Archive for April 2009

Patrick J. Buchanan

Does Barack Obama understand the people he leads? Do his aides?

These may seem cheeky questions to ask of a team that just won the presidency. But there is something in their cool, insouciant, blasé demeanor, in the face of insults to their country, that suggests there yet exists a chasm—between them and us.

Now, the change since the 1960s in the character of the nation has been great. The moral and social sappers spawned by that decade have done their work well. But Middle America yet remains a blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, God-and-country kind of nation.

We are not Europe—yet.

Most Americans remain visceral patriots. It’s in the DNA.

What almost cost Bill Clinton the presidency in 1992 was not that he had opposed the Vietnam War, but that, it was said, he marched against his country while in a foreign country.

When Barack confided to friends in San Francisco that he was having trouble in Pennsylvania because these folks “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them … as a way to explain their frustrations,” he revealed that he does not really understand a part of the nation he now leads.

It is this part of America that does not comprehend how the president could sit in Trinidad and listen to the scrub stock of the hemisphere trash our country—and say nothing.
[Read more]

COPENHAGEN (AFP) — A grenade tossed into a cafe, gunfire in the street, dead bodies splayed on the pavement, residents living in fear — all sounds out of sync with the medieval cobbled streets and copper roofs of the Danish capital.

but a bloody gang war between bikers and youths of immigrant origin has shattered Copenhagen’s customary calm and jolted officials to boost action against violence that has left three dead and 17 wounded in seven months.

“Youths of immigrant origin” - Orwellian deathspeak.

Two more attacks this week — one Friday using a hand grenade — heightened alarm, even if police would not immediately link them to gangs.

I have been reporting on the civil war raging against the west in European capitals. It’s very bad in Denmark.
[Read more]

Human nature is one of those things that everybody talks about but no one can define precisely. Every time we fall in love, fight with our spouse, get upset about the influx of immigrants into our country, or go to church, we are, in part, behaving as a human animal with our own unique evolved nature—human nature.

This means two things. First, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are produced not only by our individual experiences and environment in our own lifetime but also by what happened to our ancestors millions of years ago. Second, our thoughts, feelings, and behavior are shared, to a large extent, by all men or women, despite seemingly large cultural differences.

Human behavior is a product both of our innate human nature and of our individual experience and environment. In this article, however, we emphasize biological influences on human behavior, because most social scientists explain human behavior as if evolution stops at the neck and as if our behavior is a product almost entirely of environment and socialization. In contrast, evolutionary psychologists see human nature as a collection of psychological adaptations that often operate beneath conscious thinking to solve problems of survival and reproduction by predisposing us to think or feel in certain ways. Our preference for sweets and fats is an evolved psychological mechanism. We do not consciously choose to like sweets and fats; they just taste good to us.

The implications of some of the ideas in this article may seem immoral, contrary to our ideals, or offensive. We state them because they are true, supported by documented scientific evidence. Like it or not, human nature is simply not politically correct.
[Read more]

From a friend at Washington State University:

Our student newspaper, the Daily Evergreen, has run a series this week on illegal immigrants who attend WSU and what the University does to to help them.

They are admitted under a program called 1079. The University helps them find money for college, and on their transcripts describes them as “citizens” but lists no Social Security number.

The Evergreen’s coverage is best described as “fawning,” and they are running the stories to support the DREAM Act which is before Congress. I guess the University thinks that since this is all going to be legal soon anyway there is no harm in talking about it.

I am surprised that WSU has the legal authority to misrepresent the immigration status of students on official documents, and if I weren’t two months from finishing my Ph.D. I would like to ask our president a) what legal authority the University has for putting false information on official documents, and b) in what other circumstances can the University lie on its documents, and c) where does a state institution get the authority to disregard Federal laws?

I would dearly love for a journalist with some national stature to ask the University these questions. Perhaps this is going on at state universities all over the country.

Here, here, and here are the links to the Evergreen articles.
[Read more]

For a second straight week a student group at UNC-Chapel Hill hosted a controversial speaker.

Last week, it was former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, an outspoken foe of illegal immigration. It did not end well.

Exactly one week later it was another former congressman, Virgil Goode, who opposes multiculturalism, mass immigration and affirmative action.

Same scenario. Better outcome.

Tancredo had tried to have his say but could not, heckled and jeered from the start. Protesters even unfurled a banner in front of Tancredo, blocking the audience’s view of him.

Campus police at one point had to resort to pepper spray. A window was broken.

This time Goode, invited to speak, as was Tancredo, by Youth for Western Civilization, was allowed to deliver his entire 20-minute speech. Six protesters who attempted to disrupt Goode were calmly escorted out of the student union auditorium and arrested by campus police.

[...]

Youth for Western Civilization Website:

http://www.westernyouth.org
[Read more]

U.S. health officials expressed concern Friday that a swine flu virus that has infected eight people in the United States matches samples of a virus that has killed at least 68 people in Mexico.
Swine flu is usually diagnosed only in pigs or people in regular contact with them.

Swine flu is usually diagnosed only in pigs or people in regular contact with them.

U.S. health experts also are concerned because more than 1,000 people have fallen ill in Mexico City in a short period of time.

“This situation has been developing quickly,” said acting CDC director Richard Besser. “This is something we are worried about.”

Of the 14 Mexican samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seven were identical to the swine flu virus found in Texas and Southern California, Besser said at a news conference.

The eighth U.S. case was reported Friday. Video Watch for more on the U.S. cases »

All of the eight U.S. patients have recovered, Besser said.

As a precaution to avoid further contamination, schools and universities in Mexico City and the state of Mexico were closed Friday, said the national health secretary, Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos. He said the schools may remain closed for a while.
[Read more]

Last Sunday one of my readers wrote to me after reading In the woods with Obama. That he liked and agreed with it was almost less important almost than his following description of a recent personal trip.

He wrote, “I just returned from a 2 day drive up I-75 to Toledo, Ohio, for the North American Modern Engineering Expo (talk about a bunch of old geeks and gomers!. . . . Moi was one of them, I guess . . . ) and watched the country as we rode along to and from . . .

“The once industrial heartland of this great country is nearly dead . . . Vast factories are empty and idle, huge retail and merchandise areas are empty, the City of Toledo was laying off 150 employees (cops and firemen) and cutting the rest to a 32 hour week . . . And, so it goes!

“I am convinced that our New Messiah, in spite of the continuing adulation by all the O’Cultists, is but a continuation of what we have had in power throughout my lifetime . . . There was never a prayer of real change with election of either of the mainstream candidates (nor ever will be). Very sad.

“Anyway, keep up the fight! In Peace and Hope . . .”

For privacy’s sake, I omit his name. But this tone of sadness from heartland American got to me. Somehow it’s not that different than what we’re experiencing in New York with huge city and state deficits, huge job losses on Wall Street, in the retail sector, every sector.
[Read more]

New research shows that Neanderthals can be genetically divided into at least three different races:

The conclusions of this study are consistent with existing paleoanthropological research and show that Neanderthals can be divided into at least three groups: one in western Europe, a second in the Southern area and a third in western Asia.
[Read more]

In praising the tea parties one week, and then defending the Bush administration’s policies on torture and criticizing Obama’s diplomacy efforts the next week, talk radio has shifted conservatives’ focus from fighting government to defending it, and Bush Republicanism is hardly worth defending…