Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 331 To 340 Of 839 Comments
HELP! IS THERE A WHITE DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE?
How do you feel about seeing a white doctor and wondering whether he got into a great college as a legacy or into a med school because his father was also a doctor?
The question of affirmative action is not (sorry) black and white.
If you come from a lousy primary school you have a harder time getting into a good college and consequently a harder time getting into med school. If you're from a poor or working class family you may have to spend more time working to pay your tuition which may translate as lower grades.
The question is whether it is better to perpetuate the advantages that whites are more likely to have -- good primary education, more disposable wealth more or less in perpetuity.
Or whether we should "bend the curve" to use that fun new phrase and put more blacks in a position to eventually provide those same advantages to the next generation.
Status quo definitely favors whites. Affirmative action favors blacks.
It's not as if we have a fair system now rendered unfair by affirmative action. It's more that we have an unfair system for which affirmative action may be the wrong corrective.
I come down slightly on the side of allowing time to heal this wound. A slow accretion of black doctors will breed more black doctors. But it's slow, very, very slow. I'd resolve it by saying that schools and hospitals should advantage blacks only in the case of equally qualified applicants. On average a black applicant who scores as well as a white applicant has had to climb a higher mountain and may be superior by dint of that extra effort.
"I support affirmative action as it was originally intended. But the idea that all things being equal in educational or employment opportunities, preference should be given if at all possible to those who have been the historic targets of discrimination has fallen by the wayside..."
Sometimes, you are so eager to criticize that you don't read what I wite.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 27.07.2009 @ 10:32
A FEW RAMBLING THOUGHTS ON THE GATES AFFAIR
John:
I think that's right.
I don't see racism in the confrontation. An ivory tower intellectual and a street cop? That's trouble regardless.
Tow points. One: the scholar isn't trained to keep his cool in this kind of confrontation, the cop is. So the burden is one the cop to chill.
Second: the racism is in the reaction to this incident. In the fact that conservatives who would catapult themselves to the defense of Gates if he'd been a white man with a hunting rifle, suddenly put themselves on the side of the cops. They are blind to the rights of a black man -- even a cranky old black man.
Gates was probably a dick. But Crowley violated his training and the law to enforce his alpha male control.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 26.07.2009 @ 22:05
JS:
Or people like you could stop being idiots. That might help, too.
Here's the way the game went. For the first roughly 400 years whites enslaved, raped, beat, tortured, sold and murdered blacks.
For the next 40 years or so -- up to and including today, July 26, 2009 -- only a substantial portion of whites continued to wish they could enslave, rape, beat, torture, sell and murder blacks.
So it's black people's fault. We should all move on.
Just as it's Jews fault they're a bit paranoid about genocide.
Moron.
You are saddling the current generations of white americans with the sins of previous ones. "I shall be treated as I should be treated and not as my father should be treated" is a fundamental tenet of the republic and piling the transgressions of our ancestors on the backs of today's Americans is wrong across the board.
Recognizing past oppression is necessary. But you are talking about revenge, not reconciliation.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 26.07.2009 @ 13:40
Busboy:
I don't shade the truth for the audience. Besides, nothing will get through to some of them. Read any comment thread on Birthers, you'll see absolute refusal to allow critical thought to enter into the deliberations. I don't think this issue is any different. Facts are irrelevant. It's like arguing logic with a religious nut. Be as reasonable and as thoughtful as you like, Busboy, I'll be stunned (and admiring) if you turn anyone.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.07.2009 @ 20:51
Gates should have said “here is my ID officer. Thank you for coming by”,,,,no he went nuts. There could have been someone around the corner.Gates could have been a criminal. Look just because you are black and and friend of the president you are not above the law.
Gates is 5'7". He walks with a cane. He is 59 years old. He was dressed in business casual attire. It was broad daylight. He had no weapon. He was carrying no burglar tools. No getaway car was parked outside. No one was inside the house crying for help.
Veteran cops develop an instinct for this. Crowley did not believe Gates was a criminal. Not unless Crowley is an imbecile.
