Gas Pains

Tom grew up in Milwaukee, bartended in Wauwatosa in the '70s and moved here in 1984.

Commentary, observations and musings about the outdoors, life in general and maybe Tosa politics and personalities will be the order of the day. He savors a lively debate as much as terrific cooking.

Princes and Potentates

Birthers, Oath of Allegiance, Politics, Tea Party, Ted Cruz, Silly People

That's what I remember of it.  It's been rattling around in my brain for the better part of four and a half decades.  Princes and Potentates.  As a wise guy teenager I got a real charge out of that. 

I had to travel to the US Consular office in Chicago and take the Oath of Allegiance.  It was a condition of the issuance of my first passport.  I had to raise my right hand and renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, etc.  It left such an impression of gravity upon me that ever since I have been loath to let my passport come even close to expiring.

I'm not exactly sure what the deal was that such a big production was raised.  But there is no doubt of an irregularity of some sort.  Was it because I was born in Germany?  Was it the Vietnam war and the draft and a fear I would skip the country for The Fatherland?  Maybe it was an incomplete birth certificate?  A discrepancy in the birth record?  Mom and dad are both dead so I can't ask them.  For sure I was born in Germany - but of American parents, on a US Army post and mom and dad were US citizens.  That seems straight forward enough.  From what I can glean from a brief Google search Germany doesn't extend dual citizenship to anybody unless a parent is of German citizenry.  No traction there.  So the origins of that trip to Chicago and the oath shall remain a mystery.  I've had a valid passport ever since and have traveled freely to ten other countries.

So why is this guy looking all nervous and squinty-eyed?

I think it's because he has yet to renounce his claim on Canadian citizenship.  And he's getting called-out for dragging his feet.  Even though our neighbors to the north are our biggest trading partner any tea partier worth his tea leaves knows that all of that capitalism is a ruse.  Hiding behind the commerce, the trade, the profits and a pending pipeline is the ever-threatening danger of...here it comes...Canadian socialism.  GASP!  And if you want to be the future face of the Republican party you should be quick about banishing any hint of socialistic birthright from your closet.

I understand that Senator Cruz has a crack legal team working on the renunciation thing.  But I have to wonder why a sitting US Senator can't just roust a US Consular official from somewhere - or someone from the Department of Immigration - raise his right hand, swear the princes and potentate oath and be done with it.  I did.

Alas, in the modern day GOP it is drama - not substance - that rises to the level of critcal importance. 

We'll have to wait and see if Senator Cruz can make this uncomfortable inconvenience go away.  That way he can become the candidate of choice so that the Republican Party can have their ass handed to them in the next presidential election.

The good news is that things could be worse.  He might have been born in Kenya.

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