This year, with coverage of direct “War against Christmas” so much more extensive than it was when Peter Brimelow revived the issue here in 1999, I had decided personally to focus on the comments carried on the threads attached to various articles.

It is a gruesome business. Not conducive to respect for one’s fellow men.

But one lead characteristic needs comment: the amazing resort to Scholarship shown in so many of the anti-Christmas sites.

I have noted this previously, but a case in point is Crocodile Morsels

the next time a Christian insists that we put the Christ back in Christmas, tell them that they should also:
• Put the Mass back in Christmas
• Restore Michaelmas
• Restore Candlemas
• Restore Childermas
• Restore the Feast of the Epiphany
• Restore the Advent season
• Restore gift-giving to the real Christmas season, which occurs after Christmas day
• Don’t put up a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve — if at all
• Use Christmas as a day of contemplating Christ, not for engaging in commerce

Interesting, but this must be roundly rejected. NO Non- Christian is entitled to tell a Christian how Christmas, or any other Christian holiday, is to be celebrated.

Supplying historical data to the effect that Christian traditions are derived from Pagan Festivals–true and interesting or not-is an insult.

So I propose that those who love Christmas reject out of hand any effort to engage in historical minutiae. We believe what we believe. Those who challenge us are enemies.

And to the deluge of idiotic comments denying that there has been a War on Christmas, all that needs to be said is: look at the VDARE.com Christmas Competition Archives

There is apparently no limit to the depravity of Mexican criminals. Terrorizing innocent little kids for money is part of their thug portfolio these days: Mexican schools close as children are threatened [AP, December 13, 2008] .

Across Ciudad Juarez, parents and students are stricken by reports of kidnapping and extortion threats, starting with a sign that appeared Nov. 12 on the front door of another school, the Elena Garro kindergarten, demanding: “Either give us your bonuses, or we will start to kidnap the children.”

Police removed it before the children arrived.

Some speculate that cartels now are targeting schools to supplement income with the Mexican government’s crackdown on drug trafficking, much as they’ve already extorted businesses. Others say common criminals are trying to cash in on the fear that pervades border cities, where terrified residents are seeing ever more brutal murders – more than 1,300 so far this year in Ciudad Juarez.

It may be that the criminals in this case are knuckle-dragger opportuninsts with no intention of actually kidnapping kids and are just trying to make some easy money. But that would be a foolish assumption. Kidnapping is a low-investment crime that requires little equipment — a van, some duct tape and a spare room can put a Mexican crime entrepreneur in business, and plenty have. However, for all its simplicity, kidnapping is a tremendously cruel crime that results in a terrorized population when it is practiced as commonly as it is in Mexico.

In a reminder of the heartbreak which some Mexican families have endured (just a few months after the brutal case of 14-year-old Fernando Marti being snatched and killed), a young victim — Silvia Vargas (pictured) — has been found dead a year after being kidnapped: Mexico Kidnapping Death Stokes Outrage [Washington Post, Dec 14, 2008].

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 14 — Her mother asked that mourners wear white, so the memorial service Saturday for Silvia Vargas Escalera seemed less grim than the circumstances surrounding one of Mexico’s most notorious kidnappings.

The body of the wealthy and vivacious Mexico City teenager was found last weekend buried under a patio in a house south of the city. She had been missing for more than a year. Her remains were identified by dental records and DNA on Thursday.

The abduction and killing of the 18-year-old student, whose fresh young face had been ubiquitous in the news media here for months, have stoked outrage and revulsion in Mexico. The public is frustrated not only by waves of violent and often organized crime, but also by the government’s inability to solve cases and put the guilty behind bars.

Many people, too, are afraid of the kidnapping crews, which no longer limit their targets to the super-rich, and travel in armored cars and with bodyguards. Kidnappers now snatch middle-class and even poor victims, demanding as little as $500 in ransom for their return.

What a horror. For one twisted symptom of how Mexicans adjust to the unacceptable, see this item about bullet-proof clothing, etc.: Crime fears drive Mexicans’ increase of extreme security measures.

Naturally, the influx of millions of Mexicans has brought their way of crime, including kidnapping, along the rest of their culture.

Takuan Seiyo had an important article in September called The Case Of The “Disappeared” Subprime Minority Borrower,in which he explained how Wall Street came to be invested in bad mortgages on a large scale, and what “Mortgage-backed Securities” and “Collateralized Debt Obligations” are, as well as what Wall Street means by a “tranche.” This is a graphic representation of the same idea:

Via Overlawyered, I learn that Blagojevich is not only an illegal immigration enthusiast, who’s been accused of corruption in trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, but he was also heavily involved in the mortgage meltdown:

BLAGOJEVICH: Subprime Governor To Bailout Governor
Clusterstock.com
John Carney | Dec 9, 08 3:41 PM

Long before he would become a blazing symbol of political corruption, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was making Illinois into one of the leaders in risky mortgage lending. He pushed a program, called Opportunity I-Loans, that would make loans for up to 97% of property value, with borrowers making only a 3% downpayment. When the state legislature resisted, he went ahead and created the program through an executive order.

How did that program turn out? We haven’t been able to uncover the default or foreclosure rate on those loans. But shortly after he created the I-Loan program, Illinois became one of the leaders in mortgage defaults. Defaults under the I-Loan program would likely have been even higher than the state average because the combination of minimal downpayments and declining property values is a recipe for rising loan defaults.

