Wise Latina

Roberta laps me in the  Sotomayor discussion.  The name Linda Chavez should have popped up in  +this + blog  within seconds of the Wiseass Latina's nomination to Scotus. If His Obamaness wanted an actually  smart Latina for the court, Linda is there for the appointing. 

(Linda should have been secretary of labor and later a  United States senator.   Running afoul of the nanny laws was  probably pretty much her own fault, but the clowns counseling her in the the Mikulski race need shooting.)

It's nice to have her around as a writer, but  it would be even better to make her the first Latina Supreme Court justice. Unburdened with a law degree, she possesses a nice sense of the Constitution as a mechanism for forbidding government to engage in tyrannical practices.  

Are you listening, Mr. President? Bush withdrew Ms. Harriet Whosis.  You can withdraw Sra. Sonia.

Barrack of Arabia in Germany

President Obama has sounded the call for peace between Isrealites and  Palestinians, so  breathe easy Americans as you  try to ignore your  two nagging suspicions:  First, that The Obama did  not advance a single idea that has not been promoted by every U.S. president since Kennedy. Second, that the Obama message reduces to: 

1." I agree there should be two nations in the area.

2. "Everyone should  play nice.

3. "I'm from Washington and I'm here to help."

The Obamillac

I leave it to smarter men to reconcile  President Obama's pledge to reduce unemployment in the auto industry while simultaneously cutting 21,000 jobs at GM, of which he is now 60 per cent owner and bankruptcy receiver-in-chief. 

It's easier, and more fun, to visualize the results of Obama "revitalizing and remaking" GM and the rest of the American auto industry, though I think Johnny Cash beat me to it.

The headline and lead cry of "exposed corpses" littering Mingora in  this AP piece on the Pakistan fighting.  If you care to follow though by reading the entire report, you'll discover the  charnel house image is  is justified by exactly three bodies -- two of them apparent "insurgents" lying in a cemetery. The facts as reported could just as easily justify a screaming headline about  slothful Pakistani gravediggers.

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There is no vast media conspiracy, of the left or of the right. But there is a chamber pot full of miserably non-professional  journalism, and you really hate to see it appear so often  on what was once one of the world's great news services. 

The writer of the three-corpse trash was engaging in a venerable newspaper practice -- reaching for a  gee-whiz headline. We've all done it, but the AP pros  are, or were,  damned careful to make sure the body of the report lends some credence to whatever glorious -- or gory -- image is conjured up in the lead.