... and Buried

John McCain is dead.

Literally, obviously; but figuratively, also- and almost as obviously.

At the time and not being prescient, I was not overly impressed by this:

 

It was on October 10, 2008, during a closely contested presidential campaign featuring Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain that

At a town hall event in Lakeville, Minnesota, a woman in the audience made a false and offensive claim about Obama.

 “I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him, and he’s not, um, he’s an Arab,” she said.

Without hesitation, McCain took the microphone from her. “No, ma’am,” he responded. “He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that just I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what the campaign’s all about. He’s not [an Arab].”

At the same event, another supporter expressed fear about Obama becoming president. McCain again stood firm. “He is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States,” he assured the crowd.

Many in the audience were not happy with his defense of Obama. Reports from the time say some people booed and called Obama a “liar” and a “terrorist.” But McCain refused to back down.

“I want to fight, and I will fight,” he said. “But I will be respectful. I admire Sen. Obama and his accomplishments, and I will respect him.”

At the time, a reporter for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina was half-right upon writing "it's hard to see how his current appearance today dosn't cut against him.... But he was boxed in and had no choice but to do this."

It did cut against McCain. However, unless the mood in the Republican Party virtually reversed itself- and it didn't- between that point and Donald Trump's presidential run eight years later, Senator McCain did have the choice not to do that.

Donald Trump's words and actions did change everything, not only in politics, but in this country generally. Nonetheless, he less persuaded conservatives and Republicans than he did give license for their worst selves to manifest themselves.

 

The next time Republicans accuse Democrats of "violent rhetoric," Here's ONE of MANY videos as proof that they are full of shit.

Here's sitting US Senator Ted Cruz, doing a call-and-response with every response saying "He should be shot!"

ZERO PUSHBACK.pic.twitter.com/JEedZDljqk

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) September 12, 2026

 

It's here that one is tempted to say "but what of the Democrats and anti-Semitism? Abdul el-Sayed, Hasan Piker, and the DSA?"  Brandon Herrera has a history of making derogatory remarks about American citizens, including women and homeless people. Therefore, to Speaker Mike Johnson, he is "a very serious candidate for Congress and a very thoughtful guy" who will be elected "and help us to save America to presrve freedom and bring down costs for the Americcan people."

HOLY SHIT -- Tapper plays Mike Johnson footage of Republican candidate Brandon Herrera describing moms as "cum trophies," mentions he called Nazi machine guns "the original ghetto blasters," and asks Johnson how he can support him. Johnson says "Herrera has run a very effective… pic.twitter.com/xfz2n8ZzmJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2026

Donald Trump called former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman "that dog" and 1996 Miss Universe winner "Miss Piggy." More recently, he targeted New York Times reporter Katie Rogers as "ugly, both inside and out" and told Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey "Quiet. Quiet, piggy." 

Obviously, these are not the only sewer-level insults by Trump against women, just as he has ridiculed others on racial or other putrid grounds. And just as obviously, Ted Cruz has remained silent about all of these, aside from declaring "my favorite attribute about Donald Trump is the guy has cast iron balls at a level that there's no parallel in history." Speaker Johnson and most other Republicans have displayed nearly as much cowardice.  John McCain, war hero and defender of Barack Obama against a racially offensive remark, is dead, as is any sense of decency or courage in the Republican Party.

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Malingn Influence Almost Beyond Human Comprehension

Democrat Rafael Warnock of Georgia is a great Senator but he's wrong about the last thing he says here:

Raphael Warnock: “JD Vance is perhaps the most craven politician in the American landscape. Here’s a man who called Donald Trump America’s Hitler. He’s just deeply craven. It’s hard to know really what his moral center is. In some ways he’s scarier than Donald Trump” pic.twitter.com/ehLHnsdOqo

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) June 14, 2026

It's hard to determine who the most craven politician is in the American landscape because Vance has a lot of competition in that area. However, the Vice President is not scarier than Donald Trump- and Vance himself is evidence of that.

As noted here, in 2016 J.D. Vance "wrote to his former law school roommate Josh McLaurin, 'I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?'"   On two consecutive nights in March of 2016, DonaldTrump insulted the wife of Senator Ted Cruz. On the second occasion, Trump "retweeted a post showing a side by side image of Heidi Cruz and Trump's wife, Melania. Text on the picture read. 'No need to spill the beans.' The images ae worth a thousand words.'" (The photo was of Heidi appearing extremely unpleasant.) In that same campaign, candidate Trump called rival Marco Rubio, then a Florida senator, "Little Marco", "Mr. Meltdown", and "lightweight choker".

Now, all three are so up Donald Trump's rear end that only their ankles are visible. Nor has the President lost his touch.

Stephen A Smith on CNN: "The president is certainly an upgrade from what we were seeing from Joe Biden in terms of his alertness and what have you" pic.twitter.com/L9yaQKqPf0

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 14, 2026

This was nothing compared to the embrace the likes of Rubio, Cruz, and Vance have given Donald. The response from "Stephen A" to CNN's Kasie Hunt included some criticism of Trump. After Smith, a well-known New York Knicks fan, criticized Trump for having attended the third game of the NBA championship series between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs, Trump responded on Untruth Social with

Stephen A. Smith is an arrogant fool, a low IQ individual. In other words, he’s 'dumb as a rock,' and totally unqualified to ever think of running for high political office, or even low political office, for that matter! He’d get annihilated in a debate by the most incompetent of politicians. Joe Biden’s now 'fabled' performance would look great by comparison to anything that this loudmouth huckster has to offer, which isn’t much! Within a few weeks, they’d laugh him out of politics!!!"