Rather than react with regret about the loose mortgage climate he helped create, Blagojevich became one of the earliest political leaders to call for a housing bailout. [More, which makes Blagojevich look even worse.]

Here’s how bad the program was–not only was it, according to Blagojevich himself, only the second such program in the nation (which means it was wilder and crazier than almost anything else of its kind) it was designed to provide mortgages to minorities and immigrants who didn’t have bank accounts.

The “unbanked“ are people who for whatever reason don’t have bank accounts, mostly poor people who aren’t that well organized, and can’t afford to keep any money in the bank. They’re the customers of check cashing agencies, and welfare workers worry about them, while activist try to get the banks to offer them free services. But it’s crazy to think of offering someone like that the mortgage on a house. It gets worse–two other groups he was trying to help borrow six-figure sums were

• People with no credit rating (because of their “unbanked” status)
• People with no Social Security numbers (because they were illegals)

How could that possibly go wrong? See the details here:

CHICAGO –Building on his commitment to help working families realize the American Dream of homeownership, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich today launched a new mortgage program designed to help hardworking, taxpaying individuals and families from the immigrant and minority communities. The program, called Opportunity I-Loan, will help those individuals and families who do not have a traditional checking account or have not been able to establish a credit history, qualify for low-interest mortgage loans and buy their first home. This program will make Illinois only the second state in the nation to provide affordable, 30-year fixed rate mortgage loans for qualifying individuals and families that live and work and pay taxes but have no credit history or social security numbers. The Program will also offer further protections from predatory home loans.  OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR–ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH - GOVERNOR December 11, 2005 Gov. Blagojevich launches program to help working families in immigrant and minority communities buy homes | Program is only second in the nation to accept alternative credit and ITIN numbers [PDF]

The Washington Post catches up to what I’ve been saying all along:

Stimulus Package to First Pay for Routine Repairs

President-elect Barack Obama calls it “the largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s.” New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg compares it to the New Deal — when workers built hundreds of bridges, dams and parkways — while saying it could help close the gap with China, where he recently traveled on a Shanghai train at 267 mph.

Most of the infrastructure spending being proposed for the massive stimulus package that Obama and congressional Democrats are readying, however, is not exactly the stuff of history, but destined for routine projects that have been on the to-do lists of state highway departments for years. Oklahoma wants to repave stretches of Interstates 35 and 40 and build “cable barriers” to keep wayward cars from crossing medians. New Jersey wants to repaint 88 bridges and restore Route 35 from Toms River to Mantoloking. Scottsdale, Ariz., wants to widen 1.5 miles of Scottsdale Road.

On the campaign trail, Obama said he would “rebuild America” with an “infrastructure bank” run by a new board that would award $60 billion over a decade to projects such as high-speed rail to take the country in a more energy-efficient direction. But the crumbling economy, while giving impetus to big spending plans, has also put a new emphasis on projects that can be started immediately — “use it or lose it,” Obama said last week — and created a clear tension between the need to create jobs fast and the desire for a lasting legacy.

“It doesn’t have the power to stir men’s souls,” said David Goldberg of Smart Growth America. “Repair and maintenance are good. We need to make sure we’re building bridges that stand, not bridges to nowhere. But to gild the lily . . . where we’re resurfacing pieces of road that aren’t that critical, just to be able to say we spent the money, is not what we’re after.”

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is proud that his city was able to quickly rebuild the Interstate 35 bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 while making sure to include capacity for a future transit line on it. But he worries that many of the road and bridge upgrades around the country will not be done in a similarly farsighted way, given the time pressures.

“The quickest things we can do may not be the ones that have the most significant long-term impact on the green economy,” he said. “Unless we push a transit investment, this will end up being a stimulus package that rebalances our transportation strategy toward roads and away from [what] we need to get off our addiction to oil.”

In other words, under Obama’s “use it or lose it” rule, we’ll end up doing right away a whole lot of things like repainting bridges that didn’t seem worth doing back when we had lots of money.

Bill Richardson: “Obama is an Immigrant”

By Nicholas Stix

When Hillary Clinton supporters and Republicans question whether the racial socialist calling himself “Barack Hussein Obama” was born in America, the Obamanoids denounce them as the lunatic fringe. For if “Obama” were an immigrant, it would mean that his election was illegal, and he would be guilty of the most massive case of election fraud since Mayor Richard Daley I and George Parr, “the Duke of Duval County,” Texas, stole the 1960 election for Jack Kennedy. (Funny how “Chicago politician” and “election fraud” always seem to go together.)

But what are they going to say in response to Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson’s statement, “Obama is an Immigrant”—“Obama es un immigrante”?

Richardson was videoed by French TV station, France 24, on September 1 at the Democratic National Convention, and the video first posted to Youtube two months ago, but it only began gathering steam on the Web earlier this month.

Barack Obama is the best candidate for the Hispanic community because our community wants a united country. Obama is an immigrant. When he speaks to Latinos, he doesn’t just speak about immigration and civil rights.

Richardson’s statement was either true, a lie, or yet another example of Richardson’s Zelig-like existence, in which he is all things to all people, extending to the point of being “brown”—thanks to a tanning lamp and/or makeup—before a “brown” audience, and white before a white one.

What does Richardson do, when he has to give sworn testimony on any given subject? And what do the Obamanoids do about what he said? My hunch is that they’ll deal with it the way they deal with all unpleasant facts: Ignore it, and if pressed about it, lie.

Tip ‘o’ the hat to blogger, 24 Ahead.