BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

More reason to end this war [1] and bring our sons and daughters home! "Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth stepped into the shower on January 2nd at his base in Baghdad, turned the water on and died. The 24-year-old combat veteran was electrocuted by a short and a water pump... 12 service members the military says have been electrocuted in Iraq since 2003, most by improper grounding of electrical systems... Kellogg, Brown and Root, the largest American contractor in Iraq, had the job of maintaining the shower building and may have known about the electrical problems... PAT CAVANAUGH, FAMILY ATTORNEY: In Ryan Maseth's building, they, in fact, knew about it, reported it, were funded in excess of $3 million to fix it, and for whatever reason, did not fix it."

"Don't ask, don't tell" if you want to survive, has extended to the women serving in the United States Military [2]! "The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military... now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq and in the United States following rape. The military has characterized each death of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from ‘noncombat related injuries,' and then added ‘suicide.' Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of ‘noncombat related injuries,' with several identified as ‘suicides.'" Another alarming result of having the "bully in chief" in charge of an illegal preemptive unnecessary war! It really does "trickle down"; it really does bring out the worst in any and all those who are inclined to commit illegal acts of aggression!

So much for that being "for all the people" bull [3], McCain has been pedaling of late!!! "...now John McCain throws his hands up in the air as if there is nothing he can do when a racist ad is run by the North Carolina GOP against Barack Obama:... McCain' questionable past on issues of race his entire career... he rejected a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday (pretty much the entire 70s and 80s) to his serial flip-flops on the Confederate Flag in 2000 (which he admits he did for political reasons -- no way, not you Johnny!) to his close association with a white supremacist named Richard Quinn, who found himself hired as a political advisor by McCain in 2000 (and still is from what I can tell) after openly praising David Duke (he called him a "maverick") selling T-shirts praising the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and writing/editing for a magazine (Southern Partisan) that reminded us that slave masters just really weren't all that bad. That's The Real McCain for you!"

...the torture ordered by Bush [4] and his cabinet directly resulted in death, they must additionally be charged with several counts of murder. Fifteen U.S. soldiers have been charged with the murders of two detainees at the U.S. airbase at Bagram, Afghanistan in 2002. They were following orders issued by their Commander-in-Chief and his Principals." NOTHING, but arrest and prosecution, will ever justify the deadly results of torturing the innocent! "One of the Bagram victims was Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver. 'On the day of his death,' reported The New York Times on May 22, 2005, 'Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend... Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.'"

I defer to the esteemed Robert Reich [5] who says it better than anyone -- "Even though the summer gas tax holiday is pure hokum, it polls well, which is why HRC and John McCain are pushing it. That Barack Obama is not in favor of it despite its positive polling numbers speaks volumes about the kind of president he'll be -- and the kind of president we'd otherwise get from McCain and HRC. Haven't we had enough of politicians who reject facts in favor of short-term poll-driven politics?"

What amounts to a half tank of gas certainly does NOT reflect an understanding of "the pain that middle class and working class families are feeling [6]"! In fact, it is an INSULT to the American consumer to offer what amounts to alms for the poor, pennies a day, especially when the oil companies are walking away with billions of dollars in profits! There you have it; a vote for me will get you a few cents of relief for your effort and "a little break" over the summer! Benevolent "elitism" is really ugly!

BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

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