Kerry Parte Deux

020104214752- Rochester, NY

Some more notes on Kerry, to add to what we already
posted last week:

First, it’s my guess is that we’ll see a Kerry/Edwards
run.

Kerry’s too strong for Dean, and Edwards will be needed
for the "Southern Strategy."

In any event, Kerry will want no part of Dean who has demonstrated himself to be far too loopy as a running mate. (Consider the impact of that statement; Too loopy for Kerry?) Edwards doing well in Carolina will reinforce this idea with me.

Which leads us to a Bush Victory.

The reality is, as I pointed out last week, that Kerry
has too much of a negative
history, even among Democrats, to not be full of holes by next November.

  Here’s a few more little gotchas we will
doubtless hear more about between now and November:

Think of it, Gang….
The ‘party of the little guy’ coughs up John Forbes Kerry, someone of money, who married into MORE money in the form of the heir to the Heinz fortune. Odd all by itself, but of course there’s far more.

Kerry is someone whose only dealings with minorities is when he’s in need of another drink at the country club. Someone who has never been a working man in his life. Someone who, when he pays taxes it’s nothing more than a number; it never really affects his life in any substantial way… taxes don’t even enter his world.

We’re talking about someone here who was one of only 12 senators who voted against funding our troops in Iraq, and who voted for at least seven major reductions in defense and military spending and then claimed he was supporting our troops, and that he knows how to defend America.

We’re
talking about someone who voted repeatedly to slash the budgets of intelligence agencies by billions of dollars, and then on the night of 9/11 bitched loud and long about how our intel community failed us.

We’re talking about someone who voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion at least three times.. who was one of 14 Senators who voted against the Defense of Marriage Act… someone who voted against a parental notification requirement where minors’ abortions are concerned, who voted against mandatory sentences for drug dealers.

And just in the last few days, The New Republic Online has a put up real Gem on their site. Someone did their homework over there… and remember, TNR is hardly a right-wing paper.

They point up two letters from John Kerry to the same person, sent a few days apart, back in 1991.

–letter from Senator John Kerry to Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Massachusetts, dated January 22 [1991]

Did I say both these letters were sent to the same person?

Wouldn’t want you to forget.
I’ll bet HE could.

This is what the ‘Little Guy" Democrats are placing all their hopes in? Oh, yeah, that’s gonna sell in middle
America.

I’ve been sorting thorgh some fo the stuff that’s gone offline over time, and consdiered that some of this stuff hadn’t been seen by my newer readership. Here’s one I wrote in reaction to the U of M case last year.

–

0626031934- Rochester NY—- In 1964, we here in the US passed a far-reaching civil rights act, which reaffirmed that all men are created equal, and are to be treated as such, regardless of the individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It made such discrimination unlawful. Period. The new law made racism unlawful regardless of the effect of such race weighting, be it detrimental OR beneficial.

Court rulings since have repeatedly and wisely noted that this act was directly in line with the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” (Emphasis is mine)

So, along comes two recent court rulings which I’ve spent the last several nights going over, You should as well.  The result of these two rulings, at least in combination is confusion.  In the case of Gratz v. Bollinger, the court ruling point blank that the practice of adding 20 points to the possible 150 points in the admissions system for simply being a favored minority, is unconstitutional Good so far.

Then comes the confusion:

The court’s ruling Grutter v. Bollinger, basically re-affirms the Bakke ruling, which essentially is that race SHOULD be a factor when dealing with admissions.  The ruling does go on to state that yes, the policy does, in fact “reaffirm the Law School’s longstanding commitment to one particular type of diversity,” That is to say, it engages in racial bias. Not only that, but racial bias that is subjective, arbitrary, and subject to the bias of those running the program. (I would defy anyone to tell me that this description doesn’t capture the situation in Alabama back in the 50’s…. )

So much for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that we will “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This ruiling cuts that idea off at the knees.

So much for Justice John Marshall Harlan’s dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson saying “The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color.”

So much for the Civil rights act of 1964.

And, for that matter, so much for the 14th amendment.

