Subject: A Roman Phalanx for Democrats

This is no time for Democratic senators and House members to be mealy-mouthed "accommodators." They will gain nothing by trying to work with present-day Republicans; the Democrats would, in fact, gain much more by taking a stand on every issue we care about. They must not adopt an attitude of, "Well, we'll go along here and there and fight only on the Big Issues."

That is a recipe for remaining a minority party forever -- and losing all of the Democratic base in the process.

The Congressional Democrats must fight any judicial appointment where the nominee is an extremist ideologue. They must not just fight on the U.S. Supreme Court appointments, because more cases are tried in federal courts than ever get to the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course Democrats must fight, and fight hard, on any U. S. Supreme Court appointments, but they must also fight against putting ideological judges on the federal bench.

And, Democrats must stand together, like the Roman phalanxes of old, against privatization of Social Security, or any other of Bush's plans to "reform" Social Security.

The Republicans want to destroy Social Security, and the Democrats must not help them do it. If the Republicans want to eliminate Social Security, they must do it without a single Democratic vote.

Let the Republicans suffer the scars from destroying Social Security, and let them bear those scars alone -- without any "cover" from Democrats.

This is not a new concept. In 1993, when President Clinton wanted to raise taxes on high-income earners in order to bring the federal budget into balance, not a single Republican voted for the bill, because they felt it would harm the economy and destroy the Democrats in the process. It didn't; and in fact, that legislation was the method by which Clinton generated hugh surpluses during the last years of his administration. The Republicans thought they were dooming the Democrats to failure, but the Democrats were correct then -- and they could be correct now if they refuse to help the Republicans in their extremist activities.

The Democrats need to stand together as a single unit, and then they will be at their strongest.
 
A BuzzFlash Fan

Subject: Social Security Deception

When the scurrilous right talks about Social Security going broke, what they really mean is that in 2018, when the payroll tax no longer brings in more than Social Security needs and the decades of loans to the general revenues from the excess Social Security tax must be repaid, the government will not have the money to do it. The money is being spent now, and the government’s borrowing power will be so overdrawn by the deficits that it will be impossible to cover the theft from the "lockbox." That is the real cost and purpose of the Bush tax cuts.

The compassionate conservatives say they want to bankrupt the government and shut it down. And Social Security is part of the ploy. Education was first. They cooked up All But Rich Children Left Behind as a straw man for decapitating public schools. When the entire public school system is forced to voucher itself to economically segregated charter schools they will have won. That leaves most American kids fit only for draft fodder. The war drains resources like no tomorrow but it is off the books so we only see it in rising interest costs. Next comes Social Security. When that is converted to corporate welfare, they will have won another round. Medicare is next. It will be deemed too expensive, and just killed. Be ready to provide your own old age health insurance. And expect private groups to be made illegal, because they cost the insurers too much discount.

The cure for Social Security's problems are fairly simple. First, put an end to age discrimination (business, federal and state) and stop seniors from being pushed out of work by the youth craze. Their wages are taxed and raise the income base, plus people delay taking benefits. Second, re-index Social Security to inflation, not wage growth. Third, remove the wage cap on Social Security taxes, or at least raise it to $150K and index it to upper 10% wage growth. Together, these will provide enough revenue to keep the present system working long term. Maybe too much. They might provide enough to allow a voluntary partial private account system with no bridging shortfall. After all, the biggest revenue deficit Social Security will see is about 20% of costs. It is not that big a problem except when you hear about it on the right-wing talk show circuit.

Unfortunately, the odds of getting this message across to the general public are very slim. We have no access to media and Bush has a disinformation army spouting 24 hours a day on all available channels. We really should be able to destroy these guys by naming their lies, but the facts come only from a soapbox in the desert, while the propaganda screams from a bullhorn in every room. Progressives really have to get a better way to communicate.

A BuzzFlash Reader

I will be outside the Capitol Building on January 6th with Red White and Blue on and a sign saying Investigate "Votergate" 2004. I will also be protesting the Inauguration on January 20th in D.C. I hope others will join me.

Rebecca Howell

Subject: NYT's article on Bush cutting back food program around the world

Just now on C-Span they read an interesting article about how Bush said he was cutting back giving food to the poor -- like $100 million (war is billions a month, but whatever).

