The Many Faces of Ted Cruz and Other Matters With Which I'm far Too Busy to Concern Myself But Do Despite Present Time Constraints

I copied and pasted the first nine images

of Cruz that appeared in a Google Images search of "Ted Cruz."

I omitted image #3 because it was a closer view of image #1.

I did otherwise nothing to manipulate the results in order to gain stranger looking images of Cruz.

Any manipulation was done either by the folks at Google 

or by the photographers

or by Ted Cruz himself.

Perhaps he deliberately makes farcical faces whenever a camera is pointed at him.

You be the judge.

I'd first like to say that I believe or at least hope that the American public is smarter than the polls would indicate. I believe that at least a part of those people who have told the pollsters that they support Donald Trump for president are, in actuality, too smart to vote for him. While it may seem fun for some strange reason to some people to pretend that Trump would make an acceptable president, when those people are actually faced with a ballot bearing the names of candidates, I'd like to think that most of even those individuals who have indicated support for Trump in some ways in the past won't be able to force themselves to cast their votes for him. A relative few of them, in my estimation, probably truly are stupid enough to elect such a man to a position that gives him access to even more power than the power his money already affords him. Most people, however, may be sufficiently disillusioned with the political process to pretend they'd like to elect change by electing a man who is foreign to the political process, but in the final analysis, they'll recognize that placing someone with Trump's disposition and level of self-control in such close proximity to the black box is too daunting a prospect to undertake voluntarily. The North Koreans had no choice when it came to Kim Jong Un and his ascension to power. This is, however, the U. S. A. In theory, at least, we all have a say in the matter. 

But enough of political pontifications and doomsday predictions. What I actually wish to say even though it pertains to a presidential candidate, is not all that political in nature. 

Why does Ted Cruz consistently look so goofy in his pictures? I understand that he has many people following him around with cameras. If someone took enough pictures of me, I'm sure I'd be caught with silly expressions in some of my photos. I don't know if I could compete with Ted Cruz on that battle ground, however, even if I consciously attempted to look crazy or ditzy or foolish.

Is the biased liberal media so out to get Cruz that they've convinced the folks at Google to post at least four pictures of Cruz in which he looks as though he's deliberately displaying preposterous faces for every single image in which Cruz looks even remotely lucid? The question may sound sarcastic, but I'm actually asking it with sincerity.

Don't make any conclusions based on the information I'm providing. Go to Google and type in Cruz's name, then click on "Images." See for yourself. I'm interested in feedback from anyone who has an opinion. If you wish for your feedback to be private, either DM me at my Twitter or email me at aleximerc@aol.com. I keep confidences.

I'm down to a single final exam remaining. The other six all went well. The last final exam is a combination practical / written test, and is potentially ugly, but I've studied diligently already and will, counting both independent and group study time, put in about five more hours in preparation for it.

Glenn Beck, the Donald, and Mr. Potato Head

Separated at birth?

My pseudouncle sent me a link to a site where Glenn Beck, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Potato Head, is quoted as essentially encouraging parents to physically rough up their children as a way to teach them to believe in God and to teach them to be tougher. The only consolation is that anyone who takes Glenn Beck seriously is probably such a wack job that he or she is more than likely already engaging in such barbaric practices.

One of Donald Trump's favorite enterprises, the Miss Universe corporate entity, has stirred up recent controversy. The reigning Miss Universe, former Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo, has been charged with some form of indecency for posing with shoes or some similar iniquity at the Taj Mahal. (It seems that every news article about the incident reports it differently.) If India were not such a misogynistic nation, it would leave the poor young woman alone and charge, if it needed to charge anyone, the people responsible for carrying out the photo shoot or, for that matter, Mr. Trump himself. Pick on someone your own size, Hindustan.

Whatever crime it is with which Miss Culpo has been charged supposedly carries and up to two-year prison sentence. I doubt any women's prison in India is exactly Camp Cupcake. With the frequency of rape even on the streets of India, and with the light sentences for the small minority of rapes that are actually prosecuted in the country, it's not much of a stretch to think that any woman incarcerated in an Indian prison is in grave danger of being sexually assaulted by male prison officials. This is a nation that doesn't take significant measures to protect women from bride burning, sometimes even for the reason that their new husbands are unsatisfied with their dowries.

If it were I who was charged with such a crime in India, I could simply not go back if I were fortunate enough to have left India before being formally charged. Miss Culpo, however, has a greater quandary. She is, after all, Miss Universe, with a contract full of obligations to fulfill. Idiot Donald Trump can force her to go just about anywhere until the terms of her contract expire. If she chooses not to accede to his travel itinerary, she could conceivably face major domestic litigation. If she travels anywhere else, she could face deportation and possibly incarceration in India.

