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Post by Old Badger on Dec 24, 2015 21:40:58 GMT -5
The subject of whether we should have public schools seems like another topic entirely...
Public schools? Socialist!
That said, even though Cruz was wrong to bring his kids into a campaign ad, there's no reason for cartoonists to include them in their critiques. That's the parent/grandparent in me speaking.
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Post by bigapplebucky on Dec 29, 2015 21:17:11 GMT -5
5 Crazy Things Ted Cruz Said He Will Do During His First Day As President.1) He wants to rip up the deal with Iran and put the country on path to yet another disastrous war in the Middle East. (Note that Iran gave up 8.5 tons of low enriched uranium to Russia just this week.)2) He wants to destroy Planned Parenthood. Cruz is staunchly anti-abortion and has accused the organization of “selling baby parts.” (The whole baby part selling thing has been debunked by numerous investigations.) 3) He wants to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel by moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (This is contrary to long standing US policy. A policy followed for good reasons.) 4) He wants to repeal Obamacare. (I think that's nuts, but most GOPers, except many GOP governors, think it's fine.) 5) He wants to fight ISIS. (Alright, that sounds like a good one. Except he's talking about fighting ISIS in Mexico and "carpet bombing" in the Mid East. Get real guy.)
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 7, 2016 15:50:56 GMT -5
In politics, it's generally a bad idea to tick off people who may be of use later in your career: A great man once said: The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward revenge. John McCain proved the power of revenge on Wednesday night when asked about his longtime nemesis Ted Cruz's eligibility to be president, despite being born in Canada. 'I don’t know the answer to that,' McCain said on the 'Chris Merrill Show' on Wednesday. 'I know it came up in my race because I was born in Panama, but I was born in the Canal Zone, which is a territory. Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona when it was a territory when he ran in 1964.'... "By McCain giving a 'you know, that's a good question' response to the question of whether Cruz is eligible to be president, he keeps the story — not a good one for the Texas senator — very much alive." link
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 10, 2016 21:54:21 GMT -5
In politics, it's generally a bad idea to tick off people who may be of use later in your career: A great man once said: The arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward revenge. John McCain proved the power of revenge on Wednesday night when asked about his longtime nemesis Ted Cruz's eligibility to be president, despite being born in Canada. 'I don’t know the answer to that,' McCain said on the 'Chris Merrill Show' on Wednesday. 'I know it came up in my race because I was born in Panama, but I was born in the Canal Zone, which is a territory. Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona when it was a territory when he ran in 1964.'... "By McCain giving a 'you know, that's a good question' response to the question of whether Cruz is eligible to be president, he keeps the story — not a good one for the Texas senator — very much alive." link Ted Cruz's Mother Was On Official List Of Canadian Citizens Eligible To VoteI dismissed Ted Cruz birtherism as inconsequential until I saw the above headline. Now there's an outside chance it's a legitimate question. However: That probably settles the issue, but I suppose Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio could send investigators.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 11, 2016 0:42:18 GMT -5
The least worrisome thing about Ted Cruz as presidential candidate is his birth status.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 12, 2016 16:24:54 GMT -5
Hey, maybe Ted Cruz really is not a "natural-born citizen" of the United States, after all. At lease, so says this professor of constitutional law: "The Constitution provides that 'No person except a natural born Citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.' The concept of 'natural born' comes from common law, and it is that law the Supreme Court has said we must turn to for the concept’s definition. On this subject, common law is clear and unambiguous. The 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, the preeminent authority on it, declared natural-born citizens are 'such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England,' while aliens are 'such as are born out of it.' The key to this division is the assumption of allegiance to one’s country of birth. The Americans who drafted the Constitution adopted this principle for the United States. James Madison, known as the 'father of the Constitution,' stated, 'It is an established maxim that birth is a criterion of allegiance. . . . [And] place is the most certain criterion; it is what applies in the United States.' "Cruz is, of course, a U.S. citizen. As he was born in Canada, he is not natural-born. His mother, however, is an American, and Congress has provided by statute for the naturalization of children born abroad to citizens. Because of the senator’s parentage, he did not have to follow the lengthy naturalization process that aliens without American parents must undergo. Instead, Cruz was naturalized at birth. This provision has not always been available. For example, there were several decades in the 19th century when children of Americans born abroad were not given automatic naturalization. " linkThat second paragraph brought me up short. If Congress had to provide for automatic naturalization, and if it allowed that provision to lapse for decades before re-enacting it, the implication is that people like Cruz are naturalized, but not natural-born, citizens, and therefore ineligible for the Presidency under Article II. There is a federal case pending in New Hampshire on this issue, but it doesn't look as if it's going to be decided in time for the primary next month. Imagine the mess that a belated decision against Cruz could cause! It might be worse than 2000.
