In a not at all shocking development, Ted Cruz is a grifter who once again did something shady to benefit himself while showing no remorse, respect for the law, or any interest besides enriching his own pockets or getting in front of a TV camera.

I know that’s a hell of a long run-on sentence but I am just so mad that I could spit.

We have all seen this grift before. It’s an absolute cottage industry in the world of Boring Books Conservatives Didn’t Even Write by Themselves. They find a publisher to give them a big advance, and they put out a book. Next, their Super PAC, full of anonymous donations, buys about 50,000 – 100,000 copies of the book. This helps the sumbitch in several ways.

One: For conservatives to believe that their ideas are more mainstream than they actually are by getting the book on some bestseller lists. Fortunately, the New York Times now puts a dagger symbol to denote that the book is only a best seller because of bulk buys like this. Recently, Donny Jr and other conservatives have gotten many social media views with “PROOF THAT NYT IS A LIBERAL RAG THAT HATES CONSERVATIVES.”

Two: The money used to purchase 50,000 -100,000 copies of Fled Cruz’s books has now been laundered. Of course, the publisher has to withhold royalties from these book sales, or they have to at least publicly say that they do. But Ted Cruz is no idiot. A charlatan? Yes. Idiot? No.

Instead, his PAC, using donated funds, purchased “sponsorship advertising” from a company called Reagan Investments, LLC. Reagan Investments, LLC, then purchased his books with those same dollars, netting him his 15% royalties, and effectively laundering political donations into his pocket. How do I know for sure? Well, they wrote “BOOKS” under the “sponsorship advertising” part when transmitting the money. Here’s the full article: Now Ted Cruz may be buying his own books through a mystery company | Salon.com

Are you with me?

Cruz puts out book —-> Voters and Anonymous people give Cruz millions in a PAC ———-> Cruz gives the PAC money to Reagan Investments ———> Reagan Investments buys books, and since they aren’t a PAC the publisher doesn’t have to withhold royalties ——> Cruz personally pockets 15% off the top.

But yall, that isn’t even what this complaint is about. There’s more.

In a completely separate grift, this sumbitch spent campaign dollars on at least $18,000 in Facebook ads urging his supporters to go buy his book. There’s no ability to trace how much campaign money he spent on other ads because that’s not available to the public. So he takes $18,000 in campaign money, runs ads for people to buy his book, and each dupe that buys it nets another 15% back into his pocket which is a violation of FEC rules. 

Of course, nothing will happen because he’ll use his campaign money to pay for a big fancy lawyer and his good ole’ boy buddies way up high will get him out of trouble because even though they hate him as much as we do, they all do the same thing and they like the system the way it is.

It’s hard to explain, of course. But do you know what happens when you piss off a broad with a nice tall glass of sweet tea, steel-toed boots and a love for graphic design? Infographics.  You get infographics.

It’s all so clear, now, ain’t it?

Matt Gaetz has been the loyalist of the Trump loyalists. No matter how low Trump went, Gaetz stood there with a grin on his face and a shovel in his hand to help dig a deeper hole. It all makes sense now that we know the latest accusations about Gaetz and his inability to keep it in his pants.

Here is what they have in common:

Daddy’s money

Don Gaetz made his fortune by convincing the government to allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover hospice services – that his non-profit provided. Once the government started covering these hospice services, he switched the company to for-profit and built the largest hospice company in the country. He made millions using government health care. He then used those millions to buy his son a seat in Congress, which the son is now using to rail against government-run health care. Now he’s using those millions on getting his son a lawyer.

We all know, of course, how Donald Trump’s daddy made his money. Real estate, including government-subsidized housing, like this building in Brooklyn that still nets the Trumps $5 million a year.

Being a Giant Windbag on Twitter

The night before Michael Cohen testified before Congress, Gaetz sent this tweet, meant to intimidate a federal witness:

“Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…,”

There are about a million other examples of Gaetz being a horses ass on Twitter for you to read if you’re a masochist, and I certainly don’t need to prove that Trump is a giant windbag.

Multiple Accusations of Sexual Impropriety

This Wikipedia page lists 26 credible accusations against Trump, most of which you’re already aware, no doubt.

The best proof on this Earth of a devil is that Donald Trump gets away with literally everything he does with no repercussions ever, and the only way that this is possible is that he sold his soul to El Diablo.