And then Smith decided he could pacify Trump by claiming "the President is certainly an upgrade from what we were seeing from Joe Biden in terms of his alertness and what have you". Trump evidently falls asleep periodically during official events, which speaks of his alertness. We would know more about the President's health, were any medical records released. They have not been, and that's by design. 

One wonders: how would SAS have responded had any other public official referred to him as "an arrogant fool, a low IQ individual," and "dumb as a rock"?  Any one with any self-respect- and Smith has more self-respect than almost anyone alive- would have condemned the individual who assailed him.

But this was Donald Trump rudely and obnoxiously condemning an individual. And Smith did what so many others have done when falsely denounced by Donald J. Trump- fold. No other public official has so often humiliated others and profited by it. Trump gets away with it, as no one else has, can, or will. His sway over people, almost demonic, is incomparable. 

And that is why Senator/Reverend Warnock is wrong, uncharacteristically, when he suggests that anyone is scarier than Donald J. Trump.

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Messiah, He Said

Joy Behar was almost almost right. Sort of.

Joy Behar: “Jesus himself did not run around saying, ‘I’m the Messiah, I’m the Messiah.’”

Alyssa Farah Griffin: “Ehhhhh.”

Sara Haines: “That’s exactly what Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah!’”

Joy Behar: “No, he did not! Jesus was more modest than that. Listen I knew Jesus,… pic.twitter.com/FNTIiczhRC

— RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) April 14, 2026

Texas senator Ted Cruz responded to Joy Behar's remarks with "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Entirely correct; also, off-point.  Behar argued "Jesus himself did not run around saying 'I'm the Messiah, I'm the Messiah.'"

That's accurate. Jesus did not run or run around; he walked. He did claim to be the Messiah, though less often his than equality with God. In John, chapter 4 while on his way from Judea to Galilee, Jesus stopped at a pool in Samaria and struck up a conversation with a woman who came by for water. When he mentioned that she had had five "husbands," the woman identified him as a prophet and Jew and (as recounted in verses 21-26).

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

 In Mark 14: 61b-62a, Jesus was asked "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One" and responded "I am..."

By comparison, Jesus claimed divinity on several occasions Perhaps most famously was the reference Senator Cruz made, from John 14:6. Also

Mark 14:62: after claiming to be the Messiah, Jesus stated "And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven."

John 5:22: "Moreover, the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the Son."

John 11:25- 26: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live and whomever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

Mark 2:28: "So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath."

And simultaneously asserting divinity and pre-existence, the latter a triumph of eloquence and decisiveness over proper grammar:

John 17:5: "And now, Father glorify me in your ownpresence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed."

John 8:58: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM."

There also were instances in which other individual(s) contended, or that Jesus implied, that Christ was divine. Those contrasted, at least in degree, with those occasions in which he himself was definitive.

Behar can't believe that Jesus called himself the Messiah because he "was more modest than that." Well, for the rest of us, even Donald Trump, it would be extraordinarily immodest and boastful. Of course, the rest of us are only mortal, did not exist at the creation, do not miraculously heal the sick, and will not be executed and raised from the dead.

Pretty impressive resume. Or as Walt Whitman is thought to have said, "if you done it, it ain't bragging."

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Macho, Macho Man

Ted Cruz is a tough guy. If you don't believe it, just ask him. He drinks beer and says "kiss my ass!

This is the corniest shit I’ve ever seen.

Princeton grad Ted Cruz tries to look like a tough guy about a fake story—dropping a “kiss my ass” and taking a sip of beer in unison with his tough guy “friends.” pic.twitter.com/6WlDfS9sjf

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) August 31, 2023

He (and a few other rightists) evidently are referring to the report that

A statement from Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Dr. George Koob to the publication Thursday indicates that the U.S. could soon follow a Canadian guideline advising its citizens to limit themselves to two alcoholic beverages per week.

“I mean, [alcohol consumption guidelines] are not going to go up, I’m pretty sure. So if [guidelines] go in any direction, it would be toward Canada,” Koob said.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction recommended in January that its citizens have no more than two drinks per week regardless of gender. The CDC currently recommends that, in the U.S., men limit themselves to two drinks per day and women to one.

The advice would not be mandatory but merely advisory and may not even be issued at all. In a food fight in March of 2016 Donald Trump, who had previously claimed that Ted Cruz's father Rafael was with Lee Harvey Oswald before the latter shot and killed President John F. Kennedy

re-tweeted side-by-side images of Cruz’s wife, with an unflattering grimace, and Melania in a gauzy, glamorous pose. “No need to ‘spill the beans'” read the caption. “The images are worth a thousand words.”

At an event Thursday in Wisconsin, Cruz responded by calling Trump “a sniveling coward” who has a problem with women – particularly “strong women.”

Cruz continued to dig in Friday, painting Trump’s comments as part of a larger pattern of misogyny.

Yet, as the Washington Post outlined in March of 2022, Cruz in January 2, 2021 unveiled a proposal for an "emergency 10-day audit," approved by Donald Trump, which could have enabled Republican state legislators to overturn the results of the presidential election. In a statement to the Post, the famous conservative jurist J. Michael Luttig explained

Once Ted Cruz promised to object, January 6 was all but foreordained, because Cruz was the most influential figure in the Congress willing to force a vote on Trump’s claim that the election was stolen. He was also the most knowledgeable of the intricacies of both the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution, and the ways to exploit the two.”....

