Syria-NO NO and NO!

Good morning Mr. President.

To be perfectly honest, there is nothing that you can say that will change my mind about planned limited strike intervention in the Syrian civil war.

There are not enough pictures of the dead bodies of children to affect my thinking on this subject, because as a country, we do not and never have had the moral ground on this issue. Our national war policies have always been dictated by money, not humanitarian concern for our brothers, and certainly not for our brothers' wives, women and children.

Past history has shown repeatedly that if the American masters of the universe can't turn a quick buck, then the American corporate puppets who claim to represent the people, turn a blind eye pretending that the problem belongs to someone else. And I am surprised that you, Mr. President, have joined the warmongering neocons that citizens voted out of office in 2008, resulting in your ascendency to the Oval Office. You said you would end these senseless global police actions, and I believed you. Instead, what I am seeing is a half assed attempt at promoting American Exceptionalism, as it is called these days, without naming it officially.

Your WWII analogy is an apples to oranges comparison that falls flat. We didn't enter WWII to save the countless Jews, Roma, and gay men and women swept up in that genocidal holocaust. History shows that America knew about the holocaust long before officially admitting it. We didn't end Jim Crow segregation because we cared about the rights of Black Americans, some of whom were in the process of dying for this country. The dead were collateral damage, in the very same way that the US now turns a blind eye toward modern day Israeli atrocities and apartheid routinely and regularly committed against the Palestinians by the descendants of that very holocaust.

The US totally ignored the genocide of Rwanda which still rages today, just as other than platitudes, the US chooses to ignore the genocide of black men and boys raging right here in America. A genocide camouflaged by talk of second amendment constitutional rights, that not even the killings of little white children in white suburbia USA, have been able to move the conversation forward.

Your tears for the 400 Syrian babies are not enough, Mr. President. In order to command the moral ground, you must cry for all of the children nationwide and worldwide, not just the ones who die where it is financially feasible to take a stand.

If news reports are correct, the US recently sold Saudi Arabia 60 billion dollars in bombs, guns and planes. Why not let them deal with the problems in their neighborhood. The Saudis are on record anyway as saying they will take care of Syria if America won't. Let's take them up on that offer. Our days of supplying all the weapons as well as rebuilding once the war is over, should end now. There is always the move toward peace and like the journey of a thousand miles, it begins with only one step. Why not take that one step now, Mr. President?

And what about Plan B, Mr. President? What do we do after the limited strikes are over? Do we arm the rebels, like we did in Afghanistan? Do we do another Iran-Contra trade thing? Do we work to overthrow another government, like in Iran and countless other Central and South American countries, again? Do we send in the troops, the boots on the ground, like in Vietnam or Iraq? Do we initiate another shaky cease fire like between the Koreas and then wait for it to blow up in our faces, again?

What do we do, Mr. President? What do we do while you pour our money down another sand hole by bombing to oblivion another Middle Eastern country, so that after strafing it into submission we can swoop in and build it up again, while our own cities go bankrupt, our schools disintegrate and our utilities and infrastructure fall into ruin.

Why do Americans have to die again, Mr. President because the rich want to make more money? Why are you so happy to appease them instead of showing concern for those who elected you? I say that because you have already implied that you will go against citizens' wishes and bomb anyway, should you lose the vote in Congress. You do have that power, thanks to George W Bush and the Patriot Act.

But even though your predecessor gave you the power, we the people put you in position to use that power, and we are asking you to work for us, for a change. We the people, don't want another senseless military action.

We want peace, Mr. President, a lasting end to the needless violence that goes on and on and on.

Be the change, that you promised us you are. The polls show that we've changed. Now it's your turn.

Respectfully,

Another White Guy Rampage in America

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass if the Tsarnaev brothers are white. No one who goes around throwing bombs and killing people for no reason is ever gonna make it into my top ten list of favorite people on this earth, anyway, regardless of their skin color or place of national origin. Killing and mass murder have always been equal opportunity, especially when this special brand of psychopathy as exhibited by the brothers last week unfolds across our television screens.

