On the same day (May 24th, 2008), Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were campaigning on the Caribbean isle of Puerto Rico, where a Democratic primary (with 55 delegates up for grabs) is scheduled for June 1st.

Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory, not a state, and its residents are American citizens. Though Puerto Rico doesn’t elect members of the electoral college, it does participate in party politics so it does have a say in choosing the nominee.

According to the CNN.COM article Clinton, Obama Court Puerto Rican Voters both candidates were campaigning in different cities on the 24th. Barack Obama was in Bayamon:

… Obama marched along a street in Bayamon, shaking hands with supporters as he walked in front of a banner that said “Puerto Rico Con Obama.” This event was referred to as a “caminata,” a traditional parade for a candidate. Obama remarked to the crowd, “I will never forget the support and the friendship that I’ve seen here in Puerto Rico. … I am absolutely confident that if that we keep on working hard, there’s no reason why we can’t win here in Puerto Rico, and if we win Puerto Rico, we will win the nomination.”

Hillary, meanwhile, campaigning in Aguadilla, brought up the issue of potential statehood for Puerto Rico:

The former first lady may not have understood the language during her first campaign stop in Puerto Rico, but she certainly understood the politics. Before a crowd of a few hundred Puerto Ricans in a muggy high school gym, Clinton pledged to make it a “personal priority” to resolve the statehood issue before the end of her first term. She also vowed to clean up the former Navy testing ranges on Vieques, fund the famous Arecibo radio telescope, use federal dollars to put more cops on the streets and extend tax breaks to Puerto Rican companies. Clinton made each of those promises in English, abandoning a translator early on, despite the growing din among distracted audience members who couldn’t understand the full content of her stump speech. Still, enthusiastic supporters hoisted signs like “Puertorriquenos con Hillary” and “Hillary Presidenta” while chants of “Hillary! Hillary!” filled the room.

The next day Hillary was in Penuelas, and according to
a blog entry on her campaign website:

Hillary clearly understands the needs of the people of Puerto Rico and has amazing proposals to better the island — it is evident that Sen. Clinton really cares. After meeting with many Puerto Rican mayors and discussing the interests of Puerto Rico in Penuelas on Sunday, Senator Clinton stood in front of the audience and openly accepted a debate against Senator Obama on Puerto Rican issues, on Puerto Rican soil. Her exact words were I accept the debate anytime, anywhere.

So are “Puerto Rican issues” the same as American issues, or are they different? Could somebody please spell that out for us?

Mexicans are so darn inventive when it comes to smuggling. They have stuck a girl in a pinata, crammed a woman into a dashboard and encased a man in a car seat. Is there anything they won’t do to smuggle people and drugs into America?

Of course not–they’re Mexicans! Crime (organized and otherwise) is powerful in Mexico. When the government battles the drug cartels, the government loses.

The latest colorful border seizure is a statue of Jesus made out of cocaine…

Drug traffickers mixed as much as six pounds of the illicit white powder into a paste and used it to make a regal statue of the Christian savior, complete with painted-on flowing hair and a gold cape.

Smugglers were likely hoping the statue, which could be worth as much as $30,000 on the streets, would be dismissed by border guards as just another of the hundreds of plaster representations hawked to borderland tourists.

But a dog trained to sniff out drugs confirmed it was anything but another religious memento.
[Drug dealer's wait for Jesus denied by federal agents, Houston Chronicle, May 29, 2008]

The occasion is a perfect time for an update of the popular song, Plastic Jesus.

I don’t care if it rains or freezes,
‘Long as I got my Cocaine Jesus
Riding in the trunk space of my car.
Across the border into Texas
I’ll be buying a brand new Lexus.
With my Cocaine Jesus I’ll go far.

(Here’s Paul Newman’s low-key version of Plastic Jesus in Cool Hand Luke.)

Much of the public is aware that the folks in D.C. use a different form of mathematics than the rest of the world uses. Fred Barnes of “The Beltway Boys” gives some good examples of this “New Math” today in The Weekly Standard [Five Easy Pieces, By Fred Barnes, May 29, 2008 ]

Among the issues that Fred says should be easily dealt with in a single vote.