Worse, it appears that the Court’s defacto overturning of these ideals was intended to fix a problem that did not exist… There has never been documented discrimination that has ever surfaced at the University of Michigan as regards admissions.  Not one.  As a matter of fact,
because of the policy that was being defended by the school, Black students were 170 times more likely than whites to be admitted to the Ann Arbor school. The Court however, ignored this point, and claimed it’s ruling to be acting on the basis of the “compelling interest in
obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body”

Well, I have two arguments against this as a basis. 

*Such an interest is by no means a constitutional argument, but rather, a political argument… and a short-term political argument at that.  Even the key vote in this case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s declares, “…we expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” 

One presumes that at such a point, the court will again be asked to rule, and will reverse its decision.  For the sake of discussion, and examination, let’s assume the constitution remains fairly well static between now and then, as it has for much of it’s 200 plus years of life. If the need, much less the remedy, is a constitutional issue, how could such measures EVER NOT be needed?  Unless the constitution itself changes, something doesn’t change status from constitutional to unconstitutional and back again. These race based initiatives are both
illegal and unconstitutional. So to effect this ruling, we must ignore the Constitution.

So, the court figures maybe in 25 years (…. Or, maybe not… Justice Ginsburg reminds us we can’t accept a guarantee of the timing, here…) these measures won’t be needed anymore.  Did we simply put the Constitution on “hold” for 25 years or more, until someone decides to
start enforcing the Constitution? If so, what’s to guarantee we won’t disregard it again, at some need or other, and for less popular reasons?

Despite even that concern, this nonsense might be a little easier to accept if I thought for one hot second that in 25 years, or 2500 years, for that matter, that given this ruling, and these guidelines, racism would magically disappear altogether. I could even see an argument that it might be worth the sacrifice… if it showed any hope whatever of working as advertised.  It doesn’t.  This ruling is counter productive to that goal, and will not have that effect, which
leads me to my second point:

**There is a major difference between mandating what we’ll call “RACIAL Diversity” and encouraging “TRUE Diversity”. “Racial diversity” simply means we have a lot of different races represented in a given sector of society. “True diversity” means that we have a lot of different styles of thinking, points of view, politics, ideation, etc. regardless of the race of each individual involved.

As such, I submit there is no compelling state or societal interest in mandating Racial Diversity per se’, in a racially neutral society, which we are supposedly striving to be. 

Make no mistake from my comments; Diversity of thought… of ideas, or opinions is a fine goal… to be lauded and it constitutes the largest interest of the state.  It should be pursued. Apparently that’s the goal being sought by the Court, when it seeks to force diversity by
forcing racial diversity.  I must give the court credit for keeping that goal in mind.

However, can the pursuit of that goal get tangled when we try to get there through mandated racial diversity? Can it get wrapped up in stereotypical nonsense?  It appears so. Consider the comments of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who in his dissent, cited the testimony of a former director of admissions at the UM Law School that when the question came up about whether Cubans should be counted as Hispanics, one professor objected on the grounds that Cubans were Republicans. Do you think Racial Equality was foremost on THAT gent’s mind, or was it
pure, liberal-biased, stereotyping politics, base on race alone? 

The Court in Bollinger seems to be working under the idea that they’ll get us to True Diversity, through mandating Racial Diversity. This is a flawed, possibly fatal path to the stated goals of True Diversity and our being a racially neutral society. Following this path in fact will reverse much of the good work done already toward the essential goal of making us a less race conscious, and more race-neutral nation, as the Constitution demands. Even the court
itself, in Justice O’Conner’s writings, tacitly admits this.

This court-directed pursuit of True Diversity by means of counting the color of each nose going by the admissions gate in our schools, (and one presumes, other sectors of our society, as well) is based on the revolting assumption that a person’s race is in total control of their
thought processes, opinions, and their ideas.  Not only will I point out that such stereotyping is in fact racism, I say it is racism of a most ugly kind. It is one that should not be tolerated under ANY condition, least of which under the guise of ‘diversity’

We fought a rather vicious war, about half a century back, against a group of people called Nazis, led by an idiot with a weird mustache who operated under that same racist idea, that race is at the center of one’s being, that ones thoughts, actions and ideas are all dependant on their race, and it’s purity.  Re-applied here in the US, as the court seems to be allowing, here, this idea will at least lead down the road of racial stereotyping and increased racial consciousness. 

