Obamaworld–No Experience Necessary
Barack Obama has just nominated Elana Kagan to be the next U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Despite my having never been to Europe and not being a Catholic, I am going to see if he will nominate me to be Ambassador to the Vatican.
What is it about this man that “No Experience Necessary” is a way of life?
Barack Obama got elected by being a blank slate. He was all things to all people. Think of him as Mr. Potato Head. You can unattach and reattach everything about him, because he was whatever you wanted him to be. Perhaps Plastic Man would have been a better analogy.
Now he takes a woman who has never been a judge, and decides to put her on the top court in the land.
Some will say that the confirmation process will sort out what she stands for, who she is, and what she believes.
No it won’t.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg never discussed her abortion position, so everybody thought that silence meant moderation. It didn’t. She was hard left on the issue.
(There should be no litmus tests on specific issues, but she should have stated how she felt on the issue.)
This is where liberals get )the few that are not already) condescending and take cheap shots at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They had experience, they were bad, blah blah blah, experience is overrated.
No, it isn’t.
I often relate politics to football because some situations are highly analogous. The 21st century Detroit Lions are an example of what happens when experience is thrown under the bus.
The owner of the team picked Matt Millen as the president and general manager. Millen had no experience in management, only as a player. Millen hired Marty Morningwheg as head coach, despite his never having been a head coach. It is one thing to give a new general manager or head coach a fresh start, but not both of them at the same time. They bumbled and stumbled, and wrecked the organization.
This is what happened at the start of the Clinton administration. They came in singing Fleetwood Mac songs and put a bunch of neophytes in key jobs. They were overwhelmed. This does not make them bad people. It just made them incompetent. On the job training is not what the White House should be.
Adults like Erskine Bowles were brought in to restore order.
The same is happening with the Obama administration. Mr. Obama had no executive experience before becoming president. Janet Napolitano had no experience at her current job either. Rahm Emanuel is supposed to be the adult, but his tirades can only do so much.
Mr. Obama is symptomatic of what is wrong in America on this issue. We prize youth and beauty over wisdom. We force older workers into mandatory retirement so that new blood and fresh ideas can come in and make matters worse.
Elana Kagan may intrinsically be a good person. I have no idea. I know nothing about her. Nobody does.
I would say that I do not understand why she was picked, but I absolutely do. Somebody with no record cannot be attacked as easily. No opinions are better than controversial opinions.
In the real world that does not work. Having no credit score is not much better than a bad score.A lack of a negative is not a positive.
Republicans have to accept some basic facts. We lost the election. He gets to pick whoever he wants. He has the votes to ram her through because the GOP is way too gutless to even think of a filibuster. If the Republicans did filibuster, the left would howl that this was “unprecedented,” even though they would absolutely do it if it benefited them. Unprecedented is irrelevant in this case.
If she tries to avoid answering basic questions, then she absolutely should be denied.
Conservatives are not going to get Robert Bork in this climate. This does not mean they have to accept another Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The Republicans should absolutely consider dragging this out until it becomes an election issue. The elft will claim sexism, because that is the only ism that applies here.
Ms. Kagan absolutely should be given a fair hearing. However, if she is evasive, Mr. Obama does not get to do his famous “the discussion is closed” routine where he says “it is time to come together” in the name of conservatives shutting up and agreeing with him.
Also, if she has a “nanny problem” or some other issue that struck down prior nominees, she should not get special treatment. The practice of rules not applying to anything Mr. Obama says, does, or advances has to stop.
Does this woman believe in an evolving constitution, which is code for making things up as we go along?
Does she believe that global rulings by other courts can and should be part of he decision making process?
These are legitimate questions that deserve answers.
She deserves fairness. She does not deserve a coronation. We already had a coronation presidency (although he was democratically elected) and a coronation Supreme Court filled by a wise Latina woman who described herself accurately as mediocre.
(I wonder why this graciousness is not returned. Conservatives never get their nominees through without a hassle. It is always Republicans who have to give in, and they always do. Enough already.)
Barack Obama does not always rely on inexperienced people. He has repeatedly been given credit (rightfully so) for retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.
Yet too many times, the chameleon president selects chameleon nominees.
