If you’re looking for  some good news from the recent elections, there is some available. This is from a November 5th bulletin from the U.S. English organization :

“Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved H.J. Res. 7 yesterday, strengthening the state’s official English law. The measure passed with more than 85 percent of the vote, as 2.4 million Missourians cast ballots in favor of the measure. The approved measure makes English the official language of all official proceedings in Missouri, including the discussion of public business and roll call votes. It does not affect informal gatherings, social events, and as with all official English legislation, does not affect emergency services. H.J.Res. 7 earlier passed the Missouri House and Senate by better than 3-to-1 margins and had the support of both candidates for governor.”

The final results of the presidential election in Missouri have still not been officially declared (see here) but it appears that McCain squeaked by Obama at 49.4 to 49.3 percent of the vote. And that means the majority of Obama voters in Missouri also voted for Official English.

Pfizer continues to replace its American workers with H-1B contractors. [Pfizer Accused of Using U.S. Workers to Train Foreign Replacements, By Kevin Fogarty, Eweek.com, November 5, 2008] This newsletter has been reporting on the bloodletting at Pfizer for quite awhile, so this isn’t new news. There are a couple of new twists worth mentioning however..

Item 1: Recently Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Congressman Joe Courtney (CT-2) sent a letter of concern to Pfizer.[Dodd and Courtney Express Concern Over Reports that Pfizer Will Cut Jobs in Connecticut] The letter asks the CEO of Pfizer some interesting questions but it does nothing to stop Pfizer from replacing its U.S. workers with H-1B visa holders. [Pfizer Trains Foreign Workers As IT Replacements]
The reason these Congressmen can’t do anything to stop Pfizer is because replacing American workers is legal. Dodd and Courtney are reduced to doing nothing more than asking questions instead of demanding that Pfizer stop what they are doing. It’s not clear that Pfizer will ever answer the questions because they aren’t legally obligated to.[Critic links Pfizer Inc. to overseas job 'scam']

Sen. Dodd’s letter should not be used as atonement for his legislative history. He has consistently voted for H-1B increases as well as other types of guest worker visas. Dodd voted for H-1B in 1990 and since then has earned a grade of D- from Americans For Better Immigration for his consistent support of increasing visas for foreign guest workers. In 2004 Dodd sponsored a bill that would put some mild restrictions on offshoring government contracts but the bill died quickly. Since then Dodd has given lip service to protect Americans from unfair competition due to the use of H-1Bs or offshoring, while voting to make the problem worse. The letter Pfizer was great, but it would be even better if Dodd sponsored some serious legislation to stop the abuse. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Dodd to really do something.

Item 2: A document called Procedure 117 is getting a lot of publicity lately. You can read it here:Text of Procedure 117[PDF]

Procedure 117 is definitely not a smoking gun. It’s a rather mundane set of Pfizer policies and procedures concerning contractors. It’s not very different than what I have seen at most companies who use contractors, and it gives no clue about Pfizer hiring H-1Bs. The document says that contractors cannot work at Pfizer for more than 12 months, which is fairly standard in high-tech and doesn’t necessarily mean that Pfizer will hire H-1Bs, who are often contractors.

My recent article on VDARE.com about witchcraft pointed out the many ways in which cultures are not equal in any sense. This item would have gone into that piece.

The title is misleading, however. In some cases, the babies were not “bred” for sale, but were stolen from teen mothers who thought they were getting an abortion. Some very poor women did rent their bodies out to produce babies to be purchased. The buyers included childless couples but other babies would be raised as child labor and for sexual abuse, or worse.

ENUGU, Nigeria (AFP) – Neighbors were suspicious of the daytime silence at the maternity clinic that came to life only after nightfall, though never suspected its disquieting secret — it was breeding babies for sale.

But recent police raids have revealed an alleged network of such clinics, dubbed baby “farms” or “factories” in the local press, forcing a new look at the scope of people trafficking in Nigeria.
[...]
In 2005, a Lagos-based orphanage suspected of ties to child trafficking rings, was shut down. There, charred baby-bones were discovered on the rubbish tip, leading to suspicion the orphanage was involved in the peddling of human body parts, possibly for use in rituals or for organ harvesting. [...]

Witchcraft rituals also fuel baby trafficking, but experts say it is other motives that predominate, at least in this region of Nigeria. [Babies bred for sale in Nigeria, by Susan Njanji, Agence France-Presse, November 9, 2008]

A reader explain why it’s so hard to “meet someone” these days:

The reason things are broken is that older married women used to create the social context in which their children could get married and make grandbabies for them, but now they all have mostly completely useless jobs instead.

Some of them knew they were doing this, but most were just doing what they felt was expected of them. Mostly women do what they feel is expected of them. It’s expected now that women have jobs. If they don’t have a job, they need to be doing intensive childrearing or volunteer work. It’s completely unacceptable for them to spend their afternoons playing bridge or touring each other’s gardens or shopping for hats or any other ladylike pursuit.

But those apparently useless activities BUILT THE ENTIRE FREAKING SOCIAL WORLD. Just like a world of women would never invent anything useful, a world of men will never have a nice party. You meet your future spouse at a nice party that your mom nagged you into going to because her friend needs more people there. You have total plausible deniability about being there - you’re not there cause you’re lonely and desperate - you don’t need game, you don’t need the rules. The biddies took care of that for you. All you need to do is show up and be fertile/virile.

But middle-aged women can’t do this, and have jobs, and take care of their elderly parents, and exercise, and worry about their husbands leaving them or have to take care of their children with no husband at all. Impossible.

This is illustrated explicitly in Helen Fielding’s very funny Bridget Jones’s Diary
(which is a blend of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with a distaff version of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, but set in the dysfunctional mating environment of upscale 1990s London.)

Bridget spends a lot of time in expensive restaurants and bars with her two girlfriends and her gay male friend complaining about how they can never meet anybody. She meets proto-Pick Up Artist Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant in the movie) at her semi-glamorous (and mostly-useless) media job.

But she keeps running into the awkward but admirable Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) when she reluctantly drives out of London to obligingly show up at the various old-fashioned suburban parties her upper middle class housewife mother and her mother’s friends are constantly throwing and roping their children into attending so that the parties will be a success. Mark is the son of an admiral in Bridget’s parent’s social set, a top lawyer whose first marriage broke up when his wife had an affair with Daniel Cleaver. Like Bridget, he also hates being dragged into attending the old biddies’ parties, but he dutifully shows up because his mother and his mother’s friends need more people.

Mel Martinez feels that “anti-Hispanic rhetoric” which in this case means any attempt to enforce the immigration laws, was what lost the Republicans the recent election.

	Cuban American Senator Slams Anti-Immigration Rhetoric In Republican Party
	Senator Mel Martinez CaribWorldNews, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Nov. 10, 2008: Cuban American Senator, Mel Martinez, feels the strong anti-immigration rhetoric spewed by some members within the Republican Party contributed to their massive loss last week. Martinez, appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, said if those Republican members, meaning largely far right ultra conservatives, ` continue with that kind of rhetoric, anti-Hispanic rhetoric, that so much of it was heard, we’re going to be relegated to minority status.`[More]

He meant that Republicans are going to be relegated to minority status. The problem is that if we continue along the Open Borders path he prefers, then Americans are going to be relegated to minority status.

One of the more enigmatic articles about President-Elect Obama appeared in Politico.com on October 20, but I think I’ve cracked the secret. See if you come up with the same explanation as I did for why Obama drops in several times per day on his not very international man of mystery, Michael Signator:

‘Mystery’ Man lends support to Obama

by Kenneth P. Vogel

CHICAGO — He’s the star of bulletins chronicling Barack Obama’s movements, one of only a few nonrelatives to consistently get time with the Democratic candidate for president and a trusted confidant who has shared some of the most pivotal moments of Obama’s career with him.

Yet journalists who have followed Obama’s campaign for the better part of two years don’t know what he looks like, staffers who have logged countless hours traveling with Team Obama didn’t even know he works for the campaign and there’s never been a story in a major media outlet about him.

(more…)