The Law school ruling is particularly troubling in it’s inconsistency with the writings this week of the ruling’s principle author, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote on Thursday in Georgia vs. Ashcroft, that ” the court should be working to “…encourage the transition to a
society where race no longer matters: a society where integration and color-blindness are not just qualities to be proud of, but are simple facts of life.”

Nice words, and commendable, and quite correct. Thing is, that stated goal is 180 degrees out of phase with the Bollinger ruling.  Possibly it’s more accurate to suggest that the Bollinger ruling was off kilter with everything else.

One more point not too many people like talking about was brought forward by Justice Thomas, who cited Morehouse College, where lass than 1% of the student body was white, or Hispanic. Do we have any sense, Thomas argues, that the traditionally black colleges will now start admitting more whites for the sake of diversity?

Thomas of course is correct.  How, if at all, will this ruling change the racial balance situations in those places? Isn’t diversity equally valuable in those places? Rather makes one wonder about the value some place on this mandate of racial diversity.

Do not mistake my comments. I do not question the members of the court on their desire to get our society to a situation where racism doesn’t exist. Nor do I suggest that this is not a valid and worthy, and indeed, a vital goal.  I do question, however using racism as a tool to fight racism, on logical, moral, AND constitutional grounds. I say again: Diversity of race for it’s own sake is racism, plain and simple.

Thurgood Marshall warned us about such things in Brown:

“Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state, bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere.”

It angers me that this court has ignored that admonition. What angers me more is that also they ignored the advise of someone closer to the hearts of most Americans than Marshall… Namely, Frederick Douglass, a fellow Rochesterian, who addressed this point as well as any I can think of, even though the haze that 150 years of language difference can and does bring:

“What I ask for the Negro, is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice . . .. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!….. ..our interference is doing him positive injury.”

The court has once again, disregarded these pleas. All that’s left behind is more confusion, and more of the legal racism we’ve been trying to rid ourselves from since the middle 1800’s..

The court took these Michigan cases, supposedly to end the argument about the constitutionality of racial bias being applied to try and solve racial bias. (Irony abounds)

The answer to this issue was obvious, and the court missed it, trying to find shades of grey where they simply do not exist.  Racism is, ironically, a black and white issue, as are most things, in the end.  It’s either there, or it’s not. It’s either legal, or it’s not. We either support racism in our system of laws, or we don’t.  A clear-cut ruling, reaffirming the dreams of Dr King, the pleas from Mr. Douglass, the advise of Justice Marshall, Justice Harlan, and the law of the land in the form of the 14th amendment was what was needed.

Instead, what we got flew in the face of all of that wisdom. 

Americans of all races will suffer for that error.

“We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and
developing weapons of mass destruction.” —-Senator Ted Kennedy (D,
MA), Sept. 27, 2002

FOXNews is running a story today suggests, among other things, a quote from Armstrong Williams….

“‘Too often black history is hijacked by racial hucksters who use it not as a platform for social activism, but as a stage to shout about victimization and retribution,’ “

And another:

“Black history month, when it originally came to fruition, was an attempt to instill some pride because there was a belief that American history in general and world history did not appropriately recognize the contributions of blacks,” said Niger Innis, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (search), one of America’s oldest civil rights groups. “But it devolved into an ideological left-wing rant.”

This is what I’d like to see a national debate on.

Almost forgot; here’s the list of votes on the ‘best post’ list so far…

Watcher of Weasels has something interesting going this week; They take nominations for the best all-around post, with the contest running every week.  This link is for the list of nominees. AT the very least, some good reading, here.

I mentioned a few days ago the Hutton report.
I’ve read the report itself, of course, having posted a link to the full text of it here.
But, I admit nt having the time until now, to view the vid of Tony Blair’s statements to the House.
I must say that reading the transcript of his statement, anbd viewing it actually being delivered are two seperate things in terms of impact. The text was damning enough of the people claiming the leadership had lied as regards intel, and of the events surrounding Dr. Kelley’s death. Viewing it being delivered, and the weaseling that the opposition did in response to the report is another matter altogether.

This report has, I think many implications on this side of the drink, as well. And if you ahve an hour and a quarter to go through this, it’s quite worthwhile.

You’re need REALPLAYER, and a high speed link; it’s 177 megs at 128k/s
Here’s the link to the video…

Thanks to C-Span for posting this.

“An Amnesty International report has cited Microsoft among a clutch of leading computer firms heavily criticised for helping to fuel ‘a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for internet-related offences’. “

So says The Observer.
The report goes on to say that:

Amnesty believes Microsoft is in violation of a new United Nations Human Rights code for multinationals which says businesses should ‘seek to ensure that the goods and services they provide will not be used to abuse human rights’

On the one hand, I’m glad MS is finally being taken to task for this. OTOH, I have to question the validity of the UN’s posiiton, here, given the way they turned a blind eye to to the blood pouring out of Iraq.

Dean’s World: Saddam Lied, People Died

A refreshing change, this.

AlphaPatriot has a great post regarding change and how it’s coming about. People are catching on….

Patriots by 10.

I’ve posted this before… years ago in another venue, and the subject of odd warning labes came up over at RIGHT WE ARE, so I decided to post this here. Enjoy.
….

All of this came about when I looked at a bag of ice I’d just bought, and noticed that the bag actually had a nutritional statement on it, of all things. I was amused to learn that because the bag of ice contained 0% fat, it qualifies under government regulations, as a low fat food!

(They must not be using the water from around here, then.)

It was at this point that I started to consider all the strange and wonderful messages we are hit with every day, because of government, and of lawyers. In the process, I made some interesting discoveries.

Consider: It is because of lawsuits and Lawyers that everything we buy has a ridiculous warning on it. My lawn mower actually has a warning that reads:

WARNING!
DO NOT PLACE HANDS OR FEET UNDER MOWER WHILE BLADE IS SPINNING.

Duh! This sticker exists because someone went to court, minus part of a hand or a foot, claiming he or she didn’t KNOW there was a slight problem with putting their foot under a mower? Worse… a jury thought they were telling the truth, and forced the manufacturer to pay millions for this person’s rehab. Far as I can tell, half a foot is the least of the problems, here.

It gets worse.

I bought a toaster oven the other day. My new toaster oven came with a whole list of warnings:

“Do not touch heating coils.”

Gee. I wonder why?

“Do not stick foreign objects in oven.”

Aw, Gee… No French Bread?

“For best results do not submerge oven in bathtub.”

It’s OK if I leave it on the EDGE of the tub, so long as it doesn’t fall in, I guess. Gotta watch that. We wouldn’t want to find out what they consider less then optimal results, now would we?

“Do not drop oven on your foot.”

Aw, Gee. What happens?

“Oven is not to be used as protective headgear.”

Not even at a party?

This list of oddball warnings goes on and on. I sometimes think my $30 toaster oven would cost $15 if they didn’t have a staff of highly paid lawyers somewhere thinking up this stuff… and highly paid union printers packing literature in there with it, containing what the lawyers tell them to print.

Substitute Safety helmet?

Thinking that there is a reason for all this nonsense, that each of these warnings on a product represents a previous (successful) lawsuit, I decided to focus on one of these warnings, I chose to investigate what caused the ‘Toaster oven as Headgear’ business. It’s amazing what you can find when you’ve got a fast Internet connection and a good computer… and a Saturday afternoon to kill. Turns out that I was right; there *was* a strange story behind it.

In this example, some moron in Tacoma went to work at a construction site one day, with a toaster oven on his head instead of his hard hat, so his pals could get a laugh. Yuk Yuk.

