Canadian columnist Heather Mallick wrote a column that has been frequently rebuked as evil and stupid. [A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention , September 5, 2008, Heather Mallick, CBC News ]

She wrote a lot of personal attacks on Palin and her family, plus weird sexual innuendos against Republican males, and stuff that probably qualifies as “hate propaganda” under Canada’s hate laws. She doesn’t seem to understand American electoral politics, though:

“She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn’t already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America’s name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right. “

The reason that so-called “White trash” voters appeal to both the right and the left, (Karl Rove and Howard Dean)  is that they are the voters, the American nation, and still, despite 40 years of mass immigration, the majority. Coastal elites seem to think of everyone in America with a job rather than a career as trash. James Lileks, responding to Mallick, notes the electoral reality:

“Leaving aside whether Europe would like us more if we did something about those horrible people they see in “The Dukes of Hazzard”  documentaries, you have to love the idea of the “white trash” demo sullying our name inside our borders – she’s talking about the thin crust of coastal dwellers who regard Manhattan as some sort of precious monastery that keeps the dim flickering light of civilization alive. Why, if the hillbillies disappeared, the New Yorkers would be reduced to making disparaging remarks about people from New Jersey who take the bridges and tunnels to go clubbing in LowSoHo or MoTriVil or whatever old neighborhood has been fitted out with thudding discos and fusion-sushi joints.

Why does this demographic – the white trash, I mean, not the orange trash of the Guido Jersey interlopers - have such a “curious appeal” to the right? Because the right, perhaps, thinks of them as “voters” who cast “ballots” in “elections” for people to don’t consider rhinoplasty so they can look down their noses even further than God intended. “

And, of course, there was no reason to believe that the GOP had the regular American vote sewn up. The Wall Street Journal had a similar sneer against regular Americans.

“There’s another reality Mr. Bush is facing up to and it’s called the Hispanic vote. Paleocons and nativists may think the key GOP demographic is uneducated whites. But it’s hard to imagine a majority Republican future without at least being competitive among Hispanics. “

I responded to them by saying

“Uneducated whites.” Thanks a lot, guys. I suppose they mean uneducated by comparison with the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. But really, what kind of a thing is that to say?

There’s a simple arithmetical point here: the WSJ-level “educated” are, let us say, the top 2% of the population. They?re outnumbered when it comes to voting, by the other 98%. If the Republican Party doesn?t appeal to the “uneducated” it will be about as big as the Green Party.

See also Sam Francis’s comment on David Brooks’s  sneers at the ordinary people seen at a Buchanan rally:

“Actually, it’s not so hard to classify which political category such people belong to. They’re called ‘Democrats,’ and the contempt for them that our Mr. Brooks exudes helps explain why they never show up in the crowds around other Republican candidates.”

The U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for seven years now. We achieved excellent returns in the first few months, but since then we’ve mostly just been sucked into that useless place’s endless knuckleheadedness.

Has the U.S. government ever explained to the vast Pashtun tribe on what terms honor would be satisfied and we would leave? (E.g., Deliver Osama alive or prove that he is dead? Rename their movement something other than “Taliban?” Understand that if they ever tolerate anti-American terrorists again, we’ll be back, and really mad this time?) I suspect we could reach a meeting of the minds with the Pashtuns more easily if we phrased all our demands in terms of “honor demands that …”

If Barack Obama wins, he should appoint McCain to be Ambassor to the Barbarian Tribes (which was Sir Richard Burton’s de facto title within the British Foreign Office). McCain is exactly the kind of man the Pashtuns would feel sympatico with.

Still, the idea of negotiating a final peace agreement with the Pashtuns is probably unlikely. I’m not sure that the concept of “war” and “peace” as mutually exclusive periods of time is one that they subscribe to. To them, fighting is kind of like the professional golf season is to Americans–something that, whether formally or informally, goes from early January to late December with a one week break for Christmas. Just as somebody somewhere is always playing golf for money, somebody somewhere in Pashtunland is always fighting somebody else.

But the Establishment view seems to be swinging in the direction of Obama’s suggestion that we instead amp up the war in Afghanistan and widen the war into Pakistan, a country of 170,00,000. After Musharraf’s fall, Bush has publicly allowed crossing the border into Pakistan. Perhaps some commandos can grab Osama (assuming he is still alive) and we can be done with it.

But even if that happened our “allies” in Afghanistan would probably insist we stay. We always seem to end up at the service of our supposed puppets in country. The anti-Pashtun/Taliban folks in Afghanistan have been telling us for years, “Let’s you and them fight.”

By the way, speaking of Pakistan, Obama was close friends with three Pakistanis he hung out with at posh Occidental liberal arts college in LA. (That’s when he changed his name from Barry to Barack.) That’s why he went to Pakistan in 1981, which is just about the only foreign trip he ever took unconnected with his parents. And he later roomed in NYC for years with another Pakistani that he knew through his Oxy friends.

He sure has a lot of odd Muslim connections–like Tony Rezko being in bed with the Black Muslims in Chicago. I don’t see any evidence that Obama ever had a spiritual interest in Islam. As he admitted in connection with his Muslim grandfather, the youthful Obama saw both Islam and the Nation of Islam as being anti-white and anti-miscegenation (his grandfather had denounced his parents’ marriage), so Obama vaguely approved of both religions, without, as far as I can tell, caring much about their theology.

