HEARTLAND PROGRESSIVE

WE'RE NO. 47 - WE TRY WORSER

2012-01-28T11:26:00.000-08:00

Reporters Without Borders, the largest press freedom organization in the world, dropped Uncle Sam 27 places to 47th of 179 countries measured on its Press Freedom Index which measures governments' commitment to protecting media freedoms. America's fall was attributed to excessive arrests of journalists covering Occupy Wall Street protests.

Most Americans are rightly concerned about America's slide on the world scene from trillions squandered on senseless wars, letting our infrastructure crumble, defunding education and other vital government functions, refusing to develop alternate energy sources, and generally howling at the moon when it comes to solving problems.

At the rate our media are either under attack for trying to report the truth or shilling for the 1% who control them, we won't even know how swiftly and tragically we're sliding into mediocrity.

SANTORUM FLUNKS THE "MUSLIM" TEST

2012-01-25T03:52:00.000-08:00

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum flunked the "Muslim" test Monday at his Florida town hall meeting while campaigning for the crucial January 31 Florida Primary.

A woman questioner said she doesn't consider President Obama a legitimate President because "He is an avowed Muslim and ...why isn't something being done to get him out of government? He has no legal right to be calling himself President."

Rather than correct her about Obama's religion, anti-Americanism and presidential illegitimacy, Santorum tacitly validated her despicable comment by saying "Well look, I'm doing my best to get him out of office....and you're right about how he uniformly ignores the Constitution". When called out by reporters afterward about his failure to correct an obviously disturbed political partisan, Santorum shrugged and simply said it wasn't his job to correct her.

In so responding, Santorum dishonored himself and his presidential campaign. He should view tape of John McCain's most honorable moment during the 2008 election when confronted with an equally disturbed woman who told him that she fears candidate Obama because he's an Arab:
"No ma'am. He's a decent, family man citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with."

Memo to candidate Santorum: Sir, you do have a job. It is to quit the GOP presidential race and go back to civics class to learn to be a decent citizen yourself.

LEAVING ON A LOW NOTE

2012-01-22T21:56:00.001-08:00

Joe Paterno, who passed away today at 85, had, for 60 years, (1950-2010), 46 as Penn State's head football coach, one of the most successful and storied careers of any American public figure. Unfortunately, his career lasted 61 years and his last represents one of the swiftest and steepest career declines ever.

Revered with an almost cult like zeal at Penn State and in college football circles, JoePa, as he was affectionately called, has a life size statue gracing the Penn State campus. He made millions in salaries, bonuses and endorsements, and won every major award possible in his field of endeavor.

In coaching year sixty-one, JoePa was sacked, not by a defensive blitz, but by the Penn State Board of Trustees. Clinging to his job long after health and judgment failed him, he was summarily fired in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal. The nation reacted in horror at revelations that the "win at all cost" mentality that infects college sports, and indeed, our American culture, went so far as to excuse and even enable years of serial youth sexual abuse by a cog in the Penn State winning and money machine.

Paterno's sad and pathetic end reminds me of the Seinfeld episode devoting to the theme of leaving on a high note. In it, the Seinfeld characters all grapple with the dilemma of when to leave life's stage once you got what you wanted; in Jerry's case, telling your best joke. George, as one might expect, kept pushing after achieving his goal, and wound up losing all.

Alas, so did JoePa.

Also published in the Chicago Tribune, January 25, 2012

VIVA LA FRANCE

2012-01-22T05:16:00.000-08:00

French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he is suspending training operations in Afghanistan and is considering withdrawing France's 3,600 soldiers from there sooner rather than later. Why? An Afghan soldier Sarkozy's forces were training opened fire on them killing four and wounding a dozen. The US as well as France is incurring a spike in similar attacks as the locals we train practice marksmanship on their trainers. It turns out that many of them are illiterate criminals and drug addicts. The NY Times quotes a classified coalition report that these killings "have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban".

Once again, the French are getting it right while Uncle Sam keeps getting it wrong, wrong, wrong.

ITS HARD FOR THE CONGRESSMAN TO BE GREEN

2012-01-21T07:57:00.001-08:00

IL Sixth District Congressman Peter Roskam issued a statement blasting President Obama for denying TransCanada's application for expansion of the Keystone XL Pipeline. In so doing, Roskam scored high on the hyperbole meter, linking the the denial to calamitous events ranging from killing creation of 20,000 new jobs, preventing the marginalizing of hostile foreign powers, and even, get this, dividing the country.

It's easy to make such inflammatory charges when the Congressman leaves out the shameful politics that House Chief Deputy Majority Whip Roskam himself helped engineer that sparked the denial. The President, heeding State Department concerns regarding the environmental impact of such a potentially hazardous undertaking, was strongly on record that he would need till 2013 to make a reasoned decision. Roskam helped infuse the recently passed Payroll Tax Cut Extension Bill with a senseless provision that the President MUST make a decision on XL within 60 days. Forcing an unacceptable ultimatum on the President was sure to bring about the application denial which could instantly be turned into the aforementioned statement. As Congressman Roskam demonstrates repeatedly, that may seem like good politics, but it is terrible governance.

And those 20,000 lost jobs? The State Department states the number is likely just 2,500 to 6,000. Even more ominous, Bold Nebraska, an anti pipeline advocacy group, worries that a spill could actually cause net job losses in Nebraska's delicate agricultural sector. Maybe Congressman Roskam missed hearing about all those lost jobs from the Gulf Oil Spill.

Come on Congressman, fossil fuel development is so 19th century. Stop carrying the Koch Brothers water, I mean oil, and help turn this fossil fuel addicted country green

DOMA will still be DOMA

2012-01-19T21:04:00.000-08:00

DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) is in for a change if Newt Gingrich becomes President. His first legislative proposal will be to have it amended. Instead of defining marriage as that between one man and one woman, under President Gingrich, marriage will be defined as one man, his wife and his mistress. The acronym will remain the same. Hence force, DOMA will stand for Defense of Mistresses Act.

Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, January 20, 2012

THE PAUSE THAT DOES NOT REFRESH

2012-01-15T19:53:00.000-08:00

Though saddened, I am not at all shocked by revelations that US soldiers recorded themselves urinating on alleged Taliban corpses in Afghanistan. American war promoters from Defense Secretary Panetta, to Secretary of State Clinton to Senator McCain are "shocked, shocked" that such a horrible event could have occurred. What they're really shocked about is that such common, inhuman behavior that occurs all the time in our criminal occupations of Middle East countries, was recorded, and that the video got out; just like the Bush Administration war promoters were shocked that the torture they condoned in Iraq was photographed and that those photos got out.

We train our brave, young soldiers to fear and hate the folks they are sent to occupy and when the occupied fight back and inflict casualties on them, the rules of war and the Geneva Conventions become the real casualties of our mis-guided and futile attempts to acquire empire in the land of endless oil.

The video is actually quite appropriate in that it is a metaphor for what we are doing all the time to all the hapless citizens of the unfortunate countries the bullies in Washington choose to invade. It also serves as a metaphor for what our leaders are doing to the impressionable youth who are sent to fight these mindless wars.

Bring them all home

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

2012-01-15T07:01:00.001-08:00

All the Tobowites can get up from their one knee now that the New England Patriots defeated Tim Tebow's Denver Broncos 45-10 Saturday. Tebow was sacked five times and had no TD passes among his mediocre 9 for 26 passing and 136 yards. Tom Brady passed for 6 touchdowns on 26 for 34 attempts, gaining 363 yards.

I don't know Brady's religious affiliation; he may even be an atheist. But I suspect, to paraphrase Napoleon, that "God is on the side of the strongest passing arm".

Also published in the NY Times, January 22, 2012

SIGN THEM UP FOR OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN

2012-01-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

The two best spokesmen for an Obama re-election today are GOP Presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. Gingrich's big lead in Iowa was obliterated by a Romney Super Pak blitz of negative ads portraying Newt as morally challenged in his personal and professional life. Newt, sounding like a 99% and Occupy Wall Street activist, now blasts Romney, saying Bain Capital under Romney used clever legal ways to loot companies. Bain, Newt charges, represents the "Wall Street model" where you bankrupt a company, take out all the money, and leave behind the workers.

Perry echoes Newt's populist message: "Romney practices vulture capitalism. Vultures are sitting out there waiting for a company to get sick and then they sweep in and eat the carcass, leaving the skeleton" That translates to "Romney fires lots of workers".

Newt and Perry are spot on in their criticism of soon to be anointed GOP Presidential nominee Romney. Unwittingly, they have framed the Presidential debate to follow: the super rich, who care not a whit for the 99% who are suffering under the vulture or crony or trickle down capitalism they personify, versus the betterment of society as a whole.

MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY

2012-01-09T03:38:00.000-08:00

Never in my lifetime has a former President disappeared so completely from the American stage than George W. Bush. And that is quite an accomplishment considering I've followed the exploits of every former Prez starting with "Give 'em Hell" Harry Truman's departure in 1953. As the third anniversary of his leaving office occurs in twelve days, I sometimes have to pinch myself to remember that he actually was President.

He disappeared from public view immediately after President Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, and hasn't been seen since. Well, that's not quite true. He did pop up to give a slew of interviews to hawk his fictional memoir "Decision Points" in 2010. He has also been spotted at several high profile sporting events around the Dallas area where he is rumored to be ensconced in a million dollar mansion when not clearing brush on the Crawford ranch. No media outlets seek to interview him and the GOP Presidential field suffers memory loss of any GOP President after the deified Ronald Reagan. He wasn't at the 2008 GOP Convention as the outgoing President and he won't be at Tampa this year as the disappeared former President.

If he's not seen much around America he's seen even less overseas as he has a real fear of being arrested for the war criminal he is. At least in the good 'ol USA, Uncle Sam has given him a lifetime "immunity from war crime prosecution" card.

Maybe he could raise his profile a bit by becoming a stand up comedian. I'm sure Steve Martin would let him borrow a signature Martin bit allowing Bush to come on stage and say: "Remember that trillion dollar war crime in Iraq and the trillion dollar tax cuts for the greedy rich? WELL, EXCUUUUUUUUSE ME"!

IOWA GOP TOP THREE; WAR MONGERS 2, PEACENIKS 1

2012-01-07T06:03:00.000-08:00

It was disappointing that the top two vote getters in the Iowa Republican caucuses, unrepentant war promoters Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, garnered nearly 50% of the votes. But there is a glimmer of hope that anti pre-emptive war Ron Paul came in third with nearly 25% of the vote.

Romney and Santorum represent the war party wing of the Republican Party. They've not only done nothing to stop the trillion dollar carnage we've unleashed in the Middle East for over ten years now, they actually incite new wars to score votes in Republican primaries. Romney proclaimed at one debate, "If Obama is re-elected, Iran will get a nuclear weapon. If I'm elected President, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon". That is simply a veiled way of saying "Obama will not bomb Iran, but I will". Santorum, more prone to go for the jugular than the polished Romney, proclaimed on Meet the Press that President Obama is too soft on Iran and he, Santorum, would bomb their nuclear facilities.

With exactly ten months of electioneering to go, we will be subjected to endless saber rattling by the GOP contenders, minus Paul, of course, since Obama has infuriated the war party and the Military-Industrial Complex with his ending of the Iraq war, his call for a smaller military, and his refusal to light to fuse for more Middle East fireworks.

Hang in there candidate Paul. The GOP elite and the munitions makers hate you because you represent a threat to the endless war gravy train. Keep placing pennies on their tracks to de-rail their ride to Armageddon.

CANTOR CAN'T RECANT

2012-01-04T20:52:00.000-08:00

It you want to view a political train wreck, watch a video of House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor's interview with Leslie Stahl that aired on "60 Minutes" New Years Day.

Cantor has been taking a lot of heat from fellow Republicans for being the highest profile, non-compromising obstructionist in Congress, and is being given much of the blame for the abysmal 9% public approval rating for Congress. The nearest fictional character Americans think of when Cantor's name is mentioned is the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. What to do?

In Cantor's case, its to appear on 60 Minutes and show his human side. We see Cantor in a sweater beaming as his son says he's "pretty cool" because he likes rap music. You get the picture.

Turning to politics, Ms Stahl grilled Cantor on his championing the GOP Tea Party freshman class mantra of not compromising one bit with the President's job creation and tax initiatives.
Cantor said he'd never compromise his principles like his idol Ronald Reagan. When Stahl corrected him, asserting Reagan raised taxes, compromising that very Reaganesque principle, a voice off camera, Cantor's press secretary, boomed out: "That just isn't true... I don't want to let that stand". Cantor was both stunned and embarrassed.

To drive home the utter falsity of Cantor's position on compromising, Stahl showed the Gipper himself, asserting in a budget speech that he had to raise taxes "in the spirit of compromise".

The interview showed Cantor for what he is: a phony, insatiably ambitious partisan, utterly captive to the Tea Party faction he's using to take over John Boehner's Speakership position in the next Congress. His major legislative focus is on maintaining, if not increasing, tax cuts for his rich base to the detriment of real job creation and sensible deficit reduction.

Memo to Congressman Cantor: If you want to appear more human, ditch the sweater and the rap music and do the work of the 99% instead of that of the Tea Party and the wealthiest 1%. You will not only appear human....you'll be human.

Originally published in USA Today, January 4, 2012; also published in the Daily Herald, January 8, 2012

A CENTURY OF PROGRESS?

2012-01-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

The banksters and the billionaires and the colossal multinationals who have been miraculously turned into "persons" by the Supremes, are sure upset about some of things being said about them and their inhaling of the nation's middle class wealth:

"There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short or an easy task, but it can be done."

"The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted."

"Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of ensuring the safety and continuance of the nation."

"The Constitution guarantees the protection to property and must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation."

Though you may think those statements were from President Obama's "make or break moment for the middle class" speech at Osawatomie, KS on December 6th, they actually belong to Republican Teddy Roosevelt one hundred years earlier at the same Osawatomie, KS venue. That's why there will be no mention of TR as a great Republican forebear at the 2012 GOP convention. Should he be able to step down from his perch on Mt. Rushmore and try to gain entry at Tampa August 27, he'd be branded a wild eyed American hating socialist and tossed out faster than you could say "I feel fit as a Bull Moose".

Originally published in the Aurora Beacon News, December 27, 2011

RUN RUN, RUN

2012-01-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

This antiwar progressive is hoping for a Ron Paul victory in Tuesday's Iowa caucasus. Paul is crazy as a loon on domestic issues in that he wants to essentially shut down government services to the needy to conform to his extreme cult like libertarian beliefs. But he sure has GOP establishment heads spinning around their shoulders over his antiwar positions. The GOP and their benefactors in the Military-Industrial Complex are terrified that a Paul groundswell among GOP voters spells trouble for their trillion dollar war spending gravy train. All GOP Presidential contenders except Paul have been running around Iowa beating the drums for war against Iran because we need a new bogyman to attack, now that the Iraq war is over. Their quotes are eerily and scarily reminiscent of the Bush Administration propaganda and lies that caused millions of casualties and refugees in the process of shattering Iraq into the broken and failed nation it is today, all at the staggering cost of a trillion dollars, with a couple trillion more in extended vet benefits to come.

Any chance we could have a bi partisan co-Presidency of Barack Obama for domestic issues and Ron Paul for foreign affairs? That would be the audacity of hope.

EQUAL TIME FOR THE BRADLEY MANNINGS

2011-12-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

Am I the only antiwar American sports fan who is disgusted at the shameless commercials for our criminal wars that take place during half time or the 7th inning stretch at pro games?

With a gigantic flag waving back from the Jumbotron, and God Bless America or the National Anthem blaring from the loudspeakers, a vet is trotted out who has re-enlisted or just returned from our criminal war zone and is deified beyond all measure. The crowd goes absolutely nuts, even though not one in a thousand would pay an extra buck in taxes to fund these senseless, murderous undeclared bankrupting ventures which are destroying our country physically and spiritually.

If we cannot end the fusion of sports culture and patriotism, how about glorifying a true American patriot at Super Duper Bowl, Private Bradley Manning, who is courageously risking a life sentence or even death to get the truth out about the criminality to which he had first hand access. I'd be on my feet saluting that halftime show.

UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU...CONGRESSMAN

2011-12-24T03:50:00.000-08:00

December 22, 2011
Congressman Peter Roskam
150 S. Bloomingdale Road, Suite 200
Bloomingdale, IL 60108

Dear Congressman Roskam,

It is a sad irony that just as we're ending one senseless, murderous war, you are joining with others in the government and the media to promote a new war, this time against Iran.

