Following in the now well established tradition of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, the newest U.S. Senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, has stepped up to upbraid two decorated veterans as being unfit for government service because they are insufficiently patriotic or brave or supportive of the national defense: He said this of both John Kerry, who served on a swift boat in Vietnam, one of the more exposed and harrowing assignments of that war, and Chuck Hagel, also a veteran who actually saw bullets and other hostile projectiles fired at him during combat.
Like all other members of his Republican Tea Party cohort, Mr. Cruz has never had a bullet fired at him in anger, and he has never worn the uniform of his country. He is one of those tough guys who never actually did the tough things in life. Calling Professor Sigmund...Are we seeing something here you may have named? Actually, the Phantom is even more impressed by the Republicans who pretended to serve by hiding out in the National Guard or the Reserves, when those two places were the preserve of the rich and well connected, during Vietnam, so they could get photos of themselves in uniform, while actually hiding behind the skirts of their mothers and well connected fathers, far from the bombs and bullets flying in Vietnam--guys like Jeff Sessions and Lindsey Graham, the twin draft dodgers who are now the U.S. Senators from South Carolina. Ah, the old Confederacy. What happened to that region, which once supported itself on slaves and tobacco, but at least it produced some pretty amazing soldiers?
But back to Ted Cruz: He did go to Princeton, where he won awards as the best debater on campus.
And then he went to Harvard Law, where, he claims, there were more Communists on faculty than Republicans.
But he never fired a gun for his country.
When asked to name names, like his soul mate and ancestor in Republican calumny, Joesph McCarty, Mr. Cruz could not name a single Harvard faculty Communist. The names escaped him. But Mr. Cruz knew those pinko Commies were there.
Every few weeks, The Phantom reorders his list of states which ought to be expelled from the United States. The Phantom believes states should have to re-apply for statehood every 10 years, and if a particular state is deemed by a vote of the majority of free men and women and 2/3 of the others, to be just really nasty, we can then expel that state. If, after a sufficient period of reflection and/or internal purging and political enemas, the state feels it is all better now, it can reapply.
For some weeks the top spot was in contention between South Carolina and Arizona, but Texas, always a player, has now re-emerged for the top spot.
On the other hand, some have argued, these states provide us with such entertaining characters, it might be a shame to simply vomit them up.
Really, South Carolina has an ex governor who ran off with his Argentine mistress while claiming to be hiking the Appalachian trial and he is now running again, on that old South Carolina platform, "I am more humble than my opponent."
And Arizona has Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County who drives around in a tank painted with flames and who marches people he's arrested (not convicted mind you) in pink underpants down the street and he is a champion of the Constitution.
(All these Tea Party-ers are.)
As a side bar--have you ever known a graduate of Princeton you really liked? I mean, what is that place like, to have produced as its favorite debater the Ivy League version of Rush Limbaugh?
And while we are thinking about the health of democracy in the land of the free and the home of brave, how many American citizens have been stripped searched in American jails this week?
No comments:
Post a Comment