Good Monday to you,

Ted Cruz, obviously not content to rest on the laurels of his lamentable misappropriation of Dr. Seuss a few years back, has now laid into Big Bird. Mr. Bird, who has existed in age-defying time warp on our television screens since 1969, is scripted to be six years old. As such, he just became eligible to get vaxxed, and he tweeted happily to that effect Saturday. This was too much for Cruz, who responded on Twitter:

Science is propaganda. Great.

The thing about these right-wingers is, they’re completely oblivious as to how much they sound like the people from history they claim to oppose implacably. Exhibit B is J.D. Vance, who in a recent speech said:

“I think, in this movement of national conservatism, what we need more than inspiration is, we need wisdom. And there is a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said, approximately 40 to 50 years ago. He said, and I quote, ‘The professors are the enemy.’”

That kind of rhetoric is straight out of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This man is dangerous. However you feel about Tim Ryan, you need to wish him well in this Senate race. 

And finally, on the freedom-is-slavery beat, consider the smackdown Terry Bradshaw and the rest of the Fox (yes, Fox!) NFL Sunday crew gave to Aaron Rodgers over his reversals of reality about the vaccine:

Yowza. And they were doing the show live from the Naval (not “Navel”) Academy, and the middies gathered on the quad erupted in cheers. It’s good on some level to know that the people who are going to be in charge of our nuclear submarines some day let out a whoop on behalf of science.

In Congress, attention now turns to the Congressional Budget Office, which in the next few … days … weeks … will release its assessment of the Build Back Better bill. The New York Times described the process here. Basically, if the CBO’s estimates more or less match the Biden administration’s, that vaporizes the last (well, we think last!) excuse for Democratic moderates/centrists/conservatives to oppose the bill. We’ll see. Democrats hope the score comes this week, which isn’t impossible.

Op-ed of the day: Jennifer Rubin on what she sees as the coming Biden turnaround. 

Really lame-o hot take of the weekend: Maureen Dowd. Quelle surprise. 

At NewRepublic.com today, check out Grace Segers’s excellent round-up on how the House Democrats finally passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill; Molly Osberg’s terrific report on Kaiser Permanente’s attempt to screw its workers, and their response; and Jo Livingstone’s sharp read on the new Princess Di biopic.

Keep the faith,

Michael Tomasky

Friday’s question: Just to really emphasize the fact that this is the weekend you need to reset your clocks, if you still have any: Can you name the states that stick with one time all year? And for each state, do you know if it’s daylight saving or standard time?

Answer: Hawaii and Arizona (anyone who has driven cross-country midsummer has experienced the latter) abolished daylight savings, staying on standard all year long. Many other states have sought to follow suit, though quite a few of them prefer daylight savings.

Today’s political history question: Since I mentioned the Cultural Revolution.… Despite the general agreement on the idea that Hitler and Stalin are history’s two biggest monsters, it’s actually Chairman Mao who holds the record for most humans killed. Within five million, how many deaths is Mao responsible for?