I refer to your recent roundtable discussion in Manhattan discussing the US-Israeli relationship with Congressman Nita Lowey (D-NY). During it you two worked to put a bi-partisan face on the championing of economic sanctions against the Central Bank of Iran; sanctions which promote, not America's, but Israel's national interests in toppling the Iranian government.

But nowhere in your discussion did you consider that cooler heads than yours have described collapsing the Iran's Central Bank the "nuclear option" because it could push an already teetering global economy over the edge while inflicting massive human suffering in Iran. While you and most of the GOP presidential field promote this idea, the real adults residing in the Obama Administration have pushed back arguing "such sanctions could disrupt oil markets and further damage US and world and world economies".

You would do well to consult with University of Chicago political scientist and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, Robert Pape, who argued the following against such sanctions at a recent congressional briefing:

"Imagine, if....the Iranians were..able to create a banking crisis in the US that made it impossible to cash our checks...I don't think it would make
us do what the Iranians wanted."

Professor Pape has extensively studied modern-day sanctions and found that they failed to achieve their objectives over 95% of the time since World War 1, and they are THREE TIMES more likely to end in a shooting war than in success. Are you aware that the Central Bank of Iran regulates Iranian currency, just as our Federal Reserve regulates the US dollar. Since central banks are accorded sovereign immunity, it can be argued that sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran violates international law and some Iranian officials have already stated that such sanctions on their Central Bank would be considered an act of war.

You have been an ardent supporter on toppling the Iranian government since 2007, your first year as my Congressman. According to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, that year the US Congress agreed with President Bush's request to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. Those operations were designed to destabilize Iran's religious leadership; in other words "regime change", hopefully short of a shooting war. As a result, I led a group of twelve 6th District residents to meet with your staff in your district office to urge your support for Rep. Neil Abercrombie's (D-HI) House Joint Resolution 64 declaring America has no authority to attack Iran. We delivered 315 signatures of 6th District residents supporting HR 64 and requested you respond to our request. Instead, you ignored us. Your Chief of Staff at the time, Steven Moore, even told me we were wasting your time. He did finally agree to get us a response which arrived 35 days after our December 13, 2007, meeting.

And here you are four years later still beating the drums for regime change (and risking war) in Iran, in spite of the horrific consequences our obsession for regime change has brought America and the world. Its time you and your colleagues in the War Party and the Israel Lobby listened to Rep. Ron Paul, (R-TX), the sole voice of reason among the GOP Presidential contenders regarding Iran. He is spot on when he argues that he would not go to war with Iran for Israel's sake, because Israel, with its large nuclear arsenal and sophisticated military, is quite capable of deterring attack, and certain to prevail should it be attacked. Paul also favors talking with Iran instead of constantly threatening them. You are too young to remember but this 66 year old recalls well the very real threat of thousands of Soviet nukes pointed our way, and how we weathered that threat by sane dialogue including the famous red "hot line" phone hookup to prevent an accidental or suicidal spark from incinerating the planet. With more folks like you in government back then, that peaceful outcome would have been far less certain.

You should scrutinize your next Congressional paycheck. It is not issued by the War Party, the Military-Industrial Complex or the Government of Israel. The name at the top says The United States of America. Remember, Congressman: UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU...not to foment war....but to wage peace.

During this holiday season I remain,

Respectfully yours,
Walt Zlotow
Sixth District resident

NOT HIS KIND OF TOWN

2011-12-20T03:58:00.000-08:00

Maybe former Chicago Bear wide receiver and newly suspected drug distribution kingpin Sam Hurd's biggest mistake was coming to Chicago. After all, this is the home of the most infamous illegal substance kingpin of all time, Al Capone, who prowled Chicago streets and headlines for nearly eleven years in the 1920's and 30's, spreading happiness around in the form of Prohibition booze. Capone enjoyed fabulous wealth, power and adulation as a rags to illegal riches hero till the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the Great Depression, and some incriminating accounting ledgers landed him in the Federal pokey on Alcatraz.

Unlike Capone, who arrived in Chicago as a poor, low level thug in 1920, Hurd arrived here in 2011, a revered multimillionaire from his five years as a Dallas Cowboy and his newly minted 5.5 million dollar contract from the Halas family. Apparently, wealth and fame and status as a Chicago Bear was not satisfying enough. It never is to many, all too human, humans, who want more and more and more. Also unlike Capone, Hurd's alleged illegal career lasted only `bout eleven weeks instead of eleven years.

Unless Hurd's high powered mouthpiece can toss a Hail Mary, Hurd faces up to forty years in a 21st century version of Alcatraz. And we know now from Rod Blagojevich's Federal sentencing, he will have to complete 85% of it before his release. If he gets the max, Hurd could be a broken old man of 60 before he can attend his next Bear game.

Wouldn't it be ironic if Rod and Sam shared a cell. They would have a seeming eternity to discuss their version of Blago's brilliant campaign theme used against Judy Barr Topinka: "What were we thinking"?

WAS IT WORTH IT?

2011-12-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

With the ceremonial ending to the Iraq war this week after eight years, eight months and change, pundits have begun asking if the war was worth it. Well, lets look at both sides.

Contrarians would offer that it caused:

4,500 American military and hundreds of contractor deaths

Over a hundred thousand, maimed, injured and mentally broken American casualties

A trillion dollars spent, many billions of which simply vanished by the container load

An estimated two more trillion required to pay for hundreds of thousands of veterans' long term benefits

A domestic infrastructure and economy crumbling from neglect and lack of funds

Millions of dead, injured and displaced Iraqis

An epidemic of Iraqi birth defects thanks to gobs of depleted uranium weaponry residue

An Iraqi ally for our newest bogyman in the Middle East: Iran
America's reputation for peace and fairness around the world at its lowest point ever

War supporters would point out the following:

Defense contractors like Halliburton and private security firms like Blackwater got fabulously wealthy

America still has the biggest, badest military on the planet

We've established the principle that American leaders who start illegal wars will never be held accountable

It's a close call, but after careful consideration, the answer is.....NO.

PERSON OF THE YEAR? CALLING MR. ARPEY

2011-12-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

With a name like Arpey, you've got to be good. And Gerald J. Arpey is just that...a good man... and my choice for Person of the year for 2011.

The 30 year employee of American Airlines, the last eight of which as CEO, Arpey did an extraordinary thing when the American Airlines Board declared bankruptcy to nullify its debts and retiree benefits. He quit. Not only that, he didn't hold the Board hostage by demanding a hundred million dollar Golden Parachute. Nope, he left without severance and with nearly worthless stock holdings.

Having earned nearly 15 million over the past 5 years, Arpey's action is purely symbolic. But what grand symbolism in a nation awash in corporate greed while tens of millions go without decent jobs, rely on food stamps, pray they don't get sick, fall into poverty and lose all hope.

Please don't go quietly into retirement, Mr. Arpey. Hook up with some struggling enterprise and apply your moral vision and decency to help reverse our long, slow slide into economic irrelevancy.

SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN

2011-12-11T04:31:00.000-08:00

December 11, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

As both a progressive listener and participant in your December 7th Telephone Town Hall, I was not surprised by anything you said against the Obama Administration to the pre-screened callers who fed you softball set up questions. That's just politics.

I was, however, dismayed at what you didn't say to a man whose remarks called for instant rebuke. I refer to the caller who started off his rant against the President by saying the Obama and his entire Administration are nothing but socialists who hate America. Instead of correcting his false statement about socialism and admonishing the slanderous remark that the Administration "hates America", you complimented the caller's concern and began your own riff on why the Obama Administration is wrong for America.

You know full well that the propaganda arm of the Republican Party can no longer call Obama a "terrorist" or an "Arab" or a "Muslim" or an "Kenyon" as they did endlessly during the 2008 campaign. However, that same arm now damns Obama as a "socialist" who "hates America". Is it any wonder that an Average Joe in your district magically comes up with those two descriptors to use as a springboard for your anti Obama political message?

You didn't earn your generous Congressional salary when you gave that gentleman a pass on remarks essentially put in his mouth by your party. You should check out a Republican who did earn that salary. I refer to Senator John McCain, who got right in the face of supporters making reprehensible remarks. If you don't have the time to watch on You Tube, here is a transcript:

Ist McCain supporter: "I can't trust Obama....he's an Arab"
McCain: "No madam..he is a decent, family man citizen"

2nd McCain supporter: "We are scared of an Obama Presidency...we are scared of bringing our child up in a country where he cohorts with terrorists"
McCain: "I know Senator Obama...he is a descent person and one you don't have to be scared of"

Congressman, the conservative audience booed McCain's display of decency and statesmanship for both remarks. We expect you and every single public servant who earns an extraordinarily good living representing us, to do nothing less than than follow his example. Remember please; silence is not always golden.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
Sixth District resident

NADA TO NDAA

2011-12-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

NDAA stands for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, and it should be scrutinized by every American who cherishes our so called Freedom.

Passed 93-7 by the Senate, it essentially evicerates the Bill of Rights which guarantees every citizen the right to a trial, a lawyer, due process and the right against self-incrimination. SC Senator, Lindsay Graham, when he isn't inflamming the Senate to provoke military confrontation with Iran, has championed this onslought against ordinary citizens who the government has decided pose a security threat. On November 30th Graham offered this demented twist on American justice to his Senate colleagues...and the world: "To those Americans thinking about helping al-Qaida, please know what will come your way: death, detention, prosecution. And when they say 'I want my lawyer', you tell them: 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'" Is it just a coincidence that Graham puts death and detention before prosecution?

Come on Mr. former Constitutional law professor and current President: whip out your veto pen and give Senator Graham and his 92 colleagues a lesson on Constitionalism and statesmanship. And give a tip of your Presidential hat to those seven Senators who refused to follow the mob mentality of the Senator Graham crowd: Republicans Coburn (OK), Lee (UT) Paul (KY); Democrats Harkin (IA), Merkley (OR), Wyden (OR); and Socialist Sanders (VT).

MERRY CHRISTMAS, CONGRESSMAN

2011-12-04T02:47:00.000-08:00

December 4, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

This Christmas season, when weighing your vote on extending the payroll tax holiday, please don't channel Ebenezer Scrooge, the rich, sour and greedy villain of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol.

As Chief Deputy Whip to House Speaker Scrooge himself, John Boehner, and House Majority Leader Scrooge, known professionally as Eric Canter, you've given every indication of voting against this extension which will bring enormous grief raining down on the millions of Bob Cratchits out there among the 99% who are sadly not on your legislative radar.

We understand your fealty to the millionaires and the billionaires in the 1% who make up your base. We know you are prevented from even discussing tax increases on the fabulously wealthy due to your pledge to the all powerful Tax Scrooge, masquerading as the "random person" Grover Norquist. But please Sir, this Christmas season, try to save a morsel of empathy for the less fortunate who will instantly use every penny of that extra $1,000 provided by the payroll tax holiday to pump up our struggling economy. Isn't the 4 trillion dollars in unnecessary tax cuts for the chosen ones, money they will squirrel away instead of investing in jobs over the next decade, enough? Must you turn away endlessly from the pain your heartless tax cuts for the rich policies are inflicting on a majority of your constituents?

You've passed on Christmas past but there is still time to avoid the nightmare of Christmas present. If you're wavering, try downloading the aforementioned, A Christmas Carol, and look deeply into the eyes of Ebenezer himself after his life changing epiphany. Maybe you will see a reflection of yourself and experience an epiphany that will have an infinitely greater impact than the one on the screen; an epiphany that will benefit millions in real life.

Think about it, Congressman, and whatever your decision...Merry Christmas.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
Sixth District resident

SPIN THEM RIGHT OUT

2011-12-03T04:02:00.000-08:00

Two DuPage Forest Preserve Districts employees are fired for possible mis use of taxpayer funds and the District compounds this matter by squandering $66,000 in additional funds to hire two public relations firms to "spin" this latest scandal away (Daily Herald, November 24, 2011). Its very appropriate therefore, that the larger of the two no bid PR contracts went to a politically connected firm with the dubious name of Reverse Spin, LLC.

Since my tax dollars are being used to pay for this needless spinning, I'm going to give the DuPage Forest Preserve District some free advise.

First: implement common sense procedures and develop a public service culture to prevent corruption in the first place
Second: Don't compound alleged wrongdoing to using my hard earned tax dollars to paper over these shenanigans with spin, or Reverse Spin, in this case.

Forest Preserve spokesman Bill Weidner, defended the $66,000 in outside PR consulting contracts in addition to a 6 person PR staff costing $400,000 annually, by saying that with their "intensely busy environment....they could go on and on and on". When it comes to wasting our precious tax dollars they sure can and they sure do.

DuPage voters are well served by the Daily Herald's use of the Freedom of Information Act to ferret out the details of this episode in public waste and mismanagement. Maybe its time for these same voters to spin the DuPage Forest Preserve District incumbents right out of office.

Originally published in the Daily Herald, December 3, 2011

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

2011-12-02T18:17:00.001-08:00

Divorce and extra marital affairs are no longer the fatal obstacles to gaining the Presidency that they have historically been. Ronald Reagan became the first divorcee elected President in 1980, in part because his idealized 28 year marriage to his second wife obliterated the divorce taboo. Bill Clinton attained the Presidency in 1992, in spite of tape recordings of him and his longtime blond bombshell lover engaged in pillow talk. They simply generated a collective yawn from the public since Clinton never postured as a holier-than-thou family values guy. His lack of hypocrisy, tons of charisma and connection to the needy easily overcame his marital transgressions.

Newt Gingrich, the current GOP Presidential frontrunner, pushes the moral forgiveness factor to a new threshold. He cheated on wife No. 1 with soon to be wife No. 2, and even discussed his impending to divorce from wife No. 1 while she was recovering from uterine cancer treatment. Wife No. 2 soon fell victim to Newt's adulterous affair with eventual wife No. 3, the current Mrs. Potential First Lady. He was carrying on this new marital peccadillo as he was preaching family values as a reason to impeach his nemesis, President, Bill Clinton. When wife No. 2 asked him how he could preach family values during the Clinton impeachment, Gingrich replied: "It doesn't matter what I do...people need to hear what I have to say."
Wife No. 2 apparently also fell victim to Gingrich's aversion to sickly spouses, having acquired MS on her long road to divorce court.

Full disclosure: I could still vote for the obviously brilliant Gingrich to be my President if he wasn't a heartless, compulsively lying, corrupt and soulless political creature; possibly the least qualified human being to seek the Presidency in my 60 years of following politics, his marital woes notwithstanding. I fully understand that potentially great political leaders can compartmentalize family dysfunction from successful public service. God only knows what skeletons lurk behind Obama's bedroom doors, but I will will support him to my last campaign dollar.

But I do have a word of advise for Newt's current better half: DON'T GET SICK.

THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT HOAX

2011-12-02T03:39:00.000-08:00

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Your latest email blast to IL 6th District constituents "15 Trillion" concerning the US national debt hitting 15 trillion dollars set off my sophism detector like a geiger counter at the melted down Fukushima Nuclear plant. Sophism, as you've become a practiced master of, is the use of false arguments to deceive people. The enormous falsity presented was that our 15 trillion dollar debt is the fault of the Congressional Democrats who nixed your November 18th Republican vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment.

What you don't tell your constituents is that a balanced budget amendment doesn't actually balance the budget, it merely "requires" Congress and the President to do so. Yet you already have that power and never, ever, utilize it for a number of reasons. You and your colleagues have been too preoccupied enacting trillions of dollars in tax cuts for your wealthy base of supporters. You know that some of those tax cuts will end up in you campaign coffers as a reward for your generous tax legislation. You also have given a blank check to the war party for endless trillions for their foolish and self destructive wars without a peep of complaint or oversight. That money rathole is sacred.

What you don't tell your constituents is that your amendment would allow a deficit if both houses agree by a three-fifths vote.

What you don't tell your constituents is that your amendment would allow a deficit by just a mere majority for a "serious military threat to national security"; and given our propensity for endless belligerency around the world, when is there not?

What you didn't tell your constituents is that from 2000 to 2006 you were the Republican Whip and floor leader in the Illinois state Senate, a state that just happens to have a balanced budget provision in its state constitution and also a colossal debt. Illinois, like many other states that have a balanced budget provision, gets along by cooking the books on expected revenues and expenses, or simply stops funding its pension obligations or paying its bills from desperate small business vendors till the next fiscal year begins. How easily you forget.

Sir, in these desperate times with 40 million without adequate health care, with 45 million subsisting on food stamps and 49 million living at or near poverty, we could use more than just additional dollars to begin solving our problems. We need Congressmen who will begin talking sense.

