Rebuffs for conservative attacks on Sotomayor: Liberal Talking Points for the day

If you're so inclined as to come to the defense of the "most conservative Supreme Court pick Obama could have made", HuffPo blogger-reporter Jason Linkins reviews how (arch-conservative) Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has argued that "courts make law" (as conservatives are accusing Sotomayor of saying as a reference to "activist judging") and empathy and the racial background/history/experiences of a candidate were brought to bear in the nominations of Alito and Clarence Thomas:

This all comes courtesy of HuffPost reader Doug Schafer, who is of the opinion that journalists ought to avail themselves of this citation from Scalia whenever the "judges don't make law" canard arises. I agree!

Additionally, Sotomayor's critics are up in arms over the fact that she has admitted that her ethnic background has an affect on her decision making process. Who does she think she is? Well, as it turns out, she probably thinks she's being very similar to Justice Sam Alito:

ALITO: Senator, I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point. ... And that's why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position. [...]

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.

[WATCH.]

And, in a related way, the criticism over "empathy" fits the same "this-was-once-deemed-okay" mold. My experience teaches me that only robots lack empathy, and that most people value it. Yet, ever since President Barack Obama cited it as a focus of his, in his search for a replacement for Justice David Souter, the whole notion of "empathy" has been treated as an alien thing that threatens the sanctity of court decisions.

That's weird! In July of 1991, "empathy" was one of the major selling points presented at the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas...

And speaking of Supreme Court Joke Justice Joke Clarence Thomas, HuffPo's Trey Ellis writes:

When a middling black student from Holy Cross goes on to Yale Law School, graduates in the middle of his class and is rated by the American Bar Association between "qualified" and "not qualified," the right festoons him with laurels. Clarence Thomas, you see, reaffirmed the comforting notions many in the right have about the supremacy of white maleness. George the First nominated him clearly because any black jurist would do and there he stands today, a reassuring beacon of black inferiority.

(I'm not saying that the first George Bush wouldn't have picked a more qualified black arch conservative if there had been one laying around. In matters of race the first George Bush wasn't such a bad egg.)

Nevertheless, for the far right his nomination was a wet dream and the humiliating effect on competent black folks is the same.

Sotomayor's been dealing with this crap for years. The LA Times reports today that in law school she sued a white-shoe Washington law firm for the exact same kind of white-male- supremacist attitudes the right is regurgitating her way right now...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Hypocrisy's ok when I do it.

Blood From a Stone: The Compassion of a Conservative Heart

Read this Slate column by Doug Kendall and Dahlia Lithwick, discussing how the Republican outcry over the "empathy" Obama wants his Supreme Court Nominee to have is kind of fake, full of stickum, considering the way they too (not unfairly, if for underhanded purposes from a liberal perspective) play up empathy for those they consider to be "model plaintiffs" for Supreme Court cases they care about (i.e. "white 'victims' of affirmative action").

So despite this clever snippet from an earlier Slate article by Lithwick

And in a delicious Freudian slip, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama snorted: "I don't know what empathy means." You don't say.

apparently, they (conservatives) do. They just don't empathize with our Obama's desire for empathy because the empathy may not go the way they want it to. (And they'd likely be right, of course, in that an Obama nominee's sympathies wouldn't necessarily be with "victims" of affirmative action or those who want to keep handguns at home. Of course, you never know.)

Hypocrisy: It's ok when I do it.

Also, the Idiot's Guide to Idiotic Tax Protesters

Sometimes J-Fav economic Bob Reich (a Clinton-era economic official who often says sensible things but seems to have -- essentially admitted in his own book -- lacked the courage to vigorously oppose idiocy and greed while he's within the political system rather than just a commentator) writes "A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and Right-Wingers On Tax Day" over at his TPM Blog. The thing is really damned good, so here's a large non-consecutive sample to whet your appetite:

1. "Americans pay too much in taxes." Wrong: The United States has the lowest taxes of all developed nations.

