Malarkey Purge

Several extreme republican media persons have been criticizing President Obama’s Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor. They seem to think that Sotomayor was picked solely because she is a Latina woman. There have also been accusations that she is not qualified, even though she has the appropriate experience and education.
I’d rather not beat a dead horse here, but I think it’s important to acknowledge a major contradiction that these media persons have made between last Fall and this Spring. I distinctly recall these same critics referring to McCain’s running mate pick of Sarah Palin as “smart.” This of course referenced that McCain’s pick was tactful, because Sarah Palin was not another white man. Now they are criticizing Obama for picking a person who is not a white man as if it’s too much of a coincidence that she’s also qualified. And as we all recall: many people criticized Governor Palin’s qualifications for Vice-President, but these same extreme republican media personalities seemed to look for any reason to justify her as qualified. Now they are looking for any excuse to find Sotomayor unqualified. Obviously they just want something to go after Obama about, and make money doing it.
In regards to accusations of her being racist, which is such hypocritical malarkey it makes my frontal lobe throb, I think these guys should clean up their own record before they point fingers. I am a white guy, but I want nothing to do with these two-faced mudslingers. The last thing I need is rich selfish loud mouths defending me from Latina women. Thanks but no thanks Limbaugh. If you’d like to do people of European decent a favor: retire and take a vow of silence.

Back in October I discouraged people in Michigan from voting for Carl Levin, because he had just voted for the Wall Street bailout.  This was the bailout voted down by the House of Representatives, then pushed through the Senate, and then pushed through the House again.  I also discouraged everyone from voting for McCain and Obama for the same reason.  I still firmly believe that this bailout was a rash and problematic reaction to our economic issues and that no responsible elected official should have assisted in getting it forced into affect.  That bailout and the more recent bailout were not about partisan politics, because as I noted with the McCain and Obama example, both republicans and democrats supported these bailouts.  This point is strengthened by the fact that the initial bailout was under the W. Bush administration and the recent bailout was under the Obama administration.
Now back to Carl Levin, who has recently began to redeem himself by my fiercely judgmental standards.  Former Vice President Cheney and his daughter continually claimed that there are classified CIA documents that prove water-boarding prisoners saved lives.  Carl Levin is the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which means he sees these classified documents.  Senator Levin at the Foreign Policy Association annual dinner said, “Mr. Cheney … claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked, but those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques.”  I’m glad Senator Levin realized that it is his obligation to state this information under these circumstances.  He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who publicly volunteers useful information on a regular basis, but at least this one time when he was one of the few people who could call someone on such heinous malarkey he did it.
So I must thank Senator Levin for doing his job.  If he keeps it up, I might support him / vote for him if I’m a Michigan resident during his next election.
Lastly to fully purge this malarkey I must make a final point regarding this water-boarding situation.  Even if there were documents that proved everything Cheney claims is great about torture, that doesn’t justify breaking the Geneva Convention.  The US has agreed to certain international treaties, such as the ones of the Geneva Convention. These help prevent a third world war. John McCain, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jesus Christ understand that torture is unethical and the United States constitution protects people from cruel and unusual punishment: so the effectiveness of water-boarding is not an issue.  Apparently former Vice President Cheney is trying to talk his way out of getting prosecuted.