I didn't even know who was the current Miss Universe until this non-scandal hit the news. My mom told me that when she [my mom] was a very young child, normal people used to actually watch the Miss Universe pageant on live television. It's difficult to believe the Miss Universe pageant was ever relevant. I wouldn't have a clue when or where to find it on TV without googling.

India needs to worry a little more about the corrupt activities of its politicians and leave poor 21-year-old olivia Culpo alone. If someone absolutely must be charged with desecrating a sacred site or whatever offense this heinous government is attempting to pin on Miss Culpo, it needs to start at the top of the Miss Universe pageant corporate ladder instead of harassing the unfortunate woman who was doing as she was told to do by her bosses.

Savage misogynists, take a page out of Jocelyn Elders' handbook and screw yourselves!

This blog is ended. Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord and to keep your shoes away from the Taj Mahal and keep your children away from Glenn Beck and his maniacal child-rearing advice.

I still like you, Judge Alex, Happy Birthday Mr. President, and the Birthers

Judge Alex, my Twitter follower if not my actual friend, as I am not delusional and know the difference between celebrity social media rllationships and real-life friendshps

Where do I begin . . .except to note thst while Judge Alex's photo is set on "large' and Donald Trump's photo is set on "medium," size, even considering the head shot angle versus a "from the waist-up" orientation, note the relative differences in the sizes of the heads of the two men. Also note that money, as evidenced by the lower photo, can't necessarily buy a decent hair stylist.

This blog was to be about reality TV, but I allowed myself to become sidetracked in a major way. I'll discuss reality TV in the near future.  Then again, maybe I won't.  Regardless, for the most part, such is not the topic of the bulk of this post. I apologize if you are offended or even disappointed by my abrupt change in direction of topic, although since I never announced my topic in advance, you probably neither know nor care of the substitution.

I am once again being followed by Judge Alex on Twitter. Someone else on Twitter complained rather bluntly -- even rudely -- about having been un-followed by Judge Alex. I commiserated with the person and said the same had happened to me. I offered by way of a possible though far from definitive explanation that perhaps, with so many Tweeters who wish to be followed by him, Judge Alex can only follow any single Tweeter for a given amount of time before un-following the person to make room for someone else.  Judge Alex himself (as opposed to admin) posted to say that such was not the case. He said that his administrator periodically un-follows Tweeters who no longer follow him because of a perceived lack of interest. He said he had no idea what happened in my case, as I had never un-followed him. I am, in fact, one of his more regular communicators, though I make a sincere effort not to make too much of pest of myself. Being a minor pest is part of my job and is something I  do especially  well, if I may be so bold as to say so myself.

The bottom line is that Judge Alex again follows me. I no longer consider him a snob. I am happy, and all is right with the world, at least from this particular standpoint. Iran is still developing nuclear weapons, all manner of chaos is going on in Africa as well as various parts of the Mideast and North Korea, and there are still people walking the surface of the U. S., some of whom actually possess the power to cast votes, who believe that Barack Obama was born somewhere other than Hawaii, and is therefore not the actual President of the United States.  

Some of these people even accept that President Obama was born in Hawaii but still deny his rightful claim to the presidency on the grounds of his lack of valid U. S. citizenship by virtue of their rejection the 1959 Hawaii Admission Act and the March Referendum [a vote by residents, passed by a margin of 17 to1, to agree to statehood as opposed to continued status as a US territory; independence was not an option].This they proclaim, and do so loudly and proudly, despite the fact that, even had Hawaii been not a state but a mere territory, Barack Obama still would have been a rightful U. S. citizen.  

This is akin to my suggesting that the Compromise of 1850 never occurred or was otherwise somehow an invalid document and legal action, and that Texas remains, to this day, a sovereign nation. Such would clearly delineate that President George W. Bush, though born in Connecticut, clearly made his residence in and lived the greatest part of his life in  Texas, a residency which, in recognition of Texas sovereign status, would clearly invalidate his own U. S. citizenship and make him, therefore, ineligible to hold the office of President of the United States. Clearly, my suggestion is perfectly ludicrous. While George W. Bush was not a politician with whom I was or am politically aligned, I recognize his former standing as the holder of the office of President of the United States, and , despite any ideological differences I may have had with him, I respect the office of the Presidency of the United States and accord former President Bush #2 all rights and Privileges in accordance with the office. 

Still, once the infamous birth certificate of Barack Obama was produced  (Donald Trump's legacy, the pride for which I am certain he will carry with him to his grave, unless the man is so incredibly narcissistic that he plans on having himself cryogenically preserved, in which case he will carry the pride with him into the freezer) and even before, since the portion of the document necessary to certify the citizenship of Barack Obama was already available to the public,  the issue of the lack of Barack Obama's rightful claim to the presidency was precariously close to my perfectly ludicrous claim that President George W. Bush was a citizen not of the United States of America but of the Republic of Texas. Such is bat-shit crazy talk, yet it is far more parallel to the Birthers' claims than many acknowledge.

Furthering Mr. Trump's position in this fiasco, he treats himself as some sort of hero for his role in forcing the state of Hawaii to finally release the long form of President Obama's birth certificate. 

The undertaking was arguably out of line both as to the action of Mr. Trump and  to the response of the state of Hawaii in the sense that were I to approach my own county registrar with the request for the same long-form document  of my birth, my request would be denied. Why should Donald Trump, just because of his prominence as an obnoxious celebrity, have been given in to when neither you nor  I would  have received the same consideration had we requested such documentation concerning our own births? Still, Mr. Trump was not going away; the state of Hawaii most likely did what it had to do.

 My point here, though, is that Mr. Trump portrays himself as some sort of Moses speaking God's word from the top of the mountain (minus Moses' brother Aaron; Moses allegedly had a cleft lip or some similar major problem or defect resulting in a speech impediment so severe as to require the need for a spokesperson) for producing the long form of President Obama's birth certificate when all the production of such documentation accomplished was to verify what the President, his grandmother, and everyone who knew anything about his actual birth had been saying all along: that he was born  on August 4, 1961, IN THE STATE OF HAWAII.   What, in Mr. Trump's over-inflated self-opinion, rendered this act in any way as a furtherance of his cause?

In conclusion, I would like to paraphrase something that President Obama himself once said in [mock] praise of his mother, although he was not denigrating her,  but rather, the whole Birther movement. Stanley Ann Durham was so incredibly intelligent and filled with foresight that it occurred to her, at the age of eighteen,  while giving birth in Kenya to a baby boy, to have the birth announced in both the Honololu Advertiser AND the Honolulu Star Bulletin  and to record the birth in both newspapers as having taken place in Kapiolani Hospital in Honolulu, because she instinctively knew at that ripe old age of eighteen that her baby boy would one day run for President  of the United States of America and would need false documentation that the child had been born in the U. S. and not in Kenya, where the Birthers allege that the child was actually born. This is intended as no slight on Stanley Ann (she later dropped the Stanley and was called Ann ) Dunham's intelligence, as she attained a high level of education , earning multiple degrees, including eventually  a PhD in anthropology from the University of Hawaii, Manoa Campus in 1992, before succumbing to cancer in 1995. Rather, it serves as a  a testament to the sheer absurdity of everything for which the Birther movement and its proponents ever stood.

If you are or ever were a Birther, do yourself and the rest of us a favor: go hide under a rock, or, at the very least,  keep your ridiculous political opinions to yourself.

My Aunt Graduates tomorrow

It's that time of the year for universities, high schools, middle schools still in the dark ages (Middle school graduations, or commencements, are rapidly going the way of those who believe Ann Coulter has anything worthwhile to say, and under the the "Jethro Bodine Clause," which offers the practical reasoning that since even Jethro of "Beverly Hillbillies" fame made it through sixth grade, there's no legitimate purpose for throwing bashes complete with caps, gowns, and limousines to commemorate the successful passage of students from eight grade, similar to the logic that certificates and awards aren't usually presented for learning the proper way to flush a toilet.) Even preschools to hold ceremonies commemorating successful passage from one phase of learning to the next.***

Medical issues forced Auntie Jillian to pass on tonight's university-wide commencement ceremony, but the truth of that matter is that she really didn't want to be there anyway, and if the real medical emergencies of pseudomonas aeruginosa-induced pneumonia and perforated ulcers requiring two separate surgeries to remove and resect portions of her intestines hadn't materialized, Auntie Jillian would have invented a hangnail or cramps as an excuse to pass on the opportunity of hearing just one more member of the LDS church hierarchy bloviate on the virtues of integrity, regular class attendance, and the blessings associated with giving generously to the various alumni associations when telemarketers call at inconvenient hours to hit up recent graduates still deeply in debt with student loans, using their most effective guilt-inducing techniqies to wrangle donations from the near-destitute.

Tomorrow evening is the Law School Convocation, which is considered the "real" graduation among law school students. That ceremony Auntie plans to attend. The logistics of her attendance and participation haven't entirely been effectuated, although her father-in-law has many of the details hammered out. He's a former professor with the university who still maintains ties, so the Powers That Be at least pretend to listen to most of what he has to say even though he probably has no more knowledge than the family dog about the best way to get a young woman who is for practical purposes temporarily either an invalid or a cripple (take your pick of which term you find less offensive) and whose record number of post-surgery steps is, as of this evening, twenthy-eight. Her father-in-law counted the number of steps needed to reach her seat on the stage from the point at which the graduates begin their procession. His total, with his stride that is probably at least 1.77* times greater than hers, was one-hundred=ninety-seven steps. If you believe in miracles, please begin praying for one immediately. If you have any direct connections with Benny Hinn, please persuade him to fly to Provo and heal my aunt before tomorrow evening.(It would be ideal, incidentally, if he didn't make her fall to the floor in a state of unconsciousness immediately after being healed, as do most of his subjects, as there will not be enough time to clean and re-press her gown prior to the ceremony, much less to re-style her hair and makeup.) Any way we configurate the data, someone needs to alert Houston to the existence of a problem.

