Equal Protection

The Supreme Court today decided, 5-4, for the white and Hispanic firefighters in Ricci vs DeStefano today saying that they were unfairly denied promotions because of their race. The split was down the usual lines with Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy going for the plaintiffs.

This is interesting for two reasons.
First it overrules Sotomayors decision which no doubt will be used against her in her confirmation hearings. Remember the Democrats wanted the confirmation hearing to be in mid-July and the GOP wanted it to be later. With Ricci fresh off the docket, I'm sure there will be a sudden and nuanced shift, with Democrats wanting to wait a bit. Not that I can blame them, they touted Sotomayor as a brilliant mind, even if she has said some really stupid things. Public opinion also is against Sotomayor, so expect that angle to be played as well.

A new national poll suggests that nearly two-thirds of Americans think white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut where discriminated against when the city tossed out the results of a promotion exam after too few minorities scored high enough on the test.

The other interesting thing about this decision comes from Justice Scalia. In his concurrence opinion, he writes.

I join the Court's opinion in full, but write separately to observe that its resolution of this dispute merely postpones the evil day on which the Court will have to confront the question: Whether, or to what extent, are the disparate-impact provisions of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 consistent with the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection? The question is not an easy one.
The difficulty is this: Whether or not Title VII's disparate-treatment provisions forbid "remedial" race-based actions when a disparate-impact violation would not otherwise result- the question resolved by the Court today- it is clear that Title VII not only permits but affirmatively requires such actions when a disparate-impact violation would otherwise result. But if the Federal Government is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, then surely it is also prohibited from enacting laws mandating that third parties - e.g., employers, whether private, State, or municipal - discriminate on the basis of race. As the facts of these cases illustrate, Title VII's disparate-impact provisions place a racial thumb on the scales, often requiring employers to evaluate the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes. That type of racial decision making is, as the Court explains, discriminatory.

So when will racial discrimination end? Obviously it is still going on in the workplace. It's going on in the Universities.

Beginning in 2012, UC will no longer automatically admit the top 12.5% of all students based on statewide performance, and will no longer rely so heavily on grades and test scores. Instead, the eligibility pool will be expanded by a projected 40% by eliminating the requirement for applicants to take the SAT subject matter tests. The net effect of these changes is that academic achievement will be less significant and UC admissions administrators will have the "flexibility" to discriminate against those "dull" Asians who "study, study, study" all the time without violating Proposition 209.

What is wrong with these people? What is obvious to most is that all of this is being done in the name of "Diversity."
When will we live in a world when the color of ones skin is no longer a factor in hiring or admissions. Discrimination in any name, no matter the motive is wrong. It's wrong to deny a white the opportunity for advancement, it's wrong to deny a Hispanic the opportunity for advancement, and it's wrong to deny a black the same opportunities.
There is a big difference in equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. They are not the same. Giving everyone the same opportunities is what this country was founded on. Some will succeed and some will fail. The outcome is wholly dependant on the person, not society.
Using the equality of outcomes logic, the State and individuals will continue to use racial discrimination as a factor in everything. They will still rely on the quota system or in Ricci's case, use the threat of litigation as a factor in their hiring. The problem as SCOTUS decision puts clearly, the treat of litigation is not justification for any sort of racial discrimination (2.c.i)
In my talks with supporters of Affirmative Action, they usually base their argument on the equality of outcomes logic. They usually say that it is still needed. The obvious question to ask is until when? When will it not be needed? Five years ago, I had the same conversation and they said, "When we have a Black President." Well, now we do. So it's time to end it.
Sooner or later a case will make it to the Supreme Court challenging race based quotas and we will have to finally choose for the full implementation of Equal protection. Anything that places a "racial thumb" on the scales of justice is wrong morally, and ethically.

Score One for Single Payer.

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don't have passports.
A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

I still can't quite grasp, how some people think this is a good thing. Why do people think a Single Payer system, will be efficient? Hello, look at Medicare, Medicaid and Walter Reed, is that the kind of health care they want?

H/T: HotAir

Here are some of the wait times associated with Pediatric Medical services in Ontario.

