Fined for Hiring Illegals

Restaurant's owner and manager fined for hiring illegal workers

Reporting from San Diego—
The owner and the manager of a French restaurant in San Diego were sentenced in federal court Thursday to serve probation and pay fines after pleading guilty to knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants.

Michel Malecot, 59, the owner of French Gourmet, was sentenced to five years of probation and ordered to pay $396,575 in fines, authorities said. Richard Kauffmann, 59, the manager, was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $2,500 for his role in hiring the undocumented immigrants to work in the restaurant's bakery and catering businesses.

U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy said the convictions and sentences should act as a warning to other businesses.

"When employers do not comply, we will take vigorous enforcement action to ensure they do not profit from this illegal tactic," Duffy said.

Laura Duffy for U.S. Attorney General!

This sort of enforcement seems as if it would be sufficient all by itself to take care of the vast majority of the country's illegal alien problem. Despite hand-wringing from government officials about how enforcement won't work because of the magnitude of the problem, and how we couldn't possibly ever build a border fence because... well, because, if enough employers lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, no one will hire illegals. Yes, I know, that makes too much sense for anyone in our government.

I will hazard a guess that plenty of federal, state, and local prosecutors would be more than willing to do what Laura Duffy has done, but likely are being restrained by their various bureaucracies. Furthermore, prosecuting employers could be much more politically palatable and closed to charges of racism, etc.

Some People Are Beginning to Understand

Even in the mainstream. (Via the Chateau.)

Classical Liberal Values and Culture

James Delingpole explains why he can't support the Occupy movements despite sharing many of their concerns.

Here's the weird thing though: I agree almost entirely with this analysis. As I've argued before, the greatest division in the Western world today lies not between rich and poor, working class and upper class, or Left and Right, but between on the one hand the rapacious, unaccountable Bankster/Corporatist/Political establishment and on the other everybody else. Why then, aren't I standing with the Occupy St Paul's crowd right now, making this point more vociferously?

Simple. Because though my analysis of the problem may be quite similar to the Occupy crowd's, my solution couldn't be more different. This is why – as the above video explains – Tea Party types like me are unlikely ever to find common cause with Occupy. We're classical liberals who believe in low taxes, limited government, property rights and equality of opportunity [emphasis added], whereas they are progressives who believe in greater government control and wealth redistribution in order to create equality of outcome.

This is good, as far as it goes, and partially sums up my own position. But, where do the classical liberal values of low taxes, property rights, limited government, and so on derive? All of these come from Europe and America, and have rarely if ever been found outside the areas of European influence. When that influence has faded, for example with decolonization, the values have almost always departed as well.

Not only have these values come from European, and more specifically mainly Anglo-American culture, but they're not likely to be adhered to in a multiracial society, which is of course what our betters are determined to foist upon us, and so far pretty successfully. People generally only want to be fair to their co-ethnics, and in a multiracial or multiethnic society, governments become the providers of patronage and favoritism, which are very much antagonistic to classical liberalism. The whole system becomes one of do unto others before they do unto you.

I think this points to a huge flaw in the thinking of many or most mainstream conservatives, and especially those who promote American exceptionalism. (Ron Paul might even fall into this category.) That is, you can't have classical liberal values, including limited government, in a multiethnic society, or at the least it must be very difficult. As Lee Kuan Yew noted, in such a society people vote their ethnic interests, and aren't much interested in abstract notions of fairness.

On Second Thought

I deleted the last post, as I'm tired of being negative.

Hipsters Ask for Criticism, Want Only Praise

This story from The Daily Mail was good for a laugh: 'They say I'm a disgusting woman': Military Wives soloist with tattoo on her chest reveals how she's become the victim of cruel internet trolls

A mother who led the Military Wives choir to the top Christmas spot says she has been abused online because of her tattoos.

Yesterday's victory was bittersweet for Soloist Samantha Stevenson, 28, who was the victim of a cruel campaign on Facebook and Twitter.

She was branded a 'skank' on internet forums and her tattoos were described as looking like 'temp garish things' that made one Twitter user 'balk'.

