lulz... David Brooks is a punchline in conservative circles. A stooge punching bag for liberal media outlets to provide faux balance. Brooks supported Obama in 08.
Well, the thing again, here, is the fact that these questions were raised originally but "Constitutionalists" who wanted to go back to the "original intent" of the framers of the Constitution. In no uncertain terms, allowing, again, for abstract concepts such as time, space and history, the fledgling United States was doing what it could to prevent a foreign-born person to perhaps develop a cabal and one day ascend to the highest office through anything other than democratic will. And also, anyone not within the framers' idea of eligibility as a citizen or a human being. If the law unequivocally states that the definition of a "natural-born citizen" is dependent on one's place of birth, and not the citizenship of his/her parents, then it is indeed "...settled law..."... ...but as has been pointed out, the country has progressed greatly from those days, and many opportunities have been granted to both naturalized and natural-born citizens. The only way to truly settle this matter may be a Constitutional Amendment, which I would be all in favor for, actually.... ...but you gotta hand it to that tricky Obama... ...how'd he get the libtard media and The Donald himself in on this smear job of a true American, Castro-hating patriot like the distinguished Senator from Texas...?
not being refuted by you in any way whatsoever. Focus on content, if you can. Cruz is anti-fact and apocalyptic in his rhetoric. His rhetoric is also literally anti-Christian, unless you want to go purely old testament.
I actually tend to like him. The fact that he drives both my liberal friends and my conservative friends absolutely crazy is a good sign, I think. Anyway, I thought his content in that piece was on point.
That's his sociopathic tendencies shining through. But, honestly, it's worked for him so far, so I don't see him abandoning it, at least in the primary. Maybe he can make himself cuddly in the general. Seems like an academic exercise. In the end, only the opinion of the Supreme Court will matter, assuming anyone dares to challenge his legitimacy which I doubt they will. The SC will choose what precedents they need for the outcome they want. Without a very compelling reason to want to keep Cruz out of office, they'll defer to the election and let him be president. I like Brooks. Seems like his own man who will tell you his genuine opinion. Maybe he's not a slave to the tea party, or in bed with the establishment candidates. But B-Bob wasn't really using his political affiliation as any kind of rhetorical cudgel, so I don't see why people see the need to denounce or undermine his affiliation with republicans.
That is funny. Maybe they don't read CF closely enough. LOL. But thanks for the reply in any case. Cheers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/opinion/the-brutalism-of-ted-cruz.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur The Brutalism of Ted Cruz David Brooks In 1997, Michael Wayne Haley was arrested after stealing a calculator from Walmart. This was a crime that merited a maximum two-year prison term. But prosecutors incorrectly applied a habitual offender law. Neither the judge nor the defense lawyer caught the error and Haley was sentenced to 16 years. Eventually, the mistake came to light and Haley tried to fix it. Ted Cruz was solicitor general of Texas at the time. Instead of just letting Haley go for time served, Cruz took the case to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in prison for the full 16 years. Some justices were skeptical. “Is there some rule that you can’t confess error in your state?” Justice Anthony Kennedy asked. The court system did finally let Haley out of prison, after six years. The case reveals something interesting about Cruz’s character. Ted Cruz is now running strongly among evangelical voters, especially in Iowa. But in his career and public presentation Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace. Cruz’s behavior in the Haley case is almost the dictionary definition of pharisaism: an overzealous application of the letter of the law in a way that violates the spirit of the law, as well as fairness and mercy. Traditionally, candidates who have attracted strong evangelical support have in part emphasized the need to lend a helping hand to the economically stressed and the least fortunate among us. Such candidates include George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. But Cruz’s speeches are marked by what you might call pagan brutalism. There is not a hint of compassion, gentleness and mercy. Instead, his speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them. When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring. Cruz lays down an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear. America is heading off “the cliff to oblivion.” After one Democratic debate he said, “We’re seeing our freedoms taken away every day, and last night was an audition for who would wear the jackboot most vigorously.” As the Republican strategist Curt Anderson observed in Politico, there’s no variation in Cruz’s rhetorical tone. As is the wont of inauthentic speakers, everything is described as a maximum existential threat. The fact is this apocalyptic diagnosis is ridiculous. The Obama administration has done things people like me strongly disagree with. But America is in better economic shape than any other major nation on earth. Crime is down. Abortion rates are down. Fourteen million new jobs have been created in five years. Obama has championed a liberal agenda, but he hasn’t made the country unrecognizable. In 2008, federal spending accounted for about 20.3 percent of gross domestic product. In 2015, it accounted for about 20.9 percent. But Cruz manufactures an atmosphere of menace in which there is no room for compassion, for moderation, for anything but dismantling and counterattack. And that is what he offers. Cruz’s programmatic agenda, to the extent that it exists in his speeches, is to destroy things: destroy the I.R.S., crush the “jackals” of the E.P.A., end funding for Planned Parenthood, reverse Obama’s executive orders, make the desert glow in Syria, destroy the Iran nuclear accord. Some of these positions I agree with, but the lack of any positive emphasis, any hint of reform conservatism, any aid for the working class, or even any humane gesture toward cooperation is striking. Ted Cruz didn’t come up with this hard, combative and gladiatorial campaign approach in isolation. He’s always demonstrated a tendency to bend his position — whether immigration or trade — to what suits him politically. This approach works because in the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges court decision on same-sex marriage, many evangelicals feel they are being turned into pariahs in their own nation. Cruz exploits and exaggerates that fear. But he reacts to Obergefell in exactly the alienating and combative manner that is destined to further marginalize evangelicals, that is guaranteed to bring out fear-driven reactions and not the movement’s highest ideals. The best conservatism balances support for free markets with a Judeo-Christian spirit of charity, compassion and solidarity. Cruz replaces this spirit with Spartan belligerence. He sows bitterness, influences his followers to lose all sense of proportion and teaches them to answer hate with hate. This Trump-Cruz conservatism looks more like tribal, blood and soil European conservatism than the pluralistic American kind. Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism — when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that.