Of course, it is this week that the Gaetzgate scandal began to unfold. In my estimation, he just finally pissed off the wrong person. Mr. or Mrs. pissed off leaked the investigation that had been secret from the media for half a year. For six months, the Justice Department has been investigating whether Gaetz flew a 17-year-old child across state lines and paid her for statutory rape. Within hours of the story breaking, GOP Congressmen and women lined up to give the media anonymous accounts of Gaetz sharing naked photos of women on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives.

He is accused of having a sex contest when he was in the Florida state legislature involving . . . Harry Potter. Lawmakers got points for sleeping with married women, sorority girls, and virgins. The ultimate prize of this contest was one specific woman who they nicknamed “The Snitch” – as in Quiddich, whoever got her to sleep with them won the game outright.
Alright, alright, the Daily Mail reported the last bit there but it’s too damn juicy not to talk about at the beauty salon.

They each have a Creepy Predator Wingmen

Trump’s long documented and often photographed friendship with Jeffrey Epstein allowed him free and full access to many of these women who later accused him of sexual assault. Epstein died in prison after being indicted for running a sex-trafficking ring wherein he abused dozens of underage girls, flying them on his private plane to his private island where they could be abused without the fear of authorities coming to the aid of the children.

Gaetz’s Epstein is named Joel Greenberg. Joel Greenberg is under indictment for a whole host of unbelievably nasty crimes, from posing as a student and writing a letter that he hoped would disgrace his political rival, to using Florida state government offices to print Fake IDs for the underage girls he was sleeping with so he could fly them across state lines. That sounds familiar.

There sure is an awful lot of smoke around these folks.

Alright, jury, I’ve presented my case. Gaetz is Trump’s biggest defender because they’re the same guy. Given every advantage in life, able to purchase anything they’d ever want from women to political office, they openly flaunt their crimes and laugh at the dummies around them that play by the rules and don’t have nearly as many followers on social media as they do. They’re both full of horse shit. We can only hope that the Feds take down Gaetz before he becomes the next President Trump.

“I took her love at seventeen

A little late these days it seems
But they said heaven is well worth waiting for.”– Robert Plant/Jimmy Page

Those of you that have been paying attention to the news have undoubtedly heard about the controversy surrounding Matt Gaetz. The embattled Florida congressman always seems to find himself in the center of some controversy. A lot of this is self-inflicted. The details are a bit circumspect at this point, but I’ll do the best I can.

At the center of it all is a report that he had a sexual encounter with a 17 year old girl (thus the Led Zeppelin reference). Gaetz is currently in his late thirties, but I’m not sure when this sexual encounter supposedly happened. Unless it happened when he was 18, he is in the same hot water politically. Legally, it might be a whole other matter.

Meanwhile, Gaetz is spinning yarns about a blackmail scheme that is at the heart of it all. He is defending himself of charges that haven’t even been levied. I’m sure the psychologists among us will opine about what that fact means. I have had some psychology training, but I’m going to leave that nugget to the professionals among us.

Oddly enough, I find all of this to be a huge Rorschach test. For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to those nebulous ink blots that we are supposed to interpret for the therapist. Supposedly, our answers say a whole lot about us. In this case, I think they say more about our particular feelings for these individuals than it does about us specifically.

Gaetz is a polarizing figure. Conservatives love him and everyone else seems to hate him. So, it makes perfect sense that those particular groups would handle these allegations differently. When I look at Matt Gaetz I see a jackass. So, it isn’t that difficult for me to imagine him doing anything like this. The fact that he is awkwardly defending himself tends to be icing on the cake. Still, there is always the possibility that everything he is saying is true.

We can see no greater contrast than looking at the situation Andrew Cuomo is in right now. We could throw in the likes of Al Franken as well. The level of sympathy we feel for any of these guys is directly proportional to the level of animus we felt for them before their controversies. In plain English, if we like them we tend to believe them. If we hate them we already see them as guilty.

Make no mistake. Matt Gaetz is a jackass. I’m sure in a proud moment he would admit to that. He might not use that exact word, but he has made his bones acting in an obnoxious fashion. Maybe he would call himself spirited or a gadfly. Then again, he might not be smart enough to get the gadfly reference. Either way, he already has one foot in the jail cell for many Americans. It will be hard to resist the temptation to push him in. However, we must do it if we ever expect anyone we like to be given the same consideration.

