Posts by Jon Ponder

Jon Ponder is regular blogger for the Pensito Review

Bush Makes Belated Bid to Capture Bin Laden
Posted by Jon Ponder on June 16, 2008 at 1:24 AM.

It has been 81 months since Osama bin Laden attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, but only now — with just seven months left in his term, George Bush has become desperate to capture the terror overlord.

If you factor in the fact that Pres. Bill Clinton tried to kill bin Laden in August 1998, a case could be made that Bush should have started the search for bin Laden on his first day in office, which adds another nine months to the total. That’s 90 months — seven and a half years — during which bin Laden has been at large in the mountains of Pakistan.

With his polling down to a 24 percent approval rating and his legacy in a shambles, Bush is making one last “hail Mary” bid to to capture the 9/11 mastermind before he leaves office.

Traveling in Europe, Bush has now enlisted the aid of British special forces in the hunt, according to the conservative Times of London:

Defense and intelligence sources in Washington and London confirmed that a renewed hunt was on for the leader of the September 11 attacks. “If he [Bush] can say he has killed Saddam Hussein and captured Bin Laden, he can claim to have left the world a safer place,” said a US intelligence source…

The Special Boat Service (SBS) and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have been taking part in the US-led operations to capture Bin Laden in the wild frontier region of northern Pakistan. It is the first time they have operated across the Afghan border on a regular basis.

The hunt was “completely sanctioned” by the Pakistani government, according to a UK special forces source. It involves the use of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles fitted with Hellfire missiles that can be used to take out specific terrorist targets.

One US intelligence source compared the “growing number of clandestine reconnaissance missions” inside Pakistan with those conducted in Laos and Cambodia at the height of the Vietnam war…

Intelligence on the whereabouts of Bin Laden is sketchy, but some analysts believe he is in the Bajaur tribal zone in northwest Pakistan. He has evaded capture for nearly seven years. “Bush is swinging for the fences in the hope of scoring a home run,” said an intelligence source, using a baseball metaphor.

A Pentagon source said US forces were rolling up Al-Qaeda’s network in Pakistan in the hope of pushing Bin Laden towards the Afghan border, where the US military and bombers with guided missiles were lying in wait. “They are prepping for a major battle,” he said.

The main operations in Pakistan are being undertaken by Delta, the US army special operations unit, and the British SBS.

Special forces are being sent to capture or kill Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters based on intelligence provided by the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and its US counterpart, the Security Coordination Detachment.

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Obama Floats Florida Compromise
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on May 23, 2008 at 3:45 AM.

Now that Barack Obama is officially the pre-presumptive Democratic nominee, he’s going to have to decide what to do about “punishing” Florida and Michigan for moving their primaries too close to the sacred lead spots held by Iowa and New Hampshire.

In Florida yesterday, he floated this idea:

Delving deeper into Florida’s Democratic delegate debacle than he ever has to date, Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday that “a very reasonable solution” would be to count Florida’s disputed primary votes and cut the state’s delegation to the convention in half.

That may be a bit too Solomonic. Cutting the baby in half risks making everybody involved half unhappy. Obama has misjudged the mood among “average Floridians” about this issue:

The Illinois senator, just shy of securing the nomination, stressed that he intends to win Florida and doubted the controversy over Florida’s primary would cause any serious damage to his prospects.

“I don’t think that the average Floridian is spending all their time thinking about this,” he said, as his campaign bus cruised from Tampa to Kissimmee.

“I think what they’re thinking about is $4-per-gallon gas. I think what they’re thinking about is ‘my health care premiums have gone up 25 percent and my deductibles have gone up and I’m trying to hang on to the health care that I’ve got.”’

We are going to need all the happy Democrats in Florida we can muster in November. Since Obama will win the delegate count even if Clinton gets her larger shares in Florida and Michigan, he should countermand mean Dr. Dean and seat both delegations.

McCain Hosts Potential Veeps at His Ranch
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on May 22, 2008 at 9:34 AM.

John McCain has invited three possible running mates to his ranch in Page Springs, near the resort town of Sedona, Arizona, for a weekend visit. The three prospective veeps are Florida’s perpetually tanned, bachelor governor, Charlie Crist; former presisdential candidate, Mitt Romney; and Louisiana’s new governor, Bobby Jindal.

Crist is popular enough in Florida to make a difference in a tight race this fall, but at least one GOP operative has insisted that Charlie must get married, but quick, lest yahoos in the GOP base think he is gay.

