Year: 2006

Pensito Review Salutes the Year’s Most Worthless Everything with The Pennys: Inaugural Edition

Pensito Editors

Are you fed up with life’s rich pageant of people, events and trends completely lacking in value or values? Well, we here at Pensito Review are too, which is why we created the Penny Awards, taking the “pen” from “Pensito” and the theme from the lowest valued coin of the realm, the one-cent piece, which fully 80 percent of people polled said they would not bend over to pick up off the street.

The Penny Awards, or “Pennys,” allow us to put in our two cent’s worth of commentary on the penny ante antics of people in the news, organizations that promote worthless agendas and anything else we decry as having no redeeming — or indeed any — value at all.

O.K., except for entertainment value, which we hope you will find in lavish quantities, as we hand out the 2006 Penny Awards to the deservingly worthless.

And, if you have your own ideas about who deserves a Penny, send it in, via a comment. Your opinion is not worthless to us. No, we’d give you two pennies, at least, for your thoughts.

Of course, then we’d have your address ….

[…]

Before Execution, Saddam Was Handed One of His Own Red Cards of Death

Jon Ponder

Like all good fascist states, Saddam’s regime had its paperwork. The most dreaded document produced by Ba’athist bureaucracy was the “red card” — a death decree signed by a judge and printed on red paper. Guess what Saddam got a few hours before he was hanged yesterday:

Iraqi officials say as Hussein stood on the gallows he was handed a red card; the official order for his death, signed by the chief judge. The card was symbolic, as it was a staple of the many state-sponsored executions under the Hussein regime in Iraq.

Aside from giving him a taste of his own medicine, the red card was also meant as a symbol that it was the the Iraqi government, not the Americans, who tried and executed Saddam Hussein, thus making it less likely Saddam’s dead-enders will elevate him to martyrdom.

Even though the Saddam loyalists are probably smart enough to see through the “red car” ploy, they are not a particularly potent force in the insurgent wars today. Saddam probably lost a lot of his followers, and any chance of restoring his tyranny, when the Americans and British released photos showing him in very bad straits after his capture. First there was video of a doctor checking Saddam’s mangy beard for lice, followed by glamour stills of a beardless Saddam in his tighty-whiteys.

It’s hard to regain the adulation and fear of your subjects after they’ve seen you in your BVDs.

Poll: Bush Is ‘Biggest Villain’ of 2006

Jon Ponder

This is really bad:

A new poll from The Associated Press and AOL News has discovered that Americans are torn in terms of their perception of President George W. Bush and his performance in 2006. When asked to name the past year’s biggest villain, Bush was far and away the #1 choice, commanding 25 percent of the vote, distantly trailed by Osama Bin Laden (8 percent), Saddam Hussein (6 percent), President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran (5 percent), North Korean leader Kim Jong II (2 percent) and Donald Rumsfeld (2 percent). Satan only took in 1 percent of the vote, as did Hugo Chavez, Tom Cruise, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Rosie O’Donnell, among others.

On the flipside, Bush also claimed the top spot when Americans were asked to name the year’s biggest hero, but with only a trifling 13 percent of the vote. The troops in Iraq came in second (6 percent), followed by Jesus Christ (3 percent), Barack Obama (3 percent), Oprah Winfrey (3 percent), and rock star/philanthropist Bono (2 percent). Other “do-gooders” of 2006, receiving 1 percent each, included luminaries, business leaders and politicos such as Warren Buffett, George Clooney, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Billy Graham, Angelina Jolie, Colin Powell, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Condoleeza Rice.

Ironically, the number of Americans who are delusional is also 13 percent.

Um, That Global Warming Stuff? It’s Happening

Trish

What were you doing on Aug. 13, 2005? If you were a Canadian ice shelf, you were melting and breaking free. Yikes.

“What surprised us was how quickly it happened,” Copland said. “It’s pretty alarming.”

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic, scientists said. The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 497 miles south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada’s remote north. Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and could not believe what he saw.

“This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are loosing [sic] remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead,” Vincent said Thursday…

Laurie Weir, who monitors ice conditions for the Canadian Ice Service, was poring over satellite images in 2005 when she noticed that the shelf had split and separated.

Weir notified Luke Copland, head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa, who initiated an effort to find out what happened.

Using U.S. and Canadian satellite images, as well as data from seismic monitors, Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the early afternoon of Aug. 13, 2005.

“What surprised us was how quickly it happened,” Copland said. “It’s pretty alarming. Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly, but the big surprise is that for one they are going, but secondly that when they do go, they just go suddenly, it’s all at once, in a span of an hour.”

Iraqi Suicides on Rise Due to Stress of Violence

Buck Banks

Seeking relief: Medical experts in Iraq have noted a sharp rise in suicides in Iraq — most blamed on the psychological stress caused by unrelenting violence. The report was released today by IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service.

“We see more cases of suicide each month and all evidence shows that the main reason for the suicides has been the stress and pressure caused by the continuing violence,” said Dr. Muhammad Hamza, a specialist in suicide medical investigation at the Ministry of Health.

The Iraq Ministry of Health said that about 20 people have been committing suicide each month since January; 30 others attempted suicide but were saved.

Hamza said that he found that 70 percent of suicide victims chose to poison themselves using rat and cockroach poison. Others either shot or hanged themselves.

“Some of them leave letters to their parents and the most common excuse given for their act is that they can no longer bear the violence,” Hamza said.

“This week I had two cases of suicide. One person committed suicide because of the daily threats to his life which he had been receiving, and the other one because her husband had been killed and she became so desperate that she killed herself too,” Hamza added.

Based on statistics from the Baghdad mortuary and hospitals in five regions, the Ministry of Health said that about 20 people have been committing suicide each month since January. Thirty others attempted suicide but were saved.

“The numbers are high when compared to those during Saddam Hussein’s regime when we used to have one or two suicide cases a month,” said Ahmed Fatah, a member of the suicide investigation department at the Ministry of Health.
[…]

Who Let Bush Near the Emailer Thingie?

Trish

Al Kamen, in his “In the Loop” Washington Post blog, shares an announcement that could have been written by the president himself.

President Bush’s pre-Christmas visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center caused some unexpected problems, judging from an e-mail alert we received. There were the usual traffic rerouting and parking restrictions, from 8 p.m. on Dec. 21 until 2 p.m. the next day.

The e-mail lists 12 such changes likely to frustrate drivers and includes an apology:

“Traffic will be blocked temporarily around the campus and re-routed if necessary. Sorry for the incontinence during this mission.”

We’re sorry, too.

Pres. Ford Dies at 93

Jon Ponder

Pres. Gerald Ford died yesterday in the Rancho Mirage section of Palm Springs, California. Ford will be remembered as a caretaker president who quickly ushered the country away from its focus on Republican malfeasance under the leadership of Pres. Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandals.

Ford was the first of only two presidents who came to office by appointment. In 1974, he was the popular House Minority Leader when Nixon nominated him as vice president after Vice Pres. Spiro Agnew stepped down to face tax fraud charges. Ford’s nomination easily won approval in Congress.

The second president to be appointed was, of course, George W. Bush, who was selected by the Supreme Court in 2000.

In his brief term of office (August 1974 to January 1977), Ford was the target of two assassination attempts, both in Sept. 1975:

On the morning of Sept. 5, a young woman named Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Charles Manson family who had not been involved in Manson-related murders, aimed a borrowed .45-caliber pistol at Ford as he crossed a park near the state Capitol in Sacramento. The gun misfired as a Secret Service agent grabbed her arm.

Less than three weeks later, on Sept. 22, Sara Jane Moore, later diagnosed as psychologically disturbed, fired a shot at Ford from across the street as he emerged from the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. A retired Marine who saw Moore raise the gun struck her arm and deflected the shot. Again, Ford was not injured.

Aside from pardoning Richard Nixon for Watergate-related crimes, which included domestic spying, Gerald Ford also presided over America’s de facto surrender and withdrawal from the Vietnam War.

Florida District 13: Oooh-oh, That Smell!

Trish

Two things to take from this post: 1) Bush, et al campaigned way too hard for this loser to lose, and 2) Oh no, you did-int say the voters can’t see how the votes are recorded!

I didn’t think I would still be this appalled, all these weeks later, about the race in which Republican multimillionaire car dealer Vern Buchanan stole the U.S. House Florida District 13 seat. But with the Jetsonesquely named iVotronics’ manufacturer claiming that we, the voting public, have no right to know how (or if) their machines work, I’m outraged all over again.

Of all the races where there could have been problems with electronic voting machines, isn’t it funny that the one where the Bush Administration lobbied most heavily is the one that looks the most tampered with?

By now, everyone knows the story: Buchanan, according to his own internal polling, was behind Democrat Christine Jennings by three to six points going into the election. Jennings voters, upon exiting the booths, immediately reported difficulties with the touch-screen interface in that one race.

Not in dispute is how many voters were affected — about 18,000. The reason why 18,000 voters drove all the way down to the polling place, signed up for a ballot, cast a vote in every other race on that ballot, and then just stopped, is less clear.

Depending on who you listen to, 18,000 random folks lost interest and whiffed off just as they were about to choose between Buchanan and Jennings. Another theory holds that 18,000 people participated in a mass, extemporaneous protest of negative ads which somehow failed to stop them from voting in the governor’s race. That was the one where Republican Charlie Crist ran a month-long ad blitz with an empty chair portraying his opponent.

As we reported just before the election, Buchanan had some heavyweight support. Both Pres. and Mrs. Bush appeared on his behalf, with Laura making multiple visits. America’s mayor, Rudy himself, stumped for Buchanan, and the Vice President even left the secret bunker to make rare, daylight appearances. No doubt his garlic necklace kept him safe.

Yet, of all the races where there could have been problems with electronic voting machines, isn’t it a funny coincidence that the one where the Bush Administration lobbied most heavily is the one that looks the most tampered with?

And with ES&S, the machine’s maker, refusing to divulge how its machines work, things are getting fishier and fishier. Can you imagine the makers of optical scanning machines refusing to tell anyone how it scans ballots? Excuse me? When did Americans make a deal to be kept in the dark about the accuracy of vote counting? Was I out of the room?

It’s time for us all to wake up and smell the tuna — and this one’s been decomposing since Nov. 7.