2. "The rich pay too much! The top ten percent of income earners pay over 72 percent of all income taxes!" Misleading: The main reason the rich pay such a large percent is they've become so much richer than the bottom 90 percent in recent years. If you look at what they pay as individuals -- the percent of their incomes over and above the highest rate below them -- you'll see a steady decline over the years. When Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president, the marginal rate on the highest earners was 91 percent (after deductions and tax credits, closer to 50 percent)...

...

4. "Obama is raising your taxes!" Wrong. Obama is cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, by about $400 per person a year -- not a whopping tax cut, to be sure, but not a tax increase by any stretch.
...
6. "We have a patriotic duty to stand up against Washington taxes!" Just the opposite. We have a patriotic duty to pay taxes. As multi-billionaire Warrent Buffett put it, "If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you'll find out how much this talent is going to product in the wrong kind of soil. I will be struggling thirty years later." President Teddy Roosevelt made the case in 1906 when he argued in favor of continuing the inheritance tax. "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."

Hmm... that last bit certainly doesn't sound much like certain self-proclaimed Teddy Roosevelt Republicans.

I swear... American memory has always been short (my favorite example was the Olympics some years ago in Greece, where Americans were surprised there was a not-insignificant amount of dislike for us among the Greek -- they were understandable still pissed we had supported a dictatorship in Greece in the 60s & 70s, i.e. well within living memory, which, darkly amusingly enough, we as an overall country had rather forgotten that and were perplexed by their "anti-Americanism"), but right now we're like a mad-high dude with our "linear memory" completely disrupted -- we can't even remember what happened five minutes ago, especially when that requires some level of cognitive dissonance. Cheeses cristers.

ACORN: A Good Apple

I was outraged that Obama didn't bother to defend ACORN against McCain's ridiculous charges last night.

ACORN registers people to vote; we all agree this is a good thing, right? Well, the voter fraud charges against them are largely BULLSHIT, and I'm here to tell you why.

Three articles:
Nuts About ACORN: Believing in vote fraud may be dangerous to a democracy's health.By Dahlia Lithwick

and

So where's the ACORN voter fraud? and Republican Voter Fraud Hoax by Brad Friedman (US citizen and not-voting-for-Obama-er, despite what the commenters at The Guardian UK thought. Read the endless comments for a gamut of arguments, and scary shit about the socialist revolution that Obama is self-apparently NOT leading, not to mention that most people couldn't even correctly define any of a myriad of CORRECT definitions of socialism or distinguish it meaningfully from communism... I know it's bad to say, but I once again am ready to leave this shit and emigrate. Actually, for the first time -- last two elections I felt it was my duty to stay, but fuck that, I need a change of arguments at least, even if there's stupidity and disagreement everywhere. I need NEW political viewpoints and arguments to feel condescending towards, no more American discoursic treadmilling for me.)

(Of course, I have no actual plans to leave. But dammit, I'm getting too old for this shit. =)

ACORN is getting slammed over ridiculous, fictional sh*t.
A) They're required by law to turn in all filled out registration forms, EVEN IF THEY ALREADY KNOW THEY'RE FRAUDULENT. Would you rather ACORN itself decide which registration cards are good and which aren't?
B) They VOLUNTARILY report irregularities; one police raid of their offices was to seize files THEY'D ALREADY REPORTED AS QUESTIONABLE, without being asked. In fact, most cases "against" ACORN have been on people they themselves have turned in.
C) They register MILLIONS of VALID voters each year; the fraudulent cases represent less than 0.5%.
D) No one has EVER successfully linked voter REGISTRATION fraud, and actual VOTER FRAUD -- because all voters have to show up with an ID. Consequently, ACORN has never been connected to VOTER FRAUD.
E) They do NOT pay by the registration card; they pay BY THE HOUR.
F) They register ANYONE who they encounter on their drives; Dem or Rep. They focus on urban, poor, and minority populations. The majority of urban, poor, and minority populations are DEMOCRATS. Maintaining that ACORN is biased because they population it services is primarily Democratic is like claiming that the Detroit DMV is racist against whites because most of the people it serves are black.