…How Christian, Jesus-like is it to cut back on the loaves and fishes? If you could find and post this article I think it would be great

Betsy

Subject: future prosecution

The prosecution of Pinochet, 30 years after his crimes, should give pause to those in this administration who have played loosely with the law, and give reassurance to those suffering from it. We need to document these crimes for the future prosecution of these criminals.

d w

Subject: inauguration day

i plan to lower my flag to half staff on inauguration day. it will show that i am in mourning. i should turn it upside down as well. isn't that a distress signal?

merry christmas and a safe new year. kim,

cleveland, ohio

Subject: How the Corporate/Bush Media Distorts (a.k.a. "lies about) The News

A lie by any other name is still a lie.

Here's a new one from the Corporate/Bush Media. It is the use of the word "massacre" ...

The media is calling the recent shelling and subsequent loss of military personnel in the mess tent in Iraq a "massacre." The word "massacre" has been used to describe indiscriminate killing of civilians by military. The use of the word to describe loss of military personnel in a war is Newspeak, or something like that. Again, a word that evokes emotion is being used, even though the meaning of the word is inappropriate and misleading (a.k.a. "a lie").

Previous Corporate/Bush Media Newspeak, among many, was the use of the word "ambush."

Many defensive actions taken by Iraq during the United States led invasion were referred to as "ambushes." For example, a military convoy accidentally entered an Iraq Army grouping. The Iraq Army responded by firing on the convoy. Jessica Lynch, a passenger in the back seat of a vehicle was injured. You know the rest. The whole thing was called an "ambush," which again is an incorrect and misleading use of the word (a.k.a. "a lie").

J. Rhodes
Birmingham, AL

Subject: Bush to Investigate Executive Order

BuzzFlash Readers,

President Bush expressed outrage today over an Executive Order authorizing torture. Bush said, "We, as compassionate conservatives and good Christians, are outraged by the Executive Order authorizing torture. This administration respects life. We will investigate, but it will take time. Do you think we can just ask members of the administration who did it? That's simplistic Liberal thinking. Finding out who did anything in this administration is Hard Work. Take the Plame investigation. It's been going on for months and we are no closer than when we started in finding out what happened. Investigation is Hard Work. Being a President is Hard Work. My job is Hard Work. War is Hard Work....Hard Work...Hard Work..."

I can't be precise about how many times Bush said "Hard Work." When I left, the words "Hard Work" were still echoing in the halls.

Your Underground Reporter

[BuzzFlash Note: We presume the preceding is your own spin as to a possible Bush response. FYI, Ari Berman suggests in "The Nation" that our prospective new attorney general may have done the "hard work" of drafting that executive order.]

Subject: Dyarchy

This whole thing about 'spreading democracy' in Iraq just doesn't ring true, as we've all been witness to. As much as is possible with the big media clampdown on actual facts and information, that is. It's more in the direction of spreading Dyarchy, which is when an occupying force allows the 'natives' a small amount of say in how things are being run, while the Occupiers really hold all the cards and make the major financial and governmental decisions. The people have an illusion of say in things, in other words, but no real power. Sound familiar? Just look around, it's also happening here...

Steve in Baraboo

[BuzzFlash Note: The online Merriam Webster Dictionary says "dyarchy" means "a government in which power is vested in two rulers or authorities." But we liked your observation.]

Subject: the sorryeverybody.com phenomenon

Dear Buzz,

While the creative success and net-centric catharsis of the "sorry everybody" project put a smile on my face after a terribly disappointing 2004 US election result, it also gave me reason to feel uneasy about the responsibility that we -- progressives -- feel for the terrible course of action that our nation has taken under the mis-leadership of George W. Bush and his neocon advisors. It is one thing to dismiss our responsibility for this error when one supports Bush on account that he is giving you a tax-cut (at the expense of the middle-class, poor, and the future of our nation). The same if one supports him because one is an ignorant fool who believes the right-wing propaganda about how the US, always well-intentioned, is a victim of every other nation and international organization, from Mexico to the UN, and it is time for payback -- starting with Iraq! But when the progressive wings begin to ask for something like forgiveness for a growing list of crimes conducted in our name, under our flag, then I am afraid that we have lost sight of our civic responsibilities and that it will be a long time before we are again hungry enough for democracy to exercise it.

