December 24 to January 2 official Philippine holidays—Palace

Malacañang ‘open house’ on Christmas Day

December 24 to January 2 next year are official special holidays, Malacañang loudmouth Ignacio Bunye, who recently cheated death in Kuwait, announced yesterday. Assuaging concerns on lost productivity however, the national government has also decided to make at least five regular holidays next year, probably including Lenten holy days, regular work days.

“We are not kowtowing to the Catholic Church, this is simply part of the president’s policy on holiday economics,” Bunye said. Holiday economics is premised on the belief that the tourism benefits of lumping weekends and holidays into contiguous periods, far outweigh the costs of adjustment in the production sectors.

Statistics office drafts new guidelines on opinion surveys

On direct orders of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who has been unjustly accused of being the most corrupt president in Philippine history, the National Statistics Office has issued guidelines on the conduct of opinion surveys so these would no longer be based on ungrounded perceptions but on verifiable facts.

Our source at the NSO refused to provide us a copy of the draft but she explained the thrust of the document to us. In effect, survey organizations like Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations would have to design the questionnaires to aid respondents in forming facts-based opinions. For example, in the matter of presidential corruption, the following yes or no questions could be suggested:

1. Has the president ever given you a loot bag containing P500,000? P200,000? P50,000?
2. Has an official close to the president offered you US $10M to withdraw from a government project?

The Emir of Kuwait’s big fat flat joke almost made Gloria cry

Now that the emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, can no longer change his mind about saving Marilou Ranario from the noose, we can tell you the inside story of the crisis in Gloria Arroyo’s own mind. Something the emir whispered to her tested the woman’s determination to leave her legacy as a ‘tough’ leader and to have her place in the dustbin of history.

“I wan’t something in return. Our justice system requires that we hang someone else

Our disappearing civil liberties, or why some liberties are greater than others, especially if you have been forced to disappear

by Onionista

Speaking with her now legendary candor and sincerity, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said she was sorry about the sorry plight of reporters who had been cuffed and bussed off to Bicutan for ‘processing.’ “I am sorry,” said she as her nose glowed even with the bright lights in the Malacanang press briefing room. Just a few hours later, around 20 million Filipinos were placed under house arrest in Metro Manila and adjacent regions with what former UP law dean Raul Pangalangan said was an unconstitutional 12-5 a.m. curfew. The streets of the capital were eerier than on Good Fridays in a country dominated by nominally devout Catholics. Only the lord, if there is a lord, knows how many agogo dancers, carnappers, akyat-bahay gangsters, hotblooded teenagers, restless and bored husbands, matronas and their dance attorneys, balut vendors, wanderlustful congressmen had their freedom of movement curtailed, with dire consequences not only for the formal and informal sectors of the economy, but also on the freedom-seeking human spirit.

The ubiquitous checkpoints prompted a variation of the second law of cartoon physics: Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until a checkpoint appears, in which case kotong will have to be paid for the body to regain its momentum. If no kotong is paid, the body will disappear until a writ of amparo makes it reappear.

More recently, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) subpoenaed Maria Ressa of ABS-CBN to investigate the network’s alleged involvement in Oplan Peninsula. The subpoena was served after Malacañang, taking liberties with the word ‘dialogue’ proposed a meeting between the PNP/AFP and the press. Ressa has reportedly sent a conciliatory text message to interior and local government secretary Ronnie Puno: go fuck and talk

Gloria film gets ‘X’ for obscene nose

MTRCB censors gave an ‘X’ rating to “A Day in the Life of Gloria,” an animation film which shows President Arroyo’s nose growing after she says “I am sorry.” Artists cried ‘conspiracy’ Friday after the board also Xed another film, Mendiola. The two films were excluded from a short film festival called ‘Kontra-Agos’ because of the ratings.

ABS-CBN reported that MTRCB reviewer Mark Castrodes “dismissed the artists’ accusations as baseless conspiracy theories…the films were given an X-rating because they put government in a bad light. They should at least have covered her nose with a handkerchief, otherwise she would be seen as lying.”

Read the full report here:Repression or paranoia? Filmmakers cry foul over short films’ ‘X’ rating.

Why ‘Oplan Peninsula’ was doomed from the start

by Old Spice

Faulty analysis and poor planning doomed the rebellion led by Senator Antonio Trillanes and Gen. Danilo Lim from the very beginning. Our conclusion is based on copies of documents recovered from the Manila Peninsula last night and accounts from our sources in Malacañang.

The first sign that something was awry was the absence of crowds when the two former military officers arrived at the hotel shortly before noon yesterday. Because of the drizzle, supporters of the duo stayed at home or in their offices, opting to give only ‘moral’ support. This in turn accounted for why the various commands which ‘were in on the plan’ stayed in barracks, as the support was conditional on the presence of massive civilan support.

But what really put the nail in the coffin of ‘Oplan Peninsula’ was something else. According to Cerge Remonde, who requested anonymity, there was a palpable sense of restlessness when the cabinet convened shortly after 1:30 p.m. Even with the government’s unquestioned superiority of force, Remonde said, some cabinet officials were simply tired of the never-ending calls for resignation and were prepared to ask the president to let go for the sake of the economy.

Bunye disputes low approval, high hunger stats

by Belinda D. Libat

Respondents in a Pulse Asia survey showing the president had the highest disapproval rating among the country’s top five government officials were lying, Malacañang said in a press conference yesterday.

Asked how this conclusion was reached, press secretary Ignacio Bunye referred to an earlier survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showing an increasing incidence of hunger among Filipino families. He explained that what the respondents were experiencing was simply hyperacidity caused by anxiety generated by the political noise from the continuing antics of the opposition.

Hyperacidity, he added, causes a gnawing sensation in the stomach and is commonly mistaken for hunger. He also accused the opposition and left-wing organizations of engaging in a conspiracy to refrain from staging street protests, thus depriving the populace of a much-needed outlet for their frustrations, aggravating the anxiety linked to hyperacidity.