A wheelchair has been recommended as a way to transport my aunt from the point at which the graduates' procession begins to her seat on the stage. This isn't, all things considered, necessarily a bad idea. My aunt, however, was an NCAA Division I athlete, and has always taken pride in her strength, endurance, and vitality. She feels that people would be judgimg her because she is not a member of the majority religion, and the people judging her would henceforth reach the conclusion, spoken or otherwise, that her failure to follow the LDS "Word of Wisdon," which is a set of rules governing what can or cannot be eaten, drunk, or smoked, and would conclude that by her failure to follow the "Word of Wisdom," she herself had brought upon herself her physical misfortunes. That's what she says, anyway, even though, as a non-Mormon, she actually adheres to more of the tenets of the "Word of Wisdom" than do most practicing Mormons, and, on a non-sick day, can "run and not be weary, and walk and not faint" better than almost anyone, whether Mormon or Catholic or Branch Davidian (if there are any Branch Davidians left). This is all just what my aunt says. Her real worry is that people will look at hr funny if she is pushed in a wheelchair or somehow makes it to the stage any differently than anyone else. She's a girl. So am I. That's the way we think. I'd feel exactly the same way under identical circumstances.

Several of her law school classmates offered to piggy-back her or to carry her up to the stage or to transport her on one of those shairs (were they called litters?) on which royalty used to be transported by underlings. The university nixed both suggestions and other similar ones.

Her brother suggested that she sit in the front row of the audience and join the procession as it reached her. This idea has nor yet been rejected, which means that it will probably be the plan finally adopted. There are still concerns about the length of the ceremony and her ability to sit through it. A member of the law faculty who is also a doctor suggested placing her out of alphabetical order. (This would be a serious breach of protocol and might even require a signature from some head honcho Mormon, if not a vote from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the LDS church, for it to be even considered, much less allowed.) Anyway, the idea would be to place her on the back row so that she could be discreetly removed from the group and placed on a stretcher or couch nearby for portions of the proceedings that don't directly require her input or participation. She might not receive the full impact of the messgage of just how important it is to continue to give generously whenever the annyoing phone solicitors call during the dinner hour demanding a pledge and a credit card number, but she at least stands a chance of still being conscious when it is time for her to traipse across the stage and to receive her piece of paper that others are supposed to believe is an actual diploma. Real diplomas will not be mailed out until sometime in June, after the university's equivalent to the CIA has investigated sufficiently to know that she hasn't publicly denounced any church or universitiy authorities, hasn't acted in any way to effect a veto Proposition Eight, or has not accrued any library "overdue" fines.

Even traipsing across the stage is more of an issue for my aunt that we would like it to be. Is she capable of walking across the stage unescorted or unsupported? Under optimal circumstances the answer would be yes, but nerves, temporary weakness, and the possibily of a jealous classmate sticking his or her foot out to trip her remain real possibilities. My uncle has offered to excort her, but since no one else is being escorted across the stage by a spouse, my aunt is concerned about the appearance of this. My advice to my aunt about this matter is that she most likely has a better-looking spouse than anyone else in the entire law school class. Why not take advantage of a legitmate excuse to show him off and make others jealous? She is at least considering my advice. Other members of the class have offered to be on standy-by, and to walk more closely ahead of and behind her than would normally be done so that they can support her, catch her, carry her, or do whatever is needed.

My final bit of advice to my aunt was somewhat controversial and, I'm sad to say, wasn't taken all than seriously, although I hope that she will rethink the matter and reconsider. Because of her unique situation, all eyes will be on my aunt, for better or for worse. Why not use this attention as a platform to make a statement. She could speak of Jessica Beagley and of her mistreatment of sweet little Kristoff, or she could briefly air her view about Donald Trump's unfitness for any political office, including that of the Mayor of Wasilla, or could address her views about financial assistance for university students, or could even offer her views concerning Rebecca Black's talent or lack thereof. It isn't every day that one has a platform from which he or she will be heard. When everyone is looking at you, use the unwanted attention to your benefit.

* 1.77 is a figure I came up with totally arbitrarily, but it sounded good, so Im sticking with it.

*** In my opinion, preschool graduation ceremonies are acceptable if for no reason other than that preschoolers are inherently cute, and any opportunity to display their cuteness is a worthwhile endeavor.