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| November 23, 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. Dear Buzzers: Wish this were a bigger Mailbag (apologies). We'll be giving thanks for a few days, with our families and (other) friends. We hope you'll be doing the same. Happy Thanksgiving! Mailbag will return Monday, November 28. Subject: The sad case of Bob Woodward Dear Buzz, I was aghast as I watched Bob Woodward's appearance on Larry King's program last night. I have to conclude that Mr. Woodward is not an honest man. He repeatedly asserted, as he has for weeks, that there was no underlying crime in the CIA leak, and his proof is that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has not charged Lewis Libby with the crime of leaking but just the crimes of perjury, making false statements, and obstruction. Mr. Woodward deceitfully neglects to ever mention Patrick Fitzgerald's baseball analogy for WHY he has not -- so far -- brought charges against anyone for the leak itself. Mr. Fitzgerald carefully explained that Lewis Libby -- and all the other UNcooperative witnesses, like Woodward himself -- obstructed his ability to drill down and get to the facts in the case. Fitzgerald explained that it was as if a baseball player had kicked sand in the umpire's face and prevented the umpire from being able to call the play. Woodward never mentions that obstruction -- obstruction in which he participated. Bob Woodward is neither honest nor honorable. I would also like to point out that Woodward constantly claims he must guarantee his sources the protection of anonymity so he can get the information he needs to keep the public informed. Hah. I don't notice that Woodward's protection of his carefully romanced sources ever exposed, for us -- before the Iraq war -- all the lies the Bushites were putting out that got us into this war. My point is: What good is Bob Woodward or any of his similarly-silent colleagues, to us, if we never got from them the information we needed to make sound judgments about invading another country? Woodward was part of the drumbeat that took us to war; he should be drummed him out of the news business. If some publisher still wishes to print his books, that is a different matter. News is news, or it is propaganda; it cannot be both. I never bought any of Mr. Woodward's books because I have sensed for years that he was an administration courtier -- whatever pleased them, pleased him. And I hope anyone who might be thinking about buying or reading one of his (what we now know are) propaganda books will think twice about that. Maybe some day we will have a working press corps again -- one that serves the public's needs and not the needs of the powerful. But it won't happen until we stop supporting our own deception and stop allowing this pandering. Maybe then we will get actual news reporting instead of the slobbering-all-over-the-powerful we are getting now. A BuzzFlash Reader Subject: Commuting By Public Transport in Denver? Papers, Please. On the 9th of December 2005, a Denver woman is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court. Her crime: refusing to show ID on a public bus. At stake is nothing less than the right of Americans to travel freely in their own country. The woman who is fighting the good fight is named Deborah Davis. She's a 50-year-old mother of four who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Her kids are all grown-up: her middle son is a soldier fighting in Iraq. One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand. She hasn't commuted by public bus since that day. For further information, please visit: http://www.papersplease.org/davis/ Bill Subject: Voting Machines Call the Secretary of State's office in California and tell them that you are aware of their schemes. My view is that if we don't call them, and threaten to protest, no matter what state we are from, that the Sec of State will help Schwarzenegger turn the state red and he will be re-installed. Voter fraud has worked, through the Republican owned Diebold in the past, and it helped give us Bush twice. You think it won't turn CA red and give you Arnold again? They do not know that we are on to them. This has been planned. No wonder Arnold was so falsely humble after his defeat in propositions. He'll just pass his initiatives after he is re-installed and he can use Diebold to do it. It is nowhere near over until the fat lady sings and she is not going to sing until Diebold is exposed. We will never win anything until they are fully brought to justice, no matter how many people vote Democratic and no matter how wide the margin is over the Republicans. Diebold even lets there be a few Dem wins to give the appearance of fair play. California Voting Machines Emergency? (seeingtheforest.com) mev Subject: Iraq: A Reality Check Bush Administration flacks continue to defend the invasion and occupation of Iraq while the Democratic Party is desperately seeking it's spine. Meanwhile, they both fail to acknowledge the obvious fact that the U.S. Military has occupied Iraq for nearly three years -- at the cost of $200 Billion, more than 2000 dead and nearly 20 thousand causalities -- and they still do not control the ten-mile stretch of highway from Baghdad to the airport. They don't control Baghdad and they don't control the countryside around the city. The insurgents do. The Kurds have carved out their own little niche in Northern Iraq; and Southern Iraq and its oil fields are under the de facto control of fundamentalist Muslim Mullahs and their militias. The Shari'a is the law of their land. What will be accomplished if the U.S. "stays the course" in Iraq? If the U.S. Military eventually defeats the Sunni Insurgency -- the Shiite majority will impose their rule on Iraq -- which begs the question, why are American soldiers fighting and dying to install a fundamentalist Muslim regime in Iraq? Walter F. Wouk Subject: We Are Not a Democracy And we never have been. Perhaps too few citizens consider the meaning of what they say when pledging allegiance: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands ..." Of course, the word "democracy" plays better than the word "republic." However, George Bush's ad infinitum repetition of the error has probably made it impossible to correct. (He produced a similar misconception by repetitive use of the words "Saddam" and "9/11" contained in the same sentence.) Pam Clifford Subject: Unpatriotic Act Here it comes again. That miserable unpatriotic act being pushed by rabid republicans who seem hell bent on curtailing American freedoms. You would never guess from all the twaddle flying around that any law enforcement agency is ever able to do its job