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| January 13, 2006 |
MAILBAG ARCHIVES | ||
The BuzzFlash Mailbag The opinions expressed in the Mailbag are not necessarily those of BuzzFlash. More reader opinion is at "Contributors." You can write to Mailbag at http://www.BuzzFlash.com/contact/mail.html. Guidelines for submissions are at BuzzFlash FAQ #18. THE MAILBAG POST OFFICE WILL BE CLOSED MONDAY BUT WILL RETURN TUESDAY, JANUARY 17. THIS IS PART 2 OF THE JANUARY 13, 2006 BUZZFLASH MAILBAG. CLICK HERE FOR PART 1 Subject: Not Without a Fight The Buzzflash Reader who finds that the more they read Buzz the more they are convinced that all is lost has good reason to despair. Sometimes it seems that there is little reason to think that we can ever win. We seem to be losing every fight and we seem to be fighting alone. Where are our leaders? Where is true representation? I remember asking all those questions before. I remember wondering if the shining promise of what the United States should be for all its people was doomed. I remember feeling and thinking all those things from 1969 to 1974. I remember wondering how in the name of God people could vote for a man like Richard Nixon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon Our country survived those years. We will in time survive these. This time the evil has spread further and turned much of our government over to incompetent morons. When we spoke of the Bureaucracy in those days we had little idea how bad things could really get. We get tired of the fight. In moments of hope I believe that there is a leader who will emerge and lead us towards the light. In other moments I see Biden or Hillary or some other DLC personnel winning the Democratic Nomination and leading to another 4 years of Republicans in the White House. We can all take hope from people like Howard Dean who are out there fighting in the trenches and working for change from the grassroots. “Namebrand” Democrats will find themselves more and more marginalized in their own party if they continue to ignore the voices of the grassroots. The egregious crimes of the White House could never have happened without the help of the Congress and the Senate. We need the Senate and the Congress. We may not get it this time. I believe we will be far less of a minority in 2007. Much of that will be due to people like the Buzzflash Reader who fight their lonely fight every day. Letters to local papers, emails to television when they get it wrong. Letters to their representatives even when they know that person will never truly represent them. I am worried, because of my age, that I won’t get to see it. Fight on Buzzers. We aren’t quitting now and we are not going to quit in the future. That’s our strength and our power. Marjorie L. Swanson Subject: Pot Vs. Bigotry It's hard to believe that Douglas Ginsberg was found unfit to serve on the United States Supreme Court because he admitted to smoking marijuana as a student at Cornell, but Samuel Alito admits to belonging to the KKK-lite as an alumnus of Princeton and that's perfectly OK? It's like the country has been taken over by the spirit of Richard Nixon on acid. Would someone call an exorcist please? Laura Wilkerson Subject: Democrats I really appreciate your site and have been reading since you started. Recent editorials continue to lament the pathetic acquiescence of the Democratic party to the worst administration in modern US history. A clue - THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS DEAD. Raplph Nader knew it 10 years before the (s)election of 2000, and did all he could to get the message out. When Gore LOST the election (he may have had the votes, but he certainly ran a ridiculous campaign, like Kerry, and never grew a spine) and refused to stand up to the W cabal in the theft of it - idiot progressives actually blamed Ralph! Now some Progressives are finally catching on, after the dictatorship is nearly completely installed. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS DEAD. SO IS DEMOCRACY IN THE USA! Dennis Subject: Wire Taps And Outed Agents The parallels to the Nixon administration are breathtaking. Nixon sabotaged his opponents' political ambitions with dirty tricks and spied on his own for retribution. Now comes word that Bush has ordered the warantless eavesdropping on "bad people" that apparently weren't bad enough for a warrant to pass the FISA Court. We also hear that the spying may have actually included other citizens that were not the ones allegedly running around blowing up churches. Do you think there might have been some listening-in on calls between attorneys and their clients in the Plamegate situation? It would be nice to know what a witness is going to say you did before you go before the grand jury. Sweet Blue Chicago Subject: This is a "gotta read" article for Buzzers Dear Buzzers -- Please check out this article in truthout.org. Again, it's not "fun" reading, but it needs to be read by those of us who already thought we knew the worst. (This makes the worst "worser," so to speak.) Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11 (Jason Leopold/Truthout) In brief (but read the details, if you have time) the NSA informed Bush PRIOR to 9/11 that it was spying on Americans. Hmmm. Anyone else smell a rat here? This was (obviously) BEFORE a "terrorist attack" or an endless "war on terrorism" created a pretext for spying on those of us here at home. Most Buzzers already realize that this administration ALLOWED 911 to happen, gave the *ssh*le-in-Chief a phony excuse to (a) invade Iraq, and (b) to publicly defend and justify spying on...well, people like US. It's easy to connect the dots: (1) We want to invade Iraq for its oil; (2) We need an excuse, so we allow a terrorist act (9/11) to happen, even though we had plenty of advance warning; (3) We falsely conflate/equate the "war on terrorism" with the Iraqi invasion; (4) We invade Iraq, calling it a "cakewalk," saying that our troops will be greeted with flowers and candy rather than by the insurgency they are now living with and dying by, and declare "Mission Accomplished; (4) When the situation flares out of control, we label our critics as "traitors"; (5) We nominate Sam Alito, who believes in the imperial supremacy of the executive branch, to the Supreme Court, and condemn the country to a repressive, fascistic rule in perpetuity, declaring anyone who opposes his appointment as a left-wing, anti-religious bigot. Anyone else see a pattern here?? I.e., spying was already in place BEFORE 9/11. No terrorist attacks, to my knowledge, had occurred at this point. So who, exactly, were they spying on?? (OK, Buzzers -- go look in the mirror!) The writer who said, in yesterday's mailbag, that orange jumpsuits might end up on ALL of us hit it on the mark. (I've previously joked that we'll all be sharing a tin shipping crate in Gitmo. I realized, after reading this article, that it's no longer an example of my sardonic sense of humor. This is getting REALLY SCARY!) To summarize, since not only the Iraqi invasion but -- as this article reveals -- also the practice of spying on "us" -- were in place BEFORE 9/11, everything Bush has said to justify his warrantless spying is...well, to put it bluntly...lies and pure bullsh*t. Obviously, Bush himself -- who can't even frame a coherent sentence and keeps falling off things, choking on pretzels, and getting injured by cedars on his "ranch" -- was/is incapable of formulating these policies on his own. Look to the New American Century neocons for the REAL perpetrators. Meanwhile, as I keep saying, most of the Dems (particularly those of the DLC persuasion) are letting this happen. I'm not saying it will be EASY to reverse the process, but I've got news for the DLC wimp-outs: THEY will suffer the consequences along with the rest of us. (Of course, they'll have more money than most of us to cushion their fall.) Please do check out the article on truthout.org. Once again, it's not PLEASANT reading, but it's something we all need to know. Barbara Lee (Barb) Blazyk) Subject: Blunt Force in Springfield Mo. Re: Matt Blunt Governor of Missouri with the help of his dad, Roy (currently Majority Whip in Republican House) went around the will of the people to find money to use for a crime lab and already hired employees. The official vote showed voters overwelming did not favor this lab. As it was defeated in a recent election. There is already a shortfall in the funding for Medicaid which supplies batteries for wheelchair-bound people with disabilities, and caregivers who would keep people in their own homes instead of a nursing facility. This comes on the news that it was a good probability that money procurred by Roy Blunt from Jack Abramoff went into helping Matt Blunt get elected to his former, Secretary of State job. The question is why do we vote if the Government officials go ahead and do whatever they want???? A BuzzFlash Reader Subject: Staged Political "tears" (to mainstream corporate media) Hello, Mrs Alito's "tears" came during Sen. Lindsey Graham's questioning. Sen. Graham is a Republican. He also just happens to be the Senator who helped coach Sam Alito before the hearings. Along with her "crocodile, staged tears" was a sick smile. It was obvious that she was coached to solicit sympathy from the TV audience. If this was not staged, then why was a former Alito clerk from a conservative PR firm, immediately available for comment on Mrs. Alito's "leaving her husband's confirmation in tears"? The media has done a very poor job of reporting on this obvious ploy to generate sympathy for an unfit nominee for the Supreme Court. Come on ... you can do better than to fall into the Neo-Cons' trap. Give us true reporting, not staged "sobbing." Report the facts. Why were these facts not reported along with the "tears"??: 1) The "Tears" came as a republican (who had coached Alito) was questioning him?? Why that particular moment and not the other moments when he had to answer tough questions posed to him? 2) A Republican PR firm representative was "immediately available" to give comment on her supposed "distraught emotions." There is only one way a PR person would be available for comment so quickly. It was all an "ACT." 3) What was that "sick smile" all about while she was crying? Was she truly upset, or is that the way she looks when she is getting away with something? These obvious facts were not reported, and I was wondering why your news media did not address them. Sincerely, Patti Moses [BuzzFlash Note: Republicans: the party of Crocodile tears and faux outrage. Alito's wife's tears not unlike those from Clarence Thomas's wife's tears. 1/14.] Subject: Listen Carefully! To Whom It May Concern, The press has forgotten that Sam Alito is a lawyer and hence his word choices must be carefully scrutinized to get at his real meaning. When asked if a president can violate the law, Justice Alito said "no person is above the law...the President cannot violate a statute that IS CONSTITUTIONAL." In response to this Tim Russert and every other political analyst has said, "Alito says 'no president is above the law." However, consider this statement in the context of the Bush-speak since the wire tapping scandal broke. El Shrub-o Loco has been saying that The Constitution gives him the authority to do such things, therefore statutes banning it are, by extension, unconstitutional and, according to Alito, would not have to be followed. Alito was nominated because he is a highly conservative mouthpiece for the Right who will do their bidding like a good little white man scared of brown people and women. He's got just the right combination of likeability (didn't grow up wealthy) mixed with just enough edge (member of openly racist and sexist organization in Concerned Alumni of Princeton) to be confirmed begrudingly even while admitting, if you really