Well, you might remember some postings on this not-a-damned-blog where Senator Ted Cruz was caught with his hand in the lucre jar with his sweetheart deal with iHeartMedia. It seems the case has been referred to the Federal Election Commission for it to place its consequential weight on what seems to be a clear violation of just about every kind of ethical canon ever written by humankind.

OK, that last one might be hyperbole, but the shoe does fit.

And this writing right here might be [yawn] a little boring and [yawn] repetitious [yawn], but let’s just say [yawn] we need a proper [yawn] story on the endgame [yawn] to round out the whole discussion  [yawn].

In summary, the endgame is this: nothing is going to happen.

The Raw Story has it, but the matter was originally reported by The San Antonio Current:

“Trey Trainor, an attorney serving on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) — the panel scheduled to hear the complaint — recently retweeted a photo his wife Lucy Trainor shared of a yard sign outside their Austin-area home promoting the Texas Republican’s campaign for a third term in the U.S. Senate.”

Here is a screenshot of the “tweet”.

It gets worse:

“Trainor’s retweet follows last month’s report by the Current that FEC Chairman Sean J. Cooksey served as Cruz’s deputy chief counsel in 2018. From 2019 until joining the FEC in 2020, Cooksey served as general counsel for Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a GOP hardliner frequently aligned with Cruz.”

And you’ll never guess who appointed both Trainor and Cooksey to the FEC. You got it, Donald Von Shitzenpantz.

In short, in this jury of 6, Ted Cruz has two FEC “no” votes already in his pocket.

One caveat. If you look at the retweet, you can see that Trey Trainor is not, himself, responsible for sticking Ted Cruz’s campaign sign in his yard. His wife, Lucy Trainor, did it.

Lucy Trainor is currently Election Integrity Director for the Republican Party of Texas.

You just cannot make this stuff up.

If you aren’t a teacher then you probably know one. They are feeling worn down as another school year comes to a close. Many are feeling beaten down by added responsibilities and pressures that come from their state, their district, and their campus.

In the interest of full disclosure, I started teaching in 1997. I made $28,000 back then, but that amount of money was more than reasonable for a single guy. I was able to afford an apartment, a car, and have a little bit left over. I am making over $70,000 now. Due to the economy, inflation, and other factors that amount of money ends up coming fairly close in terms of buying power.

What those outside the profession fail to understand is that those of us near the end feel grossly underappreciated just based on the pay. Beginning teachers in our district make well over $50,000. So, my Masters degree, special education stipend, and 25 years of public school experience net me less than $20,000 more than a beginning teacher.

The normal course during these times is to give us some breakfast tacos, nachos, and maybe a jean’s pass. Stores and restaurants around the community give us coupons or special deals. Sure, you might be a highly trained professional, you might spend countless extra hours grading papers and planning lessons, and you might spend hundreds of your own on supplies, so here is a two for one coupon at The Sizzler.

My sarcasm can be biting at times and this shouldn’t be the time for that. Our administration is trying to honor us the best way they know how. Each department is getting students to say something nice about their teachers. I do not officially work in a department like that. So, we are not a part of that. So, I’m paid like a teacher. I have that as my job description. I just don’t get treated like one.

Teachers don’t want a jeans pass. I can wear jeans any day I want. Extra food is nice. Any time I don’t have to pay for my own breakfast or lunch is good. Yet, the real key is when someone is thinking about me without being forced to think about me. I turned 50 this year. It took me guilting one of my colleagues into getting a card. Our campus honors employees of the month. It took a couple of us to guilt them into honoring our department. No one else would nominate any of us for an award like that.

I shouldn’t have to alert you that we are being left out of things. I shouldn’t have to make you feel guilty for not thinking of us in order to get some consideration. It should be given of their own free will. We should be valued and respected as professionals. We should be trusted to do our jobs. We should be valued for our expertise.

In terms of the politics of everything I will just say a couple of things. If you value me and my well-being don’t give me a gun. Don’t ask me to be Wyatt Earp on the open range. I trained to help students read, write, and add. I didn’t become a cop. I didn’t become a soldier. I became a teacher. Secondly, if you want to know what we are teaching your child then ask us. Don’t believe a YouTube video your cousin Larry sent you. Don’t believe some yahoo at some site that has never been in a classroom. We will tell you that CRT isn’t being taught. We will tell you what books are actually being taught. We will tell you what is actually being taught in science classes.

This all goes back to the beginning. Real appreciation happens 52 weeks out of the year. We shouldn’t have to wait until a random week in May before getting appreciated. That goes for every other profession as well.

A commenter to a previous piece on my Facebook page made an observation. I write way too much about the ex-president. That’s a fair criticism. I’ll gladly take that on, acknowledge it, and own it. I do write too much about that man and wish I didn’t have to at all. As much as he might be a subject of this piece, he is not the subject of this piece. This piece is not so much about him, but about you.

Of course, the you in this case is what I lovingly call the pejorative you. That means it’s not about everyone, but just those that still choose to follow him. It has gone well beyond ideology at this point. It has moved beyond ideology and into idolatry. They say the self-own is the cruelest own of all.

Millions of people wear adult diapers. I don’t wear them myself, but I have had occasional bouts with digestive issues. Various medications have had any number of side effects and those were some of the more serious ones. Some people have other health problems that require their use. So, I am not going to judge anyone that has a medical need to wear them.

