First a well-done light-hearted highlight tour of the career of Tea Bagger Ted Cruz, the most universally hated person in the Senate (with apologies to also-ran Josh Hawley) from Trevor Noah’s Daily Show.

And a more serious discussion of Cruz’s Trump-related craveness, and his direct involvement in Peter Navarro and the war room’s “Green Bay Sweep” strategy to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory due to “unprecedented allegations of fraud” believed by FOX nation.

Cruz executed the opening play in the “sweep” on January 6 as the start of a coordinated Hail Mary, with the clock about to run out, to once more try to flip votes in swing states. The idea was to get Republican state legislatures all on the same page, attempt to decertify Biden electors, creating no winner in the Electoral College and throwing the presidency to the House to extra-constitutionally keep cuddly Trumpie as president.

A final word on this snarling, squirming far-right billionaire-backed fuck nut next time I sit down to open his disgusting can of worms .

(with apologies to the late, great Al Lewis)

Shortly before the first anniversary of the Trump riot to stop the certification of Biden’s win, Ted Cruz, on the floor of the Senate, with cameras rolling, referred to the organized, planned, violent siege and sacking of the Capitol as a terrorist attack.

A strong argument could be made that participating in a long physical battle with cops and leading a phalanx of criminal tresspassers into the closed to the public Capitol to stop the People’s business is, even without being part of a larger seditious conspiracy, an act of terrorism. Using violence to frighten and intimidate political opponents is the definition of terrorism.

Understandably, this term, applied to their own faithful, coming from one of their own, put MAGA nation into full rage mode. Tucker Carlson pulled no punches bullying Cruz to back down. Lyin’ Ted, as he does, immediately began reassuring FOX nation that only Blacks, Muslims, Antifa and other commie traitors can ever be rightfully called terrorists, an angry MAGA mob can only ever be patriots, since they are always righteous in their rage and fight on the side of the angels.

Fortunately for him, the supple Cruz was able to whine and grovel his way out of the fatal accusation of having spoken truthfully, as all great statesmen and moral leaders are sometimes called upon to do.

And is it wrong to have a crush on the most right-wing representative in the Congress?

As we come up to the first anniversary of Trump’s gentle, peaceful, patriotic riot at the Capitol, after weeks of frustrated, manic arm-twisting of Republican election officials in several states, desperate Oval Office meetings with Q-Anon Trump dead-ender loyalists like Mike “Lock Her Up!” Flynn (who urged martial law) Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell, personal attorney Rudy, and the MyPillow CEO, after replacing leadership at the Department of Defense right after the election and instituting a new rule for deploying the National Guard, and finally, right before certification of Biden’s win, assembling a large angry mob, whipping it up and sending it to the Capitol, a ragtag team of co-conspirators, including “alt-right” Council for National Policy member Steve Bannon and several demented authoritarian-leaning legal scholars/conspiracy theorists, sitting in a nearby war room to engineer the blocking of Joe Biden’s presidency by a coordinated plan of objections to certified electors, enabled by an insane “legal” stand by Mike Pence, by a riot, by any means necessary, it’s hard to avoid thinking about it as I drink my coffee today.

You’ll recall that immediately after the riot, when order was finally restored, the rioters allowed to go in peace, and the constitutionally mandated session continued, 147 Trump loyalists in the House, and something like a dozen in the Senate, tried to carry out the mad plan they’d hatched with Trump, insisting that since, as Lyin’ Ted Cruz put it, polls showed that millions of Americans believed the boldfaced lie that the election had been stolen, so there had to be a ten day freeze so yet another investigation could take place to prove a counter-factual case they had lost in court more than 60 times since Biden’s clear victory in the election.

The Trump appointee in charge of cyber security for the election announced, as Barr had informed Trump before parachuting out of the administration just in time, that there was no evidence of fraud that would have changed any election result anywhere. Trump promptly fired his disloyal appointee, expressed great disappointment in Barr and kept doubling down on his lie that he’d been robbed.

Right after the riot a bunch of Trump’s cabinet, including the moronic Betsey DeVos and McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, immediately resigned in protest, with days left in their terms (none will comment now, per their actual loyalties and common interests).

After the riot marquee Republicans, top Trumpers, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, people who’d resisted acknowledging that Biden was the president-elect, for crucial weeks and months leading up to the final day to overturn the election results and the riot, all denounced their enraged leader for launching his reckless and desperate attack on a joint session of Congress doing their constitutional duty.

“Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey, all I can say is count me out, enough is enough,” said Lindsey Graham, from the floor of the Senate immediately after the January 6 Stop the Steal riot. “If you’re a conservative this is the most offensive concept in the world — that a single person could disenfranchise 150,000,000 people.”

You can parse this for obvious bullshit, clearly the most offensive concept in the world to a modern, American conservative is the idea of millions of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, big city dwellers, college students, unionists, liberals, progressives, socialists, anti-racists, minimum wage earners and poor “whites” voting for politicians who will not reflexively favor the super-wealthy and corporations, thereby ousting the “conservatives” from power. Hence John Roberts casting the deciding fifth vote to overrule president George W. Bush and a united Congress (98-0 in the 2006 senate) to make partisan/”racist” voter suppression laws the new constitutional norm (unless you can successfully prove in federal court that they are ONLY racist, and intentionally so, of course, as the Founders intended).