Romney proved himself to be so inauthentic during his self-financed run against McCain last winter that it is hard to imagine why McCain would seriously consider him. Perhaps he’s on the list because, if McCain was chosen because he was the least-bad candidate, Romney was second least-worst.

Jindal is a wild card. He was a congressman before running for governor, and is well-known in Louisiana but not elsewhere, which means introducing him to the country would eat up campaign time and resources. Compounding this is his ethnicity. McCain can’t run on the success of the Iraq occupation or the Bush economy, and he’s even been botching his purported strong suit, foreign relations and security, lately. That means the best — maybe only — thing the McCain campaign has going for it is the fact that his opponent, Barack Obama is African-American, a factor that will energize the GOP racist base. Jindal’s family immigrated from India, and he is brown-skinned. Putting him on the ticket might confuse those core voters, who tend to view anyone with dark skin with suspicion. (Another possible ding against Crist.)

In any case, McCain adviser Charlie Black denies that the meetings at the ranch are anything but a fun sleepover for grown-ups. He insists the weekend will be “purely social” and has “nothing whatsoever to do with the vice presidential selection process … Wouldn’t it be difficult to interview people for vice president with the other competitors there?”

McCain’s wife Cindy is worth $100 million, we’re told, and, not surprisingly, the McCains’ vacation home sounds pretty nice:

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Scalia's Tortured Logic
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on May 1, 2008 at 9:00 AM.

The meaning of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution could not be clearer:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

And yet, beginning in 2002, the most senior members of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Sec. of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft and others, met dozens of times to draft a set of torture guidelines for use by CIA interrogators. It’s no wonder that Jonathan Turley, a strong advocate of impeaching Pres. Clinton, called their actions a war crime and compared their sessions to a meeting of gangster Tony Soprano’s Bada Bing Club.

On “60 Minutes” Last Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia offered a new and, well, tortured rationale for the legality of what Bush has euphemistically called “advanced interrogation techniques”:

STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person — if you listen to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?

SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think — Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.

STAHL: Well I think if you’re in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody–

SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you? What’s he punishing you for? … When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

As often happens, Keith Olbermann speaks for every sane American:

The second most senior associate justice on Mr. Bush‘s Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, on TV now repeating in essence what he said earlier, that torture is not really as the Constitution prohibits, cruel and unusual punishment…

So you can torture the innocent or not yet proved guilty but you can‘t punish the guilty with torture? You don‘t see any logical inconsistency in that idea? The concept of punishment being in and of itself, torture or vice versa, that isn’t very pretty obvious to you? You, still there, Justice buddy? OK. Not only do I want to see your diploma, now, I want to see your grade point average.

Media types and conservatives still deride Bill Clinton for saying in a deposition in a civil lawsuit a decade ago, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” And yet, here we have a Supreme Court justice playing semantics over the definition of torture — and the media has barely taken notice.

Air America Suspends Randi Rhodes for Calling Hillary Clinton a "F**king Whore"
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on April 4, 2008 at 5:01 AM.

Air America talker Randi Rhodes, a longtime hero of mine, has flipped from rabid Hillary Clinton supporter to even more rabid Clinton-basher in recent months. The network has suspended her because, as shown in the clip above, she called Hillary Clinton a "fucking whore" at a private, non-Air America event in San Francisco on March 22.

What the clip shows, more than anything, is that news people should avoid attempting stand-up comedy. Which is not to say she didn't have the crowd laughing as she called Geraldine Ferraro a whore; Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney racists and anti-Semites; and then dropped a combo f-bomb/'ho-bomb on Hillary.

Here's the official statement from Air America:

New York - Air America has suspended on-air host Randi Rhodes for making inappropriate statements about prominent figures, including Senator Hillary Clinton, at a recent public appearance on behalf of Air America in San Francisco which was sponsored by an Air America affiliate station.

"Air America encourages strong opinions about public affairs but does not condone such abusive, ad hominem language by our Hosts," said chair Charlie Kireker.

Obama supporters see a conspiracy:

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When Will Someone Ask Meghan McCain About Her Father’s Affairs or Her Mother’s Drug Abuse?
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on April 2, 2008 at 5:41 AM.

When Bill Clinton was asked on MTV during the 1992 presidential campaign whether he wore boxers or briefs, he could have done the world a favor by answering, "None of your business."

In the 2008 campaign, Clinton's daughter Chelsea, now 27, has now been asked twice to provide a justification for her father's affair with Monica Lewinsky, and has been widely criticized for answering, "None of your business."

Critics, including my colleague Trish, say that because Chelsea is out on the hustings as a surrogate for her mother, she should have had an answer prepared for this humiliating question. Knowing the Clintons, it's likely that "none of your business" was the answer the focus groups liked best.

But why should any philanderer's daughter be asked to answer for her old man's inability to keep his zipper shut? If there ever was a question that deserved to be ducked, it's "What do you think about your dad's extramarital affair?"

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Howard Dean: Dems' Supporter Squabbling Is Demoralizing Base
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on March 28, 2008 at 4:15 AM.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says infighting between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama threatens the party’s chances for winning the White House in November:

“You do not want to demoralize the base of the Democratic Party by having the Democrats attack each other,” he said Thursday during the interview in his office at Democratic National Committee headquarters. “Let the media and the Republicans and the talking heads on cable television attack and carry on, fulminate at the mouth. The supporters should keep their mouths shut about this stuff on both sides because that is harmful to the potential victory of a Democrat.”

Dean says he has a plan for resolving the superdelegate conundrum:

Dean wouldn’t talk in detail about what the plan is, but it likely involves encouraging superdelegates to pick a candidate shortly after the voting ends. He said he will not encourage any delegate to vote one way or another.

“I am going to stand up for the rules, and I know I’m doing the right thing most of the time because I’ve got both Clinton people and Obama people mad at me,” he said.

For instance, while Obama’s campaign has been encouraging superdelegates to support the candidate with the most pledged delegates -- which almost certainly will be Obama -- Dean says the rules don’t require that and superdelegates are free to chose who they want.

On the other side, Clinton has been arguing lately that even pledged delegates -- awarded to a candidate based on the outcome of state contests -- aren’t bound to vote for that candidate at the convention. Dean called that “a very technical argument.”

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It's Now Official: Bush Has Katrina-ized the US Economy.
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on March 19, 2008 at 5:49 AM.

Former Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan says the U.S. economy is in the worst shape in 60 years:

"The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War," Greenspan said in a Financial Times commentary.

"It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities," he said, referring to the meltdown in the US sub-prime home loan market and subsequent massive losses for the banks holding the debt instruments.

"The crisis will leave many casualties," he said, his remarks coming after Bear Stearns, the fifth largest US investment house collapsed Friday and was taken over by JP Morgan Chase for a fraction of its value of only a week ago.

But Pres. George W. Herbert Hoover Bush says his government has stabilized the crisis -- and it wasn't even all that difficult. It just required putting in a little O.T.:

"I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend," Bush said as he met with his economic advisors at the White House. "You've shown the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation."

Actually, many analysts and critics said, by focusing on Paulson's working hours instead of on the fear gripping Main Street and Wall Street, the president seemed to show just the opposite -- that he has failed to grasp the gravity of the country's economic crisis.

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Cheney in Baghdad Claims Iraq Security Is "Phenomenal" as Bombing Kills 52
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on March 18, 2008 at 8:14 AM.

The Worst Vice President Ever goes to Baghdad and says:

"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago, and I can sense, as a result of the progress that's been made since then, that there have been some phenomenal changes, in terms of the overall situation, both with respect to the security situation, where Iraqi and American forces have done some very good work, as well as with respect to political developments here in Iraq."

Meanwhile:

At sunset Monday, however, a female suicide bomber killed at least 40 people* and injured more than 50 when she blew herself up in a crowded pedestrian area near a Shiite Muslim shrine in the southern holy city of Karbala, according to government and hospital officials. Among the victims were several Iranian pilgrims who'd come to worship at the Imam Hussein shrine, one of Islam's most sacred sites...

The majority of casualties in the Karbala suicide bombing were female pilgrims who'd gathered at refreshment stands about a half-mile from the shrine.The majority of casualties in the Karbala suicide bombing were female pilgrims who'd gathered at refreshment stands about a half-mile from the shrine, said Saleem Kadhim, a spokesman for the Husseini Hospital, which received 40 dead and 56 injured from the blast.

Medics from nearby towns were called in to help the overflowing hospital, and the government imposed an open-ended citywide curfew on Karbala.

"I was near the bus station when I saw a woman who was pushing others and then, a few seconds later, I saw a flame in the sky," said Jassim Hussein, 32, who helped carry victims from the scene. "I blame the Baathists and members of the old regime. As you know, Karbala is a target for so many enemies, especially those against the Shiites. And I also blame the security forces because we don't have checkpoints in this area."

