Zee Links and Minifeatures: June 2009 Archives


Sorry, I've been really busy but I have to at least link the carnival for the week!

Carnival of Personal Finance


Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

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Baseless Bias and the New Second Sex

The unfortunate news is that this temperate, well-reasoned, and objective new NAS study has come after the Shalala/Bias and Barriers report has already accomplished its purpose. Many members of Congress from both parties (especially Republican Congressman Vernon Ehlers and Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Barbara Boxer) were electrified by the Bias and Barriers report--as well as by the volumes of highly tendentious advocacy research that preceded it (see my "Why Can't A Woman Be More Like a Man?"). Congress has already authorized NSF to spend millions of dollars on anti-bias programs, and instructed federal agencies such as NASA and the Department of Education to begin stringent Title IX gender equity reviews of science programs in the nation's universities. These expensive and aggressive policies and programs were put in place without any genuine evidence that sexist bias against women in academic science is actually a problem.

Powerful interest group twists reality to benefit its own agenda. It doesn't just happen with one side of the political spectrum.

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1984: Sixty years later

Yet "1984" does have lessons beyond the totalitarian experience. Take the book's definition of "doublethink," the ideal mental state of the citizen of Orwell's dystopia: it is "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them," the ability "to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies."

It is not just governments - democratic or not - that engage in a less extreme version of such mental gymnastics. It's activists of all stripes; talk show hosts and pundits across the political spectrum; and, finally, ordinary people. The same is true of "newspeak," terminology invented to shade the real meaning of certain beliefs or acts and make them more appealing. (Even such popular terms as "pro-choice" for "pro-abortion rights" and "pro-life" for "anti-abortion" have overtones of newspeak.)

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Sheila Bair is On Your Side

The most glaring example of this conflict has been the battle over the management of Citigroup, the "too big to fail" banking conglomerate that became the largest in the world thanks to changes in the law advocated by Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Rubin then left the government to become chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup, a post he occupied as it made risky bets on derivatives and incurred record losses. Citigroup was saved from oblivion by a plan engineered by Geithner, whom Rubin had successfully pushed for the top job at the New York Fed.

That plan, endorsed by the Bush administration, left the US government pumping $50 billion into Citigroup and guaranteeing an additional $300 billion of its "toxic" holdings. In return, we taxpayers were to receive preferred stock with the promise of significant interest payments, but now the terms have been changed. Thanks to Geithner's intervention, Citigroup will be allowed to convert half of the government's preferred stock into almost worthless common stock.

Enter Bair, who has been insisting, over Geithner's objection, that major changes occur in the leadership of Citigroup to give the taxpayers a better chance to get some of that money back. She has an obligation to make that demand because the FDIC is a part guarantor not only of Citigroup banking deposits but also of the $300 billion toxic assets package.

Read the whole thing.

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Did David Letterman get a free pass?

Examine the symptoms of this infection, beginning with David Letterman's comments (widely noted but insufficiently analyzed) about Sarah Palin "buying makeup at Bloomingdale's to update her slutty flight attendant look," as well as his joke about Palin's teenage daughter: "Sarah Palin went to a Yankees Game yesterday ... during the seventh inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez." (Letterman insists he was talking about her 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, who actually had been, well, knocked up, not her 14-year-old, Willow, the daughter who attended the game.)

According to the feminists, it's okay because Sarah Palin is One of Those Horrible Republicans. Worse, she's likely to be elected president in 4 to 8 years if they don't get busy destroying her now. It won't work, by the way. They gave Ronald Reagan exactly the same treatment from the time he started running for President, and possibly before (I was too young to remember his campaigns for California Governor).

Hope the feminists enjoy the plantation the Democrats are keeping them down on. Of course, one of these days they'll figure it out.

Imagine if, say, Michelle Obama, or Rachel Maddow, or Nancy Pelosi became the target of similar invective. The outcry from the left would be deafening. Shouldn't liberals exhibit the same sort of decorous treatment we demand for ourselves? Sexist comments like Letterman's and Cimbalo's also evoke a troublingly insular, clubhouse atmosphere in lieu of an inclusive political party. What's more, the gender-based stereotypes they conjure are as stale and ignorant as any voiced by the old Neanderthal right: Pretty women are de facto stupid, sexually promiscuous and low-class. Indeed, it's the latter slight that has been least remarked upon and is, perhaps, the most disturbing. "Slutty flight attendant" is not just a sexual put-down; it's a socioeconomic one.

And a clear double standard. If Rush Limbaugh (to name an equivalent figure on the right) had said anything remotely like that about a woman on the Democratic side of the aisle, the demands for his career scalp would be immediate and deafening. Don Imus, a Democrat but less consistently left wing than others lost his job over much less.


Victor Davis Hanson: David Letterman, Rev. Wright, and Thoughts on a Creepy Culture

The metrosexual, hip David Letterman offered an apology I think that essentially was something along the following lines. Here's my paraphrase: 'Sorry, I confused the 14-year-old Willow Palin with the 18-year-old Bristol Palin, so I was wrong for suggesting the younger Palin girl would be "knocked up" during a baseball game by Alex Rodriguez, or draw in Eliot Spitzer for sex, when I really meant that Bristol certainly would." (Note the silence about calling Governor Palin "slutty" looking. So if some right-wing nut says that Michelle Obama is "slutty" looking, are we to expect no consequences?)

No, Mr. Letterman would never joke about a 14 year old girl being (at least statutorially) raped by an athlete in his thirties. But it's okay to joke about an 18 year old? I think Mr. Letterman sabotaged his own claim.

What it is about Sarah Palin that drives the Left insane? Her charisma? Her authentic blue-collar roots? The accent? Todd? The pregnancies? The ability to galvanize crowds. Joe Biden tried to fake his working class origins, but Palin seems to live, not romanticize, the life of the middle strata, so would not the Left appreciate someone from the non-elite?

I suggest two reasons for the fury of the aristocratic Left. One was Palin's stance on abortion. In the elite feminist mind, the perfect storm would be for a 40ish career woman, on the upswing of her cursus honorum, getting pregnant and, then, heaven forbid, delivering the child with full fore-knowledge of chromosomal abnormality. Or having her 17-year old come to full term with a child, unmarried, and without money?

All types of diversity are welcome on the left. Except of course, for ideological diversity, the most important one. Indeed, I could argue it's the only important one, and I will if you really need me to.

The Democratic press and media, who wanted Obama to win, painted Palin as a right wing reactionary promoting abstinence only sex education. But that doesn't make it true

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Left Cries 'Racist' in Crowded Country

While Mr. von Brunn is currently being made out to be the poster child of the Republican Party, even a cursory look at his professed views shows he is the avowed enemy of the GOP in its current incarnation. Among many others, Mr. von Brunn hates Rupert Murdoch, Fox News (that means you, too, Shep!), George W. Bush and John McCain. And according to the FBI, Mr. von Brunn even had in his vehicle the address of the Weekly Standard, home base of the dreaded "neo-cons."

Seems Mr. von Brunn wasn't a big fan of the Iraq War and also believed that 9/11 was an "inside job." Given this political sketch, Mr. von Brunn would feel at home at Camp Casey, Cindy Sheehan's antiwar outpost in Crawford, Texas, and at the Daily Kos convention, rather than partaking in a National Review cruise with pro-Israeli war hawks Mark Steyn and Victor Davis Hanson.

It's not Charles Lindbergh's Republican Party any more. And it hasn't been for more than a half-century. But don't tell that to the facile minds at the DHS and CNN.

The inconvenient truth is that David Duke and James von Brunn currently share more in common with Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington than with Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer. But the right wouldn't be so crass or foolish to try to blame the political left for the existence of - or motivation behind - haters like Mr. von Brunn.

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Many instances of Obama being Inept at History

Actually, inept is charitable, in that it assumes he did not deliberately distort the record.

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The curious firing of Gerald Walpin gets ... curiouser

Senator Charles Grassley has demanded records from the Obama administration over the dismissal of the Inspector General for Americorps and raises the possibility that Barack Obama broke a law he co-sponsored in the Senate that protects the independence of the IGs. The firing comes as the Obama administration cut a sweetheart deal with a major Obama backer that allows him to receive federal funding as mayor of Sacramento, and fails to repay taxpayers for the money Kevin Johnson admittedly took illegally:

This is real, and an actual violation of the law, as opposed to all of the manufactured claims that Bush did this or that. Where are the calls to impeach Obama?

Via Instapundit: Gerald Walpin speaks: The inside story of the AmeriCorps firing

"Culture of Corruption" anyone?

