The idea that Clint Eastwood has made a film about embracing diversity is disappointing, to say the least. Didn’t he once have at least some conservative tendencies?

Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a grizzled Korean War vet who has never been the most sociable of men. When his beloved wife dies, he becomes downright ornery, pushing away his grown kids, the local priest (Christopher Carley), and his neighbors, a family of Hmong immigrants that includes teenage Thao (Bee Vang).

Walt just wants to be left alone, but his plans go awry when Thao tries to steal his 1972 Gran Torino as part of a gang initiation rite. Since Walt is played by Eastwood in Dirty Harry mode, the gangbangers soon learn a lesson they’re not likely to forget. But much to his own surprise (if not ours), Walt learns a few lessons too, as he tries to teach the confused Thao what it means to be a real man.
[With 'Gran Torino,' nobody gangs up on Clint Eastwood, New York Daily News, Dec 11, 2008]

Somehow, I am guessing that the film will leave out the unpleasant aspects of Hmong culture, such as horse-eating, animal sacrifice, shamanistic medical treatment, marriage by capture, polygamy, gang culture (including rape gangs), disinterest in obeying the law, a highly misogynist value system, and an aversion to education particularly for women.

Of course, it’s not the fault of any individual Hmong that they come from a primitive culture; the fault lies with the Refugee Industrial Complex that lobbies the government to import the most backward people possible, who will require lots of expensive assistance. Refugees with the skills to become independent are not what the professional resettlement workers want. So Americans are stuck with retro refugees who need instruction to operate a light switch or faucet.

Plus, the economic climate means that importing thousands more refugees of any tribe makes no sense, and even the MSM is starting to realize that American society has its limits: America provides refuge, but not always prosperity.

Anyway, after that digression, the film trailer is below.

Here’s some vintage Clint, just so we won’t forget…

ILW.com, a major immigration lawyers website, recently posted a review of Alien Nation by free-market economist Mark Skousen. Originally published in The Freeman, which not otherwise anti-Brimelow, it’s for open borders, and against any form of border control.

I have no idea why the immigration lawyers have posted a thirteen year old review, most of which has been “overtaken by events,” as they say, but they should know that we’ve posted exactly the same review on VDARE.com, with permission, for over seven years, so it’s not as if it comes as a surprise, and most of the arguments in it are refuted somewhere on this site. There’s a weird, time-travel quality to reading things like “Finally, he endorses building a huge barrier along the U.S. -Mexico border, something akin to a Berlin Wall.”

Now everyone endorses it, and it’s been passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. They haven’t actually built the thing, of course, but Brimelow’s  ideas are becoming more mainstream.

Back on October 18, a blog for the NY Daily News (via Kausfiles) reported that a Chicago real estate appraiser was claiming in his wrongful termination suit that his ex-employer had inflated the appraisal of the strip of land which Tony Rezko’s wife bought at the same June 2005 closing at which Sen. Obama bought his stately home. The blog said:

We have no idea of the merits of the case … But the fact that the suit has been filed brings back yet another item that Team Obama would rather not have to deal with in the closing days of the contest.

Of course, Team Obama didn’t have to deal with it, just as they didn’t have to deal with much of anything.

The Washington Times reported on Election Day:

A former Illinois real estate specialist says FBI agents have questioned him about a Chicago property that had been bought by convicted felon Tony Rezko’s wife and later sold to the couple’s next-door neighbor, Sen. Barack Obama.

The real estate specialist, Kenneth J. Conner, said bank officials replaced an appraisal review he prepared on the property and FBI agents were investigating in late 2007 whether the Rezko-Obama deal was proper.

(more…)

In October, the government published the latest version of their National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) study of sizes, “Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults: 2003-2005,” which is of great interest to clothing manufacturers. And you might find it interesting too.

Let’s look just at the medians for people ages 20-39, since they are most likely to be in the marriage market.

So, the average Non-Hispanic white man between 20 and 39 is 5′-10.4″ tall (178.9 cm.).

People are measured while wearing foam slippers.

As you can see, whites are a little taller than blacks, with Hispanics lagging more than a standard deviation behind.

The average height of the Hispanic population is probably bipolar, depending upon whether they were born in the U.S. or not. At the illegal immigrant march I observed in Van Nuys, CA in 2006, the average participant was very short, with men averaging well under five and a half feet tall. (This suggests, by the way, that U.S.-born Hispanics didn’t care enough about illegal immigrants to turn out in large numbers.)

The male-female gaps are similar for all three groups, with women averaging 92%-93% of the height of their menfolk.

The 95th percentile for younger white males is 6′-2.9″, for blacks 6′-3.1″, and for Hispanics is 6′-0.3″ For both white and black women, age 20-39, the 95th percentile is 5′-8.7″, while for Hispanics its 5′6.5″.

The standard deviation for white males appears to be a little more than 2 1/4th inches and for other males around 2 1/2 inches. The average NBA player is between 6′-7″ and 6′-8″ (and has been for the last 20 years). I believe that’s measured in socks rather than in shoes, although college heights tend to be exaggerated. For instance, last year’s UCLA All-American center Kevin Love was listed by UCLA at 6′-10″ but was measured by the NBA for the draft at 6′-7.25.

Assuming a black median of 5′-10″ and a standard deviation of 2.5″, that means that 6′-8″ is four standard deviations from the mean. Assuming that height is normally distributed (a big assumption),then one standard deviation above the mean is 6′-0.5 and that is the 84th percentile. Two s.d.’s up is 6′-3″ and that is the 97.7th percentile. Three s.d.’s up is 6′-5.5″ and that is the 99.87th percentile. And four s.d.’s at 6′-8″ would be the 99.997th percentile.

Five s.d.’s would be 6′-10.5″ (a seven-footer in recruiting parlance) and if the population is normally distributed, only one would be born in America, black or white, each year. So, the population probably has “fat tails” when it comes to height.

Still, it’s worth noting how rare truly tall men are. When Colby Cosh asked who was the tallest man famous for something not height-related, his readers mostly came up with novelist Michael Crichton at around 6′-10″ and economist John Kenneth Galbraith at maybe 6′-9″. (The pretender to the throne of Albania is often said to be 7 feet tall, but I can’t say how accurate that is.)

When I was young and naive, I said to a friend who had gone to three colleges, “Even if you are really tall, you have to be a good athlete to play college basketball.” He said, “No, you don’t. You just have to be tall. On every campus I’ve been on, there were two seven footers, and they were the starting and back-up centers on the basketball team.” When I was at Rice, there were two guys on the basketball team listed at 6′-11″ and, sure enough, they were the tallest people on campus. When I was at UCLA with 35,000 students, there were two seven footers, the starting center Stuart Gray at 7′-0″ (who spent 8 years in the NBA as a backup center) and the 25 year-old backup center, a clumsy-looking ex-auto mechanic named Mark Eaton, who is said to be 7′-4″ and 290. Eaton kept improving as he aged into his height and eventually made the NBA All-Star game. But I don’t recall anybody else on campus close to them in height.

Among whites, the median man 20-39 is 0.4″ taller than the median man age 40-59 and 1.6″ taller than the median man 60 or over (however, old people shrink).

People are weighed wearing disposable paper medical gowns.

At 148 pounds, younger white women average only 80% as heavy as younger white men, but black women weight 90% as much as their menfolk, so the male-female gap is only half as large among blacks. And Latinas weight 88% as much as Latinos.

So, the median white man age 20-39 has a 37 inch waist, and the median younger white woman has a 33.5 inch waist, 9% smaller. (Pregnant women are excluded.) Among blacks, however, the typical younger woman has a wider waist than her male counterpart.

The oft-criticized Body Mass Index (BMI) reflects the same findings: whites are the skinniest, with black women considerably fatter than black men.

The total sample size who were subjected to quite a few measurements were an impressive 19,593, so subgroup sample sizes were quite adequate. (The smallest subgroup shown below numbered 361.)

USA Today reports:

Federal authorities have charged a Wall Street veteran with running a Ponzi scheme that prosecutors allege lost a staggering $50 billion.

Bernard Madoff, founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, 70, was charged on Thursday by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office and the Securities and Exchange Commission with securities fraud. The charge comes a day after the complaint says Madoff told some high-level employees that his investment management business was a “fraud” and “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.”

The U.S. Attorney’s complaint accuses Madoff of losing some of his investors’ money on bad trades, then attempting to hide it by replacing that lost money with cash from his other investors. Madoff’s investment management business had between 11 and 25 clients and $17.1 billion in assets as of a Jan. 7 filing, the complaint says, and one of Madoff’s senior employees had “several million” under his management.

The scheme finally came unraveled because Madoff’s clients asked for $7 billion in redemptions as of the first week of December, the complaint says, and Madoff couldn’t come up with the cash to cover the requests.

Authorities say Madoff told senior employees at a private meeting at his apartment in New York that he planned to turn himself in within a week and that he was “finished” and had “absolutely nothing.” Madoff estimated he had lost at least $50 billion but first wanted to pay out his remaining $200 million to $300 million to employees, family and friends, the complaint says.

Fifty billion here, fifty billion there, pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

The government will presumably have to bail out Madoff’s investors, so that’s all the money that could have gone to bailing out Detroit (after all, Madoff’s investors don’t actually make anything, so they come first).

Oh, I forgot, we can just make up more money at no expense. Never mind!

Anyway, that reminds me of what a brilliant career move I made from changing from being a corporate executive to being a writer. Sure, it may not have seemed like that smart a switch from the perspective of my net worth and all that, but here’s the thing: writers don’t retire, thus positioning me perfectly for our coming Work Until You Die economy.

In other kinds of jobs, you reach a point where you just feel too old to keep making the 7am flight to Dallas, so you want to retire. But writers can keep shuffling from their bedroom to their home office indefinitely.

Sure, when I’m 80, I won’t have as many original insights as I do now. But, I have too many now. I’ll be more popular then.

Falling obediently into line behind the flag raised by Max Blumenthal, MSNBC’s resident thug Keith Olbermann had a rant tonight on his Countdown show on Thursday night naming Peter Brimelow as the originator of the War on Christmas. He gives poor Bill O’Reilly a “Worst Person in the World” award for adopting an idea from the evil VDARE.com site.

(This happens towards the end of #42 War on Christmas has anti-Semitic origins. )

O’Reilly and his people have never been in touch with VDARE.com or shown the slightest sign of knowing the site exists. That is what happens when you are at the top of the Food Chain.

I have never watched Olbermann before. It was astonishing how inaccurate his recounting of Blumenthal’s essay (itself inaccurate enough) was. It must be true these Television types can’t read. For instance, Alien Nation did not, I believe,  have any reference to the Christmas issue and Kevin MacDonald definitely does not think Jews are inferior–rather the reverse.

There was a pattern, though, in these errors: polemical convenience.

In a broader sense, though, it is correct that Peter Brimelow pioneered opposition to Christmas repression in the media–with the War against Christmas competitions in the National Review starting in the mid 90s. It is also true, as Tom Piatak notes tonight, that without popular outrage, the effort would have gone nowhere.

For the Christophobes to pull out the Trump card in American discourse – anti Semitism - is a measure of how desperate they are–or how determined to repress Christmas. It seems to be this year’s strategy. Ordering Americans of Christian heritage to choose between deferring to the supposed wishes of the Jewish community and appropriately celebrating their most cherished Festival does not seem wise.

Now we find out if Bill O’Reilly is as tough as he represents!

Caleb Howe, at Political Machine on the AOL news website, has been posting a series of fine essays on the War against Christmas.
‘War on Christmas’ Controversies Spread , [December 7th 2008,] which began the series, was particularly incisive:

A few years ago, I also thought the phrase “War on Christmas” was over the top, and I said as much in a blog entry about Bill O’Reilly. I’ve come to see, however, that the term is increasingly accurate, despite being sensational…

For a large and still growing portion of the American left, there is only one form of evil: western culture. In universities and Moveon.org meetings, the only oppressor, the only representative of evil, is western culture. It’s a culture which celebrates Christmas as well as Christianity, and it’s a culture with traditions and observances like any other…. In short, the war on Christmas is just a symptom of the greater culture war…

What is the war on Christmas? It’s a symptom of a war on American values by hateful left-wing activists who despise this country and all that it is, has been, and will ever be. It’s not about inclusion, it’s about excision. The removal of Christianity and anything associate with Christianity from these shores. It’s time to choose your side

War On Christmas: Pelosi Mugged?,  Political Machine December 9, 2008
dealt well with the extraordinary remark by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she was “mugged” for insisting that the US Capitol Hill Christmas Tree be called a Christmas Tree:

…she repeated “No, you ought to know, I really got mugged for that.” His impression, from her demeanor and expression, was that someone had really gotten to her in a way that she really didn’t see coming. Her expression conveyed “consternation” and “frustration”… it sounds clear that the Speaker endured some type of hardship. For what? Perhaps for insisting on calling the ceremony a Christmas ceremony rather than a holiday ceremony… That someone like Speaker Pelosi can be victim of what appears to be a callous ambush over something like the U.S. Capitol Christmas tree lighting should tell you much.

War on Christmas: I Saw Someone Killing Santa Claus , Political Machine, December 11,  2008 cites further incidents and concludes

Organized groups are taking on Christmas, as they do every year. The fact that they aren’t winning isn’t germane. The question is, why is such an assault on our American culture and traditions so readily accepted by the left in the name of some phantom fairness that was never transgressed against in the first place? This Christian and secular holiday is indeed called Christmas, and it is indeed predicated on the historic recognition of the birth of Jesus Christ. It takes a special and sick mind to be offended by such a mere statement of fact, to feel wronged by the mere act of a nation and culture engaging in a long-standing religious and cultural tradition…. There is a war on Christmas. It exists. It is a war being conducted by groups who have a visceral hatred of religion, who routinely, on talk shows and in op-ed columns, blame religion for all the world’s woes. What we have learned this year is that some states are going to allow them to use the flimsy excuse of equal display space to get away with blatant attacks which would never be tolerated from other groups… That is the war on Christmas, and the media just keeps helping it along.

The comment threads attached to these essays look like being a gold mine. But I have to break away from this first-class work to deal with the oafish Keith  Olbermann.