BuzzFlash

19/02/2025

The Late, Great BuzzFlash ceased publication as of March 24, 2023.

07/11/2024

Vice President Kamala Harris had 107 days to unite the Democratic Party and launch her campaign for president. She made history as the first Black and South Asian woman to secure a major political party’s nomination. And her groundbreaking campaign was carried by Black women and other women of col...

30/10/2024

Calling Michelle "Nasty"Was a Big Mistake for Trump

During his remarks the day after the vile slurs at what was supposed to be Trump’s capstone Madison Square Garden Event — but may have been his electoral graveyard — Trump did not apologize for remarks that Puerto Rico was only a “floating island of...

28/10/2024

Adding Insult to the “Injury of Colonialism”, Trump Suggested Selling Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria, Former Advisor Says
July 2020

According to a New York Times interview with Elaine Duke, who served as Homeland Security Secretary from 2017 to 2018 and worked in President Donald Trump's cabinet when Hurricane Maria severely damaged the island of Puerto Rico, the president suggested selling the territory when it became clear the federal government would have to assist with a major recovery effort.

Duke said in her interview, published Saturday, the president suggested "divesting" or selling Puerto Rico when it was struggling to recover from the storm.

"The president's initial ideas were more as a businessman, you know," Duke told the Times. "Can we outsource the electricity? Can we sell the island? You know, or divest of that asset?"

Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.), who was born in Puerto Rico, took to social media to condemn the president's suggestion.

"I assure you Puerto Rico is not for sale!" Velazquez tweeted.

BuzzFlash

10/07/2024

Mark Twain got it right:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Mark Twain quotes: 1. “I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” 2. “Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.” 3. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

02/07/2024

With all the clamoring that Biden should drop out, which he won't unless his poll numbers dip from low to lowest in his favorability rating, it's also time for papers around the nation to call for Trump to withdraw.

For years, US newspapers have treated Trump with deference, as if he were actually qualified to be president. Trump has violated so many norms that he has normalized the rants of a madmand. He also has openly called for harsh violence against his "enemies in the deep state" in a second term.

Yesterday, his puppets on SCOTUS gave him the right that Trump has voiced at least twice to kill political opponents by granting him immunity for acts he commits while president. And that doesn't include his statement that the former head of the Joints of Staff General Millie should be executed. The SCOTUS decision was like allowing a rabid pack of dogs attack a Black Lives Matter protest.
Not to mention that Trump is the one who is clealry deranged. Just recall his recent riff about sharks and an electric boat. Well here it goes. If you already have read it, read it again to fully savor the unhinged lunacy of it:

“We can’t get the boat to float. The battery is so heavy. So then I start talking about asking questions. You know, I have an, I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for many years, long, I think the longest tenure ever. Very smart, had three different degrees and, you know, so I have an aptitude for things. You know, there is such a thing as an aptitude.“I said, ‘Well, what would happen if this boat is so heavy and started to sink and you’re on the top of the boat. Do you get electrocuted or not?’ In other words, the boat is going down and you’re on the top, will the electric currents flow through the water and wipe you out?“And let’s say there’s a shark about 10 yards over there. Would I have to immediately abandon, or could I ride the electric down? And he said, ‘Sir, nobody’s ever asked us that question. But sir, I don’t know.’ I said, ‘Well, I want to know, because I guarantee you one thing, I don’t care what happens. I’m staying with the electric, I’m not getting over with it.’“So I tell that story. And the fake news they go, ‘he told this crazy story with electric.’ It’s actually not crazy. It’s sort of a smart story, right? Sort of like, you know, it’s like the snake, it’s a smart when you, you figure what you’re leaving in, right? You’re bringing it in the, you know, the snake, right? The snake and the snake. I tell that and they do the same thing.”

Oh, damn it, let Trump take his chances with the shark!

I still find it dismaying that the well-paid corporate press treated Trump as if he were sane during his "news conferences" on Covid. Swallow Clorox bleach, stick a flourescent tube down your throat, swallow some Hydroxychloroquine. And the press treated him as if this were credible.

It's extremely rare for Trump to utter any words that do not represent his mental derangement.

