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Seriously? The resident racist laughingstock thinks that's "not bad"?
bag
I didn't know until the end if this was a Cruz ad, or if he was doing the whole "good sport"/self-deprecating thing by appearing in a sketch that's kind of making fun of him.
Spoiler alert, it's a Cruz ad, and it's supposed to be funny.
Seriously? The resident racist laughingstock thinks that's "not bad"?
Ted Cruz’s ambush strategy: Being more bigoted and sleazy than Donald Trump could win him the nomination
It’s increasingly looking like, barring some major surge forward by Marco Rubio, that Ted Cruz is the most likely to win the Republican nominee. A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday shows that Cruz is only 4 points behind Donald Trump, who’s supported by 28 percent of likely primary voters.
Cruz’s strategy of drafting Trump, by basically agreeing with what he says, is working.
If he can get one final push during the early stages of the primary, he can use all that momentum to overtake the current frontrunner, who still runs a greater-than-even chance of self-immolating at some point.
But Cruz may not even need Trump to hit the self-destruct button in order to win this thing. While most of the media obsesses about Trump, Cruz has quietly set himself up to go in for the kill once the voting starts.
He is, in essence, Trump Plus: He’s got all the qualities that right-wing voters love in Trump, but believe it or not he has even more bigotries and right-wing fancies to offer than even Trump.
In a primary season where voters clearly want the sleaziest asshole they can running against Clinton, Cruz simply is a better choice over Trump. And the fact that he knows well enough to wait until the last minute to make that case, making it harder for Trump to come up with a rejoinder, shows exactly how crafty Cruz is.
Cruz simply has more to offer the right-wing voter that would rather burn this country to the ground than share it with racial minorities, feminists, immigrants, and LGBT people. There’s three major areas where he simply has a stronger case that he is what the conservative base wants.
1) Evangelical endorsements. White evangelicals cons ute a full half of Republican voters and another substantial bunch is white conservative Catholics who have the same political views and respond to the same Jesus-heavy messaging. Cruz has been quietly fortifying his support with this group by getting the evangelical leaders on his side.
Earlier this month, evangelical leaders had a secret meeting, where, according to The Washington Post, “top national activists agreed to roll out a stream of endorsements, many timed for maximum impact between now and Super Tuesday on March 1, when a dozen states will hold primary of or caucuses.” Cruz wedged out other evangelical favorites, like Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson, for these endorsements. Since then, a couple of key endorsements, from James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, have been released. Clearly, more are coming.
While Trump is hollering about Mexicans and Muslims, Cruz didn’t forget that a huge portion of the Republican cons uency is just as, if not more, obsessed with beating down gay people and independent women. While Trump says all the right things about banning abortion and gay marriage, you can tell his heart just isn’t in it the way it is for Cruz.
It’s also important to remember that the Supreme Court will be hearing arguments about abortion, in a case that might be the death knell for Roe vs. Wade, during this time, probably in March or April. That means that there will be an uptick in rallies, op-eds, and news coverage of this issue in the next few months. This will only drive more voters into Cruz’s arms.
Ben Carson is still holding down 10 percent of the votes, according to Quinnipiac. Those are almost surely evangelicals by and large, and Cruz will probably pick most of those up when Carson drops out.
2) Anti-government mania. As I reported last week, the conservative media is in full revolt, furious at House Republicans for agreeing to a budget deal instead of shutting down the government in an effort to blackmail the White House into agreeing to defund Planned Parenthood and keep Syrian refugees out of the country. But really, the particular demands that conservatives have are secondary to the rage. At this point, shutting down the government — or threatening to — is its own reward. Conservatives have spent decades demonizing the government, and so a shutdown is just emotionally rewarding, regardless of what the cir stances are.
Right now, this shutdown fever is helping Trump, whose shortsightedness and posturing on this issue appeals to equally shortsighted voters. But unlike Trump, Cruz can make a legitimate case that he’s actually tried to shut down the government. Cruz’s enthusiasm for shutting down the government is unparalleled. His constant clamoring to come up with an excuse, any excuse, to shut down the government is one of the major reasons that so many other Republicans hate him. But, as my colleague Sean Illing points out, all these establishment Republican attacks on Cruz just shore up his claim that he’s an outsider like Trump.
Except he’s been tested. Trump says that he will stand up for half-baked right wing “values” like shutting down the government for kicks, but Cruz? Cruz can legitimately say he’s done it.
3) Electability. It may not seem like it now, but electability is a major concern for Republican primary voters. Public Policy Polling shows that over half of voters consider a candidate’s ability to beat the Democrat in the race to be more important than ideological purity. The only reason this hasn’t quite hurt Trump in the polls, yet anyway, is that Republican voters are under the bizarre impression that Trump has the best chance of beating Clinton in a general election.