For some reason as yet unexplained, when guys like this throw a violent temper tantrum in order to right the perceived wrongs levied against them by society, innocents die. What happened last week felt like international terrorism only because an IED(improvised explosive device) was used. However, as the story unfolded it seemed to indicate a different kind of thing, more Columbine than 9/11. Both Columbine and 9/11 are terrorism, but different kinds of terrorism, one recognized as such, the other not so much. In the psyche of Americans, 9/11 is terrorism because of who did it, or I should say, the skin color and religion of who did it. Columbine is still considered boys acting out, read that white boys acting out, like Newtown and a couple of dozen other high school killing incidents during the past decade.

They have the money, they have access to the guns and they have the perfect hiding place, in plain sight, lost in any number of the neighborhoods inhabited by the masters of the universe. These two were so arrogant that they didn't try to run away until their pictures hit the airwaves. Then it seems they decided to go out in a blaze of glory, calling attention to themselves by killing a cop, hijacking a car, reportedly telling their victim they were the bombers and getting into a gun battle with police, complete with assault weapons right out in the street. The story goes, that little brother actually killed big brother by running over him with the get away car as he lay in the street after being tackled by a police officer, but not before he was able to call his mother and say good bye. How very American of them. Up until they revealed themselves, nobody knew who or where they were. Did they screw up and just panicked? Didn't seem like there was a plan B for these guys.

It sounds like a movie script or a scene straight out of Grand Theft Auto the video game.

What was new about this old scenario is the ease with which the police, Feds and military locked down an American city and kept it that way until they got their men. What we saw was practice implementation of Martial law. What we saw this past week in Boston would have been illegal prior to 9/11. The laws enabling this militaristic mobilization went into effect 34 days after the twin towers fell. 34 days is how long it took for Congress to pass the Patriot Act and for President Bush to sign into law.

 Rather than repeal these attacks on our civil liberties, our new President, Obama, has done everything in his power to strengthen those powers, enabling full White House control of the populace if and when it becomes necessary by using militarized police forces backed up by real military. ( All you second amendment, dooms day preppers, and apocalypse survivalists with your 14-15 assault weapons and big ammo clips....good luck with that when the shit hits the fan and the Feds come for your ass). But I digress....

Little brother crawled away from the gun fight only to be cornered hiding in some guy's boat four blocks away. Wounded, police are now speculating that even though they took him alive, he tried unsuccessfully to shoot himself in the head, before police stormed his hiding place. Jihadist tend to blow themselves up, not swallow a bullet. Swallowing bullets is soooo, well...  so American.

No one really knows what happened with these guys, or where or when they decided killing innocents was the play of the day. But having spent most of their lives living in America, it would be a safe bet to assume that their so called radicalization happened right here in the good old USA and not some mountain region in Eastern Europe.

A Use For the Patriot Act

Make no mistake about it, I consider the USA Patriot Act, pushed through Congress by Bush&Co, into law just 34 days after 9/11, to be very bad law.

It should not be on the books, if America is to remain the Republic and bastion of personal freedoms that we delude ourselves into thinking that it is.

However, since it is on the books and the Obama Administration is so far comfortable in leaving it there intact, then I think it should be put to use post haste.

The Patriot Act can legally be used to go after domestic terrorists such as the guy who killed Dr. George Tiller, yesterday while he was at church.

Those of us old enough to remember, recall the days when the so called pro life movement regularly used this kind of activity to scare doctors and medical providers away from rendering legal medical help to women, and also to scare women into hiding, fearful of the crazed masses of pro-birth fanatics camped outside clinics.

Yesterday’s killing was merely the first salvo.

The killings always follow after movement leaders or talking heads take to the airwaves stirring up the base to take action to save the babies..no matter who else dies in the process.

Title VIII of the Patriot Act redefines the term "domestic terrorism" to include assassination or kidnaping as terrorist activity in addition to mass murder and destruction. The murder of Dr. Tiller was assassination, plain and simple.

