POLL: 71% of Voters Don't Trust Sotomayer to judge fairly

The opportunity on Sotomayor, part II

from Hot Air.com
June 3, 2009
by Ed Morrissey

Last week, I wrote that the Republicans have an opportunity with the Sonia Sotomayor nomination not to conduct filibusters or fire-breathing sermons, but to calmly and dispassionately demonstrate that neither she nor Barack Obama represent the opinions of the majority of Americans on identity politics. A new Quinnipiac poll underscores that opportunity. A majority of voters across a wide swath of demographics oppose affirmative action and race- and gender-based setasides in government, education, and academia:

American voters say 55 - 36 percent that affirmative action should be abolished, and disagree 71 - 19 percent with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayer’s ruling in the New Haven firefighters’ case, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

More than 70 percent of voters say diversity is not a good enough reason to give minorities preferential treatment in competition for government or private sector jobs, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University survey of more than 3,000 voters finds.

This poll brings good news to those who want to see a color-blind society. For the most part, all demographics favor protections for the disabled, but not for ethnicity and gender:

•Support 55 - 39 percent affirmative action for the disabled in hiring, promotions and college admissions. Protestants and Catholics support it, 49 - 46 percent and 49 - 47 percent, respectively. Jews also support it 59 - 25 percent;

•Oppose 70 - 25 percent giving some racial groups preference for government jobs to increase diversity. Black voters support it 49 - 45 percent while Hispanic voters are opposed 58 - 38 percent;

•Oppose 74 - 21 percent giving some racial groups preference for private sector jobs to increase diversity. Voters in every racial and religious group oppose this;

•Oppose 64 - 29 percent affirmative action for Hispanics in hiring, promotion and college entry. Black voters support it 59 - 30 percent while Hispanics split 47 - 48 percent;

•Oppose 61 - 33 percent affirmative action for blacks in hiring, promotion and college entry. Black voters support this 69 - 26 percent, as do Hispanics 51 - 46 percent;

•Oppose 62 - 32 percent affirmative action for white women in hiring, promotion and college entry. Women oppose this 58 - 35 percent but blacks support it 55 - 37 percent.

This puts Sotomayor and Obama in a narrow group that still favors preferential treatment and outcome-based policies. Republicans should see this as the real goal of the confirmation hearings - to communicate this to the entire electorate. As the poll demonstrates, it entails almost no risk and a large potential upside.

But in order to make that argument, they need to stick to rational arguments based on Sotomayor’s own words and her decisions, especially on Ricci. The GOP needs to avoid the inflammatory personal insults and the demand for obstructionism and focus on the fight they can win. Most Americans will agree that a President has the prerogative to get his judicial appointments a fair vote, at the very least. That doesn’t mean Republicans have to vote to confirm Sotomayor, but a filibuster won’t work, and a failed attempt will make the GOP look even more impotent.

In this case, Republicans represent the majority of Americans. They have a great opportunity to use the confirmation hearings as a stage to demonstrate that, as well as demonstrate their readiness not just to oppose Obama but to prove themselves trustworthy enough for leadership in DC.
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Is Obama's Supreme Court Pick a Racist?

This is a great one!

Obamist FCC Announces Crackdown On 'Racist' Radio Ratings

IT BEGINS
from The Radio Equalizer
May 18, 2009

In what appears to be the first stage of a broader, Chavez-style crackdown against talk radio and its audience success, Obama's FCC has taken an official step toward eliminating (or, at best, manipulating) an electronic ratings system his supporters consider "racist".

Using a pager-like device, Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM) provides the first truly accurate system for measuring radio listening. Because it is passive, rather than requiring a diary to be manually maintained, opportunities for cheating have virtually been eliminated.

That means stations with small but particularly loyal followings, such as hip-hop outlets, no longer wrongly benefit from distorted record-keeping meant to reward certain FM personalities. In many cases, other formats (especially conservative talk radio) are now experiencing a more accurate reflection of their listenership, leading to improved results.

In addition, the Reverend Al Sharpton's liberal talk show has apparently been hurt by PPM's implementation.

While on the campaign trail, Obama officially condemned the electronic system, registering his opposition in the weeks before the election. Since taking power, he's made good on his promise to fight PPM's implementation, as his FCC orders an inquiry into the matter.
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The Racism Trap Defined

"We are not a nation of cowards, as Eric Holder has suggested. But many of us are indeed bound by a slavery worse than any material shackles or abuse. It is a slavery of our own making, which holds us bound and gagged by the false charges of "racism" where none exists." - Kyle-Anne Shiver

The Racism Trap Defined

from American Thinker

By Kyle-Anne Shiver

March 31, 2009

Yesterday, I received a number of emails vociferously attacking my character on the basis of the column I wrote for American Thinker, "The Obama We Knew, but Denied." I was called a "racist," a "race-baiter" and a "white elite."

Since I don't live in a "nation of cowards," as Eric Holder has suggested, I generally face all such charges head-on with individualistic fervor.

I will state boldly and for the record that I am no racist. Some of the most rhetorically bloody battles I've ever fought were in defense of equal opportunities for blacks in the days when the civil rights movement was being battled over every dinner table, at every social gathering and in every church in the South. I have had friends of many races, have worshipped hand in hand with all races and consider it to be a sin against God of the highest gravity to harbor racist feelings or thoughts. If I ever have a racist thought, I cast it out quickly with disgust, asking forgiveness. This is the Christian way.

Racism is absolutely indefensible to God, the Creator of all souls in His image. Each unique human being has perfectly identical value to God. Period. This is in adherence to both Judaism and Christianity, and no man can claim to follow either while knowingly enabling his own racist thoughts, words or deeds. To entertain and harbor racist thoughts is an act of hatred against God, one's fellow humans and oneself and if done on a habitual basis, has the power to cut one off from God entirely.

Now, as to my own definition of racism. Racism, defined by Webster's Dictionary, is "a belief that by nature some races are superior to others," or "discrimination based on such belief."
Racism cuts all ways, between all races, and any individual of any race can be equally guilty of this sin. Racism is no more a singularly white sin than is say, drunkenness or gluttony or laziness. People are people are people; sin is sin is sin.

This godly belief was at the heart of Dr. Martin Luther King's struggle for a colorblind America. Many groups vied for King's ear and tried to dissuade him from this mission, saying he should demand more, should clamor for not only equality but payback for the hundreds of years of white on black racism, including slavery and Jim Crow in the South. Dr. King resisted these efforts; I regard the man as a Saint. He may have yielded some, but in the whole of his life, he was a true Christian minister (though sinful, as we all are), who disdained the calls for human vengeance against white oppressors and held firmly to the dogma of nonviolence and forgiveness, seeking only a coming down of the walls and a restoration of equal civil rights.

Unfortunately, after King's assassination, black liberation theologians (like James H. Cone) and Black Panthers, Black Muslims and other splinter groups hijacked Dr. King's movement and turned it upside down and inside out, adopting the vengeance/violence model. Even after the post-King-assassination wholesale riots and killing sprees ended, these groups adopted socialist revolutionary tactics (those designed by Alinsky and others), which have perpetuated the battle, turned racism into a black on white sin more than the other way around, and have demanded more and more and more as just retribution and penance for the sin of white racism in the past.

This movement has had very little to do with mending relations between the races and everything to do with gaining power for the leaders of the revolution. This movement has had very little to do with wanting achievement for individual black children and everything to do with developing a large class of people loyal to the "gifts" of Party politicians. It is the most duplicitous and diabolical twisting of King's original intentions I have ever witnessed in wholesale fashion, performing its evil upon nearly the whole of our black population, holding them in shackles to a different kind of slavery, the kind we have seen emerge in post-colonial Africa. Individual blacks have economically enslaved whole generations of their own race in this quest for wealth, power and dominance.

In this, we have seen perhaps the best evidence of the fact that underneath our skins we are all alike. The human soul in a black skin is just as tempted and likely to give in to the thirst for power as any white soul. Just as likely to use other human beings for personal profit and just as likely to be damned for his sins.

I am no racist, and I will vehemently defend myself on any charge to the contrary. I do not care what any other person thinks of me. I live to serve God alone. No man can grant me eternal life. To serve the interests of other men is nothing more than to be a slave.

We are not a nation of cowards, as Eric Holder has suggested. But many of us are indeed bound by a slavery worse than any material shackles or abuse. It is a slavery of our own making, which holds us bound and gagged by the false charges of "racism" where none exists.

I am a free woman; I shall not be bound by other men or women.
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