Black is white

Would Obama have been ok with this from Hillary Clinton?

"I would hope that a wise Latina white woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white mixed race male who hasn't lived that life."

No.

Stack that with Sotomayor's perfunctory denial of equality under the law to whites in Ricci v. DeStefano and her tittering affirmation that policy is made in Appeal Courts and her leadership role in La Raza (The Race) and it seems that she's either a racist, a chauvinist or a pc hack or all of the above. Everyone knows that there's no way a conservative could overcome such a record to be appointed to The Supreme Court and no Senator who puts country before politics should approve this awful nomination.

Ironically liberals have their doubts too since no-one knows her view on Roe v. Wade. As a betting man I'm happy to take long odds against this nomination succeeding. Note that The Supreme Court will probably rule on Ricci v. Destefano before Senate hearings are complete. Whatever the ruling, it will include excoriating commentary upon the injustice of Sotomayor's judgement from judges who believe in equality before the law. Just one memorable phrase in that commentary can sink the nomination of this casual racist. Chief Justice Roberts was definitive in 2007:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race

I do have mixed feelings since something tells me that Sotomayor, once appointed, might decide that Roe v. Wade was a mistake. She is Catholic after all and would make 6 Roman Candles out of the 9. But I nominate another Puerto Rican from the South Bronx, Judge José Cabranes, who wrote of Sotomayor's judgement in Ricci:

This per curiam opinion adopted in toto the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit. It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at he core of this case, and a casual reader of the opinion could be excused for wondering whether a learning disability played at least as much a role in this case as the alleged racial discrimination. This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.

Altogether now sing "Fuhgeddaboudit, he ain't a broad." Well, this is my judgement:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of gender is to stop discriminating on the basis of gender

Jonathan Miller

Here's the pitch: English intellectual speaks nearly non-stop for half an hour - 15 minutes on Shakespeare, 15 minutes on stammering, also waves his arms. Lap it up:

I threw in the last clip as an afterthought. In it Miller, a famous atheist, draws from Dudley Moore a model of deep Intelligent Design.

Worse than a crime, a blunder

Obama's Press Secretary tweaks the tail of a big bad wolf he thinks has the measure of:

“You're not going to find very many of these newspapers and truth within 25 words of each other,” Gibbs continued.

The British Press is more adept at telling truth to power than the lapdogs whom he's addressing. The particular story denied by Gibbs has a named source with impressive credentials. Moreover it's carefully written. It may not be true, I hope it isn't, but the reporting looks responsible compared to plenty in the NYT or the W.Post or the LA Times, regular sources of plagiarism, unsourced half-truths and outright lies. The British Press is more streetwise, more diverse, more hungry, more competitive AND it has a sense of humour. When stories are made up, the rest of the pack will tear into the fabrication and editors get fired - Piers Morgan memorably so.

Gibbs didn't need to set this up. The UK Press now has a vested interest in contrasting the truth of their stories with the truth of his. He will lose.

UPDATE - from The Daily Telegraph's response:

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington. Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

Robert Gibbs' completely unwarranted rant against the British press is an absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views. An unreserved apology by Gibbs is also in order.

For all its talk of "raising America's standing" in the world after the Bush years, the Obama administration is doing a spectacularly bad job of reaching out to its allies. Unfortunately this is the new face of America's public diplomacy, which will only serve to alienate public opinion across the Atlantic. Congratulations Gibbs - you've just made an enemy out of the entire British media, quite an achievement for the man in charge of selling the President's message.

"The entire British media" is hyperbole only if you think of the BBC as British.

The Aid Virus

DanHan:

Socialists....emphasise motive over outcome.... the key thing, for Lefties, is to show that you're a caring person.

I've just been talking to a very clever man. He's called Thompson Ayodele, he's from Nigeria and he thinks that overseas aid is making African countries poorer.

Foreign aid, he suggests, isn't useless; it's actively harmful. It discourages enterprise, fosters dependency and bolsters corrupt regimes.

As Thompson puts it: "The British Treasury is empty. So you are going to be borrowing money in order to give it away. And the countries that get it will be poorer as a result". Yup: but at least we'll have shown everyone how nice we are.

I'd quibble with this last; the government isn't "borrowing other people's money", it's stealing it from other people's children and their own at the point of a gun, the gun to be paid for by those children. And The Aid Virus doesn't just corrupt Africa, it corrupts the mass of Obama voters in America: government workers, aid recipients, professional victims and elites.

The Decline of the West

Michael Savage is a lucky man. Not only does he have the publicity of being banned from the UK for being a right-wing talk-show host, but the politician who banned him is such an easy target. He should Google "Jacqui Smith expenses porno" to see how my tax pounds are spent.