He went on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to apologize for calling Jan. 6 “a violent terrorist attack,” saying his “frankly dumb” language referred only to those who attacked police officers, not “peaceful protesters supporting Donald Trump.” He played up claims that the government was somehow involved in the attack on the Capitol, asking an FBI official at a Senate hearing, “How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?”

Last month, he visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and tweeted a photo of the meeting. He rode shotgun in the lead vehicle in a trucker convoy protesting pandemic-related mandates in a March 10 event. He posed a series of confrontational questions to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson regarding her views on anti-racism.

Ted Cruz did not quite do a "180." Even after Trump publicly insulted Mrs. Cruz's appearance and implied that Rafael Cruz was involved in the JFK assassination, Cruz did not call for him to be exiled. And when the Texas senator warmed up to Trump, he didn't offer to become butler to the then-President (not quite, anyway). Nonetheless, he now has spent roughly six years kissing the posterior of someone who has made it clear that if it benefitted him in the least, he would drive over Cruz, back up over him, then go forward and drive over him again.

But Cancun Ted, with degrees from two Ivy League universities, drinks beer in public and says "kiss my ass."  A real man's man, he is.

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Everything But Crazy

A member of the California delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives is, obviously, justified in condemning Donald J. Trump's latest tweet, although I'd be a little less concerned about the "Coco Chow" racial bigotry (or xenophobia) than about the death threat.

More insanity, lies and racism from the former President. Elaine Chao is an American. https://t.co/ujlfikt6DK

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) October 1, 2022

 

Of course, Donald Trump wouldn't himself gun down Mitch McConnell, though the did once warn us that he could do it to a random stranger on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. Maybe, just maybe, Trump will be sufficiently persuasive that instead one of his disciples will take down the Senate Minority Leader, after which the ex-President would deny  responsibility.

Unsurprisingly garnering the greatest criticism was Trump's last remark "must immediately seek help and advise (sic) from his China loving wife, Coco Chow." Also not surprising is that the reference to the "China loving wife" has summoned relatively little attention. (The video below is from 1/19.) Last year, Voice of America reported

The Transportation Department's watchdog asked the Justice Department to criminally investigate Elaine Chao late last year after it determined she had misused her office when she was transportation secretary under President Donald Trump but was rebuffed, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report said the Justice Department's criminal and public integrity divisions declined in December to take up the case for criminal prosecution following the inspector general's findings that Chao inappropriately used her staff and office for personal tasks and to promote a shipping business owned by Chao's father and sisters. That company does extensive business with China...

The watchdog report cited several instances that raised ethical concerns. In one, Chao instructed political appointees in the department to contact the Homeland Security Department to check personally on the status of a work permit application for a student who was a recipient of her family's philanthropic foundation.

Chao also made extensive plans for an official trip to China in November 2017 - before she canceled it - that would have included stops at places that had received support from her family's business, the New York-based Foremost Group. According to department emails, Chao directed her staff to include her relatives in the official events and high-level meetings during the trip.

Above all, let's keep (the Secretary) happy,`` one of the department's employees wrote to another staffer regarding Chao's father. ``If Dr. Chao is happy, then we should be flying with a feather in our hat.''

The report found that Chao also directed the department's public affairs staff to assist her father in the marketing of his personal biography and to edit his Wikipedia page, and used staff to check on repairs of an item at a store for her father.

Elaine Chao was corrupt, which merely placed her in the mainstream of President Trump's employees.

*It was a strategic choice, especially the obvious clowns like Pruitt & Zinke, neither of which lasted his full term but provided early headlines in the Beltway press while Trump, Jared & Vanky were digging into the 'good stuff' like selling state secrets to KSA. @GOP

— NoelCaslerComedy (@caslernoel) September 19, 2022

 

Being surrounded by ethically vacuous managers served an additional purpose. Thus compromised, these individuals posed little threat to Trump's own underhanded and unscrupulous dealings, both past and present. They could not afford to blow the whistle on the man they served lest their own dealings be exposed.

No doubt President 45 ached for a way to insert himself into the national conversation, currently dominated by the devastation of Hurricane Ian, a tragedy so enormous it may preclude success for this effort. However, Trump famously ridiculed the looks of the wife of an enemy, Ted Cruz, and there is no downside to him attacking Mitch McConnell's spouse.

Which is to say: Donald Trump is not crazy. He knows that dishonesty, crudeness, and bigotry, mixed in with right-wing ideology, took him to the Oval Office.  If his behavior is "crazy," insanity has its upside.

 

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Tweet of the Day- Blame Where Blame Belongs

Some tweeters recognized both the depth of the calamity which unfolded Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas and the manner in which Democrats need to respond to the need for action. 

We tried Republican gun policies for 20 years now and all we have to show for it are lots of dead bodies.

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🇺🇲🇺🇦 (@RachelBitecofer) May 24, 2022

We need common sense gun laws & we won't get them until we roll over the Republicans at every level of office.

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🇺🇲🇺🇦 (@RachelBitecofer) May 24, 2022

Democrats technically "control" Congress. Of course, they aren't really in control because the will of possibly two Democrats and 50 of 0 Republican senators has obstructed the effort of a Democratic House of Representatives to enact meaningful change. 

There are many Americans who are not solidly left or right, most (not all) who pay limited attention to politics and thus do not realize that Congress is effectively controlled by Mitch McConnell with periodic assistance from conservative Democrats. They understandably confuse de facto control with de jure control.

