The LA Times blog , below. starts out “In May, it was immigrants marching for immigration reform. This weekend, about 50 protesters marched in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday…”

In 2006 there were two million pro-illegal marchers in the streets, largely because they were organized and funded by George Soros. More recently, and absent such funding, it’s been smaller, in the thousands instead of millions.  But it still  seems ludicrous to compare  those marches to a group of 50 protesters on behalf of immigration enforcement.

Does the disparity in the size of the marches  mean that Americans support enforcement less  than they do enforcement? Not at all.(Although it does mean there’s less financial support.)

First of all, the millions of pro-amnesty marchers didn’t signify American support for amnesty–because they weren’t Americans.

Second, the millions of Americans who support enforcement mostly don’t feel they need to march in the streets to support the law. This is a phenomenon that compares to the rarity of pro-Vietnam War demonstrations in the Sixties and Seventies, and the extremely rare “Peace Through Strength” counterdemonstrators during the pro-Communist “Nuclear Freeze” movement in the Eighties.

In both cases  the general public didn’t feel the need to march, since the national government was on their side. When some network news people referred to “Peace Through Strength” demonstrators in the Eighties as members of a “fringe”, conservatives pointed out that the idea of deterrence was not only the official policy of the US Government, (supported by the American people and a strong bipartisan consensus) it was the policy of of every other government in the world. It was the pacifists who were the fringe, not matter how many people they could pack into Central Park for a nuclear freeze rally.

In the same way, people don’t feel that they have to demonstrate against illegal immigration because it’s already illegal.

They’re wrong–marching would help show the patriotic immigration reformers in Congress that they have the support of the American people, and worry the others, but it’s an understandable reaction.

Minutemen, others march in L.A. to protest illegal immigration

In May, it was immigrants marching for immigration reform. This weekend, about 50 protesters marched in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to decry violence by illegal immigrants and to demand that the Los Angeles Police Department change its controversial policy, Special Order 40, limiting when someone can be questioned about their immigration status, writes the L.A. Times’ Anna Gorman.

The marchers, including anti-illegal-immigration Minutemen and local community activists, also called for justice for Jamiel Shaw II, 17, a black athlete who was shot and killed in March by an alleged gang member who authorities say was in the country illegally.[More]

The San Joaquin County Fair ended Sunday. And, I did pretty well but would have scored higher if I weren’t so stubborn.

As I know all too well, judges prefer “smaller” cookies and baked goods with “less” frosting.

I’ve had points taken off for these two infractions, if you can call them that, in past years. But since I bake for my friends and not a group of anonymous judges, I press on. My cookies are the size of your palm and the frosting is as thick as the Lodi telephone book.

My motto: if that’s too big, then eat half and put the other half in your pocket for a snack later. And if there’s too much frosting, then scrape some off and give it to your dog.

What’s most important, however, isn’t my on going dispute with the judges but my triumphs in a new category the fair introduced this year: ethnic baking.

Around the central California valley, “ethnic” translates to Hispanic or Asian.

But I threw the panel a curve by entering Irish Brownies and Italian Lemon Almond Biscotti.

The brownies–with their healthy spike of Guinness Stout–won first prize. And the biscotti took second place. For anyone who likes to bake but has never tried biscotti, I recommend it. They’re easy to make and your homemade versions will bear no resemblance to those nasty store bought ones that you break teeth on.

Mail me for the brownie and biscotti recipes, if you want to give them a try.

According to the Associated Press, The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is currently under state and federal investigation for using federal funds to provide an abortion for minors. Joanne Nattrass, executive director of Commonwealth Catholic Charities, recently admitted that four of her workers helped get a sixteen year old illegal alien from Guatemala get an abortion. They even signed the minor consent forms.[US Catholic charity is investigated for helping teen get abortion, June 20, 2008]

CCC is a subcontractor of the notoriously open borders U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who “appear to have been aware of Commonwealth Catholic Charities’ action” according to David Siegel, head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ refugee resettlement.

Of course, the main point of Steve’s article (mentioned below) is that the current recession is largely caused by the Federal Government’s using its Civil Rights muscle to force diversity on lenders. Peter Brimelow wrote in response to a Boston Fed study on “racism” in mortgage lending that blacks weren’t being discriminated against, they actual had  worse credit,[The Hidden Clue, By Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer, Forbes, January 4, 1993] It’s a “disparate impact” thing. Banks were perfectly willing to lend to blacks with good credit.

Forcing banks to lend to minorities with bad credit by threatening Civil Rights prosecution is even more damaging to the economy than the FHA/Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae alphabet soup giveaways. At least the  the government has to account for those  in its budget.

This kind of extorted wealth transfer is what Peter Brimelow called, in another 1993 article quoted by Steve Sailer, “neosocialism”:

Neosocialism, however, is not science. What’s going on here is a witch-hunt, conducted by the religious Left and aided by key elements of the civil service. The innocent victims will be the banking system, the savers of America, the economy, and ultimately liberty itself. The craven banking industry cannot be expected to resist. It is time conservatives stopped piously chanting about capital-gains tax cuts and woke up to the fact that their capital is under attack.[Racism At Work? By Peter Brimelow, National Review, April 12, 1993]

Of course, no one did wake up, and the current recession is the fruit of that.

