CONG. ROSKAM: STEALTH WAR LOVER TO ILLINOIS' 6TH DISTRICT

May 26, 2012




Congressman Peter Roskam
150 S. Bloomingdale Road, Suite 200
Bloomingdale, IL 60108

Dear Congressman Roskam,

I have a great suggestion for your fourth run to be my Congressman (third re-election). To highlight your singular contribution to American's primary industry, war, how about this slogan:

                Congressman Peter J. Roskam, Stealth War Lover to Ilinois' Sixth District

Sir, you have served your masters in the Military-Industrial Complex well, supporting every single one of the roughly 600 billion dollars you have voted for to fund our senseless, murderous and bankrupting wars of choice across the Middle East and Africa. That works out to neartly two billion dollars a week. But the closest a war lover like you will ever get to real war that is destroying the lives and lands of so many people, including ours, is to sit back and push the voting button each week from your House chair to squander another two billion dollars on this folly. I guess that qualifies you as an "armchair warrior".

Besides being a slavish supporter of this madness, you have wisely adhered to a second requirement for war lovers: stealthyness. When you signed up for the Complex during your first House race in 2006, you absorbed this requirement to never, ever discuss or mention the military ventures you back unless absolutely backed into it. Hence, your brilliant stealthy reply in your lone debate (which I attended) with Tammy Duckworth to the question: "What is your strategy for ending our war in Iraq?" Your reply, "I don't have a strategy for ending the Iraq war; I have a goal, that it end well, so we don't have to go back". The Complex issued you a gold star for that answer, Congressman. You said absolutely nothing of substance, but it sure sounded wise and statesmanlike. Here we are six years later and guess what? It didn't end well for 5,973 dead US servicemen and contractors, and hundreds of thousands more who were wounded, injured or suffered PTSD and other mental problems. It didn't end well for America, which will have to borrow 40% of the three trillion dollar long range cost. In Iraq millions are dead, injured or made homeless. And, contrary to your ludicrous conclusion; we are not going back. Even the Complex knows that is unnecessary when they have another decade of profit making warfare ahead of them in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and your latest pet war target - Iran.

Stealthyness in regard to loving war requires the subject be excised from you Congressional web site: www.roskam.house.gov. During your House tenure you barely ever mentioned the words Iraq and Afghanistan. You camouflaged virtually all of your meager and unsubstantive remarks about foreign policy under the issue: "War on terror", even though the Obama administration long abandoned that catchphrase invented by the Bush administration to promote their endless wars of choice. You've finally retired the dreadful "War On Terror" issue , but try to find anything about war in your current list of website issues:

Congressman Roskam on the Issues

• Lowering Family Energy Costs

• Reducing Job-Destroying Regulations

• Pro-Growth Tax Reform • Reforming our Healthcare System

• Reducing Debt & Saving Crucial Entitlements • Balancing the Federal Budget

I guess 600 billion over the last five and a half years is not worth a single issue mention, is it, Congressman.

You and your many fellow stealth war lovers in Congress bet on the fact that most voters, simply trying to survive day to day in a dying economy, cannot concern themselves with this most crucial issue facing our nation. Maybe that is why, when you're not supporting more war, you've devoted most of your remaining energies to snipping away at the social safety net, like abolishing Obamacare, and firing as many non-defense related government workers as possible. That's right, Congressman, keep the voters distracted just staying solvent so they won't see the damage you inflict with your endless support of the war machine.

I say bunk! I've been against senseless war since 1963, when you were still learning to talk. I will keep holding up a mirror to your atrocious record of war, war, and more war till I can no longer lift it. Look deep into that mirror, Congressman. The reflection is not pretty.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
IL 6th District Resident

UMPIRE KASS TOSSES EMANUEL FOR RICKETTS BEANBALL

John Kass, in his Sunday Tribune column, "Joe Ricketts takes a swing, gets beaned by Emanuel" demonstrates once again, how Kass twists and turns every local story back to his endless obsession to bash Chicago political leaders. Thank god Rham beaned Papa Joe Ricketts for considering use of Klan like tactics of race baiting to defeat Obama so he can destroy more of the social safety net and grab additional wealth for himself and his clan. Kass is simply tone deaf to the real issue here; the need to ferret out and excise the corrosive politics of endless money and endless hate that fuels the anti Obama frenzy. For Kass to state that the way for Republicans to defeat Obama is to "to tie him to Chicago politics...but Republicans can't risk it" is idiotic. Think Mitt would go for this John Kass slogan: "Vote for Romney...not a soldier of the Rhamfather"? Unlikely.

VACCINE NEEDED FOR NEW RICKETTS DESEASE

The bombshell story in today's NY Times regarding Joe Ricketts, billionaire patriarch of the new Cubs owner Ricketts family, is painful to even contemplate. It involves selling ten million dollars of family TD Ameritrade stock, the foundation of Ricketts' family wealth, to fund a ten million dollar campaign to smear President Obama during the Democratic Convention by blasting his long ago ties with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Papa Joe is quoted in the 54 page attack plan entitled "The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: The Ricketts plan to end his spending for good", as saying "If the nation had seen that [unaired McCain ad featuring Rev. Wright], they’d never have elected Barack Obama". If that isn't despicable enough, this is the same Ricketts family who is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to update the Cubs' Wrigley Field.


Maybe I'm being too hard on this piece of political slime. It could simply be a means of making sure there is plenty of taxpayer money left to prop up a crumbling baseball shrine.