The definition also takes in activities that are "dangerous to human life, that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any State.....that are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.... or influence the policy of a government..

The Patriot Act also defines the steps that can be taken to penalize those who support the terrorist. It is a crime to harbor or to conceal a terrorist or to help them in any way.

The government can legally seize any property or bank accounts of any group or individual who gives so much as information or vocal support to terrorists. Supporters can be jailed for up to 10 years in federal prison.

Remember how pro birth radical Eric Rudolph was found practically hiding in plain sight for several years. Many people in the area helped him elude authorities. Rudolph bombed the Atlanta Summer Olympics killing five people...he confessed to bombing women's clinics, and gay clubs.

He had help doing what he did...those helpers have not even been arrested, or prosecuted.

And, inciting to riot or to do violence is not protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution either. The Federal Communications Commission would be within its rights to levy some heavy fines, rather than twiddling their thumbs or worrying over the ramiifications of Janet Jackson’s nipples at the Superbowl.

Ya hearin’ me.....Bill....Rush...Randall Terry...Dick....Tancredo...Newt?

Although these clowns will never take responsibility for the effect of their words. Nor will anyone in the mainstream media be bold enough to step back from the controversy and not give these men the platform they crave. After all they do serve the same master....broadcasters and newscasters all owned by the same corporations chasing the same big bucks to fuel the bottom-line.

Nobody bites the hand of the man who signs their paychecks..

These days..the guys in government...the guys on the radio and at the news desks and own the corporations...are all the same...

American Taliban

Buried underneath all the financial bad news of the past week is a story in the Washington Post about 33 pastors who have decided to defy the governmental edict by mixing politics with religion from the pulpit.

One of them, the Reverend Ron Johnson, jr. told his congregation that a vote for Barack Obama represents a moral schizophrenia and was in violation of the Bible. Johnson stopped short of endorsing John McCain, but not by much.

The 33 ministers are part of a group that is attempting to generate a court battle that will ultimately overturn the 54 year old ban on telling their congregations how to vote. They say they have a constitutional right to tell their people who to vote for. They say the law violates their rights to religious expression.

The law, which is part of the national tax code says churches or any entity with a tax exempt status are barred from participating in, or of intervening in any political campaign on behalf of any person or public office. The law was enacted to prevent the joining of church and state government. There is no such ban on pastors who talk issues from the pulpit.

The IRS has taken no action...it says it is monitoring the situation.

For me, the solution is simple...if you want to talk politics from the pulpit...give up your tax exempt status. Pay taxes like the rest of us and you can say anything you want.

These blatant attempts to circumvent one of the basic tenants under lying the founding of this country has always scared the hell out of me. The people who came to these shores, and founded our country, and authored the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, were escaping from religious persecution, not running toward it with the goal of setting up their own system of preferential abuse.

If these American Taliban are ever successful at infusing our government with religion, me and people like me, will be in big trouble. There are things about me that I can’t change...the very things that make me, me, are the things that these fanatics, and they are fanatic, want to control...lock away...kill...

I’m a woman....they want to take away my control of the only thing I really own....my body..
I’m black....their religious book says I should be a slave....
I’m lesbian.....they say I can’t love the one I choose...or that I should be killed for having such thoughts...
I’m left handed......at one point in our history...left handed babies were put to death because it was said that left handed children were sired by the devil....

Sounds ridiculous, right? Well, in 1956....My first grade teacher tried to make me right handed because she said it wasn’t correct to use your left hand.. I told my Mom...she put a stop to it...That teacher should have lost her job, because who knows how many other little kids she messed up because they didn’t tell their mom, or their mom chose not to intervene in the abuse.

