Chuck Hagel Confirmed--Which I Think We Expected, Right?

Okay, maybe not everyone did, and maybe the filibuster (because yes, that's what we call it) made it seem dubious--but what exactly, was all the to-do about? Sen. McCain called Hagel "unqualified" (now, wait one Palin-picking minute!) and Sen. Graham used the confirmation hearing as yet another opportunity to grandstand about Benghazi; newly-minted Sen. Ted Cruz busted out his McCarthy impression (never too soon in your career to do that, IMHO) and the self-appointed "vetters" went Google-diving for evidence that the nominee had unorthodox opinions--except for when they apparently didn't bother to Google at all! 

From my humble-blogger perspective, it kind of looks to me like results had nothing to do with the opposition to Hagel. It was a drill with blanks in the chamber. We've got a group of people (Republicans) who will oppose anything the president supports because they feel obligated to by their intended audience. Their intended audience is neither as big as they think it is, nor as influential as they hope it is. If it were either of those things, would Obama have won re-election? (I think I would like to assign that particular essay to Jen Rubin of the Washington Post, if I could.)

(This is why I don't really feel like the sequester is a thing that's going to go through either, close as we're going to cut it. Because of Big Business, state governments, and a good handful of House Reps figuring out who is actually getting the blame. Reality has to intrude. This is probably the one I'll be wrong about, but still. Something will give.)

He Ain't McCarthy--He's Just Another Weak Tea Bag

Look, I am one of those bloggers who will give anyone a chance. I even gave sad old Tailgunner Joe a little bit of props for being less in favor of torture than a certain breed of modern Republican (I can't be arsed to find it in my archives, and while I'm at it, when did Google become useless?). But I think, along with my Rumproast co-blogger Bette Noir, that the comparison of Ted Cruz to Joe McCarthy is probably valid.  But there is a subtle difference--and it is this:

We've already had a Joe McCarthy, thank you very much. We've also had a Cold War, and it is no longer quite the thing it used to be. The Berlin Wall, she is down. The bisnesmen have taken over in the east. And as for China, they will do whatever works, and call it socialism. Fidel Castro is clinging to life, and the Latin American Socialism is just not the Communist Domino Theory bullshit that led the Reagan-era Cold Warriors to actually deal weapons to Iran to fight a war in Nicaragua. To oust Daniel Ortega from being President there, I think. Since hardly any of them went to jail, I guess it went well enough for the Reaganites, but how about those goals?

Yeah. Stupid, and dangerous, and illegal, and. Yeah. Anyway, this post is about Cruz, because if it isn't enough that he in his first couple months of being in the Senate, accused former Senator Chuck Hagel of accepting money from foreign interests alleging that Hagel hated the US military--which, among other things, Hagel has a whole lot more experience with than Cruz. It seems Cruz also has a funny history of Red-Baiting which is not unlike this present episode--

In the '90's even. Which is so quaint. 

Anyway, the funny thing about today's Marxists is that being statists, they probably wouldn't want to overthrow the US government, I think, so much as become members of the US government, where, as government employees, they would get certain perquisites that the hoi polloi don't, usually. Great government-provided healthcare. Pensions, instead of private 401K's  How else would you bring communism here beside inflitrating the government? And Cruz himself was a Harvard man. How long has he been a Communist, I wonder? When he performs his "worse is better" antics, is he being such an Alinskyite that he thinks he's radically producing change by challenging the status quo?

Should I pop some popcorn? Will his show go on indefinitely, or will someone remind him he's new on the Hill?