Charles Murray has a New Criterion piece called The age of educational romanticism, the thrust of which is that despite a thousand movies about inspiring teachers, you can’t inspire kids to be smarter than they are. This is the same point made by Steve Sailer in Why “No Child Left Behind” Is Nuts, and more recently in Alchemists Can’t Turn Lead Into Gold, Educrats Can’t Eliminate IQ. (But Lead Is Useful Anyway).

Or to put it as I put it with regard to another subject

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The primary message of conservatism is this: “Life is not like that.”

A few days ago, I got this email from Alexandra Bogdanovic (email her) of the Fauquier Times Democrat:

I recently received some information about “hate groups” here in Fauquier County. I understand that some organizations characterize your group as such, and that your group is also characterized as “white nationalist.” In browsing your Web site, I see that you adamantly disavow both descriptions. However, I would like to speak with you further about the issue for a story I intend to write for next week’s edition

So I did speak to her, patiently explaining that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was of course the source of her information, is (altogether now) A SHAKEDOWN SCAM THAT PREYS ON THE ELDERLY, HOLOCAUST-HAUNTED RICH, which has been devastatingly debunked in unimpeachable MSM sources like Harper’s and the Montgomery Advertiser.

And, of course, Bogdanovitch’s article (”Hate group presence is mostly virtual“, May 7 2008) not only ignores this, but even removes those faux-impartial quotes around “hate”.

The number of active hate groups in America is growing, according to one organization that monitors them.

Three hate groups are allegedly present in Fauquier County. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, they are the Center for American Unity, the VDARE Foundation and the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Note “allegedly present” - not “alleged hate”.

Bogdanovic’s piece is riddled with minor errors of a sort that are easy to make but also easy to catch (e.g. I am not a “former” financial journalist, I have not written “two” books critical of immigration policy, just one, alas).

Plus, of course, the VDARE Foundation has never been in Fauquier County anyway. That should have alerted Bogdanovic to the SPLC’s accuracy, but obviously didn’t.

However, the real scandal is her credulous failure to distinguish between our posting polemical articles - or, in the case of CAU, highly techical amicus briefs - and lynching people, which is what the Ku Klux Klan is supposed to do. (Although in fact Bodanovic apparently failed to trace any actual KKK members in Fauquier County).

This is a distinction the SPLC is eager to erase, in its Stalinist quest for control of debate.

Oh, I explained that to Bogdanovic too. Maybe she’s just stupid.

This is a typical MSM exercise in celebrating diversity, as well as documenting (probably inadvertently) the strategy of business to avoid paying citizen workers a decent wage.

Greeley, Colorado, was the site of some well reported workplace enforcement at the local slaughterhouse in December 2006 when Mexicans were rounded up and deported. They complained because it was a special saint’s day: “This is an insult to us as Mexicans because today is El Dia de la Vigen de Guadalupe.” (Latino community outraged at timing of ICE raid).

Like they wouldn’t have minded being deported on some other day.

Anyhow, Swift & Co. has moved on, and has chosen legal refugees from Somalia as its alternative cheapo labor force. So today, we read about happy Somalis, grateful to be working for peanuts in a slaughterhouse.

It’s noon on Wednesday, and in three hours they [four Somalis] will be working along with scores of Somalis at the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant.
Mohamed, who speaks English, is a trainer for new employees, making $12.10 an hour, while Abdi, in the hijab headscarf worn by Somali women, works in packaging. [...]
Ibraham Mohamed is a Greeley caseworker for Lutheran Family Services, which provides refugee resettlement services. He estimates that about 300 east Africans are in Greeley, and that “every day, 20 or 30 people are coming to get started at Swift, maybe 15 (a day). It depends on how they get the job.”
[At home in a foreign land: Somalian refugees adjust to a new life [5/11/08]

Some of these refugees are likely to be preliterate and may require instruction on how to hold a pencil. In addition, Somali culture includes social norms of polygamy, wife-beating and female genital mutilation. They are Muslims, and women are covered up in the Islamic style.

The article Various agencies help Somalis integrate into new culture notes how local police are being trained by Lutheran employees of the Refugee Industrial Complex in the politically correct manner to treat sensitive Muslims.

Ibraham Mohamed, the Lutheran group’s local caseworker, has worked with the Greeley Police Department to spread the word about outreach sessions. The Somalis learn the rules of U.S. roads and other local laws. Meanwhile, the police get a lesson in Somali customs.

“We don’t want to unintentionally insult them,” said Greeley Police Chief Jerry Garner.

Poor Greeley. They can’t be happy about this latest assault.

John Kass of the Chicago Tribune asks:

Will Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?[The Swamp: Obama unstained by Chicago Way ]

The answer seems to be “Not as long as the national media thinks of Chicago as place to fly over, rather than investigate.” And of course, not as long as the national media is in love with Obama.

As a candidate, Obama will do what he has to do to win. My argument is not with him–but with the national political media pack that refuses to look closely at what Chicago is. They’re fixated on what it was, and they think it’s clean now.

And they’ve spent years crafting, then cleaving to their eager and trembling Obama narrative, a tale of great yearning, almost mythic and ardently adolescent, a tale in which Obama is portrayed as a reformer, a dynamic change agent about to do away with the old thuggish politics.

It’s as if [former Daley strategist David] Axelrod channeled it, wearing a peaked Merlin hat. Obama is a South Sider and does not hail from Camelot or Mt. Olympus or the lush forests of mythical Narnia.

I’ve joked that reporters feel compelled to hug him, in their copy, as if he were the cuddly faun, the Mr. Tumnus of American politics. But I was only kidding. The real Mr. Tumnus never had Billy Daley or Ted Kennedy carving up Cabinet appointments. [More]

To his credit, Obama has promised not to fire Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who’s been investigating his friend Tony Rezko and the Daleys. But it’s fascinating to learn that John Kass thinks that this promise, that as President Obama wouldn’t interfere in a corruption investigation, is “no easy vow.”

Here’s an item about a Mexican who went the other direction to become an illegal alien. El Universal reported that 24-year old Mexican Hector Huerta, was detained as an illegal alien in Panama. Huerta was removed from a bus by Panamanian border officials, in the eastern jungle province of Darien. See Panama map here .

Kdawson writes at Slashdot:

There are new developments in the case of the counterfeit Cisco routers, which we have been discussing for some time. The NYTimes updates the story after an FBI PowerPoint presentation made its way onto the Web. It seems that experts at Cisco have examined some of the counterfeit routers in detail and proclaimed that they contain no back doors. Others don’t believe we can be so sure.

Cisco, several years ago was one of the heaviest users of the H-1b program. The technical infrastructure of these “American” companies has been gutted by corporate greed and short-sightedness. Foreign interests now not only fabricate their hardware but have access to every detail of that hardware’s construction and software and the management of these companies depend on foreign interests for virtually every aspect of their major technical decisions.

These major security problems were a predictable consequence of hiring hundreds of thousands of young men from politically unstable or hostile nations to work on key technical projects in the US. Many of these workers came from nations in which it isn’t even possible to do an accurate background check. That means that if a foreign agency plants enough employees into any target company, it is likely they can get whatever trade secrets they want out of that company in time.

If the US ever gets into a serious conflict, the architects of US “security” policy could well replace the idiots in Belgium that hired German companies to defend against the German army as some of the biggest fools in military history.

An excerpt from my new American Conservative article:

How did such a smooth operator as Barack Obama mishandle so ineptly the roadblock that he had to know stood between him and the White House: his intimate two-decade relationship with his far leftist minister, the erudite and articulate Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.? And what, if anything, can he do to repair the damage?

As I asked more than a year ago in VDARE.com, “Why has Obama tied his fate to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a tactless race man who is the living opposite of the myth Obama is trying to project about himself?”

Obama’s candidacy is based on encouraging white voters to assume naively that his mixed race ancestry means that he is somehow genetically programmed for racial and political moderation. Indeed, in his long-postponed denunciation of Wright on April 29th, the reeling Obama made explicit the amusingly eugenic thinking implicit in Obamamania:

“That’s in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings.”

This kind of fantasizing about Obama was embarrassingly widespread before television finally began paying attention to Wright in March. For example, back on December 30, 2007, conservative columnist George Will enthused about how he can just tell that Obama must share Will’s views on race:

(more…)

Googling around on the Immigration issue massively increases the awe in which one must hold the MSM’s ability to repress news in America.

Somewhere this week “an immigration-policy conference” was held at which Rep Howard Berman, D- Calif – a Bad News Bear on immigration–was, perhaps, too candid for the taste of the news managers:

House Democratic leaders worried about the November election want to thwart enforcement-only immigration legislation supported by colleagues in districts where immigration is a hot-button issue, a leading House liberal said Thursday.

People who are very committed to comprehensive reform but who are charged with the responsibility for the next elections think about Lou Dobbs and the power of this issue in different local election contests,” said Howard Berman, D-Calif.

Immigration-enforcement bill splits Democrats by Jerry Kammer, Arizona Republic, May 9, 2008

What this story demonstrates is that the Democrats are absolutely terrified by the immigration issue. (Listening, John McCain?–Aw, forget it.)

As Berman - nothing if not a professional Pol–said:

House Democrats want to avoid a vote on legislation that would require employers nationwide to check the legal status of all workers with a federal verification system.

But their problem is it is some of their newer and vulnerable colleagues, such as Rep Heath Shuler (D- NC) want to position favorably on the bill:

The bill’s chief sponsor is Heath Shuler, a freshman Democrat from North Carolina, where a decade of heavy illegal immigration has roiled the political waters.
Shuler is one of 10 Democrats who have signed a petition that seeks to force House leaders to schedule a vote on his bill.
Meanwhile, 178 Republicans have put their names on the petition, bringing it within 30 signatures of the 218 it needs to force the issue.

Berman’s opinion:

if it came up for a vote, the measure would likely pass in the House, with support from nearly all Republicans and a group of Democrats determined to pre-empt campaign ads that might brand them as soft on illegal immigration.

The response:

Democratic leaders “have been working very hard to keep our Democrats from signing” the petition, Berman said. He spoke at a two-day conference in Washington, D.C.

Unsurprisingly the Arizona Republic’s story demonstrates that new Representative Gabrielle Giffords is a Treason Lobby member:

The issue has split Arizona’s delegation along party lines. The four Republicans have signed it; the four Democrats have not.
Two of the Democrats, Harry Mitchell of Tempe and Gabrielle Giffords of Tucson, are freshmen who won their 2006 races against hard-liners on illegal immigration.

It is not a surprise that House Democrats have a problem: a number won election in ’06 by lying about their attitude on immigration–and more particularly their party’s attitude–so they now face difficulties.

Not if the MSM can help it however: as far as I can Google, the Arizona Republic is the only outlet to mention Rep. Berman’s candid and undeniably interesting remarks.The Democrats have a problem. But America has a worse problem: extreme censorship on these issues by the MSM.

The Land of the Free! What happened?

If 2000 soldiers of the Mexican Army can’t return Juarez to law and order, that region must be understood as lost to federal control, at least for the time being. And one definition for “failed state” is the inability to enforce the law and preserve order over territory.

There is an ongoing struggle for turf among the drug cartels, and the warfare continues because the efforts of the central government to rein it in are too little, too late. (Presidente Fox left his successor the mother of all banana peels by ignoring the growing power of the drug cartels.) Presidente Calderon has sent 20,000 troops throughout the country, and any sign of success remains too subtle to detect.

Stratfor’s analysis is that Mexico City has “limited options for responding to the attacks in Mexico City and for containing the violence in Sinaloa state.”

More than a month after Mexican President Felipe Calderón dispatched more than 2,000 soldiers to the troubled border city, execution-style murders remain commonplace — and usually unsolved — as heavily armed drug cartels battle for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes into the United States. [...]

At least 10 federal police officers have been killed in the past three weeks, and pitched shootouts have raged from the Pacific Coast to central Zacatecas, where three died in clashes Wednesday morning, including a young girl believed to have caught a stray bullet, authorities said.

It has been a particularly violent year in Ciudad Juarez. Once the undisputed turf of the Juarez Cartel, the city of 1.3 million people has become the scene of an epic turf battle, as elements of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel try to muscle their way in.

Nearly 300 have died in the violence so far this year, some of their bodies dumped in mass graves.
[2,000 soldiers can't stop the bloodshed in Juarez, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 8, 2008]

To showcase their power, cartels have recently engaged in high profile assassinations of two top cops in the nation’s capital city: 2 top Mexican police officials killed in 2 days.

The commander of Mexico City’s investigative police force was shot and killed Friday morning as he left his home, authorities said.

The death of Esteban Robles Espinosa comes a day after Mexico’s federal police chief was shot dead in a northwestern Mexico City neighborhood.

Robles headed Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping unit until 2003, according to the city’s judicial police. He was also on the internal affairs commission, the department said. [...]

The federal police chief, Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, was fatally shot around dawn Thursday in a street in Colonia Guerrero in Mexico City, the country’s public safety department said.

Gov Bill Richardson had a case of bad timing when he visited Mexico Wednesday and praised the improved safety along the border region after a period of worsening violence: N.M. Gov. Richardson calls US-Mexico Border more secure.

Richardson said he would ask U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza to reevaluate a travel alert, issued by the U.S. State Department in April, that warned U.S. citizens of rising violence in northern Mexico but stopped short of suggesting that Americans avoid traveling in the region.

Yes, let’s vacation in beautiful scenic Mexico!

Unfortunately, all this carnage has led some less-than-astute minds (like President Bush) to support the Merida Initiative — aka “Sending welfare to a crack house” — an equipment giveaway to Mexico on the backs of the taxpayers costing $1.4 billion. Of course, Mexico is a wealthy nation, consistently ranking among the top 15 countries in GDP, and could easily afford to purchase their crime-fighting technology. Presidente Calderon could write out a check for items he needs, just as the Saudis do for military hardware.

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs had a hearing about the Merida Initiative on Thursday. Here are the members of the Committee, in case you want to suggest better ways to spend our money–like enforcing America’s borders, for example.

Via Alipac, I see that there’s been a fairly typical race riot in a Los Angeles school, and the Associated Press isn’t reporting it as such.[Illegal Immigration ALIPAC - Race Riot in LA! AP Censors the truth again!] I did a big article about how the Associated Press, in particular, doesn’t like to mention race, even when it’s the major theme in the story:

Several Los Angeles Unified School District campuses have had brawls between black and Latino students. In 2005, Jefferson High School was the setting for weeks of clashes.

The LAPD said officials aren’t sure what prompted the disturbance.[ Locke High School in South Los Angeles locked down after huge brawl|Four people are arrested after a lunchtime melee involving as many as 600 students, By Howard Blume and Mitchell Landsberg, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2008 ]

This goes on a lot–more than gets reported. In 2006, Media Matters, the George Soros funded, David Brock run, left-wing media critic organization, criticized Terry Anderson for saying “black students are now outnumbered by the Hispanic students and when those numbers get up around 65 to 70 percent Hispanic, the riots begin. “

As I pointed out at the time, there were actual riots. That’s what mass immigration leads to. But no one wants to know. This statement is from one troubled school district’s website:

What Makes Us Special

Our community is rich in culture, racial and economic diversities. We cherish our differing cultural backgrounds and share the common goal of having high expectations for our children, and to the commitment to the continuing improvement of our schools.