Whether you liked his music or not, you have to admit he was one heck of an entertainer.  I have two videos to offer as evidence:

Billie Jean - live at the Grammys in 1984

You’ll remember this year as the year he won a record 8 Grammys.  Check out this video (note that the sound and video get disconnected and stay that way):

This is the Grammys, people.  The most talented, well-known and, arguably, least given to being star-struck people in the world.  Screaming like 15-year-old girls.  Insane.

Next, check out his 30-year anniversary performance of the same song.

A stadium full of people go NUTS when he pulls out a glove. People crying when he puts on a hat.  Unbelievable.

I don’t know or care about his personal life but I’ll say one thing.  One of the best entertainers the world has ever seen died today.  I wish him the best.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124391159480975333.html#mod=djemalertNEWS

“Citigroup Inc. has told about five former top executives that it won’t pay them tens of millions of dollars in promised severance payouts, according to people familiar with the matter.”

“But company officials recently decided not to proceed with the remaining payments, concluding that they wanted to avoid even the possibility of a public backlash over the money”

and, referring to AIG:

“Top executives at the giant insurer argued they couldn’t cancel the legally binding payments, even after the U.S. government became the company’s majority owner.”

(emphasis mine)

and

“bank officials essentially are wagering that the former executives will conclude that it would be publicly embarrassing for them to file lawsuits against the struggling, taxpayer-backed company seeking the money.”

This combined with the complete rape of the bankruptcy laws and principle of due process performed by the Obama administration should worry everybody.  No more does the law matter in the US.  What matters is how well you’re connected to the Obama administration and whether you fall in their liberal elite definition of right.

Can we not see that this is no different than illegal wiretaps founded on the premise of national security?  Is Obama not acting like Bush, except using supposed economic emergencies as his justification for illegal acts instead of national security?

Mr. Obama says he won’t cater to lobbyists, huh?  Actually, I believe him.  He doesn’t cater to them.  How bows in submission to them, just like he does to foreign leaders.

Last week, Obama announced that Sonia Sotomayor is his nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court.  Having never heard of her, I didn’t have an opinion.  The only thing I had to go on were the previous words of the man who nominated her:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/05/01/ap6368664.html

“I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

and

“justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook”

and

“We need somebody who’s got the heart to recognize - the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

and

“What matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult.”

That last one makes me chuckle.  Apparently, 95% of the cases sent to the Supreme Court by the Federal Circuit aren’t truly difficult?  Sotomayor sent 5 cases to the Supreme Court.  95% (effectively all) of them weren’t difficult, huh?  I wonder why she was overturned 3 out of those 5 times (60%)?  Either those cases are truly difficult or she’s not a good judge.

I also like his statement about justice not being about some abstract legal theory or footnote.  I wonder when was the last time a President called the Constitution an “abstract legal theory” or a “footnote”…

Finally, his emphasis on empathy worries me.  Not that empathy is a bad quality…in a friend, manager or spouse.  But I find it difficult to believe justice will truly be blind when the person applying it has “empathy” for the underdogs facing her, instead of strict adherence to the Constitution.  The underdog isn’t always in the right.

I have no beef with her resume.  She’s gone to good schools and had a long career on the bench.  However, since Obama’s made a point of talking about her race, let’s discuss that.  When you make race a factor in promotion decisions, you make it possible to promote somebody who wouldn’t qualify based on talent.  They make up for the lack of it by being a member of the favored class.  My fear is this is how Ms. Sotomayor came to be where she is.

Finally, Coyote has a great post on a decision she participated in that allowed one man to literally steal another man’s land.  Why?  He was a member of the local government.

Based on these things, I do not support her nomination.  There may be worse nominees out there, but I’m sure there are better.

Check out the small print at the bottom!  Hilarious!!

The NY Daily News writes about Justice Souder’s imminent retirement from the bench and posits about Obama’s choice of a replacement:

“Most observers expect Obama to appoint a woman, because the court currently has only one woman justice and Obama won election with strong support from women.”

To me, that’s exactly what’s wrong with our political process.  No mention of seeking out the most qualified candidate, only the most qualified woman.  And that should probably be amended to the most qualified woman who most supports Obama and his policies.

I’m not bagging on Obama for this.  Every politician does this, with few exceptions.  He’s just another in a long line…

Paul Krugman writes:

“So Bobby Jindal makes fun of “volcano monitoring”, and soon afterwards Mt. Redoubt erupts. Susan Collins makes sure that funds for pandemic protection are stripped from the stimulus bill, and the swine quickly attack.

What else did the right oppose recently? I just want enough information to take cover.”

My (inevitable) response?

“Obama and his socialism. Oops, too late to take cover. Disaster already imminent.”

If that comment gets approved, I’ll update with a link.

UPDATE:  NYTimes.com has more integrity than I guessed.  I updated with a link.  Melissa Lafsky, take note.

• “Is being an idiot like being high all the time?”
• “When I see the American flag, I go, ‘Oh my God, you’re insulting me.’”
• “When Communist U.S.S.R. was a superpower, the world was better off. The right-wing media is trying to marginalize the peace movement.”

That last one is my favorite.  Because, you know, Communist U.S.S.R. was known for peace and making the world a better place.  Those KGB peace-niks, always handing out flowers and puppies.  Peaceful governments that make the world a better place typically collapse, so I see her point. 

Anyway, in an effort to prove that you can talk with your rear-end in your mouth, Janeane has gone on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann to discuss the recent Tax Day Tea Parties.  Let me outline her thought pattern for you:

• Racists become confused and angry at speech that doesn’t make sense to them.  (Not to generalize, but sure, there may be some truth in that)
• The tea parties are “not about bashing Democrats, it’s not about taxes,”.  (Hmmm, since the entire message of the campaign and every protest sign I saw was anti-tax, I’m going to disagree here.  So, what was it about?)
• “they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don’t know their history at all.”  (So, the people attending the Tax Day Tea Parties don’t know their history?  Amazing that Janeane knows all of these people and their facility with historical events.  I’d hate to think a progressive thinker like her would make a sweeping generalization.)
• “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.“  (Wow…just…wow.  It seems she just can’t fathom that so many people don’t like the heavy-handed, socialist policies of the Obama administration, so she makes up some other reason for it.)
• “the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it’s pushing against the frontal lobe.  So their synapses are misfiring.”  (This statement is chock full of idiocy.  Not only does she equate a Republican with an average white power activist, she attempts, with her vast knowledge of neurology, to diagnose all people who disagree with her as having a mental problem.  Hello, Mr. Orwell.)
• Later on she says, “because as I’ve said, the Republican hype and the conservative movement has now crystallized into the white power movement.” (I wonder how Alan Keyes feels about that.)

What’s disturbing about her logic is that she automatically jumps to calling anybody who disagrees with an Obama policy a racist.  That’s right, we must hate black people.

Thank you, Ms. Garofalo, for taking the debate off of the actual issue of taxes, deficits and other important arguments and trying to make this about racism.  Thank you for appealing to the lowest common denominator and avoiding any actual substantive debate.  You’ve proved yourself a master of irony with this quote from the same interview:

“Fox News loves to foment this anti-intellectualism because that’s their bread and butter”

Let’s get one thing straight.  My disagreement with Pres. Obama has nothing to do with the color of his skin.  It has everything to do with his backwards, addled policies that have no foundation in any kind of reality and serve only to exacerbate problems, assuage some portion of the populace and ensure further government power and control.

Were Obama not the president, perhaps I would enjoy a healthy debate with him.  But he has too much responsibility and power for me to blithely accept what he says and does and say nothing.  His economic, social and foreign policies are all wrong-headed and will cause much more harm to this nation than they could ever do good.