A Gentleman’s view.

Men of power on Wall Street and in DC are still learning how this black man two steps.

For the first time the State of the Union that we call the United States of America, was presented by a black man. The State of this Union is quite fine, thank you very much to the Black Man in the White House. This experience is proving to be challenging for so many men of power who never had to deal with a black man at this level before as an equal on both sides of the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat. It seems both sides are being educated, we as a people just don’t roll the same way the white culture does when we do anything, especially so with our President, Barack Obama. I was off too on judging him for his handling of the Health Care Reform debate until it occurred to me that he couldn’t really do it any other way. As much as the white culture wants to claim this experience as proof that we ‘overcame’ our issues with race since the President was elected, reality keeps finding ways and situations to blatantly state the opposite. There have been more groups and individuals disrespecting the Office of the President than ever before and the amount of racially charged rhetoric is worst than any time in the 55 years of my lifetime, though needed. The battle with the opposition is about nothing but teaching blacks in this country they have no right to be seeking election to the office of the Presidency ever! You must first understand the Democrats as a group of men of power don’t necessarily have a problem with that or even adding the office of a Senator to that list also but they can never say that or suggest it. The power brokers and the pundits all proceeded to look at and treat the President as though every thing he does will be a statement of his blackness and to us, he will never be black enough or he wouldn’t have made that far. Not having  stero-typical black roots here sure didn’t hurt his cause at all.

If he came out the gate claiming mandates and taking a hard stand on the exact type of plan to put in place for fixing the problems with people who can’t get protection from getting sick or stopping the companies who refuse to protect people with illnesses already such as heart disease or diabetes or high blood pressure to get protection from getting sicker, everyone would have been screaming about the angry black man coming to Washington dictating to all the old white men and brow beating them into getting legislation passed that is not in the best interest of rest of the country. I still feel he was setup with this financial crisis waiting in the Oval Office by the Republicans trying to stack the deck against his success. Had he not been a more engaged fellow say like; McCain, or just sharp as Bush, or Reagan, this might have just been the one of the worst downturns in this country’s history. Underestimating his intelligence, although his reputation as a professor and intellectual preceded him, because of the color of his skin seems to be a continuous theme for most of those out of his inner sphere of influence. He comes into office facing banking going down the tubes, the country’s auto industry on life-support, housing and mortgage DOA, two wars to prosecute, the world in recession and us losing jobs at over a million a month for the last year. The man walking out the door started with a major surplus and left that mess in the Oval office with a trillion and a quarter in deficits that the Congress, mostly aided and abetted by the power of the Republicans, and the intimidation of the Democrats went along with to the country’s detriment.

So the President had to spend a lot of political capital his first year cleaning up this mess and the Republicans had the audacity not to participate and yet and still, paint this expenditure of government resources at this time of financial chaos and turmoil, though they inflicted it at best, allowed it to happen and look the other way at worst, as poor leadership on the part of the ruling party of Congress today and overreaching and imposed socialization by the President.  As it is, they consider him to be uppity, arrogant, elitist, and aloof, all code words for a Black Man in a position that is way above his pay grade or undeserving of holding it to begin with. The Democrats have the majority in both houses of Congress and still cannot get legislation passed or positions filled. He has been wise enough to give them said required rope in order for them to hang themselves and true to form as he said it was in Springfield, when he was State Senator, same Bullshit, different local. He has given them a year to contribute to the dialogue if not some solutions to no avail. He put them on notice during the state address to both houses of Congress and held his own quite well at gathering of theirs two days later.

No knows how this Black Man who happens to be the President of the most powerful and prosperous nation on the planet will react to anything. No matter our perception of his being lite-skinned black not dark enough to be perceived as a threat or not black enough at all because of his mother and growing up in was mostly an white culture environment in Kansas, there are those of us who have yet to see the tough man we know must be in there in order for him to have made it this far, no black man has held this much responsibility before our very eyes and those of the white power structure here and abroad. One might’ve decided at one point to take a certain tact with the Clintons because of the known hard politics they play, but a black man has never had the opportunity to display his talent at this level, and all of us haven’t the foggiest idea how this man rolls. This is going to be extremely enjoyable for me to watch as this man learns how to work his magic in this the most visible of all stages. I will say this; Chris Matthews, host of the MSNBC show ‘Hardball’ made a very telling comment of what he saw: “I wouldn’t want to be on the other side when this President finally learns what it takes to get things done in this town”.