She may not be a hard left ideologue. Yet if she is, she and the president should just be honest about it.
The only thing I care about is whether she is qualified for the job.
When did experience become a negative?
Mr. Obama could have done much better. Time will tell if he could have done worse.
eric
May 11th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Eric is missing the point on his comment, she is one of us, a member of the tribe of Benjamin, or Levy or whatever.
Obama’s entire staff of advisers are MOTs, members of the tribe (one of the 12).
Therefore, she just illustrates the argument of many fanatics on the left and right, that Obama is really half-Jewish.
I mean, look at his hair, kinky. My relatives came from Spain. They have
dark, kinky hair. He has dark, kinky hair. Therefore, put two and two together, he is really part Jewish.
If we go back to Ethopian history, they are descendents of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon. Ah hah, the truth shall make you free, as my
gentile friends like to say. (I say it can be treasonous).
Speaking of treason, Judge Goldstone gave an interview to an Israeli newspaper. (He was the guy who lead the investigation of Israel’s raid into the Gaza Strip two years ago, in retaliation to the firing of thousands of
“home made rockets” into Israel.
He blamed Israel for not sending a team to refute his report while
it was being prepared.
He may have told some truth, but still committed treason to his people.
Come the “Final Jihad” will the beheaders ignore his background? Did the
Germans give extra sympathy to the Kapos in Auschwitz? (Kapos were Jews who aided them in their slaughter, hoping for a reprieve).
I mean, has anyone heard of a Muslim who betrayed HIS people?
I haven’t.
Soooo, Obama picks a bright lady for the Justice position, someone
w/o any real, genuine, experience on the bench., someone
who also has written very little.
Or as my parents used to say, smart, smart, smart and……!
Get it.
But what will happen when the other justices retire and she takes over.
After all, we Jews know HOW TO TAKE OVER.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
The obvious insertion of a biased military hating liberal idealog is so ripe it stinks.
May 11th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Well, the reason for picking a unknown quantity is just that - they’re unknown. Obama’s not looking for a big fight on this one. Better to pick a slim record and take the heat for that, than a big record and having to deal with every little thing they’ve ever done. That’s why long-serving senators never get elected president anymore. It’s just too easy for sleazy polticians to manipulate today’s hit ‘n run media, rhetorically twisting a complex record into simplistic accusations. This is a bipartisan activity.
Plenty of Justices over the years, including a few chiefs if I’m not mistaken, were never on the bench, and they were nominated by presidents of all stripes. This is about as unique to Obama as the fact that he has two feet. We do want some justices like that, because we don’t want them too jaded, cynical or mired by the sorts of lower court minutiae that should be beneath the purvue of the court.
The comparisons to Harriet Miers are obvious. Many hard righties didn’t like her because she came from a more liberal generation and never took clear positions that are make or break for the right. Some on the left seem equally weary of Kagan.
To make a bigger picture out this - that it’s all about “experience” - is silly and hypocritical at best. George W Bush’s experience - a poor student, an AWOL officer, a failed businessman, holding the weakest governorship in the Union, and all that fed to him on a Silver Spoon - was negligible, if not rather ugly. The right didn’t care. They just pretended he had experience so they could feel better about themselves. Many on the right are very uncomfortable with the GOP’s hard turn toward low-brow, white-trash politics. They would rather pretend it just isn’t happening.
The left would do well, however, to take experience more into account - in fact, they should also be more weary of “experience.” There are a lot of people out there who’s “experiences” aren’t anything to be proud of. The GOP loves “experience,” even when it’s the sort of ignominious experience of a Dick Cheney. It didn’t matter that Cheney was against the invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War. It didn’t matter that he had seriously conflicted relations with the Middle East, the MIC, and Big Oil. They don’t care. They just want “experience” for the sake of “experience.”
Kagan IS an unknown commodity, though. So the left should scrutinize here just as much the right. How does she view the constitution? Precedent? Intent and wording? Application to new events? The trouble with her record is that we really don’t know. I hope the democrats will press her on these things, rather than just kiss her behind.