But that impression might start to buckle soon. The Quinnipiac poll shows that Trump is the only Republican candidate who fares badly in a Clinton match-up. Cruz breaks even. More to the point, everyone who isn’t in the bag for Trump hates the man at this point. Half of Americans say they would be embarrassed if Trump won the presidency. Cruz, who hasn’t gotten nearly as much media attention, hasn’t established himself as a villain in voter eyes nearly as much.
Cruz gives Republican voters exactly what they want: He’s more electable than Trump, without sacrificing an iota of ideological purity. In fact, Cruz is far more of the complete package when it comes to ideological purity, far more than Trump, whose views are all over the map. If Cruz can get across to the voters that he’s the complete package—and there’s every reason to believe that will be exactly his argument—he will start leeching more votes off Trump.
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/22/ted_...he_nomination/
Religious Right Leaders Head To Farris Wilks Ranch To Plot How To Make Ted Cruz President
As we have been reporting for several months, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has been consolidating support from Religious Right leaders by enthusiastically embracing their anti-gay, anti-choice views. The momentum shifted into high gear after a secret meeting on December 7 at which dozens of Religious Right leaders voted to back Cruz – and a flood of endorsements has followed.
Now, the Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger reports that the group will gather again a few days after Christmas “at a remote ranch in central Texas, where Cruz, his wife and several key financial backers will visit with some of the country’s most prominent evangelical leaders for private conversations and a public rally.”
The ranch is owned by
Farris Wilks, who with his brother made billions in the fracking business and has since become a major funder of far-right, anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-church-state separation organizations.
The Wilks brothers have already given at least $15 million to the effort to elect Ted Cruz. Farris Wilks is also a pastor who portrays gays as child predators and mocks environmentalism.
He preached after Barack Obama’s re-election, “I do believe that our country died that Tuesday night, to all that’s honorable, all that’s good, that’s ambitious, and that has justice.”
The Wilks brothers have also been big funders of Christian-nation zealot David Lane, a political operative who has been working hard to get conservative pastors to run for office and to convince Christian conservatives to rally behind a single Republican candidate. Lane is driven by the desire to get the reins of government in the hands of people who share his belief that America was founded by and for Christians and has a national mission to advance the Christian faith.
Lane and other Religious Right leaders are now publicly trashing Marco Rubio for not working hard enough to get conservative evangelical support.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-right-leaders-head-farris-wilks-ranch-plot-how-make-ted-cruz-president
Ted Cruz campaign rally morphs into creepy ‘prayer revival’ so everyone can pray for him to be president
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz turned one of his campaign events into a “prayer revival” on Tuesday, giving members of the audience an opportunity to ask God to make him the next president.
Cruz opened his Nashville rally by vowing
to make the Department of Justice investigate Planned Parenthood
promising an end to what he called “religious persecution.”
“I’m telling you the providence of God will work in your life,” Wiley insisted. “You never know. The seed that you sow ("give lots of seed $$$") will come to fruit.”
“And I don’t want occasions like this to end without realizing that God is in control and Ted Cruz is committed to not only conservative philosophy but with conservative theology as well,” he continued. “He’s going to make us a great president to make our nation a great nation again.”
Asking the audience to stretch their hands toward the stage, Wiley placed his hand on the candidate’s head.
“We’re going to lay hands on Ted Cruz,” he said.
“Father, in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I come to anoint my brother in the Lord.
That son, Lord, that’s raised up to follow you, and I pray, Lord Jesus, that he will not let those who gave their lives in World War II like my brother Preston did go in vein, like the thousands of others that are in this crowd that lost loved ones in the wars since.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/ted-...e+Raw+Story%29
Cruz is a Christian Taliban grifter, bull ting the ignorant, self-congratulating, gullible Christians
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-24-2015 at 04:54 PM.
What Ted Cruz said behind closed doors
In June, Ted Cruz promised on NPR that opposition to gay marriage would be “front and center” in his 2016 campaign.
In July, he said the Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage was the “very definition of tyranny” and urged states to ignore the ruling.
But in December, behind closed doors at a big-dollar Manhattan fundraiser, the quickly ascending presidential candidate assured a Republican gay-rights supporter that a Cruz administration would not make fighting same-sex marriage a top priority.
In a recording provided to POLITICO, Cruz answers a flat “No” when asked whether fighting gay marriage is a “top-three priority,” an answer that pleased his socially moderate hosts but could surprise some of his evangelical backers.
