Mix diversity and the failure of a school to enforce discipline and you have the situation in Minnesota which was recently reported by World Net Daily:

A Muslim high school student’s intolerance for a service dog needed by a student teacher with a disability has reportedly prompted the student teacher to abandon the last 10 hours of his scheduled assignment at Technical High School in St. Cloud, Minn.

Here’s some background :

The St. Cloud Times online said the situation developed with student teacher Tyler Hurd, 23, of Mahtomedi, who hopes to teach special education. He’s a student at St. Cloud State University, and was assigned to Technical High School in the St. Cloud district for his 50 hours of student teaching, and took with him his service dog, Emmitt.The newspaper said Hurd needs a service dog because of a childhood injury that leaves him with seizures, sometimes happening as often as weekly. The black lab is trained to protect Hurd when he has a seizure.

Here’s what happened :

Hurd, however, reported a student threatened to kill his dog. He said the threat came from a Somali student who is Muslim. Minnesota has a large Somali population, mostly Muslim, and they have been involved in issues over their religion in the past.

Apparently, at a previous assignment though, Somali students had been a little more tolerant of the dog:

Hurd earlier spent some time student teaching at Talahi Community School, where he said his experience was good. He told the newspaper Somali students there even petted his dog, although they used paper to keep their hands from actually making physical contact.

But not at Tech, where

Hurd reported, students taunted his dog, and he left when he was told a student threatened the animal.

The school, however, was playing it down:

The school district told the newspaper it wasn’t really a threat.

Here’s the part that indicates the attitude that is the read problem :

“I think it was a misunderstanding where we didn’t really prepare either side for possible implications,” Julia Espe, curriculum director for the public schools, said.

“Prepare either side for possible implications” ? What a cop-out ! Why couldn’t the school have just told the Somali students to leave the dog alone?

James Watson is interviewed for the first time since getting Watsoned by Henry Louis Gates, head of the Harvard Afro-American Studies department at The Root.

HLG: What do you think of deCODE’s recent estimate of your percentage of recent African ancestry?

JW: I haven’t seen the paper … [but] if I’m 16 percent African, then I’m 16 percent African. That’s … a fact; I don’t care. You don’t judge people by, quote, race, you judge them as individuals. So it’s the individual that counts, and no one should be discriminated by what they look like.

HLG: Do you trust admixture tests—I mean, tests that can say you’re 16 percent African, or 20 percent Native American?

JW: Well, the African one I can believe, but I just can’t see where that 7 percent Asian came from.

I explained here why it’s extremely unlikely, based on the photos of relatives and ancestors and detailed genealogical information in Watson’s autobiography, that Watson is 1/6th black or 1/4th nonwhite.

Gates also explains the Meaning of It All in the accompanying “The Science of Racism.”

Bill Berkowitz writes on Common Dreams:

These days, while you can still pick up a newspaper or turn on a radio or television gabfest and read, hear and see the issue of immigration batted around, it has become less of a hot-button political issue in the United States.

The shift has happened largely since the U.S. economy hit tough times, with four-dollar a gallon gas a reality in many places and home foreclosure filings continuing to climb.

Nevertheless, on May Day, tens of thousands of immigrant rights supporters marched and rallied in more than a dozen cities across the United States, hoping to reinvigorate the debate over immigration and inject the issue into Election 2008.

This year’s turnout paled in comparison to the outpouring of support on May 1, 2006, when more than a million people ‘came out of nowhere’ and garnered the attention of the public and of media outlets throughout the country.

Last year, immigration was frequently front page news: The media was closely following developments, anti-immigrant vigilante-type groups were forming, border watching efforts were increasing, and state legislatures and city councils were crafting a spate of laws and local ordinances aimed at immigrants.[Is Immigration Off the Table in Election 2008?, May 7, 2008 ]

My own comment:

Immigration hasn’t really gone away from the 2008 elections. The GOP leadership is still hoping that raids arresting immigrants themselves will play to their populist wing–while McCain uses promises of expanded guest worker programs to appeal to the uber-rich like Bill Gates and corporate criminals who rely on illegal immigrant labor. Both Obama and Clinton have admitted that increased penalties and enforcement of existing laws against illegal employers are in order.

What has been missing is any real leadership from progressives in looking at the depth of the problems facing the Americas-and just how hard it will be to create a solution that would have broad support among the American working class and the working class in Latin America.

The thing is, that in an election that is largely a money contest, immigration will be kept off the table as long as possible. The big money in both parties wants more immigration. What I suspect is the present situation will continue until both parties get realistic on immigration-and that when it happens will take place rather rapidly.

McCain is reportedly seriously considering tapping Mike Bloomberg as his VP candidate.

I would suggest this is a big nose-thumbing at the VDARE.com readership.