Double or triple the number of foreigners given H-1B visas to work in America. We need more highly educated and skilled workers from abroad, but only 65,000 H-1B visas are handed out annually.

The number of H-1B visas is already about double what Fred claims it is. The last reported figures under the current law for new H-1B visas were 116,927 in FY 2005 and 130,497 in FY 2004. So Fred, are we supposed to double or triple the 65,000 figure or the 116,927 figure?

Fred goes on to tell us,

This causes two problems: Jobs requiring special skill or training go unfilled, and those who might fill them migrate to other countries, which become more competitive at America’s expense.

Computer workers account for nearly the majority of H-1B visas. Between 1999 and 2005 employment for U.S. workers grew by 332,660. Over that same time period the U.S. approved 330,524 new H-1B visas for computer workers. In the last reported year (2005), the U.S. approved 47,282 H-1B visas for computer workers yet employment for computer workers only grew by 19,950 that year. Apparently Fred is telling us that unless we import 2 or 3 H-1B computer workers for every computer job created in the country we are going to have unfilled jobs.

This problem could be solved by a single vote in the House and Senate boosting the number of visas to 130,000 or 195,000. One click.

It’s only when you use Fred Barnes’ “New Math” that problems like H-1B become very simple.

Sometimes appearance changes over the generations when behavior is being selected. For example, when Soviet classical geneticist Dmitri Belyaev lost his high ranking position due to Lysenkoism becoming Stalin’s orthodoxy (Darwinism was seen as anti-social engineering), he began to quietly selectively breed Russian silver foxes to become pets. As they became more domesticated in behavior, their appearance became more dog-like, too.

It’s been suggested that perhaps fair skin evolved among some human groups not because of huge advantages in fair skin (such as vitamin D) but because of selection pressure for some other trait. If so, albinos might have something to teach us about human evolution.

I don’t see much evidence of albinos being smarter, but here’s a New York Times article from 11 years ago from the good old days in Zimbabwe, when people had the time (and food and electricity) to worry about starting an Albino Rights movement.

February 9, 1997

Black, Yet White: A Hated Color in Zimbabwe

By DONALD G. MCNEIL JR.

John M. Makumbe is a professor of political science. Richard Nyathi is chief librarian for a Government ministry. Stanley S. Gunda is a senior financial officer in another ministry. Not so long ago, they might have been killed at birth. ‘

Messrs. Makumbe, Nyathi and Gunda are albinos. In Africa, far more than on any other continent, that is a lifelong curse. They lack the gene that codes the skin pigment melanin, and they are very nearsighted. As white-skinned men in a black society, they are shunned and feared as the products of witchcraft, taunted by children and drunks as ”peeled potatoes,” ”monkeys” and ”ghosts.”

There is a stereotype that all albinos are intelligent and accomplished, as these three men are. But Professor Makumbe said successful albinos were ”a teeny-weeny minute number.” Most, he added, languish at home without education because they cannot see the blackboard at school or because their parents, told such children die young, will not pay for their schooling. …

In the United States, about 1 person in 20,000 is an albino, according to doctors at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, which has a clinic that studies the genetics of albinism. The condition is more common among blacks than among whites, and almost unknown among Asians.

In parts of Nigeria, as many as 1 in 1,100 are albino; in parts of South Africa the incidence is 1 in 1,800. It varies sharply from country to country and tribe to tribe, said Jennifer Kromberg, an expert on albinism at the South African Institute for Medical Research. For instance, in South Africa it is twice as high among Tswana as among Zulu, she said, because Tswana encourage marriage between cousins while Zulu forbid it.

… Albinism comes from a recessive gene and must be inherited from both parents. Not all children in affected families are albino. Mr. Nyathi, for example, has two albino siblings, while his parents and eight other siblings are black.

