Two weeks ago, U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-W.V.) set himself up as the next Jose Martí, loudly proclaiming that the United States should create a “safe zone” for anti-Communist protesters in Cuba and cover it with a no-fly zone.
In other words, invade Cuba and start a war.
When that didn’t fly with the rest of Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s advisory team on Cuba, Mooney got himself shuttled to the back of the speakers’ list at a pro-Cuban Capitol Hill rally.
Then last week, apparently in a sulky mood, Mooney failed to join the California Republican on his trip to Miami to aid the cause of Cuban dissidents.
Instead, according to the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, Mooney had opted to visit Parkersburg, in a swing through West Virginia. That was followed by another swing to Texas to introduce Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) at a Young America’s Foundation conference and pick up his son, Lucas, who was attending the event.
Note that Parkersburg is not even in the 2nd congressional district that Mooney represents. But Parkersburg will almost certainly be part of the new congressional district up for grabs next year, after his current district is eliminated due to West Virginia’s population decline.
Mooney explained that his visit to Parkersburg was unrelated to the next election and he was there simply to visit Blennerhassett Island and coincidentally listen to the problems facing small businesses there.
Right.
The guy that Mooney was listening to just happened to be Matt Herridge, who is the chairman of the government relations committee of Burger King’s National Franchise Association. Herridge’s Charton Management, Inc., owns several Burger King and Qdoba Mexican Eats restaurants in West Virginia and Ohio. Herridge occasionally has vital business before Congress.
It seems that Alex Mooney’s concern is for Alex Mooney’s political career and not for his constituents in his West Virginia district—and certainly not for the dissident Cubans for whom he was beating the war drums just a few weeks ago. He has become a self-deflating hot-air bag.
Meanwhile, according to multiple confidential sources on Capitol Hill, Mooney’s chief of staff, Mike Hough, apparently disturbed that American Greatness is obtaining accurate information about his questionable job performance, has morphed into Captain Queeg!
Employing the same “geometric logic” Queeg used to find his missing strawberries, Hough has reportedly requested a complete electronic sweep of Mooney’s D.C. office for bugs, thumb drives, micro-transmitters, Romulan cloaking devices, copper IUDs, and the Cheshire Cat.
Hough has also undertaken an inspection of all of the staff’s email—which is great for the morale of an office that has seen about a quarter of its staffers jump ship in recent weeks.
All Hough needs now is three large ball bearings and an empty can of strawberries.
Meanwhile back in Cuba, imagine the glee among the lying propagandists of Radio Havana as they conjure an enormous wave of vile lies about the congressman:
“The capitalist pig Alejandro Mooney has abandoned his war-mongering ways! Apparently, this misbegotten swine of the traitorous Suarez family, though corpulento, has little real stomach for dealing with the glorious, revolutionary Cuban people. He is vacationing in the mountains and traveling to Texas to join the equally misbegotten half-Cuban Ted Cruz, to give lessons in hegemony to a meeting of young imperialists.
“Meanwhile our brilliant operatives of the Direccion de Inteligencia have directly infiltrated the brain of Mooney’s malignant chief lackey, Miquel Hoof, using the improved LIDA machine developed by the Universidad de las Ciencias Informaticas.”
“Our operatives, using a van cruising 2nd Street NE near the Yanqui capitol, and another near Hoof’s home in bourgeois Brunswick, Maryland, were able to turn his mind into lukewarm flan. This was not difficult.
“Using what the Yanquis call the Havana Syndrome, we caused him to believe, through artificial telepathy, that we have penetrated his computers! Even his tinfoil hat will not protect him! He is now on a self-destructive rant to which there will be no end. Such are the wages of the sins of capitalism! This is Radio Havana signing off.”
In any event, so much for Alex Mooney’s foray into national security and foreign affairs. Perhaps he should stick to the campaign finance “procedures” that have him currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics. He’s good at that, anyway.