This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • Pandering writ large

    I know there are single-issue voters, but I think single-issue political debates are just boring and useless attempts at pandering to draw in people who can’t hold more than one idea in their tiny brains at a time. Take this example, a debate about gays by the Democrat candidates;

    Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd have confirmed they will participate. Several other Democratic candidates also may join the debate.

    The debate will be conducted with a live audience in Los Angeles.  On the panel questioning the two Democrats will be Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese and singer Melissa Etheridge.

    The debate was put together by LOGO and HRC.

    “In the 2008 presidential election, issues of concern to the LGBT community have already been at the forefront of the national conversation,” said Solmonese.

    “From the repeal of “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” to the recent signing of a civil unions bill in New Hampshire, there is no doubt that voters will demand answers to important questions affecting our community.”

    So what are they going to “debate” – which candidate is more gay than the others? There’s no debate in the Democrat party about these so-called “gay rights” (whatever that happens to mean), so why are they going to stand on stage and promise huge special interest giveaways to people who supposedly want to be treated like everyone else – despite the fact that they refuse to act like everyone else and they demand “rights” that no one else has.

    Yeah, it’s going to be a huge applause-fest that does nothing except try to gain for the gay community the acceptance into the mainstream that they claim they so lack. While we’re at it, lets have a debate about the fate of abandoned puppies. I’ll bet the Democrat candidates can rate huge among their base on that one, too.

  • What is a bi-partisan strategy?

    I’m still trying to catch up on news and the idiocy that seems to have permeated the District of Columbia while I was gone (only three days, f’pete’s sake), so excuse me if this old news to you. In the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial column today, “Republican Retreat“, they quoted Dick Lugar;

    “I do not doubt the assessments of military commanders that there has been some progress in security,” Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared on the Senate floor late last month. But that didn’t stop Mr. Lugar from concluding that its chances of success are “very limited.” Why? The “short period framed by our own domestic political debate” won’t allow it, he says. Instead, Mr. Lugar wants a “sustainable bipartisan strategy” along the lines recommended in November by the Iraq Study Group. Last week, New Mexico’s Pete Domenici noisily joined this bandwagon, as have several other Republican Senators, some of whom face tough re-election fights next year.

    All of this nuanced language is just goofy posturing. What the hell is a “sustainable bipartisan strategy”? That’s just buffoonery – you either win or you lose, you either have a strategy to win, or you have a losing strategy. You can’t have it both ways.

    There’s no compromising on strategy to please a political base – the political base aren’t interested in the particulars of fighting wars and they wouldn’t know a battle formation from an SOS breakfast.

    That’s why our founding fathers didn’t make Congress the Commanders-in-Chief – they just hand out the money. You can’t fight wars in Committee. Look how long it’s taken for Congress just to come up with a defense bill. Imagine how long wars would take if the military had to wait for Congress to make a decision about tactics or strategy.

    So what if Lugar, Domenici and the unnnamed ones are in a political battle? Will any of them be killed as a result? But, in the meantime, how many of our troops are dying because their political posturing rewards every bullet the bad guys fire at them?

    For once, just once, I want to see a politician put the country and the folks fight for them ahead of their political careers.

    The WSJ concludes;

    As for Mr. Lugar’s bipartisan hope, it would be wonderful to think that Washington could come together around a sustainable, long-term Iraq strategy. But how many Democrats are ready to work with Mr. Bush on that? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now calls ending the war his “moral” obligation — as if America’s departure would end anything — and he responded to Mr. Domenici’s statement by saying GOP Senators must now vote for a rapid withdrawal.

    The Democrats don’t want to end the war before next November any-damn-way – They need the issue for the election. And Harry Reid wouldn’t know a moral obligation if it bit his hip pocket. Apparently, Lugar and Domenici suffer from the same affliction.

  • Congress returns ready to battle the President

    I read that headline in the Washington Examiner this morning and the first thing I thought was “how is that news”? They might as well run a headline that says “Man biten by dog” or “Summer expected to be warm”.

    Congressmen returning from their Independence Day break are ready for battle with the White House, with Democrats decrying President Bush’s commutation of former aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s prison sentence and fighting Bush’s latest claim of executive privilege.

    Both events occurred around Congress’ vacation, inflaming an intense battle between Democrats and Bush over his use of executive power. There was relatively high tension on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as majority Democrats – and increasing numbers of Republicans – challenged Bush’s Iraq war policy.

