Posts
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| President Barack Obama |
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
INTRODUCTION
I apologize for the length of this letter. I divided it under different headings so that you can choose to read any part you wish. Before I get into the issues, I wish to first tell you where I am coming from. I believe that you are the best president we have had in years. I don’t write these words lightly. In general, I despise politicians. But you are the only president that I have ever identified with, and you are the only president I have ever enjoyed listening to. I thought your press conference after the debacle was the best I have seen. I never saw a politician answer question so candidly the way you did. No matter what I write below under each heading, I intend to vote for you again, In fact, if I had my way, I would run you for 3 terms. By then, I would run your lovely wife for 3 terms. By that time, your children should be old enough so that I can vote for them as well 3 terms each. I wouldn’t mind seeing an Obama in the White House for the rest of my life.
I wrote on my Facebook page that you are the only sitting president in the history of our country who has ever had to explain his religious beliefs or his birth. I sincerely believe that if you were as white as that idiot Glenn Beck, they would never be questioning your religious beliefs or your background. I am a white Jewish person whose grandparents came from Hungary. You, Mr. President, are every bit as American as I am. Your religious beliefs are none of anyone’s business. Even though I have never been to Hawaii, I always wanted to visit there and maybe even live there. I also think you have a beautiful name, better than a Bush, a Reagan, or a Nixon.
I read someplace that you were homeless for a time. During the early 70’s I found myself sleeping in my car for a month. You are not a person born with a silver spoon in his mouth. You know what it is like to have a tough time, and I appreciate you even more because of this.
I wish that you and the Democrats weren’t so afraid to be more liberal instead of center near the right, but even so, I like your personality. I would gladly, if I could, meet you and sit down for some juice. I don’t drink coffee or tea. But juice is my picker upper. I realize that I will never meet you as long as you are president, but when you go back to private life, I would be glad to sit down and have juice with you. I love the fact that you are professorial at times, and that you are a highly educated person who is also a gentleman. I would adopt you and your family as my own if I could.
I hope that in this introduction I have made clear how I feel about you. I am glad that I voted for you and hope to have the privilege of voting for you again. Please be more liberal, more progressive. I do not like middle of the road Democrats, especially since today’s middle of the road is more to the right than ever before.
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| Image of Big Brother as He appears in the second film version of 1984 |
I understand that as an adult and as a gentleman, you are trying to find a way to work with people who will never work with you. I understand you can’t come on TV acting as if you are spoiling for a fight, but I believe that is exactly what your enemies are doing. You and your party have done a great deal in the first two years of your term. You stand for things fair and humane. The Republican Tea Party Taliban, on the other hand, stand for everything I am against. I think that you should have bragged a little more about your accomplishments. When the Republicans stated their intention to repeal your health care bill, I was hoping you would answer: when heck freezes over. In other words, you and the Democrats are being way too nice to the Republicans. Niceties are inappropriate for these times. This is a war. I am not talking about the so-called war on terror. This is a war for the salvation of all the things that make our country great: fairness, humanity, freedom, liberty. The Republicans and their corporate backers are against everything this country stands for. Evil bullies like them have been trying to undermine this country for years. In the fifties, it was a McCarthy and now it is a Boehner. Being nice to these people is not going to get you anywhere. In fact, I wish you were not afraid to be as progressive as you can be. I do not like the so called Republicrats or as you call them…blue dog Democrats. Democrats are supposed to stand for something different from Republicans. If Democrats continue to seek the middle, they will be voted out. The Republicans are not “wishy washy” about where they stand. I know exactly what they intend to do if they had their way. I would like the Democrats to be as fanatically liberal as the Republicans are conservative. I want the Democrats to stand up for their liberal values even if they have to put the boxing gloves on and be as nasty to the Republicans as they are to the Democrats. If they don’t do this, your party will lose in 2012. AND THAT WILL BE A TRAGEDY.
Some of the pundits say that you don’t show enough emotion. I think that is nonsense. You are simply being the gentleman that you are. The last thing I want you to do is come out with a cowboy hat and a six shooter. I want you to dig deep into yourself and remember the days you were homeless. Feel the rage for a change and come back at them with force in your own tough way.
You ARE tough, Mr. President. Anyone who went through what you did and comes out on top has to be tough. I know that once you show your dark side to your right wing Republican enemies, they will be afraid, very afraid. Right now, they are not afraid. In fact if I had my way, if the job numbers remain the same next year as they are now, we should impeach the Republican house. How’s that for being mean? Then they will know what real fear is.
