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| October 24, 2005 |
MAILBAG ARCHIVES | ||
The BuzzFlash Mailbag The opinions expressed in the Mailbag are not necessarily those of BuzzFlash. Read the BuzzFlash FAQ for info on submitting to the Mailbag. Subject: DeLay's Picture Why not just tell it like it is. DeLay's "SMUG SHOT" was indeed just another staged event. These guys can't even get arrested like normal people. Kevin Mccormick Subject: DeLay Mug shot Open Letter to Tommy Thomas, Sheriff of Harris County, Texas Dear Mr. Sheriff, Say, if I ever get arrested in your area, could I get one of those cool 8x10 color photos like Tom DeLay got? You know, the one that's suitable for framing and without those annoying numbers underneath? In fact, could I get a nice frame included, as well, at tax payer expense? Thanks so much! Average U.S. citizen Not part of elite senate staff Rob Moitoza Subject: DeLay's Delay IF DeLay gets his request for a new attorney on the grounds he donated money to an organization I will surely believe we, the American people, are on the road to certain control by a single party and a single regime ... with control of the media and any other source of information. The smiley, arrogant, schizophrenic picture of DeLay after he was finger printed is the joke of the day ... and the joke is on US. The system should make sure this process is carried on to find whether DeLay is guilty or innocent. I am appalled the way the right wing republican squirrels are taking over the country ... once owned by the American People ... AMERICA WISE UP AND TAKE NOTICE Makesenseofit Subject: Killing the Middle Class I am trying to make sense out of the moral death of our nation. I don't understand why Bush and company is intent on the annihilation of the middle class and oblivious to the needy except that Bush's ilk are simply mean little people. I have a serious chronic illness and a child with one too. We are fortunate that, for the time being, we have insurance. When we go to cancer centers that look like Ritz Carltons, we have to ask ourselves a few things. First, would we rather have this opulence and serve only the wealthy or insured, or have less ostentatious facilities and cover everyone? Secondly, how are these fortresses of medicine to sustain themselves without the middle class or with this illusory snake oil they are selling as "medical savings accounts"? I simply cannot wrap my head around this. Anyone - I mean anyone - can lose their health. I hadn't counted on serious illness - several of them, in fact, that would lead to my inability to work. But what astonishes me is that the Bush administration in five short years has completely abolished the time honored paradigm of insurance risk pooling, which is what makes insurance work effectively. Insurance was devised as a public service so that no one goes broke, and it is premised on pooling. For example, for every one of me and my child, there are ten or twenty healthy people, so everyone benefits. But, since we have insurance for profit, pooling isn't good enough; companies must make uber profits. Generic drug companies enjoy a 3000 percent mark-up on their drugs (no, that's not a typo). The ill become demonized and the healthy (who may not remain that way) are now convinced that their premiums continue to rise because of the ill. This is nonsense, but people don't know otherwise. Finally, actions must be taken to stop letting employers off the hook of honoring their obligation to retirees who worked for years for benefits upon retirement. It would be one thing if dumping the Medicare eligible retiree on to the Medicare (and letting the employers off the hook), and forcing the chronically ill (SSDI recipients) on this program if it were free and reasonably priced and not illusory, particularly with respect to the obscene drug company giveaway masquerading as a prescription drug benefit. The way this process is set up financially would break anyone who is a middle class retiree or disabled person who needs serious medical care. So let's get moving into action. Congress doesn't care; they have gold plated coverage. Bush's base doesn't care - they can pay for anything. But we do have numbers and we need to get out of our denial that these people who happen to be running the show right now don't really care if people who are "unfortunate" live or die. They just would like them to "go away" if they aren't contributing. This isn't my