Imigration 101

President Barack Obama

1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW

Washington, DC 20500

October 1, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Immigration is an economic and cultural “tradition” in the US. Were you aware

that the American Apparel crack down was going to occur? I hope not. Those people,

and many others like them, have been in this country many years and are Americans, except on “paper.”

America has had open borders for more than two hundred years. It has been

a fruitful and beneficial policy. Our population is as diverse as the United Nations. Our

Constitution welcomes all people to our shores. Immigrants who have been woven into American life by doing jobs we won’t do, shoring up our economy and raising our children should be respected and rewarded for what they’ve contributed to our society. We must reward them with citizenship, not arrest them.

Perhaps our borders need to change with the times, however. We can’t just allow people in without documenting them these days. Unfortunately, it is now too dangerous

for us to have completely open borders, there is so much illegal trafficking. The safety

of our citizens is suffering from many kinds of criminal activity by many unscrupulous

people, not just undocumented workers. There is much illegal commerce interfering with our peace and prosperity.

We can tighten our borders by screening immigrants for everything we need to know in order to keep all Americans safe. We want that. Arresting workers and forcing families to leave and return to their countries of origin is cruel and counter productive. Many haven’t been “back home” for decades. Many will be arrested for political views when they disembark their flight “home.” These are important people in our lives. People such as the woman who helped raise my child, the grocer down the street who has been caring for his community and raising two sons, the seamstress who lost her only son in Iraq or the doctor who plans to return to his home country to serve the poor there.

The proper and respectful procedure in rounding up illegal residents should be

to do background checks, see if they have any record of criminal activity, examine their current situation to see if they are good people and make them citizens, not deport them.

We need them here.

An amendment should be discussed and perhaps added as an “update” to our Constitution, which was crafted long ago. There are good productive people here from all over the world who should stay and help us advance to meet our challenges.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Brady

Afghanistan War On Line

September 23, 2009

Dear President Obama,

Today the papers are reporting you want to take a new turn in the Afghan war.

That is great, but we should not send troops there at all. Trying to fight Al Quaeda is like fighting ants by stepping on one and thinking that you’ve won.

The pursuit, we all know, of Osama Bin Laden is futile. He may even be dead. We all realize that he is just one of many Al Quaeda leaders. For that to be our objective, I have to believe your administration is just using that to explain to the Americans who need a reason for the death of their sons and daughters. Either that or we need a war to sustain our flagging economy? Or, perhaps, you, Mr. President, feel you must continue the conflict to shore up the Democratic party. Are we fighting to keep the Republicans from beating you up some more?

Mr. President, I don’t mean to be rude. You are in a tough spot. You were handed this idiotic war and there is no easy way out. If changing the mission there from killing all insurgents to weeding out Al Quaeda so that perhaps we can have fewer troops deployed, I’m all for it. Keeping any troops there at all, however, is senseless.

The US needs to pull out of that area entirely. You and the other commanders in chief should develop a solid new plan to fight Al Qaeda (and even the Taliban) in cyber space. The latest capture of Mr. Zazi, in New York, is good. He seems to be talking quite a bit (can we believe this?) and providing the authorities with some useful information, hopefully. Our investigators are looking at plans he and others had on his computer. He used the internet to organize a group of terrorists, make a plan of attack and assemble the different materials to make bombs.

This method of combat is what I think the American armed forces should use more extensively. If we have to find people hiding in caves, use their Facebook or MySpace. I’m not trying to be flip. I am serious when I say our enemies use electronic devices and we should track them via that technology. Obviously, we will deploy troops at some point to go get whoever is found out. The number of American at risk would be so few and their objective would be so much clearer and much more direct. At least, they would know what and where the enemy was.

Such a surgical approach and use of many fewer troops would surely make more sense, save many lives and win the approval of the American people. The people of Afghanistan and many other countries would be happier with us too. What right have we to invade these countries, march through villages with sub-machine guns frightening people and putting their lives at risk? We are now trying to “make nice” with those localvillagers. Are we really helping them? The Taliban and other groups kill the elders for talking to American soldiers.

We should be a silent force in our battle with terrorists. Our missions should be clandestine and invisible to our enemies. Our intelligence agencies would do well to get better information to supply to the troops on the ground. It would be nice to be so good that we attack our enemies with surgical swat teams that accomplish their objectives

and then leave, without killing civilians.