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| Today's cracked Youth under Republiot Threats |
STAY IN TOUCH WITH THE YOUTH
Mr. President, please keep in touch with young people the same way you did during your initial run. I read that many of the young people stayed at home this time and did not vote because somehow there has been a disconnect between your relationship with them then and your relationship with them now. You should tell them that the Republicans want to see the retirement age raised to 70, for example. I realize that 70 may seem a long way for most people in their teens and for most people in their 20’s. But take it from me. I just turned 60 and got a big shock from it. Old age is there before you know it. I voted for you in part because of your youth. I want to see a better world for the people of the future. I don’t want them looking back on us and condemning us for our inaction and blaming us for the horrible state of the planet. (if the Republican Tea Party Taliban have their way that is).
PLEASE UPGRADE YOUR INTERNET MAILINGS
I get a lot of mail from your supporters, and from you. There seems to be no way to give any feedback on these mailings. All I get is pep talk and requests for donations. In fact, I am giving 25 dollars a month out of my pension check to help you in your fight for the middle class. I have been doing this for a few months already and have never received any indication that you are even getting my money. Am I making these deductions out of my fixed income for nothing?
My wife and I are being audited by the IRS for 2008. One of the things they don’t believe is my deductions for my purchase of DVDs. Before I retired, I was a NYC public school teacher for 28 years. For about 23 of those years I taught a course in my intermediate school called introduction to movies and media. I would gladly give you all the details of what I taught as if you were a parent of a child in my class, but that is a subject of another letter. When I got the notice of the audit, I wanted to withdraw my 25 dollar a month donation just in case I have to pay the 10 thousand dollars they may want. I went to one of the letters I got from your group, I think it is Organizing for America, and wrote them about this matter. I never got a reply nor do I think they ever got my note. I am still deducting the 25 dollars a month, and I still have not gotten any indication from this group that they are even getting my donation.
By the way, I am pretty angry about this, and I was pretty angry about it when I walked into the polls. In spite of this, I voted Democratic all down the line thinking that voting based on my anger will not get me anywhere. In fact, voting for the Republicans is like sticking a rusty nail into an already open and infected wound.
Your internet mailings are a very important way of staying in touch with the voters, but you have to make sure that we are able to reply to your messages. Right now, there is no feedback one way or another, and again, I wish I knew that you were getting my 25 dollar a month donation to help the middle class. This 25 dollars is an addition to my tax liability. I also give 20 dollars a month to the Humane Association and 50 dollars a month to Greenpeace. I have always been supportive of all kinds of charities despite my financial situation. Putting my money where my mouth is has been very important to me….now if I only knew your “help the middle class” campaign was getting my monthly donation.
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| David McCallum, from The Outer Limits, shows what a good education does for you. |
EDUCATION
As I wrote above, I was a NYC public school teacher for 28 years. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. Your solution to our educational problems is more charter schools and forcing teachers to work in the summer months. The dumb right accuses you of being a socialist, and yet in regards to this and some other issues, you seem to be more right wing than the right.
Charter schools are really private schools funded by public money. Many of them bully their way into public school buildings and take over. Since the right is obsessed with privatizing everything, charter schools fit that pattern very well. When I went to school, we had no need for charter schools. I was graduated knowing how to read and to write, how to add and how to subtract. The reason our public schools worked was because the teachers ran things and the students did not. Parents were more involved in those days, actually raising their own children. If traditional public schools were allowed to slap some of these trouble makers and their parents upside the head, maybe this fear would make the trouble makers behave. In any event, charter schools have the unfair advantage of being able to pick and choose any student they wish, leaving the dregs to the beleaguered public schools. This is certainly not fair. If charter schools are public schools, they should be forced to accept every student a public school has to accept, and charter schools should be forced to abide by the same rules public schools have to follow. Our country’s unique contribution to the world of education was the free, open public school system. Additionally, public schools were in many ways the center of a community. Sadly with the attack on public schools, many of these centers of community activity no longer exist.
Teachers’ unions are also under attack since many of these charter schools can opt to not have a teachers’ union in their building. Let me tell you why teachers need a union. I personally witnessed teachers being treated as second class citizens. I saw them treated the same way I was treated when I was a blue collar worker. Principals and assistant principals spoke to teachers like trash, even yelling at them in front of students. Teachers don’t have a private office or a private bathroom in their classrooms like administrators have in theirs. I also know that no matter how good a job you do, if a principal or another administrator doesn’t like the way you look or dress, you are out. If they don’t like your politics, you are out. Mr. President, as long as our country and its school administrators want to treat teachers as if they are nothing more than tools, we need unions. Employees who feel equal to their employers out of mutual respect don’t have much need for a union. Teachers, on the other hand, are under siege by administrators, school secretaries, school custodians, the parents, and the students. As we have learned in the past, without a union to protect them, teachers are left to twist in the wind.
You said that you want to extend the school year. I understand your need to want to do this. Other countries are going way ahead of us to places we should be by now. But there is another stark contrast. These countries may force their teachers to work year round, but at least their society forces students and parents to respect the teacher. In our country, a longer school day or year just means more of a bad thing. Before you force teachers to work in the summer remember this: Parents should be forced to work harder as well such as simply raising their kids to respect the adult authority in the classroom.
By the way, the mayor of New York City just showed how much he respects his teachers by picking another non- educator to run one of the largest school systems in the country (10 November). Would you pick a non-firefighter to run the fire department? Would you pick someone without medical experience to run a hospital? It is because no one in this country really takes the teaching profession seriously that millionaires like Bloomberg can pick one of his own to run the schools.
I do not like the idea that business is insinuating itself into all aspects of our lives, and with the Republiots running the house beginning in January, this will become much worse.
ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST
I am not disappointed by your Mid-East policy. I knew before I even voted for you that you would not be good for Israel. There was a time when I was younger that I was, sadly, a one issue voter. I am ashamed to say that I voted for some of the worst scum of American history including Nixon and Reagan because I perceived they had a more positive attitude when it came to Israel’s security. I have since grown up and now vote for the person who will be best for THIS country, not necessarily good for Israel. I believe no matter who is president of this country, Israel will do what it wants to insure its security.
I have followed the wars in the Middle East since I was a kid. All of them were started as wars of aggression against the Jewish state. In fact, I believe that the whole basis of this conflict stems from the religious hatred these particular Muslims have for Jews and the Jewish religion. You may think that Israel’s creation of settlements is an obstacle to peace, but in 1948 when Israel was established, the Arabs went to war with the Jews even then, in spite of the fact that the Jewish state had none of the so-called occupied territories, and the old city of Jerusalem was under the control of Jordan. Israel should have never given up any part of its historic land for nothing, and I hope that it is not forced into making any more suicidal concessions. Even if Israel gave every piece of land the Arab aggressors demanded, they would still find something to complain about. This is because they hate Israel and the religion of Israel. I am not surprised and quite annoyed by the fact that you promote the fiction that there will be peace between Israel and its neighbors if only Israel did not expand settlements and still occupies so-called Arab lands. There are 21 Islamic countries in the Middle East and one Jewish one. I will not allow a 22nd Arab Muslim state there. By the way, Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is the capitol of the Jewish State of Israel.
12 November 2010
ON RIGHT WING DEMOCRATS aka, REPUBLICRATS aka BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS
The most undermining concept the Democratic Party has is the so-called right wing Democrat. I have to tell you, I literally despise these people for many reasons but most importantly, they blur the distinction in the public’s mind between what the Democratic Party stands for and what the Republican Party stands for. People are not going to vote for Republican “light”. They are going to vote for the real thing. I, on the other hand, would never vote for a Republican even if they threatened to pull all my finger nails out. And I am not so fond of this Democratic Party either, but the alternative is far worse.
17 November 2010
OUTSOURCING
I buy something in this country. I should not have to call India or any other country when I have problems with the product. I have never heard of doing this kind of thing. While I feel bad for jobless people in other countries, I am more concerned with people who are unemployed here in this country. If American companies want to outsource American jobs, I have to consider not doing business with them in the future. The Democratic Party should not be soft on this issue if you wish to see the job index rise.
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| The face of the Enemy dujour in 1984 |
Mr. President, my favorite book is 1984. I can’t even count how many times I have read this book. The first time I read it, I was in the ninth grade. I never forgot the lessons this book taught me, and in many ways, it helped to change my life. As you know, the book deals with life and death under a horrible totalitarian government whose three slogans are War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. I just turned sixty, and I don’t even remember when I lived in a peaceful and secure world. War, similar to what happens in Orwell’s novel, has gone on forever. How much money could have been saved and used for better projects had we not been at war? As you know, I want you to be president for a long time. The continuation of war is going to eventually kill your presidency. I personally do not recognize the war on terror as a true war like the ones we have with other countries. Once you start waging war on words or concepts, you can be at war for hundreds of years, a war that will never end.
I consider the terrorists to be sociopathic and psychopathic criminals who need to be hospitalized in institutions for the criminally insane. Criminals are hunted by police, NOT American soldiers. I would like you to end the war in Afghanistan which was begun for the purpose of hunting down Osama Bin Ladin. Instead of sending in troops, you should be sending in secret agent police who would work undercover until they find this criminal and others like him. This is a more surgical way to prosecute this conflict. Using the word “war” in our fight against criminal terrorists keeps the military industrial complex up and running while at the same time draining all our money and our resources. In the novel 1984, war is continuous in order to keep the structure of that society intact with the rich on top and the poor always on the bottom.
