Ted Cruz Solves Border Problems With New Levels Of Table-Pounding
He screamed a lot at DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, securing either the border or a spot on Fox News.
As part of the Republicans' push for immediate Fox News rage over the US-Mexico border, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) used a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on border issues yesterday to accuse Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas of being personally responsible for child trafficking and rape, because that proves how serious Republicans are about border security.
Peppering Mayorkas with loaded questions and demanding yes or no answers, Cruz bravely grandstanded and reduced complicated immigration issues to sound bites that delighted right-wing Twitter. Here, have a bit of unrestrained performative rage from Cruz, who refuses to let Mayorkas actually respond to any of the questions because Mayorkas would just lie anyway, he works for Joe Biden so of course he's a liar.
A fact to keep in mind before we go any further: For all Cruz's ranting about the threat that criminal immigrants supposedly pose, the reality is that undocumented immigrants are far less likely to commit violent crimes than US citizens are, a fact that still hasn't changed since Donald Trump lied about it in his 2015 campaign announcement.
\u201cTed Cruz is pulling out all the stops to get on Hannity tonight\u201d— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1680020952
After putting up a chart with a big red line to show that immigration was just peachy until Mayorkas personally allowed the entire population of Central America into the US, Cruz demanded answers to unanswerable questions about criminal immigrants, because that's a senator's job. He also conflated Border Patrol arrest numbers at the border during the Biden administration so far — 5.5 million — with the number of people who pass an initial asylum screening and are allowed into the US. Bigger numbers are way more frightening!
The larger tally includes people who've been arrested more than once, and doesn't account for the fact that most border crossers are deported back to Mexico or their home countries. Last fall, the New York Times reported that, during Biden's time in office, the total of asylum seekers actually admitted temporarily to the US while their cases are processed is a bit more than one million. Keep that in mind as Cruz keeps waving around the misleading "5.5 million" number.
Cruz: Let me ask you, we now have over 5.5 million people who have entered this country illegally under Joe Biden. How many murderers have you released into America?
Mayorkas: Senator, I’m not aware of any murderer we’ve released into the —
Cruz: So you don’t know? Do you know?
Mayorkas: Senator, let me say something. If you take a look at —
Cruz: No, no, you don't get to give a speech. Do you know how many murderers you've released?
Mayorkas: I'm just trying to answer your quest ...
Cruz: How many rapists have you released?
Mayorkas: Senator, I'm trying to —
Cruz: Do you know? You can answer "I know," or "I don't know."
Mayorkas: Senator, any individual who poses a public safety threat ...
Cruz: How many child molesters have you released?
Mayorkas: ... would be removed from the United States.
Cruz, voice rising: So your testimony under oath, subject to perjury, is that you have not released any murderers, rapists, or child molesters among the 5.5 million. Is that your testimony?
Mayorkas asked the committee chair if he would be allowed to answer the loaded questions, but Cruz bravely interrupted again: "No, you may not! You may answer my question: Is that your testimony, yes or no?"
The DHS secretary also wouldn't give a yes or no answer to whether he'd stopped beating his wife yet, which is probably cause for impeachment, too.
Cruz moved on to the latest border freakout on the Right, human smugglers' use of plastic wrist bands that are color-coded to indicate the number of times migrants have tried to crossed and how much they still owe the cartels for getting them to the border. Reuters explains the practice here. Cruz asked Mayorkas if he knew what the bands are for, called him incompetent when Mayorkas didn't know, and claimed the bands are evidence of "sex trafficking." Mind you, that claim isn't mentioned in either the Reuters story or this piece from the Border Report, but why would Cruz let that stop him from making the most lurid accusations possible?
\u201c"What the senator said was revolting and I'm not going to address it" -- Mayorkas after Ted Cruz accuses him of being complicit in child sexual abuse\u201d— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1680020952
Cruz waved around a plastic bracelet and demanded that Mayorkas tell him how many children "have been sold into sex slavery," since surely, as QAnon says, the administration tracks that while doing nothing about it. He made sure to repeat "children sold into sex slavery" as many times as possible, then accused Mayorkas of personally allowing the murder and sexual abuse of children
Mr. Secretary, I want to say to you right now your behavior is disgraceful and the deaths, the children assaulted, the children raped, they are at your feet and if you had integrity, you would resign!
