Month: March 2006

Pensito Review: Off the Wires

Buck Banks

College Students Get Rare Look at Cuba
HAVANA – Molly Morris didn’t realize how isolated Cubans are from the United States until a worker at her hotel asked for a U.S. map to see where she and other visiting American college students came from. Of course, being an American, Morris could not find Nebraska on the map.

John Paul Still a Presence, a Year Later
WARSAW, Poland – Poles mark the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s death Sunday with their beloved native son still very much a public presence, with some here even crediting him with continued influence in the strongly Roman Catholic country’s politics. Who ya gonna call? Pope Busters!

Fake E-Mail Topples Japan Opposition Party
TOKYO – Japan’s opposition party suffered a fresh humiliation Friday when its leadership resigned en masse over a fake e-mail scandal, handing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi an uncontested grip on power in his last six months in office. The e-mail purportedly began: “You are big winner of International Rotto ….”

Taiwan Rejects China’s Offer of Pandas
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Tuan Tuan the panda won’t be following in the footsteps of his mother and grandparents as a goodwill ambassador for China. Taiwan on Friday rejected China’s offer of the panda and a female mate, Yuan Yuan, in the latest sign of a hardening attitude toward its communist neighbor. President Koo Kuan-min issued a statement in which he said, “Accepting the mainland’s panda pandering would open a Pandora’s box that will only lead to a pandemic of pandemonium for Taiwan.”

Resurrecting Terri

Buck Banks

No rest in peace: A year ago today, Terri Schiavo shuffled off her mortal coil, ending a two-decades-long family saga that managed by turns to be tragic and ludicrous. There are two books out about the case, one by Terri’s husband, Michael Schiavo, and a competing one by the Schindler family. Now, a year after she died peacefully, blissfully unaware of the personal and political forces her persistent vegetative state had inspired, Florida conservatives are exhuming her for their political ends.

I received today a “Conservative Alert” (co-editor Trish does not understand how or why I subject myself to this stuff, but it helps to know one’s enemy, not to mention it provides content for the Review) from wingnuts William Greene and Randall Terry.

The letter begins this way:

It is hard to believe that today — March 31 — marks the one-year anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s brutal death by starvation. I’m still grieving over the fact that our elected officials allowed a tin pot dictator judge to starve an innocent woman to death.

Greene, who wrote the first letter, goes on the mention Terri’s “public execution” and her “struggle for life” as a way to introduce Randall Terry’s campaign for Florida Senate against the evil Jim King. According to Greene:

Senator King callously said, “I want her to die.” Senator King made it his personal mission to ensure that she was starved to death, and successfully recruited eight other Republican senators in his mission. If we had had just three of their votes, she would still be alive!

“We support the right to life! And that includes the right of all handicapped and severely injured people to live without fear of starvation!”
— Randall Terry, Republican

Then Randall Terry gets wound up in a letter that has no less than four — count ’em — four links to donate to his campaign:

Please understand this — the vast majority of the voters in the upcoming election were ardent supporters of Terri Schiavo’s right to life! Moreover, the vast majority of the voters in this district support the right to life of the unborn. My opponent, Jim King, is an ardent supporter of abortion on demand as well as the chief voice for Terri’s starvation.

I, on the other hand, am a strong supporter of the right to life.

And to add insult to injury — he supports a number of left-wing causes such as special rights for homosexuals, including the right for openly homosexual couples to adopt children!

And as if that is not enough — he is now under an ethics investigation for an illegal private plane ride to a major gambling casino in Canada. He is mired in scandal, and saddled with the burden of a record in the Senate that is against the values of the majority of the voters.

By giving Terry money, he says, you will be saying to the world, “We support the right to life! And that includes the right of all handicapped and severely injured people to live without fear of starvation!”

It was bad enough when the Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush started passing laws to prolong Schiavo’s vegetative state, but then Senate Majority Leader and physician Bill Frist started diagnosing from the podium and George Bush came out of vacation to chime in to try and save the brain-dead woman. But for Greene and Terry to raise the dead in support of a hyper-conservative agenda is just, well, I suppose it’s just par for the course in a case that seems not to have a lowest point.

