Ted Cruz may well be the least self-aware person in all of Washington, and as a result he continually tries to attack others on social media but only winds up owning himself in absolutely humiliating fashion.
This time, Cruz saw a tweet online from the GOP that chided President Joe Biden for going on “vacation,” which is not exactly the proper word for the president going back to his home state of Delaware for the long Columbus Day weekend.
Joe Biden has decided to go on vacation YET AGAIN.
He is running away from all the problems he has caused.
What the GOP didn’t mention are the endless golfing vacations failed former President Donald Trump took and charged taxpayers for. Trump played more golf in four years than Arnold Palmer did in his entire life.
Trying desperately to attach his name to the GOP tweet, Cruz thought he’d attempt a jab at President Biden while also sliding in a bit of self-deprecating ribbing for himself.
You probably recall that back in February, as the state of Texas was suffering under a terrible winter storm, Cruz and his family boarded a flight for the Mexican resort. Cruz later blamed the entire thing on his children.
But he can’t blame anyone but himself for the online payback he got for his posting:
Wait…Cancun? Texas residents must be experiencing another crisis if "Lyin' Ted" (FG's term) has Cancun on his mind. Btw..FG spent 38 weekends away from the WH his first year. https://t.co/JbqfsLTsS7
The setup here is that a senator went on a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Cancun while millions of people in his state lost power during extreme winter storms, and then he fought an infrastructure bill because of "reckless spending". The punchline is that the senator is you.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) got a lesson in military discipline and patriotism when he attempted to suggest that Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, should have have resigned when President Joe Biden decided to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan despite military leaders suggesting some U.S. troops should remain.
Cotton, who served in the Army, specifically asked Milley why he didn’t resign in protest when his recommendations weren’t followed. To that, the general replied:
“Senator, as a senior military officer, resigning is a really serious thing. It’s a political act if I’m resigning in protest. My job is to provide legal advice or the best military advice to the president. That’s my legal requirement. That’s what the law is. The president doesn’t have to agree with that advice. He doesn’t have to make those decisions just because we’re generals.”
Milley added that resigning just because a president doesn’t take his advice, “Would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to just resign.”
“This country doesn’t want generals figuring out what orders we’re going to accept and do or not. That’s not our job. It’s critical. My dad didn’t get a choice to resign at Iwo Jima. They can’t resign, so I’m not going to resign. There’s no way. If the orders are legal, we’re in a different place. If the orders are legal from civilian authority, I intend to carry them out.”
The fact that Cotton would ask such a question proves his only goal was to try and trash Biden as commander-in-chief and score political points instead of giving a damn about what’s in the long-term best interests of the United States.
If Sen. Cotton is unhappy with American foreign policy under this administration, then he should toss his hat into the 2024 presidential race and see if voters like his ideas. Otherwise, he should sit quietly and be thankful we have a president who gives a damn about our troops.
There’s an almost endless list of reasons that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has never and will never be president.
One of those reasons came from Graham’s mouth during an interview with BBC reporter Stephen Sackur.
The interview began with Graham kissing Donald Trump’s fat ass:
“He rebuilt the military. Whether you like Trump or not, whether you believe it’s Trump’s fault or Biden’s fault, here’s where we’re at as a world. The Taliban are not reformed, they’re not new. They have a view of the world out of sync with modern times.”
And then Graham suggested the United States would be invading Afghanistan again:
“But most importantly, they’re going to give safe haven to Al Qaeda who has ambitions to drive us out of the Middle East writ large. We will be going back into Afghanistan as we went back into Iraq and Syria.”
That led the incredulous reporter to ask:
“Are you serious?. You think the United States will once again, in the foreseeable future, put troops back into Afghanistan?”
“We’ll have to. Because the threat will be so large.”
Clearly, Lindsey Graham doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. The U.S. military now has capabilities with drones and other remote weapons to destroy any terrorist threat before it can launch an attack on us. We’ve been picking off Al Qaeda and ISIS members for years now with drone and missile strikes.
Poor Lindsey. He wants so badly to be relevant. But he’s nothing more than a Trump groupie who’s missing his sugar daddy.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has become the proverbial skunk at the garden party, insisting that he wants drastic changes to the Democratic $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package.
In an op-ed that was published by the Wall Street Journal, Manchin wrote:
“The nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future. Yet some in Congress have a strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future. I disagree.”
