LET THEM GO TO SANFORD

To those who say there is no racism in America... let them go to Sanford.

To those who say we have one system of justice for all... let them go to Sanford.

To those who say American justice is blind.. let them go to Sanford.

To those of us who want justice from Florida's unequal enforcement of their Stand Your Ground law...let us stand our ground in Sanford.

TELL ME WHAT WERE THEIR NAMES, TELL ME WHAT WERE THEIR NAMES

One of the more poignant and powerful songs from World War II was "Rueben James" written by our poet laureate of the common man, Woodie Guthrie. It commemorates the sinking of the US Destroyer Rueben James on October 31, 1941, by a German submarine while escorting ships supplying England with war material shortly before US entry in WWII. 115 crew members perished and only 44 survived. The majesty of the song is that it doesn't mention the world war or even our eventual adversary Germany. Its simply asks the listener two questions: "What were their names?", and, "Did you have a friend on the good Rueben James?" The song achieves a universality in its evocation of real human beings being killed as opposed to just statistics.

I'm reminded of Guthrie's song when thinking about the slaughter of 16 Afghans; 4 men, 3 women and 9 children, apparently by a lone, mentally unhinged soldier, who left his base one night and systematically carried out his slaughter in two nearby villages, shooting his victims in their homes before burning their bodies.


We now know the name of the suspected shooter who has been furnished a celebrity defense lawyer, and we hear of many reasons offered to explain his grotesque behavior. The celebrity lawyer has met with the suspect, who, he says, has no memory of the incident. Very convenient.

But we haven't now and may never know the names of the 16 Afghans shot down and burned for the crime of being the first civilians the shooter came upon. Maybe an Afghan equivalent of Woodie Guthrie can pen a song about them to remind us that they were someone's mother or father or son or daughter or sister or brother, or as Guthrie so eloquently sang, simply a friend. As we focus all our attention on the man who threw away his life in one deadly act of rage, his victims deserve nothing less.

OPEN LETTER TO AFGHAN PRESIDENT KARZAI

Dear Afghanistan President Karzai:

Please kick us out of your country. We are too stupid and too heartless and too addicted to the money and power of criminal war to leave on our own. We use an overburdened private army to fight our senseless wars because we would not support them for a minute if we were all subject to a universal draft. As a result we send hired soldiers to multiple tours and some of them go nuts, killing and maiming and defiling your country. That's what happens in war; always has, always will. Tell us to leave real fast so the door doesn't hit...I think you get the point.

MCCARTHYISM ALIVE AND WELL IN KASS WORLD

I love reading John Kass's Tribune columns about local bad guys in Chicago politics. Whether dissecting Governor Deadmeat (A.K.A. Rod Blagojevich) or State Senator How You Doin'? (A.K.A. James DeLeo), Kass is as entertaining as he is informative.

Sadly, he just can't seen to get over our 2008 Presidential election of Barack Obama, a transformational figure, who just happens to come out of Chicago politics, by way of Harvard. In his March 15th column "Some Blago missteps criminal; some just stupid" commenting on Governor Deadmeat's own transformation into Prisoner Deadmeat, Kass gave inordinate attention to his pet project of denigrating Obama by guilt through association, a trait made famous by Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare sixty years ago. The real theme of the column was how Blago was a corrupt politician who was stupid and went to jail, while Obama was a corrupt politician who was smart, and went to the White House. True, Kass writes "I'm not accusing the president of corruption", but in a slick McCarthyite pivot, he immediately completes the sentence with "although he and Blagojevich shared a friendship with the same influence peddler Tony Rezko".

Kass then completely misinterprets the nature of Obama being a reformer by explicitly writing that "The young Obama played the reformer (emphasis mine) for an adoring media. Obama would never dare challenge the alphas of Illinois". What Kass doesn't understand, or refuses to see, is that Obama doesn't play at being a reformer for an adoring media, he governs as a reformer as President. Ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell, is not playing reformer, it's governing as a reformer. Passing Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is not playing reformer, it's governing as a reformer. Passing Credit Card Accountability Act is not playing reformer, it's governing as a reformer. Passing Dodd-Frank Wall Street & Consumer Protection Act is not playing reformer, it's governing as a reformer. Requiring no pay birth control for needy women is not playing reformer, it's governing as a reformer. Passing Affordable Health Care Act is not playing reformer, it's governing as a reformer. And that is just in the first three years!

Kass ends his defamatory and innuendo-filled attack on the President with one last link to the corrupt Blagojevich. "Obama walked quietly along the Chicago Way and became President. And Blagojevich didn't, and now he's gone." And up in the Political Great Beyond, Tail Gunner Joe is smiling and saying "Nice job, John."