Why does Senator Sessions view Supreme Court nominee Sotomayer thru a looking glass darkly?

Because he has flirted with a racist mindset most of his public life.

Sessions was turned down for an Alabama district court judgeship appointment in 1986, by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, because of charges of "racial insensitivity".

Now, twenty three years later, he is the ranking Republican of that same Senate Committee which will be holding hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayors nomination.

Sessions is particularly sensitive to charges that Judge Sotomayor may have too much empathy. This humanitarian attitude may block her ability to hand down objective opinions from the highest court.

Wow, here we go again with that dreaded word "empathy", possibly the least understood word in the English language.Conservatives believe the word symbolizes everything "bleeding heart" liberals stand for. Sessions and his ilk, have spent 230 years fighting these humanitarians, the very people who he believes gave this country to the minorities.

I devoted an entire post to the definition of "empathy" on this blog several months ago when I was fighting a lonely battle against fraudulent criminals in the household goods moving industry,a battle I eventually won but at a great and lasting cost. So, forgive me if I get excited when I hear this word tossed around loosely by a do no-gooder like the Alabama Senator.

Empathy simply means a feeling or emotion by which someone expresses that he or she shares a sense of outrage or even shock with victimized beings.It sounds simple but it isn't. I have found that most people lack some genetic ability to share the shock and/or outrage of the oppressed or enslaved or criminalized against.

Even normally upstanding people quickly distanced themselves from me. The feeling left with me was that I had brought it on myself.

This is the very same feeling that the minorities in this country live with.Our black population have this feeling almost inbred in them because of the vicious crimes committed against them for centuries.

When people are viewed as inferior, they will eventually feel that they are indeed inferior and will begin to doubt whether they have invited their misery onto themselves.Of course when their minds clear they will fight back.

Judge Sotomayor was raised by a widowed mother in a project in the Bronx. Sessions and other right wing members of the Judiciary Committee, like the silky Senator Lindsey Graham,Rep.,S.C, assume that her background makes it more likely the Judge will empathize with citizens with similar childhood experiences.

Well la de da ! What's wrong with that?

Well here is how Sessions puts it: "The idea that a judge should use his or her personal feelings about a particular group or issues to decide a case stands in stark contrast to the impartiality that we expect in the American courtroom."

He goes on further in his published quotes but I don't want to bore you with ludicrous statements from a twisted man,stained by his own childhood growing up among rednecks.

Impartial American courtrooms? Hah !

Is that why there are 10 black men rotting in our prisons for every one lily white man?

As for Session's fellow Committeeman,Senator Lindsey Graham, let me remind my readers of his background.

This is the man who stood to the right of John McCain throughout the Presidential election campaign; the man who fed lines to McCain when the candidate stumbled on his words,which was just about every day.

Flanking McCain every day on his left was the Benedict Arnold of the 20Th century, Joe Lieberman, the Senator from anywhere.

Graham is an intelligent,patriotic man, I'll give him that. But ironically this stamps him as a hypocrite for strongly supporting the lipstick mom from Alaska for V.P.. He knew damn well Palin could not even read or write. Pathetic cronyism.

Lindsay, who is so smooth I cannot watch him for more than 30 seconds without having to reach for a tums, made some other news this week. He is a very vocal supporter of Mark Sanford of Argentina and urges him to not give in to those calling on him to resign as Gov.. Of course. the normally holier than thou Senator Graham, was in the forefront of the impeachment process of Bill Clinton.

Clinton should have been impeached by Hillary but she turned the other cheek.Was that an act of empathy? Hell no; she was setting herself up for her presidential run and wasn't about to run as a divorcee. These days ,wives of adulterers get lots more sympathy than divorcees.

So there you have it folks, day after day, crooked politicians and judges judging other judges.

When will we humans start discovering what empathy really means?

WHY IS THE SANSA FUZE 4G MP 3 PLAYER REFERRED TO AS THE NANO KILLER?

Because it is a better player than the the vastly overrated iPod and costs about half as much.

Please bear in mind that this comparison refers to both products functioning specifically as audio MP-3 players.

