Welcome To the Party, Bob Dole

 

“It isn’t Bob Dole’s Senate anymore.”

It isn’t Bob Dole’s Senate anymore, that’s what Meredith Shiner said over on CQ Roll Call.

Boy, isn’t that the goddamned truth?

It’s not Bob Dole’s Senate anymore.

Senate? It’s not even Bob Dole’s Republican Party anymore.

And it hasn’t been for a long time.

Unfortunately, nobody told Bob.

A frail and infirm Bob Dole returned to the Senate on Tuesday and spoke to the conservatives there as if they were the republicans he remembered, the mostly reasonable ones who, with maybe a little cajoling, could usually be counted on to do the right thing. 

Unfortunately for Bob Dole, a while back the GOP suffered a corporate buyout and was taken over by fervent religious extremists and their band of drum beating jingoists. These goons have been in the process of right-sizing conservatism ever since. Reasonable republicans got the pink slip and their positions were outsourced to the lowest bidders.

That’s what happened to Bob Dole – and he wasn’t the only one.

Reasonable conservatives got marginalized, then they got downsized right on out of the organization and replaced with the CEO’s weak-chinned idiot nephew.

Speaking of which…

“We did it!” Rick Santorum tweeted triumphantly after his fellow Senate republicans successfully scuttled a vote on the United Nations Convention of the Rights of People with Disabilities.

We did it. We won.

Yay.

You ever notice that whenever Rick Santorum wins, everybody else loses?

Including his own disabled daughter?

Ask yourself something, what exactly did Rick Santorum win? The right for disabled people to be treated as second class citizens in foreign countries? Is that what he won? Because it sure looks that way from where I’m sitting.

The Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD) is a treaty already ratified by more than a hundred nations. By signing the treaty, nations agree to treat the disabled in a manner similar to that mandated here in the United States through the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

The CRPD is directly modeled on the ADA. In fact, the George W. Bush Administration drafted the treaty and brought it to the floor of the United Nations in 2006.

That’s right, George W. Bush.

Yeah, that guy.

 

I’ll pause for a moment so you can wrap your head around the super-sized colostomy bag full of watery brown shitty shit shit you’d have to be in order for George W. Bush’s international human rights record  to look good in comparison.

 

It’s ironic that the man conservatives honored before the CRPD vote, Bob Dole, was one of the principal sponsors of the ADA and a vocal supporter of the CRPD.

It’s ironic, given just how much conservatives hate both the ADA and the CRPD.

Conservatives can’t stand it, can’t stand that bleeding heart crap, can’t stand that anybody would put people before business or before nationalism.

Because apparently treating the disabled in a respectful manner and providing sissy liberal cripples like former Republican Senator Bob Dole – who was disabled in the service of his country while fighting for America in WWII no less – with equal access to, well, life is somehow downright un-American. 

In a stomach turning display, Republican senators, each in turn, stopped to pay their respects to Dole before the vote as he sat there weak and shrunken in his wheelchair on the Senate floor, and the malignant disgusting hypocrisy of it all just completely escaped them.

See, if it wasn’t for the ADA, they wouldn’t have been able to roll Bob Dole into the Senate chamber in the first place.

Republicans stopped to shake Dole’s hand and speak kind words to the elder statesman.

That’s bullshit.

What they should have done, each and every one of them, was to step right up and punch Bob Dole right in his crippled arm.

Yes, that’s right, Republicans should have struck Bob Dole right in his withered arm, they should have mocked his infirmity, his age, and lorded their physical fitness over him. 

They should have looked him right in the eye and told him that he was a communist, a socialist, and a fucking Nazi.

Then, Rick Santorum should have stepped up and spoken for tea swilling, powdered wig wearing, flag waving patriotic American conservatives everywhere and told Senator Bob Dole to get out, just take his unAmerican crippled ass and move to Canada.

That’s what they should have done.

At least that would have been honest contempt.

Instead the hypocritical contemptuous craven sons of bitches looked upon Bob Dole in his wheelchair, they shook his hand and touched his shoulder and mouthed the empty words of their selfish bankrupt ideology and the hollow platitudes of their selfish diseased religion – and then after Elizabeth Dole rolled her husband from the floor, Republicans took their seats and when the roll was called they unzipped their flies and pissed on Bob Dole.