And I will tell you the men and women of the Border Patrol, they’ve never had a political leader undermine them. They despise you, Mr. Secretary, because you’re willing to let children be raped to follow political orders. This is a crisis, it’s a disgrace, and you won’t even admit that this human tragedy is a crisis.
So that was some red meat for the far Right, hooray.
Once Cruz was finished grandstanding, Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durban (D-Illinois) allowed Mayorkas to reply, finally, but by then, Mayorkas had had it. "What the senator said was revolting. I’m not going to address it," he said, prompting another fit from Cruz, who said, "Your refusal to do your job is revolting."
In another exchange, this time with Texas's other Senate idiot John Cornyn, Mayorkas angered Cornyn by noting that "about 90 percent" of fentanyl smuggled into the US comes through official ports of entry, not on the backs of illegal border crossers.
Cornyn angrily declared, "That's a totally made up number!" and closed his questioning by saying Mayorkas has "simply lost all credibility."
The Texas Tribune notes that in fact,
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, fentanyl brought through U.S. ports of entry accounted for more than 96% of fentanyl seizures at the border since the 2023 fiscal year began on Oct. 1.
Wow, you know what that means? Obviously, Sec. Mayorkas has personally been rigging the CBP stats! That monster.
[Texas Tribune / Mediaite / Border Report / Reuters]
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Without Charming Old-Time Racism, Agatha Christie Novels Now Just Wokedunnits
Oh no, there goes Western Literature again.
Several Agatha Christie novels are being reissued in new editions that have removed the original texts' racist language, in hopes that they'll remain marketable for modern audiences. The changes have been made by publisher HarperCollins to novels originally published between 1920 and 1976, featuring Christie's two most popular detectives, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot. The entire run of Marple novels have been updated, as have selected Poirot books.
It appears that some of the new editions actually went into print in 2020 without anyone noticing, according to the Telegraph, while others have yet to be released. As of yet, only a few American wingnuts have gone ballistic over this unspeakable defacement of a beloved writer they haven't thought about in years, although we have little doubt that Ben Shapiro is salivating at the prospect of saying on video the original 1939 title of the mystery that was released in the US in 1940 as And Then There Were None.
As the Telegraph delicately puts it, the new editions have been edited to remove "passages containing descriptions, insults or references to ethnicity, particularly for characters Christie’s protagonists encounter outside the UK." The n-word is removed, as is "Oriental," since that's no longer the preferred nomenclature, Dude. (We'll assume the train is still the "Orient Express," because that title is gold, Jerry, GOLD.) Unflattering mentions of characters being Jews are gone, and references to "natives" are changed to "locals."
The Telegraph notes that some of the edited passages are in the "interior monologues" of Marple or Poirot — egad, they're literally victims of thought police! — while other snips involve the dialogue of already unsympathetic characters.
For instance, in Death on the Nile, a 1937 Poirot outing, Mrs. Allerton speaks contemptuously of children bothering her, saying, "they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children.”
That's been changed to "They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children," which we figure is enough to make her unsympathetic as it is. In the same novel, the term "Nubian" has been excised as well, so "the Nubian boatman" becomes "the boatman," and what a loss to literature that is.
Also too, the Telegraph notes,
Dialogue in Christie’s 1920 debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles has been altered, so where Poirot once noted that another character is “a Jew, of course”, he now makes no such comment.
In the same book, a young woman described as being “of gypsy type” is now simply “a young woman”, and other references to gypsies have been removed from the text.
Well gosh, without the rank ethnic stereotyping, how are readers supposed to even know those characters are untrustworthy?
We haven't yet seen quite as much rightwing outrage about the edits to Christie as we noticed when more extensive changes were made to Roald Dahl's children's books, possibly because Christie is more readily considered a consumer product, or maybe simply because the edits seem less ridiculous. A separate Telegraph column decrying the "woke censorship" of Christie argues that with all the racist and antisemitic stuff removed, readers can't appreciate that these are novels written in the past, when terrible attitudes were less civilized (or at least less carefully concealed), and we should understand that.
