When not attacking the Muppets, they've spent the year laying out plans to tax the poor and eliminate Social Security.
Now, let me say one name to you: Ted Cruz.
They've become synonymous, with the Texas
lawmaker perennially topping national lists of goofy, right-wing political
goobers. Only, Ted can't rightly be called a lawmaker, for he's not a serious
participant in that process, instead devoting his senatorship to political
stunts and picking silly PR fights with a growing list of enemies.
Running out of people to attack, Ted has found
another species for his vitriol: Fictional icons. He's been padding his
right-wing credentials by going after Mr. Potato Head, Mickey and Pluto, and,
believe it or not, the Muppets.
This U.S. senator has dedicated the power and public resources of his office to demonizing popular creatures on "Sesame Street," specifically Big Bird and loveable little Elmo. Ted rants he has proof that Muppets are covert tools of "government propaganda." So, this ridiculous excuse of a senator is saving America from… Muppets.
But for a whole bag of assorted nuttiness, you
can't beat Senator Rick Scott's 11-point plan to "Rescue America." A
disgraced former healthcare mogul, Cruz's mega-millionaire colleague reinvented
himself as a wingnut Florida senator, and he now chairs a policy arm of the
Republican Party.
In February, Scott set forth a stunning agenda
of far-out right-wing extremism that he says his party will push if they retake
the Senate this November, including:
-
Implementing new federal taxes on the poorest half of Americans. So—as
Scott puts it—they'll "have skin in the game."
-
"Stopping socialism" by terminating Social Security and
Medicare.
-
Spending unlimited billions to build Donald Trump's folly of a border wall
(and, ironically, naming the scam after The Donald).
Fiddle-faddles like Cruz and Scott have turned
the once-proud U.S. Senate into The Little Nut Shoppe on the Hill.
Jim Hightower is
a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books
"Swim Against The
Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow" (2008)
and "There's Nothing
in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of
Political Subversion" (1998). Hightower has spent three
decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be -
consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and
just-plain-folks.