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| Without good infrastructure, nothing stands for long. |
22 November 2010
When I heard your inaugural address, I felt as if I was in the presence of a true visionary. We need to rebuild the infrastructure as soon as possible. We are one of the greatest countries in the world, and yet we have no high speed railroad. We have no modern up to date electrical grid. You suggested in your speech that all of this would change. Imagine how many jobs could be created once you started this project. I may not live to see all the improvements in infrastructure you plan to make, but if you do nothing or let the Republiot have their way, no one will ever see improvements in this vital area.
I have not flown since 9-11-01. I feel that the airlines have gotten away with murder and still they treat the passenger like cattle. Many services used to be part of your ticket price, and now you have to pay for everything, and be treated like a criminal to boot with those intrusive body scanners which I refuse to be subjected to. Too bad the rails are so slow and run down that people seem to have no choice but to take an airplane. I would rather ride my bicycle to my destination, but it would be nice if I could use a high speed cross country train. You have many great ideas…Please don’t give up on them. Personally, I would gladly pay more taxes if I knew that in part they were going to help make our lives better and easier.
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| Col. Hefner gets it in The War Of The Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal. When the Republicans have their way with the environment, we are all going to end up like poor Hef here. |
THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE FUTURE
Again I cite your inaugural address with all its visionary themes. You mentioned wind energy and the like. You mentioned getting us off the oil addiction. I don’t care about me. I care about the future and the young people of today who will have to deal with it.
I am frankly quite disappointed with my generation: The Baby Boomers. I saw a lot of promise at first, but years later in the present, I see that our world is as rotten and as messed up as ever. I guess all those 1960’s demonstrations and civil disobediences were just a hypocritical way to simply get out of class and have fun, especially if your parents are footing the bill for your college education. Years later, the main thing my generation has contributed is more graphic mainstream movies, loose fitting jeans, and chronic “yuppyitis.”
One of the reasons that I voted for you was because you are not a member of my generation but are a member of the younger generation who I thought would be a little more concerned about the future since you, more than me, will be dealing with its positive or negative effects. I believe in climate change and global warming. I believe that so-called globalization is contributing to the downfall of our planet. I believe that every second I write more Amazon rain forest if being decimated. You are a Democrat, so to me, you are supposed to be progressive, especially regarding social programs and the environment. Presently, I feel like I am living in a very bad science fiction movie dealing with the end of the world and how we don’t prevent it. The only thing standing in the way is a bunch of doubters and Republicans who want everyone to think that climate change is a myth. Meanwhile, if nothing is done radically to save our planet, no disaster movie ever made will compare with the horror future generations are going to have to deal with, watching this planet convulse beneath the dregs and garbage of our nowhere environmental policy. Fifty years from now, long after I am gone, I hope that the young people then will be enjoying a cleaner and more peaceful planet, so that when thinking about the baby boomers, they won’t be cursing us for our inaction but praising us for helping to make the future (their present) wonderful and fulfilling. You, Mr. President, can make the great future happen if you stop being so middle of the road to the right and go back where you should be in the progressive left. Please help save our planet and fight those who would dare say that climate change is a myth.
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| Libertines were the best..Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey |
LEGALIZING CERTAIN DRUGS, LEGALIZING PROSTITUTION, LEGALIZING GAMBLING 29 November 2010
I thought that the movie Kinsey was great, especially when the main character muses: what would this country have been like if the libertines had founded it instead of the Puritans? If you cut the defense budget and then legalized certain drugs, prostitution, and gambling, can you imagine how many millions the government could raise? You may be infected by Puritanism, Mr. President, so you may never consider legalizing all the above, and that is very sad and short sighted, but I will still vote to have you re-elected.
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| American Indian Leonard Peltier, innocent victim of blind justice |
I believe in Mr. Peltier’s innocence. Although I respect individual members of the FBI, I never trusted the agency especially after I read that they had spied on Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X among others. I believe so strongly in Mr. Peltier’s innocence that I would gladly spend at least a year in prison so that he could have at least one year off his life sentence. I am saddened by what the invaders did to this country and to its native peoples. Mr. Peltier is another in a long line of American Indians disemboweled by the long knives of the ever present unjust cavalry. I realize that you have much to deal with right now, especially from the Republican threat to our democracy (I wish I could try each and every one of them for treason). But at some point please consider the plight of this man who was not even where he was accused of being the night those FBI men (helping the murderous police force, the reservation goon squads) were murdered.
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| Bullies are the worst. Here is the late Vic Morrow, second from right, and his notorious X gang in Blackboard Jungle. |
30 November 2010
We are trying to fight ourselves out of one of the worst financial disasters in our history. Who is to blame are well known.
Have they really been punished?
Not really.
Who is supposed to bear the brunt?
The middle and the working class?
Where can the working person turn to?
The Democratic President?
What is one of his suggestions to cut the deficit?
Freeze the pay of federal employees?
I did not expect a Democratic president to support closing the budget on the broken backs of working people and not on the broad backs of the rich who could take it.
Can it sadly be true? Are you knuckling under to the Republican/ corporate bully?
Bullies have harassed me throughout my life. Bullies harass our country and have always tried to bring about their return to total unquestioned power. You can’t stand down from bullies. You can’t compromise with bullies. I voted for what I thought was going to be a liberal/ progressive agenda, not an agenda that supports the cutting or the freezing of any worker’s pay as you suggest should be done to non-uniformed federal workers. I expect you to stand up tall and loud for everything liberal I know that you stand for. I expect you to tell the bullies that there will be no tax break for the rich. You may want to add that it is your way or the highway. Let them drag their behinds away and sulk and plan, but we’re going to keep a watchful eye on these enemies of freedom. You can’t beat a bully only once. They are going to keep coming back until we beat them down again. We on the progressive side must behave just as dirty…just as low as they are playing. I am sorry for writing these words, but I really sincerely believe that our country is under attack by shadow corporations supported by the Republican Party and the United States Chamber of Commerce. I have no desire to live under a corporate dictatorship. If the public can’t see the threat these people pose to the free world, as the last vote seems to prove, than it is our job to bring it to their attention, in their faces, just like the opposition does, just like the bully does.
I would love to see you come on national television and tell the public everything this Republican Party plans to do if they had their way. That party loves to use fear tactics to tick off the voter. You can do the same thing. I am very afraid of the Republican Party and was hoping you would be just as vocal about this as I am. I am afraid of what they want to do with Social Security, Medicare, the EPA, the Department of Veteran Affairs, the department of education, and so on down the line.
I voted for a progressive and wished that you would weed out all the non progressive Republicrats in the Democratic Party and invite them to join the Republican Party. I understand that you would like the Democratic Party to not be exclusionary, but these so-called blue dog Democrats are homogenizing Democratic Party principles and will ultimately kill the party. The bullying Republicans are moving more and more to the right and are daring you to join them closer and closer to their middle of the road. Please, sir, stand up to these bullies, and please do not compromise your progressive tradition.
I respect you, sir, for your being an adult and a gentleman, but now is the time to shake these fascists up. Anyone who grew up the way you did and eventually rises to become the president of the United States cannot be a weak and/ or wimpy person. There is more to your reserve than meets the eye. Please continue below…
THANKS FOR READING THIS….A WORD ABOUT ONE OF MY TEACHERS, PHILIP ANDERSON OF HOLLYWOOD HIGH SCHOOL CIRCA 1967/68… WHAT I THINK YOU ARE GOING TO DO….A Final Plea To Fight The Enemies Of Democracy, The Republican Party…Recommended Viewing From A Retired Movies And Media NYC Public School Teacher
3 December 2010
I had some good teachers. Mr. Philip Anderson was one of them. I actually first met him in junior high school and eventually became his sole AV monitor when he worked at Hollywood High School. I remember the experience fondly even now many years later.
14 December 2010
I was never fond of industrial arts classes that my guidance counselors kept shoving down my throat because they did not think I had the grades to get into college. I didn’t like where they were sending me, so I fired them and did my own academic counseling. I’ve never liked guidance counselors since. But being in Mr. Anderson’s high school electronics class was a treat because it was kind of like an extra period of being his AV monitor. Mr. Anderson knew that I sucked at industrial arts. But at least he allowed me to take his class, be his monitor when necessary, and graded my “projects” with an eye toward understanding industrial arts may not be for everyone, even if their guidance counselors think that it is so.
The group of students I had to share the period with was boisterous and talkative. I am sure that the noise would get on any teacher’s nerves, even easy going fellows like Mr. Anderson. When I spoke with him, he would say “yes” drawn out and going up at the end. It was a very friendly way to almost sing a word instead of just say it. Mr. Anderson said this word a lot when I spoke with him, and I felt it showed me that he was interested in what I had to say. He was also deaf or hard of hearing out of his right ear, if I remember. So his saying “yes” all the time meant that he was also making sure he was hearing everything being said to him. That incessant loud talking that went on during his class must have been annoying to listen to through a hearing aid.
