When President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the usual suspects were all like “Wow! First woman Hispanic Hispanic female Latina woman from Puerto Rico!” and I was like “Cool, but what about Benjamin Cardozo?” Well, it turns out that ol’ Ben don’t qualify as Hispanic, as Lord Peter Wimsey might have said, because his antecedents were Portuguese, and that’s not Hispanic. However, it is Latino…and then again some people think that Cardozo’s family was originally Spanish, not Portuguese. But plenty of people wouldn’t count Cardozo as anything even remotely “Spanish” in origin, because he was Jewish, and hey, we’ve let lots of Jews onto the Supreme Court so now they’re no longer considered minorities any more.

So what’s the big deal about this stuff? Nothing! It’s just that some people get all excited about the “first this” and “first that” until the end result is that everyone is issuing press releases like the “first disabled lesbian Native American to be named CEO of a green renewable energy firm in the Midwest” or something. As far as I’m concerned, an announcement of this magnitude should be about someone’s qualifications and background, and all this minority rah-rah nonsense should be left for the last sentence in the last paragraph of the press release, if at all. But what do I know, I only spent 20 years as a journalist.

So what about her qualifications? Well, Judge Sotomayor is apparently a top-notch pick and more than just well qualified, having graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and having spent almost two decades as a respected Federal judge. No problem there. And I have nothing to say about any of her so-called “litmus test” beliefs — where people decide if they like a judge based on their “check the box” position on abortion, gun rights, free speech, death penalty, etc. — because apparently she hasn’t signaled one strong preference or another on these subjects in all this time. So that’s very good, because every case should be decided on its own merits, not as a rubber stamp based on a judge’s personal opinion.

My main concern with Judge Sotomayor is simply her reported viewpoint, given in a speech, that a “wise Latina woman” (sic), presumably herself, “would reach a better conclusion than a white male”.

Let’s pause here for a moment. Can you imagine any Supreme Court nominee in the last 25 years who wouldn’t have been totally demolished if they had said “a white male would reach a better conclusion than a [fill-in-the-blank minority]“? That sort of remark would be rightly considered as totally racist, and before anyone on either side of the aisle even considers confirming Judge Sotomayor, they ought to get a very clear answer from her on how she reconciles that kind of statement with her sworn duty to judge cases fairly…especially given her decision in Ricci v. DeStefano.

Well, I’m not sure how else to put it.

According to this article in the Jerusalem Post, Rahm Emanuel, who is Obama’s Chief of Staff, warned hundreds of top supporters of Israel that stopping Iran’s nuclear program is conditional upon Israel making “progress” in its “peace” negotiations with the “Palestinians”.

Essentially, Emanuel is using third-party nuclear blackmail, implying that if Israel doesn’t do more for the Gazans — you know, the people that all the Arab countries wring their hands over but want nothing to do with themselves — then Obama will sit back and let Iran blow up Tel Aviv with a nuclear weapon. Naturally, the Israelis will not let things go that far but will target Iran’s nuclear facilities themselves if necessary…at which point, Obama will join the chorus of pious denouncers of Israel’s “aggression”.

Politics may suck, but Rahm Emanuel sucks the worst.

OK, this is it. When I first read this article, I thought it was a sick joke, or The Onion. But then the full horror of it dawned on me.

For six months, I’ve tried to calm down. I haven’t been getting myself riled up by some of the insane things that have been going on. Well, OK, I have, but I’ve been mostly talking to the cats about it, rather than blogging about it and going public.

I’ve kept quiet about some of the insane things that have been going on in this state and this country (the world is too big even for me to take on . But maybe I’ve been fooling myself. Maybe it’s actually better for me to express my outrage. Maybe someone will read this and it will do some good.

But I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s too late…that maybe things are too far gone, and too many people are just too stupid or too ignorant or too complacent to understand what’s going on and how bad it is and how it must be fixed. Hopefully not. Anyway, that slim hope is what got me back up here today, because perhaps this blog, and others like it, can educated, elucidate, and shake loose enough people to get things going properly again.

So here we go. I’m going to quote liberally from this article in the San Francisco Chronicle so you can understand exactly how bad the problem is. My comments are in bold.