America anymore. Sue C. Subject: The Dead in Iraq Like many of my fellow Buzzers, I wait impatiently to see the results of Fitzgerald's investigation. I hope there are many deserved indictments. But as Don Williams comments: http://www.mach2.com/williams/ the Plame, Libby affair is about more than perjury or obstruction of justice. "It's really about the many who died in Iraq." The real crime that this administration and its neocon friends have committed is pre-meditated homicide. Now we know how far they have gone to twist the truth to their own megalomaniacal fantasies, there should be very serious consequences. When OJ was found not guilty as a result of his criminal trial, he was sued by Nicole Brown's and Ronald Goldman's families for wrongful death in a civil trial, and lost, big time, to paraphrase Cheney. I think the families of those who died in this illegal war should sue those who are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for their loved ones' deaths. Since they have no shame or regrets for what they have done, hit them in their investment portfolios. Make them really pay. Perhaps the first to sue should by Cindy Sheehan, the woman who has become the real face of the war. I'm sure many would donate to a legal war chest. Hell, there might even be a few Canadian dollars. Patty Coombs Subject: BuzzFlash Poem Contribution Greetings BuzzFlash! I thought you might be interested in posting a small poem of mine that I previously read on the campus of the University of Richmond. It's an ode to the unqualified. I am not an acclaimed poet by any means, but I thought your readers would enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks! Scratch Off Faction! Global expansion? Stable distraction? Choose your digits religious Elliot Cole Subject: Bush pardons As your link indicated on the Oct. 21 home page, Bush can and very possibly might pardon his buddies before they can be tried. That scenario creates an interesting possibility of future events. First, as many bloggers pointed out, Bush can't pardon himself and has three long years to go before he can skip town if he's not impeached and convicted beforehand. Second, the pardon could send up a storm of fallout that would do just as much damage as not issuing one. Many people will look at the pardons as a "guilty" - after all, why issue pardons for innocent people? This could rub off as a "go to hell" to the public from Bush, and suggest that he is only interested in his own survival and no buddy of his can ever be held accountable for anything. The Democrats will weigh heavily into this potential windfall provided they grow some gonads and jump on the issue and hang on like snapping turtles. A huge midterm election could be theirs to lose, and given their past history, they probably will. If the Democrats can't regain control of at least one House in 2006, then they truly are an impotent party and the time will be well past that a new party not afraid to fight takes over. Bush can still be impeached and tried, pardons or no pardons. Will we let him slip away and fall for some BS lines from some limp wrist Democrat like "It's time for the country to heal"? Or will we open that wound, take out the malignant growth and stop the disease of greed and power once and for all? It's put up or shut up time. Scott Subject: NYT Those poor misinformed souls at the NYT. All that resource at their fingertips and they only now start the cry of "we were misled." Bulls**t. They knew exactly what they were doing all along. I'd love to know the NAMES of those high up at the Times who were so keen to see the pro-war agenda advanced back in 02-03. Now it looks like they have started the process of semi-discreetly disassociating themselves from the war hawks. Too late you traitorous bastards. get me some rope and a lamp post. A BuzzFlash Reader Subject: A Historical Document of Interest to BuzzFlash Readers In 1917 the poet Siegfried Sassoon came to believe the war he was fighting in was misguided and futile, as eloquently set forth in his famous Declaration against the War. The starting relevance of his thoughts to our situation in Iraq might be of interest to Buzzflash editors and readers; we have something to learn, in particular, from his concluding words about the difficulty of mobilizing opposition to a war fought far away whose "agonies" and atrocities those protected from being directly involved need to find the "imagination" to comprehend.
