Cho Seung-Hui: Victim of Multiculturalism

Since the massacre of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech, the mainstream media have obsessed over the fact the crazed gunman was able to buy a Glock in the state of Virginia.

Little attention has been paid to three other facts:
(1) that "Hokie Nation" is a campus where the typical multicultural crap is pushed, giving Mr. Cho a perfect justification for his murders.
(2) the Richmond legislators who voted to make "Hokie Nation," a gun-free zone where gus were outlawed, and surprise, surprise, only the outlaw had a gun.
(3) that Mr. Cho was not alone, in the last two decades there have been quite a few rampages by immigrants, who were no doubt marinated in the "multicultural" (multicommunist) and "politically correct" (politically communist)propaganda pushed in academia and the media.

In stories about Mr. Cho, we learn he had no friends, rarely spoke, and was a loner, isolated from classmates and roommates. Cho was the alien in Hokie Nation, encouraged by the multicultural pap of "professors" like Nikki Giovanni. And to vent his rage at those with whom he could not communicate, he decided to kill in cold blood.

Before this multicommunist crap, we were a people, a community, a country. Students would have said aloud of Cho: "Who is this guy? What's the matter with him?"

Teachers would have taken action to get him help—or get him out.
Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?

Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation. And in numbers higher than our native born, some are going berserk here.

But you won't read, see or hear about that; it's covered up by a politically correct media, which seem to believe it is socially unhealthy for us Americans to see any correlation at all between mass migrations and mass murder.

"Diversity is strength!" So we are endlessly lectured, Orwellian style. "War is peace! Freedom is Slavery!"

But are we really a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring country than we were before, against our will, we became what Theodore Roosevelt called "a polyglot boarding house for the world."

Let's Say I Break Into Your House....

Take your amnesty and shove it...

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that at least some people in Congress are finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration, even if a good many of them are proposing "comprehensive immigration reform" fraud, which essentially gives the illegal aliens what they want.

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand the "thinking" behind these protests.

Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.

But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

According to the protesters' sleazy lawyers:
--You are Required to let me stay in your house

--You are Required to add me to your family's insurance plan

--You are Required to Educate my kids

--You are Required to Provide other benefits to me & to my family (my husband will do all of your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part).

--Somehow, this house was originally mine, even though back then there WAS no house, just a patch of land ruled by a murdering bandit named Santa Anna, who I claim to be descended from, even though I am not, and in Santa Anna's time, I would have been shot by him.

If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.
It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house.
And what a deal it is for me!!! I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep,

and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior. And all the while I talk incessantly of "La Raza" and "hating the gringo".

Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you to learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can communicate with me.

Why can't people see how ridiculous this is?! Because they are commiecrat demunist liberal dupes, what's why....Only in America.

If you agree, pass it on (in English). Share it if you see the value of it.

If not blow it off......... along with your future Social Security funds, and a lot of other things, not to mention your country. Which, I am sure, your "multicultural" education taught you to hate anyway...

Moving to California, or moving out

Or so says the LA Times.

Frankly, I think the stats are erroneous, because the in migration is based upon prior year tax returns, and doesn't count immigrants who didn't pay a tax return in 2005, legally or illegally.

Still, even only counting U.S.A. citizens, the stats are revealing:

Tax returns from 2005 show the net migration difference between California and all U.S. counties outside the state:

Migration from California
High: (200 to 11,375)
Low: (1 to 199)
--
Migration to California
High: (114 to 1,217)
Low: (1 to 113)
--
Following the money:
In net terms, those leaving are wealthier than those arriving, based on tax returns filed in 2005.
Money out of California / Tax Returns out of California:
Midwest: $1,637,329,000 / 34,019 returns
Northeast: $1,668,232,000 / 28,221 returns
South: $4,141,298,000 / 83,946 returns
West (other than California): $6,474,155,000 / 128,092 returns
TOTALS: $13,921,014,000 / 274,278 returns
Money into California / Tax returns into California:
Midwest: $1,810,572,000 / 37,027 returns
Northeast: $2,169,639,000 / 36,223 returns
South: $2,698,385,000 / 61,314 returns
West (other than California): $2,755,642,000 / 67,797 returns
TOTALS: $9,434,238,000 / 202,361 returns
COMING TO CALIFORNIA
Counties with the highest net loss of taxpayers to California:
New York City boroughs / Suffolk County, N.Y.: 1,217
Cook County, Illinois.: 795
Middlesex County, N.J.: 470
--
LEAVING CALIFORNIA
Counties with the highest net gain of taxpayers from California:
Maricopa County, Ariz.: 11,375
Clark County, Nev.: 10,657
Washoe County, Nev.: 2,149
--
Sources: California Department of Finance, Internal Revenue Service. Data analysis by Doug Smith and Sandra Poindexter

The sources of in-migration actually make a lot of sense. If you are going to live in a state with higher costs of living, higher taxes and increasingly warped and corrupt politics, why not make it a state with nicer weather? Less Mafia too, at least for now, but the Mexican Mafia, Nuestra Familia and MS-13 are dong their best....

Virginia Tech's Silver Lining?

Columnist Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal seems to think so, in the sense that authorities will now be more able to act against the mentally ill and the disturbed sooner.

At first I thought "well, Gee, Dan, hindsight is 20/20...", but apparently, there was a report forewarning of this kind of tragedy in 2002, the Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative, conducted by the Secret Service and the Department of Education. This report studied 37 different school violence incidents between 1974 and 2000, among them Littleton, CO, Springfield, OR, Pearl, MS, West Paducah, KY, Jonesboro, AR, and San Diego, CA. The last one you might remember that one if you remember "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats.

Most interesting, the study was led by the Secret Service. Why?The study doesn't quite put it this way, but it was because the Secret Service's main job in life is preventing the nuts from killing someone. Simply, the study's goal was to try to figure out what is "knowable" before an attack.

The report notes how too often it was clear something bad was going to happen, even taking into account the discounting fact that hindsight is 20/20, but a sense of privacy and a culture of "tolerance" meant nothing was done:

Cultural indeed. Over time we have accreted a culture in the United States--of rules, laws, liability concerns and mindsets--that adds up to no-can-do. Or, Attorney may I?

Among the reasons widely adduced for not doing something about (Virginia Tech University student) Cho's violent proclivities are HIPAA and FERPA, the confidentiality laws for health records and college students' records. Well, there's no FERPA for high schools. There is merely the weird cultural refusal to turn in bad actors to adult authority. In one school attack, so many students knew it was coming that 24 were waiting on a mezzanine to watch, one with a camera. The enemy is us.

Rerfreshingly, the report advised against "gun-free schools" and other such nonsense:

In the Safe Schools 37 incidents, most of the attacks were stopped by an administrator or teachers, largely because half didn't last longer than 15 minutes. The cops stopped only 25% of the attacks--an argument for deputizing and arming someone in the schools.

Indeed. The Paducah, Pearl, and Jonesboro incidents were stopped by armed teachers and administrators.

But above all, it's time to stop tolerating the culture of "students rights", no matter how pathological the student behaves.

On Tuesday, for example, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece by a professor titled, "Why It's OK to Rat on Other Students." Here, as with the message screaming off the pages of the Safe School report, the exhortation is to do something, no matter what the intimidation of the law or received wisdom.

What this means is that some college presidents, and their lawyers, rather than rolling over before those confidentiality laws, should tell some aggrieved student who is refusing to take the medication prescribed for his psychosis: So sue! Let a judge decide whether 32 deaths warrant a reconsideration of these restrictions.

As well, there is no hope unless a light goes off in the collective socket of our elected politicians, which illumines just how much their oh-so-needed laws siphon time and energy out of the daily lives of institutional leaders who a long time ago had the common sense and personal authority to chuck out a Cho Seung-Hui.

When the police don't show up....

Apparently, that's just what happened at Virginia Tech.

After the first two murders were discovered at 7:15 a.m., campus police chief W.R. Flinchum said he assumed the killer had left the campus and perhaps even the state. Flinchum and university president Charles Steger didn't lock down the campus and assure everyone else's safety. One has to wonder why Blacksburg police chief Kimberly Crannis wasn't immediately notified either.

This nonchalance allowed the gunman -- who had his own dorm room on campus -- TWO FULL HOURS of "time to reload, restock his ammunition supply and walk across campus calmly to Norris Hall, where he chained all the doors shut and began systematically killing as many people as he could," writes Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily.com. Thirty people would not have been slaughtered if the police had evacuated the campus right away. Instead, the authorities -- the campus police chief, the city police chief, and the university president -- took their time. Instead of taking bold action, the university decided to send emails advising students to be "cautious."

When the Norris Hall shootings began at 9:15 a.m., there were no police around the building, and no alert to all students broadcast.

Thirty minutes later, at 9:45 a.m., campus police received a cell phone call from inside Norris Hall. It took a few more minutes for officers to get there and a few more minutes to break in, but by then the shooting had stopped. Cho killed himself last.

Consider that if the campus police had put everyone on a REAL red alert, police officers would have been around and inside every building on campus. They could have stopped Cho, who had belts of ammunition strapped across his chest, from entering Norris Hall in the first place. They could have stormed the building early and saved most of the 30 people who otherwise died.

Now you might be thinking that I am "Monday Morning quarterbacking". But the precedent for how to deal with deranged murderers was already there: The 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Columbine was a wake-up call to many law-enforcement agencies across America. The old style of dealing with a shooter in a building full of people was to close off the perimeter and try to negotiate. But that no longer works in our world of murder plus suicide.

The Virginia Tech and Blacksburg, Virginia police chiefs that didn't recommend locking down the campus and didn't station officers around buildings were apparently operating in a pre-Columbine world. They were out-of-touch with what other police departments had learned. After Columbine in 1999, many police departments had retrained themselves to "shoot to kill" urban terrorists. As Timothy Harper wrote in 2000 in his eye-opening Atlantic Monthly article Shoot to Kill:

"Officers were traditionally trained to help the wounded and evacuate bystanders. Now they are taught to step over the wounded, push bystanders aside, and keep pursuing the shooters. In the past SWAT marksmen were expected to put a
shooter down. Now every officer is instructed to 'take the shot if you have it.'"

"Earth Day" is also Lenin's Birthday

So"The People's Cube" humorously observes. Closet communist Pete Seeger was a keynote speaker and performer at the original event held in Washington DC, and that is enough to give me pause.

But seriously, why was April 22 chosen? Why not the Spring Equinox, which is when the United Nations, hardly an organization known for opposing communism, celebrates it?

Or around Easter Week if we wanted to make Earth Day a reminder to be God's good stewards of the Earth? Nope, we can't have that, eco-hysteria is a jealous God and will have no gods before it. When people stop believing in God, as Chesterton observed, the danger is not that they will believe in nothing else, but that they will believe in anything else--like a New Ice Age that reverses itself to become "man made global warming" in less than 30 years.

Wikipedia observes that Earth Day may have taken over Arbor Day, which is a plausible explanation:

"April 22 is also the birthday of Julius Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day, a national tree-planting holiday started in 1872. Arbor Day became a legal holiday in Nebraska in 1885, to be permanently observed on April 22. According to the National Arbor Day Foundation "the most common day for the state observances is the last Friday in April . . . but a number of state Arbor Days are at other times to coincide with the best tree planting weather."[11] It has since been largely eclipsed by the more widely observed Earth Day, except in Nebraska, where it originated."

(from Arbor Day's Beginnings. The National Arbor Day Foundation. Retrieved on 2007-04-22).

VA Tech Massacre: Thanks a lot, NBC

In the aftermath of the heart-breaking Virginia Tech mass murders, various schools and universities in California and the nation have received disturbing phone calls from deranged people threatening to do harm. I believe it's largely due to NBC's irresponsible publicity of the video sent to the network by mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho. What NBC started, and the other networks repeated, sent a clear message to America's deranged population -- that if they do something big like Cho, they’ll receive the attention and power they crave. NBC got what it wanted, which was the highest ratings of the day. And America's going to get what it didn't want -- more mass murderers who will kill to be famous.

Imus and "The Rules" for White Comedians

A brilliant essay on this, from the Weekly Standard’s “Scrapbook”:

Jeff "Protein Wisdom" Goldstein also has a very keen insight on this matter.

The firing of Don Imus makes me ambivalent.

One the one hand, it IS nice to see a leftist like Imus get savaged by his fellow leftists. And make no mistake about it, Don Imus is left leaning, although the Left will deny it.

I started (and soon stopped) listening to Imus back in 1995, when I noticed he had a Rush Limbaugh impersonator singing painfully unfunny parody songs about what a racist Mr. Limbaugh was, only to follow that up with Imus trying to elicit slurs out of people, and in some cases succeeding (Senator Al D’Amato vs. Judge Lance Ito during the O.J. Simpson trial, for example).

On the other hand....I wonder if Imus will show up on satellite radio with a more right leaning slant. Faced with the hard facts that most of his leftist chums not only bailed but took some parting shots to polish their own liberal bona fides will Imus have an epiphany on the topic of conviction? Remember the definition of “neo-conservative”: a former leftist mugged by reality. Imus got his mugging.

On the other hand, given how Imus then groveled before that dirtbag Al Sharpton, maybe not.

There are two general orthogonal rules about who is allowed to speak about race in contemporary American polite society: blacks and comedians have vastly more freedom to tell it the way it is than whites and serious thinkers. So, there’s a grid of acceptability in who is supposed to discuss race, with the most favored corner being black comedians such as Dave Chappelle, who gets a $50 million contract to make fun of blacks and whites. In contrast, a serious, judicious, data-driven thinker like Charles Murray is in the opposite corner. He becomes persona non grata and is subject to horrific slanders.

