It Must Be Terrible To Be Ted Cruz

Everybody hates this guy  

I suddenly have just the teeniest, tiniest bit of sympathy for Ted Cruz.

It's miniscule, but it's there.

It seems everybody hates, HATES Ted Cruz. This is probably not fair, but when I Googled "Ted Cruz hated" I got 20,600,000 results.

Think about it. All we've heard in the news for months is how much everybody hates Ted Cruz. I'm sure he's heard it, too.

His presidential campaign collapsed in a heap Tuesday in Indiana, and the end was a mess. Donald Trump managed to get into Cruz's head just by repeating the bullcrap from the National Enquirer about Cruz's dad somehow being involved with the JFK assassination.

Even Cruz's erstwhile, brief running mate Carly Fiorina fell off a stage, which seemed like an omen a day or two before the Indiana vote. Cruz also accidentally punched his wife while hugging one of his very few supporters the other night.

Cruz was hated in college. There's an interesting article in Slate written by a person who remembers what a slog it was to be in a debate club with Cruz.

"Most of my memories of debating Ted Cruz involve being hollered at," writes Dahlia Lithwick.

As a young lawyer, In the Senate people hated him.  Didn't former House Speaker John Boehner just call Cruz "Lucifer in the flesh"? 

Senator Lindsey Graham said: "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you."

Congressman Peter King of New York said he would take cyanide if Cruz won the nomination.

Not exactly loving words.

Almost all politicians are rejected by voters from time to time. You need an amazingly thick skin to get into that line of work.

But the word "hate" comes up so often when people are talking about Cruz, and he must be aware of it. This has to sting.

Lithwick, in Slate, sees the same "qualities" in Cruz now as she saw in the college debate gatherings:

"Watching Cruz's halting rise and crushing fall on the campaign trail this season, I've seen so many of the same behaviors: the canned absolutists lines, the just-add-water-outrage machine the too-loud, too-much quality that thrums through every venue until your face hurts."

Politico suggests that maybe Cruz likes to be hated:

"He wants to be hated. He draws strength from the attention it delivers and he has sought the hatred of others since high school......"

"From the view inside Cruz's skull, once you get people to like you, your job has only begun. Additional acts of kindness, consideration and fairness must be extended or your likability will fade into the background.

But hatred is a much more efficient use of emotional energy. Often, a single does of malice can seal the impression among most people that you're a terminal prick. By acquiring as his enemies the Washington political establishment, Cruz figures he can inherit their enemies and the 2016 campaign has proved him right. Nobody until Cruz had the stomach to build his political foundation on a bedrock of loathing."

This obviously was written before Cruz's campaign crashed and burned.

So now what?  If Politico is right, then being the most hated person in the room didn't get Cruz very far.

Does being hated hurt Cruz emotionally? What is it like to have everybody say they hate you. It has to be crushing.

It would be for me and you, but for Cruz, I have no idea.

It all makes you want to give poor Ted Cruz a teddy bear to hug.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz Enthusiastically Help With ISIS Marketing Campaign

This image is hyperbole, but still, Donald Trump is
doing quite a good job marketing ISIS recruitment.  

The world is reeling again from the latest outrage from ISIS and its supporter - this time that double bombing in Brussels that killed 31 people.

Once again, the story is a familiar arc. To most of us, the Brussels attack is a horrific outrage, a tragedy.

To radical so-called Muslims, it's a marketing campaign, and there are people in the United States, leading politicians and candidates mind you, that are making the marketing campaign all the more successful.

I know that calling these deadly attacks a marketing campaign is crass, but it kinda is. They're meant to stir up anti-Musllim sentiment in the West, which the extremists then use to say how awful the West is to Muslims so join us.

Some disillusioned people will go and join them, and more will perpetrate attacks, and the cycle goes on and on.

It's obviously not easy at all to counteract these "marketing" attacks. If it were, this would be done by now.

The Obama administration is probably not doing a perfect job at managing this, and of course his actions are open for scrutiny.