I tended to behave in a classroom. I am sorry, but as messed up as both my parents were, they raised me to respect my elders. When I was in Mr. Anderson’s class, I sat in the front row as was traditional for me since I was almost blind out of my left eye. If he needed me to be his monitor, I would be out of the class delivering a projector, picking up film, dropping off film, and helping to run the projector if the person I was delivering to needed me to run it. This particular day I was getting something in the back of the room. The other students were nosier than usual. He was trying to tell me something from the front of the room. I stood there in the back cupping my ear, and that was when it happened. Mount Anderson erupted. His voice rose to a height and loudness I never thought possible for such a gentlemanly and soft spoken person. The room at once got deathly silent as Mr. Anderson continued to explode. I knew that he was not yelling at me, but I still felt the blast of his voice as it filled the room with his rage. Before I knew it, he was back being himself, and the others, the disrespectful morons I had to share the room with, never dared to annoy Mr. Anderson again. He had stood up to his student bullies and taught them that he may be a nice person, but he is no sucker and no pushover. From that day on, the others were never loud in his class again.
16 December 2010
You probably wonder how this little story relates to you. I believe you to be a gentleman, and I also believe that you are not the push over many are starting to believe that you are, especially in light of your approval of extending the Bush Tax cuts to the upper two percent of Americans. I believe that what you are doing is similar to what Mr. Anderson did. You are allowing these Republican bullies to push you around only to a point. I am sure that even with your unfortunate approval of this gift to the rich, you are getting to a point where you are finally going to reveal your dark side, an explosion akin to Mt. St. Helens. I would hate to see you explode, Mr. President, but if it takes that to save your presidency then you should do it, and please soon. Right now these Republiots want to go home for the holidays and are accusing Senator Reid of being anti-Christmas because he wants to finish other work before their invasion begins next year in January. After all, the Republiot Tea Party Taliban has held this entire nation hostage until they were granted the tax bonus to the rich. The fact that you were able to get anything done at all over the last two years is herculean to say the least. That a party in the minority can do this amount of damage, I pale over what they will be capable of when they are in the majority over the next two years. Only you can determine how you are going to handle the assault. The Republiot Tea Party Taliban is the gravest threat to our democracy since McCarthy. They are seriously undermining the war effort because they want us to always be in a state of war, so that they can gleefully feed the hungry mouth of the military industrial complex, a term, I might add, coined by a Republican, not a Republiot.
These rightist fanatics are truly frightening to me. Now I have never owned a firearm in my life. John Boehmer and his crowd really gives me a chill to the point that I feel threatened enough to buy a firearm for home protection, but also to be used to defend myself when the day arrives that our democratic Republic falls and is replaced by a fascist corporate totalitarian based society. Remember this, Mr. President, corporations can care less if our country falls. Sure, it will shake the financial world for years to come, but at the end of that time, the corporations will still exist, if not by the same name than by a different one.
I live in this country in part because of its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. There have always been forces at work in our country that have tried to undermine our ideals with the hope of overthrowing and taking over our government. We have fought and defeated the likes of these including Joseph McCarthy who sought to instill fear in the hearts of Americans, setting one against the other. In our own time, we have Boehner and his band of merry fascists with their motley crew of tea party racists and bigots. They have made a mockery of the real tea party event in our history. Had these people been there in those times, the real tea partiers would have tossed them into the ocean alongside the British Tea.
When I voted for you, Mr. President, I voted for progressive leadership, not Republican pseudo-dictatorship, and make no mistake, that is exactly what they would want to see. I voted for you, Mr. President, because I thought you were on the side of the poor, the working class, the middle class, the downtrodden, the helpless, the children, the sick, the physically and mentally challenged. I voted for you in part because you had a vision for the future of this country not tied to the old corporate controlling ways. I voted for you, Mr. President, because you promised that you would not continue the tax break to the rich. Both of us know that trickle-down economics never worked; in fact it was the beginning of the catastrophe we saw in the last decade. We also know for the ten years the tax break to rich has been in effect, they have created next to nothing in jobs. Their purpose seems to be to have fun while the rest of us toil, suffer, grow old, and die.
You are the only one that stands in the way of the GOP succeeding in its nefarious plans. I would sure hope that I can vote for you again in two years. As I wrote above, I hope also to see your wife and children eventually go into the white house. If we can have 2 Bushes in the white house, why not 3 or more Obamas?
