Spare a thought for the less fortunate

You may think you have it tough, but there is always someone who has it tougher.

Washington Post: Dave Brat tells inmates, 'You think you're having a hard time -- I've got $5 million in negative ads'

CNN)Virginia Republican Rep. Dave Brat drew parallels Wednesday between the campaign attack ads against him and the challenges faced by inmates at a Virginia prison, according to the Washington Post.

"You think you're having a hard time -- I got $5 million worth of negative ads going at me," Brat told Chesterfield County Jail inmates Wednesday, The Post reported.

"How do you think I'm feeling? Nothing's easy. For anybody. You think I'm a congressman. 'Oh, life's easy. This guy's off having steaks,'" Brat continued, in a recording published by The Post. "Baloney, I got a daughter, she's got to deal with that crap on TV every day. It's tough.' "

Yes, that's a sad story, indeed. But not nearly so heart-rending as this one:

Heidi Cruz Didn’t Plan for This
a whole new world—that is what Ted Cruz wanted to give her.

Yes, a world of tax breaks and deregulation and no gay marriage, - - Isn't it Romaaaantic!

It was the spring of 2001, and Heidi Nelson was planning her nuptials to the man she’d met just over a year earlier. On Christmas break from Harvard Business School, she’d encountered the cocky and cerebral Cruz in Austin, Texas, where they were both working on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. He was “super-smart” and “really fun” and looked like a “1950s movie star.” “It was love at first sight,” she told me.

Okay, I'll give you "super smart." I can't prove that there wasn't some period of time when Ted Cruz was *ahem* "super fun."

But which 1950's movie star do you think this guy resembled?





Maybe a young Fuyvesh Finkel?

Peter Lorre?

Walter Brennan?

Imagine "love at first sight." The sight of this oily, slimy, mincing, preening little worm.

Which is how Heidi found herself planning a May wedding to a man who, for all his pretension, insisted they play “A Whole New World,” the popular Disney song, at the end of the ceremony. She didn’t understand: They had a band, she told him—a violinist, no less! Why on earth would they play a CD? “Because no one can do Aladdin,” he said.

Hey, the man loves his showtunes!

If some people look like their dogs, Heidi Cruz looks like her house: expensive, serene, draped in pretty fabrics. That Wednesday afternoon, she greeted me somewhat breathlessly—“This client call went much longer than I thought it would!”—wearing a light-blue silk dress, a slightly darker blue scarf, and a knotted strand of pearls (not the ones from Ted). As we sat down to eat, she said what I imagine all women who wear these things must say, her voice warm and conspiratorial: “We’re gonna have some champagne. Yes, we are.”

On march 22, 2015, Heidi was on a Southwest flight en route to Liberty University, where her husband would announce his bid for the White House the following day. She was journaling her calorie count. . .

Oh my God. Is that really a thing? Is that really a thing a human person does?

 She was journaling her calorie count when she accidentally flipped to entries from more than a decade before, in the midst of her depression.

So. . . the depression started when, exactly? If the "midst" of the depression was more than a decade before 2015, that would put the beginning around. . . .

Ted Cruz/Heidi Cruz/Marriage

May 27, 2001 

Yeah, right around then.

Also, who huge is that fucking journal?

I asked Heidi whether she was thinking about killing herself.  “We were early in our marriage … It’s a wonderful thing—like, in a great way, you amplify each other. You’re a couple now, you’re two together, stronger. But before that, you make all your own decisions,” she said. “And there’s an adjustment that takes place when you realize that life is now all about the two of you, and that’s fine, but there are trade-offs.
“I think it’s very natural to feel afraid, to feel like things are in your path, in your wake, that were not your decision,” she continued. “I think my spirit just fell to a low place.”

Gee, and here I thought it would be paradise being married to this thing:

The officer who arrived on the scene believed that Heidi was a “danger to herself,” according to his report. He drove her to the police station. Her husband came to pick her up. “Ted’s never mad,” Heidi remembered. “He just hugged me

Jeez, that is so Texas.
 You find a suicidal woman sitting by the freeway and you take her to the hospital the police station and call a psychiatrist her grotesque evil husband to come pick her up like he isn't the souirce of her misery.

“He just hugged me and said, ‘I just wanna make sure that you’re happy here, and that this is a successful chapter. We’re not always going to be here.’” She said the moment helped her realize how much he loved her.

