Are you fed up with life’s rich pageant of people, events and trends completely lacking in value or values? Well, we here at Pensito Review are too, which is why we created the Penny Awards, taking the “pen” from “Pensito” and the theme from the lowest valued coin of the realm, the one-cent piece, which fully 80 percent of people polled said they would not bend over to pick up off the street.

The Penny Awards, or “Pennys,” allow us to put in our two cent’s worth of commentary on the penny ante antics of people in the news, organizations that promote worthless agendas and anything else we decry as having no redeeming — or indeed any — value at all.

O.K., except for entertainment value, which we hope you will find in lavish quantities, as we hand out the 2006 Penny Awards to the deservingly worthless.

And, if you have your own ideas about who deserves a Penny, send it in, via a comment. Your opinion is not worthless to us. No, we’d give you two pennies, at least, for your thoughts.

Of course, then we’d have your address ….

Politics

Most Worthless Self-Imposed Nickname: The Decider. ‘Nuff said.

Most Worthless Home-Grown Terrorists: Last May the FBI “uncovered” a plot by a group of Miami-based losers to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago in order to, in the words of their leader, “Kill all the devils we can.” Of course, they had no weapons or the money to get them. The guy they thought was their al Qaeda operative was an FBI informant, and they spent most of their time learning kung fu fighting in the empty warehouse that was supplied by — the FBI! There was even a scouting trip to Chicago to case the Sears Tower in a van — supplied by the FBI! At a news conference touting the U.S. government’s prescience in thwarting a deadly attack, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said: “Our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don’t know what we don’t know about a terrorist plot.” And, he might have added in a Rumsfeldian musing, we don’t know what we don’t know even when we don’t know it.

Elective Vacancies: The Penny for the 109th Congress has as much to do with disgrace and scandal as it does with lethargy. From the resignations of Republicans Tom DeLay and Mark Foley to the idiocy of Democrats Cynthia McKinney and William Jefferson, our elected officials failed to inspire. Then there’s the record set for working the fewest days — two and a half of each week in session — of any Congress. But the fact that when it was all said and done, more than one-quarter of the 383 bills signed into law dealt with naming or renaming federal buildings (mostly post offices), speaks volumes about a legislative body seriously adrift. No wonder we voted so many of them out in November.

Most Worthless Piece of Machinery: It is with a sense of mechanical incompetence that we award this Penny to the electronic voting machines of Sarasota County which, during the midterm election for Florida’s First Nut Katherine Harris’ old congressional seat seem to have undercounted more than 18,000 votes. After two electronic rechecks of the machines, the state of Florida declared Republican Vern Buchanan the winner over Dem Christine Jennings for the 13th District House seat by a difference of just 369 votes. Of course, the machines might not be to blame for the 17,811 electronic ballots that had votes in other races but no vote, or an undervote, in the congressional contest. Including paper ballots, there were more than 18,400 undervotes — nearly 13 percent of all votes — in Sarasota County for the race. So, it could have been human error, we suppose, but, as the Republicans in Sarasota say, “Deus ex machina.”

Being Too Dumb to Live: A Penny trucked in on the short bus goes to the nearly 39 percent of Americans in 2006 opinion polls who didn’t think the country is on the wrong track, the 24 percent who thought George Bush is trustworthy, the 38 percent who thought the mainstream media is too liberal, the 16 percent who continued to believe we’re winning in Iraq, and the 38 percent who said the loss of American lives there has been worth it.

Gay Republicans: This year brought a new level of exposure to the love-hate relationship between conservative gays and their political party of choice. There were two stupendous involuntary outings: Former Rep. Mark Foley, who headed a task force on exploited children while he engaged in exploitative chatting online with teenaged boys; and Rev. Ted Haggard, who preached against gay sex while indulging in it himself with a male escort. And then there was Mary Cheney, whose father and mother, Vice Pres. Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, are figureheads among gay-hating Culture Warriors. Earlier this year, Mary published a barely read memoir in which she tried her best to circle the square of Gay Republicanhood, and more recently she and her unmarried gay non-spouse announced they were having a baby. Finally, there are those Republicans who remain in the closet: Perhaps Ken Mehlman, recently deposed head of the Republican National Committee, and Rep. David Drier of California, will be among those who voluntarily out themselves in 2007.

Worst Victim - Harrry Whittington: Attacking the victim is wrong, but a rare exception may be the case of Harry Whittington, the man who was shot in the face by Vice Pres. Cheney in a hunting accident last February. Whittington was an awfully good sport about the whole thing, allowing himself to be treated like a doormat by Cheney, who may have been drunk at the time of the shooting. Was his complacency motivated by misguided patriotism, over-weening party loyalty or a nice cash settlement? We hope it was money not fealty, frankly.

Most Useless Rhetorical Chicanery: The Transitive Self-Interrogatory. This is a term we have devised to describe the linguistic trick of interviewing oneself in public. Politicians use this tactic during press interviews and hearings to take control of the message away from the questioner.

While many politicians use the transitive self-interrorgatory, the grand master of the technique is the former secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Here is the master at work, under questioning at Senate Defense Committee hearing last August:

DONALD RUMSFELD, Secretary of Defense: Are there still Taliban around?

DONALD RUMSFELD, Secretary of Defense: You bet.

DR: Are they occupying safe havens in Afghanistan and other places, correction in Pakistan and other places?

DR: Certainly they are.

DR: Is the violence up?

DR: Yes.

DR: Does the violence tend to be up during the summer and spring, summer, and fall months?

DR: Yes it does. And it tends to decline during the winter period.

DR: Does that represent failed policy?

DR: I don’t know, I would say not. I think you’ve got an awful lot of very talented people engaged in this, and the decisions that are being made are being made with great care after a great deal of consideration.

DR: Are there setbacks?

DR: Yes.

DR: Are there things that people can’t anticipate?

DR: Yes.

DR: Does the enemy have a brain and continue to make adjustments on the ground, requiring our forces to continue to make adjustments?

DR: You bet.

DR: Is that going to continue to be the case?

DR: I think so.

DR: Is this problem going to get solved in the near term about this violence struggle against extremism?

DR: No, I don?t believe it is. I think it’s going to take some time. And I know the question was some wars lasted three years, some wars lasted four years, some wars lasted five years. The Cold War lasted 40 plus years.

War

Most Worthless Execution: While we believe that most executions of human beings for whatever crimes are worthless, the most worthless this year was Saddam Hussein’s. Why? Because it was done strictly for political reasons — George Bush wants to send 30,000 more targets into Iraq, and what better justification than the fact that the Sunnis and the Baathists have gone bat-shit over Saddam’s assassination by the United States and the Iraqi provisional government and have ramped up the violence. Send in the cannon fodder ….

Sloganeering: A Very Special Penny goes to the spinmeisters that just kept the phraseology coming during 2006. Who could forget “staying the course,” “the central front in the war on terror,” “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here,” “a free and democratic Iraq,” or “the way forward?” An honorable mention goes to whoever came up with the idea to call troop escalation a “surge” and thereby instantly change the debate from one about when to pull out in Iraq to one about the correct number of new troops to send.

Dumbest Iraq War Rationale of All: “We must fight the terrorists in Iraq or we’ll have to fight them here.” Because terrorists are too stupid to read maps? If the 19 guys who attacked us on 9/11 could get here, so can others. Even more importantly, the folks firing on our troops in Iraq are not terrorists, much less al Qaeda, they are insurgents. They want us out of Iraq, and since their beef is with each other, they would have no interest in following us back to the United States.

Culture

Most Worthless Pastime — Watching Professional Sports: Just look at the time, money and emotional investment Americans put into watching professional sports and it’s easy to see that pro sports consumes more resources than it could possibly ever return in entertainment value or social good. The fact that NASCAR is now the most popular professional spectator sport in the U.S. pretty much says it all. Recent incidents featuring fights, riots and dirty tricks during games, and the subsequent obligatory navel-gazing of sportswriters and social commenters is enough to convince us that there really is no less productive, dumber, more worthless pastime than watching professional athletes getting their checks cashed. Aside from watching Bill O’Reilly, of course.

Most Worthless Reality TV Producers: All of ‘em, because they overlooked the opportunity of a lifetime. Producers of reality TV should be kicking themselves for not signing on to follow Katherine Harris around during her quixotic run for the Senate this year. Think about the video drama that is now lost to posterity: Katherine behaving so erratically that her entire campaign staff walks out on her — twice! Katherine snarling at her staffers and demeaning to them in public. Katherine having meltdowns — throwing a cell phone against a wall and hurling a computer keyboard into a desk. Katherine playing footsie (literally) with a clearly freaked out college reporter. What a show it coulda been. But here’s the good news. Katherine Harris is writing a book.

Biggest Waste of Broadcasting Bandwidth: We love politics as much as most, but the TV pundits who are already harping on the 2008 elections are abusing their positions. Their endless and ultimately useless, speculation and candidate handicapping 23 months before the 2008 elections, while they ignore the deadly serious challenges faced by the United States — the Iraq civil war, the 45 million Americans with no health insurance, global warming and the rest — exposes them for the shallow, over-paid empty toupees that they are. The worst offenders are Tim Russert on NBC, Chris Matthews on MSNBC and Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Give it a rest boys, and, for a change, just do your frickin’ jobs.

Most Worthless Parents — Celebrities: The year 2006 will go down as the one of the worst in the history of celebrity parenting. First we have the love children so proudly produced, first by Brad and Angelina, then by Tom and Katie. Both couples postponed marriage with rarely-used excuses. Brangelina claimed they just wouldn’t feel right about getting married until gay people can. Tom Kat needed to wait until they could stage the biggest media spectacle since…well, that’s our point. But it’s not just having children out of wedlock that set 2006 apart. Who could forget the pictures of Brit dangling the baby over the hotel balcony while driving her SUV? Um, wait, who could forget Brit holding the baby in her lap while tossing empty beer cans and cigarette butts into the truck bed? And then there’s poor Madonna, whose efforts to pull a reverse-Angelina were treated to worldwide contempt. The lesson here is adopt a bunch of African children first, then have your own. If you do it the other way around, instead of being hailed as sincere you will be skewered for being selfish. Wha?

Dishonorable Mention — Most Worthless Father: K-Fed, hands down. We’re sorry to besmirch these pages by bringing Kevin Federline into them, but sometimes an egregious new low in egregiousness has to be noted for the sake of posterity (especially since the posterity produced from his loins may outnumber us all before he’s done). How many children does this guy have? Two with Britany Spears and two with Char Jackson, and he’s what — 25? It’s scary to think that by age 75 or whatever, Federline could produce a whole army of air-headed wastes of space. A future filled with Federlines, now that is worthless.

Ironically, Kevin Federline’s one foray into public service this year was to show up at an event honoring — the penny.

Team Spirit: The Penny for the U.S. Olympics team is a toughie. On the one hand, their (with a few exceptions) dismal performance showed the world just how self-absorbed and self-indulgent Americans have become. On the other hand, they lowered the bar for future U.S. Olympians who now are under no pressure to win medals. Henceforth, just showing up for the events on time and sans hangover will be enough to restore the nation’s pride.

Got an idea for a Penny? Let us know!