Tuesday, June 20, 2017

An Open Letter to Senator Lankford

Dear Senator Lankford,
I hope this letter reaches you for it is very important to me.
After the Alexandria shooting you asked us to tone down the rhetoric.  The thing is however for many of us it is not just rhetoric but life or death issues that we struggle with every day. Both parties have betrayed the American people and sold out to corporate interests. Our anger is real, not just rhetoric and if you can understand and choose to deal with it we may yet save our country.
I suspect most of your constituent are contacting you about health care and many on climate change and the environment as well as jobs.  These are all important issues to me as well. However the most important issue to me and the thing that helps me fight through my pain and motivate me to volunteer for my PAC is the betrayal of my government. Even though I cant find a job and am desperately waiting to see if disability goes through in time it is my anger at President Trump and the support he enjoys from the GOP. I find it hard to push past my depression enough just to keep myself alive and do certain basic things that could extend my life, pride kept me from asking for disability until it was probably too late.  Yet my anger and hatred can still motivate me to try and keep him from destroying my country.
It is not just rhetoric but life and death and a betrayal of a country I still love and want to protect.  I am not alone, the shooter in Alexandria in my view did not want to kill anyone, I doubt anyone is that bad a shot.  Instead I think he had given up on life an wanted to make a political statement as his last act. Unlike right wing conservative extremists he did not bomb a church, kill a little Muslim girl with a bat, shoot up a gay night club, or any of the other things that seem to be more and more common every year. Nor did he, like the desperate and hopeless (or yes some of the mentally ill) go on a random shooting spree.  Instead he made a patriotic act of defiance and went for the leadership. I would prefer not to see any of that but if we have to see more people killing people out of anger, frustration and sheer desperation I hope you understand why I feel it should be more of the latter than the former. It is not immigrants, the GLBTQ community, minorities, or different religions that are destroying America it is our leadership.
All right I hope I have established how important I think this issue is so now on to laying it out for you.
President Trump is guilty of lying with a frequency we have never seen before, he violates the Emolument clause, attacks the media, uses his office to advertise his properties and line his pockets, pushes away our allies and embraces our enemies.  All while the GOP sings his praises, makes excuses for him and has become our modern day Nero with Trump as the mother.
I do not regard the Democrats as much better but right now you are in charge so the responsibility is yours. Having met you once I consider you intelligent and I think actually care about the country.  I don’t side with your views on many issues but I hope I am right and you care for this country.  I am not bothering with Senator Inhofe or Rep Frank Lucas as I do not have the same impression and hope for them. Heck I can even see the difference when I call your various staffs.  I am volunteering for Brand New Congress as I think it is the last hope for peaceful government reform. However your in charge now and maybe, just maybe you can help stop the violence or even civil war I see us headed towards.
As you sit on the Intelligence committee you have access to more information than I do but let me list what I as a civilian see.  President Trump did not win the election as a conservative republican; he won as an anti-establishment candidate against a corporate and establishment democrat. He had the lowest approval ratings of any previous President and many people did not trust him.  Yet people were desperate for change and he promised that.  They should have known better and the GOP should have been able to choose someone else instead of him as the best they had to offer. Both parties failed America. People are still desperate and tired of being lied to and politicians choosing party over country. I appeal to you to impeach him as soon as possible and curb his excesses as much as possible until he becomes  unpopular enough the GOP is willing to do so. I appeal to your sense of morality and patriotism as regards the following issues.
Turkey: He and Flynn asked to hold off helping the Kurds against ISIS because Turkey wanted that and both were taking money from the Turkish government. Flynn was directly paid and Trump has a hotel they reportedly increased support for. As a member of the Intelligence Committee I suspect you can easily check out how true this is. If true I consider this treason as we are at war with ISIS.
Russia: There are so many people around him with ties to Russia it is amazing the GOP does not seem to care.  Some of these may indeed be legitimate, however why does he fight investigation so hard?  Why did so many of his people withhold that information on their security forms? Why did both Sessions and Comey testify under oath that he never asked about election meddling? I was disappointed to see you not press that issue. We have reports of financial ties to Russia and China and I do not for a moment believe he will put the countries interests over his business ones.  Do you?
Allies: He treats our allies as corporate rivals, treating handshakes as arm wrestling contests, shoving a Prime Minister to get in front of the camera, lectures them in front of the NATO 9-11 memorial with barely a mention of the sacrifice they went to on our behalf at that time. I can barely walk and yet I would have walked with them rather than follow in a golf cart. There is more but you are aware of that.
Emolument and Graft: He is in violation of this every day.  Diplomats and companies stay at his properties or pay club dues (which he doubled at Mara Lago) for access.  He used the White House to advertise his property and has the taxpayer funnel money into them for his weekend getaways and even official functions such as meetings with ambassadors. Turkey moved their convention from the Ritz to his place. China just happened to grant him and his family Trademarks. His brand is growing and he is getting more and more wealthy and yet we do not even know how deep his foreign ties are because he hides his taxes. He approved DAPLE while holding stock in the company, he wants to sell off public lands to his friends and make the bankers wealthy by deregulation (even though it will likely cause another recession when we have to bail them out again).
Maybe the country could survive his bungling of foreign affairs and general incompetence but that the GOP protects him on the above is enraging. And it will cost them.
Thank you,
Rory Fansler veteran of the Cold War.



 PS: I had more to say but it was already 2 pages. I hope he gets it but his staff are really awesome.
The other guys Sen Inhofe and Rep Lucas staff are downright surly when you call them.  I have the feeling they dont pass anything along.

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