Friday, May 14, 2010

Got to Say...

Not too much to disagree with here:
Who the hell does Barack Obama, this morally preening, arrogant hypocrite, think he is? His vacuous, demagogic shtick about helping the "people" fight "the powerful" is getting so old from his lips, and already was so hackneyed even before he expropriated it, that it's a miracle that even he himself can say it anymore without getting nauseated by his own oleaginous triteness.

Obama spewed the same old effluvia Monday when introducing Elena Kagan as his nominee for the Supreme Court. Let us count the inanities and dishonesties in his introductory remarks:

"Behind law there are stories -- stories of people's lives as shaped by the law, stories of people's lives as might be changed by the law…" Of course, here he is quoting Kagan herself, but it's still absurd. Of course the law affects people's lives: That's why we have elections to choose legislators to write the laws, and it's why we give trial judges at least a modicum of discretion in meting out sentences when laws are violated. But even that discretion is governed by the laws as laid out by the legislative process. The appeals courts exist to ensure that those laws are applied the same way to every litigant regardless of what their personal stories are, not because of their personal stories.

"During her time in this office, she's repeatedly defended the rights of shareholders and ordinary citizens against unscrupulous corporations." What nonsense. A corporation is a set of shareholders. When a corporation pays a judgment, its shareholders are the ones who pay. When the corporation loses money, it is the shareholders who lose the money. When a lawsuit supposedly on behalf of shareholders is successful, the "payout" gets taken from the corporate accounts, which devalues the stock of, yes, the shareholders themselves. Setting the shareholders against the corporation is asking Peter to fight not Paul, but Peter himself. It's like boxing one's own image in a mirror -- except that when you throw a punch, both the mirror and the puncher get hurt. So too in any match between a corporation and its shareholders: It's nothing more than self-mutilation.

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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Why it matters

“For It”: MSA Student Confesses She Wants a Second Holocaust

Horowitz: If you don’t condemn Hamas, obviously you support it. Case closed. I have had this experience at UC Santa Barbara, where there were 50 members of the Muslim Students Association sitting right in the rows there. And throughout my hour talk I kept asking them, will you condemn Hizbollah and Hamas. And none of them would. And then when the question period came, the president of the Muslim Students Association was the first person to ask a question. And I said, ‘Before you start, will you condemn Hizbollah?’ And he said, ‘Well, that question is too complicated for a yes or no answer.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hizbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For or Against it?

MSA member: For it.

Horowitz: Thank you for coming and showing everybody what’s here.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Let's have a thought experiment

If this had been black kids not getting to participate, you would hear about this, right?
Remember a few years ago that the phrase "driving while black" was used often to excuse being pulled over for whatever traffic violation? Well, looks like now there is a more real racism - "learning while white." You don't get a ticket for being white. Instead, you lose your educational opportunity. From Ann Arbor.com (HT: Jennifer Gratz on FB): Field trip for black students sparks controversy at Ann Arbor elementary school
An Ann Arbor elementary school principal used a letter home to parents tonight to defend a field trip for black students as part of his school’s efforts to close the achievement gap between white and black students.

Dicken Elementary School Principal Mike Madison wrote the letter to parents following several days of controversy at the school after a field trip last week in which black students got to hear a rocket scientist
White students not allowed! This isn't even separate but equal, it is rather separate and unequal by design! And the principle of the elementary school is defending this by pointing out the benefit to the black students that got to go:
“In hindsight, this field trip could have been approached and arranged in a better way," Madison wrote. "But as I reflect upon the look of excitement, enthusiasm and energy that I saw in these children’s eyes as they stood in the presence of a renowned African American rocket scientist in a very successful position, it gave the kids an opportunity to see this type of achievement is possible for even them.

“It was not a wasted venture for I know one day they might want to aspire to be the first astronaut or scientist standing on the Planet Mars.
Thus begs a question: would the white children have not gotten the same benefit from attending that event? Would Principal Madison not have seen "excitement, enthusiasm and energy" in the white students eyes as well?
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