The devil is in the details:

First of all the iPod is not a safe product for people with high blood pressure as it has more glitches than a weather forecast.

The iPod has a feature called syncing which can delete in one second 800 songs which it took you 10 years to accrue.

It is fragile; drop it and you better be standing on soft ground.

Most importantly you have to put up with the I-tunes application on your PC or your iPod is worthless.I-Tunes has satanic qualities. It can take control of your computer and your Windows media and reduce you to tears.

I lost my I-tunes from my laptop 6 months ago. Every day I searched for it and googled it and visited every geek store within a 50 mile radius. I followed every suggestion, no matter how absurd. I deleted it and all its files and all Quick Time files, bonjour and mobile device files and then reinstalled it. I must have done this at least 50 times to no avail. It would download but would not launch.

Finally I gave up and went shopping for a new MP-3 player, an "anything but iPod" Mp 3 player. I read all the reviews on the web, checked Consumer reports etc etc.

I finally decided on a Sansa Disk Fuze 4-g which is the equivalent in capacity to the iPod Nano 4g. It cost me $89.00 at Best Buy and it is one of the best purchases I have ever made. I have escaped from my I-tunes prison after 10 years of misery.

First of all the Sansa Fuze is better looking than iPod, sturdier and has a clearer screen. It is smaller than a credit card and thinner than a pencil.

It has FM radio with 20 preset stations.Why is this important. Well if you have satellite radio, Sirius or XM, you can set any FM radio in your home to 88.1 frequency and listen to Howard Stern through headphones on your Fuze.I happen to like Stern but i sure don't want my neighbors overhearing some of the language on that show. So now I sit on my patio and listen in private while they wonder what I am guffawing about.

The Sansa Fuze has a built in recorder so I can record reminders to myself of what I have to do on a given day.

It has a 24 hour battery life. Since I normally use it about and hour a day, I can go at least 3 weeks without running out during my morning walk, which happened constantly with my iPod.

It holds 800 songs but is expandable to 10g with the purchase of an inexpensive card.

To load new songs on to your player you simply click and drag your music from your computer's library into the Fuze file. This is a zillion times simpler than Apple's complicated, proprietary music file system.

To sum up, the iPod is more of a status symbol than a practical player. It can't hold a candle to the SanDisk Fuze. Don't be a snob, break free from the mob and light up with the Fuze.

MANIC MONDAY

A POTPOURRI OF STRANGE FIREWORKS THIS HOLIDAY WEEKEND:

(some funny and some very serious)

Maureen Dowd, Op Ed,Sunday's NY Times,as usual,sums it up best:

Sarah wants to leave and Sanford wants to stay.

GOP turning gray?

Dowd's tongue in cheek 2012 Ticket....... Palin/Sanford ?

FWIW: Can Ken and Barbi succeed where GW failed?


Great NFL QB(Steve McNair) meets untimely end in possible murder/suicide!


South Carolina serial killer still on the loose.
FWIW: How in hell can one determine who's a serial killer in a state where every citizen carries a gun??

Foreclosures in progress soar to 844,389.

Serena and Roger win again at Wimbledon.
FWIW: No Ken/Barbi here, just two raw talented, legendary tennis greats who deserve all the accolades.

Memorial at Staples Center Tuesday for Michael Jackson.
FWIW:King of pop was King of popsicles and never was my cup of tea.... but memorial is appropriate because of his talent.
Certainly not for the life he lived, no way.

Safety Net Fraying for the Very Poor... Page 15 of Sunday NY Times.
Because of the recession/depression, fewer families are being pulled out of the "deepest poverty" demo., defined as income below half the poverty level threshold.
FWIW: I have lived below the poverty threshold for most of the past 13 years.However I am grateful I do not qualify for the new "deep poverty" level.Thank God for Franklin Delano Roosevelt!

Bernie Madoff,71, sentenced to 150 years.
FWIW: Lenient Judge could have given him life

FWIW: If i was 20 years younger I would marry Maureen Dowd,the smartest woman in America.

That's it for today.

