Body Parts

Where Sotomayor Spoke Is Revealing About Her 'Wise Latina' Analysis

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's famous analysis of the higher wisdom of a Latin woman with rich experience, as compared to a white male, was made at UC Berkeley. This locale is significant. Berkeley is  one of the nation's epicenters of identity politics, diversity, feminism, and affirmative action--the "other" is always better at Berkeley. Her discussion wasn't made at a young conservatives meeting in Dallas or Phoenix. It wasn't made at the Indiana state fair. It wasn't made at the Republican Party's national convention. It wasn't made in an interview on Fox News. It was made among a friendly audience whom Sotomayor knew would agree with her opinion. She could let down her political guard without fear of tarnishing her image. It was not an off-hand remark or comment. It was not a momentary poor choice of words. It was her real, deep-down, philosophical view of the world, just as was Obama's remark about empathy as a guideline for judicial judgment; that is what is troubling with her remark. She sees justice as, ultimately, political.

The Road To Serfdom

Begins with government censorship and control of news for the purpose of protecting centralized economic planning.

Minimal Requirements for Mandatory, Universal Health Care Insurance

The discussion of national health care reform has not mentioned (in what I have read) whether a number of issues are being discussed which concern me.  I list the following items to bring them some attention.

Mandatory, universal health care insurance should include coverage for all persons of:

• insurance portability (eliminate COBRA, focus benefits on the person and/or family and/or household, have no difference in payment schedule whether employed or not)
• nondeniability (should be extended to the items below)
• hospice care (for patients whose care requires professional skills and resources that family assisted living cannot provide)
• dental care
• vision care
• alternative medicine (i.e., complementary medicine including naturopathy and homeopathy)
• national licensing of alternative medical doctors
• national licensing of conventional medical doctors
• mental health (behavior health) care, also involving 
  • restoration and expansion of dedicated, residental, mental health hospitals
    • This program would require modification of legal rights of mentally ill persons to "choose" not to be hospitalized
  • restriction of community-based mental health care to supporting care provided by residential, mental health hospitals 
  • moving mentally ill persons (such as dual-diagnosis drug offenders) from prisons to dedicated mental health hospitals
• shift from an industrial medicine paradign to primary care medicine, focussed on continuity of care, preventive medicine, lifestyle issues, and whole life well-being
• folding Medicaid programs into the national mandatory program with provision of realistic doctors' fee schedules for the low-income and welfare persons
• maintenance of consumer choice for benefit schedule (for instance, not all families need hospice care benefits)
• deductibles and or co-pays for all persons--everyone should pay something out of pocket for their medical care and medical insurance; no one should get it "free" from taxpayers unless everyone does (and I oppose "free" for all as medical communism). 

I would prefer reforms based upon private insurance based on:

• risk pools without a public option, including high risk and low-income or welfare pools into which all insurance carriers would contribute
• policy distinction between everyday medical care and catastrophic medical care.  

If a public insurance option is inevitable, as it appears to be, I would prefer that the inclusion of the public insurance option be structured so as not to force out private insurance.

I have blogged about some of these issues here.

Obama's Comfortableness With Dictators and Anti-Americans Makes Me Uncomfortable

Observe his body language toward Abbas (in the context of similar camaraderie with Chavez and Ortega in the Latin American meetings a while ago) in these photos at Astute Blogger.

Obama Squeezes Israel on Defense on Behalf of the so-called Palestinians

Typical of Obama's "screw you" style on getting his way: now he's blocking an Israeli request for advanced attack helicopters. The excuse is that the request needs to be  reviewed for the possible effect of this weapon system on the so-called Palestinians. As if Israel were not surrounded by hostile Muslim Arab states. Israel has already been denied America's most advanced air superiority fighter and our latest fighter bombers. Obama won't be satisfied until he has disarmed Israel. Many of us warned that Obama would not be a friend of Israel and the Jews and he's not. Squeezing Israel on defence is another tactic to compel Israel to surrender its highest national interest to the so-called Palestinians. Obama doesn't have a clue that weakening Israel de-stabilizes the region, not a clue.

What If Japan Builds Atomic Weapons To Counter North Korea?