The ambiguous corners belong to the serious black thinkers such as Thomas Sowell and the white comedians such as this Don Imus radio fellow who is being condemned by Al Sharpton, arbiter of all that is right and holy.

You’ll notice that even the writers for that wonderfully irreverent show "The Simpsons" are hesitant to joke at all with black characters. The show has a completely stereotypical Asian Indian, Apu, but no continuing characters who act in any way stereotypically "black". The upper-middle class Dr. Hibbert is a parody of Bill Cosby’s Dr. Huxtable character.

Meanwhile, the show’s creators telegraph to viewers that they are avoiding joking about blacks by creating two black characters who behave indistinguishably from their white partners. There are Homer’s co-workers Lenny and Carl; and there are the cops Lou and Eddie. After nearly 20 years of watching, I still have no idea whether it’s Lenny who is black, or if it’s Carl. The same goes for Lou and Eddie. If there was just one ambiguous duo like this, it might be an accident, but having two pairs indicates the writers are making a subtle joke about their hesitancy in the face of race.

A culture of self-defense vs. a culture of voodoo guns

Today is Patriot's Day. Two great essays deserve linking:

From Michelle Malkin: "Missing At Virginia Tech: A Culture of Self-Defense". No doubt she will be savagely attacked for this, but she's spot-on.

From The Volokh Conspiracy: "Zero Tolerance Comes To Campus". The ninnies at Yale have banned realistic loking weapons in their theatrical productions. No, it's not a parody. One of the commenters, "Fub", was particularly perceptive:

I think something more underlies these silly rituals. What makes these ritual bannings of depictions or imitations of real weapons politically effective (among those for whom they are effective) is a very primitive human thought process: belief in sympathetic magic.

The actual object, the weapon, is imbued with magical power. Its very presence magically causes harm. It causes people to behave in evil ways. The rationale commonly offered is that the mere presence of a weapon makes people more prone to violence.

Sympathetic magic is the belief that what one does with an imitation of the thing with magical power will affect the actual thing. For example, in a magical religious context we see the image of a deity addressed, or given gifts or sacrifices. The magical deity is affected through the treatment of its image, and so performs its magic for the one who gives the image a gift.

In the imitation weapon banning context we have first the belief that the object, the actual weapon, is magic and causes those in its presence to behave in an evil manner. The sympathetic magical belief is that by banning the image or the imitation weapon, the magical power of real weapons to cause people to be violent will be lessened, or the real weapons will stay away from the presence of the faithful.

A more elaborate way of saying "liberalism is a mental disorder"?

Another lesson from the terrible school shooting

Michelle Malkin reseived an email from a Virginia Tech student:

We heard pretty much continuous shooting for the next minute or so, and I said, "Shouldn't we barricade the door," because we were sitting ducks with no way out inside that room if he opened the door. A couple more people floated the idea that "We need to barricade the door, NOW." But I was too scared to even move, much less move the teacher's desk.

Finally one of the guys in the front of the classroom was brave enough to get up and move the desk in front of the door to prevent outside entry. About twenty seconds later, the shooter rattled the doorknob trying to get in. When he couldn't get in he fired two shots through the door (single solid piece of wood) and left. We heard him go in to 206 (the room across the hall) and shoot the people in that room. If we hadn't put the barricade up when we did, I and all my classmates would be dead.

In other words, if it looks like you are doomed anyway, remember Todd Beamer's "Let's Roll". What have you got to lose? Who knows? You might just save yourself and others.

A Modest Proposal To Reduce Gun Violence

A Person From Porlack had a wonderful post:

Well, I have sent the New York Times the standard letter I send 'anti gun violence' papers at times like this:

To the Editor:

A practical, commonsense way of reducing gun violence -- especially in the schools -- would be a federal law prohibiting, or at least seriously limiting, the interstate reporting of sensational gun crimes like Virginia Tech for five working days.

Such a law would not affect local coverage, where there is a need for the immediate dissemination of information, but would make the event 'old news' when it was finally reported nationally and therefore unlikely to get the massive publicity that invites further, copycat violence. Even a small reduction in today's intense coverage of such events might, by not stimulating some potential gunman to action, save lives.

While 'gun' laws are hard to enforce because of the easy concealment of firearms, the public nature of 'news' would make enforcement of this law virtually automatic.

Because the delay would be short and serve a compelling government interest, it should pass constitutional muster; the Brady law serves admirably as a precedent here. While First Amendment absolutists will cavil, the simple fact is that it is as wrong to hold that the Press Clause protects a media 'right' to lethally endanger the public as it would be to hold that the Religion Clause protects human sacrifice.

Sincerely,

(me)

For some reason, even though the suggested law would clearly be 'worth trying' (a standard rationale of the Left), no 'anti gun violence' paper has ever published it.

But of course not, Person From Porlock, because, you see, they're okay taking away OUR rights (to self defense, never mind that the criminals will STILL prey on us), but not theirs (to incite copycats in order to further their agenda).

How to deal with psychopaths looking to commit mass murder before they end their worthless meaningless lives? Well, we could look at how countries as diverse as Israel, Russia and Thailand have dealt with this exact sort of event, coming from--you guessed it--Muslim terrorists. What have they resorted to? ARMING THEIR TEACHERS. “People don’t stop killers. People with guns do.”

Of course, only a properly trained teacher would qualify for this; in these aforementioned countries (Israel, Russia, Thailand) the armed teacher more likely than not is a reservist or a former draftee already.

The Left will probably poo-pooh this idea, in favor of making us all more helpless and dependent upon the authorities and not ourselves.

But what happens when the authorities do nothing either for incompetence or for political reasons, as sadly may have happened at Virgina Tech? Why did the University sit on this for nearly THREE HOURS, doing nothing? (The email to students was a nice touch, fat chance people coming for morning classes would ever read it.) This in spite of at least several previous bomb and gun threat incidents.

Even my alma mater, the University of Caliphony at Bezerkley, where pandemonium was the norm and winos and halfway house people often wandered the campus, would have issued an APB, locked down the dorms, broadcast a full alert, called out all the campus cops to patrol, and alerted the neighboring City of Berkeley PD and the Oakland PD.

An armed citizenry is wrong, says the left, "rely on the authorities." The same authorities who by all appearances sat on this information for three hours either out of incompetence or for public relations reasons.

And yet, such precedents of armed teachers taking out would be shooters do exist on our own shores. This is almost the 41 st aniversary of the 1966 University of Texas Tower shootings, where ironically the casualties were almost equally reversed. Charles Whitman killed 15 and injured 31. In part because two professors had their deer rifles at the campus and were shooting back at Whitman, who was perched on top of the clock tower in the center of the campus. One English professor went through 3 boxes of Ammo returning fire at the tower, this action is credited with keeping the number of killed lower than it could have been.

