Day: August 16, 2006

When Life Sends Us Spam, We Make Poetry

Buck Banks

Unfiltered inspiration: Here at Pensito Review, we receive lots of spam e-mails every day. Hundreds of them, most having to do with erectile dysfunction, offers for weird pharmaceuticals cheap, pornography involving animals and/or Siamese twins, and a wide variety of poker games.

We hate the spam because it takes lots of time to go through it to capture the intelligent comments from sensitive readers sprinkled among the e-mails for hoodia weight-loss programs. However, we have discovered pearls among the spam — cheery, upbeat messages that accompany the offers of sex with several people simultaneously and get-rich-quick schemes.

We have collected these feel-good messages into what we think is a pretty nifty poem with lots of exclamation points and creative grammar that makes us feel just great about the Pensito Review Web site, and we hope it will brighten your day too. It’s called “Hello Jane, Great Site!”

Hello Jane, great site!
Your home page, its great.

HI! I love this place!
So interesting site, thanks!

Hi, man! Your site is cool! look for my site –
May we exchange links with your site?
I just don’t have anything to say right now.

Very good site. Thanks for author!
I like your site,
Good site. Thank you.

Great website! Bookmarked! I am impressed at your work!
Your site is very cognitive.
I think you will have good future. :)

Plame Attorney to Use Paula Jones Precedent to Force Cheney to Testify

Jon Ponder

The biggest travesty wrought by the Supreme Court in the 1990s was its unanimous decision that Paula Jones could sue Pres. Clinton while he was in office. (This was followed by their biggest travesty perhaps ever but certainly of the millenial decade, in December 2000, when they voted along party lines to give George W. Bush the presidency over Al Gore.)

But here is how the worm might turn:

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling that neither Clinton “or any other official has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.”

A lawyer plans to use a legal precedent that allowed President Bill Clinton to be sued while in office to force Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify in a lawsuit brought by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband.

California attorney Joseph Cotchett said he will ask a federal court to order Cheney, his ex-chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Rove to testify in depositions about their role in disclosing her classified status.

The civil lawsuit accuses them and others of conspiring to publicly identify Plame as a CIA agent to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for writing in an op-ed piece that the Bush administration twisted intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Cotchett, who took over as trial counsel in Plame’s case on Tuesday, said legal precedent for whether Cheney and the others could claim legal immunity in the case comes, in part, from Paula Jones’ sexual harassment case against Clinton.

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling that neither Clinton “or any other official has an immunity that extends beyond the scope of any action taken in an official capacity.”

In order to be dismissed from the case or avoid testifying, Cotchett said, lawyers for Cheney and the other men would have to argue that they were acting on government business if they are found to have leaked Plame’s name to the media.

Federal law makes it a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent.

Poll: Americans Dumb as We Thought

Buck Banks

Ignorance is this: A new Zogby International/AOL.com poll (PDF) has plumbed the depth of Americans’ idiocy, measuring how well citizens of the world’s wealthiest nation know civics versus, say, the names of the Three Stooges. Here are the lowlights:

  • Knew Homer Simpson’s son’s name is Bart: 60 percent
  • Could not name one of Homer’s ancient Greek tales (Iliad or Odyssey): 78 percent
  • Knew Superman is from Krypton: 60 percent
  • Could name the three branches of U.S. government (executive, judicial, legislative): 42 percent
  • Knew that CIA stands for Central Intelligence Agency: 60 percent
  • Knew that CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation: 53 percent
  • Could name prime minister of Britain (Tony Blair): 50 percent
  • Could name two of Snow White’s dwarves: 52 percent remembered Sleepy, 39 percent named Dopey, but only 1.5 percent named Bashful
  • Could name two Supreme Court justices: 20 percent named Clarence Thomas, 11 percent named Antonin Scalia, but only 1 percent named Stephen Breyer; 63 percent could not name a single justice
  • Could not name Samuel Alito as the justice most recently appointed to the Supreme Court: 81 percent
  • When asked which current world leader signed a secret order authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, 67 percent named George Bush.
  • Named all three of the Three Stooges: 74 percent (only 1 percent mentioned poor Shemp)

The poll was taken in late July among 1,213 Americans, of whom 29 percent were college graduates, 74 percent were white, 27 percent make less than $25,000 per year and 52 percent were female.