V E DAY, MAY 8,1945

An excerpt from my novel, S'mothered, about a 14 year old boy coming of age during
W W 11

I was getting ready for school on a Tuesday in May when I heard a commotion outside. Peeking through the window curtain, I saw a crowd was gathering. It was obvious something important had happened. The old woman up the block, the scary lady they called Calabraze was shouting to seven or eight people out on the street, I couldn’t make out what she was screaming about because of her heavy accent. I opened the window and could hear more clearly.

“Did anyone hear the news on the radio?” She shouted. “The war is over in Europe, the War is over, and President Truman is on the radio announcing it right now.”

Apparently, her neighbors also heard the bulletin on their radios and ran outside to tell others. Within a few minutes, ten or twenty more people joined in and everyone in my house started to scream “It’s V-E Day; it’s V-E Day!”

My Uncle Jimmy barged in from his apartment across the hall and shouted so loud I thought my eardrums would break “turn the radio on, Germany has surrendered, open the windows, look what’s going on!”

The crowd outside had swelled to about 50 people; they came from all directions to congregate on our corner. I put some water on my cowlick and flew down the stairs, taking them four at a time. I would often take them three at a time, but this was a four-step level of excitement. I would have been trampled on if I went slower. By now everyone in the house was following me down the stairs and out of the house. It was like a stampede I saw in a Gene Autry movie.

Outside now, I could not believe my eyes, the area in front of our house, the whole block was filled with hundreds of people and it was getting noisy, noisier than New Years Eve when many people came out at midnight and shot guns into the air.

Cars started to blow their horns, women were crying, men were laughing at first and then even they were crying, everyone was hugging everyone and the people who stayed in the house were throwing confetti out of windows. The only time I had ever seen men cry was at Grandpa’s wake. The confetti made it look like it was snowing but it was May, and even in New Jersey it didn’t snow in May.

Cars stopped and had their windows rolled down. They had turned their radios up as loud as they could; playing patriotic songs intermixed with broadcasts of people shouting from all over the country.

I looked up the block on both sides of the street. Every window was open with radios on window sills facing outward. Patriotic music was blasting from the radios and combining with the noise of wailing air raid sirens. Church bells were chiming mournfully and the noise level was getting louder every minute. It was surreal like nothing I had ever even imagined or had seen in the movies.

I was excited and scared at the same time, like I couldn’t tell if it was the end of the world or the beginning.

Then I saw the bus from the defense factory where my mother and aunts all worked, pull around the corner. I guessed the owner had closed the plant and sent everyone home. I saw my Aunt Vera jump out first, then Dorothy and then my mother. They ran through the crowd, hugged and kissed all the kids and me. We kids were all laughing but my aunts and even my mother cried.

All the pent up emotions, the years of anxiety which dragged so slowly they seemed like decades, the remembering of the G.I. who wouldn’t be coming home, the joy of realizing no more would die; apparently all of these feelings exploded at once on this cool cloudy morning in May on the streets of Rose Point.

Bedlam erupted but there was no need for cops. Some were sprinkled in the crowd .They weren’t there to maintain order; they were also celebrating and hugging.

People ran back into their homes, rummaged through boxes, cabinets and iceboxes and returned to the street party with New Years hats, noisemakers and horns. Others followed with bottles of beer and fruit and candy. Several men were carrying tables out into the street while the women were decorating them with festive tablecloths.

It was crazy, everything was there for anyone to take and eat and drink. It turned into a Fiesta, an espozolitzio, right before my eyes, with laughing and shouting, people dancing, men with women and women dancing with other women. Kids were dancing with adults, and then someone was dancing with my old Grandma.

And my old grandma was crying because her beloved husband wasn’t alive to see this glorious day. Six other women were weeping hysterically over six sons from our neighborhood who could not share in this celebration. The mangled bodies of their sons were buried in a cemetery somewhere in Europe.

It was 10 o’clock in the morning!

My Uncle Jimmy was dancing with his wife Dorothy and then with my mom, then with Gina, Jenny and Vera. Even my usually grouchy Uncle Joe was dancing with Aunt Lucy.

For one of the few times, I saw him smiling.

There were five times as many women as men. The men who hadn’t gone to war were dancing with two women at a time and before long huge circles were forming. Large groups of women and men and kids were all dancing with each other in and out of the circle. My cousin Larry and I were pushed inside the circle. I wasn’t shy anymore, thank God.

Some of the younger women, with boy friends or husbands overseas, ran back in the house and tried to send telegrams. It was impossible to get through. All the phone lines in the world were tied in knots. When my mother told me this, it dawned on me how incredible this event was. This was not just a block party in my neighborhood or in my hometown. All over the world, millions were celebrating just as they were right here.

I doubted I would ever again see something this spectacular. Maybe I was a little too young to grasp the full meaning of all this but the complete lack of anger and hostility was obvious to anyone who viewed it. For this brief moment in time, everyone loved everyone. No one avoided hugging someone because of his or her nationality: Polish, Irish, Italian, or Jewish. It wasn’t because everyone here was American. It was simply the war finally being over. A feeling of peaceful, joyous serenity had spread throughout the world and I watched a microcosm of it right here in front of my house.

I felt a little depressed, just for a second. ‘Wow,” I shouted aloud, while thinking to myself, Is this what the world could be like?”

The celebration continued throughout the day as word spread to other parts of town. When darkness arrived and the air grew chilly, the party broke up into smaller gatherings and moved indoors. Anyone could go into any home they wanted; it was a gigantic open house all over the town and apparently all over the country.

Some day I hoped I could tell my children what I witnessed today. For now, I just collapsed into bed and lay there, too excited to sleep.

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE FOUR STAR MOVIE?

It has gone the way of the dinosaur!

Here is a breakdown of the number of Four Star rated American movies put out by Hollywood during the past 7 decades. Source: Video Hound's Golden Retriever

The Forties (i.e. 1940-49)......................................34
The Fifties........................................................29
The Sixties .......................................................13
The Seventies ...................................................11
The Eighties .....................................................8
The Nineties .....................................................6
2000-2009 .......................................................7

Can you believe it?, From 1970 to right now, 39 years, 32- 4 star movies.

That's about one a year.

So if you are paying about $80.00 a month for standard tier television programming plus 2 movie channels you are paying about $1000.00 per 4 star movie

For that much you could almost film your own home movie.

Break it down further, there were 63 movies with the highest rating between 1940 and 1960. From 1960 to the present, there have been only 45 4 star classics.

Obviously Hollywood is tanking and I have my ideas as to why:

Too many sequels
Too many horror movies
Too many animated movies
Too many vampire movies
Too many Ben Stiller movies
Too many Adam Sandler movies
Too many Will Farell movies
Too many Aston Kucher mvoies
Too many Demi Moore movies
Too many Helen Mirren movies
Too many girlfriend movies
Too many stoned out Hollywood Directors
Too many stoned out Hollywood Screenwriters
Too many stoned out Holywood actors and actresses
Too many Movie Reviewers addicted to Heroin

So what can we do about this sad state of affairs?

Really not much. Maybe pray for a major earthquake to hit Hollywood dead on?

How important is Al Franken's official victory in Minnesota?

Extremely important!

FOr the first time in over 30 years a major party will have a filibuster proof vote margin.

This is a majority you would think would be welcomed by President Obama but the answerman sees it differently. You see, the president sees himself as a compromise chief executive and prides himself on his ability to work with the opposition to achieve bi-partisan results. His hero is Lincoln,who used incredible mediating skills to attain previously unreachable goals.

Well that was yesterday and today is today. There is no longer any reason for Obama to reach across the aisle. He has a solid majority and can now undo the damage done to this country by the Reagen-Bush axis during the past 30 years.

Clinton,also, did very little to push forward the left wing agenda; in fact he basically eliminated the welfare program.

There are millions of defaulted mortage holders who would love to have the welfare option right now, many of them GOP supporters who would normally blanch at the use of that word.

Make no mistake about it; the liberals and progressives put Obama in the White House and we expect him to start moving our platform today. The time for compromise and excuses is over Mr. President. You called for change and the people responded.I don't recall a period when the citizens of this country were more fed up with the status-quo.

