BuzzFlash Mailbag for May 11, 2009

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Subject: Sykes on Limbaugh! YES! Loved it!!!

How delightful, how delicious to hear SOMEBODY finally lampoon fat ass so publicly! I've been waiting for almost 20 years for a real public put down like the one Wanda Sykes delivered! She cut right to the heart of this horrible person like a surgeon!

Those who criticize her are just plain ignorant of the deep viseral disdain people have for the this guy!

Limbaugh's days of mocking good honest Americans is quickly coming to an end! Thank goodness!

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: The Fix Is On, Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

Seems that whenever our military is accused of having killed innocent civilians, its response to criticism is to say something like "We regret the loss of life but ask that judgment be withheld until our investigation into the matter is completed." Then a day or two later the military will issue a statement clearing itself of any wrongdoing, either by way of blaming the victim(s)or by pinning the blame on the enemy, as in last week's massacre of Afghan civilians ("the Taliban did it"). Not surprising this, being that these so-called investigations amount to nothing more than the foxes looking into who slaughtered the hens in the hen house. Why does the military persist in such coverups? Because they can get away with it, that's why.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Torture investigations?

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) is formally asking Attorney General Eric Holder to name a special prosecutor or an independent commission to investigate torture. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed the establishment of a bipartisan commission to investigate torture and other abuses committed by the Bush Administration.

Forget the special commission to investigate torture. We had a special investigation to find out the facts about 9/11 and it was carefully handcrafted to support the "official" original report from our very trustworthy govenment. A waste of time and money mostly done just to satisfy the public. There is enough evidence already to indict and try many high level Bush administration officials right now without an investigation. Either do it, or get off the pot.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUZZFLASH.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: May is Mental Health Awareness Month - Did you know that?

I wrote this in response to the recent discussions regarding Health Care reform.

My specific issue regarding health care reform deals with people who have a severe mental illness. My brother Paul was among the thousands of people who were pushed out of the New York state hospital system a decade ago, and into "assisted" living apartments and adult homes. While the gesture is a noble one, that everyone has a right to live in and with other members of society, there is a segment of the mentally ill population that should never be expected to be able to live on their own and who need constant supervision. My brother was one of them.

Paul was committed to the New York state mental hospital system in 1977, when he was only 17. He had his first major psychotic episode at 16 and after a three day observation he was admitted to a private hospital, diagnosed with schizophrenia. A year later, my parents' insurance ran out and they were advised that committing him was the only option that would ensure they could financially take care of the rest of their children. He never left the state hospital system, except for short visits home or day outings, until the hospital closings caught up with him 22 years later.

There were no drugs that would bring Paul back to “normal”. He never had a day without speaking about something that never happened such as how he was going to star in the next James Bond movie. He spoke about the 200 children that came out of his teeth, often agonizing about them because he didn't know where they were and if they were alright. It was very heart wrenching. He also talked a lot of how his childhood friend shot and killed him, ignoring the fact that he wasn't really dead. This is just a small sample of the many, many delusional statements he made.

He did have lucid moments though. He could ask about how my sons were doing and he loved to show me all of the pictures of his nieces and nephews that were in his wallet. He knew who everyone was, and could follow along with the happenings of our family members over the years. But when you got into any discussion with him about any topic, rarely could he get through it without saying something that was totally off the wall.

Yet they had one track for Paul and the other patients displaced from the hospital closings – and that was to live independently. He was first put in a transitional group home on the hospital grounds. They put him in cooking and other life skills classes, trying to teach him the basic skills he would need to live on his own. Looking back, I can't imagine how some of the staff would not have thought this was absurd. He was then moved to another transitional group home within an “assisted” living complex, and then finally to an apartment within the “assisted” living complex.

Paul shared the apartment with one of his friends from the hospital. It was the happiest and saddest time for him, and our family. He was finally out from behind locked doors and barred windows, but his condition gradually deteriorated due to lack of care. One time, when one of my sisters visited him she saw that he looked very thin. It had been about four weeks since her last visit.

