Sotomayor's Statement Just a Normal Product of Leftwing Thinking

Ann Althouse dispatches the concept that Sotomayor’s statement was something which was garbled, out of context or in some way excusable:

…it was not an unguarded spontaneous outburst. It was a carefully written speech delivered to a particular audience. Sotomayor was saying the things that would be well-received by her audience. Indeed, I have trouble getting roused by her statement — “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” — because I’ve been immersed for a quarter century in the kind of law school environment that she addressed. Here, we sympathetically smile and nod at such things. We nurture racial analysis. We create a school of thought and hire people to write about Critical Race Theory. What Sotomayor said was actually a weak, feel-good version of the kind of racial talk that is widespread in the legal academy.

Althouse suggests that we view the statement as “racial” rather than “racist” but to me that is a distinction without a difference. The plain fact of the matter is that the liberal elite of this nation believes that white people are inherently wicked (unless they are liberal, of course) and must pay back the non-white population for what they have stolen from them…thus Sotomayor’s racist statement that a Latina woman can have insights superior to a white male’s is nothing to write home about. Its non-controversial on the left. Its like asserting that low taxes are good on the right side of the aisle – a truth so embedded in the worldview as to be considered self-evident.

But it is racist – unlike the left, we on the right have retained our understanding of right and wrong. What Martin Luther King fought against was wrong – to consider anyone superior or inferior on account of race is morally wrong; it degrades the dignity inherent in all men, which is endowed to them by God. We learned, and we’ll never go down that road again. The left learned, but only for a moment…after MLK’s death, hustlers took over and the task was no longer justice, but what could be gotten out of government. Taking off from this, a whole host of idiocy was enshrined in our institutions of higher education (such as, among other monstrosity, “Chicano Studies”

Chicano studies, black studies, feminist studies…all of these disciplines built up in order to allow race-baiters to live on the government gravy train. Sotomayor is the product of this sort of thing – she was told this twaddle in college, she believes it, and she’s going to impose it on us via judicial fiat. If we wish to fight against racism, then this is our struggle – to eject from office anyone who holds to the sort of views Sotomayor has…she might very sincerely believe she’s not racist…but many whites in the South thought that, too.

Sorry for the No Blogging

Had a bit of a party at the Noonan homestead last night then had to work on Sunday…consider this an open thread.

Conservatism Rising in the Midwest

And I’ll bet that Obamunism just accelerates this trend:

My friend Eric Ostermeier at the University of Minnesota has been parsing 160 polls taken recently in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, and found a surprising result. Despite having elected Barack Obama by wide margins in most of the states, voters in the region have become more conservative over the past two years. Self-identifying conservatives have reached their highest levels in at least four years:

In 2006, the percentage of Minnesotans identifying as conservatives plunged 5.3 points (15.9 percent) to just 28.1 percent of Gopher State residents. Self-identified conservatives in Iowa also declined by 5.1 points (13.9 percent) to 31.5 percent that year, with the largest drop occurring in Wisconsin, with a 6.1-point decline (16.9 percent) to 29.9 percent. In that November’s election cycle, Republicans lost control of the Minnesota House, the Iowa House, the Wisconsin Senate, as well as three U.S. House seats (MN-01, IA-01, WI-08).

The percentage of residents identifying as conservatives declined again in 2007, by 1.6 points in Minnesota (to 26.5 percent), by 3.0 points in Iowa (to 28.5 percent), and by 2.2 points in Wisconsin (to 27.7 percent).

However, during the last two years, conservatism seems to be mounting a comeback in the Upper Midwest, even though the 2008 election cycle saw Republicans lose control of the Wisconsin Assembly, and lose additional seats in the Minnesota House, Minnesota Senate, Iowa House, and Iowa Senate.

In Minnesota, those Gopher State residents identifying as conservative increased by 1.3 points in 2008 (to 27.8 percent) and by another 1.2 points to 29.0 percent in an aggregation of polling data through the first five months of 2009. This marks the largest percentage of Minnesotans viewing themselves as conservative since 2005.

In Iowa and Wisconsin, the conservative resurgence has been even more pronounced.

Obviously, that didn’t help much in 2008, but part of the answer for that may be in the candidates fielded by the Republicans.

We’re being fed a siren song by the left and by weak kneed GOPers that we have to mute our conservatism…to be less confrontational, to be more nicey-nice and, of course, be more willing to “accept” moderates (which means, of course, “pour out your sweat and treasure for nominal GOPers who will cut you off at the knees when it really matters”). This bit of advice from liberals is what liberals want very much for us to do – because anything which tends to allow them to appear moderate by blending in with the GOP helps them get elected by a center/right electorate. This bit of advice from weak kneed GOPers is what the weak kneed want because they prefer to be invited to the cool parties and have soft-ball interviews on MSM talk shows…makes ‘em look smart and important, ya know? Combined, this advice will allow the left to have a kept GOP minority and allow the left to rule the roost. This advice thus doesn’t commend itself to me.

We need to be more stark in our differentiation with the left – with Obama and his Democrats we must be clearly and absolutely different from them. When the wheels finish coming off the Obama Express, we have to be in a position where we warned it would happen, and have a clear alternate plan already in the public mind. Its like this – we screwed up and we lost; the liberals won…allow the liberals to run things and thus allow them to take full responsibility for how bad it gets. Enunciate a clear, conservative message and the people will swing back to us.

Some American Issues

As you may know, I am on the blogging team at American Issues Project, where I blog mostly about energy issues, as well as local issues out of New York State and Massachusetts… Here are a few recent posts 

• Obama Fuel Economy Plan: Pay More, Get Less
• New York’s Taxes Send People and Businesses Out Of State
• Green Jobs Equal Green Unemployment
• The Empire State Strikes Back

I will soon be starting another blogging gig, where I’ll be talking about health care issues… more on that later…

If We Were Liberals and Obama a GOPer, Our Opposition to Sotomayor Would be a Good Thing

Example:

…Sotomayor is poised to be the first Hispanic, and the third woman, to serve on the Supreme Court She appears headed for confirmation, needing a majority vote in a Senate, where Democrats have 59 votes. But White House officials also want a smooth confirmation, not one that bogs down them or their nominee.

As a senator, Obama supported a failed attempt by Democrats to stall President George W. Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito to the high court. (emphasis added)

So, you see, the whole “better not fight against Sotomayor” may be translated as “we know we have a kook leftist, racist nominee, and we want to scare you away from doing even half what we did to your highly qualified nominees”. Helping the Democrats in this effort are week kneed Senate GOPers who figure that we rank and file GOPers should trust them on this and not go all out…of course, given that these Senate GOPers have presided over a net 16 seat loss over the past two cycles, I don’t know if we rank and file types are exactly in awe over their political acumen…

Subversive Phrase of the Day

A timely reminder of what he rescued us from:

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man. – Ronald Reagan

Obamunism in Action

Like night following day – this stuff is not hard to figure out:

Crude oil rose, capping its biggest monthly gain in a decade, as the dollar weakened against the euro, bolstering the appeal of commodities.

Oil climbed above $66 a barrel to a six-month high as the dollar declined beyond $1.41 against the euro for the first time this year, making raw materials such as oil and gold an attractive alternative investment. Prices also gained as U.S., and Asian indicators pointed to a global economic recovery.

“The devaluation of the dollar is leading to the revaluation of energy and commodities in general,” said John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy at MF Global in New York. “This is a monetary-based rally. The market is focused on the future and ignoring the fundamentals of the present day crude-oil supply and demand picture.”

The wife asked me last week why gas prices were rising when there was no shortage – I opined that it was probably being run up by people dropping dollars and dollar-denominated securities because Obama is leading us right into high inflation, and maybe hyperinflation. No one with any sense wants to hold on to dollars right now – buy land, buy commodities, stock up on canned food: buy anything you can which has intrinsic value and you’ll come out ahead under Obamunism.

Now, there could be a silver lining in this – the collapse of the dollar’s value means things we grow, mine and make will become cheaper on the global market. Given this, if we enter into a crash program of increasing the amount of stuff we make, mine and grow, we can start to work our way out of this. The problem is that Obama and his Democrats don’t even suspect this – its outside of their worldview, and thus they will be impervious to any attempt to explain to them that even their boneheadedness can now be worked to our advantage if we stop being boneheaded.

We’re about to enter into the very worst economic times we’ve ever experienced. A bit of poverty will, I think, be salubrious for us in the long run. We elected the stupidest man we could have carrying on the stupidest possible policies over the past 75 years. Hopefully what we’re about to go through will teach us our lesson.

Conservatism on the Rise in Great Britain

According to Conservative Home, the Tories are polling at 41% against Labour’s 21%. We’ll have to see if this holds through the upcoming British elections, but I like to remind myself that Thatcher won before Reagan…

Sotomayor Narrative Partially Bogus

The poor, Latina woman who rose up out of abject poverty? Well, not quite:

…Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx — she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and then Yale.

And Sotomayor’s life and lifestyle after law school largely resemble the background of many lawyers who rise to powerful positions in Washington.

She climbed her way up through New York’s Democratic power structure boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years — Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. That’s the access of a partner in a corporate law firm, not a kid from the South Bronx.

She now earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes. Her brother, Dr. Juan Sotomayor, is a physician in North Syracuse, N.Y., whose practice doesn’t accept Medicaid or Medicare — programs for the poor and elderly — according to its Web site.

In other words – he family was a bit down on its luck early on, but swiftly moved out of that and Sotomayor lived a life indistinguishable from any other middle class American…and now lives the life of a rich liberal…this is someone who is supposed to have some sort of keen insight into the problems of, say, poor immigrants in south central Los Angeles? I’d put my experience of that area as much better than hers – I know that area and have immense respect for those immigrants and their children…not all of whom, by a long shot, Mexican…who are working so hard to climb out of genuinely desperate poverty. Given Sotomayer’s racist views on who would be a better judge of a case coming out of that area, I’m out of the mix…just too white and too male, I guess. The only thing I have going for me is truth and facts and other such trivial nonsense…

Obama "Justice" Department Ok's Voter Intimidation

As long as you are criminally supporting Obama, its all good:

Career lawyers overruled on voting case

Black Panthers had wielded weapons, blocked polls

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident – which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube – had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as “the most blatant form of voter intimidation” that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.

One thing to keep in mind, as things go where they’ll go, is that the left does tend towards a criminal conspiracy against the United States of America. This is what Obama wants out of that fascist militia he has planned – people who can go around intimidating people, keeping them quiet and making sure that only the “right” votes get cast. Be wary, and be ready to defend your liberty.