Mitch and his gang are aided and abetted by the extent to which MSNBC- and more consistently, CNN- talk of "Congress" instead of Republicans. (MSNBC at least features as a guest one truthteller, video below). This tweeter understands:

Attention @MSNBC @CNN and your hosts and guests: it’s not “lawmakers” and “Congress” who are failing to do anything about gun violence, it’s Republicans. Put the blame where it belongs. Ask @SpeakerPelosi and @ChrisMurphyCT

— Phyllis Kupferstein (@pkdof) May 24, 2022

Only in rare moments of boldness will Democrats actually hold Republicans responsible name or by party. Even more rarely will they name names.  They must call out specific Republicans who not only obstruct passage of firearm safety legislation but receive large sums of money from the gun lobby. While senators come and go, as of mid-2019, the #1 recipient was Utah senator Mitt Romney.

That would be the same Mitt Romney who expressed "grief" which "overwhelms the soul" because of the murders in Texas. It's the same Mitt Romney who joined George Floyd protestors two years ago while  ostentatiously posting a photo to "make sure that people understand that black lives matter."  He has gone on to oppose federal gun safety legislation, and a measure to make infant formula more available. Black lives matter, though only when convenient..

Now it is Ted Cruz who collects the most blood money. However, Democrats will avoid upsetting their GOP colleagues or cause them discomfort by naming names. Voters will be denied an opportunity to recognize Republicans whose passion for the proliferation of deadly weaponry may be prompted by the financial generosity of the industry of death featuring the NRA and firearms manufacturers.. It is late, but not too late for Democratic collegiality to give way to the importance of highlighting GOP indifference to slaughter.

 

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The Actual Bork Lesson

The Republican Party (Lindsey Graham in particular) would like you to believe that the Democratic Party is responsible for the attacks upon Ketanji Brown Jackson in the Senate Judiciary Committee because of how Democrats treated poor ol' Robert Bork in the 1980s. Predictably, mainstream media- even supposedly liberal CNN and MSNBC- have done little to push back on this myth. Fortunately, we now have John Heilemann imposing reality (at 24:41 of the video below) when on Friday evening's Real Time with Bill Maher he explained

This is the thing. This is the thing about the lessons of the Bork experience, Like, if you go back and watch the Bork hearing, you'll find it was like a constitutional law seminar. I mean, you had Larry Tribe down from Harvard and you had Ted Kennedy and you had at that time Joe Biden, who was leading that charge. they were dissecting Robert Bork's constitutional views and trying to say if this became a prevailing view of the Constitution, America would go backwards.

It was substantive. It definitely had an ideological edge. But it was substantive- not what we see now. And I think you have people who say, well, it's become a partisan circus because of Bork. That's not what happened because of Bork.

What happened because of Bork was people decided they couldn't ever- justices*- one good thing about Bork was that he always said what he was for and what he was against and that's why he lost- because he told the truth, that he was retrograde, he did want to take America back in time,

Now you have justices who are coached, do not say anything. And so in a constant- where justice is like if I speak my mind I could get voted down, they- alright, it's all performance for them. It becomes Kabuki.

That's the unfortunate legacy of Bork is that we now have substance-less hearings in a time when a televised hearing could be a great lesson.

Heilemann then started talking about Merrick Garland, but you get the point. There was never any interest on either side in anything substantive. Democratic senators and Mrs. Jackson were confident that without any flubs or gaffes, the Judge would end up being approved in the Senate, with or without a tie-breaking vote from the Vice President.

Republicans also understood approval was virtually assured unless they could get a juicy soundbite from Jackson. They knew they could not get that by boring down on issues with the relentless questioning, which a witness on the jury stand might face.

At 6:53 of the video below, Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee can be seen asking the nominee 'can you provide a definition for the word 'woman'"? Jackson replied "I can't" and when asked again stated "not in this context. I'm not a biologist."

That should bring to mind the stock answer given by Republicans when a few years ago they were asked whether climate change is real. "I'm not a scientist" they would often respond, to the justified derision of everyone unafraid to acknowledge the obvious.

Thomas' refusal to get nailed down as to whether there is a difference between men and women is analogous to the refusal of another post-Bork Supreme Court nominee to answer another simple question.   As reported at the time of his Judiciary Committee hearing, Clarence Thomas "told Mr. Leahy that he had never debated the Roe decision with any acquaintance, did not remember discussing it as a law student and had no present position at all on it."

The controversial C.T. was clearly lying (by a long shot, not his most famous lie) and because of- not despite- his deception, he was confirmed.

That less is lost on no one, as Heilemann was saying. Nonetheless, Judge Jackson inadvertently offered  to Senator Blackburn an opening upon stating "I am not a biologist." Were Blackburn intent on exposing a nominee she already had made up her mind to vote against, she would have noted that physical scientists (i.e., biologists)  generally agree with Blackburn's view of a biological distinction. It is social scientists, dreaded by many conservatives such as Blackburn, who question the traditional, dichotomous view of men and women.

But the Tennessean didn't go there, instead remarking

The fact that you can't give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is  underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about. Just last week an entire generation of young girls watched as our taxpayer-funded institutions permitted a biological male to compete and beat a biological woman in the NCAA's swimming championships. What message do you think this sends to girls who aspire to compete and win in sports at the highest levels?

But Jackson had given "a straight answer" (or a gay one, whatever) and a potentially revealing one by throwing the question back to biologists, which gave Blackburn a chance to nail her down. However, making a point about gender in sports and berating the public school systems "("taxpayer-funded institutions") was a higher priority.