We don’t have to risk American lives by making our soldiers befriend Afghani people over tea, ever on the lookout for someone who might kill them. That is ridiculous. Our soldiers with camo and guns should not be doing the job of the Secretary of State and foreign policy experts. Secretary Clinton should be over there winning over Afghani hearts and minds.

Al Quaeda is not an army that assembles at some headquarters in Pakistan or Iran or any other one place. They gather in “cells” all over the world. The recent arrest of Mr. Zazi proves that. Al Quaeda is everywhere. Al Quaeda is on the internet. Do our military really think they have home offices in the mountains of Afghanistan? Cubicles in the caves? Coffee machines and Sparklets water fountains in the rocks?

President Obama, if you really want to take the war in Afghanistan in a new

direction, look no further than your laptop. That is the way in. That is where our enemies lurk. Please get our people out of that desert and onto the world wide web. I makes sense to fight terrorism at its heart and its weakest point. Communication.

Urgent: Obama and Health Care Reform

Dear President Obama,

In today’s New York Times (online) I found the best opinion piece yet about what is wrong with your approach to getting the health care reform we all want.

“Mr. Obama should declare himself in favor of covering as many of the uninsured as possible in the near future; should insist that insurers grant and renew coverage without regard to health status; and should insist on new insurance exchanges in which people without group coverage and those working for the smallest employers could buy insurance at large-group rates.” He should insist,...that a strong public plan be introduced if private insurers fail to hold costs down in the future.”

Declare, insist, push are strong words that echo what the American people

are waiting for you to do, Mr. Obama. You are way too diplomatic. We are no longer

sure of what you believe. There are “reports that the price for winning over Republicans and conservative Democrats” will get us a “drastically scaled-down” plan. We have been

very clear. We want every American to have basic health care coverage. Cutting costs

to please Republicans would be a huge mistake. Democrats need to take advantage of the number of their colleagues in Congress and the Senate at this time and have the

guts to push through a comprehensive health care reform bill that will provide what all Americans want: universal coverage.

Finally, the editorial says, to get through the Republican blockade, “Democrats ought to resort to a parliamentary maneuver known as “budget reconciliation,” which would allow them to push through most reforms by majority vote.” Absolutely right,

Mr. President. This is the time to push hard, use every way possible to do this for our country. If you, President Obama, never achieve anything else while you are in office,

this would be enough of an accomplishment to make you a hero forever in American

history.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Brady Woods

Dear President Obama,

It seems, from my readings, that you may have to relinquish the plan for a public option

when you speak to Congress tomorrow. I want to tell you to do so, but only if

you get in return: 1. a substancial structure in place that will give good care to poor children and the neediest elderly. 2. no allowance of refusal of coverage of pre-existing conditions.

Lets hope for that much.

To the New York TImes: TALKING ON CELL PHONES WHILE DRIVING

California

July 21st, 2009

7:21 am

I am a 57 year old woman, well educated and travelled. I am well informed in general. I listen to NPR, watch CNN, read the LA Times as well as the NY Times. I vote in every election. I am a mother, a wife, a teacher.

I also have a beloved iPhone.

I will say honestly that I have texted two times in the last month while driving. You know. Just a few words. I have used my \"hands free\" device every work day to make \"neccessary\" phone calls. My hands free device has fallen out of my ear so I had to reach to pick it back up, taking my eyes off the road, many times.

I beleive talking on the phone is extremely distracting and should be against the law.

What if someone called you to tell you a loved one had been killed by a texting driver?

Do you think you can really drive well and watch out for dangerous drivers while someone is telling you about Aunt Mary's latest faux pas or your date is telling you he wants to get married?

There has got to be a way to stop me (and others) from texting and talking on the phone. Maybe random searcheds by police? Lets say it was illegal to have a phone in the car. Maybe cars could have a signal to remove a phone from a car before it will drive. I am deadly serious.

“Dear Governor Schwartzeneger,

In my dream you were the best governor we’ve ever had. You probably had

that dream too. Too bad is was just a dream. I suspended my criticism of you and your policies for years because you seemed to be a new kind of conservative, more centrist than others. So we have a few differences of opinion, no problem, I thought. We have that even with our pets.

