Archive for July 2010

Asked if the United States might send still more troops to Afghanistan, if the Obama surge is not succeeding by year’s end, Vice President Joe Biden answered, “I do not believe so.”

So, that is it. Biden is saying the 100,000 U.S. troops in theater or on the way is our limit. If Kabul and the Afghan army fail with this investment of American forces, they will be permitted to fail. All the chips we are going to commit are now on the table.

And a series of critical deadlines is approaching.

By the end of August, all U.S. combat troops are to be out of Iraq. Only 50,000 “training troops” are to remain, but all U.S. forces are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of 2011.

In December, a review takes place of Afghan war strategy. Next July, U.S. withdrawals are to begin, though, since naming Gen. David Petraeus as his field commander, President Obama and his cabinet have emphasized that the withdrawals will be “conditions-based.”

We will walk, not run, to the exit.

But if we are topping out in Afghanistan, and the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is already less than half of the 170,000 after the surge of 2007, it seems America is on her way out of both wars.

What did they accomplish—and at what cost?

Saddam and his Baathist regime were overthrown, the dictator was hanged, elections were held, and a government that reflects the will of a majority of Iraqis put in its place.

Cost to the United States: More than 4,200 U.S. dead, 35,000 wounded, $700 billion sunk. In the Islamic world, the Iraq War led to pandemic hostility toward America. At home, the war led to the rout of the Republicans and the election of an anti-war liberal Democrat.

If Obama is indeed leading America into socialism, the War Party that led us into Iraq can take a full measure of credit.

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The federal court decision blocking key provisions of Arizona’s immigration law from taking effect could light a fire under lawmakers considering an alternative — and some say radical — approach to reining in illegal immigration.

Lawmakers since last year have been kicking around a proposal to bar U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants from becoming U.S. citizens. Such a move, which has been ridiculed by legal scholars, would be a drastic reinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

But those supporting the move say it removes a key incentive luring illegal immigrants over the border. And with Arizona lawmakers now prohibited from requiring police to check immigration status, the option might be back on the table.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News after the Arizona ruling came down that “birthright citizenship” needs to be changed.

“I’m a practical guy, but when you go forward I don’t want 20 million more (illegal immigrants) 20 years from now,” he said. “Let’s have a system that doesn’t reward people for cheating.”
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CHANDLER - The Chandler Police Officer who lost his life during an undercover investigation in south Phoenix Wednesday night is being identified.

During a press conference Thursday, Chandler Police Chief Sherry Kiyler said that Officer Carlos Ledesma was killed during a staged drug deal. The suspected drug dealers also shot two other officers, but they will not be named in order to protect their investigation and their identities.

Of the wounded officers, one has been released and the other is in critical but stable condition.

Chief Kiyler said all three of the officers were married and have young children. Ledesma was a father of two.

“As we prepare to pay our respects to our fallen hero… we are truly grateful for the overwhelming support we have received,” says Kiyler. “The events of last night are a grim reminder of the challenges that are faced by our law enforcement officers. As we mourn our loss and the loss of our community… we renew our pledge to safeguard the freedom and security of our citizens.”
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Channel 4 has been accused of under-representing white people because it is obsessed with ethnic minorities.

The broadcaster has come under fire from an MP who suggested a series of diversity schemes it has run discriminate against whites.

Conservative MP Philip Davies yesterday attacked the political correctness at the company saying it should employ people on merit.

The broadcaster’s chairman, Lord Burns, and its chief executive, David Abraham, appeared before MPs sitting on the Culture, Media and Sport committee, to answer questions on Channel 4’s recently-released annual report.

Obsessed with ethnic minorities: A scene from Channel 4’s Meet The Armish

At the session Mr Davies said schemes like a recent bursary for African, Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani students, were effectively depriving white people of the same equal opportunities.

He asked why, given that Channel 4 already had 12 per cent of its staff from an ethnic minority background, as compared with eight per cent of the general public, it needed special programmes like these.

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PHOENIX - Opponents of Arizona’s immigration crackdown went ahead with protests Thursday despite a judge’s ruling that delayed enforcement of most the law , and more than 50 people were arrested in various parts of downtown Phoenix.

Gov. Jan Brewer called U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s Wednesday’s decision halting the law ” a bump in the road ,” and her spokesman said they’d appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco later Thursday.

Outside the state Capitol, hundreds of protesters began marching at dawn , gathering in front of the federal courthouse where Bolton issued her ruling on Wednesday. They marched on to the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made a crackdown on illegal immigration one of his signature issues.

