Sotomayor Nomination

The three most interesting things surrounding the Sotomayor nomination:

1. The irrational fear white people have that minorities are out to get them. White men seem to carry this fear the furthest, which I suppose makes sense since as a group they have the most to lose. Whatever -- I find the egomaniacal paranoia quite disturbing. Is it such a crazy thing to want a SCOTUS that even remotely reflects the population of the country it serves? I've always found it odd that women make up more than 50% of the population yet we can only find one qualified woman (and briefly, two) to serve on the court? Perspective matters... and anyone who suggests that those seven white men aren't bringing perspective to the bench with them are liars.

By the way, are we really supposed to feel sorry for the seven white male justices because their numbers have dwindled from nine? Awww... poor fellas!


ACORN ACORN ACORN ACORN (Boo!)

2. The grotesque (and grotesquely transparent) attack on Sotomayor's "intelligence" and "temperament". I guess we're all supposed to find that more acceptable than coming right out and calling her a dumb bitch. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and went to law school at Yale, where she edited the Yale Law Journal. She was an assistant DA, was in private practice, and was nominated to the US District Court by Bush the Senior. Yeah, I mean c'mon... what a moron!

It's always been the case in this country that those who rest on their legacy lifestyles insist on a meritocracy for everyone else. In Sotomayor we have an indisputably meritocritous ascent and yet these same folks can't help themselves from trying to diminish her. Curious, no?

3. The sudden conversion of pundits / talking heads from laymen to legal experts. Suddenly Rush Limboob, Pat Buchanan, and everyone on Fox News are citing Sotomayor's reversal record like they know what it means. They don't. It's sad. Sometimes it's just better to STFU.

What A Coincidence!

This is timely... and convenient for the Cheney administration:

British journalist and historian Andy Worthington, an expert and author on Guantanamo, reports that the man who had supplied a key false tie between Iraq and al-Qaeda --- after being tortured in Egypt, where he had been rendered by the U.S. --- has died in a Libyan prison. "Dead of suicide in his cell," according to a Libyan newspaper.

Deep Thoughts

Conventional Republican Wisdom: In an election with the highest percentage of voter turnout since 1968, previously red states and independent voters went for Obama because McCain/Palin wasn't conservative enough.

Running To The Right

I am still amused to see the Republicans on my teevee lamenting their loss of power and conspiring on how to win it back. Having witnessed the same with the Democrats previously (and really, isn't history full of political come back stories?), I can only offer the following:

• America is not a "center right" country -- that statement is, and always has been, as convenient for Republicans as it is off-the-mark. In today's polling, America is actually looking like center left. By assuming Americans are naturally on their side, Republicans will continue to commit the sin of overreach.
  

• Americans are reactive and America is self-correcting. It's the giant swinging pendulum theory at work. It's a good thing for our political system... a healthy thing. If the Republicans are now out of power, it's because they went too far to the right.
  

• Americans are tired of operating out of a place of fear. It's not our style... the American spirit has always been a mix of visionary optimism and heads-down determination. Neocon Republicanism (Cheney-style) had its moment in the sun after 9/11 but that moment was an anomaly and an aberration. America is not immune to such moments... we interred Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, for example, but it never takes long for us to come to our senses. See self-correcting, above.

• Here's the most important point: As long as Republicans try to force-feed social conservatism to the entire country, they will continue to lose. The convenient but unnatural coupling of social conservatism with fiscal conservatism is simply a losing long term strategy, and the far right's insistence on driving socially liberal conservatives out of the party all but guarantees a long and industrious Democratic rule. Dems learned this lesson well, which is why they have a big coalition of blue dog Dems now driving the lefties crazy. But it's a healthy mix and the resulting debate is healthy for the party and for the country, in general. I likes it.

If the Republicans think the way to win is by moving even further to the right, God bless 'em. A long and industrious Democratic rule doesn't bother me in the slightest. But if they figure out that maybe christianist social cons are best left to the southeast districts and that the GOP can tolerate a few paleocons in the northeast and west, the road to recovery might become a little shorter.

In Which I Am Annoyed To All Hell

Things that annoy me today:

• This article in Politico -- "Dems Struggle with Gitmo Politics" -- seems to have Republicans pressing Democrats on the issue like it's a winning strategy in Gotcha! politics. I guess we're supposed to forget that this is yet another mess made by Bush Co. which the Dems must now clean up and for which there are now, regrettably, no good options left. Bush made Gitmo a symbolic pothole in America's moral high road and fucked around with the detainees until they were untriable in any court of law. So now Republicans want to point and laugh as Democrats try to figure out what to do with this fubar'd situation? Unreal.

• I remember when The Republicans of Olde thought individual rights were important. Now they're only important when they don't clash with the goals of the christianists. In case folks haven't noticed, the christianists (aka "social conservatives") seem to have an unending obsession with policies they think are best for the cultural collective and have very little regard for the rights of any one person. Opposition to R v W, women's rights, civil rights, gay marriage, etc, have all been argued on the basis of their threat to society at large. And now with the pending David Souter retirement I am forced to listen non-stop to tv pundits reporting that conservatives were "duped" into appointing a liberal. Color me annoyed. Doesn't it seem like Souter's focus on the rights of the individual might be considered more conservative than the conservatives obsession with preserving their ideal cultural collective?

• People who don't support a level playing field. John Cole's post titled "Moral Hazard is for the Little People" says it all. And Dick Durbin is spot on:

Durbin said on the Senate floor that in negotiations, the banking industry argued that restructuring primary home loans—secondary home loans and luxury loans for items like yachts can already be restructured by a bankruptcy judge—would create a moral hazard in this country.

“Senator, you don’t understand the moral hazard here,” Durbin paraphrased the banking argument. “People have to be held responsible for their wrongdoing. If you make a mistake, darn it, you’ve got to pay the price. that’s what America is all about.”

“Really, Mr. Banker on wall street? that’s what America is all about?” he railed.

“What price did wall street pay for their miserable decisions, creating rotten portfolios, destroying the credit of America and its businesses?” Durbin said of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout Congress passed, and Durbin supported in the waning days of the Bush administration. “Oh, (the bankers) paid a pretty heavy price. Hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers’ money sent to them to bail them out and put them back in business, even to fund executive bonuses for those guilty of mismanagement. Moral hazard, huh? How can they argue that with a straight face? They do.”