To the best of my memory I hadn’t even heard of the damn thing until ER’s spew.

But out of curiosity, I spent some time looking into it after that. I read ER’s article (he linked it twice), then looked up some more articles. I found the text of the treaty. I looked up old stories on it from 2009 and later. I read some things by people who opposed it, and some things by people who supported it.

It’s been hanging fire in Washington since Obama signed it in July of 2009. It languished during the next year or so of overwhelming Democratic control, then finally showed up in the Senate almost three years later (May, 2012). It’s interesting, and a bit suspicious, that this treaty vote only came up just now during an all-out political war against the Republicans.

And yes, there are reasoned objections to this, and no, they aren’t about children being stolen in the night. They are about legal precedents, definitions, the past performance of other “committees” similar to the one in this treaty, and other things that need to be resolved.

I’m not the one promulgating lies about the treaty, such as the ridiculous assertion that it enable the UN to “seize” American children and “quarantine” them.

You show me what’s so objectionable about the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The treaty negotiated by George W. Bush in 2006. Show me where it threatens US sovereignty. Show me where it empowers “UN bureaucrats” to seize American children. Show me where it’s a “UN takeover”.

Show me even one reality-based reason justifying rejection of a Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Just for the record, I did sample about half the sections of that treaty. It’s bland and innocuous and the New World Order and black helicopters are nowhere to be found.

Check it out.

It’s really not much of a trick to tap into conservative paranoia about the UN to round up votes for any anti-UN resolution. It really was just a knee-jerk vote; just a bunch of scorpions being true to their natures.

The mean-spirited vote against the treaty upgrading the rights of the disabled globally to US standards was motivated by exactly the same paranoia.

Republicans didn’t make a conscious decision to be good guys on one vote and shits on the other; they were consistently being shits. Lucky for us that in one case it came up roses.

Although the flap about the upcoming Dubai meeting is exaggerated and overblown and paranoiac as usual, in principle there is always a danger that a nation like Russia might introduce some poisonous provision (which would be put to a vote of the entire ~170 member nations). So it’s nice for the US to go on record that we would take a dim view of changing the Internet regulatory status quo. But it’s really not something worth losing any sleep over, and it’s only an accident that Republicans did the right thing.

I’m afraid I’m with ER: Republicans deserve little credit for yet another knee-jerk reaction.

This is all political posturing, designed to prove how they ain’t taking no crap from this Obama pretender to the throne, meant to reassure the TPartiers back home that UN agents will not be coming to take away their disabled kids. Kerry mentioned some of his Senate colleagues were actually getting phone calls from terrified constituents that they had been “advised” that the bill gave UN functionaries the right to quarantine American kids and take them away to foreign lands for supervision.

This is more death panel stuff. Not even the TPs in the Senate believe it, but they don’t want to be caught on record denying it.

However, there’s no reason why you can’t comment all you want.

Frankly, I think that is the voice of a wise man, and I can’t find fault with it. I wish I could be so succinct and terse. I didn’t have much to say anyway, certainly nothing which should occupy productive minds.

Said in all sincerity.

Arf

But I will let it stand as is. There’s no point in commenting any further anyway, at least as far as I’m concerned.

Thirty-eight Republicans appear to have agreed and voted Tuesday to reject the treaty. And while 61 senators supported it — including eight Republicans and two independents — the tally fell five votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. No Democrat voted against it. Sen. Mark Kirk, Illinois Republican, was absent and did not vote.

—

Mr. [John] Kerry called Tuesday was “one of the saddest days I’ve seen in almost 28 years in the Senate.”

Former GOP Sen. Bob Dole, a wounded World War II veteran and prime sponsor of the original ADA law who supports the treaty, made a rare visit to the Senate floor to watch the debate and vote.

Who are these people? What is the matter with them? Is there no limit to their hate and their fear?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/4/senate-rejects-un-disabilities-treaty/#ixzz2EDtAU7l2

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/4/senate-rejects-un-disabilities-treaty/#ixzz2EDsanvL7
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