Dissecting Ketanji Brown Jackson's constitutional views was of little interest to Blackburn or any of her colleagues, even to Ted Cruz, who has argued in front of the US Supreme Court. Since Bork, every nominee is coached to avoid answering questions and in this case, the opposition changes the subject even when the nominee slips up and says something interesting.

 

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Sons And Daughters Of The Elite

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson invoked a great passive-aggressive moment on Tuesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into her nomination to replace Justice Breyer on the USA Supreme Court. Questioned about the remarks made during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings by two Trump-nominate judges, Jackson stated "I do agree with both Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett on this issue,  Roe and Casey are the settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a woman's pregnancy."

Nonetheless, there was more controversy prompted by the interrogation (first 17:09 of the video below) of Judge Jackson upon Texas senator Ted Cruz 

interrogating Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson about critical race theory.

The Texas senator first took issue with references made to Nikole Jannah-Jones during a speech Jackson gave at the University of Michigan on MLK Day in 2020. Hannah-Jones wrote The 1619 Project, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

"It is not something that I've studied. It doesn't come up in my work," Jackson said about The 1619 Project. "I was mentioning it because it was, at least at that time, something that was talked about and well-known to the students that I was speaking to at the law school."

Cruz then moved on to discussing critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how race and racism function in various institutions. Republicans have decried critical race theory, passing laws to ban the theory from schools.

Jackson repeatedly emphasized that she has never studied critical race theory and that it doesn't apply to her work as a judge.

"It wouldn't be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court," Jackson said.

Democrats were repulsed by Cruz's line of questioning and

The Republican National Committee on Tuesday also attempted to tie Jackson to critical race theory. The committee posted a GIF depicting Jackson with her initials "KBJ" being crossed out and replaced with the initials "CRT," meaning critical race theory.

The committee was also criticized for the post, with many decrying it as "racist."

"Critical Race Theory is being used as a slur against Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson," Kentucky's Charles Booker wrote on Twitter. "For some politicians, it's the new way to say the N-word. It's not right, and this Senate confirmation is too important. The American people deserve better."

Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell tweeted at the committee, "Why do you hate black people?"

This was sound and fury signifying nothing- or perhaps everything  As Cruz pointed out, Jackson is a member of the Board of Trustees of Georgetown Day School, which the Senator attempted to prove teaches critical race theory. In roughly 80 seconds more telling than is obvious, the Judge commented (at 10:23)

Georgetown Day School has a special history that I think is important to understand when you consider my service on that Board. The school was founded in 1945 in Washington, D.C. at a time in which by law there was racial segregation in this community. Black students were not allowed in the public schools, to go to school with white students. 

Georgetown Day School is a private school that was created when three white families- Jewish families- got together with three black families and said that despite the fact that the law requires us to separate, despite the fact that the law is set up to make sure that black children are not treated the same as everyone else, we are going to form a private school so that our children can go to school together.

The idea of equality- justice- is at the core of the Georgetown Day School mission and it's a private school that every parent who joins the community does so willingly with an understanding that they are joining a community that is designed to make sure that every child is valued. Every child is treated as having an inherent worth and none are discriminated against because of race...

 

 Judge Jackson notes that no child should be discriminated against because of race, and establishing in 1945 a school dedicated to that notion was both laudatory, especially so because it probably was controversial.

Nonetheless, it is now 77 years later, 68 years after Topeka v. Board of Education, decades after the nation understood that schools should not be racially segregated. Yet, they still are segregated, in some locales more than in the past.

This is not primarily because of racism or racial discrimination. Instead, schools are separated by race primarily because of housing patterns fostered by economic class distinctions- and the proliferation of private schools, of which (as Jackson pointed out) Georgetown Day School is one.

The class divide in the USA is large and getting larger. "None are discriminated against because of race" at the school, the nominee remarked. 

And so they are not. But the annual tuition at the prestigious school runs from $39,896 to $46,682. It is gratifying that there are black families who can afford that. However, there are more black families who cannot, proportionately even more than of white families who cannot.  

Disturbingly, Judge Jackson, an extremely impressive and well-qualified nominee worthy of Senate approval, is proud to be intimately associated with an institution closed off not only to the poor of all races but to the vast majority of the middle class and working-class of all races.

This is not to suggest that Ted Cruz, evincing a loathing of Georgetown Day School because of its alleged approach to teaching American history, deserves any credit. He'd love to derail approval of a nominee proud of the school's social justice mission, yet failed to notice that the "children (who) can go to school together" at a school "designed to make sure that every child is valued" excludes all but the elite.

It's a reminder that when a Republican oozes sympathy toward, or empathy for, everyday Americans or the working-class, he or she probably is working a con.  But it's a reminder also that, notwithstanding the passion for racial justice among most Democrats, their passion for economic justice, though greater than among Republicans, is fairly meager- except insofar as it advances racial justice.

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The Incredible Shrinking Rafael Edward

If there is one thing Donald Trump is right about (and there must be) it's Ted Cruz. The New York Daily News reports

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, bombarded with national criticism over a Cancun getaway as his frozen state shivered in the dark last week, said Tuesday that the incident illustrated “how ridiculously politicized” the country is — but he didn’t stop there.

“Here’s a suggestion, just don’t be a--holes,” said Cruz (R-Texas). “Yeah, like just you know treat each other as human beings. Have some degree, some modicum of respect." Somehow, that was not the fault of Heidi Cruz's friends, who leaked the information, nor to Mrs. Cruz herself, who, as an executive of Goldman Sachs feels so entitled as to flaunt a trip to coastal Mexico while her husband's state is being devastated. It was the fault of the press, you see.