Civil rights for Blacks and the LGBT community continues.....look at the vicious racial attacks on Obama in this campaign...I’ve had my fair share of personal brushes with racism, some of it based in the old testament, my phone chats with the late Bill Wilkinson, grand wizard of the KKK, for instance. I was okay with him until I told him I was black, this coming six weeks into our weekly phone conversations....He couldn’t tell I was black by hearing me talk....When I started in broadcasting...I had a news director tell me that I was too light to be black on television...I’m high yellow in complexion, as we say in the ghetto...I can’t help that...My complexion is testimony to the race mixing of America...been going on for ages...yet this white man chose to judge me for color...never mind that I had a track record of running rings around every other reporter he had on staff.....I won that battle....I worked in darker makeup for about six months..until he stopped paying attention...It didn’t end there...but it’s over...I don’t choose to look back....unless provoked.

The specter of the repeal of Roe v. Wade looms large these days...It’s not just about abortion..It’s about returning women to second class citizenship or the days of barefoot and pregnant. There is actually a legal group who is studying whether or not women can be limited in their travel or crossing of state lines, if they seem to be with child..or someone thinks they may be traveling in order to get an abortion...no proof necessary...just the suspicion would be enough...

Anyone who is sitting on the fence need only look to the middle east to see religion taking over government....dissenters silenced in the name of religion...women killed in the name of religion.

Don’t think it can happen here? Listen to the pseudo Christians of the conservative right. Listen to the Governor of that great state of Alaska. The concentration camps have already been built with our taxpayer money by KBR, the Bush/Cheney favored corporation. Bush, as I said has done away with some basic civil rights protections that would make it easy to co-opt the government if the religious right in this country makes it to the White House. Don’t believe me, then go read The Patriot Act. We basically have no rights. The trouble is most of us won’t know, until the government starts to use our laws against us.

Back to the topic at hand....In an open letter from the Rev. Eric Williams, of the United Church of Christ...he warned that many members of the clergy are "exchanging their historic religious authority for a fleeting promise of political power," to the detriment of their churches.

"The role of the church -- of congregation, synagogue, temple and mosque -- and of its religious leaders is to stand apart from government, to prophetically speak truth to power," Williams wrote, "and to encourage a national dialogue that transcends the divisiveness of electoral politics and preserves for every citizen our 'first liberty.' "

I just hope that more people are listening to Rev Williams than Rev Johnson.

And So it Begins....

Folks, we’ve been back doored, bamboozled, misled, screwed with...insert your own adjective. The financial crisis is a smoke screen for some other stuff going on.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column about some new laws that went into effect doing away with some vital protections within our democracy. You can read the column here.

The laws passed in October, 2006, made it easier for the president to declare martial law. The new rules also suspended Posse Comitatus of 1878, which prevented the deployment of army troops on American soil for use against American citizens... Well....

As of October first, of this year, according to The Army Times, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry will be assigned to day to day duty under the direction of Homeland Security for one year.

"They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological,
radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .” according to the article.

You can read the more detailed version, here.

I’m not saying that anyone is mounting a coup of America...yet...It’s just that all of the pieces are falling into place and if I can put them together...then so can anyone else...

Combine the military deployment with Patriot Act ramifications and what you could have is a quiet, bloodless revolution. The Patriot Act, among other things, did away with Habeas Corpus...That is your right to know why you’ve been arrested and thrown in jail....That right no longer exists in America thanks to Bush and his neocons...

And if you think this financial bailout is going to help us...you got another think coming....Bush is selling this bailout the same way he sold the Iraq invasion...Through fear and intimidation..

If someone doesn’t stop this travesty....then once again, we’ve been had without benefit of Vaseline...

An Open Letter to Barack

Dear Senator Obama,

In the beginning, I was not a supporter. I was not a believer, preferring to find comfort in my love for the Clintons, mainly Bill. Hillary, despite being a Senator, was not really on my radar. After all, I live in Ohio, and she was not my senator. She was just the wife of the last president I liked.

I heard your speech four years ago, when you burst onto the scene at the Democratic convention. I got chills when you talked. Didn’t know you from Adam, but you touched me then, for the first time.

