Put Ted Cruz's Plaque Next to McCarthy's in the Bullshitter Hall of Fame

Senator Ted Cruz, Republic of Texas (Harry Cabluck/AP)

Jed catches the money quote in Todd J. Gillman's interview of Wingnut Senator Ted Cruz:

GILLMAN: Is McCarthy someone you admire? 

CRUZ: I’m not going to engage in the back and forth and the attacks.

So that's a yes, then, Senator?

Keep in mind that this is the Senator who engaged the warp drive in "the back and forth and the attacks" on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Cruz's bogus attacks on Hagel included, among other things, the slander that Hagel had received speaking fees from north Korea.

This is the Senator who famously said of Harvard:

“There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”

This, of course, is more pig shit than bullshit, since pig shit isn't fit to be used as fertilizer. But the point is not the voracity of what he says, which doesn't matter to Bullshitters, but rather the willingness with which he engages "in the back and forth and the attacks."

The Higgs Boson of the matter is a bit further up in the Gillman interview, where his disregard for facts, context, and basic logic fall apart as anything does once it crosses the event horizon of the wingnut black hole.

I applied to John Kerry what I call the `John Kerry standard.’ When he was a senator he voted against confirming Condoleezza Rice to be Secretary of State. He voted against confirming Alberto Gonzalez to be attorney general. He voted against confirming Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General. Applying the same standard,  in my judgment, his record was not appropriate to serve as Secretary of State and in particular, his willingness to countenance undermining US sovereignty was troubling.

Condoleeza "Mushroom Cloud" Rice was head of National Security when 9-11 happened. She thought "Bin Laden Determined to Attack inside the US" was a historical document (or, if she didn't actually think that, she said she thought that, which would make her a liar). She was one of the chief sales people of the Iraq War. I wonder what Senator Cruz would have had to say if President Gore was trying to appoint his head of the NSA that failed to protect us from the largest attack on US soil in decades to be Secretary of State after lying us into a $6 trillion dollar war that maimed and killed millions?

John Kerry didn't lie us into war, he just believed the liars. And he apologized.

Alberto Gonzoles may have been the most unqualified AG ever, unless you count Michael Mukasey, who's far right wingnuttery is so wingnuterific that even CPAC wouldn't officially sanction it.

GW Bush, undermining US sovereignty

The fun part is the "same standard" BS, where his hemming and hawing ("...in my judgement...") before he goes all McCarthy on Kerry ("...his willingness to countenance undermining US sovereignty...") is his tell. If you're a feisty reporter, go all in! I would suggest: "Senator, are you suggesting that John Kerry wants to allow other countries sovereignty over the US? Could you explain this?"

Gillman's next question? "But you didn’t break a sweat to oppose him."

Really.

Of course, "willingness to countenance undermining US sovereignty" is a particularly loud and juicy dog whistle dripping with the spit of thousands of wingnuts. I'm sure the Senator from the Great State of the Former Republic of Texas would be happy to list several examples of what he means, if pressed on the matter, maybe something about black helicopters and UN bureaucrats taking our guns, but down in Texas they all know damn well it means the USA's ability to lie ourselves into invading any damn country we want, facts and international law be damned.

The Great Gazzoo of Threat Inflation Jumps the Shark on Islamist World Domination

Michael Mukasey

Via Political Wire, I see that a former Bush Attorney General [Guess which! Hint: currently a walking ad for Breitbart's Ghost] has something to warn us about... Islamists!

“You may not be interested in Islamism, but Islamism is interested in you,” warned former Attorney General Michael Mukasey at a Saturday CPAC panel of activists so fringy that they were not technically invited to the conference.

The Great Gazoo of threat inflation is hovering over Mukasey's shoulder, proudly stating how dulce et decorum it is to get other people killed in "defense" of one's country, because: Muslim hordes want global domination!

Keeping company with the likes of Pam Geller and Robert Spencer is easy when you have the facts!

“The vast majority of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims adhere to a view of their religion that agrees on the need to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on the world,” he said.

CPAC, which was looking for reasons why the GOP lost, wouldn't officially acknowledge this panel of "activists." If they really wanted to understand why the GOP is free-falling to rump party status, they'd look closely into the big brass bolas Mukasey's swinging around over his head and calling "facts."

I couldn't find a poll that shows that a "vast majority" of the world's Muslims want to impose Sharia Law on the whole world. I couldn't find a poll that shows a simple majority wants to. (Similarly, I couldn't find any poll that shows how many American Christian Fundamentalists want to impose their biblical law on the world, but there sure are plenty helping other countries pass anti-gay laws.) Lacking any obvious hard evidence on Mukasey's claims, I realized that he is, of course, bullshitting. But it's still fun to prove how full of shit he is!

The Religion of Piece is a website run by some of the looniest loons of them all when it comes to hating on Muslims. Everything they publish is designed to make Islam look as blood thirsty as possible (project much?). For a little background on TROP, check out this article from Loon Watch.

"...anti-Islam hate site, The Religion of Peace (TROP), associated with Islamophobe Daniel Greenfield, aka “SultanKnish,” who you will recall earns a pretty penny from the David Horowitz Freedom Center."

TROP is about as far right as you can get on this stuff. Or so you would think... Mainstream Republicans would certainly move toward the center to get away from this kind of hate speech, since even CPAC didn't want to have anything to do with them, officially. One would expect that no prominent member of an administration that told us our glorious war in Iraq was certainly not a "Crusade" would support such nonsense! No matter how Freudian Bush's dyslexicon might have gotten, the sensible people in charge truly believed what Bush said when he called Islam "a religion of peace."

Watch out for the right hook!

TROP has this little page of polls from the Muslim world. A whole section on Sharia Law links to polls that show majorities (or a plurality in the case of the Indonesia, the world's largest concentration) of Muslims want Sharia Law imposed on all Islamic countries. Not the whole world, just their corner of it. According to the site dedicated to making Islam look as bad as possible. 

TROP doesn't have one poll to back up Mukasey's claim that the "vast majority" of Muslims want to impose Sharia on the whole world. The polls they do have show that in the most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, the idea of imposing Sharia on all Muslim countries doesn't even get a majority. 

So, either Mukasey is bullshitting, or he's got some information the rest of us haven't seen yet. Maybe he'll do us the favor of sharing it with us, because, based on this and other fun things he's said ("...not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime..."), I'd really appreciate it if he'd keep talking.