Supreme Court hands the political process over to anyone in the world with enough money.

‘What the market will bear’ has always been the mantra of the Republican Party. Government intervention was always portrayed as intrusive to the natural order of things when it came to free and fair market practices. Well the free and fair practice of markets and politics just merged by a very generous decision by the United States Supreme Court. They ruled that it is against the First Amendment Free Speech rights to limit the amount of money that could be spent by corporations supporting candidates for political office as to do so to them is the same as doing so to a person and is illegal. Welcome to our worst nightmare. Literally, any law, any policy, and thing that is not in the best interest of profit can be manipulated, modified or stop dead in its tracks for the price of the right Politian. This, fortunately for most of us, cannot and will not take place over night.

There is a lot to be worked out to the point of a complete breakdown of our democracy as we know it but, consider these possibilities: Step one; receive August 6, 2001 intelligence briefing stating that there appears to be in place verified operations with the potential for attack to take place on our soil and take no steps to stop or defend against it when planes are mentioned, Step two; the attack on American soil on 9/11 and our reaction to it in looking for vengeance rather than justice for those who died that day, Step three; declaration of war to authorize use of military forces, Step four; permitting corporate ownership of and the creation of an army for profit; Blackwater, invasion of Afghanistan and authorization of torture and illegal detention, Step five; Invasion of Iraq with nothing in place prior to maintain order after removing Saddam Hussein, Step six; a republican congress using reconciliation to sign the Patriot Act into law while claiming any opposition to be aiding and abetting the enemy in order to put into place laws facilitating inordinate government intrusion the lives of American citizens without due process of law in order to ‘keep the country safe’, Step seven; stack the highest court in the land with a pro business, less government view and wait for the right case to come along to hand full control of the political process over to the profit minded bottom line thinking individuals. Not for nothing, Bush accomplished all the above in eight, and he took a lot of vacation.

Okay, I digressed on a tangent there, but my point being real simple; Former Vice President Dick Cheney could now go back and take leadership of Halliburton Corporation, which is no longer, headquartered in the United States of America, and being offshore not subject to our tax laws, and finance him or his daughter who is towing his line if not that of the national republican party and buy all the support necessary to get her elected as President and have her declare all Muslim and black population groups to be a danger to society and declare that they be interned until we could determine who was safe and who wasn’t in order cut down the chances of us being attacked from within our borders. Now with enough Democrats scared of being declared treasonous if not traitors for not offering total support for laws and practices that keep the citizens of this great country safe, I think obtaining that enough support for that kind of drastic action would take about ten to fifteen years to put into place, but you got to think, they really got a good start when you look at it. And they have their own private army to deal with any resistance along the way, Blackwater.

This may appear to be extreme to have happen here in America, but we had laws in place before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and we still have people who don’t understand what all the brouhaha is about the water boarding. My point is the Supreme Court has opened some gaping holes into the laws put into place to stop that very thing such as the McCain/Feingold Act. But if a business has the rights of a human being and as such can have no limits placed on it when supporting political positions that may be brought forth to become law or a politician who may not have the best interest of his constituents but rather his personal bottom line, any scenario is possible, and I do mean any! Want to think extreme, a company could determine 7 dollars an hour now to be the minimum wage is too much for a businesses bottom line, the community agrees, but a politician will need the support of the money folks, and they think less expenses for business is good. Lower wages, no unemployment insurance, no health insurance for employees mean more profits and bonuses.

What will this do to the will of the people? The race is on for the most powerful corporation whether it is commercial or athletic, or religious or chemical, to find the right Senator or Governor to run that state or manipulate some law or maybe totally wreck the country right now with enough money and support behind them to be brought into any position in Congress, State Capitals, and political offices all over the land. Any claim can be made about about choices and decisions being made in the best interest of the city, state, or country and reasoned to be in the best interest of the rest of the world and anyone who disagrees, don’t worry, there will be plenty of money to squash the opposition by hook or crook. Rush Limbaugh is pro-business; I believe Glen Beck, Sean Hannity and Sara Palin are also, FOX could support any of them. Who, I ask you, just who is going to stop them? Seriously! Who is going to stop them now?

From MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling today in the case titled “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.”

On the cold morning of Friday, March 6th, 1857, a very old man who was born just eight months and thirteen days after the Declaration of Independence was adopted; a man who was married to the sister of the man who wrote “The Star Spangled Banner;” a man who was enlightened enough to have freed his own slaves and given pensions to the ones who had become too old to work read aloud, in a reed-thin voice, a very long document.

In it, he ruled on a legal case involving a slave, brought by his owner to live in a free state; yet to remain a slave.

The slave sought his freedom, and sued. And looking back over legal precedent, and the Constitution, and the America in which it was created, this judge ruled that no black man could ever be considered an actual citizen of the United States.

“They had for more than a century before been, regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

The case, of course, was Dred Scott. The old man was the fifth Chief Justice of the United States of America, Roger Brooke Tawney. And the outcome, he believed, would be to remove the burning question of the abolition of slavery from the political arena for once and for all.

The outcome, in fact, was the Civil War. No American ever made a single bigger misjudgment. No American ever carried the responsibility for the deaths and suffering of more Americans. No American ever was more quickly vilified. Within four years Chief Justice Tawney’s rulings were being ignored in the South and the North.

Within five, President Lincoln at minimum contemplated arresting him. Within seven, he died, in poverty, while still Chief Justice. Within eight, Congress had voted to not place a bust of him alongside those of the other former Chief Justices.

But good news tonight, Roger B. Tawney is off the hook.

Today, the Supreme Court, of Chief Justice John Roberts, in a decision that might actually have more dire implications than “Dred Scott v Sandford,” declared that because of the alchemy of its 19th Century predecessors in deciding that corporations had all the rights of people, any restrictions on how these corporate-beings spend their money on political advertising, are unconstitutional.

In short, the first amendment — free speech for persons — which went into affect in 1791, applies to corporations, which were not recognized as the equivalents of persons until 1886. In short, there are now no checks on the ability of corporations or unions or other giant aggregations of power to decide our elections.

None. They can spend all the money they want. And if they can spend all the money they want — sooner, rather than later — they will implant the legislators of their choice in every office from President to head of the Visiting Nurse Service.

And if senators and congressmen and governors and mayors and councilmen and everyone in between are entirely beholden to the corporations for election and re-election to office soon they will erase whatever checks there might still exist to just slow down the ability of corporations to decide the laws.

It is almost literally true that any political science fiction nightmare you can now dream up, no matter whether you are conservative or liberal, it is now legal. Because the people who can make it legal, can now be entirely bought and sold, no actual citizens required in the campaign-fund-raising process.

And the entirely bought and sold politicians can change any laws. And the politicians who will be bought and sold into office this November, or two years from now now, can undo any legal defense you can structure.

And any legal defense which honest politicians can somehow wedge up against them this November, or two years from now, can be undone by the next even larger set of politicians who will be bought and sold into office in 2014, or 2016, or 2018.

Mentioning Lincoln’s supposed ruminations about arresting Roger B. Tawney, he didn’t say the original of this, but what the hell:

Right now, you can prostitute all of the politicians some of the time, and prostitute some of the politicians all the time, but you cannot prostitute all the politicians all the time. Thanks to Chief Justice Roberts this will change. Unless this mortal blow is somehow undone, within ten years, every politician in this country will be a prostitute.

And now let’s contemplate what that perfectly symmetrical, money-driven world might look like. Be prepared, first, for laws criminalizing or at least neutering unions. In today’s Court Decision, they are the weaker of the non-human sisters unfettered by the Court. So, like in ancient Rome or medieval England, the stronger sibling will necessarily strangle them, the corporations, so they pose no further threat to the Corporations’ total control of our political system.

Be prepared, then, for the reduction of taxes for the wealth, and for the corporations, and the elimination of the social safety nets for everybody else, because money spent on the poor means less money left for the corporations.

Be prepared, then, for wars sold as the “new products” which Andy Card once described them as, year-after-year, as if they were new Fox Reality Shows, because Military Industrial Complex Corporations are still corporations. Be prepared, then, for the ban on same-sex marriage, on abortion, on evolution, on separation of church and state. The most politically agitated group of citizens left are the evangelicals, throw them some red meat to feed their holier-than-thou rationalizations, and they won’t care what else you do to this corporate nation.