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Video: Five reasons why Class-warfare economics won't work

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UPDATE: Almost forgot. I have a problem with shaving. Specifically, the fact that I have extremely tough facial whiskers, combined with facial skin that's the classic easily cut baby face. Put it all together, and not only do I hate shaving, I quite often emerge from shaving looking like I've lost a war with my razor. I've spent a lot of time and effort trying different solutions to the problem, which only got worse when my doctor put me on blood thinners after my heart attack.

So when my wife wanted me to try Mary Kay's Shaving Cream for men, I was understandably skeptical, but I understood this was Something Spouses Do For Each Other. She's certainly done equivalent things for me in the past.

I was very pleasantly shocked at how much better of a job it did. I've been using it now for almost two weeks, and the incidence of cuts is drastically reduced over the product that formerly did the best job.

So in penance for my skepticism, I'm posting this here. I highly recommend Mary Kay's Shaving Cream. I'm going to keep using it.

Disclosure for the clue challenged: Yes, my wife makes money every time she sells a can of this stuff. But she still did a good thing by making me try this. And she's the World's Only Perfect Woman too. I'll even send you the link to her Mary Kay website if you ask, but this stuff is available from every Mary Kay person.


I have just about had it with Cox Cable. I pay them close to $2000 per year for internet, phone and basic cable TV. For the last three months, I've been having connectivity issues. For no apparent reason, at random times I suddenly have trouble reaching the internet. I have replaced literally everything from the wall out except the computer itself - and that works fine according to my repair shop. At Cox's request to deal with this problem, I have first replaced, then removed the router altogether. I replaced the cable splitter. They finally sent a technician out - who was there for a whole thirty seconds - just long enough to tell me to replace a modem that was completely functional, if older. So I replaced the cable modem, despite the fact that repair shop (which could have sold me a new one had they told me it was bad) had told me the modem was fine. So I replaced the modem anyway, which gave me a whole two days grace before I woke up this morning with connectivity so limited that 2400 baud dial up would be better. Spent a half hour on the phone trying again to fix the problem, with no help. Cox apparently wants to blame everything except their service. Well now I have replaced literally everything, and according to them, I'm still getting 30-50% packet loss. Completely unacceptable.

I have tried to remain silent about the reasons for my somewhat limited online presence of late, but this is just beyond human endurance. I used to be one of their biggest boosters, and sent them a significant number of clients. I take it all back. I'm considering going over to AT&T for internet and phone, and if my wife absolutely has to have cable, getting a dish.

It's 11:00. I should have been looking at properties two hours ago. So what I have to do is use the library's wireless internet, and hope that my portable printer is quiet enough that nobody objects (it is pretty darned quiet - the only noise I hear is the paper feed). But it's still a bloody pain, and ten times more expensive that the laser printer I have sitting useless on my desk. Not to mention way slower than what I'm paying for - and not getting - from Cox Cable.

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Correcting the record on the Chrysler and GM loans

1. The Obama team declined to respond to the Bush team's offer to work together to create a joint process that would have resulted in a resolution by March 1st or April 1st, rather than by June 1st for Chrysler and maybe September 1st for GM.

2. We then worked with the Democratic majority to enact legislation that would have limited funds to be available only to firms that would become viable.

3. After Congress left town for the holidays without having addressed the issue, President Bush was faced with a choice between providing loans and allowing these firms to liquidate in early January, which would have further exacerbated the economic situation for the incoming President. President Bush chose to provide the loans.

4. We provided GM and Chrysler with sufficient funds to get to March 31st, not January 20th, and in those loans we gave the incoming Administration the ability to extend them for 30 more days.

5. The loans were conditioned on restructuring to become viable, with a precise definition of viability, specific restructuring goals, and quantitative targets.

6. The Obama Administration followed the restructuring process laid out in the Bush-era loans. They are now measuring that deal against the targets established in the Bush-era loans. The only changes the Obama team made were that they extended GM for 60 days rather than 30, and the Obama Administration directly inserted themselves into the negotiations as the pre-packager.

HT: Megan McArdle

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Victor Davis Hanson (himself an academic) contrasts what academia teaches with the real world:

Here was his final compliment, one that apparently connected my once elite disdain for his grubby world of the muscular classes with my inevitable failure and bankruptcy to come. It went something like this, though after three decades I have forgotten his exact phraseology: "Victor, I used to drive by your grandfather's house, and see you up there on the scaffold, scraping off the old paint. I'd say to my friends -- look at that young fool, he's painting my house. You see, I knew you'd go broke, and I'd buy your place. Always wanted it, and knew you were getting it ready for me. Why not let you finish before I took it?" (I didn't tell him, that in fact he used to say that not just to friends, but to me as I was chipping away.)

Read the whole thing. I suspect most of the people who need to won't, because it calls into question a key assumption of theirs about the world. The rest of you already know the point, but are likely to enjoy Mr. Hanson's means of illustrating it anyway.

On the same tack: The Dowd Conundrum

also: It's all so obvious (except to Obama)

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economic reporting: then and now

AP kinda sorta admits: The stimulus isn't working

Maybe the reporters ought to throw away their pom-poms and do their jobs before any hope of regaining credibility is lost.

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Arizona Judge Throws Out Political Arrest Based on Photo Ticket

Arrowhead Justice Court Judge John C. Keegan last week dismissed the photo radar-based reckless driving charges filed against the Executive Director of the Arizona Republican Party. On May 6, officers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety (DPS), which is headed by Democrat Roger Vanderpool, showed up at the state GOP headquarters with a speed camera ticket in hand to arrest Brett Mecum, 30

How long until they trump up charges against this judge?

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Holy Mackerel! It's Yahoo, and therefore likely impermanent but look into the eye of a tornado

What the heck - here's the embed of the video

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Gingrich: Obama has already failed

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said President Barack Obama's plan to fix the economy through stimulus spending and government intervention to boost companies like General Motors Corp. has "already failed."

Well, duh

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Obama to banks: You can repay TARP, but Treasury keeps warrants

Yes, we can trust them not to exercise the warrants, because after all, when has this administration ever used power it didn't have? Never mind the fact that it extorted concessions from Chrysler and GM bondholders in order to benefit Obama's political allies in the unions, stomping all over contract law. The White House would never in a million years use the warrants to extort concessions on business operations from the bankers ... right?


Megan McArdle is blogging up a storm with lots of really good points about abortion and the murder of George Tiller.

This debate is not going away. Those who believe abortion is murder are not going to mysteriously vanish, or stop believing thus one special day. The fact that the Supreme Court has short-circuited the political process on this makes it more problematical, not less. Just because you happen to agree with the result does not make the Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v. Wade a good thing. Indeed, those who subvert the political process to shelter Roe v Wade are making things worse - the way that gets done every time a Republican president has nominated a potential justice ever since.

The Supreme Court should not be the final word on this subject. There is nothing in the constitution about the subject of mothers killing babies. Indeed, all of the background legal tradition until the moment Roe v. Wade was handed down supported the other side. Which means we need to deal with this question the hard way - have a national argument discussion, vote and have our elected representatives vote, and come to a compromise that, if perfect for no one, has at least the virtue that everyone has had their input, their chance to convince others, their vote at appropriate spots, and therefore everybody feels they're had their due influence upon an honest political process.

I suspect that the end result would vary from state to state. That is fine and as it should be. It isn't the end of the world for fourteen year olds to need parental permission for an abortion or even for eighteen year olds to have to hop a bus to another state. And if a legal adult wants to make the decision, as a parent as well as the person carrying the child, that abortion is the best thing to do, I do not believe the state is justified in using the brute force of the law to prevent it. However, neither do I believe that the decision to abort should be easy or convenient. In fact, it should be both difficult and inconvenient so long as these obstacles do not rise to effective prohibition. Abortion is murdering babies, at least once they have passed the point of viability. Even before that point, you are killing a living thing that will be human one day if not killed. When you consider that, it's a pretty massive bad deal to put any current or future human being through with no input from them, and a certain number and height of obstacles are pretty much obligatory to balance that out. Compared to what happens to that baby, I think temporary inconvenience or embarrassment to the mother is pretty much a nonstarter as an argument. I think that abortion should remain legal with obstacles, the strength of which should increase as the pregnancy advances, but that is the result of a long drawn out careful consideration and considering both sides of the question with their advantages and drawbacks. Furthermore, my position has evolved over time, and may evolve some more in the future.