At least eight protesters approached a police line and allowed themselves to be arrested. A group of about two dozen protesters then sat down in the middle of the street or refused to leave, and police arrested them as well.

Earlier, three people were detained at the courthouse after apparently entering a closed-off area. Former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002, was among them.
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If damaging evidence against affirmative action turns up in a pro-affirmative action book, the author often explains it away as misunderstood or exaggerated. This has happened once again, this time to a book that made no splash when it was published last October, but drew attention here at Minding the Campus in criticism that spread to Ross Douthat’s column in The New York Times, Pat Buchanan’s syndicated column and now Time magazine.

The book is No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, a careful study of admission practices at eight unnamed elite colleges by Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade and a research associate, Alexandria Walton Radford. Writing here on July 12th in an article headlined, “How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others,” Russell K. Nieli of Princeton wrote that the book reported an immense admissions disadvantage to Asians (because admissions officers think there are already too many in the best colleges) and poor whites, who are penalized by favoritism, not only for blacks and Hispanics, but also for whites with middle-class and upper-class backgrounds. None of the criticism that greeted Nieli’s article has focused on the anti-Asian bias. All of it has dealt with the slim chances of poor whites at the most selective colleges.

Time magazine this week interviewed Espenshade about Douthat’s charges that elite education seems inclined to exclude the poor of red-state America. (The book does not mention red-state America at all.) Espenshade said this:

What I think he did was take a relatively minor finding and push an interpretation that goes beyond the bounds of available evidence. We have this finding that if students held leadership positions or won awards in career-oriented extracurricular activities when they were in high school, there was a slightly negative impact on their chances of being admitted to one of these top private schools. Now, what are these career-oriented activities? Douthat mentions as possibilities, and I don’t deny it, that it could be participating in a 4-H club or Future Farmers of America, but those aren’t the only types of activities that might fall into that broader category. It could include Junior ROTC. It could include co-op work programs. It could include a host of things. And these aren’t necessarily rural types of activities. My interpretation is that [having leadership positions or winning awards in career-oriented activities] suggests to admission deans that these folks are somewhat ambivalent about their academic future.

Pioneers! O Pioneers! by Walt Whitman

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
blood intervein’d,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang’d and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon’d mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill’d,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill’d.
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Life’s involv’d and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day’s procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock’d and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call–hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!–swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Immigrant workers in New York City are more likely to have a job than their U.S.-born counterparts, according to a new analysis by an economic policy group.

Some 8.8% of New York immigrants were unemployed in the first five months of this year, compared with 10.9% of U.S.-born workers in the city, according the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning economic policy group.

Both groups saw their unemployment rate surge in the recession, but labor experts say that some low-wage service jobs have returned to provide some relief to foreign-born workers in the city.

“In tough economic times, immigrants are more likely to send people into the labor force,” said James Parrott, deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute. “They are likely to take the first job that comes along,” he said. Participation in the labor force—the proportion of working-age people who have jobs or are actively looking for one—also favored immigrants. The labor-force participation rate for immigrants in the city was 64.1%, compared with 57.1% for natives.

While industries such as construction and manufacturing still haven’t recovered, immigrants might be finding more opportunity doing odd jobs and in part-time work, said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center.
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Public confidence in Congress has plummeted to the lowest level of any institution since Gallup began asking the question in 1973. One-half of all Americans have little or no confidence in the Congress.

Only 11 percent have a “great deal” or “a lot of” confidence in what is, given its place of primacy in the Constitution, the first branch of government and the branch most representative of the people.

The house of such giants as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and Henry Cabot Lodge, the greatest legislative body in the world that was home to John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” who decided the questions of war and peace, Reconstruction and civil rights is now looked upon with pervasive mistrust.

Of the 16 major institutions of which the question was asked, Congress’ closest competitor for the least trusted was HMOs.

And this poll was taken after President Obama achieved what is being hailed by his party as the greatest legislative accomplishment since Medicare and Social Security.

Not only is this bad news for the Democratic Party this fall, it is reflective of the disdain if not contempt in which the nation’s political class is held by those they govern. Three times as many Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court as have in Congress.

And though Obama has been through a rough patch, three times as many Americans retain confidence in his office as have confidence in the Congress. Even when Bush was at his nadir, in 2008, 26 percent professed a high level of confidence in the presidency, more than twice those who today have confidence in the institution led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

This would also seem to be bad news for democracy, as the closest competitor to Congress in public disregard was the 2008 Congress that enjoyed the trust of only one in eight Americans.

But the poll reveals even more about us as a people.
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