(03-25) 20:36 PDT Oakland — About 60 people marched and rallied in Oakland on Wednesday to condemn the police and honor Lovelle Mixon, who was killed by Oakland police after he fatally shot four officers Saturday.

To condemn the police? The dead ones, who died trying to keep the mean streets of Oakland safe, or the ones who were left alive after the maniac Mixon starting his “killing spree”? To honor Lovelle Mixon? For what? For being a conviicted felon and a child rapist and a cop-killer?

“OPD you can’t hide – we charge you with genocide,” chanted the demonstrators as they marched along MacArthur Boulevard, near the intersection with 74th Avenue where Mixon, 26, a fugitive parolee, gunned down two motorcycle officers who had pulled him over in a traffic stop. He killed two more officers who tried to capture him where he was hiding in his sister’s apartment nearby.

Yeah, the Oakland Police Department is genocidal. They only go after black people, not criminals. /sarcasm

The protest was organized by the Oakland branch of the Uhuru Movement, whose flyers for the march declared, “Stop Police Terror.”

OK, here was a convicted felon in possession of a pistol (totally illegal under both state and Federal law) and (reportedly) an AK-47, which is the favorite firearm of terrorists worldwide and so illegal in California that even Arnold Schwarzenegger himself couldn’t purchase one legally. And the marchers call the police terrorists?

Lolo Darnell, one of Mixon’s cousins at the demonstration, said, “He needs sympathy too. If he’s a criminal, everybody’s a criminal.”

Lolo Darnell may well have a very valid point here.

Asked about police allegations that Mixon was suspected in several rapes, including that of a 12-year-old girl, marcher Mandingo Hayes said, “He wasn’t a rapist. I don’t believe that.”

Three words. Dee Enn Ay.

Bystanders had mixed reactions. Nicole Brown said that she can’t condone murder but that police don’t respect residents of the area. Daria Belt said she had no sympathy for the protesters but sympathized for Mixon’s family.

Yes, well, I realize Mixon’s family lost a family member, but when Mixon ran to his sister’s apartment, he didn’t have that AK-47 until he got there. So was she complicit in storing it for him? Or maybe it was hers in the first place?

Anyone who can support a POS like Lovell “good riddance” Mixon has, in my opinion, failed to meet the basic criteria of “human being” and must now be regarded as simple, vile scum of the earth. No matter what color their skin is. This isn’t about race…it’s about the survival of our civilization…assuming we still have one.

Also on the case: ScoopThis.org

“I fart in your general direction!”

OK, that’s a quote from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and not from Jose Cruz, the star of this particular story, but that’s pretty much what happened.

According to a local news article, Mr. Cruz was stopped by police in West Virginia for driving at night without headlights, and then subsequently arrested for driving while intoxicated. While being processed in the police station, Cruz became argumentative and passed gas directly onto one of the patrolmen, fanning the odorous mixture directly at him (if you read the actual complaint). That’s apparently when they added the battery charge.

Personally, I want to hear the other side of the story, because I think the police version stinks

But seriously…he’s very lucky he didn’t just get beaten to within an inch of his life.

This may be one of the most disgusting and egregious misuses of police force I’ve ever heard of.

According to this story in the Detroit News, police repeatedly beat Ernest Griglen, 59, so hard that he required emergency brain surgery and is still in a coma and on a ventilator more than three months later.

Even though his car had state-issued handicap plates, police admit to striking Griglen repeatedly in the upper chest after pulling him over, apparently after seeing his car weaving in the lane while Griglen was going into insulin shock and mistaking that for intoxication. And the reason they struck him in the chest? To get him to drop his hands, apparently. And their story as to why they took such harsh measures? Because they saw him fiddling with “a black object on his waistband” and they thought it was a weapon.

Unfortunately, it was his insulin pump, which it sounds like he was frantically trying to get to work before he passed out entirely.

But this story from the police doesn’t quite make sense. Who “strikes” (presumably with a police baton) anyone in the chest deliberately, especially an older person, unless they are attempting to cause severe injury, possibly even a heart attack? And if they had struck him in the chest as they say, how did he suffer brain damage? And is this standard police procedure, even for intoxicated subjects?

Perhaps it is in this case, because as it happens, Griglen is black.