So, I try really hard not to poke fun. The key point here is that every time someone points out a flaw or human weakness in the dear leader they adopt that as a sign of strength. Trump passes gas and some have suggested (people are saying) that he stinks because he has likely soiled himself. Instead of admitting that maybe he is not the best person for the job we just kind of assimilate this knowledge into our new schema. To translate that into plain English we can simply say “real men wear diapers.”

Thus the continuing spiraling nature of our politics and our culture proceeds without abatement. Therefore if you have control of your bodily functions, have basic knowledge of science, history, and current events then you aren’t really a man. If you have basic empathy for others and compassion for people that might be struggling then you aren’t a real man.

Let me be very frank. Normal people don’t do this. You will not see liberals. progressives, and leftists doing this. We don’t have bumper stickers on our cars. We don’t have signs for the yard. We don’t own any tee-shirts, hats, or flags that we fly from the home or on the back of our pickup truck. We actually don’t have a pickup truck, but that’s not the point.

People in cults do this. So, this isn’t about him. It’s about you. It’s about your desperate need to support everything and anything that comes out of his mouth (or any other portion of his body). I am trying as hard as I can to be respectful here. This is not a good look for you. You aren’t owning the libs. You are owning yourself. The self-own is the cruelest own of all.

You can often find Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas’s 22nd District with a cigar in his mouth and sporting his congressional member pin just above his Combat Infantryman Badge on his business suit’s lefthand lapel.

The cigar is beside the point. Whatever method Nehls chooses to shorten his lifespan is up to him. His body, his choice.

Likewise, the membership pin. No one here doubts that Nehls won his elections fair and square, even though he ran for his office in the same election as TFG in 2020. Nehls does not question the validity of his own win in that very same election.

No, the problem is the Combat Infantryman Badge he wears. This CBS News article spells it all out, so forgive me if I leave out the gruesome details that are laid bare by the article

Suffice it to say that Congressman Troy Nehls wears a Combat Infantryman Badge that the Pentagon rescinded in March 2023 because Nehls served as a civil affairs officer in Afghanistan at the time it was awarded, and not as an infantryman. This photo was taken of him in October 2023 when Nehls was holding handcuffs for Congressman Jamaal Bowman for his fire alarm pulling stunt that month. No cigar this time, but right there, below his congressional pin is the rescinded Combat Infantryman Badge.

And then there is Congressman Nehls’s 2nd Bronze Star. His military record shows that Nehls did earn a Bronze Star for his superlative skills managing Iraqi staff members and four coalition soldiers assigned to the Kirkuk Business Center in 2004. But if you look at any given discussion of Nehls’s military service on his congressional website, you’ll see that he claims to have a 2nd Bronze Star. CBS’s investigation of his military record found no such 2nd medal.

As a good friend of mine says, “Lying about your military record is stolen valor.” Me? I see this as the direct opposite of “Swiftboating”. In 2004, then Senator John Kerry was maligned for claiming war medals he did not earn in his Vietnam military service. He earned all of them, but the lie took hold.

So what is worse, stealing Valor or having Valor stolen from you?

When people know that what they have done or said is wrong they have three choices. They can double down and really go for the jugular. They can admit that what they have done or said is wrong and seek to reconcile with whomever they have offended. They can use slight of hand mentally, psychologically, or physically to make it appear that what they did was really not that bad.

We call the third rationalization. It is usually more mental and psychological than anything else. We need to convince ourselves that what we did was somehow justified and not wrong. I won’t say that everyone has done it, but I will say I’ve done it. Sometimes it is because I was just incapable at the time of seeing my own culpability. Sometimes I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had done an awful thing.

The news media reported excerpts from Kristi Noem’s book and the rationalizations started in full force. Granted, some of these that were mentioned to me by friends and family that were sympathetic to her. Some came from her or people in her camp. My friends simply used a different report than I did. Others developed their own rationalizations to explain someone else’s behavior. What if the dog had done this? What if the goat did that?

I will never understand the power that some people have over others. I will never understand the need to rationalize the behavior of someone you have never met and aren’t connected to. I certainly get choosing to believe the best of people. I try to do that too. What I also believe in dealing with teenagers on a daily basis is that the story you get first is usually the most truthful one.

I wasn’t there when Noem shot her dog and goat. I just know that the amended details don’t make a ton of sense to me. She supposedly shot this goat when she was 14. So, how did this same goat terrorize her children at the same time as one of my friends said? So, could she have left out some details in her book that would make the story more palatable? Absolutely. Of course this begs the question of why.

In this story, if she or other family members were attacked wouldn’t that be the lead? Instead, the lead was that she hated the dog because it didn’t perform well while hunting and chased some chickens. The story about the goat came because she didn’t like the goat because it didn’t smell very good.

My instincts tell me that she told this story because she thought it would score points with the MAGA crowd. Cruelty is in you know. However, once she discovered that even they have their limits the story started to change some. Let’s give her every benefit of the doubt. Let’s say the animals should have been put down because they were a danger to her family and anyone they came into contact with. That still means she lied initially to curry favor with a group of people.

My favorite rationalization came from Kimberly Guilfoyle. She wondered if someone inserted that story into her book without her consent. As if someone would completely make that story up out of whole cloth to make her look bad. That is some active imagination. So, there you have it. Notice that Noem never disputed the account in her own book. She never said the media was mischaracterizing the account from her own book. She just wanted to change the story after the fact. Given the circumstances I probably would too.