There was also the shooting January 9, 2002, at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, a short distance from VA Tech. It was two ARMED (with their concealed carry handguns) students who stopped the (militant Black Muslim) shooter from killing more students and staff.

Given that the story didn't fit THREE liberal media templates, no surprise it was dropped quickly.

Similar events where teachers who happened to be armed occurred at Pearl, Mississippi, and Jonesboro, Arkansas in the 1990's.

At at Virginia Tech itself, licensed teacher and student self-defense was proposed, out of concerns of something like the Applachian Law School happening at Virginia Tech, but it was blocked in 2006, and, of course, mocked.

Here's another Jan. 18, 2002, column, which also concerned the Appalachian School of Law. The gunman, Peter Odighizuwa, killed three, and probably would have killed more but for another student's gun:

Students ended the rampage by confronting and then tackling the gunman, officials said.

"We saw the shooter, stopped at my vehicle and got out my handgun and started to approach Peter," Tracy Bridges, who helped subdue the shooter with other students, said Thursday on NBC's "Today" show. "At that time, Peter threw up his hands and threw his weapon down. Ted was the first person to have contact with Peter, and Peter hit him one time in the face, so there was a little bit of a struggle there."

Appalachian is a private institution, Virginia Tech a public one; and Virginia law prohibits guns on campus. Early last year there was an effort in the state Legislature to change that law, but it died in committee. As the Roanoke Times reported at the time:

Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

I wonder what Mr. Hincker has to say now....

Armed defense works in practice, daily. There is no evidence to support the view that handgun prohibition works. Alcohol prohibition did not work. Drug prohibition is not working.

Paradise By The Dashboard Lights....

It turns out that rocker Meat Loaf and this bloodthirsty moslem savage have something in common:

The father of suicide bomber Tareq Hamid was ecstatic as he praised his son's martyrdom operation to the channel on March 6. He told the interviewer that when his son was about to perform the terrorist attack, he called his friends and told them, "I swear by Allah that I saw the black-eyed virgins of paradise on the hood of my car."

And yet, we are told that the poor Palestinigoons have been oppressed by the big bad Zionists. But straight from the proud papa's mouth:

Mr. Hamid added, "Some people claim that all these young mujahedeen who blow themselves up are desperate people. … These claims are wrong. These are lies and clear Zionist propaganda. All the mujahedeen I came to know … are the finest of Palestinian society. … The only thing they need is to reach paradise by means of defense and martyrdom for the sake of Allah…"

You know, if it was up to me, I'd let Israel buy some of the old B-1B's and B-52-D's from "The Boneyard" at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and let them start carpet-bombing the Gaza Strip. It would work effectively, unlike the jungle canopy of Vietnam. Or even surviving B-47's if any can be restored.

Duke boys innocent; media, commie profs won't quit

What was obvious to anyone with a shred of integrity from the beginning, that the Duke players are innocent of the charges of rape, has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, as the phony Nifong case comes apart. The Baltimore Sun sums it up reasonably well, but in their story they interview someone named Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, and she tries the usual moral relativism crap:

"There was an initial, preconceived notion about what the overall narrative of the story was about," said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. "It was: 'Elite, spoiled white boys degrade and humiliate poor, black woman.' And then, over the next couple of months, you saw the pendulum swing in the complete opposite direction. It became: 'Loose, unstable black woman accuses nice white boys of rape.' Both of those narratives were excessive, and the reporting behind them could not substantiate the conclusions."

Oh, really, Kelly? Show me even ONE story where the narrative became 'Loose, unstable black woman accuses nice white boys of rape.' And no, Kelly dear, the latter narrative was NOT excessive; it was in fact accurate, and the evidence substantiated the conclusion. And this bitch teaches ethics. I pity the students.

But others in the liberal media can't give up their meta-narrative. Selena Roberts of the New York Times is typical:

At the intersection of entitlement and enablement, there is Duke University, virtuous on the outside, debauched on the inside. This is the home of Coach K's white-glove morality and the Cameron Crazies' celebrated vulgarity.

The season is over, but the paradox lives on in Duke's lacrosse team, a group of privileged players of fine pedigree entangled in a night that threatens to belie their social standing as human beings.

What a bitch. "Enablement," indeed.

Even after the Duke players' vindication, ABC News's Terry Moran piles on them:

Let us also remember a few other things:

They were part of a team that collected $800 to purchase the time of two strippers.

Their team specifically requested at least one white stripper.

You mean they dared choose a preference? Like preferring a redhead over a brunette? Oh my god, Terry! Fry 'em!

During the incident, racial epithets were hurled at the strippers.

No proof of that is advanced, and conflicting time lines (one of the accused wasn't even there at the time) frankly make the whole charge dubious.

Colin Finnerty was charged with assault in Washington, DC, in 2005.

So being a loutish jock who gets in a bar fight with some other loutish jock makes him a rapist. Interesting reasoning.

The young men were able to retain a battery of top-flight attorneys, investigators and media strategists.

How DARE they try not to be put away in prison for false charges!!!

As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives. There is a very large cushion under them--the one that softens the blows of life for most of those who go to Duke or similar places, and have connections through family, friends and school to all kinds of prospects for success. They are very differently situated in life from, say, the young women of the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

That last point is indisputably true. One reason they are differently situated is that the Rutgers women were merely insulted by that dumbass Don Imus, not put through a yearlong legal ordeal. Moran continues:

And, MOST IMPORTANT, there are many, many cases of prosecutorial misconduct cross our country every year. The media covers few, if any, of these cases. Most of the victims in these cases are poor or minority Americans--or both.

If the media don't cover these cases, it's not clear how Moran--who is, after all, part of the media--knows that there are many of them, let alone how he has data on their wealth and ethnicity.

What is interesting to watch is the new tack that these leftist scum like Terry Moran have taken with respect to the Duke victims (that is, the lacrosse players, who have been effectively smeared). Terry and his minions are reduced to asking the holier-than-thou question:

"Well, what were they doing watching a stripper? Huh? HUH???"

Isn't it interesting how the Commiecrat Leftists, who regularly cry wolf about "Christianists trying to create a theocracy", act like the most holier-than-thou of fundamentalists here? Gee, I thought they were all about sexual freedom and "letting it all hang out"?

What about that? Huh? HUH?

Being falsely accused of rape and subsequently cleared certainly does not make one a saint. But it does make one a victim of a smear.

All kinds of people who are victims of injustice need not be saintly. For example, not everyone who died in, say, the Holocaust was a good person, for instance. Among the millions of victims of the evil Nazis, there were, no doubt, at least a tiny number of Jews who DID molest children, steal from civil service jobs, or cheat Gentiles in business dealings. And probably many more who cheated on their wives or their taxes or abused their children. But that doesn’t mean they deserved to be shoved in ovens, or that we shouldn’t bemoan the fact that they were.

And yeah, young men sometimes act like goofballs, as if that justifies throwing them in jail for 20-some odd years and wrecking their futures because they like to watch women take off their clothes.