But she has vowed to celebrate her chart success by adding a remembrance poppy tattoo to her collection of bright inkings.

'There were loads of nasty comments,' the mother-of-two told The Sun.

'It was hurtful. My tattoos make me stand out from the rest of the girls.

More...

Military Wives are the Christmas number one after selling 556,000 copies in a week
'I've drunk a bottle of wine already!' A jolly Imogen Thomas joins host of celebrities in sharing their Christmas Day snaps

'Most people are lovely and supportive. But I've been really shocked by the reaction to my tattoos by people on the internet.

'They say I'm vile, I'm a disgusting woman with disgusting tattoos and I shouldn't be allowed on TV.

'You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, I am who I am and I like my tattoos. It doesn't make me a bad person. The internet stuff isn't going to put me off.'

Wait, "you shouldn't judge a book by its cover"? Then why is she having herself defaced with tattoos that everyone within eyeshot can see? Oh... she only wants praise for being such a non-conformist, but no criticism please. See, hipsters are all about making sure everyone knows that they're on the leading edge of trashing public decorum and smashing bourgeois values, but they want only adulation for it. When the bourgeoisie whose values are getting trashed abject to it, the hipsters cry out, "Don't judge me!"

We see this phenomenon in everything from OWS to the juggalos. Now, even "military wives" want to be hip and accepted at the same time.

For the record, this woman does indeed look disgusting.

Merry Christmas

Nativity scene by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Flemish painter, diplomat, and spy.

A very Merry Christmas to to all of you who read here.

Ron Paul: Best of a Bad Lot?

OneSTDV writes today on a theme he's touched on before: Ron Paul's alleged lack of nationalistic and/or patriotic fervor. For instance, Paul has claimed that Michele Bachmann "Hates Muslims" and has suggested that "Islamophobia" is behind opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.

I'm agnostic on whether or not Paul is any of the things that One claims for him, and I wouldn't defend him for the above statements, but I wonder who One, or those like him, will vote for? Romney? More of the same establishment nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place? Gingrich, the man who will make Bush's policy of immigration, invasion, and indebtedness (the 3 I's) look like a warmup? And so we could go on to the rest of the candidates: while they each have individual and common flaws, virtually none of them that I can see possess more patriotism or nationalism than Paul does. If they seem as if they care about this country, it's only lip service, because they plan to do nothing about the 3 I's. If Paul seems less nationalistic, it could be because he's merely more honest than the others - which I realize is damning with faint praise.

Another reason for Paul's statements could be his going along with the zeitgeist in an appeal to more liberal voters. The recent attacks on Paul for racism and Paul's disavowal of his old newsletter illustrate this, for I strongly suspect that his denial isn't wholly truthful and that he still believes like he formerly did, but understands that he can't get elected president if he stands by them. Again, that isn't to excuse Paul for going with the flow, but may explain him.

The fact that the establishment, and most especially the media establishment, so obviously hates Paul and everything he stands for is the best sign that Paul will move the country in the right direction. (I wouldn't say that for just anyone the establishment hated, but they never seem to hate anyone on the Left, no matter how far left and how marginal his views.) Paul isn't my ideal candidate; someone like Pat Buchanan would be, but Paul might get us to a place where electing someone like Pat would be at least possible.

The other candidates are just more of the same.

PC and the War on Christmas

This is strictly anecdotal, but my experience this year has been that the War on Christmas has gotten worse, and not because the opponents of Christmas have become stronger, but because of capitulation on the side of ordinary people. Everywhere I turn, whether it's on my favorite classical station on the radio, to greeting cards, to signs in businesses, "Happy Holidays" is the order of the day. If you were from Mars, even if you asked a local you might have a hard time discovering which holiday was being referred to.

Political correctness has a certain genius about it, almost as if it had been created by Sun Tzu in order to get the enemy to undermine himself. For the fact is, virtually all of the War on Christmas, barring the very public fights over nativity scenes in city halls and the like, is about self-censorship. No one has stopped anyone from saying or writing "Merry Christmas", yet it seems most people have stopped saying it anyway. People sense that wishing Christmas cheer has become politically incorrect, so they self-censor.

