UPDATED: Another screwup by the Villar-Cayetano leadership

or how the NBN investigation was fucked up big time by Cayetano according to Jarius Bondoc.

Related:

- The Toothless and Feckless Blue Ribbon committee under Villar.

UPDATE: In the end, mangyayari dito. This is just for show. The Administration already got to Lozada because Cayetano revealed the supposed to be "secret witnesss" identity. Which means Lozada is now likely to do the same shit as Neri did at the Senate--throw Abalos under the bus, but absolve and protect Jose Pidal and Co.

Time and time again, these two "opposition" members have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

UPDATE: From the Malaya:

Another possible witness to the Ar-royo administration’s thieving ways has left the country to evade a Senate subpoena. Rodolfo Noel Lozada, described as having intimate knowledge of the $375 million ZTE deal which would have cost taxpayers $150 million in overprice, flew to Hong Kong and points east on an "official trip."

I'm sure napagusapan na ni Lozada at ng mga Administration handlers niya ang script niya bago siya bumalik sa Pilipinas.

"An amazing pastoral statement from the CBCP"

From the Tribune Editorial:

Catholic bishops appear to have totally lost their moral moorings as they virtually exculpated Gloria Arroyo and her government from blame on the rampant corruption and instead put the blame on the Filipino people for the moral decay in society.

They also placed the blame on the media for the “darkness” that we live with today, saying Filipinos are “a people almost without hope,” seeing darkness everywhere, adding the many problems we have today are “simply rumors, fears, suspicions, imagined wrongs” and as these rumors, imagined wrongs, suspicions and fears are reported in the newspapers, the people believe these imaginary problems to be true and factual. All these were stated in the bishops’ pastoral statement issued Monday.

This is truly an amazing pastoral statement from the bishops who claim to be the country’s moral guides.

Simply rumors, suspicions and imagined wrongs in this government and society, they say? Were the “Hello Garci” conversations caught on tape detailing the cheating operations of the presidential polls of 2004 which even included abductions of election officers who were not willing to engage in cheating, an imagined problem and a rumor?

Read the whole thing. I don't trust the CBCP. When the issue of Hello Garci election fraud first surfaced, the CBCP immediately came out with a pastoral letter saying that they were not asking for Arroyo's resignation, and that they would not support another edsa power grab, but would prefer "constitutional means" like impeachment. A lot of people including members of the opposition were skeptical that impeachment will work, but went along anyway.

Guess what? A year later, Bait and switch. When the anti-Arroyo movement moved to impeach arroyo, the CBCP came out with another pastoral statement, this time saying they will not support Arroyo's impeachment.

These are the same people too that supported the unconstitutional Calibrated Pre-emptive Response (CPR) rule at the height of Hello Garci.

So whenever i hear bishops pontificating na "we are all corrupt", or "everybody cheats anyway", matawa ka na lang.

"Karaoke for Shy People"

Blogs! (via Sully)

Orwellian

He would be proud of this.

Feel free to download all the songs -- Legally

for real?

Martin Scorsese plans to direct controversial film set in Japan

From the AP:

Martin Scorsese has disclosed that he is planning to direct a movie, set in 17th-century Japan, that may have implications related to the war in Iraq. In an interview with the Associated Press at the Cannes film festival, Scorsese said that his film, Silence, presumably based on the novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo and William Johnston about Portuguese Christian missionaries who arrived in Japan in feudal times, has parallels to America's role in Iraq. The Oscar-winning director (The Departed) said that he hopes to shoot the film in Japan, at least partially, beginning next summer. "It raises a lot of questions about foreign cultures coming in and imposing their way of thinking on another culture they know nothing about," Scorsese told the A.P.

So was it a mistake for the US and other Western countries to invade and occupy Afghanistan and impose their culture of democracy in that god-forsaken terrorist sponsoring state?

Is Scorsese saying that the US and NATO should get the hell out of Afghanistan now and leave the weak Karzai gov't to fend for himself against the Taliban and Al Queda?

What about Japan after WW2? Was it a mistake too for the US to impose democracy in that part of the world then?

