The Cruz-athon
So Ted Cruz turned CSpan-2 into a cable access channel for 21 hours and that was supposed to prove what?
The Senate wasn’t in session during the infomercial [he asked for money] which is why it was 21 hours, so all that happened is that he wasted taxpayers’ money and prevented the Senate chamber from being cleaned.
This was not comparable to what Wendy Davis did in the Texas Senate when she filibustered another attack on women’s access to healthcare. Ms Davis was required to stand without leaning on anything and remain on topic the entire time. She wasn’t allowed to have someone else stand in for her when she needed a bathroom break, or a stretch, or a snack, she had to do it alone. Cruz read Green Eggs and Ham, had another whacko take over when he needed a break, and wandered all over the map on what he said.
If Cruz wants to filibuster the amendment to remove the language defunding the Affordable Care Act he should have waited until that amendment came up for a vote. He pulled this stunt because he knows that would fail. This was about Ted Cruz and his ambition. He is going to have to grow up a lot to try to fill Wendy Davis’s sneakers because she was acting like a Senator, not a carnival barker.
Update: Digby has a nice example of his own party’s reaction to the nonsense.
9 comments
One of my coworkers called it “The FAILibuster”. Heh.
Jim Wright sez “in the South, they call what Ted Cruz just did ‘showing his ass’. Yes, that’s right. Ted Cruz just twerked for 21 hours.”
Need… brain… bleach…. :).
Fidel Castro used to do things like this, talking for hours without saying anything, so maybe it is something Cubans do.
There aren’t 41 Senators who want their names attached to shutting down the government, so he can’t pull a filibuster on this bill, which is what the Republicans in the Senate have explained to him.
The Republicans can’t gain control of the Senate because Senators are elected state-wide. You can’t redistrict a Senate seat, like you can a House seat. Senators up for re-election don’t want to play games that are going to piss off large segments of voters enough to go to the polls. 2014 should be a low turn out election and angry voters go to the polls in bigger numbers that the ‘true believers’.
I’m getting really tired of people telling me how smart this guy is supposed to be because he went to Princeton and Harvard. The Shrubbery went to Yale and Harvard, and we all agree he wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
LOL Jon did a segment on TDS and we were all ROFL! Jon even took Cruz to task for getting the whole Dr. Suse thing wrong (especially ‘Green egg’s and ham’). Typical politician. Can’t get anything right! 😆
Too funny! 😀
I really don’t think Ted Geisel would have approved of the use of his works in that way.
Cruz is allowed to carry a firearm, drive a car, and father children – which shows how permissive Texas is.
all that happened is that he wasted taxpayers’ money
my tax dollars went to pay for ted cruz to read dr seuss to a tv camera? a win, if you ask me, although it could turn out that if you play the tape backwards, it’ll be a message from the devil. or from the real ted cruz. still that’s 21 hours that he wasn’t making back room deals with alec or the koch bros.
He still had time to coach the whacko wing of the House on shutting down the government. He has a cunning plan to convince people that Zero did it, not the whackos.
We have a bad parody of the ‘Gong Show’ for a government. We really need recall elections for Federal Congressional offices.
Oh noze, not recalls. We have bad experience with recalls here in Cah-lee-foh-nee-ah. They look good on paper, but in practice turn out to be a way for the whackadoodles to get rid of sane politicians in an off-year where non-whackadoodles hopefully won’t turn out for the recall election, leaving a plurality of whackadoodles actually showing up at the polls.
They look good on paper, but in practice turn out to be a way for the whackadoodles to get rid of sane politicians in an off-year where non-whackadoodles hopefully won’t turn out for the recall election,
much like what just happened in colorado with the gun nuts recalling and replacing two state legislators who supported sane gun legislation.
There is always a risk with any election, but we need something other than violence to make changes when politicians go off the rails.
They will probably be reelected when the regular election takes place, Hipparchia, if they want to run. No one died in the change, and that has been becoming my bottom line for some time. The US is becoming a very volatile place, and I don’t want to have to start dodging bullets again.