US senate disgraces itself... AGAIN!

Bardox

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A UN treaty, based on US legislation already inacted, against discremination of the disabled finally came up for a vote of ratification and fell short by 5 votes. Despite former senator Bob Dole, a world war 2 veteran who is near the end of his life, getting out of his death bed to attend this vote. He was sitting on the senate floor in his wheelchair with his wife expecting the treaty to easily pass. Fictitious fear mongering was used to justify the no vote on a treaty that had no real reason not to pass. Even though it would require nothing on the part of America and it is one of the coveted occasions a US law influenced the rest of the world, they voted against a treaty that does nothing other than helping handicapped people around the world. I find this utterly disgusting and disgraceful on a scale I have not seen before. I have seen many dumb and stupid things come out of congress, but nothing like this.

Treaty for the disabled should have passed - Editorials - The Boston Globe

I bring this to my fellow LPSG members for your opinions and any justification you may have.
 

tbrguy

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I heard about this last night and wondered if there was any limit to how low your politicians would go, just to... well, just to what?

Children in a playground was the closest I could get to thinking of a parallel.

Oblivious to the wants, needs and feelings of those affected by their internecine squabbling; how out of touch with reality these guys must be.

They obviously feel no obligation to their constituents.

Strange how, in a country where no politician can hope to get elected without adopting a veneer of christianity, they can behave like this.
 

D_Miranda_Wrights

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Not that I don't think it's totally paranoid, but the Republican issue here is with encroachment on U.S. sovereignty and probably not the substance of the issue at hand.
 

MilkDaddy

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There are 2 kinds of people in this world. People who want to be politicians, and those who are too smart to be and do something productive with their lives.
 

b.c.

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Just yet another example of how a handful of right winged zealots, bigots, misanthropes, and hate-mongering fascist NEOCONS can serve to undermine the workings of a GOOD cause - while the majority silently look on. Look at what they've done to undermine collective bargaining in Michigan as of late.

These people are STILL hard at work at HAVING IT THEIR WAY.

Vote their asses OUT in 2014.
 

Bardox

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After reading over the treaty terms and conditions, and I admit I needed help with the "legalese" in there, I can find no way in which this treaty could threaten US sovereignty or have any impact on American life as we have already complied with the terms laid out. It's just our own law rewritten to suit the global community. That's it.

There is nothing about men in blue helmets breaking down your front door, nothing that would change for home schoolers, or anything else that was used to justify their no vote. Fear mongering with crazed black helicopter and NWO conspiracies do not a good reason make.

I usually try to put a slightly humorous ending on my posts, but this is just too depressing. It's shameful, amoral, wrong.
 

D_Miranda_Wrights

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After reading over the treaty terms and conditions, and I admit I needed help with the "legalese" in there, I can find no way in which this treaty could threaten US sovereignty or have any impact on American life as we have already complied with the terms laid out. It's just our own law rewritten to suit the global community. That's it.

There is nothing about men in blue helmets breaking down your front door, nothing that would change for home schoolers, or anything else that was used to justify their no vote. Fear mongering with crazed black helicopter and NWO conspiracies do not a good reason make.

I usually try to put a slightly humorous ending on my posts, but this is just too depressing. It's shameful, amoral, wrong.

I mean, the inverse argument here would be that if it's redundant to U.S. law, why would we agree to something that could be construed to obligate us at a supernational level?
 

Hoss

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Bob Dole voting on a Bill to reduce discrimination of the disabled from his wheelchair... priceless.

Actually Dole didn't vote on this. He's no longer a Senator, he was attending for what should have been a clear and decisive statement of rights for disabled people.

The Republican Party has clearly changed and needs a quick reality check. They are letting the Tea Party dictate and direct. Years back the Republicans had George H.W. Bush who signed into legislation the Americans With Disabilities Act and then there was George W. Bush who was on board for part of the groundwork to try and get this treaty passed.
 

Calboner

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Anderson Cooper Takes On ‘Baffling Case’ Of GOP Flip-Flopping: ‘Why The Fudging Of Facts?’ | Mediaite

According to Cooper, three of the Republican senators who voted against ratification had formerly publicly supported the bill. One of them, Sen. Jerry Moran, was a co-sponsor of the ratification measure. None of the Republicans who voted against the bill has made any public statement about their reasons for doing so. The effort to thwart ratification was led by Rick Santorum, whose arguments are entirely based on false premises. There seems to be no motive to the opposition but an utterly unreasoning paranoiac aversion to the United Nations.
 

Fuzzy_

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Anderson Cooper Takes On ‘Baffling Case’ Of GOP Flip-Flopping: ‘Why The Fudging Of Facts?’ | Mediaite

According to Cooper, three of the Republican senators who voted against ratification had formerly publicly supported the bill. One of them, Sen. Jerry Moran, was a co-sponsor of the ratification measure. None of the Republicans who voted against the bill has made any public statement about their reasons for doing so. The effort to thwart ratification was led by Rick Santorum, whose arguments are entirely based on false premises. There seems to be no motive to the opposition but an utterly unreasoning paranoiac aversion to the United Nations.


Isn't paranoia a disability?

Santorum claimed that the treaty could lead to the euthanasia of disabled children.

This is what Santorum wrote in WorldNet Daily:

"The best interest of the child" standard 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.
This is eerily similar to Palin's death panel argument. Both Santorum and Palin both used their disabled children as examples in their fear mongering.

Fuzzy wonders... if the US' policies are in line with the UN treaty, then why do the Republicans reject it?
 

Phil Ayesho

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If other countries want to be up to our standards, it should up to that country. I thought liberals didn't like the U.S. policing the world?

Its not the US policing the world. It was the UN trying to get multinational agreement that the US standard should be the ideal to which other nations aspire.
But when you can't even get the nation whose laws inspired the treaty to endorse it... it kind of makes the USA look like its run by class A morons.

All because the GOP congressmen are terrified they will be primaried by the extremist nut jobs in their base who have completely detached from reality.

Sad, really... the GOP has spent 30 years selling their right wing a steady diet of ever more extreme conspiracy theories and fear mongered scapegoatism.
And here they are, trapped by the fact that the misinformation campaign they waged has resulted in their core constituency being too stupid to understand the world around them.
And eating their own for not voting in line with their wild eyed delusions.