Respectfully yours,
Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District resident

TEA PARTY HAS NOTHING IN COMMON WITH OCCUPY WALL STREET....THANK GOD!

2011-11-30T15:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Jerry (Moore, My Suburban Life Opinions Editor): I agree whole heartedly with letter writer (and fellow Glen Ellynite) Dan Schuchardt, who argues against your editorial premise that the Tea Party and Occupy Party have more in common that they realize. Of course they don't.

The Tea Party is a creation of powerful and vocal elements of the 1%, such as fossil fuel billionaires the Koch Brothers, and former Congressman Dick Armey, current chairman of FreedomWorks, a 1% propaganda arm promoting "lower taxes, less government and more freedom", which is code for "keep your hands off my 1% wealth". It also includes their media arm Fox News, which breathtakingly covered every non-noteworthy Tea Party rally while conveniently ignoring the vicious anti Obama signs and chants.

Due to its top down origins, The Tea Party has virtually disappeared as a political force. Except when a 1% media star like Glen Beck showed up, the demonstrators were actually members of the 99% crowd now occupying Wall Street and even our own Naperville. They just didn't know it. They've melted away because they inevitably understood the 1% has nothing to offer them, and they've tired of doing the Koch Brothers' dirty work. Conversely, the Occupy Movement, a bottom up phenomenon, will only grow in size and influence because the economic despair inflicted on the 99% grows relentlessly. Even affluent Glen Ellyn is home to some of the 40 million without adequate health care, the 45 million on food stamps and the 49 million living at or near poverty.

Come on neighbor Dan, join me at next Saturday's Occupy Naperville event. We may not share the same planet but by sharing a ride, we'll reduce fossil fuel emissions and help save both planets. Heck, I'll even that a bath.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, November 30, 2011

WELL......EXUUUUUUUSE ME!

2011-11-29T21:27:00.001-08:00

The accidental killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by NATO forces is only a front page story because of the repercussions it has caused the prosecution of our senseless, murderous and utterly futile war in Afghanistan. Pakistan immediately closed a vital route providing roughly half of all supplies to NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan, and gave the US fifteen days to shut down Shamsi airbase in Balochistan province.

Our government, our media, our war profiteering corporations give not a hoot for the thousands of innocent civilians and allied soldiers will kill and maim and make homeless. All they care about is keeping open the supply routes and the bases so our weopons of mass death keep flowing and firing.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, made members of the war party, expressed condolances to their Pakistani counterparts and their utmost support for NATO's "intention to investigate immediately." They should save their breath. We don't need no stinkin' investigation. We just need to pack up our bullets and our bombs and our canon fodder and get out of the Middle East.

2011's BEST NEW WORD

2011-11-25T13:00:00.001-08:00

kardashian (noun); a shameless ploy to promote the career or brand of a semi attractive but otherwise talentless near celebrity. Example: That new reality show is nothing but a kardashian.

THE CONGRESSMAN AND THE LOBBYIST: PLEDGED TOGETHER FOR THE UPPER 1%

2011-11-25T05:54:00.000-08:00

I, Peter J. Roskam, pledge to the taxpayers of the 6th district of the state of Illinois and to the American people that I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Upon entering Congress in 2007, Congressman Roskam joined 237 other Congressmen, 236 of which are Republican, and 41 Senators, 40 of which are Republican, in signing conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge. It is more accurate to call this document "The Upper 1%'s Tax Protection Pledge" because it is solely focused on further redistribution of middle class wealth to the wealthiest Americans, to the detriment of the rest of society. While 26 million Americans seek full time work, 40 million Americans go without adequate health insurance, 45 million subsist on food stamps and 49 million fall into poverty, Norquist works tirelessly to shrink the social safety net to pay for endless tax relief so the most privileged can engorge their portfolios.

Amazingly, Speaker John Boehner, Roskam's boss in the GOP controlled House, has called Norquist, "some random individual" even though 55% of the House has pledged fealty to Norquist's infamous dictum: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub".

Next November, the 700,000 residents of the 6th district will be selecting a Congressman for the 113th Congress. I know how 7,000 of them are likely to vote. I wonder what kind of pledge and what kind of Congressman the other 693,000 will be thinking about when they enter the voting booth.

ONLY IN WHERE?

2011-11-24T06:05:00.000-08:00

My sleepy eyes tried to focus on the You Tube video of police dispassionately pepper spraying the faces of peaceful, non-violent demonstrators and figured I must have stumbled onto some Middle East dictatorship crazyness perpetrated against folks trying to exercise free speech and assembly; something we enjoy so fully here in the USA. Once the cobwebs cleared I realized this wasn't Ubeckybeckystan or some such place, but the University of California at Davis.

Memo to Unlce Sam: quit channeling the tyrants who we are supposed to be reforming. They have nothing to teach us except what not to do

IRAN IS WINNING - ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY ON TRIB EDITORIAL

2011-11-22T16:17:00.001-08:00

Your November 12th editorial "Iran is winning" is particularly disturbing because it starts with a false premise and posits but two courses of action, both of which are not only doomed to failure, but likely to be self destructive.

The false premise is that Iran is building nuclear weapons, when in fact that is far from conclusive. Even if true, does it not dawn on the Trib editorial board that possible motivation for building nuclear weapons stems from the hundred or so Israeli nuclear weapons pointed at Iran; and that the US, with Trib backing, tends to only invade perceived unfriendly nations that don't have nuclear weapons? Check out our last three major interventions, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and the pass given to North Korea, as evidence.

The two courses of action considered, military war on the Iranian government or economic war designed to collapse the Central Bank or Iran, should both be off the table instead of the only morsels on the Trib's menu.

The essence of your editorial was that collapsing the Central Bank of Iran is the only way to prevent Israel, with tacit US support, from launching a military strike against Iran. By so doing you pretend to take the high ground as the adults working furiously to avoid a self destructive shooting war.

But nowhere in your editorial to do consider that even cooler heads than yours have described collapsing the Iran's Central Bank the "nuclear option" because it could push an already teetering global economy over the edge while inflicting massive human suffering in Iran. While Senators like Mark Kirk and most of the GOP presidential field promote this idea, the real adults residing in the Obama Administration have pushed back arguing "such sanctions could disrupt oil markets and further damage US and world and world economies".

You would do well to consult with University of Chicago political scientist and founder of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, Robert Pape, who offered the following against such sanctions at a recent congressional briefing:

"Imagine, if....the Iranians were..able to create a banking crisis in the US that made it impossible to cash our checks...I don't think it would make
us do what the Iranians wanted."

Professor Pape has extensively studied modern-day sanctions and found that they failed to achieve their objectives over 95% of the time since World War 1, and they are THREE TIMES more likely to end in a shooting war than in success.

Is the Trib editorial board aware that the Central Bank of Iran regulates Iranian currency, just as our Federal Reserve regulates the US dollar. Since central banks are accorded sovereign immunity, it can be argued that sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran violates international law and some Iranian officials have already stated that such sanctions on their Central Bank would be considered an act of war.

After sixty years of reading the Trib, going back to when Col. McCormick was still recovering from "Dewey Defeats Truman" and plotting to abolish the New Deal in his Wheaton lair just a short hike from where I write this, I will not give up encouraging the Trib editorial board to refrain from ginning up the next war, military or economic. But time is running out folks...so get with it.

FAMILY VALUES PARTY

2011-11-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

With almost a year to go, the best headline of the entire Presidential sweepstakes has already been written:

"Confirmed serial adulterer passes alleged serial sexual harasser for GOP Presidential nomination"

127 YEARS LATER....SAME GAME PLAN

2011-11-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

In July, 1884, the Democrats nominated highly regarded NY Governor Grover Cleveland for President. The corrupt reputation of his GOP opponent James G. Blaine made Cleveland the clear favorite.

Only Maria Halpin stood in Cleveland's way. Halpin was a 43 year old widow with three children, that last of which was fathered by the bachelor Cleveland in 1874. Cleveland had been covering up his lone known public indiscretion for ten years, even conniving to have his illegitimate son put in an orphanage and Halpin briefly institutionalized for insanity, till authorities regained their sanity. Not all bad, Cleveland paid some child support and a $500 cash settlement to the beleaguered Ms. Halpin.

Upon his nomination, the scandal went pubic in the July 21, 1884, Buffalo Evening Telegraph under the explosive headline "A Terrible tale: The Pitiful Story of Maria Halpin and Governor Cleveland's Son". Having devastated Halpin's life upon the birth of their son ten years earlier, Cleveland and his operatives engaged in a second smear campaign, further subjecting the hapless Halpin to a life of shame and poverty. A recent biography of the scandal has recounted her ruin and resurrected her reputation. While Halpin was descending into a pitiful fate, Cleveland ascended to the Presidency twice, never publically acknowledging their son.

Here we are 127 years later, and another powerful politician, Herman Cain, is borrowing from the Cleveland playbook to salvage from sexual scandal his heretofore spectacular drive for the GOP Presidential nomination. Cain has countered publicized sexual harassment claims made years ago by two women who worked for his national restaurant organization by calling them liars, knowing full well they cannot defend themselves due to their confidentiality statements. Republican operatives have denounced as a scam artist, Sharon Bialek, who publicly described a sex-for-job quid pro quo allegedly offered by Cain. Most egregiously, Cain hired Lin Wood, famous for defending accusations of sexual indiscretion with threats of defamation lawsuits, to intimidate further potential accusers. Wood quickly earned his retainer with this remark: "I'm not here to scare anyone off...any new woman thinking of coming forward...should think again".

Cain has been heralded as a modern, common sense, straight talking outsider who has excited the Republican base. In truth he's straight out of the 19th century; where the powerful trash the powerless in their voracious quest for the brass ring.

Iran is winning - reply to Chicago Tribune editorial

2011-11-13T16:36:00.000-08:00

Your November 12 editorial, "Iran is winning", should have been titled "America is losing". We are losing because once again The Trib editorial board is taking orders from the war party which never tires of ginning up new wars to feed our insatiable military industrial complex.

You supported our senseless and murderous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya since the war party took near total control of the political process following the 911 attacks. You believed, or even more cynically, simply passed on the lies and the scare tactics about Iraq's fictitious nuclear program to help launch that criminal war and now accept the inevitability of military confrontation with Iran by claiming Senator Mark Kirk's call for all out economic war is the last chance to avoid military confrontation.

Apparently, the GOP candidates, all of which are fellow members of the war party with you except the sane Rep. Ron Paul, boned up for their debate by reading your inflammatory editorial. Here are their comments on Iran:

Mitt Romney: "If all else fails, if after all of the work we've done, there's nothing else we can do except military action, then of course you take military action."

Rick Santorum proposed that the U.S. support an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities "before the next explosion in Iran is a nuclear one, and the world changes."

You've spent ten years cheering on the funneling of trillions of our treasure into the endless money and death pit of our failed Middle East empire while America crumbles both morally and physically.

America is losing, sadly, in part, because influential media like the Tribune never learn from their mistakes.

HATERS FROM THE 1% WELCOME

2011-11-09T03:37:00.001-08:00

Think we'll here this from President Obama when he accepts nomination for a second term next summer?

"For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master. . ."

Not likely. Those words were spoken by FDR, accepting re-nomination for President 75 summers ago in 1936. FDR didn't suffer fools easily and he relished calling them out on their destructive foolishness. Come on, Mr. President, wear the current hatred directed at a President trying to help the 99% as a badge of honor. It garnered that "traitor to his class" as his enemies tagged him, 61% of the vote and 46 of 48 states.

IN FORBES WE RUST

2011-11-06T07:26:00.001-08:00

Congress should start each day spending the first half hour re-affirming that the motto of the United States is not E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) but In God We Trust (we trust in God).

Ridiculous, you say? That is just about what Congress has been up to since 1956, when Cold War hysteria and religious fanaticism induced the 84th Congress to officially change our unofficial motto E Pluribus Unum to (a tough one for this non-theist) In God....you get the picture.

A little history:

E Pluribus Unum dates from 1782, when it was etched on the Seal of the United States by an Act of Congress, but never codified as the official motto even though it is a nearly perfect three word description of the American Experiment.

In God We Trust began appearing on US coinage during the Civil War when opposing sides trusting in the same God were slaughtering 600,000 of their fellow trusters in that same God.

Not satisfied with the 1956 law, Congress voted to reaffirm the motto in 2002. It passed a new law that said the old law should not be changed one bit. “Make no change in Section 302, Title 36, United States Code,” it ordered then, citing the passage that created the motto

Then, in 2006, the Senate, just to be safe, voted again, to reaffirm “the concept embodied in the motto.”

Alas, three times for In God We Trust was not sufficient for GOP Virginia Congressman Randy Forbes, founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, who, besides sheparding (no pun intended) through this fourth Congressional In God We Trust action, has proposed the following bits of legislative wisdom:

To designate the United States as a Judeo-Christian nation.

To declare that "the Holy Bible is God’s Word".

To declare religion a prerequisite for freedom and reject "the notion that the laws and Constitution of the United States require the exclusion of God from matters of government".

To declare that religion forms "the inseparable foundation for America’s representative processes, legal systems, and societal structures".

For a guy who was valedictorian of his 1974 Randolph-Macon College class, one might surmise he would at least have a rudimentary grasp of the separation of church and state.

Maybe the millions of us non-theists should accept continued marginalization of our beliefs pertaining to Uncle Sam's motto. After all, the 26 million who cannot find full time work sure can't trust in Rep. Forbes.

SINGLE DIGIT NO SHOCK TO MOST CONGRESSMEN

2011-11-05T22:32:00.000-07:00

The CBS News poll showing support for Congress has dropped to an abysmal 9% may dismay an electorate expecting solutions from that august body; but stirs not a quiver among the Congressmen themselves. Why? Well, when the majority of them are used to serving the interests of and enjoying the largess from the upper 1% of the wealthy, they're quite comfortable dealing with a single digit.

Originally publihsed in the Daily Herald, November 5, 2011

TITLES TO BE PROUD OF

2011-11-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

The publication of Condoleezza Rice's memoir as a member of the Bush Administration Iraq war cabinet completes the quartet of books by the four principle architects of our made up and senseless war of choice against Iraq. Although it caused millions of casualties and refugees, principally in the shattered country of Iraq, at the eventual cost of several trillions of dollars, much of that borrowed, these books will earn their authors millions of dollars for their apologias of their foul misdeeds.

The least this fearsome four could have done is provide an honest title to their tomes. Since they didn't, I offer the following:

"Criminal War Decision Points" by former President George Bush

"In My Criminal War Time" by former Vice President Dick Cheney

"Known and Unknown Criminal War: A Memoir" by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

And finally: "No Higher Honor: Launching Criminal War" by former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The only useful purpose these books could serve is to be offered as evidence by the prosecution in their authors' trials for war crimes

A FRIEND INDEED!

2011-10-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Arizona Senator John McCain never, ever tires of promoting endless war around the world. Back in the 1960's, McCain was flying high, literally; dropping hundreds of bombs on innocent North Vietnamese in our colossal failure of a 14 year war (1961-1975) that killed millions, mostly Vietnamese. Thirty-five years later McCain was one of the biggest boosters of our fairy tale but murderous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, never missing a chance to ratchet up the rhetoric or the troop levels.

He did take time out, however, to cozy up to Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, responsible for the persecution and murder of untold thousands of his own people in his 42 year long saga holding onto power in a gigantic country composed of three completely disparate tribes. Once Gadhafi admitted guilt and paid billions in reparations for the Pan Am bombing over Scotland in 1988, McCain became one of the biggest US cheerleaders for the "reformed" tyrant; even leading a delegation of Senators on a photo op visit inside the strongman's lair on August 14, 2009. That night McCain, now officially pallin' around with terrorists, tweeted: "Interesting meeting with an interesting man".

But when one of the two non Gadhafi tribes revolted, McCain was right there on the virtual front lines, cheering on the rebels and excoriating President Obama for not using a more robust military to whack Gadhafi in days, instead of the eight months required.

Tyrants beware: with friends like McCain, you don't need enemies.

TWO CHEERS FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA'S IRAQ TROOP WITHDRAWAL

2011-10-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

In making the historic announcement that all US troops would leave Iraq by year end, President Obama conveniently failed to mention two important points:

First, our withdrawal is over the objection of the Pentagon which has lobbied for and worked hard to keep indefinitely tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for training, support and counterterrorism past December 31.

