A few years ago two associates of mine, who are long-time activists in the immigration reduction movement, met with then Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, now sitting in President Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat thanks to the disgraced former governor of that state, Rod Blagojevich.

During this meeting, Burris agreed wholeheartedly that our present immigration policy is hurting black Americans who increasingly are losing jobs to foreigners, many of them here illegally.

The message the increasingly unpopular Burris sent during the firestorm of protest following his appointment went something like this:

“It’s important that I get this job because I will be the only black Senate voice for African-Americans in the country.” (more…)

Dr. Norm Matloff writes:

This past Monday, CNBC ran a “debate” between Vivek Wadhwa and Ron Hira. As many of you know, Vivek is a former CEO who now writes and does academic research on the tech industry, and Ron is a professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and who also does research on the tech industry.

Though most viewers wouldn’t know it, Vivek and Ron actually agree with each other on the issues at hand: Both are critics of the H-1B program, and both support expanding the employment-based green card program. (I agree with them on H-1B but disagree regarding green cards.) Both Vivek and Ron have made important research contributions to the H-1B issue, for the most part in mutually compatible directions. (I still take issue with some of Vivek’s research, but I have found much of it to be first rate.)

The subject matter in the debate was the recent enactment of legislation that would place certain restrictions on the hiring H-1Bs by employers who receive TARP financial industry bailout funds. For example, these employers will now be required to try to hire an American for a position before filling it with an H-1B.

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In his unswerving drive for popularity in the mainstream of conventional Jewish opinion, The Kvetcher has turned his attention to the claims being made by the Progress By Pesach campaign.

He has a caveat:

Progress By Pesach…seeks an end to enforcement of our immigration laws and amnesty for its violators. I don’t personally understand how Jews should have a right to dictate immigration policy unilaterally — despite quote after quote recited to me about The Stranger…

He is unimpressed by the quantity claimed:

…let’s see. There are millions of American Jews…and Perfidy has collected a total of…1,600 signatures:

And was possibly over-zealous – he actually looked at the lists:

Looking at these signatures,

I found a couple of strange things. I sure hope Obama looks at this list carefully, because some of these people voted, well…twice.

325 February 28, 2009 Matt Dallek Washington, DC
324 February 28, 2009 Matt Dallek Washington, DC
192 February 25, 2009 Dragos Morar Chicago, IL
191 February 25, 2009 Dragos Morar Chicago, IL
84 February 05, 2009 Rachel Maisler Silver Spring, MD
83 February 05, 2009 Rachel Maisler Silver Spring, MD
289 February 26, 2009 margy nurik bethesda, MD
288 February 26, 2009 margy nurik bethesda, MD
82 February 05, 2009 Lauren Gross Washington, DC
81 February 05, 2009 Lauren Gross Washington, DC

Since many of these are in order, it seems there may have been a computer glitch. I guess HIAS didn’t have time to fix it yet. I’m sure they will. Especially when the signers didn’t even remember to put in their names.

89 February 05, 2009 ,
88 February 05, 2009 ,

The Kvetcher goes on to note that some of the signers appear to be Hispanic and Asian - although Progress By Pesach is a specifically Jewish campaign - and some live in other countries, although the issue is after all American.

He concludes

Progress By Pesach notes,

“1600 + signatures collected, we still need 8,400 more to reach our goal of 10,000”

Oh, I’m guessing they’ll get those, come hell or high water. But they may not be Jews, they may not be Americans, they may not be unique signatures, and they may not even have signed any name at all.

It doesn’t matter. They will continue to claim to speak for all of us.

VDARE.com comment: Progress By Pesach is a dangerous mistake. Does it have to be fraudulent too?

The NYT claims “Study Offers a New Test of Potential Lawyers:”

The LSAT, as the half-day exam is known, does not claim to predict much beyond a student’s performance in law school. But critics contend that it does not evaluate how good a lawyer someone will be and tests for the wrong things. They also say it keeps many black and Hispanic students — who tend to have lower scores — out of the legal profession.

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John Derbyshire has a very kind essay on me up at Taki’s Magazine: “Sailer-ism.”

By the way, looking at my picture from last fall illustrating Derb’s article, I wanted to mention that I’ve recently shaved off the goatee. The first famous person in Chicago to wear a goatee in 1991 was the White Sox ace pitcher Jack McDowell, whom I knew slightly because he went to my high school. Jack was a grunge rocker during the offseason and hung out with Eddie Vedder and the like so he brought the Seattle look to Chicago. But it took me years to get around to wearing a goatee. I’m not very fashion forward.

Now, de-goateed, staring at myself in the mirror, I feel like I’m missing something. My face is best seen in limited measure and too much is currently on display. So, I’m thinking about growing a mustache.

Clearly, though, mustaches are around the bottom of the popularity curve. Not even relief pitchers wear mustaches anymore — I looked at pictures of the Dodgers’ and Angels’ 40-man spring training rosters and nobody has a mustache without accompanying chin ornamentation, not even the bullpen boys. (Facial hair creativity is found most often in masculine workplaces with a hurry-up-and-wait work schedule such as bullpens, firehouses, and army camps. The Civil War was the great progenitor of facial hair fashions, such as the sideburns of General Burnsides. See Ron Maxwell’s movie “Gettysburg” to see what men with too much time on their hands can get up to in the facial hair department.) The older stars like Vladimir Guerrero tend to still sport goatees while the rookies tend to have that weird little chin frizz that Tiger Woods displayed awhile ago.

Do firemen still wear mustaches? Lots of the343 FDNY guys who died on 9/11 had mustaches, but have they kept up the look? Do homosexuals still wear mustaches or have they hopped off that bandwagon finally? The only people that I’m sure still like mustaches are the illegal immigrants I see riding bicycles.

Attorney General Eric Holder has a mustache. It looks distinguished on him, but it’s the same one he’s had for years, so it’s not exactly a fashion harbinger.

While reading up on Ameriquest, the top subprime mortgage originator in America before going belly-up in 2007, I was struck by this bit from a 2005 LA Times article by Mike Hudson and E. Scott Reckard:

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Shouldn’t Obama call off his war on carbon emissions “for the duration” of the economic downturn? If the economy is roaring back in 18 months, swell, let’s all start fighting carbon again then. But if we’re in for a decade-long depression, then carbon emissions will be way down by themselves, and the last thing we should be trying to do is make energy, the main driver of economic growth, even more unaffordable.