That classical station plays plenty of Christmas- and Christian-themed music, yet its announcers can't bring themselves to acknowledge it. (Kind of figures, it's in SF.) Face it, there is no Hanukkah, Eid, or Kwaanza music. European Christians invented this season and everything that goes with it - which is why PC wants to stifle it.

Obama Struggles Among White Voters

Ronald Brownstein reports the results of a recent poll, and they don't look pretty for Barry O.

Obama is now facing dismal approval ratings in all corners of the white community. In 2008, he carried 52 percent of those college-educated white women, but attracted much smaller shares among college-educated white men (42 percent), white women without a college degree, the so-called waitress moms (41 percent), and the non-college white men (just 39 percent). The new survey shows that with all four groups his approval rating is appreciably lower than his 2008 performance. He's fallen to 42 percent of the college-educated white women, 37 percent among the college-plus white men, just 34 percent among the non-college white men, and all the way down to 30 percent with the waitress moms.

Since this is just another poll, you may ask, why is this so interesting? For readers of this blog, you'll notice that the poll results put a serious dent in our friend Whiskey's thesis that white, educated women are the core group driving the country towards leftism and ruin.

Obama is arguably the most leftist president the country has ever had, perhaps not so much in his policies and practices, bad as they are, but what the man seems to hold as his main beliefs, namely (IMO) cultural Marxism. In 2008, some 52% of white, college-educated women voted for him, hardly the screaming endorsement Whiskey says they gave, and for the "waitress moms" he's currently down to a miserable 30% support. Looks to me like white women are about as unsatisfied with the country's direction as white men.

But some things don't change:

The groups that have proven most resistant to this trend are Hispanics (where Obama's latest approval rating has slipped just three percentage points from his 2008 vote share); seniors (where he's actually running slightly ahead) and families earning at least $100,000 annually (where he's also fallen just three percentage points.) Some other surveys - like Gallup's nightly tracking poll - show Obama receiving lower ratings among all three of those groups than the Heartland Monitor does.

Black voters still prefer Barry at a 95% level.

As for those over $100K a year families, well, they're following the SWPL script.

Governments Against Low-Carb

Not from The Onion: Finnish officials mull taking children into care over low-carb diet:

Finnish officials have told a family of low-carbohydrate enthusiasts that their children would be taken into care if they failed to heed nutrition advice, provincial paper Iisalmen Sanomat reported Sunday.

Ursula Schwab, a clinical nutrition specialist at the University of East Finland, said at least one family had received such an ultimatum after parents ignored healthcare staff's warnings about the dangers of an imbalanced diet for children.

"If a child's growth slows down because of a poor diet, one must send a wakeup call to parents," Schwab told the Finnish News Agency.

"Should this prove ineffective, the child must be moved to a place where he receives enough nutrition."

Schwab added that she knew of parents who had put toddlers on so-called low-carb diets.

"A strict low-carb diet is very fatty, and it suppresses hunger. If you down eggs and bacon for breakfast it will take hours before you can even imagine eating again."

"A growing child needs a varied diet."

Imagine that: bacon and eggs for breakfast leaves you so satisfied that you're not hungry until lunchtime. With that sort of thing going on, it will take until adulthood and a change of dietary habits before the poor child become obese. We can't be having that.

So, now governments, including allegedly civilized, Western ones, will rip children away from their parents for the reason that they don't like the food that the parents feed the kids.

The state has become so powerful that it can dictate what sort of food is proper and right. And of course they got it all wrong.

Denmark recently instituted a "fat tax", but unfortunately the government decided to tax butter and cheese and other fatty foods, rather than pasta or sweet drinks, so the tax will make Danes less healthy.

Anarcho-tyranny works for every sphere of life.

Anarcho-Tyranny

The late Samuel Francis coined and defined the word "anarcho-tyranny":

What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [...]

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites ... or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and "pathological" elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms—people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible—not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.