Second, we are leaving because President Obama's negotiators failed to get the Iraq government to grant immunity to any US soldier for crimes committed against Iraqis after December 31, 2011. Iraq has experienced senseless and unpunished violence against its citizenry for eight and a half years and they are justifiably fed up. Without a grant of immunity, President Obama has also had enough of our murderous and bankrupting war and occupation of Iraq, while American itself is crumbling both physically and spiritually.

Now, if we can finally launch the investigation into Bush administration war crimes, which led to this sad chapter in American history, we would really have something to celebrate.

IS THERE A PILL FOR THIS MALADY?

2011-10-21T03:49:00.000-07:00

An American, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated by a fellow American, and some Americans cheered.
An American, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated by a fellow American, and some Americans cheered.
An American, Martin Luther King, was assassinated by a fellow American, and some Americans cheered.
An American, Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated by fellow Americans, and many Americans cheered.
The important difference among these four assassinations by fellow Americans was that only the last one was carried out by government employees acting in accordance with immoral, un-American, but official government policy.

I don't feel a bit safer because al-Awlaki is dead. But I do feel a bit sick.

WAR DAZE

2011-10-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

On Mar. 18, President Obama told the U.S. Congress that U.S. involvement in the Libyan would be a matter of "days not weeks." October 18 marks seven months, or more appropriately, 213 days and counting. Technically, the President wasn't lying or mis-informing the American people. He was simply measuring the Libyan campaign in days not weeks...or months or years. But the import of his March 18 statement to our citizenry was that this military intervention would last a week or two at most.

Shame on him and his co-war mongers in NATO, who have an killed an untold number of innocent civilians who might otherwise be alive but for our needless and murderous intervention. These are
the very people Obama claimed his intervention was protecting. Its real purpose is to grab of chunk of the vast Libyan oil reserves by supporting and supplying the designated winners of the Libyan civil war.

Apparently, the designated losers forgot to get the US/NATO game plan. It happens every time.

HELLO KETTLE, POT CALLING

2011-10-16T16:20:00.001-07:00

The US charge that Iran orchestrated what appears to be a "Keystone Kops" type terrorist attack against the Saudi ambassador, and the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington should be viewed with extreme skepticism by anyone familiar with decade long US lying to provoke military ventures in the Middle East. The plot described in court was simple minded, easy to discover and unlikely to succeed. It involved an Iranian immigrant used car salesman, Mansour Arbabsiar, with a family connection to the Iranianh Quds Force, hiring members of the DEA infiltrated Mexican gang Los Zetas to do the deeds. The fact that such a cockamamie scheme goes completely against the highly sophisticated Iranian intelligence community does not disprove Iranian government involvement; but it sure should make us wary of the shrill cries of proof positive emanating from Washington. The pro Iran war extremists in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US are once again beating the drums for a third major war in the Middle East in spite of the two colossal loses we've racked up there already.

With our record of creating millions of dead, injured and homeless through our lying about the need to instigate and maintain endless wars, this congers up the old adage of the pot calling the kettle black.

BECKY AND STAN'S EXCELLENT ADVANTURE

2011-10-14T16:50:00.001-07:00

GOP presidential contender Herman Cain offered up his credentials on foreign policy by telling Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody the following in response to Brody's inquiry as to how Cain will handle questions about his lack of foreign policy experience:

"When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?”

I have a hunch that "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan" refers to a region of Cain's brain where his delusional and non-sensical thinking originates. I'm more concerned, however, about the Republican primary voters, who have listened to the nonsense Cain has been peddling.....and have vaulted him to the head of the GOP presidential field. It's enough to make this non-theist start praying again.

WITH APOLOGIES TO THE BARD

2011-10-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

Friends, Tea partiers, Republicans, listen up;
I come to praise Romney, not to bury him.
The flip flops that men do live after them;
The rigid opinions are oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Romney.

The noble Perry
Hath told you Romney was a flip flopper:
If it were so, it would not be a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Romney answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Perry and the rest, --
For Perry is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men and one woman --
Strange creature though she is,
Come I to speak in Romney's defense

He was for Romneycare before it became Obamacare,
now he doth vow to smite it on his first day as Emperor.
But Perry says he was just ambitious;
And Perry is an honourable man.

He hath many women cheering his love of Roe and Wade
Till the Evangelicals have cried No! Romney has wept
And cried: "Out with this noxious pair!
No child shall be untimely ripped!"
But Perry says he was just ambitious;
And Perry is an honorable man.

Whose job outsourcings did the Romney coffers fill:
Upwards of three hundred millions in gold,
And thousands of flesh shorn from their labors;
Did this in Romney seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Romney hath not wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Perry says he was ambitious;
And Perry is an honourable man.

You all did see that on the Detroit factories
I thrice presented him an auto bailout
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Perry says he was ambitious;
And, sure, Perry is an honourable man.

I speak not to disprove what Romney spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
He first said, "I doth support stimulus economus",
Till wondrous one percent said "Fie on false gifts".

You all did love him once, --not without cause:
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
O judgement, thou art fled to brutish candidates,
And men have lost their reason over tea and sophistry
--Bear with me;
My heart is in the ring there with Romney's hat
And I must pause till it comes back to me.

THE 1% SOLUTION

2011-10-12T15:32:00.001-07:00

Congressman Peter Roskam, (6th District, IL) is one of America's hardest working and dynamic Congressmen. He is everywhere.

In four short years, he has risen to Chief Deputy Whip of the majority House Republican leadership. When House Majority Leader Eric Cantor steps to the microphone to announce that Republicans will not allow a House vote on President Obama's jobs bill, there is Congressman Roskam standing close by. Tune on cable news and you might catch the Congressman talking about how governmental regulation is causing economic "uncertainty". Pick up your ringing telephone and there is Peter himself asking you to join in his telephone town hall meeting to discuss onerous taxes on the "job creators". Check the roll of proposed legislation and Roskam's contribution is his "Tax Hike Prevention & Business Certainty Act", which would permanently set the Capital Gains and Dividend Tax Rates at the current 15%.

Scratch the surface of all this racing around and rhetoric and you discover that most of Roskam's time is devoted to the interests and agenda of the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

And just what does this tiny but enormously wealthy and powerful group stand to lose if the Congressman fails to fulfill their agenda?

The top 1% own 40% of America's wealth, up from 33% a quarter century ago
The top 1% take home 24% of national income, nearly tripling their 9% share since 1976
The top 1% own half of America's stocks, bonds and mutual funds
The top 1% are taking in more of the nation's income and their overall share is greater than at any time since just before the Great Depression

The lure of a lifetime job serving the upper 1%, with their gargantuan wealth, power, prestige has become a common temptation to anyone given the privilege of serving in Congress. Regardless of what plays out in the other 434 Congressional districts, the 700,000 residents of the Illinois 6th deserve better that a Congressman spending nearly 100% of his time working on the 1% solution.

FOR A MOB LOOK IN THE MIRROR MR. CANTOR

2011-10-11T22:03:00.000-07:00

"I for one am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country. And believe it or not, some in this town have actually condoned the pitting of Americans against Americans.” Eric Cantor, GOP House Majority Leader (Rep. VA) speaking at the conservative Value Voters Summit about the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in NYC and around the country.

Those thousands of peaceful Americans, exercising their First Amendment right to peaceable assembly to express their their grievances against the financial industry for the enormous damage it has done to the middle class and the country as a whole, are anything but a mob. They are peaceful, even in the face of unwarranted NY police pepper spray. They are protesting in the finest tradition of people throughout our history who have worked for and inspired change by peaceably assembling to air political needs not being met by Congress or the Administration.

Close your eyes, listen to Cantor's words, and you can imagine fifty years ago the same inflammatory and dismissive and false statements hurled at the peaceful anti Vietnam war protesters and the peaceful black civil rights protesters, some of whom suffered grievous injuries and even death for their courageous efforts.

Cantor may be one of our highest ranking political figures, but he should be sent back to a grammar school civics class to brush up on the meaning of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment of which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

When Congressman Cantor denigrates groups exercising that First Amendment freedom because it terrifies him that his political agenda is being threatened, not by the opposition party, but by the people at large, he ceases to function as a reputable and responsible public servant.

Cantor has for years now, served the interests of the upper 1% of the wealthy who have managed to decimate the middle class and shatter the American Dream for the vast majority of us. If the Congressman wants to see a real mob, he should merely hold a mirror up to himself and his caucus.

ANYTHING BUT SWEETNESS

2011-10-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Da' Coach, Mike Ditka says he'd spit on Jeff Pearlman, author of "Sweetness: the enigmatic life of Walter Payton", for demystifying possibly the greatest all around football player ever.

That kind of talk is, sadly, not unexpected from a crude, crass sports celebrity who has made millions from his skill as a player, coach and entertaining pitch man for numerous products. Instead of congering up an unpleasant word picture involving violent use of his bodily fluids, Ditka should focus on correcting his family history of DUI's, including his own. Ditka won't have to worry about a posthumous tell all biography fleshing out the all too human details of his life. It's right there on the front page during his work-in-progress.

Originally published in the Daily Herald, October 9, 2011

YOU'LL NEED IT

2011-10-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

"Hank, why do you drink?
Hank, why do you roll smoke?
Why must you live out the songs that you wrote?" Song: Family Tradition, by Hank Williams, Jr

The singer songwriter Hank Williams Jr, wasn't just making that lyric up 35 years ago; he was being honest about his often turbulent life in the chemically enhanced fast lane living in the shadow of his legendary singer songwriter father Hank Williams Sr.

Due to his lifelong love of the high life, Williams Jr. may be one of the least qualified persons in the country to be trotted out to expound on politics; but there he was on Fox & Friends the other morning. The first glimpse of ol' Hank, casually dressed in baseball cap, sunglasses and arms folded, prompted Brian Kilmeade to remark, "Your body language says, 'Leave me alone'". When asked where he was, Hank replied he was in his little Nashville studio but added, "I'd rather be there looking at Gretchen".

That was the classy part. Williams proceeded to compare President Obama to Hitler, and called Obama and Vice President Joe Biden the "enemy" and the "Three Stooges", somehow being unable to comprehend the number three. The most charitable assessment of Williams appearance was that it was incoherent; but it's fair to say it was also hateful, disrespectful and utterly without redeeming content. Gretchen Carlson was even compelled to disavow Williams' Obama - Hitler comparison after the interview was mercifully ended.

Up in that Great Newsroom in the Sky, Edward R. Morrow, who brought unequaled decency and honesty and serious discourse to a news starved nation in the first decade of TV news, has modified his famous signoff thusly: "Good night and good luck....you'll need it."

NOW...THAAAT'S CHUTZPAH

2011-10-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

Chutzpah is the commonly used Yiddish word to describe someone who has overstepped the boundaries of accepted behavior with no shame.

If we were nominating folks for Chutzpah of the Year Award, my choice is former Vice President Dick Cheney. On the stump hawking his VP memoir In My Time, Cheney is demanding President Obama apologize to him for 2008 campaign remarks criticizing Cheney for "over reacting to the 911 attacks". Cheney's suggestion was prompted by Obama's assassination, without indictment, of American Muslim cleric and suspected terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. Somehow, in Cheney's twisted moral world, Obama's utterly illegal and immoral wrong somehow justifies Cheney's eight years of orchestrating endless criminal war and instituting policies of torture which will brand him forever as a war criminal.

Cheney's chutzpah however, is his convenient forgetting that one of Obama's first crucial decisions as President was to officially announce that there were be no investigation of Bush Administration war crimes, with the astounding comment, "We need to look forward and not backward." Mr. Cheney is not satisfied with being allowed to roam free, in America at least, instead of stewing in a prison cell, due to the undeserved magnanimity of the President. But that is not good enough for Cheney. Now, only an apology will make him happy.

Now, thaaaat's chutzpah.

AT LEAST NO 20 YEAR WAIT

2011-10-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

Compared to convicted cop killer Troy Davis, who was dispatched by state sponsored homicide September 21, radical Muslim cleric and US Citizen Anwar al-Awlaki got off pretty easy. Davis had to stew on Death Row for 20 years while the wheels of justice creaked to their inevitable conclusion, in accordance with due process, so that, yes, Mr. Davis was worthy of being murdered by the State.

But when it comes to justice for "suspected" terrorists, even US citizens, the Obama Administration created American justice 21st century style precisely to avoid the inconvenience of an indictment, a trial, and then ten to twenty years of appeals. Al-Awlaki was simply put on the Administration "hit list" and in two short years we located his whereabouts and dispatched an unmanned drone to blast him painlessly to smithereens.

Troy Davis may have received due process, getting a fair trial in which nine folks fingered him for the killing and getting 20 years of additional life for appeals, but in the end it appears he was still railroaded to the Lethal Injection House for a crime we now know he may not have committed. That kind of due process might have proven al-Awlaki guilty of nothing more than anti American rhetoric and simply could not have been tolerated.

Due process? Justice? That is so old fashioned. Besides, this is God's shining city on the hill......where we don't need no stinkin' justice.

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP

2011-09-27T04:05:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, September 21, 2011, was a dishonorable day in American history as Georgia committed state sponsored homicide of a man, Troy Davis, who may possibly be innocent of the murder for which he was senselessly and needlessly executed. Since he was only convicted on eyewitness testimony of nine persons, seven of which have now recanted, and one of the other two now being named as the possible shooter, we will never know the certainty of Davis' guilt.

If Americans consider their country great, they are correct only insofar as it is one of the greatest destroyers of human life on the planet, whether it be in senseless, needless wars throughout the Middle East and Africa, or in its endless fascination with and participation in capital punishment. Consider the other nine countries in 2010's top ten purveyors of capital punishment, the fifth slot of which, with 46 executions, goes to good 'ol Uncle Sam:

China over 1,000
Iran 252
North Korea 60
Yemen 53
Saudi Arabia 27
Libya 18
Syria 17
Bangladesh 9
Somalia 8

America not only doesn't occupy the moral high ground on this planet, it is mired in the abyss of cruelty and ignorance and mendacity with the other all stars on this list of shame.

Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, September 28, 2011

AN HONEST MOTTO

2011-09-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Limping to the 2011 season finish line, four games under .500 and 14.5 games back, the White Sox have officially changed their season motto from "All in" to "All Dunn".

Originally published in the Chicago Tribune.

BLOOD SIMPLE

2011-09-24T03:34:00.000-07:00

If you want to gauge the pulse of the GOP, don't tune in their weekly debates to hear the same old tired cliches of the candidates lined up on stage. Tune in to hear the crowd reaction to issues of life and death and human dignity that will literally take your breath away with their heartlessness, insensitivity and plain old meanness.

First we had the wild applause at the announcement that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has presided over 234 executions during tenure as Texas governor. At the next debate we heard cries of "Yes", cheering and laughter at the question posed to Dr. Ron Paul whether we should let a seriously ill 30 year old uninsured man die. Just to show that Republicans aren't just for something, they booed and hissed when a gay GI Iraq war veteran asked whether the GOP aspirants would try to undue gains made for gay soldiers by the Obama administration.

After gauging the pulse of the new GOP, it appears to be bloodless, and GOP must stand for Grand Obscene Party.

A MAN WAS NOT LYNCHED LAST NIGHT

2011-09-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

One of the most famous photos of the Jim Crow era is the 1936 street scene shot from an upper floor of the New York headquarters of the NAACP, showing a large flag billowing overhead with the words, "A man was lynched yesterday". It calls attention to one of thousands of lynchings of blacks in the South (and occasionally the North) that occurred with all too grisly frequency from Reconstruction through the 1930's and beyond.

While lynchings and other forms of vigilante justice are an almost extinct blot on American history, the state sponsored killing of people convicted of heinous crimes and deemed too undesirable to live goes on in 34 states. While most of the 1,268 killed since Gary Gilmore's firing squad ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in 1977, were guilty of the crimes involved, it is certain that one or more innocent souls were, for all intents and purposes, legally "lynched" by the state for a multitude of reasons besides the alleged crime, including incompetent legal representation, poverty, minority status, undesirable character, demeanor or whatever fit the bill for snuffing out a person's life without sufficient evidence. Eleven condemned men were set free from Illinois' death row when new evidence established their innocence; one of which, Anthony Porter, had but fifty hours to live.

Possibly another such innocent soul was Troy Davis, convicted of the murder of off duty Savannah, GA police officer Mark MacPhail twenty-two years ago. Davis was convicted solely on testimony of nine eyewitnesses, seven of which have recanted, asserting police pressure to convict Davis. Several have now implicated Redd Coles, one of two eye witnesses who have not recanted their testimony naming Davis the shooter. Three of twelve jurors now say they would vote to acquit.