Provincial Paediatric Wait Times Analysis by Subspecialty

	5 out of 10 Patients Treated Within (Days)	9 out of 10 Patients Treated Within (Days)	Volumes
	May 2009	May 2009	May 2009
All Services	59	195	1155
Cardiovascular Surgery	37	171	52
General Surgery	33	88	171
Gynecology	39	74	10
Neurosurgery	20	77	35
Ophthalmology	55	146	85
Dental/Oral Surgery	102	356	159
Orthopedic Surgery	79	207	109
Otolaryngology	64	252	262
Plastic Surgery	52	169	130
Urology	62	170	142

That Bigot Perez Hilton

I really don't like Perez Hilton. So I really hate writing this, but the hypocrisy is just too great.

Remember way back when, when Hilton asked Carrie Prejean about her views on Gay Marriage?

I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised.

Then came Hilton's vBlog tirade, calling her all sorts of vile sexist names. All of which he pretty much got a pass for in the MSM.

Now Hilton is in the news again, hopefully not for long, over an incident with the Black Eyed Peas in Toronto. Apparently, Will.I.Am asked Hilton to not write anything about his band anymore. In response, Hilton called Will.I.Am a Fag.

Is it okay for a gay man to use homophobic rhetoric against straight man?

One level of hypocrisy, is how the MSM treated Prejean's statement, which is the same stance our Deal Leader has and how they treated Hilton's openly hateful language against another man.
The silence from the gay rights groups is deafening.
The other hypocrisy is of course Hilton's own personal hypocrisy. His whole reasoning for his vBlog tirade against Prejean was that he was upset with HOW she answered the question. Which is why I quoted it. I don't see any hateful remarks against gays in that statement. If what Prejean said was hate, then Obama, Hillary Clinton, and a whole slew of politicians in Washington are full of hate. Of course we can't criticize our Dear Leader like that now can we. That's a whole different subject.

Needless to say, Hilton was "forced" to issue an apology. I say "forced," because it seems to me that he did it to try and save his "brand." His brand for me is dead. I never really cared at all about anything he did, I find his "How Gay was that?" segment on VH-1's remember the Millenium to be the dumbest thing on the show, even dumber than Moby's segment.
Hilton in an offer of good faith or just self-promoting, take your pick, said he would give the proceeds of his lawsuit against the Black Eyed Peas to the Mathew Shepard Foundation. Which they replied.

We do not know the details of the lawsuit, whether it has been filed, the nature of his claims or the likely outcome. But because the lawsuit presumably involves the physical attack prompted by Mr. Hilton's admitted use of an anti-gay slur, the Foundation will be unable to accept any funds obtained in such a manner.

At least there are some gay rights groups out there with some core principles. Equal rights doesn't mean some groups are more "equal" than others.

H/T Hotair.com for the gawker link.

Creating Jobs?

How many jobs are being lost thanks to Barry and his hypocritical no smoking law?

Tampa will lose part of its cigar heritage in August when Hav-A-Tampa shuts its factory near Seffner and lays off about 495 employees, closing a factory that has been operating since 1902.

Work that had been done in Tampa will now be performed in an Altadis plant in Puerto Rico, where it has extra manufacturing capacity, McKenzie said.

However, the company attributed much of its trouble to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, a federal program that provides health insurance to low-income children. It is funded, in part, by a new federal tax on cigars and cigarettes. McKenzie couldn't say how much sales of Hav-A-Tampa cigars had fallen off, but the numbers have dropped significantly, he said.

Previously, federal excise taxes on cigars were limited to no more than a nickel, said Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America trade group. The tax increase, which took effect April 1, raises the maximum tax on cigars to about 40 cents, Sharp said.

Instead of Barry's nefarious "Create or sustain" jobs notion, we need a number to the number of jobs Barry and this Congress have destroyed or shipped overseas to where taxes are lower?


H/T Mises

Biden was right for once.

Thank goodness, the Dems put their head in the sand when Biden, in a moment of honesty and candor, told everyone that in 6 months there would be a testing for Obama.

• Iran in ruins
• British pissed off about Uighers
• N. Korea talking about nuclear war
• Economy in shambles with inflation on the rise
• and China thinking about unloading their US Treasuries....

Which crisis did Biden think was coming?

Palin plagerizes Gingrich?

According to Huffington Post she did. Then again, liberals never plagiarize right?

Ha ha actually Palin cited Gingrich twice throughout her speech. So if citing the source still counts as plagerism...there are a lot of college grads out there that need to give back their degrees.

Conservatives4Palin.com has the 411.

Of course plagerism is something Obama and Biden would never do.

Ha if you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you.

This just highlights the point that liberals are scared to death of the Sarahcuda.

I am behing her 100% and hope to hell she runs in 4 years. That's change we can believe in.

When Liberals attack...who ya gonna call?

It's a funny thing when liberals turn on one of their own. The outcast is usually shunned like a leper and immediately the object of attack. Anyone who dared oppose Obama this last election saw it.
Newsbusters has an interested story today of a liberal writer who was fired from AOL for reporting a story about Playboy and misogyny.

AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that the do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo's vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy's screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.
The evidence is stacking up quite high that AOL News fired liberal writer Tommy Christopher today due to his repeated attempts to get coverage of the Playboy attack list on AOL's Politics Daily. Christopher had first attempted to post this criticism of Playboy's sick list the day it was published on their website. However, he was surprised to find that shortly after putting his article on Politics Daily it was deleted by an editor.

Now deleting posts from a website, called scrubbing, is common practice in today's media. Obama used the technique quite frequently during the campaign.
What's interesting is that the people that are defending Tommy Christopher are the people he'd normally attacking, conservatives and twitter. You can read his own website for more info.

Exit question: Why is it okay for liberals to hate women and want to rape them?

A Long Dead Economist

That economist is Keynes.
Keynes is dead and hopefully too will his General Theory, soon.

I'm not a big fan of Keynes. I think his theories have given politicians a carte blanc to spend spend spend, with no fear of ever paying the bill. With over a trillion dollar deficits this year and rising budget deficits for years to come, all based on a theory of a long dead economist. Maybe we should be looking to see if any of his theories proved to be right?

That is a topic for another day but I found this article to be good. Mainly because I really don't like Paul Krugman.

No doubt there are powerful deflationary headwinds blowing in the other direction today. There is surplus capacity in world manufacturing. But the price of key commodities has surged since February. Monetary expansion in the US, where M2 is growing at an annual rate of 9 per cent, well above its post-1960 average, seems likely to lead to inflation if not this year, then next. In the words of the Chinese central bank’s latest quarterly report: “A policy mistake ... may bring inflation risks to the whole world.”

The policy mistake has already been made – to adopt the fiscal policy of a world war to fight a recession. In the absence of credible commitments to end the chronic US structural deficit, there will be further upward pressure on interest rates, despite the glut of global savings. It was Keynes who noted that “even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist”. Today the long-dead economist is Keynes, and it is professors of economics, not practical men, who are in thrall to his ideas.

Liberals turning on Obama?

President Obama is just killing the progressive movement.

This is from Dana Milbank, a regular on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Maybe this is a sign that the kool aid scales are starting to fall from liberals eyes?

I doubt it by reading the comment to Milbank's piece.
He does make a good observation, liberals had so much fun being the opposition, they aren't really enthused by being a defender instead of the instigator. You know it's not fun to protest when you don't have much to protest about.

Reminding the audience of the group's more muscular days, Borosage played a tape of Obama speeches at the 2006 and 2007 Take Back America conferences. Over rock music, one clip had him saying: "It's going to be because of you that we take our country back."

That was from June 2007, before Obama took back America -- and took away the progressives' rallying cry.

Is it still fun to be anti-war, when the President from your own party is escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan?
You know trivial stuff like that.

Even More LIberal Hypocricy

Democrats are at it again...proclaiming tactics that they once used, but now they are race baiting.
Jesse Jackson knows race-baiting well. He's been using it his whole adult life to make lots and lots of money. Enough money to try and buy his son a Senate Seat perhaps?

But the assault on Sotomayor isn't about her skills as a jurist. This is classic race-based politics from the Republican right. Our real problems are too great for us to fall back into this. The slurs reveal a lot more about those who are spreading them...

Perhaps Mr. Jackson will listen to his own last sentence and look himself in the mirror.