LongHairedWeirdo

We've been seeing an interesting example of racially charged narrative in the news recently.

Sonia Sotomayor is being harassed for having said that she didn't quite agree that a wise man and a wise woman will necessarily come to the same decision; she cited some famous instances in which the Supreme Court upheld discrimination, and said she felt that a wise Latina would more often than not come to a better decision than a man who hadn't had the experiences of such a woman.

Many white men angrily said that this was unfair, that if *they* said that a white man was a better judge than a Latina, they'd be ridden out of town on a rail, and, oh, by the way, Sotomayor was WRONG WRONG WRONG on the Ricci case, where she obviously demonstrated prejudice due to her ethnic background.

No rail-riding so far.

As you know, the President of the United States is suspected of engaging in horrendously egregious misconduct.

Noble Public Servant Gerald Walpin was fired - yes, *fired* - for daring to investigate one of Obama's supporters, leading to CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS with no charges filed, and the return of some federal funding because there's no proof it was spent properly due to sloppy accounting.

This is terrible, because Walpin, ,just like any other competent attorney doing the same job could have, found *SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS OF WASTE AND FRAUD* in the Americorps plan, including the aforementioned Obama booster, Kevin Johnson whose organization was actually only asked to return a bit under half a mill; ignore that; the 75 million is more impressive and damaging sounding.

There is no other reason for firing Walpin. The only possible reason for firing Walpin was that he investigated an Obama supporter.

Look... some members of the so-called "reality based community" will say he made overstated claims that could not be supported by the subsequent investigation... but hey, he got some money returned, so what's the big deal that he claimed a lot more than could be proven?

And they'll harp on that tired old allegation that he withheld exculpatory evidence from the US Attorney's office. But come on; prosecuting attorneys just *love* surprises!

And, sure, he didn't bother to do an audit to determine how much money might have been mis-spent, but what's more important, a few facts, or making some loud, newsworthy accusations against a person who's running for political office?

And come on... we all know that talking to the media during the election about an investigation which later found no criminal wrongdoing is *not* unethical. Why should people be entitled to the presumption of innocence *during a political campaign*? What kind of pansy-ass liberal thinks that you shouldn't let an investigation run the risk of doing irreparable harm to the subject of the investigation?

And, yes, yes, Walpin pushed to have Johnson barred from receiving or dealing with federal funds - a rare sanction, invoked (per the IG's office) "If we find really egregious stuff and we want to stop the bleeding" - which could have barred him from carrying out his duties as mayor, and Walpin vociferously fought to keep that suspension in place despite the damage that could do to the city of Sacramento, CA, but after his clear objectivity and fairness in other parts of the investigation, why should this count against him?

Anyway, as you can see, this is clearly a purge, and a warning. Obama is saying to people working for the government that if you royally fuck up an investigation investigate one of his friends, you're out of here, if he has the power to fire you.

You know how we know that?

Because Obama had one of his people call Walpin up, ask him if he was going to resign, and told him he had *one hour* - ONE HOUR - to resign, or he'd be fired.

Clearly, this phone call was an attempt to get around a law that said that if Obama wants to fire an Inspector General, he has to send a letter to both houses of Congress, saying that he is firing the IG, and why.

Even more egregiously, although the law doesn't dictate what reasons Obama can give for firing an IG, *HE SAID HE WAS FIRING WALPIN BECAUSE HE NO LONGER HAD CONFIDENCE IN WALPIN*.

So, clearly, he was quite possibly violating that law, by sending that letter, saying Walpin was fired 30 days after the letter was sent. Oh, maybe not the *letter* of the law, since the law just says he has to send a letter, but the *spirit*. Because the law was intended to provide oversight, giving Congress 30 days to act! And, you see, Obama claiming he lost confidence in Walpin denies Congress the power to engage in oversight, because if it doesn't, *OBAMA WOULDN'T HAVE VIOLATED THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW*. And we know that's not possible.

In any case, calling Walpin up and asking him to resign must be a manner of dodging that oversight.

Because, you know, that call was a threatening one. Resign - or be *FIRED*.

*Quit your job* - or you'll lose it anyway.

I'm sorry; I know that's so threatening that some folks reading this are probably having palpitations, but I need to drive home the truth. Besides, can you imagine something more bullying?

I can't.

Oh, sure, some dirty stinking liberal who insists on giving Obama the "benefit of the doubt" will surely say that it's common courtesy to give a guy a chance to say he's decided to pursue other interests, rather than to say he's being fired. But how on earth are you supposed to believe that Barack Obama - a Chicago pol! - could have acted out of common courtesy?

Look, none of this proves anything... I'll be the first to admit that. But it bears watching. Because if we keep ignoring the atrocious acts of Walpin, and slant the story really heavily, we can make it sound like this makes Obama look really bad!

I'm not that old, but I can tell you a story about how things used to be in the good old days.

Back in the day, here's how insurance would work.

An insurance company would expect to take in a lot of money - just to have a solid figure, let's say a billion dollars over the course of 20 years. And it would expect to pay out a billion dollars over the course of 20 years. And it would pay out its administrative expenses and such simply from the investment income from that billion dollars over those 20 years.

It's supposed to be a pretty dull business. You make careful, prudent investments to make absolutely sure that you have the money you need to pay out claims. You spend hours pouring over actuarial tables and calculating premiums to make sure that you offer good value for the customer's insurance dollar, while still covering the possibility of a large claim coming in.

But sometime a while back, folks decided that greed is good and free enterprise can do anything better than a bunch of boring accountants and actuaries trying to provide a valuable public service. Let's run insurance like a for-profit business, and the magic of the free market will make everything better!

And, since greed is good, it's good to try to keep every dollar in premium payments you can for as long as you can. It's good to find ways to cut the costs of claims (even if this means denying a claim for an excessive period of time). It becomes a great idea to find a reason to, say, drop an expensive patient-to-be from your health insurance rolls, if you can do so legally. Remember, you're not trying to provide a valuable public service, you're trying to maximize shareholder return!

Of course, if a small group of extremely wealthy investors wanted to run an insurance company along more traditional lines, they could. It would have to be a small group of very wealthy investors, though... if such a company was publicly traded, it would likely be the target of a buyout. You see, since it wasn't maximizing its profit, its stock value would be low; other companies would realize they could make more money from that customer base. They'd buy out the company (and thus, the insurance contracts), probably using a leveraged buyout - the kind of risky investment old-time insurance companies would consider imprudent - and bye-bye traditional company.

Right now, Congress is considering health care reform. One of the possibilities on the table is a "public option", which is to say, medicaid for anyone willing to pay for it. Let the government run a health care plan; it won't be for-profit, and it won't try to be flashy. It'll just try to balance out premiums paid with benefits paid. It'll be immune to leveraged buyouts, and while it won't attract the flashiest of the flashy investment gurus, it won't need to, because it doesn't need to make a bunch of shareholders happy with maximized profits... it'll just need to make stakeholders (that's "we the people of the United States") happy.

The insurance companies hate it; they're willing to take the good (a mandate that everyone has health insurance coverage), but they're not willing to take the bad (competition demanding that they be more efficient than a government agency). Which is strange, since we've been assured that the government can never be more efficient than a private company.

But what it really comes down to is this: in order to beat the government at the insurance game, they'll have to play the insurance game the old fashioned way, making more prudent investments, finding ways to serve customers and maximize the value of their policies, and otherwise engaging actual, honest competition that is intended to benefit the consumer first and foremost.

Here's an example of "context".

First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.

Note that the subject, a woman who has recently come to national attention, is talking about cases involving discrimination. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in gender discrimination cases. It certainly is not true that other folks are *incapable* of understanding the values.

But it took until 1972 for 9 white men to uphold a discrimination lawsuit involving a woman.

A wise latina would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion when discussing cases like those under consideration... those involving racism or sexism. Or, so she suggests, recognizing that a great many of those cases were decided less wisely, since sexism and racism were both upheld when the court was composed entirely of white men. But even there, she states, quite clearly, that "many are ... capable" of understanding the values and needs of other groups.

Why don't conservatives who want to attack Sotomayor bring this context up? Is it that they can't read her speech and recognize the context?

Or does the first part of the sentence say all that needs to be said? That too many conservatives just wish to attack Sotomayor, without regard for the truth?

There are a lot of people out there trying to make a big case out of the question of what Nancy Pelosi knew, and when she knew it, when it comes to the question of the Bush administration torturing people.

Now, me, I'm glad that there are people who realize that torture is a horrible, horrible thing, and who realize that someone who knew about it, and didn't act to stop it, was a terrible person for that failure.

But before we start crucifying the moral cowards who might have known about it (if the CIA isn't being deceptive - go figure, a spy agency being deceptive!), shouldn't we start crucifying those who engaged in torture cheerleading and coverups first? Or, you know, tortured people?

Shouldn't we investigate fully, and learn everything we can, and spread the blame where it belongs, rather than singling out individuals who weren't involved in the creation or implementation of the policy?

If Nancy Pelosi is horrible for having known and done nothing, there are a lot of bigger fish we should be frying before we get to this guppy.

There are a lot of folks talking about this.

"Gee, Cheney, who will be shamed and maybe indicted if torture is useless, is telling us that torture is acceptable. Now, as tempting as it is to note that he's telling us self-serving bullshit, maybe we should consider whether torture works... because, after all, Cheney was so (cough) successful, and he seems so serious."

The trouble is that there were a lot of people who supported torture in the days after 9/11, who now have to try to justify their own cowardice and brutality. And there were a lot of people who turned the other way when hearing about torture, and they have to try to justify their own guilt over not caring.

Well, there's one thing that we know that torture does, one way in which we know that torture "works".

We know that torture can force people to say whatever needs to be said to get the torture to stop. In SERE, for example, our military folks are forced to sign confessions saying they have committed war crimes. These are tough people, who know they will become legends if they hold out against the worst that SERE can dish out to them... and they, in almost all cases, sign false confessions.