However, the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are making the ISIS terrorist "ad campaign" of sorts all the more effective.

Trump and Cruz aren't intentionally helping ISIS, obviously. It's just that ehy are putting their own ambitions over our national interests. They know some voters want simple statements that exude American strength and toughness. Hysterics and bluster sells.

So Cruz tells us he wants police to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods," whatever that means.

Never mind that's unconstitutional, and police departments don't report to the President. Cruz, a Harvard law graduate, should know that and probably does, but that's besides the point when you're trying to become dictator, or president or whatever he wants.

Law and order guy Bill Bratton, the NYPD Police Commissioner, said it best: "We don't need a president that doesn't respect the values that form the foundation of this country. "

Bratton noted that 900 or so NYPD officers are Muslim. So they have to "patrol and secure" themselves?

Meanwhile, our favorite fascist blowhard, Donald Trump, is trying to outdo everybody on this one, and trying to take full advantage of Brussels to advance his campaign. It's all about him. And showing what a supposed tough guy he is.

It was the usual blather from Trump. Close the borders to Muslims, waterboard suspects, despite what the Geneva convention says, go after families of terrorists, even if they didn't do anything wrong, and blame Obama for everything.

As Mother Jones noted, Trump is unwittingly one of the worlds biggest ISIS boosters, doing everything in his power it seems, to make them stronger.

Says Mother Jones:

"........Terrorism expert Malcolm Nance, the head of the Terrorism Asymmetrics Project and a veteran of Navy intelligence, took Trump to taks for doing the propoganda work of ISIS.

'Good God, they're probably cutting videos of this right now,' Nance said on MSNBC about Trump's comments. 'Donald Trump right now is validating the cartoonish view that they tell their operatives...that America is a racist nation, xenophobic, anti-Muslim and that's why you must carry out terrorist attacks against them...It's irresponsible and needs to stop.'"

Don't count on it, Malcolm

National interest is besides the point for Trump.

And sure enough, just a couple days after Nance made that comment about ISIS making videos of Trump, it appears they have, according to The Hill.

So yeah, this blowharded stupidity and shrillness from Trump and Cruz must sound wonderful to their base, which probably isn't big enough anyway to get them through the general election. (We hope)

Trump and Cruz must sound awfully wonderful to ISIS terrorist recruits, too.

Silly Political Ad Season Arrives Early Cruz And Bacon, Plus A Canadian Super Hero

If this guy wins the Presidency, we'll all learn how
to properly cook bacon. Oh joy!  

It's already time for bizarre political ads in both the United States and Canada, and we're off to a STUNNING start.

Here in the good old U.S of A, crazy Texas Republican Senator "Government Shut Down" Ted Cruz is running for President, as we all know, and like the rest of them, he's trying to get attention.

Say what you want about the climate denying, Obama hating, religious kook Cruz, he's sure got a flair for style, at least in ads and videos.

Earlier this month, he demonstrated how they cook bacon in Texas. He wraps bacon on the barrel of a   machine gun and fires away, probably to demonstrate his gung ho guns and red meat style of conservative bonafides to a willing audience.

Or, as Roxanne Roberts couldn't resist saying on last week's NPR news quiz show, "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" Cruz engaged in classic pork barrel politics. Ha!

I dunno, though. It's a little chilling watching the end of the video, in which Cruz says, MMMmm! Machine gun bacon!  Would he have that smirk on his face if he goes to a NATO diplomatic summit as president.

Anyway, here's the video.




Next we move on to Canada. O Canada!

A gentleman named Wyatt Scott is running for the  Canadian Parliament. 

In is ad, he does a number of incredible things, like ride a giant Canada goose, slay a dragon and send death rays out of his eyes to slay a giant robot thing. A real superhero to save Canada!

If Scott wins, and his performance is anything like what we see in his campaign ad, I think we will all then be able to agree that Canada is NOT, in fact, boring.

Watch: