Headlines come cheap these days – and so do “racism” claims.

The Dallas Morning News reported this evening that Ernestina Mondragon was ticketed for making an illegal U-turn, driving without a license and driving while not speaking English — the latter being a legitimate ticketable offense in Dallas, although only applicable to commercial drivers.

Never mind that Mondragon has been a legal resident for 29 years, or that her English-speaking daughter was in the car with her and did not offer to translate. No, the headline here is about her “humiliation”.

“[Attorney] Garcia and Mondragon…want an investigation into Dallas police training and supervision generally and specifically to uncover any evidence of racial profiling.
“And I want the Dallas Police Review Board to monitor the investigation as an impartial third party,” Garcia said.
Garcia said he will file a claim asking the city to refund fines that Mondragon paid. She also incurred about $7,000 in medical expenses when she appeared to get ill after the traffic stop and her family took her to Baylor Medical Center at Garland. Her daughter said her mom was found to have stress-related symptoms and was admitted and kept overnight.”

Woman ticketed by Dallas police for not speaking English says she felt humiliated, by Richard Abshire, The Dallas Morning News, October 26, 2009. Link added.

Police Chief David Kunkle has already folded with an apology, a promise to investigate, and the mass dismissal of all 39 similar charges from the last three years.

Significantly, the comments posted are just as critical as I (Texan born and bred) am. One industrious commentor, kk45 volunteers his services:

“…I work for a sign shop and would love to print a sign for all Hispanics who believe that America must accept all Hispanics, no matter how they got here, and must learn to speak Spanish. Hispanics will sue till you do!”

My favorite comment, posted by BinBama, pretty much sums it up: “Learn the Language. This aint the lottery lady.”

Reading The Pioneer Woman, my favorite non-VDARE.COM blog, I came across this comment on the effect of immigration in the Dominican Republic:

Apparently, after the sugar industry was privatized in 1996, the owners … phased out the traditional workers … in favor of new, freshly-imported Haitians who worked for much less money. Ironically, the residents of this community were once Haitians themselves, and had few if any employment options outside the sugarcane industry. Still, the company determined it was still cheaper for the company to import “fresh” Haitians. This seems to be a problem common to many of these batey [sugar company-owned village] communities—one that seems to be worsening an already desperate situation for many families in the Dominican Republic.

“Marlboro Man“, who wrote this particular post, has taken his two daughters on a trip hosted by Compassion, a child sponsorship program designed to help the very poor through local churches. He has chronicled the communities they meet and how the children respond to each other, plus what Compassion does to help out.

On a lighter note, he’s also chronicling the universal mothers’ problem of too much laundry:

P.P.S. I took more photos of laundry piles yesterday. But I’m afraid if I send any more to Ree, she won’t let me come home. All I’m trying to tell her is that I understand now that her struggle is a universal one. But I don’t think she’s getting the joke.

It’s useful to note that, like laundry, too much immigration is also a problem everywhere.

I knew it was coming…but in the first week of September??

In my email inbox today, there is was:

“Free Shipping on Holiday Sneak Peak” from Smith and Hawken.

There are no menorahs, or kwanzaa kitch. Only what normal people would identify as traditional Christmas decorations. Clearly though we’re not supposed to identify them. They’re “holiday” decorations, not Christmas, duh!

At least they have the decency to sell prelit “Christmas” trees, unlike purveyors of “holiday” trees elsewhere.

Email them here, or, if you’re needing some more one-on-one catharsis, call them at 1-800-940-1170.

An Amber alert was issued today for missing 3-year-old Seth Guerrero, whose mother and infant sister were found killed this morning in their Kansas City, Kansas home. (Amber Alert Issued For Toddler After KCK Deaths, www.myfoxkc.com, 02/03/08)

He is assumed to be with his father, Andrew Anthony Guerrero, who, it is reported, is fleeing to Mexico.

The media so far has described Andrew Guerrero as Hispanic, 23 years old, with brown hair and brown eyes, weighing 170 pounds and standing 5′9.”

No word yet on his citizenship.

Feel like you’ve heard gruesome stories just like this before? You have. Here. And here. And here. And here. And here.

The Houston Chronicle reported today that in Texas, wetbacks are back and have diversified their border-crossings. (Laws aimed at hiring illegal workers drive many to Texas, by James Pinkerton, The Houston Chronicle 02/03/08)

Swarming in from Arizona and Oklahoma, where lawmakers have removed incentives for illegals to work, hundreds of families have relocated to Houston. There are an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 illegal immigrants in Houston already — a city known for its terrible sprawl and traffic.

Despite the Chronicle’s attempt to spin the numbers by saying that many of the immigrants are “Central American refugees” and attributing Texas’ stability in the national housing slump to “a long tradition of relying on skilled labor from Latin America” (skilled in what, exactly?) it profiles some day laborers who spell it all out under the subtitle “Labor up, income down”:

”I was working [in Oklahoma] in September, but they passed a law that allows the local police to act like immigration agents,” Fernandez said. ”I came here 25 days after they passed the law — I wasn’t going to let them experiment on me.”

Ortiz, a native of southern Mexico, said he left Phoenix eight months ago working 60 to 70 hours a week as a nursery worker.

Immigration agents raided his job site, but he evaded arrest.

Now, he’s standing on Houston street corners. He said that in a good week he can pick up two or three days of yardwork. He barely earns enough, after paying his rent and food bills, to send money home to his wife and son in Tabasco state.

So, kids, what do we learn from this?

1. Remove incentives, and immigrants will remove themselves,
2. Law enforcement does have a deterrent effect on other illegals
3. A steep increase in the illegal population in a city even as large a Houston means less work for everybody, including those who were there first. In other words, competition does exist, even where skill does not.

I even find some solace in the misguided conclusion on which the article ends:

As the implications of laws in other states play out, Hubbard, the Mexican consul from Dallas, doubts many immigrants will go back to Mexico.

‘I think they will relocate. They will at least give it one more try,” Hubbard said. ”It’s very difficult to cross the border, and expensive, too.”

One more try? And then what? It’s more difficult and expensive to be away from your family, living under the law, speaking a foreign language with no job, than it is to just go home.

I’m fed up.

When my family subscribed to Netflix, I was delighted to see they have NBC’s Law & Order: SVU (Special Victims Unit) listed in their “Watch Instantly” category. Basically what that means is that I can turn on what was one of my favorite shows, about good cops finding bad sexual predators, and watch it on my laptop. It’s useful while cooking dinner, cleaning up or fiddling around with busy-work in other windows on my computer. And the fact that there are no commercials is a big plus.

Well, I just finished the first season. Half way through I was already able to predict each episode’s perpetrator. Allow me to illustrate by listing descriptions of the first five criminals:

1: Two white women mutilate and kill a white man, but are sympathetic characters because the man they kill had raped them previously. A seperate middle-aged white man makes a cameo appearance and is convicted of a lewd act.

2: Another middle-aged white man makes a lewd act cameo. The rapist in the main plot is the wealthy, middle-aged white father of the victim.

3: This killer duo are a wealthy middle-aged white male and white female couple who rape and kill as a team. Episode features yet another middle-aged white father cameo, in which the father is accused of encouraging his son to rape.

4: Rapist/killer is a young wealthy white male, whose victim was a highly educated middle-class black girl mistaken for whore (because she dressed like one). Features a fourth middle-aged white cameo,

5: Main suspect is a white middle-aged mother, and the actual perp is a teenage white girl.

So it has become pretty obvious. Even without the commercials, I get the message they’re selling: these crimes are only committed by white people - of all ages and genders, even teenage girls! - and usually by wealthy men, often fathers.

Of the entire first season (and folks, that’s almost 21 hours of television, with 37+ white suspects about 30 of whom confess) there is only one (1) non-white perpetrator. And even he gets his own pity party. He only molested that little boy because it’s what his wealthy, white, middle-aged father-figure did to him first! He was taught that behavior by Whitey! He’s not really a bad guy! Promise!

The only thing “special” about the “Special Victims Unit” is their interpretation of crime statistics.

For the facts about race and crime, click here and here.

Tell NBC.

Emergency room waits have increased 36% between 1997 and 2004, according to a study released yesterday by Health Affairs. It’s safe to say the trend has continued since then. According to the WSJ coverage, researchers chalk it up to ER closings and “increased volume”. (Waits Grow in Emergency Rooms, by Theo Francis, Health Blog of the Wall Street Journal 01-15-08)

If “increased volume” is supposed to be a euphemism for “overwhelming numbers of illegal immigrants”, then I’d say they’re right on target. I’ve been to the ER twice in the past five years, and both times I was the only non-Spanish speaker in the waiting room. And, I’d like to add, the only one with an emergency. The rest were runny noses and sprained ankles.

While Theo Francis and the WSJ seem to gloss over the critical factor that illegal aliens play in both the ER closings and increased volume, the blog’s readers do not.

A few choice comments:

Common Sense?: “Another study that misses the boat….ER’s closing and increased volume=longer waits…the genius Researchers ignore the truth due to their idiot PS-ness. It is the ILLEGAL Alien and Welfare suckers that are forced on the Tax burdened Citizens and the WSJ open border fools just refuse to see the cause and effect…”

Anonymous: “A wonderful system of coverage by specialists of the ERs has been annihilated by the crooked trial lawyers (jackpot justice lawsuits) and the breath-takingly incompetent federal bureaucrats (EMTALA, ever declining Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements, the destruction of primary care, and refusal to enforce immigration laws)…”

David: “Obviously that 20 million illegal aliens played a big role in ER delay.”

Is there any hope that the WSJ pays attention to any of this direct feedback from readers?

Following a link on Google News recently I found 290 articles in this vein:

Dad Throws Kids Off Alabama Bridge

A shrimp fisherman confessed Tuesday that he threw his children from a bridge in the coastal waters off Alabama.

Wednesday rescue teams were scanning waters for the bodies of the four children.

Tuesday night Lam Luong, 37, of Irvington, Ala. was charged with four counts of capital murder after he confessed that he threw his four kids off the Dauphin Island Bridge, which is 80 feet high over the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway that connects Mobile, Ala. and Dauphin Island…(Dad Throws Kids Off Alabama Bridge, By Matthew Williams, EFlux Media 01-10-08)

There were no Lam Luongs in the Army of Northern Virginia.

But only one headline in the 290 identified him as a Vietnamese immigrant - and it wasn’t in a US paper (Vietnamese admits throwing four children from Alabama bridge, South China Morning Post01-11-08).

This ABC News website has hosts a comments section after the story that proves this sort of mendacity really has an effect.

An early commenter says:

CurtMerzFan: “Another drunk rage-aholic male from the south? Why are we even surprized when the offspring of inbred #### smacks their wife or their kid…”

Luckily, not everyone is duped:

actinolite2: “Another drunk rage-aholic male from the south?” Would that be …south Vietnam? Way to go with your short-sighted regional stereotypes, CurtMerzFan (”inbred”? Seriously?)…”

And then, the inevitable:

Serene882: “Shame on you curtmerzfan and actionlite2 for even making that an issue. You two sound like a bunch of racist thugs…and under the influence, might commit the same hideous acts…watch out…don’t let your anger get out of control!! We should learn from the mistakes of others rather than point fingers and stereotype a certain group of people. As a Vietnamese, I am offended by your comments…”

In short, this is yet another case of what VDARE.COM has identified as “immigrant mass murder syndrome“. But don’t expect the MSM to report the trend, when it can’t even report the facts.

After reading James Kirchick’s article in The New Republic, which bashes Ron Paul as a racist, homophobic, anti-semitic nutjob conspiracy theorist, I couldn’t be more bored. (Angry White Man, The New Republic, 1-08-08)

First of all, the article itself is almost 4,000 words (where is the editor?) Secondly, the nasty newsletter accusations have already been in on wikipedia and in the New York Times for months. And even the New York Times retracted the story after a while because there was so little there. Thirdly, is it too much to ask for some creative muckraking now and again? How many times do expect us to hear “racist!!!” before we fall asleep?

The only new development in Kirchick’s article is the fact that he’s posted .pdf copies of the newsletters he supposedly dug up. However, given that these newsletter have already been combed over by the most malignant reporters for several years, I don’t see the point. They will show, as they have already shown before, that there are no bylines and are not characteristic of Paul’s style.

Appropriately, only about 10% of the first 80 or so comments posted on the New Republic’s website are impressed with the article. I didn’t look much further than that (there are 1285 comments so far). The other 90% call it what it is: stale, hollow propaganda.

PS: The New Republic has already had to post three corrections to misstated fact from the original article. Surprise, surprise.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments tomorrow in a case between President Bush and his home state (and mine!), Texas, regarding the execution of a Mexican convicted of the brutal rape and murder of two young girls. [Supreme Court case pits Bush against Texas over death penalty for Mexican, AP, October 7, 2007]

Gang member and illegal alien, Jose Ernesto Medellin participated in the gang-rape and strangulation of Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena, ages 14 and 16. When their bodies were found four days later, Medellin was arrested and read his Miranda rights, but…not informed of his ability to seek aid from the Mexican consulate under the Vienna Convention.

According to the Administration, “The president does not agree with the International Court of Justice’s interpretation of the Vienna Convention”. Nevertheless, Bush is citing it in an attempt to undermine the Texas justice system.

You have to wonder: why? Is Bush really, as Brenda Walker has suggested, The MexiChurian Candidate?