He couldn’t explain what the problem was but his roommate finally told her that his food stamps card didn’t work any more. When my sister asked the case worker about it, she said, "Well, I gave him the forms!” Yeah, and my brother thinks he is a kung fu star in Korea! We found out he had been knocking on doors, begging for food. Another time, he was picked up by police because he was “menacing” people on the street, yelling at them, claiming they stole his liver. Luckily, the police took him straight to the hospital.

His condition deteriorated to the point that he was sent back to the state hospital. During that time, we found out he had "volunteered" for a drug study program. Another of my sisters went to visit him (it had been about three weeks since his last visit) and was told he had been moved. He was put in a special unit where they could watch him more carefully and gave him a drug called Abilify. They monitored any side effects and took blood everyday to check on how much of the drug remained in his blood stream. This drug study was not designed to help his particular symptoms, only to test the side effects of the drug and to verify how long the drug would stay in a person’s bloodstream. He was a human guinea pig!

When he was released from the state hospital – again – he was placed in a 200 hundred-bed facility called a home for adults. Everyone there was mentally ill. They would mill around the halls and outside, smoking, or wandered the streets. There were no planned activities. You couldn’t give my brother anything of value as it would get "lost" or he would give it away, being generous or trading for cigarettes. There were times we had to ask the staff to clean his room because it smelled really bad. There were times when I visited him and other people were sleeping in his roommate’s bed. One of them, a woman, had a habit of wetting the bed. There were never sheets on his roommate’s bed. Paul again cycled in and out of the local hospital psych wards and the state hospital.

In April of 2007, after several bouts of pneumonia, the local hospital was going to send him back to the adult home - back to smoking – but after speaking to the case worker at the hospital, we found a nursing home that would accept patients like Paul. The idea was to give him time to recuperate, without smoking, while we looked for another group home that would monitor him better and feel more like home. However, due to his physical decline, we were able to convince the nursing home to keep him there indefinitely. They had taken a liking to him. His nickname was “The Governor” because he said hello to everyone and shook their hands. Just weeks after we got the good news that he could stay where he was, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He passed away on May 1, 2008.

The point of all of this, my telling Paul’s story, is that the premise that all mentally ill patients can recover enough to live independently is false. After Paul’s roller coaster ride of recurring psychotic episodes, trips to the local hospital psych ward, stays back at the state hospital and then back to the adult homes, it is clear to me that he would have been much better off if he had stayed in a real hospital setting, or at least in a permanent group home, where his medication would have been better monitored and where he would have been more closely supervised.

If we are to reform the health care system, we need to take this into account. Considering the fact that up to a third of all prison inmates suffer some form of severe mental illness, judging from the behavior I've seen from the homeless on the streets and seeing first hand the type of care my brother received after being released from the state hospital, I think the current mental health care delivery system for people like my brother is a failure. We can, we must, do better than this.

Ilene Flannery Wells
Saugerties, NY

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Subject: Get relevant

It is time for you guys to focus more on the really big events that will affect the future. Let's start talking about climate change and how are we going to reinvigorate our industrial base and how are we going to deal with our growing health epidemic from obesity...etc. Start a serious discussion about the big picture and I'll start donating again. J.O.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Losing Hope

Are others of you out there beginning to get discouraged with the progress in digging out of the disaster of the last 8 years? The outright hostility towards President Obama seems to be growing. And I am not just talking about the Republicans who have behaved like spoiled children that did not get their way and the hate-filled commentaries by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, etc. We have allowed these ugly Americans, over these past years, to brainwash so many of our citizens into thinking that everything progressive Democrats do is evil. It is such a myth, propagated by the right wing that the media loves President Obama. Nothing could be further from the truth. For eight years the MSM refused to hold Bush accountable and now, all of a sudden, they have found their capacity to criticize every move made by this administration.

But it is not only the media that has joined the bandwagon of right wingers, some Democrats have come on board. Shockingly enough, I even see some of BuzzFlash's commentary highly critical of President Obama. As an example, just the other day, a commentary referred to the White House as a "comedy club". I don't think that kind of talk is helpful in our struggle to recovery. Frankly, it is rhetoric that one would expect from a right-wing blog.