Obama’s Pakistani friends no doubt came from wealthy, influential families within Pakistan. Does anybody know what their political connections are within Pakistan, since they’ve probably helped shape Obama’s view of that complicated and obscure part of the world?

The New York Post has reported that the 67-year-old Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.’s 2007 affair with a 37-year-old church lady employed by a black Texas megachurch headed by one of Wright’s proteges has led to her divorce and firing. (And, yes, she’s not black.)

Payne’s husband, Fred Payne, 64, said he learned of the affair in late February, when he discovered e-mails between his wife and Wright. “There must have been about 80 of them, back and forth,” he said. “Wright said things like he was going to leave his wife for Elizabeth.”

Wright has been married to his second wife, Ramah, for more than 20 years. The preacher reportedly wooed Ramah away from her first husband in the 1980s, when the couple came to marriage counseling at Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

After discovering he had been cuckolded, Fred Payne, who had married Elizabeth in October 2006, headed straight for divorce court. “I was downright mad about this bull- - - -,” said Fred, who said he is “in the oil and gas business,” belongs to a hunting club and makes his own bullets in his garage.

“People wouldn’t be happy to know that my wife was sleeping with a black man.” He added, “Rev. Haynes doesn’t like the interracial thing, either. This was quite an issue for him.” [Rev. Haynes is black.]

Elizabeth Payne said she has been banished by Haynes and the flock at Friendship-West. “I’m not a member of the congregation anymore; I’m not even allowed on the premises,” she said.

Ms. Payne has filed a charge of wrongful dismissal.

That big house being built for Sen. Obama’s long-time spiritual adviser in an almost all-white gated golf course community is owned by Trinity United Church of Christ. I assumed at the time that there was some tax-avoidance reason for this, but perhaps when Wright made these arrangements, he had community property issues in mind, too.

I have been negative on the Greeley Tribune’s coverage of the Beef Packer/Somali confrontation, disliking the newspaper’s apparent repression of the news of Somali violence at the plant, and doubting that the Publisher comprehends the issue

So it is only fair to note that on Friday, balanced against a wooden pro-immigration essay by Clinton Cabinet Affirmative Action Hispanic Frederico Pena the Tribune ran a fine piece by former Governor Richard Lamm

Illegal immigrants are ‘cheap labor’ for some, costly to rest Friday, September 12, 2008

Lamm really understands the issues

It is easy to see why illegal immigrants are attractive to employers. These are generally good, hardworking people who will quietly accept minimum wage (or below), don’t generally get health or other benefits, and if they complain they can be easily fired. For some employers it is an abused form of labor. Even minimum wage is attractive to workers from countries whose standard of living is a fraction of ours.

But that is not to say it is “cheap labor.” It may be “cheap” to those who pay the wages, but for the rest of us, it is clearly “subsidized” labor, as we taxpayers pick up the costs of education, health, and other municipal costs imposed by this work force.

That has become a substantial and growing cost as the nature of illegal immigration patterns has changed.

Lamm points out that the shift towards working immigrants bringing and having families has changed to whole cost equation because

no minimum-wage workers, or even low-wage workers, pay anywhere near enough to pay for even one child in school. Even if they were paying all federal and state taxes, Colorado’s estimated 30,000 school-age children of workers illegally in the United States impose gargantuan costs on other taxpayers.

He then devastates the “Illegals pay taxes” falsehood:

The dilemma is compounded by the fact that approximately 50 percent of illegal workers are paid in cash, off the books. Go to any construction site almost anywhere in America, and you will find workers paid cash wages. Virtually every city in America has an area where illegals gather, and people come by to get “cheap” cash wage labor

And notes the impact on wages:

Cheap labor drives down wages as low income Americans are forced to compete against these admittedly hardworking people.

Even employers, who don’t want to wink at false documents, are forced to lower wages just to be competitive. It is in many ways a “race to the bottom” fueled by poor people often recruited from ever more distant countries by middlemen who profit handsomely. Harvard professor George Borjas, an immigrant himself, estimates that American workers lose $190 billion annually in depressed wages caused by the constant flooding of the labor market from newcomers.

This is as succinct and up-to-date immigration-skeptic article as I have seen in quite a while; and I commend it to emailing VDARE.com readers.

Pena’s essay in contrast, is a tired recital of partisan sources, and relies primarily on sleight of hand rather than reason. For instance:

» Immigrants unduly tax our health care system, especially our emergency rooms.

A recent study conducted by UCLA’s School of Public Health found that immigrants are actually underutilizing the system given their health needs. Why? Because undocumented immigrants are less likely to be insured, they are also less likely to visit a doctor, clinic or emergency room.

Emergency Rooms, of course, are obliged by the Federal Government to treat regardless of ability to pay. A rational illegal may therefore not see the purpose in going to a private doctor. But more importantly, the issue is not how comprehensive immigrant health care is: it is the extent to which what they do get deprives the native born of appropriate treatment – or drives up the cost.

The Greeley Tribune did not follow standard MSM repression procedure: It allowed Governor Lamm to offset Frederico Pena. Applaud the Greeley Tribune Publisher, Bart Smith