June 22, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor: Barack Obama's ideological soul mate

Mickey Kaus points to an NYT article about Sonia Sotomayor's service on some kind of New York housing handout board a couple of decades ago, which documents both her Obama-like Who? Whom? worldview and her anti-Obama tendency to rub people the wrong way.

“She wanted lower-income people served, and that’s a good goal,” said Royce Mulholland, who represented the state’s Division of Housing and Community Renewal on the board. “But we also explained that the insurance program was intended to serve moderate- and middle-income apartments — and we only provided the insurance, which means we had very little leverage.”

Ms. Sotomayor did not confine her scrutiny to the balance between low- and middle-income housing.

After receiving a report about the agency’s affirmative action program in 1989, she requested a breakdown of the number of black and Hispanic workers. Later that year, when she was informed that just 8 percent of the agency’s contracts went to businesses owned by women or members of minorities, she called its performance “abysmal.”

“It was like a boys’ club when we came there,” recalled Hazel Dukes, who is black and joined the board about the same time as Ms. Sotomayor. “We knew how to be pushy. We were like bees in their bonnet.”

Fioravante G. Perrotta, a former agency board member, did not care for Ms. Sotomayor’s views. Mr. Perrotta recalls her as conscientious and knowledgeable, but he said she was an “extreme partisan” on questions of class and ethnicity.

“She made it very clear that she was very liberal and a Democrat,” Mr. Perrotta said, “and that really should have been a nonpolitical organization.”

Basically, Sotomayor is what Barack Obama would be if he had never mastered his "I have understood you" Jedi mind control shtick where he recounts his interlocutor's argument more eloquently that his conversational partner put it himself, thus persuading 99% of the people he talks to that he shares their views. After all, if he understands my views, how could he possibly not hold my views?

John Carney at Business Insider offers a more lucid explanation of what this government thing-a-mabob was supposed to do, and how Sotomayor's activism is relevant to today's mortgage meltdown.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

22 comments:

  1. “We knew how to be pushy. We were like bees in their bonnet.”


    These types would of course never think about becoming busy bees and actually producing something of value instead of parasiting off whites.

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  2. "Basically, Sotomayor is what Barack Obama would be if he had never mastered his "I have understood you" Jedi mind control shtick where he recounts his interlocutor's argument more eloquently that his conversational partner put it himself, thus persuading 99% of the people he talks to that he shares their views."


    Well put Steve! Basically Obama is what you get just before Al Sharpton. I think South Africa is a good template for the US. Mandela had the same Jedi-halo and many liberals and ordinary whites fell for his machinations. After him it’s back to the traditional African tribal chief where what-you-see-is-what-you-get, such as with Zuma. I guess you guys can expect a Sharpton or Chocolate-City Nagin after Obama.

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  3. "which documents both her Obama-like Who? Whom? worldview and her anti-Obama tendency to rub people the wrong way"

    Maybe it would be more appropriate to say she's Michelle Obama's ideological soulmate, matching the bitterness over her low test scores, overbearing personality, obsession with victim politics and the race racket, and affirmative action Princeton acceptance.

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  4. “It was like a boys’ club when we came there,” recalled Hazel Dukes
    ====


    Say it like you mean it: a WHITE boy's club.

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  5. Lucius Vorenus6/22/09, 8:45 AM

    Steve Sailer: ...John Carney at Business Insider...

    A little off-topic, but who are these guys behind "Business Insider"?

    They've been doing a number of really first-rate pieces in the last few months.

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  6. Hazel Dukes pled guilty to robbing one of her employees. Who was a cancer victim.

    It takes a special kind of creep to do that.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/opinions/1997/10/19/1997-10-19_hazel_dukes__serial_betrayer.html

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  7. Lucius Vorenus6/22/09, 9:18 AM

    Fioravante G. Perrotta, a former agency board member, did not care for Ms. Sotomayor's views. Mr. Perrotta recalls her as conscientious and knowledgeable, but he said she was an "extreme partisan" on questions of class and ethnicity.

    "She made it very clear that she was very liberal and a Democrat," Mr. Perrotta said, "and that really should have been a nonpolitical organization."


    By 1987, this was nothing new for Sotomayor - she had been a pugilist in the racial shakedown racket since at least her SOPHOMORE year at Princeton [if not even earlier than that]:

    Latin student groups assail University hiring performance
    By David Liemer
    April 22, 1974
    dailyprincetonian.com

    Accion Puertorriquena and the Chicano Organization of Princeton have filed a complaint with the New York office of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), charging the university with a "lack of commitment" in hiring Puerto Rican and Chicano administrators and faculty and recruiting students from these minority groups...

    "This is a claim that has been made to us continuously," said Sonia Sotomayor '76, co-chairman of Accion Puertorriquena. "But there were many openings when Bowen revamped the administration two years ago, and no genuine efforts to find Latinos were made then," she charged...


    Letter to the Editor: Anti-Latino discrimination at Princeton
    by Sonia Sotomayor '76
    May 10, 1974
    dailyprincetonian.com

    Letter to the Editor: Criticizing the process of selecting a 'minority dean'
    by Sonia Sotomayor '76 et al
    Sept. 12, 1974
    dailyprincetonian.com

    BTW, Sotomayor arrived at Princeton as an illiterate:

    Sotomayor's Focus on Race Issues May Be Hurdle
    DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
    May 29, 2009
    nytimes.com

    She spent summers reading children's classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and "re-teaching" herself to write "proper English" by reading elementary grammar books. Only with the outside help of a professor who served as her mentor did she catch up academically, ultimately graduating at the top of her class.

    She then held a knife to Princeton's jugular with the H.E.W. complaint, knowing full-well that the Princeton Administration lacked the gonads to stand up to her, and, sure enough, by 1976, not only had they caved on the question of the deanship, but they had also awarded her the Pyne Prize:

    Back for Pyne Prize luncheon, Chicanos find 'changed' campus
    By Tom Streithorst
    March 1, 1976
    dailyprincetonian.com

    Yet, to this day, Sotomayor remains, at best, semi-literate:

    The Case Against Sotomayor
    Jeffrey Rosen
    May 04, 2009
    tnr.com

    Sotomayor's Prose Style
    Heather Mac Donald
    Tuesday, June 09, 2009, Posted at 10:36 AM
    corner.nationalreview.com

    Of course, if you had read any of the non-Ayers pieces in the Obama "corpus", then you would realize that Our Fearless Leader is barely literate [as is his wife].

    In fact, Sonia Sotomayor and Michelle Obama might, together, be as big a stain on Princeton's historical legacy as is Peter Singer himself.

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  8. Reminds me of DeGaulle with his "I have understood you" comment to the Pied-Noirs in Algeria,thus convincing them he was on "their" side. In reality as soon as he assumed power he got France out of Algeria. Just because someone "understands" you doesn't MEAN they AGREE with you.

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  9. Once again, I'm shocked, SHOCKED that Obama nominated a *liberal* to replace Souter on the High Court.

    Clearly all the conservatives and ultra-conservatives who voted for Obama and donated so much money to his campaign must feel very betrayed right now...

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  10. The MSM outlets are all a bunch of sycophants.
    Please check out my take on all the photo ops, and stick around for more good content.
    http://libertarianhumor.com/2009/06/22/idol-worship-president

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  11. Just out of curiosity, was there anyone in the US in the 20th century, from George Bailey on, who argued against giving more government help for poorer people to buy homes?

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  12. RKU, we all know you want more Hispanic immigration. Like Andy Sullivan or testing99 you are a mite predictable.

    For others, isn't it funny how not one word is spoken about how Obama must appoint a moderate rather than a "divisive" appointee? Unlike Bush.

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  13. It seems like every crummy economic decision the past 40 years contributed to the housing bubble/collapse: inflation, easy money, artificially low interest rates, federal minority housing programs, state minority housing programs, Fannie and Freddie, massive federal budget deficits, G.I. Bill housing loans, "no interest" loans and other newfangled debt instruments, mortgage income tax deductions, the two Clinton/GOP Congress cap gains tax cuts for housing (1996 and 2000), California's Prop. 13 limit on taxes on houses (making it the only sector of the economy to partly escape the state's notoriously high taxes), near-open immigration for workers of "jobs Americans won't do," etc.

    It had to collapse like a prefab house in a hurricane, and it did.

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  14. Chief Seattle6/22/09, 7:19 PM

    Obama barely literate? Not judging from his speeches - he's a very thoughtful speaker. The last president was much closer, and he couldn't even blame it on race.

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  15. "Except that blacks only constitute 13% of the U.S. population. Which is why it is especially important for them to form anti-white coalitions with the Latino population, exactly as Obama is doing with Sotomayor."

    While it's true that Obama is trying to build a black/hispanic coalition, it's really not necessary. Obama's mere presence shows us that combined blacks, hispanics, and self-hating white liberals already constitute a majority in this country.

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  16. off topic

    Seriously Steve, sometimes you're scary.

    http://isteve.blogspot.com/search/label/infrastructure
    ... new California construction hiring is postponed indefinitely and Obama's infrastructure money is diverted to keeping current civil servants employed. Teachers and prison guards and the like will be renamed "human infrastructure."


    http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/659dkrod.asp?pg=2
    "In triumph, Gandy, Smeal, and their sister activists turned their attention to Congress. They perfected a special "handshake pitch" for members of Congress to be used when reminding them of the importance of rebuilding our human infrastructure, intoning, "That infrastructure is fragile too." With Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on board, the revised recovery act sailed through Congress, and President Obama signed it into law on February 17."

    Unfortunately you missed the feminism angle.

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  17. Obama's election only shows that a majority of the country preferred him to John McCain, as I did and still do (although I didn't vote for him). At least we're not dropping bombs over Iran in the wake of a contested election.

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  18. "anony-mouse said...

    Just out of curiosity, was there anyone in the US in the 20th century, from George Bailey on, who argued against giving more government help for poorer people to buy homes?"

    I never made the George Bailey connection before. I wonder how much influence that movie has had - it must be aired 50 times around Christmas, every year.

    And to think, if only that angel had let Jimmy Stewart jump off that bridge, my house would still be worth a million today.

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  19. ...where he recounts his interlocutor's argument more eloquently that his conversational partner put it himself,...

    Depends on whom he's talking to I guess.

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  20. Judge Stone said...

    At least we're not dropping bombs over Iran in the wake of a contested election.

    The US is still involved there, maybe electing Obama delayed the bombing by say, two weeks?

    While it's true that Obama is trying to build a black/hispanic coalition, it's really not necessary. Obama's mere presence shows us that combined blacks, hispanics, and self-hating white liberals already constitute a majority in this country.

    And don't forget guys like Angelo Mozillo, who think that the "Evil WASP establishment is holding them down, and therefore decide to take the side of "other minorities".

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  21. don't forget guys like Angelo Mozilo, who think that the "Evil WASP establishment is holding them down, and therefore decide to take the side of "other minorities".

    To be fair to the Oompa-Loompa we dont know whether he actually takes their side, or just used them as stick to beat what he perceived as the WASP establishment. Looks the same from the outside.

    Like so many other ethnic shakedown artists he complains about WASPs on the one hand while insisting on his right to enrich them with his presence in their company and access to institutions they created - countries, businesses, universities, clubs etc.

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  22. Meanwhile, staunch conservative intellectual and Supreme Court superstar Clarence Thomas issues heroic dissenting vote in a Fourth Amendment case:

    Story here.

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