(I've heard it claimed that no one holds up under torture, but that groups have managed to escape or overpower the interrogators. Obviously, I can't speak authoritatively on this subject.)

So we know torture can easily produce false information. We also know that false information can be a lot more damaging than a lack of factual information. It can be very hard to prove a negative! On the other hand, truthful statements are easier to collaborate... hey, they're true, after all. So standard interrogation, which produces more true statements, is going to be better.

Ah, but if there's a ticking time bomb...

Yes, indeed. If we know there's a ticking time bomb, and we know who knows the location of the time bomb, we can torture that person... and maybe get false information out of them. And then we waste precious time chasing down a false lead.

And if it is a false lead, does it mean the torture-victim lied? Or didn't know the bomb's location after all?

The only thing torture does is get people to say something. Proving that it's true is another thing entirely, and figuring out if it's false can be flat out impossible. Standard interrogation methods produce better intelligence; that should be all anyone needs to know.

I saw an interesting argument posted by someone, somewhere, and I thought I'd point out the flaw to it.

This person said that, if Medicare is going broke, universal coverage isn't going to help... that we awful liberals are just making stuff up when we point to universal coverage as a method to protect Medicare. After all, Medicare is already big enough to gain economies of scale, and to set rules and negotiate. So how can universal coverage help?

And on the face of it, it sounds almost reasonable. Doesn't it?

Well, here's the thing. No one is saying "let's start covering everyone without figuring out how to fund this coverage." There'll be some combination of contributions and taxes or fees, or who-knows-what, intended to pay for medical care. And if we figure out how we can fund medical coverage for everyone, we've also figured out how to fund medical coverage for those now covered by Medicare.

Too bad for the "universal coverage can't fix Medicare!" meme. It could have been such a lovely little soundbite if it wasn't so tragically and obviously false.

So, for the past while now, Dick Cheney's been going around being, well, Dick Cheney... do we need a nastier insult? Barack Obama, he says, is making the country less safe, and Cheney's championship of torture helped protect us.

For a while, I was just disgusted by this, but then I thought about two people.

First, I thought about Rush Limbaugh and his now infamous "I hope he fails" bit. Isn't this really the same kind of thing? Cheney's going around, hoping desperately that a failure on the part of Obama might redeem his own legacy.

But then I thought about Jack Goldsmith. Jack Goldsmith pointed out that the horrible legal opinions rendered by the OLC before he joined were the result of people who were afraid that there might be another terror attack... and that they might be blamed for letting it happen. It's kind of interesting that he, a lawyer, mentioned this specifically. It wasn't just the fear of another attack; if that was all it was, why bring up the prospect of blame at all? No... I trust Mr. Goldsmith on this. The Bushies were not just afraid of another attack; they were afraid of the blame and fingerpointing that would follow.

And isn't that all you need to know about Cheney, and Limbaugh, and the rest of the Bushies right now?

They had six years to run the country, and they failed miserably. They used every trick they had available to them, and they still flopped. And now, they have a smart, competent, strong leader who doesn't need to play their games, and what can they do? They can hope he fails.

Because what if he succeeded? What if he showed that fair tax rates and smart spending could help put the country back on its feet? What if he showed that America was stronger when it wasn't waging pointless wars? What if he does better at keeping America safe by using good intel, and living up to American values?

I think the Bushies can deal with being proven incompetent... they've had enough practice. But now, they'd also be proven wrong. And I don't think they're emotionally capable of dealing with that.

So, I hear-tell that Wanda Sykes took some shots at Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and this is supposed to bother us... over the line, and all that.

Well, let's remember who Rush Limbaugh is.

First, he's an entertainer, which is to say, a bullshit artist. If you're a bullshit artist, you can't expect to be treated with respect. That's the nature of being a bullshit artist. If you're not real, you don't get the respect due real people.

But, let's just pretend that he's not. Let's pretend he's being serious, and deserves the respect due his ideas. What's the most famous recent idea he's put forth?

Well, that he hopes Obama fails, of course. And we're supposed to accept this. Why? Well, because he disagrees with Obama's ideas. And so it's okay to hope they fail.

That is: he, and his supporters, say that it's okay to hope that the country goes through pain and trouble, rather than have that pain and trouble be avoided by ideas they disagree with.

In short, they'd rather hope that the country suffers, if the other option is that they'll be proven wrong.

Does Limbaugh deserve to be protected from scorn, when he'd rather hope the country suffers, rather than see his bloviation exposed for the utter bullshit that it is?

No.

Kids today - by which I mean 20 somethings - are evil, nasty, hateful, and short sighted. You know how I know this? They make broad over-generalizations and only consider one kind of thinking to be proper. They're all wrong, because they don't think the way I do!

Oh, yeah - and if you disagree with someone, and say so in a mildly nasty manner, you should be thinking about how it looks like cross burning!

(I only wish I was kidding.)