Let’s face it – a majority of Texans who bother to vote are stupid.  After all, we get politicians like Fled Cruz (from Canada), Screwy Louie Gohmert, Sid Jesus Shot Miller, Dan I’m a Navy Seal! I’m a Navy Seal! Crenshaw, Rootin’ Tootin’ Rick Perry, Greg I Sue and You Can’t Abbott among many others.  There are perpetually zero days since some Texas politician makes us a national embarrassment to normal people.  Well, it’s gotten worse if that’s even possible; we have another carpetbagger.

Enter Dan Rodimer.  Ol’ Dan (who calls himself Big Dan) is from New Jersey, born and raised.  He attended Seton Hall prep school, played football for the University of South Florida, and graduated from Ava Maria Law School in 2013.  But that’s not all he’s done; between college and law school, Big Dan played semi-pro football and arena football, then changed his name to Dan Rodman and became a professional wrestler, associated with WWE (yeah, THAT WWE).  Oh, and was charged with assault and domestic assault (by his now wife) between 2010 and 2013.  He agreed to deferred adjudication in one case and attended anger management training to get those charges dropped.

And there’s more; a lot more.  In 2018, Rodimer moved to Nevada and ran for the Nevada State senate.  He lost.  THEN, Rodimer ran for the US House from the Third District of Nevada.  He lost to incumbent, Susan Lee, a Democrat.  He’s not done, though.  Earlier this year, he moved to Mansfield, Texas, bought a cowboy hat and boots, then gained a southern drawl, to position himself to run in a special election for the Sixth District, now vacant since Ron Wright died from COVID in February.  Oh, and there’s more.  He’s positioning himself as none other than a bull rider, wearing the now familiar flak vest riders now wear to provide some protection when they get stomped by some angry bovine.

Rodimer is as fake as Trump’s hair.  He’s a chameleon, desperately trying to be relevant by getting a high profile job somewhere – New Jersey prep boy, second rate Florida football player, professional fake wrestler, fake Nevadan, now fake Texan and fake bull rider.  His new video ad includes a bull ride where Big Dan a stand-in actually got on a bull. How bad is Rodiman’s charade? None other than Matt Gaetz, drooling Trumpist and career liar, condemned Rodimer as a fake Texan:

Fake Texan makes fake video of fake bull ride.

We already have enough phonies in congress.

Texans, please send this Nevada man back to his true home state (where he lost two prior elections).

Texas shouldn’t import its congressmen.

Big Dan is all hat, no cattle. https://t.co/CcGZsUG4kv

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) March 26, 2021

First time I’ve ever agreed (or ever will) with Gaetz.  Advice for “Big Dan”:  Go home, wherever that is.  Leave us alone.  We want you to leave because Texas voters are stupid and will probably fall for you.  The last thing Texas needs is another snake oil salesman representing us.  We’re full up on those.

A new study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina has concluded the obvious – states with Republican governors had higher COVID case rates and higher death rates from COVID.  In the report, study senior author Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society stated,

“Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus.  These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics.”

I know this is like concluding in an academic study that gravity makes things fall down, but it’s good that they quantified in a peer reviewed study what we all knew to begin with – politicizing public health policy gets people killed.

Note:  Yesterday, I dubbed him Cancun Ted, but social media’s name, Fled Cruz, is better and seems to be sticking, so what the hell, I’m going to use that, too.

Politico is reporting this morning that the quaint tradition of shaming misbehaving politicians seems to be returning.  That’s pretty much amazing coming out of the last 5 years of Donald Trump’s malfeasance and immorality out in plain sight.  When caught at something awful (kids in cages, bribing porn stars, screwing porn stars, extorting foreign leaders, inciting insurrection, etc, etc.) Trump would just say, “Hell, yeah, I did it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Up yours.”  He did it repeatedly, numbing many Americans’ sensitivities, and pleasing the hell out of millions of his supporters who cheered him on.