I like his movies, but Scorsese sometimes make dumb political comments.

Byron York on Romney's secret Timetables

From the Corner.

Greetings from Florida. I know the sentiments here in the Corner about the McCain-Romney tussle over Iraqi timetables. But I have to say that, looking at what Romney said last April, I think McCain has a point. Here is the exchange in question, from ABC's "Good Morning America" on April 3, 2007:

MS. ROBERTS: Iraq. John McCain is there in Baghdad right now. You have also been very vocal in supporting the president and the troop surge. Yet, the American public has lost faith in this war. Do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, there's no question but that — the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn't be for public pronouncement. You don't want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you're going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

MS. ROBERTS: So, private. You wouldn't do it publicly? Because the president has said flat out that he will veto anything the Congress passes about a timetable for troop withdrawals. As president, would you do the same?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven't reached the Rhine by this date, why, we'll go home, or if we haven't gotten this accomplished we'll pull up and leave? You don't publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time. So, of course, you have to work together to create timetables and milestones, but you don't do that with the opposition.

Reading that, I think it's fair to conclude that Romney was saying he was in favor of Bush and Maliki setting a secret timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal. (By the way, I didn't think that was a bad idea, on the grounds that the Iraqis needed to be pushed hard before they would get anything done.) Certainly people who were listening took it that way; at the time of Romney's statement, there was a fair amount of reaction, much of it from the left, to the effect that Romney was coming around to the idea of a timetable. His pledge to veto a congressionally-imposed timetable seemed based on the idea that such a timetable would necessarily involve a publicly-known deadline, although there are clearly separation-of-powers objections one could make, too.

In addition, I think it's indisputable that, at the time, McCain's Republican rivals supported the surge but were also happy that it was McCain who was all the way out on the limb. Last February, someone in the Romney camp told me that yes, Romney supported the surge, but that "McCain owns the surge." The implication was that if things didn't go well, McCain would be the one to suffer; the other guys would be OK precisely because they didn't put it all on the line for the surge. So when I look at Romney's comments on "Good Morning America," I see a lot of caution and a bit of behind-covering, as well.

UPDATE: The War over the War.

Writers from the Associated Press and Time magazine, among others, have suggested Romney's quote does not constitute an endorsement of "secret timetables" for withdrawal. It is a debatable point. If Romney does not actually say, "I support secret timetables for withdrawal," he does seem to endorse such timetables in response to a question about withdrawal. That's important. It was a direct question: "Do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?" If the answer was no, presumably Romney would have said so. He did not.

Romney further muddled things in his response to a follow-up. Roberts said: "So, private. You wouldn't do it publicly? Because the president has said flat out that he will veto anything the Congress passes about a timetable for troop withdrawals. As president, would you do the same?"

Romney responded: "Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven't reached the Rhine by this date, why, we'll go home, or if we haven't gotten this accomplished we'll pull up and leave? You don't publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time. So, of course you have to work together to create timetables and milestones, but you don't do that with the opposition."

Did Romney say he would, like Bush, veto anything with a timetable? Or does the rest of his answer suggest that he's for the timetables as long as they're private? Again, it's debatable.

But to go as far as CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, who claimed that McCain is "lying" about what Romney said, is a stretch. At the time Romney made the comments, many observers, including several reporters, took him to mean exactly what McCain is imputing to him now. If the Romney campaign protested that interpretation, their objections did now show up in any of the follow-up reporting on his comments.

Get rid of COMELEC crooks, Nene Pimentel dares Melo

Good luck with that. If he won't even acknowledge that the Garci-led operation to rig the elections is real, like some of the COMELEC people we know, and that Garci couldn't do this all by himself without the help of other officials within the COMELEC, then Nene is just whisling in the dark.

If Melo decides to sack a few COMELEC officials for show, it'll probably be for the botched MEGA Pacific automated deal.

But no COMELEC official will be punished or be made to tell the truth on the Garci operations in 2004.

MORE: They shouldn't only remove crooked COMELEC officials, but PARTISAN ones too. Remember, these are the same COMELEC that allowed Mike Arroyo's nuisance candidate to fight for Cayetano's votes.

Here's what i thought of the 75 yr old Melo's appointment.

Money Quote from the Daily Tribune:

There have been changes in the Comelec leadership in the past seven years of Gloria’s reign. The same praises were given to these then new appointees, but were there any changes by way of cleaning up the poll fraud operations that mark every election year, not to mention a genuine cleaning up of the voters’ list?

The usual civil society groups hailed the appointment of Benipayo as Comelec chairman, just as they did in the appointments of Justice Felix Brawner, Rene Sarmiento and Nicodemo Ferrer. Did anything change? There certainly was cheating even with them there.

The year 2004 was certainly marked by electoral fraud, but the then Comelec didn’t put its foot down, and even aided in creating the impression that Gloria had won even before the National Board of Canvass started its canvassing.

And did the Comelec commissioners clean up the voters’ list, or even ensured that the voters would not be disenfranchised by scrambling the voters’ list in opposition bailiwicks?

Of course, it can always be argued that at the head of the Comelec was Benjamin Abalos Sr., but whatever else can be said about the disgraced Abalos, the fact remains that a chairman merely has one vote and can certainly be overruled that which the chairman of the commission presses, by way of a ruling. There never was any move to do that, given the concurrence in many a resolution by the other commissioners.

Even the 2007 senatorial elections were marred with electoral fraud, and again, the commissioners did nothing to stave off the cheating. They had, in fact, sanctioned the cheating, which was as clear as day.

So did they constitute changes in the poll body?

Read the whole thing. There's more background info on Melo. And Yeah, there was cheating even after Garci, and little was done about it, other than a few slaps on the wrists.

Related:
- COMELEC declares Musa Dimasidsing a failure
- Mama Mary vs Musa
- How COMELEC tried to screw Alan Cayetano.
- COMELEC tries to sneak past a bloated voters list
- Garcillano the Master Operator

The New Rambo film a "political movie"?

(via ross douthat) after reading this review, i may have to see it for myself.

Like its three predecessors, Rambo strikes a nerve, and it's not a nerve that America's left-leaning critical establishment wants struck. Cowritten and directed by Stallone, the fourth Rambo movie is a bracingly political picture -- as much an argument in movie form as No End In Sight; a pro-interventionist rebuttal to all the 2007 documentaries and dramas about America losing bits of its soul in Iraq. The I-word is never spoken in Rambo, yet in its coded way, the film makes a case for why we are in Iraq and should stay there until the job is done, whenever that may be.

Read this too.

Here's the 60 sec trailer.



But I like the longer one.

UPDATE: Arroyo appoints 75-year old Jose Melo as COMELEC chair

before, he appointed corrupt partisans and crooked operators as commissioners. Now she appoints a way too old person for the job.

Can't find anybody who's at least 20 years younger? the ole COMELEC operators, if they want to, can run rings round this geezer.

UPDATE: Notice the members of the search committee here and here? I don't see any Opposition or Anti-GMA personalities on the list. I see a lot of church people (as if the CBCP is not predominantly pro-Arroyo), and I see some who are blatantly Arroyo apologists. Some are for "reforms" but have a difficult time telling it like it is (i suspect he's a closet arroyo supporter (his wife is) but wearing a "moderate/independent" clothing, just like this phony).

So a bipartisan search committee these ain't. Excluding people who you don't agree with politically is not the way to go.

If McCain loses in the primaries...

it's not going to be because of Iraq, or on immigration.

it's going to be because of the economy. Because a) the economy is slowing down. b) he's going up against Mitt Romney, the successful businessman/governor of Massachusetts in the GOP primaries.

BUT if McCain manages to survive and secure the Republican nomination, he'll win the General Elections over whoever the democrats nominate (Hillary or Barack), because a) he has better national security credentials and b) because clinton and obama have no experience in running a business, a company or a state either.

I admit that Mitt also looks stronger now vs Democrats because of the economy.

Maybe Bill Safire's right, McCain should get this guy for vice president if becomes the prez candidate (Or maybe Barack will get the guy first?)