While Cruz’s private comments to a more moderate GOP audience do not contradict what the Republican Texas senator has said elsewhere, they demonstrate
an adeptness at nuance in tone and emphasis that befits his Ivy League background. Indeed, the wording looks jarring when compared with the conservative, evangelical rhetoric he serves at his rallies, which have ballooned in size and excitement as he has moved to the front of the pack in Iowa.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/ted-cruz-gay-marriage-secret-audio-217090#ixzz3v9zTZR1Z
Cruz has his young children reciting scripts supporting his campaign.
Cruz, on the other hand, is not likable. And thoroughly unlikeable people do not win the presidency.
As I've written, in part from personal experience, there does not seem to be any social milieu in which Cruz has spent any amount of time in in which virtually everyone didn't dislike him. College, Law School, high profile legal work, Senate, etc. He has the uncanny and almost ingenious ability to radiate both intensely grating insincerity with wildly convincing true-believer-ism.
His political appeal is geared to people who are alienated and angry enough that the mix of aggression, indifference, and exploitativeness he radiates is one that these people can identify with.
Second is simply ideology. Cruz is way too rightwing for a national campaign. This is almost mathematical. He's very right wing and unlike George W. Bush presents his hard right politics in a pure and unmediated form.
That is a recipe for a staggering defeat in a national election.
Just as importantly, I do not think Cruz is either temperamentally capable, interested or able to significant shift off those views in a general election. Part of it is character and part of it is simply that he's created to long a paper trail. There is no credible softer, gentler
Ted Cruz who cares about people like you.
He would certainly have impassioned and intense support from the base of his party and some of the more conservative elements of the financial services community - something that Trump might struggle with. But beyond that he would have great difficulty.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/...+%28TPMNews%29
But ing Texian Christian Taliban elect this mofo to the Senate.
Cruz and his insane, sick Christian Sharia papa
Ted Cruz’s father pushes radical religious vision
but most can agree that politicians’ family members should generally be off-limits unless they choose to enter the arena.
But Rafael Cruz, the Texas Republican’s father, is a different story. He’s served as a surrogate for his son’s campaign, which makes Rafael Cruz’s right-wing vision fair game.
The Washington Post the other day published an advance look at the pastor’s new book, “A Time for Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America,” which is filled with the predictable screeds – President Obama is compared to Fidel Castro, for example – though one argument stood out for me.Substantively, all of this is quite bizarre, even by 2015 standards. If the nation’s founding do ents are based on the Ten Commandments, why don’t the Cons ution and Declaration of Independence mention the Decalogue or Christianity? Can Cruz identify anyone, anywhere in the United States, who’s even hinted at punishing Americans for worshiping out of houses of worship? Can anyone name an anti-Christian Obama appointee?
Cruz writes that there is no such thing as separation of church and state and it is not enshrined in the Cons ution and Declaration of Independence. The Ten Commandments, he writes, are the foundations for these do ents. […]
The pastor warns that there are five areas where the United States could change and “jeopardize our freedom,” including that “freedom of religion could become freedom of worship,” meaning that
people would be punished for worshiping outside of churches.
He said Obama has made appointments of people who think the government should discriminate against Christians.
But even putting reality aside for a moment, the challenge for the Republican presidential hopeful is confronting questions about
whether he believes any of his father’s nonsense.
As we discussed over the summer, if Rafael Cruz wants to travel the country saying inflammatory things – he blamed the Devil, for example, for Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling – that’s obviously his right, and the idea of holding Ted Cruz responsible for his father’s tirades doesn’t seem fair.
I have some relatives whose ideas I consider ridiculous, and I wouldn’t want anyone attributing their beliefs to me, just because of the family connection.
But the Cruz campaign has used Rafael Cruz as a surrogate, dispatching him as a speaker who can represent his son when the senator is elsewhere – which generally makes it more difficult for Cruz Jr. to distance himself from what Cruz Sr. has to say.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-30-2015 at 07:36 AM.
Maybe ISIS has pushed opposition to gay marriage out of his top 3 since June.
Christian Sharia bull from Christian mullah
Ted Cruz’s Fundie Dad Thinks God Did Bang-Up Job Writing U.S. Cons ution
Rafael Cruzpere has published a book of his very own sincerely held beliefs about God, America, and why God’s America has to be more Godly. led A Time for Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America, it sounds like a wonderfully insane bit of Dominionist propaganda about making the United States the theocracy its founders never intended,
For starters, it’s got an introduction by Glenn Beck, which ought to be good for huge sales already, in which Beck praises Rafael Cruz as “one of the greatest freedom fighters of his generation” and a man who “will do anything to protect and preserve freedom” (but he won’t do that).
the book sounds like pretty standard Culture Wars fare, with the usual claims that the Democratic party “promotes an ungodly socialist agenda that is destroying America” and a warning that far too many Republicans are willing to go along with all that America-destroying,
Cruz also treats us to a possibly fanciful account of his days as a resistance fighter against Fulgencio Batista in the ’50s, a personal history that the New York Times reports may be more tall tale than memoir, according to those who knew him back in Cuba.