But back to Lindsey, who like his buddy in the House Kevin “not as upset as some people” McCarthy, and even Grim Reaper Mitch McConnell, condemned Trump’s mad, violent plan to maintain power. Trump still hates McConnell, the man who made his biggest achievement, the Trump Court, possible, for belatedly congratulating Biden on his win, for not having Trumpie’s back about the Big Lie being TRUE. McCarthy headed to Mara-Largo where he was reminded of the irresistibly delicious taste of his master’s nether sphincter, he came back fighting the Steal, his story changed to 100% incoherent. Here’s the highly principled, persecuted single white male from South Carolina’s current stance on the man who tried to do the thing most hateful to conservatives:

“It’s his nomination if he wants it, the Republican base appreciated him, we don’t appreciate all the things he does sometimes, but from a policy point of view of he was the most successful president, from a conservative’s point of view, since Ronald Reagan. It is his nomination if he wants it and he will be in the White House in 2024 if he wins a disciplined campaign,” Lindsey Graham told the FOX audience last week.

Ominous though it is that Trump would be back in the White House in 2024, before his imagined inauguration on January 20, 2025, it’s Lindsey, it’s live TV, it’s FOX. So, shit yeah, the night of the 2024 election, when partisan officials installed in Republican-controlled swing states, pursuant to Trump’s Big Lie and his then illegal plan to undo the last “STEAL” by appealing to partisans to bend the then-law just a little, declare Trump the president, he will immediately take power, the day after the election, and woe unto his many enemies.

I have to say, abhorrent as I find her hard right political views, as creepy as I find her facial resemblance to one of the most evil men in American history, I find myself loving Liz Cheney every time I hear her speak. She is clear and cuts to the chase: an American president who incites a riot to try to cling to power, after months of increasingly inflammatory lies and manipulation, making extra-legal efforts in several instances clearly criminal (come on, fellas, give me a break … you just have to say I got 11,780 fucking votes…), and allows that riot to continue for over three hours as he calls at least one Senator/co-conspirator to make sure he’s still going to do his part to block Biden, must never have power again.

For his part, the former president, who, while increasingly beleaguered, is the current leader of the Republican party with their full backing (including paying all his legal fees) is planning an alternate program for January 6. He will tell his delusional version of the story: there WAS massive voter fraud, the INSURRECTION was on ELECTION DAY, his conspiracy was only launched to right a TERRIBLE wrong, that Blacks and others who hate him, Muslims, disloyal Jews, Mexican rapists, Communists, the Chinese, the Italians, Ukrainians and Venezuelans, somehow corrupted weak Republicans like the two traitors in Georgia and too many others to name, to PERPETRATE THE BIGGEST CRIME IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!! ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING TO ME, YOU GODDAMNED WEAK LOSER MORONS!!! WE WERE ROBBED, I WAS ROBBED AND WHEN YOU ARE ROBBED YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORM LYNCH MOBS TO GET BACK WHAT WAS STOLEN FROM YOU AND AVENGE THE THEFT. KILL MY ENEMIES! SECOND AMENDMENT, ARTICLE TWO, I’M STILL THE PRESIDENT — KILL THEM!!!

Meantime, in response to numerous lawsuits and civil and criminal investigations the Orange One does what he’s always done, spend a vast fortune of other people’s money to use the courts to delay and avoid justice. His son and daughter have filed frivolous motions to quash subpoenas for their testimony, which will delay things for at minimum a few months. Others in his orbit site phantom privilege to defy subpoenas and wait for a 6-3 Trump Supreme Court to hopefully back them up, eventually.

For now, in the wake of a year when a billionaire psychopath was Time’s Person of the Year, instead of say, Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who, judging by the video of his smart move to protect the Senate from being overrun by enraged “tourists” who’d innocently broken in, possibly saved Mitt Romney’s life, we need to focus on justice being done.

As for the crowd Goodman’s quick thinking turned aside — why not kill a RINO who voted his conscience at one of the fake, evil, witch hunt impeachments of the defrauded, persecuted Leader? Death for the one public act of integrity performed in a long political career, in my opinion, is a little harsh, even if the man is an entitled vulture capitalist by trade, one who continues to vote in a Trumpist/McConnell bloc to thwart all proposed legislation, to prevent it even being debated in the senate. Preventing debate is key for Republicans — if they get to the merits of the argument WE LOSE! filibuster now, filibuster tomorrow, filibuster forever! [1].

There are good reasons for optimism, in spite of our recent history and the wild success of Charles Koch’s reborn John Birch Society Republican Party. We now know for a fact, verified by the sworn testimony of eye witnesses, what all of us were pretty sure of right after the long riot. Trump loved the mayhem, felt the love of that angry crowd during what he described as a love fest, watched it all on live TV with a little stirring in his pants. He ignored numerous urgings, from FOX news, from at least two of his children, from elected Republicans hiding from an exuberant mob of rioters, to call off his peeps. He did so reluctantly, lovingly, after more than three hours had gone by, the National Guard standing down and standing by. During the deadly assault, Liz Cheney informs us, he called at least one Senator, to make sure the plan was in place, that the Senator would do what they’d agreed on to Stop the Steal. No conspiracy, no quid pro quo, no collusion, total exoneration, I’m not a liar YOU ARE A LIAR, the real BIG LIE is your LIE, I don’t stink, YOU STINK, I know you are but what am I?

Is it sad to love Liz Cheney? I don’t feel bad. She is behaving heroically, putting democracy, in this instance, ahead of the willful destruction of our form of government, flawed though it most certainly is. In spite of the infamous spinal flexibility of corporate Democrats, I am feeling hopeful.

The story seems to be changing now, finally. That a third of Republicans surveyed support a violent mob’s right to object to what they’ve been convinced was a crime is troubling. That the courts can still be weaponized for agonizing delay, intolerable. But that two Republicans can stand for values higher than sheer power, and that the evidence pointing toward justice, in a court of law, appears to be so overwhelming, are very encouraging signs for 2022 and beyond. Peace be upon us all.

[1]

“I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” – George Wallace