That led progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to slam Manchin on Twitter:
Manchin has weekly huddles w/ Exxon & is one of many senators who gives lobbyists their pen to write so-called “bipartisan” fossil fuel bills.
It’s killing people. Our people. At least 12 last night. Sick of this “bipartisan” corruption that masquerades as clear-eyed moderation. https://t.co/KW8w7HUhvT
And now award-winning actor and director Rob Reiner is weighing in on Manchin’s comments, and what he has to say perfectly encapsulates exactly what millions of us think anytime we hear that the West Virginia senator is standing in the way of legislation that would help the country.
Here’s the tweet Reiner posted:
We’re living under the tyranny of the Minority. I don’t remember voting for Joe Manchin for President.
Yep. That pretty much says it all. Why in the hell is Joe Manchin suddenly the most powerful man in Washington? He wasn’t elected to that position. Joe Biden was.
But with the Senate evenly divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, Manchin has indeed become the spoiler, able to hold up anything he wants even when his “reasons” are complete bullshit.
Others also joined the discussion on social media:
It's infuriating. You work your ass off to get people to vote blue and it succeds, only to be undermined by two senators who seem to not realize they're supposed to represent the people…not the corporations or themselves.
Driven by the Koch's Network! It's time for all American's to demand their investigated! Problem they have Trillions behind their group! All Oil & Gas & Military Industrial Complex because their equipment needs Fuel & Pharma & chemical composition & Billionaire's don't pay taxes
Senator Joe Manchin was elected with 290,510 votes in 2018. Over 159 million Americans voted in 2020, but Manchin (with his 290k supporters) is calling the shots. We need to reform our system of government to reflect the will of the majority. What we have is not Democracy.
A couple of weeks ago, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called for President Joe Biden to be impeached, telling Newsmax:
“I think Joe Biden deserves to be impeached because he’s abandoned thousands of Afghans who fought with us and he’s going to abandon some American citizens because he capitulated to the Taliban to a 31 August deadline.”
Of course, this is the very same Lindsey Graham who refused to vote for the conviction and removal from office of failed, one-term former President Donald Trump on TWO separate occasions, so the senator’s thoughts on any serious issues are not exactly relevant or even welcome among anyone other than the far right-wing, tinfoil hat wearing rubes who tune into to Newsmax, OAN, and other fringe conservative media outlets.
Kathleen Parker is also a South Carolinian, and as she notes in an op-ed she penned for The Washington Post, Graham has become little more than a “circus poodle” who is willing to contort himself into any position necessary to remain in the Donald’s good graces:
“Is that you, Lindsey? The same man who staunchly defended Donald Trump through two deserved impeachments now wants to impeach a Democratic president. If bad or misinformed decisions in war times were impeachable offenses, we’d have to add a secretary of impeachment to the Cabinet.”
Graham’s current hypocrisy, Parker continues, is a mystery to nearly everyone who knows him:
“It gives me no pleasure to note Lindsey’s fall from gravitas. He represents my state. He once employed my son. I’ve praised him for courageously saying what no one else would.
“Then Trump became president of the United States, and the real Lindsey Graham was never seen again. Suddenly, he was Trump’s puppy (my puppy loves golf-cart rides, too). One day, Lindsey’s seated at the kid’s debate table saying Trump is an ‘idiot‘ on foreign policy, and to ‘make America great again’ we should ‘tell Donald Trump to go to hell.’
“The next thing you know, Lindsey and Trump are bromancing.”
The senator’s main goal in life, Parker concludes, is to remain relevant in a town where the players change with each election. And Graham the “circus poodle” can only be marginally relevant if he continues to kiss Trump’s butt on a regular basis:
“Lindsey was reelected in 2020 and doesn’t have to genuflect to the Trump base for another four to five years. But power is hard to let go. Flattery from a president, though I wouldn’t know, is likely addictive. He said as much to Leibovich: ‘I have never been called this much by a president in my life … He’s asked me to do some things, and I’ve asked him to do some things in return.’ About Trump, he added: ‘I personally like him. We play golf. He’s very nice to me.'”
Lindsey Graham was elected to represent the people of the Palmetto State. At the moment, however, he’s just an obsequious suck up to a man who is despised by a majority of the American electorate.
Maybe Lindsey should marry Trump (or at the very least agree to be his concubine) so he can constantly be in close proximity to what passes for power these days in the Republican Party.