Mr. President:  With the arrival of the new Senator from West Virginia, a filibuster-proof majority could be mustered to extend unemployment benefits.  Economists of every stripe, across the spectrum from left wing to right, support the extension as necessary for the economy — quite apart from the verifiable needs of families who find themselves in severely strained circumstances through no fault of their own.  Republicans appear to have but one motive – to inflict pain which they expect will bring out angry anti-incumbent voters in November.

During the Presidential election when Mrs. Clinton presented a positively pugilistic stance on Iran, you appeared to show wiser restraint.  Then what accounts for the activities of Mr. Stuart A. Levey, the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at Treasury and Andrew J. Shapiro, the Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs at the Department of State.  When our own Intelligence Estimate has clearly negated the so-called Iranian nuclear threat, Mr. Levey is trying, with some success, to cripple the Iranian economy by preventing international banks from transacting with Iranian counterparts.  One might well ask:  Is this likely to bring Iranians to the table or make them more intransigent?  For the Iranians, of course, there is always China and Russia — the latter playing a double game of duck ‘n weave and deal.

Mr. Shapiro is busy plying Israel – already a regional superpower – with billions more dollars of the latest military hardware.  It is hardly likely to encourage Israel to be serious about peace talks when it is being rewarded for insulting our Vice-President, thumbing its nose at our President, ignoring our peace initiatives and generally running roughshod over your peace envoy — whatever happened to him? — and your administration.   As Uri Avnery, the respected Israeli  commentator, has observed frequently, the Israeli government needs tough love not pandering if we are to have any chance of peace in the Middle East.  By the way, the number of letters I get from charities, food depositories, shelters etc. now average a half dozen daily.  A single billion dollars would probably take care of all their needs.  But then who cares about them; after all, it was a Democratic president who put the screws on welfare recipients, the social security elderly — through the farcical core rate of inflation – and even unionized workers.

I mentioned Senator Byrd’s seat earlier.  He was like a very fine Bordeaux, harsh and unpalatable in his youth – some say he joined the Ku Klux Klan – but matured well.  He was an auto-didact.  As a legislator, he became eminently well-informed on the Constitution, the Senate’s rules and procedures, and, when I heard him, the War Powers Act.  I remember his speech opposing blanket authority to George Bush to pursue the Iraq war while your Secretary of State was a prominent supporter.  Would that we had listened to him then?  Over a million Iraqis have died, four to five million displaced, their country devastated, the economy shattered, all for no valid reason.  It has also cost us plenty.  But it is what Israel’s neo-con supporters wanted just as they have their sights set on Iran now, again busy manufacturing evidence where it does not exist.  Mr. President, our country is exhausted.  We need to help our own.