Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think.
If you were going to have open-heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is, or by the best surgeon you could find — even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Sowell: ‘Empathy’ in Action
Furor grows over partisan car dealer closings
Instapundit is collecting the evidence which is (maybe, sorta) indicating that politics might be involved in deciding what car dealerships to close. Hmmm, hard to imagine political considerations being part of the government's beneficent management of an automaker. I'm shocked!
First, from the Washington Examiner:
Evidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans.
Then from a reader:
one of the guys advising SecTreas on this thing is married to someone who used to be one of the people in charge of fundraising for the Democratic Party.
If it saves one union job, it's all worth it. Right?
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The 'Empathy' Nominee
In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
I think Charo with her rich experience as a guest star on The Love Boat would have more empathy for the common man. Cuchi-cuchi
(Now, if that comment doesn't catch the attention of Instapundit, I don't know what will.)
Goldberg: Empathy vs. Impartiality
President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the right Hispanic woman for the job. Here's the oath Supreme Court justices must take:
"I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
Contrast that with Obama's insistence that the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles" is the key qualification for a Supreme Court justice. According to White House talking points, Judge Sotomayor's "American story" of humble origins — she was raised in the South Bronx — best prepares her for the high court because it shows "she understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts."
North Korea Threatens Armed Strike, End to Armistice
It's 3 a.m. and the phone is ringing off the hook. Obama? Hillary?
Is Dick Cheney still available?
North Korea threatened a military response to South Korean participation in a U.S.-led program to seize weapons of mass destruction, and said it will no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.
"The Korean People's Army will not be bound to the Armistice Agreement any longer," the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement today. Any attempt to inspect North Korean vessels will be countered with "prompt and strong military strikes." South Korea's military said it will "deal sternly with any provocation" from the North.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Millionaires Go Missing
Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. ... Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." ... One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.
Clinton State Dept. Gives Benefits to Partners, Adulterers
I think this is satire...
"Same sex or opposite sex, married or not, faithful or cheating — any time people come together intimately, taxpayers are morally obligated to take care of their every need," said Secretary Clinton.
Follow the link for the full story.
Obama: We're Out of Money
Summarizing the argument for ObamaCare...
"I've bankrupted the nation, so now your only hope is to pass my healthcare plan." That goes beyond chutzpah to the edge of pathological dishonesty. Except, I guess, that it's not pathological if you get away with it. And so far, he has.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Steyn: What Are We Stimulating?
So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job "coordinating" other programs funded by the stimulus. What's next?
"Grantwriter."
That's how they spell it. Like in Star Wars — Luke Grantwriter waving his hope saber as instructed by his mentor Obi-Bam Baracki ("May the Funds be with you!"). The Grantwriter will be responsible for writing grant applications "to augment ARRA funds." So the second new job created by stimulus funding funds someone to petition for additional funding for projects funded by the stimulus.
The stimulus will do nothing for the economy, but it will dramatically advance the cause of statism (as Mark Levin rightly calls it). Last week's vote in California is a snapshot of where this leads: The gangster regime in Sacramento is an alliance between a corrupt and/or craven political class wholly owned by a public-sector union-bureaucracy extortion racket. So what if the formerly Golden State goes belly up? They'll pass the buck to Washington, and those of us in non-profligate jurisdictions will get stuck with the tab. At some point, the dwindling band of citizens still foolish enough to earn a living by making things, selling things, or providing services other than government-funded program coordination will have to vote against not just taxes but specific agencies and programs — hundreds and thousands of them.
"I’m All Right, Barack" - Gov take over of GM
What we now face is a nationalized car maker, with the government owning 51 percent of the company and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union holding a stunning 38 percent of shares. Bondholders, who normally have first claim on a company's assets, receive only 10 percent instead, and the current stockholders get the remaining 1 percent.
Consider that for a moment. The government and the current administration's political fellow-travelers own 89 percent of an American company. This is a terrible precedent. Just ask the domestic British auto industry. Unfortunately, it won't answer, because most of it went out of business when the British government tried the same tactic in the 1970s. The government attempted to save a dying domestic industry by nationalization and heavy investment in R&D to produce a "product-led" recovery. That recovery never emerged, because the unions put saving jobs before producing good vehicles (as I detail elsewhere). With the UAW now owning 38 percent of the company, should we expect anything different from GM?
The GM nationalization ignores the lessons of history, and its terms are plainly unjust. The UAW, acting for its members who are former workers and GM pensioners, did indeed represent something like $20 billion worth of GM's liabilities. So the idea that the union should get an equity stake in return for that is fair enough. However, the UAW is getting three times as much as the bondholders, who represent $28 billion of GM's outstanding liability. When the bondholders protested, the administration refused to meet with them.