I realize that my favorite pundit/news people are MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, and when they begin to question your decisions, I start to listen because I trust those two as much as I trusted Edward R. Murrow. There is so much at stake including the planet no less. It has been struck a critical blow by the Bush policies whose repercussions are still to come. Only you can reverse what that monster of the last 8 years did.
Considering what just went down regarding the Bush Tax cuts, your enemies will now be emboldened to do more and to demand more. Their one goal is to see that you are a one term president. The thought of this makes me very angry because I know that behind this is racism as rotten and as despicable as ever. I know then that you’re not going to let them push you or the American People around and that at some point you are going to go Philip Anderson on their, butts.
You’re going to get out there among the people. I want to see you on Letterman, the View, every show you can. I want you and the Democratic Party to show just what the Republiot Taliban is. No more urbane behavior towards these slobs. You can’t treat the enemy in such a fashion unless your intention is to coax them until they are over a cliff. I want these traitorous creeps to be exposed and humiliated. I want each and every American to see once and for all that the Republican Party as it stands today is dangerous to our liberty, our children, our planet, our national security, and our future. They are spokespeople for those groups who have now found a legal way to collect graft, those same groups who for years have tried to undermine our unique open and free society. Today, the new threat are the corporations, countries and governments unto themselves, and believe me, they are not looking out for our best interests.
I hope that you are up for the fight for our country, the war against the Republican Party. I will do what I can to spread the word about this danger we all face, almost as frightening as the terrorists. In the meantime, I really hope that the next time John Boehner cries, I hope it is because you just smacked him upside his orange head.
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| Gary Cooper in the title role of John Doe in Frank Capra's prophetic look at how a populist movement can be used by a corrupt businessman for his own evil purposes. |
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| THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: The best most realistic and most disturbing film about Nuclear war is Threads. Not available on DVD in the states. It should be required viewing for the entire world. |
Finally one of the best movies about nuclear war ever made (it makes The Day After look like a Sunday Picnic) is Threads. This film should be required viewing for the entire planet, and unfortunately the film is only available in Europe. I am lucky that I have a VHS copy of the movie, and I transferred it to DVD. When I get a new DVD recorder, I will gladly make a copy for you if you want. It is a graphic depiction of the horror of that kind of war, and if you get a chance to see it, you will never forget it.
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| The rubble of the World Trade Center burns and close to 3000 people with it 11 Sept. 2001. This world was never a nice place. |
20 December 2010
As of today, that historic smack to the bully’s head is yet to come. The tax bonus for the rich has been passed, digging our nation deeper into debt. Instead of leaving a legacy of health and prosperity, we are leaving the next generations of Americans more of the same. What was your campaign slogan: something about change?
I am often than not, depressed. I am glad that new medications offer some relief for the symptoms. I wish these drugs had been in use during my mother’s time. Perhaps with a little more understanding and compassion on the part of the state of California Department of Mental Health, my mother may have come out differently by the end of her miserable life. Maybe my father, had this country understood the effects of post traumatic stress related battle field experiences, would have lived passed age 46. Those times with my parents were pretty stressful and mostly miserable times. I used to hear them talk sometimes about this or that person who was going to take away my mother’s mental health service. Later, I would understand this to mean that some politician was running for office, threatening to cut these services for the working class because it was a drain on the budget.
Does this sound familiar, Mr. President?
When I turned 60, I discovered that my own depression was organic, having gone off the medication that I started in 2001 with great detriment. I have since put myself back on that same medication with the understanding that although part of my depression is organic, another part of it stems from my own issues.
One of these issues is how I relate to the outside world. A long time friend of mine lost his son recently to cancer. The young man was 23. One day, while my friend and I walked on the Coney Island Boardwalk and admired the sunset, he remarked how beautiful it was and how this was hell.
I appreciated the irony of his statement. The earth, unsullied and unpolluted, can be a canvas of ever changing beauty, and yet acted out right in nature’s face, our petty hatreds, our crimes against this planet, and against each other in the form of war. With every bit of beauty this planet has to offer we only have another cut of bitterness to add to it all. Wherever you are on this planet, someone else is being screwed over so that you can enjoy some comfort. Want to enjoy a week in Jamaica in a luxury resort? Just remember that the price on the other side of the coin are the workers getting paid slave wages and told not to ask for any tips. Want to enjoy a DVD? Just before you insert it into the machine ask yourself how this little disc got to you so that you could simply play it? You can believe that a lot of pain went into making that little disc. You can almost imagine the person working in that factory more than 8 hours a day because he has no union protection. He gets all kinds of dirt unique to the job on his hands and probably smells the work place on himself hours after he has been home. It is amazing how much misery is so profitable.
