Pretty good candy, actually — kind of an orangey-menthol thing. I guess if sponsoring things that are good to suck on were actually a positive political attribute, Manny would be our guy.

Accountability - A Cultural Perspective

At the end of the day, crooks go to jail or at the very least resign from their positions – in Japan and the US. The Philippines is a different story.

Oh, I know nobody can prove anything, and these are just dirty, dirty allegations — but Messrs. Enrile, Gordon, and Estrada are not really three guys one would think of sitting down together and concocting the same fabulous accusation, so you have to wonder.

Money is pretty damned useful, but money can’t buy integrity, a proven track record, or a clear set of ideas and objectives. Vote Gordon in 2010.

Over at AntiPinoy, benign0 analyzes a common complaint, exemplified in an article by caffeine sparks in FV, that Senator Villar is somehow being like, totally unfair and all because he’s got this nutty idea that he should utilize all his resources and put maximum effort into his campaign. Now to be fair to Sparky, she really didn’t mark herself out as a Noynoy supporter in her article….But on the other hand, she didn’t mention any other candidates, either. And the last, oh, say couple hundred times or so we’ve heard the complaint, it’s been uttered by a yellow tongue, so…

Granted, we don’t really like Manny either, but it’s pretty easy to see where he’s going with all this, and hard to blame him, the goofy nature of elections (and the electorate) here being what they are. Noy still hasn’t figured out which hand to make his trademark signal to the homies with, so perhaps it’s not really a surprise he hasn’t caught on to concepts like, you know, ambition. Or work.

Imagine who would have such taste and live in such opulence?

An American Billionaire?

A Saudi Prince?

Louis XIV of France ?

Savor the pictures then scroll to the bottom of the page to see who owns this Work of Art.

This Mansion is in Bald Knob, Arkansas, USA and belongs to:

Senator Noynoy Aquino of the PHILIPPINES

While Filipinos starve, and die because of abject poverty ….and while Sen. Aquino brags that he had parents and he had attended Congress and the Senate over and over again… but look now.. he and his family (well, okay, maybe family is kind of hypothetical) live like this…….his DISREGARD FOR BUILDING CODES sort of embarrasses his poverty stricken fellow Filipinos.

PLEASE send this to everyone you know.

They can send it to everyone they know.

Soon Filipinos around the world will know what this man is doing to the people he wishes to serve if elected President, and that is, making them want to send out a lot of spam e-mails.

It’s probably a dubious distinction, true, but at least Erap waited until he was actually President to start ripping off the people.

It’s okay, though, girls. That snot is HOLY.

For a while, I thought Noy was on to something. Oh, I never bought the whole “reluctant candidate” routine; it takes a very darkly cynical and opportunistic mind to even conceive embarking on an endeavor like a presidential candidacy before the body of one’s own dead mother has even cooled. But he played it up well, in the beginning, with the whole discernment thing. He discerned that plucking on the heartstrings tuned to the (faulty, but that’s beside the point here) memories of his mom would earn him the instant popularity and recognition his own vacuous presence in the legislature never could. He discerned that playing the ‘Will of God’ card would score huge with a deeply superstitious population of extraordinarily poor critical thinking skills. He discerned that using these things to portray himself as good to everyone else’s evil would keep him on top, at least for the first few rounds of surveys.

What he didn’t discern, obviously,  is that there’s no way polish a turd of a personal and political career that has no quantifiable achievement of any kind that indicates, even in the slightest, most optimistic degree, any intelligence, effectiveness, or even good intentions as a leader. What he didn’t discern was that giving nobody anything more to talk or think about beyond “GMA is evil” and “I’m the son of my parents”, and what’s more, specifically avoiding most opportunities to talk about anything else would begin to make people question the wisdom of considering him as a potential president. What he failed to discern was that, by not giving anyone any plans, platform, or even coherent points of view on any issue would encourage people to start looking into the more childish aspects of his character and past actions, to the point that now some previously-enthusiastic supporters are publicly — regretfully and with great disappointment, but firmly nonetheless — withdrawing their advocacy.

Does he discern that the dinosaur of his own arrogance is about to bite him in the ass? And more importantly, do the Filipino people discern that they’re being made fools of?

Ignoy is a real piece of work. Four months into his own campaign for the presidency, he finally decided he should take charge of it:

“You are supposed to have competency in all aspects of government so I am doing it. Nobody can be master of everything, but I want to know precisely what I don’t know,” he said.

What a numbnuts. Would you get on a plane piloted by a guy who waited until he got it in the air to decide to learn how to fly?

On a related note, here’s a little screensaver treat for our fans out there, provided you can guess the super-secret password (that’s a hint, particular for our occasional Noyista readers, who tend to be a little dense about these sorts of things). Originally we wanted to post it for Valentine’s Day, but the precise steps needed to bring this piece of artful delight to you were not immediately obvious, and unlike a certain unremarkable Senator we learned a long time ago that when we don’t know what the eff we’re doing, much better results are to be had by endeavouring to find out, rather than just cluelessly forging ahead.

Oh, that’s right, I forgot: Mr. Take-Charge had discernment. We’ll address that later, methinks.