Now that the heat regarding the nomination and confirmation of Judge Sonamayor is over, time for a little retrospect and understanding from all sorts of different sides of the fence. Lets start simply, not to generalize, but I have seen radical transformations from people who used to be smokers and really didn't care less that their smoke ended up in my lungs. However, once they saw the light and stopped smoking, they became much more acute to the smoke around them and many have become rather aggressive in letting their feelings be know to their ex fellow smokers. Suddenly, they had their minds opened to something that hadn't realize before, the proverbial epiphany.
I am a 3 time cancer survivor, and the most disturbing item people say to me is oh I know how you feel. My response, what Cancer did you have? Well, I haven't, I just know I understand. Wrong, sorry, you don't. This is why I am so fond of the Relay for Life (http://www.relayforlife.org/relay/ ) movement, survivors are together, we get it, we know, we can look each other in the eye and understand. It can't be explained, it is a shared experience thing. Not to be a hypocrite, I am guessing, not knowing, but guessing, it is similar to Veterans of real combat. They can talk among themselves, but very hard for them to talk to non-veterans. It is a shared experience.
So, I believe I get it. I identified iinstantly with what Judge Sonamayor said about a wise Latina. I'm not Latina, but I understood what she was saying. Call it deja-vu all over again, but been there, done that, and still doing it. I have been to many round-tables and town meetings on Health Care and hear the experts up on the panel pontificating on what needs to be done. There are good ideas coming from the podium, but, no one up there really understands it from the patients standpoint. I stand up with questions and tell them you are lecturing it, I live it. Of course, they got even with me by putting me on Advisory and Steering Committee's, but that's OK at the least now a voice is at the table. Be careful what you ask for, or said another way, no good deed goes unpunished.
Supreme court nominees are nominated at the will of the president. Unless the Senate finds something totally failing about the candidate, then all due course of fairness should take place. It would have been a very interesting Judiciary Committee meeting if Harriett Myers had made it that far. Luckily cooler heads prevailed and that mistake was understood before it went too far.
So, to that, I am very discouraged to find that this is the first Supreme Court nominee that Senators McCain and Hatch voted against. Given that they both voted for Judge Thomas, who really should not have made it out of committee, and they voted nea here. Come on, we need more rationale debate, our problems are too big to get into this kind of thing. We all have to get bigger and more mature, please ...
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