BuzzFlash Fun

Support the Public Option, and get a free book. Our only request is that you lend the book to everyone you know after you're finished reading it to help spread the word about the need for a public option.

BuzzFlash thanks Chelsea Green Publishers for donating copies of Howard Dean's book to help pass a robust public option.

Here's how to win a copy ot the book.

1. Find your favorite BuzzFlash article from the past week.

2. At 3pm EDT, tweet that article using the Twitter button on the top right hand side. Feel free to personalize the message, as long as you retain the @BuzzFlash and the link to the article.

That's it. Every third Twitterer will win a copy of the Howard Dean book until we're out of 10 copies. You will be alerted via Direct Message, so make sure you're following @BuzzFlash and keep your eyes open. You can enter multiple times as long as you are tweeting different articles.

Good luck!

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BuzzFlash has vastly enjoyed interacting with the members of our progressive Twitter community at http://www.twitter.com/buzzflash, where we have reached more than 9,000 followers in just a few months!

But making our nation better shouldn't always be hard work; sometimes we need to celebrate and offer our thanks to all of you who work to ensure the promise of our democracy.

So enjoy, the BuzzFlash Twitter Premium Giveaway!

We'll try to do it on Mondays, when the opportunity arises.

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BUZZFLASH FUN

This was a tough one to decide. There were so many fine and humorous entries which you can read at the original contest site.  There were long ones about W's fate were his last name Smith; there were short ones.

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BUZZFLASH FUN

Okay, George W. Bush is now spending most of his time palling around with the dog, Barney, who just watched as Bush choked on a pretzel. (Remember that bizarre incident?)

For 8 years, BuzzFlash and many other sites reminded people that Bush wouldn't have gotten any of his jobs -- including President -- if his last name were Smith.  The guy was as good as a curse when it came to business, except for the Texas Rangers where he was given a fortune by his Daddy's friends to essentially be a greeter -- which you got to admit he is good at.

So, BuzzFlash will give a prize to what our staff judges as the best comment (post below) that answers the question: "What would George W. Bush have done for a job if his last name had been Smith and he were born to a poor family?

The winner will receive a free copy of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" and "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free."

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BUZZFLASH FUN
by Alyssa Morin

^{Image courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio}

After months of counting and recounting, adjudicating and appealing, we at Buzzflash have finally confirmed a winner in our "Seat the Senator" contest. Congratulations, Quousque.

Author, comedian and Saturday Night Live veteran Al Franken was sworn in as Minnesota's senator on July 7, 2009, a staggering 239 days after the November 4 election last year. Franken declared victory on January 6 after the official recount found him ahead by 225 votes. The same day, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman filed a lawsuit with the district court disputing the results. The 111^th Congress convened with an empty seat where its junior senator from Minnesota would be.

When it became all the more painfully clear this winter that Coleman was not going to go quietly into the night, we at Buzzflash decided to hold a little contest to make the ensuing legal battle a bit more tolerable. In February, we asked our readers to "Seat the Senator" by guessing the day Franken would finally take his seat in Congress.

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BUZZFLASH FUN

You voted and the results are in. It was a tight race, but BuzzFlash is ready to announce the first- and second-place winners in our Name Cheney's Memoir contest. Drum roll, please!

Coming in at the very top of our eight finalists with 35 percent of the vote, the submission of BuzzFlash reader daphne chyprious earned first place with the witty literary pun "Lord of the Lies."

Second place goes to winston smith (who may be a familiar name thanks to his frequent contributions to BuzzFlash's Mailbag, or due to his role as the protagonist in George Orwell's seminal dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four) whose suggestion of "Undisclosed Location: A Personal Journey From Washington D.C. to Fort Leavenworth" came in with 21 percent of the vote.

Of course, we'll be sending off their prizes (straight from the BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace) shortly. But we did want to allow the talented "daphne" a quick literary indulgence of her own. Our first prize winner sends gratitude to her fellow BuzzFlash readers for their votes as well as this touching dedication for the award:

I consider this honor a tribute to my mother, recently stricken with dementia, who, under other circumstances and had she ever become computer-proficient, would have entered Lord of the Lies herself. The brevity, the alliteration, the literary reference, particularly the pun (all apparently appreciated by BuzzFlash's intelligent, educated readers), are rhetorical devices she taught me and used in her own locutions. In a delightful case of serendipity, the day I was notified of being a finalist in this contest I also learned that she has returned home after several months alternating between the hospital and a rehabilitation residence.

Much gratitude to P.M. Carpenter -- whose column I had been following on his one-man blog -- for merging with BuzzFlash thereby introducing me to this invaluable enterprise. Can you believe I was unaware of it until that happened?

Congratulations to my fellow finalists. I hope my contribution to the liberal lexicon joins the ranks of such notables as DFH, Friedman Unit and the Villagers.

We hope so too. Thanks to everyone who participated in the Name Cheney's Memoir contest, and stay tuned for more BuzzFlash fun!

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A BUZZFLASH CONTEST

Browsing the proliferation of summer reading lists over the past few weeks, BuzzFlash has had publishing on the mind. Because we try to bring you the best in progressive reading -- along with our favorites in free trade, movies and more -- at our BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace, we're always on the lookout for new political reads. So when we saw that the champion of our 2009 March Madness Sour Sixteen contest was fishing for a book deal, we couldn't help but take note.

The New York Times reported last month that former Vice President Dick Cheney is seeking more than $2 million in advance for the pleasure of publishing his memoir.

In that same article, the Times reports the previous administration has formed a kind of talking point study group reunion to make sure they all lie the same way in their independent forays into the world of "writing." The former president and his wife are each penning a memoir, along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove, on whom the NYT has finally bestowed the official title of "former presidential political mastermind."

Whew, that's a lot of formers. Can the bargain bins at Wal-Mart handle the influx?

While some former teammates of Bush & Co. have deals in the works, Darth Vader doesn't yet have an official publishing agreement. Sara K. Smith predicts that Cheney's memoir will stand out from the crowd, writing that the "manuscript, written longhand, perhaps in chicken blood or children's tears, revealing all the most sinister secrets and fevered imaginings that passed through his robot skull during his eight-year reign" will have "true crossover appeal."

But in order to really make it in the publishing world, the title is everything. Jon Stewart had a couple of great suggestions in a March episode of The Daily Show (his list begins around the three-minute mark of this video):

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