R.I.P. Terri Schiavo, if they’ll only let you.

Shortage of Cronies Getting Critical

Buck Banks

No friends in high places: You can tell it’s a lame-duck administration when Congress threatens to withhold appropriations from the Department of Homeland Security until the agency fills a bunch of top-level posts, including director. Come on, there must be some ex-horse show execs or wives of admin flunkies out there somewhere to fill these high-level positions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

With hurricane season only two months away, those of us who live in the subtropics are distressed to learn that FEMA is staffed at only 73 percent of its funded capacity and that, besides the fact that “Brownie” has not been permanently replaced, 40 percent of the agency’s division and regional chiefs are only “acting.”

‘Let the word go forth from this place that we want a permanent director of FEMA and we want these regional directors and division directors to stop acting and be permanent.’
— Harold Rogers

According to the Congress Daily, the House committee that oversees DHS appropriations thinks this situation deserves attention. House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-KY, offered up a hilarious quote while threatening to withhold fiscal 2007 appropriations for the positions if they are not filled:

“I want people in these positions where we can look them square in the eye . . . and get a commitment from them,” Rogers said. “Let the word go forth from this place that we want a permanent director of FEMA and we want these regional directors and division directors to stop acting and be permanent.”

“Let the word go forth from this place” sounds rather biblical to me, and I think we’ve all had quite enough “acting” from the FEMA folks. In an attempt to top Rogers’ over-the-top quote, the “acting” director gave the kind of emphatic reply we’ve all come to expect from FEMA:

Acting FEMA Director R. David Paulison told the panel that he has directed the agency to achieve a 95 percent staffing level by June 1, the start of the next hurricane season. He said the agency probably will not meet that goal, but will come “very darn close.”

He also said FEMA will have a permanent director by June 1, but declined to say if that will be him. “I serve at the pleasure of the president and will do what he asks me to do,” Paulison said.

With that kind of attitude, Paulison likely will go far — heckuva job, Paulie!

It’s Time to Play “What’s Under Bush’s Shirt” Again

Trish

Hey kids! Remember during the 2004 presidential debates, when we were all trying to figure out the squarish object(s) that appeared under Mr. Blinky Eyes’ jacket? Well, it’s time for another round of “What’s Under Bush’s Shirt”!

Take your best guess as to what that is under Bush’s shirt in this recent picture posted by Lou Dobbs on CNN. It shows Bush with Pres. Vicente Fox of Mexico and Prime Minister of Stephen Harper of Canada discussing how to best to restrict the flow of each other’s citizens across the borders, while maximizing the flow of their money in the same direction.

So far, P.R. Editor Jon is going for a box of Cuban cigars. I’m thinking it’s more likely Bush’s battery pack, which has to be charged every few hours or he gets cranky. What do you think it is?

Bush Tax Cuts at Work: Roads, Waterways, and Skies are a Mess

Trish

Chalk up another failure for the Bush tax cuts. The head of UPS today is warning that America’s neglected infrastructure is hobbling us in the global marketplace.

“What’s shocking, quite frankly, is the inability of our transportation infrastructure to keep up with the normal day-to-day stresses imposed upon it,” said UPS CEO Mike Eskew

Describing the nation’s roads, ports, railroads and airports as the backbone of global trade, UPS’s chief executive officer today warned that America was taking a chance with its future by neglecting its infrastructure.

“What’s shocking, quite frankly, is the inability of our transportation infrastructure to keep up with the normal day-to-day stresses imposed upon it,” said UPS CEO Mike Eskew. “Our highways, waterways, railroads and aviation networks are simply not keeping up with ordinary demands.

After Hurricane Katrina even emergency supplies languished in ports and parking lots. Eskew said you don’t have to wait for a storm or earthquake or terrorist attack to see the problems. You also don’t have to be a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, but they have issued a scathing analysis of our transport system.

“In 2005, here’s what our infrastructure report card looked like: our aviation system got a D+; navigable waterways a D-; roads a D, and rails a C-.”

