Let Them Go!

(originally written 4/9/09)

Texas Governor Rick Perry, supporting a "tea party" event this week, suggested that states may want to secede from the Union, because the federal government is "thumbing its nose" at the American people."

No specifics as to the nose-thumbing. Lots of possible examples come to mind, but they belong to the period beginning in December, 2000 and recently concluded with the thanks of a grateful nation to the departed President Bush.

So Perry couldn't have been talking about any of that; no he and others similarly afflicted managed to contain their outrage until recently.

But let's all be reasonable, and let them do their jobs. If they continue to hold tea parties and in general to work themselves up, we may get lucky. Imagine a USA without the southern tier of states. Why, we wouldn't have ... uh, the southern tier of states.

Thanks for nothing, Abe Lincoln.

Racism!

Now we must listen to the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh telling us that Judge Sotomayor is disqualified for consideration for the Supreme Court because of her comment that a Latina judge might make a better decision than a white male judge, because of "the richness of her experience."

And it is from the font and bastion of racism in the society, these past two generations, viz. the "intellectual leaders" of the party that made racism its chief tool, that we must abide such nonsense.

Consider the probable career path of a female or minority person, now in his or her fifties, who has been successful in virtually any field in this country. Think of the professional environment in which such a person was nurtured, and the sea in which he or she swam, metaphorically speaking. Allow, even, the possibility that such a person has succeeded through only a modicum of merit and with a large serving of affirmative action.

Can you seriously doubt that, in order to rise to whatever level such a person has achieved, that person would have experienced, every day of his life, the world of the majority white male culture? And would not such a person have learned the conventions, the rules, the behaviors, even the prejudices, of the majority?

Could one seriously argue that a white male in the same profession would have had a comparable exposure to the world of the minorities, and absorbed in a comparable fashion their worldview?
So, wasn't Judge Sotomayor simply stating a rather pedestrian truth, namely that a successful minority person, whatever other characteristics he or she had developed, would have perforce had a richer, in some ways broader, understanding than a member of the majority? Wouldn't this, most likely, be true in any environment?

Maybe she shouldn't have said it; maybe she said it poorly. But let's move on!

No One Knows What Your Point Is

Oregon Man Used an Electric Dog Collar to Shock His Kids "Because He Thought It Was Funny"

“Leave me for the moment — you can beat me again later,” she screams.

It was not clear what the young woman was accused of.

One account said she had stepped out of her house without being escorted by a male family member, according to Samar Minallah, a rights activist. Ms. Minallah said she distributed the video to local news outlets after it was sent to her by someone from Swat three days ago.

Another account said a local Taliban commander had falsely accused the teenager of violating Islamic law after she refused to accept his marriage proposal.

A Taliban spokesman defended the punishment to the Geo Television Network but said it should not have been done in public.

You can watch this barbarism here.

Let's Be Clear

The bailout, meaning the continuing marriage and merging of government and corporations, is the inevitable next step in an evolutionary process of empowered moneyed interests finding unique and creative ways to bilk everyone else. Matt Taibi writes this silver-tongued piece in Rolling Stone:

"That same year, as the subprime crisis was exploding [2007], the Government Accountability Office criticized the OTS, noting a "disparity between the size of the agency and the diverse firms it oversees." Among other things, the GAO report noted that the entire OTS had only one insurance specialist on staff — and this despite the fact that it was the primary regulator for the world's largest insurer!

"There's this notion that the regulators couldn't do anything to stop AIG," says a government official who was present during the bailout. "That's bullshit. What you have to understand is that these regulators have ultimate power. They can send you a letter and say, 'You don't exist anymore,' and that's basically that. They don't even really need due process. The OTS could have said, 'We're going to pull your charter; we're going to pull your license; we're going to sue you.' And getting sued by your primary regulator is the kiss of death."

I recommend reading it in full.

Of Course It Wasn't True

All that BS about reducing the deficit in four years.  Did you believe a word of it?   Even principled Democrats say it's nonsense. 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said on Thursday he expects federal deficit spending will be about $1.6 trillion greater over the next ten years than President Barack Obama's budget plan forecast

You had to know this was coming . . . Part II

Iran's fist still clenched.

Only now that we're holding out our hand to the tyrants, the reformers are hiding their heads.