A BuzzFlash Reader Subject: Bush Is Clueless - (and Therefore Dangerous!) Republicans are bewildered by President Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers for a seat on the Supreme Court. Democrats gave up trying to make any sense of this man’s thought processes years ago. Perhaps the best insight into the workings of the Bush mind can be found in his own words. In Bob Woodward’s book, "Bush At War," the author describes an interview with the President and quotes him as saying: "I'm the commander in chief, see, I don't need to explain, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting part about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." Maybe Republicans can now appreciate the utter frustration the rest of us experience as we contend with the wreckage that results from Bush’s higgledy-piggledy decision-making process. Bob Regl Subject: The Bush Administration contempt for the media and the public continues unabated One would have thought that after they were exposed for paying alleged "journalists" like Armstrong Williams to regurgitate their propaganda and nailed for rehearsing soldiers to recite their talking points on camera they would have ceased this brazen Stalinistic attempt at media manipulation. However, it is clear that they are continuing their ceaseless efforts to orchestrate the news. However, they are as inept at this as they are in responding to hurricanes and managing the federal budget and protecting national security. This article indicates how four newspapers in geographically divergent regions of the country suddenly ran THE IDENTICAL canned editorial supporting Bush's indefensible action of repealing Davis Bacon wage protections for workers involved in hurricane cleanup. All of the newspapers portrayed it as the opinion of their own editorial board. The papers who did so were all apparently owned by the same company which has extremely close ties to the administration. This is nothing more than a continuing deliberate and outrageous attempt by this maladministration to ram state-sponsored propaganda down our throats by disguising it as the original opinion of a newspaper. You know, once upon a time we in America used to scoff at the Soviet Union's news apparatus and chortle at how it would spew nothing but outrageous lies on behalf of the governing regime, and then we would thank our lucky stars that we did not live in such a society. Well, now it appears that we do. Any newspaper that ran this puerile garbage as the opinion of its editorial board should fold its tents, as it now has established that it has zero credibility and absolutely cannot be trusted. And we the people need to reward this blatant attempt to treat us as sheeplike fools with a sustained boycott of any news outlet that engages in this, the worst possible kind of dishonest malfeasance. http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2005/10/esp-wonder-newspapers-channel-bush.asp http://www.freedom.com/newspapers/ Dan D. Subject: Rich Kid That Took Pipe Bomb Parts on Airliner Can anyone tell us what came of this article? Was he even punished? Wayne Blackshire [BuzzFlash Note: This from WFAA.com last month: "Student pleads guilty to having pipe bomb at airport. A University of Oklahoma student charged with taking an explosive device to an airport pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge in federal court in Oklahoma City. Charles Alfred Dreyling Jr. faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine at a sentencing hearing. Mr. Dreyling, 24, was arrested in August at Will Rogers World Airport after security personnel noticed a suspicious object in his carry-on bag. Mr. Dreyling later told FBI agents that he forgot the device – which he described as "basically a pipe bomb" – was in his bag."] Subject: DeLay Must Be Against Miers Tom DeLay yesterday filed papers claiming that the judge in his case cannot possibly be fair because the judge had made donations to MoveOn.org. If that's true, then Harriet Miers cannot be confirmed to the Supreme Court because she has been the recipient of Republican funds, has worked for a Republican administration and has actively supported the Republican agenda. I'm certain Congressman DeLay would agree. David Fisher Subject: Find Me a Candidate!!!!! My mantra has become find me a candidate! I know my fellow Progressives are, and I am, searching far and wide - high and low for an electable candidate to right the wrongs we have suffered under this illegitimate administration. From corrupted voting machines and ballots to the stripping of laws protecting everyone and everything from the greed of business to the NRA's total control of state legislatures and congress, we are angry and frustrated. Is there one clean noble person left anywhere that we can trust to lead us out of this mess? Is there a shining knight to throw down the gauntlet and challenge the NRA? Is there one brave soul to state up-front what his/her first presidential edict would be? The war is the elephant in the room of course, but there are thousands of other issues at