We rank disgracefully low among civilized countries in two significant areas, health care and illiteracy. The time for action is now. Hold a symbolic news conference this week with Senator-elect Franken by your side. Make it known to Congress that the numbers game is over.

We demand better schools,brighter more prepared graduates. We insist on health care for all regardless of income; the calibre of health care the members of congress have had for decades.

This is a historic period and you have the opportunity to go down in history as the president who to told the obstructionist minority to get lost.

This window of opportunity will slam shut with a thud in 6 months because Jan.1,2010marks the beginning of a congressional election year. Politicians running for re-election will not advance anything even slightly controversial.

I am confident this president has greatness in him and will speak out on this new situation, but we voters to the left of center are not sure of this. It's possible he will not budge,at least publically, from the center.

He may not feel he has to. He may be too cocky and assume we,his main supporters have no where else to go if he obstinately tries to get 70 votes from senators by watering the health care bill down?

He might be in for a shock come November, 2010.We don't care about numbers 60 or 70, we want legislation sooner than later.Do not take us for granted. Staying home can sometimes be as effective as forming a third party.

Is God dead?

The year was 1883,the month is unknown.

God died metaphysically sometime that year when the Friedrich Nietzsche epic "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" was published. Through the words of the mythical persian poet, Zarathustra, Nietzsche laid out the strongest case ever as to why God had to die.

Actually Neitzsche asserted that God had begun to suffer through a long slow death 2000 years ago, an agonizingly slow death as his creatures immediately and without letup through the centuries suffocated him by demanding his pity.

Here is an excerpt from Neitzsche's classic to clarify in his own words:

From Part 4:

"WHAT does all the world know at present?" asked Zarathustra of the old pope he encountered on his journey.

"Perhaps that the old God no longer lives,the God in whom all the world once believed?"

"You speak the truth O godless one," answered the old man sorrowfully. "And I served that old God until his last hour.

"You served him to the last?" asked Zarathustra thoughtfully,after a
deep silence,"you know HOW he died? Is it true what they say, that
sympathy choked him. That he saw how MAN hung on the cross,and could not endure it?

"So you are saying to me that his love for man became his hell, and at last suffocated him with pity ?

The old pope however did not answer,but looked aside timidly,with a
painful and gloomy expression.

"Let him go,"said Zarathustra,after prolonged meditation,still looking
the old man straight in the eye.

"Let him go,he is gone.Though it is honorable of you to only speak
in praise of this dead God,you know as well as I WHO he was,and that he had curious ways."

"I speak among three eyes," said the old pope jestfully(he was blind in
one eye),"in divine matters,I am more enlightened than Zarathustra
himself,believe me you utterly godless one.

"I served him many long years, my will followed all his will. A good
servant, however, knows everything, many a things which a Master
hides from himself.

"He was a hidden God, always very secretive. Even with his own son
he operated with secrecy as to his conception. At the door of his faith stands the hint of adultery.

"Whoever honors him as a God of love,does not think highly enough of love itself.Did not that God want also to be Judge?

"But one who truly loves does not seek reward and requital.

"When he was young,that God out of the Orient,he was harsh and revengeful,and built himself a hell which delighted those who loved him most.

"At last,however,he became old and soft and mellow and pitiful.
he became more like a grandfather than a father,but most like a tottering old grandmother.

"Then did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner,
fretting on account of his weak legs,world-weary,will-weary,until one day he suffocated of his all too great pity."

"You,old pope,"said here Zarathustra,interrupting,"have you seen THAT
with your own eyes?

"It could well have happened in that way:in that way,but maybe otherwise.
When Gods die they always die many kinds of death.

"Well!"said the old pope,"regardless of the actual specifics,one way or other,he is gone.God is dead! He was counter to the taste of my ears and eyes; worse than that I will not speak against one who died.

Zarathustra replied,"I love everything that looks bright and speaks honestly.

You know this to be true,old priest.
There was something of your own type in him.
He was the priest type.He was equivocal.

"He was also indistinct.How he raged at us,this wrath-snorter,because we
understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly?

"if the fault lay in our ears,why did he give us ears that heard him badly?

"If there was dirt in our ears,well was it not this dead God who put it in them?

"So much died with him,this potter who had not learned thoroughly how to shape clay!

"But what was unforgiveable was that he took revenge on his pots and creations, because they turned out badly. That was truly a sin against GOOD TASTE.

"There is also good taste in piety, at last the great godless poet concluded.

"Away with SUCH a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own account,better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'"

End of excerpt......

There you have it. God was "equivocal" and "indistinct", a "wrath snorter", too much like a priest. As I interpret this, in Nietzsche's view God gradually became ineffective as he morphed from a harsh and revengeful creator into an old, soft pitiful, world weary,will weary, grandfather and eventually a tottering old grandmother smothered in pity.

So Man murdered God. Forced to be a judge, God could not, at the same time be the ultimate LOVER that mankind insisted he be, a distinct,unequivical unconditional Father.

Does this perhaps explain why most people are self-indulgent, obsessively self-centered and unhappy?

Possibly.

I am just a simple man, an athiest who can think up questions but most of the time cannot answer them. A hypocrite who has the chutzpah to call himself The Answerman

I can understand how most religions will label this blasphemy but for the confirmed disbeliever it makes sense.

A humiliated spouse (Jenny) upends a cheating louse (Mark)

Did Jenny Sanford stamp all men as pigs over the weekend?

Absolutely. Yes

Whether intended or not, that was the net effect of her Saturday morning interview with the Sun-Times. The Sun-Times is the newspaper of the South Carolina Myrtle Beach area. This is the district her husband once represented as an up and coming boy wonder congressman.There are more redneck men per square inch in this state than anywhere else in the free world. But there are also powerful,cunning gals who know what makes these guys tick

Jenny grabbed this scandal right out of Mark's dirty claws. She revealed more about herself in a few short paragraphs than her swinish hubby did in hours of self remorse.

She has known about her husband's cheating heart for many months but women like Jenny don't give up the title of "First Lady" easily.She begged him to end the affair.

Mark,in all his pignified stature,turned right around and begged her to let him have just one more fling with Maria Belen Chapur,divorced mother of two sons and a former reporter in Argentina.

Sort of like an alcoholic pleading with his AA sponsor to let him have just "one more drink".

The Sunday NY Times, in the Sunday Styles section has a revealing article suggesting that infidelity is rapidly becoming a minor setback in a marriage and certainly not an important enough reason to head to a divorce court.

On the Op-Ed page, Maureen Dowd castigated the pitiful Governor as only she can.

What's so different about this drama being played out on the public stage is that this time the wife is shaping the story to the press while the chastened hubby stands by with his thumb in his mouth.

I love the Gov.'s recent public statement about Jenny:

"I'd simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process"

I barfed, pulled myself together, and then paraphrased what this creep was really saying to his deluded redneck following:

" Jenny is a relgious woman from the deep south; she understands that we men are all pigs and need woman to keep us feeding at our home trough most of the time. She also understands that because we are pigs, we need to wander for some strange swill occasionally. Thank God for the bible."

Running a little long with today's topic and I promised to be concise but bear with me a little further. Both of the egotistical characters in this lurid drama are wealthy members of southern royalty (where almost all wealth is inherited wealth from the slave labor system). Jenny and Mark never fail to mention the children as a reason they are trying to save their marriage.

How convenient to use the kids as the rationalization for a stupid decision which will ultimately hurt the children the most.If Jenny really was as concerned as she says she is now, she would have dumped him when she first learned of the affair.

Staying in a bad marriage for the children's welfare is ridiculous. It teaches the children about nothing except hyprocrisy.

Jenny and Mark, face up and split up for the children's sake.

Mark, have you no shame? Resign as Governor today.

PS: As you might expect in a state like this, Sanford's cabinet is standing as almost one in defense of their John Wayne leader. However I would be remiss if I didn't salute one heroic figure. State Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia called on Sanford to "do the right thing and step down" while also encouraging other legislators to follow his lead.

Very seldom does a Rebublican break ranks in the Age of Limbaugh so we have to honor them when they do.