...In other violence Monday, a car bomb exploded at a busy intersection in the Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, wounding eight people. Three separate roadside bombs in the capital also left casualties: One policeman was killed and one wounded when their patrol was targeted near a teachers' training institute in Mansour; three Iraqi civilians died at a busy intersection near the Shaab Stadium in Zayuna; and one civilian was injured near the landmark Mr. Milk grocery store in Mansour.

And:

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Dr. Laura Blames Elliot Spitzer's Wife for His Passion for Prostitutes
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on March 17, 2008 at 5:28 AM.

Last week, Laura Schlessinger showed us again what a PhD in physiology will teach you about about what makes people tick. Here is her take on what drove former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to cheat on his wife, Silda, with high-priced hookers:

"When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs," the popular psychologist and radio personality said.

Schlessinger admitted she was speaking from ignorance: "I do not know anything about their personal lives," she said, but she insisted that when men cheat it is because their needs are not being met:

"The cheating was his decision to repair what's damaged and to feed himself where he's starving," Schlessinger replied. "But, yes, I hold women responsible for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need."

If she can make shoddy analyses based on nothing more than a hunch, so can I: Sounds like Laura Schlessinger may be projecting. We can only wonder what needs she was trying to meet in 1975, for example, when she agreed to pose topless for her boyfriend, Bill Balance.

A more realistic view is that while some men stray because they and their partners have grown incompatible, perhaps about a third of the species just can’t keep their jimmies in their pants. The “needs” of these guys, the Hugh Hefners of the world, are insatiable.

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Swiftboating Obama: A Look Inside Bogus Right Wing Claims He Has Terror Ties
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on March 11, 2008 at 6:48 AM.

In early January, when Barack Obama was just one among many Democratic candidates, we published Swiftboating Obama's Religion: He Is Not a Muslim. Now that he is the putative Democratic nominee, here is a look at another potentially Swiftboat-able part of his record — his tenuous connections to Michael Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, who were members of the Weather Underground in the Vietnam War era — and his one-time professional relationship with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, a one-time PLO media director.

Ayers was a prominent constituent in Obama’s state senate district.
Ayers and Dorhn were involved in the planning and execution of violent protests 40 years ago:

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb -- designed to kill army officers in New Jersey -- accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she's an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

This never-heard-of-him rightwinger offers a taste of the spin to come from his fellow Noise Machiners:

Ayers, along with his fellow former Weather Underground terrorist wife, Bernardine Dohrn, are among the two most despicable people in living in America. And Obama served on a board with him. That will play well in rural Ohio — for John McCain.

While the Arizona senator was being tortured by his North Vietnamese captors, Ayers was openly cheering for a Communist victory over our troops.

Obama biographer, John K. Wilson, author of “Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest,” and who says he is not affiliated with the Obama campaign, describes Obama’s relationship with with Ayers this way:

In 1995, State Sen. Alice Palmer held an event for supporters at the home of Ayers, where she announced her plans to run for Congress and introduced Obama as her chosen successor. Obama also served on the board of directors for a progressive foundation, the Woods Fund, from 1999-2001, when Ayers was also on the board. In 2001, Ayers gave $200 to Obama's state senate campaign fund. And Obama and Ayers appeared together on a 1997 panel at the University of Chicago dealing with juvenile justice (Obama also praised Ayers' approach on the subject in an op-ed he wrote that year), and on a 2002 panel on public intellectuals at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

That's it.

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Fred Phelps' Anti-Gay Hate Group to Protest Funeral of Murdered UNC Student President
Posted by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review on March 8, 2008 at 4:53 PM.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christianist hate group whose members are mostly members of the family of Fred Phelps, a disbarred attorney, are at it again, feeding off the misery of innocent, grieving families:

Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for protesting and picketing funerals and memorials of fallen soldiers, is planning to picket at the Sunday afternoon funeral of 18-year-old Auburn freshman Lauren Burk, according to the group's Web site. Burk was killed Tuesday night. Police are investigating her death as a murder...

The group is also planning to picket the funeral of Eve Carson, UNC student body president who was killed Wednesday morning.

Both funerals are listed on the WBC site's online picket schedule for Sunday.

Eve Carson, 22, of Athens, Ga., was murdered on March 5:

[She] was found Wednesday morning lying on a street about a mile from campus. She had been shot several times, including once in the right temple. Her sport utility vehicle was discovered Thursday, a few hours after the police positively identified her as the victim.

The shooting appears to be random, [Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian] Curran said.

Police have reported a break in the case:

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