In which I have emailed my congressional representatives and asked them pointblank questions, their answers to which I publish.
I have emailed my congresscritter Drew Ferguson:
Back in February, I emailed our senators a simple question:
On Dec 24, 2016, I emailed you to ask if you agreed with the president’s tweet that we should restart the nuclear arms race. You haven’t answered.
Now it appears that the president, in a private talk with Putin, has denigrated the limitations of the most recent START agreement.
If this proves to be the case, will you support a nuclear arms race? If so, to what end?
Yesterday I received a reply from Johnny Isakson:
Thank you for contacting me regarding North Korea. I appreciate hearing from you and I am grateful for the opportunity to respond.
Kim Jong-un has chosen to follow along the same destructive path as his father, Kim Jong-il. Kim has refused to comply with regional and international pressure to discontinue North Korea’s nuclear weapons program by carrying out a nuclear test and launching short and long-range missiles. In July 2017 alone, North Korea has conducted 2 missile tests, and 22 since November 2016.
It is clear that Kim Jong-un’s repeated, unacceptable and deplorable threats cannot be allowed to continue. I support the additional sanctions placed on North Korea through H.R.3364, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and urge the President to implement this law fully.
North Korea has continued to show a severely reckless attitude toward the welfare of its own citizens by committing serious human rights violations and by continuing to pour resources into nuclear weapons. We must continue to support our allies that live under constant threat from North Korea, and we also must urge China to place greater economic and political pressure on the Kim regime. North Korea has shown that it is a threat to the entire world, not just the United States. Without China participating in this negotiation, it is near impossible to hold North Korea accountable. Additionally, I am strongly in favor of increasing our missile defense capabilities and working to ensure that we are prepared for any missile threat.
We as a nation must keep all of our options available, including the use of force if necessary, to protect the American people and remove the threat of nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.
(highlights mine)
At least I think he’s answering my nuclear arms race question. Since none of my congresscritters have been at all responsive to my requests for position statements, I stopped tallying them over at the Easy Answers page. I may have sent something specific to North Korea at some point, either via email or ResistBot. Who can remember? We’ll just pretend that this answers my nuclear arms race question.
Because it does.
The Trumpsters are hooting and flinging poo because their Current Embarrassment isn’t afraid to call North Korea’s unstable leader names, unlike his wussy predecessors who used sanctions and suasion to keep things calm-ish on the peninsula. He’s not afraid to threaten nuclear annihilation to the madman who rules that country. That’ll show him, crow the Trumpsters—USA! USA!
Neither they nor their Chief Poo Flinger ever think that they will also kill the 25 million humans who are trapped in the Hermit Kingdom, nor of the 51 million humans who live next door in our ally, South Korea, nor of the 127 million who live in Japan. That’s not important. Showing Kim Jong-un who has the bigger club is what’s important.[1]
So if we need an analogy to help us understand the difference between the “Bomb them!” crowd and the deliberate approach pursued by sane politicians, I offer this video:
Obama, the Bushes, Clinton: they’re the English police dealing with a crazy man. The Current Embarrassment: he’s the St. Louis police department.
I suppose it all boils down to which end result you’re after.
—————
[1] And by “club” I mean “penis.”
This morning I emailed my senators, Johnny Isakson and David Perdue, to ask them an easy question:
I have read your statement on why you voted for the healthcare bills under consideration. Can you show me the scoring on those bills to back up your claims that they will give more people in this nation healthcare? Not “access” to healthcare: healthcare.
The easy answer is, of course, “no.” They cannot. No amount of massaging the data—which they don’t have in the first place—will show that the bills they have voted on will actually improve healthcare in this nation.
#ShowMeTheScoring
I’m not even adding this to the Easy Answers page any more. What’s the point when they’re not going to answer in any legitimate way?
UPDATE: I’m not the only one catching on.
If every proposal to “fix” the ACA leaves millions uninsured, at some point you have to be honest: this isn’t about fixing anything.
— Rev. Dr. Barber (@RevDrBarber) July 27, 2017
A few weeks ago I faxed my representatives in the Congress (using the very good https://resistbot.io/ to do so) about the Current Occupant’s praise of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s “handling of the drug problem,” i.e., murdering drug users and drug dealers. The question was very simple: Do you agree with the Current Occupant?
Here is U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson’s response, via email:
Thank you for contacting my office regarding the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte. I appreciate your thoughts and the opportunity to respond.
As a member of the United States Senate, I am pleased to see constituents, such as you, taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns about the federal government and its policies. Your letter will be helpful to me as the Senate considers legislation dealing with the issues facing our great nation.
Thank you again for contacting me, and I hope you will not hesitate to call on me in the future if I can be of assistance to you.
I will address my comments to Senator Isakson:
Senator, you may not remember it, but you and I worked together a couple of times on the State STAR Student program, and we encountered each other once or twice through your chairmanship of the State Board of Education and my involvement with GHP. You always struck me as intelligent and balanced.
