Oh, poor Ted Cruz, the bullies are picking on him.

Tough-talking freshman Sen. Ted Cruz is attacking critics with a bold tactic: whining. The man who told the world, without evidence, that defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel might have taken money from Hamas or North Korea now complains his critics are trying to “silence” him – but it won’t work.

“Washington has a long tradition of trying to hurl insults to silence those who they don’t like what they’re saying,” said Cruz.

Dude, take a nap and then think this through.  Isn’t that exactly what you tried to do to Chuck Hagel?

You know, I have heard that Ted Cruz likes to walk through his house nakkid, wearing only a coonskin hat and a Viva Fidel! bumper sticker on his butt.  Until he can prove otherwise, I have no choice but to believe it.  I’m just asking questions.

By the way, Cruz whined at a peculiar place.

Cruz made his comments at a visit to a Texas gun maker that manufactures assault weapons for the civilian market. “He’s our type of guy,” kvelled the firm’s marketing manager.

Expect a large campaign contribution to Cruz from this arms merchant.  Cruz pals around with arms merchants.

Y’all, you gotta admit that Mr. Bully plays the victim quite well.

Thanks to Brian C for the heads up.

Want to make an impression she’ll never forget next Valentine’s Day?  Shoot her in the butt.

According to an Oak Creek police report, a 24-year-old man called 911 about 5:45 p.m. Feb. 14 saying he just accidentally shot his girlfriend in the butt with a 9-millimeter handgun.

Dispatchers instructed him on how to tend to his girlfriend’s wounds as he waited for police and paramedics to arrive, according to the report. A police canine searched the couple’s residence, in the 500 block of E. Town Square Court, and determined it was safe for officers to enter.

And then have the police send in the dogs.

Oh baby, baby.

Or having really caring and loving friends …

Twenty three year old Krystal Caruso liked playing with her gun.  She had a permit to carry and a license for the gun.

Coombs said her 16-year-old brother watched Caruso, a graduate of Royal Palm Beach High School, spin the gun in her hand and point it at her head. The loaded gun fired and killed her, Parker reported.

“I want to wake her up back from the dead just to punch her in the face and go, ‘Why were you being so stupid?'” Coombs said.

It must be spring.  Love is all in the air.

Thanks to Carl for the heads up.

I said they could eat the children, not go sparkin’ with them.

So here’s Former Sen. Pete Domenici admitting that he was mattress thrashing with a woman not only half his age, but the daughter of a fellow politician.  And for thirty years they kept it a secret because (1) Domenici is an “honorable man,” and (2) they didn’t want to “insinuate pain and ugliness where joy and beauty have presided.”

Horse hockey.

(1)  Honorable married men do not honk their friends’ children.  (2)  Let’s go talk to Bill Clinton about pain and ugliness.

Domenici voted to impeach Clinton.  He is a total jerk and do not forget how he tried to get a US Attorney fired for not investigating a Democrat for some damn thing.

He had a son and he did not support that son.

Republicans are lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon wheel rut.

Bless Ted Cruz’s heart.

It’s gonna be a long six years for us while he’s in office, but I think it’s going to be even longer for him.

Crazy Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz says some of the attacks on fellow Republican Sen. Marco Rubio by Democrats are motivated by race. Cruz said today the fact that Rubio is a Republican Latino poses a threat to political adversaries.  “I think Democrats and the media are afraid of Marco Rubio because he is a smart, intelligent, conservative Hispanic. And they are looking for any excuse they can to attack him, because that threatens them,” Cruz told reporters during a tour of a Texas gun manufacturing plant …

Okay, so does make all the GOP attacks on Obama racist, too?  ‘Cuz, I’ll give you that deal.  I mean, y’all are way ahead of us in the attack department.

We Democrats attacked John McCain because he’s …. secretly some other color?

Lemme ask you something, Cruz.  Republicans trot out minorities to do the response to the State of the Union and those minorities fall on their faces.  That wouldn’t be on purpose, now would it?

Just checking.

Thanks to David for the heads up.

The government is not coming for your guns.  Hell, last I heard, they’re not coming for your mail either.

Listen up, dammit, the arms merchants you dudes are making rich are having themselves a heckuva party down in their bunker, safe from you.

Numero Uno Whack Job:  Rep. Mike Leara in Missouri may take the cake.

Rep. Mike Leara said Tuesday his bill is a statement of principle. It would make lawmakers guilty of a felony punishable by up to four years in prison if they introduce legislation restricting gun rights.

So you can’t even talk about gun rights without it being a felony? On the upside, Leara admits that his bill probably won’t pass. I dunno, maybe that’s because the other members of the Missouri House are … uh, Americans?

Coming up on Numero Two Whack Job: Steve Toth of Texas.

State Rep. Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) has filed legislation assisting the protection of the Second Amendment of the United State Constitution. The ‘Firearms Protection Act’ or HB 1076 would make any federal law banning semi-automatic firearms or limiting the size of gun magazines unenforceable within the state’s boundaries.

And if that works, we can start talking about women’s right to vote not being a real Texas thing.  We can talk about it.  This is America, where we have free speech.  (Offer not valid in Missouri.)

Thanks to Brian and Kyle for the heads up.

Republicans have no sense of humor and no ability to understand satire.

If published today, Jonathan Swifts’s A Modest Proposal would send them scurrying to prayer meetings and put Fox News into overdrive.  Ted Cruz, however,  would only see it as unreasonable if it were written by Barack Obama.   If he thought Newt Gingrich wrote it, he’d be willing to amend it to include his mother.

Republicans have it floored in neutral.

You know that rumor that Chuck Hagel was getting money from Friends of Hamas?  It was a joke started by a reporter who operated under the mistaken belief that Republicans would know that he was joking.

Friedman wrote that he was interested in knowing if Hagel’s Republican critics knew the names of specific groups from which Hagel received speaker fees. He contacted a Republican aide and “hypothetically and hyperbolically” asked if Hagel addressed groups such as “Friends of Hamas” or the “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France.”

The Daily News’ Dan Friedman was jacking with them.  Nobody in their right mind would think such organizations even existed.

I think the key here is “right mind.”

Friedman also put the question into email form, presumably thinking his joke would not be taken seriously. He was in for a surprise.

The following day, an article appeared on the conservative website Breitbart.com with the headline, “SECRET HAGEL DONOR?: WHITE HOUSE SPOX DUCKS QUESTION ON ‘FRIENDS OF HAMAS.'” Conservative pundits, including Mike Huckabee, and other websites also addressed the rumor. It even came up during a Fox Business segment with host Lou Dobbs.

And then it ended up in Ted Cruz’s mouth in the damn United States Senate.

So a joke ends up in the mouth of a joke.

I would like to make a modest proposal:  Ted Cruz has to call David Letterman to run his statements through the joke machine before he’s allowed to say anything else.