And Terry Moran must ignore the fact that that’s precisely the service the ladies in question were peddling. Because otherwise, it doesn’t make them seem quite so victimized, now does it?

How I hate Demunist Commiecrat liberal racist and sexist hypocrites. Stripped away of all its ‘educated’ pretense, Demunist Commiecrat leftism is coalition tribalism. The race pimps will never apologize for ‘defending one of their own’, let alone smearing 'one of them', because that is the sum total of their politics. Their entire program is the assembly of just enough identity groups to get a plurality of votes in a majority of Congressional districts and state legislatures, then use their power to take from the rest of us for the benefit of the coalition members.

Polipundit: The fraud of "Gay Marriage"

One of the snarkiest, funniest, and spot-on blogposts on the matter that I have ever seen:

Here, I shall quote it in case it disappears:

On “Progressives” and Homosexuality

In my earlier essay exploring the formation of the political views of modern liberals I concluded that misguided emotion guides their outlook on issues of the day. Outside of the war in Iraq, it seems nothing gets the left’s dander up more than the issue of gay marriage.

First, I want to point out that recently there was a bit of a kerfuffle offline regarding this topic and an openly gay blogger. I was singled out for my “very angry and hurtful comments” which were “stoking some very dangerous language about gays.” Well! What did I say? I, for about the millionth time, pointed out that being gay is: abnormal, immoral, and unhealthy.*

I usually make these comments on the topic of gay marriage as I don’t believe the state should be encouraging or attempting to normalize such behavior. That is not to say I think that sodomy should be illegal, but certainly changing the family structure of our society because a tiny, tiny minority feel the need to be part of an institution they used to despise is certainly not a good idea. Yes, most gays were against marriage before they were for it.

Now these facts, inconvenient truths if you will, get me castigated as ignorant, mean, homophobic, and dangerous. Why is such language used in response to these facts? Because they can’t be answered, and they must be prevented from being openly talked about. Which means I have won the argument. When a gay blogger has to write emails saying he refuses to read your blog postings and can not speak to the comments, I’ve won. Having no response to facts demonstrates the weakness of your position. And I think just about anyone who has done just a bit of thinking on this topic realizes just how weak the position of gay marriage proponents actually is. Let’s look at some of these “arguments”:

1. “LOL, you want to run our society/laws based on the bible“

Uh, no, actually I don’t. Not entirely anyway. Though those 10 commandments seemed to have been a pretty good guide, haven’t they? Anyway, I want our society to reflect some common sense values. Since gay sex will never produce a single child, and since gay sex has no benefits and many risks, why should we encourage it and redefine our family structure?

2. “Jesus never condemned homosexuality/those quotes from the bible are taken out of context”

LOL, you want to run our society based on the bible? Typical liberal shell game. If one line of attack doesn’t work, reverse course and lie. Well, Jesus never condemned me drinking a bottle of Cuervo Gold and getting in my car and hitting the beltway at 95 mph either. So it’s ok then, right? Anyone seriously arguing that any biblical references are “out of context” given the fact that God said man and woman will be joined as one in the flesh, and said “honor thy father and thy mother” (note: not “parents” not “2 mommies” not “dad and bob") is just being silly. Texts from both Old and New Testament support the proposition that homosexuality is not looked upon favorably by God.

3. “You wingnuts want to legislate what goes on in our bedrooms.”

Not quite. Gay sex, which I’ve said shouldn’t be illegal, isn’t gay marriage. Which is a public, state sanctioned act. If anyone wants to legislate sexual activity, it is the Homocrat Left.

4. “The bible says I can’t eat shellfish, and many other things we ignore, why should we bother listening to it?”

Well, using this “logic” we can ignore the whole thing then I guess. Or, we can realize that changing the cornerstone of civilization for 2 millennium to appease a radical homosexual agenda may not be on par with shellfish, sweetheart. As noted above, God doesn’t want us to engage in such behavior. Do you think maybe there is just some merit to that? I do as male and female parents are the best option for rearing offspring.

5. “Discrimination, the 14th Amendment!!!”

I reject this out of hand as a) it assumes you have a “right” to marry whomever you wish and b) it pretends that the government doesn’t make discriminatory decisions each day. We as a society express a collective judgement on many behaviors deemed inappropriate and aim to prevent them through various laws all the time. As has been mentioned elsewhere, if you have the “right” to marry as two gay males, then I have the “right” to marry multiple women in polygamy, or even a cat. Your “happiness” can’t trump mine, especially when the survival of the species is at stake. If we decide it is “constitutional” that 2 males marry, behavior which has no value in the continuation of the species, then so is any behavior I wish to engage in regarding marriage.

6. “We let infertile and old people marry, why not gays?!”

Two things here. 1, people who have thought they were infertile have had children. 2. As a society, and remember marriage is a social institution, we should reinforce the idea that male & female relationships are the norm. A framework that demonstrates the preferred societal good is reflected each time males and females make that bond.

7. “If marriage is so sacred, why is the divorce rate so high, and you can get married on a game show!”

And I’m for neither of these things. But, it is the left that has brought us the idea of no fault divorce (and fought for welfare benefits for single mothers thus encouraging that behavior), through the feminist movement starting in the late 60’s. In other words, they have succeeded in practically destroying marriage and now want to redefine it however the see fit which will put the nail through the coffin of it. See, these people don’t revere or respect marriage all that much and have done everything to make it less valuable and meaningless over the last 40 years. Now, they must pretend it has some redeeming value to let gays in which will ultimately make it futile.

Dennis Prager also has a very good article refuting the phony "high divorce rates justify gay marriage" crap.

8. “Bigot, redneck, homophobe, fascist, Bushbootlicker/McChimpyBurton!”

Demonstrating I’ve won. Clearly. Now, while I don’t think gay sex should be illegal, I do think we as a society need to better reflect a disapproval of homosexuality. Gays in movies and on TV are smart, witty, lovable, and wise. Mainly because Hollywood is chalk full of gay writers. Well it’s great that those people wish to portray themselves that way. However, I think we need to counterbalance that with some actual facts to encourage some critical thinking about just how important this issue is to our children and the future of our society. Which is why I’ll continue to speak out on it.

*{To see exactly how risky being gay is to your health, see: here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and yes, you are going to read these next 3 links correctly, gay males intentionally try and catch HIV: here, and here, and here. Finally, read this. Gays have higher incidences of STD’s, HIV, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide than heterosexuals. Period.}

Film Director and Son Killed by Drunk Illegal Alien

Sad. One of the few good guys in Hollyweird, too. Somewhere, "Ralphie" mourns.

The 24-year-old man suspected of causing the accident that killed film director Bob Clark and his son had a bloodalcohol level three times the legal limit, authorities said Thursday.

