Thursday 28th of March 2024

cruising to the death penalty...

 

cruising to the death penalty

In December, when a mentally ill Texas man convicted of murder was poised to be executed—and a number of prominent conservatives were calling to postpone the killing—Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) declined to criticize the pending execution.

"I trust the criminal-justice system to operate, to protect the rights of the accused, and to administer justice to violent criminals," Cruz declared. This was not shocking. As a politician and public officeholder, he has long supported capital punishment. While running for Senate in 2012, Cruz repeatedly mentioned his win as Texas solicitor general in a case before the Supreme Court that preserved the death penalty for a Mexican citizen convicted of raping and murdering two Houston teenage girls.

Yet as a lawyer in private practice two years earlier, Cruz had argued that the criminal-justice system, in at least one instance, had gone awry and nearly killed the wrong man. This happened when Cruz was assisting the case of a Louisiana manwrongfully convicted of robbery and murder who spent 18 years in prison—14 of them on death row—before being freed. As an attorney for this man, Cruz argued that local prosecutors could not be trusted, that institutional failures in the justice system had nearly led to his client's execution, and that this fellow was owed $14 million in restitution because of these miscarriages of justice. But after his experience in this dramatic case—which included coauthoring a passionate brief presented to the Supreme Court—Cruz the politician would still offer a full-throated endorsement of the criminal-justice system and capital punishment.

Read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/ted-cruz-death-penalty-thompson-connick-supreme-court

 

cruising for stimulus...

There are few members of Congress more opposed to using government funds to boost the economy than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). As a candidate in 2011, heblasted President Barack Obama's job creation agenda as "yet another rehash of the same big-government stimulus programs that have consistently failed to generate jobs." Government, he went on, "doesn't create jobs. The private sector…creates jobs." In office, Cruz has inveighed against the president's "failed stimulus, which reminds us that jobs are not created by the federal government"—a message he's sure to repeat if he launches a presidential bid, which looks more likely by the day.

But before entering politics, when he was a $695-an-hour lawyer in private practice, Cruz once delivered a full-throated defense of the stimulus spending he now condemns. In a little-noticed legal brief Cruz filed in July 2009 on behalf of the Texas Retired Teachers Association, he argued in favor of the legality and constitutionality of the Texas state government using federal stimulus money to cut a one-time $500 check to some 250,000 retired teachers. Moreover, Cruz touted the economic benefits of the payments and noted that they would help fulfill the mission of Obama's stimulus. These $500 checks, Cruz wrote, "will directly impact the [Texas] economy…and will directly further the greater purpose of economic recovery for America."

read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/ted-cruz-president-obama-stimulus-lawyer

hot chilli and burning chat cruising...

 

While the doomsday language Republicans use to describe Democratic President Barack Obama and his policies may no longer surprise the American public, it apparently still has the power to shock very small children.

Prominent Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who is widely expected to announce a tilt at the presidency later this year, appeared to alarm a young girl, if only momentarily, at an event this weekend when he repeatedly told her that the world was "on fire".

Cruz, a conservative Tea Party favourite from Texas, made the statement at a 'Chili and Chat' grassroots political event in New Hampshire.

"The Obama economy is a disaster. Obamacare is a trainwreck," he told the crowd.

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"And the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, of leading from behind," he said, then paused, "... the whole world's on fire!"

From the front row, a high-pitched little voice suddenly exclaimed: "The world is on fire?"

That voice, according to the Washington Post, belonged to three-year-old Julie Trant, who was attending the speech with her mother Michelle. 

Cruz immediately turned to the child, but instead of withdrawing the statement, or explaining it was a metaphor, he doubled down in a bizarre attempt at offering some comfort.

"The world is on fire," he said with a smile and a nod. "Yes, your world is on fire."

"But you know what? Your mummy's here, and everyone's here, to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better."

read more : http://www.smh.com.au/world/republican-presidential-hopeful-ted-cruz-shocks-threeyearold-girl-the-world-is-on-fire-20150316-1m0o8x.html

 

 

The bullshit these Republicans go to is beyond the amazing... Sure the world is not what it could be but the Republicans have had their fair share with the sulphur and phosphorus matches... The present Middle-East is as much a result of Republican cockups and fucups as it is from the Democrats who are trying to swat the inferno... and kings going to the crusades for "religious" beliefs more than a millennium ago... The devastation of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) Inferno started to simmer in the undergrowth during Reagan's tenure... More flames of course came from the Bush era with illegal wars and stupidity plus... 

Lucky, I believe the young girl was used to eat hot chilli... while the adult crowd present at the "chilli and chat" was used to swallowing bullshit... Amen.

texan hanging...