It could almost be said that anarcho-tyranny is the ruling principle of government today, and even more so since the advent of the Obama administration. Take for instance this bit of news: Justice Dept. goes after Sheriff Arpaio, accusing him of, of course, discrimination in his zealous execution of his official duties. The anarcho-tyranny lies in the fact that illegal immigration has been now made all but legal - since the feds are taking only as much action against it as needed for show - while the same government sues a county sheriff for doing the job they won't do.

Here's a slightly different example: Muslim gunman murders several and wounds over 100 in Belgium. The Belgian government vigorously enforces laws against defamation and hate speech, meaning that anyone who had been publicly skeptical of the gunman's presence in Belgium before the crime, and maybe even after, would likely be prosecuted by the Belgian state. At the same time, the Belgian authorities allowed the gunman to live in their country and even released him from prison early.

And yet another example, in this instance a small victory over the forces of anarcho-tyranny: Congress overturns incandescent light bulb ban. The same politicians who won't do a thing about mass immigration in a time of record unemployment wanted to regulate this private aspect of Americans' lives, viz. what sort of light bulbs they should be allowed to buy and use.

Anarcho-tyranny serves the purposes of the globalizing elite: those laws which hinder them go unenforced, those which serve them are enforced.

PS: I forgot one; call it anarcho-tyranny in the UK: Taxpayer spends £1m a week funding visa appeals
The taxpayer is spending almost £1 million a week to fund appeals against family visa refusals after cases increased six fold in a decade.

Where did they get the gold?

Gold and silver have fallen sharply in price over the past few weeks, leading some - more or less mainstream - commentators to call an end to the gold and silver bull. (I highly doubt that.) It appears that a fair amount of gold has been leased from central banks or other entities, and sold into the market, thereby lowering the gold price. Where did that gold come from? Jeff Nielsen thinks that maybe the gold came from Greece and Libya:

As we all know, when Greece (finally) forced the bond parasites to absorb 50% “haircuts” on their holdings that was a default event. What happens when a debtor defaults on a debt? Collateral is seized. The latest statistics from the World Gold Council on official government reserves show Greece sitting with over 111 tons of gold. And as victims of the MF Global collapse have learned the hard way, our criminal governments (and the bankers who pull their strings) no longer see it as necessary to even report when they have taken something from people. Thus the bankers could have looted every ounce of Greece’s gold from its people and it could be months, years, or never before we finally find out about it.

One hundred and eleven tons is a lot of gold to lease, but it’s certainly not the only gold hoard onto which the bankers could have recently latched their talons. Those who followed the “Libyan revolution” will have recalled a remarkable flip-flop by the West.

At one moment, we had the vastly superior military forces of Muammar Gaddafi steamrolling the rag-tag, disorganized rabble we knew as the “Libyan rebels”. They were on the verge of collapsing. All hope was lost. Western leaders lamented that the lack of “UN authorization” prevented these upstanding citizens of the global community from doing anything to assist the rebels – and there was absolutely no sign of any “movement” in those negotiations.

The next moment, the same disorganized rabble which didn’t even have a military command structure (let alone a nation to command) announced they had created a “central bank”. About ten seconds after that announcement, Western leaders announce a “sudden breakthrough” at the UN, and a drafted-and-approved resolution instantly materialized. And before the ink was even dry on that document, war-planes from several Western nations were on the way to Libya to enforce a “no-fly zone”.

Now, I know that gold advocates have a record of being a little off the radar when it comes to their notions of what goes on behind closed doors at the highest levels of finance and government. (Any difference between the two these days?) But consider an undoubtedly sober commentator (not that Mr. Nielsen isn't), Jim Rickards, an investment banker and financial expert who's been invited wargaming with the Defense Department and who wrote the book Currency Wars. Rickards calls the U.S. "the Saudi Arabia of gold" and believes that one possible endgame to the current financial crisis is the seizure of gold held in the U.S., not merely private gold but that of other nations held here, most notably Germany's. With that move, the U.S. could dictate the dollar's terms and it would again be king of the global currencies and the world's reserve currency.

So, why wouldn't the U.S. start by seizing the gold it can get, like that of Libya? Could this be the real reason behind the war?

Recently, Hugo Chavez had all of Venezuela's gold, held in London, shipped to his own country for safekeeping. He's a smart man.

Republicans, Except for Paul, Bow and Scrape

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Not exactly a huge fan of Jon Stewart, but he exactly nails the absurdity of a slew of presidential candidates vying to be winner in the "I Put Another Country Ahead of my Own" sweepstakes.

PS: Support for Ron Paul is surging, with Paul now running just one percentage point behind the slimy newt. See here.

Emma West is a political prisoner

There's not much I can add to commentary on Emma West coming from other conservative and alt-right blogs. Two very good commentaries are those by Rick Darby and OneStdv. One calls his post a "begrudging defense"; you can also see the video that got West arrested at either of the above links.

Emma West's outburst is of the nature of something that might get one thrown off a train or airplane (as happened to Alec Baldwin recently, and he was not arrested), or perhaps a citation or maybe even an arrest for disturbing the peace. However, far more serious disturbances take place without their perpetrators being arrested.

Instead, West has been arrested and is being held indefinitely and her young boy taken away from her, the reason being that she dares to question the multicult, which is the means by which the Marxist rulers of Britain are proceeding with the replacement of the indigenous population. She questioned the presence of huge numbers of immigrants in Britain, which Britain's rulers have deemed not a subject for debate.

Undoubtedly you've all seen this news report: Girl gang who kicked woman in the head while yelling 'kill the white slag' freed after judge hears 'they weren't used to drinking because they're Muslims'

• Yobs ripped lump of hair from Rhea Page's head during High Street attack
• Three sisters and cousin escape with six-month suspended sentences
• Maximum term for assault occasioning actual bodily harm is five years' jail
• Judge: 'Those who knock someone to the floor and kick them in the head can expect to go inside, but I'm going to suspend the sentence'

Note: the normal maximum term for this type of crime is five years in prison, but the judge let the girls off based on a flimsy excuse, even though this was clearly a racially motivated and brutal assault. In contrast, what sort of sentence will Emma West receive for a "crime" - if it is indeed one - orders of magnitude less serious?

Academic Frauds

An article about academic frauds reveals "ten of the worst frauds, fakers, and phonies ever to pull the wool over the bespectacled eyes of the academic world". Of the ten frauds discussed, I count four as belonging to the social sciences - the others being in physics, biology, and medicine - and all four of these involve leftists or leftist ideas. The most recent and well known case if that of Diederik Stapel, who produced regular studies documenting alleged "stereotyping" and how meat-eaters are more selfish.

Others included the case of Michael Bellesiles, who fabricated data that buttressed his case for gun control; Ward Churchill: and the famous Sokal case, in the latter the fraud being that a leftist journal bought the hoax in its entirety.

It's been remarked that the reason these frauds were successful is because they told stories that people wanted to hear. Why couldn't right-wing academics perpetrate similar fraud? Well, for one thing, there are hardly any of them, and even if some of them did, they wouldn't have much of a market for their papers. An academic who wants to write fake papers does so for a reason: advancing his career, and fake reports of a conservative bent wouldn't do that.

Conservatives and libertarians might be more likely to fall for things like cold fusion.

Hollywood Shooter: Freelance Terrorism? - updated

See this video.

If you can believe the witness interviewed (starting at 2:42), the gunman was shouting "Allahu akbar!" Oddly enough, neither the news reporter in the video nor any other sources that I've seen mentions this or what it might mean.

Strange, this news reporting.

Update: Shooter has been identified, and appears to be a garden-variety white male.

The Indefinite Detention Bill

Here's a good summary of the Indefinite Detention Bill:

The recent passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (Senate Bill 1867), otherwise known as the “Indefinite Detention Bill,” should scare the heck out of anyone who loves the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This bill effectively hands over control to the military to arrest, torture and even kill terrorists on American soil. It also allows the military to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely without a trial or due process. This applies to both non-citizens and citizens of the United States! With this bill, you are not innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty until proven innocent, and you may never get a trial to defend yourself. There is surprisingly little written in the mainstream media about this Senate bill that passed 93 to 7 at the end of November.