Note how casually the characters make such remarks. Note also how no other character objects. This teaches the 21st-century reader something important about the period in which these books were written. In the 1920 and 30s, middle-class, educated, well-mannered English people could, and would, give voice to nakedly antisemitic prejudice in everyday conversation – without fear of rebuke or disagreement. It was perfectly unremarkable, at the time. Antisemitism, after all, was not invented by the Nazis. It is an ancient and widespread prejudice. Reading an early Agatha Christie highlights this – and if it shocks the 21st-century reader, then good. It should.
But does anyone really read Christie for the sake of seeing how casually racist Britons were in the 1920s? We suspect probably not: the appeal of Christie has always been the clever detecting and the big reveal of the killer, and HarperCollins, as mercenary as any industrialist, wants to sell the whodunnits with as few grumpy product returns as possible.
Also, with millions of copies of Christie's books already out there, we should point out that no one will be required to turn in their old copies when they buy a new edition of the book. You want all the stereotypes, you'll have no trouble finding a copy.
[Guardian / Telegraph (paywalled)]
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If You Thought Tucker Was Being A Vile Sicko BEFORE Nashville Mass Shooting, Look At Him Now
Lies, incitement, lies, incitement, lies, incitement.
Last week, Tucker Carlson terrified his idiot viewers by telling them that transgender people were going to get ALL THE GUNS and that they were coming to murder them. We would say it was unhinged even for him, but we think we may be far beyond "even for him" at this point. Then the horrible, devastating mass shooting happened in Nashville, where the person holding the weapons of mass destruction reportedly identified as trans.
This merely confirmed Tucker's theory that trans people are going to get ALL THE GUNS and are coming to murder everyone.
Obviously, this is different from the 98 percent of mass shootings where straight cisgender dudes bring in their weapons of war and gun down innocent schoolchildren and coworkers and concert-goers and so forth. And it's definitely different from all those dudes who leave manifestos jerking off to white supremacist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement Theory, which happens to ALSO be one of Tucker's greatest fap fantasies.
If you thought Tucker's rhetoric was vile and dangerous before, just look at him now.
Here's some of last night's monologue:
\u201cTucker Carlson: The trans movement is targeting Christians, including with violence. Most Christian leaders in this country don't want to admit that. Admitting it might force them to take deeply unfashionable positions.\u201d— nikki mccann ram\u00edrez (@nikki mccann ram\u00edrez) 1680048673
Tucker is irrationally viciously seething mad that the authorities haven't released the shooter's manifesto. We don't remember him being so impatient after the Buffalo synagogue mass shooting, when that killer's manifesto obsessed about the Great Replacement, or El Paso, or Christchurch. Maybe those manifestos just came out in a more timely manner.
"The trans movement is targeting Christians," said Tucker, "including with violence. Most Christian leaders in this country don't want to admit that. Admitting it might force them to take deeply unfashionable positions." What kinds of unfashionable positions, Tucker?
In the next 10 seconds after that quote, Tucker asserted that it was "true" that trans people are targeting Christians three times in rapid fire manner. We've talked about Tucker's nervous tic with over-asserting that things are "true," and how it's one of his tells that he's actively lying and delivering propaganda.
You can read Tucker's full monologue from last night if you'd like. It's called "The trans movement is targeting Christians." He continued lying about how actually America isn't dangerous for trans people and actually trans people are privileged over everyone else, and continued to tell his viewers that NPR is encouraging trans people to get as many guns as possible.
Identifying as trans, whatever, again, its downsides, does convey status in this country, which is why so many young people now do. Not a lot of 19-year-olds are pretending to be car mechanics or lineman for a regional power company in eastern Ohio, but plenty of college freshmen do pretend to be members of the opposite sex, and why wouldn't they? The people in charge despise working class Whites, but they venerate the trans community.
People don't identify as mechanics but they do identify as trans, got it. Never forget that on top of everything else, Tucker is deeply fuckin' weird.
The lies, and then the incitement:
We can't think of any trans person who's ever been murdered by a pastor. As far as we know, that has never happened. So, it's not an actual threat of violence from Christians that's inspiring some trans people to buy an AR-15.
Tucker can't think of any trans people who have ever been murdered by pastors, so there must not be any threat from Christians against trans people. Obviously trans people are targeted with fatal violence at high rates in America, but because Tucker has erected a strawman that he can't think of any trans people who have been murdered by pastors, then we're just supposed to follow him down his little Nazi incitement path.