without knowing American reading habits at the local library. Or entering and searching your home while you are not there and never letting you know about it. There are Americans who say, “so what,” I have nothing to hide. Let them search. Fine, let them search your house. I have nothing to hide either, but I’ll be damned if I want Federal Agents having free access to my person or property. This is America! What’s the matter with you people? Ever hear of the Constitution? Maybe they just need some help from crime fighters on television. Maybe our law enforcement folks need to be at least as competent as those on CSI or Law & Order. Maybe the FBI needs Mark Harmon from NCIS or Mandy Potemkin from Criminal Minds, my newest favorite. Or here’s an idea, fellas, you could always call Patricia Arquette from Medium. She could have a dream that might solve all your cases. Or if she doesn’t ring your chimes, and you want a fashion show, try Ghost Whisperer. Maybe Jennifer Love Hewitt can ask a dead guy who done it in between costume changes. Without all these flamboyant Hollywood Crime Fighters to help you, you just might try the same tried and true methods that have worked for so long. I know where you can find some bright lights, and rubber hoses. (Just kidding, please don’t come to my house. Although I have to confess there are some truly terrifying dust bunnies in the spare bedroom.) Marjorie L. Swanson Subject: Cuckoo's Nest? I don't know which is scarier,the fact that so many members of the Bush administration are so obviously insane(Rumsfeld is even beginning to LOOK like Dr. Strangelove),or the fact that so many Americans think they're normal. Phil from Vermont Subject: Snail Mail I read your articles on an almost daily basis. Your web site is one of the few places left in the American media where you can still get insightful, truthful and developed information relative to our current meltdown of our democracy. While I don't always agree with your opinions, I deeply respect your integrity and intelligence. This is why, I am writing you in order to correct what I am sure is an oversight and not a slight on your part. Your use of the phrase snail mail is harmful to our sense of commonwealth. Let me explain. Bill Moyers has expressed the importance of the battle between wealth and commonwealth. I am quite sure you are aware of his arguments about how our public institutions are being placed up for auction to the highest bidder at the public's expense and often without the public's awareness. Well, the United States Postal Service is one of those institutions that is facing the threat of privatization. Your reference to the mail as snail mail only plays into their hands at devaluing its image and importance in the public's eyes so that they can accomplish their goal of turning a public good into a cash cow for the wealthy. I am not concerned about the political correctness of a word or phrase, but how your use of that phrase plays into the hands of the greedy. Robert Unick Subject: OOOH, Let's bomb al-Jazeera !!! When I read this story today, I thought this was probably one of the biggest stories of this miserable administration and its miserable war. This comes a day after we hear bush et al., say that we are "entitled" to our opinions (just as long as we voice them responsibly, I suppose). Isn't this just the tip of the proverbial iceberg? When the government of the US, whose Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and of the press, is willing to bomb the headquarters of an opposing point of view, in order to replace the sovereign government of a region with "democracy" in order to give them the "freedom of speech and of the press"!! What other freedoms are we willing to eradicate in order to install a "democratic" government? The freedom to elect leaders, the freedom to worship, the freedom to live? This administration ought to be impeached and imprisoned. Leslie Subject: As-Yet Unexpressed Theory About Woodward Given that we can now add to our fact files that Woodward is just one more media bagman for the illegal Bush-Cheney regime, has it occurred to no one that Woodward is lying about having casually been informed in June, 2003 by a "senior administration official" about Valerie Plame? Come on -- it's also perfectly reasonable to think that Woodward's Bush-Cheney handlers recently tasked him with "revealing" this supposed lapsed memory item to Fitzgerald for the sole purpose of attempting to defray and invalidate, in the eyes of the nonthinking American, the case against Libby. We already know how this works. This is a classic Rendon Group tactic -- control the debate within the American press with your twisted propaganda (which is actually illegal, but illegality defines this administration), and you will control what people think. Ergo, get Woodward to tell Fitzgerald this fake story, leak that fact to all of the press, and then, at precisely the same time (what a coincidence!) get the major media whores who are on your payroll to "suggest" Woodward's announcement somehow gets Libby off the hook. I mean, consider the following in an article written by Carol Leonnig and Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post on November 17, 2005:
Give me a break. The Washington Post can take its legal experts and shove them up their collective ass. So: Haven't heard this theory bandied about, but it makes perfect sense that Bush-Cheney have used Woodward to make up this story in order to help get Libby out of hot water, because the crap being spread by media owned by the cabal about how this seems to help Libby's case just happens to work so seamlessly and is spread at exactly the same time as the revelations about Woodward. Make sense? Beth Hunter Subject: Leak Investigation: For Libby and Rove, Legal Woes--And Bills (Newsweek Periscope - MSNBC.com)
Ironically, my ass. This is why media fails us today. Instead of seeing this as cynically hideous and uncovering it ... they call it “ironic” and move on. John L. Johnson Subject: W's sense of humor OK, so: President George W. Bush planned to bomb pan-Arab television broadcaster al-Jazeera, British newspaper the Daily Mirror said, citing a Downing Street memo marked "Top Secret". But, of course: The Mirror quoted an unnamed British government official as saying Bush's threat was "humorous, not serious". Blair talked Bush out of bombing al-Jazeera: report Ha ha ha ... We are laughing so hard we are ready to puke. That must have been this famous W's sense of humor, the same one that allows him to quip (?) about how things would be easier if he could only become a dictator. Side-splitting funny, is it not. Elizabeth
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