… Superstitions are strong in rural Zimbabwe. The practice of killing suspected witches survives, and albino children were once smothered at birth. The belief that adult albinos do not die, but simply vanish, is still widely held. …

Professor Kromberg said surveys she had done among young albino adults in Soweto, South Africa, found that they were rarely shunned on buses or in the classroom but did have much lower marriage rates and believed that they would have difficulty finding work. She said she had come across anecdotal evidence that black children were reluctant to share food with albino classmates. …

All three men did well in school, despite vision problems. The genetic differences that cause albinism also change the connections between the optic nerves and the brain. Many albinos have nystagmus — ”dancing eyeballs” — and myopia that, even with thick glasses, can only be corrected to about 20-200.

”Albinos seem more intelligent because they try harder,” Mr. Nyathi said. ”You have to get out of your seat, go up to the board, squint, write two sentences, go back, and still finish the test in the same time as the others.”

Dr. Kromberg said her intelligence studies had confirmed that. ”Albinos have normal I.Q.’s but a higher capability,” she said. ”I think it’s because they don’t play in the sun all day. They stay inside and do their homework.”

So, are albinos smarter or just more bookish?

I can’t find the names of too many high-achieving albinos in the West: just rock musicians Edgar and Johnny Winter (but Roy Orbison was not an albino), reggae star Yellowman, and, most interestingly, the famous Oxford don Rev. William Archibald Spooner, the Sam Goldwyn of Britain, for whom the term spoonerism is named:

At a naval review Spooner marveled at “this vast display of cattle ships and bruisers.”

To a school official’s secretary: “Is the bean dizzy?”

Visiting a friend’s country cottage: “You have a nosy little cook here.”

So, not much evidence for albinos being smarter than average.

Overall, it’s a tough life being an albino.

Things have been slow lately at Stuff White People Like as Christian Lander and Co. work on their upcoming book (2/3rds new content!), for which Christian got a $350,000 advance. He’s back today, though, with a vintage SWPL:

#101 Being Offended
May 28, 2008 by clander

To be offended is usually a rather unpleasant experience, one … that many people develop a thick skin and try to only be offended in the most egregious and awful situations. In many circumstances, they can allow smaller offenses to slip by as fighting them is a waste of time and energy. But white people, blessed with both time and energy, are not these kind of people. In fact there are few things white people love more than being offended.

Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. In fact, they don’t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people (ask a white person about “flyover states”). As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.

It is also valuable to know that white people spend a significant portion of their time preparing for the moment when they will be offended. They read magazines, books, and watch documentaries all in hopes that one day they will encounter a person who will say something offensive. When this happens, they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples. … All of which do an excellent job of raising awareness among white people who hope to change their status from “not racist” to “super not racist.”

Another thing worth noting is that the threshold for being offended is a very important tool for judging and ranking white people. Missing an opportunity to be outraged is like missing a reference to Derrida - it’s social death. [More]

Neatly fitting with National Review’s puerile (and peculiar) effort to deny the implications of modern genetic science, and Steve Sailer’s crushing refutation of it ( “National Review “Determined” To Ignore Realities of Genetics” ) comes the information that the Federal Government is in fact systematically employing genetic considerations in employment decisions.

In Dogs.

On Friday May 23rd USA Today carried the stereotypical hyperventilating National Defense spending story:At $4K each, K-9 imports draw howls by Mimi Hall

The complaint was that the Customs and Border Protection division was buying European dogs costing as much as four times as much as “similar” U.S. dogs – e.g. supposedly of the same breed.

To anything who knows anything about dog breeding, the CBP’s defense was impregnable:

Lee Titus, director of CBP’s Canine Enforcement Training Center in Front Royal, Va., where the dogs are trained, said 90% of the dogs come from overseas because Europe has a long history of breeding dogs with the proper temperament for security duties. U.S. breeders, he says, breed mostly “pretty” show dogs or pets.
Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan says the “bloodlines from Europe make the dogs very desirable for us.”

This of course was exactly the point made by Frank Miele in his seriously appreciated VDARE.com essay The K9 Comparison—What Dogs Tell Us About Humans

Dedicated fanciers of any breed will tell you the worst thing that can happen is for it to become popular overnight because of some movie or television show

With a minimum dog generation being perhaps three years, determined breeders can change a breed - a “race” – out of recognition in fifty years. The same thing is less manageable and slower in humans.

But it can happen.