listen, that he's ok with the unitary executive spying in the homeland and violating the core principles of our nation. Samuel Ridout Subject: Money Money Money To Whom It May Concern, Yesterday on NPR I listened to a woman from New Orleans that has been interviewed multiple times since Katrina. Her name and location are unimportant but what is important is that she's a black woman who pulled herself up by her bootstraps (you would think this is who conservatives would support, but I guess her color got in the way) and bought a house in a nice neighborhood in which to raise her two children. Her house is gutted but still standing and she's been determined to rebuild along with her neighbors. The problem is that if enough don't return, her house, along with the nearby graveyard in which her mother is buried, may be turned into park lands or allowed to be reclaimed by the Mississippi as marsh. I agree that building below sea level in the first place was probably not a great idea for the founders of New Orleans, but we now have a metropolis there and displaced people that STILL need electricity and countless other forms of help to get back on their feet. A "bigger and better" Crescent City was promised by Bush and Nagin in the immediate aftermath, but the newly released rebuilding plan is nothing of the sort. Further, one wonders how much it would really cost to put New Orleans back together, even if you splurged and put the poor folk in better situations than they had before the storm? The reason I raise this financial point is that the same day I saw that private firms have started to release estimates of what Iraq will really cost when you factor in drawdown and semi-permanent troop presence in the middle east to make sure the place doesn't erupt into civil war. The new estimates put the total figure somewhere between 1 and 2 TRILLION DOLLARS! I'm no math whiz, but that sounds like a lot of money to me, far more than you would need to provide healthcare to all U.S. children, improve public schools, lower the cost of college tuition, rebuild New Orleans, and probably still have some left over to buy golf trips for Tom DeLay. I might be a young, stupid idealist, but doesn't it sound like a borderline crime against humanity to forego all that good that could have been done with $1 trillion, and instead use it to bomb an already-neutralized dictator at the additional expense of over 2,000 troops who made the ultimate sacrifice? I guess all I can say is "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for him." Samuel Ridout Subject: What Does the Future Hold in Store for the American Citizens? The American people are in a precarious position, the likes of which have not been seen since the Cuban missile crisis. Unlike the Cuban missile crisis, the current dangers to America are self created. The majority of Americans are so self absorbed in their own lives that they fail to see that the “parts are pieces of the whole.” Soon individual Americans will be faced with making survival choices which they never fathomed, in the recesses of their selfish little hearts, that they would have to make. What will force these agonizing survival choices? - Gas will soon soar to over $100 a barrel within the next eighteen months. - Interest rates will soar to stratospheric heights. - Health care will be unavailable except to the wealthy. - Unemployment will soar to 10% according to the U.S. Labor Department, but in actuality will be about 22% of the work force. - The American standard of living will plunge to levels not seen since the depression. How will this come about? - Bush and his surrogates (the UK and Israel ) will bomb Iran. - The UN will bluster, but in actuality be powerless to intervene, - Iran will attempt to retaliate, but will use the only weapon that they have and that is to reduce the supply of oil on the world market. - Iraq Shiites who control the government will become part of the insurgency battling the American forces in Iraq. Oil production will slow to 25% of today’s figures. - Other Muslim countries will be forced to take sides and the populace of many of these countries will openly revolt, if the side chosen is that of the U.S. - China will see this as the opportune time to become more of an economic super power by ceasing to bankroll the U.S deficit. - Venezuela will reduce the oil supply to the U.S, although they will be threatened with invasion. However, the U.S will not have the military forces to carry out this threat. - "TerroristS" will bomb the Saudi Arabia pipelines, reducing the already dwindling supply of oil. - Russia will sit on the sidelines waiting for the “ideal” time to put itself back into a super power position via the oil it produces. I wish I could say this won’t happen, but it’s just a matter of time. Vaughn Williams [BuzzFlash Note: Fear -- is it going to energize or paralyze us? Dear readers, don't give up.] Subject: Matthew Habben Has A Point Hi, Buzz! Matthew Habben reminds us that we are not without hope of the country finally turning around. He points out that corruption always comes out and the corrupt can't hang onto power forever. It's been this way for a LONG time, Matthew; you're right. I ran across this Scripture the other day, which says it all:
The scandalous behavior of this Administration is finally coming to light, and it's not a nanosecond too soon. Jane Hawes Subject: IF VILLAGE VOICE IS RIGHT & SEN GRAHAM WAS AT WHITE HOUSE/ALITO PRACTICE SESSION ISN'T THAT AN ISSUE WE SHOULD BE COVERING? AND IF SEN GRAHAM WAS PRESENT AT A PRACTICE SESSION IN THE WH, ISN'T IT MISLEADING ON ALITO'S PART TO LEAVE GRAHAM'S NAME OFF THE LIST OF PARTICIPANTS THAT ALITO SUBMITTED TO SEN FEINGOLD? SUPPORTING DOCS: 1) LINK TO LIST OF WHITE HOUSE PRACTICE SESSION NAMES (thinkprogress.org) 2) REFERENCE TO VILLAGE VOICE PIECE: Alito and His Coaches By James Ridgeway with Michael Roston MCMANUS
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