Here’s a different ranking of top research universities compiled at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, based on Nobel Laureates, citations, etc. (This is not a list of most desirable undergraduate colleges–it includes entities like Rockefeller U. that don’t have undergrad colleges.)

In 2007, The top 20 included 17 American colleges, Oxford, Cambridge, and the U. of Tokyo at #20. The highest continental European university (ETH Zurich) was at #27, the highest French college was at #39, and the highest German school at #53. No Chinese or Indian universities are in the top 100 on this Chinese list.

This Chinese list seems less chauvinistically biased than the London Times rankings I cited in tonight’s VDARE article (Harvard #1 in both, but Stanford is #2 on the Chinese list vs. #19 on the English list, behind a number of obscure provincial colleges in England). Because it’s a better list, it supports the point I made in VDARE even more strongly than the previous list did: that America’s exclusive universities are now enormously prestigious relative to Germany’s and the rest of the world’s.

German colleges that would have dominated the list 100 years ago have been hit hard by sincere, leftist anti-elitism. The same thing happened to most French universities after 1968, except for some small Ecoles. In contrast, CCNY, which famously shifted to open admissions with disastrous effects, is close to the exception that proves the rule that American colleges largely ignored their own leftist rhetoric and refused to follow their European counterparts into egalitarian anti-exclusivity.

Steve Sailer has an article on affirmative action in mortgage lending, [The Diversity Recession, or How Affirmative Action Helped Cause the Housing Crisis Takimag.com ] in which he references a 1977 Wall Street Journal article on Marquette Park, Illinois, an old Lithuanian neighborhood which is now 10 percent white, 50 percent black, and in a development unexpected in 1977, 35 percent Hispanic. The WSJ article [Racial Change In Marquette Park, By Jonathan R. Laing, March 2, 1977]

Steve’s point is that the mortgage meltdown has been largely caused by the federal government’s campaign against “redlining” and imagined discrimination against blacks. (As opposed to “predatory lending” which is imagined discrimination in favor of blacks.) The Journal wrote in 1977

The whites in Marquette Park are particularly embittered over the Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance program which they claim is causing neighborhood deterioration by subsidizing home purchases by blacks too poor to maintain them. Long conservatively run and an engine of the post-World War II suburban housing boom, the FHA program was liberalized shortly after the 1968 urban riots to encourage lower-income black home ownership (”if they own it they won’t burn it” was the maxim of the time). Downpayment requirements for FHA mortgages were all but eliminated and lending standards were relaxed.

The thing is that most of the white  residents wouldn’t have much objection to blacks who had jobs and qualified for mortgages moving into their neighborhood. What they objected to was the Federal Government moving its welfare clients into their neighborhood, with predictable results.

Joann Hanahan says that she was on edge from the moment a year ago that blacks began moving on her block in the eastern section of Marquette Park. “Like a lot of people around there, my husband and I had seen the neighborhood we grew up in wrecked after blacks moved in, so naturally we were worried,” recalls the 40 year-old warehouse worker’s wife. At first there were no problems, according to Mrs. Hanahan. “Most of the blacks who moved in were nice people like the cement finisher who bought the house directly across the street from us. They were running from the ghetto too,” she says.

One of the new neighbors agreed with this:

Says Alfred Williams, a muscular black 25-year-old body and fender repairman, “I really hope that the white families will stay on the block because if it goes all black the neighborhood will go bad. In black areas, there are just too many kids hanging around breaking in houses and messing things up.”

It’s the same with schools and busing–unlike the old days before Brown vs. Board of Education, parents wouldn’t object to blacks who live in their neighborhood going to their school. They objected to blacks from the ghetto being bused into white schools, and vice versa.

This item is a particularly egregious example of the San Francisco Chronicle emphasizing cheerful aspects of diversity while leaving out important facts entirely.

The topic is lead poisoning among Oaxacan immigrants in California who are eating snacks sent from home, like fried grasshoppers and pumpkin seeds which contain hazardous levels of the toxic metal. But at no point does the story mention the symptoms of even low levels of lead in the blood. The emotional focus is instead on how much the foreigners love their traditional foods.

A far more informational Chronicle report in 2006 noted, “Just 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood can permanently lower a child’s IQ by four to five points.” Today’s article [Oaxacan townspeople have high lead levels, June 22] states that some Oaxacan immigrant children have lead levels “reaching 20 micrograms per deciliter.”

Since half of Hispanic children don’t graduate from high school, you might think cultural habits that decrease intelligence would be taken seriously as a public health concern. But at the Chron, not so much.

In an open-air market in this rural town, indigenous Zapotec women scoop fried, rust-colored grasshoppers and pumpkin seeds from large baskets into plastic bags. Customers, from elderly men to school children, pluck down a few pesos to munch on Oaxaca state’s most popular snacks.

Scenes like these make Oaxaca immigrants to the United States–many of whom live in the Bay Area–homesick. And one of the best ways to assuage their nostalgia: lovingly prepared care packages sent by relatives filled with homemade goodies.

“It’s comfort food,” said Teresa Mendez, a 54-year-old market cook who regularly sends local treats to her grandchildren in Northern California. “Food keeps us connected.”

Remember the topic of this article is the incidence of lead poisoning caused by ethnic foods, but it reads more like an advertisement for fried grasshoppers than a warning against them.