There’s nothing as dangerous as a stupid person who believes that they’re intelligent and has all the answers when their knowledge could fit on the head of a pin. Bill-O calls them pinheads and I call them malakas but it’s the same idea We’ve seen a lot of malakatude from Republicans since President Obama took office. This sort of thinking reached either its apogee or nadir this week with the release of the simplistic, marginally literate, patronizing letter written by a Freshman Senator. And that is why Tom Cotton is malaka of the week.

The Cotton letter has been called a lot of things but I think Charlie Pierce summed it up best:

Cotton stands revealed as a true fanatic. He’s stalwart in his convictions as regards things about which he knows exactly dick. What he and practically every Republican in the Senate did was nothing short of a slow-motion, partial coup d’etat. It was not quite treason, and it was not quite a violation of the Logan Act, no matter how dearly some of us might wish it was. (Imagine the howls if the Justice Department actually inquired into that possibility, which it certainly has a right to do. Lindsey Graham might never rise from the fainting couch.) But it stands in history with Richard Nixon’s grotesque sabotage of the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 and with whatever it was that the Reagan campaign did to monkeywrench the possible release of the American hostages from their captivity in Iran in 1980. It is an act of unconscionable and perilous presumption, reckless at its base and heedless of eventual consequences. Nobody elected Tom Cotton or the rest of these clowns to undermine the ability of this president to conduct foreign policy. (Nobody elected Bibi Netanyahu to do it, either, as sad as this might make Jen Rubin.) It long has been acceptable on the respectable American right to call this president practically anything. It now is acceptable on the respectable American right to do anything to thwart his ability to conduct his office. A twice-elected president must bow to the uneducated whims of the representative of 478,819 Arkansans. We have fallen through the looking glass and left it far behind.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s said (by whom I’ll never know) that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, that’s why Tom Cotton and his ilk are so dangerous. They’re fanatics with a peppercorn of knowledge who think they know best  but, as always with Obama era wingnuts, they only know what they’re against, they offer no solution to the problem, which is a serious one that should be reserved for serious people instead of clownish malakas like Tom Cotton. Damn, that was a long ass sentence. I’ve been reading too much Rick Bragg for my own good…

Another thing that troubles me about the Cotton open letter stunt is that 46 Republican Senators signed on to something drafted by a FRESHMAN who has been in office less than 3 months. It makes me long for the days when Freshman Senators kept their mouths shut and didn’t speak for at least a year. It’s yet another sign that Chinless Mitch has about as much control over his caucus as his counterpart in the House. Does anyone seriously believe that Bob Dole would have allowed a Freshman Senator to involve 46 colleagues in such an extreme as well as extremely stupid policy statement? Way to side with the Iranian hawks, Senators. They don’t want an agreement either.

Right Wingers believe that you cannot negotiate with your enemies, which is ludicrous. There is no need to negotiate with your friends. We’ve seen this time and time again over the years. The only way to settle differences is to compromise with your adversaries, which is something that is lost on the likes of Malaka Cotton and his new found hero, Bibi Netanyahu. Btw, Bibi has been saying that Iran is on the verge of producing nuclear weapons since 1991. That was when Poppy Bush still wore black socks, REM was one of the biggest bands in the world, and I had a full head of hair. In the immortal words of David Crosby, it’s been a long time gone.

The worst thing about all this Republican Senatorial gamesmanship is that the stakes are so high. The alternative  to a rational, verifiable nuclear agreement with Iran is some sort of military action either in support of or in conjunction with Israel. Been there, done that. Besides, how does one “take out” nuclear reactors that produce enriched uranium? I haven’t the foggiest and neither do cretins like the FRESHMAN Senator from Palookaville.

Republicans expect great things from the Senatorial class of 2014. I expect they’ll be serving us bowlfuls of crazy for quite some time. While I don’t quite agree that what Malaka Cotton and his colleagues have done is treason, it verges on it. It is certainly unpatriotic as well as downright stupid to attempt to thwart the President’s efforts to keep the peace by clumsily intervening in the process. Making it more despicable is that is driven by personal animosity towards President Obama. We tried it their way and hundreds of thousands of people died and are still dying because the Republican approach made an unholy mess of the Middle East.  Tom Cotton should be ashamed of himself but his kind have no shame whatsoever. And that is why he’s malaka of the week.

I’ll give the New York Daily News the last word with its smashing front page from yesterday: