Year: 2005

Christmas Wars: The Tortured Elf

Jon Ponder

On CNN yesterday:

SAM SEDER, [host of Air America’s “Majority Report”]: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it’s almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

[CNN Newsreader Kyra] PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I’d like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don’t think that exists…

SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.

PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?

SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it’s actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It’s exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.

Racists Reveal Their Own Ignorance and Fears

Jon Ponder

Ignoramuses among us: Our post on the Tookie Williams story – and the threat by gang leaders to riot in Los Angeles after his execution – has drawn mentally deficient outside interlopers – we call them “Bush Voters” – to leave the most incredibly vile, racists ravings in our comments section that we have seen to date.

Pensito Review has an informal policy of not censoring comments. For one thing, censorship is what the rightwingers do.

As an ex-patriated Southerner, I know racism inside and out. Here’s the bottom line: Racist statements and, especially, racist thinking, say everything you need to know about the dark-hearted fear and ignorance of the speaker and zero – absolutely nothing – about the people who are the objects of the speech and the thinking.

On their surface, racist statements may appear to promote the superiority of the speaker over the group he or she is castigating. In reality, these statements reveal their bearer’s intellectual inferiority and, especially, his or her cowardice and fear.

As to the comments themselves, Pensito Review has an informal policy of not censoring comments made on this site. For one thing, censorship is what the rightwingers do. For another, we count on our regular readers, and the other smart people who drop by here irregularly, to take on the cretins and expose their blackheartedness to the antiseptic light of day.

Which you do – and for which we are grateful.

Gangs Threaten Riots in Los Angeles: ‘Took Die, the City Fry’

Jon Ponder

UPDATE 2: Read our view of the racist blitherings left by numbskulls in the comments on this page HERE.

UPDATE: Apparently Gov. Schwarzenegger’s focus groups and polling indicated that he would derive the greatest political benefit from allowing the execution of Tookie Williams to proceed. Barring a last minute stay from the Supreme Court, Williams will receive the lethal injection tonight at 12:01 PM.

And that puts us on riot watch here in Los Angeles. Right now, I’m not feeling it. There hasn’t been a groundswell of protests, and no protests that I’m aware of that weren’t celebrity generated.

It seems very unlikely that the city is going to erupt like it did in 1992. And if it does, we have a better police force now so we can hope for the best.

From December 5, 2005:

Rage redux: The LA Weekly reports that the word is out in the “gang-osphere” that if Crips founder Tookie Williams is executed on Dec. 13, angry mobs are set to riot once again in Los Angeles:

“Took die, the city fry,” said Raymond “The Hatchet Man” Locket, a member of the West Side Harlem Crips, who says he knew Tookie back in the day. “That’s the word on the streets.”

Having lived through the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict in 1992 and then the Northridge earthquake in 1994 (not to mention the Landers quakes and hundreds of fore- and after-shocks), I personally would take a 6.9 quake over citywide riot any day of the week.

The 1992 Riots

The ’92 riots showed how vulnerable cities are to an angry mob. Looking back, the weeklong state of emergency in Los Angeles 13 years ago also offered a preview of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans this year. There was official negligence: Police chief Darryl Gates was at a fundraiser the night the riots erupted, and purposefully stopped the LAPD from moving in to quell the violence at Florence and Normandy.

Ironically, Gates was raising money that night to fight efforts to reform his police department in the wake of the videotaped beating of Rodney King. It was the not-guilty verdict in the trial of the LAPD officers involved in the beating that sparked the riot April 29.

That night, millions of Angelenos watched local news overnight as the burning and looting escalated and spread across the city. The next morning, when Gates finally deployed the police, the LAPD was massively outnumbered by looters and malcontents. Our Thin Blue Line was a sad and pitiful joke. National coverage of the rioting apparently depicted it as being isolated to the ‘hood but in reality stores were looted Downtown, in Koreatown, Silver Lake, Hollywood, Beverly Hills and all over the city. Smoke and ashes from burning buildings blanketed the Basin and the hlls for days. Just about every Circuit City on the Westside was emptied. Molotov cocktails were tossed out of cars along Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills at the Saks and Barney’s stores. Even the famous lingerie store Fredericks of Hollywood was trashed and picked clean.

[…]

Christmas in Florida, and the Imaginary Manatees are Dancing

Trish

Oops, Columba did it again! Florida’s First Lady has commissioned an official state Christmas ornament, depicting West Indian manatees, endangered marine mammals native to Florida. Of course, she failed to acknowledge the environmental policies of her husband, the gov, put the animal at risk. The Southwest Florida Herald Tribune’s Mark Zaloudek:

The official state marine mammal gets top billing this year in “Manatee Dance,” which depicts some manatees frolicking amid water lilies and papyrus. (Just for the record, manatees aren’t likely to eat water lilies, and you’d have a hard time finding papyrus in Florida waters inhabited by manatees, but hey, who am I to challenge an artist’s concept?)

Mark also didn’t mention that the normally gray sea cows are depicted in a cheerier than life red, while the water lillies and papyrus are in artificially festive green and gold. Hey, whatever works.

Jeb, meanwhile, has done so much to make manatees of any color extinct that he was issued an “F” by an environmental group in 2002.

Manatee advocates gathered today at the Florida Press Center to issue Governor Jeb Bush a report card on protection of his “favorite mammal.” Standing in front of a pile of 174 stuffed manatees, representing the number killed by watercraft since the Governor’s October 2000 Manatee Summit, Rodger Schlickeisen, President of the national environmental organization, Defenders of Wildlife, condemned Bush’s performance.

“The Governor receives an ‘F’ in manatee protection,” said Schlickeisen. “Not only has Governor Bush given meaningless lip service to manatee protection, but he is facilitating the active undermining of protections for this endangered animal by special interests and agency officials.”

This isn’t the first time Columba has failed to connect the dots between Bush talk and Bush action. Last month, she had the gall to urge local school officials to put more emphasis on art education. She didn’t mention that her husband cut the funding for such instruction, and that his unswerving emphasis on the FCAT – Florida Comprehensive Acheivement Test – leaves teachers no time for anything but teaching the test. Palm Beach Post:

Florida’s first lady challenged parents and the community to become more involved in arts education and noted the importance of private funding at a time when state and federal dollars are focused less on the arts and more on preparing students to pass standardized tests.

Speaking almost inaudibly at times, the petite, soft-spoken Columba Bush told her audience, “We all share in the responsibility of giving Florida’s children an education in the arts.”

Yeah, but some of us share it more than others, Columba.

Christmas Wars: Take Note of the Muzak – It’s 90% Christmas Hymns

Jon Ponder

Occasionally I leave the house: You won’t catch me at the mall until – well, never – but I have been out to stores and restaurants recently and I noticed that there is one arena in which the put-Christ-back-in-Christmas crowd is winning the Christmas wars: The piped-in music in commercial establishments is predominantly Christmas-related – by a factor, it seemed to me, of 10 to one.

This is typical of rightwing tactics. They emphasize the visual predominance of “Happy Holidays” messages in commercial settings while carefully omitting a key sensory element: Sound.

In particular, we were in the Aaron Brothers art supplies store down the street for over an hour on Saturday. Could there be a more Jewish-sounding store name than Aaron Brothers? And we were in West Hollywood, in a metropolitan area that – according to unverified urban myth – has the third or fourth largest Jewish population in the world.

Nonetheless, while we were in the store, the satellite music channel playlist went from one Christmas hymn to another and another: “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Starry Starry Night” and even “Ave Maria.” Not a single song mentioned bells.

This is typical of rightwing tactics. They emphasize the visual predominance of “Happy Holidays” messages in commercial settings while carefully omitting a key sensory element: Sound.

Of course, the MSM hasn’t caught onto this and never will.

Btw, there’s evidence the public isn’t buying into the whole War on Christmas charade invented by Fox and friends:

Despite an avalanche of mentions on Fox News, The War on Christmas [written by Fox newsreader John Gibson] continues to do disappointing business. It’s nowhere near breaking through the New York Times best-seller’s list. It’s not even included on USA Today’s expanded list of the top 150 best selling books. In fact, according to Amazon.com’s sales rankings, The War on Christmas is stuck in the 200’s; No. 286 to be specific. The book has sold approximately 30,000 copies since hitting book store shelves nearly two months ago. That’d be decent business for a first-time non-fiction writer. But for a Fox News anchor whose employer won’t stop plugging the title, that sales total is middling at best, which only confirms how manufactured Fox News’ crusade is — even its loyal, Red State viewers aren’t buying it.

Groups Demand Investigation into $4.2 Mil That Ralph Reed Took from Abramoff

Jon Ponder

Ralph & the Devil: Former Christian Coalition president Ralph Reed is known for his choir boy looks and a propensity for believing his own press. What other than blinding hubris could have led him to take $4.2 million from a sleazebag like Jack Abramoff? And you gotta hand it to him – he almost doubled disgraced GOP congressman Randy Cunningham, whose bribes from military contractors only totaled $2.4 million:

Texans for Public Justice, Common Cause of Texas and Public Citizen filed their complaint with Travis County Attorney David Escamilla.