You know, we may start publishing a daily list of Christian leaders — pastors, youth group leaders, Christian school teachers — who rape and sexually abuse kids, as we've done occasionally before. In the meantime, a lawyer on TikTok is listing all the people every week arrested for it. It's a hell of a lot more fair than what Tucker is doing here, and a lot more pertinent, considering the right-wing Christian holy war against LGBTQ+ folks and drag queens. At least with Christian leaders hurting kids, it's something that happens EVERY FUCKING DAY, which suggests an actual pattern.
Back to Tucker:
No, it's got to be more fundamental than that, and it is. The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity, and therefore its natural enemy.
Go fuck yourself, Tucker.
In Christianity, the price of admission is admitting that you're not God.
Fine, we'll do it in this post.
Former Wausau Priest Sentenced for Child Porn Charges
Christians openly concede that they have no real power over anything, and for that matter, very little personal virtue.
We'll do a line from Tucker's anti-trans incitement monologue, and then a headline about Christian leaders hurting kids. How about that?
The trans movement takes the opposite view.
Man arrested in Athens on child pornography charges(It was a former Catholic school teacher.)
Trans ideology claims dominion over nature itself.
Retired Orange County Pastor Convicted of Sex Assaults on 2 Girls
We can change the identity we were born with, they will tell you with wild eyed certainty.
Abilene Christian University professor arrested, accused of sexually abusing adopted children
These are all from the last week or so, by the way.
Christians can never agree with the statement because these are powers they believe God alone possesses.
Youth coordinator at San Angelo church arrested for possession of child pornography
That unwillingness to agree, that failure to acknowledge a trans person's dominion over nature, incites and enrages some in the trans community.
Christian Filmmaker Steve Greisen Pleads Guilty to Felony Sex Charges(Against a child.)
People who believe they are God can't stand to be reminded that they're not.
Former DeWitt teacher charged with sexual exploitation of student(Now employed by a Catholic school.)
Christianity and transgender orthodoxy are wholly incompatible theologies.
Church leader charged in 2019 sex crime
They can never be reconciled. They are on a collision course with each other. One side is likely to draw blood before the other side.
Trans people think they're God and they're coming to "draw blood" because they hate Christians. That's Tucker's very 1930s Germany message about transgender people.
Again, these kinds of sweeping generalizations are only operable for this particular mass shooting.
When the next white supremacist mass shooting happens -- at current rates it'll probably be next Tuesday or so -- it'll just be yet another anomaly, just white boys bein' boys, just a terrible mental health situation nobody could have seen coming. The right-wing internet will probably falsely identify that shooter as a trans person too, for as long as they can get away with it.
Here are more videos from the most famous self-proclaimed member of the Dan White Society:
\u201cOn his Fox program tonight, Tucker Carlson provided the highest-profile endorsement of the Christian fundamentalist Satanic panic against trans people, claiming falsely that being transgender is a "religion" that is aiming to kill Christians. \n\nHe's trying to get people killed.\u201d— Matthew Sheffield (@Matthew Sheffield) 1678304577
[Fox News / h/t to JoeMyGod for keeping track of all the Christian child abuse headlines]
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Tennessee Republicans Have Mass Shootings All Figured Out: More Guns, Everywhere, Always
At some point, there'll be no one left to shoot.
Following the latest mass shooting by a responsible gun owner — the killer had no criminal record and purchased at least two of the guns legally in Nashville — Tennessee Republicans are offering the expected prayers and thoughts, although none of the thoughts include reducing the nation's ample supply of firearms.
As Yr Wonkette noted earlier, brand new member of Congress Rep. Andy Ogles, who only won his seat thanks to Republican gerrymandering, is getting dragged a-plenty for his Christmas card demonstrating his family's devotion to the Prince of Pieces. We'll just add that the caption on that December 2021 image was all about the divine power of guns, and we are not making this up: "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good."
We aren't sure it quite matches the meter of Mel Tormé's "The Christmas Song," but that's certainly a Christmas wish! And it was so: The atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere is with America not only during the Sacred Baby Season but also all year long.
While Ogles hasn't been in Congress long enough to vote on any gun bills, in his previous job as mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, he signed a March 2020 resolution declaring the county a "sanctuary community" for the Holy Second Amendment. That doesn't mean a damn thing at all in practical terms, but it's a symbolic statement that if Tennessee ever passes a "red flag" law (it hasn't), maybe the county would just let people making violent threats keep their guns. Stalkers need to defend themselves, too! And now, if Joe Biden tries to take all the guns, the guns can take refuge in Maury County, where people will presumably hide them just like Anne Frank's family.
