Cancun Ted decided it would be a good idea to be in the Astros victory parade today.  The response was heartwarming.

I turns out that the police response to the Uvalde shooting was a shitshow, and then local authorities lied to the media about it.  Local and state authorities reported that the shooter was engaged by officers on the way in to the school.  FALSE.  Reports were then issued that SWAT took out the shooter.  Looks like that is false, too.  Then it was reported that an off duty border patrol officer shot the shooter.  We don’t know yet. Video has now emerged and witness accounts confirm that police hung back for AN HOUR before going in.

Could lives have been saved if they moved faster? We don’t know yet, but the likely answer is yes.  What we do know is that Abbott and his crew spent the better part of two days grandstanding, giving false information, and spouting bullshit about how gun laws don’t work.  We also know that this catastrophe clearly demonstrates that the “good guy with a gun” myth is bullshit.  This is the logical result of allowing weapons of war into the general populace and there is no ifs ands or buts about that conclusion.

Ted Cruz continues to show his ass to the media spouting nonsense about arming teachers and closing off all but one door to schools.  He’s like a broken record spouting his bullshit and lies, complaining about Democrats proposing legislation he hates, but offering no alternatives of his own.  He’s a useless bag of shit and  I wish he’d go back to Canada and leave Texas to Texans.  We don’t need his “help”.

Y’all smell that?  That stench of partisanship that Sotomayor pointed out about the now GOP-packed SCOTUS?  Yeah, there’s that stench, but the stench I’m talking about is that of insurrection.  We already know about the federal judge who ruled today that TFG likely committed multiple felonies trying to steal the election and stay in power and that’s no surprise, but what’s emerging now is the stench emanating from the office of our own junior senator from Texas, Fled Cruz.  Apparently, he is asshole buddies with insurrectionist lawyer John Eastman, who’s now been ordered to turn over records to the January 6th Committee since his “work” for TFG was not privileged because the judge said he was likely concealing or assisting him to commit fraud against the American people.  BTW, that’s a crime.  Cruz has known Eastman since they clerked together in 1995, and they teamed up (and succeeded) in 2000 to make sure that Al Gore didn’t get a fair count in Florida in that disputed election.

Cruz has continued that tradition ever since, but now it’s coming to light that not only is he a sniveling brown noser who can’t tolerate cold weather or stand up to an ignorant blowhard like TFG, he decided that helping his effort to overthrow the US government was more important than being not a slimy-skinned reptile.  Cruz agreed to lead the insurrection charge in the Senate for TFG, using Eastman’s battle plan to steal the election from Biden by coercing Pence to defraud the American people and his involvement ain’t pretty.  I encourage everyone to read Heather Scott Richardson’s summary of Judge Carter’s order to Eastman to disgorge the damning documents he’s been concealing for over a year, hiding behind attorney privilege that doesn’t exist. It is chilling.  Since it’s “more likely than not” that TFG and associates criminally obstructed Congress, that evidence could not only incriminate Eastman, but all those doing his and TFG’s bidding, like our Junior Senator who dishonors Texas on a daily basis.

I’m popping popcorn.

Besides the decades long morphing of the GOP into the “Stupid and Proud of It Party,” Republicans have also become known for the mobster tactic of hostage taking.  The latest example is Moscow Mitch’s cynical filibustering of Democratic efforts to raise the debt limit to pay for Trump’s $7.8 TRILLION spending spree during his 4 year infestation of the WH.  While smirking and speaking with the weight of a law school professor while peddling manure to an eager press, McConnell has said that the Democrats must solve the debt ceiling crisis by themselves while preventing from just that by filibustering their efforts.  Of course, because it can’t be put on a bumper sticker, the press is unable to explain to the public exactly what McConnell is doing, so they report that the Dems are “split”, “in disarray”, and “bear the responsibility” for the problems that were created exclusively by Trump, McConnell, and the lockstep marching GOP caucus in the Congress.

This is not the first time this has happened, and won’t be the last until the idiotic “debt ceiling” fabrication is killed, dead and buried.  In 2011, 2013, and 2015 McConnell, with the aid of our own Ted Cruz, threatened the good faith and credit of the United States by taking the economy hostage with debt ceiling battles and government shutdowns to blackmail the Obama administration to stop Obamacare and other programs that actually help people.  The 2011 shenanigans caused S&P to downgrade the credit rating of US debt for the first time in history.  Since then, they’ve taken immigrants, women, racial minorities, children, the aged, and the environment hostage every single time that a Democrat dared tried to do something positive for the American people.

McConnell and his enablers are no better than petty mobsters playing confidence games with small neighborhood business people by threatening to destroy their businesses unless they pay up.  “Nice economy you have there; it would be a shame if something bad happened to it.”

File under: He Didn’t Really Say That, did He?

Yesterday, Flyin’ Ted decided it was time to demonstrate his total lack of self-awareness by holding a press conference in front of the Supreme Court alongside Lindsey Graham to complain about…wait for it…court packing.  During his diatribe, Cruz even said, “You didn’t see Republicans when we had control of the Senate try to rig the game.  You didn’t see us try to pack the Court,” which is precisely what we saw in 2016 and again in 2020 when Moscow Mitch brazenly blocked Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, replacing him with Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch, then Frat Boy Brett Kavanaugh, and then ramming through Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to take RBG’s seat only days before Trump’s defeat at the polls.  As a measure of the backlash of Cruz’s declaration, Merrick Garland immediately began trending on Twitter as Cruz was mocked for his idiotic declaration.

The Republicans have been packing federal courts for years, especially after McConnell triggered the nuclear option on Trump’s nominees for federal courts.  The GOP voters are so focused on court packing that they tolerate deplorables like Trump, Jordan, Gaetz, Gohmert and a plethora of other politicians simply because of their efforts to maintain an iron grip on the courts to cement in their power through gerrymandering and voter suppression.  The only way to stop it is to increase the seats on the Supreme Court and implement term limits.  Until then, partisans on the federal bench will be disrespected by half of Americans.  When a legal layman like me can predict with virtual certainty how the Supreme Court will rule on controversial cases you know that the court has been most certainly politicized, and that’s not healthy for any society, especially ours.  It’s time for that to stop, if for no other reason than to shut Flyin’ Ted’s mouth.

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.