The bill is a terrible violation of the Constitution, but there's more here than meets the eye, as Jew Among You argues in "Hijacking the term "American". More mainstream commentators (such as in the former link) make much of "American citizens" being subject to the bill's provisions. But these citizens are not people "whose ancestors arrived with the Mayflower". They are people whom the elite, in all their wisdom, have allowed into the country in recent decades, people from the bastions of civilization in the Middle East and elsewhere who have zero love for this country, quite the opposite in fact.

The same elite/government/media complex demonizes anyone who questions the wisdom of letting these people in. So the complex has given us a double whammy: it has allowed potential terrorists into the country, made them citizens, and then uses the consequences of this process to take away the constitutional rights of all Americans, all the while denouncing those who want to put a stop to this insanity.

Nice work.

Diversity Is... Sex-Selective Abortions

In NRO, Steven W. Mosher writes about evidence that many Indian(dot not feather)-Americans are having abortions when they discover that the sex of the fetus is female. (Thanks to a reader.)

“There is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many sons,” Dr. Sunita Puri was told by the Asian-Indian women she was interviewing.

The physician, who practices in the Bay Area, wanted to find out why so many immigrant Indian women in the United States were so eager to find out the sex of their unborn children, and why so many of them choose abortion when they found out they were carrying a girl.

What she discovered over the course of 65 interviews conducted over several years profoundly shocked her. Fully 89 percent of the women carrying girls opted for an abortion, and nearly half had previously aborted girls.

Puri’s report, published in Social Science and Medicine this last April, makes for grim reading.

The husbands and fathers were also involved:

They also made clear that they were not free actors when it came to reproductive “choice.” Many, when it was learned that they were carrying girls, became the victims of family violence. Some — in an effort to make them miscarry — had been slapped and shoved around by angry husbands and in-laws, or even kicked in the stomach. Others were denied food, water, and rest in order to coerce them into aborting their unwanted girl babies.

Wait, what? The heads of both feminists and immigration enthusiasts must be exploding just about now. The feminists believe in abortion for any reason whatsoever, that it's all just a "choice", even when that choice is that the parents don't like little girls. Even when that choice is made not by the mother, but by the father. (Actually, seems only fair that the father has a say, whether yea or nay, in an abortion, assuming that women are going to have them.) The irony that the feminists wind up supporting the deaths of members of their own sex is, well, ironic.

The immigration enthusiasts believe that this once-great nation can only be enriched by the vibrant diversity with which the planet has generously gifted us. Family values, Rio Grande - or in this case, the Ganges - and all that. But one imagines that we couldn't have come up all on our own with the new uses that some foreigners have for abortion.

Jason Abrevaya of the University of Texas analyzed U.S. birth data and found unusually high boy-birth percentages after 1980 among later children (most notably third and fourth children) born to Chinese and Asian-Indian mothers. Moreover, using maternally linked data from California, he found that Asian-Indian mothers are significantly more likely both to have a terminated pregnancy and to give birth to a son when they have previously only given birth to girls.

Columbia University economists Douglas Almond and Lena Edlund also found clear evidence of sex-selective abortions in what they called “son-biased sex ratios,” that is, a higher ratio of boys to girls than would occur in nature. Looking at the sex ratio at birth among U.S.-born children of Chinese, Korean, and Asian-Indian parents, they found that first-borns showed normal sex ratios at birth. But if the first child was a girl, the sex ratio jumped to 117, and if the first two children were girls, then the sex ratio jumped to 151. That is to say, for every 151 boys, there were only 100 hundred surviving girls. The rest had been eliminated.

However, Mosher later has this to say:

Racism kills as well, to judge from the fact that the abortion rate among blacks is about five times higher than the American average. Blacks are only 12 percent of the population but have 37 percent of the abortions. This suggests that their abortions, too, are more than just a matter of personal choice.

Wait, what? (Again.) Mosher appears to be blaming white people - the only racist around - for the abortions of blacks. He says that these are somehow "race-selective", but he doesn't say that anyone is coercing these women to have abortions. Mosher does know that accusing some entity or practice or person of "racism" is just about an unanswerable argument, so he whips it out (so to speak) to use in his own cause.