Complaining about a paparazzi who photographed his wife wearing a bikini on the beach in Cancun, Cruz nonetheless added "Heidi is smoking hot, so I looked at the pictures and said, ‘Man, you look great.’” Fortunately, though he once called Ohio senator Sherrod Brown on the Senate floor a "complete ass," Cruz spared us his favorite "a" word in describing his wife's physique.

The whine took place on the podcast Ruth Less, not coincidentally begun soon after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. However, Cruz is more than peculiarly classless.  We recall March of 2016 when

After a super PAC unrelated to Cruz published an ad using a suggestive photo of Trump’s wife, Melania, from GQ, Trump laid the blame on Cruz anyway.

“Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”

While it remains unclear what “beans” Trump was referring to, he posted an image on his Twitter account Wednesday another user had tweeted insulting the appearance of Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz. 

As the Texas Tribune pointed out in December

Cruz has proven in the past four years that he’ll stand by Trump in the president's most pressing times. During Trump's impeachment trial early this year, Cruz joined forces with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as part of the in-house impeachment advisory team and met with Trump and his lawyers to help “frame their legal strategy,” which ultimately contributed to the president’s acquittal.

And now, Cruz has been a leading voice in sowing doubt in Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat.

Cruz even collaborated with Trump's legal team during the more recent impeachment trial, when "after Democrats wrapped up their case against Trump"

Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee huddled for roughly an hour with Bruce Castor and David Schoen, evidently to go over strategy. “I just wanted to sit down and say, ‘Okay, what are y’all looking to put forward?’ and to share our thoughts in terms of where things are,” Cruz recalled in a Fox News interview Thursday evening. “And certainly what I urged to the Trump defense lawyers was to focus on [on the legal standard of incitement].” On Friday morning, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins reported that the three senators specifically intended to give Trump’s legal team “advice for the rebuttal” to Democrats’ arguments.

Although few if any senators of either party would confront their colleagues, this does not make for credible jurors.. Nor was Cruz credible when on his podcast he complained of the paparazzi's photograph "I will tell you,that she is pissed about." The senator was terribly concerned about his wife, once publicly humiliated by Donald Trump a few months before his boots were licked by Cruz.

And that is why Donald Trump understands Ted Cruz.  The Washington Post noted a year ago after Trump's first acquittal

at a Jan. 29 event celebrating the ratification of a new North American trade deal, Trump singled Cruz out for praise. “Thank you, Ted, for everything,” he said. “You’ve been incredible.”

Incredible.  That is one of the best descriptions ever of Ted Cruz- incredible, as in "not credible."

 

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Not The First Time

It didn't start yesterday.

George Will is accurate and being celebrated on left Twitter after noting "on Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies." And you can't beat (emphasis Will's) "Hawley — has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment?"  (Hawley is right about $2,000 stimulus checks but the push by him and Sanders hasn't succeeded.)

Nonetheless, Will is trying to blow smoke up our posteriors when he advances the notion that there are three discrete parties in politics:

America’s three-party system — Democrats, Hawley-Cruz Republicans, and McConnell-Sasse Republicans — will continue to take shape on Wednesday. Watch how many of these Republican senators who might be seeking reelection in 2022 have the spine to side with the adults against Hawley-Cruz et al. and the Grassy Knollers among their constituents: John Boozman, Richard Burr, Mike Crapo, Charles E. Grassley, John Hoeven, Mike Lee, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Richard C. Shelby, John Thune, Todd C. Young.

Today, they are assuring what was already assured, that Joe Biden will be inaugurated President on January 21, 2021. However, each one has sided with the authoritarian on nearly every vote in this regime. All of them delivered a stunning rebuke to the rule of law and American democracy when they ignored the overwhelming evidence against President Trump in order to vote not guilty at his impeachment trial.

During the impeachment hearing early this year, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned 

Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in [this] very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide, and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our Democratic affairs? The short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. You can't trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. He will not change and you know it.

What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.

After the President was impeached, all 15 of those GOP senators, though (or maybe because) aware that Trump would cheat, then not go quietly if defeated for re-election, voted for acquittal.

This isn't the GOP's first rigging rodeo. CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer recalls

On November 21, the Florida Supreme Court authorized manual recounts in four counties and set a November 26th deadline. The next day, the Miami-Dade County canvassing board decided to focus solely on the contested ballots in order to meet the deadline. To hunker down and avoid the media frenzy that had descended on Miami, the officials decided to move to a smaller room on the 19th floor so they could be closer to the ballot-scanning machine, according to an account in Salon.

But Republican operatives, congressional staffers and lawyers had organized a group of protesters to fly to Florida, and the mob of "50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones and Hermes ties," as described by the Wall Street Journal, gathered in the high-rise building where the recount was taking place.

When New York Congressman John Sweeney, who was working for the Bush campaign, learned that the recount had been moved to another room, he ordered, the troops to "shut it down."

The protesters yelled and screamed, accusing the canvassers of trying to steal the election. The chants became fiercer and the demonstration increasingly raucous as they directly confronted the county officials. "Stop the count. Stop the fraud," they chanted.

Miami-Dade Democratic County Chairman Joe Geller bore the brunt of the protesters' ire. When someone handed him a sample ballot to test one of the voting machines, the protesters surrounded him and demand that he desist, accusing him of stealing ballots.

"This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me. At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death," he recalled. The police escorted Geller so that he could safely leave the building. Republican organizers denied that the situation ever became violent.