Be prepared, then, for racial and religious profiling, because you’ve got to blame somebody for all the reductions in domestic spending and civil liberties, just to make sure the agitators against the United Corporate States of America are kept unheard.

Be prepared for those poor dumb manipulated bastards, the Tea Partiers, to have a glorious few years as the front men as the corporations that bankroll them slowly unroll their total control of our political system. And then be prepared to watch them be banished, maybe outlawed, when a few of the brighter ones suddenly realize that the corporations have made them the Judas Goats of American Freedom.

And be prepared, then, for the bank reforms that President Obama has just this day vowed to enable, to be rolled back by his successor purchased by the banks, with the money President Bush gave them his successor, presumably President Palin, because if you need a friendly face of fascism, you might as well get one that can wink, and if you need a tool of whichever large industries buy her first, you might as well get somebody who lives up to that word “tool.”

Be prepared for the little changes, too. If there are any small towns left to take-over, Wal-Mart can now soften them up with carpet advertising for their Wal-Mart town council candidates, brought to you by Wal-Mart.

Be prepared for the Richard Mellon Scaifes to drop such inefficiencies as vanity newspapers and simply buy and install their own city governments in the Pittsburghs. Be prepared for the personally wealthy men like John Kerry to become the paupers of the Senate, or the ones like Mike Bloomberg not even surviving the primary against Halliburton’s choice for Mayor of New York City.

Be prepared for the end of what you’re watching now. I don’t just mean me, or this program, or this network. I mean all the independent news organizations, and the propagandists like Fox for that matter, because Fox inflames people against the state, and after today’s ruling, the corporations will only need a few more years of inflaming people, before the message suddenly shifts to “everything’s great.”

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh don’t even realize it: today, John Roberts just cut their throats too. So, with critics silenced or bought off, and even the town assessor who lives next door to you elected to office with campaign funds 99.9 percent drawn from corporate coffers — what are you going to do about it? The Internet!

The Internet? Ask them about the Internet in China. Kiss net neutrality goodbye. Kiss whatever right to privacy you think you currently have, goodbye. And anyway, what are you going to complain about, if you don’t even know it happened? In the new world unveiled this morning by John Roberts, who stops Rupert Murdoch from buying the Associated Press?

This decision, which in mythology would rank somewhere between “The Bottomless Pit” and “The Opening Of Pandora’s Box,” got next to no coverage in the right-wing media today, almost nothing in the middle, and a lot less than necessary on the left.

The right wing won’t even tell their constituents that they are being sold into bondage alongside the rest of us. And why should they? For them, the start of this will be wonderful.

The Republicans, Conservatives, Joe Liebermans, and Tea Partiers are in the front aisle at the political prostitution store. They are specially discounted old favorites for their Corporate Masters. Like the first years of irreversible climate change, for the conservatives the previously cold winter will grow delightfully warm. Only later will it be hot. Then unbearable. Then flames.

And the conservatives will burn with the rest of us. And they’ll never know it happened. So, what are you going to do about it? Turn to free speech advocates? These were the free speech advocates! The lawyer for that Humunculous who filed this suit, Dave Bossie, is Floyd Abrams.

Floyd Abrams, who has spent his life defending American freedoms, especially freedom of speech. Apparently this life was spent this way in order to guarantee that when it really counted, he could help the corporations destroy free speech.

His argument, translated from self-satisfied legal jargon, is that as a function of the First Amendment, you must allow for the raping and pillaging of the First Amendment, by people who can buy the First Amendment.

He will go down in the history books as the Quisling of freedom of speech in this country. That is if the corporations who now buy the school boards which decide which history books get printed, approve. If there are still history books. So, what are you going to do about it?

Russ Feingold told me today there might yet be ways to work around this, to restrict corporate governance, and how corporations make and spend their money. I pointed out that any such legislation, even if it somehow sneaked past the last U.S. Senate not funded by a generous gift from the Chubb Group would eventually wind up in front of a Supreme Court, and whether or not John Roberts is still at its head would be irrelevant.

The next nine men and women on the Supreme Court will get there not because of their judgement nor even their politics. They will get there because they were appointed by purchased presidents and confirmed by purchased Senators.

