As a post subject heading, shouldn't this be "Gimme Back My Bullets" ?

I'm guessing he'll get his gatts back soon.

For Spanky
 

I can't believe you posted this. This is such B.S. The inherent stupidity of her statements are beyond belief. Do you really think that this interview does anything but show what a moron Guinier is?

If the system schools are currenlty using is not letting in the most qualified students, then find another system to determine merit that does work. If you assume what she is saying is true, that the current system does not discern merit, that does not logically mean that affirmative action systems does determine merit.

The current system may not determine merit, but there is no question that an affirmative action system has absolutely no relationship to merit.

I think the current system works a lot better than she implies. How do I know this? I have seen statistics that show the failure rates of students accepted under affirmative action programs, and they are not good. The failure rate is much higher than normal students. At the school Less and I attended, a student accepted under affirmative action was five time more likely to fail.

Therefore if the best students are not being admitted under the current system (as Loni stated), then why is it then when the current system is suspended (for example with affirmative action) that the students that get in will do less well.

She is correct that race and class are two different issues. But any moron knows that and that is not any deep insight.

Her whole rationalization of why blue collar alumni (who by the way are a lot different than affirmative action alumni) are better alumni is also absurd.

She is also says that a Meritorcracy may not be egalitarian or democratic because a higher percentage of the students that get in to schools have parents from higher income brackets. I don't know why a egalitarian or democratic system has to accept students equally from all classes. In addition, it may be the families from higher income brackets place a higher premium on education and professional success and push their children harder.

The admissions system should be based on an as an objective merit system as possible. That is the fairest system. Any system that chooses students based on race is inherintly unjust no matter how Loni tries to rationalize it.

What has she said in this article that makes you think she has an IQ above six?

For Spanky
 

I haven't read the article and I have no interest right now in the merits of the debate (I'm too busy with that thing called work to get sucked into anything), but if you are admitting that she has written an article, as opposed to, say, gibberish, I think you just established that she has an IQ higher than 6.

Carry on.

For Spanky
 

The bigger question is what level of boredom caused you to read that article.

For Spanky
 

Did you actually read the interview? She doesn't disagree with you. Well, or disagrees with you only to the extent she might argue that AA is no less arbitrary an admission factor than the SAT.

Her research shows that this is not actually true, according to the interview. Other research may show differently. Where empirical data conflict, it's not exactly fair to call the other person a moron for stating conclusions based on the data she observed.

Why is it absurd? They make more money, are more prominant in their communities and (most importantly) give more money to their alma maters. You have a better measurement of alumni?

I agree this is a factor. I also agree that it is not appropriate to assume that all classes should send people on the higher education equally. I'm not sure that Loni believes that either, as much as you've decided she believes that because it's an easy straw man.

And where is she rationalizing it? Her point is that class is more important than race.

And at any rate, I'm not sure that I agree with you, for old school reparation reasons. When the last people whose education was impacted by segregation (either in the sense of being held back, or in the sense of being taught to discriminate) are past retirement age, I'll agree with you. Call me in about 2040.

The part where she discusses the impact of class on the reaction to desegregation. That much of the consternation wasn't at the integration of blacks, but the stratification by class of the whites in the city, and the impact (or perceived impact) that had on the educational opportunities for poor whites.

Also, the observation about the Hopwood plaintiff being penalized for going to a lesser school due to her economic background was interesting, is it not? I didn't read the interview to suggest this was a reason to keep quotas, but simply a criticism of the underlying assumption that the admissions process was otherwise fair to Ms. Hopwood.

For Spanky
 

I am really tired of this damn contract.

For Spanky
 

Your argument would be more convincing if you could cite a few 30-year old movies and TV shows.

I believe James at 16 had an episode on affirmative action, and I'm almost certain that Buffy did as well (but, is the performance of demons really a valid gauge of AA?)

For Spanky
 

I also remember a very special episode of Diff'rent Strokes where Willis was personally hurt by racism.

For Spanky
 

Son, those there Demons are what we call a metaphor. They represent the sexually charged, innately violent races who seek to defile the innocent and beguiling Christian womanhood represented by Buffy and her Friends. Affirmative Action is what gives power to the Demons and corrupts sweet Buffy and her friends.

We have been reduced to these metaphors by the censorship that goes on, keeping good, Christian shows out of the mainstream.

For Spanky
 

You mean like "Highway to Heaven" and "Touched by an Angel"?

Fine quality shows - great plots, inspired acting - I laughed, I cried.

For Spanky
 

Not to mention "Doc", "Sue Thomas: FB Eye", "It's a Miracle" and all the other fine programming on PAXtv.

Yes, I had to look it up. This contract isn't getting any more interesting.

For Spanky
 

Mealy mouthed, watered down tripe. The last good christian entertainment I saw was "Birth of a Nation".

But I do like the 700 Club.

HA!
 

From Drudge:

• Congresswoman McKinney Punches Police Officer... MORE... Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) punched a U.S. Capitol Police officer today after he mistakenly pursued her for failing to pass through a metal detector, HOTLINE reports... The entire incident is on tape. The cop is pressing charges and the USCP are waiting until Congress adjourns to arrest her, a source claims... Developing.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

This guy is running against my candidate (Brian Bilbray) for Duke Cunningham's vacated seat. Duke is the the guy who likes Yachts and fancy restaurants. I thought this was a pretty interesting way to drum up support from the Republicans in the district. I wish we had thought of it.

Friends,

On my campaign website I have included photographs we took as part of Move America Forward's trip to Iraq. A delegation of radio talk show hosts and myself led the "Voices of Soldiers" tour to Iraq where we interviewed our troops in the battlefield along with the people of Iraq - so they could tell the true story unfiltered by the liberal media.

Today those photographs have created an international media firestorm today and I wanted you to get a full explanation as to what has happened. The "Blame America First" crowd is desperate to malign me, right along with our brave troops who are serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

When we traveled to Iraq to support our troops we found that the REAL Iraq was a very different place from what you see reported by the mainstream news media. Most parts of Iraq are peaceful and calm. Violence is almost exclusively limited to 3 out of Iraq's 18 provinces.

The mainstream media was not happy with our trip and our message that our troops are winning the war and the country is becoming stabilized. The news networks either ignored us or criticized us.

But in the last 24 hours they have suddenly taken an interest in our trip to meet with the soldiers and inspect the progress being made in Iraq.

The reason for their sudden interest is that my campaign posted a picture from Istanbul, Turkey (where part of our delegation traveled through on the way home to the United States from Baghdad) and we mistakenly identified the photograph as coming from Iraq.

It was a mistake. I accept full responsibility for it.

Once I realized the situation, I had the photograph replaced with one of the many photos we took from Baghdad.

As a result of that one simple mislabeling of a photograph, news outlets and liberal political activists have barraged my home with phone calls asking about our "bogus propaganda" used to support the mission in Iraq.

These journalists and liberal political activists are attacking our campaign, my credibility, and the message we delivered (that progress is being made despite what the media reports) because they are determined to beat down the morale of the American people. The liberal journalists who dominate the ranks of the media want American troops to pull out of Iraq before the mission there is completed.

Well I say this: We aren't going to back down. And if you want to use this non-issue to advance your defeatist message that we must surrender in the war against terrorism, then I say this: bring it on.

I will apologize for mislabeling 1 photograph. I will NOT apologize for supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. I will NOT apologize for supporting the mission the heroic men and women of our Armed Forces are serving in.

I am going to continue to carry this message forward, and we will prevail.

Now I ask you to help me turn this around on the media and liberal anti-war crowd. They want to use this episode to defeat our campaign for Congress.

I am asking you to make a contribution to my campaign to throw this back in their faces. Let us raise the money to get our message out over the constant noise of defeatism and criticism from the news media.

Make a contribution to our campaign here:

http://www.kaloogian.com/contribute

Or mail in a contribution to my finance headquarters:

Kaloogian for Congress
P.O. Box 1863
Sacramento, CA 95812

Now let's go show the media and anti-war activists that their attempt to attack our trip to Iraq to support our troops has backfired.

Thank you most sincerely for your continued support.

-- Howard Kaloogian
Conservative Republican for Congress http://www.KaloogianForCongress.com

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

It is indeed an interesting tactic. I think before it's an "international media firestorm" it has to appear in more than two publications I've ever heard of (based on a Google News search - I've heard of Newsweek and the Guardian, although I'm not sure why a single constituant should give a rat's ass what the UK's most left leaning major newspaper thinks (and actually, it's a pretty good paper so long as you read it back to back with the FT)).

But that's never stopped a Republican from complaining about the media before. It's such a standard tactic that you are (no offense) a complete idiot for not thinking of it.

For Spanky
 

Exactly. The SAT is arbitrary. Asking people if they can read, and write and do math is just as an arbitrary test of merit and future success than picking them based on race. Anyone that would argue that "AA is no less arbitrary an admission factor than the SAT" is a moron. Equating AA with the SAT is such a stupid idea that it is hard to know how to address someone who would even consider such a stupid assertion as having even a drop of merit.

There is no valid empirical data that shows that students accepted under Affirmative action programs do just as well as the average student. It is a given that AA students have a tougher time. Her point of view is just simple denial. Among most people that deal in this area, the question is not whether AA students have a tough time, but the question is how to keep the AA students in school. Almost every large university has set up special programs to help AA students stay in school. A friend of mine from college, all he does he travel from university to university to help them set up programs to prevent the AA students from failing out. He is a firm supporter of AA but even he would laugh at the idea that AA students perfrom just as well as average students.



Yes it is absurd because it is inherintly contradictory to every other study I have read. Other studies( most put out by liberals) show that students from lower classes, even when they do well in school, have trouble succeeding ( as the liberals like to point out) because of the inherient tendency of the "aristocracy" to help their own advance. In addition, most universities have found that the biggest donors to the university are second generation alumni. People that are both alumi and children of alumni at the same time, tend to donate more. That is why the "development offices" of universities focus on what they call "generational alumi". Now that would seem to contradict the idea that children from blue collar families (whose parents are clearly not alumni) donate more to the university.


You asked if I read the interview. You may have read it but you clearly did not comprehend it. She clearly points out the fact that since most students that enter universities are from the upper classes that that make the system "not egalitarian or democratic". It was one of the points she most emphasized in the interview.

That is not her point.

Affirmative action programs have been consistently tried all over the world. In India with the untouchables, in Malaysia favoring the Malay over the Chinese, in Belgium favoring the Walloons, etc. etc. and it never helps remedy the problem it is attempting to fix, and usually makes the problem worse. The idea behind affirmative action is absurd, and not surprisingly to anyone with any common sense, the usual consequence of affirmative action programs are a huge backlash that makes the problem worse.

Loni Guanier is a joke. The fact that anyone takes her seriously is a serious condemnation of our current academic system. Like a Christian fundamentalist she manipulates the data to fit her theories. Anyone that critisizes her methods or her reasonsing is a bigot just like anyone that critisizes the accuracy of the bible is just an anti-Christian bigot.

The academic process and critical thinking she uses to reach her conclusions is no different from Pat Robertson's or from your average holocaust denier.

George Will on our friend Lani
 

Sympathy for Guinier
By GEORGE F. WILL
Newsweek

GUINIER BELIEVES BLACKS SHOULD HAVE SPECIAL RIGHTS. WELL, WHERE SHE WORKS, THEY DO.

GEORGE F. WILL

Lani Guinier deserves some sympathy. She is an academic and a liberal Democratic activist, so she probably cannot understand what the fuss was about. She probably rarely associates with people who think her ideas are strange. (After McGovern lost 49 states in 1972, a member of Manhattan's liberal literati exclaimed in bewilderment, "But everyone I know voted for him!") Many of Guinier's ideas are extreme, undemocratic and anticonstitutional. But they also are reflections or extensions of tendencies in today's academic thinking and public policy.

She believes majority rule is inherently problematic in America's incurably racist society. She favors federal imposition on state and local governments of rules that would generate results pleasing to groups she prefers. She says existing civil rights laws demand "a results-oriented inquiry, in which roughly equal outcomes, not merely an apparently fair process, are the goals." Any process is unfair if the outcomes it produces frequently disappoint Guinier's favored groups. She says "each group has a right to have its interests satisfied a fair proportion of the time." Each group, that is, among those groups that Guinier believes merit preference. She will decide what is a "fair" proportion. Her radical proposals include weighted voting, racial vetoes of majority actions and other measures to abridge or block majority rule.

Anyone shocked by Guinier's ideas has not been paying attention to developments in the culture and in public policy. We already have moved a long way toward Guinier's goal of a nation of grievance groups exploiting the coveted status as "victims" (of America's wickedness) to claim special rights and entitlements.

Guinier, believing results more important than rules, would dilute democracy in order to promote "progressive" social outcomes. Judicial activists have been lionized for doing just that. (Impatient with democratic debate about abortion policy? Get a court to discover a new "right.") Guinier believes blacks should have special rights. Well, where she works, they do. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania where some blacks angry about a conservative columnist destroyed virtually an entire press run of the newspaper, without any punishment.

She says that blacks who are not elected primarily by black votes are not "authentic" black leaders. "Authentic" blacks have deep roots in "the community." (Guinier, a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law, is a wealthy tenured Ivy League professor; and she is an arbitrator of black "authenticity." She suggests that a black Republican can be only "descriptively black.") She says "authentic" blacks have a "cultural and psychological view of group solidarity." But many of liberalism's advanced thinkers embrace the idea that groups are homogeneous and that groupthink is natural and good. Affirmative action policies often are justified as ways of including "minority perspectives," as though racial and ethnic groups have (or "authentic" members of these minorities have) uniform "perspectives." Such tribalism is premodern and morally retrograde but it is all the rage where Guinier comes from: academia.

An implication of her writings is that only blacks can properly represent blacks. That is the theory of "categorical representation," which holds that the interests of particular groups can be understood and articulated only by members of those groups. This idea was codified years ago in the Democratic Party's quota system for convention delegates. The New Republic, calling for withdrawal of the Guinier nomination, denounced her "reductionist identity politics," the premise of which is that identities, and rights, derive from group membership. But that is the idea that has produced racial "set-asides," hiring quotas and other "race-conscious remedies," including the "race norming" of test scores to prevent "disparate impacts" of employment tests. (Under race norming, scores are segmented by racial groups and individual's scores are reported not in relation to all those taking the test, but only in relation to others in the individual's racial group. Race norming was outlawed in 1991 but the Clinton administration is promoting policies very similar.)

Illegal 'prejudice': People like Guinier, who affix the label civil rights" to every bit of their political agendas, have made it an empty phrase-a classification that no longer classifies. This, too, is a consequence of a "progressive" idea-"critical race theory," which is fashionable in many law schools. It holds that America is so saturated with racism that any social problem is a civil rights problem. Guinier believes the Voting Rights Act is violated by any legislative body where measures favored by certain government-approved minorities are often defeated. She purports to believe that under the Voting Rights Act as amended in 1982, such a pattern of defeats is itself proof of illegal "prejudice" that makes mandatory her "remedial" overthrow of the rules of American democracy. But it is impossible not to detect cynicism: How can she square what she (and she virtually alone) says Congress did, in 1982, with her dogma that white-majority legislatures cannot rise above America's pandemic hostility to blacks?

Speaking of cynicism, Ralph Neas, the "civil rights activist" who ran the campaign of lies and scurrilities against Robert Bork, argued on Guinier's behalf that senators should defer to a president's personnel choices. But Neas was a leader of the successful campaign for rejection of William Lucas, Reagan's choice for the position Guinier sought, because Lucas was a particularly objectionable phenomenon-a black conservative. Still, presidents generally should get the people they want. Guinier was an exception to that rule because she aggressively misconstrues the laws she would have been responsible for enforcing.

At the end of this debacle Clinton's attorney general was still describing Guinier's nomination as "superb," Clinton was claiming that he had just that day discovered what his friend of 20 years thinks, and the usual groups (the Congressional Black Caucus, feminists, etc.) were making the usual claim that Guinier is a "victim." Just another day in the "reinvention of government" by a "New Democrat." What next? Next, this lot will "fix" the economy and "reform" the health care system. Hang on.
PHOTO: George F. Will



Copyright (c) 1993, 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

Exactly. I have not seen it anywhere. But how would his readers know that. This is the perfect straw man tactic.

However, on this campaign we are doing a mailing to 200,000 people. I just went and saw all the pieces before they went out. It is an impressive amount of paper and it will be a little more effecitve than this media trick.

Money talks and Bull shit walks.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

Seems pretty easy to rectify.

1. Have your guy do something slightly idotic, but explicable.
2. Make sure a blogger finds out.
3. Send out an e-mail railing against the liberal establishment, and maybe even accuse Kaloogian of trying to set you up.
4. Done. No more dirty illegal immigrants.

For Spanky
 

The SAT is not a test of whether someone can read, write and do math (although all of those things are necessary to acheive above a minimum score). It is a test of ones ability to reason, along with, at the high end, a test of one's vocabulary, with a emphasis on vocabulary common to east coast elites.

I think her data is valid; at least as valid as the anecdotal evidence you present. At any rate, it would be surprising if AA admissions were able to fully keep up, at least initially.

I don't see it as absurd that someone from a blue collar background, who won their place in college against tougher odds, wouldn't be more successful in life after college, nor does it seem absurd that such a person would donate more to the institution that made them what they are than someone who was otherwise advanatged and who would therefor value the contribution of their university somewhat less.

Can you imagine why my high school classmates who went to segregated elementary schools might disagree with you? Keep a boot on someone's neck long enough, and they'll never get back up without a hand. One fucking full generation is all I ask.

Play misty for me
 

Kum bah fucking yah.

Given the single parent rates in the inner cities, a "full generation" is every 15 years. So by my calculation, we've now had at least three since Nixon.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

The SF Chronicle carried this story today. But they didn't really call out the most interesting point -- that, according to Kaloogian, The candidate said he hadn't recognized the error because "the military asked us to use our discretion and put things on the Internet that were nondescriptive ... (because) if we posted something that was easily identifiable, it could be a target."

Doesn't this detract from his "point," that there really isn't all that much violence in Iraq and that it's the evil liberal media's fault that people think there is?

In this instance, "detract from" = "show to be utter bullshit"

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

Do you use the "borrow and spend as much as we want, we never have to pay it back!" line on the campaign trail?


And speaking of payback, when's our next poker game?

Play misty for me
 

Balt's classmates did not go to segregated elementary schools in an inner city.

Play misty for me
 

Oh, great. Now we're going to debate busing, too.

Play misty for me
 

I'm down

Play misty for me
 

Why do you think that? I didn't go to a defacto segregated elementary school until 3rd grade; I went to an elementary school that was just plain old skool segregated. As in no blacks allowed, regardless of where they live.

Yes, bussing was part of the desegregation solution. So were magnet programs. Anybody want to discuss the inherent racism in creating a plan to get more white students to go to a majority minority school by creating an honors program (which, in this case at least, backfired in spectacular fashion: from my class, every single student but one that participated in the magnet program was a minority. Social pressures among whites to stay at the other school were just too high.)?

Play misty for me
 

Let me guess: Duke lacrosse?

Play misty for me
 

Another anecdote that has informed my position on this issue: when I was in high school, I took a math class (precalc) in summer school to free up my schedule the next year. The class was desgined to allow students at the other high school, the honors high school, who had not started on the advanced math track to catch up and take calculus their senior year. I was the only one in the class who was not taking the class for this purpose, although not everyone in the class was at the other high school.
Everyone else in the class was black or hispanic. Everyone else in the class had essentially the same story: when they enrolled in junior high school, they were automatically placed in the lower track. The smartest kid in the class (who eventually ended up with a masters degree in math) was even put into remedial math initially, the standard class for students in the English as a Second Language class. The problem? He was a native English speaker and didn't speak any Spanish. But his last name was Lopez, and his parents weren't very good at fighting the system (luckily for him, a couple of years later a teacher took notice and ramrodded the school district into correcting its mistake).

That class was clearly a form of affirmative action. I had to fight to get into the class, as I wasn't the target. If it hadn't been there, Mr. Lopez wouldn't have had the prereqs to get into the math program he eventually got into (probably, with the help of an affirmative action program at his school). The summer program was only offered one year, though. The next year's students were just SOL.

Play misty for me
 

Well, clearly that Lopez guy's parents just didn't care, and sins of the fathers, etc.

Play misty for me
 

When I hear stories like this, I'm just glad we passed the "No Child Left Behind" act. Obviously, the Republicans have long acknowledged that education and hard work are the way out of poverty, and have prioritized education the way no prior administration has.

Play misty for me
 

It. Was. A. Joke.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

Brian Bilbray is your candidate? The guy whose website front page says:

• "Over the past several years I have served as a Co-Chair of the Federation for American Immigration reform (FAIR), working to convince Congress to toughen our laws against illegal immigration. We cannot wait one day longer to protect ourselves from illegal immigration and in Congress that issue will be my number one priority."

Doesn't seem like he'd be your guy, but hey.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

We're on our fourth day in a row of protests. I'm pretty impressed, though no one's sure what to do about all these kids who are walking out of school to march on city halls.

The Agenda
 

One out of two ain't bad.

Like thinking that Mexican busboys should learn to speak goddamned English!
 

Exactly.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

I haven't kept up on this bill, but I'm curious to hear your objections. I take it you are not in favor of completely open borders, correct?

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

Objections to what? There are a lot of bills floating around.

I'm most in favor of something similar to what happened in 1986.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

To the concept of border security in general. I'm under the impression that 1986 was just amnesty for people already here but did little for border security.

Interesting campaign tactic.......
 

"Border Security?" That's what they're calling it?

Ok...

Last I checked, the border that has historically let terrorists through is the northern one, but that really didn't seem to be the focus in Congress last week, and it certainly wasn't why high school students all over my city are protesting.