Cruz vacation plans and why should I care?
News reports were having it that Senator Ted Cruz went to Mexico on vacation during the Texas cold snap.
So what?
Cruz returned, indicating at the time that he had gone down only to facilitate the trip for his daughters, but the vigilant press reported that in fact he'd planned to stay originally and that this trip was pre booked prior to the emergency brought about by the weather.
Let me be frank. I don't like Ted Cruz as a politician. When he ran in 2016 he came through this state asserting that he wanted to transfer the Federal lands to the state, which would be a disaster for Wyoming and which indicates that he was taking advice from somebody on the far right wing edge of the GOP. I figure that you don't get bad advice like that, which the overwhelming majority of Wyomingites oppose, unless that's the company you keep. That view was cemented by his self serving challenge of the election results on January 6 and his prior bizarre offer to argue Trump's case in front of the United States Supreme Court as if he's some sort of legendary jurist.
But he's entitled to a vacation as much as anyone else.
Heck, for that matter, under the conditions Texas has been in the past week, why wouldn't somebody want to go to Cancun?
Cruz really can't do anything about the power emergency in Texas. Texas can, but it can't overnight. Part of what Texas could do is to cease the 1930s vintage system in which Texas is its own power grid. There are not doubt technical things beyond that, but that would be a good start. But Ted Cruz can't do that.
Ted Cruz did go to President Biden, as did the Governor of Texas, and ask for the Lone Star State, whose AG sued over the Biden election just a few weeks ago, to certify Texas as a disaster area, which Biden did. That's about all he could do. And he did that. Sitting around freezing in Texas isn't going to accomplish a lot more, no matter what critics like Robert Reich think.
What this probably confirms is that Cruz pushed his political future off the rails back in January. That this was going to obviously occur isn't news, but its' starting already, just as the 2022 election is. In a world in which Mitch McConnell is struggling to regain control over the party and people like Cruz were attempting to co-opt it, just like a roll of the dice in an Avalon Hill game, nobody can game for the weather.
But I don't want to read about where Ted Cruz goes on vacation for the next four years, and frankly, why wouldn't he have gone to Cancun? Get a grip.
Um. . . he's a Republican
Donald Trump Jr. criticized the "Democratic Governor of Texas" over that state's response to the weather emergency.
Problem is, he's a Republican.
This is similar, we'd note, to Ted Cruz last year criticizing the "green" power infrastructure of California. Yes, that Governor, who is in major political trouble right now, is a Democrat, but you ought not to throw rocks at glass houses. . .
At least Cruz, when this was point out, admitted he had no response to it.
The Zeitgeist is not forgiving.
Infrastructure
It might be worth noting, when this rubble all falls to the ground post cold snap, that the US has an infrastructure problem. In the 2016 election everyone promised to fix it. Clearly, it hasn't been fixed.
Old stuff needs to be repaired. For a nation where people seem to be buying new stuff as its new constantly, that fact seems to escape us. Americans buy new houses not because they really need a new one, but because its new. People replace appliances as there are new ones. Lots of modern stuff flatly can't be fixed anymore as nobody fixed it anyway so its not built to be fixed. Had a television repaired recently? Of course you haven't.
So the concept of maintenance seems to have completely escaped us.
For a nation that likes new so much, the fact that we aren't building new high tech infrastructure or even really looking at it is bizarre. Yes, we're bringing new power generation technologies on line, and we're replacing old ones, whether people like it or not, but we haven't really rethought it.
In at least my view, power grids are like computers. Back in the day, places that had computers, which were few, had giant banks of them. Then the towers came. Then the laptops. There's now more computer muscle power in your phone than there was on board any of the Apollo craft.
What this may mean is that they day has arrived for smaller, not larger, electric power grids, but ones that are also interconnected, like the Internet.
No Changing The Name
Devil's Tower, for at least the time being.
Cynthia Lummis has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would preclude the government from changing the name of Devil's Tower National Monument. Senator Barrasso has signed up for it.Lummis was last in the news largescale when she followed Ted Cruz into voting against the Pennsylvania vote on the very day of the January 6 insurrection. She's been hailed by Trump supporters locally just as Cheney has seemingly been condemned, although letters to the paper suggest that at least the rank and file who are willing to pick up a pen support Cheney fairly overwhelmingly. This is going to be an issue in the 2022 election for Cheney, and given the chatter background, she's in good shape.
Lummis isn't as far as having any influence on anything right now. Paybacks, as the old phrase goes, are a bitch, and as a freshman Senator in the first place she has no pull on anything without somebody giving her some. She's not on the right side of Mitch McConnell right now, as he is clearly a Trump enemy and she's welded to Trump given her tactical decision to abandon her earlier expressed disdain for him and now praise him. We don't know what's going on in the background, but chances are strong she's on the "we'll get back to you on that" list in regards to the GOP in the Senate right now, and on the "Cynthia who from where?" list as far as the Democrats are concerned.
The press has openly speculated about "what now" in terms of Wyoming's political influence in the Senate. The answer is pretty obviously none whatsoever. This bill is extremely unlikely to go anywhere for that reason right now, but it will serve to keep her name in the press on an issue where most Wyomingites will agree with her.
As for the name, there's real confusion on how it came about. It seems to have first been suggested by the Army following Custer's survey of the Black Hills, which it is located in. It seems that the translation given may have been incorrect, however, as various native groups do not seem to have called it that. The Lakota called it Bear Lodge, and in 2014 they petitioned that the batholith and nearby community be renamed that. The Cheyenne also used a name associating the feature with bears. Other native names associated it with eagles and noted its resemblance to a buffalo horn.
There is precedence for returning such topographic features to their native names, with Mount McKinley being the prime example. Nobody calls the tallest mountain in North America that any more, and everyone knows it now by Denali, its original and restored native name. As a Wyoming native, I don't think I'd object to the feature being restored to a native name, as its pretty clear that the present name was due to a translation error in the first place. I.e., the original intent was to translate, into English, the native name, but the translator got it wrong.
No matter, this is one of those issues that's tailor made to create a flap. Lots of people are going to get their backs arched up on it, and a lot of those people will be people who live here now, but actually aren't from here originally had have low connection with the state and its geographic and topological features.
Detestation
Mitch McConnell reportedly detests Donald Trump and always has.
Politics is full of marriages of convenience. While it may not be a really good example, Admiral Canaris was reportedly plotting against the Nazis the entire time he was very ably serving them, for example. Stalin and Bukharin had been buddies, but for a lot of the latter's period before his fall, he was really a dedicated opponent, even though from the outside world you'd never have known it. Eisenhower was a very able assistant to MacArthur when MacArthur was chief of staff, but they really didn't like each other.
McConnell is a master tactician, and he put up with Trump as he could use him to advance the causes he really cared about. He used Trump, and Trump needed him. The question is where this all is at now. McConnell is trying to put things back in order in the GOP, which would restore a conservative alliance between the various spectrums of conservatism. Trump doesn't seem interested in a conservative GOP without Trump as the central figure in it.
Betting against McConnell would be a mistake.
Prince Harry chooses not to resume royal duties
I just wish he'd go home.
I'm not super keen on the Royal Family anyhow, although in recent years the Queen has risen considerably in my scale of approval. Prince Harry, when he was still somewhat of a guy, was okay, but since he married Meghan Markle, the present Duchess of Sussex, he's become a real wimp.
I may be wrong, but I thought that Meghan had to renounce her American citizenship when she entered the Royal family. So why are they here? They aren't citizens and they hold not necessary skills that the U.S. can't fill on its own.
This is one more example of how U.S. immigration laws are really whacked. There are probably engineers in Syria who aren't working as they're on the wrong side of the regime we could really use, and instead of them being here, we're housing a soy boy prince and his whiney bride.
Stupid Spam
"Kamala's Backdoor".
I started getting that one almost as soon as the new administration came in.
I really wonder who bites on all of this stuff. For a long time there was one I'd get almost daily about a secret that President Trump was revealing even though the Pope wanted him to keep it a secret. Really?
By the way, Hormel sponsored a B-25 during World War Two that was named "Slammin' Spammy". It's nose art featured a M1917 helmet wearing pig throwing a bomb. Hormel is, of course, the processor of the real SPAM, the canned chopped ham.
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