This is what John Roberts did today. This is a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little actual Democracy is left in this Democracy. It is government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. It is the Dark Ages. It is our Dred Scott. I would suggest a revolution but a revolution against the corporations? The corporations that make all the guns and the bullets?

Maybe it won’t be this bad. Maybe the corporations legally defined as human beings, but without the pesky occasional human attributes of conscience and compassion maybe when handed the only keys to the electoral machine, they will simply not re-design America in their own corporate image.

But let me leave you with this final question: After today who’s going to stop them?

For some, if this isn’t a war on terror, there’s something wrong!

The pundits; the talking heads we see on TV, the so called people in the know about things to the point that when something happens seemingly related to their area of expertise, they get called in to comment on the topic from the perceived point of having some prior experience in the arena in question. Most of the time they seem to come up with rational decision-making process to explain why an action should have or haven’t been taken depending on the outcome. It appears that there are no shortage of those who know better than the current President when it comes to most of the decisions he has made to date, especially when dealing with national security, a area the Republican Party falsely claimed authority with little experience or support to back up the pride in place. One of these talking heads has at least the real life experience to give some credence to opinions voiced by the man; namely former US Attorney General for the State of New York for one thing, and follow that up with being Mayor of the City of New York at the time of the most devastating attack on American soil since World War II.

But for the sake of having a real leader when we were attacked, we have wandered and meandered from being a hurt innocent and angry nation seeking to avenge those lost with that innocence with no particular target in mind. We headed to the Middle East because we were told they came from that a way. A decade later, when we voted for change to the status quo in Washington for the umpteenth time, after all this time at war, there is no money for the change so many of us so drastically need just for survival in this country. The Republicans, striving for being more than the party of no, have decided they still reign supreme in the national security arena and are challenging the President’s handling of the Christmas Day Bomber attempt to bring down a plane. The President refuses to recognize that we are at ‘War’, he doesn’t use the word ‘Terror’ enough, shouldn’t be trying ‘these people’ in our courts, they don’t deserve rights. The Republican Party has decided that the worse crime that any citizen of the world can commit at any age, and even more so if it is a person of color or than white, is to attack America in any way shape or form. That in so doing constitutes a capital offense and is deemed automatically punishable by death. This includes all kinds of aiding, abetting and providing material support for declared and perceived enemies of these United States of America.

This declaration in and of itself is not the most terrible statement a country can make to the world in the pursuit of discouraging organizations, states, and or individuals from attacking our nation or interests around the world as well as those of our allies. If through our required respect for and faith in the national perception of the rule of law across this land, we choose to snatch people up walking down the streets in their home countries, lock up people based on rumor, rather than investigation and due process. If everyone just starts pointing out every little suspicious thing they run across when it comes to their neighbor, we could take care of this little problem of national security right here at home just fine, let us worry about how we are getting the information for the declaration of ‘enemy combatant’. In this environment, evidence would not necessarily be required; once someone decided it that any ‘said person’ is an enemy of the state. The former Republican Mayor made this declaration on national television this week when questioned about the handling of the Nigerian ‘kid’ probably suffering from either Bi-Polar Disorder or Schizophrenia. The question put to ‘America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani was why did he come out against processing this young man through our courts as we would any criminal. Why his former experience as US Attorney General for the State of New York, he stated that convictions didn’t matter here, we shouldn’t have stopped interrogating him at all and definitely not waste our legal system on him.

We here in America, are of the perception of being somewhat equal level in that if we commit a crime against another one of us, we are still required some legal representation through the process in order for the system to be considered fair for those who might be cheated otherwise. There are no exceptions to this consideration even if as a citizen, an attempt is made on anyone in whole or part to cause major harm or loss of life or with the intent of causing catastrophic death and destruction of major property. There is no exception to this fair representation rule even if you killed the President. But for all the families of the over 3000 who died in the World Trade Center attack, they have never heard the guilty or not guilty victory cry or defeat needed for closure. But, even if we are not sure you have ever committed a wonton act of terror against our land or our interest, someone scared of the possible ‘hospital treatment’ in one of our now infamous facilities around this planet can claim that any one of countless people they could have a personal problem with, can be ultimately determined to be an enemy combatant, and by their Republican standards of no due process, requires they be put to death at best, locked up for the rest of their lives at worst as their fate. The former US Attorney General said convictions don’t matter when it comes to the war on terror, just keep interrogating them until you can’t get no more information from them, then processing them through Military Tribunals. Question is, ‘Just exactly when can you stop getting information from them to win this war? Another, What exactly is interrogating them again? What was that about spending and a budget? We got a War to Win!

