Month: August 2006

Passive Agressive: Bush Subjects Male Staffers to Flatulence

Jon Ponder

Republicans and the media liked to refer to President Clinton as “Bubba.” But he never behaved like this:

He loves to cuss, gets a jolly when a mountain biker wipes out trying to keep up with him, and now we’re learning that the first frat boy loves flatulence jokes. A top insider let that slip when explaining why President Bush is paranoid around women, always worried about his behavior. But he’s still a funny, earthy guy who, for example, can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides, but forget about getting people to gas about that.

He should try lighting them. Teenaged boys — and grown men suffering from arrested development — really like that.

Web Traffic Down Due to Terrifying ‘Asymmetry in Cyberspace’

Buck Banks

Missed hits: Pensito Review Editor-In-Chief Jon sweats the Web site traffic numbers every month. He crunches them, massages them and analyzes them to ascertain how many above-average people visit Pensito Review and how many stick around to read its insightful and occasionally irritating content.

Just the other day at the watercooler, he was lamenting to Trish and me about how our traffic numbers were down in July and are likely to be down again in August. We tried to make him see that it’s the summer and people are away at the beach or the mountains or whitewater rafting or watching “Snakes on a Plane” instead of seeking out trenchant political and cultural commentary on the Internet. But Jon was not to be consoled.

The collapse of Bush’s political standing and the growing public reaction against the war in Iraq appears to have produced an asymmetry in cyberspace

Yet, as it turns out, like George Bush’s polling numbers, traffic at conservative Web sites is plummeting at a much higher rate than the dozen or so folks who failed to visit Pensito Review in the past month (you know who you are). According to National Journal’s Technology Daily, conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” has experienced a 50 percent drop in traffic to BillOReilly.com since March, when it had more than 100,000 visits for every 1 million Internet surfers to below 50,000 in August.

And it ain’t just Billy-boy — other wingnuts are losing readers, too.

Traffic to blond blatherer Ann Coulter’s site is off 16 percent over the last three months. Rambling Rush Limbaugh has seen his site traffic drop 14 percent, and The Drudge Report has fallen 10 percent.

While all weblogs seem to be off their peak this summer, red ones are doing worse than blue ones: RedState traffic is down 28 percent; Right Wing News dropped 20 percent, Blogs for Bush was down 13 percent and Townhall dropped 14 percent.

Readership at the liberal Huffington Post is down 14 percent, and at Daily Kos, the most trafficked blog, traffic is down 12 percent. Some liberal bloggers saw gains, however — MyDD is up 9 percent, as is Alternet, and Virginia’s Raising Kaine grew 119 percent over the past three months.

The Democratic National Committee was down 24 percent, but the Republican National Committee doubled that at 48 percent fewer clicks.

Pundits trying to fathom the traffic drain have resorted to arcane explanations:

“The collapse of Bush’s political standing and the growing public reaction against the war in Iraq appears to have produced an asymmetry in cyberspace that, together with other consistent evidence, bodes well for a strong national Democratic tide,” Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, said of the traffic numbers.

So don’t feel so bad, Jon, it’s just a passing asymmetry in cyberspace that should clear up about Nov. 8.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

You have got our country, but are not satisfied; you want to force your religion upon us. Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it?

— Red Jacket (Sagoyewatha) (c.1758-1830), Seneca Indian chief, in a reply to a missionary during the Council of Chiefs of the Six Nations

Harris Imploding as Primary Nears

Trish

If a tree fell on Katherine Harris, would anyone be around to see it?

She said a tree fell on the hangar that the rally was scheduled to be in…Airport officials, however, said no trees had fallen and that Harris was in the hangar her campaign had originally booked.

Even by Katherine Harris standards, it was a bad week. First, in her U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat Bill Nelson, she held a rally that no one attended, even the headliners. Next, the campaign worker that she tried to blame for the no-show event quit. And finally, one of Southwest Florida’s biggest newspapers announced their endorsement in the U.S. Senate Republican primary for…no one.

To begin, there was the rally. Harris expected to share the stage at the Orlando Executive Airport with a score of notables, before a teaming crowd of well-wishers. That’s not exactly how it went down.

None of the nine officials listed on her event flier appeared, leaving Harris on her own to address a group of about 40 supporters, reporters and campaign staff members.

Harris spoke in an airplane hangar that seemed to highlight the modest size of the crowd…

Harris spoke for 10 minutes…When she finished, red, white and blue balloons dropped onto an empty stage, rendered unnecessary by the sparse crowd.

