Reader Commentary

STEVE JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

So why do the Republicans want the Presidency? They seem to be doing so well without it. They have the majority in the House of Representatives. Through the use of the never-ending use of the filibuster (by just saying “we filibuster,” courtesy of Harry Reid not actually having to do it) they control the legislative process in the Senate. They have a lock on the majority of the Supreme Court. ...

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READER COMMENTARY FOR BUZZFLASH

U.S. Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack talks about the benefits of agricultural biotechnology:

"We probably have not done a very good job of explaining to people the benefits of GMOs, not just simply the fact that they can produce more crops, but that they can do so with less reliance on natural resources, less damage to natural resources and less reliance on chemicals and pesticides."

View the video clip here:  http://video.forbes.com/fvn/thought-leaders/usda-secretary-on-gmos?partner=yahootix

He ends his little "GMOs are *good* for you!" by saying, "It's all about choice."

As in, That doesn't apply, of course, to labeling food products as containing GMOs.  No, no, that might cause people to not buy them.  That would hurt certain agroexperimenting businesses, dontcha know.  When I said 'choice', I didn't necessarily mean consumers.

Oh, okay.  Got it.  Thanks, Tom. ...

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BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
by Karen Webb

In response to President Obama’s speech last week on healthcare, the only registered Democrat in the Oklahoma Congressional Delegation [Rep. Dan Boren] told FOX News:

They can break my arms. They can do whatever they want to. They'll never get my vote -- ever. They'll have to walk across my dead body if they want my vote on this issue.

Who are they? Do any of us qualify or does it take a quorum? He isn’t really a Democrat; he is just registered as one.

I just asked his secretary if he is really willing to die to prevent Oklahomans from having affordable health care. She responded with something like, "he will die before he will vote for it." ...

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BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

A reader sent this e-mail regarding Cheney's Valentine's Day appearance on ABC. BuzzFlash is reposting it unedited, as we will do from time to time:

BuzzFlash,

when dick cheney is out there saying obama is putting our country at risk and doesn't know what he is doing....................
why in gods name don't the democrats point out not one american has died in this country at the hands of a terrorist!
THREE THOUSAND AMERICANS DIED UNDER DICK'S WATCH!
WHAT AN EVIL BASTARD HE IS!

L.V.M.

...

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BuzzFlash Guest Commentary

By Dee Evans

So, Sarah Palin using crib notes in the palm of her hand during a Question and Answer segment on live television is no big deal.  When did that happen???
 
I was completely astonished to hear Chuck Todd of MSNBC tell Andrea Mitchell this morning, “well, we’ve all used notes.”  Well Chuck, I have news for you. ...

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BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTIONS

May 6, 2009

From time to time we post samples of the many kind and generous e-mails and letters that we receive from the BuzzFlash community  -- and we are a community!

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A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by John F. Williford

On an episode of her sitcom some years ago, Roseanne said, "I don't want you kids watching sex and violence. So just pick one."
 
There is such a plethora of alleged criminality in the G.W. Bush Administration that the mind boggles. The most repeated and obvious charge is responsibility for torture, both in U.S.-controlled prisons and in sites where captives were sent in extraordinary rendition. The images of indignities at Abu Ghraib briefly stirred the American public's interest, partly on salacious grounds.
 
Such outcomes from violations of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 are capital offenses under the War Crimes Act of 1996 (passed by a Republican Congress).
 
The GWB lawyered up on this one by creating an entirely fictitious category they called "enemy combatants," which means that substantial numbers of prisoners held without charge are neither prisoners of war (thus not protected by the Geneva Conventions) nor criminals, which would allow due process under U.S. law. Unraveling this legal rats nest will be a bit like trying to untie the gordian knot. (This is not to say it doesn't need to be done).
  ...

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A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by David Calamoneri

After reports of 651,000 more jobs being lost in February, the national unemployment rate is now officially 8.1% and climbing. Unemployment is over 10% in California. Michigan's is at 11.6%. Seeing lines of suits going around the block at "job fairs" make one realize that the Obama Administration, and the 111th Congress, extension of unemployment benefits was a good idea, as was increasing funding for food stamps. A record 31.8 million are now in need of them (an increase in 700,000 last month). Helping millions of children get health care through SCHIP helps American people, who have children in need of medical attention, while they face the recent economic downturn. Spending billions in "stimulus" on health care may also help in curbing government costs. If health care was either provided for or really made affordable by the end of a year or two (a dream of President Obama's), it would not only help families, hit hard by lay offs, foreclosures, et al. to not have to choose between medicine or food, but also dramatically lower spending by state and local governments, and businesses who provide insurance. Not to mention the whole easing of the strain on the majority of the American people who are paying in some fashion for their own health care or don't have any at all (emergency room visits of the uninsured cost of all taxpayers money).
...

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A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Karen Webb

I came in just in time to hear Michael Steele, the figurehead chairman of the RNC, tell Matt Lauer that the only thing the GOP needed to do was to get the Democrats to be bi-partisan. He probably had just said that President Obama promised bi-partisanship.

This is the “You be da Man” man, as Rep. Michelle Bachmann referred to him at C-PAC who has been set-up for abuse by the GOP. The first African-American to be elected chairman of the RNC was elected so he could go up against the first African American President because a white man might be accused of being racist, no matter what he says. Then they tell this fine well-educated Black man that he has to apologize to the biggest, white, college-dropout bully on the planet for saying the bully is an “entertainer," with an “incendiary” talk radio program. There has never been a truer statement come out of the mouth of an RNC chairman. There are reasons Limbaugh is not on TV any more, but that could change.

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A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt

Albert Einstein once described insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
 
It is stunning to think with our country in a deep recession, the GOP is taking a political path to self-incineration grounded forever in tax cuts, mainly for the richest Americans. Yet, this is the path they continue to follow. However, they have become wackier and wackier now that we have seen the new leaders of the GOP, which include Joe The Plumber, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and crazier-than-a-loon Eric Cantor. These folks are their rising stars?
 
Clearly, eight years of Bush pronouncements of no new taxes, six of which were during a virtually veto-free Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, the Bush-GOP policies not only failed to create jobs and income but also in fact caused the loss of both income and jobs for average American workers in each year of Bush's tenure in the White House.
 
Yet astonishingly, after the November 4 election in which Republicans lost the presidency and seats in both houses of Congress, the Republican response to the gargantuan economic collapse that they created is to repeat over and over the bromide that tax cuts are the answer to the economic catastrophe.
 
After Bush left office, he bequeathed to Barack Obama a $1.2 trillion budget deficit, two wars, soaring unemployment, near-total collapse of our banking system, escalating bankruptcies and home foreclosures, and Wall Street Ponzi scheme swindlers who had free run of investors' money that they squandered on get-rich financial contrivances such as derivatives, junk bonds, hedge funds, and credit default swaps (even the name sounds dishonest).
...

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