Month: August 2006

FL 13: GOP Candidate to Replace Katherine Harris Says Blacks Can’t Swim

Jon Ponder

ABOVE: George W. Bush with his friend, Tramm Hudson

Unlucky 13: With Virginia Republican Sen. George Felix Allen still taking blowback over his use of the Tunisian racist term “maccacca” to describe a man of Indian descent, in Florida, Tramm Hudson, a GOP candidate for the 13th District House seat Rep. Katherine Harris is vacating to run for Senate, had this to say about the swimming abilities of African Americans:

“I grew up in Alabama and I understand, uh…I know this from my own experience; blacks are not the greatest swimmers, or may not even know how to swim.”

Mr. Hudson sounds like just the right fit to fill Katherine Harris’s empty pumps.

Forgot to tip the hat to Charlie at the Garnet Donkey for this story.

Watch the Video

Dems Can’t Stop Schwarzenegger – Only Conservatives Stand in His Way

Jon Ponder

No candidate for governor that I’m aware of is less deserving of a second term than Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it appears all but a dead certain he is going to get one.

After his disastrous 2005, he has stuck to his playbook this year, kowtowing to the left on the environment and education, keeping his mouth shut unless scripted (we never hear an extemporaneous word from him; and the number of public gaffes has fallen to zero), and avoiding controversial topics as much as possible.

He has almost certainly won back California independents, but in wooing the left could the governor lose the right?

To keep conservatives in line, Schwarzenegger campaign operatives have quietly launched efforts to rally support among Christian fundamentalists, gun owners and other Republicans who have long been wary of the governor and backed him only grudgingly.

His stands on illegal immigration, the state’s swelling debt, gay rights and other matters continue to rankle many of them, and his high-profile courtship of Democrats and independents risks repelling them further as the campaign intensifies.

Schwarzenegger faces no danger of a broad defection of conservatives to his Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides; polls show they overwhelmingly favor the governor.

The governor — who is a notorious serial adulterer — is actively courting fundamentalists Christians:

Meanwhile, to drum up support for Schwarzenegger among evangelicals, the state party has hired Ben Lopez, a lobbyist for the Rev. Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition, a group that seeks to outlaw abortion and roll back gay rights.

Lopez and Anna Bryson, statewide coalitions director for Victory ’06, the party’s November election operation, plan to meet next week in the Sacramento area with roughly 200 conservative ministers — the first of several such gatherings to promote the governor, Bryson said.

“The governor believes strongly in family values,” she said.

Good luck with that, Gov. Plowchops.

Poll: Bush’s Fear Tactics Appear to Be Losing Their Mojo

Jon Ponder

Without fear, Pres. Bush’s power diminishes — but that leads to a scary scenario: an amoral leader whose power comes solely from his ability to incite fear in voters facing the loss of the very thing that gives him power. To what lengths might Bush and his political team go in order to scare his sheeple into worshipping him again? Now that is scary.

Pew Research Poll: “The strong focus on news from abroad is having little impact on the public’s political opinions. President Bush’s job approval rating stands at 37 percent, virtually unchanged from July. His personal image continues to be far less positive than it was about a year ago ­ about half the public says he is not a strong leader, not trustworthy, and unable to get things done. Moreover, the renewed emphasis on terrorism has done little to boost the president’s standing on that issue.”

Quote du Jour

Pensito Editors

Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and war is a part of God’s world order. In it are developed the noblest virtues of man — courage and abnegation, dutifulness and self-sacrifice at the risk of life. Without war the world would sink into materialism.

— Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891), Prussian field marshal

Judge Rules Bush’s Domestic Spying Program Illegal

Jon Ponder

This is good news — except for the fact that people who willingly break the law, including Pres. Bush, don’t really care what judges have to say about their illegal activities:

It’s too bad there’s no judicial remedy for punishing presidents who break the law — except when they lie about extramarital sex.

The Justice Department said it would appeal the ruling, saying the program was “a critical tool that ensures we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack.”

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, — who is based in Detroit, Michigan — struck down the National Security Agency’s program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

The defendants “are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III,” she wrote.

She further declared that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.”

She went on to say that “the president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders.”

It’s too bad there’s no judicial remedy for punishing presidents who break the law — except when they lie about extramarital sex.

Quote du Jour

Pensito Editors

A wise and courageous prince, with money, troops and laws, can perfectly well govern men without the aid of religion, which was made only to deceive them; but the stupid people would soon make one for themselves, and as long as there are fools and rascals there will be religions. Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody that has ever infected the world.

— Voltaire (1694-1778), French philosopher

Poll: Bush’s Approval Rating Down to 34 Percent, 45 percent Among Wal-Mart Shoppers

Buck Banks

Eroding, imploding: According to a poll conducted by Zogby International this week, George Bush continues to lose support among his Republican base and his approval rating has hit 34 percent, down two points in the past two weeks. The survey was conducted Aug. 11-15, 2006, and included 1,018 respondents.

The numbers continue to reflect erosion in the President’s political base — just 62 percent of Republicans give him positive marks for his job performance, while 38 percent give him negative marks. Even among weekly WalMart shoppers — a demographic group identified by Pollster John Zogby as a critical support group for Bush — just 45 percent now give him positive job marks, though his numbers among those shoppers have improved 10 points since early June.

More than three out of four — 76 percent — of weekly WalMart shoppers voted for Bush over Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election, earlier Zogby polling showed.

Among both conservatives and those who consider themselves very conservative, 59 percent give [Bush] positive marks, while 41 percent in each group gave him a negative job rating.

One third of respondents — 34 percent — said that, overall, the nation is headed in the right direction, while 59 percent said they think things are off on the wrong track.

Democrats continue to carry a lead into the fall campaign season on the generic congressional election question. Likely voters in the poll, asked whether they planned to vote for the Democrat or the Republican in their local congressional election, 39 percent favored Democrats, while 31 percent said they would be voting for the Republican candidate. Democrats also are winning the battle among independents, who favor the out–of–power party by a 32 percent to 20 percent margin, with 41 percent of independents yet undecided.

Asked if the war in Iraq has been worth the loss of American lives, 38 percent said “yes,” while 56 percent said “no,” a ratio that has held steady over the past year or so.

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!”

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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.