stake. The bibliography in the back of Al Franken's books would be a place to start. This "Knight" would need a team. Who would be on that team? I would just love to see what would happen if, after the swearing in, the new president would march off to congress with a u-haUL full of bills to correct and undo every piece of legislation passed in the previous 8 years that wasn't in the best interests of the people. Here's something I would love to see: the line item veto is gone - so how about a rule stating that a bill and amendments can only be about one issue? What a concept. If a candidate would announce at the beginning of his campaign who would be on his "team," who would actually be working on what issues, What they would be doing - with or without congress, and the msm on board, the voters could assess their own future outcome. We need someone outside the beltway to step in and shake up the status quo. Expose the dirty little secrets, and let all the citizens know there is a new sheriff in town. I would love a campaign of truth instead of sound bites, of real issues instead of what some poll said we wanted to hear, of pissing off reporters who ask the same stupid questions, of an angry candidate that doesn't pander to whoever he/she is speaking to at that moment. JEEZ - NOT A SELL OUT. I am tired of nothing changing. The same talking heads, the Same old/same old. Washington needs to be turned on its head, and the termites infecting it exterminated. Does anyone have the balls to stand up to the money? Dean almost did it with just the internet, couldn't someone else, now that that we know how to do it? And this time it looks like a few republicans may climb on board with us. K.D. Ridout Subject: Bug-man Mug Shot Hi BuzzFlash, Maybe you could run a contest for captioning DeLay's mug shot. Personally I think he's posing pretty for his future constituents in the slammer, sort of a preemptive "I'll be your bitch for cash" message. A BuzzFlash Reader Subject: The next time you are tempted to think the Democrats aren't doing anything....... Remember this article ... A Democratic House member is forcing a vote to repeal Bush's gutting of Davis Bacon Wage Act protections for workers on the Gulf Coast. Of course you hear nothing of this on the major media outlets, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN as per their standard policy to bury anything favorable that Democrats do. Likewise major newspapers like the New York Times, Wash Post and Pittsburgh Post Gazette bury news like this routinely on their back pages. All of this contributes, perhaps intentionally, to the perception that Democrats aren't doing anything to oppose Rethuglican policies that screw the average American. The fact is though they are fighting hard on many issues like this but they are virtually ignored by the major media in their efforts. It's the silent tree falling in the empty forest syndrome. So I encourage you to be aware of this effort to bury the truth and take action to demand your local paper and news station give full coverage to these important stories. Demand that they quit providing a one-sided Republican slant to every story as routinely on news shows and in articles you will see three Republicans quoted or interviewed to every one Democrat. Republican Pravda in operation. It is high time to demand an end to this propagandizing and withhold your dollars from them if they do not restore some semblance of balance to their news operations. Democrat forces US House vote on Bush wage order Dan D. Subject: The U.N. Punish Syria? Our commander-in-chief is demanding that Syria be punished for its alleged involvement in the murder of Lebanon's prime-minister. As long as our president claims to be in pursuit of all the world's evildoers, how's about him owning up to his own bloody record? Already, in a war that is based solely upon his lies, he's wasted nearly two thousand of our best and brightest, which qualifies him as a mass-murderer. So if he really aims to protect the world from evildoers, he should insist that he himself be punished by the UN. for his own crimes against humanity. That way he'll truly be getting at the root of all evil! A BuzzFlash Reader Subject: Proves Again Busheviks Lies About N.O. WE knew they were lying when they said they were caught by surprise by the N.O. disaster. Amazingly Chertoff and the gang did this brazen spin about how they didn't see anything in the newspapers so they didn't rush to help. This time they are releasing photos that show exactly how weather is constantly being monitored by the US military. http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20051022/capt... The government knew exactly what was going on then and Bush's gang was guilty of negligence. Jazz Band Subject: RE: Withdrawal of Miers Nomination The weekend produced several reports that either the White House will withdraw the Miers nomination or that Miers herself will withdraw it sometime this week. One would normally conclude that weeks of vehement rightwing pushback has finally taken its toll on the misguided nomination, but