Apocalypse Cruz |

Full Metal Jackasses on shameless parade

With the breathtaking cynicism and “performative assholism” that is the GOP, a bunch of their most opportunist jackals just dressed up in Rambo cosplay costumes, travelled to the southern border, and clownishly cruised down the Rio Grande on machine-gun-laden boats to protect them from huddled masses of scared kids and highlight the “Biden Border Crisis” that doesn’t exist; they evidently assume nobody will notice the gaping cognitive dissonance between their new-found outrage about the treatment of vulnerable migrant children and their contemptible, dogged, utter silence during the four years their former sociopath of an overlord was ripping those same kids and thousands like them from their distraught parents. The ludicrous Apocalypse Now-flavored river stunt – “We love the sound of cameras clicking in the morning” – was the flashy clincher of a staggeringly hypocritical campaign to pretend the tangled issues at the border are all the fault of Joe Biden, who in two months has made so much progress with COVID-relief, the economy, the vaccine et al that the right is flailing to find an issue that isn’t sedition or gun control. Cue Fox News and Eric Former Guy shrieking about the “FULL-BLOWN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS” at the border and terrorists coming and Biden going home to Delaware for God’s sake and how it’s “heartbreaking” for Eric who “saw all the time and energy my father spent on the job,” mostly on the golf course, but still. Despite the media’s depressing willingness to buy into this crap, experts repeatedly say there is, in fact, just a predictable seasonal shift underway, and no border crisis – or certainly no more than there has been for decades.

Biden has been pretty straightforward about acknowledging the chaos that has long been U.S. border policy – “The situation at the southwest border is difficult” – while insisting on a safe, legal, humane immigration system. “Securing our borders does not require us to ignore the humanity of those who seek to cross them,” he said in an Executive Order. “We are both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. That is one of our proudest traditions.” We are also a nation, many officials note and most press outlets ignore, whose odious, irrational prior administration “completely dismantled the asylum system,” along with much of the rest of the federal government. White House officials describe finding “a disaster” of a sabotaged immigration system, its three main agencies in a “gutted, unnerving state,” often severely undermanned by inept hacks. Into this moral, legal and political morass waded, this week, a boatload of “full metal jackasses,” 19 chortling, showboating, Safari-vest-wearing GOP Senators immune to nuance or irony but intent on hollow photo ops to uncover “the crisis that is playing out,” and facts be damned. They were “led” – using the term loosely – by Cancun Cruz, who once famously sizzled bacon on gun barrels and has since oddly morphed into a mix of chubby Fidel Castro and “clearance-sale Burt Reynolds in a cheap ‘Deliverance’ remake.” Mugging for the cameras, Cruz crouched in the nighttime brush – David Plouffe: “the rarely seen Bearded Pudgy Wanker in the Wild”- to post “must-watch” video, stage-whispering like a Christopher Guest mockumentary, “We’re at the Rio Grande. The water is right behind me.” He claimed voices and flashlights on the Mexican side were “human traffickers and cartel members” who had “heckled” him, but, really, who could blame them? Steve Irwin, eat your heart out.

Cruz was swiftly savaged for his bullshit political theater: He got lost looking for Bigfoot, he’s still trying to get to Cancun any way he can, he looks like a cross between Hans Solo, Geraldo Rivera and Chewie, he’s being heckled by plants at Four Seasons Landscaping, this is the most work he’s ever done, “As I stand in the weeds trying to look like I’m doing… something, please forget I’m a moron.” There was fury behind much of it: Where was he when Texans were freezing to death or when Trump was ripping kids from their parents, and “if he wanted to see a crisis playing out, he could have visited an ICU any time in the last 12 months.” Unconscionably, then he went on Fox to blather about media lacking access to detention camps that OMFC have been there for four fucking years: “They could not show the American people cages after cages of little boys lying side-by-side…covered with reflective emergency blankets with virtually no space between them.” Joe Biden has to “stop denying reality,” he intoned, and “stop sanctioning lawless chaos on our southern border.” And Ted Cruz has to stop being a sanctimonious, hypocritical asshole, everywhere. Immigrant advocate Frank Sharry blasted the “disgusting play-acting” by 19 GOP Senators “going on ‘patrol’ with machine guns against migrant children fleeing violence,” which is “exactly 19 more” than went to Atlanta or Boulder after recent shootings, or stood up to white supremacist Capitol rioters: “Make no mistake, this signals to their diehard base that vulnerable kids seeking protection (and) other refugees are threats that should be met with guns.” Beto O’Rourke, who deserves the job Cruz has miserably failed to do, likewise noted, “You’re in a Border Patrol boat armed with machine guns (against) unarmed children and families seeking asylum (as well as the occasional heckler).” Then, he calmly suggested substantivechanges to our immigration laws and foreign policy. Proving, now as always, “In life be Beto, never Cruz.”

Heart of Idiocy, looking for the hotel bar.

Gut of beer, ditto

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