Things that make me go "Ummm..."

Fantastically interesting article in the NYT about the apparent lack of conservative plays/playwrights. I haven't the time or energy to fully explore the topic here, but some quick takes:

a) The article bugs me for some reason... I think because it takes for granted that the highest standard for something is whether or not it's present; that is, it's easy to argue all/many/most plays are left-leaning. What's harder is to ascertain the reason and the content -- are they liberal because they celebrate multiculturalism? Mock convention? Are flamingly gay? What? Should plays that are on the bleeding edge of avante garde or transparent political leanings be placed in anything like the same genre as big Broadway hits that, like Hollywood, treasure profitability and production values over content? (Not that good content doesn't happen, it's just secondary to profit.) The author doesn't begin to engage these ideas until the second page, and then the article ends. I guess I feel like the argument is pointless in the abstract, without analyzing what specific themes are absent, within AND without a liberal "canon," rather than the simple binary she sets up.

b) There's the occasionally repeated point that arts tend to draw in people with radical ideas and/or marginalized agenda; would it be fair to say that free-marketeerism wasn't (at least until recently, and I'm not convinced even now) is not an endangered ideology? Considering the embrace of it in so many aspects of our life, do conservative ideas just not stage as well? I mean, no one makes plays about happy, untroubled people living in harmony with their neighbors for 3 acts. Why? Because conflict is the heart of a play, and theatre is a great place to be "in your face" in a way that things rooting for the status quo usually aren't. There are "in your face" conservative novels, but don't they tend to be ideologically shocking more than stage-shocking? What is the conservative stage equivalent of the first gay kiss, the first interracial kiss; the conservative stage equivalent of brilliant strung-out prophets and flamboyant, flashy colors and dancing and scantily clad ladies and gents? Is conservatism, which at its heart tends to be backward-looking (i.e. we would be better served by going back to "values of old", from the Bible to Patriotism to freer markets), just hard to portray?

c) In relation to b), I've often asserted that the reason, for example, that there are also fewer conservative running comic strips, a conservative "Doonesbury" or "Boondocks" for example (yes, fine, I see you Mallard Fillmore, but you're still not funny or very popular) is because irony doesn't play as big a part in conservative thought. Hypocrisy has to be accepted in more cases. (Sure, this is "skewed liberal," I'm sure conservatives, in fact I know conservatives charge liberals with hypocrisy, but it just seems less, I dunno, authentic to me. What's a situation with more inherent conflict making for ironic humor/hypocrisy: revering the founding fathers and strictly honoring their positive accomplishments, or questioning their authenticity and own moral consistency, from slave-holding to elitism? Is it just easier to go to the well repeatedly to find new inconsistencies and questions than it is to continuously make interesting reverent works? Has 1776 already plumbed most of the play-worthy reverence?) Ultimately, it just seems to me to be more of a conservative trait to believe some ideas aren't to be questioned, there's an avoidance of conflict, whereas within liberalism, despite caricatures, not everyone feels the same about feminism, affirmative action, war, abortion, what not? Can you make a conservative play that questions adherence to core conservative ideas? Or does it become liberal then? Does a play questioning liberal ideals become conservative, or does it tend to stay within a broad liberal orthodoxy, making it still liberal?

d) Last point: it also funnily strikes me as vaguely, you guessed it, ironic when these arguments about diversity of viewpoints are made about academia or theatre. It is *not* that diversity of viewpoints isn't a good thing, but rather that it's a supposedly liberal, relativistic argument (actually a corruption of post-modernism in my opinion) that all ideas are equally worthy. Conservative arguments about being in academia, for example, presuppose conservative viewpoints are just as valid as liberal ones and should be included. And hey, I'm not saying that they're NOT just as valid, but rather that the conservative argument that they must be included just to include them, and that it's actually discrimination that keeps them from their proper share of positions, is strictly speaking an affirmative action, relatistic argument. That is, "we aren't succeeding at X because of discrimination, and therefore structures must be changed, people must be included, and the way things are done must change to address this." They contend that the best people aren't being chosen but rather that selection is biased, but the empirical evidence I've seen is sparse and equivocal, it seems to me. And in any case, you don't see many arguments (at least I don't) with specifics, that is, THIS person, THIS idea is clearly qualified, and isn't accepted for the following reasons, but rather, THIS person, THIS group of people aren't represented, and therefore are discriminated against, QED. The quality of their work and the possibility that their points of view don't stand up academically is rarely broached -- again, I'm not saying the answer is already known, but rather that by failing to pose these questions, in theatre or academics, conservatives are asking for mushy multi-culti relativism that they supposedly oppose: include me in your "marketplace" of ideas because everyone deserves to be there. In the end, apparently, we need marketplace adjustment in academics and theatre because, apparently, the market is supplying a suboptimal amount of conservatism.

I'm just saying, it's a funny idea.

-J

PS Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention: is it possible that there's so much celebration of conservatism in other venues, that those who espouse it don't need to go the relatively difficult route of a playwright? Just saying.

Hah! For all my Melittologists, what what! Plus: Apis Samanthas

Hat tip to Daktari:

Bee Dance.

(Though should really all be chicks. Chick bees, that is. You know what I mean.)

And speaking of Anthophila, our favorite Apis via Feministing, Samantha Bee on... um... decisions... um... what was it? Alternatives?... for Bristol... at the RNC...

Sarah Palin just made me barf. Plus: French ticklers!

She was fine and unoffensive -- in the sort of literal way of being bland and predictable in her attacks and jokes -- until she belittled community organizing as compared to being Mayor (of a town of "less than 7,000" no less), saying that in small towns they're not exactly sure what community organizers do (I think) and definitely saying that being Mayor involved real responsibilities, unlike community organizing. (??)

WTF? When was being a community organizer a crazy socialist idea? Isn't the Republican ideal a "welfare" system based entirely on the goodwill (or lack thereof) of your neighbors to get together and build the less fortunate a house? I mean, that's what they SAY, that communities should take care of such affairs, not the state, but apparently DOING it is just SILLY. It's one of those things you just say and don't mean, like "I'll call you back," or "I'll get lavish federal funding to help you out here by building a very expensive bridge to an airport on a road that doesn't exist yet."

Oh, wait:

One year later, Ketchikan's Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin's decision to pull the plug... Palin's 2007 press release announcing her change of course came just a month after McCain himself slammed the Ketchikan bridge for taking money that could have been used to shore up dangerous bridges like one that collapsed in Minnesota... Mayor Weinstein said many residents remain irked by Palin's failure to come to Ketchikan since that time to defend her decision -- despite promises that she would.

And this is the same woman who just criticized Barack Obama for saying one thing to small town Americans and then doing another.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Republicans aren't just not bothered by hypocrisy. They pull hypocrisy on like a French Tickler and go at Truth from behind while sticking a finger in her ass. (Don't ask how long it took me to come up with that. But I think it was worth it.)

The VP to Nowhere

Wow... So, there's a cornucopia of news and items to talk about, but so little time... But this just had to be linked to.

I was watching CNN last night (a truly rare occasion), and on Larry King Live, there was James Carville, DNC strategist and the voice of Foghorn Leghorn*, and some Congressional Republican woman with a face so immobile she made Nancy Pelosi's look life-like, debating about Sarah Palin, McCain's VP pick.

Carville kept pointing out that Palin was neither experienced nor qualified to be a VP, having only been governor of Alaska for less than 2 years, and having been mayor of a town of 7,000 people. (Someone had given him a copied or faxed picture of the town hall of Wasilla, the town, which was a modest one-floor building resembling a mini-mall outlet. Carville sputtered, at his most Foghorn-Leghornest, "It, it, uh, it, uh, it looks like a BAKE SHOP, for Pete's sake!") The Republican womanimatronic kept saying she was eminently qualified, tough, and a reformer -- one who had cut budgets and gotten rid of the outrageous Bridge-to-Nowhere, baby of Alaskan Sen. Ted "Indictment Smash!" Stevens.

Well, turns out that actually:

Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone -- because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.

Because, you see

Congress eventually removed the earmark language but the money still went to Alaska, leaving it up to the administration of then-Gov. Frank Murkowski to decide whether to go ahead with the bridges or spend the money on something else.

In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town's prosperity.

She said she could feel the town's pain at being derided as a "nowhere" by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.

[...] "I think we're going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project."

But, then

One year later, Ketchikan's Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin's decision to pull the plug... Palin's 2007 press release announcing her change of course came just a month after McCain himself slammed the Ketchikan bridge for taking money that could have been used to shore up dangerous bridges like one that collapsed in Minnesota...

Meanwhile

Mayor Weinstein said many residents remain irked by Palin's failure to come to Ketchikan since that time to defend her decision -- despite promises that she would.

So... tough... reformer... how? Er, yeah... about that...

Now, since I've made such expansive use of the article in a bit of a stretch of fair use, you really should go read the whole original Anchorage Daily News article.

In other news, Daktari asks an interesting question about my views on why a two-party system sucks and a multi-party system would be better, but I'll have to demur to answer any more than I have for today.

Michael Kinsley spits out a mouthful of SURGE!

Michael Kinsley, Slate.com's founding editor, wrote a tolerably good article in Slate on the "Surge Strategy" in Iraq, arguing that while it has reduced casualties and violence, laudable goals indeed, it hasn't achieved its own aim: to produce stability such that more troops can withdraw than were added. That is, the point of the surge wasn't to provide stability enough for 130,000 US soldiers to continue staying there indefinitely, but rather stability enough that we could start drawing down soldiers. Going back to a (safer) status quo, but not so safe or stable that we can start leaving in even token amounts, is emphatically not a success:

In fact, President Bush laid down the standard of success when he announced the surge more than a year ago: "If we increase our support at this crucial moment, and help the Iraqis break the current cycle of violence, we can hasten the day our troops begin coming home." At the time, there were about 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Bush proposed to add up to 20,000 more troops... the surge was generally described as lasting six to eight months.

By last summer, the surge had actually added closer to 30,000 troops, making the total American troop count about 160,000. Today, there are still more than 150,000 American troops in Iraq. The official plan has been to get that number back down to 130,000 by July and then to keep going so that there would be about 100,000 American troops in Iraq by the time Bush leaves office. Lately, though, Gen. Petraeus has come up with another zenlike idea: He calls it a "pause." And the administration has signed on, meaning that the total number of American troops in Iraq will remain at 130,000 for an undetermined period.

So, the best that we can hope for, in terms of American troops risking their lives in Iraq, is that there will be just as many next July—and probably next January, when time runs out—as there were a year ago. The surge will have surged in and surged out, leaving us back where we started. Maybe the situation in Baghdad, or the whole country, will have improved. But apparently it won't have improved enough to risk an actual reduction in the American troop commitment.

Kinsley is making a basic point that (a weirdo-world morally consistent) President Bush would be on board with: we can't judge U.S. military "progress" in Iraq using the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Revisiting John McCain's Journey Up His Own Ass (and other bits and bobs)

Wow. It is, of course, old news that presidential "hopeful" John McCain is probably drawing more on hopefulness than realistic chances to win, and old news that he has must needed to suck up to conservative Republicans rather than his erstwhile large moderate base in 2000, but I hadn't really put it together as succinctly as this (via Slate's Today's Papers from a story in the WaPo): "Ron Kaufman, a former aide to Bush's father, gives us the best take on McCain's alternating praise and criticism of Bush. He bluntly states, 'It's ironic that McCain spent eight years sucking up to the White House, and now it's a negative.'"

Daaaaaaaamn.

He's right, though. I was one of those taken in by McCain's seeming moderatism and "Straight Talk" in 2000, going as far as thinking of voting for him then (had he won the nomination) and after 2000 settling on him as someone who, at least, I could tolerate as an honorable-ish politician, someone with whom you could disagree on priniciple but respect that he had conviction of his beliefs.

HA. How naïve, hoh boy. It's interesting to see, however, how much his extreme ass-kissing and sticking his head so far up his own ass he somehow ended up inside Bush's has backfired. I now think McCain was never that great shakes -- I mean, if he can't even keep up his "Man of Principle" Act throughout an unpopular war and unpopular president and falls on his sword to get a chance at the gold ring again before it's even in sight, well, how much principle would he keep to as an actual president? People aren't known for their bold, radical moves of principle after they enter a presidency (though one could argue Bush did do the bait-and-switch of moderatism and ended up making bold, radical moves of principle, at least as far as principles that apply in his own dreamworld. But I'm not sure bold and radical in this case don't stem from being a dipshit as much as "principle". And I suppose you could call it "principles" to follow your beliefs no matter what they lead to and who they kill, but that's not any kind of good principles people are usually referring to.)

All that puckering up to Bush, and it turns out that an ass is just an ass. Oh, sweet schadenfreude.

I have long been skeptical of McCain -- after all, he was not only a long-time politician, he was a Republican. He talked good on Global Warming, for example, but I read numerous articles laying out how he didn't spend his considerable political capital (now somewhat diminished) to actually get substantive bills through. He did go to the mat on campaign finance, which, most agree, hasn't really worked. (I still don't understand the intricacies of how and why it does and doesn't work, but at least he was working in an area I cared about.) Of course, when he REALLY went to the mat, all the way, offering his hindquarters up like an animal in heat, was for Bush after he lost the nomination in 2000 (in part due to dirty tricks, duly recorded and verified, such as Bush supporters spreading rumors of McCain's "illegitimate black child," presumably based on the RealFact that McCain has an adoptive Bangladeshi daughter. He says he's "very good, friendly relationship" with Bush in a 2004 interview on Democracy Now!. He has since, in order to try and win the Republican nomination, backstepped on his criticism of Bob "No interracial dating" Jones University and has spoken at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

That, of course, in addition to merrily speaking up for Bush in his 2004 speech.

Of course, I seriously questioned what world McCain was living in anyway when, on (I think) NewsHour with Jim Lehrer years ago, he said something to the effect that he didn't believe any of his colleagues in Congress were corrupt, or took bribes. This could be dismissed as normal politicking, but he repeatedly stuck up for it under questioning, saying that there had been occurences of bribery and corruption in the past, but he seriously didn't believe any of his colleagues were subject to such things. Considering that this was still in his supposed "straight talk" days, and that Tom Delay was still in Congress, then, frankly, give me a fucking break. I don't cotton to lies that insult my intelligence; I feel if you're going to lie, at least make it entertaining (or give it the sarcastic bite McCain sometimes used on The Daily Show to give a wink to his necessary kowtowing and politicking).

In utterly other news, MarketPlace on NPR just had a story about local currencies popping up in Europe alongside the Euro. Such currencies, like the "berliner", are apparently not even meant to supplant the Euro or simply represent exercises in Nationalism, but rather to emphasize a local resistance to globalization and embrace of local variety, and to encourage patronage of local businesses. Hear hear, what a good idea! This is an idea worth revisiting in the future. In the meantime, a relevant quote from one of the founders of modern economics, John Maynard Keynes (and apparently originator of the phrase "In the long run, we are all dead"):

"Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel -- these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let good be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national."

This, of course, is dismissed by people who are otherwise pro-Globalization Keynesians as him being creaky and soft-headed in a moment of weakness, but there you go.