A Scooby-Doo lunch box another worker dropped on him injured him. (I can just picture this big burley construction worker with his Scooby-Doo lunchbox, can’t you?) From the accounts, the lunchbox landed on his head. Well, on the toaster oven, which was on his head, apparenty casuing some damage. What is unclear to me, is how much damage was pre-existent.

In any event, he apparently wasn’t warned by the toaster maker that a box of tin filled with heating coils and no padding does not protect your head from metal lunchboxes filled with baloney sandwiches and a thermos full of coffee, moving at 33 ft/sec. So, in response, he sued the toaster oven company as well as his employer, Hanna-Barbera, (the people who drew the pictures on the lunchbox) the lunchbox maker, and just for good measure, the state of Washington and the federal government.

(Apparently, the work site was a government building…. A Post Office. Doesn’t it make you all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that idiots like this are responsible for the quality of the work on government buildings?)

Get this: The guy won $6.33 million, and then took the money and bought a brand new trailer home (the old one was pretty bad… I remembered seeing him on TV at the time) and a collection of commemorative Elvis plates. What novel choices for expenditures! I guess you can’t change a real man.

In response to this unprecedented cost of doing business, the toaster oven manufacturer decided to warn people of the rather limited uses of their product.

Now, before you get started… Of course, I believe that companies should be held accountable for the safety of their products, given reasonable use. I just think that our purposes could be better served by one warning:

WARNING: Do not use this product if you are a complete idiot.

We all know about the MacDonald’s coffee case, where the older woman put her coffee between her legs and pulled off… squeezed the cup while driving, thus spilling her coffee in a rather, shall we say, tender spot. Nowadays every drive-up and every cup of coffee the Fallen Arches serves up, has a label:

WARNING! COFFEE IS HOT!!!

Look, Gang… Let’s nip this one, shall we? Coffee is hot, and it will burn you if you’re not careful. If you don’t understand this, then you’ve got bigger problems than a $2.7 million settlement can solve, OK? I suppose you are, however, qualified as a possible winner of the Darwin Award.

Now, just recently, a case against McDonalds, which was almost verbatim the same case as was brought here in the states, was laughed out of a court in London. I’ve not seen the particulars, myself, but the reports I’m seeing suggest the judge gave the plaintiff a bit of a chewing out, and I gather the lawyer is in trouble over it, as well. One wishes that had happened here in the states when the same case came up; the case in England would never have been brought.

The ideals we all grew up with would be served best if the next time someone goes to court to sue both Nabisco and Ford, because neither company warned him that Jell-O was not a suitable substitute for motor oil, the judge quickly throws out the case and recommends that the plaintiff avoid any pyramid investment opportunities, stairs of over three steps, yard implements, and most kitchen utensils, and many small farm animals.

A certain amount of common sense is necessary to survive in this world. Unless of course you have a jury filled with your peers… IE: Fellow idiots, willing to pay someone else’s money to help you along.

Of course, the people might not be idiots, and they’re just after the money, huh? Do you suppose being hit with commercials from personal injury lawyers might have something to do with their bringing suit in
the first place? In such an event, might it be the people leveling the suits that are the abusers?

A lot of flash traffic on this one…. here a feed fromthe AP:

“LONDON (AP) – British Airways (BAB) has canceled three flights from Heathrow Airport to Washington, D.C., and Miami because of government security concerns, the airline said Saturday.

Flight 207 to Miami will not fly on Sunday, she said, but had departed Saturday morning.”

223, you will recall, was the one that was canceled at the beginning of January.
Some reports are suggesting that this action was NOT taken because of passenger lists. Apparently some other type of intel prompted the actions, here.

The DOD is reporting:

“BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30, 2004 – Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III today offered his congratulations to the nearly 500 new police officers who will soon be on the streets of Iraq, protecting the Iraqi people as part of the Iraqi Police Service, according Coalition Provision Authority officials.
Following an eight-week training program at the Jordan International Police Training Center, 466 newly-hired officers graduated, becoming the first class to graduate from the training center.”

A is reporting:

“MIAMI — Four gay men lost a federal challenge Wednesday to the only blanket state law banning homosexuals from adopting children. “