I do not find those who disagree with me to be evil, especially the ones who acknowledge the strengths of the other side's arguments as well as the weaknesses of their own; I do find those on both sides who insist it's a simple question on which no moral person could possibly disagree with them to be incredibly dishonest as well as moral monsters who should never be allowed any sort of control over another human being (or potential human being). I don't insist that the final decision mirror my own conclusions; only that the ordinary voters have a voice and that their elected representatives be forced to take a stand for what they believe is the right course. Let the elected representatives lead for once; that is the responsibility they campaigned so hard for, spent so much of their contributor's money for. Let them convince us they have the right of it - that is what we elected them for. And if some of them lose elections because their stance disagrees with the vast majority of their constituency whom they fail to convince, that is right and proper and as things should be. The Supreme Court should not be used to allow elected representatives to duck responsibility; that is not its intended function.

Nor does the action of a single lunatic, or a group of lunatics, on either side of the question alter my judgment on the base matter, which is the morality of abortion. It merely earns my contempt for their attempted distortions of the political process, taking the law into their own hands, and killing human beings. My attitude on these twits is the same whichever side of the question they are on.

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Actually, I would claim that it is not reasonable: It's Not Fair To Casually Call People Racist

Sen. Feinstein is right as far she went. She avoided one undeniable fact though. If a white male nominee had been discovered to have said something similar -- that he was better situated to judge due to his background and life experiences than a Latina woman -- he would be cashiered so fast as to induce whiplash. Those are the unwritten rules that Limbaugh and Gingrich are attempting, one suspects, to expose for their one-sidedness. Nevertheless, the instant labeling of the woman, based on one unwise remark, is hardly fair. If Democrats are learning this now, that's excellent news. One hopes they will remember this discovery when the wheel turns and a Republican nominee is before the Senate. Certainly they didn't seem to get it as recently as 2002, when President Bush nominated Judge Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The article uses Judge Pickering's media lynching as an example of Democratic tactics. Democrats have been using the racism brush to tar any Republican judicial nominee they could for at least two decades. They've been trying on the flimsiest of evidence even when it wasn't applicable, simply because they didn't want people on the bench with philosophies they didn't agree with - especially highly competent, highly articulate ones. Now we see how the Democrats react when that same exact standard is applied to one of their own nominees. Calling someone racist has developed into one of their favorite forms of blackmail, far more often than not, to the point where the accusation should no longer have power over anyone.

I think we should apply exactly the same standard to Sotomayor as was used on Pickering, Gonzales, Alito, Bork, etcetera. And then in the aftermath, before Obama tries another nomination, maybe the leading senators of both parties can come to some mutual understanding on what does and does not constitute grounds for denying a judicial nomination, an understanding that's going to outlast the current occupant of the White House. The current circus atmosphere for judicial appointments is only one undesirable consequence of using the courts as a shield so the legislature doesn't have to do its job.

(See previous entry)

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Show us the money

The government will do health care cheaper and better, the president said.

OK, show us the money.

Let our president show the American people that the federal government can save money by saving money in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

He's got Medicaid and Medicare backwards, but otherwise he's right on the money.

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The best and brightest?

Imagine you had to pick someone to shepherd a gigantic multinational corporation through a bankruptcy in order to salvage it. Would you look for someone with extensive experience in the firm's industry, or would you prefer someone with demonstrated savvy on Wall Street in turning around troubled firms? If the firm made cars, perhaps you could think of it as a choice between a Lee Iacocca or a Mitt Romney.

Or, maybe, you'd just pick someone from the mail room, as Barack Obama apparently has in the GM bankruptcy:

A 31 year old law student whose entire resume is in campaign work. Does that sound like the ideal candidate to steer GM out of bankruptcy in a healthy direction? Or does it sound more like he was picked for backing the right horse politically?

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Thomas Sowell

Looked at in the context of Judge Sotomayor's voting to dismiss the appeal of white firefighters who were denied the promotions they had earned by passing an exam, because not enough minorities passed that exam to create "diversity," her words in Berkeley seem to match her actions on the judicial bench in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals all too well.

The Supreme Court of the United States thought that case was important enough to hear it, even though the three-judge panel on which Judge Sotomayor served gave it short shrift in less than a page. Apparently the famous "empathy" that President Obama says a judge should have does not apply to white males in Judge Sotomayor's court.

Without this decision, I would be a lot more charitably inclined towards her racist remarks. People can say whatever they like. But a judge's job is to apply the law equally to everyone, and considering the way she and most of her panel tried to sweep this decision under the rug judicially is also troubling. They were acting as if they were ashamed of it, and for good reason. Suppose the firefighters in question had all been minority instead of white, and their promotions had been pulled because no whites came in the top 18. Is there any question in your mind the decision would have been different? The issue almost certainly would never have come up, as New Haven would not have failed to promote the top 18 candidates just because none of them were white.

This is one standard applying to one group, and a different, more difficult standard applying to another group because of nothing they did, but rather the way they were born. Wasn't ending that what the Civil Rights movement was all about? I seem to remember someone very revered asking the American people to judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the contents of their character.

I don't like what Ms. Sotomayor's actions say about the content of her character.

Defining oneself shouldn't define court decisions

Sotomayor's claim 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'' wasn't some blundering parenthetical reference. It was part of a full-scale repudiation of the idea that the law, or the judges who interpret it, should be color-blind. It even questions whether judicial objectivity is a desirable goal.

The more I discover about Ms. Sotomayor, the less I like the thought of someone with those views and with a history of undertaking those actions sitting upon the Supreme Court, likely for thirty years or more.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Diversity Mess

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has scolded Americans for being "cowards" and not talking more about race. Now, Holder is getting that "dialogue" with the recent controversy surrounding President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor.

Most of the furor surrounds statements on race by Sotomayor herself: "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."

Sotomayor was clear enough. In a broad discussion about sex/race discrimination cases and their history, she stated that judges' ethnicity and gender make them better or worse at what they do.

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Disgusting: Banks trying for taxpayer ok and guarantees on sub-prime loans (video)

(more video) Bush and Obama's "Help for Homeowners" plan: $500 million for precisely fifty-one loans - fifty of which are under investigation for fraud My that $500 million worked so well, the Obama administration decided to throw tens of billions at the same program!

I seem to recall predicting this mess on both occasions. All it took was elementary economics and an unwillingness to lie to myself.

(The second video also has some Timothy Geithner schadenfreude, although HVCC is primarily Andrew Cuomo's fault)

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People like this give you an understanding of how much further you can go: Oldest serving cop in US dies at age 84

The oldest active duty police officer in the United States, who battled the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy and the chaos which ravaged New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has died at the age of 84.

1 day shy of the 65th anniversary of him going ashore on D-Day at Omaha Beach. May flocks of angels guide thee to thy rest, sir.

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A more honest headline would be "Obama reassures World Tyrants They Have Nothing To Fear From US": Obama proclaims an end to Bush's regime-change doctrine

His message? America recognizes a universal yearning for the right to self-government, but regime change in democracy's name is over.

"No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other," Mr. Obama said

Democracy is not a panacea, much less the appearance or outward form of democracy. Germany in 1933 was a democracy. Many of the world's worst hellholes are democracies or republics in name, even today. North Korea, Iran, China, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela - the list goes on and on. Nor did President Bush impose democracy upon Afghanistan or Iraq - the governments there found sufficient native support to begin with. All he did was remove the tyrants who prevented democracy from having a chance, and both regimes had given us more than enough in the way of reason in terms of US interests. Also, Bush helped persuade Musharraf to leave power in Pakistan without civil war or even invasion.

But President Obama is telling those dictators that no matter what they do, the United States will do nothing to make them accountable to their people. Not necessarily that he'll directly help the regime hold the people down (although how do you think China has kept the lid on this long? Our leaders of the last fifteen to twenty years are as guilty in the repression of the Chinese people as any accomplice of a crime) but that he won't do anything active to bring them down. If I were named Kim Jong Il or Bashar Al-Assad (not to mention Khameini), I'd be feeling a lot happier right now. Especially as the Obama Administration has already shown itself very amenable to actions that indirectly help tyrants hold their people in thrall.

We can't go practicing regime change everywhere, of course. But reserving the ability to cut a particularly bad example out of the herd furnishes a marvelous incentive for these tyrants not to be that particularly bad example. Witness the behavior of of Qaddafi in Libya since the Iraqi invasion.

Of course, with Obama he's quite likely to do something else entirely than what he talks about. In this case, however, that would only exacerbate the feelings of betrayal of any Arabs who believed him today.

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Death by Deficit

Not only does continued, increased government borrowing ever more sap our economy but also, as the baby boomers retire, we will move from the recent statistic of four workers for each retiree to two workers for each retiree. That means a weaker economy, as this smaller work force will not produce enough to support all of government's costs -- even with massive and persistent tax increases. And if, as seems possible, sometime in the next decade the world resists lending our government sufficient money (because our economy will be too small to produce enough to pay the ever-growing interest on the debt), then we finally will be forced to make choices of what to buy and what to forgo

I think it's much later than Mr. Blankley evidently believes. What happens when the interest rates we need to pay to borrow start rising? The answer is that we need to borrow even more, resulting in still higher interest rates, etcetera. This is what engineers call a positive feedback effect - the more out of balance things are, the greater the forces that make it worse will get.

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I don't often agree with Bill Reilly, but he's got it right here: LEFT EXPLOITS DOC'S SLAY TO SILENCE FOES LIKE ME (sic)

But the bigger picture here is the glorification of Tiller.

The uber-liberal New York Times led the way, editorializing: "For his principled devotion to women's health and constitutionally protected rights, Dr. Tiller was the target of protests at his clinic, his house and his church."

The Times made Tiller out to be a hero. The paper's editorial never mentioned that he aborted fetuses after 21 weeks, when they could live outside the mother's womb.

The Times opinion also did not mention that Tiller became a millionaire doing this, or that only three late-term abortion clinics exist in the entire country. Nor did the editorial writer put forth that 36 states restrict late-term abortions without violating the Constitution.

As usual, The New York Times editorial page failed to tell its readers the whole story.

I also agree with "No matter what you think about abortion, it is a sad day for the country when vigilantism takes a life."

Nobody deserves to be murdered. But that doesn't make Tiller a saint. He was, in fact, apparently quite the opposite. And using his death to hijack the discussion and make it appear as if nobody opposed to abortion can have a valid point because one supporter agreed with his cause would be precisely the same logic as saying that environmentalism is evil and/or indefensible because Adolf Hitler was an environmentalist. Neither of these arguments is valid, but if one is, they both are, because they both use precisely the same argument of contagion. Identical logic cannot be valid in one case and not valid in another. Adolf Hitler was an environmentalist, but that doesn't taint environmentalism. Neither does the murder of an abortionist by an anti-abortion activist taint the cause of working against abortion.

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If Obama Had Carter's Courage

That fortitude is exactly what's missing today, as it was missing from Mr. Obama's statement on Monday, which attributed GM's failure to sins by everyone but Washington.

We're still waiting for the brave, original thinking that we were told Mr. Obama represented. Like Washington circa 1978, he has landed for once in a situation where something more than symbolism is required of him. He has finally glided into the land of the real, where the key measurable outcome is no longer whether an audience is glowing with self-approval when he leaves the room.

I'm no admirer of Mr. Carter in general, but this is one of those things he demonstrably got very right. Obama is failing a similar test badly.

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(begin sarcasm)

Boy it's a good thing we passed that "stimulus" Obama wanted

(end sarcasm)

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Reporters with pom-poms

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Banks retreating from partnership with Obama administration

Not that the banks had much choice on the TARP funds anyway, as Judicial Watch has already reported. Hank Paulson threatened them with regulatory action if the banks didn't willingly take government money and along with it further government control. However, as the Post explains, the government doesn't have the regulatory power to compel them into the public/private partnership on toxic assets (at least not directly), and therefore they have chosen not to willingly yoke themselves yet again to Treasury and the Obama administration. In fact, many of them are trying to find ways to give back the TARP funds to end the forced partnerships they already endure


Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

**********

Did Obama Target GOP Donors In Chrysler Dealer Closings?

every single dealer he checked out except one were either GOP donors or donated to Obama's rivals in the democratic primary.

and

Unreal. This is the kind of thing they do in Marxist regimes and Chicago. Could this really be happening in America?

How many laws does this violate, if true? There's a better chance of flying to the moon by flapping your arms than this kind of thing happening by chance. If verified, the statistical probability of it happening is more than enough to constitute a smoking gun worthy of impeachment and removal from office for anyone who understands mathematics.

Of course, the Democrats are a majority in both houses of Congress, so that may be an obstacle to Congressional understanding of basic mathematical fact.

Things are not looking good for the "just a coincidence" explanation

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Ralph Peters: Instant justice for terrorists

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The hidden costs of presidential empathy.

Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion--one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.

It seems that the more I learn about Ms. Sotomayon, the less I like. A direct quote: "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."

Suppose it had been Samuel Alito or John Roberts who said that, 180 degrees reversed? He would have been lucky to keep his previous position, much less be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Judge Sotomayor's Identity Problem

The essence of the rule of law is that identity doesn't matter. The law means the same thing regardless of the identity of people applying the law or subject to it. We don't have one law for Jews and another for Catholics, one for Italian-Americans and another for Hispanic-Americans. We don't need to know who the judge is to know what the law is.

Judge Sotomayor's nomination is predicated on almost exactly the opposite understanding of what law is and should be, of what matters in our judges and their

**********

The Need For Failure

First, the very notion of "too big to fail" is dangerous. It suggests that there is an insurance policy that says, no matter how risky your behavior, we will make sure you stay in business. It encourages banks to get bigger (or more interconnected), and it subsidizes risky behavior.

I have long thought that if a company is too big to fail, it needs to be broken up.

**********

Obama, Incorporated

The interlocking directorate is anathema to trustbusters and corporate watchdogs. It occurs when a board member or top executive of one company sits on the board of another company, accumulating undue power over a given industry. When it reduces competition, the arrangement is forbidden by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

If Henry De Lamar Clayton, the Alabama congressman who introduced the aforementioned act, were still with us, he'd presumably be shocked at the creation of the most far-reaching interlocking directorate in U.S. history. Obama Inc. has effectively won a seat on the board of companies at the heart of the nation's industrial production and its financial system. The robber barons of old would marvel at the tentacles of influence of Barack Obama, a CEO whose power would overawe J. P. Morgan (the famous industrialist, not the bailed-out bank)

Taking control of all the major capital corporations. Taking control of the banks. Taking direct political control of the census (putting it under White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, whose job it is to be partisan and who performs that part of it splendidly). Threatening dissenters with severe government harrassment. Spending trillions to subsidize supporters at taxpayer expense. Apparently favoring political supporters by closing auto dealerships belonging to those who supported others.

Is anyone else starting to see a pattern here? I can name some really horrible totalitarian hellholes that started their transition from democracy with less power concentrated in the strongman and cronies. Heck I've been liberally linking Armies of Liberation for four years who has documented the control over the country of Yemen wielded by the Saleh government with much less complete control of the country's power centers. I can't name any countries that became more free and more prosperous rather than less once they had ceded that much power to a given individual and his cronies.

Think it can't happen here? That's what they said about China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Cuba. More recently, they said it about Venezuela.

**********

You call this an amusement park? Depends upon whose amusement it's for

**********

Want to figure out how biased your news source is? Compare the coverage of these two events:

Military recruiter killed in Ark shooting

Suspect jailed in Kansas abortion doctor's killing

While the second was was unmistakeably vile, the first one is worse. I disagree vehemently with the alleged person who shot Tiller, but at least he did target his victim because that victim engaged of his own free will in a specific activity, to wit, the killing of late term babies (I may agree that it should be legal, but I refuse to shrink from the full consequences thereof by using euphemisms that deny the humanity of those babies). The second dominated news yesterday; I couldn't get away from it every time I opened my homepage. The first is receiving only a fraction of the attention. To be fair, the second is a day older than the first. But, as Michelle Malkin notes every pro-life organization has condemned the actions of the twit that killed Mr. Tiller in no uncertain terms. Let's see how many organizations like Code Pink condemn the killing of two soldiers who were simply assigned to sit in a recruiting office for two weeks straight out of training before being assigned to their units. Let's see if the media gives the two stories equal play.

I'd like to see both of these perpetrators fried. But the person who assassinated two soldiers willing to stand between the rest of us and people who want to kill us, simply because they happened to be in a recruiting office, deserves to fry slowly.

**********

Why is the Obama Justice Department protecting people who intimidate voters? (video included!)


Political appointees at Justice pressured career prosecutors into giving up on the case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers group in Philadelphia, who attempted to frighten voters away from the polls in the presidential election:

Q and O:

A default judgment. A done deal. Guilty.

But they were ordered to drop the charges and case and settle for this:

A Justice Department spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the agency had dropped the case, dismissing two of the men from the lawsuit with no penalty and winning an order against the third man that simply prohibits him from bringing a weapon to a polling place in future elections.

Witness affidavit in NBPP voter bullying case It's damning.

So why is the Obama administration dropping charges after conviction?

Related: Obama administration: It's OK When We Politicize the Justice Department

The "politicization" of the Justice Department was one of many aspects of the Bush administration which the Obama administration was going to cure. But it appears that while the party of the administration has changed, we are seeing a level of political meddling at the Justice Department which the Bush administration never remotely approached
**********

Advice to College Grads

HT Instapundit

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This page is a archive of entries in the Zee Links and Minifeatures category from June 2009.

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