BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White 

My garden started a little late this year, but my five varieties of heirloom tomato plants (plus a tomatillo) are really looking promising already. I can almost taste the fresh burst of flavor that's been missing from my diet for months on end. Every sorry winter salad with a pink tomato slice laying limply on top was another reminder of how important farmers markets and my own garden would be to my taste buds this summer.

So, my ears perked up when I heard talk of efforts to "restore the supermarket tomato to something that tastes more like a tomato than a piece of cardboard" coming from my radio this morning. Of course I should have known something was amiss when the next sentence noted that the effort would require "a combination of psychology and genetics."

The National Public Radio report consisted of a visit to the University of Florida at Gainesville to visit a scientist working to boost the concentration of chemicals called "volatiles" in tomatoes without reducing the yield. See, factory farmed tomato plants are selected for their huge yield and the fruit's tough exterior, so that farmers can get as many un-squished tomatoes to the supermarket as quickly as possible. But that also means that wonderful tomato taste gets diluted when one plant has to share all its nutrients and sugars with so many fruits.

BUZZFLASH DISCUSSION

Though the president went to the Gulf this morning to show his deep concern about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the communities it's affecting, the media was unimpressed. For example, MSNBC whines that President Obama "stops short of feeling America's pain." Yet as our very own Barbara points out in her Daily BuzzFlash Minute this morning:

Rather than a cool head and an informed plan, they want a president who screams "fire" in a movie theater... Give me a man who can maintain a calm approach that actually solves the problem any day over a jerk-off spouting platitudes with a bull-horn! 

Still, having a president rage against the ineptitude and secrecy of Big Oil could be mighty cathartic right about now. But at a time when political discourse seems to have devolved into who can scream the loudest, is it indeed best that we have a calm voice at the helm? What do you think?

BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

Is Obama's 'cool' too cold for ravaged Gulf?

Mainstream corporate media never ceases to amaze me. Rather than a cool head and an informed plan, they want a president who screams "fire" in a movie theater! Having participated in many Code Blue situations, (resuscitations) I can attest that running around screaming and yelling will not, I repeat, will not bring a patient back from the dead! Neither will pseudo-passion plug the hole in a deep water oil spill!  Give me a man who can maintain a calm approach that actually solves the problem any day over a jerk-off spouting platitudes with a bull-horn! It's both sad and amusing that the bobble-head pundits, the Petes and repeats, whose only job is to instigate scandal, believe themselves experts on any given situation confronting an American president!

STEVE JONAS FOR BUZZFLASH

              In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited one of the first post-Abolitionism, post Civil War, post-Reconstruction African-Americans, Booker T. Washington, to visit him in the White House. To southern whites this was going too far. One editor wrote: "With our long-matured views on the subject of social intercourse between blacks and whites, the least we can say now is that we deplore the President's taste, and we distrust his wisdom."  By the bye, Mr. Washington, born a slave, had a white father. 

Vaughn Ward

Welcome back to GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

You may think it unfair or counterproductive to award GOP Hypocrite of the Week to a candidate who just lost his bid for the GOP nomination to the U.S. House. However, as a Sarah Palin tea-cruit and GOP favorite, we're pretty sure that Vaughn Ward isn't going away anytime soon. And we certainly wouldn't want his come-back to occur without this entertaining gem.

Yes, in case you hadn't seen it, embedded in this award is the video mash-up of Vaughn stealing a speech nearly word-for-word from then-Senator, now bane-of-the-tea-party's-existence, Barack Obama. 

Now, this apparently isn't the first time Ward has been accused of plagiarizing in this campaign. But as Gawker asked, "if you're a Palin-endorsed Republican, is there anyone worse to plagiarize than President Obama? From his famous 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, the one that all but launched his career?"

Hmm. Maybe Karl Marx or Keith Olbermann..?

Ward has railed against President Obama and his policies. But it turns out that all that hope-y change-y stuff kinda worked out for him and all, so why not try and steal it? We wouldn't expect anything less from the latest Republican to be labeled a part of the Grand Old Hypocrites Party.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White 

One of the most popular rallying cries of Republicans and tea partiers alike this election year is that Democrats are not listening to the will of the American people. They can point to polls on many hot-button issues, from immigration to the environment to trying terrorism suspects and say that the "majority of Americans" disagree.

Well, count me as one American who disagrees with that entire premise. On this particular issue, I'm with former Darth Vader Dick Cheney's sentiment that public officials shouldn't "be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."

Let's start with immigration. Despite the massive public outcry over the Arizona immigration bill, all we hear about in the media is about how the majority of Americans support it. Well, that is, 51 percent of the 1,079 people who were asked about it in this one poll said that they backed the new law. Yet when asked in that same poll what they think should be done with illegal immigrants found in this country, a whopping 64 percent of respondents said that they should be allowed to stay here under some kind of work and/or citizenship program. 

The Democrats response to this in an election year? Send $500 million and 1,200 National Guard troops to the border in the hopes that such an action will placate these scared, confused Americans and the obstructionist Republicans who are holding the breaks on real immigration reform.

BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

Critical Perspective:

BP is not tackling this mess alone. The entire drilling industry is involved...

On having Obama "do more," WTF is he supposed to do?

Actually he's been involved, contrary to what the "press" would have you believe. This is a story that gives insight to where mainstream, corporate media is in this ongoing Gulf disaster. As I listen to the veiled and not so veiled remarks made regarding President Obama and his participation in the oil spill disaster,  I can see the media is trying their best to blame the president in order to weaken his reputation. The psychology is indeed abhorrent!

MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

John Stossel

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

As our own Jeffrey Joseph points out, FOX News has really rallied the troops around the Kentucky GOP's nominee for U.S. Senate, Rand Paul. In an effort to keep the tea party-supported candidate from looking too outside the mainstream after his comments disparaging parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, conservative "heavyweights" such as Sarah Palin and Dick Armey took to the airwaves blaming liberals for blowing the remarks out of proportion.

But apparently that wasn't enough. Enter John Stossel. The libertarian commentator for FOX Business contended that Paul hadn't gone far enough in his remarks. He said he agreed with Paul that government shouldn't be allowed to discriminate, but it's totally cool if private businesses want to do so:

"I would go further than he was willing to go, as he just issued the statement, and say it's time now to repeal that part of the law," Stossel told FOX anchor Megyn Kelly. "Because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won't ever go to a place that's racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."

While Stossel presents himself as the brave defender of the right to free speech, he's clearly making an error in his logic. The Civil Rights Act never stopped anyone from being racist. It merely stopped people from restricting the movements and legal actions of other people based on their race.

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

When calculating the cost of offshore drilling on our nation's coastline, its easy to point to the millions in clean-up costs and economic damages to affected communities racked up in the explosion of a BP-run oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. 

BP has assured us all that it will pay "all legitimate claims" regardless of whether it hits the $75 million cap set by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. BP's latest estimate of the clean-up costs more than a week ago was a whopping $625 million, and they haven't even fully stopped the leak yet. Experts are already warning the total could top $2 billion.

Before we get too weepy about BP's financial future, however, let's keep in mind that Big Oil has been screwing the American taxpayer out of much needed funds for decades. And if only one good thing comes of this oil spill, it may be cuts in the subsidies that many agree allow for cheap, but increasingly dangerous oil.

BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZFLASH MINUTE

Sarah Palin Gives Disastrous Speech At Commercial Real Estate Conference, Calls Obama An "Opium" Addict

Sarah Palin is so full of herself, she believes all she has to do is show up and say something, anything derogatory about President Obama, wink and she's "gotcha"! Time now to pay up, because that's what Palin is all about: just another it's-the-money-stupid Repuglican!