Folks, there are some things that the President has done and continues to do that I don't agree with, mainly associated with the banking mess, the unwillingness to not stand in the way of holding those accountable who supported the disgraceful torturing history of the last administration, and not attempting to end the Afghanistan/Pakistan operation. The torture issue is a sticky one and I can somewhat understand the President's hesitance to pursue it because Bush succeeded in working up the angst of the public to the point that the majority probably support doing whatever is necessary, including torture, to fight terrorism in the name of patriotism. As for the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, it is a no-win situation that Bush has created, just as he has made it virtually impossible to leave Iraq.

Rationally, in my opinion, the best move for the country is to leave both wars ASAP. But again, because of the mind set of the public that has been set by the Republicans, media, etc., doing so could be the end of the Obama Administration. I can hear the outrage now, "Obama is a coward and bring on impeachment."

So, what do we do? Given the near impossible situation that the Bush Administration has created in the economy, healthcare, energy, foreign affairs, and just about every aspect of our government, our only hope is to pull together and support President Obama to the fullest, realizing that mistakes will occur, but that in time he can at least get us back on the right path to restoring us to where we were before this nightmare began. How he will do this is certainly beyond me, but he is extremely intelligent, perhaps the most intelligent and articulate president in my lifetime. An exception might be FDR, but I was a child during his administration.

As President Obama has said, it will take time, given the enormity of the mess, probably even longer than his term in office, even if that is eight years. If we work with him, I have faith that he can at least give us a jump start. But, as I said in the beginning, in the present atmosphere, doing so seems unlikely. Until his enemies out there finally wake up and realize that their disgraceful hopes that the President will fail can not happen without the country also failing with him, then all may be lost.

Rex Hamilton
Canton, GA

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Subject: David Lindorff and ...

David Lindroff and Paul Krugman (I don't care what award he's won) and those like them are doing a disservice to the American people, by their negativity of President Obama and his administration. What gives them the authority?

It's not going to work, it's going to fail, coming from all directions by people who should know better.

Where were they when Bush/Cheney used their power to trash and tear apart everything America stood for?

What we need now is the hope President Obama has brought with him to the White House. We have that hope, and the people I mentioned here are undermining his efforts by their careless negative comments and are keeping the Bush fear tactics alive and well!

ENOUGH!

We do not want or need this kind of talk from those who are on the outside looking in.

If we didn't think President Obama could handle the mess that Bush/Cheney left for the next President, we wouldn't have elected him by a landslide.

Those who have criticized this President, (he has been office for such a short time) should focus on the neocons who are making it their mission to derail the efforts of President Obama.

Negative remarks are truly helping our President's adversaries. It's giving credence to the party of fools.

No if's, but's or maybe, negativity is music to the neocons' ears! Where is the praise for the accomplishments that this President has made to date? Where????

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Environment

How about more environmental related news?

Do you really believe that everyone watches television that reads BuzzFlash?

A BuzzFlash Reader

[BuzzFlash Note: We aim to do more writing on the environment. Look for items under our new heading, "Green Is Good."]

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Subject: Time Calls Geithner a "Con Man" and the Stress Tests a "Confidence Game"

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/time-calls-geithner-and-con-man-and.html

And: Is Everyone In Washington Being Blackmailed?

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/is-everyone-in-washington-being.html

And: U.S. Votes For 9/11-Style Commission To Probe Financial Crisis

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/us-votes-for-911-style-commission-to.html

And: Facing the Shadow

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/facing-shadow.html

George Washington
California

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Subject: Call their bluff.

Now the GOP is saying if the Dems investigate the Bush people then he or they will be forced to investigate Clinton people.

Fine then we need to take a look at all those Bush I and Reagan Iran/Contra papers.

The Clinton administration is the most investigated administration in my memory and the GOP did it and are now not willing to hold a GOP administration to the same scrutiny.

Take the bluff. They have a lot of nerve. It is another case of we can go after you, but you are completely un-American if you even question what we did.

