Year: 2006

Public Thinks Bush is Doing a Lousy Job of Handling Even Nonexistent Terror

Trish

The president’s handling of terrorism was highly criticized by those who responded to a recent Bloomberg poll.

That’s kind of startling, considering Bush hasn’t had any terrorism to handle since Sept. 11, 2001.

Americans just seem pissed off with their leader’s flawless record of failure.

Americans just seem pissed off with their leader’s flawless record of failure.

U.S. public opinion turned against President George W. Bush’s handling of terrorism, his signature political strength, last month amid overwhelming opposition to plans to let a Dubai company operate U.S. port facilities.

For the first time, a majority of Americans, 54 percent, disapprove of Bush’s dealing with terrorism…

Bush’s job approval rating fell to 38 percent, a five-point drop from a month ago, fueled also by rising discontent over the Iraq war.

The poll taken from Feb. 25 to March 1 found that almost two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq, amid a surge in sectarian violence there. Sixty-four percent say the U.S. is on the wrong track, while 30 percent say it’s going in the right direction.

The poll found similar discontent with the economy and health care under Bush. The environment was only referenced within the issue of oil consumption, although global warming is to me the biggest threat to our future on a round planet.

A curious part of the survey was asking people how they felt about Bush economic policies compared to Clinton’s. Not surprisingly, Bush came out the loser, with only 26 percent saying they favor the economy now over the economy then.

“For all his personal issues, if you try and lay that aside, Clinton was a very good president,” said Henry Lennon, a 59-year-old surgeon in Boca Raton, Florida, who voted for Bush in the last election. “Under the current economy the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. As a responsible person I think that’s wrong,” poll respondent Lennon said in a follow-up interview.

So as a responsible person, Henry, why’d you vote for Bush in 2004? You are what we around Pensito Review refer to as, “the problem.”

Pensito Review: Off the Wires

Buck Banks

In Letter, Charles Criticizes Right Act
LONDON – Prince Charles criticized landmark human rights legislation in correspondence printed in a British newspaper Thursday, a leak likely to fuel criticism of the heir to the throne’s role in politics. EXCERPT: “What a silly idea! If I were king, I would simply grant everyone human rights”

Document: Al-Qaida Encourages Oil Attacks
CAIRO, Egypt – Al-Qaida has encouraged its followers to attack oil pipelines and facilities in Muslim countries but not wells, according to a document posted on a Web site by the group that targeted the world’s largest oil-processing complex in Saudi Arabia. Renind us again why we need illegal wiretaps when al-Qaida is posting its secret terrorism plans on the Web.

McCartneys Join Effort to End Seal Hunt
CHARLOTTETOWN, Prince Edward Island – Opponents of Canada’s seal hunt have a powerful ally in their bid to end the annual slaughter: Paul McCartney, who has pledged to take to the ice floes and frolic with the doe-eyed pups before the harvest gets under way. However, it was McCartney’s threat to reunite Wings that finally convinced the hunters to spare the seals.

Gunmen Shut Down Kenyan Paper, TV Station
NAIROBI, Kenya – Masked gunmen who identified themselves as police shut down Kenya’s second largest media group Thursday. Since then, programming has consisted of 24-hour reruns of “Hill Sreet Blues,” “NYPD Blue” and “Cops.”

Abbas: Al-Qaida Has Infiltrated Gaza Strip
RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview published Thursday that the al-Qaida terror network has infiltrated the Gaza Strip and West Bank. “And now it’s calling itself Hamas,” he said.

Bush: ‘I Did Not Have Sex on That Levee’

Jon Ponder

Now there is videotape of President Bush being briefed on Katina in which damage to the levees is anticipated:

So when the president told Diane Sawyer on September 1 that, “No one could have anticipated the levees being breached,” it was a lie.

Federal officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief of possible devastation just before Hurricane Katrina struck.
Six days of video footage from briefings and transcripts were obtained by The Associated Press.

The warnings were that the storm could breach levees, risk lives in the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelm rescuers.

A-P reports Bush didn’t ask any questions during the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck on August 29th.

He assured state officials that the government was fully prepared.

Several hundred thousand Louisiana evacuees ended up in Texas and other states after Katrina hit.

The tapes and documents show federal officials were fatally slow to realize they didn’t have enough resources.

So when the president told Diane Sawyer on September 1 that, “No one could have anticipated the levees being breached,” it was a lie.

At Last: What Total Lack of Separation of Church and State in America Looks Like

Trish

A bizarre town is taking shape in Southwest Florida, built by Domino’s Pizza C.E.Nutcase Thomas S. Monaghan. Monaghan will rule his town according to Tali-Catholic-ban guidelines.

Jesus will be hanging just overhead at all times, in case anyone starts thinking about doing anything that might lead to a need to prevent pregnancy

The pizza magnate, raised by wolves nuns in orphanages, is bankrolling the town called Ave Maria with millions of dollars, calling its construction “God’s will.”

