"RICK SANTORUM vs. THE DISABLED"
Did the United Nations Make Him Crazy?

Over the past few days, the mainstream media and dozens of advocacy internet sites have been jumping on Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) for the Senate's failure a few days ago to get a 2/3rds majority vote to ratify the U.N.'s Conference on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities international treaty (hereafter CRPD) passed by that organization in 2006.

The CRPD was negotiated by then-President George W. Bush that same year, and has since been endorsed by a majority of U.S. congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle.  According to its proponents, it mirrors the U.S.'s excellent Individuals with Disabilities Education Act  together with President George H. W. Bush's 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

But apparently that wasn't good enough for 38 GOP senators this month when it came down to ratifying the treaty, which would've made the USA an official signatory to the CRPD along with the European Union, Russia, China, Cuba, both Koreas, many Muslim nations, and others. Sen. Santorum, it seems, raised an alarm about some of the CRPD's provisions and succeeded in getting his colleagues to reject it.

So why did Santorum (father of a young disabled child!) do this?  According to the aforementioned media and internet sites, it was because he hates disabled people. See the following examples:

Santorum’s new cause: opposing the disabled, by Dana Milbank (Washington Post)   

Rick Santorum’s Most Recent Enemy? The Disabled People (sodahead.com) 
 
Rick Santorum’s Most Recent Enemy? Millions of Disabled People Around the World  (beyondchron.org) 
 
Rick Santorum Takes On The Disabled (care2.com) 

Aside from the fact that the j'accuse  titles of all such articles and links seem to come from some Giant International Political Headlines Cartel, they have one thing in common:  Santorum's actual motive isn't revealed until well within the texts and it doesn't match the motive implied in the headlines (i.e., Santorum hates and/or opposes helping disabled persons).

For example, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank admits that Santorum's real concerns came from "the document's [supposed] threat to American sovereignty" and from a possible "plot to keep Americans from home-schooling their children and making other decisions about their well-being."  So, ostensibly looney "theories" aside, even by Milbank's own admission Santorum doesn't really "oppose the disabled" after all. He opposes the United Nations.  (Perhaps Milbank's editor didn't bother to read his entire column before assigning a headline to it.)

So which passages in the CRPD's text could've raised such alarms in Santorum's and other GOP Senators' minds? At this writer's initial reading of the text, the CRPD appears quite harmless, even innocuous. But ineffectual as well, given the U.N.'s poor record on protecting human rights since the organization was founded (e.g., the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Sudan).

As has been typical of UN treaties and resolutions, the CRPD's language is so ambiguous that it invites a rainbow of interpetations and applications. No wonder therefore that the nations which signed the CRPD include more than a few totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships –which also signed other U.N. human rights treaties in the past but never abided by a single one of them.

In other words, except as propaganda tools for Marxist, Maoist, and Islamo-Fascist regimes ("See? We support human rights too!"), such treaties have proven to be a waste of time and money, barely worth the pixels and paper they're published on. And they offer no help to anyone, disabled and otherwise, in the USA which already has its own very effective civil rights and human rights laws and enforcement mechanisms, beginning with the Bill of Rights and the Supreme Court.

Moreover, as has been the case with previous such U.N. treaties, signatory nations are required to submit reports to the U.N.'s "rights experts" so that the latter can pass judgment on their  record. In addition, signatory nations must send a delegation of at least twenty representatives to Geneva to appear before a panel of such "experts," which often include officials from such human rights giants as Cuba, China, Iran, and North Korea.

So why bother in the first place? As Senator Michael Lee (R-Utah) correctly pointed out, "We don’t think that it’s appropriate for the United States to be answering to a U.N. convention based in Geneva, Switzerland, when we are the leader of the world on this issue, as we are on so many other issues."

Perhaps knowing all that was what really drove Rick Santorum over the edge.

COMPROMISE, NEWSPEAK STYLE
Obama to House Republicans: "Take It or Leave It"  

From the very first hour of his victorious status quo re-election on November 6, President Obama has been urging both sides to "compromise" while at the same time repeating his demand that the House Republican majority --also victorious in the same status quo re-election-- end the Bush tax cuts for the upper 2% of taxpayers (which includes not only millionaires like himself and billionaires but also small businesses making $250K per year). 

The House GOP rejected that idea since 2009, but seem to have now finally put it on the bargaining table. All they want in return is for Obama to put entitlement spending cuts and tax reforms on the same table. Yet rather than meet the GOP at least halfway on this Obama has told Congress that he also wants $1.6 trillion in more taxes (instead of his original $800 billion "request"), especially for entitlement programs. On top of that, he wants more “stimulus” money and wants to take control of the debt ceiling limit away from Congress --in effect, to do away with it.

Mr. Obama’s definition of "compromise” seems to be an Orwellian one:  “Just shut up and give me everything I want.”  If he persists on this road, this would put the House GOP in a “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” position:

If they cave in and give Obama the blank check he wants, and taxing-and-spending goes even higher through the roof while the economy goes down the tubes, Obama and his palace guard [aka the mainstream media] will blame the Republicans. If they stand their ground and say “no,”and  the country drives over the fiscal cliff with Obama at the wheel, Obama and his palace guard will likewise blame the Republicans.

Perhaps the House GOP’s only ways out are: 

(A) Push for enactment of the Simpson-Bowles Commission’s debt and tax reform proposals despite deep rejection by both parties in 2010; 

or 

(B) Pass another extension of the Bush tax cuts in the House. Publicly emphasize it's "for the sake of small business and the middle class" using mass media, the Internet, and tweets --implicitly "daring" the President and the Democrat-controlled Senate to reject it.

WHAT IS THE "FISCAL CLIFF"?

This 7-minute video, produced by the Wall Street Journal a few weeks before the election, is an excellent "primer" on the Fiscal Cliff --what it is, what it means, and how it can be avoided.