UPDATE: From CNN's Youtube debate. what mccain's looking for in a vice president:

Cooper: Senator McCain, has this president given too much authority to the vice president?

McCain: Look, I am going to give you some straight talk. This president came to office in a time of peace, and then we found ourselves in 2001.

And he did not have as much national security experience as I do. So he had to rely more on the vice president of the United States, and that's obvious. I wouldn't have to do that. I might have to rely on a vice president that I select on some other issues. He may have more expertise in telecommunications, on information technology, which is the future of this nation's economy. He may have more expertise in a lot of areas.

But I would rely on a vice president of the United States -- but was Fred said, the primary responsibility is to select one who will immediately take your place is necessary. But the vice president of the United States is a key and important issue, and must add in carrying out the responsibilities of the president of the United States.

Erap Hearts Villar

Says Manny Villar is his likely anointed.

Global Freedom in Retreat

according to Freedom House (2008)

I guess Miguel Zubiri hates poor people

he and other people's advocacy and embrace of biofuels has caused food shortages and food prices to skyrocket.

"The world's rush to embrace biofuels is causing a spike in the price of corn and other crops and could worsen water shortages and force poor communities off their land, a U.N. official said Wednesday." Cellulosic ethanol, and methanol from biowaste, etc., can do some good. Corn-based ethanol is a lousy idea.

Feed the Cars? How about feeding the poor, Migz?

Heh

Why Arroyo wants the public to forget Edsa Dos.

Robert Heinlein's guide on how to vote in elections

(via Instapundit)

READER TOM SARTIN WRITES:

Somehow, the following observation from Robert Heinlein seems quite apropos.

‘If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for . . but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”

“If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.”

The best advice i've heard in a while.

Heath Ledger found dead

the guy who played joker in the new batman film soon to be out died of drug overdose raw.

Joker Arroyo to GMA: Make clean elections your 2010 legacy

From the PDI:

Sen. Joker Arroyo the other day urged President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to make clean elections in 2010 the legacy of her “scandal-tainted reign in Malacañang.” To ensure that the 2010 presidential election will be honest and fair, the senator said Ms Arroyo should choose wisely the new chair of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and use her political will to carry out the long-delayed computerization of elections. He also said the President should put a stop to the cheating that tainted previous elections and appoint trustworthy persons to the vacant Comelec posts so that the poll body would regain the trust of the public.

But didn't Gloria Macapagal Arroyo also promised clean elections in 2004 back then? Joker Arroyo's statement is silly considering the source. Joker supported Arroyo, defended her "win" in the 2004 Elections, and he and Zubiri ran under GMA's ticket in 2007 (where Zubiri benefitted mightily from the GMA/Garci COMELEC Machine in Maguindanao).

OTOH... in a bizarro sense yes, there is less incentive to rig the presidential elections in 2010 since she is stepping down in 2010 and will not run anymore. That's one of the few positives that point to a "cleaner" elections.

More from the editorial:

All of these suggestions are well-taken, and if Ms Arroyo could carry them out before the 2010 elections, they could earn for her presidency a better public judgment. But to these suggestions we would like to add: Prosecute the Comelec officials found liable for the anomalous billion-peso computerization deal. Up to now we cannot understand why the Office of the Ombudsman has yet to find former Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos liable for the failed P1.3-billion Mega Pacific contract for the computerization of elections. Only Commissioner Resurreccion Borra has been found liable. Why only Borra when all the commissioners, including the chair, signed the contract?

Notice that among all these wonderful suggestions, something's omitted. What ever happened to punishing those election officials helped arroyo steal the elections in 2004? We know it wasn't just Garcillano who fixed the elections for ARroyo. There were plenty of others. I'm sure Gudani and Balutan and Zuce knows more. How can there be credible reforms if nobody from the civil society has the political will and guts to say, we need to go after these guys throw the book at them. We need to go after all the COMELEC officials past and present, active and inactive, who helped commit election fraud in 2004 and 2007. Or else, you gonna have "sleeper cell" COMELEC operators, ready to be activated when needed.

Anything less than that is B.S., in my opinion.