The Protest Of A Patriot
In the note he circulated this month, Asness denounces the president for castigating Chrysler bondholders when they opposed his plan to pay them only 29 cents on the dollar. "He called them 'speculators' who were 'refusing to sacrifice like everyone else,' " Asness writes. "The president's diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union [the UAW] that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to 'sacrifice' some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good?"
"This is America," Asness concludes. "We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred plus years. When it fails, it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the Oval Office to be scolded for disobedience by the president."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Krauthammer: Obama Adopts the Bush Approach to the War on Terrorism
Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he's doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush's moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.
Obama declares Gitmo detainees to be 'fetuses'
Satire alert...
"We can debate whether enemy combatants have access to protections under the U.S. Constitution," said Obama. "However, no serious person would grant such protection to an embryo or fetus. The loss of 240 fetuses wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a nation where more than 3,000 of them hit the Dumpster daily."
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Obama's speech
I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more. As Commander-in-Chief, I see the intelligence, I bear responsibility for keeping this country safe, and I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation. What's more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counter-terrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.
Let me get this straight: Before we detained the terrorists at Gitmo, the Islamo-fascists were less likely to mistreat Americans than they are today. In the days since 9/11, we've given them a good reason to hate us. Capturing terrorists and not giving them American criminal rights actually has made us less safe in the world. And now that Obama is giving the terrorists due process, and potentially bringing them to American soil, we're supposed to feel safer.
Wake up! Terrorists are not misunderstood juvenile delinquents. They're not poor kids with no hope for a better life. They're not going to change their ways if only we tried to love and understand them. They won't respect us for turning the other cheek. Showing weakness and a lack of resolve will only encourage more attacks on our country.
Cheney's Speech
Read the whole thing:
By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.
Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.
Yet for all these exacting efforts to do a hard and necessary job and to do it right, we hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative. In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists.
I might add that people who consistently distort the truth in this way are in no position to lecture anyone about "values." Intelligence officers of the United States were not trying to rough up some terrorists simply to avenge the dead of 9/11. We know the difference in this country between justice and vengeance. Intelligence officers were not trying to get terrorists to confess to past killings; they were trying to prevent future killings. From the beginning of the program, there was only one focused and all-important purpose. We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans.
Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogations. And to call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives, and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims.
The United States of America was a good country before 9/11, just as we are today. List all the things that make us a force for good in the world--for liberty, for human rights, for the rational, peaceful resolution of differences--and what you end up with is a list of the reasons why the terrorists hate America. If fine speech-making, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for--our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.
McCarthy: Obama's National Security Speech
President Obama's speech is the September 10th mindset trying to come to grips with September 11th reality. It is excruciating to watch as the brute facts of life under a jihadist threat, which the president is now accountable for confronting, compel him forever to climb out of holes dug by his high-minded campaign rhetoric — the reversals on military detention, commission trials, prisoner-abuse photos, and the like.
The need to castigate his predecessor, even as he substantially adopts the Bush administration's counterterrorism policy, is especially unbecoming in a president who purports to transcend our ideological divisions.
Lib California Speaker Karen Bass Says Voters Rejected Tax Hikes Because They Were Fatigued & Uninformed (Video)
California Speaker of the State Assembly Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) says voters sent a clear message to state officials with their defeat of the budget related measures. But, the liberal speaker says that the people were just misinformed and fatigued by all of the voting lately(?)
Otherwise, they would have voted for the billions in tax hikes.
video at the link
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
How the GOP beat Obama on Guantanamo
For the moment at least, Obama has lost the Battle of Guantanamo. What began with pressure from McConnell, whose 40-member Republican caucus in the Senate has no power to enact anything by itself, has ended with the crumbling of majority Democratic support for closing Guantanamo. And that is a major defeat for Obama.
The Democratic change of heart came in the form of the Senate's decision to cancel $80 million to fund the relocation of Guantanamo prisoners.
Blankley: The two-state 'solution' mirage
So long as fewer than 2 in 10 Arabs, both Palestinian and all others, believe in Israel's right to exist as a nation with a Jewish majority, there can be no successful peace based on a two-state solution. That is the reality that no diplomacy can change.
California Voters Voice Outrage
The results are finalized in California, and taxpayers finally took a stand. Propositions 1A through 1E were soundly defeated last night. [...] Proposition 1F was the only measure to pass. It imposed a weak limit on pay raises for legislators, theoretically disallowing them during budget deficit years. Regardless of its actual teeth, the results show true populist outrage in California: The measure passed by a resounding 74-26.
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