Tag: Film

Crime Watch: Signs of the Times

Buck Banks

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The economy really sucks right now. How do I know this? By reading the Police Report section of the Miami Herald. See, when times were better, crimes were, well, more glamorous and exciting to read. But now, the Police Report is just kind of sad, what with a string of garbage can thefts and all. You’d think in hard times, crooks would set their sights a little higher, but nooooo.

Here are some examples:

  • Little Havana: A thief shoplifted six bottles of liquor from a store at 99 NW 27th Ave. Oct. 7
  • Brickell Area: A man on a bicycle stole a woman’s bus pass while she waited for the bus at the corner of SW 7th St. and South Miami Ave. Oct. 17
  • Shenandoah: A thief tried to pry open the front door of a house in the 2400 block of SW 15th St. Oct. 22
  • Silver Bluff Estates: A thief grabbed a City of Miami garbage can from the front of a house in the 3300 block of SW 23rd St. Oct. 21
  • Coconut Grove: A thief stole a City of Miami garbage can from a house in the 3300 block of Ah-We-Wa St. Oct. 20
  • Coral Way Park: A thief stole a money clip, a cell phone, a credit card and a driver’s license from a chair during a wedding party at the Big Five Club. Nov. 29
  • Coral Gables: A thief stole three tickets to the Madonna concert from a desk at a University of Miami dormitory Nov. 24
  • South Miami: A vandal smashed a window on a 1992 Ford Explorer in the 6300 block of SW 41st St. Nov. 25
  • Fairway Heights: A thief took a cell phone from an unlocked 1996 Honda Accord in the 16700 block of SW 102nd Court Nov. 25
  • South Miami Heights: A thief drove off with a 2005 Ford F-450 tow truck in the 12300 block of SW 212th St. Nov. 25. “Smart Towing” is printed on the sides of the truck.

Crist in Europe Spent Like Palin in Bloomingdale’s

Trish
Crist and Palin: “Heck, it’s not our money!”

Charlie Crist’s travel bill is starting to look a lot like the tab for Sarah Palin’s wardrobe — it ain’t pretty.

You might recall us telling you last July about how the Republican Florida governor and his newly-announced fiancee jetted off to Europe under the guise of a trade mission. We thought the trip a bit of an extravagance, what with news reports at the time that Florida’s budget shortfalls would likely be much worse than previously anticipated.

We didn’t know the half of it. The bill to Florida taxpayers for Crist’s entourage was officially announced at $255,000 back then. Crist’s own travel was supposedly underwritten by business interests, not Florida residents. Now, thanks to an investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the invoice has been revealed to be closer to $430,000.

First, there’s who went on the 12-day spree: the governor, his fiancee, his fiancee’s sister (who is not a Florida resident), nine bodyguards, an official photographer, a spokesperson, and numerous lawyers, business people, and realtors. The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell puts the list at six pages and 90-odd people. Maxwell also scrutinized the hotel bills.

Crist and Palin both spend too much time in tanning beds, have never passed a mirror they didn’t like, and believe public service means the bill always goes to someone else.

First of all, I’m thinking soon-to-be Mrs. Gov. Good Times was responsible for some of the drink bills. Because “minibar” receipts show someone (or some ones) in Crist’s room imbibed 14 times in Crist’s suite on the three-day stay in London.

Maxwell also questioned the need for so many bodyguards.

The bodyguards alone, split up among the four countries, spent more than $148,000. And keep in mind: We’re talking relatively safe places such as London and Paris…where people go to celebrate their anniversary. One can only imagine the bills if Charlie had gone to Baghdad.

[…]

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.

A Bailout Plan for Consumers: Use Treasury to Pay Off Americans’ Credit Cards

Jon Ponder

Last month, representatives from both the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Services Roundtable proposed reducing the amount of credit card debt held by financially troubled consumers by 40 percent:

The unusual joint request from the Financial Services Roundtable and the Consumer Federation of America highlighted the urgency of the situation: consumers — even those with strong credit records — defaulting at high levels on their credit cards, while banks battered by the credit crisis bleed tens of billions in red ink from the losses.

The reduction would have to be approved by U.S. Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, whose Treasury Department agency oversees national banks.

Here’s an even better idea: The Federal Reserve estimates that the total of all credit card debt in the United States is $900 billion. Why not use taxpayer money to pay off all consumer credit card debt in one fell swoop?