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 12, 2016 18:04:37 GMT -5
The Brutalism of Ted CruzDavid Brooks doesn't have a high opinion about the Cruz version of Christianity. He makes some good points.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 12, 2016 19:22:11 GMT -5
CINO: Christian In Name Only?
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 14, 2016 18:20:30 GMT -5
The latest flap over the $750,000 loan to the 2012 Cruz Senate campaign from Goldman Sachs (Cruz's wife's employer) that was reported in 2012 and until recently as a personal contribution from Cruz might just hurt the Cruz campaign, maybe fatally. I deal with election finance reporting for my local committee. We had a small loan for a couple of months from an inactive candidate's campaign committee. It showed as a balance on one report and a repayment on the next. Kind of a pain to go through, but necessary. NYS BOE is pretty easy going and if we had originally reported the amount as a contribution they would have basically said nothing. In much the same way, the FEC is not the main problem Cruz has with this. The fact that the report was finally corrected probably satisfied them. At worst, he might have to pay a small fine. The real problem is pointed out in the link: This breaks trust with his supporters and may hurt him badly in this race. His financial reports filed with the Senate after his election were also inaccurate.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 14, 2016 23:24:19 GMT -5
Wait, are you saying that this man might be insincere? Say it ain't so, Joe!
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Post by buckybasser on Jan 15, 2016 2:27:52 GMT -5
Cruz secures a duck hunting endorsement. For the record - I rarely hunt & I do not watch the duck show.
However, Duck Dynasty & the Robertson family in general are very popular in hunting, fishing, car racing and religious circles here in Florida.
BHO might say the program is popular among people who "cling to guns or religion..."
As opposed to radical community organizers who cling to Marx, Alinsky and Ayers...
>O
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 15, 2016 11:28:56 GMT -5
Cruz secures a duck hunting endorsement. For the record - I rarely hunt & I do not watch the duck show.
However, Duck Dynasty & the Robertson family in general are very popular in hunting, fishing, car racing and religious circles here in Florida.
BHO might say the program is popular among people who "cling to guns or religion..."
As opposed to radical community organizers who cling to Marx, Alinsky and Ayers...
>O Rachel Maddow called that the best Republican ad she had seen so far in this campaign. By best, I think she meant effective. Not even Bernie Sanders "clings to Marx" these days.
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Post by buckybasser on Jan 15, 2016 14:50:06 GMT -5
I do not watch any of the network or cable outlets for political news or shows.
However, if I had to watch one of the shows it would be Rachel. I find her snippy & quirky style totally refreshing despite the fact I never agree.
I saw the incredible power of the Duck Dynasty brand this past fall.
I manufacture and wholesale sport fishing tackle. A sales representative of one of the world's largest sporting goods distributors pointed out a special on a Duck Dynasty fishing combo at a trade show I was attending. I thought the camouflage rod & reel looked silly, but the salesman just laughed.
I bought two dozen and he scolded me for not comprehending the power of the brand. He warned they might sell all 5000 or so they had at the promotional price.
All 24 of mine went to just one customer, sold within a week and more were requested...
Of course, all of the specials had already sold to folks more in tune with the Duck Dynasty brand.
>O
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 17, 2016 20:52:48 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 21, 2016 15:31:51 GMT -5
Conservative columnist gives 10 reasons why Cruz should "just stop" with his claim that Trump now is the establishment candidate: link. My #1 from her list: "Rubio and others are landing blows by showing Cruz is a slick, calculating pol with no sincere and deeply held beliefs. And here Cruz is so obviously playing the guilt-by-association game that he makes his opponents’ case: He’s another conniving pol who thinks voters are dumb."
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Post by buckybasser on Jan 25, 2016 7:40:54 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 25, 2016 8:21:58 GMT -5
Radical performer Natalie Maines apparently forgot her party has banned historical language, symbols and songs.
Does "her party" include Nikki Haley?
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Post by buckybasser on Jan 25, 2016 9:35:03 GMT -5
No, but given her Leftist / Ryan & McConnell / GOP Establishment State of the Union response, the term 'radical' certainly applies to our Darling Nikki...
Here is an awesome tune (hope you're not too old) with a rich political history...
Darling Nikki is NSFW and partially lead Tipper Gore to begin a crusade that would eventually bring warning labels to music.
My Prince link would not work - this is nowhere near as good...
>O
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 25, 2016 11:47:04 GMT -5
Um, yeah the once and future Prince.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 30, 2016 23:57:36 GMT -5
Iowan flummoxes Cruz with a simple question about Obamacare: “What are you going to replace it with?” Why has no one in the media, with all those debates, managed to raise this question to Cruz or any of the other GOP candidates? Read how Cruz was stymied and you can see what a lie "repeal and replace" actually is. link
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 31, 2016 16:54:55 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 31, 2016 18:27:20 GMT -5
The latest from the Cruz campaign shows how an innovative academic idea can become a clumsy tool in real-life politics: "A decade ago ago, a trio of political scientists asked voters a powerful question: Why weren't they voting as much as their neighbors?...(They) wanted to find out whether peer pressure and social norms could drive up voter turnout, so they mailed more than 180,000 Michigan households a letter telling them that they were part of a study, in which other people would find out if they stayed away from the ballot box...The letter worked. Political consultants...found that similar letters in real elections could boost turnout by up to 2.5 percent." linkI suspect they mean 2.5 percentage points, which would be a huge effect for this kind of thing. But a funny think happened when the Cruz people tried to use this finding to win tomorrow's Iowa caucuses: "Republican strategist and writer Sarah Rumpf found a tweet (now deleted) from Iowa voter Tom Hinkelday, displaying a Cruz mailer meant to look like a 'VOTER VIOLATION.' 'CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE,' read the mailer, patterned after a report card, 'and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses."' Now, it's one thing to send out a mailer as part of a study saying that your neighbors are voting, so maybe you should think about it, too. It's quite another to imply that not voting is a "violation" for which the citizen might face official scrutiny. That's more like intimidation, as Iowa's Secretary of State suggests: "Accusing citizens of Iowa of a 'voting violation' based on Iowa Caucus participation, or lack thereof, is false representation of an official act. There is no such thing as an election violation related to frequency of voting. Any insinuation or statement to the contrary is wrong and I believe it is not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses."
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Post by bigapplebucky on Feb 4, 2016 17:16:50 GMT -5
While I laugh at Trump's butt hurt over Cruz's dirty trick in Iowa, the bottom line is that Cruz did play dirty. Cruz State of Washington campaign chair resigns after proof he lied about his military service.Hunt was one of two Washington state lawmakers who traveled to Oregon to meet with the armed militants who have taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Since that time, there are only four remaining Occupiers left at the refuge. LaVoy Finicum was fatally shot by the authorities and the leaders remain in custody.
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 12, 2016 11:53:00 GMT -5
A bit on the lighter side is this story about a pulled Cruz ad: "It was a clever set-up for a negative ad from Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign — one that took aim at rival Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): Seven people sitting in a circle, group-therapy style, talking about their past ballot box regrets. 'Has anyone else here struggled with being lied to?' the group’s leader asks. 'Well, I voted for a guy who was a tea party hero on the campaign trail,' a man in the circle of trust replies. 'Then he went to D.C. and played patty-cake with Chuck Schumer and cut a deal on amnesty.' 'Maybe you should vote for more than just a pretty face next time,' a woman advises. Cruz puts in an appearance at the end, offering the usual disclaimer: 'I’m Ted Cruz, and I approved this message.' But Cruz soon decided that he definitely did not approve this message, and the ad was pulled — because Amy Lindsay, the actress warning about voting for a 'pretty face,' wasn’t exactly what she seemed to some viewers. In fact, she is perhaps best known for her roles in softcore pornography films." linkOK, no one believes all those "real people" in campaign ads are anything but actors, but having a (former) porn star, albeit soft rather than hard-core (“I didn’t cross a certain line...Porn to me is penetration — having sex. It’s something entering you on camera”), in your ad while running as the most religious, "family-oriented" conservative candidate is just a tad off-message. Cruz's campaign, correctly, blames the ad agency for failing to vet Lindsay, but what's fascinating is this: "And Lindsay, it turns out, is no stranger to Ted Cruz. The spot for the Texas senator wasn’t just another gig, she said — she is a Cruz supporter, though some might find her politics unusual. She contains multitudes. She is pro-gay marriage, she said. She is pro-gun. She is pro-life. She voted for Ross Perot in 1992. She appears with hardcore king Ron Jeremy in a photo on her Twitter feed." The complexity of political alignments is starkly presented by the porn industry. In the 1980s, there was a bookstore in my neighborhood that stocked a plethora of political periodicals and a lot of foreign newspapers (I often stopped in to pick up La Repubblica to keep my little bit of Italian from disappearing), and also a rather large collection of porn mags, including really hard-core stuff, both straight and gay. At the time, the US prosecutor in Alexandria was trying to shut them down for selling porn. They had a hand-made sign asking people to sign a petition protesting this imposition on their First Amendment Rights. Immediately above that sign was a picture of Ronald Reagan--the guy who had appointed that very same prosecutor. Funny as that seems, it's not all that anomalous: "Whatever does or doesn’t enter whomever, the GOP and porn are not strangers. The industry has a libertarian streak. 'I think that my work and being in the porn industry definitely hits on so many libertarian themes like free speech, and censorship, and, you know, choice and autonomy over our bodies,' Miriam Weeks, a Duke University sophomore who was outed as a porn star in 2014, said last year. 'So I think that I’ve really become passionate about libertarian issues because of the intersection.' Indeed, Jenna Jameson, among the industry’s most successful performers, backed Mitt Romney in 2012, and is for Rubio this time around. 'I’m very looking forward to a Republican being back in office,' Jameson said in 2012. 'When you’re rich, you want a Republican in office.'” People are very hard to pigeon-hole into little ideologically-consistent boxes. An alliance between Evangelical Christians and Libertarian porn stars seem ill-fated only if you think everything should fit together in a pre-defined way, but "politics makes strange bedfellows" is more than just an adage. It's what makes politics more fascinating than arithmetic: in politics, there's never a "right" or "wrong" answer, just a complex jumble that sometimes comes out like this: "Keep the Government's Hands Off My Medicare!"