Harris expected her fellow Florida Congress-people Mark Foley, Ginny Brown-Waite, Jeff Miller and Cliff Stearns to be at the airport, especially since her campaign web site boasted their support. Instead, right after the disastrous event, each spoke up to say they never endorsed Harris and their names were pulled from her site.

Then yet another campaign worker quit.

Rhyan Metzler, who had been Harris’ political director, is no longer with the campaign, according to Harris spokeswoman Jennifer Marks. Metzler is being blamed for embarrassing comments Harris made after a rally at Orlando Executive Airport.

Only 40 people showed up for the event, and Harris blamed the paltry turnout in part on a last-minute location change. She said a tree fell on the hangar that the rally was scheduled to be in, forcing her campaign to switch to another hangar.

Airport officials, however, said no trees had fallen and that Harris was in the hangar her campaign had originally booked.

Now, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is clearly stating the Republican case in the Senate race, and it is this:

There is no one worth supporting.

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris’ erratic behavior and her extensive contacts with defense contractor Mitchell Wade have further undermined her tenuous claim to be the Republican best able to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate.

Unfortunately, Republicans who want an alternative to Harris as the GOP nominee don’t have a good option. Harris’ opponents in the Sept. 5 primary — retired Adm. LeRoy Collins Jr., attorney William McBride and developer Peter Monroe — waited until the last possible day to file to run. They’ve done little on the campaign trail since May to dispel the appearance that they were last-minute, seat-of-the-pants candidates….

The party leadership’s misgivings have been underscored by Harris’ Senate campaign. She is incapable of keeping a cohesive congressional or campaign staff, and her behavior has frequently ranged from bizarre to inexplicable…

In light of Harris’ problems and the lack of support from party leaders, and the absence of other candidates who took this race seriously before May, we offer no recommendation in the Republican primary for U.S. senator.

Yepper.

VA Sen: Allen’s Lead over Webb Shrinks after ‘Macaca’ Comment

Jon Ponder
Among younger voters, Allen went from Plus 23 to Minus 17, a swing of 40 points.

This almost restores my faith in humanity:

In an election for the United States Senate in Virginia today, 8/21/06, incumbent Republican George Allen edges Democrat challenger James Webb 48 percent to 45 percent, according to an exclusive SurveyUSA poll conducted for W*USA-TV in Washington, DC.

Since an identical SurveyUSA poll released 6/28/06, Allen has lost 8 points and Webb has gained 8 points. Allen’s lead has shrunk from 19 points to 3 points.

Interviewing for this poll began 8/18/06, one week after Allen singled out a Webb campaign worker at an Allen rally. Allen has lost support across all demographic groups, but in particular, among younger voters. He has gone from Plus 23 to Minus 17, a swing of 40 points. In Southeastern VA, Allen has gone from a 2:1 lead to a tie, a 31-point swing.

Whose Anniversary?

Trish

Ever since Jamestown, Virginia announced its intention to celebrate its quadricentennial next year as “America’s 400th Anniversary,” residents of my own St. Augustine, Florida have been in a snit. It’s not just the fact that St. Augustine celebrated its 400th anniversary back in 1965, or that the city was the thriving capital of the Spanish colony before Jamestown had a name.

American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling in Jamestown, Va., in 1607…The lessons have left out a lot.

We sniff the barest hint of (dare I say it) racism in Jamestown’s pronouncement. The Spanish, after all, were part Moorish by the time they came ashore in Florida, in stark contrast to the lily white English. They were also Catholic, which was just slightly more exotic than what the Pilgrims had in mind.

Juan Ponce de Leon declared Florida to be Florida in 1513. Its mission system had been in place nearly 200 years before the first mission in upper California was built. Florida had flown three flags (Spanish, French, British — and Spanish again) by the time it joined the Union 15 years before the Civil War, and had ended the Third Seminole War just two years earlier, in 1858.

The Spaniards had very different relations than the English did with the people who were already here — and the runaway slaves who had escaped to Florida from the United States to live among the Creek and Miccosukee. It might be a little rosy to say we all lived together in peace and harmony, but it was better than after Spain lost us to the British or when Andrew Jackson launched the first War of Indian Removal, aka the First Seminole War, in 1817 — in which he banned “Negroes” from Pensacola to the Suwannee River.