Lest my apprehension about this project be misinterpreted, I reiterate that it initially brought a smile to my face after a disheartening election. In addition, I think that the project helps express to the world that "America" is not a single-minded hegemon at this moment in history. Quite the contrary, this is a country at war ... also with itself, in which contradictions of globalization, too many to enumerate here, have surfaced with a vengeance.

But to express to the rest of the world our internal opposition toward the Bush regime there are more ways than simply saying that we are "sorry." I am sorry, but frankly this is no longer enough. Maybe it was enough in 2000 when we were blindsided by Rove and James Baker, and we allowed them to finally steal our democracy, in order to supposedly avert a "constitutional crisis." But now we must put our names to our growing bill for everything that we have broken, for each child we each day condemn to a life -- long or short -- in terror-ism; for the child's mother and father; for the sorrows that will flow as a petrol-drunk civilization turns to control the last reserves of a limited resource -- at any expense. Sorry is not enough. Self-reflexion is invaluable.

We must remove the cancer, but also the carcinogens.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: Item: Ariel Sharon rejects Tony Blair's call for a Middle East conference 12/21

No, he kinda didn't:

But that's not the conference that Blair is talking about, anyway:

Why is it so necessary for BuzzFlash to consistently portray Israel in such nefarious terms?

Are we supposed to believe that Israel is the only principal party in the whole deep wide middle east conflict that is capable of having any influence on the situation's circumstances?

Are The Jews really all that powerful? I could guess that if we can kill off the sons of gods then mastering the domination and control of world media, global finance, and the prospects for peace in the middle east is a piece of cake.

Let's check our heads every now and then, huh?

PeaceLove&Laughs,

Barry from Winfield

[BuzzFlash Note: Our headline seems to have had the wrong emphasis, but Blair and Sharon are spinning this story, too. Is it diplomacy? Ariga.com offers an interesting perspective. Furthermore, you err in ascribing the antisemitic view that Jews are too powerful to us at BuzzFlash.]

Subject: It IS OUR money

Dear Buzz,

Look at it this way: Every week of your whole working life, you have put $100 into a jar to save for your retirement. You did this for 30 years.

Your neighbor knew where your jar was and regularly helped himself to your money. Using your money (from the jar), he gave gifts to his friends, making them wealthy in the process; your neighbor also took some of your dollars for himself while he was at it. Your neighbor did put IOUs into your jar, promising to pay you whatever he had "borrowed," with interest.

Fast forward, it is time for you to retire ... you go to your jar which is filled with your neighbor's IOUs ... you go to your neighbor -- who, by now, thanks to your savings, has moved away and lives in a swankier neighborhood -- and ask him to make good on his IOUs ... he says he can't, he's out of cash.

You say, "But that was MY money ... I put that in the jar for MY retirement ... I want my money and I need it now."

Your neighbor says, "Too bad, but I spent it on this mansion and my new Rolls-Royce."

His kids and the neighbor kids, hearing all the yelling, come to your former neighbor's aid and tell you to get off his property. They say that if he honored his IOUs and paid you what he "borrowed" from you, he wouldn't be able to continue living in his swanky house and his kids would have to give up their membership in the swanky country clubs they belong to, courtesy of your money.

The kids -- including the neighbor kids who have also benefited from YOUR savings dollars and bought expensive toys -- are very surly, saying it's THEIR money now and it's very selfish of you to want it back.

Well, that is exactly what the federal government has been doing: taking OUR Social Security tax dollars and using those dollars to pay bills and give tax cuts to Bush's rich friends. The Bushites have been putting IOUs in our "savings jar" called the Social security trust fund, and the Bushites now are prepared to refuse to pay us back OUR own money because they have given it all away to America's richest in the form of tax cuts.

It's OUR money and WE want it back, with interest.

It was NEVER Bush's to give away, and he now has a moral obligation to get it back from the rich people he gave it to -- and pay up on his IOUs to the Social Security trust fund.

The Truth? Bush will NEVER give that money -- OUR money -- back to us, because he WANTS us to be poor and his friends to be rich.

It was OUR money ... it IS OUR money ... we are entitled to have OUR money back, with interest.

End of story.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subject: Bigotry leads to hate, and hate leads to killing

The evils of this world are racial hatred, religious hatred and the urge for world domination.

Last night I watched a program about the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The suffering of the men in the armies, and the suffering of the civilian populations, was awful.

And what was it all about, that war?

Well, much of it had its roots in racial bigotry, religious bigotry, and the urge for world domination.

Now, we can update that a few decades and ask ourselves what the war in Iraq is all about. There is certainly an undercurrent of racial bigotry, religious bigotry and the urge for world domination, isn't there?

Do you think for a minute we would be slaughtering innocent Iraqi women, children, babies and old men (and innocent young men, as well) if it wasn't the case that there is much American bias against people in the Middle East, because they don't look like us and they don't follow the same religion most of us do?

At what point in this Iraq war did the Iraqi people turn into "the enemy," an enemy we could torture and slaughter at will? The Iraqi people, and even the Iraqi leaders, had NOTHING to do with Sept. 11, and were NO threat to our national security. But we are killing them daily, anyway.

Hitler understood that the way to get a civilized population to be willing to slaughter another group of people is to, first, DEMONIZE the other group, make them into "the enemy," make the "civilized" ones think the "others" are the cause of whatever grievances they have.

More than a year ago, Bush said that with Saddam Hussein in our custody, the world was a safer place, that America was safer.

Are we?

No, we are NOT one bit safer. In fact, we are probably less safe because so many additional people now hate us for the methods we have used to subdue the Iraqi population.

Whenever we let our leaders make us scorn other people because they "aren't like us," we do bad things.

Just in this country, Bush has turned us against one another: he has divided us by race, by religion, by region, by political views, by profession (hate the trial lawyers!), and by age group. What is Bush's Social Security "piratization" plan except one more way to set us against one another? The young think we are spending THEIR money on the older generation, forgetting the older generation paid into Social Security all their working lives; many are still paying taxes on earnings. Furthermore, seniors pay taxes on even their Social Security income. Everyone's tax dollars -- even those of seniors -- go into educating children and into providing Pell grants and student loans.

Fomenting hatred and bigotry and bias is evil, and any leader who does that should be repudiated.

Bigotry leads to hate, and hate leads to killing.

It was true in the 1930s and '40s, and it is true now.

A Loyal BuzzFlasher

Subject: Is US torture policy gathering information? Are we having 'Secret Successes' or just sadistic revenge?

The question of whether torture is sometimes justified to save lives is not so simple. I believe there theoretically may be rare times it may be justified for the greater good. There is no evidence that any of those rare times have ever occurred under the current administration and its more widespread policy of torture. The administration has never claimed one example of intelligence gathered under such conditions that has saved a single American life.

Some (especially those still harboring some old fashioned notion that public officials might hold the public's interests in higher regard than political interests) would say that the government may well know of such cases where torture paid off and just can't reveal it for security reasons.

There are two arguments against there being any such secret success in the use of torture as a means of gathering intelligence.

First is the fact that this administration does not seem particularly worried about national security when it comes to making announcements of their success. John Ashcroft regularly taints jury pools by announcements of terrorist arrests (often followed months later by dropped or severely reduced charges). The administration is willing to name CIA agents in the field of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Valerie Plame) if they think it will discredit their spouse’s anti-administration talk. And don't forget the time when a terrorist prisoner in Europe who was revealing information was named and lost much of their usefulness to back some particular statement that needed political support at the time. So it seems highly unlikely that the administration is concealing any secret success due to national security reasons.

The second reason that the administration would not be concealing any hidden success in the use of torture as military policy is that they are desperate for news that will justify themselves. If the administration was willing to stretch the truth enough to make outright false statements about Iraq to take us to war, do you think they wouldn't happily push forth any success against terrorism that would make George Bush seem more like a successful "war time President" and less like a clueless commander in chief?

I feel pretty confident that all the torture used so far has not produced nearly enough information to outweigh the increase in hatred against America produced by using Saddam style military tactics against the same people Saddam used them against.

This use of torture has to stop and George Bush should be forever known as the man who's "values" were that torture as official policy was just fine with him.

Following is an example of the policies our administration has favored:

signed,

A BuzzFlash Reader and Big Time Patriot