Stores won’t sell pornographic magazines, pharmacies won’t carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will carry no X-rated channels, he said in a speech last year to the Boston Catholic Men’s Conference…

The town is being built around Ave Maria University, the first Catholic university to be built in the United States in four decades, which Monaghan also founded.

The community…will be set on 5,000 acres with a European-inspired town center. It will encircle a massive church and what planners call the largest crucifix in the nation, standing nearly 65 feet tall.

So Jesus will be hanging just overhead at all times, in case anyone starts thinking about doing anything that might lead to a need to prevent pregnancy. Of course, some people are wondering if it’s constitutional to do all this banning of perfectly legal activities.

“This is country club Christianity,” said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, which opposes the church’s bans on abortion and birth control.

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, agreed.

While Simon notes there are religiously homogenous communities across the country, none can “wield governmental power along the lines of religious principle.”

The folks in charge of Florida are currently punting.

“The community has the right to provide a wholesome environment,” [Florida Attorney General and candidate for governor Charlie] Crist said Tuesday. “If someone disagrees, they have the right to go to court and present facts before a judge.”

Gov. Jeb Bush, at the university’s recent groundbreaking, lauded the development as a new kind of town, where faith and freedom will merge to create a community of like-minded citizens.

And I just love it when that happens. Meanwhile Monaghan has no qualms, but all the self-assurance of a true religious fanatic and extremist.

“I believe all of history is just one big battle between good and evil. I don’t want to be on the sidelines,” Monaghan said in a recent Newsweek interview.

No worries there, Tommy. You bought a seat in the front row.

Ethics Quietly Removed from Defense Spending Bill

Buck Banks

Oxymoron — military ethics: Where do the Pentagon’s military officers go after their retirement from active service? Many go to work for big defense contractors as liaisons between the contractors and the people who sign the contracts on Capitol Hill.

For instance, one of the more notorious cases involved Darleen Druyun, a high-ranking Air Force procurement official who was in charge of overseeing Boeing Co. air tanker negotiations at the same time she was applying for a top Boeing job. Talk about padding your resume!

She pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and in 2004 was sentenced to nine months in prison.

Duh — problems likely ahead in changing ethics rules for both lawmakers and lobbyists.

The Senate unanimously passed a plan last November to officially identify former Pentagon officials who go to work for defense contractors as part of the $491.5 billion defense authorization bill. But somewhere in the House-Senate conferences of December, the provision disappeared, quietly, without a peep of conscience.

Congress Daily offered this insipid insight that’s one for the “Duh” file: “The removal of the provision from the defense bill that would have required the defense companies to report the names of former members and military officers to benefit from government contracts signals the problems likely ahead in changing ethics rules for both lawmakers and lobbyists.” (emphasis added)

The provision would have required companies with defense contracts over $10 million to name former defense officials or military officers who received compensation from the contractors in an annual report to the Pentagon. Now that doesn’t sound too egregious, does it?

Contractor disclosure apparently got scrubbed after the Pentagon raised objections, according to one top Senate staffer involved in the talks.

The department apparently felt “there were too many people covered” by the provision, and there also was resistance by the House during a short conference meeting prior to the lawmakers’ departure for the Christmas holidays.

In the fiscal free-for-all that characterizes the Bush administration, such week-kneed attempts to inject an iota of ethics into the self-enrichment process will undoubtedly continue to fail. All hail the Commander-In-Thief!

Bush Greeted by 100,000 Protesters in India

Jon Ponder

Here’s a bet: There will be scant coverage of these protests on American news broadcasts:

Tens of thousands of Indians waving black and white flags and chanting “Death to Bush!” rallied Wednesday in New Delhi to protest a visit by President Bush.

Surindra Singh Yadav, a senior police officer in charge of crowd control, said as many as 100,000 people, most of them Muslim, had gathered in a fairground in central New Delhi ordinarily used for political rallies.

“Whether Hindu or Muslim, the people of India have gathered here to show our anger. We have only one message — killer Bush go home,” one of the speakers, Hindu politician Raj Babbar, told the crowd.

We Are Winning the War On Christians

Buck Banks

Wagers of sin: We’ve got ’em on the run and we are winning the war on Christians! Actually, I did not know we were waging a war on the God-jockeys until I received an e-mail from Rick Scarborough of a group called Vision America. These folks are so afraid of us lefties that they are holding a conference in the holy city of Washington, D.C., March 27-28.

Here’s what Scarborough gives as proof there’s a battle a-wagin’:

A war on Christians rages across the America. By attacking Christians, the left intends to destroy the remnants of Judeo-Christian morality.

