Ted Cruz, sauntering in Athens
Big Beautiful Bill, and then zoomed off to vacation in Greece while his constituents died.
The Texas senator was spotted visiting the Parthenon in the Greek capital, Athens, with his wife, Heidi, on Saturday evening. That was a day after Camp Mystic announced that more than 20 girls had gone missing in the floodwaters.
On Saturday, July 5, at about 6 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET)—more than 24 hours after the Guadalupe River burst its banks—Cruz and his wife were spotted by a Swamp spy lining up outside the iconic tourist site.
“He was with his family and a lone security guard,” said an eyewitness at the Parthenon. “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’
“He sort of grunted and walked on. His wife shot me a dirty look. Then they continued on with their tour guide.”
He’s a perfect example of Republican governance.
Sure, it’s just chance that weather disasters struck (or is it? Should Texas put up danger signs when Ted goes on vacation?), but when children are dying, you could at least set aside your Greek dinner and get on a plane home.
Surprised he was able to walk up there, it’s quite steep, and it’s hot. Read somewhere he took his scheduled return flight, no rush obviously. Not dissimilar in character weakness to Australian PM Morrison who vacationed in Hawaii while half of the country burned to the ground.
Spineless unprincipled Cancun Cruz is totally dominated by his wife who is a cross between Eva Braun and Cruella De Vil. He did make things better for the people in his hometown of Houston after Ice Storm Uri. Oh, wait, no, he didn’t. He did nothing. Twelve years a senator and his epitaph will be “He Did Nothing.”
You can make a game of guessing where Cruz’s next international vacation will be when Texas experiences another inevitable disaster. My guess is the French Riviera.
Ted Cruz did that before too – holidfying in Cancun Mexico whilst his consituents froze or flooded or burnt or something ..Echoes of “I don’t hold a hose” Scummo’s Hawaii holiday during the Unprecedented Bushfires here in Oz.
Predictable as is Cruz not learning from history and the resultant clearly too briefly remembered backlash it caused.
@ rorschach : & now I see you;’ve beaten me to it with the Scummo comparison..
I’m sure we can all guess what he would say, and he can say that from any where with the same effect: “Thoughts and prayers. Amen.”
My view is that when politicians visit the site of disasters, or even return to their office as a result of disasters, it is political theatre. They are unlikely to improve the situation. The rescue and rehabilitation
work is done by civil servants and volunteers. The best a politician can do is ‘send thoughts and prayers’ and more importantly say ‘here is a bunch of money to help the situation’.
pwdm@7–
Politicians visiting disasters can make matters worse, e.g. Bush Jr visiting New Orleans post-Katrina. His decision to fly Air Force One over the city to view the damage forced rescue helicopters to stay grounded at the absolute height of the emergency.
But there’s still something important about a leader turning up to disaster zones as an act of solidarity and to observe rescue and health work first hand (without being disruptive), especially if they have significant power over the agencies involved.
At this point, things are better if Ted Cruz stays away. Not even moral support counts anymore because many people have realized that he is a craven, venal, little man. They understand that any words of solidarity or concern are just window dressing. Granted, there were a lot of things Ted could have done beforehand as a US senator, but that ship has sailed.
I am reminded of what Al Franken said about Ted Cruz several years ago on one of the late night shows (paraphrasing):
“Here’s the thing about Ted Cruz: I like Ted Cruz more than most of my Senate colleagues like Ted Cruz… and I hate Ted Cruz.”
It’s not like he could help. His only skills are bloviating and grandstanding.
It is a tragedy, but I have no compassion for the flood victims or their families. See above about shunning of warning systems, ignoring alerts, housing children on a known flood plain/hazard and so on. The fact that they were Christian camps creates a damper on my ability to emote over this. Sadly, this is what I’ve become trying to recon with buffoons who use any ignorant rationale to confirm their philosophies and principles.
