Day: April 6, 2007

Calls for Head on a Platter After Imus Loses His Mind

Trish

“Nappy headed hos???”

That’s how radio superstar Don Imus described Rutgers University’s Scarlet Knights, after they lost the NCAA Women’s Basketball title to the University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols.

“That’s some nappy headed hos there, I’m going to tell you that,” Imus said.

“That’s some rough girls from Rutgers,” Imus said. “Man, they got tattoos …”

“Some hardcore hos,” said [Imus Show’s Producer Bernard] McGurk.

“That’s some nappy headed hos there, I’m going to tell you that,” Imus said.

As you might expect, lots of people were unhappy with the racist, sexist characterization of the college athletes.

[National Association of Black Journalists] President Bryan Monroe asked Thursday if Imus had “lost his mind” and called for the veteran radio host’s dismissal.

I agree, but I must say Imus made a good apology.

Imus said he wanted to “apologize for an insensitive and ill-conceived remark we made the other morning referring to the Rutgers women’s basketball team.”

“It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we are sorry.”

So many people would have said they were apologizing to anyone they “might” have offended, as if whoever found their bad behavior offensive was the problem. At least Imus owned his backward stereotyping.

Imus, according to Wikipedia, hails from Riverside, Calif. I shudder to think what people would have made of this if he were from, say, anywhere at all in the South.

Monica Goodling ‘Resigns’ – Would Have Been First DOJ Official to Take the Fifth

Pensito Editors

Another Friday night, another bad news dump by the Bush Dept. of Justice, which has just announced that Monica Goodling is “resigning” tomorrow.

Had she stayed on, Goodling would have been the first senior official in the Dept. of Justice to assert her Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination in United States history, according to many sources including Jonathan Turley on MSNBC’s Countdown last night. She has been called to testify before committees in both houses of Congress regarding the U.S. attorney firings in December, however her lawyer announced she would refuse to answer because she feared she might perjure herself.

Goodling is one of 150 graduates from the law school at a university operated by televangelist Pat Robertson.

One question: Why is her last day a Saturday?

Why I Won’t Be in Church on Easter

Trish

As Christians and people of Eastern Orthodox faiths observe their holiest day this Sunday, one of their number has a few questions about what they think it means to follow Christ.

Christian commentator Roland Martin speaks for many.

When did it come to the point that being a Christian meant only caring about two issues,­ abortion and homosexuality?

Roland Martin: “I’ve grown tired of people who pimp God”

Ask the nonreligious what being a Christian today means, and based on what we see and read, it’s a good bet they will say that followers of Jesus Christ are preoccupied with those two points.

Poverty? Whatever. Homelessness? An afterthought. A widening gap between the have and have-nots? Immaterial. Divorce? The divorce rate of Christians mirrors the national average, so that’s no big deal.

The point is that being a Christian should be about more than abortion and homosexuality, and it’s high time that those not considered a part of the religious right expose the hypocrisy of our brothers and sisters in Christianity and take back the faith.

Martin puts his finger on one of the reasons I and so many others have all but turned our backs on faith, and can’t be pushed into an organized religious service with a Mack truck.

…it’s troubling to listen to “Christian radio” and hear the kind of hate spewing out of the mouths of my brothers and sisters in the faith.

In fact, I’ve grown tired of people who pimp God. That’s right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it’s time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.

I mean no disrespect to the people closing their businesses to celebrate Good Friday, or those joining the throngs at church on Easter Sunday. But the joy of religion is long since past for me. And until it becomes more about quietly setting the highest example for others to follow and less about judgement and scorn, it will probably remain that way.

Downing Street Memo Redux: DoD Provides New Evidence of Bush ‘Fixing’ Pre-War Intel

Jon Ponder

There is a new report out from the inspector general at the Dept. of Defense that provides clear evidence that senior Bush officials at DoD “fixed” the pre-war intelligence on Iraq to suit their policy of fictitiously connecting Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, in order to motivate the public to go to war against Iraq.

A normal president would be held accountable if proof were offered from within his own government that his team deliberately falsified intelligence in order to trick the country into going to war. And yet this revelation yesterday is barely even news.

In particular, the IG’s report includes a January 2002 memo from Paul Wolfowitz, the neocon architect of the war who was then deputy defense secretary, written to Douglas Feith, DoD’s number three official:

“We don’t seem to be making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda,” Wolfowitz wrote…

Using Pentagon jargon for the secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, he added: “We owe SecDef some analysis of this subject. Please give me a recommendation on how best to proceed. Appreciate the short turn-around.”

