As I’ve been pointing out, the competition between the American and Mexican national soccer teams is fierce, to say the least. The long-standing enmity between the countries shows up in open hostility on the field and in the stands.

There was another match-up last Wednesday in Columbus as part of the qualifying rounds for the World Cup. Mexicans had their sombreros spinning with excitement over the possibility of beating the hated gringos. But no such luck — the American team won, 2-0, followed by some unsportsman-like conduct on the part of a Mexican assistant coach. [Slap could get Mexico assistant in trouble, San Diego Union Tribune, Feb 14, 2009]

The already bitter U.S.-Mexico soccer rivalry got a little more caliente with a slapping incident outside the locker rooms after Wednesday night’s World Cup qualifier in Columbus, Ohio.

A camera for Spanish-language TV network Univision captured the altercation as players left the field at Crew Stadium after the United States’ 2-0 win. The Americans extended their unbeaten streak against Mexico on U.S. soil to 11 games by a combined score of 19-3.

Veteran U.S. defender Frankie Hejduk, a San Dieguito High alum, is seen walking with his jersey off (he had thrown it into the stands) when Mexico assistant coach Paco Ramirez steps in front of him, accosts him verbally and then slaps him across the face with his left hand. Hejduk’s head jerks to the left, and players and staff jump in to push Ramirez away.

Whoa, that sounds like assault to me.

Further up in the stands, the Mexican fans must have been disappointed at the loss, in particular that their special voodoo magic didn’t work out as hoped. Fort Worth-based Radio Shack had sponsored an anti-American voodoo doll promotion a couple weeks ago (Radio Shack Drinks Mexican Soccer Kool-Aid) but thought better of the scheme after US anger was shaping up. The idea was for Mexican soccer fans to take a coupon to a store that would get them an American soccer player doll to torture with pins.

After Radio Shack sensibly bailed on the project, Blockbuster moved in: Mexico voodoo promo gets new partner, Blockbuster [Boston Globe, Feb 6, 209].

MEXICO CITY - After Radioshack dropped out, a Mexican newspaper has found a new U.S. corporate sponsor to help put a voodoo hex on the U.S. national soccer team — and end Mexico’s decade-long losing streak.

Blockbuster stores in Mexico City began trading Record newspaper coupons for voodoo-doll likenesses of U.S. soccer players Friday. The back of the dolls’ jersey reads, “Gringos.” [...]

“Hold a needle firmly between your thumb and index finger and prick slowly the part of the doll where you want to affect the opponent,” the instructions say.

(You can contact Blockbuster Inc. Corporate Communications in Dallas at 214-854-3190 or corporate.communications@blockbuster.com).

Below, some of the Mexican crowd in Columbus giving the traditional salute during the Feb 13 soccer match. Click here for a slide show of the event.

The suspect in an upstate New York multiple murder is named Frank Garcia. He’s apparently from Hilton, NY, a typical American small town which is demographically only 1.49% Hispanic. He’s probably American-born, a guess I’m making based on his first name. Ontario County, where the shooting occurred, is also demographically behind the times, so much so that they don’t have any murders:

A rare charge in Ontario County
By Jessica Pierce
Canandaigua Daily Messenger
Posted Feb 16, 2009
Canandaigua, N.Y. —

Frank Garcia could be the first person in at least 30 years to be charged with first-degree murder in Ontario County.

That’s according to Ontario County District Attorney R. Michael Tantillo, who intends to ask a grand jury to consider the charge within the next two weeks.

If the charge is levied, however, Garcia won’t be considered a “capital” case and won’t face the possibility of the death penalty because the Court of Appeals has struck down that statute, ruling it unconstitutional, in a 2004 case called People v. LaValle. The death penalty had returned to New York state nine years earlier.[More]

Does the fact that suspect Garcia was probably born in the United States mean that we  shouldn’t put in the “Immigrant Mass Murder“ category? Not really.

I recently read a book called Traitor’s Purse by Margery Allingham. Written and set in England during the Second World War, it features Albert Campion, her aristocratic detective, who was occasionally called upon not only to solve murders in high life, but to save England.

In Traitor’s Purse, he saves it from a fiendish Nazi plot to destroy England’s national morale at around the time of the Battle of Britain, and the fiendish plan is this: the villains have printed up millions and millions of pounds of counterfeit bank notes, which of course are not actually backed by anything, and plan to distribute this by mail.

This will make the currency worth much less automatically, by inflating the money supply, and make all of it untrustworthy, which with a little luck, the Nazis thought, would create panic. In a particularly fiendish touch, they’d planned to do it by mailing it to every house in Great Britain which had received government assistance, with an official looking note saying it would be the patriotic thing to do to spend it as soon as possible.

It is actually not that easy to give money away on the street, because people think there’s a catch to it, and patriotic people would reject money that had been showered on them from Luftwaffe planes, (which was, believe it or not, a real-life Nazi plan, never carried out) but people who have been on the dole are used to the idea of getting money from the government, and usually have no problem spending it right away. (Almost all these people would have been white, by the way.)

You’ll be happy to know that Campion saved the day, by blowing up the cave full of trucks where the money was stored, and England went on to win the Second World War.

As for the fiendish plot to inflate the currency by giving away money at random to people who were supposed to spend it as fast as possible—it’s back. This time it’s called “The Stimulus.”

Wasn’t Obama going to improve relations with Europeans? He is not off to a good start by returning a bust of Winston Churchill which had a valued spot in the Bush White House.

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government’s art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush’s tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”
[Barack Obama sends bust of Winston Churchill on its way back to Britain, Daily Telegraph, February 14, 2009]

A reason for Obama’s undiplomatic action was mentioned…

Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill’s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President’s grandfather.

Which naturally prompts the question, Does Obama regard Kenya as a more important ally than Britain? Does he see himself more as a son of Kenya than of America’s British-descended founders? Inquiring citizens want to know.

In the budget battle over the “Stimulus”, a new Republican spokesman/leader has emerged, Eric Cantor, a Jewish Republican who holds James Madison’s old seat in the Virginia congressional delegation.

(See International Herald Tribune piece here).

So how is Cantor on immigration?

In their evaluation system, Numbers USA / Americans for Better Immigration give Cantor a grade of B, which is above average for the Virginia delegation.

More specifically, Cantor has a career record of A+ in the areas of Border Control, Reducing Chain Migration, Reducing the Visa Lottery, Reducing Refugee and Asylum Fraud. The congressman has an A in Interior Enforcement, though that’s dropped to an A- in recent the (2006-2009) evaluation. Cantor has a career B+ in the area of rewarding illegal immigration though that’s increased to A- in the recent evaluation. On the other hand, Cantor has a career grade of C in the area of amnesties, and a career F- in foreign worker visas.

Some advice for Cantor: use the current emphasis on the economy to point out repeatedly that rewarding illegal immigration has no place whatsoever in any sort of stimulus or economic improvement bill.

If you’d like to call Cantor’s office and offer some advice, the congressman’s phone number is (202) 225-2815.

Julia Preston reports in the New York Times:

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.

Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.[U.S. Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship, February 14, 2009]

I see this as largely a way to hide the real cost of the war-and pass the costs onto a few select groups of Americans-since it costs the military nothing to grant citizenship rights. I find the idea of loading critical infrastructure of the US military with H-1b workers rather scary, given what has happened in places like Enron and what almost happened at Fannie Mae. The military is proposing to recruit en masse from countries where they can’t even perform a reliable background check? I understand that some of this might need to be done to get the right language skills–or in special cases(like the German engineer who earned his US citizenship by providing a working Zero after Pearl Harbor). Doing this on the a mass scale sounds like a formula for disaster.

The senior GOP member of the Armed forces Committee of the House, John McHugh, has been a big H-1b supporter. Write him here. The current Democratic Chair, Ike Skelton has had similar inclinations. He’ll only accept messages from residents of Missouri’s 4th district.

I seriously wonder if these policies weren’t bought and paid for by interests hostile to the people of the United States. The amount of money that it took to buy congress to expand H-1b visas isn’t that much in terms of a military budget. If the military defeat of the United States can be engineered this way, it will be quite a bargain.

The older I get, the more it seems like nothing in American social mores has really changed since the 1964-1973 turning point. Thus, the late Daniel Seligman’s Keeping Up columns in Fortune from two decades ago seem like they could have been written yesterday:

March 2, 1987
The Dream Girls

A reader has sent in a clipping from Broadcasting magazine and suggested we comment on same. We are delighted to do so as the subject affords a long-awaited opportunity to mention what we consider the single most fascinating social-science finding of the latter 20th century. Pretty big buildup, you say? Just wait and see.

The article in Broadcasting says the Canadian government has developed “voluntary guidelines” about the portrayal of women on television. The article leaves you thinking the governing classes in the U.S.’s friendly neighbor to the north have nothing better to do than brood over the pernicious effects of sex-role stereotyping, and now they are taking action against this evil.

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