Sotomayor: "Abrasive" "Racist"

I'm sure most of y'all have heard about Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court. Well, I was watching the Rachel Maddow Show last Friday and the main topic was what the Republican party is saying about Sotomayor.

The Republican party has been attacking Sotomayor and accusing her for a number of things: for bringing her ethnicity and gender into her decision-making process, for being empathetic, and other things. Ya, one problem with those attacks. As Maddow pointed out, if we attack Sotomayor for bringing ethnicity into decision making, we have to attack Justice Samuel Alito for the same thing, if we attack Obama for praising her empathy, we should also attack Bush Sr. for praising the same quality in Clarence Thomas. So that basically breaks those attacks down for now.

G. Gordon Liddy, one of the masterminds of the famous Watergate scandal and a radio talk show host, said, "let's hope that the key conferences aren't when she's menstruating or something, or just before she's going to menstruate. That would be bad." I was like, WTF!?! Is it that her judgement skills will be impaired during that time of the month? Is she less capable to do her job just because she is a woman?

Some republicans are claiming she's racist. How the heck is she racist?? Did I miss something? I've seen no evidence of her being racist, except maybe saying that she takes her ethnicity into consideration when making decisions on cases, which totally makes sense if you ask me.
One other thing that was pointed out was that Sotomayor is "abrasive" but what about all those men in Congress and what-not...aren't they abrasive too? Or are they called go-getters? Powerful? Resourceful?

Truth be told, I don't really pay attention to politics but this just pissed me off! How can people be so blind to someone's qualifications and attack her based on her race and gender? One more reason I'll never get into politics.


Here's the clip from the Rachel Maddow show that deals w/ the attacks on Sotomayor.

4th Quarter Book Review

For this quarter I am reading a biography of Madam C.J Walker titled The Black Rose written Tananarive Due and Alex Haley. It contains 39 chapters and 375 pages. Madam C.J. Walker was one of America's first black female millionaires. Her biography discusses her life growing up in the southern state of Louisiana. She was born December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. As a bashful child she did not imagine herself evolving from share-cropping and corn fields. By inventing a beauty company, and being a leading philanthropist in African American causes she change the view of a African American woman. author Alex Haley was fascinated by Madam C.J Walker's triumphant life and the era that she lived in that he wanted to write a book about her before his past on. Madam C.J Walker's government name was Sarah Breedlove. People called her Miss. Sarah. Throughout her life she was married at the age of fourteen to Moses McWilliams, at the age of eighteen she gave birth to her daughter named Lelia, and at the age twenty she was widowed. She discovered her name Madam C.J. Walker from her second husband Charles Joseph Walker. After dealing with hair loss, she prayed and dreamed of a formula that would repair African Americans hair and that is when she created a formula that enhance African Americans hair for many generations to come. After becoming a self-made millionaire and traveling all around the world, Madam C.J Walker died in 1919 at the age of 51 due to hypertension.The Black Rose is a wonderful novel and I recommend that everyone should read it. It is enlightening and inspirational. It shows that you can do anything if you just put your mind to it.

the year is finally done...

For the fourth quarter i read Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien. Its about a squad of men in Vietnam chasing after a guy named Cacciato. He deserted the war and started a long march to Paris. The squads goal was to chase him down and bring him back to the war but Cacciato ended up leading them across two continents into Paris. He was running from the chaos in Vietnam; for a stable life in a stable country. He was running for greener pastures, and deep down I think thats what everybody is secretly looking for. I'm going to Alabama in two weeks and cant wait to leave. Maybe the grass is greener in the "Dixie" land. The closer I get to leaving the more I can somewhat understand why Cacciato was trying to leave. Well overall its a very good book to read. Every other chapter switches from chasing Cacciato to back in the fighting in Vietnam and it may confuse some people but if you can put up with that then I recommend this book for you.

To read is to learn...

This quarter I read a book entitled Handle with Care by one of my favorite authors, Jodi Picoult. Picoult writes books that often address social/moral issues (teen suicides in The Pact, rape and murder in The Tenth Circle, school shootings in Nineteen Minutes, capital punishment and organ donation in Change of Heart, and most recently medical ethics in Handle With Care).

Willow was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), which is a genetic bone disorder characterized by bones that break easily. She is five years old and have broken over 68 bones in her body. People with Willow's type of OI can break a bone by slipping on a fallen napkin, they can break a bone if the car stop too suddenly, or if they sneeze too hard. But Willow also has a great spirit. She knows how to read at a 6th grade level and can surf the web. She enjoys learning random facts that no one else knows.

Well, one day her mother decides that although she loves her daughter dearly and can't imagine life without her, she wants to sue her obstetrician, who also happens to be her best friend, for not telling her about Willow's disease sooner and thus giving her the option to abort the baby. The lawsuit that ensues tears apart Willow's family, and leads to many questions: How disabled is TOO disabled? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love?

I really enjoyed reading this book, not only because it was written by Picoult but because the issues it addresses were interesting and so were the characters. The book is written from the points of view of four major characters and though Willow is the central character, we don't really hear her speak till the end of the story. The story line is compelling and it captivates the reader till the very last word.

4th quarter book summary

The book I read was called “The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino”. Joey Massino was the leader the Bonanno's a mob family located in New York. He worked his way up from hijacking cars and taking orders from people to money laundering, order hits on people, and giving the orders instead of taking them. Massino became the mob leader shortly after Phillip Rastelli died in the late sixties. Massino had many undercover cops and friends who would soon betray him that worked under him and were suppose to be some of his closest associates. Even his own brother in law testified against him in court. It took a while for Massino to finally be caught on all his criminal actions, but in 2003 he was caught, convicted in 2004 of racketeering, extortion, loansharking, conspiracy, money laundering, arson, illegal gambling, and seven murders, and sentenced to two consecutive life terms in 2005. Massino avoided the death penalty by wearing a wire and talking to his associates as an undercover informant. This book was okay and sort of interesting, but at the same time it was long and also had its boring parts. The book consisted of numerous characters which made it harder to keep up with every thing since you had to remember all the hard pronouncing names of the victims, friends, and associates. I like this book due to it having more interesting parts then boring parts. I also disliked this booked because of all the people named in the book and the dialogue that you have to keep up with. Overall this is a good book and everything, but I wouldn't recommend it to any one unless they really enjoy mob books.

quarter 3 book summary

My book was about an abusive mother to her two children that later killed her because they couldn't take it any more. The main character is Jane and she has two kids by two different men. Her first son she treats like more of a mistake because she despised his father who committed suicide because she wouldn't give him the time of day any more because she no longer wanted to be with him. Jane's second son is treated much better then Jason her first son, but still isn't treated like a son should be treated. Mathew's father left Jane because he couldn't take her any more. He realized how much she hated her first son Jason, she would yell at him for the smallest things and sometimes just put him outside for hours at a time and he would sit out there until she was ready for him to come inside. Jose left her once for the way she treated there sons, but he eventually came back. He left once again after they had a big argument which she started waving knives at him which wasn't an unusual thing. Once she realized he wasn't coming back she called the cops on him saying he sexual assaulted her and that resulted in him spending 3 months in jail. He would have spent a longer sentence, but he got out on good behavior. Once he got out the next time he saw his sons again was on the news for a crime of killing there mother. After Jane's first husband death she moved because she didn't like her family much and just couldn't take them at all. As a kid you should play outside as much as you can and associate with people because its harder to do once you get older, but Jane allowed none of that as much as she could. Most of the time Jason and Matthew would go and play outside when there mother was gone, but would hurry back inside when they thought she was on her way back home. Matthew wanted to join a hockey team and his mother was resistant at first, but eventually she gave in and she joined. Matthew was a joy to the team and was probably one of the better players on the team. The team's coaches wanted phone numbers from each of the players parents for practice times and game times, but Jane gave them a new number almost every month because around this time she thought someone from the music industry was was after her and was out to get her for some strange reason, but she soon left the team. Matthew joined a different hockey team later and again he was a joy on the team, but once other parents and coaches tried to befriend his mother they realized they couldn't get threw to her at all. So Matthew was removed form the team, but a team dad which was a cop made sure he let Matthew know it was his mother's fault 100% that he couldn't stay on the team. Jason was nothing like Matthew and kept to him self whether it was at school or at home. Even when Jason would go to Matthews hockey game he wasn't doing much talking or watching, but homework or playing a held hand game. Jason was smart and only received nothing, but straight A's and it had to stay that way or else he would get beat. Being so smart and uptight made him a kid who wasn't so popular but he often talked about being other people superior which of course people took to offense. Being so smart Jason was allowed to skip the eleventh grade and graduate being at the edge of seventeen. He did this for the reason any one else would have had done at this point in his life and that was to get away form his crazy and abusing mother. Later in the years the boys had enough and in 2003 they took it to the max and let their mother know they weren't going to take any more from her so they killed her and cut off her head and hands so it would make it harder for the police to identify her. They got the idea off of the hit series The Sopranos.

Men, men, men men mainly men!!!!!

As many of you may know I got into a simple argument with Daniel Aisha(I-ee-sha) Briscoe the other day; it was about who wanted to read or something like that, the argument escalated and then she ended up blurting out a statement saying, "Men always have to think what they say is final and that they (men) have ultimate authority women." I agree with the statement that men always think they have authority over women because men are more powerful and more assertive than woman. For example in the argument that Daniel Aisha (I-ee-sha) Briscoe and i got in was because i asked her if she wanted to talk to the class about what we read and she replied i don't care, it doesn't matter who talks in the group. That made me assert myself into saying that i will talk to the class then. Which makes me to believe that men tend to assert themselves in situations while women like to sit on the sidelines.