U.S. Media — Hyping the Terror Hysteria

Buck Banks

Media mania: There is a good chance the individuals arrested by British police last week were up to no good, but so far there has been no proof that they were about to launch an airline bomb attack of “unprecedented proportions,” as was breathlessly reported last week. No formal charges have been brought against them. Indeed, British authorities just went to court to ask for more time to hold and interrogate them without bringing charges. It’s not even clear how close they were to actually trying to perpetrate the alledged plot.

CNN, for example, chose ‘Target: USA’ as its phrase, Fox News opted for ‘Terror in the Sky,’ and MSNBC neatly combined the two with ‘Target America: Terror in the Sky.’

But that has not stopped the U.S. media — especially the squawking heads of cable TV — from heralding the beginning of “World War III.” The din of dumbness has proved particularly irksome to David Walsh, columnist for the World Socialist Web Site, who provides a comprehensive and compelling case for turning off the television and reading a book:

Since August 10, when British authorities arrested two dozen individuals in connection with an alleged plot to blow up a number of airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean, the American mass media has worked ceaselessly to create a climate of fear.

For the first several days after the news of the alleged plot broke, American news programs were virtually unwatchable. The lurid logos and wild, unsubstantiated allegations made a mockery of claims that the networks and cable channels are in the business of “news-gathering.”

The responses of the cable news channels to events like the August 10 arrests are predictable. One knows ahead of time that each of the channels will have its own sensationalist logo and catch-phrase. However, the combination of limited imaginations and shared political goals—centered on keeping the US population in a state of constant panic—often results in a certain overlap. CNN, for example, chose “Target: USA” as its phrase, Fox News opted for “Terror in the Sky,” and MSNBC neatly combined the two with “Target America: Terror in the Sky.”

Read the rest of the column here.

Trouble at the New York Times

Jon Ponder

The opposite of love, sayeth the wise man, is not hate but apathy. In the five long years during which I was a Manhattanite, I developed a yawning apathy about the local newspaper of record, the New York Times.

The main problem for me as a local resident was that its reportage on the local scene was spotty at best. What good is a newspaper if it fails to cover its putative beat? To find out what was going on in New York, you had to read the tabloids, the Daily News, the Post and (for a while) Newsday.

The reason was obvious: The New York Times considered itself to be the nation’s newspaper of record — a sort of USA Today for grownups — and therefore did not deign to report on which New York man was bitten by what New York dog — or, better, which New York man was found headless in what New York topless bar.

In an exposé on the troubles facing the New York Times, Vanity Fair writer Michael Wolff offers some statistics on the disastrous results of the paper’s decades of trying to be everything to everyone, which apparently, and predictably, have resulted in it’s becoming nothing to no one:

Unlike The Washington Post, which has put much of its editorial and business energies into dominating its local market, the Times’s strategy — a doomsday scenario, foreseeing a one-newspaper nation, a last-man-standing paper — has been to make the paper national. Hence, the New York Times is no longer principally a metropolitan paper. With a daily circulation of 260,000 in the five boroughs, it’s no longer even creditably a New York paper. (Its two tabloid competitors, the Daily News and the New York Post, have far more readers in New York City.)

Wolff’s article tracks what appears to be the New York Times’ downward spiral. Business is not good and the paper has been rocked by two journalism scandals — Jayson Blair’s plaigarism and Judith Miller’s stenography for the Bush/neocon war machine — all of which is symbolized by the paper’s current project: a huge new office tower under construction on West 40th Street.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Terror is nought but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is less a particular principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to the pressing needs of the fatherland.

— Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758- guillotined 1794), French revolutionist

Declaring ‘War on Terror’ May Have Been Bush’s Worst Mistake

Jon Ponder
“We must drop the metaphor of a “war on terrorism.” Wars are mostly fought with arms on battlefields between soldiers of opposing countries. Wars have beginnings and ends. None of these characteristics apply here.”
–Richard Haass

Of all the mistakes the Bush Administration has made, their most most historically significant error may have been the elevation of terrorism from the mundane purview of criminal justice to the status of a “war” that requires the engagement of the full force and might of the United States military.

Identifying, tracking and defeating terrorists requires the surgical precision of intelligence operations, not the heavy cudgel of carpet bombs and special forces. We have proof of this now in Iraq. Using the military to fight terrorism only serves to breed more terrorists.

The president’s motives in re-casting the fight against terror as a “war” are clear: He wanted to become, as he put it, “a war president.” During war-time, presidents can claim nearly dictatorial privileges, and war presidents are harder to defeat in elections.

In that sense, the president’s war on terror has been a rousing political success — for President Bush. With the assistance of a pliable Republican Congress and the dimwitted, self-absorbed Washington press corps, he has accrued unprecedented powers for the Executive and won two elections — so far.

But by aggrandizing himself as a warrior president, George Bush also raised the profile of our enemies both as specters of fear for Americans and as heroes among their own people. The moment the president declared his war on terror Osama bin Ladin and his ilk were promoted from the ranks of criminal thugs into a new class of global warriors who became worthy adversaries of the world’s last remaining Superpower.

Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former high-level State Dept. staffer in the administrations of both Pres. Bush 41 and 43, published an op-ed piece last week calling for an end to the marketing of the fight against terror as “war.” His article is remarkable because it answers the Republicans’ catcall that no one has a better plan than the failed policies of the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress.

If you want solid answers on how to fight the rise in terrorism from the Islamic underground, here is Richard Haass’ plan:

[…]

Rapture Index Gauges Nearness of End of the World

Buck Banks

Signs of the end times: It’s a high-tech version of the cliche cartoon character — the zealot in long beard and robe holding the sign that predicts the end of the world. It’s the Rapture Index, a kind of gauge of how close we are to Jesus’ return to the earth, the Rapture and the Apocalypse as predicted in the Book of Revelations and various Old Testament visions.

The world has always been going to hell in a handbasket, and the prophets of doom have always been among us

This week’s rating is 160, based on measures of 45 different components that ostensibly portend the end of the world. A rating under 60 represents a period of slow prophetic activity, whereas anything over 145 is considered a pretty good indicator that there is going to be a lot of driverless vehicles on the interstate very soon. The 45 components are ranked on a scale of one to five, with five being high prophetic activity. This week low unemployment, lack of supernatural activity and the peace process (as represented by the cease-fire in Lebanon) all get a one ranking. Good signs of the rapture include high oil/gas prices, poor political leadership, developments in Israel, Gog (Russia) and Persia; and droughts, floods, wild weather and volcanoes all rate a five.

Reading the Rapture Index’s analysis is kind of like getting those annoying cryptic readings from a palmist:

  • Supernatural: Satanism is reported to be flourishing in Russia
  • Leadership: During the past few weeks, several end-time categories have become locked in a holding pattern.
  • Ecumenism: World religions have been at odds with each other.
  • Gog: Events in the Middle East are moving closer to the Ezk 38 & 39 prophecy.
  • Mark of the Beast: The U.S. Patriot Act has failed to get enough votes for extension.
  • Date Settings: Several organizations have been talking about Iran launching an attack against Israel on 22 Aug. The claim is based on the doomsday beliefs of Iran’s President.

Instead of the Dow Jones of the Apocalypse, the Rapture Index prefers to see itself as a kind of prophetic speedometer — the higher the number, the faster we are hurtling toward the end.

It’s an interesting attempt to quantify biblical prophesies as they are supposedly manifested in the news. But it’s a load of hooey. The world has always been going to hell in a handbasket, and the prophets of doom have always been among us, waving their signs and exhorting us to repent, the end is nigh. This is just a more entertaining poster for the end of the world.