You have to ask yourself –  what the hell is it about Trey Gowdy and his hair?  Is it just me?  Or does he have more hair styles than Cher?  Not only is this one of the goofiest sumbitches on Capitol Hill (not quite as goofy as Screwy Louie), he takes the cake for multiple goofy haircuts.  He goes from early Monkees one day to full on racist Nazi “high-n-tight” the next, to Gordon Gekko the following day.  Jesus, pal, pick a lane.

Here are some of my favorites:

All of us are aware of Trump stupidly supporting arming teachers in public schools to supposedly protect little children from mass shooters who have easy access to weapons of war.  NOW, his irresponsible budget slashing is placing the same requirement on healthcare workers, counselors, and teachers working in federal prisons.  Mindless budget slashing (while handing out over a trillion dollars of tax cuts to billionaires) has created a critical shortage of prison guards in facilities housing our most dangerous criminals.

The idiocy of this cretin infesting the White House is destroying lives, dragging down the economy, and now putting professional healthcare workers and teachers in harms way, just because.

There’s a time for anger, and this is it.

In a more quaint time, government shutdowns and playing chicken with the debt limit were common tactics to take something away from people.  Now it’s committing international human rights atrocities to get what they want.  This new tactic is nothing but hostage taking.  In the 1980s, Reagan used several government shutdowns because the budget contained spending he didn’t like.  Newt Gingrich used government shutdowns trying to get slashes to Medicare, public health, and education spending.  The 2011 budget drama caused S&P to actually downgrade the US’s credit rating for the first time ever due to the irresponsibly of the Congressional Republicans’ continuous brinksmanship.  In 2013, they tried it again when brand new Senator Ted Cruz whipped up the House to shutdown the government in an effort to take healthcare away from millions of people.  All this screwing around never works, but Republicans continue using showdowns over the debt limit and budget to kill everything from healthcare, social spending, to funding Planned Parenthood.

Which brings us to now.  Donald Trump lied in a continuous stream about many, many issues, but one of his biggest lies was that he was going to build a “big beautiful wall” to keep dark-skinned people out of the country.  The most outrageous part of that promise was that, through his singular strength and negotiating prowess, he was going to make Mexico pay for it.  The notion was and is idiotic, and everyone but his biggest sycophants dismissed the promise as extreme hyperbole.  As expected, Mexico shot Trump the finger, and former president Vicente Fox makes sport of regularly poking him in the eye over the issue.

Having failed at destroying healthcare for millions of people and after blowing a gigantic multi-trillion dollar hole in the nation’s budget passing out tax cuts to billionaires, he’s now trying to keep his most outrageous promise by pushing funding in the federal budget and taking money from parks and military budgets to build his wall, but the Democrats have planted their feet saying no.  So, to put pressure on the them, Trump’s in-house white supremacist, Stephen Miller, with the help of a few other deplorables, cooked up the scheme to start holding dark skinned people hostage on the border.  As is typical for extremists, Miller miscalculated, but Trump and Jeff Sessions stupidly blundered into this political and human disaster.

Sessions defended this new hostage taking plan and continues to do so, even in the face of loud and getting louder opposition.  This tactic is also the reason that Trump’s newly assigned talking point blames the “Democrats’ terrible law” that’s forcing him to take hostages.  As we all know, there is no law.  He’s taking thousands of children hostage, in violation of international human rights laws attempting to force the Dems to fund his stupid wall.  It’s familiar territory for him, since he’s connected so closely to the Mob.  You know that line, “Cute kid – it would be a shame if something bad happened to her.”  That’s PRECISELY what Trump’s doing.  To force Dems to fund his wall, he’s doing irreparable damage to thousands of children and even more parents.

How anyone could support a politician who so regularly takes hostages is beyond me.  Such a tactic is not only immoral, it costs US taxpayers billions of dollars and destroys our standing on the world stage.  A government shutdown that merely costs jobs and damages the economy is one thing.  This tactic is literally costing lives. The Dems should stand fast, and we should back them doing that.  Like the Mob, extremists don’t compromise; they destroy and threaten until they get their way.  It’s time to take that tool away from them.