Senate Republicans are Dangerous Assholes

Republicans currently serving in the United States Senate comprise the finest collection of giant assholes in the world outside of a pod of Blue Whales. Keep your attention focused on this crew of creeps, boobs, asses, douchebags and bastards. What a spectacle! Senate Democrats are no treat, and it is very fashionable these days to spread disdain in a non-partisan fashion. But a closer examination reveals just how ignorant and nasty is the GOP. They take corruption, fear-mongering and outright lying to the next level. Red-baiting has even been invoked, despite how extremely difficult it is to find a Red. They are Über-scum. But they are even worse than most Americans know.

Consider START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) for a moment. In 1991, Presidents Gorbachev and Bush Sr. signed START in Moscow and enacted the most comprehensive and successful arms control treaty ever. The Senate voted 93-6 in favor of implementing the treaty. It successfully slashed the number of deployed nuclear weapons of the US and the Russian Federation.

Earlier this year, Russia and the United States agreed to continue the arms reduction treaty beyond START II. Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the New START. Another milestone in the reduction of nuclear stockpiles.

This level of cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States was not achieved easily. In the decade before the ratification of START (the 1980's), the arms race between these two nations radically increased the number of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, bombers, and nuclear submarines. President Ronald Reagan further aggravated the world by insisting on the development of a missile defense system ("Star Wars"). But Reagan eventually woke up long enough to help lay the groundwork for START before he left office. This, plus radical changes in the former Soviet Union under the leadership of Gorbachev, as well as the end of the Cold War, set the stage for considerable progress.

START put an end to an arms race that was out of control and a threat to every living thing on Earth. Check out the numbers:

In 1990, Russian ICBMs and other missile programs were capable of delivering 9,420 nuclear warheads to the United States and NATO nations. A mere 9 years later, that number was reduced to 3,289. The United States responded in accordance with START requirements and cut her missile arsenal to 4,800, from a high of 8,300 ten years earlier.

That is impressive to me. Even more impressive is the New START, which will cut the number of nuclear missiles and warhead delivering bombers to 700, for each nation.

Now, send in the clowns, those wacky Republicans. The provisions of the new treaty, yet to be ratified by the Senate, are not controversial. The most talked about provision of New START is Article 5, which would prevent the US from converting ICBM stations into missile defense silos. This is something that the US never wanted to do, for reasons related to strategy and cost.

The ratification of New Start by the US Senate should be a no-brainer. It should have been passed already. There is nothing to argue about. Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, wrote earlier this week about the bipartisan support for the treaty:

Secretary Clinton and every living former secretary of state—nine in total-- have all publicly voiced their support. Five former secretaries of defense have endorsed the treaty. Seven former Strategic Command commanders have endorsed the treaty. As does STRATCOM, headquartered in my state of Nebraska, which oversees America's strategic nuclear, non-nuclear and cyber defenses. Also, it's important, I believe, that U.S. Strategic Command played a key role in the negotiating the treaty.

The position of Senate Republicans is best expressed by the Junior Senator from Tennessee (the man who took over for Bill Frist, remember him?), Bob Corker. On the Senate floor, Corker threatened to work with his Republican cohorts to kill New Start if Democrats dare to call for a vote to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Sickening, but true. Like I said...total assholes. Here is part of what he said.

[the vote to repeal DADT] is poisoning the well on this debate, on something that's very, very important….I'm just hoping that saner minds will prevail and that these issues that have been brought forth that are absolutely partisan, political, issues, brought forth to basically accommodate activist groups around this country. I'm hoping that those will be taken down or else I don't think the future of the START treaty over the next several days is going to be successful, based on what I'm watching.

Take it in, my fellow Americans. How unscrupulous and low can a human being go? And it's not just Corker, it's McCain and many other Senate Republicans, as well. The GOP is using the universal desire to reduce the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, manifest in New START, in a political ploy to keep gays out of the military.

This is just one example of why Senate Republicans are worse than vermin, they may very well be insane. Notice that I haven't even mentioned the extension of the Bush tax cuts and unemployment insurance, or the proposed repeal of the Estate Tax, or the Republican desire to privatize Social Security. There is an overwhelming tidal wave of evidence that Republican Senators are, indeed, dangerous assholes.