Senator Ted Cruz, the freshman senator from Texas has not shut his mouth since he was sworn in eight months ago. And the United States Senate has never had such an upstart elbowing his way to the podium, constantly showing up on TV and on-line espousing his narrow scorched earth proposals.
We all have suffered a ranting old hard line relative thundering his way through family gatherings. But Cruz is only 43 years old. Born of a Cuban father and an American Mother in Alberta, Canada, he claims the Latino half of his origins.
Though he was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas school of law in Austin you would never know it. His is in no way objective, and clearly is a wholly partisan Tea Party conservative extremist of the worst sort.
His logic is self serving and skewed to the extreme far right. Cruz is quite willing to drag the whole nation into fiscal default by forcing a governmental shutdown unless he gets his way.
His logic is self serving and skewed to the extreme far right. Cruz is quite willing to drag the whole nation into fiscal default by forcing a governmental shutdown unless he gets his way.
Particularly odious are his demands that we vote to balance the nation's debt by doing away with the new Affordable Health Care act, cutting life saving governmental assistance to feed hungry children, slashing food stamps, closing rural public health clinics, and a whole litany of other appalling Republican and Tea Party objectives.
It occurred to me that when a flash-in-the-pan political pariah like Cruz shamelessly seeks to even worsen things for our neediest Americans, his extreme Scrooge-like views should have a memorable moniker.
So as we approach the holiday season, I invite you to wish all those who would use their political or high social positions to neglect and harm the most vulnerable among us in the name of debt reduction, a very, "Merry Cruzmass!" I even designed a greeting card you may copy and email to them or post on Facebook!
Graphic by Larry Ray 2013 Photo by Brenda Ann Kenneally - AmericanPoverty.org