When you declared for president, I was skeptical. I liked you, but not enough to support you. I was a Hillary girl. I thought she knew the questions and had the answers that I wanted to hear from my representatives. I also didn’t think a black man had a snowball’s chance in hell of being taken seriously enough, by black people, let alone whites.

I felt and still feel that whites, or I should say, many whites who take issue with you, do so because of color and inborn prejudices that “we” are somehow never up to the task of leading. The racists are the ones who are honest about these feelings. I’m not mad at them. They are, what they are. They can change. Judging by your poll numbers, a lot of them have changed.

Alleged liberals and the enlightened who are horrified by the racist label, are the ones who need to get real. We all have prejudices against others. We make change when we admit this and go on toward the common goal. We still haven’t done this, yet, as a country. The apology from Congress was a beginning. Your candidacy is a start. Your winning will not be the end, only another step on a very long journey.

I remember listening to your speech on race in my car on the radio. I sat in the parking lot of Circuit City in a rain storm with tears in my eyes, the emotion so strong that it’s welling up in me now as I write this. I called my sister in South Carolina after you finished...still in the car in the parking lot. She’d listened too and told me that she goes to church with the young woman you talked about in your speech. They are friends.

Inadvertently, you drew closer to me and you don’t even know me. That day, I wholeheartedly changed my allegiance. I was already leaning when Caroline Kennedy became a supporter. I lived Camelot and like all good memories, I want them back. I wanted to feel good about this country again. I haven’t felt good about this country since the days of the Kennedys. Clinton came close, and I think that is what led me to Hillary in the beginning.

Now you have the nomination (or will, officially, later this week). You have it because we, the people want change. We hear you and believe that you are the beginning of change. We can’t take another four years, yea even another year of the stuff running off capital hill in Washington.

What I need now is to know how you intend to affect the change that you have begun. Your selection of Joe Biden is a good thing. Let him do the attack dog thing on McCain. Let McCain hang himself, as he has done, over and over with his Rovian attacks on you. If McCain were really listening to the stuff coming out of his mouth, albeit written by others, he might not be saying it. I think his campaign speaks volumes about the kind of president he would be and therefore not worth my support. I’m glad you haven’t stooped all the way down to his level. But I do think you need to fight back. The Bulls couldn’t get past Detroit in the playoffs until they learned to play Piston basketball. You know that. You can play with a dog without getting dirty. It can be done. But let Joe do it. You need to sharpen your message.

Is there something you can do on January 20th....I don’t know....an executive order, maybe..repealing the Patriot Act..to show us you mean business about change....How about abolishing the Department of Homeland Security...

How about closing Guantanamo and restoring Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus.

How about sending the message that leadership in the House and Senate needs to be changed, Walking wastes of oxygen like Pelosi and Reid need not apply.

How about giving us a Justice Department for all the people, not just politically appointed hacks.

How about bringing back General Colin Powell or the likes of Madeleine Albright to help you out of this mess.

Your campaign keeps getting compared to Camelot...how about a New Deal to jumpstart things like work and jobs for people who don’t have them. How about programs like some type of peace corp to work nationally and internationally to bolster our reputation with our neighbors.

I would really like to see a revamp of the Veterans Administration. I don’t for the life of me understand why Vets have to go through what they do, after coming home from protecting us. In my mind, if you’re a Vet, all you need to do is to present your ID at any hospital, to any doctor, any dentist, whoever...and get treatment. Paperwork not necessary. It should be our way of thanking them for what they do for us.

The GI Bill built the middle class in this country...how about rolling out a new version to help the guys and girls mired in Iraq and Afghanistan..

I can go on and on and on, but I won’t. There are thousands of things that need to be done now and in the near future. I understand you have to be elected first. I think that is going to happen.

As a people, we need honest effort...from you and from those you choose to help you. The lies and prevarications of the past eight years must be relegated to the past. Open communication between the president and the people is what is needed.

We believe.....Now make it so...


Jo Anne Moore