They honestly believe that Jesus would use torture and he gave them permission to use torture.

Karen Webb
Moore, Ok

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Subject: Nat'l. prayer day

Faith is the mortar of any religious belief. Without faith, in any religion the belief falls apart.

Faith trumps fact in believing in any religion. Fact can be a nuisance, if not an enemy, to any religion.

Governments that fear truth and facts enjoy a religious citizenry because both establishments depend on elaborate stories morphed from histories fashioned to their liking or myths blended in to their teachings.

These teachings are the epistemology of societies all over the world, and though they differ in particulars, they serve the same purpose ... mind-control.

So my prayer on this most Hallowed Day is: Thanks to Something, that I don't understand but aware of, for giving me the mental faculties to think, analyze, reason, use my own judgment, and "dare to be Me".

Mack Moody

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Subject: Abstinence

Hi, Buzz!!

I question the assumption that schools can - or should - teach sexual morality. Specifically, abstinence-only "curricula."

I am in favor of comprehensive sex education - that is to say, EDUCATION, not indoctrination. I also think abstinence is the best method of preventing pregnancy, STDs, heartbreak, and any other type of sex-related catastrophe.

However, if kids are to really get the abstinence message and practice it, it has to be PARENTS who teach it, and from the kids' early childhood. By the time they reach high school, it's too late to introduce the idea. And the school will never have the influence on kids that parents have.

The school's mission is to EDUCATE students. Parents - and parents alone - have the responsibility to RAISE their children. Morality is a matter of upbringing, and parents should not abdicate this duty. The most a school can do is reinforce the moral teaching that kids get at home. It cannot replace it, and shouldn't try.

And we shouldn't expect it to.

Jane Hawes
Edmond, OK (red-state Democrat)

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Subject: Court

I like Diane Wood or Beth Brinkmann for the new Supreme court justice, if Al Gore is out.

Thacker
Cincinnati, Ohio

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Subject: What Good Our Electing A Democratic President & Congress If They Don't Deliver On Change We Can Believe In?

"Little or no good."

"What's holding them back?"

"Either they lied to us or they've got no cajones."

"The answer being?"

"It's up to us to hold them to their promises."

"Based on?"

"Yes we can."

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Re: Fox News plays satanic music while showing Obama slide show

Clifford Hritz,

Regarding your question, I believe this ought to answer it:

"O Fortuna is a poem from Carmina Burana, a collection of Latin poems written in early 13th century. Fortuna is the goddess of fortune in Roman Mythology. German composer Carl Orff selected 24 poems from the collection and set them to new music between 1935 and 1936. O Fortuna is the most famous movement from Orff's Carmina Burana composition, and opens and closes the cycle.

Orff's setting of the poem has become immensely popular and has been performed by countless classical music ensembles as well as popular artists. It powerfully conveys the human condition of struggle. The composition appears in numerous movies and television commercials and has become a staple in popular culture, setting the mood for dramatic or cataclysmic situations.[1] For instance, it is used to portray the torment of Jim Morrison's drug addiction in the film The Doors.[2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna

The translated lyrics can also be found at the wiki page.

Akhil Bhardwaj
New Delhi, India

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Subject: Don't Blame Us For The Economic Collapse

"Who are us?"

"Immigrants, Blacks, Browns, Gays/Lesbians and welfare recipients, among others."

"If not us, who or what?"

"Run amuck capitalism and its advocates."

"The answer being?"

"Fix the economic system, not us."

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Cantor: Yes, we can hear without listening.

Eric Cantor responding to Limbaugh saying the GOP doesn't need a "listening tour", but an "education tour".

"This is not a listening tour, but think about what we saw a few weeks ago on the tea parties. The American people are very frustrated that they really see a government that doesn't hear them."

Think about it;

Problem: The people aren't being listened to.

Solution: Don't listen to them.

Karen Webb
Moore, Ok

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Subject: AIPAC* Puts Israel's Interests Before America's

"Based on?"

"Israel's occupation of Palestine is what stokes the hatred that underlies the messianic violent movements of the Mideast and elsewhere, including al Qaeda which was responsible for 9/11."

"Which makes AIPAC?"

"A threat to us all."

*American Israel Public Affairs Committee

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Change We Not Only Can Believe In, We Can Look Forward To

Where each of us has a say as to what sort of world, everyone's in charge of his/her own destiny, there are no have-nots nor left-outs and there's peace on earth and goodwill to all living beings. How? By popular demand, that's how.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Subject: Universal Health Care

Since so many of the Republicons and some of the Blue Dog Democrats are so against public funded medical care, when are they going to put their money in their mouths and refuse it for themselves?

I suggest that those who speak out against it, be denied it and told they have to buy their own.

Ungrateful bastards.

Lisa Johnson
Tacoma, WA

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Subject: Hannity torture bet

I've now emailed Sean Hannity at Fox and made my offer to take the waterboarding with him, with money raised to benefit our troops.

I am not a former member of the armed forces, but my brother served in Viet Nam, my father in Patton's 3rd Army in Europe and my uncle lost his life at Okinawa.

I am a former prison guard, and while I feel waterboarding is torture, it's worth it to me to (1) Raise money for troops (2) Raise Hannity's awareness of what torture is.

I doubt I will hear from Hannity or Fox though.

Mike Curtis
Greenbrier Ark

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Subject: Empathy and Sympathy are out as character traits.

Since empathy and sympathy are out as character traits for a judge, then Compassionate Conservatism must be history.

Empathy

1: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it

2: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner ; also : the capacity for this

Sympathy

3 a: the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another b: the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity

Compassion

: sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.

Bush claimed to be compassionate and was calling for compassion, but that kind of went during the first term and was definitely gone when Katrina hit.

Jesus couldn't get a yes vote as a judge from the GOP. It is no wonder the GOP wants to make sure sinners are punished here because Jesus and God are just to empathetic, sympathetic and compassionate for today.

I believe the GOP is looking for a hardhearted, stonyhearted, unfeeling guy or gal to match the other justices Reagan and the Bushes put on the court. The guys who put there personal religious beliefs and Bible interpretation before the Constitution. We want hanging judges, one look and get that rope. We want the Bush Justice Dept where you can be as cruel as the worst of them as long as you think women are too stupid to make their own choices and homosexuals are not equal citizens. Judges who can make torture look alright.

While looking up the terms on Websters on-line I found that today's Word of the Day is just for me; embonpoint: plumpness of person: stoutness.

Karen Webb
Moore, Ok

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Subject: Sen. Specter 2001 Rule to Prevent Party Switching

Sen. Specter 2001 Rule to Prevent Party Switching

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v6zwg8SAsY&feature=channel Article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v6zwg8SAsY&feature=channel

YouTube: Sen. Specter 2001 Rule to Prevent Party Switching Description: Back in 2001 when Sen Jeffords switched to the Dems, Specter wanted a rule put in to prevent Senators from being able to switch parties.

How Ironic - And Hypocritical.

Tom Wieliczka

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Subject: Clifford's music question

Hi, Buzz!!

Clifford Hritz wonders what "satanic" music Fox was playing the other night to accompany a piece on President Obama. I didn't see the report, but I have a couple of possibilities: If it was an orchestra piece, it's likely to have been "Night on Bald Mountain" (Mussorgsky, I think). If it was an organ piece, probably Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor." That's the same piece that Keith Olbermann plays during his "Worst Persons" segment.

Jane Hawes
Edmond, OK (red-state Democrat)

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Subject: "Give me a war without blood and gore, and I'll be the first to go."

If Obama was a real man he would let the war resisters in Canada and wherever come home with a promise of no jail time. We were lied into an immoral, illegal war and these resisters are actually the true heroes. Give them a dishonorable discharge and drop all charges. You know why this past regime had to torture? They needed confessions to back up their stories no matter what it took. They will never be brought to justice because they have the power to change the world as we know it at anytime. They have always been masters of mass distraction, color code alerts, anthrax scares, new bin Laden warnigs. They won't go down without taking the world with them.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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