Hey, $900 billion is a steal in comparison with the money we taxpayers are shoveling out to Wall Street, the automakers and the citizens of Iraq.

Fed Secretive Over Where Our $2 Trillion Is Going

Buck Banks

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Remember the economic bailout that was supposed to head off the next Great Depression through an injection of $2 trillion in cash and loan guarantees? Do you know where your money is going? Neither do I, and apparently, that’s the way the Federal Reserve want to keep it.

According to Bloomberg:

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

“The collateral is not being adequately disclosed, and that’s a big problem,” said Dan Fuss, vice chairman of Boston- based Loomis Sayles & Co., where he co-manages $17 billion in bonds. “In a liquid market, this wouldn’t matter, but we’re not. The market is very nervous and very thin.”

Apparently, the $700 billion bailout approved by Congress — with certain safeguards — is only a drop in the bucket of what the Fed really has access to. And most of the dough the Fed is doling out is being distributed through programs that are not approved or overseen by Congress.

But really, what kind of money are we talking about here?

The Fed’s lending is significant because the central bank has stepped into a rescue role that was also the purpose of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, bailout plan — without safeguards put into the TARP legislation by Congress.

Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank’s purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

In scenes reminiscent of how the Bush administration justified spying on U.S. citizens for our protection, both Paulson and Bernanke seem to be invoking the word transparency way more often than they are practicing it:

At a Sept. 23 Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington, Paulson called for transparency in the purchase of distressed assets under the TARP program.

“We need oversight,” Paulson told lawmakers. “We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.”

At a joint House-Senate hearing the next day, Bernanke also stressed the importance of openness in the program. “Transparency is a big issue,” he said.

Right. Well Bloomberg has filed a federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to force the Fed to reveal the deals. And I bet we’re not going to like what we see when they lift that curtain ….

Joe the Plumber Was On Welfare At Least Twice

Jon Ponder

Here’s another dim bulb the McCain campaign did not vet before trotting him out. But like Sarah Palin, Joe Wurzelbacher — who, let’s recall, is not a plumber, and who lied to Obama when he said he was going to buy a plumbing business — will remain a Dittohead icon for the foreseeable future.

In this video, he says that his family living on welfare was not socialism because they had paid into the system. Sorry, Joe, or whatever your name is, welfare is socialism.

Obama-Biden Now Hiring

Trish

Want a job?

If you are among the 6.5 percent of Americans left unemployed after eight years of George W. Bush, I have good news! Barack Obama and Joe Biden are hiring.

This website is designed to provide prospective applicants with information to help them apply for positions in the Obama-Biden Administration. President-Elect Obama will make appointments throughout the federal government. Some positions will require Senate confirmation while others will not. Some appointments will be made during the transition process and others during the early part of the new Administration.

Hear that? You might not even need Senate confirmation. What are you waiting for? Go to Change.gov, click on “Jobs,” and apply today!

Abramoff Claims Another Victim: Florida’s Tom Feeney

Trish

Two other pieces of good news from Florida. U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (R-East Central Florida) was soundly trounced by former state Rep. Suzanne Kosmas. Feeney was one of the poster children for the corrupt Tom DeLay/Jack Abramoff years, enjoying an infamous golfing excursion to Scotland on the lobbyist’s bankroll among many other gifts.

Kosmas forced Feeney to address his misdeeds squarely, resulting in what passes for an “apology” from a Republican, which means he said he didn’t do anything wrong, and even if he did it wasn’t his fault, and gosh, how did he know it was bad to be bought and sold by power-brokers?

The other news is interesting if suspicious. U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Lakeland), who won re-election easily, announced he will step down as No. 3 in the Republican leadership of the House.

[…]

What Economic Crisis? Palin Spends $150,000 on Clothes and Shopping

Trish

Politico:

How much was that polar bear pin anyway?

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

The McCain campaign’s response:

“With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses,” said spokesperson Tracey Schmitt. “It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.”

Yeah, because that’s what Joanne Six-Pack would do — donate $150,000 of crap to charity. It’s funny that the statement mentions pantsuits. I haven’t seen Palin photographed in one of those, but it seems like there was another female candidate recently who wore a lot of them. Now, let’s see, who was that?

The McCain campaign is doing the same thing it’s done since their ill-fated pick for vice president. When someone criticizes Palin, they scream sexism. Trying to equate the treatment Palin has received with that Hillary Clinton got, by citing pantsuits, is a false argument. It just ain’t happening.