Ted Cruz And Birtherism

I have a feeling this will become one of my favorite stories for 2014:

The junior senator from Texas is still a Canadian. But he’s working on it, eh? Born in Alberta 43 years ago last Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz was unaware of his dual nationality until The Dallas Morning News explored the issue in August. Since then, he said in a recent interview, “I have retained counsel that is preparing the paperwork to renounce the citizenship.”

He expects to complete the process in 2014. That time frame jibes with predictions from Canadian legal experts.  He doesn’t dispute holding dual citizenship. “Not at this point,” he said.

Think about that for a moment: Ted Cruz is not -- at this point -- disputing that he is a citizen of Canada. That means he is admitting he was born in Canada. In other words, he has admitted to having the exact same eligibility problem that Birthers have long fantasized Obama has, namely, Cruz is not a natural born citizen and is thus not eligible to become President of the United States.

Well, it's not the exact same problem.  Canada is, after all, a predominantly white country whereas Kenya -- the country where the Birthers claim Obama was born -- is predominantly a black country.

And that's why I believe I'm really going to love this story in 2014.  No, I don't think it will have any effect on Cruz's run for the presidency.  Indeed, Ted Cruz would be the dream Republican nominee as far as Democrats are concerned.  But it will force Donald Trump and the other Birthers --  who undoubtedly think Cruz would make a great president -- to either abandon the whole notion of Birtherism or admit that it is inherently a racist position when they apply it to Obama.

Or -- and I wish this would happen but it probably won't -- Donald Trump and the other Birthers might feel a need to be "consistent" (i.e., avoid looking like a bunch of racists) and end up actually opposing Cruz on eligibility grounds.

In any event, fun times ahead.

"A Couple People Shouting At An Empty Room In Shifts"

The Great GOP Civil War is rolling merrily along.  John Boehner finally went on the offensive yesterday against GOP outside groups over their opposition to the recent budget agreement:

For the first time, Boehner acknowledged that these groups pushed Republicans into an unsuccessful strategy that he didn't favor. He expressed particular outrage that one of the groups later said it knew the shutdown strategy wasn't going to work.

"Are you kidding me?" Boehner shouted. "Frankly I think they're misleading their followers. I think they're pushing our members in places they don't want to be," he added. "And frankly I just think they've lost all credibility."

The American Taliban clearly did not like what Boehner had to say.  The Idiot Glenn Beck, for example, responded by calling the Speaker "worthless" and "utterly feckless," and said that those like him “have got to go.”

But as happy as all this makes me, my favorite thing to happen this week was Senator Mitch McConnell's hissy fit over the Democrats finally growing a pair and reforming the filibuster:

Last night, the Senate “pulled” an “all-nighter,” meaning there were a couple people shouting at an empty room in shifts. They did this because Democrats partially nuked the filibuster and are trying to get a big slate of nominations through before the winter break, and Republicans are trying to slow things down in protest, which they will continue to do in the days ahead.

The bottom line, though, is that a shitload of Obama nominees who had no chance of confirmation before will now all be confirmed, and there is not a goddam thing McConnell can do about it.

I find this totally hilarious, because all Sen. McConnell would've had to do was give Senate Democrats an up-or-down vote on one (or at most, two) of Obama's DC Circuit Court nominees, and the Democrats would not have gone nuclear. But McConnell gave Harry Reid no choice but to reform the filibuster, and now Obama is going to get all his nominees through the Senate.

If I was a Tea-Bagger running against McConnell in a primary, I might want to bring that up during the campaign.

We Must Never Forget . . . .

Huffington Post has some great stuff today on what right wingers used to say about Nelson Mandela. Here are some highlights:

"This hero worship is very much misplaced" - John Carlisle MP, on the BBC screening of the Free Nelson Mandela concert in 1990

"The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation ... Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land" - Margaret Thatcher, 1987

"How much longer will the Prime Minister allow herself to be kicked in the face by this black terrorist?" - Terry Dicks MP, mid-1980s

 "Nelson Mandela should be shot" - Teddy Taylor MP, mid-1980s

American radical right wingers got into the act as well.  In 2000, Dick Cheney defended his vote against freeing Nelson Mandela by stating: “The ANC was then viewed as a terrorist organization. I don't have any problems at all with the vote I cast 20 years ago."

Think Progress has a great timeline on all this.