Hector Manuel Velazquez-Nava, a native of Mexico who federal authorities said was in the U.S. illegally, faces possible charges of vehicular manslaughter, driving without a license and driving under the influence of alcohol. He suffered minor injuries in the early Wednesday accident on Pacific Coast Highway and is being held at the Van Nuys Jail.

Although bail has been set at $100,000, his undocumented status makes him
ineligible for release on bond, police said.

[Driver drunk in crash that killed director], LA Times 4/6/07

The LAPD still enforces Special Order 40, a 1979 ordinance instituted by the LA Police Commission, requiring that police officers not inquire into people's immigration status.

Thanks to S.O. 40, much of LA is today under the control of murderous illegal immigrant gangs and Los Angeles last year suffered 269 gang-related murders.

LAPD Chief Bill Bratton still defends S.O. 40. He insists that if police inquire about people's immigration status, no-one—i.e., no illegal immigrants—will come forward to report crimes and bear witness against bad guys.

But, as Bratton [email him] has to know perfectly well, his sanctuary policies have emasculated the police and ceded sovereignty to the gangs. So no illegals report crimes and bear witness against the gangs anyway—because they know that doing so will guarantee their death and the deaths of their loved ones.

And Bratton's own officers have for years complained about seeing known illegal immigrant gang-bangers on the streets but not being able to do anything until the gang-banger commits additional crimes.

Such a handcuffing of the police, which has no legal basis, is at the root not only of the LAPD's years-long impotence in solving murders, but of its role in enabling murderers to kill people in the first place. A sane policy would permit police to stop all known gang members on sight, make them show identification proving that they are legal residents or U.S. citizens, and detain them if they fail to do so, deporting them if they are in fact, shown to be illegal.

(Identifying them is child's play. Gang members make it their business to identify themselves via gang tattoos, gang signs, and gang "tags" that they paint on private property in acts of vandalism.)

A video blog on Special Order 40 produced and posted last July 30 by the folks at Full Disclosure contains interviews held with current and former LAPD officials over the past few years. In one interview, host Leslie Dutton asks a uniformed LAPD official, "Why don’t you enforce immigration laws?"

The official responds, "Well, I think it’s a basic human right. ["It" apparently refers to breaking America’s immigration laws.] And what we’ve looked at in terms of the immigration status of somebody is that we have a tremendous melting pot in the City of Los Angeles and we recognize that there are a number of basic social issues that come to bear as a result of a number of people coming from a number of different nations, and as a result of that type of melting pot of atmosphere that we’ve seen in the City of Los Angeles, the city fathers, [E mail Mayor Villaraigosa] the City Council, our Police Commission has taken the attitude that what we want to do is provide services to everybody in the community, regardless of their undocumented status, and unless they break the law, we’re not going to report things to INS. Where it’s just the sole status of them being here illegally, we don’t take that into consideration when we’re enforcing the law."

Since when do uniformed police officers, who have taken an oath to enforce the laws of the United States, get to speak the foreign language of "human rights," and openly say that they will refuse to enforce the nation’s laws?

It would have been one thing if the LAPD officer had simply said: "The politicians have ordered us not to enforce America’s immigration laws, so the matter is out of our hands." But instead we get this shameless "human rights" sophistry.

Just imagine how far an American citizen would get with the same LAPD if he said he refused to follow written statutes because they violated his "human rights."

Linda Chavez: Beyond ignorant sluttiness

I didn't think she could get worse on her immigration delusions, but she does. Sadly, is she correct that the Bushyrovies are as deluded as she is???

The Bush administration is desperate for a victory somewhere — anywhere — and White House operatives are hoping that they may eke one out on an unlikely issue: immigration reform.

You mean, actually walling off the southern border, deporting the ones in our jails, and getting enough personnel to track down the rest? Yea! That WOULD be a victory! But of course, it isn't what the Bushyrovies have in mind....

The heart of the administration's proposal is a new temporary workers program, something the country desperately needs if we are ever to stem the flow of illegal workers into the United States,

WRONG--what stems the flow of illegal workers into the USA is (1) walling off the southern border, where nearly all are coming from (2) boosting immigration personnel and detention facilities to deal with the rest.

and still provide necessary workers in a full-employment economy.

Ah, the real agenda. And frankly, she may be right, although the underpinnings of our "full employment" economy are very debatable. But let's be honest about what a temporary workers program really is, shall we?

But as currently outlined, the plan will do nothing more than create a class of workers who will never assimilate into the mainstream of our society, much less become Americans.

Gee, Linda, given that they are *temporary*, why is that such a surprise?

The plan would not allow workers to bring their families with them, no matter how long they continued to work on renewable two-year permits. But increasing the number of young, unattached males in our society is a recipe for problems.

Families bring stability — indeed, one of the reasons immigrants have low crime rates is that they are more likely to live in married, two-parent households with children than those who are native-born and of comparable socio-economic status. Instead of families who, after a time, would buy homes and start businesses and whose children would become the new Americans, we would have a permanent class of non-English-speaking workers with no ties to the communities in which they live and work.

(1) In other words, they AREN'T temporary! A new bracero program, where we just get the seasonal labor and don't have to accommodate a new long-term underclass, this isn't!

(2) While families do bring more stability, they also bring net takers of social services, and people who take far more out of the government than they pay in. While driving wages in entry level jobs down, which is a disincentive for welfare reforms and getting our own underclass working! And it again raises the question: given the social services net tax outflow, just how cheap is that labor, really?

And the proposal for dealing with the 12 million illegal aliens already living here isn't much better. On the positive side, Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, who have consistently opposed amnesty for the 12 million, now seem ready to embrace a path toward legalization for those who are here. The plan would be to create a new visa — dubbed the "Z," perhaps it will be the least desirable visa available — that would be renewable in three-year increments for a $3,500 fee, on top of an $8,000 initial fine. These provisions are so draconian they would essentially make indentured workers out of the 12 million.

Given that wages have been driven down in construction and service industries, aren't all those American born workers getting closer to becoming indentured already?

But the proposal is just a starting point, and there is plenty of room to bargain. The bill also includes a huge expansion in enforcement efforts, including a 50 percent increase in the border patrol — which is already nearly double the size it was when President Bush took office.

Wow, from minuscule to less minuscule--doesn't that make you feel swell?

The plan would also include a secure identity card everyone in the United States would have to use, citizen and non-citizen alike, to gain employment.

Great, police state the citizens just to track the non-citizens. It would be a lot less intrusive to wall off the southern border and expand the formerly INS / now ICE personnel and detention facilities.

In addition, the proposal would also expand the current border fence with Mexico to include 200 miles of vehicle barriers, 370 miles of fencing and 300 miles of electronic sensors.

Less than the 800 miles of real walling and fencing we were promised, and still short of securing the whole damn border. (While much of the border is impassable mountains, inhospitable desert, or both, nothing short of a full Great Wall Of America will really do the trick. "Virtual sensors" are a joke if there are not the personnel to apprehend the illegal aliens).

