Sotto Strikes Again

Just when you think this bad episode of senate speeches gone wild is over, Sotto makes yet another statement that enrages the public.   

You’d ask, what’s the point of all this? Is he just KSP or what? Does he just want more publicity? (Even if it’s negative and has nothing to do with the actual issue that he is allegedly fighting for) Or is it just because he can’t let it go? (Pikon lang ba siya?)

When I saw the headlines of his statements such as “Senator Sotto backs blogging bill” and “Sotto claims cyber bullying”, for a few seconds I was lost for words, all I could think of was – SERIOUSLY?!?

Just like the many twisted arguments against the RH bill, there goes Sotto’s camp again with their very many hilarious to ridiculous (failed) PR machinations.

Disclaimer: photo not mine (why would I even take his photo?!)

Kawawa Effect: Claims of being a Cyberbullying Victm

Sotto: “Ako yata ang kauna-unahang senador ng Pilipinas na naging biktima ng cyber-bullying. Mula sa blogs, Facebook, at Twitter, ginawa akong sentro ng mga mapanira at malisyosong atake ng iba't ibang tao, lalo pa ng mga sumusuporta sa RH Bill. Bahagi siguro ito ng kanilang istratehiya, lalo pa't may milyun-milyon silang pondo. 

While it is true that there is such a thing as cyber bullying, Sotto is hardly a victim of one. For one, a bully is defined as “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people” (dictionary.com).

Truly, can Senator Sotto be categorized under the “smaller or weaker people” label?

Senator vs. people of social media – who’s the big man and who’s the little people here?

According to Sotto, the Internet and social media is being paid off by the pro RH bill side since they have millions. Well, I don’t know about you but maybe it’s time he realizes that these are actual comments of real people. They are not paid, just as this post isn't a paid post. It's simple: people are just angry at what he did.  

Tunay bang hindi niyo matangap na ganyan kadami ang nagalit sa ginawa ninyo na ipinipilit niyo na bayaran sila? Denial ba yan? Ganito kasi yan, yun ginawa po ninyo medyo lang nakakainis, kaya natural lang na madami ang mainis sa inyo. Simple lang.

Isa pa, ang mga tao’y hindi nagagalit sa inyo dahil iba ang pananaw nila sa RH bill. Nagagalit po sila sa inyo kasi nangopya kayo, pagkatapos hindi pa kayo umaamin o humihingi ng paumanhin ng maayos at nangangawiran pa kayo ng kung ano ano. Yan ang dahilan kung bakit gusto nilang barilin ang taga dala ng mensahe. 

Plagiarism, Not a Crime

Sotto: “Nais ko ring banggitin para sa kaalaman ng mga tagapakinig, lalo na ng mga taga-pintas kong nais akong makasuhan dahil sa pangyayaring ito, na walang krimen [na] plagiarism sa Pilipinas. Kahit hanapin ninyo pa sa Revised Penal Code, sa Intellectual Property Code, at maging sa Special Penal Laws, wala kayong makikitang krimen [na] plagiarism.”

Let’s just say no one can sue him of plagiarism, does it make it right? Students get kicked out of school for this, I wonder why? Oh, could it be because it is wrong and punishable? 

Let’s just say that plagiarism isn't a crime here, it is still embarrassing. It shouldn’t have to be said that plagiarizing his televised senate speech was behavior unbecoming of a senator. 

Uulitin ko lang, kasi yan ginawa niyo na pinipilit niyo na hindi krimen eh nakahiya pa rin. Dapat ho  eh nahihiya kayo. Dapat humihingi kayo ng pamumanhin ng maayos at diretso. Kaso wala naman kayong ginawa kung hindi magpalusot, magdahilan at mangatwiran na balubaluktok. 

Mukhang hindi naman kayo tunay na nahihiya sa ginawa ninyo, ibigsabihin po ba nito eh wala kayong hiya? 

Just Delete It 

Sotto: “Mr. President, with the permission of this body, I move that the paragraph containing reference with the study of Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride which can be found in Journal No. 8 page 162 dated August 13, 2012 be stricken off the record in order to lay this matter to rest.”

Erasing the plagiarized lines from the official record won’t erase it from everyone’s memories. You did it. It happened.

But let’s say this deletion helps your case, you delete Pope’s lines but what about the (FIVE) other writers and bloggers that you also plagiarized? 

Enrile to the defense

So, Enrile has treaded carefully and sort of defended Sotto. He also declared that he doesn’t know what a blog is. 

I don’t know, Manong Johnny, you disappoint me. After your great performance in the impeachment trial, you could have chosen to concentrate on the legacy that you've claimed to care about.  

Joey the poet 

I don’t know how much more ridiculous this can get. So, a Philippine senator chooses to close his public statement with a poem that was written by his former co-host, a comedian known for his toilet humor movies and gag shows (not to mention is an admitted rapist), who Sotto bizarrely declares is a “mahusay na makata”.  

WOW MALI?!?!
(picture from the show's official site) 

Even more ridiculous is the content of this poem:

“Eh di wala nang titingin sa katalogo
Ipagbawal mga sumusunod sa uso, mga impressionists ipakulong na ninyo, pati na rin si Willie Nepomuceno.
Ang masama lang pagdating sa gayahan ay iyong masasamang asal ang tularan.
At kopyahin ang pera at lagda ninuman.
At gayahin ang pilay at may kapansanan.”

Seriously?! It must be asked: Ginagago na ba tayo ni Tito Sotto dito?!

Just because Joey de Leon writes a poem, doesn’t really mean that this actual helps his friend’s argument or that this poem actually makes sense. It really doesn't.

Oh, Tito Sotto…

The more he speaks, the more his team makes their moves, the more Sotto's true colors shine through.

What we find after his weeks of delusional defensiveness about the plagiarism that actually was is the image of such a despicable, unethical, and (scary) narcissistic character who unbelievably has been voted into the senate time and time again. 

His behavior over this plagiarism brouhaha reveals a man so out of touch with the new world, still believing and insisting on using his old school hooligan ways to ironically bully the people into accepting his plagiarized anti-RH arguments, his dramatics, his lame excuses and justifications.

What we see here is the epitome of a trapo. 

Nalulungkot talaga ako para sa Pilipinas, taon taon naghahalal ng mga taong tulad ni Tito Sotto na sagad sa buto ang pagkatrapo. 

Ano na ba ang mangyayari satin kung parati na lang ganito?  

Business and Politics

These past few weeks I’ve been mulling over my opinions on business and politics. Some could say I’ve been somewhat biased for business. Were there some double standards there? 

I’ve criticize the lawyers who defended Corona more because he is a lawyer, one of their own, than because of his innocent. I’ve expressed opinions against politicians whom I frown upon and there were/are a lot of them. But I’ve also laughed at the occupy Wall Street people and thought most of their picket signs were just ridiculous. 

Do I have a general beef against the establishment? I don’t think I do. But if you ask me, do I think the corporations, the bankers and the 1% were greedy? I suppose, I do. 

As everything else now blows up and the world economy further plunges (think of the recent Barclay and Libor scandals etc.), the more it is revealed that the financials systems have been rigged and manufactured all this time. In a way, the system fed on itself as financial institutions and instruments, insurance companies, the stock market, etc. were allowed to go about their (greedy) business ways until shit hit the fan. 

In my defense, I really did not respect the occupy people because in my opinion most of them were just angst. The movement became a mob mentality slash cool thing to do for people who had nothing better to do and after all the rallies and sit-ins nothing really happened since these people really had no concrete collective demand to speak of. It was like a tantrum of sorts, they were angst and they just wanted the establishment to know.

Perhaps it’s because I was once a banker and a business student. I am a business owner and I am not a lawyer, a government employee or a politician. 

I remember a friend of mine once told me that it’s part of the game. It’s a simple statement that everyone acknowledges, corruption and politics is part of the game, especially here in this country. That is, if you want to be successful in business, you have to climb, cheat and bribe your way in one way or the other, you cannot be clean. My friend’s reasoning was along those lines. 

My friend from time to time has also expressed this hatred for the current admiration. The motivation of which, I’m not entirely sure of. My friend has mentioned about this current government’s laziness and a whole lot of other random reasons for said hatred. 

I’m still not sure exactly why my friend prefers a different administration. I want to believe it’s something shallow like being straight is just so uncool but I suspect it’s because personal interests are better served with a corrupt government, with corruptible officials and systems.   

In effect, my friend was saying that business and politics are the same this way. You can’t make it either way if you chose to be clean. Maybe that’s true but I suppose it also depends on what your definition is of success is (another topic that could be discuss some other day).   

But I guess my point is this: The very existence of business is that it’s meant to make money while the very existence of government, at least in our democratic republic, is that it should serve the people.  Businessmen are out for profit. Politicians are supposed to be out for the common good. 

If a business offered me a product and I decide to purchase it, I know they are making some profit off me. That’s ok, I already know that. 

But if a politician promises me something, whatever it is, and I vote for this politician, the technical premise is that the politician should follow through because that’s the politician's duty. And, if said politician doesn’t make good on the promise, as is often the case, then I (and the people) have been cheated.  

So, here lays my beef with the cynics and the trapos. It is because while I expect a business to serve the business, I also expect a government to serve the constituent it governs. 

So the good die young...

This post would have been entitled “Where in Masbate is Jesse Robredo?” had I finished writing it last night. 

After more than a day of not finding anything but a wing, a flight plan, and a windshield, the prospect of finding them alive seemed quite dim. 

I was going to talk about how nice it was that people were united in prayer and in the search efforts. It was nice to see diver volunteers step up while other volunteers from all over just flocked to help out. 

But as it is, the body has been found and has been brought to Naga. 

To be honest, the moment I heard about the plane crash my first thoughts were:  sabotage? 

I actually said this out loud to a number of people before I realized I sounded like a conspiracy theorist. 

I just thought it was so sudden and so random. And, I suppose, I’ve always thought that people who fought corruption and blocked corrupt elements are at high risk of being taken out sooner or later. 

I could tell you that this line of thinking makes me a cynic but I suppose it really does not.  It, unfortunately, just makes me a realist.  

But putting thoughts of conspiracies aside, all I can say is that the crash simply made me sad. 

A sudden plane crash. Relatives and friends in tears.  A man with a very good public service reputation, rare and almost extinct in our time, dies. It's just sad. 

They said he was very real. They said he was very sincere. They said he was the real deal. His constituents loved him. He was voted in for 6 terms in Naga. His employees loved him and were inspired by him. So many good words have been said. 

Today I heard a candid interview of his speech writer on the radio. She said so many good things about the DILG secretary, she mentioned a conversation she had with Robredo in which she asked if good governance was really possible. She said that Robredo said that there will always be politics involved but that as long as they put the measures in place, like his full disclosure policy that aims to promote transparency, that the citizens will eventually demand for good governance and everything else will follow. The speechwriter said that he never lost hope in the Philippines. She was in tears, which also brought Winnie Cordero, the radio interviewer at that time, in tears. 

Perhaps Winnie Cordero really felt her sincerity. After, she said on air, still in tears, “Bakit ang good kinukuha, bakit ang bad hindi kinukuha”.  

It’s been said that the good die young. And with everything that Jesse Robredo stood for and with every anecdote and story that’s revealed about him, his untimely death all the more becomes sadder. 

Roger: Wimbledon, Olympics and Cincinnati

Wimbledon

Might be too late of a reaction but let it be known that I was beyond ecstatic when Roger won Wimbledon, regained the #1 spot and finally broke the records of weeks in #1.

I won’t even be bother to be annoyed with the naysayers and anti-Federers. I could comment on Murray’s less than winning sulky attitude, Djokovic’s up and down form, or Nadal’s injury but I won’t.

I am just going to dwell and be utterly elated, jubilant and overjoyed about Roger’s summer season.  And, what a fantastic summer it truly was. 

The Olympics

Ok, I got greedy and wanted Roger to get gold in the Olympics as I know that he really wanted it and looking to 2016 just seemed farfetched. So, I was a little bit sad for a while. But hey, a silver medal in the Olympics is still quite a prize. He had that super tiring semifinals against Del Potro and I understand that really zapped his energy.

And really, if after the Australian Open this year someone told me that Roger would win Wimbledon and regain #1 again, I would be all - yes, please!

I would be so happy and content, even if the same person tells me that he won't be doing much after that.

The silver Olympic medal and 3 Master titles he won this year truly are more than any Roger fan could hope for. We all wanted him to make a grand come back but we weren't sure if he was going to pull through for us (though we would have loved him anyway). So, it's all good. A silver medal? We will take it and cherish it. 

Cincinnati

Roger with his Cincinnati Masters Trophy
(from online image search, edited by phone apps)

5 Cincinnati trophies (a record), 21 Master titles (also a record, tied with Nadal), not losing a serve the entire tournament (a record too in Masters and Grand Slams) and winning the first set of the finals 6-0! (against Djokovic at that)

I was smiling from ear to ear and I’m very excited for the US Open! Allez Roger!

Sotto, Don’t Speak

Tito is from Eat Bulaga, a long running noontime show. He hosted it with Vic and Joey, both are aging comedians. The noontime show featured: beauty pageants (for men, women and kids), gags and jokes that range from mindless to toilet humor, frivolous games, scantily clad women dancing... And, the point is, it’s not a show that inspires smart discussions, intellectual stimulation, public service or anything that would be considered decent roots for a senator. 

That is, really, Tito Sotto never had much credibility, at least to me. I don’t remember anything about him politically. Perhaps, I was too young to notice then when he first got elected. And after his foray into politics, he just went back to hosting Eat Bulaga (I do think that it’s weird when politicians go back to their old jobs when their old jobs are things like: hosting noontime shows or hosting shows that criticize the government, i.e. Noli).

Tito Sotto didn’t do anything remarkable or nationalistic during his time off and then he suddenly becomes a senator again. 

Tito Sotto, SAY WHAT?!?!

(Disclaimer: image from Google search)

To me, Tito Sotto is just a blank spot, similar to Lito Lapid and Bong Revilla. They’re just there waiting to be told what to do by whoever wins the bid to push their buttons. They are mouth pieces, just as Tito Sotto’s only job was to be the narrator during the recent impeachment trial. Even if he is the majority floor leader, he didn’t have anything decent to say.  

So, I was actually surprised that he was standing up and playing a role in the RH bill issue. I didn't really listen all that much, as I don’t really listen to the anti RH people anymore lest I’d just die of annoyance, and all I know is that he cried, claimed contraceptives killed his child and spewed the expected twisted arguments. 

I really wasn't playing too much attention to him until this plagiarism issue came up. Even then, I find Tito Sotto so dull, dumb and uninspiring that I still didn’t give it the time of day. 

Only after a friend of mine told me more about the whole blogger fiasco did I browse some articles on his speech. All I can say is that what happened actually exceeded my expectations. 

That is, I never expected Tito Sotto to be the sharpest tool in the shed but perhaps because he had some years of experience, I’d thought he would at least be an expert in maneuvering his way around the political arena, well, apparently, that’s not the case. 

I don’t know what his chief of staff looks like but an image of an aging pencil pusher who’s out of touch with reality, technology and a normal sense of decency comes to mind. He does not even know the definition of plagiarism, makes me wonder if he’s really a lawyer. 

Well, Tito, just continue to do what you’ve been doing so far this term, just be a mouth piece or don’t be. Stop giving speeches and interviews. Stop saying you believe that the RH bill is not applicable to Filipinos like it is to other countries and stop quoting an American (a non-Filipino) blogger in your arguments. Just don’t speak.  

Funny about this plagiarism business, so many have been burned and yet lessons have not been learned. A certain MVP and his speech writers come to mind. 

Could we attribute this to generation gap?

I had this horrible (older) MBA groupmate who always cut and pasted his contributions from the internet, paragraphs of them, without even crediting the source. I always ended up editing his parts out or (embarrassingly) typing sources for his multiple plagiarized paragraphs when I had no time to replace his sections. 

Old folks, let me remind you that these days everything can be googled. 

The RH Bill vs. The Church

It’s been a while. I have been caught up in a whirl of events and things, amidst all the important and not so important random things in my life. At some point, my emotions had been up and down that whenever I found some downtime, I just wanted to lie down or do some escapist activity like read mindless romantic novels or catch up with various TV series.

But hey, the world has been turning. And, issues have come and gone. Maybe, it’s time for me to get some of my thoughts out into the universe.  

So let’s talk about the RH bill. First off, I am pro the divorce bill and I am pro the RH bill. Strip off all the politics and religious brouhaha and, to me, it’s just about access to information and freedom of choice for the women of the Philippines.

In its somewhat weak form, the current proposed RH bill somehow just becomes a point of principle. The bill aims to become a means of educating Filipinos to hopefully pave the way to empower them with informed choices. 

The Church, as I’ve said time and time again, is just looking for ways to insert itself and to insist on projecting its relevance. The Church, via the CBCP, is just hanging on and refusing to let go, resorting to all these pathetic shenanigans (case in point: remember when they spoke against Lady Gaga?) at the expense of the betterment of the people.

Never mind that the people remain ignorant as long as they remain blindly obedient to the CBCP, hasn't this been the game plan ever since the colonial days?

Let me say that I am a Catholic and I will probably be one forever but I’m not mindless or blind.  

I am amazed by these illogical things that come out from these anti-RH bill people. No matter how you look at it there really is no logic in going against educating people and giving them the right to an informed choice.

All I’ve ever heard from these anti-RH people, regardless of position or station are statements with convoluted backwards logic or otherwise known as “pilosopo” reasoning.  

I remember Lito Atienza’s witless reasoning at an interview I once saw on TV, when the bill was first discussed, he spewed a bunch of ridiculous lines such as saying that since contraceptives are already in the market, then that means that freedom of choice already exist and so there is no need to pass a bill. If I remember correctly, he also kept on insisting that the RH bill is anti-life when the bill doesn’t even touch the topic of abortion.  I recall that I was so upset with him after that interview as he just kept on giving one senseless argument after another. Watching him was exasperating. 

In any other universe (or country), the bill would have passed a long time ago based on the principle alone. 

But hey, we are in a country where the Church is still allowed to desperately strong-arm its way into feigning its dying relevance at the expense of Filipina mothers, who based on statistics die at a rate of 11 per day because of childbirth.