Well, it looks like we’ll probably be stuck talking about Ted Cruz for the next 11 months, because he’s quickly shaping up to be the Republican presidential candidate. I hope you like the sound of air slowly escaping from the pinched valve of a balloon, because as with Charlie Brown’s trombone-voiced teachers, that’s all I can hear when Ted Cruz talks.
Conventional wisdom is starting to coalesce around Cruz, although it’s still too soon to make any definite predictions. Tuesday’s CNN debate might help clarify the future, or at the very least provide us with new soundbites to make fun of.
Maybe shining a temporary spotlight on Cruz is a good thing. His political career is financed largely by polluters—$15 million from oil and gas billionaires just last year—and the scrutiny of a national campaign might at least expose the worst of the climate-deniers’ lies.
Cruz is still clinging to the claim that there’s no such thing as global warming because “the satellites that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever.”
Of course, that’s absurd. Regardless of what the satellites indicate, we have thermometers located down here on Earth that show some pretty irrefutable evidence of warming.
As you might have guessed, Trump is NOT HAPPY that Cruz is beating him in the latest polls. He called Cruz “a maniac” while Cruz told donors that Trump doesn’t have any judgment. I think both accusations are probably true.
Cruz later responded to the “maniac” accusation by having his Twitter lackey post a video from Flashdance. This led to a delightful situation in which Politico explained the plot of the film to its readers in its usual dull tone.
“In Flashdance, the Michael Sembello song plays over footage of Jennifer Beals’ character dancing, one of a number of such scenes in the unlikely story of a Pittsburgh welder trying to live her dream as an artistic dancer.”
I kind of want to see Politico get into the movie review businesses now.
To most human creatures, Cruz is pure cringe, like a creepy uncle who says something that doesn’t make sense, then stares at you and you don’t know if he thinks he just said something funny and expects you to laugh. He told a little boy he was a monkey last week, and the New York Times‘ best investigative reporters were unable to explain whether or not it was a punchline to a joke.
Cruz also likes to brag that he and his friends played with Star Wars action figures when they were young, a claim I find highly unlikely since Ted Cruz cannot possibly have ever had friends.
He’s also given to quoting Yoda: “There is no try. Do or do not.” That’s a slight inversion of the actual quote but I’ll try not to be pedantic about it. I would just point out that although a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force, anger, fear, and aggression—the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will.