There’s also a lot of America Is A Christian Nation stuff, like this insight that Cruz reached, apparently without consulting any actual histories of the Cons utional Convention:
I believe without a shadow of a doubt that the reason the Declaration of Independence and the Cons ution of the United States have lasted over two centuries is that they were divinely inspired and then written by men who had spent time on their knees. These were men of God seeking revelation from God, and that’s what He gave them. Of course, these two do ents aren’t equivalent to the Word of God, but God certainly directed the men who crafted them.
When it comes to the place of religion in public life, Cruz is in favor of total Christian control, since how can we have a Godly country if it’s not enforced?
In no way, shape, or form was Jefferson implying that the church should be restricted from exerting an influence upon society. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that we are the salt of the earth and light of the world…Doesn’t that suggest that our influence should touch every area of society – our families, the media, sports, arts and entertainment, education, business, and government?
a lot more in the book, like how every Democratic president ever reminds Rafael of Fidel Castro, as well as
an appendix that explains how net neutrality and progressive taxation come straight from the Communist Manifesto,
http://wonkette.com/597420/ted-cruzs...s-cons ution
One begins to see how, with a clinically insane father, Krazy Kruz would grow up to be such a damaged human being.
a blatant sign of the continued, unstoppable decline of American democracy
The Billionaires Responsible For Inflicting Ted Cruz On Us
“It just takes a random billionaire to change a race and maybe change the country...[T]hat’s what’s so radically different now.”Paul Krugman wrote an Op-Ed in Friday’s New York Times led “Privilege, Pathology and Power,” in which he mordantly observes that “those empowered by money-driven politics include a disproportionate number of spoiled egomaniacs:”
Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered. Narcisstocracy? Jerkigarchy? Anyway, it’s an ugly spectacle, and it’s probably going to get even uglier over the course of the year ahead.
The Billionaires backing Ted Cruz are no exception.
The creation known as Rafael “Ted” Cruz, currently the Republican Presidential frontrunner in Iowa, is owned by four SuperPACS, all calling themselves “ Keep The Promise.” There are four iterations of “Keep The Promise,” cleverly styled as Keep The Promise I, Keep The Promise II, Keep the Promise III and Keep The Promise PAC.
These are their primary (known) funders:
Keep the Promise I raised $11 million from New York hedge fund investor Robert Mercer.
Keep the Promise II received $10 million from Texas private equity investor Toby Neugebauer.
Keep the Promise III received $15 million from the billionaire Texas fracking family of Farris, Jo Ann, Daniel and Staci Wilks.
Finally, Keep the Promise PAC received funds from a more diverse audience, including $500,000 from Houston Texans owner Robert McNair and $250,000 from investor John W. Childs, but only raised $1.8 million total.
Who are these people responsible for inflicting Ted Cruz on the country? What makes them tick? We begin with Cruz’s undisputed top moneyman, Robert Mercer:
Robert Mercer, 65, is co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies LLC, a $15 billion hedge fund. The IBM language-recognition whiz-turned-financier brought home $125 million in 2011, making him the 16th highest-earning hedge fund manager, according to Forbes.
When he's not bobbing about on his 203-foot Superyacht, the Sea Owl, Mercer might be found playing with his $2 million dollar train set, ensconced in one of his mansions (he sued its builders, claiming he was overcharged). But his real passion is, as you might suspect, making as much money for himself as possible notwithstanding the collateral damage he inflicts on the rest of us:
Mercer is a longtime Republican donor who shares Cruz's disdain for financial regulation. He has plowed millions into campaigns against lawmakers who have pushed to rein in Wall Street. Rep. Pete DeFazio (D–Ore.), who started an effort to tax high-frequency financial transactions, was the target of a Mercer campaign of more than half-a-million dollars. So was former Rep. Timothy Bishop (D–N.Y.), an ex-SEC prosecutor. In 2012, Mercer shoveled more than $900,000 into an effort to unseat Bishop. While Bishop held onto his seat, Mercer targeted him again in 2014—this time, with success. Also in 2012, Mercer pumped millions into two super PACs, headed by Karl Rove, that flooded the airwaves with ads for Mitt Romney and Republican candidates for Congress. Club For Growth, a free-market focused super PAC, has notched more than a half million from Mercer, too.
(All links are from the original.)
