AUMF anyone?

Ask a hundred random Americans what an AUMF is and you'd be hard pressed to get a single correct answer. But ask the 535 members of Congress about an AUMF and they'll recoil in horror as if it combines AIDS, Zika and Ebola viruses all rolled into one. AUMF stands for Authorization for Use of Military Force, a congressional requirement from the War Powers Act of 1973 to reign in unilateral presidential war making so murderously abused by President Nixon in his secret war in Cambodia during the Vietnam era.

We haven't had an AUMF since the 2002 AUMF to prosecute the Iraq war. Yet today the President is expending thousands of bombs and billions of dollars trying to destroy imagined bad guys in the Middle East. Our war making today is so absurd we're both bombing Sunni Muslim followers of ISIS/al Qaeda at the same time we're supporting the very same folks trying to overthrow the hated Shi'ite government of Syrian President Assad. For the US war party, everyone is a potential target. On top of that absurdity is all this carnage is being carried out under old, obsolete AUMF's dealing with the 911 attackers and Saddam Hussein's non-existent WMD.

Neither the president nor Congress wants a new AUMF. Obama doesn't want Congress interfering with his License To Kill. Congress doesn't want their bloody fingerprints on any documents supporting such madness should things go badly. And the American people? We long ago ceded any interest or involvement in criminal warfare. We're willing to watch our defense stock portfolios rise in direct relation to Middle East bodies that fall from our ceaseless bombing.

A new AUMF to prosecute perpetual war? Not for the world's only superpower.

We've been warned

A really bad president does much to conceal their unfitness for office during the campaign. Such is the case with the two worst in my lifetime, Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Nixon rose to power in the McCarthy era; smearing Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis as a communist sympathizer in 1946 to win his California House seat. He reprised that line, branding Democrat Helen Douglas as the 'Pink Lady' to grab the Senate seat in 1950.  We got a glimpse of his mental instability from his little seen 1962 post gubernatorial defeat press conference showing a clearly unhinged Nixon. But such ruthlessness and mental unfitness were largely forgotten by 1968 when Nixon won the presidency on a promise to end the Vietnam War. Then he went berserk in a futile effort to prevent America's first lost war, before self destructing from paranoia and personal insecurity pursuing his imagined domestic demons. 

George W. Bush slithered into the White House as the affable (though largely failed) son of President George H.W. Bush; the guy you'd like to share a beer with instead of the smart but stiff Al Gore.  Bush campaigned on a promise to pull back from nation building but then went Full Monty after 911 unleashed the war mongering neocons who played Bush like a Stradivarius to bust up the Middle East, sending hundreds of thousands to an needless death.  

While Nixon and Bush voters get a pass on electing truly dreadful presidents, anyone voting for Donald Trump knows exactly the tsunami of fear and loathing he represents. He wears his unfitness as a badge of honor, leading his 12 million primary voters to act out their hatred of the 'other' that has gotten some measure of relief and support from that foreign born, secret Muslim traitor for the past eight years. That was Trump's pitch from Day One. 

Republican leaders hate Trump for exposing the sick underbelly of their constituency. They despise him for not using the established GOP code for garnering that disaffected vote without resort to overt xenophobia and racism. A Trump presidency will be no mystery and no surprise. 

We've been warned.   

NY governor curtails free speech over BDS

Progressive Americans would have been rightly outraged had the Governor of Alabama in 1955 issued an executive order to punish black groups and individuals boycotting the Montgomery, AL bus company which led to integration on the buses and sparked the modern civil rights movement.

Progressive Americans would have been rightly outraged had the governor of California in 1964 issued an executive order to punish migrant groups and individuals boycotting California produce growers which led to contracts finally giving migrant workers fair wages and working conditions.

Progressive Americans would have been rightly outraged had an American president issued an executive order to punish groups and individuals boycotting the Apartheid government of South Africa which led to the end of Apartheid and freedom for South African blacks

Yet, there is much progressive silence over the executive order issued by progressive NY governor Andrew Cuomo to punish NY groups and individuals who boycott Israel over their colonization and subjugation of Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. Depriving Palestinians of basic services, food and water, while displacing Palestinians to build illegal settlements and inflict collective punishment such as the current water reduction over a recent terrorist attack, is reviled around the world. Collective punishment is considered a war crime.

