So good I decided to post it here

I decided to apply myself to write for Examiner.com, after my wingnut friend joined up and introduced me to it. As part of their application process they ask you to submit a "writing sample," 200-300 words about some topic with a local angle. So I chose to write about the Sotomayor nomination and the Supreme Court ruling reversing the Ricci decision:

Here comes another round of Sotomayor-bashing. The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling overturning the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on the New Haven firefighters' case has already resulted in a statement from our own Senator John Cornyn's office; despite the 5-4 ruling, Cornyn asserted that "all nine justices" were critical of the Court of Appeals ruling, and thus by implication of Sotomayor herself. You can be sure that this will only be the first of many such statements by Sotomayor opponents.

What these people continually leave out are inconvenient facts such as: the 2nd Circuit does not have the luxury of ruling as the Supreme Court does, setting aside black-letter law for their own interpretation- the Appeals court had to rule based on the law as written and the evidence before it; that rulings Sotomayor is associated with don't even come before the Supreme Court unless the Supremes feel that there is an actual question they need to rule on, which means that a 60% reversal rate on such cases (even if that statistic is accurate) should not really be surprising, and leaves out the many more cases they DON'T elect to review; and that Sotomayor's supposed "racism," er, "racialism" is based on taking a quote out of context.

The fact remains that Sotomayor is an outstanding jurist with extensive credentials that qualify her to be named to the Supreme Court. All of this sniping is merely an attempt to muddy the waters and confuse people, trying to somehow paint her as some kind of radical racist. Don't be misled.

American spending priorities

Deep thoughts from The Editors:

A few trillion (more actually) to kill a bunch of foreigners in a couple of wars that have yielded almost nothing but instability and suffering? It would be unpatriotic to bring up the price tag.

A couple of trillion in tax cuts for the insanely wealth heir and heiress set? Opposing them would be class warfare.

$1.8 trillion to cover American citizens who (frequently) must choose between food and medicine, their kids welfare and medical treatment, life and death…?

Well, that is a lot of money. Government needs to be more fiscally responsible. Let’s not get carried away. Looks like socialism to me. Just think of the deficits. Does David Broder think the bill is bi-partisany enough?

Bang on.

And today I see this:

Lawmakers defy veto threat on F-22 fighter

Congress on Thursday moved forward with plans to build more Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter jets, disregarding a veto threat from the Obama administration.

Billions for "defense," but not one cent for poor people.

Funny

Fafblog, an irregular blog (in every sense of that word):

before the end of the world

"How long you think we got before the end of the world?" says me.
"Forever!" says Giblets. "We'll outlast the universe with nothing but gumption and can-do and thousands of tiny robots!"
"It's true!" says me. "A year before the end of the world we will solve the everything shortage through the invention of a miraculous device that can make anything out of simple air and dirt!"
"Now all we need is a way to replenish our rapidly dwindling supply of air and dirt," says Giblets.

We Send Letters

Mr. President:

In your letter yesterday to Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Baucus on health care reform, you mentioned "making every American responsible for having health insurance coverage." I want to make clear my opposition to any sort of mandate forcing American citizens to pay for health insurance. It is not only unfair to force the poorest Americans to pay for health insurance or face federal penalties (and possibly criminal charges), it may also be impractical. We should not force Americans to choose between compliance with a mandate and starvation or homelessness. We also should not force citizens who are self-employed to make similar choices between compliance and career (for those who would be unable to afford insurance while self-employed). Mandatory health insurance is not a solution to the health care crisis.

I am fortunate to be covered by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan. If I were to become unemployed, one of my first decisions would be to forgo health insurance coverage even if it were mandated by this kind of provision. It simply makes no sense to exhaust resources I need for bare survival in order to comply with a federal mandate that is not of direct and immediate benefit to me in such circumstances. I hope you will come to understand that mandating purchase of health insurance by citizens will only result in a massive enforcement headache, requiring expenditure of resources that would offset some or all of the savings you might think the nation would realize under your proposal.

Please do not pursue this misguided "reform." The only true reform that will solve the health care crisis is to join the rest of the industrialized world in implementing a single-payer health care system. Large majorities of American citizens support such a plan.

Thank you for your time,

Rob Woodard
Richardson, TX

Who Examines the Examiners?

A wingnut Strat baseball friend recently signed up with Examiner.com to be Their (Conservative) Man in Tampa. Head on over and give him some love. (I think he gets paid per pageview or something like that, I dunno.) He's a good guy, just misguided. Well, and maybe a bit hypersensitive about reverse racism. And immigration. And Democrats. OK, he listens to too much Rush Limbaugh. Anyway, he's always up for a fight and he's fun to practice arguing against.

So anyway apparently Examiner.com read my browser cookies or something and figured out I live in the Dallas area, and set up links from his blog to all the Dallas Examiner.com blogs. Let's check out some of what's cooking, shall we?

The "Dallas Libertarian Examiner" Garry Reed warns of the giant sucking sound in healthcare should the government-run healthcare plan that President Obama hasn't proposed be implemented. Yes, single-payer healthcare means all the competent doctors will "go Galt" and expatriate themselves to sunny Mexico. "And Thailand and Singapore. And South Korea and Taiwan and Malaysia." Places that will continue to finance their extravagant lifestyles through "free market" (i.e. high) healthcare costs, because as you know Mexico doesn't have a problem with massive and widespread poverty, and those other countries are so easy to emigrate to. Also, your pancreas will crash and your kidneys will curdle and your rectum will rot off (eww) while you are on the government critical healthcare waiting list that doesn't exist in any single-payer system in the world. (And what about all those stories about kidney transplant waiting lists with the system we have now?) Apparently Libertarians are all about scaring you with the ugly things that will happen because of imaginary policies that no one has ever suggested implementing. At least in Dallas.

The "Dallas Republican Examiner" Victor Medina is all riled up about some African immigrant hospital office manager ordering an employee to take down an American flag she had put up in observance of Memorial Day. He didn't even order it burned, just that it be taken down because the display offended him in some unspecified way. Of course this gross act of UnAmericanism was quickly rectified (after the wingnut hissy fits started rolling in), but it just goes to show that those immigrant UnAmericans are everywhere.

More Examinations to come...