Mercer, like many of the Billionaires who seek to interpose their “guidance” on our country, is known as an “intensely private person” who rarely permits himself to be photographed. He is described by the financial cheerleader network CNBC as “little known by design.” His family foundation, technically run by his daughter, Rebekah, has donated heavily to right-wing think tanks that spread and foster “denial” of climate change. Personally, he seems to be something of a vindictive Scrooge:
In 2013, a group of former workers at his house sued him for not paying overtime. They also accused him of deducting money from their semi-annual bonuses as a form of punishment for, among other things, failing to replace shampoos, close doors and change razor blades.
Mercer’s highly successful Hedge Fund, Renaissance, has been under investigation by the I.R.S. for approximately six years:
Last year the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused Renaissance of using complex financial structures that allowed it to underestimate how much it owed the Internal Revenue Service by $6 billion.
Taxpayers “had to shoulder the tax burden these hedge funds shrugged off with the aid of the banks,” Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said at a hearing last summer.
Not coincidentally, Rafael “Ted” Cruz has run a virulently anti-IRS, pro-Wall Street and pro-finance campaign, urging the repeal of the Dodd-Frank Bill designed and passed by a Democratic Senate in 2010 to rein in, and hopefully prevent, the same reckless Wall Street practices that caused the 2007-8 Financial Collapse and the ensuing Great Recession. He has also proposed completely abolishing the IRS. As long as Mercer’s money continues flowing in, Cruz can be expected to tailor his policy proposals accordingly, even if deregulating Wall Street and sanctioning the practices of people like Mercer proves disastrous for ordinary Americans who have to deal with the real-world consequences to their lives, futures, and hopes for retirement.
Toby Neugebauer is next. If his name seems familiar, it should:
Mr. Neugebauer, the son of Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas, is the co-founder of Quantum Energy Partners and has been an active investor in the oil and gas sectors, overseeing billions of dollars of assets.
Neugebauer previously tied his star to Rick Perry, whom he would take for happy rides on his private jet to discuss ways he could maximize his profits from shale drilling in North Texas. Since Perry proved to be an embarrassment as a Presidential candidate, Neugebauer has set his sights on Cruz. Like many Billionaires these days, however, Neugebauer’s personal fealty to the country he seeks to control has taken a back seat to personal tax avoidance, and he recently relocated to Dorado Beach, Puerto Rico:
Because of laws enacted in 2012, a move to the island guarantees thatpersonal investment income (i.e. capital gains, dividends) will be completely tax-free.
Because Puerto Rico has a unique legal status, American can escape most U.S. taxes without renouncing U.S. citizenship to do so. The only requirement is to be a physical resident for 183 days out of the year.
With a dismal economy and 14% unemployment, Puerto Rico’s Department of Economic Development and Commerce has been recruiting America’s billionaires to come aboard. The list of new immigrants includes names like John Paulson, Peter Schiff and Rob Rill. It probably meant nothing to South Plains residents until Bloomberg reported on Puerto Rico’s newest resident two weeks ago: Toby Neugebauer, the son of District 19 Congressman Randy Neugebauer.
Neugebauer told Bloomberg News that he moved to Puerto Rico because he wanted his children to “learn Spanish” and attend a “top school.” Apparently this couldn’t be accomplished in Texas. In his leisure time, Neugebauer enjoys killing lions and other trophy animals for fun.
The problem with tax “avoiders” like Neugebauer goes well beyond their lack of any patriotic sense. The money Billionaires avoid paying in taxes by skedaddling to places like Puerto Rico is money that would have gone to our schools, to our roadways, to our community infrastructure, and to our armed forces. It’s money that people like Neugebauer blithely take out of Americans’ pockets even as they enjoy all the immense privileges of profiting off our free enterprise system.
Finally, the Wilks Brothers, who round out this small list of Cruz’s financial SuperPAC backers, made their money by getting in on the “ground floor” of the fracking business, selling the heavy equipment that has so despoiled much of our so-called “public lands. But as some of the world’s richest people, they have more pressing interests to impress upon us through their political puppets like Mr. Cruz:
While both Farris and Dan have given to conservative groups and candidates, it is older brother Farris whose foundation has become a source of massive donations to Religious Right groups and to the Koch brothers’ political network. Farris also funds a network of “pregnancy centers” that refuse, on principle, to talk to single women about contraception. (Married women need to check with their husband and pastor.)
Cruz very vocal embrace of Apocalyptic Christian theology, which motivates his base support in Iowa, dovetails in beautiful symmetry with the Wilks brothers personal beliefs:
Farris [Wilks]thinks conservative economics are grounded in the Bible. Like Mitt Romney, he says people shouldn’t vote for politicians who promise “free this, free that.” Like any number of Religious Right leaders, he saw Barack Obama’s re-election as a harbinger of the End Times and he believes God will punish America for embracing sexuality. Unlike all of them, he’s on the list of the world’s richest people.