Japan's acquisition of a nuclear weapons for a MAD defense against North Korea would be a momentous step for the Pacific region. I have already discussed how Obama's policies implicitly fold up the American umbrella of protection around the world, destabilizing each region from which its protection is withdrawn. It is no avail to point out that some of Obama's rhetoric appears to support steadfast maintenance of the US extended deterrence; for Obama's other policies, his deeds, and his budget declare emphatically otherwise. Now think about Japan's abandonment of its official pacifism, forced upon it by the United States in 1945. The Pacific War in the second world war is still in living memory of some of the leadership and many people in the national populations that saw horrific combat--China and North Korea, which were conquered by Japan and suffered terrible cruelty, for which Japan has not direct apologized, and the nations of southeast Asia, and the islands which the US had to capture for its "march on Tokyo". Memories are long. Japan's re-militarization would re-ignite the smoking embers of resentment, national injury, and desire for revenge. At the same time, a regional alliance between Japan, South Korea, and Australia would convince China that it was being isolated. China would be compelled to ramp up its military. All these guns pointing at one another, in a world of mutual suspicion and latent hostility, is a far higher level of danger than we have experienced since the post-WWI era. The possibility of mis-steps in international relations is far more dangerous in this situation that it has been since the mid-1950s when the Korean War ended. Obama's ideological delusions are not leading us and the rest of the world into a twenty first century era of peace. Obama is leading us back a hundred years to a highly dangerous, deteriorating, inherently unstable international order. Or should I say, disorder?

Obama's Pattern: Be Nice Diplomacy, Discourse, and Negotiation Are Just Masks To Hide Thuggery

We can now see the dun pattern: dull smudges of cast iron showing through as the thin gold wears off the statue. In his "I won" dealings with Republicans over the stimulus, his coercion of banks to accept Treasury capital and his initial refusal to allow them to leave the new power arrangements if they paid Treasury back, his unsympathetic shutout of secured debt holders at GM and Chrysler, his summary execution of Chrysler dealers who contributed to the GOP. And now his latest mugging: he "wants to see" Israel, as sock puppet Secretary of State Clinton put it,  stop all increase in settlements, including natural population increase. Jews should not reproduce. We are learning that in some matters, Obama's promises of discourse and rule of law idealism and smart diplomacy are masks for brute force. When he has the power, he will coerce others to do his bidding. This is the track record of socialist authoritarianism. We should have known how his election would turn out. What distinguishes those matters in which he uses muscle from those matters in which he reluctantly engages in negotiation that respects the rights of others? When he has someone by the balls. When he does, Obama is a presidential thug. I am embarrassed for America.

Hooray For GM Bondholders Pushing GM Into Bankruptcy

The only chance we have to force Obama's so-called rescue of GM out of the darkness of political corruption and into the light of law is in bankruptcy court. The bondholders are right to demand what they are legally due by their contracts. Get GM into Chapter 11 and let's open the can of worms.

Stories I'm Watching: GOP-Supporting Chrysler Dealerships Closed By Obama Political Committee

Start the story with Gateway Pundit.

Everytime I think my cynicism will protect me from new revelations about the depredations of political self-interest, I am surprised. Obama's administration of the formerly-private economy is just political opportunism performed by thugs working in legal darkness.

Update. May 28, 2009. White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, denies bias against GOP supporters in the dealership closures. Would you expect him to say, yes, of course, we screwed Republican supporting dealers? But, wait, there's more analysis of the dealership closures, here.

Update. May 30, 2009. The evidence is getting clearer of a systematic political bias against the GOP supporting dealerships. More evidence, here. This is an extraordinary example of what is wrong with political management of business. And the MSM are starting to notice.

Update. May 31, 2009. "Dealergate" is an apt name for the growing scandal. Anyway, the wife of the "car czar" has political connections that might be the source of the list of Democratic contributing dealers whose dealerships oughtn't be closed.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor Is An Affirmative Action Candidate For The Supreme Court

This listserve bulletin of talking points about her nomination is pure affirmative action ideology in action. Through the entire confirmation process, we'll be inundated with this kind of personal information that is irrelevant to her qualifications for the appointment to the Supreme Court. By and large, the liberals, the elites, and the MSM will fall in line and support her appointment on these grounds. We saw this affirmative action process unfold with the Obama campaign for the presidency, so the ground of public opinion has been furrowed; Obama needs only to drill in the seeds. There will be a lot more of this before we have run through Obama's four years.