Cuomo's order directs all agencies under his jurisdiction to discontinue all dealings with companies and organizations that support BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions). It also mandates that Cuomo's commissioner compile a list of institutions and companies that support a boycott of Israel. The blacklist will be publicly posted. The burden of proving that these entities do not support the boycott is on the companies and institutions themselves. Cuomo issued the executive order because the NY legislature rightly refused to enact laws stifling the free speech of participants in BDS.

Cuomo's directive is an unconstitutional infringement on free speech as well as being cruel and immoral in furthering Palestinian suffering. It must be opposed by every American who values free speech; and justice, citizenship and statehood for Palestinians.

My 50 year old membership card in the American Civil Liberties Union doesn't make a free speech exception to perpetuate man's inhumanity to man.

Trib Editorial Board warmongering hiding behind Chapman's sanity

The Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman quite rightly faulted President Obama's failure to truly end our Middle East wars in his June 9 op ed 'Obama prolongs unwinnable wars'. So good was Chapman's analysis it was picked up by www.antiwar.com, the Holy Grail of anti war news and opinion.

But nowhere in Chapman's piece is that some of the blame for both starting and prolonging these criminal excursions in mass death goes to the Chicago Tribune's Editorial Board, which Chapman has participated in since 1981. Sadly, in those 35 years, Chapman's influence on the Board's support for endless war and American exceptionalism has been zero. They were all in for our senseless and lost war in Afghanistan. They were all in for our senseless and lost war in Iraq. They loved the Libyan intervention where "We came, we saw, he died" referring to the gruesome execution of Libyan President Qaddafi, one of thousands whose blood is on US hands. The Board argued mightily against rapprochement with Iran and helped foment new Cold War with Russia over Ukraine by supporting US involvement in the February, 2014, coup, unraveling that sorrowful land and prompting Russia to protect their backside.

The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board is a board member of the neocon war party. Every so often they let Chapman loose to tell truths they will never reveal to placate the folks who still buy the Trib hoping for some sanity in their coverage of America's death spiral.

Is Breen following Trump into political gutter?

My Illinois State Rep Peter Breen (IL-48) knows better. Yet, he begins his constituent email with a gratuitous insult and falsehood:

"Mike Madigan's 'Madigoons' are on the loose in the 48th District! Madigan has hand-selected an opponent for me in the upcoming General Election, and we have now seen proof that his campaign workers, including some of his top staff, have been walking precincts in our district, trying to unseat me."

Breen may think it's clever to connect the name of Illinois House Speaker to 'goons', the well known moniker denoting hired political operatives who use violence to further a political cause, but it's not. If merely demeans reasoned political discourse, desperately needed in our culture, with unhelpful name calling. Citizens who spend time gathering signatures so that voters will have choice, a clear choice in November, are not 'goons'. They are the folks who make democracy work.

Worse, Breen spreads the falsehood, likely a conscious lie, that his unnamed opponent was 'hand selected' by Speaker Madigan. The only hands that picked his opponent were his own, and those of the Nominating Committee of the DuPage County Democratic Party.

Breen's opponent has a name. It's Steve Swanson, a soon to be retired minister from Lombard.

Two things you can count on in this campaign. Steve Swanson will never engage in gratuitous insults or spread falsehoods. And Peter Breen, likely taking cues from the master of gratuitous insult and lies at the top of the Republican ticket, will nod and follow suit

Roskam's 'A' is a grade of shame

My Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) is very discreet about the A grade he receives from the National Rifle Association for his work on their behalf to prevent any sensible gun legislation. He's just as discreet about the money he receives from the NRA to help keep him in Congress working to promote their agenda. Go to his congressional website www.roskam.house.gov and you won't find a single reference to the NRA, assault weapons or gun violence. You can ignore the two references to 'gun control' that pop up from 2013. They contain the words 'gun control' in passing on articles having nothing to do with possibly the most important public health issue facing the Illinois 6th District, and all America.

That's my congressman Peter Roskam, getting a cool quarter million a year in salary and benefits keeping the 6th District safe for America's gun merchants. For Roskam, when it comes to the slaughter going on in our streets, our churches, our schools, our places of recreation; it's 'hear no gunshots, see no gunshots, speak no gun control'.