Yesterday, Davis failed to dodge his fourth date with the executioner and became state sponsored homicide number 1,269 in the modern era when the US Supreme Court waited the obligatory four hours before giving Georgia the "all clear" to snuff out Troy's life. The folks in America who cheered Texas Governor Rick Perry's record of presiding over 234 executions during his ten years as Texas Governor when that fact was announced at a recent Republican Presidential debate, demand more souls to feed their bloodlust. Troy Davis, whether guilty or innocent, was offered up to them last night.

No, a man was not lynched yesterday, if lynching involves a mob busting into the jailhouse, grabbing the undesirable and stringing him up for the nearest tree. But that is no consolation to the innocent among the 3,250 doomed still waiting on death row for a polite and smartly uniformed state employee to say "It's time".

PALESTINE CELEBRATES 4TH BIRTHDAY

2011-09-17T07:06:00.001-07:00

There was no I Pad or smart phone back in 1952; only the current edition of My Weekly Reader, a slim newspaper passed out in second grade, geared to introduce us seven year olds to the gigantic world around us; a world of which we knew virtually nothing.

The title of the one such edition that May, 1952 day, intrigued me: "Israel celebrates 4th birthday". I was stunned. How could a country be three years younger than me? I assumed every country was a natural geographic entity that existed since the beginning of time. The article began to answer that question and fostered an endless interest in politics and history. I learned how countries are relatively recent human creations arising from numerous causes often including war and the endless struggle for survival, national identity and economic prosperity. They are constantly changing; sometimes growing through empire building and sometimes vanishing as the victim of that dreadful human drive.

Next week another chapter in this age old quest unfolds in the United Nations when Palestinian leaders make their case to the UN Security Council for statehood. Palestinians have been seeking statehood for decades but the don't have the power or the friends or the lobby often required to achieve the elusive goal of a homeland to call their own. Virtually the entire world supports the Palestinian cause, but alas, two of the most powerful, Israel and the United States, not only oppose it; they are working feverishly in concert to prevent it.

The irony should not be lost on any of us fair minded followers of this struggle, that both opponents were created out of the same yearning of a people to escape an oppressor and form a state of their own.

I'd like to imagine a day in September, 2015, when a seven year old, maybe not much unlike me, can click on his digital device and stare at the pixels which proclaim: "Palestine celebrates 4th birthday".

A DIME'S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE

2011-09-14T15:22:00.000-07:00

What's the biggest difference between the criminal 911 attacks and the criminal Iraq war? The latter killed about 997 thousand more innocent souls.

The second biggest difference? 911 was planned and carried out by a loosely organized non-state sponsored criminal gang. The Iraq war was planned and carried out by an elected criminal gang of the most powerful nation in the world.

Number three difference? Most of the perpetrators of 911 have been brought to justice. The Iraq war perps? Well, they've all earning millions running around America hawking tell all war crime books.

Is this a great country or what?

COME BACK PAUL HARVEY

2011-09-13T21:26:00.001-07:00

As a lifelong student of history, I enjoyed the late radio legend Paul Harvey's clever show "The rest of the story". It was always insightful and amusing how Harvey presented factual historical events on a variety of subjects with a surprise or "twist" saved until the end; something never before known or apparent. In his inimical voice Harvey ended each show with the tag line "And now you know… the REST of the story."

Sadly, we may never know the rest of the story how two airplanes managed to knock down three gigantic buildings on September 11, 2001. True, two buildings were hit, and large fires with temperatures far lower than could possibly have melted their support columns, ravaged their upper floors. But that doesn't explain the ten seconds of utter freefall as the concrete exploded into untold tons of dust and metal fragments were hurled hundreds of feet to embed themselves into nearby structures. Nor is there an explanation for how WTC Building 7, not hit by anything larger that some debris from the twin towers, magically fell in on itself about nine hours after the attack. And how did the BBC reporter have the psychic powers to announce the collapse of Building 7 about twenty minutes before it actually went "poof"?

We can't get the rest of the story from the NIST (US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology) report which spent 3 years and 16 million dollars because it focused only on identifying "the sequence of events" that triggered the collapse, but omitted detailed analysis of the collapse mechanism itself (during which the collapse occurred). While there are plausible arguments that the three collapses could only have been caused by controlled demolitions, NIST simply concluded that there were no explosives or controlled demolition involved even though no tests were conducted to rule them out. When asked why NIST did not test for explosive residues, NIST spokesman Michael Newman simply stated that NIST saw "no evidence saying to go that way."

Ah, for Paul Harvey to leave his great radio studio in the sky and come back down for one more big scoop to startle and inform his avid fans of yesteryear who simply want to know, "the rest of the story."

INQUIRING MINDS....AND 911

2011-09-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

As the 911 attacks approach their first decade of history, it is not only appropriate, it is vital that we continue to raise the following inquiries that beg for answers:

Why did the incoming Bush Administration de-activate the virtually frantic effort of the outgoing Clinton Administration to uncover al Qaida plans to attack America?

Why was the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing Memo "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" so blithely dismissed?

How was the American electorate manipulated into supporting the Bush Administration's senseless and likely criminal war to conquer and control Iraq?

Why did the Obama Administration refuse an investigation of potential Bush Administration criminality involving pre-emptive war, implementing torture and spying on Americans based on the fiction of having to "look forward rather than back"?

Why did the 911 Commission ignore investigating those explosions in the bowels of the two WTC towers that were reported on as they happened during live TV coverage?
How did Building 7 fall down all by its lonesome?

It's not just that inquiring minds want to know. It's that they take seriously the admonition of famed 19th century Abolitionist, Women's and Indian rights advocate and all purpose agitator Wendell Phillips who cautioned: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".

OPEN LETTER TO GOV. RICK PERRY ON SOCIAL SECURITY PONZI SCHEME

2011-09-08T15:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Gov. Perry,

I have been contributing a small portion of my earnings into Social Security since 1961. Even then, this 16 year old understood Social Security was a savior to millions of Americans since 1935, when working people literally died from being destitute in a heartless society ravaged by the Great Depression. I realized that while I may not be that needy fifty years down the road, it was comforting to know that it would be there for me, my family, friends; indeed, all my follow workers.

After 50 years of contributing, I began receiving a monthly Social Security check that I know is secure till at least 2037, and on to forever with just a modest effort by wise leaders. It is tragic that you choose not to possess the wisdom to qualify as one of those potential leaders.

Governor, even though Uncle Sam is keeping score on how much I've contributed, I am not. If I drop dead tomorrow, recovering barely a pittance of what I've contributed, it concerns me not the least. My excess contributions will go toward benefiting all workers by keeping the system solvent. That is called protecting The Commons, a concept you apparently have been unable to grasp in all your 61 years.

You may double down on your ludicrous charge that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme all you want. It clearly demonstrates that while your last name is not Ponzi, your Presidential candidacy is merely a scheme... designed to take from the needy to further enrich the already rich.

Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, Septemer 14, 2011

THE CONGRESSMAN AND THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN

2011-09-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

In just two full terms IL Sixth District Congressman Peter Roskam has used his considerable intelligence, ambition and drive to rise to Chief Deputy Whip of the majority Republican House leadership. Alas, Roskam's rise coincides with the rise of the cult-like tea party mentality that has captured the GOP, causing it to oppose every sensible measure to extract America from its economic malaise.

Creating or saving thee million jobs with an economic stimulus program caused them to pretend that it didn't create a single job. Providing the first measure of relief in the hundred year effort to give adequate health care to the tens of millions without it, caused them to pretend that capitalism and freedom are dying.

That mentality reached a new low with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's call that any federal aid to Hurricane Irene victims be offset by spending cuts to other parts of the social safety net. Cantor's hypocrisy, not to mention his heartlessness, is breathtaking considering he voted against a similar proposal in 2004, when Tropical Storm Gaston struck his home state of Virginia and a Republican occupied the Oval Office.

Yet, there was Congressman Roskam defending Cantor's comments by blithely stating "We're out of money, all of us...and... we need to recognize there's a cost to that". Roskam knows full well he is simply parroting Tea Party talking points rather than exercising statesmanship. American is neither broke nor out of money; being able to borrow at interest rates which right now are much less than in 2004 when Majority Leader Cantor argued it wasn't necessary to pay for disaster relief. While Congressman Roskam postures about budgetary deficits to help the needy, he is strangely silent as America borrows endlessly to fund senseless wars in the Middle East. Roskam recognizes that the needs of the war party are a forbidden topic for Tea Party ire.

One can imagine Congressman Roskam starting each day with his morning tea, wondering what nonsense the Majority Leader has prepared for the Chief Deputy Whip to re-hash to his District. Republican House leadership in Tea Party Nation sure strikes me as a Devil's Bargain.

Also published in the Daily Herald, September 10, 2011

HEADS UP

2011-08-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

Former Vice President Dick Cheney used hyperbole in hawking his Bush era memoir "In My Time" by stating it would make "heads explode" in Washington.

While nothing from advance reviewers indicates a single Beltway Bean will figuratively fracture, the policies of the most powerful VP in US history made untold thousands of heads, both Middle Eastern and American, actually explode from the senseless and criminal wars Cheney celebrates in "In My Time."

The fact Uncle Sam allows a war criminal and professed torturer to roam free gobbling up millions bragging about his immoral and criminal exploits, may not make Sam's head explode, it certainly is cause to have his head examined.

Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, August 27, 2011

JOB CREATOR...OR JOB DESTROYER?

2011-08-20T03:32:00.000-07:00

In the four and a half years Peter Roskam has been IL Sixth District Congressman, I have yet to hear or see a single significant statement or action from him to improve our struggling economy.

From Day One he has been preaching the twin priorities of more tax cuts for the rich and less regulation on business. Yet, the six years prior to his entry into Congress in 2007, were based almost solely on those policies by the George W. Bush Administration. Roskam entered Congress just when those policies helped bring on the worst recession since the Great Depression and bulge our debt by five trillion dollars.

In his second two year term, Roskam devoted all his efforts to prevent a stimulus program with saved or created three million jobs and a national health care law estimated to save nearly a trillion dollars in health care costs over ten years; finally putting some brakes to our spiraling health care crisis.

Now in the first six months of his third term, the Congressman has risen to Republican Chief Deputy Whip and helped sheppard through Congress the Debt Ceiling Bill which virtually every economist of integrity estimates will throw an additional 300,000 hard working folks off the employment rolls.

I'm still waiting for Congressman Roskam to be a job creator; but I sure don't have to wait any longer to see his job destruction bonafides.

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

2011-08-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election...we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas" - TX Gov. Rick Perry discussing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke at early campaign appearance.

Perry also said such action by Bernanke would be "almost treasonous".

Ouch! The last time a swaggering, tough talking Texan ran for President...he won...eventually unleashing two bankrupting, criminal wars that have created over a hundred thousand dead and wounded Americans and millions of casualties and refugees in the Middle East; all for nothing.

Perry' s fulminations may play well in Texas, but for the rest of us our view is simply: "Read my lips....no new Texans".

Also published at www.chicagotribune.com, August 18, 2011

A REASON FOR THE OTHER 49

2011-08-15T18:36:00.001-07:00

"Texas once was a stand alone nation...we can leave anytime we want".

With those words, Texas Gov. Rick Perry became the first elected political leader to talk secession since the Civil War.

Perry is now a bonafide Presidential contender, possibly not realizing that Job One as President is to preserve the Union.

Perry is also a staunch states' rights Republican, so much so, that when NY legalized gay marriage he remarked that whatever the radical state of NY wants to legalize is their business. The homophobe wing of the GOP abruptly reminded Perry that virulent opposition of full citizenship for gays doesn't permit allowing any state that exercise of states' rights. Voila, Gov. Perry now champions a Constitutional amendment to embed second class citizenship for gays into the Constitution.

Gov. Perry's secession talk was based on his belief that the centrist Obama policies were too extreme for his state. Unwittingly, a possible Perry Presidency gives secession justification for the other forty-nine.

Originally published in the Chicago Sun Times, August 14, 2011

TEA TIME FOR CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM

2011-07-31T10:36:00.000-07:00

July 31, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam:

You sure look uncomfortable being thrust into the national spotlight as a Republican House leader having to defend the tea party cult that has virtually taken over your party, preventing it from exercising any rational discourse to fix our stagnating economy. There you are at the televised House press briefings positioned in back of Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor as they pretend to offer constructive policy when they can only parrot the extremist positions of the freshman tea party caucus that would exacerbate our economic decline if they had any chance of being enacted.

Your frozen expression as you are framed in the picture during these truly bizarre briefings makes one wonder what your must be thinking.

Are you thinking that your substantial paycheck from Uncle Sam might just be among the first checks to be deferred should the tea party cult's effort to shut down the government comes to pass? Are you wondering if you will be asked to voluntarily give up your paycheck due to your active role in that possible shutdown?

Are you thinking how long your constituents, tens of thousands of which are suffering under ruinous Republican policies, will continue to buy your statements about controlling spending when you support spending trillions on senseless wars, trillions on senseless tax cuts for the already rich, and hundreds of billions in senseless giveaways to Big Pharma who successfully lobbied your party to prevent negotiation for fair prescription drug costs for seniors?

Are you thinking about the thousands of Congressman hours wasted placating the tea party cult controlling your party instead of engaging in the most critical component of good governance...compromise?

Are you wondering if the 72% of Americans who demand fair taxation for the wealthiest Americans is reflected in your district as well when your number one priority is not only maintaining, but increasing tax breaks for your wealthy financial supporters?

Are you wondering how long you can continue to blame the Obama Administration for creating "uncertainty" in the market place when the unprecedented uncertainty caused by the tea party cult has solicited withering criticism from economists, bond rating services, the public, foreign trading partners, and even the dwindling number of rational Republicans who haven't yet been co-opted by the cult.

Are you wondering how many hundreds of thousands of hard working folks will be thrown onto the unemployment roles if the tea party cult gets the spending cuts to the social safety net they have forced you to support?

Are you wondering how your Illinois House colleague and tea party cult spokesman Joe Walsh (8th, IL) could have become such an embarrassment to your party with his reckless personal finances, while he shamelessly preaches fiscal responsibility?

Sir, only you can truly tell us what you're thinking as your frozen expression frames the two guys pretending to be statesmen
at those press briefings. But if I had to guess, one thought for sure is: "I'd rather be anywhere else."

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
Sixth District resident

235 YEAR OLD EXPIRES...LOOKS LIKE WE DID IT

2011-07-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

The body of a 235 year old, affectionately known as Uncle Sam, was found on Capitol Hill in Washington DC today. Crime Scene Investigators placed police tape around the body believing foul play was involved.

Given his age, Uncle Sam showed signs of extreme elder abuse. Most of his assets had been siphoned off to engorge the money belts of the very rich, and fund criminal wars that have killed hundreds of thousands and sent millions more fleeing the carnage his minions unleashed against them. His eyes had been taped shut to prevent him from seeing the damage being done and his ears were plugged to ward off cries of the unemployed and the untreated sick and the poor. His jaw was wired shut to prevent his screams for help. His arteries - the highways and bridges that carried the commerce so vital to his economic well being - were clogged and crumbling, not from old age but from senseless neglect. His cholesterol level had topped 14 trillion. The paid public servants responsible for his well being were seen imbibing a strange brew of tea and sophistry that drove them into a frenzy of unprecedented meanness towards their benevolent Uncle. As they danced around the corpse they were heard chanting: "Government is not the solution: government is the problem".

Police broke up the mob but made no arrests.

Also published in the Glen Ellyn News, August 3, 2011
and the Daily Herald, August 10, 2011

SHINING CITY...OR GARBAGE DUMP

2011-07-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

Having followed politics and current events for 60 years now, it is with great distress and it takes great effort to follow the sham public debate occurring on Capitol Hill over the debt crisis.

Any discussion of reducing the public debt by tossing thousands of hard working folks securing the social safety net off the payrolls is a sham.

Any discussion of reducing the public debt without ending our trillion dollar criminal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia is a sham.

Any discussion of reducing the public debt without reducing the bloated national security extravagance which accounts to over 50% of discretionary spending is a sham.

Any discussion of reducing the public debt without reducing the swollen non-war military budget which has increased 70% in the last ten years is a sham.

Any discussion of reducing the public debt without having the greedy rich pay their fair share of taxation is a sham.

Any discussion of reducing the pubic debt based on even further cuts to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure is a sham.

Any discussion of reducing the public debt based on reductions in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is a sham.