No, Trump won't drop out, and the RNC isn't about to push him. The cult leader has nearly total control over the Republican party, which has become the party of craven zealots.

However, the media of America can make amends by calling for him to drop out. It is the right thin to do and provide moral clarity that needs to be shed upon a second Trump term that will shatter our democracy.

With a scathing front-page editorial, the Trump-friendly tabloid joined another of Rupert Murdoch’s papers, The Wall Street Journal, in attacking the president’s attempts to undo the election result.

29/06/2024

After Tuesday's mendacious spectacle of Trump piling lie on lie, it is clear that Trump is giving used car salesmen (or women) a bad name.

After all, there are some honest used car salesmen. But Trump is a mendacious Mussolini. No used car salesman goes full-blown violent on his customers.

Deploying a technique call the Gish gallop, "a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments."

To those who complain that the CNN moderators should have fact-checked Trump in real time, it would have meant that they probably couldn't get past Trump's first response before the debate would be over.

"To counter a Gish gallop, the best course of action is usually to call out the Gish gallop explicitly, and then respond using a thematic or grouped-point rebuttal, rather than addressing each opposing argument individually, unless refuting a few key points can refute the overall line of argumentation."

Biden, taking a stroll through La La Land, didn't have the wherewithal to employ this strategy and the rest of going to live in infamous history.

Trump tromped on facts, like an elephant in heat. Meanwhile, Biden stumbled trying to end the same sentences he entered.

Is it time to get your passport ready for moving to Canada. Now is the time to make you sure yours is not going to expire soon.
So, whatever is your take on the squalor of being Donald J. Trump, please don't defame used car salesmen by calling him one.

Mark Karlin

28/06/2024

If Jill Biden really wants to save her husband from losing to Trump and thus making America into a hellscape, she needs to persuade him that to save America he must yield to a younger candidate.

His performance lat the first debate was heartbreaking and evokes empathy. He is right about democracy and the rule of the law.

That is why he must withdraw his name from the nomination. He had a great first term, but after last night he is probably not electable. And if he is running to protect democracy, he should step aside and let one of the Democratic rising stars take on the execrable orange man.

Key to persuading him that it's not all about him, that if stays in Trump is likely to win, is to point our that democracy will not be saved if he is the Democratic candidate in 2024.

I like everyone reading this, will vote for him no matter what, but my vote and those of the people who read BuzzFlash Nation, are not the votes he needs to win.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/politics/biden-conversation-gaza-conflict-concerns/index.html
Trump pulled it together to engage in blustery, lying, bombastic bragging that was mostly swirling lies, but his energy was a dangerous contrast the frail, bewildered Biden. I think we are way beyond the "it was just a bad night" excuse.

It is hubris for him to run again. He is leaving our democracy in peril by likely losing to Trump, who appeared energetic and commanding

Many political consultants advise viewers, to evaluate the two candidates, to turn off the sound for a while during a debate to evaluate the them. With Biden looking weak and often losing his train of thought, Trump stared defianty into the camera. Visually, Trump won by light years.

As a columnist for the Boston Globe wrote this morning:

"There is no shame in getting old. Age comes for everyone fortunate enough to achieve it, often in different ways.
And it’s been said countless times since the merciful end of last night’s debate that Biden is a good man, even a good president, who deserves credit for navigating this country through a uniquely tumultuous time with a uniquely old-world sense of empathy."

Dr. Jill Biden, if you care about your husband's admirable legacy, persuade him to leave his pursuit of a second term with dignity.
A loss to Trump would turn his sterling record into infamy and leave America in grave peril under Trump.

When President Joe Biden met with a group of Muslim community leaders this week, he recounted a recent conversation he had with first lady Jill Biden relating to the conflict in Gaza.