"Parts of the proposal are more realistic than others," the Manhattan Institute's Tamar Jacoby said. "But it shifts the battle away from what to do with 12 million already here — the GOP senators now seem to understand they are going to stay — to the issue of who will come in the future. The terms and conditions for new workers visas is where both sides will have to do some hard negotiating that will come to compromise."

The problem is, in the absence of a Border Wall and a beefed up Border Patrol / ICE, telling the illegals already here that they are going to stay only opens the floodgates for another "bums rush", overwhelming the economy, the society, and in this age of dangerous anti immigration and "multiculturalism", our very national fabric.

But Linda doesn't care as long as she gets her cheap nanny and gardener.

Good Friday

Why is such a sad day called "Good Friday", anyway?

We are constantly told by the leftist liberal types that "Chimpy Bushhitlerburton", and those of us who voted for him over the candidate those Commiecrats had to offer, are trying to make this country into a "Christianist theocracy", in the words of that pansy boy leftist who pretends to be "conservative", Andrew Sullivan.

Actually, this leftist pap precedes even Bush The Younger. It has been harped on for years, even becoming the basis for a stupid movie, based upon an even more stupid novel.

And yet, all of us have to work on Good Friday, and all of Holy Week, even the government employees. Easter is reduced to a pathetic Sunday.

Even the "Spring Break" that students get, "students" ranging from wee rugrats to nubile "Girls Gone Wild" coeds, does not necessarily fall during Holy Week.

Gee whiz, Christianist brothers and sisters, how are we ever going to get everyone attending mandatory right-wing indoctrination church camps if we can't get ALL of Holy Week off from work?

Passover fits in at the same time, so the Jews will work with us on this! We all know we need the go-ahead from the Jews before we do anything, right? Michael Moore says so.

Seriously, how can we go about creating theocracy if the week of the arrest, trial, torture, execution murder, and resurrection of The Man In Whose Name We Christian Fascists Act ISN'T a week long work-free holiday with the strictures and prohibitions on the level, of, say, Ramadan?

Or maybe, just maybe, the liberal Demunists are full of crap.

Eugene Volokh summed it up well:

Forcing their religious opinions on us: I must have blogged about this a while ago, but this trope keeps bugging me. "Those fundamentalist Christians are trying to force their religious opinions on us," the argument goes. But that's what most lawmaking is -- trying to turn one's opinions on moral or pragmatic subjects into law.

Gay rights activists are trying to force their opinions on us by making employers give out benefits based on sexual orientation, or by making taxpayers pay for various marriage-related benefits for same-sex couples as well as heterosexual couples. Civil rights activists forced their opinions about race and sex discrimination on private employers, landlords, and business owners.

Ah, the argument goes, but those laws are backed by secular arguments, not religious ones. Well, as it happens, many laws -- civil rights laws, for instance -- were motivated by religious opinions (it's the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., you might recall). But more importantly, all of our opinions are ultimately based on unproven and unprovable moral premises. For some of us, the moral premises are secular; for others, they're religious; I don't see why the former are somehow more acceptable than the latter. And the slogan "separation of church and state" hardly resolves anything here: Churches may have no established role in our government, but religious believers are just as entitled to vote their views into law as are atheists or agnostics.

Just the other day on the freeway, I was cut off by a car with an utterly obnoxious bumper sticker reading: The Last Time We Mixed Politics With Religion....People Got Burned At The Stake. (You guessed it, the car was a Subaru, although you get partial credit for guessing a Volvo, and yes, she was a dykey looking driver).

Oh really? So the whole Civil Rights Movement never happened? Or Abolitionism?

(In the dummy dyke's favor, I suppose it would be nice to believe that whole foolish, and religion based, Constitutional meddling mess called Prohibition never happened either. But it did, at a time when more permanent constitutional meddling was also taking place, like direct income taxation and direct election of Senators.)

Of course, it's perfectly sound to disagree with people's views on the merits: If I don't agree with the substance of someone's proposal, whether it's religious or secular, I'll certainly criticize the substance. And naturally people will often find others' religious arguments unpersuasive -- "ban this because God said so" isn't going to persuade someone who doesn't believe in God, or who has a different view of God's will. (Likewise, many devout Christians may find unpersuasive arguments that completely fail to engage devout Christians' religious beliefs.) But there's nothing at all illegitimate about people making up their own minds about which laws to enact based on their own unprovable religious moral beliefs, or on their own unprovable secular moral beliefs.

Just how cheap are those strawberries, really?

More evidence of the folly of the open borders lobbies.

What ethnics are in the military, and how?

Are minorities overrepresented in the volunteer army? That claim is often expressed in the Mainstream Media. It was hammered home ad nauseam in Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. New York Representative Charles Rangel openly advocates a return to the draft on the grounds that "It shouldn't be just the poor and the working poor who find their way into harm's way." [The Return Of The Draft, Rolling Stone, January 27, 2005]

Reinstate conscription, these folks say, and we’d alleviate the disproportionate burden the current system places on minorities.

Funny: I watch network news nearly every night, but I’ve not seen many soldiers of color on the Iraq segments. Most of those guys in Hummers, or recuperating at Walter Reed, look REALLY pale.

And DOD statistics confirm this: 74.4 percent of U.S. military deaths in Iraq, and 73.0 percent of the wounded, are white. Blacks and Hispanics make up 9.7 percent and 10.8 percent of the dead, respectively. (Table 1.)

To be sure, whites accounted for a significantly larger share of battlefield deaths in Korea and Vietnam—but their share of the U.S. population was greater at that time too. (Table 2.)

A Heritage Foundation study released last October compared the demographic characteristics of recent military recruits with the total U.S. population. We present some of their data, along with DOD statistics on U.S. military casualties by race, in Table 3. [Who Are the Recruits? by Tim Kane, Ph.D. Center for Data Analysis Report #06-09]

In 2004 about three-quarters (75.6 percent) of the adult population, and 73.1 percent of recruits, were classified as white. This indicates a population/recruit ratio of 0.97—with 1.00 indicating an exactly proportional representation. The casualty/population ratio for whites is also 0.97.

Bottom line: whites are proportionately represented among both recruits and casualties.
Blacks, on the other hand, account for 14.5 percent of recruits, but only 12.17 percent of the population, for a recruit-to-population ratio of 1.19. Yet only 8.4 percent of casualties are Black—a casualty-to-population ratio of only 0.69.

The same pattern holds for Hispanics, although they may be undercounted in DOD casualty figures due to a reluctance to identify themselves by ethnicity.

Asians are underrepresented both among recruits and, more dramatically, among casualties.
Bottom line: Blacks and Hispanics are overrepresented among recruits, but underrepresented among casualties.

(Note that Hispanics are often double-counted, because they can be of any race. What we really need to refute Rangel is the “white non-Hispanic” military death rate, but this is not provided. However, we can infer that it may above the white non-Hispanic share of the population from the fact that “non-Hispanics” constitute 85.9 percent of the overall population and 93.12 percent of the combat death.)

