Fresno Famous

Senator Mitch McConnell (spelling?), whose goal in life is said to be to prevent President Obama from getting a second term, has just shot himself in the foot.  He is said to have said that, while he has no objections to the arms treaty just ratified, he will vote against it because he doesn't want the President to have a public relations victory that might set him up for a second term.  Well, he failed.  Eleven Republicans broke ranks and voted for the treaty.  If he had succeeded, the result would have made the League of Nations debacle in the twenties look like a Sunday School picnic.

The treaty was hard fought over and was the best we could get at present.  Once ratified, it will lead to negotiations over short range nuclear weapons and further reductions in our stockpiles of useless and dangerous arms.  Failure to ratify would have set back negotiations by at least ten years, during which the absence of verification that has prevailed over the last year would continue (we wouldn't even get to guess at what they're up to).  Even the elder ex-President Bush came out in support of the treaty.  The younger Bush was too busy picking his nose to comment.  All the Republican objections were mere smoke screens in their desperate attempts to prevent President Obama from succeeding at anything, at any cost.

The Republican Party has become not just the party of Hell No, but the party of destruction.  How can any representative who claims to do the will of the American people vote against such a treaty?   Nuclear arms are not just deadly, they are the most expensive and most wasteful weapons in our bloated arsenal.  Obama's "compromise" with Republican leaders, the allocation of 85 billion dollars to modernize our nuclear weapons stocks, could feed a lot of starving people if it were released to do good instead of evil.   Enough nuclear warheads to kill everyone in the world many times over are stored in each of the arsenals of the USA and Russia.  No military leader in his right mind (that is, not genocidal as well as suicidal) would even consider using a nuclear weapon in warfare.  We are spending more than any other country, in fact more than the next three countries combined, on our military, and what does it get us?  Defeat and disgrace in Afghanistan (I guarantee that, your money back if not satisfied) and the radicalization of two countries, Iraq and Pakistan, that could have been great allies in the Middle East if they were properly and humanely handled instead of being dealt Shock and Awe indiscriminately followed by Predator drone strikes on civilians.  

(If anyone reads this , don't bother to disagree.  I have facts and figures that will change your mind if you have an open one.  If your mind is already made up, go suck an egg.)

There is no excuse for this Senator's behavior and it is fervently hoped that the voters will deal Mr McConnell a well deserved defeat when next he goes to the polls.  He does not qualify to be a city councilman, much less a senator.

PS the younger Bush was arrested for drunk driving--he was stopped, not because he was "driving too slow" as one right wing apologist had it, but because he crashed into a hedge.  Oh, and he wasn't taken into custody.  He was cited at his home.  Sounds like preferential treatment of a rich man's son, doesn't it?  He's been forgiven by his God, but not by me.