“It was a challenging time. Because she was struggling with having given up a professional post that was very meaningful to her,” the senator told me recently about that night. “But we came through that process, and actually came closer together.” He said they never considered leaving Texas.  

So the moment that showed you how much Ted loved you. . . was a lie. He never considered leaving Texas.
Which might not seem like that big a deal, except the explanation Heidi gives for her breakdown is this:

“It was, like, all of this—like, ‘Why am I here? And by the way, I gave up living where my family is to come here, so that I could sit on [the] 290 freeway every week to go work for a company that’s actually headquartered in New York, and I could be in headquarters if I wasn’t here with you.’”

So. Yeah.

Shortly thereafter, on a friend’s suggestion, Heidi signed up for a Catholic spiritual retreat. Much of that weekend was cathartic.
Heidi remembers her counselor, an 80-year-old Haitian woman, well.
The counselor “sat me down, and she looked at me and she goes, ‘I can tell you have an amazing husband. And you both will have an impact on this country,’” Heidi recalled. “She said … ‘God is going to use you, not Ted—not just Ted. You’re part of this team for a reason. God’s gonna use you to do something beyond yourself. You just let God take you to Texas, you let him take you wherever. Because there’s something bigger than you now.’”

Jesus Christ!  So she has the same delusions of grandeur/Messiah complex as Ted? Where the hell do they get these "counselors?"

There were downs, of course. Days when being on just wasn’t all that fun, when even someone as intentional as Heidi would find herself asking: To what end? “You cannot prepare to run for president,” she told me. “You can’t prepare to be told on the flight, ‘Oh, sorry,’ last minute, ‘you’re gonna have a meeting with a bunch of pastors at the hot-dog stand in the Des Moines, Iowa, airport, and they’re gonna ask you about your husband’s spiritual life.’

Oh my God, you mean to tell me that people would ask you questions? About the candidate you're supporting? Who is also your husband? Yeah, there's just no way to prepare yourself for that!

“I mean, that’s the weirdest expletive I’ve ever heard!” she exclaimed. (She actually said the word expletive.)

No. NO! No she did not seriously use the word "expletive."

The Cruzes’ oldest daughter, Caroline, who was 7 when the campaign started, was skeptical about her decision to leave Goldman 

Which is totally what you'd expect from a small child who is totally a normal human person.

“I tried to articulate, you know, ‘It’s actually for the country, it’s a much bigger project than ourselves.’ And she wanted to know, if we won, was the first lady paid?”
When Cruz told her no, Caroline paused before answering. “That’s a bad deal for you,” Heidi recalled her saying. “We shouldn’t do this.”

I’m not sure whether this conversation happened word for word with her daughter. It may more accurately reflect one Heidi had with herself. 

But here's the part where it really gets sad:

Another term in the Senate means six more years her husband won’t live at home. It means more family conversations about why Dad can’t make it to school on Wednesday for the meet and greet with Caroline’s new teachers. It means Heidi is working 70-hour weeks not only because she wants to, but also because she has to.
“I really feel mission-driven on what he’s accomplishing,” she clarified. But “it does take some supportiveness, you know. Six to seven years in it, with me being the primary breadwinner—it’s like, ‘Uh, yeah, this is when people say thank you. I’ll now take that appreciation.’” She laughed. “Yeah, we’re seven years into this, and we’re not buying a second home anytime soon.”

Yeah, it's gotta be tough being the primary breadwinner when your loser husband is only pulling in. . . how much do senators make? **googles senate salary** On Hundred and Seventy-Four Thousand Dollars a year?  And Heidi does what for a living, again?

Oh, yeah. The  co-head of the Southwest region for private wealth management at Goldman Sachs. 

Honestly, it's surprising they can afford ONE home!

But lest you think that Heidi Cruz's troubles are all about her own misfortunes, let me assure you that she is also very concerend and bothered by the state of our nation.

. . . fewer and fewer Americans seemed to understand the Constitution. Free speech, religious liberty, gun rights—there just weren’t a ton of families “talking about that at the dinner table anymore.” 

Yes, I remember the good old days when we would gather around the dinner table and my dad would ask us how our days went at school and then we'd all discuss the 2nd Amendment and the limits of religious liberty.

So take a minute today to think of those less fortunate than yourselves. No matter how difficult your road may seem, at least you're not married to Ted Cruz.