Global Warming Religion

In the WSJ, Bret Stephens asks how religions die:

Consider the case of global warming, another system of doomsaying prophecy and faith in things unseen.

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

There may have been a time when AGW looked more like a science, when there was some doubt as to whether the climate was in a warming trend. Although, there doesn't seem to have been any debate at all as to whether global warming might be a good thing; no, it was all doom and gloom, rising sea levels (via Malcolm), and the extinction of polar bears, when the reality was more likely to be extended growing seasons, more clement weather, and sunbathing in Nova Scotia.

But it has never been about anything other than Who? Whom? Stephens:

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the climate apocalypse. Namely, the financial apocalypse.

The U.S., Russia, Japan, Canada and the EU have all but confirmed they won't be signing on to a new Kyoto. The Chinese and Indians won't make a move unless the West does. The notion that rich (or formerly rich) countries are going to ship $100 billion every year to the Micronesias of the world is risible, especially after they've spent it all on Greece.

Cap and trade is a dead letter in the U.S. Even Europe is having second thoughts about carbon-reduction targets that are decimating the continent's heavy industries and cost an estimated $67 billion a year. "Green" technologies have all proved expensive, environmentally hazardous and wildly unpopular duds.

All this has been enough to put the Durban political agenda on hold for the time being. But religions don't die, and often thrive, when put to the political sidelines. A religion, when not physically extinguished, only dies when it loses faith in itself.

He goes on to say that the new Climategate emails have put a decided crimp in the process of the transfer of wealth from producers to non-producers, whether the "non" are Goldman Sachs (cap and trade) or the Maldive Islands.

But I can't help but think that the alarmists will just keep ratcheting up the rhetoric. After all, a lot of money and power is at stake. How much has been wasted on this issue so far? Undoubtedly hundreds of billions, when you count the grants, taxes, conferences, regulations, and Lord knows what else. And, the crucial point, some people and entities have made that money. (Well, it went into their pockets, anyway.)

The whole thing is one great globalist heist, so don't expect it to go away.

Don't check "Asian"

Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian':

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

"I didn't want to put 'Asian' down," Olmstead says, "because my mom told me there's discrimination against Asians in the application process."

For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it's harder for them to gain admission to the nation's top colleges.

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges' admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.

Welcome to our world, Asians. You see, white people in the U.S. are also deemed to be too successful, therefore they must give away some of their rightful places in college (and elsewhere) to other, minority, ethnic groups. It seems possible that Asians might be more discriminated against, relative to their test scores, than whites are, a rule of thumb being the higher the score the greater the bias.

The problem here for comparison purposes, however, is that Asians expect admission to college (and elsewhere) based purely on merit, and decry discrimination - perhaps rightly - when that doesn't appear to happen based on an analysis of the numbers. But whites are expected to give up places in college (and elsewhere) purely because they are in the majority; Asians face no such barrier. Whites are expected to give up places in college (and elsewhere) because of a "legacy of discrimination", and Asians face no such barrier. Quite the opposite, actually.

I can't recall when an article in the MSM decried discrimination against whites in higher education, but apparently it's alright to denounce such discrimination if the victims are not white.

PS: As an aside, there's a current of thought in the rightist blogospshere that some people, e.g. myself, tout the merits of the theory of human biodiversity and racial IQ differences because in many measures of the prerequisites of social success, e.g. IQ, conscientiousness, and low rates of various types of social pathology, Asians come out on top, ahead of whites. Thus the purveyor of this kind of analysis allegedly gets a pass on charges of discrimination.

But those who say this need to distinguish between science and advocacy. On this blog, we do both.

Republicans (Israel Division) Bar Ron Paul from Debate

Matt Welch in Reason: Republican Jewish Coalition Bars Ron Paul From Presidential Debate, Saying He's Too "misguided and extreme":

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, the Republican Jewish Coalition will host a presidential-candidates forum featuring Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. Not invited is the GOP candidate currently polling around third in New Hampshire and second in Iowa: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). The explanation:

Paul was not invited to attend the RJC's candidates forum because the organization - as it has stated numerous times in the past - "rejects his misguided and extreme views," said [RJC Executive Director Matt] Brooks.
"He's just so far outside of the mainstream of the Republican party and this organization," Brooks said. Inviting Paul to attend would be "like inviting Barack Obama to speak."

We certainly can't have any Republican candidate going around without pledging his undying support to a foreign country. I mean, that would almost be as if he were running for the presidency of an actual, independent, sovereign power, in which foreign policy is set at the highest levels, rather than by lobbyists for another sovereign nation. It's long since been decided that the USA doesn't fall into that category, hence Paul's utter uselessness.

Here's Abe Foxman speaking some real truth (for a change). David Frum also makes an appearance:

Anti Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman has a perhaps unintentionally interesting take about Paul, U.S. politics, and Israel:

with the exception of Ron Paul, there is not much difference between the parties

And no orthodoxy-definition would be complete without David Frum:

Of the 8 candidates competing for the Republican presidential nomination, 7 declared themselves intense supporters of the State of Israel, the sole exception being crank no-hoper Ron Paul.

Since the only candidate who has suggested that he would place the interests of the U.S before that of Israel is Ron Paul, he of course must be stopped.

The Race-IQ Issue

In the current media dustup over race and IQ, I'd say that something important has been omitted from the discussion. First, to get you up to speed, links and all, here's OneSTDV:

Sigh...the race-intelligence debate has flared up as a widespread blogosphere issue for the first time since James Watson's infamous (and accurate) statements back in 2007. I won't deluge you with a whole bunch of links, so see Chuck's listing, along with thoughts from HBDers Sailer and Roissy/Heartiste. There's nothing new here - media personality (Andrew Sullivan) supports racial differences in intelligence and liberals go hysterical, offering arguments almost entirely comprised of insults interspersed with discounted work by Stephen Jay Gould and other dishonest liberal creationists.

(Saved me some work and gave credit where due.)

Heartíste (link above) wrote a good response laying out a few of the ramifications of the debate. This some might not think necessary, but it never ceases to amaze how clueless some in the mainstream are:

Lest we forget, there’s a reason why emotions run so hot on this issue. Not only does it cut straight to the beating heart of equalist ideology — the predominant ideology, arguably, of the last 150 years in the West — but the ramifications of the subject under debate are huge. [...]

This dismissive hand-waving about “a certain kind of test” reveals more than it conceals. It is meant to assuage egos and smooth the airwaves for sensible, rational discussion on the topic. But egalitarians and the SWPL industrial complex know that these softening words cannot contain the horrible, unrelenting, monstrous truth that stalks every cooing syllable. IQ is F***ING [my edit] HUGELY IMPORTANT to your chance to live a happy, successful life filled with wonder and glee and gadgets and crime-free neighborhoods in a modern, technofantastical, information-highwayed, cognitively stratifying first world Western nation.

The enemies of truth know this, and that is why they tirelessly work to shut down any talk about it, and to smear and slander and shun those who would deign to lift the veil of lies for a peek underneath.

Several times lately on this blog we've noted the fact that a (relatively) higher IQ is a necessary if not sufficient condition to get to the top in a meritocratic, technocratic society. So while many who have commented on the contretemps have asserted that bringing up the issue of race and IQ serves no purpose and only publicly hurts feelings (of black people, mainly), they're wrong.

But, why can't we just not discuss this and let the cultural process of the smarter people getting ahead proceed? Because our opponents in this matter constantly blame white people for the failings of non-Asian minorities - strangely we never get credit for Asians' success, which we ought to if we're so damned powerful - and then they want whites to pony up for their alleged depredations.

Is it any wonder that some, mostly white, people want to keep bringing this issue up? Professional blacks like the wonderfully named Ta-Nehisi Coates do almost nothing but blame whites for everything wrong with their race, other than when they're demanding compensation for it.

Raising the race and IQ issue is, for whites, merely a matter of self-defense, and of the truth.