Well, let me first neutralize that title and indicate that this is not a hopeless crusade. Basically, I think, he really hates Obamacare and wants to become President of the USA.
Cruz's birthplace was Calgary, Canada almost 43 years ago. His father was born a year before me in Cuba, became a critic of Fidel Castro, and fled the country in 1957, landing with $100 sewn in his underwear and knowing no English, somehow becoming a student at the University of Texas, supporting his way as a dishwasher making 50 cents/hour. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, who changed his name to Robert Garrett, earned a degree in mathematics, went into oil, became a U.S. citizen in 2005, and is now a pastor near Dallas. Cruz's mother is of Irish/Italian descent and is also a mathematician, from Rice University, and worked in the oil industry.
Son Rafael Edward ("Ted"--Ever wonder how Ted comes from Edward? Has something do with adding a T to Ed...as, how did Dick come from Richard or Peggy from Margaret.) Cruz:
- He joined the Free Market Education Foundation while an intermediate school student in Houston, graduated cum laude from Princeton (but was he creepy?), where in 1992 he was named U.S. National Speaker of the Year in debating, then graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School as primary editor of the Harvard Law Review.
- Professor Alan Dershowitz said, "Cruz was off-the-charts brilliant."
- He clerked from William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the U.S., the first Hispanic ever to clerk in the Supreme Court.
- In 1998, 15 years ago, he served as private counsel for Congressman John Boehner.
- Joined the Bush-Cheney campaign in 1999.
- Served as the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas.
- Joined the U.S. Senate as a Republican this year.
Do you recognize hints of Barack Obama? You say, how can someone so smart be so stupid? Well, he has become the general leading the Tea Party and many other conservative Republicans who believe that freedom itself is being compromised (Obamacare being just one example), and that the American culture is being destroyed by an alliance of Hollywood, Washington, and public (as opposed to private) schools leaders.
Obamacare is a key piece of legislation worthy of their attack because there are few social issues where Republicans might have an edge. President Obama's bully pulpit speech today, however, will move more than half of the country in favor of the Affordable Care Act, and especially so when the Administration fixes that website embarrassment. What might not generally be known is that you can also do this the old fashioned way: telephone or visiting some federal office. The fact that a Republican Supreme Court endorsed Obamacare makes this issue hopeless for Republicans, anyway.
So I return to the Somali pirates analogy, where they, and the Tea Party today, have no other course of meaningful action than to take hostages. The next time, and this will come in January and February, Cruz and his supporters better have a more winnable strategy, or his Cruz for 2016 campaign could come to a screeching halt.
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Typhoon Francisco at 95 MPH is weakening, and is now projected to skirt the eastern coastline of Japan, passing near Tokyo at the end of the week:
Now on the same track behind Francisco, is Tropical Storm Lekima, projected to become a Category 4 hurricane:
However, chances are Lekima will also remain in the ocean and only threaten Japan.
In the East Pacific, Hurricane Raymond is now at 120 MPH:
However, most computer models seem to show Raymond turn west and possibly completely missing Mexico. However, a couple show Raymond going north, so the situation is a bit fluid.
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