They pissed on every disabled American veteran, including me.

They pissed on every disabled American, on every disabled person in the entire world.

They pissed on the disabled who haven’t yet been born, but may be one day.  Those tiny babies that they claim they care so very, very much about.

They pissed on those that are not yet disabled – but someday will be, as happens to all of us who live long enough. Including themselves, I hope.

And they did it because in their tiny fevered minds, they have come to believe that equal access for the disabled somehow diminishes the rights of able bodied Americans like themselves, like Rick Santorum. The truly ironic part is that these same people, this exact same list of smugly pious hypocrites, trumpet their Christianity at every opportunity – people just like Rick Santorum who wears Jesus on his sleeve like some kind of shiny diamond encrusted Rolex watch that he waves around to impress others.

Christianity. Pardon me while I roll my eyes.

That’s what Jesus said, right? Screw the sick and the lame! Life, liberty, happiness – those things are only for the people God made whole (and made wealthy and American, but I digress). Sure, that’s it. Just ask the head of Rick Santorum’s church, Pope Benedict. 

See, his Holiness won’t sign the treaty either.

The head of the Catholic Church, the guy who is supposed to represent his loving and compassionate God on Earth, the guy who claims a direct spiritual connection to Jesus himself, yeah, that guy won’t endorse a treaty that gives equal rights and access to disabled people. 

Boy, sure wouldn’t want the Church onboard with something like that, eh? 

Sure wouldn’t want to have to justify that one when your holiness stands in front of ol’ God, would we?

You what? You supported equal rights for the disabled? The fuck, Benny? Feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the poor? Who the hell told you to do that? Well? Answer up, before I give you a good smiting!

(You may, if you like, insert a gratuitous pedophilia joke here).

Somewhere up in that pristine white biblical heaven that these pompous self-righteous jackasses claim to believe in, their lord and savior is screaming in appalled outrage and throwing breakable things at the wall.

The level of assholery displayed here is beyond mindboggling, it’s downright sickening.  And, you know, I’d be almost willing to believe in the long delayed Second Coming – if it meant I got to watch angry raging Jesus give these sanctimonious hypocrites what they all so righteously deserve. I don’t need to see these idiots dropped into boiling pitch, but little would give me greater pleasure than to watch Jesus shove his crown-O-thorns right up Rick Santorum’s ass and twist.

But I digress.

So, what’s the big deal anyway?

Why won’t the majority of Republican Senators ratify the treaty?

Let’s start with Senator Jim Inhofe, the Republican from Oklahoma:

"I do not support the cumbersome regulations and potentially overzealous international organizations with anti-American biases that infringe upon American society."

Exactly, because if disabled people have the same access as everybody else, it’ll infringe on American Society – because obviously disabled people aren’t actually part of American society.  Inhofe is nothing if not predictable, this is the same logic he uses to deny everybody equal rights under the law, it’s just too much paperwork, fellas. Sorry.

Note the word “potentially.”

Not actually. Not definitely. Nothing we can actually prove. Potentially.  Potentially, as in some unspecified manner that maybe could potentially happen sort of some time in the undefined future. Potentially. The conservative Heritage Foundation agrees. Ratification of the treaty could lead to unspecified problems by unspecified means from unspecified agencies hostile to unspecified conservative principles.  Potentially speaking.

Wouldn’t that mean there’s an equal potential for the treaty not to infringe on American society? Especially since we wrote it?

“It’s a treaty to change the world to be more like America!”

That’s what Senator John Kerry, Democratic Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the same guy republicans want to be the next Secretary of State, said to the Senate prior to the vote. 

It’s a treaty to make the rest of the world more like America.

Seriously?

Didn’t anybody tell Kerry that we make the rest of the world more like America by invading their countries, bombing the shit out of them, and killing a couple hundred thousand brown people, not through diplomacy. Jesus, who the hell is this guy?

Rick Santorum was outraged:

“This is a direct assault on us and our family!”

Yes, signing a treaty that obligates the United States to do exactly what it’s been doing for the last twenty three years since the passage of the ADA and will require no changes in our laws whatsoever is a direct assault on Rick Santorum and his family.

Santorum was particularly wary of the CRPD’s “Best Interest of the Child” verbiage.