Well, with the Felon in Chief back at Mar a Lago beating the crap out of the little white ball all day, things are changing, if only a bit.  You’re already up to speed with Fled Cruz’s stupidity in taking the family to Cancun in a trip conjured up by his wife.  Characteristically, he lied that it was his daughters and their friends who wanted to go, then lied again to cover that up, lied again to cover up that lie, and then finally came clean.  Texans, normally very tolerant of Republican malfeasance and gross negligence, weren’t that tolerant this time, and I would posit that when his supporters are the ones suffering and not just the little people who don’t count 99% of the time, they get narrow minded.

Cruz is getting crucified on every social media platform.  The memes are just writing themselves, and if his arrogance wasn’t so perpetually galling, this whole episode would be funny.  This time, though, when people are freezing in the dark, bodies are now being discovered, and millions still don’t have power, water, or both, he’s actually paying a price for acting like a dumbass.

This is what happens when you elect people who don’t believe in government to manage your government.  Three of our four most visible politicians in Texas have made fools out of themselves this week.  Abbott blamed the nonexistent Green New Deal for gas fired power plants shutting down. Rick Perry crawled out from under his rock to stupidly assert that Texans would rather freeze in the dark rather than be subject to big, bad, federal regulation.  And then there’s Fled Cruz, who was doing Jack Shit sitting around his house while other politicians were out working the phones assisting with food and water distribution and checking on senior citizens.  The only one of these four, John Cornyn, while being virtually invisible, at least didn’t show is ass to the entire world.

We’ve talked about it before.  What we’re seeing here is the logical result of failed Libertarian ideology.  Libertarianism doesn’t work, has never worked, and never will work.  Period.  Yet we continue to elect politicians who spout Libertarian nonsense and make policy around it.  That’s how you get public policy that establishes voluntary compliance with clean air and clean water regulations.  That’s how you get the PUC to establish voluntary weatherproofing and maintenance requirements for power generators.  Voluntary standards for industrial safety and health are just as stupid as the SCOTUS actually saying that money equals speech and that money doesn’t corrupt when it destroyed limits on political spending in its idiotic Citizens United ruling in 2010.

Perhaps we’re finally turning the corner here on response to malfeasance.  I’m not all rainbows and unicorns here, but we had moved so far away from those quaint times when politicians like Gary Hart and Al Franken had their careers completely destroyed for really obscure and/or overblown misbehavior that a return to shaming that works is a breath of fresh air.  As we’ve said before, Fled Cruz, doesn’t care if you live or die.  He doesn’t give a shit about doing his job as a US Senator.  He doesn’t even believe in a federal government.  He didn’t give one single thought to how it looked for him to jet off to Cancun during a power crisis where people are actually dying.  The ONLY reason he came back to Houston was that social media blew up when pictures of him on a United flight exploded on millions of feeds on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  When it hit mainstream media, even his tin ear could hear it.  That’s when he scampered back to Houston lying all the way.

Maybe we do have a light at the end of the tunnel, but we’ve got a long way to go.

Dominion Voting Systems announced yesterday that they are suing Rudy Giuliani for a cool $1.3 billion for defamation.  Defamation is putting it lightly, since he spewed pure bullshit and fantastical conspiracy theories blaming the company for Trump’s loss at the polls.  The funny thing, though, is that three hours after being sued, Rudy suddenly came to his senses and announced on his radio show on WABC that “As far as this election is concerned, it’s over.” and, “Biden’s the president, she’s the vice president.”

Later, in a formal statement he complained that Dominion was trying to “intimidate” him with the large demand, and threatened discovery in his counter suit.  I’m sure they’re quaking in their boots.

You remember all those scandals under Obama, right?  You know the ones – Obama’s tan suit scandal, Michelle’s bare armed dress scandal, Obama’s “Religion and Guns” scandal.  Those “scandals” occupied weeks and hundreds of hours of air time in RW media, breathlessly reporting on how so many Bible thumping “Christians” we aghast at how the Obamas could be so tone deaf and insensitive to them and white supremacists.  During the Rein of Trump, all those outrages were explained away when Trump (an actual criminal) did everything from extorting a foreign government to leading an insurrection to take down the federal government.  Now that he’s off to Mar a Lago, the outrage switch has been turned back on.  Here are this week’s “scandals” caused by the Biden presidency:

1. The “Chinese handler” scandal:  Rumors began circulating on Twitter and RW media on inauguration day when talk started about an Asian man who was everywhere Biden went, telling him what to do at every step.  He was immediately dubbed the “Chinese handler” with all kinds of talk about how Biden was being controlled by “Communist China”.  Turns out that this Asian man was not Chinese at all, but of Korean descent, and the head of the Secret Service presidential detail on Inauguration day.  His name is David Cho, and, funny enough, he received the Department of Homeland Security’s exceptional service gold medal. The award was given to him “for tireless and direct participation in high-level negotiations” during the second summit between former President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam.  What a scandal.
2. The Rolex watch scandal: The NYTimes pointed out that, rather than a Timex or other cheap watch, Biden dared to break presidential tradition and wear a Rolex.  Gasp.  #bidenrolex and #bidenwrist starting appearing on Twitter and other social media, shocked that Biden would wear such an elite watch.  Never mind that Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ, Reagan, and latter day Obama also wore Rolex watches.
3. The Biden wears an earpiece scandal returns:  On Inauguration day the stupidest rumor mongering returned on Twitter, claiming that, because he’s in rapid mental decline, he must wear an earpiece where a handler instructs him how to behave.  There was some video floating around social media where Biden is walking through a door at the Capitol with Dr. Jill when, spotting Marines at the door says off-handedly to her, “Those are good looking Marines”.  That was immediately picked up by the Q-types who interpreted that he said, “Salute the Marines”.  When he didn’t salute, they immediately concluded that he just repeated the instructions in his earpiece but didn’t actually do it, obviously because of his mental decline.  Stupid, right?  Again, Twitter and other social media blew up to the point that the Washington Post Fact Checker debunked it and gave it 4 Pinocchios.

This is only the beginning.  As the Q types have now figured out that Trump actually did play them for chumps, rather than disowning RW bullshit, they have just shifted back to old, pre-Trump bullshit.  If it’s anti-Dem, they just assume it must be right.  And here we go again, round and round to nowhere.

Yesterday, the goofy and well-armed Qanon crowd woke up that they’ve been played for chumps for the last 5 years.  When the power grid didn’t fail, the military didn’t turn on Biden, and Trump actually fled Washington, they suddenly realized that the jig was up and they were the losers.  The Q bullshit not only drove a national insanity, it actually got people killed in the failed attack on the US Capitol 2 weeks ago.  Trump did not declare martial law; the military didn’t take over; Trump is no longer President.  Oops.

On top of the Q crowd getting disillusioned, the hard right social conservatives are not happy with their current lot.  During Trump’s term, he lost the House, then the Senate, and now the White House.  The religious right is now soul searching about how they betrayed their own faith to follow a fornicating, lying, corrupt, spray painted television game show host.  Oops.

Mainstream conservatives are also assessing the damage wrought by Trump.  One, Kevin D. Williamson, posted a scathing rebuke of those who followed Trump in the National Review today titled Witless Ape Rides Helicopter, Goodbye to Donald J. Trump, the man who wanted to be Conrad Hilton but turned out to be Paris Hilton.  It is a must read piece.  A few choice tidbits:

“They pissed that away like they were midnight drunks karaoke-warbling that old Chumbawumba song: In 2021, they control approximately squat.”

“You Trumpish Republicans sneered that Joe Biden was too corrupt and too senescent to win a presidential campaign, that he was one part mafioso and one part turnip.  That turnip just kicked your dumb asses from Delaware to DC. So you rioted. Real smart move, Cletus.”

“‘Trust the plan,’ the QAnon cultists say. Is this what you were planning? I know you are stupid, but you are not that stupid.”

This piece speaks for a lot of conservatives who may not yet be willing to admit Trump’s folly, but you know are thinking it.  Such are the smoldering ruins of the Rein of Trump; with any luck, he’ll get banned from holding office again.  If that fails, certainly his civil and criminal liability will keep him too busy (or incarcerated) to keep him from running again.

And the pendulum swings.

Note: For those who may have trouble reading the Williamson piece on NR, here it is on Yahoo News.