Author: Pensito Editors

The Future’s So Bright We Can Already See It

Pensito Editors

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We’ve reluctantly — because we don’t want to abuse our supernatural powers — dusted off the Pensito Review crystal ball to make a few predictions for 2009.

  • On her first trip to Eastern Europe as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton is met in Bosnia with sniper fire.
  • Adam Sorkin creates a new West Wing-like television program based loosely on The Jeffersons sitcom where a black family moves into the White House and has to deal with a bunch of weird white people in Congress in a lot of forced, uncomfortable situations.
  • In his last few hours as president, Bush pardons Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Vicks, Mark Cuban, Ken Lay (posthumously), Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, Todd Palin (DUI), Ted Stevens, Duke Cunningham, Larry Craig, Bill O’Reilly (sexual harassment), Rush Limbaugh (prescription drug fraud), Phil Spector and O.J. Simpson.
  • Eliot Spitzer and Jon Edwards buy a Winnebago and a digital camera and hit the road for Panama City, Fla. during spring break for a new reality program called “Guys Gone Wild.”
  • It’s June 2009 and they’re still counting votes in Minnesota.
  • Jamie Lynn Spears, Angelina Jolie, Katie Holmes, Bristol Palin, Clay Aiken and those 17 high school girls in Gloucester, Mass., volunteer to be sterilized by aliens as a gesture of interplanetary goodwill.
  • The newspaper industry completely collapses, bankrupting Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zeller, and leaving the West Framforth Argus-Beacon the only print newspaper still publishing in the United States.
  • With its bailout money, the U.S. auto industry retools and comes out with the coolest hybrid ever made, called the Iaccoca. Unfortunately, although the vehicle initially is greeted with excitement and was hailed as having the potential to single-handedly cure our dependence on foreign oil, due to its name it is consigned to the dustbin of history alongside the Edsel.
  • In a desperate attempt to maintain its momentum from the presidential elections, Saturday Night Live starts doing skits involving Georgia’s president Mikhail Saakashvili, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — and nobody notices.
  • After poisoning our dogs’ food, our children’s toys and our toothpaste with melamine, China refines its efforts to kill members of both political parties by flooding the post-election market with lead-glazed Barack Obama commemorative plates and MSG-infused “Palin in 2012” T-shirts.
  • Larry King finally stops doing whatever it is he does.
  • On his first day in office, President Barack Obama signs Executive Order 1256 decreeing that no one, and he means no one, is supposed to pay one iota of attention to any celebrity who goes by just one name. That means you, Cher, Madonna, Beyonce, Oprah, et. al.
  • Newt Gingrich gets fatter, uglier and meaner.
  • So does Jeb Bush.
  • Al Gore just gets fatter and more saintlike.
  • General Motors apologizes to the American people for the Hummer, calling it “the single most obnoxious thing we ever did” and adding, “Our heads were up our butts, but we get it now. Buy a Chevy! LYLAS!”
  • It’s October 2009 and they’re still counting votes in Minnesota.
  • The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints apologizes for its role in the defeat of California’s Proposition 8, which bars gays from entering into a civil marriage contract. The Mormon Church issues a statement that to atone for its actions, it will immediately stop posthumously baptizing Nazis and Jews. Pinkie promise!
  • In what has been hailed as a further effort to seal his hetero creds, a honeymoon sex tape was released on the Internets of closeted Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and his blushing bride Carole Rome engaged in sexual acts that are illegal in every county of the state. The grainy, poor-quality tape confirms that Crist’s famous tan is an all-over one.
  • Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin agrees to appear on the cover of Playboy Magazine. “How many hockey moms do you know who can have four or five kids and still have a bodacious bod like this?” asked the former Miss Wasilla.

Photo, Past Statement Prove Palin Lied about Opposing Bridge to Nowhere

Pensito Editors

The McCain campaign is brazenly promoting the lie that Sarah Palin consistently opposed the infamous Bridge to Nowhere pork project in 2006 that they even included this false claim in a new ad.
We’re not going to “allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.”
— Palin
It ought to be problematic for them that the record shows that Palin wholeheartedly supported the Bridge to Nowhere when it was first proposed. Evidence of this includes the photo above showing Palin holding a T-shirt promoting the giant pork project, as well as this statement to a local paper:

“I’m hearing from a lot of Southeast residents who believe that maybe they haven’t been given their due respect,” she said. “Part of my agenda is making sure that Southeast is heard. That your projects are important. That we go to bat for Southeast when we’re up against federal influences that aren’t in the best interest of Southeast.”

She cited the widespread negative attention focused on the Gravina Island crossing project.

“We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,” Palin said…

“There needs to be a link between Ketchikan and its future and its future opportunities and progress, opening up land in this area,” she said.

It ought to be problematic for them to promote Palin as Maverick when the record shows she has egregiously flipflopped on one fo the most controversial issues of the day — but it probably won’t hurt them at all.

This is another instance of Republicans setting ground rules for Democrats and then flagrantly breaking their own rules when it suits them.

For example, it is permissible for Republicans to impeach a Democratic president over something as minor as lying about an extramarital affair in a civil deposition, but it is outrageous to suggest that a Republican president might be impeached for falsifying his reasons for taking the country to war, or for treasonously exposing a CIA program tracking WMB in order to enact political revenge.

In 2004, Republicans used John Kerry’s two opposing positions on the war — he was for it before he was against it — to disqualify him from the presidency. But now that they have a vice presidential candidate who has taken two diametrically opposed, but both politically expedient, positions on the most controversial pork project of all time, they’re simply ignoring her strong support in the beginning while they promote her as a maverick for opposing it after the political winds changed.

Ask Dr. Democrat: Did We Always Have Superdelegates?

Pensito Editors

Dear Dr. Democrat:

Did we always have super delegates? I don’t remember ever hearing the term before this year.

Unsure About Supers

Dear Unsure:

The super delegates were added after the McGovern nomination in order to prevent the party from ever again nominating high-minded, wine-sipping, arugula-munching intellectual elites who don’t stand a chance in the general election. Obviously, it has been an abysmal failure.
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But seriously, the purpose of the super delegate system is to stop a too-liberal, unelectable candidate in a close election from getting the nomination at the convention. The idea was that if it should ever come to pass again that the hoi poloi gave the popular vote to an unelectable effete, the super delegates, who are mostly current or former elected officials, would step in and save the day by choosing a more palatable (i.e., conservative) candidate.

It’s popular to cast Clinton as being evil because she might play this card, but the card was put there to be played. That being said, I don’t think she’ll do it — and if she tries, I don’t think the supers will go for it. Feinstein and even Schumer have signaled they won’t vote for her.

But, as the saying goes, the rules are the rules.

Dr. D

We Have Updated Our Comments Policy

Pensito Editors

Because of the presidential campaign, the tenor of some comments this year has grown more emotionally charged and inflammatory. While we put a premium on lively, informed and well-reasoned dialogue, and we don’t expect everyone to share our beliefs, we do expect a certain level of discourse. We appreciate sarcasm and snarkiness — they are our stock in trade — but we will not tolerate hate speech, insults, threats or lies. If you want to engage in those behaviors, get your own web site.

For these reasons, Pensito Review recently updated its comments policy. We now moderate messages that fall into the categories laid out below, along with others that might crop up that we haven’t anticipated. Commenters who persist in abusive behavior will be banned and their comments may be expunged.

What we consider “abusive behavior”:

Abusive language: Comments that contain racial epithets, personal insults, intimidating language, threats and the like.

Troll behavior: Comments that are primarily intended to disrupt regular discourse, annoy, harass and aggravate, to be purposefully and persistently unreasonable, or that are malicious.

Purposefully spreading falsehoods: Since it is the practice of certain ideologues to spread falsehoods, particularly about candidates (also known as “Swiftboating”), as well as to attempt to rewrite history in order to mask the nefariousness or incompetence of their leaders, we reserve the right to flag these statements as false by posting the truth within the comments.

Pensito Review News Roundup for April 1, 2008

Pensito Editors

Howard Dean has announced the Democratic National Committee will pay to hold the Florida primary again, and this time, candidates will be allowed to visit the state before the voting. Dean said the primary will be held Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008.

Sen. Hillary Clinton says she’s quitting her campaign and will join Sen. Joe Lieberman as an “Independent Democrat.” The new party so far has two members, but plans spin-off chapters, including one headed by Ralph Nader, the “Independent Green Party,” and one led by Ron Paul, the “Independent Libertarian Party.”

Sen. Barack Obama, explaining his recent chronologically challenged anecdotes in a speech in Selma, Ala., last week, claimed he was suffering from “a temporary superabundance of audacity and a dearth of hope.”

At a press conference today Sen. John McCain gave a clearer idea of his proposed timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq: “When I learn the difference between Shiites and Sunnis, we’ll leave.”

Karen Thurman, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, announced today that the party was changing its name to #@&%$ Florida Democrats!, which is how the organization has been referred to since last fall by Democrats in other parts of the nation.

In his ongoing efforts to encourage more tourists to visit Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist unveiled a plan today to make some of the state’s more oddly named cities and attractions more palatable to visitors. Among the examples were Tallahassee, which will now be called Talltown; Orlando, which now will be Mouseville; Lake Okeechobee will become Lake OK, and the Everglades will be known as Screwed.

Ashley Dupre, the high-priced call girl responsible for the resignation of New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, explained in an interview today exactly why she was paid up to $4,000 a night to sleep with Spitzer: “So I wouldn’t giggle when he took his pants off.”

Spitzer’s replacement, Gov. David Paterson, who has admitted dabbling in drugs in his 20s and having a series of affairs while married, explained how he, a legally blind African-American man, could actually manage to have a series of affairs: “Barry White, baby,” he said.

Happy April Fool’s Day, everybody!

Pensito Review’s 2007 Nominees to the GOP Adulterers Hall of Fame

Pensito Editors

2007 GOP Adulterers Hall of Fame Nominees

The Real Threat to Traditional Marriage Is Not Gay People, It’s Adulterers – Especially Republicans Like These Who Proclaim ‘Family Values’ While Breaking the Marriage Vows

At the outset of putting together the list of nominees for the GOP Adulterers Hall of Fame this year, Richard Melon Scaife was far and away the top candidate for the top spot. The 75-year-old billionaire bankrolled the $2.3 million “Arkansas Project” to dig up dirt on the Clintons’ marriage in the 1990s — at the same time that he was ditching his first wife in order to marry his mistress — is likely to lose half his $1.3 billion fortune in a divorce settlement with his second wife (the aforementioned former mistress) because she caught him having an affair with a 43-year-old former prostitute. As GOP adulteries go, there are few more vivid examples than that.

But Scaife got edged after we inadvertently ran across at least one adulterous period in the life of Ronald Reagan — and, no, Nancy was not involved. In 1938, when Reagan started dating his future wife, actress Jane Wyman, she was married to someone else. About 10 years later, when his marriage to Wyman was coming undone, Reagan lived on and off in the Garden of Allah Hotel on the Sunset Strip, where, he would later brag, he often woke up next to women whose names he couldn’t remember.

Also on this year’s list, Sen. David Vitter, the Louisiana family values huckster whose long history of consorting with prostitutes was revealed in the D.C. Madam scandal; Huckabee advisor Dick Morris, who was caught in the 1990s having his toes sucked by a prostitute, and no less than four married male homophobes — Sen. Larry Craig, Rev. Ted Haggard, Florida Rep. Bob Allen and Washington Rep. Richard Curtis — who got caught having sex with men (or trying to) — including three who paid for sex (or tried to) — Craig, Allen and Curtis.

Without further ado…

2007 GOP Adulterers Hall of Fame
NOMINEES

  • Ronald Reagan: Lived like a Hollywood playboy during his first marriage
  • Richard Mellon Scaife: Rightwing billionaire caught by his wife in LTR with a former hooker
  • Larry Craig: Homo-hating U.S. senator nabbed seeking sex in men’s room
  • David Vitter: Another senator with a morals agenda, his hid an irresistible penchant for prostitutes
  • Dick Morris: Current advisor to Rev. Huckabee, was embroiled in a prostitute scandal in the 1990s that involved toe sucking
  • Ted Haggard: Megachurch founder, Bush advisor and professional homophobe, he was outed by a male escort in 2006
  • Bob Allen: Homophobic Florida politician tried to buy sex from an undercover cop in the men’s room of a park
  • Richard Curtis: A rightwing gay-hating Washington pol who accused a hustler nicknamed “The Stallion” of extortion

[…]

Another Dog Killed by Republicans – Blackwater Shoots Resident Pooch at NYT Bureau in Baghdad

Pensito Editors

On Monday we learned that Mike Huckabee has been accused of covering up his son’s brutal killing of a stray dog years ago. Now there is word that handlers of security service dogs employed by Blackwater, the paramilitary mercenary group with exclusive, high-level and pervasive ties to the Republican Party — and that has received over $100 million in no-bid contracts from the Bush administration — shot a dog that lived at the New York Times bureau in Baghdad:

Investigators from the State Department have made two visits to The New York Times’s news bureau in Baghdad as they look into the shooting of one of the bureau’s dogs by Blackwater bodyguards last week.

Employees of the bureau said that the Blackwater guards shot the dog, named Hentish, during a search of the Times compound for explosives. A security team was conducting the search ahead of a visit by an American diplomat.

Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, the private security firm, told Reuters that the dog had attacked one of Blackwater’s bomb-sniffing dogs.

“The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs,” she said in an e-mail to Reuters. “When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company’s K-9 and himself.”

It apparently didn’t occur to the Blackwater dog handler to remove the service dog from the area so that someone Hentish trusted could secure him inside. Or maybe saving the dog’s life was considered a waste of Blackwater’s precious time.

I guess we should take comfort that the Blackwater goon didn’t torture Hentish before shooting him.

Rightwing Religious Militias in Iraq Target Gays for Assassination

Pensito Editors

Leaders of Iraqi LGBT report that fundamentalist Shia militias in Iraq are tracking down and killing gay people.

Apparently life for Iraqi gays was better under a brutal secular dictator than it is today with armed rightwing religious fanatics roaming the streets.

The group’s founder, Ali Hili, says two Iraqi LGBT members were killed inside a safe house they operated in Najaf earlier this year. A young boy the two women had rescued from the sex industry was also murdered.

Iraqi LGBT has been operating five safe houses for gay people but says it has closed three of them due to lack of funding. Now the lives of the people forced out of the shelters are in danger,say Ali Hili:

Over 30 gay residents who we cared for in these three safe houses now have to take their chances in a country where religious militia regularly seek out gays and execute them. We feel deserted by the international gay community. Few people seem to care about our fate,

One member of the group said,”Nowadays, we don’t dare be seen in the neighbourhoods where we used to live. It is too dangerous for anyone known to be gay or to have had a homosexual past.”

Interestingly, Ali Hili blames the U.S. and British invasion and occupation for setting loose the homophobic killing spree:

Their armies invaded and occupied our land, destroyed the infrastructure of government, and created the chaos and lawlessness that has allowed religious fundamentalism to flourish and to terrorise woman and gay people.

Violence against gays has intensified sharply since late 2005, when Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, which declared that gays and lesbians should be ‘killed in the worst, most severe way possible’.

Since then, LGBT people have been specifically targeted by the Madhi Army, the militia of fundamentalist Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, as well as by the Badr organisation and other Shia death squads. Badr is the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is one of the leading political forces in Baghdad’s

Apparently life for Iraqi gays was better under a brutal secular dictator than it is today with armed rightwing religious fanatics roaming the streets.

For information on making a donation to keep the safe houses open, visit the Iraqi LGBT website.