Japan's Nikkei index plunged below 13,000 for the first time in more than two years

Asian Markets continue to plunge

Tribune Editorial: The Truth Revealed about Edsa Dos

The truth revealed

EDITORIAL

01/22/2008

Catholic bishops have been denying they had worked to plot a coup d’etat against then sitting President Joseph Estrada in January 2001, claiming the Edsa ll revolt was a “spontaneous” popular uprising against Estrada.

This, despite the fact that the Tribune prior to the mounted coup by Gloria Arroyo, her military and her elite forces, had already published as its banner, some seven years ago, the “confidential report” from the Vatican forbidding the bishops and clergy from staging a revolt against Estrada, stressing in that report that Estrada was a popularly and democratically elected president and that the Church should not interfere in political matters as the Vatican feared that the Catholic faith would be compromised, if not lost among the Filipino faithful.

Seven years after the fact, the Inquirer came up with its banner saying that Jaime Cardinal Sin opposed the Vatican order and pushed Edsa II, as he had threatened to resign as archbishop of Manila.

The truth is, having been given that Vatican order, the entire community of bishops in the Philippines all disobeyed the Vatican, including the then papal nuncio, as the order was for all the bishops, and the bishops knew of this Vatican ban, but disobeyed it — and the Pope — which does not speak well of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

As for Jaime Sin threatening to resign, that’s a laugh, considering the fact that when it was his time to retire, he still didn’t want to do so. More: Even as he had already been retired, he insisted on staying at the Villa San Miguel, despite the fact that a new archbishop of Manila was appointed by the Vatican.

Still, the Inquirer report, seven years late, establishes more proof that indeed, Edsa II was not a spontaneous revolt, but a well-planned coup d’etat by Gloria Arroyo, the Supreme Court (SC) justices, bishops, the military and business groups, led by the Makati Business Club.

As reported, Sin, as archbishop, could easily call on the students from Catholic schools to make up a crowd at Edsa.

There was no real trigger. Gloria and the then political opposition, along with her elite coup plotters, merely used the second envelope excuse to make it appear that Edsa ll was a spontaneous revolt.

The Inquirer reported that as Sin opposed the Vatican order, a mediator, in the person of then Associate Justice Artemio Panganiban, worked things out between Sin and the Vatican.

So what was the business of an SC justice acting as mediator, if not for the fact that he was also in on the Gloria coup plot to oust Estrada?

It has been recorded in Panganiban’s book, Reforms in the Judiciary and admitted by him, that he and then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., decided to swear in Gloria even when they were aware of the fact that Estrada had not resigned and was in fact still in Malacañang.

This just proves that the high court justices willfully violated the Constitution and covered up their crime by inventing the doctrine of “constructive resignation” to legitimize the illegitimate and unconstitutional. Davide swore in the usurper knowing that there was no vacancy in the high office and, it must be stressed, as the so-called Angara diary was not even published as yet. How then could the SC justify the unconstitutional removal of Estrada when the court did not even know of the diary’s existence when they swore in Gloria Arroyo as president?

The justices were in on that coup plot and they know it.

Even Davide was already in on that plot, which was why he did nothing to stop the prosecutors and the evil civil socialites during the impeachment trial.

As early as October, 2000, the Tribune also exposed the coup plot by Gloria and her elite forces, with the plot called “Oplan in Excelsis,” which detailed a meeting of the coup plotters to depose Estrada and install Gloria.

That was October 2000. The Edsa revolt was staged in January 2001.

But long before that — a year before, to be exact — Gloria Arroyo was already plotting the ouster of Estrada with her military, the bishops, the leftists and the business groups. This, she herself has admitted publicly before her then allies, the members of the Council of the Philippines (Copa) in a posh hotel in Makati sometime in late February 2001, and even proudly introduced her co-coup plotters in the military and police.

If there continues to be division today; if there is no enthusiasm for Edsa II anniversaries, it is mainly because there never was a true popular uprising against the popular Estrada, who continues to hold the trust of the Filipino masses.

The elite staged a coup and succeeded in installing Gloria and her government. But they succeeded, too, in destroying the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy.