I sometimes think that it is excessive sentimentalism, more than anything else, will destroy the American Nation. Of course, there is a highly legitimate role for emotion in a country’s self-assessment. But with celebration of the deeds of the men who founded and sustained the country more or less suppressed, it seems the only thing the MSM will allow Americans to show emotion about is Immigration.

The Bounce: U.S. has 33 foreign-born Olympians
The Associated Press Published: 07.19.2008

This is a teary piece about the presence of 33 immigrants in the US Olympic squad - a more significant number than at first glance, when you think of the low age of all these kids.

For those seeking symbolism, it’s hard to top the men’s 1,500-meter squad - Kenya native and Tucsonan Bernard Lagat; Lopez Lomong, one of the “lost boys” of Sudan’s civil war who spent a decade in a refugee camp and then attended Northern Arizona University;

“It’s a magical time,” U.S. men’s track coach Bubba Thornton said. “I’m glad that these young men found their way here. It may just remind us all of where we came from, and how hard the struggle may have been, and how big the dream was to be here.”

Thornton’s comments are, of course, rubbish. Munificent refugee programs and airlifts were absolutely not the way most American’s ancestors arrived here.

But there is a more serious issue involved. It is well stated in the article:

Randy Capps, a demographer with the nonpartisan Urban Institute who studies immigrant families, sees the U.S. as keeping pace with global competition in its acceptance of foreign-born athletes.

“Would you rather have them competing for someone else? Would you rather the U.S. be more competitive or less competitive?” he asked. “You wouldn’t want an immigration policy that would exclude people who could potentially be the best at what they do.”

What is the objective of Olympic participation? Is it to stimulate athleticism, with all its proclaimed advantages to health and character, amongst American youth? Or is it just the gratification of a fat, middle aged, sports bureaucracy - and the MSM?

It appears general sport is going the way of Tennis and Baseball, with sports bureaucrats scouring the world for athletes where genetic or social factors cause the production of high fliers in particular sports.

Why should any American teenager give up the pleasures of the Mall or some more hours on video games, if they know at the end of the day some paragon from the other side of the world is going to be parachuted in before them? Our children have numerous problems, but they are not, in fact, totally stupid.

Sport seems to be turning into a competition in importation skills. The country would be better served with fewer medals and more American also-rans.

Try to explain this to Randy Capps. (Signed copy of Alien Nation to anyone who figures out Bubba Thornton’s email.)

Update:  Email Coach Thornton at bthornton@mail.utexas.edu. (The person who found this already has a signed copy of Alien Nation. We’ll have to think of something else.)

This is an editorial in the Orlando Sentinel, June 19, 2008

Before the presidential race heated up, Mr. McCain bucked most of his GOP colleagues in Congress and his party’s base when he co-sponsored comprehensive immigration legislation with Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy. Their bill would have combined better border security with a path to citizenship to coax the 12 million or so illegal immigrants already in this country out of the shadows. It failed under an onslaught from opponents who branded it “amnesty.”

Now, states and localities are creating a hodgepodge of immigration restrictions to try to deal with the chaos left by Congress. As federal authorities selectively crack down on employers, some are struggling to fill jobs. And millions of illegal immigrants continue to live and work on the wrong side of the law.

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain now talks on the campaign trail of somehow securing the borders first, a position much closer to his party’s hard liners. In a primary debate, he wouldn’t give a straight answer when asked whether he still supported his own bill.[ EDITORIAL We think: McCain needs to reassert his commitment to immigration reform]

They think he needs to go back to amnesty to have consistent principles. But that’s not how McCain thinks. In any case, while he is edging in that direction, his basic problem is finding ways to convince actual  Republicans to vote for him, and the Orlando Sentinel’s plan would lose him the election.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the demographics of Orlando, Florida on Wikipedia. Thanks to immigration, they are down to 50.8 percent “Non-Hispanic White.” They also have a substantial Haitian population. They speak several different languages, and according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office there are 62 active gangs operating in Orange County, Florida, (Orlando’s county.) And if McCain passes his amnesty, with the aid of a Democratic Congress, your town can look like that, too!

Greg Ip reports at the Wall Street Journal:

In 2002 Sprint, reeling from the collapse of the telecommunications industry, initiated a wave of layoffs that eventually totaled 15,000 workers in 13 months, Ms. Dewing among them. She remained in the Kansas City area, posting her résumé on job boards. When recruiters called, she would usually put her expected salary at something close to her old salary. As time went by without an offer she lowered it steadily, to $60,000. She found herself competing for jobs with employees of outsourcing firms brought over from India on temporary visas, such as the H-1B.

Basically the truth of what H-1b expansion has meant is becoming so obvious that even corporate infomercials like the Wall Street Journal are havinng to tell something of the truth her sometimes.

Half Sigma writes:

IQ is more highly correlated with life outcomes for people with below average to average IQs. Most career tracks have an IQ floor, and if your IQ isn’t high enough to meet the floor level, you can’t perform that job adequately. Few career tracks have IQ floors much higher than 115, so if your IQ is higher than that, your parental wealth and connections become very important.

Thus, the higher your IQ, the more important the wealth of your parents becomes (the very opposite of what most people think). People with exceptionally high IQs but inadequate parents often have poor life outcomes because of the mismatch.

So, JFK and GWB would be examples of people just above the Presidential IQ cutoff who became Presidents because of their fathers.

An interesting idea. I haven’t had time to assess it, but it seems worth thinking about.

In general, let me say that I check in on Half Sigma regularly because, while we have fairly similar approaches, he often winds up with ideas I wouldn’t get to myself.

It looks like all systems are go for the lethal injection death August 5 of Jose Medellin, the illegal alien who brutally raped and murdered teenagers Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena in 1993 as part of a gang initiation. One of the other killers was executed in July 2006, and the families are more than ready to see Medellin dispatched after these many years awaiting justice.

Keep in mind that President Bush took the side of the killer, that he should not have been executed because Jose Medellin was not informed during his arrest of the right to contact the Mexican Embassy: Bush Crushes Justice for Victim Families.

So it was a relief in March when the Supreme Court overruled the one worlders and reaffirmed American sovereignty. A last minute appeal from the World Court didn’t make a dent after the Supremes had laid down American law.

Texas will go ahead with the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of Houston rapist-killer Jose Medellin despite Wednesday’s United Nations world court order for a stay, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry said.

The U.N.’s International Court of Justice’s call for stays in the cases of Medellin and four other Mexican nationals awaiting execution in Texas came in response to a petition filed last month by the Mexican government.

The petition sought to halt executions to allow for review of the killers’ cases to determine whether denying them access to the Mexican Consulate after arrest impaired their trial defenses. [...]

Meanwhile, Randy Ertman, father of Jennifer Ertman, hotly denounced the world court’s order for stays.

“The world court don’t mean diddly,” he said. “This business belongs in the state of Texas. The people of the state of Texas support the execution. We thank them. The rest of them can go to hell.”

Adolfo Peña, father of Elizabeth Peña, agreed.

“I believe we’ve been through all the red tape we can go through,” he said. “It’s time to rock and roll.”
[Execution of Houston girls' killer still on track for Aug. 5, Houston Chronicle, July 17, 2008]

Below, murder victims Jennifer Ertman (14) and Elizabeth Pena (16).

In other crime news, more than 3,000 illegal aliens are serving time for murder in California prisons: Special Report: Prisons Crowded with Illegal Inmates (KTLA Los Angeles, July 18, 2008).

The numbers can look staggering. Nearly 20,000 inmates in California’s state prison system have ICE holds on them, meaning there’s a good chance they’re illegal immigrants. More than 3,000 of those inmates are serving time for murder.

Because many of those convicts likely spent time in and out of local jails before committing the crimes that landed them in state prison, federal officials have begun working with more city and county jails to try to identify and deport more illegal immigrants earlier in their criminal careers.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s employees started working with ICE agents in 2006. Now, every week, county employees interview more than 100 inmates to try to determine their immigration status. The county employees have access to federal computers, including a fingerprint database that can match inmate fingerprints to see if the inmate has ever been deported.

First-term Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC) is often mentioned along with Sen. James Webb (D-VA) as the kind of hillbilly moderate-conservative Democrat who might do well on the national stage. Shuler, an imposing 6′-7″, was the runner-up for the Heisman trophy at the U. of Tennessee in 1993. He later returned to school, finished his degree in psychology, started a successful real estate firm, and won election to Congress in 2006.

That’s the good news. On the other hand, he was a complete bust in the NFL, listed by one count as the 17th biggest flop of the last quarter century in sports. This may have something to do with his reported Wonderlic IQ score of 16, which translates to about a 90.

Shuler replies that he didn’t take the test seriously.

On the other other other hand, he named his children “Navy” and “Island,” so maybe the Wonderlic score does say something about him.