“What does the overall report card on our national transportation infrastructure look like? Well, let’s put it this way: if your kids brought home report cards like this, someone would be grounded.”

Eskew was especially critical of railroads. As those of us who live near its Jacksonville headquarters are well aware, Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow was head of CSX before his crony status qualified him for a seat at the Bush cabinet table. CSX is a leader in the rail industry at avoiding liability and sticking it to the taxpayers every time its worn-out tracks cause an Amtrak derailment.

Eskew [added] one private business sector that particularly needs to step up is the rail sector. The nation’s railroads are “under-investing” in advanced technologies available today that could improve the capacity and safety of their networks, he asserted.

The problem is not insurmountable, he added, but it’s time “to sound the alarm.”

New & Improved: Actually See What You’re Typing!

Trish

To all the insightful P.R. readers who let us know that leaving a comment on our posts involved magnifying glasses and microscopes, thanks. No. 1 Editor Jon seems to have fixed the problem and accommodated all those who, like me, just had to hope we were typing what we thought we were. Sometimes the phrase “web master” just doesn’t cover it. How about “web genius?” Thanks Jon!

If tiny type was holding you back before, please feel free to comment early and often now.

Update: I made another adjustment. Check it now.

Kaloogian on Fake Photo: I’m Not Lying Just Incompetent – Standard GOP Dodge Works Every Time

Jon Ponder

One of the characteristics of the current Republican era is that when Gops are caught lying, they automatically claim incompetence. The truly astounding aspect of this is that it works every time.

Kaloogian will probably get away with this dodge. It was worked well for President Bush, especially in excusing his two biggest failures – Iraq and Katrina.

Case in point is the flap over the photo of a purportedly showing a “calm and peaceful” corner of Baghdad posted to the website of California GOP operative Howard Kaloogian who is running for the House seat vacated by Duke Cunningham, a Republican who is serving time for taking bribes worth millions of dollars. (Go here for our coverage of the story yesterday.)

The photo was, in fact, taken in the suburbs of Istanbul, which, for everyone educated after the 1970s, is in a country north of Iraq called Turkey.

Now Kaloogian is denying he intentionally tried to defraud the public by posting the photo and is blaming the flap on the incompetence of his staff:

“They used a picture that was wrong. There’s nothing sinister about it,” [Kaloogian] said.

And, oh yeah, it’s the librhul media’s fault:

In an e-mail to supporters, [Kaloogian] blasted bloggers and journalists for using the photograph to attack his campaign for the 50th Congressional District.

“The liberal journalists who dominate the ranks of the media want American troops to pull out of Iraq before the mission there is completed,” he wrote.

That’s a bit nicer than his earlier statement that journalists “are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism.”

Kaloogian will probably get away with this dodge. It has worked for President Bush time and time again over the past five years, but especially when he was excusing his two biggest failures:

  • The president has denied lying when he said Iraq had WMD, instead he says he incompetently took the country to war based on bad intelligence
  • During Katrina, he denies lying when he said that “no one” could have anticipated the levee breaches, despite videotape evidence showing him being warned about just such an possibility, instead he was just incompetently out of touch while on vacation

So good luck, Mr. Kaloogian. I’d say that with tap dancing like this, you’ll go far as a Republican congressman.

GOP in Trouble So Now Iran Gets Warning: Bombing to Start in 30 Days

Jon Ponder

The time has come to wag the dog:

Will the bombing have the effect the GOP wants and rally the whole country — or just its base of Dittoheads and sheeple who are addicted to terror?

The U.N. Security Council gave Iran 30 days to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and key members turned their focus on what to do if Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment and allow more intrusive inspections…

After three weeks of intense negotiations, the 15-member Security Council approved a statement Wednesday asking the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report back in 30 days on Iran’s compliance with demands to stop enriching uranium.

The Bush Administration has zero credibility in most of the world and among a majority of Americans. The timing of this is too perfect. Bombing will start around the first of May when campaigning is ramping up. It will be interesting to see if our attacks on Iran have the effect on the electorate that the GOP intends, or whether the bombing only rallies the 25 percent who make up their base of Dittoheads and sheeple who are addicted to terror.