Brooks doing his best beta-male cry bullying. "Why is Cruz so mean!?" time for Cruz to get Secret Service protection (Sanders as well) <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">WATCH: <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz">@tedcruz</a> handles hecklers at New Hampshire gun event: "The Bernistas are out in force!" <a href="https://t.co/RbHcc2tax9">https://t.co/RbHcc2tax9</a></p>— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/686985978813100032">January 12, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Nothing more pathetic than loser leftist protesters commandeering the time of others without their permission. Because no one want's to listen to them, they use force to seize an audience they haven't earned.
trigger warning to sensitive leftists: this video contains guns, dead animals, Phil Robertson, and blackface <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0i-9D92bzu8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Brooks wasn't saying "why is Cruz so mean?" In fact, there was no "why" or "mean" at all. He's saying Cruz is hyperbolically, illogically negative and only negative, that Cruz and his rhetoric are demonstrably contrary to the teachings of Christ, and that the shtick aims merely to appeal to the worst tendencies among us, all for Cruz's political gain. I haven't seen anyone refute any of that. People just attack Brooks. Now calling him "beta male"? Oooo, wow. You really put the Brooks argument to bed now. (Even though he wears a lot less make-up and hair product than Ted, FWIW.)
Brooks' point is that Christianity isn't just about smiting your enemies but also about compassion. Cruz while running has a Christian conservative has focused almost totally on the smiting part.
I haven't been following the Cruz campaign closely but I know that he has run on a populism angle including anger at Wall Street. What I'm wondering is if Cruz violated campaign finance laws by not promptly disclosing just so it wouldn't go against his populist rhetoric. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/politics/ted-cruz-wall-street-loan-senate-bid-2012.html?_r=0 Ted Cruz Didn’t Disclose Loan From Goldman Sachs for His First Senate Campaign As Ted Cruz tells it, the story of how he financed his upstart campaign for the United States Senate four years ago is an endearing example of loyalty and shared sacrifice between a married couple. “Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” he says he told his wife, Heidi, who readily agreed. But the couple’s decision to pump more than $1 million into Mr. Cruz’s successful Tea Party-darling Senate bid in Texas was made easier by a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. That loan was not disclosed in campaign finance reports. Those reports show that in the critical weeks before the May 2012 Republican primary, Mr. Cruz — currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination — put “personal funds” totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” as Mr. Cruz described it in an interview with The New York Times several years ago. A review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign. What it does show, however, is that in the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year. There is no explanation of their purpose. Neither loan appears in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns. Other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders. There is no evidence that the Cruzes got a break on their loans. A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz’s presidential campaign, Catherine Frazier, acknowledged that the loan from Goldman Sachs, drawn against the value of the Cruzes’ brokerage account, was a source of money for the Senate race. Ms. Frazier added that Mr. Cruz also sold stocks and liquidated savings, but she did not address whether the Citibank loan was used. The failure to report the Goldman Sachs loan, for as much as $500,000, was “inadvertent,” she said, adding that the campaign would file corrected reports as necessary. Ms. Frazier said there had been no attempt to hide anything. “These transactions have been reported in one way or another on his many public financial disclosures and the Senate campaign’s F.E.C. filings,” she said. Kenneth A. Gross, a former election commission lawyer who specializes in campaign finance law, said that listing a bank loan in an annual Senate ethics report — which deals only with personal finances — would not satisfy the requirement that it be promptly disclosed to election officials during a campaign. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “They’re two different reporting regimes,” he said. “The law says if you get a loan for the purpose of funding a campaign, you have to show the original source of the loan, the terms of the loan and you even have to provide a copy of the loan document to the Federal Election Commission.” There would have been nothing improper about Mr. Cruz obtaining bank loans for his campaign, as long as they were disclosed. But such a disclosure might have conveyed the wrong impression for his candidacy. Mr. Cruz, a conservative former Texas solicitor general, was campaigning as a populist firebrand who criticized Wall Street bailouts and the influence of big banks in Washington. It is a theme he has carried into his bid for the Republican nomination for president. Earlier this year, when asked about the political clout of Goldman Sachs in particular, he replied, “Like many other players on Wall Street and big business, they seek out and get special favors from government.” In recounting the decision to put all of their savings into the campaign, Mr. Cruz said in the 2013 Times interview that Mrs. Cruz immediately agreed to his proposal, even though he was trailing in the polls and still viewed as a long shot against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who spent $24 million of his own money on the race. “What astonished me, then and now, was Heidi within 60 seconds said, ‘Absolutely,’ with no hesitation,” Mr. Cruz said. Mrs. Cruz, who is on leave as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, later suggested that the reality was more complicated. She told Politico in 2014 that she thought they should apply “common investment sense” and not use their own money for the campaign “unless it made the difference” in winning. The article did not mention anything about loans from banks. The money from the Cruzes allowed his campaign to keep running television ads in the period preceding the primary election, including a $300,000 ad buy that highlighted the story of Mr. Cruz’s father’s flight from Cuba in the 1950s after opposing the Batista regime. Mr. Cruz earned enough votes in the primary to qualify for a runoff, where he defeated Mr. Dewhurst and went on to win the general election. The ethics reports that candidates file with the Senate require them to list all assets they held at the close of the year or that generated income during the year. Assets are reported in broad categories of value, such as $1,001 to $15,000 and $100,001 to $250,000. Mr. Cruz’s filings show that at the close of 2011, he and his wife had cash and securities in bank, brokerage and retirement accounts worth $1.3 million to $3.4 million. They also had mortgages and a loan against Mr. Cruz’s partnership equity in his law firm. During 2012, they sold securities worth $82,000 to $355,000, and the value of other holdings was reduced by, at most, $155,000. However, they also added a money-market account with $250,000 to $500,000 in it, and the value of other holdings increased by as much as $435,000. All told, the value of their cash and securities in 2012 saw a net increase of as much as $400,000 — even as the Cruzes were supposedly liquidating everything to finance Mr. Cruz’s Senate campaign. The biggest change in the Cruzes’ finances in 2012 was the addition of the two bank loans, each valued at $250,000 to $500,000, during the first half of the year. One was a margin loan from Goldman Sachs. Margin loans, which are secured by holdings in a brokerage account, are often used to buy more stocks, but can be obtained for almost any purpose. The other loan was a line of credit from Citibank. Even if the Citibank loan did not go directly into the Senate campaign, it could have freed up other assets for that purpose. While the Cruzes were well paid — he made more than $1 million a year as a law partner, and she earned a six-figure income as an executive in Goldman Sachs’s Houston office — they also had big bills, including mortgage payments and full-time child care. Both loans had floating interest rates around 3 percent, according to Mr. Cruz’s Senate disclosures, which appear to be generally in line with rates available to wealthy borrowers at that time. During the remainder of 2012, the Cruz campaign repaid Mr. Cruz for about half of the money he lent. His Senate disclosures show that he and his wife paid off the Citibank loan that same year. As for the Goldman Sachs loan, it remains outstanding, though the balance has been reduced to between $50,000 and $100,000. The federal guide to campaign finance reporting for congressional candidates makes it clear that if the original source of money for a candidate’s personal loan was a margin loan or a line of credit, it must be disclosed. “Bank loans to candidates and loans derived from advances on a candidate’s brokerage accounts, credit cards, home equity line of credit, or other lines of credit obtained for use in connection with his or her campaign must be reported by the committee,” according to the guide.
failure to disclose a margin loan secured by their portfolio on the proper form 4 yrs ago doesn't seem like that big a deal....even if technically offside. I suspect it was inadvertent. Hard to hide your Goldman connections when your wife's an exec there and you're disclosing your portfolio. And from Goldman's perspective, this loan was independent of his political aspirations.
LOL. Cruz knows his base. Will be interesting to see how and if this brand of pseudo-Evangelical populism will translate to a wider base.
Goldman Sachs only makes investments with the expectation of a return. They may have been hedging against Dewhurst but it was an investment just the same. This is a perfect example of astroturfing, money owning the voice of the opposition. Whichever candidate wins, you win. You let all their hot air about being 'against Wall Street' diffuse into inaction and business as usual. get a brain morans
