Ted Cruz, Have You No Shame
Leave My Big Bird Alone
Besides being bare knuckled trumpers and certified wingnuts, one might ask what Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Wendy Rogers, Lisa Boothe, Steve Cortes, Lavern Spicer, Robby Starbuck and Mike Cernovich have in common and the answer is that they are on a crusade to take down Big Bird, that blatant communist tool of the Democratic Party.
Could Kermit the Frog be your next innocent target?
Funny, it isn’t, because the Republican far right wing anti-vaxxers have attacked a tweet from Big Bird urging that children be vaccinated against COVID-19. The beloved, yellow feathered friend of children, young and old, has been a Muppet fixture on Sesame Street for 53 years but he is officially just 6-years-old. The great bird announced yesterday that he had been vaccinated, now that the government has approved COVID-19 vaccinations for children 5 to 11. It’s not the first time the aviary icon has called for kids to be vaccinated as over the years he has peeped out similar pleas to protect kids against various childhood diseases. But this time, he crossed the line, at least according to that pantheon of unethical panderers, Cruz, Rogers, Boothe, Cortes, Spicer, Starbuck and Cernovich.
“My wing is feeling a little sore, but it’ll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy,” Big Bird tweeted.
Many tweets applauded Big Bird’s message, but not Cruz, who tweeted that the bird’s tweet was nothing more than “government propaganda.” Boothe, a contributor to Fox News, said the iconic Muppet was “brainwashing children” and Newsmax host Steven Cortes labeled the bird’s actions as “evil propaganda.”
Big Bird wasn’t the only one to get vaccinated, as so did the turquoise, bilingual Muppet Rosita and Granny Bird and are they next to come under attack from the defenders of stupidity. I assume, without positive evidence, that Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo (The Great Gonzo), Rowlf the Dog, Scooter, Animal and Pepe the King Prawn have been similarly protected from the scourge that has killed millions around the world.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that after scientists conducted clinical trials with about 3,000 children that the FDA has determined that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has met the safety and efficacy standards for authorization in children ages 5 through 15 years.
“Widespread vaccination for COVID-19 is a critical tool to best protect everyone, especially those at highest risk, from severe illness and death,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted. “People who are fully vaccinated can safely resume many activities that they did prior to the pandemic.”
The federal government is providing the COVID-19 vaccine free of charge to all people living in the United States, regardless of their immigration or health insurance status. The CDC said that while COVID-19 tends to be milder in children compared with adults, it can make children very sick and cause children to be hospitalized. In some situations, the complications from infection can lead to death.
Although children are at a lower risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19 compared with adults, children can be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, have both short and long-term health complications from COVID-19 and can spread COVID-19 to others.
The CDC also reported that children with underlying medical conditions are more at risk for severe illness from COVID-19 compared with children without underlying medical conditions. Children who get infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 can also develop serious complications like multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) — a condition where different body parts become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.
Cruz, Rogers, Boothe, Cortes, Spicer, Starbuck and Cernovich apparently know better probably because they follow Facebook regularly. Here’s a bit about these people who are placing their politics above the health of children, while they attack Big Bird.
Rogers and Cruz falsely have claimed that children are not at risk of COVID-19. Rogers said Big Bird is a communist, and Spicer tweeted that “Big Bird & Elmo are at least a step UP from [Dr. Anthony] Fauci, but using them to push the drug is just as reprehensible nonetheless.”
Rogers was in the Air Force from 1976 to 1996 and is a member of the Arizona Senate from the 6th district, after five losing campaign for the U.S. Congress and Arizona Legislature before winning the state post in 2020.
Rogers is a member of Oath Keepers, an anti-government militia organization whose members took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. She has indicated agreement with the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory embraced by white supremacists and has made appearances on a webcast that promotes hate speech. She also spoke at an October 2021 QAnon-linked conference in Las Vegas, has tweeted that Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was a “great patriot and a great leader” and in February, she sponsored legislation to rename a portion of Arizona State Route 260 as the “Donald J. Trump Highway.” The legislation was defeated. She also claims that trump won the 2020 election and that the assault on the Capitol was led by antifa groups.
Cortes tweeted, “This kind of propaganda is actually evil. Your children are not statistically at risk and should not be pressured into a brand new treatment.” Cortes is a Fox News contributor, former Trump campaign advisor and spokesman for the Hispanic 100, and he worked on Wall Street for two decades, as a trader and strategist.
Spicer, no relation to Sean “Millions Attended Trump’s Inauguration” Spicer, is a Republican running to represent the 24th Congressional District of Florida. She exhibited her prowess on all matters of science recently when she compared basketball great Magic Johnson, who continued to play basketball with HIV, with Kyrie Irving, a Brooklyn Net who has refused to get a COVID-19 shot. Spicer may not know that HIV, the disease that precludes AIDS is sexually transmitted while COVID-19 is airborne and can be easily spread.
Boothe, a Fox commentator who also has a regular podcast, said that Big Bird was guilty of “Brainwashing children who are not at risk from COVID. Twisted.” I’m sorry, who is twisted, Lisa Boothe?
Starbuck tweeted in response to Big Bird, “Big Bird posts photo from his hospital bed. Hi kids, I had a little heart attack but it’s very rare. I’d do it all over again and can’t wait to get my booster shfndnnd. Sorry kids he’s having a reaction totally not related to the shot and needs rest”
Starbuck is running for Congress with the endorsement of another anti-vaxxer, Rep. Rand Paul, R-Kent. Starbuck’s mother and grandparents left Cuba for the United States in the 1960s and he has made opposition to socialism part of his campaign platform, as well as opposition to the teaching of critical race theory. A former director and producer of music videos and commercials, Starbuck said he is an investor in real estate and the stock market and his wife, Landon Newsom, is a musician who performs under the name “Matriarch” and who posted on Facebook that “Elected Dems, Big Tech and media are complicit in the cover-up of human trafficking.”
Cernovich is an alt-right social media personality, political commentator, and conspiracy theorist. He began blogging in the 2000s, winning viewers for his anti-feminist themes. Among other insights, Cernovich claimed that date rape “does not exist.”
Cernovich helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that John Podesta and other high-ranking Democratic Party officials were involved in a child-sex ring. Cernovich’s family were devout Christians in the farming town of Kewanee, Ill., while the family was poor, and his mother suffered from mental illness. Cernovich was arrested and charged with rape in 2003. The rape charges were dismissed, but he was ordered to perform community service for misdemeanor battery. His record was later expunged.
Which brings me to Cruz, who makes Oscar the Grump look like the world’s nicest fellow. Cruz is said to have few friends on Capitol Hill and I have it from a fairly good source that his wife and daughter think he’s something of a Frankenstein monster.
Most recently, before his cruel assault on the innocent bird, Cruz famously took off for the Cancun, Mexico, resort last February to escape the terrible cold weather that left millions of constituents, who could not flee, without electricity.
Some of Cruz’s more outrageous comments include claiming the Paris Climate Agreement was only good for people living in Paris. Those pearls of wisdom oozed out soon after President Biden rejoined the accord after his inauguration, cancelling the destructive action taken by trump who pulled the U.S. out of the groundbreaking international agreement.
In 2016, fellow Republican senator Lindsey Graham “joked” that “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
Cruz was among more than a dozen Republican senators and 150 members of the House who planned to vote against Biden’s confirmation in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, that fateful day when trumpers stormed the capitol. Cruz dismissed the need for Planned Parenthood because “we don’t have a rubber shortage in America.” The esteemed senator said he would introduce a constitutional amendment denying citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally.
In 2015, Cruz said that “the scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming.”
During his unsuccessful 2016 campaign for president, Cruz said that the Black Lives Matter movement has “embraced rabid rhetoric, rabid anti-police language, literally suggesting and embracing and celebrating the murder of police officers.”
These are the people who represent America and they make it so very hard to heed the words of Big Bird, who said, “”Bad days happen to everyone, but when one happens to you, just keep doing your best and never let a bad day make you feel bad about yourself.”
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