The aforementioned 60 years of study can be neatly divided into two 30 year periods. The first 30 years was one of seemingly endless progress creating the greatest middle class in history, building the unsurpassed national highway system, erasing the sorrowful stain of racial discrimination against our black brothers and sisters, addressing the urgent need to protect our environment, and on and on. Entrepreneurs paid up to 90% of their earnings in taxes and still created tens of millions of jobs. That is what entrepreneurs do. The greedy rich simply brag about the size of their stash.

Sadly, the last 30 years brought a new political philosophy to the fore. Government was the new evil so it had to be destroyed to allow the greedy rich and the war lovers to wreck their havoc on the less fortunate and the social fabric. A fading movie star rode onto Capital Hill slashing taxes, dismantling sensible regulation, gutting the Sherman Anti Trust laws, dismissing use of government to solve real social problems. His mantra: "government is not the solution; government is the problem" represent the nine most infamous words in American history; yet they are the mantra of the upper 1% which now has most of our wealth and most of our power.

And that Shining City on the Hill that the fading movie star waxed so eloquently about? It's actually turning into a garbage dump.

IS GOD A REPUBLICAN?

2011-07-24T17:53:00.000-07:00

We don't normally think of God as a political Supreme Being, but maybe we need to.

Starting with George W. Bush in 2000, quite a few presidential hopefuls have invoked God to justify throwing their hat into the ring. Just this year alone Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain and now Rick Perry have alluded to God's Calling as the basis of their active or contemplated run. And potential Presidential powerhouse Mike Huckabee dropped out...yep, on advise of the Big Guy.

Hey, all these folks are Republicans. Maybe that explains the difficulties we Democrats are having trying to right the Ship of State that has been floundering since the God inspired Presidency of the aforementioned Bush. We simply don't have God on our side.

WE'RE IN TOUCH; YOU BE IN TOUCH

2011-07-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

July 15, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Your latest email blast to IL 6th District constituents "Out of Touch", criticizing newly minted Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, (Dem, FL) seems stunningly out of touch with the policies you have championed for a political lifetime that led to the economic disaster we face today. You claimed she was out of touch for her comment that Democrats have turned this economy around in spite of continued high unemployment.

Please try and get back in touch with your freshman term in 2007-2008, to get the context of her remark. That was when six years of trillion dollar Bush tax cuts for the wealthy helped push seven million US jobs overseas to further engorge the wealth of the already wealthy. That was when years of deregulating financial institutions allowed them to make trillions of dollars of our treasure disappear almost overnight. That was when the greatest redistribution of wealth from the bottom 90% of workers to the upper 10% of the wealthy reached its peak. That was when millions more of the middle class lost their health insurance or slipped into poverty as the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930's occurred. That was when the last of 5 trillion dollars of new debt was chalked up on the Bush Administration score card. Congressman, you were so in touch with those dubious achievements that you doubled down on them to garner the endless financial support they provide to politicians of your persuasion who stay in touch only with the wealthy and the special interests.

Congressman, were you in touch during your second term of 2009-2010 when a truly remarkable transformation occurred? The Obama Administration, over your and your party’s intransigence, finally achieved a measure of relief for 40 million Americans denied adequate health care. You were out of sight when the President’s economic stimulus program hired or kept working several hundred thousand folks who otherwise would have pushed the unemployment rate to nearly 12%. When the President almost single handedly rescued GM and Chrysler and hundreds of thousands of more jobs, you were on the sidelines cheering on their imminent demise. You ran for cover when the President sheparded through financial reform to put a modicum of brakes on the Wall Street crowd who nearly brought us down.

Now, in your third term, and having risen to Republican Chief Deputy House Whip, there you are practically touching Congressman Eric Cantor during his press appearances as he threatens economic default in order to realize his, and your dream, of a decimated social safety net.

Sir, getting back to your bizarre allegation that Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is out of touch, understand this. Congresswoman Schultz is touching something important to achieving progress that you are not even remotely close to: REALITY.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District resident

IF YOU'RE GONNA DO CRAZY

2011-07-09T14:12:00.001-07:00

Although dismaying, it is not surprising that former KKK Grand Wizard, Louisiana state representative and Republican state district chairman David Duke is considering a run for the GOP Presidential nomination. Duke's flirtation with a presidential bid comes against a background of growing interest in elective office from white supremacists, one party affiliation of which is not on their list of potential parties is Democratic.

That's because most racists began fleeing the Democratic Party when Southern Democratic President Lyndon Johnson sheparded historic Civil Rights legislation into law in 1964 and 1965. Johnson ruefully remarked at the time that the Democratic Party was finished in the South and his prediction came true under his GOP successor Richard Nixon, who brilliantly devised and exploited his "Southern Strategy" to turn millions of disaffected Southern Democratic whites into Republicans.

Nixon's triumph in 1968 and 1972 with a solid white Republican South was not lost on Ronald Reagan who symbolically kicked off his post convention campaign for President on August 3, 1980, in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were assassinated in 1964 for the crime of trying to register black voters. Reagan's theme that day: Up with states' rights; down with federal interference in state matters. Hint, hint.

Racism was largely dormant in Presidential politics of late till the election of black Barack Obama in 2008 brought all the latent GOP racism to the fore, headed up by racist cartoons, pictures and chants at GOP created and funded Tea Party rallies. It peaked in the endless phony allusions to Obama's African birth, even championed by faux candidate Donald Trump. Sadly, the most overtly racist remark by a GOP contender was from black conservative Herman Cain who boasted: "No Muslims need apply in a Cain Administration".

If Duke does enter the race, a good motto for the racist fringe of the GOP should be: If you're gonna do crazy, go all the way....Duke for President.

Also published in the Chicago Sun Times, July 11, 2011 and
the Daily Herald, July 17, 2011

CHANGE THE CHANNEL?

2011-07-05T18:03:00.000-07:00

Waking from a fitful sleep, I popped on MSNBC to catch up with the momentous events shaping our destiny, and there was a trial judge giving jury instructions in a bizarre Florida murder case involving possible infanticide, child abuse, deceit, monumental family dysfunction; about every conceivable domestic depravity known to mankind. Hmmmm..something amiss, I muttered and switched to CNN to find the same trial judge; HLN, ditto. For the first time in forever I tried FOX News and there was Judge Everywhere. This can't be happening I stammered; maybe I'm still experiencing nightmare, or Cable TV has been hijacked by the Bizarro Continuum. Flipping on my favorite all news radio station, the first words at the top of the hour were: "Jury deliberations have begun in the murder trial of...."

A hundred years from now, historians of 2111, discussing the collapse of the American Experiment in the second decade of the 21st century, can sum up the failure of an uninformed electorate to prevent America's downfall at the hands of the war party, the banksters, the insatiably greedy oligarchs and the anti intellectual religious fanatics in two words: CASEY ANTHONY.

Orgianally published at www.chicagotribune.com

SECOND STATE

2011-06-25T05:31:00.000-07:00

Illinois may have beat NY state to legalizing civil unions for gay couples, but that still makes gay couples in Illinois second class citizens. NY state just trumped Illinois by giving them The Full Monty...MARRIAGE! We Illinoisians should not rest as long as a single couple has to explain to their fellow citizens that they weren't married...they were only civil unioned. That is disgusting.

Speaking of seconds, Chicago may always be the Second City, but Illinois blew a great chance last January in the humanitarian sweepstakes with their Empire State rival... of being the First State.

5 MAKES UNCLE SAM AN "ACE"

2011-06-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

Let's see, we're still killing and being killed in Iraq and most likely won't leave on the scheduled December 31st Yankee Go Home date.

Afghanistan is a catastrophe. Three suicide bombers struck today in Kabul just a few blocks from the Presidential Palace, killing nine. Six hundred seventy-six US soldiers have been killed there in the last eighteen months. The war will be ten years old this October with no end in sight.

Our drones are killing civilians like there's no tomorrow in Pakistan and that country is naturally starting to push back against Uncle Sam's atrocities.

Yemen is the fourth target for our high tech drones and only God knows how many civilians have been obliterated by them in that forlorn land.

Today, we dropped bombs on the rebels we're supporting in Libya, injuring sixteen in our obsession to oust Moammar Kaddafi in a war the President refuses to consult Congress about.

When a fighter pilot destroys five enemy airplanes in aerial combat he gets the revered designation of Ace. Uncle Sam, with his five senseless, murderous and unwinnable wars in the Middle East and North Africa is now the Ace.....Of Losers.

CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM NEEDS HISTORY LESSON

2011-06-17T17:32:00.000-07:00

June 17, 2011

Dear Congressman Roskam:

As a former history teacher (All Saints H.S., St. Thomas US Virgin Islands, 1985-1986), you know that history is not entertainment; but absolutely crucial to understanding our past so we can make informed decisions about our future. It is dismaying, therefore, that your latest email blast to IL Sixth District constituents, "Job Creation", either erases recent US economic history or distorts it wildly to promote failed policies that serve your narrow political base.

Your opening line is a doozy: "House Republicans sent a clear message to the White House...Washington must stop spending money it doesn't have".

Did you forget, Congressman, that the last Administration with a balanced budget and colossal job growth was the Democratic Clinton Administration?

Did you forget that the George W. Bush Administration, exploded the debt from 5.7 trillion to 10.7 trillion?

Did you forget that Republican Bush borrowed over a trillion dollars to wage two senseless wars that have killed hundreds of thousands, including over 6,000 GI's?

Did you forget that President Bush provided 2.5 trillion dollars (over 10 years) in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans which were totally unnecessary except for an avalanche of campaign contributions they stimulated?

Did you forget that President Bush passed an unpaid for, trillion dollar (over 10 years) prescription drug benefit for the elderly that prohibited the government from negotiating reasonable drug prices with Big Pharma?

Did you forget that Bush Administration's obsession with deregulation allowed the Wall Street Bankers to bring our country to the brink of economic collapse in 2008?

Did you forget that some of the debt incurred under the Obama Administration was to provide economic stimulus which prevented unemployment from hitting 12% (currenlty 9.1%)

Did you forget that some of that debt was to bailout the auto industry which is recovering nicely, paying back the government, and has saved several hundred thousand good American jobs?

Then there is: "The continued borrowed-and-spend madness hasn't helped create jobs either".

Did you forget that the Republican Bush II administration had the worst job creation record since the Republican Hoover administration between 1929 and 1933?

Did you forget the 2 million private sector jobs the Obama administration has created in the last 15 months in spite of concerted Republican intransigence to any economic stimulus?

Your prescription to end "borrow and spend madness" not only doesn't include reducing military spending and making sure the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, it increases both military spending and tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens and corporations. So where do you cut?

Education

Health care for the needy

Infrastructure improvement

Funding for financial regulatory reform

Funding for environmental protection

Wow! These programs not only keep thousands of Americans working; they actually benefit those most in need and provide the framework and infrastructure for a thriving economy.

But the most radical program you support is Representative Paul Ryan's (Rep. WI) plan to privatize Medicare. This is the cornerstone of the Republican Party blueprint to funnel more money to the private health care industry at the expense of the elderly, and it will do nothing to create jobs.

Being certain you would not intentionally erase or distort recent economic history, maybe you should go back to school to re-learn that history. While in class, it will be OK to also bone up on the 3 R's, but please don't focus on the 5 R's: Roskam's radical Republican roadmap to ruin.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District resident

HANG WIFF 'EM WEINER

2011-06-17T03:50:00.000-07:00

Congressman Anthony Weiner should not resign.

He has been one of the most passionate and articulate defenders of the tens of millions of the needy and the unemployed and the uninsured and the forgotten people being hurt by the Republican agenda to funnel endless wealth to the already wealthy at the expense of those legions of the less fortunate.

It turns out he was a bit over passionate in one aspect of his private life as well, but as far as we know he broke no laws and did not hurt anyone directly other than himself and those closest too him - injuries that will no doubt haunt him the rest of his life.

Contrast the Democratic leadership and even the President trying mightily to force him out for consensual, albeit tawdry and bizarre behavior, with the Republican leaders who gave a pass to Republican Senator Larry Craig, arrested for soliciting sex in an airport men's room, and Republican Senator David Vitter, who name turned up as a client on the DC Madam's little black business book. We're talking criminal conduct here; but with no salacious photos being endlessly paraded on TV and the internet, Senator Craig got to serve out his term and Senator Vitter got re-elected by his Louisiana constituents.

Weiner deserves even more of a chance than the aforementioned Senators to finish out his term to do the important business he has championed since 1999. Letting him get his head straightened out mentally so he can return from his leave of absence, is not only humane to him and his family, it is fair to his constituents who have hired him seven times now to represent them, and have just sixteen months till they can can vote to fire or rehire based on his performance as their Congressman. They are the only boss he has, and if his current district polls hold up, he will handily be re-elected.

Hang wiff 'em, Weiner.

Originally published at www.chicagotribune.com, June 16, 2011

WE DID KNOW JACK

2011-06-07T19:14:00.001-07:00

Dr Jack Kevorkian, 83, more famously know as "Dr. Death" for assisting over 130 terminally ill people to commit humane suicide between 1990 and 1999, ironically died peaceably in his sleep June 3rd, in Michigan, one of 47 states yet to legalize suicide for those in need. Ironic because Kevorkian always maintained he was promoting legalized suicide with his own end in mind: "I may end up terribly suffering..wanting some colleague to be free to help me when I say the time has come. I'm fighting for me...and if it helps everyone else, so be it."

Al Pacino portrayed a truly bizarre and obsessed Kevorkian in the movie, "You Don't Know Jack". While making for fascinating entertainment, the title got it wrong. All we needed to know about Jack is that he saw a compassionate medical need not being addressed and he dedicated his life to correcting it. Batting .060 in baseball may be a ticket to Palookaville, but in life those three states of fifty make Dr. Kevorkian a batting champ for humanity.

Also published in the Daily Herald, June 13, 2011

NOVEL PROSECUTION: YES! SLAM DUNK: NO!

2011-06-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

John Edwards sure must feel beleaguered by the millions of dollars and thousands of man hours spent indicting him on the novel criminal theory that gifts from his wealthy friends to his baby mama girlfriend were really illegal campaign contributions that may eventually land him in jail.

Edwards didn't have the luck to actually get elected President so he could start a criminal war costing billions of dollars and thousands of dead people. That conduct certainly granted prosecutorial immunity to George W. Bush for seven long years...and two years plus to the current President.

BOMBING TO SAVE HUMANITY

2011-06-03T12:21:00.001-07:00

On March 25th, President Obama trumpeted America's intervention in the Libyan civil war on the grounds of preventing the massacre of Libyan civilians by dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Here were are sixty days later and we've just passed 2,500 NATO air strikes on Col. Qaddafi's forces and compounds, resulting in an untold number of deaths and injuries to innocents as well as the members of the Libyan government forces we are trying to destroy. On April 30, a day before we assassinated Osama bin Laden in our military intrusion in Pakistan, NATO bombed one of Qaddafi's compounds, missing the Libyan strongman but obliterating one of his sons and three grandchildren, all under the age of 12.

It matters not that Congress was neither consulted nor authorized this third senseless war America has blundered into in the Middle East. President Obama's predecessors taught him well; from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush: If the President does it, that means its right.

The President should turn in his Nobel Peace Prize. Bombing to save humanity, or more honestly, bombing to save our stake in vast Middle East oil reserves, disgraces the President, America and every American who turns away from our rampaging military madness.

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, June 2, 2011

MURDEROUS AFGHAN WAR DOESN'T EXIST IN CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM'S WORLD

2011-05-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

May 27, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Eight US soldiers died in Afghanistan yesterday, Congressman.

They didn't just die; they were blown to bits by two roadside blasts while on foot patrol in a land we have no business waging war upon. Their deaths raise the US death toll in Afghanistan to 1,595, of which 1,237 (78%) died during your four years and five months in Congress. The tour of duty resulting in their deaths was financed by the two billion dollars you authorize weekly in borrowed money to keep our 100,000 pieces of canon fodder in harms way, for no sane or moral or humane or national security reason.

They died without you acknowledging the mere existence of our senseless wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya on your Congressional website, www.roskam.house.gov, which doesn't have an issue topic for war; doesn't have an issue topic for Iraq; doesn't have an issue topic for Afghanistan; doesn't have a topic for Libya. The only topic remotely close is "War on Terror". Amazingly, your last posting for it is dated February 3, 2010 and concerns your opposition to relocating Guantanamo detainees to Illinois.

For reasons known only to yourself, our trillion dollar wars of death and destruction simply do not figure in the Congressional face you show to your constituents. Could it be you know full well that over 70% of Americans view the Afghan war as an utter waste of America's military blood and America's dwindling financial treasure? Could it be you are silent because even a fine intellect like you can not construct an argument for continuing this madness?