that's too simplistic. Rarely does Bush reverse course without a seemingly plausible cover story, and he continues to publicly, at least, support her nomination. No, these latest reports of a behind-the-scenes reach-out is part of a larger shell game. Barely reported on is the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee has received a waiver from GTECH so that Larry Littwin can be subpoenaed to testify before the committee when it takes up the matter of the Miers nomination. And he has quite a story to tell. Littwin was fired by Miers when she was Chairperson of the Texas Lottery Commission because he wanted to investigate GTECH's contract (why the lottery's contract wasn't put out for competitive bids and why Ben Barnes was bought off with $25 million), and the Littwin testimony before the Senate committee would open up a whole can of worms, exposing the manner in which our dear president joined the TANG champagne unit to evade duty in Vietnam. Oh, better to pitch dear Harry over the side than to allow the public to learn the truth behind Ben Barnes' allegations that family influence paved Bushie's way into the Guard to save his sorry ass. After all, Bushie's public persona/reputation is more far more important than any old Supreme Court seat. My only regret is that by dropping the nominations and short-circuiting the committee hearings and Littwin's proposed testimony, Dan Rathers will not get some public apology from CBS, after its egregious treatment of him for airing the TANG story last fall. SherAn Subject: Keep Score Along At Home [indictments] http://www.takefive.d2g.com/scorecard.pdf Linda Bianchi Subject: Miers Land Deal So based upon this reasonable math - one could calculate that had she been on the supreme court she would have decided the eminent domain case in favor of the town of New Haven only if they we willing to pay 16.66 times the property value? Katharine Roberts Subject: Penthouses at 30,000 Feet You know what, folks? This absolutely makes me sick. Okay, call me a blazing socialist, but when I read stories such as this where folks are struggling to make ends meet, find food to eat in this world, keep a roof over their heads, millions without homes in Pakistan and our hurricane victims, this is unconscionable. They are most likely Bush's friends. Sorry for the rant there, but I just had to. Penthouses at 30,000 Feet (BusinessWeek Online) Mary! Subject: Helen Thomas Wings of Justice Award Bravo! This is an award she richly deserves. She will be remembered as a twenty-first century Paul Revere. We are all better because of her....and BuzzFlash. Jim Wolfe Subject: Names for Judy's book They are all good...good thing she does not have to choose. She is a little ditzy pipsqueak if you ask me...and no one did, she is also a cover upper! I saw a couple of bumper stickers on the same car the other day...a rare thing to see an anti-bush sticker even in this predominately democratic city. We have a cell of rightwingers in Frontenac....a super rich upscale part of the county....Cheney (the liar) was there over the weekend...campaigning with Jim Talent. One other thing you might be interested in...our Sen. Kenny Hulsof of Missouri...from, I think, Columbia...wrote a check to the Katrina victims for the exact $14 thousand dollar amount that he had gotten from Tom DeLay's PAC!!! I would like to know that it was sent! Anyway...back to the stickers. This car was parked in plain sight...which when these maddening Bush Hooligans can...will tear them off. I had one that simply said, Pray for the Troops...it was taken. On one side of his car was a sticker in plain black...that said, "I would rather have a president who screwed an intern, than a president who screwed the entire country!" Very true!! The other sticker said, simply, "You cannot be Pro War...and Pro life!" Also very true...I have had heated debates with family members who are pro life, but are also pro war.....it is an oxymoron....cannot be correct...never! Shirley............St. Louis Yo Buzz- Not to be a pest, but I have a theory and I want to express it... goes like this, Catholic priests have a high(er) percentage of pedophiles among them than some other occupations. So does any other position in society in which adults have higher access to children. Teachers, sports coaches, day care providers, counselors, the list goes on. Now, most of these people are great and do a heck of a job and help kids and that's the end of it. But pedophiles gravitate towards those positions. That is a fact. Their sickness, which many claim cannot be treated, dictates so. Any idea how many high school teachers are having sex with their students right now? A lot, ok? Now, why are there so many articles about this problem among Catholic priests, but hardly none about the rest of the group? Look at it this way, most pedophiles are NOT Catholic priests. Where do these articles come from? Do these people have an agenda? Just a theory. Thanks - Was Alaska a Dumping Ground for Abusive Priests? (AP/AOL) Tom Funk |
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