Wilks has a fixation about gays, equating sexuality with bestiality, and regularly invokes what he sees as a betrayal of God by modern American mores, including women exercising their reproductive rights:
Think of all the murder that has happened in this country….all the babies that have been murdered…think of all the perversions in the realm of sexual perversion of all kinds…all the breaking of Yahweh’s covenant….and so you recognize that at some point Yahweh’s going to say it’s time to wrap up… it’s time to move on to a kingdom of people that want to serve me, that want to be redeemed, that want salvation…we have to draw some lines in the sand for ourselves….
Conveniently, Wilks’ “God” is Himself a big proponent of fracking and “free enterprise:”
Earlier this year, Farris preached on “Government That We Can Believe In.”…. Yahweh, he preached, is “someone who respects private ownership” and the Torah is “set up on the free enterprise system.”
Cruz himself told his supporters on Thursday to strap on their “Armor of God,” claiming the Republican race will be over by March. His campaign hauled in $20 Million last quarter to begin their final push in Iowa. If the profit-hungry Hedge Funders, tax-avoiding Billionaire expatriates, and bigoted Billionaire religious nutcases have there way, that is only the beginning.
What these grotesque people all have in common is a fervent desire to shape public policy to help themselves in a very big way, even while it makes life for the rest of us worse.
Ted Cruz is perfectly happy to be their stooge.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016...Ted-Cruz-On-Us
Ted Cruz really, really loves the death penalty
Five of his nine Supreme Court appearances related to the same issue: the death penalty. In each case, Cruz represented the state of Texas and defended capital punishment in cases where even many advocates would normally be squeamish.
He defended executing rapists who had killed no one; executing the mentally ill; and executing a man with an IQ of 78. He lost those three cases, all by narrow 5-4 votes.
But his two other appearances related to the same case, in which Cruz was opposed by the Bush administration, the Mexican government, and the International Court of Justice. Cruz won, and the defendant was executed five months later.
...
Cruz's contentions were that:
- Merely ratifying the Vienna Convention, and its "Optional Protocol" allowing for ICJ jurisdiction over related issues, did not make the ICJ's decisions binding US law. In other words: US courts have no obligation to obey ICJ rulings.
- Bush's memorandum to courts instructing them to obey the ICJ ruling had no binding authority.
In a 2010 article for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy boisterously led, "Defending US Sovereignty, Separation of Powers, and Federalism in Medellín v. Texas," he characterizes the issues raised by the case this way:
"Are the American people governed by judges, courts, and laws of nations other than our own, or are they governed by the United States Cons ution, by the U.S. Congress, the United States government, and ultimately by 'We the People'? It is difficult to imagine a more fundamental question."
At points, the grandiose cons utionalist rhetoric reads less like scholarship and more like campaign literature.
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/2/10690022/ted-cruz-death-penalty
So in Krazy Taliban Kruz's world, USA's signing international conventions can be ignored. USA's written commitments are worthless.
I Saw Why Ted Cruz Is Leading in Iowa -- Reporting from a Rally of Whooped-Up White Evangelicals
Now I understand why Cruz is winning Iowa. You would too if you saw this band sing "I Wish Kids Prayed in School."
Cruz swapped out his usual stump for an exchange that blended scripted sermonizing with red-meat fighting words against Democrats he said are fixated on abolishing religious liberty.
“If we allow non-believers to elect our leaders, we shouldn’t be surprised when our government doesn’t reflect our values,”
Cruz asked that attendees pray for him by asking for peace for his campaign, for the wisdom granted to the Biblical Solomon and for the well-being of his daughters, Caroline and Catherine.
“That they know at every moment that they’re loved by their mom and dad and they are loved by their father in heaven, and that they maintain a spirit of joy and peace, as well,”
A family band garbed in red, white and blue kicked off the heavily produced affair, performing original Christian songs with lyrics such as “I wish kids prayed in school before classes” and “kids need a mom and a dad.”
“From the schoolhouse to the courthouse, they’re silencing His word. And now it’s time for all believers to make our voices heard,”
Standing alongside conservative-values author and commentator James Dobson, Cruz swapped out his usual stump for an exchange that blended scripted sermonizing with red-meat fighting words against Democrats he said are fixated on abolishing religious liberty.
“If we allow non-believers to elect our leaders, we shouldn’t be surprised when our government doesn’t reflect our values,” Cruz said to widespread applause.
Cruz called for increased voter turnout among evangelical caucus-goers, using the type of overtly religious rhetoric that has galvanized support from social conservatives and propelled family-values candidates such as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum to first-place Iowa finishes in 2008 and 2012.
