Caught Between Iran and a Hard Place

I was going to take a breather today and not write about Trump’s “Memorandum of Understanding” surrender document.  But a news story came up that leaped out to grab my attention. 

I was watching the news, and they had a montage of MAGOPs in the Senate either avoiding answering questions about the disastrous document, or giving scathing comments.  MAGOPs!!  There was Lindsey Graham, the First Acolyte, actually walking in silence past a questioning reporter asking him about his cult leader.  There was Susan Collins, running for re-election, standing in an elevator, and doing all she could to talk slowly enough for the doors to (please, oh, pleeeease) close on her so she could avoid answering a question and having to she explain that, no, “I haven’t had a chance...to read” the...1-1/2 page docum….  There was Trump sycophant Ted Cruz saying scathingly that “giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea.” There was deep-far right Tom Cotton shredding the idea of giving billions to Iran, adding in deeply-bitter sarcasm that “we know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on daycare or on hospitals. They're going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and fund Hezbollah."  There was Ohio senator Jon Husted, running for re-election, refusing to answer a question on the memorandum. There was…

 Wait, hold on.  Let’s rewind and go back a minute.  While news stories all day were rightly pointing out how notable it was that Senate MAGOPs were either blasting Trump’s surrender or avoiding comment completely, something leaped out to me that seems to have slipped through the cracks.

Okay, do we have it cued up?  Deep-far right Tom Cotton shredding the idea of giving billions to Iran.  Play the tape --

“We know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on day care or on hospitals. They're going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles, to fund Hamas and fund Hezbollah." 

There it is.  A regime that we know is so terrorist and revolutionary that they’re going to use the billions we given them in order to fund such terrorist organizations as the evil Hamas and Hezbollah, rather than spend it on such humanitarian needs as day care and hospitals. 

Exactly like Cotton’s own MAGOP is doing!  Not spending money on day care.  And cutting funding to hospitals.

 This isn’t hyperbolically twisting words.  This is MAGOP policy.  On the record.  Verbatim.  From their party’s leader.  And we have it on tape.  Go to Trump – 

“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.” 

And on of the core features of the MAGOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (and name they’ve been trying to run away from ever since it passed, and the public grasped what was in it) was cutting funding from rural hospitals.

From the National Health Organization – “Rural hospitals are expected to see a 21% decline in Medicaid reimbursement due to provisions in OBBBA [One Big Beautiful Bill Act]. With almost half of rural hospitals having negative operating margins, we are concerned about rural hospital closures or elimination of key service.”

And this – this!!! – not spending money on daycare and hospitals -- is what far-right senator Tom Cottom (MAGOP-AR) used an example to special show how cruel and dangerous the “terrorists” of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are!!  People who Trump sycophant Ted Cruz called “theocratic lunatics.” 

I don’t know if MAGOPs in Congress listen to their own words, or don’t care what their words are since they’ll change them to fit the moment, or don’t understand their words since they only care about posturing, or sometimes feel do caught and scared and lost that they’ll just spit out anything to fill the dead air space.  Or maybe it’s something else.  Or a combination of the above.  Or maybe it’s just that Trump’s dementia has become accepted within the MAGOP as the norm, and so speaking the same unconnected, unfocused, “Does he know what he’s saying???” rambling way as him is now the party’s standard.

Or maybe, like Trump, sometimes MAGOPs don't realize they just project themselves.  Slamming others while really only explaining who they are, out loud. 

I only know that for perhaps the first time, I actually agree with at least part of what Tom Cotton said.  Supported by Ted Cruz.  And backed up by all the silent, enabling, scared members of the MAGOP in Congress -- 

People who won’t fund and will even cut funding for daycare and rural hospitals are “theocratic lunatics who, like “terrorist revolutionary regimes,” don’t care about the humanitarian needs of those they serve.

You know what would be cool?  If the media picked up on this, too.  It's not a hard one to grasp.