22/06/2024

Once again, Claribel Clarence Thomas, the man of unlimited corruption, put the residents of America at personal risk for their lives, in this case women.
It's almost inconcievable to imagine anyone who cares about protecting our society could muster up a grotesque defense of allowing domestic violence abusers under restraining orders, and with a past history of criminal behavoie, to keep their guns.
As the sole dissenter in the just-decided case by SCOTUS, Clarabel claimed that there was an "originalist" right for domestic abusers to keep packing heat, even though many women are killed by their abusers. The notion is so dangerous that even Sam "upside down
But Clarabel Thomas marches to the beat of a different and life-threatening drummer. Chanelling the original originalist, Antonin Scalia (who stole the 2000 election from Al Gore). Thomas arrogantly claims that he can read the minds of the foundiing fathers.
That's quite haughty for a guy who dirty-talked Anita Hill about a publc hair on the metallic top of a can of soda.
Common Dream lacerated Thomas in an acidic commentary on his lone dissenting vote in the Rahimi case:\
Critics across the political spectrum called Thomas' lone dissent in the case "insane" and blasted the right-wing justice as "a "corrupt lunatic," and a "contemptible POS" who "continues to undermine the safety of women and disgrace the court."
"C.M. [the abused woman] attempted to leave, but Rahimi grabbed her by the wrist, dragged her back to his car, and shoved her in, causing her to strike her head against the dashboard," Roberts wrote. "When he realized that a bystander was watching the altercation, Rahimi paused to retrieve a gun from under the passenger seat. C. M. took advantage of the opportunity to escape. Rahimi fired as she fled, although it is unclear whether he was aiming at C. M. or the witness."
How perfidious can one married to an election-denialist wife be?
The answer is an unbounded ignorance that borders on the criminality.

Join Retroland as we take a fond look back at the beloved clown from The Howdy Doody Show, Clarabell.

17/06/2024

Mark Karlin

Can America survive a return-four years of an ignorant, megalomanic, narcissistic, pathological Donald Trump

If ever there was someone who needed a mental health intervention, it's Donald J. Trump. Lord knows, he needs it immediately. That he is in severe cognitive decline might merit compassion, if he were not a sinister threat to the Republic.

Paul Krugman, who was one of BuzzFlash's first interviewees in the early '2000s says the warning signs have been their for years, but the mainstream press is covering the 2024 presidential contest like a horse race, instead of saying the strark truthout outloud: Trump needs comprehensive psychiatice help. He gives a bad name to people who are mentally ill.

The New Republic recently interviewed Krugman and provided this preface:

"This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s new book comes out, and it contains a disturbing chapter about Donald Trump’s ignorance, explosive rage, and megalomania during the coronavirus pandemic. We think this should be covered as a loud, clanging alarm bell about the dangers of a second Trump term. So we talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has written a series of recent columns on voter amnesia about Trump’s 2020 performance, about the horrors unleashed on the country by his unfitness for the presidency—and why recent events suggest he’s gotten much, much worse."

Good grief, what can you expect from a man who advised people to use Chlorox or flourescent tubes to kill COVID? It was stomach-churning to watch the White House press corps, the elite of reporters cover those COVID "press briefing" science-fiction, cringeworthy travesties. Except the creme de la creme should have boycotted them entirely instead of giving credence to Trump's Dr. Caligari.

The New York Times executive editor thinks it a violation of "neutral" media coverage to say that Trump's next home shouldn't be the White House but rather a padded loony bin.

But here we are.

When the GOP frontrunner was asked Tuesday whether he thought Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered, he jumped into the hottest new conspiracy theory feet first—because of course he did.

15/06/2024

"Justice Sotomayor rips Justice Thomas’s bump stocks ruling in scathing dissent read from bench"

The biggest theat to reducing gun violence in America is the 6-3 right-wing majority. Let's call them the gun-loving Supremes, and I don't mean Diana Ross.

As the Hill wrote,

Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a fiery dissent harshly denounced a Supreme Court ruling Friday that rejected a ban on bump stocks, saying it “eviscerates” the congressional regulation of machine guns.

“Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands,” Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “To do so, it casts aside Congress’s definition of ‘machinegun’ and seizes upon one that is inconsistent with the ordinary meaning of the statutory text and unsupported by context or purpose.”

Of course, the "Orginalist" fanatics on the Supreme Court won't admit that there were no bump stocks around when the 2nd Amendment was written. In fact, there no modern arsenal of guns at all way back then. Clarible Thomas and Insurrectionist Flag Man Alito just use "Originalism" as a cover story to restore a gun-toting male patiarchy.