Just look at the Wikipedia entry on Bloomberg:

Bloomberg has attacked social conservatives on immigration calling their stance unrealistic, “We’re not going to deport 12 million people, so let’s stop this fiction. Let’s give them permanent status.” He supports a federal ID database that uses DNA and fingerprint technology to keep track of all citizens and to verify their legal status. Bloomberg believes that illegal immigrants should be offered citizenship and supports the congressional efforts of John McCain and Ted Kennedy in immigration reform. Regarding border security, Bloomberg compared it to the tide, stating, “It’s as if we expect border control agents to do what a century of communism could not: defeat the natural market forces of supply and demand… and defeat the natural human desire for freedom and opportunity. You might as well as sit in your beach chair and tell the tide not to come in. As long as America remains a nation dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” people from near and far will continue to seek entry into our country

Basically, McCain is hoping that with a few symbolic arrests of illegal immigrants themselves, a big chunk of the political base will forget in November that a huge, nation-changing amnesty is the official policy of the GOP.

Now, I won’t vote for McCain regardless of who he picks as his VP. I can understand why a lot of VDARE.com readers may find much more in common with McCain than I would-and I can see why they might consider risking a McCain presidency if he picked someone like Pawlenty as his running mate, who has spoken somewhat sanely on the topic of immigration.

Regardless of McCain’s VP choice, Obama’s optimal election strategy is to pick someone less cosmopolitan-and more working class than himself. Obama already has a lot of electoral funds–and just doesn’t need the “juice” Bloomberg’s support would provide. If Bloomberg does run with or endorse McCain, Obama’s optimal strategy may be to choose a running mater like Jim Webb–and pursue populist issues much more aggressively.

The thing is, if McCain picks someone like Bloomberg as his running mate, it is in the interests of Paleocons to see McCain defeated as decisively as possible–say with a defeat worse than that suffered by Goldwater. That might at least delay McCain’s ideology from rising again for several years.

Since Cuba barely exports anything, its currency’s exchange rate is practically below zero. The Miami Herald reports:

CARDENAS, Cuba — Loraicys is 27 years old, has never worked, and refuses to take just any job. She is not alone. As Raúl Castro embarks on an ambitious plan to kick-start the communist nation’s economy, he faces daunting challenges: Many Cubans simply do not work.

Decades of measly salaries and vast government subsidies have kept many young people off the labor rolls because it’s more lucrative to hustle on the street. Others live comfortably enough off remittances from Miami and elsewhere.

Loraicys passes on neighborhood janitor positions in hopes of higher-paying work at nearby resort hotels, where she also would have a chance of earning tips in dollars.

”I am not going to tell you something different: there are jobs here in Cárdenas where I live. Doing what? Cleaning hospitals for 150 pesos ($7) a month,” said Loraicys, a single mom. “For 150 pesos, I would rather stay home with my kid. I am willing to work really hard, but not for nothing in return.”

While Cuba struggles to increase productivity, it must also find a way to entice hundreds of thousands of people to get a job. The dilemma is one of the profound systemic difficulties Castro faces as he tries to create a so-called modern socialist economy.

The government says there are plenty of jobs–just low-paying ones Cubans won’t take. Even educated professionals would rather work in the tourist industry as waiters or taxi drivers, which earn far more money than state jobs that usually offer about $10 a month.

Ten dollars a month? That’s what the pay would be for a job that Porky Pig applies for in a 1941 Warner Bros. cartoon.

Cubans in Miami probably put all their pennies in a big jar and every January ship it to Havana for their relatives to live off for the whole year.

Cuba has 2000 miles of coastline, and there’s nothing golfers like more than playing alongside the ocean, but only one golf course has been built in the country since the Revolution. The smaller, formerly more-backward Dominican Republic has 22 golf courses, and its famous ocean-front Teeth of the Dog course charges outside players $225 per round, which is twice what a Cuban makes in a year.

Colorado’s Greeley Tribune had an irritatingly smug editorial yesterday: Immigration: No Longer an issue in the campaign – Bart Smith The Tribune June 1 2008. The writer, “Publisher of the Tribune”, averts his eyes from the obvious fact that, like the absurd nomination of faux Republican John McCain, the absence of immigration from the debate now is simply another example of the immense power of the MSM in totalitarian mode. Remember, McCain got large shares of the votes of those who declared themselves angry about the immigration issues – presumably those who still rely on the MSM, not the internet, for “facts”.

But glancing down the procession of crushing refutations already posted by Tribune readers, I came to this gem in “Related Articles”

Give me your tired, your poor… Tribune Opinion May 15 2008

Presumably by the same pen, judging by the scintillating originality (no demerits for clichés in Colorado writing classes?).

This is a celebration of the fact that Greeley now has some 300 Somali refugees in the town, attracted by work at a local meat packing plant.

The Somalis…have come to Greeley for the opportunities it offers. Their presence, however, is not just about opportunities for them, it is also an opportunity for all of us. It is an opportunity to grow and expand our world….While the customs that come from half a world away can seem scary, they will — like the customs of the Russian-Germans a century ago — enrich our lives

They sure will – like the Somalis have elsewhere in America. As Brenda Walker recently pointed out,

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.

Somalis seem very likely to be the most dysfunctional refugees imported since the Hmong.

And why does The Tribune compare them to “Russian-Germans of a century ago” – rather than the Italians, or Poles and others, who entered at the same time?

Probably this code word for Jews is employed because the writer knows the Somalian entry means similar immense changes in national direction, and not in the interests of the native born.

VDARE.com confidently anticipates a large increase in support from the Greeley area.

Tell Bart Smith to expect us!