    In Roll Call this morning, it’s Stephen Dennis’ “Democrats Keep Focus on Libby“($);

    Incensed Democrats plan to use President Bush’s decision to spare Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, from prison to bolster their theme of a GOP “culture of corruption” with hearings this week and on the campaign trail.

    Democrats have few options to strike back at the president, given their slim majorities and the reticence of Democratic leaders to consider impeachment despite an increasing drumbeat from liberal activists and growing support in some polls. The number of Democratic co-signers to an impeachment resolution for Cheney introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is expected to inch higher this week but remains a tiny subset of the Democratic Caucus.

    But that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t try to score political points.

    According to Dennis, Conyers wants to start an investigation of the pardon and subpoena Libby (to what result, I can’t understand), a witness list is supposed to come out today. Wexler wants to censure Bush – what a crock of dung. Wasting time on stupid political popcorn farts. Meanwhile, Emily Pearce ($) writes, also in Roll Call, that Reid probably won’t get any of the spending bills he needs to pass this year;

    While July is often reserved for appropriations bills in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has set aside very little time to complete even one or two bills this month, despite the fact that the chamber’s conservatives appear in no mood to help smooth the way and President Bush is expected to veto the majority of spending measures that reach his desk.

    So, instead of doing their job in Congress, the Democrats are just making noise. Useless, pointless political noise.  

    Ya know what headline I’d reallly like to see? “Congress returns ready to battle terrorists”, or “Congress outraged by al Qaeda connections in Glasgow plot” or “Democrats Keep Focus on the War Against Terror”.

    Since when is it more important for our elected representatives to be more ready to do battle with our other elected representatives than they are ready to do battle with the enemies of our people? Or why is it more acceptable to the American people that the politicians are more focused on “scoring political points” than they are on scoring wins against the enemies that want to destroy us all?

    Me? I’ve returned ready to fight all of the enemies of our people – especially the ones in Congress. 

  • Independence Day

    I’ve always been amazed at how Americans take their freedom and their country for granted. Being a bit of an amateur historian, I like to visit places like Jamestown and Williamsburg to experience pre-Revolution days and for a moment imagine what it was like to live in that world – a world ruled by infallible Kings who wrote the law to benefit themselves, who taxed the labor of their subjects, not to benefit those subjects, but to swell their own coffers and expand their empires.

    It’s cliche now to mention that people came to America for freedom – economic and spiritual freedom - but they found it here, only by the virtue of distance and time. The further the colonists got from their King, they earned more and kept more of their own money. The more decisions they could make for themselves, without restrictions from government, the better their lives became.

    In 1630, John Winthrop wrote about the promise of a new future for the world as he hopefully crossed the Atlantic towards that new beginning;

    …men shall say of succeeding plantations: the lord make it like that of New England: for we must Consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us….

    As the English king reached further and further into the colonies, colonists moved further inland to keep their freedom – until King George blocked their expansion at the Pre-emption Line to keep people from running ahead of his grasp – then mercilessly taxed every aspect of their lives. But that was the way of the world – there was no other system of government, until the colonists declared themselves independent.

    I like Ronald Reagan’s recitation of history;

    I have always believed that this land was placed here between the two great oceans by some divine plan. It was placed here to be found by a special kind of people–people who had a special love for freedom and who had the courage to uproot themselves and leave hearth and homeland and come to what in the beginning was the most undeveloped wilderness possible. We spoke a multitude of tongues–landed on this eastern shore and then went out over the mountains and the prairies and the deserts and the far Western mountains of the Pacific, building cities and towns and farms and schools and churches.

    If wind, water or fire destroyed them, we built them again. And in so doing at the same time we built a new breed of human called an American–a proud, an independent and a most compassionate individual for the most part. Two hundred years ago Tom Paine, when the thirteen tiny colonies were trying to become a nation, said we have it in our power to begin the world over again….

    And our forebearers did begin the world again and we became Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill”. Every nation that has thrown off the chains of tyrants, has done so using our revolution as a model. Every new Constitution has been modeled after our own. Slaves in Haiti threw out their French masters, Bolivar in South America threw out the Spaniards.

    The French saw promise in our revolution, but being typically French, they screwed it up four times before they finally got it right. I remember that I saw the key to the Bastille on the wall in the entry-way of George Washington’s Mount Vernon home given to him by Lafayette as a reminder that America deserved credit for the liberation of the people of France from their own despotic king.

    Americans did change the world that July 4th 231 years ago – not that we get much credit for it anymore. Maybe it’s because we ourselves call it plainly by it’s date, July 4th, instead of it’s meaning – Independence Day.

    Kate republishes the Declaration of Independence, and Spanish Pundit wishes us a happy Fourth. Mike at Flopping Aces tells us what Independence Day means to him (and should for you) While Scott Malensek at Flopping Aces writes an updated Declaration. Cuban-American Marc Masferrer at Uncommon Sense pays tribute to the First Amendment. Val Prieto at Babalu Blog, also a Cuban-American, thanks America for the opportunity this country has provided. Atlas Shrug’s Pamela Geller Oshry quotes Ronald Reagan today, too.

    But on a sad note, I mark the passing of a blogger – the first blogger to ever link to me. He or she is still alive and kicking, I presume, but we’ve lost some brilliant commentary from On the Radar – lost to political correctness and the lack of free speech in academia.

    Borrowing from my friends at Hang Right Politics, who named their blog from Benjamin Franklin’s famous phrase; “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”  

  • Bush commutes Libby’s sentence – so?

    First – an admission. I was told about a month ago that this would happen, by a source I can’t name. See? I keep promises. I guess I could’ve written it as a prediction a week or so ago and looked like a fricken genius, but I never got all wrapped up in the minutae of the case. I just made an off-handed comment to someone that the sentence was excessive and that the judge, Reggie B. Walton, was an asshole – that’s when my source told me the back story. So there’s still stuff I know that I’m not telling. By the way, I will tell you that Judge Walton is not an asshole – that’s all I’m saying at this point.

    But let’s get to the drama queens – like Obama;

    “This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law,” Obama said. “This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years.”

    We already know that Libby didn’t leak Valerie Plame’s name to Bob Novak – the reason for the whole investigation in the first place. So, what national security issue are we talking about here, Barack? I wonder if he even knows what the case is about judging by that nonsensical statement.

    “Today’s decision is yet another example that this administration simply considers itself above the law,” said Clinton of Bush’s decision to commute Libby’s sentence. “This case arose from the administration’s politicization of national security intelligence and its efforts to punish those who spoke out against its policies.

    “Four years into the Iraq war, Americans are still living with the consequences of this White House’s efforts to quell dissent. This commutation sends the clear signal that in this Administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice.”

    Does she think we just forgot about her first tour of the White House? Does she remember kathleen Wiley’s cat disappearing? Linda Tripp and others suffering the wrath of the IRS? And the only attempt to punish Joe Wilson for “speaking out” was made by Joe Wilson’s lyin’ mouth. Should I remind her that John Kerry dropped Wilson from his campaign website when it was proven that Wilson was nothing but a lying, self-serving primadonna?

    And the prettiest candidate ev-ver, John Edwards;

    “Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today,” Edwards said. “President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush’s America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI.

    “George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today.”

    Like John Edwards would know anything about being equal with the rest of us, or even anything about justice.

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said: “The President’s decision to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence is disgraceful. Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq war. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone.

    “Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter of national security,” Reid said. “The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own vice president’s chief of staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.”

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “The president’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people.

    “The president said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the president shows his word is not to be believed,” Pelosi said. “He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his administration accountable.”

    Reid and Pelosi had better check their hypocrisy meters on those statements and see how it pegs when the names William Jefferson and John Murtha are run through the meter. And it’s all hyperbole, any-damn-way.

    All of those Democrats act as if the rule of law has been tossed out the window – one guy who got railroaded by an over-excited prosecutor got an unreasonable sentence commuted. That’s it. He wasn’t even the target of the investigation – just an ancillary player.

    If they want to talk about breaches of national security and circumventing the rule of law, let’s talk about Sandy Berger and his reluctance to even meet the terms of his plea agreement. When the Democrats get their panties in a wad over that, maybe they’ll have some credibility on the Scooter Libby subject.

    The Bloodthirsty Liberal has more on the hypocrisy, Crotchety Old Bastard thinks it was a weak decision (so does the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal), Curt at Flopping Aces thinks the Left’s reaction will be pure entertainment for the rest of us, the editorial board of the Washington Post, typically a useless opinion, says that “Scooter Libby’s prison sentence was excessive, but so is President Bush’s commutation.”

    Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters brings us the “Today” interview with Joe Wilson from this morning – as if Wilson has anything newsworthy to say about the case now. 

    Wesley Pruden gives the President “one cheer, but no more than two”;

    He spared Scooter Libby from prison, as decency demanded, but left intact a $250,000 fine, which can only be regarded as tribute to the venality of a special prosecutor and the vanity of a federal judge (both lawyers, after all).

    I guess that’s the only time that we’ll read that Libby still got hit with a $1/4mil fine.

  • This is why I hate the pompous scum on the Left

    Someone tell Elizabeth Edwards that it’s numbnuts like this Larry C. Johnson who “lowers the political dialogue at precisely the time we need to raise it” not Ann Coulter;

    Preliminary, unconfirmed reports indicate a nuclear blast has occurred at Glasgow’s international airport.  No one has seen the mushroom cloud or heard the blast, but something by God is happening and it must be terrible.  There is smoke and fire.  In fact, a car is on fire.  It must be Al Qaeda.  Only Al Qaeda knows how to set themselves on fire inside a car.  Please.  Flee to the hills (leave you doors unlocked).  Oh the humanity!

    I found the link at Little Green Footballs because I don’t usually venture into the slime that call themselves the great thinkers on the Left. I found this, with a helpful assist from The Conservative Article Annals who trolled the depths of The Daily Kos;

    The Al Qeida or Real IRA wannabes failed.  Chemistry and physics were not on their side.  They did succeed in getting the inept press led by Faux News to to characterize the cars “as bombs that would have killed hundreds of people.”  

    The press managed to scare and terrorize people again.

    Of course, it’s the press that’s terrorizing Britons, not “asians”. I thought the whole idea of terrorism is to frighten people – successful in attaining a large body count of innocents or not, that’s what crashing a flaming car into a crowded airport achieves.

    Yeah, so far UKers have been lucky this year – but the thing about amateur terrorists is that the ones who live, learn from those who didn’t. The intent is just as dangerous with or without the skill.

    John Edwards said the global war on terror is a bumpersticker slogan, Michael Moore repeats “there is no terrorist threat” every chance he gets. The Democrat presidential candidates think that fighting terror is a spigot we can turn off whenever  we want. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi think that the war on terror is just something that gets in the way of their social agenda.

    I’m pretty sure this idiot Larry C. Johnson, on September 10th, 2001, would’ve scoffed at 19 Arabs trying to crash four airplanes into buildings armed only with boxcutters, too. Or a couple of rednecks who parked a truckload of manure in front of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma.

    Just like the bozos on the Left who scoffed at the Dix Six and all of the other cells the feds have rolled up in the last five years. Yeah, Richard Reid was a dope – but he got explosives on a plane. If he hadn’t sweat so much that his matches didn’t light on the first strike, he would have taken that plane out, too.

    Yeah, these terrorists are incompetent morons- somehow the profession of suicidal maniacs doesn’t attract those who might otherwise become rocket scientists – until they get successful, and it only takes once. 

    At least this Canadian fellow, Red Tory, admits it’s a real terrorist attack, but somehow the fact that it happened in the UK, proves that Bush is wrong about fighting terrorists in their own backyards;

    …if nothing else, they point out yet again the fallacy of the Big Fib© still being trotted out by Bush-Cheney about the importance of “fighting the terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them here” or as Stephen Harper put it last month when speaking at Petawawa, “the risk of terrorism here if we do not confront it there.” As has been demonstrated by the al Qaeda-related London bombings of 2005 that killed 52 and the Madrid train bombings that killed 191, and by numerous failed or thwarted plots in recent years, involvement in the conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan provide absolutely no defense from terrorism at home. Nothing could be further from the truth in fact and its time the government stopped indulging itself in this fractured fairy tale when attempting to drum up support for the war in Afghanistan.

    So we should just sit there and take it, I suppose, cowering in our basements until the next strike. So, Leftists, which is it? Are they not a serious threat or are they proof that we can’t take pre-emptive measures to stop their attacks? Or are ya’all just so damned smart that any excuse will suffice?

    Mr. Red Tory should take the time read Sergeant Grumpy;

    The Islamists do not simply want us to leave them alone, to live and let live. They want us to submit to the will of Islam, to abandon enlightenment and reason, humanity and civility. To live according to the tribal arabian cruelty that subjugates women, crushes dissent and dialogue, and takes away every freedom we have fought so hard to enjoy.

