Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch and Tim Cavanaugh met with Wayne Allyn Root, a Las Vegas sports handicapper and  Libertarian Party Vice Presidential candidate, and this conversation ensued:

Root:..But here’s the story that I think the press should be digging up, I really mean this, about Barack Obama. When George Bush annoyed everyone the first thing they went to was how dumb he was, and they said how bad he did in Yale, and blah blah blah, he got a C average. Then they found his C average was better than Al Gore’s average, and it was better than John Kerry’s average!

Cavanaugh: And then you stopped hearing the story.

Root: Right. But the point is all three of them had C averages. I had a B-plus, A-minus average at Columbia University.

Welch: Wait, you’re bragging on your GPA?

Root: No, no I’m not, because here’s the moral to the story…. I had a B-plus, A-minus average at Columbia University, in four years. When I graduated, I took the LSATs and I did well. I didn’t do great, I did well; B-plus, A-minus average. My counselor at Columbia said don’t even bother applying to Harvard Law School, because you can get into any law school in the country with your record, except Columbia, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton [Editor's Note: Princeton doesn't have a law school]. Except for the very top, you can get in anywhere, but don’t even try those, because your grades don’t cut it.

Well, everyone says how bright Barack is, but Barack won’t release his transcripts from Columbia University.

(more…)

Barack Obama has taken umbrage at Sarah Palin’s lack of respect for the sacred job of community organizer. To help explain what the profession entails, here are excerpts from the classic 1970 work of sociology:

Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
by Tom Wolfe

Going downtown to mau-mau the bureaucrats got to be the routine practice in San Francisco. The poverty program encouraged you to go in for mau-mauing. They wouldn’t have known what to do without it. The bureaucrats at City Hall and in the Office of Economic Opportunity talked “ghetto” all the time, but they didn’t known any more about what was going on in the Western Addition, Hunters Point, Potrero Hill, the Mission, Chinatown, or south of Market Street than they did about Zanzibar. They didn’t know where to look. They didn’t even know who to ask. So what could they do? Well … they used the Ethnic Catering Service … right … They sat back and waited for you to come rolling in with your certified angry militants, your guaranteed frustrated ghetto youth, looking like a bunch of wild men. Then you had your test confrontation. If you were outrageous enough, if you could shake up the bureaucrats so bad that their eyes froze into iceballs and their mouths twisted up into smiles of sheer physical panic, into shit-eating grins, so to speak–then they knew you were the real goods. They knew you were the right studs to give the poverty grants and community organizing jobs to. Otherwise they wouldn’t know. …

(more…)

I’ll be discussing Sarah Palin and her views on immigration this evening on Lars Larson’s nationally-sydicated radio show (also on the web) at 7:30 Eastern.

VDARE.COM focuses on immigration and National Question issues, so GOP Presidential nominee John McCain’s acceptance speech last night was on its face uninteresting to us. For broader analyses, I recommend the comments of our contributor John Zmirak on Takimag and MSM ambassador to the patriotic immigration reform movement Mickey Kaus on Slate (here and here).

I am struck, though, that McCain’s paen of praise to his war own record included the concession, slightly jarring and surely unnecessary, that his North Vietnamese captors “broke me”. There have long been rumors that McCain’s POW record is not as publicized. Is he trying to pre-empt a looming Democratic “October surprise”?

Referring to a couple of rah-rah bipartisanship passages in McCain’s speech, Kaus writes shrewdly:

Am I crazy or are these passages a blazing arrow pointing toward … comprehensive immigration reform, one big bipartisan “solution” that the Democratic Congress will be all too happy to work with President McCain to achieve? What else is he talking about? OK, maybe Social Security (where Congress will be far less helpful.) … Surprisingly, immigration reform–which McCain’s friend Lindsey Graham pledged he “will” take up–wasn’t actually mentioned at all in the speech. I’d thought McCain would at least “flick” at it as part of his pitch to the Latino swing vote. Maybe the convention really was all about the base (which doesn’t like the semi-amnesty parts of McCain’s reform). They can always be betrayed later.

