We've Come A Long Way, Baby!

For the past few weeks I've heard a lot of commentators discussing Judge Sotomayor's racist attitudes. Outstide of some dumb blonds on Fox, it's mostly been white males. The discriminatory practices of Judge Sotomayor and her ilk is tearing at the fabric of this country. Mike Barnicle said that the country has had enough after decades of these practices. Pat Buchanan has been going ballistic, and was put down very well by Rachel Maddow the other night. Good for her.

But an event occurred last week that was just recently reported that puts quite well the state of racial equality in this country. Harvard professor Henry Gates, Jr. was arrested for disorderly conduct. He was in his home at the time having just "broken in" because of a problem with his locks. A passer-by had seen Professor Gates and another black man trying to gain access to the house and called police.

So for all the white male whiners who are concerned that their fellow white males are being denied access to jobs across the country, like the New Haven firefighters, I think you need to take a step back and look at the situation a little closer. The playing field has not been sufficiently leveled.

Though I guess we should all be proud of the progress we've made. If you think about it, if Professor Gates had tried this 40 years ago, the cops would have shot first and asked questions later.

At my wits end - no catchy title

I feel that my education has been wasted. I was reading a piece in the business section on MSN.com that stated that there have been 6.5 million jobs lost since the recession started in December of 2007. Now I know that knowledge of economics is not a prerequisite for writing for MSN.com/Money, and it's been quite a few years since I studied the topic in B-school, but a recession is 2 or more consecutive quarters of zero or negative growth in GDP.

The fourth quarter of 2007 showed a 2.3% growth, followed by an increase of 3.5% in the first quarter of 2008, with subsequent quarterly increases of 4.1% and 3.4% before tumbling 5.8% in the fourth quarter. So I'm really thinking that the recession started closer to December, 2008. And I think the job loss has been smaller in the last eight months.

But it got me thinking as to why this writer would create his own version of economics. Is he trying to blame the Bush Administration for a recession? The job losses in early 2008 can be blamed on their economic polices without rewriting economic policy. Is he trying to ease criticism on Obama? That might be, as every Fox talking head is now saying that Obama owns the economy, the budget deficit (even though the budget year started under GWB), and oddly enough the entire national debt. But then the economic knowledge of Fox News, to say nothing of the Bush Administration, would make the guy at MSN.com/Money look like a Nobel laureate.

Or as someone said on Morning Joe today, the tar is starting to stick to Obama. Just to show that Pat Buchanan is not the only racist on MSNBC.

Rest in Peace Michael Jackson

Never was a big fan. I liked some of the stuff he did with his brothers when I was 12, but not a big fan of his solo work, except maybe the song about the rat. But I am hoping he will rest in peace, and then the news channels can cover something else. Because of the almost non-stop coverage I was forced to watch a lot of Fox last night. And my head still hurts.

O'Reilly was kind of funny. He had a segment where Steve Doocy and some blonde played a version of Name That Tune. It wasn't the blonde from the Fox and Friends show. Though she had a doozy, or would that be doocy, of a comment the other day. Talking about Obama's visit to Russia she mentioned that we need to improve our relations with them, as they have more influence on the world scene than they've ever had. She may be too young to remember the Cold War, but you would think that she'd have at least heard of it.

Anyway, Doocy and the other blonde had no clue as to song names. The blonde got indignant that The Doors' song LA Woman wasn't LA Woman. She claimed to have every Doors recording and know every song. O'Reilly claims that he does a mean Jim Morrison. It was freaky.

Speaking of Russia's influence on the world, Hannity had Haley Barbour, who is seriously being talked about as Presidential timber. Yeah! But he was talking about how we can't have any more of these arms treaties and how Reagan brought down the Soviet Union by building up arms. Do any of these people read history books. Who initiated the INF agreement which led to START?

Hannity several times was bashing the President for not recognizing the fact that we are the sole super power in the world. Combining this with his bashing Obama for not speaking out more on the situation in Iran, and his bashing of the handling of the Uighurs being released from Guantanamo now makes for an interesting confluence of events.

The Uighurs, an Islamic people, are revolting against the Chinese. I wonder who Sean will be asking Obama to rail against? I guess it doesn't matter, as we are the lone super power in the world. China being bigger, more populous, having an incredibly larger standing army, being a major economic power, especially when it comes to our imports and the subsequent ownership of our national debt, and having nuclear capabilities is obviously not a super power.

We have thousands of nuclear warheads, Sean would probably say. He's not quite aware that it doesn't take thousands to put a pretty big dent in the world as we know it. He, like all the neo-cons still think that our armed forces are the most powerful around. Given the commitments we have in the Middle East, I think we might have a tough time proving that to the Chinese.

Anyway, can we let Jackson rest in peace so I can get some unfair and unbalanced news?

And to my good friend Joe Scarborough, you need some new news writers. Not only to avoid your insanely funny, funny stupid not funny ha ha, discussion of the story you tried to report on Al Gore (Mika you need to know the difference between the text of a speech and a news report about the speech) but you really need someone to know that there is no such word as Iceburg.

Role Reversal

This is just too funny. The Supreme Court ruling yesterday on the New Haven Fire Department has just got the conservatives kerfuffled. They are trumpeting the case to show that Judge Sotomayor truly is a racist, she hates white men. It's obvious from her decision on the case, though you have to read between a very small number of lines.

But if you read those lines you'll find that what she, and the other members of the panel, did was to uphold the law. No judicial activism here. And what do you find when you read the majority opinion of Justice Kennedy in the case? Uh oh!

Yes. Judicial activism. Justices Roberts and Alito committing the cardinal sin. They swore they wouldn't. Every one of their conservative sponsors touted them as strict constructionists.

And they are all full of shit. Truly. They are.

At least we should now all see that there is no such thing as being a strict constructionist. That it is the responsibility of the judiciary to change laws at times. We should also see that the conservative movement is truly racist. They are all fearful of the decline in the power of the white male.

The best comment was from Mike Barnicle, an old white man. He applauded the court for eliminating employment in the workplace and ending the bias that has been applied for, as he said, these past few decades. These past few decades!

We've been subjugating women, men of color, gays, people with handicaps for millennia. More than just subjugating, abusing, torturing, killing. Long past the time when Jesus told us not to do it anymore.

And poor Mike Barnicle and the other old white males have been having to go through this for decades. Well not Barnicle, he's only been denied employment for his plagiarism.

So the Right will only stand for activist judges when it props up their racist system.

Leonard Pitts had a great column last week on the racist Right. You should read it.

On a personal note to my good buddy Glenn Beck. The US didn't buy Alaska in the 1950's, you ignorant dolt. It was the 1860's. Read a book. Hit yourself in the head with a book.

And don't try telling me that you misspoke. You were saying the reason we bought Alaska was for oil. We didn't know from oil, where to find it, what to do with it when the deal was negotiated by Secretary William Henry Seward, who may have been the last living righteous Republican.

Effective Communications

So I'm reading where Ahmadinejad is saying that President Obama is acting just like Former President Bush. Imagine what he'd be saying if Obama had foolishly listened to the Grahams and McCains and Krauthammers. He'd probably be saying the same things, but it would've made him sound believable. Quite a feat at that!

But maybe President Ahmadinejad is listening to that fatuous, farcical phony, Monica Crowley. I saw Dr. Crowley on the O'Reilly Show last night. She was actually trying to give the credit for the demonstrations in Iran to Bush. She said it is the democracies now established in Afghanistan and Iraq that are leading the Iranian people to force their own democracies. The governments in Afghanistan and Iraq were democratically elected, but with the insurgencies, the violence that has been there since, well since we started it, one could hardly hold them up as the ideals free and peaceful countries of the world are hoping for in the Middle East.

Also, we all have to remember that even if the Islamic Republic in Iran is overthrown, the people wearing the green still do not trust the United States. Even the people under thirty have heard all about the Shah and Savak. This is an area where Admadinejad does not have to lie. And we were the ones who installed the Shah.

O'Reilly had a conversation with Barney Frank on his show last night. In Bill's typical debating style, he was constantly interrupting his guest. And Congressman Frank called him on it. Bill's response was that there will always be interruptions.

He's a jerk. But at least he's an honest jerk. He openly admits that he's rude, crass and was brought up with absolutely no common courtesy.

But of course the best example of effective communications yesterday was Governor Sanford. I truly believe he was trying to put the entire crowd into some kind of trance with his stream of consciousness rantings. It might have worked if The State did not have copies of his e-mails.

I used to say that the difference between Republicans and Democrats was that they were both trying to do the same thing, but the Democrats were doing it one woman at a time. I believe the right is trying to usurp that strategy.

Fear Factor

Last week, Ed Schultz started a brouhaha when he said that Former VP Cheney wanted an attack on the US so that he could come back and say I told you so. I think Cheney is the devil. Actually I think the devil is Cheney's henchman. But I disagree with Ed. This is just part of the Republican platform, and has been for years. They just want to scare everyone, and then repeat the mantra that Democrats are soft on defense, soft on terrorism, ill-advised in foreign affairs.

That is what's going on with the Republican leadership and the neo-con talking heads in response to the President's words on the situation in Iran. He's tepid. He needs to make a stronger response. Listen to Senators McCain and Graham on yesterday's talk shows. Their statements are eerily similar. Almost as if they are just parroting proscribed talking points.

Charles Krauthammer's last column stays on message in his recent column, "Showing Weakness Toward Iran's Fate". He states that we are missing a chance to capitalize on events such as the ouster of Hezbollah in Lebanon. He says that a revolution in Iran right now would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism. His logic is a little specious, as communism as a socio-economic system has collapsed, yet the totalitarian rule in China and the former Soviet Republics is still rampant.

That political vermin, Dr. Monica Crowley, has also been cackling about the tepid response. I saw her on McLaughlin this weekend and she was bemoaning that Obama should be like Reagan in dealing with the USSR. She was impassioned in screaming how this administration could abandon those huddled masses yearning to breathe free in Iran.

One of my favorite people in the world, Lawrence O'Donnell, demanded of her that she give an example of what she thought Obama should say. She quickly started talking about some piece in the NYT, she repeated "the New York Times, even" as if to show that liberals supported her theory. Of course the piece she was talking about had nothing to do with her theory. She never did, and I'm betting never will, answer O'Donnell's question What a bitch!

Funny, for the previous two weeks the bitch was lumping every Muslim, from the nut who shot the recruiter in Arkansas to al-Qaeda to the other 1.5 billion of them into one group who were only concerned with destroying the United States. Hey bimbo! They're Muslims in Iran.

These doofi are not just preaching to their choir. They are trying to convince the independents, the Joe Six-Packs in the Democratic party that the Democrats, as the GOP has done for decades, can't handle National Security issues.

It is great that Hezbollah has lost power in Lebanon. And how did that happen, because the US hadn't intervened. Reagan challenged the Soviet Union, but not on elections. Neither Carter nor Reagan did anything when the Solidarity movement had it's roots. That's why it was successful. Had we endorsed Lech Walesa, the government would have had a reason to quash it.

We should not intervene, nor unduly comment on this situation in Iran. If for no other reason than what happened in 1953. When we intervened in "disputed" elections in Iran, and foisted the Shah on the Iranian people. Americans tend to forget that that happened, but not the consequences. The Iranian people remember it all. With hate and anger.

Joe Wrote a Book!

I'm reminded of the Groucho Marx line - "From the moment I picked up your book, to the moment I put it down I was convulsed in laughter. Someday I intend reading it."

I've just been too pissed off to write the last few weeks. I've been watching a lot of Fox, so it's understandable. They have some of the stupidest people in the world on their shows. The brown haired guy who is not Steve Doocy has to be the dumbest. Two examples of things he said recently:

Talking about Chastity Bono going through a sex change he asked if a lesbian
becomes a man does he still date women.

On a story about a boy who disappeared fifty years ago, mentioning that the
boy's father had been assigned to Mitchell Field in New York, he said that is
where Lindbergh landed.

So I wind up watching more Morning Joe. For the past few weeks it has pretty much been an infomercial for his book while he was there. Fortunately, he's been whoring it around the country and has missed a lot of face time on the show. I'm not that upset.

But today, as the self-appointed new leader of the conservative cause, he got on his soap box about a new poll out that he says proves that he was prescient about the budget deficit situation. The poll shows that a majority of Americans want the administration to concentrate on reducing the deficit no matter how it affects the economy. Which is what Joe says he's been saying for months. When he was saying this, I must have been watching the Fox Nimwits in the Morning show.

Joe is in favor of reducing the deficit now. Or is it in the out years, his new favorite phrase? I'm not exactly sure how the poll question was phrased, but the answer, from Joe specifically, is crap.

I'll put it to you this way Mr. Scarborough, if you really feel we need to reduce deficits and you're not as concerned about the economic affects, let's do it. Let's start taxing the wealthy.

When I read your book, I'm pretty sure I will not find that scenario mentioned.