"It may sound like it protects children, but what it does is put the government, acting under U.N. authority, in the position to determine for all children with disabilities what is best for them. In the case of our 4-year-old daughter, Bella, who has Trisomy 18, a condition that the medical literature says is 'incompatible with life,' would her 'best interest' be that she be allowed to die? Some would undoubtedly say so."

Some would undoubtedly say so about Rick himself.  Some people like me, potentially speaking.

 

I’ll just pause again, so you can take another moment to contemplate the sheer size of the shitbag that is Rick Santorum.

 

Seriously, Rick Santorum is concerned that somebody is going to tell him what’s best for his family?

You’re kidding me, right?

Aren’t these the exact same people, the exact same people name for name, that keep telling us what’s best for our families?

Aren’t these people the same ones that want to decide for us when to have children or when to unplug our brain dead family members or even who we can love and marry?

These are those exact same assholes, are they not?

I honestly don’t know how people get this damned twisted. I really don’t. I don’t understand how you can get this full of crap, this bugshit insane, and somebody doesn’t see you out on the street covered in crusty dried snot and smelling of week old piss mumbling to yourself about the children and tilting at invisible windmills, and not drop you with a tranq dart and haul your goofy ass off to Crazyland (Ok, Congress. Same same. You got me there).

How the hell do you get from “Best interest of the child” to “OMFG! They’re coming to kill my disabled kid?”

Probably the same way you get from “Hey, let’s make sure every American has access to healthcare” to “OMFG! Death Panels! Death Panels!”

Just, damn.

The boundless hypocrisy of modern conservatives never ceases to amaze me. The difference between what was, in republicans such as Bob Dole, and what is, in modern republicans such as Rick Santorum, is horrifying and depressing. But then, I feel the same way about most prominent Christians – at least the ones who have their own TV shows and wear Jesus on their sleeve like a fancy watch.

Meanwhile, Mike Lee, the honorable Republican from Utah was worried about homeschooling:

"I and many of my constituents who homeschool or send their children to religious schools have justifiable doubt that a foreign body based in Geneva, Switzerland, should be deciding what is best for a child at home in Utah”

Yeah, Mike, I doubt it too.

Honestly, Mike Lee voted against civil rights for disabled people all over the world because he’s afraid that that somebody in Switzerland might laugh at the fact that he and his inbred constituents in Utah are teaching their handicapped kids how ol’ Noah rode velociraptors around the deck of the Ark.

Obviously even Mike Lee must think that’s a form of child abuse, otherwise he wouldn’t be worried about it, would he?

Both Lee and Santorum couldn’t actually point to any provision in the treaty that would actually allow the Swiss to confiscate homeschooled kids in Utah and put them into a UN Reeducation camp, but both were afraid that “somebody” somewhere might use the courts to do something unspecified to prevent homeschoolers from doing something else unspecified. This, of course, despite the fact that Congress itself included language in the treaty that specifically forbade its use in American courts.

Frankly I’m a hell of a lot more concerned about these homeschooled goofs than I am about the Swiss. Take Michael Farris, a home-schooling activist who was invited to speak against the bill before the Senate:

“The other thing that everybody in America will be living under is socialism as an international entitlement. We're signing up now for our first economic, social, and cultural treaty which means as a matter of international binding law that goes to the supremacy clause in our Constitution, we're signing up to be an official socialist nation, cradle-to-grave care for the disabled."

Now there’s a hell of an endorsement for homeschooling right there. 

Just for fun, see how many things you can find wrong with Farris’ statement, you can start with his definition of socialism and work your way up to “international binding law,” whatever the hell that is.

Cradle to grave care for the disabled.

Boy, wouldn’t want to sign up for that, would we?

I mean, Jesus Haploid Christ, what kind of civilized country takes care of its disabled? Maybe we should just gas them like they did in Nazi Germany … or we could take them out back and shoot them like they do in Utah.

And then, of course, there’s…

What? Would you like me to pause again for a moment?  No? Well then what is it?

Oh, riiiiight.

Good catch.  Rick Santorum campaigned against the CRPD because it would kill disabled people instead of caring for them while Mike Lee voted against it because it forces us to care for disabled people instead of just letting them die.