My sister just this morning related to me what happened to her years ago in the early 80’s. She was camping at a campground when she was warned to leave as it was raining upstream and a flash flood was expected. She was packing up the last of her gear when the flood came. It was frightening how fast, furious, and high the flood came up. She barely escaped. It seems that there was a lot of cheap land in the scenic Texas Hill Country in various dry river plains people buy for such uses like this. This is not the first Christian camp washed away by such a flood. One was swept away with loss of numerous children’s lives in 1987 In another case, a house owned by a Christian church was swept away with a number of teenagers inside. Luckily many were rescued. Apparently the idea of not building a Christian children’s camp in a flood plain subject to flash floods never occurred to some people in Texas. Nor has Texas government in its utter lack of wisdom forbidden such stupidities. It was a somewhat similar situation two years ago in Houston. People were allowed to build homes in a flood plain. And lost homes to the inevitable flood. We seem to be kind of stupid that way down yonder in Texas.
I dunno. When Biden came to Florida after the devastation of Hurricane Ian (killing 100+ Floridians of whatever political yada yada) the unintended optics couldn’t have been better. And for a brief moment Desantis may have acted like an actual human while sporting white go go boots:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/10/06/ron-desantis-hurricane-ian-response-boots/8195796001/
That literally hit close to home as Ian exited over me albeit much weakened. So I feel for Texans with this recent disaster.
And stuffin @12 … no compassion? In the past I have harbored some serious dislike for Texas. Hate the Alamo. Ozzy did the right thing at the time, but that was harmless. I can’t just write people off during a horrific natural disaster.
Australia had a similar politician, a PM who holidayed in Hawaii while most of the east coast was on fire. Several coastal towns were devastated with thousand having to take to the water to survive. When he returned in response to a reporters question about his absence he replied “I don’t hold a firehose”. He was shunned and abused by survivors and told to F#*K off by a weary and angry firefighter. He lost the next election.
It gets better. His replacement, now the leader of the opposition, a thoroughly nasty individual who as border czar presided over the rape and murder of refugees interred in offshore gulags far from the reach of any legal assistance channelled Trumpian talking points at the next election and was backed up by our equivalent of Fox News. He was torpedoed by one of his own senators who chanted the MAGA slogan and not only lost his formerly very safe seat, but his party was reduced to a tiny rump now riven by internal squabbles because a woman did the unthinkable and won the leadership ballot. Don’t give up there is still a faint hope that some degree of sanity will arise from the ashes.
@1 I hope
Scott’sTed’s house burns down.Super NSFW. Lots of swears.
And yet people still keep voting for him. Half the Magat voters in Texas could have died in those floods, and the other half would just shrug their shoulders and say, “thoughts and prayers.” There’s something wrong with Americans.
@12. stuffin
You know, my personal view, the fact that they were, y’know kids, who likely didn’t get a choice and option to be there or not should be enough to restore your ability to emot e or feel compassion for most of the victims here. Okay, not the adult, fair enough but the kids?
@12 Wow. Really? So now it’s okay to punish kids because their parents are stupid?
That’s right up there with the Republicans slashing SNAP funding because they’re busy pandering to their hateful base by punishing “welfare queens” while ignoring that the biggest welfare queens are big businesses. (Remember “Couldn’t you have jet pooled?” when the US auto industry took separate private jet flights to DC to whinge at Congress for bailout money to keep the US auto industry afloat (and not coincidentally said CEOs’ paychecks, stock portfolios and golden parachutes?)
Sure, the camp operators are beyond stupid in operating camps with no emergency warning systems (perhaps criminally so) in a place nicknamed Flash Flood Alley but is there a specific reason you are holding kids to adult standards (and as if they had adult agency) just because you dislike their parents?
It’s worth noting that a lot of people did the best they could to alert others to the flash flood, like the Minnesota couple that drove around honking their car horn to alert fellow campers to the danger. Not everyone involved is a horrible person.