Cruz asked that attendees pray for him by asking for peace for his campaign, for the wisdom granted to the Biblical Solomon and for the well-being of his daughters, Caroline and Catherine.
“That they know at every moment that they’re loved by their mom and dad and they are loved by their father in heaven, and that they maintain a spirit of joy and peace, as well,” Cruz said.
Cruz currently leads all other Republicans in Iowa and has cracked the 30 point level in most poll averages – more than three points ahead than second-place finisher Donald Trump.
A family band garbed in red, white and blue kicked off the heavily produced affair, performing original Christian songs with lyrics such as “I wish kids prayed in school before classes” and “kids need a mom and a dad.”
“From the schoolhouse to the courthouse, they’re silencing His word. And now it’s time for all believers to make our voices heard,” they sang at one point.
A baby boy in the third row sitting near one of the massive speaker systems put his hands over his ears.
Cruz’s remarks came after introductions from Rep. Steve King and CEO of The Family Leader Bob Vander Plaats – both Iowans who have garnered past controversy for their stances on social issues.
Cruz promised
to repeal all of President Obama’s executive actions,
to abolish the Iran nuclear deal spearheaded by Secretary of State John Kerry,
to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to Israel and
to open a federal investigation into the controversial Planned Parenthood videos that surfaced in July.
He also reiterated earlier claims that the GOP would know its nominee by the end of March.
His back-and-forth with Dobson, while obviously rehearsed, was received warmly by the roughly 400-person crowd.
But some Iowans remain worried that Cruz may have an authenticity problem.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-pol...ter1048531&t=6
No amount of pastor-ization will disinfect this lying bag of
Why McCain’s shot across Cruz’s bow matters
The recent history adds a degree of irony to McCain’s comments about Ted Cruz yesterday.
Arizona Sen. John McCain said he doesn’t know if the Canadian-born Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is eligible to be president, saying the Supreme Court might have to decide if Cruz is eligible to be president.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” said McCain on the Chris Merrill Show on KFYI550 on Wednesday of Cruz’s eligibility.
As the BuzzFeed report added, McCain went on to say, in reference to Cruz, “I think it’s worth looking into.” McCain added he thinks Cruz should try to get ahead of these eligibility issues, though without access to a time machine, how he’d go about doing this is a bit of a mystery.
It’s a genuine shame that Donald Trump has pushed this issue into the spotlight, because as best as I can tell, this entire line of attack is misguided. For all intents and purposes, natural-born citizens are those who were citizens at the time of their birth. This applies to Cruz. End of story.
I can think of about a thousand reasons to be concerned about a Cruz presidency, but his eligibility isn’t one of them.
What I find more interesting, however, is Cruz’s sudden need for friends in high places.
With the developments surrounding McCain in 2008 still in mind, the New York Times asked this morning, “Now the question is, will the Senate again weigh in to clarify the cons utional status of another one of its members and declare Mr. Cruz eligible to be president?”
The answer is, almost certainly not. Among senators from both parties, Ted Cruz is extremely unpopular. He’s gone out of his way to alienate his colleagues, pick fights with his own party leadership, and generally make as few friends in the chamber as possible during his tenure.
Right about now, Cruz would probably love to see the same level of Senate support McCain received eight years ago, but he shouldn’t hold his breath. As the Times added, for most senators in both parties, “assisting Mr. Cruz would amount to a foreign concept.”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow
So many people who know Ted seem to dislike him. John McCain is now saying Cruz's natural born citizen status is a legitimate concern even John was born on a military base outside the U.S.
Krazy Kruz' biggest sucker lie: "I'm an outsider"
Ted Cruz's Outsider Claims Belie His Political Insider Past
A Princeton graduate and Harvard-trained attorney, Cruz clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the Supreme Court — the very court he now accuses of "judicial tyranny." While working as a Washington lawyer in 1998, Cruzrepresented one of his future Capitol Hill nemeses, John Boehner.
He helped get George W. Bush elected president in 2000 — before the Bush White House enraged conservative activists by running up federal deficits.
His first political appointment back home came in 2003. Texas' then-Attorney General Greg Abbott saw in Cruz a hungry young attorney who would enforce his own vision for conservative legal governance, luring him back from Washington to be state solicitor general.
"The first time I ever heard his name was from a longtime party establishment person," says Dale Huls, a suburban Houston tea party activist, referring to an area Republican precinct chair.
Now Huls is preparing to campaign for Cruz in Iowa. Like many supporters, he says he doesn't hold Cruz's non-outsider past against him because "he has not disappointed us one single time" since being elected. '
"You take your experience from the times you were living," Huls says. "At that time, Bush was the guy. I voted for Bush twice."