Well, at least the republicans got together beforehand and talked it over.

So anyway, where were we?

Oh, yes, abortion.

Because when you’re dealing with conservatives, every conversation always, ultimately, works its way around to abortion.

Always. Every single conversation. Every. Single.  One.

These people have abortion on the brain.

“The global community could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled at taxpayer expense!"

That was Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. Tony got all soggy and hard to light over a clause in the treaty that requires signatories to provide disabled people with health care in the areas of reproductive health. And you know what “reproductive health” means, don’t you? Abortion! We’ll be funding abortion across the globe for disabled people! That’s what reproductive health means, not pre-natal care, or contraception, or disease prevention and treatment, or any of the myriad medical things associated with human reproduction – all of which can be enormously complicated with disabled folks in third world countries – nope, reproductive health means abortion, abortion and only abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Abortion. Also, Nazis.

Note, this was the Pope’s beef too. The Holy See was convinced that he’d be signing up for contraception and baby killin’ and dammit, well, it’s all about keeping the children safe for Jesus.

(You may, if you like, insert a gratuitous pedophilia joke here).

It wasn’t just the Senators, the average conservative weighed in as well.  As always, Yahoo! News provides a good representative sample:

WE have the ADA and we enforce it. We do not need the UN getting involved with our country period. The UN is a disgusting mixture of despots and thieves that WE SUPPORT with our Tax Dollars and that needs to END ! I have a disabled family member and he is not descriminated against and never has been to my knowledge. This UN crap must be stopped people, demand we get the hell out of it ! The EU and the rest can kiss this americans rear end.[sic]

Another sterling product of Utah homeschooling no doubt.

Let’s hope this silly yahoo’s disabled relative never has to travel to a foreign country, shall we?

Most other countries are failed societies. Why should we heed the people who made them fail?

I’m sure this will come as a surprise to most other countries.

Also, the people that made most other countries fail were the ones who signed up to a treaty we drafted so that disabled people in their countries weren’t discriminated against? Did I get that correct?

It’s no wonder most of the world, including our friends and allies, hates our damned guts.

It's how they will tax the U.S. and redistribute the US citizens wealth to 3rd world countries. Obama's dream..

Yes, I’m sure that Barack Obama lays awake at night scheming how to make sure disabled Americans who visit, live, and work in foreign countries can enjoy the same access and non-discrimination there as they do here. Why that wily bastard!

Do the disable in the USA have equal rights without this treaty? YES!! Why then do we need to sign on to this treaty? Such an action implies that the UN has sovereignty over us. It does not. Thumbs up to those who voted against the treaty. Thumbs down to those voted for it, and double down to those alleged Republicans who supported the treaty. Hopefully, the same wisdom will prevail in the new Senate next year. [sic]

By far and away that’s the most common sentiment expressed by Yahoo! commenters.

I read over a thousand comments that said pretty much the same thing.

We’ve got the ADA, why should we sign the treaty? I don’t know, maybe for the same reason we sign treaties regarding international police cooperation even though we’ve got our own police forces, or for the same reason that we sign international standards agreements even though they use the metric system and we use some antiquated measurement based on furlongs per fortnight times the number of barleycorns it takes to equal the length of some long dead king’s index finger, or maybe we should sign it for the same reason we signed the international conventions against torture and mistreatment of POWs … OK, that’s a bad example but I think I’ve made my point here.

When do we get out of the UN. It is the most Socialist org. ever. And send them packing from New York ASAP. They are working for the New World Order. And it will take away Americans free Rights. Truth, Google it, if you do not believe me. And for you Liberal just stick it. You are the party of taking away freedoms. Just look at all your against. Against American energy independence, gun control, free speech, on and on....

Oh noes! Not the New World Order!

I forget, is the One World Government the same as the New World Order? Or is that a completely different clinical diagnosis? Are they both run by the Illuminati or the Masons or Bilderbergs.  As the commenter suggested, I Googled it, but that just made it worse.

 

Honestly, at this point I’m starting to think that Conservative should probably be classified as a disability, right between Orly Taitz and those people who think Ben Stein is actually funny – or actually an economist.

 

Meredith Shiner was right, it isn’t Bob Dole’s Senate anymore.

And America is far worse for it.