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Post by bigapplebucky on Feb 12, 2016 19:05:04 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 12, 2016 23:15:13 GMT -5
"GREENVILLE, S.C. — In a corner of Bob Jones University, the evangelical institution where presidential candidates have long gathered to highlight their faith, Senator Ted Cruz stared into the cameras to answer the question that had almost certainly never been posed inside these halls. What was up with that porn star in your attack ad? 'It happened that one of the actresses,' Mr. Cruz told reporters coyly, 'had a more colorful film history than we were aware.'” linkI guess even at an extremely religious college a story with the word "porn" in it attracts students' attention, lol. "Colorful film history" is quite the euphemism.
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Post by bigapplebucky on Feb 13, 2016 17:04:38 GMT -5
She's a CHRISTIAN now AND a CONSERVATIVE" doesn't mean that GOD has forgiven all her past sins and she can be their hero now?
That clearly works for cheating on spouses, having affairs, stealing money, fraud, etc, etc. So how come it isn't working for her?
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 13, 2016 17:32:14 GMT -5
So how come it isn't working for her? Cuz the films are still out there. ;-)
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Post by Old Badger on Feb 17, 2016 17:27:46 GMT -5
Ted Cruz is firing the anti-abortion AR-15 at Donald Trump: That's just the start: "Cruz said Trump's campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter to his campaign Tuesday stating that an advertisement Cruz's campaign aired about Trump is 'replete with outright lies, false defamatory and destructive statements' and that the campaign must take it down immediately or face a lawsuit...In a response letter to Trump's lawyer, Cruz's counsel said the ad would now be aired with greater frequency...Cruz, a lawyer, held a news conference here that was more akin to a courtroom argument, with a reading of a cease-and-desist letter, visual aids, citing of "data points" to argue Trump's lawsuit would be frivolous, and paperwork stacked on a table. He repeatedly gesticulated as one would toward a judge, often with a sheet of paper in his hand." linkWith the GOP campaign continuing to hit new lows, Cruz also went after Trump's sister, federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry, whom Cruz called a "radical pro-abortion extremist" because "in July 2000, Barry wrote the majority opinion on a panel that ruled that New Jersey's ban on late-term abortions was 'constitutionally vague' and 'unduly burdened a woman's constitutional right to obtain an abortion.' One of the other judges on the panel was now-Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. The case involved Planned Parenthood." Alito concurred in the decision, but thought Barry's written opinion "obsolete" because while it was being written the US Supreme Court struck down an almost identical Nebraska statute. If this were a Three Stooges movie it might be fun to watch; that's it's a presidential campaign is simply embarrassing.
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Post by bigapplebucky on Feb 23, 2016 22:34:55 GMT -5
I would posit that Sanders is more Christian in his political beliefs than so-call Evangelical uber-Christian, Rafael Eduardo Cruz.
Sanders wants to feed the poor. Cruz supported cutting the SNAP (food stamp) program.
Sanders wants to aid the sick. Cruz wants to eliminate Obamacare.
Sanders wants to avoid wars. Cruz is a chicken hawk and wants the Middle East carpet bombed.
Whose policies are closer to the Christian ideal? It's not even close, IMO.
Aside from that, Bernie is for science and Teddy is against it.
I haven't looked into (really don't give a damn) Bernie's attendance at Temple. Does he go most Saturdays, only for Passover, or not at all?
PS: It would be an easy choice for me to support Hillary over Rafael Edward Cruz.
PPS: Why does Faux News continuously repeat the president's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, yet they never ever say Rafael Eduardo Cruz? Hmmmm?
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