On the same day those eight brave but doomed soldiers were needlessly denied a chance for a full life, you cast a vote on a referendum to end the Afghan war. The amendment by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) would have called on the administration to begin wrapping up the war and negotiating a settlement that would allow for a pullout. McGovern's amendment lost by just 11 votes, 215 to 204. You, sadly, joined 206 other Republicans and just 8 Democrats to defeat the amendment supported by 178 Democrats and, yes, 26 Republicans, who have come to their senses and are now on record to end the Afghan war that will enter its 11th year this Octorber 7.

In two days we will celebrate Memorial Day. Instead of giving a speech or sending an email to your constituents on how we honor and revere those brave soldiers who gave the last measure of life to defend our freedoms; why don't you spend the day reflecting on why you continue to send another eight or eighty or eight hundred of those soldiers to die for the war lovers and the war profiteers who support your political career.

And if you still believe sending them to die there is worth it, at least have the decency to post your reasons on your website or via an email to your constituents. The souls of the 1,237 heroes who have died in Afghanistan on your watch in Congress deserve nothing less.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District resident

FORGET TEA BAGS - READ THE TEA LEAVES

2011-05-25T20:28:00.000-07:00

Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin 47% to 43% in the New York Congressional District 26 special election yesterday in a stunning rebuke to the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare. Hochul's election is remarkable because New York's 26th District is one of the most conservative in the nation, having given 74% of its votes to disgraced former Republican Congressman Chris Lee just seven months ago.

Our Illinois Sixth District Congressman Peter Roskam, who voted last month to privatize Medicare with a voucher system, might just be having second thoughts about a vote that he cannot erase from his record when he runs for a fourth term next year. If 74% previously voting Republican couldn't save a Republican candidate embracing one of the most unpopular domestic policy positions in memory, then Roskam's 64% vote total last year no longer appears insurmountable.

The Republican agenda has for two years now been set by the The folks with the tea bags dangling from their hats, demanding endless cuts to programs benefitting the most needy Americans. Today, five Republican Senators broke ranks and joined 52 Democrats to vote down the radical Republican Medicare plan in the US Senate. It appears that smart Republicans are beginning to ignore those the tea bags in favor of the tea leaves that spell out what is really important to most Americans.

TRUE LIES

2011-05-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

Arnold Schwarzenegger proves the adage that behind every successful man is a woman; but behind every failed former successful man....is another woman.

Originally published in the Chicago Tribune, May 22, 2011.

THE TWO RON PAULS

2011-05-15T11:18:00.001-07:00

Republican Presidential contender Ron Paul presents us anti war, social progressives with a real dilemma.

His libertarian philosophy makes him 100% right concerning our bankrupting, criminal wars. He is totally against them as contrary to libertarian principles, the Constitution, and common sense.

That is the good Ron Paul

Unfortunately, his libertarian philosophy makes him 100% wrong on domestic issues. He is against virtually all forms of governmental social services such as FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) as not only being unconstitutional, but immoral as well. If people are in the way of a natural disaster like a hurricane or a flood, they should rely on the generosity of their neighbors, not the federal government. Smart, rich white guys like Paul live on high ground and have the personal resources to deal with any calamity. Speaking of white guys, candidate Paul came out this week against the civil rights act of 1964, even though its been on the books for47 years. Why? Because Paul's libertarian philosophy dictates that you can't legislate a private business into serving blacks, or any other group or person it chooses not to, as an unconstitutional intrusion on personal property rights.

That is the bad Ron Paul.

You see, its all about the cult of libertarianism to folks like Big Paul (Ron) and Little Paul (Senator Rand of KY) who walk around with dog eared copies of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and speak in hushed tones about "the virtue of selfishness".

Paul's candidacy is simply an amusing sideshow in President Obama's upcoming re-election cake walk. Hey, the President could use the good Ron Paul. How about replacing the interventionist hawk Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State with Ron Paul? He would be fabulous when the neo-cons beat the drums for more war. But please, when the talk turns to domestic issues at cabinet meetings, send the bad Ron Paul out for coffee.

ONLY IN AMERICA

2011-05-14T07:52:00.000-07:00

The killing of Osama bin Laden may provide some measure of justice to relatives, co-workers and friends of the dead on September 11; and to the survivors themselves.

But what about justice for the relatives and the friends and co-workers of the hundreds of thousands of dead from all causes in President Bush's senseless, made up war of empire and revenge and diversion against the people of Iraq as a reaction to bin Laden's terrorist attacks? The war was based on lies and propaganda and fear tactics and intimidation; a criminal war by any and all measures of the most heinous of all crimes.

Where is the justice for the millions more who were injured or tortured or driven from their homes in the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the carnage we unleashed against Iraq which overnight turned out the ruling Sunni minority and replaced it with the long oppressed Shiite majority?

Where is the justice for leaders who first approved of torture in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions and then bragged about it their self serving memoirs that earned them millions?

Where is the justice for those who ordered the systematic destruction of Fallujah, which today has an abnormally high rate of birth defects from all the depleted uranium our weaponry deposited in the soil we so ruthlessly and callously desecrated?

It is a sad commentary on American justice that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice cannot safely travel outside the US without fear of arrest for war crimes. They will live out their lives in glorious wealth and splendor, earned in part from their very criminality; but they can do so only as long as they reside in the country that only looks forward rather than backward when it comes to cleansing its own dirty war crime laundry.

The Nuremberg War Crime Trials established the principle that looking forward instead of backwards when dealing with the instigators of criminal war is not an option.

Except it is...but only in America.

AND THE NEXT STEP IS.......

2011-05-10T03:56:00.000-07:00

Steve Chapman concludes his fine and accurate May 8th Tribune column, Waterboarding in the search for bin Laden:

"In the end, they don't really care about imposing limits, and they don't really care if torture is effective or not. Torture, in the minds of its apologists, is not a means to a good result. It's a good result all by itself."

These "apologists" Chapman refers to are not some low level sociopathic military grunts who get tossed in the brig when their photos of torture get published, causing a public relations nightmare for the war party. They are sociopaths at the highest level of government with names such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Chapman knows that full well even though as a member of the Tribune Editorial Board he signed off on the re-election editorial of those same sociopaths back in 2004 because the Trib concluded that the Bush Administration had the experience and the smarts to keep us safe.

Criminal war, torture, secret rendition, endless incarceration without a prayer of getting justice were their stock in trade for the seven years they ruled after September 11, 2001. Steve Chapman and the Tribune should take the logical next step after calling out the torture apologists and demand a full and impartial investigation with possible prosecutions for these criminals. Revealing the truth is easy; just open your eyes. The hard part is obtaining justice.

BIN LADEN'S LEGACY

2011-05-08T04:04:00.000-07:00

Death may have ended Osama bin Laden's terrorist career, but analysis of his legacy is just beginning.

And it is shaping up to be a truly astonishing legacy.

With a few hundred, or even just a few dozen operatives, and about a half million dollars, bin Laden did what the German Kaiser in WWI, Hitler and Togo in WWII, and Stalin and Khrushchev in the Cold War couldn't: starting America on the slow but inevitable decline from greatness to ruin.

Bin Laden consciously provoked an America newly governed by leaders bent on conquest in the Middle East, to over react to his pinprick attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon using flying lessons, airline tickets and box cutters. He set a trap that America willingly dove into by launching utterly unnecessary wars against nations instead of the rag tag but clever criminals under his spiritual guidance.

Here we are ten years later bogged down with semi official wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya plus military action in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and God only knows what other places we aren't told about. Against bin Laden's half million we've squandered a trillion and a half so far, with trillions more yet to come.

Meanwhile, we barely invest pennies in rebuilding an America crumbling physically as well as spiritually. Heroic teachers face larger class sizes while warding off assaults against decent wages and working conditions. We ignore truly fixing the worst health care delivery system in the industrialized world. Fourteen million Americans are still looking for work that has been largely shipped overseas. On top of the unsustainable cost of endless war we give unsustainable tax cuts to the rich.

Bin Laden knew America better than we Americans, and exploited those insights brilliantly to begin our decline. Just when we might be having a real debate about obscene military spending his killing will stifle any legitimate criticism. A military that can track and kill bin Laden is above spending cuts.

Americans may be high-fiving bin Laden's demise and spiking the figurative head nearly blown off his torso, but they would better serve their interests by observing the quicksand spreading under their American feet. Quicksand provided by Osama bin Laden.

Also published in the Daily Herald, May 13, 2011

CONG. ROSKAM ENERGY POLICY RUNNING ON EMPTY

2011-05-02T18:07:00.000-07:00

May 2, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Several times in your five years as my Congressman, I've accused you of sophistry, the use of false arguments to deceive people. Sadly, you topped your sophistry level with your latest email blast to constituents titled: Gas Prices.

You tell the thousands of economically distressed residents of the Sixth District struggling with $4.19 per gallon gas, that the current problem is two-fold:

1. There are plenty of untapped fossil fuel resources right here in the good 'ol USA that could bring reasonable gas prices
2. The White House and liberal Democrats simply won't tap them

Conclusion: No surprise - high gas prices are strictly the fault of the Democratic Party.

That is not only sophistry, Congressman, it is a tautology: a series of self reinforcing statements that cannot be disproved because the statements depend on the assumption that they are already correct.

But they are both false as a $3 bill. You know full well that best estimates are only 3 million barrels a day could be added to US production if ALL the current untapped land and seabed resources were magically tapped, a mere 3.5% of the 86 million world wide barrels produced daily. You also know that it would take years to begin to realize the meager benefits of those resources, a further cruel hoax on the folks you tantalize with your magical solution of falsely blaming the Democrats.

You state The Democrats can start by reversing the off-shore drilling moratorium and pursuing safe and timely energy production in the Gulf. Why didn't you mention that the moratorium has already been lifted and that 11 new deep water drilling permits and 49 shallow water drilling permits have been approved (not that they will solve today's $4.19 per gallon gas).

Congressman, for a real solution, why didn't your email blast mention that the Democrats supported, and your party opposed, financial regulation to prevent the Wall Street oil futures speculation which may be the biggest factor in the gas price rise? The President's reform bill requires the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to enact new rules to restrict the amount of oil that speculators could trade on the energy futures market. Only two of the five commissioners support such sensible regulation but three are required to pass new rules; causing an egregious three month delay in reducing price spiking speculation What are you doing to break this logjam which would have the quickest impact on escalating gas prices?

Is it that you never met a regulation over the endless greed and speculation of the super rich you didn't oppose as being "stifling to business"?

It is time to end the partisan politics of easy blame and magical solutions when dealing with the "no-win" battle to attain cheap energy from 19th century reliance on fossil fuel. As other countries invest in modern infrastructure and clean energy technologies to face the future, you support the endless solutions of:

1. Less regulation over Wall Street and Big Oil
2. No investment in the future
3. Endless tax breaks for the folks whose wealth depends on the energy status quo
4. Drill baby drill

Congressman, that may be a tankfull, but its woefully short on octane.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District resident

NO GENTLEMAN'S C FOR THE PRESIDENT

2011-04-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

President Obama was challenged this week about the continued imprisonment, under quite possibly inhumane conditions, of Pvt. Bradley Manning for allegedly aiding Wikileaks revelations.

Members of the Fresh Juice Party paid $76,000 to attend an Obama breakfast fundraiser in San Francisco. They held up signs and broke into song in support of Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who has been held in virtual solitary confinement for nearly a year since his May, 2010 arrest. First detained in Kuwait, he was transfered to the Marine Corp Brig at Quantico, VA. Amnesty International publicly complained this January about the conditions imposed upon Bradley's confinement, calling them harsh and punitive. Two hundred and ninety-five legal scholars signed a letter in April saying that the detention conditions amounted to a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Under such mounting pressure, the Pentagon last week transferred Manning to a new facility in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he can finally interact with other pre-trial detainees.

Former Constitutional law professor Obama has no concern that Bradley's harsh treatment for nearly a year with no formal charges being filed, possibly constitutes torture in violation of the US Constitution. How sure is the President? Well, instead of finding out for himself, he is relying on his military advisors, who he states, have assured him the 23 year old is doing just fine. Hey, a year of no contact with the outside world should be a walk in the park for someone treacherous enough to dare reveal American war crimes. Besides, when challenged about Manning's indefinite, endless stay in prison, Obama said flat out "He broke the law".

If the President could somehow time travel back and take a constitutional law class from his former identity as a law professor at the University of Chicago... he would flunk.

THE DONALD TRUMPS BUSH ON WAR CRIME RHETORIC

2011-04-22T05:02:00.000-07:00

When it comes to bragging about being a war criminal, George W. Bush can't hold a candle to Donald Trump. The former President may have launched a criminal war against Iraq sending hundreds of thousands to an early grave and millions more to hospitals, safer neighborhoods, even other countries. But growing up in a three generation family of Senators and Presidents, young George learned how to mask his criminal ventures with rhetoric invoking concepts such as "get them before the smoking gun is a mushroom cloud", or "they're interested in re-starting their WMD programs". The war loving mass media and an ignorant, violence prone populous loves such sound bites, allowing President Bush to declare in his farewell address that his biggest accomplishment was keeping America safe...if you start counting after September 11, 2001, that is.

Unfortunately, political novice and celebrity superstar Donald Trump got no such oral guidance from his forebears. Yesterday, Trump boasted to a stunned George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America, that since we spent $1.5 trillion dollars conquering Iraq, the least we should do is get our investment back by stealing their oil, which, as the third largest reserve in the world, would solve America's rapid climb to $5 a gallon gas and beyond. Trump even trotted out the old cliche: "To the victor goes the spoils". Trump's 'let it all hang out' defense of criminal war is playing well among Republican voters who vaulted him to the No. 1 spot after only a handful of similar interviews.

We can't prosecute Trump for making such immoral and heartbreaking comments; but the least we can do is shun him.

CONG. ROSKAM NEEDS DETOUR ON ROADMAP TO RUIN

2011-04-21T17:58:00.000-07:00

April 21, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Your latest email blast “Did you hear about Rep. Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity?” begs the question: “Who’s Prosperity?”

It certainly isn’t that of the middle class or the needy. Rep. Ryan’s roadmap demands trillions of dollars in cuts to health services and medicare, environmental protection, infrastructure rebuilding and education, all to pay for trillions in tax cuts for the super rich.

Rep. Ryan and your vision of government, as one of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, is a radical one which will dismantle the enormous middle class I grew up in during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Working at good jobs for the past 43 years thanks to the benefits that middle class gave me, I contributed steadily to the social security and medicare programs I am now drawing on. Those were programs which alleviated economic suffering for both my parents who began their working life at the beginning of social security in 1935, and finished their working life half way through Medicare’s second decade in 1979.

Sadly, 1979 marked the zenith of that great American middle class, built by entrepreneurs paying a 92% tax rate in 1952, who didn’t let high tax rates keep them from creating tens of millions of GOOD middle class jobs. These programs remind us of the highest purpose of government – to uplift and care for the entire society based on a fair and equitable taxation system.

That middle class began to disintegrate in the early 1980’s when the super rich decided that even the 70% upper income tax rate at that time was too great to bear. Voila, utterly forgetting recent history, they created the myth that even that reasonable rate cost jobs. So they dropped the rate to 50% in 1982 under President Reagan and down to 35% under President Bush in 2003. The result? Millions of jobs disappeared overseas, virtually overnight, while the upper 10% of the rich increased their wealth enormously at the expense of everyone else.

Now your new superhero Rep. Ryan is proposing trillions more in unconscionable tax cuts, down to 25% for wealthy individuals and corporations to feed their insatiable thirst for unlimited wealth. Rep. Ryan’s plan may have passed the House with the help of your vote, but it’s Dead On Arrival in the Senate, not to mention a certain Presidential veto. Ryan may have more to worry about than failing to destroy the middle class. Rob Zerban, small business owner and Kenosha, WI county supervisor, will be challenging Ryan in 2012, in a state where the middle class is newly energized by Governor Scott Walker’s clumsy and heartless effort to abolish public workers’ collective bargaining rights.

Congressman, your Path to Prosperity is simply a Roadmap to Ruin. You should turn your eyes around, look deep into your heart and your soul, and contemplate taking a detour.

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District Resident

AUTHENTICATE PLEASE

2011-04-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

Newly minted Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump vaulted to the No. 1 spot among the many GOP hopefuls by explicitly endorsing the scurrilous and likely racist charge that Barak Obama's Presidency is illegitimate due to his alleged African birth.