Here’s what I mean by a war on Christians:

  • Christmas symbols and greetings are purged
  • A federal judge bans “One Nation Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance recited by school children
  • A Navy chaplain is told he can’t publicly pray in Jesus’ name
  • Removal of Ten Commandments monuments
  • Move to stifle religious expression at the Air Force Academy
  • Christians arrested for peacefully praying at a “gay pride” rally in Philadelphia
  • Federal appeals court says parental rights stop at the schoolhouse door
  • Homosexual “marriage” established by judicial decree in Massachusetts
  • Blasphemous “Da Vinci Code” movie comes out in May
  • Churches are burned down in Alabama

So I’ve been invited to attend Vision America’s The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006 conference, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. There, I’ll supposedly be given “the knowledge and strategies to fight back effectively.”

The left intends to eliminate God-based morality from our government to achieve its goal of cultural Marxism in a secular state.

They’ve certainly lined up an impressive array of Christian soldiers and wingnuts for the conference, including Sen. Sam Brownback (R, Kansas), Sen. John Cornyn (R, Texas), Congressman Tom DeLay (R, Texas), Gary Bauer (failed 2000 presidential candidate and president of American Values), Alan Keyes (failed serial candidate), con-columnist Phyllis Schlafly, radio wingnut Janet Parshall, Christian activist and radio talker Janet Folger, rightwing radio talker William Greene, and TV preachers Ron Luce and Rod Parsley.

As if that lineup wasn’t enough, there are panels addressing different aspects of the war with titles that are just hilarious:

Christian Persecution: Reports from the Frontlines

The Gay Agenda: America Won’t Be Happy

The ACLU and Radical Secularism: Driving God From The Public Square

Hollywood: Christians Through A Distorted Lens

The Judiciary: Overruling God

The Media: Megaphone for Anti-Faith Values

Jews Confront The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006

Taking Our Faith To The Ballot Box

The left intends to eliminate God-based morality from our government to achieve its goal of cultural Marxism in a secular state.

They get extra credit for cleverness. Anyway, it’s relatively inexpensive to go, and there’s actually a marriage benefit. Registration for individuals is $149; for married couples, $259; and for students (without meals), only $50.

If you go, tell me how it went. I’m curious about the War on Christians, but I don’t want to get too close and end up as collateral damage ….

Credit Where It’s Due: Bush Says Osama Helped Him Win in 2004

Trish

Loyal to the end: A new book says Bush credited Osama bin Laden for helping him win the 2004 election, but stops just short of saying Bush asked his old family pal to do it. CNN reports that Bush felt like the tape, released the Friday before Election Day Tuesday, was a little slice of serendipity for himself and his handlers.

“I thought it was going to help,” Bush said

Bush said there were “enormous amounts of discussion” inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called “an interesting entry by our enemy” into the presidential race.

Bush’s comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book “Strategery” by Bill Sammon, a longtime White House correspondent.

“What does it mean? Is it going to help? Is it going to hurt?” Bush told Sammon of the bin Laden tapes…

“I thought it was going to help,” Bush said.

“I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

Not that anyone would attempt to manipulate the voters by tugging on those fear strings, or by issuing a deluge of elevated threat level warnings as the election approached about acts and people that never proved to have any substance.

Pensito Review: Off the Wires

Buck Banks

Saudis Say 4 Militants Killed in Raids
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi authorities announced Tuesday that four of the five militants killed during police raids a day earlier in the Saudi capital included the kingdom’s top terrorist and three other members of the al-Qaida terror group. Nice shooting, guys. Okay, now you can take over our seaports.

Prosecutors: Saddam OK’d Shiite Executions
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein’s trial resumed Tuesday with the former leader’s defense attorneys ending a month-long boycott of the proceedings. When they asked the judge if they’d missed anything he replied, “Opening arguments, presentation of evidence and closing arguments, but you’re just in time for the sentencing and execution.”

Iran Says It Opposes Nuclear Weapons
TOKYO – A report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency shows there is no proof Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at producing nuclear weapons, Iran’s foreign minister said Tuesday in Japan. Right, and didn’t you guys recently say the Holocaust didn’t happen, either?

Rio’s Carnival Parade Pays Homage to Women
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Thousands of plumed dancers kicked off a second night of parading Monday in Rio’s pre-Lenten carnival. The Porto da Pedra group opened the festivities with 3,720 dancers who delighted the 70,000 people packed into the Sambadrome stadium. Interesting homage — nothing like putting women in huge feathered headdresses, pasties, sequined thongs and high heels, and watching them jiggle all over to demonstrate your appreciation.

Poll: 72% in Military Favor ‘Cut and Run’

Jon Ponder
Almost 90 percent of the military believes the Bush lie that Saddam was behind 9/11

According to the new Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll, just one in five troops — 72 percent — agrees with President Bush that the United States should stay “as long as they are needed” in Iraq.

There is a terrifying number in the poll however: Almost 90 percent think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks.