CDR Salamander

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.

Ginsburg had opined that an employer who had a manifest racial imbalance in the composition of his work force could be subjected to court-ordered quotas even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on his part. But Ginsburg herself, at the time of her Supreme Court nomination, had operated her own judicial office for over a decade in a city that was majority black, but had never had a single black person among her more than 50 hires. (Senator Hatch established this glaring inconsistency at the outset of Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing.)

On blacks, immigrants and indigents:
"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people

On sterilization & racial purification:
Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech.

On the right of married couples to bear children:
Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her "Plan for Peace." Birth Control Review, April 1932

On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was "to create a race of thoroughbreds," she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)

On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
"More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

On the extermination of blacks:
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

Labels: Culture Wars

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 15:38

During the first five months of this year, with the Senate under the control of its first African-American majority leader, [State Senator Malcolm] Smith, top Democrats bemoaned the lack of minority Senate staffers.

But instead of trying to recruit new hires, they fired nearly 200 almost exclusively white workers and replaced them with a large number of minority employees, many of whom were seen by their fellow workers to be unskilled at their new jobs.

The move produced severe racial tensions, made worse by the fact that, as a high-level Democratic staffer confided, “We’ve been told to only hire minorities.'’

Labels: Diversity

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 13:22

A misinterpreted navigation system, a sleep-deprived skipper, faulty equipment and an inexperienced bridge team led to the grounding of the Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal on the night of Feb. 5, according to a Navy Safety Investigation Board report.

The very visible and very embarrassing four-day grounding of the Port Royal in 14 to 22 feet of water off the Honolulu airport's reef runway caused an estimated $25 million to $40 million damage to the ship.

Capt. John Carroll, skipper of the Navy's guided missile cruiser, had only 4 1/2 hours of sleep in 24 hours, and 15 hours of sleep over three days as he pushed to get the warship under way after shipyard repairs.

Carroll was qualified for the job, but was not proficient, the report said. He was at sea in command for the first time in nearly five years.

The 9,600-ton cruiser's fathometer, which measures water depth, was broken, and both radar repeaters, or monitors, on the bridge were out of commission.

A shift in the ship's navigation system led to erroneous information on the ship's position. The switch from a Global Positioning System to a gyroscope caused a 1.5-mile discrepancy in the ship's position and set off alarm bells that were continuously disregarded.

During the transfer of personnel back to shore that night using a small boat, the operations officer took a binocular bearing to the harbor landing from the boat deck and noted a discrepancy.

He tried unsuccessfully to radio others and then headed back to the bridge, where he immediately realized the cruiser was in the wrong spot.
...
The officer of the deck had been qualified for only three months, and had no experience operating at night in the vicinity of the reef.

According to the internal report, the quartermaster of the watch had stood three months of watch on a deployment a year earlier, but could not plot fixes in near-shore waters, so another sailor, a navigation evaluator, took over to plot the ship's position.

The navigation evaluator subsequently lost "situational awareness," officials said.

Qualified lookouts were on board for watch duty the night of the grounding, but they were working in the mess as food service attendants and were not allowed to assume the watch.

Set and drift were not calculated, the report states.

I highly recommend that everyone read the JAN 09 Proceedings article A Rude Awakening by Lieutenant Mitch McGuffie, U.S. NavyHere is a ‘lil taste.

It didn’t take me long to discover that I was not the seasoned and accomplished bridge watchkeeper I had once thought. I was now being held to a much higher standard, serving alongside Royal Navy officers who had endured years of training and had been certified by the International Maritime Organization’s Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping (STCW). My new peers could recite rules 1 through 19 of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, more commonly known as “Rules of the Road,” verbatim, navigate the ship in close proximity to land with little or no supervision, and instinctively apply the Radian Rule to determine how far left or right of track they were when using a headmark or sternmark. They could also operate the ship in some of the busiest waterways in the world with little oversight from senior leadership. These were just the most junior bridge watchkeepers, each of whom had been assessed and certified by the Royal Navy’s Training Command but had not yet attended any of the notoriously difficult navigator courses.

Frankly, I was embarrassed at my lack of maritime knowledge and skills for the first few months of my exchange. My first 90-minute-long written Rules of the Road exam was a disgrace. I was accustomed to the U.S. Navy’s 50-question multiple-choice exams, and now I was being harshly critiqued on whether I mistakenly wrote a “shall” in place of a “should.” During one of my under-instruction bridge watches I made a shipping report to the captain and told him what my maneuvering intentions were. I followed by saying I was going to hail the other vessel on bridge-to-bridge radio to confirm her intentions, which is common procedure on U.S. ships.

Within 30 seconds the captain was on the bridge, and I will never forget what he told me. “In the Royal Navy we abide by the Rules [of the Road] and we assume other vessels will do the same. If you truly understand the Rules and abide by them you should only have to use the radio in an emergency situation.”

Look at how the British and Dutch do things. It can be done better, safer and more professional. On top of that, you can get a beer to decouple when off watch.

Labels: Cruiser

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:19

Labels: Humor

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:15

The major conundrum of the civil rights age remains. The 14th Amendment bans discrimination on the basis of race. But the Civil Rights Act, which bans “disparate impact” discrimination — procedures (such as exams) that yield racially unbalanced results — affirmatively mandates racial favoritism to undo those results. The evil day will come, writes Justice Antonin Scalia in his concurrence, when this contradiction will have to be resolved.

He is right. For decades we have been finessing the issue with a mess of compromises, euphemisms, incoherences and pretenses such as banning racial quotas but promoting racial “goals.” Anyone who has ever had to make hiring or admission decisions knows that this angel-on-the-head-of-pin distinction is 95 percent a matter of appearances, gestures and lawsuit-avoiding paperwork.

And yet we have muddled our way through, permitting a large dose of intentional discrimination to ameliorate past discrimination — and present inadvertent imbalances — without totally abandoning the ideal of colorblindness.

The result? At the near half-century mark of the Civil Rights Act, racial minorities have seen remarkable social advancement. The younger generation is infinitely more racially tolerant and accepting. We’ve made great racial progress. But the fundamental unfairness that underlies the racial spoils system continues to rankle. That’s what animated the Ricci case.

Labels: Diversity

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:09

Labels: Humor

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 21:51

Panorama of Pearl ~1947. Never really noticed before I took this out to scan, but the two large ships are the New York and Nevada which had been brought back nuke damaged from Bikini in '46 for study. They were sunk as targets in '48. Kinda scary that survivable nuclear warfare is once again being seriously contemplated...

// posted by CDR Salamander @ 06:06