The charge originated during the 2008 campaign out of the worst elements of the Republican party taping into the latent racism of the shrinking white US majority whose racist wing resides almost exclusively in the GOP. It is likely racist because it is simply inconceivable that such a charge would be hurled at a white candidate.

While Trump displays no shame whatsoever using the African birth canard to jump start his publicity fueled campaign, the other dozen or so contenders quietly fuel the Obama smear by refusing to call out The Donald or the many others in the GOP who trumpet the utterly idiotic allegations for personal and political gain. They might say they personally believe Obama was born here but they somehow "understand" why so many in the GOP don't. That's like saying one isn't racist but "understands" why other folks are. Bunk.

I've decided to start my own campaign to require proper documentation from the GOP contenders. Henceforth, every last one should produce a "Certificate of a Live Brain".

Also published in the Glen Ellyn News, April 20, 2011, and the Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2011

FRIENDLY FIRE DRONES ON

2011-04-14T03:45:00.000-07:00

It was inevitalbe that we would hear of our drone aircraft, which for the past several years have been raining down fiery death and injury to thousands of innocents in Pakistan and Afghanistan, would kill American GI's in a high tech version of "friendly fire". The two American soldiers blown to bits today in Helmond Province, Afghanistan, by a errant drone missile fired by a confused joy stick jockey at a computer game board in Nebraska made the front pages of every American paper today because they were Americans. But those same members of the free press are obvious to the endless foreigners who meet the same fate.

Afghans have gone on the rampage in recent days, even killing members of the UN mission in Mazar-i-Sharif, ostensibly over reports of the Koran burning by Christian Florida pastor Terry Jones. Even President Obama weighed in last year when Jones first threatened to burn the Koran, saying his actions jeopardize the safety of American soldiers. The US agonizes over the exercise of free speech, however misguided, by Pastor Jones, while it spends trillions of borrowed dollars to fight three criminal wars in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

President Obama and his American war party conducting these self destructive wars should get this straight: They don't hate us for our freedom to burn the Koran. They hate us for our freedom to burn their people

NAME THAT BUDGET BILL

2011-04-10T06:39:00.001-07:00

The compromise hatched between Republicans and Democrats yesterday prevented a governmental shutdown at midnight, but did nothing to slow America's slide to irrelevancy on the world's economic stage.

The GOP majority in the House has used their 13 weeks of power to do the opposite of what they campaigned on: creating jobs. Not only has Job 1 not been created, their $38 billion in budget cuts has insured tens if not hundred's of thousands jobs will be lost in the rush to defund critically needed infrastructure projects and services to the needy. President Obama, who called the cuts "painful", at least reduced them from the original GOP target of $100 billion, or the $61 billion in the GOP House passed budget version, and he kept funding for Planned Parenthood's reproductive services to women while keeping the government operating.

But cutting back investment on job training, education, health care services, infrastructure, and environmental protection at a time when the reverse in needed to stimulate an economic resurgence is a recipe for failure. On a positive note, the real GOP agenda of starving government to pay for obscene tax cuts for their super rich base was a smashing success.

If Congress wants a truthful name to attach to the budget being hammered out next week, I offer: "The 2011 US Banana Republic Budget Bill".

IKE WARNED US ABOUT SENATOR KIRK

2011-04-07T21:48:00.000-07:00

As a quintessential member of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, it comes as no surprise that Illinois Senator Mark Kirk is calling for arming the Libyan rebels seeking to oust forty-one year long strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Entering the US House in January, 2001, Kirk voted for every one of the $1 trillion we've blown on our senseless and self destructive war in Iraq and every one of the $500 billion dollars we've blown on our senseless and self destructive war in Afghanistan. He has been quiet as a church mouse about the nearly 6,000 dead GI's and hundreds of thousands more who have been wounded, injured and mentally damaged requiring several trillion more dollars to care for over several generations. He has also been mute about the three million dead, injured or displaced Iraqis and Afghans by our military invaders.

But ask Kirk about his teaching or military career and you can't shut him up with truth being the first casualty.

As a Cornell undergrad he held a work study job supervising a play group at the Forest Home Chapel nursery school which morphed into a full time teaching career when discussing education.

But it was Kirk's service as an intelligence officer with the Naval Reserve that truly honed his resume padding skills. An award given to his intelligence division became Kirk's award as "Navy Intelligence Officer of the Year" when he testified before a House Committee in 2002. Then Kirk tuned a routine flight over Iraq into a death defying effort dodging anti aircraft fire.

Now Kirk urges arming the Libyan rebels who are essentially a secessionist movement of tribes and sects in Eastern Libya who have never considered their portion of Libya known as Cyrenaica, a part of the western portion known as Tripolitania. No doubt, Kirk, who is on the payroll of two thirds of the aforementioned Complex, is seeking to throw a few more billions at his best buddies in the third segment which produces all those weapons that must be sold and used.

Former Republican President and true war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower waned us about the likes of Kirk in his January 17, 1961, Farewell Address to the American people:

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. ...we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

I doubt you'll find any picture of Ike in Kirk's Senate office. But those industrialists that fund his campaign while they pocket fortunes with the military expenditures Kirk so readily and silently funnels their way? If he doesn't have their pictures hanging, he sure knows their faces and their phone numbers.

OBAMA'S WAR TRIFECTA IS NO PRIZEWINNER

2011-04-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

In his 27th month as Commander In Chief, President Obama is now presiding over three unnecessary wars, all with a different level of investment on his part.

Obama opposed the Iraq war before it started, and never argued its legitimacy in serving America's national interests. He has reduced the number of soldiers in Iraq and ended official combat operations. So little news emanates from Iraq that most Americans don't realize we still have 50,000 soldiers there at dozens of military bases. Since taking office, 204 GI's have died, many times that have been injured; while bombings, murder and mayhem involving Iraqis are a grotesque daily legacy of America's criminal invasion eight years ago.

The nine and a half year old Afghanistan war is a different matter. To have any chance of getting elected in a country ruled by the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, candidate Obama embraced this war for dear life. Had he taken the same position on Afghanistan as he did on Iraq, Obama may well have lost the Presidency to war hero and war lover John McCain who is the undisputed champ when it comes to exploiting false patriotism to promote endless war. Obama now must answer for 858 American soldiers and thousands of Afghans who have needlessly died there since he earned his License To Kill on January 20, 2009.

But even though he twice escalated troop levels in Afghanistan by tens of thousands upon taking office, Obama still had no war he could truly call his own. He finally got his chance to orchestrate America's greatest export when he pushed the button to unleash hundreds of cruise missiles upon the hapless mercenaries doing Muammar Gaddafi's dirty work in the Libyan civil war.

Now, instead having to appear helpless to control events like the insane Congressional budget battles leading inexorably to a governmental shutdown, unemployment that may never again drop below 9%, gas which is heading to $4 a gallon if not to $5, and the impending Japanese nuclear catastrophe that may well flip the globe into a new worldwide recession, Obama can blow all those unpleasantries off the front page with his cakewalk in Libya.

The President has learned well the lesson of leaders seeking to stay in power when events at home spin out of control with no solution in sight - start a military operation.

CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM TO THE UNDERINSURED: DON'T GET SICK

2011-03-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

March 29, 2011

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

Dear Congressman Roskam:

While she doesn't reside in the Sixth District, or even in Illinois, twelve year old Taylor Wilhite of Ohio is someone you should know. Four years ago Taylor was diagnosed with leukemia. As her health care costs skyrocketed over $750,000, Taylor's parents were advised to check the lifetime cap on their health care insurance and found it ended at $1 million. Anxiety setting in, the Taylors began putting off all health care expenses for Taylor that weren't life threatening but still the heartless and arbitrary private health care limit loomed. Then a man made miracle happened. Over you and your entire party's tireless efforts to prevent it, President Obama achieved the century old dream, first proposed by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, of a national health care program that ended the lifetime limits on insured care. Taylor, whose treatment could eventually cost $4 million, will be given the medical care that up till now would be cut off by unscrupulous and greedy private health care insurers.

I bring up Taylor's case in response to your stunningly hurtful and insensitive March 17th email message trumpeting you and your party's number one objective in the 112th Congress: the repeal of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111-148) enacted March 23, 2010. You continue to follow the propaganda line of the private health care industry and use the obscenity "Obamacare" to utterly trivialize the health care debate and totally ignore the immense benefits that this law is just beginning to bring to the 50 million Americans with inadequate or no health care insurance. You continue to perpetuate the lie that this bill is a job killer, when in fact it is the first substantive effort to reign in exploding health care costs while bringing relief to the folks you choose not to recognize.

What other health care benefits to the needy does your scurrilous attack on this law ignore?

1. Children can now stay on their parents' health insurance till age 26, covering a time when many do not have jobs with medical coverage

2. Small businesses get a 35% tax credit to help them buy medical coverage for their employees

3. Insurance companies can no longer cancel policies for innocent clerical errors to avoid paying major medical expenses. As a Congressman you should know that the House Energy and Commerce Committee found that just three insurers cancelled the policies over 20,000 people during a five-year period, confirming for lawmakers that the practice was widespread and growing. By rescinding those 20,000 policies, the three companies avoided paying for more than $300 million worth of medical care, much of it for critically ill people. This will help folks like Robin Beaton of Waxahachie, Texas. Her insurance company notified her the day before a scheduled mastectomy that it was canceling her coverage. Why? Robin had failed to note when she applied for insurance that she had previously been treated for acne.

4. That committee discovered during another investigation that the four largest U.S. insurance companies had refused to sell coverage to more than 600,000 people with pre-existing conditions over a three-year period. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, insurers can no longer deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. The law will apply to all of us by 2014.

5. Copayments are eliminated for preventive services

6. Insurers are now required to establish appeals procedures for denied coverage or claims.

7. The law has additionally begun to close the infamous "doughnut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug program.

8. Medicare beneficiaries are also now getting better coverage for preventive care.

9. Instead of engorging the wealth of their executives, the new law requires insurers to spend most of what we pay them in premiums on medical care. In 1993, insurers on average were spending 95 percent of our premiums paying medical claims. That average has dropped steadily ever since. In many cases, especially in the individual and small-group markets, insurers have been spending as little as 50 percent on medical care. The law requires insurers spend at least 80 percent (85 percent in the large-group market) on health care services or quality improvement activities. Those that don't will have to pay rebates to their policyholders. By 2014, states will have to set up health insurance exchanges, which should help control costs. Between 2000 and 2010, American families saw annual premiums increase 114% on average from $6,438 to $13,770 for private policies, and 147% for people insured by their employers. The exchanges, if implemented as Congress intended, should bring down the cost of premiums by fostering competition among insurers. The exchanges will also require insurers to provide data that will enable us to make apples-to-apples comparisons among various benefit plans.

Is this law perfect, Congressman? Absolutely not. Even with benefits accruing to 30 million Americans, another 20 million still have no health insurance whatsoever. But instead of dishonoring and disrespecting it with the two epithets "Obamacare and "job killer", roll up your sleeves and work to improve it in the 112th Congress. We know you have the intellect to achieve that goal. The real question is: do you have the heart and the conscience required?

Respectfully yours,

Walt Zlotow
Sixth District resident

UNCLE SAM STRIKES AGAIN

2011-03-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

It's a sad irony that America chose to intervene in the Libyan civil war on March 19th, the eighth anniversary of our catastrophic war in Iraq, where 50,000 GI's amid dozens of military bases continue to defile that pitiful land, smashed to bits by America's might.

Unfortunately, Uncle Sam cannot resist blasting another oil rich country with our Tomahawk cruise missiles when such a repellent strongman as Muammar Kaddafi tries to hold onto power in a vast land of feudal tribes masquerading as a country.

Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya all bear little resemblance to real, functioning countries with a unified culture and populous. The various tribes and religions have been fighting each other for centuries and no doubt will still be fighting each other centuries from today. We care not one whit about civilian casualties. If we did we would have prosecuted the leaders of our country for inflicting millions of casualties and refugees over there in our lust for empire and oil.

But when American Presidents are powerless to achieve meaningful progress in a declining economic power at home, it sure must feel good to push a button and watch as America's most prosperous export, weapons of human destruction, shows another sorrowful land America's true greatness.

EYE OPENER

2011-03-20T06:19:00.001-07:00

It is disheartening to see a major Illinois political figure, State Senator Kirk Dillard, trying to bring back the death penalty in Illinois when the ink on Governor Quinn's signature abolishing it is barely dry (Tribune Op Ed, March 18).

In Dillard's bizarre heart and soul, all life is precious, except for certain undesirables who Dillard feels it's OK to target for state sponsored murder. Is there any real difference between heinous violent criminals and those who delight in committing murder under color of law to achieve some sort of "justice?" Both feed their bloodlust but the latter do it with a moral self righteousness which is not only disgusting, but needlessly contributes to the acceptance of violence as a means of solving societal problems.

Dillard, amazingly, contradicts himself in the last paragraph. He starts with: "I do not believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime", but concludes by quoting former Texas Governor George W. Bush: "I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people's lives." Which is it Senator?

George W. Bush should be the last person on Earth to use as a character witness for supporting the death penalty. As Texas Governor, he appeared to be in a contest with Florida Governor and brother Jeb, to see who could execute the most death row inmates. After winning that contest, George "failed up" to President where he went on to launch a needless war against Iraq resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths including over 4,400 American pieces of canon fodder. Would George W. Bush qualify under Dillard's Senate Bill 2277 as the "worst of the worst" to be earmarked for an early grave at the hands of his fellow man?

After Governor Quinn's courageous action, the 16th President began resting a bit more easily at Oak Ridge Cemetery, enjoying the irony of Illinois being the 16th state to hop off the "kill your fellow man" train. With Dillard's bill an eye has opened to keep watch that his beloved Illinois does not back slide into the barbarity it has so recently turned its back on. The only thing Senator Dillard should consider killing...is SB 2277.

DO YOU SEE A PATTERN HERE?

2011-03-12T04:22:00.000-08:00

Congressman Peter King, Rep. NY, opened his hearings this week focused on his obsession with proving his preconceived notion that 80% of America's Mosques are supporting jihad against America. Nearly 60 years ago we were subjected to Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy's preposterous and endless hearings obsessed with proving his preconceived notion that 80% of State Dept employees during the FDR and Truman Administrations were Communists which made both FDR and Truman guilty of being fellow travelers to the Communist cause.

Hey, wait a minute. McCarthy was of Irish descent and so is King. That must be more than a coincidence. How about if a non-Irish American Congressman opens a hearing into the propensity of Irish American legislators to engage in witch hunts against a particular group of people, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, to demonize them for political purposes?

A SMILE FROM THE BIG HOUSE

2011-03-10T16:54:00.000-08:00

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation making Illinois the 16th state to outlaw capital punishment today in a private ceremony in his Capitol office. Quinn was surrounded by longtime opponents of capital punishment but conspicuous by his absence was the man who arguably had the most to do with this momentous day - former Governor George Ryan.

It was Ryan who imposed the moratorium on capital punishment after Illinois became the poster state for blundering or worse, possibly framing numerous innocent men onto Death Row. Ryan, responding to public advocacy groups which uncovered errors, misfeasance and malfeasance leading to the exonerations, initiated the nation's first moratorium on the death penalty on January 30, 2000. Nearly three years later on January 11, 2003, three days shy of leaving office, Ryan commuted the death sentences of all 167 doomed souls on Illinois' death row to life imprisonment, arguing that the intervening three years since announcing the moratorium fully convinced him that the death penalty was a monstrous institution with no redeeming societal benefit whatsoever, and irretrievably broken.

Since my daughter was involved in the Northwestern Law School Center on Wrongful Convictions which helped exonerate several condemed men, I tuned into Governor Ryan's latter speech held, appropriately, at the Northwestern Law Center.

It turned out to be the single most moving and humane speech I've heard a public official give in sixty years of following public affairs. Given on a Saturday afternoon, most except death penalty partisans, both for and against, likely missed it. That is a shame. Every school in America should include Ryan's speech in civics class as an example of the high calling and enormous good a dedicated public servant can aspire to and achieve.

It is fitting, therefore, to give the Governor Ryan, still cooling his heals in the Big House long past the time that common sense and basic decency demands, the last word, on this momentous day, from the very last line of his magnificent speech:

"In the days ahead, I will pray that we can open our hearts and provide something for victims' families other than the hope of revenge. Lincoln once said: 'I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.' I can only hope that will be so. God bless you. And God bless the people of Illinois".

Originally published at chicagotribune.com, March 9, 2011