But this unwillingness to speak out against the unconsidered comments and actions of the incompetent, venal, egomaniacal, and vindictive man you have in the White House is both craven and disappointing. Is this how you want to be remembered, as an enabler of the disaster that the Executive Branch reveals itself to be every day? Do you really want it said that you were willing to allow the worst excesses of this White House as long as your party’s social/economic agenda could be crammed through Congress, often flouting your own rules to do so? Is this who you thought you were going to be when you ran for office?
Shame on you.
::sigh::
My question today to my senators:
Do you agree with the U.S. President that the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem”?
Duterte, of course, has been attempting to solve his nation’s drug problem by killing all the drug sellers and drug users.
I wonder what form email I’ll get in reply?
And Trump supporters, I really really need to hear you justify this. I want to hear how much you will abase yourself to avoid criticizing your leader. I want to hear you agree that murdering people is a good thing.
And while we’re on a roll here, I need to hear you agree with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s support of Saudi repression of political dissent:
WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
Sent to Isakson, Perdue, and Ferguson:
Yesterday afternoon the President tweeted the following:
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! —@realDonaldTrump, 4:48 pm, 2/17/17
I expect you to denounce this tweet from the White House—and the sentiment it represents—in no uncertain terms. Will you?
Yeah, right.
I know that our Congress is so technologically illiterate that they have no way of responding meaningfully to the millions of emails they get, especially these days when the whole planet knows them to be craven wankers more concerned with preserving their party’s dominance than the republic, but seriously, Sen. Isakson?
As you know, I have been emailing my elected congresscritters some very simple questions, almost none of which they have answered directly. This past week, I was astonished to see five emails from Sen. Johnny Isakson.
Prepare to be amazed.
Two of them said this:
Thank you for contacting my office regarding federal policy. I appreciate your thoughts and the opportunity to respond.
As a member of the United States Senate, I am pleased to see constituents, such as you, taking the time to share your thoughts and concerns about the federal government and its policies. Your letter will be helpful to me as the Senate considers legislation dealing with the issues facing our great nation.
Thank you again for contacting me, and I hope you will not hesitate to call on me in the future if I can be of assistance to you.
Three of them said this:
Thank you for contacting me about President Trump. I appreciate hearing from you and am grateful for the opportunity to respond.
I believe the American people elected President Trump because they want change in Washington. They want us to rein in federal spending and reduce our national debt so we do not mortgage our children’s future. Voters also sent the message that they need relief from excessive government regulation. We must promote a level playing field and institute commonsense, pro-job growth solutions.
I also recognize that our country is very divided at this time. I hope that President Trump and leaders in Congress will make it a priority to find areas of common ground where we can work together to help all Americans regardless of their race, sex, religion, or where they live. I am ready to work with the president and my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get the best results for Georgia and the country.
Thank you again for contacting me.
I think the only thing worse than not getting an answer at all from your elected officials is to receive a string of emails that say literally nothing more than, “We got your email.” There is absolutely no indication that either he or his staff have actually registered what my specific concern is. I mean, I have sent the man fifteen questions. To which five of those are these even an non-answer?
Somehow this is not that “let’s put aside our partisan bickering” bullfuppery I have heard so much about from these putzes.
You may recall that back in December the head of the current Republican administration tweeted his desire to jumpstart the nuclear arms race, because that makes sense.[1]
Now it is being reported that he and his boyfriend Vlad were talking the other weekend, and the leader of the free world confessed that it seemed to him that neither country had enough nuclear warheads and that Obama was a poopyhead for negotiating the most recent START agreements limiting the two countries. Not banning nuclear weapons, minds you, just limiting, but even that chafes the Leader’s butt.
Sweet baby Cthulhu, how small are the man’s hands??
Off we go to our senators, who would be in charge of any treaties, etc.
On Dec 24, 2016, I emailed you to ask if you agreed with the president’s tweet that we should restart the nuclear arms race. You haven’t answered.
Now it appears that the president, in a private talk with Putin, has denigrated the limitations of the most recent START agreement.
If this proves to be the case, will you support a nuclear arms race? If so, to what end?
I do not expect an answer.
—————
[1] It does not make sense, not strategically, not tactically, not militarily, not ethically, not even economically.
Today’s Easy Question:
The president has chosen to sideline the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the National Security Council and to install Steve Bannon in their stead. Do you agree with his decision?
For those keeping score, here are all the easy questions I’ve asked.
Why no answers? Here. Savvy readers will recognize one of the problems as one I identified here, in footnote 2.
Since the Congress is determined to throw healthcare in the country into a death spiral, I thought it would be worth asking:
What is your plan to protect the gains we have made in providing health coverage to our citizens?
I of course do not expect a response. These people do not actually care what their constituents think.