No, Mickey, you’re not crazy.

Another possible hint: McCain said

In this country, we believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers.

The GOP delegates may have assumed this meant Grapes of Wrath-style nomadic fruit pickers. But “migrant“ is the immigrant enthusiasts’ favorite euphemism for “immigrant”, including illegals (when they’re not calling them “citizens“).

My guess is that McCain really means illegal aliens - and amnesty will be his first order of business.

The GOP could easily win this race with what VDARE.COM calls the “Sailer Strategy“ - run against immigration, affirmative action and the imminent swamping of the traditional American nation. And maybe it will - but not because McCain mentions these issues, or will do anything about them.

During McCain’s convention speech, Google sent lots of inquirers to this seven month old blog posting of mine that answers the question that, apparently, was on a lot of Americans’ minds tonight.

Marcus Epstein mentioned that Bay Buchanan was going to have an Op-Ed in the NYT about Pa’t 1992 speech. Here it is:

Pat went on to deliver his now famous “culture war” speech. It is often blamed for Mr. Bush’s defeat, and Pat is accused of hijacking the convention. But the final version was sent to the White House for approval, and it received high praise from the news media and the Bush family. Oh, one other detail: A poll that concluded the night after Pat spoke gave President Bush a 10-point bump in the number of voters who strongly supported him.[And the Party Blinked ,By Bay Buchanan, New York Times, September 4, 2008]

Sometimes it is easier to see mistakes when others make them. China is further along the overpopulation highway, with 1.3 billion people, compared with the US’s 305 million, but the principles of increased resource use versus limited supply are the same. As always, water is paramount: China May Choke on Its Own Growth [Frontpage Magazine, September 3, 2008].

The PRC faces a water crisis. Starting at the top, the Himalayan glaciers are melting.[1] Winter 2008 levels on the Yangtze were the lowest since record keeping began in 1866, and the Yellow’s outflow is a shocking 10 percent of what it was 40 years ago.[2]

Water consumption has already soared and will naturally continue to rise with population growth, urbanization, and industrial expansion. If glaciers can no longer provide sufficient water, rice output will plummet beyond possibility of domestic replacement.[3] The Communist Party’s hallowed goal of grain self-sufficiency will be lost and the domestic and international impact of food dependence will make oil pale by comparison.

Groundwater use, falling water tables, and subsidence occur in every eastern city, costing $75 billion to date, with the promise of far greater costs to come. In rural areas, the Ministry of Health labels over 40 percent of drinking water unsafe. One-quarter of all surface water is unusable, and three-fifths can no longer support fish. Sanitation is a crucial health indicator, and despite growing wealth, China has badly trailed the global average on this count.[4] Grand plans for hydropower are doomed in the face of declining water levels, accentuating the need for coal, which in turn worsens air quality.

In addition, 90 percent of cities have polluted groundwater and in Beijing, the water coming from taps is undrinkable. The government diverted a huge amount of water from agricultural regions to assure Beijing of having an adequate supply for the Olympics, threatening the livelihoods of millions in the process, according to the BBC. The Beijing Olympics presented a Potemkin Village of epic proportions, at least regarding water.

Interestingly, Sen Obama thinks America should emulate Red China by throwing up infrastructure improvements fast and furiously. Yes, it’s true that a totalitarian state can muster its resources rapidly. However, the Senator from Illinois might also consider the terrible tragedy caused by the PRC’s poor building practices which caused the deaths of thousands of children when their schools collapsed in the May 12 Sichuan earthquake — a long rumored scandal which was recently admitted as true by Beijing authorities [China Admits Building Flaws in Quake, By Edward Wong, New York Times, September 4, 2008].

BEIJING — A Chinese government committee said Thursday that a rush to build schools during the country’s recent economic boom might have led to shoddy construction that resulted in the deaths of thousands of students during a devastating earthquake in May.

This tragic and avoidable loss of life makes annoying building codes look like a great idea.