 

The trial was a farce. Over even the prosecutor's objections, Judge Stephen Ables let Panetti act as his own lawyer, and allowed him to continue representing himself after he went off his antipsychotic medication. The defendant showed up in court decked out in what a family friend described as a 1920s-era cowboy outfit: "He wore a large hat and a huge bandanna. He wore weird boots with stirrups—the pants were tucked in at the calf," she later testified. "He looked like a clown."

Standing before the jury, Panetti called himself "Sarge" and rambled incoherently for hours about everything from the TV show Quincy, M.E. to castrating a horse, with little interference from the judge—who did, however, intercede to question the relevance of belt buckles. In addition to his veterinarian, Panetti subpoenaed Jesus, John F. Kennedy, and the pope, and issued a stream-of-consciousness description of the crime:

"""Sarge is gone. No more Sarge. Sonja and Birdie. Birdie and Sonja. Joe, Amanda lying kitchen, here, there, blood. No, leave. Scott, remember exactly what Sarge did. Shot the lock. Walked in the kitchen. Sonja, where's Birdie? Sonja here. Joe, bayonet, door, Amanda. Boom, boom, blood, blood.

Demons. Ha, ha, ha, ha, oh, Lord, oh, you."""

It's hard to blame the jury that sentenced Panetti to die. At the time, Texas had no option for life without parole, and some of the jurors stated they were scared he'd get out someday. But whether or not Texas executes a schizophrenic man isn't simply about that man and his crimes. It's about the moral ground on which America's legal system rests.

read more: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/scott-panetti-mental-illness-death-penalty

 

meanwhile as global warming is...

 

In the last term one of Mr Inhofe's Republican colleagues on the House of Representative's science, space and technology committee, was Paul Broun, a medical doctor by training, who said at a speech in 2012, "All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell."

Senator Ted Cruz, the Tea Party favourite and climate change sceptic gearing up for a presidential run, now heads the subcommittee controlling NASA's budget.

He recently appeared on a late night talk show and said, "I just came back from New Hampshire, where there's snow and ice everywhere." He went on to repeat the thoroughly refuted assertion that there has been a pause in global warming over recent years.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/republican-frostiness-toward-modern-science-gathers-pace-20150321-1m3nq4.html

 

 

No, there has not been a pause in global warming in recent years. 2014 was the warmest year on record and ten (or so) of the warmest years on record have happened since 2000. Yes we know that New Hampshire is the navel of the earth and dictates which president the USA are going to get... Yes we know, this is where Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny live...

as keating said of abbott: "god help us !..."

Washington: Ted Cruz, a charismatic conservative senator from Texas, is the first Republican to officially announce his candidacy for the party's presidential nomination, effectively starting the 2016 primary race.

Mr Cruz made the announcement via Twitter shortly after midnight on Monday, local time.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/ted-cruz-the-tea-party-republican-announces-his-run-for-us-president-20150323-1m5f2y.html

 

May the god of atheists kill this bad idea in the bud... Thank you...

in charge of the subcommittee but lost in space...

Cruz has good reason to be watching the fly-by closely: He's in charge of the Senate's subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, which oversees NASA. His chairmanship has centered on a campaign to correct what he sees as an imbalance in NASA's activity: too much focus on Earth science, and not enough traveling to other planets. The Pluto mission is a perfect example of what he wants to see more of.

But NASA is also one of the main purveyors of the satellite observations of Earth that are a basic necessity for many fields of Earth science. That's the part Cruz doesn't like: He wants to slash the agency's budget for Earth sciences—in particular, for climate change, a subject on which Cruz's theories are, in the words of one scientist, "a load of claptrap."

It's not just Cruz. In the House, Republicans are forging ahead with a bill that would gut $90 million from NASA's Earth science budget.

There are a couple major problems with that approach, and they make Cruz's lauding of the Pluto mission distinctly ironic and hypocritical. First, NASA is uniquely equipped among federal agencies to send satellites into space, so it would be hard to transfer its Earth research to some other outfit. (These are the very satellites, by the way, that produce the data Cruz likes to erroneously cite as evidence against global warming.)

But perhaps even more importantly, it's pretty hard for scientists to make sense of what they see on other planets if they don't understand the one we're on.

Cruz's attitude belies a deep misunderstanding of how NASA uses basic science—the very types of research that enabled the New Horizons spacecraft to reach Pluto in the first place—says Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

read more: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/07/pluto-nasa-ted-cruz-new-horizons

 

Unfortunately due to the denialist claptrap coming from the merde-och press in YameriKa, the denialist claptrap Republicans may have a chance at the White House... May all the people see through the merde-och claptrap and stop buying those claptrap papers and stop watching the claptrap fox network...