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The Civil War Battle That Explains the 2013 Elections

by 1LymSlagter473 Posted on November 6, 2013

Mother Jones

With Gov. Chris Christie’s massive reelection victory in the blue territory of New Jersey and Ken Cuccinelli’s embarrassing defeat to Terry McAuliffe in the governor’s race in often-red (in the off-years) Virginia, reasonable Republicans scored points against the party’s renegades in the GOP’s ongoing civil war. This internal battle has intensified since the government shutdown, as diehards led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have insisted the Republican Party’s fortunes are tied to no-compromise conservatism and ideological confrontation, and establishment Rs have decried their party’s Kamikaze Club and contended the GOP must maintain a lifeline to the center and political reality.

Yet in the two big statewide races of Election Day 2013, the results favored those who don’t fancy hostage-taking. (In Alabama, a tea party birther was defeated by a Chamber of Commerce-backed candidate in a Republican primary for a vacant House seat.) Christie, who drew the ire of hardcore conservatives by refusing to treat President Barack Obama as the devil incarnate, coasted to an easy triumph and earned the right to declare this message: Republican success in the real world comes when GOP candidates emphasize pragmatic governing not ideological crusades. And Cuccinelli, a fierce social conservative with plenty of name recognition as the current state attorney general, was the poster boy for those right-wingers who assert that their party must stick to the far right lane to win elections and transform the nation. His defeat at the hands of a Democrat tainted by assorted money-and-politics scandals—in an election shaped by the government shutdown and Cuccinelli’s hard-right views on abortion, birth control, and divorce—will be joyously cited by those who cry bunk in the face of Cruzism. But the non-Cruzers ought to resist the urge to celebrate too much, for the Republican Party may have just experienced its own version of the Battle of Chancellorsville.

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The Civil War Battle That Explains the 2013 Elections

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Former Gay Propagandist SpongeBob SquarePants Is Now a Conservative Darling

by JuliaPage Posted on November 5, 2013

Mother Jones

After years of vilifying him as a flamboyantly gay, liberal propagandist, conservatives are now claiming SpongeBob SquarePants as their hardworking, anti-food-stamp hero.

On Monday, Nov. 11—almost two weeks after the nation’s food-stamps program was slashed by $5 billion—Nickelodeon is set to air “SpongeBob, You’re Fired!” in the US. (The episode aired in Greece in July.) After the beloved sea sponge loses his job at the Krusty Krab in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob slips into a slovenly depression. His friend Patrick, a starfish, tries to teach him the benefits of “glorious unemployment“—as in free time and free food. “Unemployment may be fun for you, but I need to get a job,” the determined and eager SpongeBob tells Patrick.

And with this, conservatives found themselves a new star. “‘SpongeBob’ Critiques Welfare State, Embraces Self-Sufficiency,” the Breitbart headline reads. “Lest he sit around idly, mooching off the social services of Bikini Bottom, a depressed SpongeBob sets out to return to gainful employment wherever he can find it,” Andrea Morabito wrote at the New York Post last week. “No spoilers—but it’s safe to say that our hero doesn’t end up on food stamps, as his patty-making skills turn out to be in high demand.” Fox News personality Heather Nauert had a similar take about SpongeBob not “mooching off social services”:

Contempt for “moochers” (recall Mitt Romney’s 47-percent comments) on food stamps is a popular conservative meme. But life for the unemployed or welfare recipients on the brink of poverty is far from “glorious.” The sponge-related coverage from Fox prompted MSNBC‘s Al Sharpton to stick up for poor Americans. “The right-wingers found a new hero in its war against the poor,” Sharpton declared. “SpongeBob SquarePants. That’s right. SpongeBob SquarePants…So a sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea doesn’t need government help. That means no one does?”

Nickelodeon declined to comment on the political firestorm caused by SpongeBob’s aggressively anti-funemployment message. But Russell Hicks, Nickelodeon’s president of content, development, and production, did say in a statement that, “part of SpongeBob’s long-running success has been its ability to tap into the zeitgeist while still being really funny for our audience.”

But conservatives’ newfound love for the food-stamp-refusing SpongeBob conveniently glosses over the his green, liberal, and notoriously gay past. Fox News has previously attacked SpongeBob for brainwashing children on the issue of global warming. Christian-right groups have targeted the giddy sponge over his alleged gay proselytizing. Ukraine’s National Expert Commission for the Protection of Public Morals announced a special session in 2012 to review a report by a right-wing religious organization that refers to the cartoon’s “promotion of homosexuality.” Furthermore, the series has enthusiastically supported workers’ rights, has been harshly critical of corporate takeover, and is generally pro-environment.

But SpongeBob likes to work! Which is exclusively a conservative value in the eyes of some.

Here is a clip from “SpongeBob, You’re Fired!” via the Hollywood Reporter:

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Former Gay Propagandist SpongeBob SquarePants Is Now a Conservative Darling

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6 Things You Might Not Know About Bill de Blasio, New York’s Mayor-in-Waiting

by pa98grv Posted on November 5, 2013

Mother Jones

Come Tuesday night, Bill de Blasio will likely be the first Democratic mayor-elect of New York City in two decades. De Blasio is expected to crush his Republican rival Joe Lhota. Most national attention has focused on the implications of de Blasio’s win for the future of big-city liberalism, contrasting the humble Park Slope public advocate with Wall Street-friendly billionaire Michael Bloomberg. The city’s rich denizens are supposedly quivering with fear that the new Democratic mayor will hit them with a small tax increase to fund universal pre-K, though Gov. Andrew Cuomo is poised to squash any tax hikes from NYC.

Here are several fun facts about de Blasio that you might have missed amid the class warfare.

He was born Warren Wilhelm, Jr.:

De Blasio has a fraught relationship with his deceased father. A navy vet who lost his left leg in World War II, Warren Wilhelm fell prey to McCarthyism in the 1950s. His career as an economist at the Commerce Department derailed when he and his wife were questioned about their views on communism. Wilhelm Sr. later became an alcoholic and de Blasio’s parents divorced. “The pain he caused people, even if he didn’t mean to, just so many people were badly affected,” de Blasio said in an interview with The New York Times. “I think I really was angered by that.” By the end of high school the he had ditched his given name and opted for his childhood nickname Bill and his mother’s maiden name.

He worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign:

De Blasio managed Hillary Clinton’s first run for office, but it ended poorly as the Clintons came to view him as weak and indecisive. Longtime Clinton pal Patti Solis Doyle was brought in from Washington to spearhead the final months of the campaign. Per The New York Times:

Despite having the title, Mr. de Blasio hardly fit the profile of a traditional campaign manager.

While he had a say on all sorts of matters, including finance and personnel, he did not have signoff power on many key issues, and did not enjoy the same access to Mrs. Clinton as other advisers, according to more than two dozen people involved in the race. Then still the first lady, she often relied on a team of White House aides she had known for years.

It doesn’t seem like there are too many hurt feelings, though. Both Hillary and Bill endorsed de Blasio, but not until he’d already secured the Democratic nomination. Hillary also headlined a million-dollar fundraiser for de Blasio in late October.

His was a lefty activist in his 20s:

De Blasio got his start in progressive politics by supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua during the 1980s:

Mr. de Blasio became an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries. He helped raise funds for the Sandinistas in New York and subscribed to the party’s newspaper, Barricada, or Barricade. When he was asked at a meeting in 1990 about his goals for society, he said he was an advocate of “democratic socialism.”

He worked as a political organizer at the Quixote Center in Maryland for his first job out of grad school, soliciting donations to send to Nicaragua.

He worked out at his local YMCA during the campaign:

Hard to imagine Bloomberg working up a sweat at the local gym. From New York magazine:

If I needed any further indication that the city is on the verge of a radical change in mayoral style from Bloomberg, who seems as if he were born in a pin-striped suit, there’s the 52-year-old De Blasio himself: He’s just back from his daily workout at the 9th Street Y and wearing a frayed, sweat-soaked blue T-shirt and baggy gray sweatpants.

He was evicted from his first New York apartment:

He moved to SoHo in 1983 but couldn’t stay there since the apartment was an illegal sublet. Perhaps that experience will make him more sympathetic to those city residents who lack affordable housing than New York’s current mayor.

He’s not a Yankees fan:

In fact, he roots for the Bronx Bombers’ despised rival, the Boston Red Sox. De Blasio must be feeling confident heading into the election, since he couldn’t help himself from bragging about the Red Sox’s World Series success, even when he campaigned in the Bronx.

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6 Things You Might Not Know About Bill de Blasio, New York’s Mayor-in-Waiting

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GOP Congressional Candidate Told Gay Citizens to Go "Back to California"

by AlexisKVH Posted on November 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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It would be tough to find a political office-seeker less prepared for the job he’s running for than Alabama congressional candidate Dean Young. Asked by the Guardian last week to identify the current House majority whip, the Republican suggested House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who left his old post almost three years ago. Quizzed on the current treasury secretary, Young identified Henry Paulson (who left four years ago) and then Tim Geithner (who left his post 10 months ago). Young, who also called President Obama’s country of origin “the $64,000 question,” didn’t go so far as to suggest that the Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln lived, but that’s probably because no one asked.

On Tuesday, Young will face off against former state Sen. Bradley Byrne in a runoff for the Republican nomination in the special election to replace former GOP Rep. Jo Bonner, who resigned to take a job at the University of Alabama. (In March, Mother Jones reported that Bonner had gone on an all-expenses-paid African safari under the auspices of investigating Al Qaeda’s ties to poaching.) In a deep-red district, the runoff winner is all but assured a spot in Congress—which means that Young, who held a narrow lead in the final poll of the race, could soon be headed to Washington.

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GOP Congressional Candidate Told Gay Citizens to Go "Back to California"

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Oklahoma’s Ban on Abortion Drugs Is Permanently Blocked, Following a New Supreme Court Ruling

by billytalley1169 Posted on November 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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The US Supreme Court has decided not to weigh in on the constitutionality of an Oklahoma law limiting access to abortion drugs.

This summer, the court tentatively agreed to hear a challenge to the 2011 statute, which bars doctors from prescribing abortion pills, except as outlined on the FDA label. Before proceeding, however, it asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to clarify the breadth of the law. Last Tuesday, the state court ruled that the bill effectively bans all abortion drugs, including those used to treat life-threatening ectopic pregnancies, and found that it was unconstitutional.

The US Supreme Court subsequently dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” meaning the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling striking down the law will stand. For more on the case, Cline v. Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, see Mother Jones‘s recent in-depth story.

Oklahoma is not the only place that’s clamping down on abortion drugs. Here’s an overview of the other states that have restricted access:

A state-by-state LOOK AT abortion drug restrictions

Hover over a state to see a breakdown of restrictions in place there. Source: Guttmacher Institute.

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Oklahoma’s Ban on Abortion Drugs Is Permanently Blocked, Following a New Supreme Court Ruling

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Why Texting-While-Driving Bans Don’t Work

by CarrolHof Posted on November 2, 2013

Mother Jones

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Lost in the clamor for stricter distracted-driving laws, a study from April 2013 found discouraging patterns in the relationship between texting bans and traffic fatalities.

As one might expect, single occupant vehicle crashes dip noticeably when a state legislature enacts a texting and driving ban. But the change is always short-lived, according to this study, which examined data from every state except Alaska from 2007 through 2010. Within months, the accident rate typically returned to pre-ban levels.

The researchers, Rahi Abouk and Scott Adams of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, attribute this pattern to the “announcement effect,” when drivers adjust their behavior to compensate for a perceived law enforcement threat—only to return to old habits when enforcement appears ineffectual. In other words, drivers might dial back their texting when they hear about a ban, but after they succumb to the urge once or twice and get away with it, they determine it’s okay and keep doing it.

“It’s different than drunk driving,” Adams said. Identifying intoxicated drivers is relatively easy, “you can give somebody a breathalyzer, you can have checkpoints.” But with texting, “it’s really hard for policemen to know” if someone’s been texting.

No one denies the dangers of texting while driving. In fact, 95 percent of AAA survey (PDF) respondents said texting behind the wheel was a “very” serious threat to their personal safety. But 35 percent of the same respondent group admitted to having read a text or email while driving in the last 30 days. Because Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 send and receive an average of 88 texts per day, and American drivers average nearly 40 miles a day, it makes sense that the Department of Transportation estimates that at any given daylight moment, approximately 660,000 people are “using cell phones or manipulating electronic devices” while driving.

State governments have attempted to curb the formation of this lethal habit. Forty-six states have enacted some kind of texting ban, with penalties ranging from a $20 ticket to a $10,000 fine and a year in prison (hey, Alaska!). Unfortunately, enforcement has seen limited success, in part because of how difficult detection is. Likewise, actual cell phone related fatality statistics are vastly underreported for a number of reasons, experts say. And, unless a driver involved in a crash admits to it, investigators may have no reason to suspect cell phone use.

The most effective bans, Adams said, were those enacted earliest. In Washington, where legislators took action in 2007, “people actually took it seriously,” at least for a time. Yet the efficacy of that ban decreased with each successive year. Likely, Adams said, because people heard “reports that these things weren’t being enforced.” In those states slower to legislate, any dip in fatalities evened out within several months.

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Why Texting-While-Driving Bans Don’t Work

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The Battle of the NSA Surveillance Bills

by cfg2nx26 Posted on November 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, the Senate intelligence committee took a step forward toward officially authorizing some of the National Security Agency’s more controversial surveillance practices, which have recently come to light thanks to leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The panel passed out of committee a bill allowing broad phone surveillance to continue under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Backed by the committee chair, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the FISA Improvements Act leaves untouched the NSA’s internet surveillance dragnet, PRISM, and does little to improve oversight of the government’s surveillance powers. Feinstein’s bill will face off against legislation introduced earlier this week by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that would significantly curb the government’s ability to sweep up the private information of Americans.

Privacy experts say that the FISA Improvements Act, which passed 11-4, codifies current surveillance practices instead of fixing the law to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans: “This was an opportunity for Congress to really recalibrate the statute, and it’s very disappointing that they’ve used this opportunity to cement domestic spying programs instead,” says Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the ACLU.

The primary focus of the bill is Section 215 of FISA. This is the part of the law that provides the legal justification for the bulk collection of the telephone metadata of Americans, including phone numbers and the date and duration of calls (but not the content of those conversations). While the bill’s language amends the statute to prevent the NSA from hoovering up phone metadata en masse, it provides gaping loopholes that could allow the agency to continue with its bulk collection practices as usual, such as if there’s a “reasonable articulable suspicion” that an investigation is related to international terrorism. The legislation also makes it legal for the government to collect and search records that are three “hops” from a target who is suspected of terrorism—in other words, a suspect, all of that suspect’s contacts, and all of their contacts. The bill makes only surface fixes and “absolutely allows for the kind of collection that is already happening right now,” according to Amie Stepanovich, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s (EPIC) Domestic Surveillance Project.

Also worrisome to privacy experts is the fact that the bill expands the NSA’s powers, by allowing the agency to track cellphone’s of non-Americans believed to be located abroad for 72 hours after they enter the United States. The bill additionally levies a penalty of up to 10 years in prison on anyone who accesses NSA information without authorization, like Snowden did.

“The call-records program is legal and subject to extensive congressional and judicial oversight, and I believe it contributes to our national security,” Feinstein said in a statement. “But more can and should be done to increase transparency and build public support for privacy protections in place.”

Feinstein’s modest reforms include limiting the amount of time the government can store the information it collects to five years, with the approval of the attorney general required to search records that are older than three years. And it requires regular reporting to Congress on all FISA violations. The bill also requires the NSA to disclose to the public annually the number of times the agency searched its telephone metadata database.

Feinstein’s surveillance bill will now go head to head with Sensenbrenner and Leahy’s legislation. They introduced companion bills in the House and Senate that would end the bulk collection of phone metadata and put strict limits on the section of FISA that has been used to justify PRISM (so that if the online information of an Americans is accidentally collected, it cannot be searched). The USA FREEDOM Act has been referred to committee.

Unlike the bills introduced by Sensenbrenner and Leahy, Feinstein’s legislation was only made public after it was passed out of committee. EPIC’s Stepanovich notes that the secrecy with the which the Feinstein bill was crafted does not bode well for real reform. “This is the problem with all of these programs,” she says. “You don’t find out about them until it’s far too late, and you have secret collection approved by a secret court, that’s now being reformed by a law that’s kept secret. It is unclear to what substantive ‘improvements’ the title of the bill refers to.”

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The Battle of the NSA Surveillance Bills

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Timeline: A Century of Racist Sports Team Names

by y0afvun Posted on November 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, representatives from the Oneida Nation met with NFL higher-ups in New York City to discuss the Washington pro football team’s offensive name—the latest in a series of moves to pressure the franchise to change its name and mascot. After the meeting, Oneida representative Ray Halbritter said, “Believe me, we’re not going away.”

But with everyone from President Obama to Bob Costas weighing in on the Redacted, it’s worth remembering that this issue didn’t start when, earlier this year, owner Dan Snyder said that’d he’d “never” change the name—and that it’s not limited to one team. Here are some key moments in the history of racially insensitive sports mascots:

1890

The word “redskin” first appears in a Merriam-Webster dictionary. Eight years later, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary notes that the term is “often contemptuous.”

1915

The first incarnation of baseball’s Cleveland Indians forms. “There will be no real Indians on the roster, but the name will recall fine traditions,” the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote at the time.

1922

Oorang Dog Kennels owner Walter Lingo founds the Oorang Indians, an NFL team made up entirely of Native Americans and coached by Jim Thorpe. The team’s popular halftime shows feature tomahawk-throwing demonstrations and performances from Lingo’s prized Airedale terriers.

1926

The Duluth Kelleys pro football team changes its name to the Duluth Eskimos.

1933

The Boston Braves changes its name to the Boston Redacted. According to the Boston Herald, “the change was made to avoid confusion with the Braves baseball team and the team that is to be coached by an Indian.” (The coach, Lone Star Dietz, might not have been Native American.)

1934

The Zulu Cannibal Giants, an all-black baseball team that played in war paint and grass skirts, barnstorms around the country. Six years later, the Ethiopian Clowns continue the tradition of mixing baseball with comedy to appeal to white audiences.

1951

Sportswriters dub the Cleveland Indians’ new red-skinned Native American logo “Chief Wahoo.” The caricature is inexplicably still in use today.

1962

The Philadelphia Warriors basketball team moves to San Francisco, changing its Native American caricature logo to a plain headdress. In 1969, the imagery is dropped altogether in favor of a Golden Gate Bridge logo.

1967

The Washington Redacted registers its name and logo for trademarks.

1972

The Kansas City Chiefs drop their Indian caricature logo, replacing it with the arrowhead still in use today.

1975

St. Bonaventure University drops the name Brown Squaws for its women’s teams when, as one former player put it, “a Seneca chief and clan mothers came over from the reservation and asked us to stop using the name, because it meant vagina.” Seventeen years later, men’s and women’s team names are officially changed from the Brown Indians to the Bonnies.

1978

Washington Redacted fan Zema Williams, who is African American, begins appearing at home games in a replica headdress. “Chief Zee” becomes an unofficial mascot. “The older people been watching me so long, they don’t even say ‘Indian,'” Williams told the Washington Post. “They say, ‘Injun. There’s my Injun.'” He still goes to games in his regalia.

1978

Syracuse University drops its Saltine Warrior mascot—a costumed undergrad—and iconography after Native American students call the character racist and degrading.

1986

The Atlanta Braves retire “Chief Noc-A-Homa,” a man in Native American dress who would emerge from a tepee in the left field bleachers to dance after a home run. Levi Walker, a member of the Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and the last man to play Noc-A-Homa, said the Braves were “overly sensitive about being politically correct.”

1992

Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser writes that “it’s only a matter of time until ‘Redskins’ is gone.” He suggests the team change its name to the Pigskins. (In 2012, a Washington City Paper poll asks readers to vote for a new team name; “Pigskins” wins with 50 percent of the vote.)

1994

Marquette University and St. John’s University both change their Native American mascots. Marquette’s Warriors become the Golden Eagles; St. John’s Redmen become the Red Storm.

1997

The Miami (Ohio) University Redskins become the RedHawks.

2001

The National Congress of American Indians commissions a poster featuring a Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo baseball cap alongside those from the (imaginary) New York Jews and San Francisco Chinamen. The ad goes viral in 2013 when the Redacted controversy heats up again.

2003

The University of Northern Colorado’s satirically named Fighting Whites intramural basketball team uses $100,000 from merchandise sales to create a scholarship fund for minority students.

2005

The NCAA grants Florida State University a waiver to continue using its Seminoles nickname and iconography largely due to support from the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which maintains a friendly relationship with the university.

2012

A leaked Atlanta Braves batting-practice cap features the decades-old “Screaming Savage” logo. After a public outcry, it never makes it to stores.

May 2013

Redacted owner Dan Snyder tells USA Today that he’ll never change his team’s name: “NEVER—you can use caps.” Ten members of Congress, including Native American Tom Cole (R-Okla.), sign a letter urging Snyder to drop the R-word: “Native Americans throughout the country consider the term ‘redskin’ a racial, derogatory slur akin to the ‘N-word.'” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell responds that the team’s name is “a unifying force that stands for strength, courage, pride and respect.”

July 2013

A resolution by the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes states that “the use of the term ‘Redskins’ as the name of a franchise is derogatory and racist” and that “the term perpetuates harmful stereotypes, even if it is not intentional, and continues the damaging practice of relegating Native people to the past and as a caricature.”

August 2013

Slate, The New Republic, and Mother Jones decide to stop publishing the team’s name. In the following month, MMQB.com‘s Peter King, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, and USA Today‘s Christine Brennan follow suit.

September 2013

Appearing on a DC sports radio program, Goodell says of the Redacted name, “If one person is offended, we have to listen.”

October 2013

Obama tells the Associated Press, “If I were the owner of the team and I knew that there was a name of my team—even if it had a storied history—that was offending a sizable group of people, I’d think about changing it.” In a letter to season ticket holders, Snyder insists that the name “was never a label. It was, and continues to be, a badge of honor.”

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Timeline: A Century of Racist Sports Team Names

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WATCH: Ted Cruz’s Dad Calls US a "Christian Nation," Says Obama Should Go "Back to Kenya"

by 85138uz Posted on October 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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In April, Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), spoke to the tea party of Hood County, which is southwest of Fort Worth, and made a bold declaration: The United States is a “Christian nation.” The septuagenarian businessman turned evangelical pastor did not choose to use the more inclusive formulation “Judeo-Christian nation.” Insisting that the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution “were signed on the knees of the framers” and were a “divine revelation from God,” he went on to say, “yet our president has the gall to tell us that this is not a Christian nation…The United States of America was formed to honor the word of God.” Seven months earlier, Rafael Cruz, speaking to the North Texas Tea Party on behalf of his son, who was then running for Senate, called President Barack Obama an “outright Marxist” who “seeks to destroy all concept of God,” and he urged the crowd to send Obama “back to Kenya.”

Comments uttered by a politician’s parent may have little relevance in assessing an elected official. But it’s appropriate to take Rafael Cruz into account when evaluating his son the senator. Ted Cruz, the tea party champion who almost single-handedly spurred the recent government shutdown, has often deployed his father as a political asset. He routinely cites his Cuban-born father, who emigrated from the island nation in 1957, when he discusses immigration and justifies his opposition to the bipartisan reform bill that passed in the Senate. (Ted Cruz hails his father as a symbol of the “American dream” who came to the United States legally—though Rafael Cruz began his career in the oil industry in Canada, where Ted was born.) Moreover, Ted Cruz campaigns with his father; he had him in tow on a recent trip to Iowa (where the evangelical vote is crucial in GOP presidential primaries). Rafael Cruz regularly speaks to tea party and Republican groups in Texas as a surrogate for his son; during Ted Cruz’s 2012 Senate campaign, his father was dispatched to events and rallies across the state to whip up support. And thanks to Ted Cruz’s political rise, Rafael has become a conservative star in his own right. He has been prominently featured—and praised—at events held by prominent right-wing outfits, such as FreedomWorks and Heritage Action. What Rafael Cruz says—especially when he is speaking for his son—matters.

The elder Cruz is a pastor affiliated with the Purifying Fire ministry, a Christian evangelical outfit that seeks to “gain back territory from the Kingdom of Darkness” and that was founded by Suzanne Hinn, the wife of controversial televangelist and self-proclaimed miracle-healer Benny Hinn. Rafael Cruz’s inflammatory remarks and fundamentalist views have recently started to attract increased media attention. A few weeks ago, he sparked headlines when he told a gathering of Republicans in Colorado that Obama has vowed to “side with the Muslims,” that Obamacare mandates “suicide counseling” for the elderly, and that gay marriage is a plot to make “government your god.”

A sermon Rafael Cruz delivered in August 2012 at an Irving, Texas, mega-church has also come under scrutiny. At that event, he asserted that Christian true believers are “anointed” by God to “take dominion” of the world in “every area: society, education, government, and economics.” He was preaching a particular form of evangelical Christianity known as Dominionism (a.k.a. Christian Reconstructionism) that holds that these “anointed” Christians are destined to take over the government and create in practice, if not in official terms, a theocracy. Rafael Cruz also endorsed the evangelical belief known as the “end-time transfer of wealth“—that is, as a prelude to the second coming of Christ, God will seize the wealth of the wicked and redistribute it to believers. But, Cruz told the flock, don’t expect to benefit from this unless you tithe mightily. Introducing Cruz at this service, Christian Zionist pastor Larry Huch offered this bottom line: In the coming year, he predicted, “God will begin to rule and reign. Not Wall Street, not Washington, God’s people and his kingdom will begin to rule and reign. I know that’s why God got Rafael’s son elected, Ted Cruz, the next senator.” (In July, several prominent Dominionist pastors at a ceremony in Iowa blessed and anointed Ted Cruz, rendering him, in their view, a “king” who would help usher in the kingdom of Christ.)

During his sermon at this church, Rafael Cruz preached that men, not women, are the spiritual leaders of their families: “As God commands us men to teach your wife, to teach your children—to be the spiritual leader of your family—you’re acting as a priest. Now, unfortunately, unfortunately, in too many Christian homes, the role of the priest is assumed by the wife. Why? Because the man had abdicated his responsibility as priest to his family…So the wife has taken up that banner, but that’s not her responsibility. And if I’m stepping on toes, just say, ‘Ouch.'”

As Rafael Cruz recounted at the Hood County tea party event, he had a powerful role in shaping his son, introducing Ted, when he was in middle school, to the Free Enterprise Education Center, where the young Cruz was flooded with Austrian School libertarian economics and archly conservative interpretations of US history. Cruz excelled in this setting and went on to become part of a traveling road show of teens called the Constitutional Corroborators. They appeared at Rotary Club luncheons across the state to extol the wonders of the free market and the US Constitution. While the Rotarians ate lunch, the whiz kids transcribed from memory the articles of the Constitution on easels placed at the front of the room.

At the Hood County gathering, Rafael Cruz, in full sync with his son’s political stance, attacked RINOs—Republicans In Name Only. He noted that the “wicked” were now ruling the United States. He insisted that “those death panels are in Obamacare,” and that the US government wants “to take all of your money” and confiscate “our fortunes.” He asserted that the Democratic Party promotes “everything that is contrary to the word of God.” He also exclaimed, “Social justice is a cancer. Social justice means you are ruled by whatever the mob does. What social justice does is destroy individual responsibility.”

Pastor Cruz is a fiery speaker whose rhetorical red meat is well-received by hardcore Republican and tea party audiences. He regularly has compared Obama to Fidel Castro and routinely echoes the no-surrender calls of his son. At a “freedom rally” at the Alamo in 2012, he vowed, “We’ve had enough compromise…enough of Establishment Republicans that don’t stand for anything.” Speaking to Houston Republicans in September, he decried John McCain and Mitt Romney, blasting both of the former presidential candidates for having “played dead” when challenging Obama. He blasted McCain for refusing to slam Obama regarding the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He asserted that the elderly would be harmed by Obamacare, claiming that “everywhere in the world when socialized medicine has been instituted it takes 12 to 18 months to get any kind of medical proceeding.” (That is not the case with Medicare, a form of socialized health care.) He also declared, “I haven’t heard Obama ask us for our consent when he’s trying to ram Obamacare down our throats”—without noting that Congress voted for the Affordable Care Act. At the Hood County event, Rafael Cruz, a fervent foe of gay rights, vowed that he would be speaking “across this country to support constitutional conservatives to retake the Senate.”

Whether he’s at a prayer breakfast or a tea party rally, Rafael Cruz easily and enthusiastically mixes religion and politics. At an event hosted by the National Federation of Republican Assemblies in September, he contended that after the 2012 election, God told him, “If we could blame one group of people for what happened in the last election, it is the pastors.” By that he meant that, for decades, too many Christian leaders have remained on the political sidelines, declining to do combat with liberals and Democrats. Consequently, he explained, prayer has been removed from schools, legalized abortion has continued, and gay marriage has come to pass in several states. He insisted that the advancement of Christianity (his fundamentalist version of it) depends on political battle, noting the need not just for a “spiritual savior” but a “political savior.” (The idea of states’ rights, he said, was based in the bible.) Obama, Cruz proclaimed, believes “government is your god.” When Cruz was a keynote speaker at a tax day rally hosted by Texas tea partiers in April, he told the crowd that conservative Christians need to take over “every school board in this nation.” At a Texas tea party rally in September 2012, he claimed that Obama has “a clear agenda…to destroy American exceptionalism”—and “to achieve a “worldwide redistribution of wealth” and “make us subject to the United Nations.”

The United States as a “Christian nation”; death panels; social justice a cancer; gay rights a conspiracy; the “wicked” in charge in Washington; women inferior to men as spiritual leaders; Obama a Muslim-favoring, God-hating, Marxist Kenyan; End Times; a UN worldwide dictatorship; states’ rights; free markets over all—Rafael Cruz blends the far reaches of extreme conservatism and Christian fundamentalism. He embodies the full synthesis of the tea party and the religious right. In fact, he has noted that the rise of the religious right in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign “was the precursor of the tea party.” Rafael Cruz may well be key to understanding the ideas, desires, and long-term aims that drive Ted Cruz—a politician who is exerting an outsized influence on the GOP.

At the least, Cruz ought to have to explain whether he shares the more extreme views of his No. 1 surrogate. Asked to comment on Rafael Cruz’s remarks—particularly his statement that the United States is a “Christian nation” and his call for Obama to be shipped back to Kenya—Sen. Cruz’s office requested citations for these quotes. After receiving the citations, Sean Rushton, a spokesperson for Cruz, replied, “These selective quotes, taken out of context, mischaracterize the substance of Pastor Cruz’s message. Like many Americans, he feels America is on the wrong track.” Rushton added, “Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator.”

“People here are trying to figure out Ted Cruz,” a Democratic senator recently told me. “And a lot of them are saying, ‘He went to Princeton, Harvard Law—he doesn’t really believe what he says.’ But I think he does. All you have to do is look at his father. So much of our life is mirroring. And Ted Cruz is mirroring his father.”

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WATCH: Ted Cruz’s Dad Calls US a "Christian Nation," Says Obama Should Go "Back to Kenya"

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What It’s Like To Sneak Across the Border To Harvest Food

by 2343b4u4u Posted on October 31, 2013

Mother Jones

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For most anthropologists, “field work” means talking to and observing a particular group. But for Seth Holmes, a medical anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, it also literally means working in a field: toiling alongside farm workers from the Triqui indigenous group of Oaxaca, Mexico, in a vast Washington State berry patch. It also means visiting them in their tiny home village—and making the harrowing trek back to US farm fields through a militarized and increasingly perilous border.

Holmes recounts his year and a half among the people who harvest our food in his new book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies. It’s a work of academic anthropology, but written vividly and without jargon. In its unvarnished view into what our easy culinary bounty means for the people burdened with generating it, Fresh Fruit/Broken Bodies has earned its place on a short shelf alongside works like Tracie McMillan’s The American Way of Eating, Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland, and Frank Bardacke‘s Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers.

I recently caught up with Holmes via phone about the view from the depths of our food system.

Mother Jones: What sparked your interest in farm workers—and how did you gain access to the workers you cover in the book?

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What It’s Like To Sneak Across the Border To Harvest Food

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