The other four recidivist right-wing judges are glad to go along for the ride in the Model-T Ford that Thomas and Alito are driving, driving America right into a fusillade of gun madness.

The gangbaner 6 will be ruling shortly in the Rahimi case whether a convicted domestic violence offender should be denied a right to carry a gun.

Excuse me, but women who have experienced violent abuse should be scared to death, which is how they might end up, if the Supreme Six uphold the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that domestic violence abusers should not be denied the right to own guns because it violates the Second Amendment.

If you don't know about rulings of SCOTUS in the past two decades, that have continued to loosen and strike down laws that regulate concealed carry and the possession of handguns. Just look up the McDonald, Heller and Bruen decisions on Wikipedia.

With Trump set to incite mob violence whether he wins or loses the 2024 election, hold on to your holsters because the ethical-violating SCOTUS majority are making the US a killing field of gun violence.

The “Good Guy With a Gun” Myth routinely costs lives Posted by Pardeep Kaleka | Sep 23, 2017 | All across the United States, school boards are having discussions and preparing teachers to be armed with a handgun at schools. More than a thousand educators from 12 states have already taken part in...

13/06/2024

Mark Karlin

The gross hypocisy of the gun lobby and the Republicans.

Trump has made it a compulsory talking point for Republicans to trash the US judicial system, unless it is a Biden who is being convicted, in this case Hunter Biden.

According to the inimitable Jeff Tiedrich the Republicans have gone Trumpazoid bonkers. Wait they have been bonkers for years:

“Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict is nothing more than the Left’s attempt to create the illusion of equal justice. Don’t fall for it.

Hello, what? You rancid sh*tnozzles demanded that this trial take place — and now you’re saying the whole thing is a leftist plot?"

According to the AP, "Hunter Biden ’s was convicted with two counts of making false statements, first for checking a box falsely saying he was not addicted to drugs and second for giving it to the shop for their federally required records. A third count alleges he possessed the gun for about 11 days despite knowing he was a drug user."

But the GOP thinks it was a set-up by President Biden and Merrick Garland to balance Hunter's conviction with Trump's. Welcome to Alex Jones's conspiracy nation.

Holy Marjorie Taylor' Greene's trans body!

The Hill added, "“If the argument was that there’s two tiers of justice, then the Biden case — meaning Hunter Biden’s case — would never have been gone to trial,” said Michael Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor. “The plea deal would have went through, the case would have been swallowed up in some motion practice or some technicality. But because it went to trial and because ultimately he was found guilty, the argument that there’s two tiers of justice kind of falls by the wayside."

In short, Trump is as guilty as dog p**p on the bottom of your new pair of Nikes. That's how our justice system works,

Then, add the gross hypocrisy of the gun guys. They never met a gun regulation that they didn't try to have repealed. So Biden is convicted for not checking the box on what is know as the ATF Form 4473 indicating that he used drugs. The form has to be filled out when buying a gun from a gun dealer. (The Biden administration is trying to have that also apply to private gun sellers, but the gun guys are suing to deep six that requirement. A federal judge appointed by Trump sided with the gun guys yesterday.)

Holy G***k 17!

So all the rabid gun organizations defend gun owners from laws like the one Biden was convicted of breaking,

According to Politico:

The Fi****ms Policy Coalition reiterated an offer to aid Hunter Biden in his challenge.

“Countless lives are destroyed every year under the federal government’s unconstitutional and immoral regulations. We proudly work to eliminate these laws and create a free world. Just as we have in many other cases, we stand ready to assist Mr. Biden in his challenge of federal gun laws,” said FPC President Brandon Combs.

Holy Charlton Heston!

What's a gun lover to do? Rejoice in the conviction of a Biden, or try to reverse the use of Form 4473 as an infringement on gun owner rights?

What a dilemma. I'm so confused I'm going to go to my favorite shooting gallery to let off some steam.

Many are surprised to learn that the NRA of generations past worked with the federal government to limit the traffic in guns, for example where ex-convicts or mental patients were involved.