Some of the insanity from the Right - that she’s a “biased military hating liberal idealogue” - proves that Obama probably made a good choice. Imagine if she was extensively experienced! God knows what insane things the right would be calling her! Kagan has some close ties with conservative legal scholars. It’s PO’d some on the Left. She’s obviously not the “radical liberal” some of the over-the-top conservatives are making her.
JMJ
May 11th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
“Some of the insanity from the Right - that she’s a “biased military hating liberal idealogue” - proves that Obama probably made a good choice.”
No. it just proves that hes spreading the wealth amongst his freinds. It doesnt take a rocket surgeon tlo figure it out.
But thats alright, Ginsburg wiil probably croak after Obamas one and only term. Breyer may well hang up it during the next conservative presidency also.
May 11th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
I have a really hard time telling when Dan’s tongue is in his cheek…
JMJ
May 11th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Illegaly restricting recruiters access to Harvard durung war time.
Smooth. Cant have them Harvard intellects getting their hands dirty, can we ?
May 11th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Do you actually know that story of that ban?
JMJ
May 11th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
I didn’t think so.
The Right is going to hammer away at that whole Harvard “ban” thing, but it’s not gonna stick. All she did was uphold decades of Harvard policy as best she could and should given the prevailing laws, while still allowing the recruiters to work through the school’s veterans association. That ban was in place since 19-friggin’-79. She would have been like 19 or so when that ban was put in place. If anything, she was very gracious to the recruiters. She’s not “anti-military” at all. That’s just stupid. A perfect example of sleazy pols and pundits manipulating today’s hit ‘n run media, rhetorically twisting a complex record into simplistic accusations.
Pathetic.
JMJ
May 12th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Yeah Jersey.
Only anyone without a TV doesnt know about the ban.
The point is that Harvard was accepting fed funds and during war,its really counterproductive and speaks volumes to limit access to recruiters.
Her idological stance on homsexuals kinda got to her effecting her sentiments for the military, its really pretty simple.
DADT has been upheld five times in federal court, and in a Supreme Court case, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. (2006), the Supreme Court unanimously held that the federal government could withhold funding in order to force universities to accept military recruiters in violation of university nondiscrimination policies.[
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/11/kagans-legal-record-portrays-cautious-liberal/
In a 2003 email to faculty and students, Ms. Kagan called the military’s policy barring active homosexuals from serving “a profound wrong—a moral injustice of the first order.”
In 2005, Ms. Kagan was one of 40 professors who signed a “friend-of-the-court” brief urging the Supreme Court to uphold a ruling permitting law schools to limit access by the military to campus recruiting events. The brief took a more modest position than others. Rather than calling the 1996 Solomon Amendment unconstitutional, it argued that schools were in compliance with the statute because they treated the military equally with all other employers that discriminated against homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court found otherwise.
Businessweek.com
During her confirmation hearing to be solicitor general, Kagan distanced herself from a memo she wrote to Marshall while clerking for him in 1987. She wrote that religious organizations shouldn’t be allowed to take part in a program designed to discourage teen pregnancy because they inevitably would be engaging in religious teaching.
Kagan said she recently read the memo for the first time in 20 years. “And I looked at it, and I thought, ‘That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,’” she said.
“HIT AND RUN MEDIA”
75% of all media personell are registered democrats
May 12th, 2010 at 12:12 am
‘If anything, she was very gracious to the recruiters. ‘
Got anything to back that up ?
May 12th, 2010 at 7:54 am
She is a product of the Harvard puppy mill. No other requirments necessary.
Toma
May 12th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
The school, at the time, had an understandable and legal reason for restricting recruiting (it was never banned - that’s a LIE): the military discriminates against people based on their sexual orientation (and that’s really stupid, too). The law changed, so Harvard changed the policy. And you’re right “everyone who watches TV knows about the ban.” but the “ban” is a lie told by sleazy pols and pundits.
JMJ
May 12th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
“(it was never banned - that’s a LIE): ”
Get it right.
Kagan was the one crying about a ban when in all truth and fact dont ask dont tell was in place in 2004 banning no one but only stipulating no one ask and no one tell.
Tryagain.
The scholl was recieving fed funds. By lawthey’re obligated to allow recruiters.
THATS WHY SHE LOST !!!