Hall Of Shame.…..An International Disgrace

Forty (47) Republicans Senators attached their sig­na­ture to a Letter which they sent to the Iranian Government.
The gist of the mes­sage to the Iranian Government is that what­ev­er deal President Obama (America’s sit­ting President and com­man­der in chief) strikes with them, can and may be wiped away after the pres­i­dent demit office.
Please take a moment to absorb , and assim­i­late the impact and the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of this unprece­dent­ed move.
Pundits and his­to­ri­ans alike have stat­ed there is no prece­dent for this.
Some argue this bor­ders on treason.
Never before in the his­to­ry of the Republic , his­to­ri­ans lament, has the con­gress or parts of it,ever attempt­ed to usurp the author­i­ty of the President in this way much less on for­eign affairs.

Former Democratic Senator and pres­i­den­tial front run­ner Hillary Clinton said quote<“one has to ask, what was the pur­pose of this let­ter?

“There appear to be two log­i­cal answers,” Clinton said. “Either these sen­a­tors were try­ing to be help­ful to the Iranians or harm­ful to the com­man­der-in-chief in the midst of high-stakes inter­na­tion­al diplo­ma­cy. Either answer does dis­cred­it to the let­ter’s signatories.”

Well Hillary, this is not the first time they have been dis­re­spect­ful or tried to under­mine this President . Remember Joe Wilson’s “You lie”?
Since then it has been inces­sant, just recent­ly Boehner invit­ed Israel’s prime min­is­ter Benjamin Netanyahu to use the US house of Representatives to blast the Iran pol­i­cy of the sit­ting President.
So there is prece­dent for their behavior.
They would rather col­lude with a for­eign pow­er against this President, that try to find com­mon ground toward secur­ing America’s future, and the future of the planet.
Which means they col­lude against their own country.
I am not a Lawyer, and cer­tain­ly not a Constitutional lawyer by any stretch , but if it looks like treason,smells like trea­son behaves like trea­son, oh well.….…..

President Barack Obama slammed the let­ter on Monday, accus­ing the GOP of mak­ing “com­mon cause with the hard-lin­ers in Iran” by attempt­ing to under­cut ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions that face a first dead­line for a frame­work agree­ment at the end of the month.

The Republican point man on this lat­est affront to Presidential author­i­ty is Arkansas fresh­man sen­a­tor Tom Cotton. The fact that Cotton would be point man on this is even more unprece­dent­ed. According to sen­ate tra­di­tions Cotton who just took the oath has­n’t even fig­ured out his way around the sen­ate build­ing yet, much less to have inject­ed him­self into inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly one this del­i­cate and one which real­ly is the purview of the President.

Only Seven Republican Senators did not sign Cotton’s let­ter to the Mullahs. They are Sens. Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Dan Coats, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins and Bob Corker.
Guaranteed each had their own self serv­ing rea­son not to, which did not include their alle­giance to the Republic.

Under pres­sure to explain his unprece­dent­ed actions Cotton insist­ed there was noth­ing unprece­dent­ed about what they did, argu­ing that the let­ter was not intend­ed as a par­ti­san move and was instead aimed at keep­ing the U.S. from reach­ing a bad and “dan­ger­ous” deal.

“This let­ter is about stop­ping Iran from get­ting a nuclear deal,” Cotton said. “One way that we make sure that we get a bet­ter deal is that we stand strong.”
Here’s the hypocrisy of Cotton and repub­li­cans, if they want­ed to stand strong they would do so stand­ing with the Commander in chief of their coun­try and the oth­er Nuclear armed pow­ers behind the deal being worked out with Iran. They would stand as Democrats did with George Bush after the events of September 11^th 2001.
It is not unusu­al for the Political par­ties in this coun­try to be con­tentious. It is also not out of the ordi­nary that there are grave and seri­ous dif­fer­ences when issues of seri­ous import are being con­sid­ered. Never for­get this coun­try fought a civ­il war to decide its way forward.
What is out of the ordi­nary is that Americans would give aid and com­fort to oth­er pow­ers rather than sup­port their own twice elect­ed leader.

You do not stand strong by telling a for­eign pow­er that you are against your own leader.
That is not patri­o­tism, there are oth­er names for that kind of action, and they are not sim­i­lar in mean­ing to patriotism.
Cotton is a for­mer sol­dier and a Harvard edu­cat­ed lawyer. He is also a right-wing hawk who wants war. Republicans want war with Iran.
Expect that there will be far worse than Netanyahu’s speech and Cotton’s let­ter, they will not stop until they get anoth­er war with anoth­er mid­dle east­ern country.

Their goal is to neu­tral­ize any coun­try in that region that has the gall to stand up to the nuclear armed apartheid bas­tion of white suprema­cy we now know as Israel.
Obama will not insti­gate a war against Iran and that makes Obama dan­ger­ous. Waging war against Iraq using lies and dis­tor­tions was not enough. The con­se­quences of Republican lies and decep­tion result­ed in the cre­ation of ISIS and has rad­i­cal­ized young men across the Globe.
They see America as wag­ing war against Islam. President Obama who thank­ful­ly have seen the World out­side as com­pared to his Republican coun­ter­parts , some of whom have nev­er seen any­one out­side their coun­ty of birth,refuses to fall into that trap of mak­ing it seem that America is wag­ing a chris­t­ian cru­sade against Islam.
And for that the idi­ot­ic and idi­ot­ic repub­li­cans crit­i­cize him.

During the American Civil War Lincoln did not want to free the slaves, con­trary to what you hear today. Lincoln was a slave owner.
Eventually Lincoln had to make the war about some­thing big­ger that him­self, even big­ger than the Union.
There need­ed to be a high­er moral argu­ment for this war…
Lincoln signed the Emancipation declaration.
Not because he was a man of high moral con­vic­tion on the issue of slav­ery as some revi­s­i­tion­ist his­to­ri­an would have you believe.
Lincoln need­ed men to fight, he need­ed a grand idea on which to ral­ly the Union, he also need­ed to pre­vent the French from com­ing in, in defense of it’s Louisiana territory.
It was the moral and right thing for Lincoln to do, the North won the war and the Union survived.
Obama under­stands the con­se­quences of the per­cep­tion of an American cru­sade against Islam, and is doing his lev­el best to avoid that perception.
Unfortunately that lev­el of com­pre­hen­sion can­not be expect­ed from the racist bunch of white suprema­cists which is now the Republican party.

Even those who have seen com­bat, Cotton included,and the car­nage of war, are in no way dis­suad­ed from the fal­la­cy and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive nature of con­stant­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing new enemies.
Instead they con­vince them­selves that brute-force and heavy hand­ed­ness are appro­pri­ate tools in deal­ing with Sovereign powers.
Then they wring their hands and won­der whats behind the think­ing of young peo­ple who head to Syria and Iraq to fight along­side ISIS.

SELMA 50 YEARS LATER

It is inter­est­ing to note that not one of these racist war mon­gers who signed Cotton’s let­ter to Iran both­ered to show up in Selma Alabama to com­mem­o­rate the 50^th Anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus bridge.
Black America’s tri­umphant march across that bridge was sym­bol­ic of more them pre­vail­ing against the raw big­otry of Racist oppression.
They braved bil­ly-clubs, dogs and bul­lets know­ing they were writ­ing the indeli­ble sto­ry of America. The America which still, is an evolv­ing saga yet to be completed.
They had their heads bashed in , bones splin­tered ‚flesh gnarled by vis­cous dogs, because they believed in the phrase ” all men are cre­at­ed equal” and that they too deserve to live as equal men on this land blacks occu­pied before Europeans real­ized the world was not flat.
The big­otry and racism of 1965 has not died or gone away , it dwells just below the sur­face, forced there by strong Federal laws which guar­an­teed that peo­ple were not to be imped­ed when they want­ed to vote.
Laws which guar­an­teed that all Americans , regard­less of race, class, or creed, reli­gious or sex­u­al per­sua­sion should be able to study in the same schools.
Yet the very insti­tu­tion charged with the sacred trust of pro­tect­ing the fun­da­men­tal rights of all the peo­ple is the very insti­tu­tion tear­ing away at the fab­ric of the vot­ing rights act and the right for peo­ple to go to school where they please and con­gre­gate where they please.

When our President speak of the America of his dreams with euphor­ic ora­to­ry and bril­liance, I shud­der to think of what America will be under the likes of Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and others.
We may hide our heads in the sand and pre­tend all is well, or we may con­front the real­i­ty of what those like Cotton and his band of 46 dim-wits mean. These are elect­ed offi­cials who hold high office, yet they sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly missed, or chose to miss that whether they like it or not the African-American sto­ry is the sto­ry of America.
Choosing to stay away makes it clear they do not care to respect, rep­re­sent, or relate the black sto­ry, America’s story.
By so doing they have cast them­selves as incon­se­quen­tial foot­notes in the dust-bin of his­to­ry. Rendering them­selves and their par­ty incon­se­quen­tial to the con­ver­sa­tion going forward.
By turn­ing their backs on black America they turned their backs on America.
By turn­ing to Netanyahu and Iran they declared their das­tard­ly dis­loy­al­ty to America in no uncer­tain terms.
That my friends is what the Republican par­ty has become.
An inter­na­tion­al disgrace.….….