The strategy worked. Hours after the riot, the board decided to shut down its operations and the manual recount in Miami came to an end. (David Leahy, one member of the canvassing board, told the New York Times, "This was perceived as not being an open and fair process. That weighed heavy on our minds." But days later he denied the protests played a role in ending the manual recount.) The Supreme Court later handed the victory to George W. Bush, and a number of the participants in the Brooks Brothers Riot went on to serve in the administration and work in conservative politics.

Nor did the lying about the election process begin in 2020 as

“This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me,” recalled Geller, who is now a state legislator. “At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death.”

Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent.

“That’s all bulls---,” he told The Post. “There was no violence. There was no threatening behavior.”

Although senators Hawley and Cruz are straight-up authoritarians, their GOP colleagues chose to condone the President's crimes when they had the chance to shut them down.  Assaulting democracy is how Donald Trump rolls. But it's also how the Republican Party rolls.

 

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A Proud Texan Proud Of Texan Gun Laws

Retweeting right-wing Breitbart News, Texas senator Ted Cruz on Monday commented

Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens. 

Huffington Post reports

In reply, Lightfoot told Cruz to “keep our name out of your mouth.”

In the same tweet, she posted a graph showing how nearly 60% of the illegal firearms that were recovered in the city between 2013 and 2016 actually came from outside Illinois.

They were, Lightfoot wrote, “mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation.” 

Among the laws the federal government needs to enact is one requiring a background check on all private gun transactions, aside from the transfer of a firearm from one individual to a member of his immediate family. Currently, according to the Brennan Center

Twelve states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) and the District of Columbia require universal background checks at the point of sale for all sales and transfers of all classes of firearms, whether they are purchased from a licensed dealer or an unlicensed seller.

Not surprisingly, things are much different in Ted Cruz's state, inasmuch as

handgun license holders in Texas are exempt from the federal background check requirement when purchasing a handgun.2 (Note, however, that people who have become prohibited from possessing firearms may continue to hold state firearms licenses if the state fails to remove these licenses in a timely fashion.)

Texas does not require private sellers (sellers who are not licensed dealers) to initiate a background check when transferring a firearm.

This should be quite inconvenient for its junior senator. We were reminded , slightly less than 24 hours after Cruz's tweet, of the deadly consequences of policies in such states as Texas because

A law enforcement official says a gunman who killed seven people in West Texas had obtained his AR-style rifle through a private sale, evading a federal background check.

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity on Tuesday because the person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Officials said Seth Aaron Ator had previously tried to obtain a gun but failed a federal background check.

Obtaining the weapon through a private sale, as opposed to buying it through a licensed gun dealer, would've allowed Ator to skirt the background check.

And Ted Cruz remains among the very few things senators Lindsey Graham and Al Franken agreed about:

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Sorry Impulse

Beto O'Rourke has apologized.

Did the Democratic candidate to unseat Senator Ted Cruz sexually assault a woman? Has he used the "n-word?"Did he call his opponent a "Nazi" or rashly, inaccurately, and offensively referred to abortion as a "holocaust?" (No, that would be a few right-wingers.)

R-E-L-A-X. It's far less serious than the latter two, and not in the same universe as the first. Instead, Politico reports

In 1991, the 19-year-old O’Rourke reviewed the Broadway musical “The Will Rogers Follies” for the Columbia Daily Spectator, the university’s student newspaper. Writing under the byline Robert O’Rourke, he panned the performance as “one of the most glaring examples of the sickening excesses and moral degradations of our culture.”

He went on to bemoan the bevy of “perma-smile actresses whose only qualifications seem to be their phenomenally large breasts and tight buttocks.”

The review in the Oct. 10, 1991, edition of the Spectator, which according to an archive search was the only article he wrote for the newspaper, offers another glimpse of the former life of the Texas Senate candidate, who has given Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) an unexpectedly serious reelection challenge. It also shows how drastically the sensitivities surrounding descriptions of women have changed over the past three decades: While it’s unclear whether O’Rourke was criticizing the musical’s use of scantily-clad women for effect or commenting on their bodies himself, his prose, in hindsight, is jarring either way.

No, it's not jarring and no, it's not unclear.

O'Rourke is being criticized for being sexist or misogynistic or insensitive for pointing out that a for-profit cultural event (which became highly successful) was itself misogynistic and/or insensitive.

But the candidate belongs to the Democratic Party. And so while a nominee for the United States Supreme Court very likely perjures himself about attempting to rape a female and about nearly everything else, O'Rourke sends to Politico a statement reading in part "I am ashamed of what I wrote and I apologize. There is no excuse for making disrespectful and demeaning comments about women."

There is not, and there might be cause for apology if he had in fact made a disrespectful or demeaning comment about women.

O'Rourke deserves credit for not issuing a fau-apology along the lines of "I apologize if anything I said may have been hurtful to someone." But the apology culture has taken hold with Democrats- apologize first, think second, attack never. Politico added "The column was flagged to POLITICO by a person who opposes O’Rourke’s Senate campaign."

Hardly newsworthy, this is a case of a media outlet being used by a political campaign.  O'Rourke would have been better off noting that this was a smear performed by a political operative doing Ted Cruz's dirty work for him.  And if that would have entailed a swipe at the mainstream media, all the better. It may be what much of the public has been waiting for a Democrat to do for some time.

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More Than Ted Cruz

It's obscured, arguably concealed, yet potentially extremely important.

TIME annually publishes a list of the 100 most influential people in the world and the blurb recognizing Donald Trump was written by Texas senator Cruz, who (in full) remarked

President Trump is a flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America. The fact that his first year as Commander in Chief disoriented and distressed members of the media and political establishment is not a bug but a feature.

