the spin that is SONA(kakasuya)

I liked it … because of its simplicity and its delivery. None of the high-flown language or the soaring rhetoric that previous presidents used to court applause. The speech was a straightforward, almost hurried, recitation of facts. I only wish all of them were true. If they were, we are indeed on the way to change.

But all Sonas are like that. They are like drugs, or alcohol, or nicotine that give us a high, especially the speaker. The President is like a painter painting a beautiful picture of the nation, an Amorsolo with words. But the painting is only good to look at hanging on the wall. The reality all around it is very much different.

that’s from neal cruz.  and siyempre, that it was wholly in simple, even vernacular, tagalog won the hearts of many, never mind the lack of substance.  sabi ko nga sa facebook, ang babaw naman ng ating kaligayahan.  na siyempre uli, ikina-offend ng constituency ni phnoy.

okay, so phnoy has convinced his constituency (and even daw the undecided, says one) that he’s on the right track and that things are looking up for the rich (stockmarket’s up) and for the poor (hunger’s down), and i’m just too lazy to rain on his parade… besides, baka sabihin utak talangka ako, lol, what a way to ward off criticism, in a sona yet, how sooo unpresidential.

oh, and the the wang wang thing?  i’m not convinced it’s really gone. i rarely step out but on one occasion i saw how vips have just gotten creative, dinadaan sa ilaw-ilaw, busi-busina, hagad-hagad effect and yellowribbon stickers, to make us patabi-tabi so they can zoom ahead.  disimulado, kumbaga, and i suppose the same goes on in every level of life where the rich and powerful are accustomed to getting ahead of everyone else.

as for thanking our schoolteachers for staying instead of ofw-ing, and the pulis na nagtatrapik nang walang kapote o payong ba, kahit umuulan…. eh siyempre kailangan muna nating tiyakin na yung teacher ay hindi naghihintay lang ng passport o contrata para makapag-abroad, ano?  at kung public school teacher na nagtitiis talaga dito out of love for country, aba hindi sapat na pasalamatan, dapat taasan ang suweldo nito, utang na loob!!!  at yung pulis na nagtatrapik kahit nababasa ng ulan, tama bang pasalamatan lang, sabay drive-on?  hindi ba dapat abutan ng payong o kapote?  ah ewan.

most nakakasuya of all is the kayo-ang-boss-ko line, because it’s so not true, or only true re fighting corruption e hindi lang naman corruption ang problema.

to top it all i wake up to this behind-the-sona fb status:

An unimpeachable little yellow bird tells me that PNoy and some of his very close circle of friends have imported (smuggled?) several Belgian FN Herstal P90 submachine guns/compact assault rifles in the country to the tune of P880 thousand pesos each. Yes, each. Aaah, the privileges of powerful oligarchs and faux-bonhommes in disguise as heaven-sent public servants.

oh my.  gearing up for war?  share naman.

read too:
SONA 2011: Little to report, less to look forward to 
Excuse us, but Recto Bank is not ours

senators absolve poor bishops

Sen. Franklin Drilon said the Senate would have no reason to hold the bishops accountable if they agreed to turn over the SUVs to state-run Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).

Sen. Francis Escudero said he was not keen on grilling the bishops after they agreed to return the SUVs and after the CBCP opened an inquiry into the matter. “I hope it would end [the controversy],” Escudero said over dzBB.

Sen. Ralph Recto said the bishops could not be absolved of any crime they did not commit. “They did not commit any crime. The legal burden is on the one who gave it,” Recto said in an interview, referring to the old PCSO board. “The real issue is propriety. The allegations basically are that they were bribed.”

hmm. are these senators running for re-election already? making sure they get the support of the church?  so what else is new.

MANILA, Philippines—The Catholic Bishops’Conference of the Philippines on Monday said that the seven bishops linked to the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office fund mess are ready to accept responsibility for their action and to face the consequences should their actions be proven unlawful, anomalous and unconstitutional.

“We assure you that their action was done without malice,” says Tandag bishop Nereo Odchimar, CBCP president reading a prepared statement during a press conference at the Pope Pius XII Center in Manila.

yeah, sure, without malice maybe, but certainly without any sense of propriety and ethics either, much less of political correctness.  akala ko ba, anti-gambling ang simbahan.  so what’s going on?  for the alleged sake of the poor that they allegedly serve they are willing to compromise — at least the money is from legal gambling and not from jueteng? lol

whatever happened to the spirit of sacrifice and the vows of poverty?  what exactly has the church done for the poor anyway in the last hundred years that has made any difference in this blighted catholic country of ours?

if anything the church gets richer by the year and yet her princes have the gall to compete against poor Filipinos for meager government funds.

read this too from elizabeth angsioco and weep.

too much ado over phnoy photo

yes it’s an awful photo, but all the crap about the tacky wallpaper, the huge ashtray and pack of cigarettes, susmaryosep, are neither here nor there in the context of the larger picture, the larger question, of where his daang matuwidis headed.

if anything, it’s the blank look of phnoy* a la george bush post 9/11, that i mind having seen at all.  talaga naman, nakakapagpatanong, what was the three-headed hydra thinking, approving for release such a photo in the first place.  ano yon, in the spirit of transparency?  LOL!  such rookies!

*phnoy: di ko ma-take ever ang “pnoy” just because napaka-contrived to seem maka-pinoy.  but phnoy, as in jologspeak/spell (and phinoy/z for pinoy/s) which my cousin karen b.c. started on fb, i love it!  ph as in philippines too, why not.

abusing the webbs

justice secretary leila de lima’s latest statements unequivocally declaring the webbs guilty of lying re the whereabouts of hubert on the night of the vizconde massacre — new evidence daw shows that hubert was in manila and not in the u.s. — smacks of gross injustice to the webb family.  and that she’s not here to answer questions and face the webbs — nasa berlin daw for some conference — makes me wonder: was it deliberate, making her statements on the eve of her departure, so as to avoid the firestorm she set off?

and what about, making her statements on the eve of the lapsing of the 20-year statute of limitations on murder cases.  all the time i thought that the nbi/doj were looking at other suspects.  ang hirap ba masyado?  easier to just go back to hubert, lalo na’t lauro vizconde insists he’s guilty?  really, what makes de lima’s new witnesses so credible, after 20 years of silence?  and again, what about u.s. immigration records that prove hubert arrived in the u.s. when he said he did?  nabayaran din lang?  LOL

all the talk about how former senator fredddie webb was so influential, he was able to have records doctored to reflect hubert’s departure before the murders, is i think misplaced — if he were so influential, hubert wouldn’t have gone to jail at all.

the one who is really influential, it seems to me now, is lauro vizconde himself who i hear is a board director of ibc 13 and a consultant in pagcor, thanks to gma.  ano yon?  reward?  pampalubag loob?  preferential treatment?   if he hadn’t gone overseas as ocw baka buhay pa ang asawa niya’t dalawang anak?

and what about the aquino administration?  masaya ba sila sa ginawang ito ni leila de lima, refusing to respect the supreme court ruling?  or is this part lang of a continuing campaign vs the supreme court?  sana hindi.  there must be other ways to skin that cat without using the webbs who have suffered enough.

revisiting hubert webb
from fritz webb
surreal justice