Cruz's unforeseen 2012 Senate victory got a $5.5 million bump from the Club for Growth, a small-government activist group based not in his home state, but Washington.
Despite his insider resume, he got the backing of conservative grass-roots activists who helped him tap into the emerging tea party wave.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cr...+%28TPMNews%29
the articled failed to mention Krazy's wife works for predatory band of thieves Goldman-Sacks.
Like everything about the cosplay patriots, tea baggers, secessionists, astroturfers, Krazy Kruz and his supporters are 100% lying frauds.
Cruz rails against 'crony capitalism,' praises wife's Goldman Sachs career
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/0...n-sachs-116381
Krazy Kruz is an "outsider"
Ted Cruz Flushes His Campaign Down the Toilet For the Religious Right
Ted Cruz has bigger problems than his place of birth, the Canadian citizenship of his parents, and Donald Trump. Ted Cruz has positioned himself as the champion of theocracy in the United States, and as its other would-be champions fall to the wayside, he has been left standing alone as the dominionist messiah.
Cruz has outdone them all by announcing that Bob Vander Plaats as National Co-Chair for his campaign. Vander Plaats is CEO of The FAMiLY LEADER, a group you might remember thanks to their bizarre Marriage Vow Pledge, which asserted that “African Americans were better off as slaves.”Yes, he wants that guy as his national co-chair:
“With Bob’s leadership we will succeed in uniting conservatives around this country. Bob is an inspiring leader in the conservative movement with the values and tested ability to help us fight to restore the principles that made this country exceptional. I’m grateful to have such a tireless advocate for liberty on our team. If we as conservatives come together, we will win.”
What Cruz doesn’t seem to get is that the only thing worse than a theocrat is a racist theocrat.
Deace, writing at BarbWire, says that if you don’t vote for Cruz you are “stupid,” “slappy” and “child-like,” and he explains, “rest assured I mean paste-eating, booger-picking child-like.”
Ted Cruz just boxed himself in with the minority of Christians who think the Cons ution doesn’t mean what it says and that the Founding Fathers intended all along that we should be a theocracy.
Only the specter of his wacky “Ted is the messiah” and “I’m the self-appointed educator for the American Negro” dad, offers irrefutable evidence that Cruz is serious.
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/...iticus+USA+%29
Is Ted Cruz a 'natural born Citizen'? Not if you're a cons utional originalist.
There are three leading theories of how to interpret the Cons ution today.
One is textualism: the Cons ution means what its words say. The historical context of the words is important when a modern plain meaning is not self-evident.
A second theory, adopted by many liberals, relies on a
“living Cons ution”: the Cons ution means what is most consistent with fundamental cons utional values as applied to present cir stances. The third theory, championed by many leading conservatives, is originalism: The Cons ution means what ordinary people would have understood it to mean at the time it was ratified, which is 1788.
Under either a textualist or a “living Cons ution” theory, Cruz is a “natural born Citizen,” eligible to be president; under an originalist view, however, he isn't. It's the conservative theory that would exclude the conservative Cruz from presidential eligibility.
To an originalist, a “natural born Citizen” is a person who is a citizen of the United States under “natural” principles of law in 1788. Two such principles were then in play in the U.S.
Jus soli — the law of soil — was the principle that a child was subject or citizen of the sovereign who ruled the land or seas on which the child was born. Jus soli was viewed as a part of the common law of England, which was adopted by the American states.
Jus sanguinis — the law of blood — held that a child's citizenship flowed from the parents' allegiance, regardless of place of birth. This principle was prevalent in continental Europe, and in England it was the basis for an exception to jus soli for children born there to foreign ambassadors.
But the Supreme Court has never directly decided the meaning of “natural born Citizen.”
It's a neat irony: The most conservative cons utional interpreters must find Cruz ineligible to be president; liberals must grin and bear him.
Cruz himself purports to embrace originalism as the correct view of the Cons ution. To be faithful to his understanding of what the Cons ution means, the senator may have to disqualify himself.
Thomas Lee is a professor of cons utional law and international law at Fordham Law School.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...110-story.html
Repugs are misogynists, per the Bible
Ted Cruz: Voters should spank Hillary Clinton like I spank my five-year old daughter
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...r?detail=email
im not a ted cruz fan, but lol what a misleading article le
cruz said:
"You know I'll tell you, in my house, if my daughter Cather, the five-year-old, says something she knows to be false, she gets a spanking," he said. "Well, in America, the voters have a way of administering a spanking."
indeed. he is not actually suggesting spanking clinton like the article le implies
Cruz using the image of anybody spanking a grown women is insulting, misogynist, just like his ing weird evangelical Christian Taliban base
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