Since when did conservatives start believing that the police have unlimited powers to arrest any and all who vocally disapprove of them?
If Gates had been white and holding a hunting rifle every conservative in the country would support him. But he was black. So conservatives pull a 180 and support unrestrained police power.
A large portion of the conservative community still rants and raves over FBI attempts to enter David Koresh's compound -- a compound where there were stockpiles of guns and allegations of child abuse. And don't tell me it's just because of the fire, the FBI didn't start the fire, the FBI and ATF were trying to enforce legal search warrants.
This is racism in action. Pure and simple. Crazy white people with guns? They've got a right not to be hassled by cops. Black scholars in their own homes? Not so much.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.07.2009 @ 19:58
...actively interfering with the police constitutes the crime of “Obstruction of Official Business.”
And with what official business was Mr. Gates interfering?
No law allows total, unfettered leeway to the police. If there is a law that law must be defined, the limits established.
So, what legal business were the police pursuing? And how does a man in his own home yelling at them impede that legal purpose?
The cops had nothing. I'll repeat: if anyone broke the law, it was probably the cops themselves. And if Mr. Gates wishes I'm sure he could do a great deal of fiscal damage to the town of Cambridge were he to pursue a civil case.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.07.2009 @ 19:17
1) No American citizen is required to produce ID.
2) It is not against the law to yell at a cop from your own home.
3) Police, in order to arrest, need probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. There was no crime, as evidenced by the dropped charges and the police officer's own report.
Crowley was wrong. Gates may be a loudmouth, but cops are supposed to be able to cope with that. The police acted stupidly. And if any law was broken, it was broken by the police.
Obama acted stupidly in commenting the way he did, and intelligently in defusing the situation the next day.
If Gates had been a white guy, in his own house, not breaking any law, and let's say holding a legal firearm, every conservative in the country would be on Gates' side. In fact the NRA would make him a cause celebre.
But of course he was on old, gimpy, unarmed black guy. So that's different.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.07.2009 @ 14:25
IT'S PAST TIME TO INOCULATE CONSERVATISM AGAINST THE BIRTHERS
They would perhaps be better served. . .
Or maybe, just maybe, Republicans could actually engage on the issues. Make their case in a rational way. Get over their racist panic, accept the fact that yes indeedy, we have a black guy in the White House and yep, he's a Democrat.
Then maybe we could talk about the line between government and free market, or between group rights and individual rights, or about questions of taxation or environment. The stuff non-crazy people think of as the essence of political debate.
And I have an even wilder idea: what if after we debated the issues we allowed that the other side might have some good ideas, or at least some valid questions, or that at very least they had a genuine desire to strengthen our country?
Why is the GOP doing this? You lost one election and it's like someone opened the gates of the psych ward. Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, now Cheney, all endorsing this stupidity?
I'll tell you something: the GOP's problems have nothing to do with Democrats. We couldn't possibly hurt you as badly as you've hurt yourselves.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 22.07.2009 @ 15:14
You have quite a dilemma Rick. You're the rational Republican, trying to salvage something from the wreck of your party while still coloring within the lines.
The birthers aren't a fringe of the GOP. They're a fringe of American politics, but they are the heart, mind and soul of the GOP.
I don't think you're going to win this fight. I don't think it's not worth fighting, I don't know, maybe it is. But I think the crazies are driving the bus and you're the interloper, the one sane guy at the asylum.
Keep it up and Pajamas will drop you. Crazy is the new Conservative, and PJM will have no choice but to pander to them.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 22.07.2009 @ 11:39
PROSECUTING TORTURE AS A DISTRACTION FROM THE ECONOMY
I was originally against torture prosecutions. I favored a truth commission.
But the sheer idiocy spilled out onto the page in the above comments makes me think prosecution might be in order.
After all, if it's not torture there will be no convictions. So the torturers . . . excuse me, enhanced interrogators . . . would be cleared and vindicated.
Right?
Either way, let's get it all out there. All of it.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 12.07.2009 @ 15:05