They said Reed failed to register as a Texas lobbyist in 2001 and 2002, when he received a reported $4.2 million from Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon to push for the closure of casinos operated by the Tigua tribe of El Paso and the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Livingston in East Texas…

[…]

Poll: It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

Buck Banks

Job insecurity: Mildly encouraging economic news is being touted and flouted by the Bushies like there’s no tomorrow — in spite of the $8 trillion deficit. But the economic “good” news doesn’t seem to be making folks confident enough to tell their boss to take this job and shove it. It’s more like, “Lord. please don’t lay me off.” From the National Journal’s PollTrack:

Half of Gallup poll respondents said the economy’s getting worse, but that’s down from 58% in the mid-November survey; 39% said it’s getting better, up 3 points.

Despite that apparent increase in optimism, however, six in 10 still said it’s a bad time to find a “quality job” — a 4-point increase since the previous poll; 36% said it’s a good time, down from last month’s 42%.

A similar question in this month’s Ipsos Public Affairs survey revealed more personal worries about the job market: 47% of respondents said it was at least somewhat likely that they or someone they know will lose a job in the next six months. That’s a 5-point jump since Ipsos’ last economic survey in early November, when 42% gave the same response.

But another Ipsos number seemed to counter that prediction. Although a 45% plurality said they are less confident about job security now than they were half a year ago, 39% said they are more confident — up 3 points since the previous poll. About the same number of respondents said they were as comfortable making both major and regular household purchases this month as they were last month.

And President Bush’s handling of the economy got a big boost in recent weeks, according to Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs pollsters — 42% said they approved of his work on the nation’s finances, compared to 37% in early November, while 55% expressed disapproval, a 6-point decrease from the previous poll.

Poll: Two-Thirds of Iraqis Want the U.S. Out

Jon Ponder

Associated Press:

Most Iraqis disapprove of the presence of U.S. forces in their country, yet they are optimistic about
Iraq’s future and their own personal lives, according to a new poll.

More than two-thirds of those surveyed oppose the presence of troops from the United States and its coalition partners and less than half, 44 percent, say their country is better off now than it was before the war, according to an ABC News poll conducted with Time magazine and other media partners.

But Iraqis are surprisingly upbeat on many fronts, the poll suggests.

Three-quarters say they are confident about the parliamentary elections scheduled for this week. More than two-thirds expect things in their country to get better in the coming months.

The Pious Hypocrisy of DINO Joe

Jon Ponder

Think Progress:

On Wednesday, Sen. Joe Lieberman argued that anyone who questions President Bush’s credibility while the country is at war puts the nation in danger. Lieberman, 12/7/05:

It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.

But when he was running for President, Lieberman directly questioned Bush’s credibility on the war. In fact, he argued that doing so was an essential part of our democracy. Lieberman, 7/28/03:

In our democracy, a president does not rule, he governs. He remains always answerable to us, the people. And right now, the president’s conduct of our foreign policy is giving the country too many reasons to question his leadership. It’s not just about 16 words in a speech, it is about distorting intelligence and diminishing credibility. It’s not about searching for scapegoats; it’s about seeing, as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs, that presidents stand tall when they willingly accept responsibility for mistakes made while they are in charge. [Press Conference with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) Re: War in Iraq, 7/28/03]

When he was running for President, Lieberman questioned Bush’s credibility on the war because that’s what he needed to do to get votes. Now, after his campaign flopped, he is attacking people who question Bush’s credibility on the war because that’s what he needs to do to get attention.

Liberal Gop Rep: House Leaders Don’t Get It

Jon Ponder

If the pundit prognisticators are correct, the Capitol will be awash in the Abramoff scandals in a very few months. Some are predicting that the political damage to Republicans in the House of Representatives could lead to huge losses in the November elections that puts the GOP majority in jeopardy.

“I am very uneasy that my leadership doesn’t get it now. They’re going to get it in November if they don’t get it now.”
– Rep. Chris Shays

One subspecies of Republicans who could be in particular peril is the small group of northeastern liberal Republicans. One of these turkeys with his head on the chopping block is Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut:

The growing ethics scandal surrounding former lobbyist Jack Abramoff could explode in the coming months and put at risk Republican control of the House, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., warned today. “There will be bad stories that come out that are embarrassing to Republicans and will cause them trouble,” Shays said at a briefing. “I’m holding my breath.” Shays, a moderate often at odds with the more conservative leadership, said GOP leaders do not yet understand the magnitude of the ethics problems swirling around the House — including Abramoff’s relationship with Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, the former majority leader. “If I were leadership, I would be very concerned about the next few months and try to understand what’s going on,” Shays said. “I am very uneasy that my leadership doesn’t get it now. They’re going to get it in November if they don’t get it now.”
— Rep. Chris Shays