This bifurcation does not impugn the bravery of Black and Hispanic soldiers. Rather it points out the opportunities the volunteer army affords minorities.

And if you are more likely to be a "lifer", it makes more sense to look for support and logistical roles. And African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to look toward becoming "lifers":

Combat units have gotten whiter because a lot of young white guys join up to "play Rambo" for four years and then go to college using military tuition benefits. In contrast, more blacks view the military as a long-term career.

If you intend to stay in until you are 40 or 50, it makes a lot of sense to pursue a specialty that offers plenty of desk jobs. Crawling on your belly and sleeping in the mud might sound like fun if you aren't staying past your early 20s, but it gets old awfully fast as you yourself get older.

College-educated Blacks, for example, make up 12 percent of the officer corps, yet only 7.6 percent of college graduates are Black. Black enlisted men are under-represented in the military and Special Forces, and over-represented in logistical support and administrative occupations—skills that are valued in the civilian world. A draft would obliterate those advantages.

So which racial groups are disproportionately casualties of the Iraq war?

Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (Samoans) are the most likely to be killed or wounded. They account for 1.02 percent of Iraq casualties, 4.5-times their population share. They also volunteer at far greater rates than other races.

Second place goes to American Indian/Alaska natives, whose share of the dead and wounded is 1.36-times their share of the population.

But the numbers involved are very small. Neither group is large enough to provide a significant share of soldiers.

Note, however, that both groups inhabit sparsely populated, predominately rural, regions of the country—and that, rather than race per se, is the key factor.

Heritage finds that rural areas contribute far more recruits relative to population than urban areas. Completely urbanized areas have 39.1 percent of the population but accounted for 27.3 percent of recruits in 2005, producing a 0.70 recruit/population ratio. As urbanization decreases the recruit/population rises, reaching 1.56 in the most rural parts of the country.

The urban/rural death gap is the subject of a study sponsored by the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute, which specializes in overlooked parts of the country. Among the findings: "The death rate for rural soldiers (24 per million adults aged 18 to 59) is 60 percent higher than the death rate for those soldiers from cities and suburbs (15 deaths per million)." [William O’Hare and Bill Bishop, "U.S. Rural Soldiers Account for a Disproportionately High Share of Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan," Carsey Institute, Fall 2006. PDF]
One of the study’s authors, demographer William O’Hare, is quoted:

"…..The opportunity differential between rural and urban America is probably higher now than at any time in the past. Our study highlights the price some young folks and their families are paying for lack of opportunity in rural America." [Rural America Pays the Price for War in Iraq, Alternet.org, By Tom Engelhardt, January 27, 2007]

Unfair? Maybe. But it’s the economy, not race, stupid.

Two more thoughts:

1. If we want a winning military, does it really make sense to fill it with people who don't want to be there?

2. Where do different races and ethnics get along better--in the military or on university campuses?

Dinah Shore turns over in her grave

Tragic. This is why we call it "The Land Of Fruits And Nuts". This is also why the bloodthirsty moslem savages really hate us:

ON Thursday night, as a D.J. played the 1986 Beastie Boys hit “Girls” at a divey downtown gay bar here, a handful of women, in knee socks and miniskirts, tattoos and fedoras, jumped up on the stage to dance. On the floor, dozens of women in tank tops, jeans, boots and body jewelry followed suit, grinding up against one another in threesomes and pairs, singing along: “Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls! Girls!”

In the next room, on a platform, a bikini-and-fishnet clad go-go dancer did a push-up while balanced on one foot, then jumped up to wiggle her behind at an appreciative crowd of women waving cameras and $20 bills.

Welcome to Dinah Shore Weekend, or, as it’s better known, lesbian spring break, which concludes today. An annual pilgrimage for more than three decades, it has attracted thousands of adult women to this mountain-ringed Southern California desert town, which becomes a destination for lesbians looking to party, socialize and hook up.

This party began being held to coincide with the Dinah Shore Ladies Golf Tournament. It turned into a lesbian festival sort of on its own -- it turns out that many fans of women's sports are themselves lesbians, if you can believe such a thing. (snicker)

The late great Dinah Shore must be spinning in her grave. She had a passionate affair with a then young (and 20 years younger) Burt Reynolds. You don't get any less lesbian then THAT.

(The story has it that apparently before her death she was appalled at what had been wrought in her name.)

Among the biggest changes of the post “L Word” era, said Sivan Schlecter, a marketing consultant who has helped companies like Showtime and Logo, a gay and lesbian television network, promote events here, is that “corporations pay a lot more attention to it.”

She added: “With the increase of lesbian visibility, brands now realize that women are a part of the gay market, not just men.”

Like they weren't visible already?

When I was a student at Berkeley, we had a saying: "The women who like men don't speak English and the women who speak English don't like men..." Indeed, so many of my peers and I wound up meeting, and marrying, Asian, Latina and lately Slavic immigrants. And for the most part this has worked out well. Of course, the leftists, with their "multicultural" (multicommunist) and "politically correct" (politically communist) agendas, try to create friction, even outright hatred, between the ethnics as well as the genders.

But they have NOT succeeded there as well as they have succeeded in amplifying friction between genders, in academia, in entertainment, and in the media. Could the picture below be the result? Could that be why the women below, who in another era might have been delightful blond surfer beach bunnies, potential spouses for lonely beach combing guys, now find it fashionable to disdain young men? I have no hard evidence on this, but I do have my suspicions.

What a waste....and what is sadder is the way this agenda is pushed and marketed, as we see on the t-shirts of the ladies below: "Girls! Don't try to meet the boys and marry them someday! No, you must HATE THEM!" Precisely the agenda pushed on so many coeds at most university campuses now. "Lesbian Spring Break", indeed:

In fairness, this may not be a cause, so much as it is an effect. That is, these sorts of women always existed, they are just more visible now in an age of video cameras on cellular phones.

And it may not be so much that "lesbian chic" *caused* anti-male sentiments in the culture, as it is that it *reflects* them: These women found each other, and they are so excited that it comes across as insufferable lesbian cheer leading. Just as Rush Limbaugh didn't cause conservative talk radio listeners; he filled a void that was there and waiting to be filled.

 

It may also be a phase the better looking ones go through, and frankly, the lookers tend be be far fewer in number, and these ones below make up most of the attendees, judging by the photo albums for the events, and they can pass. It's not like they were seduced into leftist moonbattery, they were Code Pinko moonbats to begin with:

And most lesbians, in the real world, who don't have the money to attend ritzy parties built around quasi athletic events like the LPGA, look more like this. In other words, fellows, no big loss:

Another question comes to mind: if homosexual activists disdain traditional gender roles, then why do they tend to divide up into what can be called copies (or parodies) of the two genders? Lesbians can be "butch" or "femme" and male homosexuals are often rugged, overly-masculine or limp-wristed feminine drama queens.