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.

• City of the Dead
• In Manila, Death Comes by Night
• End the Drug War

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:

• Trump’s commerce secretary praises no protests in a country where people die for them
• Commerce secretary praises lack of protesters during Trump’s Saudi visit
• Context: A Saudi Arabian Activist Will Get 50 Lashes Every Friday for the Next 20 Weeks

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.

I for one am not even astonished that the Congress is looking to fund the president-elect’s “wall.”  So what if the man said that “Mexico will pay for it”?  Apparently nothing he said on the campaign trail matters.^[1]

It also doesn’t seem to matter that the party of “fiscal responsibility” and “small government” now wants to jumpstart the biggest boondoggle since the Iraq war.

But I do have some questions for my elected representatives.

• Does the congressman have data (in the form of research studies or reports) on the effectiveness of a “wall” in keeping migrant workers from entering the country from Mexico?  Can you provide me with a link to any of those?
• Does the congressman have data (in the form of research studies or reports) on the impact on employment/wages in this country if low-wage migrant workers are excluded from the economy?  What are his plans to prevent wage inflation if the country loses access to these workers?
• Has the congressman weighed the opportunity costs between building the “wall” and investing in the country’s infrastructure?  In other words, given our limited resources, is it going to be a better strategy to insure our economic future to build the wall rather than to repair our bridges, roads, and airports?

Or, bluntly, is the congressman’s vote based purely on the symbolic vindictiveness that seems to characterize his party?

—————

^[1] It doesn’t matter because the only thing that matters to the Republicker party is that they now have a patsy in the White House.

It is worth noting that my new Congressional Representative, one Drew Ferguson, has emerged from his pod and will now be receiving some very simple questions with simple answers alongside Sen. David Perdue and Sen. Johnny Isakson.

That is all.  Carry on.

I don’t even really know how to phrase this in the form of a question.

The president-elect tweeted this morning:

“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”

What are your thoughts about this man’s message?  Do you think this is appropriate for our nation’s leader?  Do you support this attitude?

Given that I have not had an answer to most of my easy questions, I don’t expect to hear from either of my senators on this one either.  (Still waiting for my new representative to emerge from his pod.)