…The memo marked the beginnings of what would become a controversial yearlong Pentagon project supervised by Feith to convince the most senior members of the Bush administration that Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked — a conclusion that was hotly disputed by U.S. intelligence agencies at the time and has been discredited in the years since.

What this brings to mind, of course, is a key section of the Downing Street Memo:

[Unnamed British official “C”] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

You recall that the “memo” was actually the minutes of a meeting of top officials in Tony Blair’s government in July 2002 — seven months into the “yearlong project” to link Saddam and 9/11.

When the memo was leaked in May 2005, the mainstream media ignored it for weeks. As I recall it, its release dd not make the front page of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post or any major U.S. daily paper. When the memo finally made it into the news, the Gang of 500 dismissed it, as did rightwingers like comedian Rush Limbaugh:

I purposely haven’t talked about this Downing Street memo much because, frankly, A, it didn’t interest me. And, you know, if it doesn’t interest me I’m not going to talk about it. And the reason it didn’t interest me is because it was just another one of these ginned up things by the libs…

Wrong again, Rush. And yet, while it’s nice to (once again) get proof of Bush’s skulllduggery, this revelation (once again) amounts to little more than cold comfort.

A normal president would be held accountable if proof were offered from within his own government that his team deliberately falsified intelligence in order to trick the country into going to war. And yet this revelation yesterday is barely even news.

Bush, Cheney Dig Deep for Friendly Graduates to Address

Trish

Both the president and his impeachment insurance — er, I mean, his vice president — will speak to graduating young people this month. Cheney will go to Mormon-run Brigham Young University while the holder of the nation’s highest office will go to…wait for it…a satellite campus of a community college.

Meanwhile Condoleezza Rice will address the graduates of Little Tots Preschool in St. Joseph, Missouri. Rice is preparing for tough questions afterward, like “Can I go pee-pee now?” Oh wait, Bush won’t be there to ask that last question.

President Bush will deliver a rare commencement address at a community college: the Miami Dade College Kendall Campus, on April 28.

The White House said Monday that it’s only the second time in history that a sitting president has spoken at a community college commencement. The first time came last year, when Bush traveled to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College following Hurricane Katrina.

O.K., it’s billed as the country’s largest community college but still. This is just embarrassing. Why MDC?

“Though his popularity is at a historic low, [Bush] remains more popular among Cuban Americans, said Fernand Amandi, executive vice president at public opinion research firm Bendixen and Associates…

”I think the student body at Kendall Campus are an educated body and will understand that he’s the commander-in-chief and will show him the respect he deserves,” [17-year-old Student Government President Christopher] Miles said.

Well, Chris, I are educated enough to know that you’re probably right. There’s no chance Bush would go anyplace that isn’t a slam dunk to love him. And obviously, those places are getting harder and harder to find. No offense.

Cheney, meanwhile, is venturing into hostile waters. I know, he’s supposedly from the West and Mormons are very Republican but BYU students are protesting his visit. A writer for the University of Utah’s independent student paper really let it go, saying Cheney came looking for the work.

BYU has invited the devil to Happy Valley.

OK. That last sentence isn’t entirely true. Vice President Dick Cheney will be giving the commencement address at BYU-and yes, he is the devil. What isn’t true is that BYU sought out his services. It was the Bush administration that laid the groundwork for this controversial decision. It asked politely if BYU leaders could see it in their hearts to listen for an hour or two to the half-smiling codger. It seems Cheney won’t be busy this month giving no-bid contracts to Halliburton, outing CIA agents over a grudge or shooting his friends in the face.

Whew. Want to come to work for Pensito Review when you graduate? The pay’s not so good but…well, anyway.

The first of the actual protests got off to a very Mormonesque start.

The College Democrats passed out fliers listing their grievances with having the VP speak at the ceremony. Among them are complaints that: “Cheney’s controversial actions do not represent a model our students should follow,” various issues with the war in Iraq from, the war being “preemptive” to “misleading use of weak intelligence to elicit fear” to ties with Halliburton…

The protest was a peaceful sit-in style with discussions between students but very little shouting and no chanting.

At the BYU College Republicans’ counterprotest, students handed out blue armbands, circulated a letter thanking Cheney for agreeing to speak and offered cookies, brownies and lemonade.

The speeches are still a couple of weeks away, so maybe the action will pick up. Meanwhile Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address graduates of Little Tots Preschool in St. Joseph, Missouri.* Rice is said to be preparing for tough questions afterward, like “What’s your favorite color?” and “Can I go pee-pee now?” Oh wait, Bush won’t be there to ask that last question.

* Not.