Month: September 2006

Feinstein Opponent Finally Gets Front Page Coverage – Misstated Service Record

Jon Ponder

Until this morning, I’d wager that the number of Californians who could name Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Republican opponent in her reelection bid this year was limited to the candidate, his family and staff — until this morning when his name appeared on page 1A of the Los Angeles Times.

I’m a political junkie, obviously, and I couldn’t have dredged Richard Mountjoy’s name — even if I had been waterboarded. Well, he’s got publicity now:

U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mountjoy has claimed in his campaign biography that he served aboard the battleship Missouri during the Korean War, but his military record shows no assignment on the famous vessel, The Times has found.

In an interview Thursday, Mountjoy acknowledged that he did not serve on the Missouri. Last week, when first asked about his record, he said his Missouri stint had been “very brief” and that he otherwise served on the U.S. heavy cruiser Bremerton, which has a less celebrated history.

He said later that he occasionally boarded the Missouri during the Korean conflict and was on the ship for “a couple of days at a time.”

But his name does not appear on the ship’s muster rolls for those years, according to a researcher engaged by The Times. Asked about this, Mountjoy said, “I would have never answered a roll on the Missouri” because he wasn’t assigned to the ship.

Got a Good Quote?

Buck Banks

Quote, unquote: We have recently (like, yesterday and today) received an unprecedented number (two) of suggestions for the Quote du Jour, one of which we published today. Now, we could take that to mean that our resident quotemeister (me) is not serving our readership the creme de la creme of human thought, which has responded by co-opting the QdJ. Some of us here at Pensito Review (me) prefer to think that the inspiring quotations served up herein have been an inspiration to readers who desire to share their own favorite smart things somebody else said or wrote with the other thoughtful folk who visit our little corner of the Internet.

If you have a favorite quotation, quip, proverb or blurt, share it with us (and your fellow readers). Just send it to me (resident quotemeister) at buck@pensitoreview.com.

Note that all quotes will be moderated and sent to our crack fact-checking staff (did someone remember to feed them this morning?) for vetting prior to being posted for the whole world and your mom to see. Note too that we reserve the right to not publish your quote because Jon finds it offensive or Trish doesn’t “get” it.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Submitted by “Jerome”

New Study Says Drinking is Fast Track to Wealth

Trish

I’m just saying: A new study shows drinkers earn more than the George Bushes of the world, and laws aimed to make it harder to drink are a solution in search of a problem.

San Jose State University’s Reason Foundation makes the case.

Men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers

Drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more money at their jobs than nondrinkers and men who drink socially, visiting a bar at least once a month, bring home an additional 7 percent in pay, according to a new Reason Foundation report by economists Bethany Peters, Ph.D., and Edward Stringham, Ph.D.

“Social drinking builds social capital,” said Stringham, an economics professor at San Jose State University. “Social drinkers are networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their Blackberries that result in bigger paychecks.”

The study finds that men who drink earn 10 percent more than abstainers and women drinkers earn 14 percent more than nondrinkers.

Damn! Think I’ll crack open a cold one before I read on.

The study, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Labor Research, suggests that the growing wave of anti-alcohol legislation at state and local levels will have harmful effects on local economies and individual finances. Efforts to impose massive tax increases on alcohol, to restrict alcohol sales through zoning laws, and prohibit alcohol advertisements have all been stepped up in recent years.

“We’re quick to ban beer at sports stadiums and festivals. The legal blood alcohol level is dropping everywhere, and we’re barraged with overhyped warnings about binge and underage drinking,” Stringham said. “Instead of fear mongering we should step back and acknowledge the proven health and economic benefits that come with the responsible use of alcohol.”

Ain’t that the truth? Just last night, I responsibly consumed several units of Blue Moon with a coworker, and while I haven’t seen an immediate increase in my earnings yet, I am confident that with just a few more pitchers, I can prove Dr. Stringham correct.

BONUS: Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

— Thomas Jefferson, second President of the United States

Ted Turner: Iraq One of the Dumbest Moves in History

Trish

Ted Turner has to be regretting that $1 billion gift to the U.N. a few years ago, since it’s pretty much all going to problems created by George W. Bush. He told Reuters how he really feels about the U.S. invading Iraq.

“It will go down in history, it is already being seen in history, as one of the dumbest moves that was ever made by anybody. A couple of others that come to mind were the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of Russia,” Turner told the forum.

“It literally broke my heart. You don’t start wars just because you don’t like somebody. … I wouldn’t even start a war with Rupert Murdoch,” Turner said, referring to his onetime cable network rival.

One of the dumbest moves? Well, why not? After all, it was conceived by hands-down the dumbest president.

Pres. Clinton: Bush Wrong to Legitimize Whacking People Around

Trish

Did Bush skip Ethics 101 his junior year at Yale? You know, the course where you have to start out reading the Greeks and end up with John Stuart Mill, and know the difference between situational ethics and moral absolutism? And then you have to write a paper describing what you think is the best system for society — one that strives to produce the greatest good for the greatest number or one where everyone just does what works for them in the moment and maybe it equals out in the end.

Clinton: “The president says he’s just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they’re whacking these people around in these secret prisons”

Yeah, I thought Bush sat that one out.

But former Pres. Bill Clinton must have earned an “A” in that class.

“The president says he’s just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they’re whacking these people around in these secret prisons,” Clinton said in NPR’s “Morning Edition” interview, recorded on Wednesday.

“If you go around passing laws that legitimize a violation of the Geneva Convention and institutionalize what happened at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, we’re going to be in real trouble,” he said…

Even if there were circumstances where such treatment is necessary to prevent an imminent attacks, Clinton said: “You don’t make laws based on that. You don’t sit there and say in general torture’s fine if you’re a terrorist suspect.”

House Passes Voter ID Bill – Must Be White Male Landowner to Vote

Buck Banks

Poll text: In a move that Democrats are decrying as a return to the days of Jim Crow laws, Republican House members yesterday voted overwhelmingly to roll back voter identification laws nearly 100 years. If the bill passes the Senate, voters would be required to show photo identification, proof of Anglo-Saxon descent and proof of land ownership before being allowed to exercise the privilege of voting.

Democrats were quick to condemn the vote as election-year politics. “It’s just not fair,” said Thelma Green of Norfolk, Va. “Everybody knows that blacks, women and renters all vote Democratic.”

‘Border fencing and voter identification legislation are just the first two bills in what we believe is the dawning of a new era in the United States.’
– Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

But Republicans were quick to counter that the new requirements are not without precedent. “Look at our Founding Fathers,” said Biff O’Toole of Norwalk, Conn. “You don’t think George Washington shared the ballot box with his wife or slaves, do you?”

Election officials across the country greeted the bill’s passage with relief: “This should really cut down on our workload,” said Charles D. Classey, supervisor of elections for Trousdale Wilson County in Tennessee. “For one thing, there will be fewer people voting, and in my experience white landowners are more polite and less messy at the polls than other former voters, if you catch my drift.”

The Senate, which consists of almost totally rich white landowners, is expected to take up a similar bill which, with the swift application of cloture, could sail through the Senate with no discussion or amendments, and be on the desk of our rich, white landowning president by late next week.

“Border fencing and voter identification legislation are just the first two bills in what we believe is the dawning of a new era in the United States,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

Senate Dems Decry Lack of Iraq Oversight by GOP

Jon Ponder

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, took to the floor on Monday to excoriate the Republican leadership of the Senate for failing to provide oversight on President Bush’s debacle in Iraq, via Bob Geiger at Huffpo:

Reid went on to give the Senate leadership a quick history lesson on how Congress is suppose to work and how it indeed operated before the current crop of Bush rubber-stampers took over:

During the Civil War, President Lincoln was faced continually with oversight hearings by his Congress. Of course, we know during World War II, there were a number of commissions. The most famous was that conducted by Senator Harry Truman of Missouri, which led to his becoming Vice President. Some say, but for that he would not have been chosen as Vice President.
What was the Truman Commission? It was to determine what was going on with World War II. Was money being wasted? Were troop levels right? Korean war hearings were also held, and the same for the Vietnam war. But for this war, none–even though this war has taken longer than it took to settle the differences in the European theater in World War II. Soon it will be the same amount of time that we were able to beat Japan…
This Republican Congress has wasted 20 months on horse slaughtering; the Schiavo case, dealing with someone’s personal relationship, which should not even have been before this body; gay marriage; the nuclear option; flag burning; repealing the estate tax,” said Reid. “But they could not find a day for some time to look at the President’s mistakes, missteps, and misconduct, which have hurt American security and plunged Iraq into a civil war — not a day.”

And then Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, joined Reid for a colloquy:

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