What other place can this be than hell? When I was born, I immediately had a label slapped on me pertaining to a very important position that I hold in this realm. That position, economic status, was working class. In the world of hell, you have to have money in order to enjoy the wonderful but fleeting pleasures the natural world has to offer. I mean, Mr. President, who needs racism to drive people apart when we have money to make it so much easier. Don’t want an undesirable in your club? Just make it too expensive for him to join.
One of the points you brought up in your campaign was the fact that congress people get the best health care, and you wanted all the citizens of this country to have this care. Right then, the point was further reinforced to me that you and all the rest of the politicians in this country are members of a whole different restrictive club. Only in hell can we understand the true meaning of irony.
I managed over my sixty years to move from working class to professional middle class, not anything special really. If I want to get into the rich person’s paradise for even a week, I better have saved up for it. If I want to buy my first home in my life, that may be difficult as well, but no matter where I live, I have to live with my class of people, middle class. If I want better, I have to have more money, and if I don’t, well, that is on me.
So I have to live with the label, middle class that the rulers of hell have placed upon me. The next thing to do in hell is simply suffer. I mean even the investment class that you are a member of, Mr. President, has its share of suffering. I understand under the rules of irony that everyone should be careful what they wish for because they might get it. At least, on your level, you can control some of your own suffering. Many of those on your economic level have no qualms about making others suffer for their profit. The Walmart family comes to mind followed by British Petroleum. You are a political leader, on the other hand, and as such, you are supposed to owe more to the people than to the lobbyist. You are supposed to endeavor to make everyone’s life better in this country, especially those who do not have the advantages that the wealthy have. You are supposed to demand more government when those of the state or city fail in their duty to protect their citizens. You need to have taxes especially if we are to support programs necessary to the health and well being of those less fortunate.
I don’t trust any politician because 8 chances out of 10 he or she is a member of the investment class and cares little for how the rest of the unwashed masses live. If I wanted to take a really cynical bent on this tax compromise, I would say, what do you expect? The world is controlled by the wealthy, and you have to hope that some of these rulers have a little humanity left in them. Otherwise, they are going to do things to benefit each other and not the rest of us to eternity. A character in Platoon put it like this: “The rich have been f---ing the poor forever, even during the time of the pyramids…”
I voted for you because I thought that you had that humanity even though you are not a member of my economic class. I figured you were young, and we needed someone who would do the work to help heal this planet and the life forms that share it. But I forget that this is hell, and that the idea of hell is to suffer.
I was born in 1950, and believe me when I tell you this, Mr. President, this place was never peaceful. There has always been hatred and war, always a budget crisis that somehow falls on the heads of the working and on the middle classes, always hatred, always taxes that seem to go nowhere but to the military. As long as I could remember, Mr. President, everyone who runs for president says that they want change and that they are the ones who will finally do it.
In the sixty years I have survived on this planet, I know what to expect from politicians and from promises they make about changes to come. Hell never changes, Mr. President, it just gets better at meting out suffering. Who would have thought that right in the middle of my life, the world would be held hostage by a bunch of criminal religious fanatics, and that in the beginning of the second decade of terror and murder, we all get to be naked at the airport, and not get some sexual release in return, at least for our time and for our humiliation. Perhaps in a libertine world, we would have such considerations, but then again, in a libertine world, there would be no need for such devices because there would be no terrorism. There would not even be wars because more people would be busy having sex rather then hating and killing and Sarah Palining each other.
I hate to even imagine that, yes, old age is happening even to me, and I suppose if I was a little more satisfied with my life, I would not feel as depressed and as fearful about my eventual demise. But the thought that in the remainder of my life, I will still be surrounded by stress, pain, hypocrisy, greed, irony, and agony is making me even more depressed. As my friend said, this is hell. We were on the brink when I was born in 1950, and we have been on the brink since.
It will never change as long as all of us are divided by our economic status, and those on top can reap the benefits of their wealth in poor as well as in rich times. This is the way it was, and this is the way it will always be, especially as long as mainly the investment class can afford to run for public office. We can never forget that in hell, one’s success is measured by how much money he has, and not necessarily by how much integrity he has.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, MR. PRESIDENT
4 January 2011
Thank you for reading this long letter. It took me a little over a month to write, but I felt that writing to you would not be a waste of time. I congratulate you on getting a lot done in the last two weeks of December. Since I do not believe in any religion, I can only hope, not pray, that our country will last longer than the Roman Empire did, and that we will never live under the yoke of a corporate dictatorship. Only liberal progressive leadership can stop this from coming to pass. Please make sure you are always safe. I am always afraid for you, and it causes me a lot of stress.
Sincerely and Respectfully,
Gary Perl
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