The same cultural safe spaces that blinkered coastal elites to candidate Trump’s popularity have rendered them blind to President Trump’s achievements on behalf of ordinary Americans. While pundits obsessed over tweets, he worked with Congress to cut taxes for struggling families. While wealthy celebrities announced that they would flee the country, he fought to bring back jobs and industries to our shores. While talking heads predicted Armageddon, President Trump’s strong stand against North Korea put Kim Jong Un back on his heels.

President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo. That scares the heck out of those who have controlled Washington for decades, but for millions of Americans, their confusion is great fun to watch.

It's hard to imagine so much minsinformation in seven sentences, but most reaction- understandably- has been on the effusive praise given freely to a man who has so insulted (first video from 3/16; the latter from 5/16)the Senator's family. Typical was one from a Matt Fuller:

Call me old fashioned, but if I were Ted Cruz and Donald Trump had personally branded me as a liar, suggested he had dirt on my wife, spread rumors that my father assasinated JFK, and was, you know, Donald Trump, I’d probably pass on writing his effusive TIME magazine blurb.

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) April 19, 2018

Cruz will be easily renominated but is in very serious danger of losing his November re-election bid to Democrat Beta O'Rourke. Therefore, it's counter-intuitive that he would strive to endear himself to Trumpists while risking support among independents and right-leaning Democrats. Steve M, however, suggests the possiblility "he grovels because he thinks he's going to lose in November. Hey, there are sure to be some openings in the Trump administration in 2019, right?"

Not only will there be openings in the Trump administration in 2019, but even more in the unlikely event of a second Trump term.

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz has argued nine times before the US Supreme Court and is seemingly unaware that the US Constitution establishes the President as Commander in Chief only "of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several states, when called into the actual Service of the United States."

But of course he does know that because he is the same Rafael Edward Cruz of whom Al Franken once said "I like Ted Cruz more than my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz." Veiled and obscured in fulsome praise in TIME, the message is: do not question Donald Trump- he is our Commander in Chief, to whom full obedience is due.

Ted Cruz was, is, and evermore shall be a con man. However, this goes well beyond Ted Cruz.  If the President is re-elected, he will need the cooperation of his minions to get out the messages that dissent is unpatriotic and all resistance is futile.  Fulfilling the latter aim would be law enforcement agencies which would be called into service at each level of government- perhaps assuming credibility by acting on behalf of the "Commander in Chief."

But there will be individuals tasked with the first aim and expected to undermine the First Amendment's protections of a free press and freedom of speech.  It would be too important to leave to the President, who on his own cannot destroy the fabric of society. In this first term, congressional Republicans offer no resistance to the President, and often serve as his attack dog.  In a second term, the stakes would be much higher, and Ted Cruz has performed very well indeed in his first audition.



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Let's Call It A "Boot."

We don't know how the vote will proceed on the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017 once it's reconciled but as for now, good on you, Bob Corker. And John McCain gets a pass, even though he was captured because, well, because he was captured, tortured, and then he refused release.  But....

as for you, Ben Sasse:  candidate Donald J. Trump tweeted "@Ben Sasse looks more like a gym rat than a U.S. Senator. How the hell did he ever get elected?"





as for you, Marco Rubio: candidate Donald J. Trump tweeted "Little Marco Rubio the lightweight no show Senator from Florida is just another Wahington politician." (Rubio reportedly is 5'10"; the average American male, 5'9").

as for you, Rand Paul: candidate Donald J. Trump: Donald J. Trump tweeted "Why would anyone in Kentucky listen to failed presidential candidate Rand Paul re: caucus. Made a fool of himself (1%.) KY his second choice!"  (Translation: "get rid of him, Kentucky voters.")

as for you, Ted Cruz: candidate Donald J. Trump tweeted "Wow, Lyin' Ted Cruz really went wacko today. Made all sorts of crazy charges. Can't function under presure- not very presidential! Sad!" (Also, he linked your father to assassination of John F. Kennedy.)

as for you, Lindsey Graham: candidate Donald J. Trump gave out your cell phone number and publicly called you an "idiot" and "lightweight." (In fairness, you have tried to prove him right.)





as for you, Dean Heller:  President Trump at a White House luncheon quipped "You weren't there (on ACA repeal) but you're going to be." After the desired laughter, it was "Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn't he?" (Nice little Senate seat you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.")

as for you, Jeff Flake:  President Trump tweeted "Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is runing against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic!" ("WEAK on crime" from a guy accused of sexual assault (by conservative definition, not this one) at least twice and sexual harassment several times.)

as for you, Lisa Murkowski: President Trump tweeted "Senator @lisa murkowski of the Great State of Alaska really let the Republicans, our our country down, yesterday. Too Bad!" (Admittedly, a relatively mild rebuke for voting to uphold the ACA. He's a misogynist; of course he treats women differently than men.)

And so you have it.  Forty-two Republicans, including the sainted Susan Collins, voting for the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017 because, as Graham and Rep. Chris Collins admitted, they're scared of their donors or, as Rubio revealed, it will create the pretext for going after Medicare and Social Security.

Then there were the other senators, who will give all manner of excuses. However, there is one thing certain: each was humiliated, receiving a boot up their rear end by Donald J. Trump. All of them now have voted to enhance the prestige and power of that same man by simultaneously voting for his unpopular tax cut plan and health care mandate repeal.  There are eight GOP senators (seven if Lisa M. is generously excluded) who have no spine but like the feel of the Timberland up their rear end.




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