    Where do they learn such hate? Is it from the American and Israeli gunships? No, it is from two of the most powerful institutions in any culture for shaping the minds of it’s people – religion and education.

    I guess we’ve all forgotten about the bomb in the airport at Ibiza, Spain, earlier today haven’t we? The best details are at Spanish Pundit. It serves to remind us that we need to fight all terrorists, whether they’re al Qaeda or ETA or FARC or whoever.

  • Venezuelan soccer fans protest Chavez at Copa

    Despite Chavez best efforts to keep protesters away from the Copa America soccer tournament, Associated Press reports about half of the 40,000 fans broke into anti-Chavez chants;

    MARACAIBO, Venezuela (AP) – Thousands of Venezuelan soccer fans used an international tournament to show opposition to President Hugo Chavez, rising to their feet with chants of “Freedom!” The chants, which included “This government is going to fall,” began shortly into the second half of Thursday’s match between the United States and Argentina in the western city of Maracaibo, a stronghold of opposition to Chavez. 

    Chavez opponents are hoping the arrival of thousands of tourists for the Copa America tournament will draw attention to their protests against the president’s refusal to renew the licence of a popular opposition-aligned television channel.

    “We want the world to know we’re not all with Chavez,” said Gabriel Gonzalez, a business student at the University of Zulia, who attended Thursday’s match.

    About half the crowd of 40,000 appeared to join in the chants, which filled the stadium for about three minutes.

    Chavez, who was re-elected by a wide margin in December, has gone to great lengths to keep Venezuela’s bitter political divide from spilling into the tournament, banning protests in and near stadiums and ordering state security forces to crack down on any that do arise.

    Only one match in the three-week-long tournament is being held in the protest-prone capital of Caracas.

    But opposition activists seem determined to voice their criticisms about Chavez to the world.

    “I don’t really know whether it’s spontaneous, semi-spontaneous or directed from above” by the political opposition, said Steve Ellner, a political science professor at Venezuela’s University of the East. “This could be part of a strategy to erode support and create uncertainty.”

    The chants on Thursday followed a heckling incident two days earlier, when a small number of fans booed Chavez as he attended a ceremony.

    All this despite Chavez best laid plans to make the Copa about him, according to Daniel at Venezuela News and Views;

    As expected Chavez could not resist to make the Copa America his. From “ahora es de todos” the Soccer tournament went to “ahora es de Chavez“. How come the Conmebol allowed 1) the silly and stupid speech of Chavez, something which was never allowed in previous editions of the Copa? and 2) this picture below (from EFE through Tal Cual)?

    Gateway Pundit has a link to the video on YouTube and another wire service story. But the Venezuelan blogs seem silent on it.

    And Chavez is making deals with Russia to build four new refineries. No wonder he slammed the US missile defense plans for Europe. I wonder if he’ll be using Cuban slave labor for his refineries, too.

    RCTV’s Observador Online reports that Chavez is in negotiations with Belarussia to buy Venezuela a modern air defense system including missiles, radar and a command system;

    29 de junio de 2007.-
    El presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, llegó este viernes a Minsk, la capital de Bielorrusia, para concretar la adquisición de un moderno sistema de defensa aérea. Según medios rusos y bielorrusos, se trata de un sistema de defensa aérea a partir de baterías de misiles rusos S-300 PMU-2 y Tor M-1, dotadas de radares, para el que Bielorrusia ha ofrecido crear un sistema de mando automático.

    Paranoia writ large.

  • What year is this?

    I made the mistake of reading the Washington Post this morning before I read anything else. I read about the Democrat presidential candidates debate last night here in DC (excuse me for not knowing there was a debate scheduled last night in my hometown). Anyway, I read about about some Supreme Court decision that somehow portends the end of civilization (something else I missed yesterday, apparently – probably because of the chattering class’ preoccupation with the immmigration bill);

    The forum at Howard University seemed to be a guaranteed fit for Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), the only black candidate in the race. He repeatedly discussed racial disparity, education and AIDS and used his unique status to call for greater responsibility from African Americans, one of his frequent themes. But the audience largely embraced the other seven Democrats on stage as well, applauding Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) when she called for a greater focus on AIDS research and cheering Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) when he called for an end to the Iraq war.