Now others are starting to notice the same thing St. Augustinians did in Jamestown’s slogan: the implication that British settlement in this country is somehow more noteworthy than any other. The Boston Globe:

American students often get the impression from history classes that the British got here first, settling in Jamestown, Va., in 1607. They hear about how white Northerners freed the black slaves, how Asians came in the mid-1800s to build Western railroads. The lessons have left out a lot.

Forty-two years before Jamestown, Spaniards and American Indians lived in St. Augustine, Fla. At least several thousand Latinos and nearly 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War. And Asian-Americans had been living in California and Louisiana since the 1700s.

Now, more of these and other lesser-known facts about American minorities are getting more attention. The main reason is the nation’s growing diversity.

The Globe story goes on to note there are “hundreds of efforts underway to tell the untold stories” of America’s history. Jamestown telling the truth — and changing its slogan — would be a good start.

GOP’s ‘Average’ Joe Scarborough Turns on Bush

Jon Ponder

Nothing Joe Scarborough, the former Gingrichite GOP congressman and current MSNBC Fox-News-wannabe, could ever say or do would give him credibility at this point. Still, it is interesting to note that he has joined rightwing rats like George Will and William F. Buckley in jumping off the good ship George W. Bush as it capsizes:

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether “George Bush’s mental weakness is damaging America’s credibility at home and abroad.” For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, “IS BUSH AN ‘IDIOT’?”

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly “no.” While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: “I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don’t think he has the intellectual depth as these other people.”

Bush Team Finds New Way to Ignore Global Warming

Trish

The Current Occupants have come up with a better way to muzzle NASA scientists who try to tell the truth about global warming, according to the Sierra Club.

Dr. James Hansen appeared on 60 Minutes last year describing how Bush’s team altered scientific reports to falsely make climate change appear a matter of opinion. He defended his actions based on the mission of the agency he served.

Why not use NASA as they do all other government agencies — as a means to advance their brooding and greedy agendas?

Hansen…told New York Times science correspondent Andrew Revkin that it would be irresponsible for him not to speak out on global warming, particularly because NASA’s mission statement includes the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet.”

Hard to get around that…unless you’re a neocon.

As Revkin reported in the Times on July 22nd: “In early February [2006], the [NASA mission] statement was quietly altered, with the phrase ‘to understand and protect our home planet’ deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is ‘to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.'” A flak-catcher for NASA insisted that the change had nothing to do with Dr. Hansen’s use of the phrase.

But the change is more than skin-deep.

…recent cuts in NASA’s budget also reflect a real shift in priorities, away from science in general and earth science programs in particular. In June — more than a month before the news about the changed mission statement broke — Beth Daley reported in the Boston Globe that NASA had been forced to delay or cancel many satellite programs, including, “almost every planned earth studying mission,” that had some contribution to make to the understanding of (how’d you guess?) global warming.

Bush and his cronies seem to view space much as they do the earth: as a military tableau and potential source of wealth. To them, space is prime real estate for satellite surveillance devices and Star Wars defense shields of questionable utility. And Bush didn’t give a crap about going to the moon or Mars until someone pointed out there are valuable minerals there, just waiting to be extracted. So why not use NASA as they do all other government agencies — as a means to advance their brooding and greedy agendas?

Still Eating Meat? This’ll Put You Off Your Feedlot

Trish

Being a vegetarian, meat headlines always leave me a little unsettled. Still, the news has been particularly bad lately.

The normally poisonous gas keeps red meat red no matter how old it gets, instead of allowing it to turn that rainbow-sheened gray that would normally be part of the decomposing process

First we find out American meat packers are trying to package the stuff in carbon monoxide gas in order to keep it looking � and looking only � fresher longer. The practice was already banned by the European Union.

The normally poisonous gas keeps red meat red no matter how old it gets, instead of allowing it to turn that rainbow-sheened gray that would normally be part of the decomposing process. Consumers, we are told, will indirectly save money because instead of grocery stores having to dispose of animal parts and pieces when they’re edible but revolting, now they can keep right on selling until that cow’s been dead…a real long time. The results aren’t quite as planned.

At issue is the growing practice of spiking sealed packages of meat with small doses of carbon monoxide. The gas…can keep meat looking bright red and fresh even as it spoils…

The July issue of Consumer Reports…took bacterial counts on 10 samples of locally purchased ground beef and steaks that had been treated with the gas. All the meat looked red, but two had spoiled by their “use or freeze by” dates and one “was on the brink of spoilage” one day before its stamped date.

Other studies showed that even if the stuff looked great in the package, you better stand back when you open it up.

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