I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of the activist group Roots Action: one of their particular charms in my opinion is that their email campaign messaging is very good, and they allow users to tweak it and add to it, or even overwrite it entirely, before forwarding it on to one’s congresscritters. As you might imagine, sometimes that opportunity is too tempting for me to pass up.
Today via email, the good people at Roots Action offered up just such a tasty treat: an entirely editable missive to both my senators demanding they vote against President Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Japan, that ratfucker Rahm Emanuel. It also urges them to announce their intent to do so publicly.
Here is the email with some background; unfortunately it does not come close to cataloging all the things I despise about this nominee. But then, ain’t nobody got that kind of time on their hands.
President Biden has announced that he is nominating Rahm Emanuel to be the U.S. ambassador to Japan. Emanuel would be a terrible choice for ambassador to any country, let alone a nation with the world’s third-largest economy and 119 U.S. military bases.
We agree with Congress members Rashida Tlaib, Mondaire Jones, and Cori Bush, who immediately responded to the announcement by strongly urging senators to reject the Emanuel nomination. “This is a travesty,” Rep. Jones wrote. “Senators of good conscience must not vote to confirm him.”
Please take a minute now to tell both your senators to vote against the nomination of Rahm Emanuel.
Working in Bill Clinton’s White House, Emanuel fought for the NAFTA trade deal, the mass incarceration-oriented 1994 crime bill, harsh barriers to immigration and the punitive 1996 “welfare reform” law. Later, as a member of Congress, Emanuel supported the Iraq invasion and defended the U.S. occupation of that country.
After being elected mayor of Chicago in 2011, Emanuel waged an intensive war on the teachers’ union and made history by closing 49 public schools, many in African-American neighborhoods.
In a tough re-election campaign in 2015, Mayor Emanuel very likely would have lost the election except for the fact that for 13 months his administration suppressed a horrific dash-camera video showing the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, an African American who’d been shot 16 times by a police officer as he walked away from the officer.
RootsAction.org has initiated a coalition of 20 organizations to launch a nationwide grassroots campaign urging senators to vote No. (You can read the joint statement from those groups via a link under “Background” below.)
…
This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $3 now.
— The RootsAction.org Team
Background:
>> “No to Rahm” Coalition Statement
>> Norman Solomon, Common Dreams: “Will Senate Democrats Stoop to Confirming Rahm Emanuel as Ambassador?”
__________
Here is my letter: my edits are red and/or bolded.
__________
Subject: Reject the Rahm Emanuel nomination – to ANY government post.
Dear Senator Schumer / Senator Gillibrand:
We all know who he is: part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. His policies, priorities and worldview, spelled out over decades in word and in deed, are unequivocal.
Frankly, Japan deserves better, and we as Americans deserve to have a better representative on the world stage. I believe we can and should do far better than Rahm Emanuel. Do you?
President Biden’s decision to nominate Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan is disturbing unacceptable. As a your constituent, I urge you to announce that you will vote against this nomination. Emanuel has a long record of being extremely undiplomatic, abrasive and contemptuous of humane values. His record as mayor of Chicago, where his administration oversaw the coverup of the horrific police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, is troubling disqualifying.
Please let me know your decision on this matter. It will be very important to me.
__________
Wow, I feel like I really accomplished something today! No, not because I wrote pointless letters to my Senators. It’s because I came across a serendipitous opportunity to call Rahm Emanuel a ratfucker on my blog. I really ought to do this a lot more often.
Oh, and just in case you’re interested, there were more background links on the letter screen than there were in Roots Action’s email:
Sent mine off. Whats wrong with these people? Biden has to do better.
StonedRanger says
Nothing, if you love ratfuckers.
Thank you I did this for my state.
Ratfuckers does not seem harsh enough. Squirrelfuckers, maybe?
I do not love rat fuckers or ratfuckers. Since I do not love them the question still stands, whats wrong with these people?
I got a canned response email from both my senators.
StonedRanger:
My sincere apologies! It looks like I have been a terrible slacker in running regular refresher courses on this critical matter of global, national, and very often personal security.
The short answer to your question is that they are Squirrel People.
The less short but more elucidating answer to your question is that they are Squirrel People, and Squirrel People are by definition card-carrying members of the Democratic Party, albeit ones who conduct themselves as conservatives. Like, for instance, their absolute allegiance to privatized healthcare, fossil fuel subsidies, panty-sniffing surveillance, Big Banksters, unrestrained capitalism, oligarchy over democracy, kleptocracy over accountable government, contempt for those Others they deem “beneath” them, etc. etc. ad nauseum, wait seriously, I’m getting nauseated 🤢). Perhaps the easiest, most obvious and illustrative nexus between squirrels and Squirrel People is that conservatives ruin everything–and I do mean EVERY GODDAM THING–just like the enemy rodents do! And this is key: just as the sciuridae use their bushy-tailed cuteness superpower to obscure their true, evil nature, so too do the Squirrel People use a big, blue capital letter “D” after their names as camouflage to disguise their innate and unrepentant conservatism. It’s anyone’s guess which of the two have more humans completely bamboozled.
The loooong answer can be found all over this blog, for starters here:
Invasion of the Squirrel People.
Debbie Wasserman Squirrel.
Squirrel people collude to maim and kill Mississippi women.
Ahh, the distinct scent of Squirrel Person scalp.
I trust this answers your question satisfactorily.
Sean Boyd: Well, given the insular nature of conservative communities, coupled with their characteristic repressed and unhealthy views of sex and sexuality, I’d venture a guess that there’s an awful lotta intra-species Squirrel-People-fucking going on. But that’s kind of a mouthful (yes I know: that’s what SHE said😆) while “ratfucker” just seems to roll off the tongue…(yeah she said that too🤣).
I don’t have the link at-hand now, but some months ago there was an (opinion?) piece in, I think, the Grauniad, contrasting Biden’s domestic- and foreign-policy teams. What it pointed out is the domestic team is largely composed of somewhat-progressives who worked for Senator Warren and others, and who largely don’t trust the thugs (Republicans), “big” industry, etc. The foreign team is mostly hangers-on from previous administrations, i.e., very very welded to the military-industrial complex, who tend to be beholden to teh “cold war”, teh military, teh arms industry, and so on (notably lacking in humanitarian, developmental, etc., specialists). The piece postulated this was an important reason for some of the domestic agenda not being stillborn, whilst all of the foreign agenda seems to be the same old failed shite.