The Nobel Prize was a great close to an impressive first year.

Fantastic year! It looks like they don’t feel you to be enough of a threat as they have let you live this long, so far, so good. There were times during the ‘Tea Party of all summers’, the ‘Gimme My Country Back’ periods last year when I wondered just what exactly was being implied. Why did so many people feel the right to bear arms in the same neighborhood our President happened to be in, all of a sudden? The way the birthers were protesting displaying such uncivilized public behavior, you have thought Hawaii really was a foreign country. I am very grateful to see you make it this far alive, just in case no else says that to you.

At first, when your term started and everything it appeared needed to be done was passed off to the Congress to get done, I didn’t get what it was you, not just was doing, but had to do in order keep the focus off of who you are, the ‘First Black Man’ to become President of these very white minded, if not white controlled, United States of America. No one but you can be even acutely aware of what it is you just pulled off in this most separate, but not equal country of ours. As much as the left has been hollering and screaming about you walking down the center of the road administrating during these most trying of times we find ourselves in as we go into a new decade. Convenient of them to forget the pile of mess in the Oval Office when you arrived consisting of a budget not realistically dealing with the war, ‘the war’, two of them, the Auto Industry in it’s death throes, the banking industry in a state of virtual collapse at its own hands and everyone looking the other way claiming no guilt or responsibility. In spite of that huge mound left by the previous administration, you forged on with an agenda that would not wait until ‘The time was right to do the right thing’.

This health care reform did not go as I envisioned. I saw this helping so many people out like small businesses and local Chambers of Commerce, Small Business Administrations all over the country, but no, they were not having any reform. I personally have moved from jobs that were not paying enough for me to afford it for all the members of my family, so it went to the kids. As time passed and my skill improved, I have worked my way to jobs where everyone in your family was protected and every type of care you could want or imagine is offered.  During this time to the present day, I have watched this situation evolving to the point that even at a good job paying good money, companies can no longer afford to offer employees both; the salary and the insurance, the freedom of choice that the Republicans brag exist so much in a open free market, has come to this point. I have watched the Auto Industry gripe with the unions about legacy costs, as well as municipalities dealing with contract renewal with unions making the same claims of year after year, the cost keeps rising. Through all of this brouhaha and screaming, businesses across the nation sit in silence during the most important of national debates.

I wonder of the silence, why it does not matter to not one or many Chambers of Commerce across this great nation screaming please save our city some money so we can give the kind of insurance people need to attract the quality people to the positions that require them. I wonder of the silence of Detroit who should be screaming on how lower insurance rates for retirees of the Auto Industry and the present day workers could make America’s Auto Industry competitive again on the national stage. I wonder of the school districts having enough money to be competitive in attracting quality teachers to the public school systems across the nation as these costs are reduced because of the options of either earlier entry into Medicare, or a public competition has become a reality. I wonder. But, had you stated even wanting or demanding any option or desires or wishes or bottom line, you were wise enough to know, you would have nothing, instead you are closer than any other president has ever been.  I suddenly realized what a brilliant tactic to take, no could say they was passing legislation you wanted as you put the ball in their court by insisting they come up with law that makes sense to fix the problem at hand.  They have come further than any others in any session of Congress before. This as the Republicans try to convince everyone you are trying to destroy America, as we know it to be.

I wish you a most happy of Happy New Years, as I understand you have your work cut out for you in just getting this health reform to fruition. Be mindful they are still hell bent in making this the most unpleasant of experiences for America and you so no other Black American ever thinks they should want to experience the stress they are witnessing you go through each day. As much opposition as I expect them to give you this year, nothing will match what you received and will continue to receive until this battle is over. I personally will do a column on the impact of the experience on my life once this process comes to a conclusion; I wanted it not to be my personal issue as well.  I want to thank you for the added bill a month on unemployment, as I just have been downsized, so that is good. I don’t think the opposition will have a lot left to do battle with you once health care reform gets passed.  Hang in there, you have done more in your first year than most do in their whole term, keep up the good work!

Gratefully yours,

A Gentleman