Ogles yesterday tweeted a brief statement saying, "My family and I are devastated by the tragedy" at the private Christian school in his district, with the usual thoughts and prayers and an assurance that he was "heartbroken by this senseless act of violence." The replies were mostly pictures of the Christmas card, with a variety of commentary: "This you?" "We see you," and the evergreen standby, "Fuck you."
As it happens, then-mayor Ogles signed his 2021 gun sanctuary resolution just a day after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced his own plan to allow all Tennesseans to carry handguns — openly or concealed — without a permit, meaning they'd no longer need to take a tyrannical safety class or pass any tyrannical criminal background check (other than the tyrannical federal one required to buy a gun). That law passed easily, and Lee signed it into law later in 2021, and now Republicans in the Tennessee Legislature are considering broadening it to allow open carry of all "firearms," including assault rifles, instead of just handguns. Very important for the atmosphere of firearms to include people walking around on the sidewalk with AR-15s at the ready.
Lee tweeted an inspiring suggestion that Tennesseans join him in prayer, for all that's worth.
Lee has been very busy protecting Tennessee children this session — not so much from being shot at school but from seeing drag shows and also criminalizing gender affirming healthcare for trans kids so they can be forced to go through puberty as the gender they don't identify with, which will make them stop being trans anymore (except for how that doesn't work). Research keeps showing that when trans and nonbinary youth receive gender-affirming medical care, the appallingly high suicide rate among trans kids can be reduced by as much as 73 percent. But as long as they ignore all the warnings, forcing unwanted puberty on trans youth probably won't have any risks that Republicans would worry about.
As ever: If you are having thoughts of suicide or self harm, call the national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who's benefited from more than $1.3 million in total spending by the National Rifle Association over her House and Senate career, did a routine "heartbroken" tweet, thanking first responders, but without "thoughts and prayers," possibly for the sake of avoiding cliché.
Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg offered a thoughtful revised version for Blackburn, a sort of "War Prayer" explication of the unspoken half part of her tweet:
Let me re write that for you.
Chuck & I are heartbroken to hear about the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville that was enabled by NRA puppets like me who are willing to let kids be fucking slaughtered so long as the NRA continues giving me millions.
Singer Roseanne Cash offered her own thoughts for Blackburn. Her tweet lacked any prayers:
Don’t even. You vote against every common sense gun control bill that comes across your desk, you’ve taken over $1 million from the NRA and you rank 14th in all Congress for NRA contributions. Spare us the hand-wringing @MarshaBlackburn
Possibly the most honest reaction to the shootings came from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee), who told reporters at the US Capitol what he and fellow Republicans would do to solve gun violence: Not a damn thing, because criminals will always find a way to get guns, like walking into a firearms dealer and buying one.
"It's a horrible, horrible situation," Burchett said. "And we're not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals and my daddy fought in the second world war, fought in the Pacific, fought the Japanese." From that, the elder Burchett's taught his son that "if somebody wants to take you out and doesn't mind losing their life, there's not a heck of a lot you can do about it."
We aren't sure whether Burchett is depressed or just lazy, since he didn't even invoke the mythical "good guy with a gun." He's certainly not going to try to stop the massacres anyway, because government and laws are useless. Quite the argument to keep him in the lawmaking business, no?
No, there's nothing Congress can do either, don't be silly, because criminals are unstoppable lawbreakers: "I don't see any real role that we could do other than mess things up." He did point out that there's one way to end mass shootings, though:
You gotta change people's hearts. You know, as a Christian, as we talk about in the church, and I've said this many times, I think we really need a Revival in this nation.
That said, Rep. Burchett has an "A+" rating from a leading anti-abortion group, because you can definitely legislate away women's reproductive freedom without waiting around for the filthy sinning strumpets to find Jesus and mend their ways.
Oh, and as for the safety of his own children, Burchett explained that's not a problem, since his daughter is homeschooled and will never have to worry about her safety. Rest of you people are on your own, the end.
[Daily Herald / Tennessean / NBC News / Brennan Murphy on Twitter]
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