Now I am very angry indeed. I am an elementary school teacher. I hope you know that our anger is not about the money we are loosing. Believe me, we have never earned enough to have it be an issue. We manage what we do with money that we find in other places, sometimes our own. We work for our children to do the best we can for them. We make things with our hands. We go to the $.99 as much as possible. The parents of our students bring us paper.

Now you have spoken of suspending Proposition 98 and you have threatened the California Teachers Assn. You have attacked us through our TVs, with mean and dirty commercials, spending taxpayer’s money as a weapon against ourselves. Democrats advocate new taxes on oil and tobacco. I think that is a great idea. We have college age kids (we might have to pull out of school because we can’t pay their tuition, by the way) who abuse alcohol and tobacco. To make it harder to buy would be nice.

This phobia against raising taxes has got to stop. There are many places we

can raise taxes. Tobacco and alcohol are not our only vices. We buy designer clothes when we should use J. Crew or Urban Outfitters. We travel first class when we could go coach. We buy gas guzzling expensive cars when we could all get much more affordable hybrids. There are so many “luxury” areas of commerce that should be taxed. How

about the new airline for pets?! Please tell me that is a necessity.

Cuts and layoffs in LAUSD schools are among the last ways the state should use to pay off the deficit. We have no summer school this year. Our poor families

don’t know where to put their children while they work. It is a choice of where to leave their children or lose their jobs. Our special ed teachers were laid off. We have no art programs. Even the music has ceased.

Is this a pretty picture? Would you want to have your children in this situation?

As an immigrant, are you different just because you landed a job in a movie all about your built up body? Do you think you are really any different from all the children I teach?

Please don’t punish our school system anymore. I am begging you. We have no supplies. We have no summer program. We have no tutors. We have no teacher’s assistants and we don’t have enough teachers. Soon we won’t have enough public schools. What kind of a world is this? Is the TERMINATOR coming?”

Very sincerely,

Elizabeth Brady Woods

WAR

Dear President Obama,

This week, in the op-ed section of the Los Angeles times, George McGovern wrote an editorial about our war in Iraq and the one that is still continuing in Afghanistan and possibly spreading into Pakistan. He wants us to pull out of that area completely and immediately. I agree.

As it happens I grew up in the Middle East and know the nature of the tribal and religious sects in that area. I have not been to Afghanistan but my father was all over that area as a New York Times correspondent in the sixties. I was there for three years with my family and returned to Beirut for college from 1970 to 1975. I know first hand how the different religious and
sectarian factions think and compete for power. We are not going to change any of that. It is a fight as old as Jerusalem.

I agree with Senator McGovern that we should not be fighting there. It is nothing we can win. We have spent six years teaching the Iraqi people how to manage their country. It is time to leave. The costly lesson must end now. “Khrallas!” as they say there. The word is a mixture of “finish” and “stop.”

As for Afghanistan, it will indeed be your Vietnam, as Senator Kerry communicated yesterday, along with a soldier home from duty in there in Afghanistan. He said that combat in that stark landscape is like “fighting ghosts” because they never see their enemy.

As Mr. McGovern says, “Why have you adopted most of Bush’s formula for dragging out the war?” The fixation Americans have on Al Quaida is psychotic and miopic. There are many anti-American groups there and elsewhere. There will always be. If thousands of American troops go into those Afghan mountains it will be slaughter for many on both sides. You will just encourage more insurgents to join the militants in the caves. Why are you insisting on it?


Pull out completely. You and your staff should work diplomatically to receive accurate intel from the countries that harbor (against their will, by the way) terrorists and make sure the anti-American groups are well contained and observed closely. Just use the considerable resources in the area already. We have to surround any place they are operating from,
contain them, maintain a close watch on them and their movements. Please don’t use our men to go in those treacherous mountains.

President Obama, I’m wondering if you have been brainwashed into thinking we need to continue a war there in Iraq and Afghanistan. Are the commanders of the Armed Forces controlling you as they did President Bush? If so, I am extremely disappointed. You are still allowing Americans to die every day in Iraq (and probably other places) and killing civilians
by the dozens. I am shocked that you are allowing this to continue.

Please try to do the right thing. Save all those lives that will end there in the next few years. Bring our troops home, please.

Sincerely,
Elizabeth Brady Woods