    By the end of the 90-minute forum — attended by numerous prominent black leaders, including Al Sharpton and Princeton scholar Cornel West — the group had covered an array of issues, such as the genocide in Darfur and disparities in education.

    “You can look at this stage and see an African American, a Latino, a woman contesting for the presidency of the United States,” Clinton said. “But there is so much left to be done, and for anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America is to deny the reality in front of our very eyes.”

    Obama, when it was his turn, said, “We have made enormous progress, but the progress that we have made is not good enough.”

    Just hours after the Supreme Court handed down a decision restricting public school districts’ use of race in most school-acceptance decisions, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) described the ruling as “a major step backwards.” He added: “And as president of the United States, I would use whatever tools available to me to see to it that we reverse this decision today.”

    Referring to the Bush administration, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) said: “They have turned the court upside down, and the next president of the United States will be able to determine whether or not we go forward or continue this slide.”

    So, I’m thinking “Holy Crap!, the Supreme Court has refused to allow Black people into schools across the country based on their skin pigment”. But then I find out that’s not exactly true from the Wall Street Journal;

    In one of its most bitterly divided rulings of recent years, the Supreme Court sharply restricted how school districts can racially integrate their student bodies, reflecting deep disagreements over the meaning of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

    Yesterday’s ruling could bring sweeping change to hundreds of public-school districts, many of which must rethink the use of various race-based policies they have voluntarily adopted, including the busing of students from minority urban areas to predominantly white suburbs. Except for districts ordered by courts to remedy the ills of prior official segregation, the decision effectively outlaws assigning students to a school because of their race.

    That means more districts are likely to seek diversity based on students’ socioeconomic status. Some, such as Pinellas County, Fla., have already dropped any consideration of race.

    So basicly, the Supreme Court just ruled what it’s always ruled – no preference based on skin color, no restrictions based on skin color. So what’s earth shaking about this? Well, the Supreme Court actually ruled in favor of everyone equally, not giving any preferences to anyone. They said a lack of skin pigment is equal to some skin pigment and a lot of skin pigment – that in the Great Scheme of Things, all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

    Someone said once;

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    Honestly, I thought we’d arrived at Martin Luther King, Junior’s dream. So what are the Democrat candidates talking about?

    “You can look at this stage and see an African American, a Latino, a woman contesting for the presidency of the United States,” Clinton said. “But there is so much left to be done, and for anyone to assert that race is not a problem in America is to deny the reality in front of our very eyes.”

    Race is only a problem because Democrats see it as a problem. What, pray tell, is left to be done? Legislate away thoughts? Legislate some grandiose give-away program – based on skin pigment? The court said we’re all equal – regardless of skin pigment. I think we’ve come thousands of miles from where we were when I began my life.

    Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) described the ruling as “a major step backwards.” He added: “And as president of the United States, I would use whatever tools available to me to see to it that we reverse this decision today.”

    A step backwards from where? How? Just mouthing these empty words certainly don’t help, Mr. Pudgy. Words that promise to overturn the colorblind Constitution. Empty BS from the Empty BS Party.

    This is just another campaign issue they plan to wave like a bloody shirt – but nothing they can do anything about because there’s nothing that can be done. Remember the blue ribbon commission on Race that Bill Clinton empaneled? What did they do about race besides yammer? What could they do? Just talk – because the problem is only in some people’s minds. Usually weak-minded people at that.

    Like the guys at the Daily Kos – this guy in particular; Adam Bonin who wrote a lengthy essay on the decision today on AlterNet wherein he concluded;

    It is difficult to deny the importance of teaching children, during their formative years, how to deal respectfully and collegially with peers of different races. Whether one would call this a compelling interest or merely a highly rational one strikes me as little more than semantics. The reality is that attitudes and patterns of interaction are developed early in life and, in a multicultural and diverse society such as ours, there is great value in developing the ability to interact successfully with individuals who are very different from oneself.

    I thought we were all equal – that we’re all the same. And who gives a tiny rat’s ass whether or not we “interact successfully”, and where in the Constitution does mandate that the government has to insure that we “interact successfully”? Since when is a court required to engineer our social strata? Who are these goofballs and what law school teaches this goofball stuff?  

    And anyone who thinks Renquist and O’Connor would’ve voted differently, they’re fooling themselves – you can’t blame this on Bush. Blame it on the Constitution.