Cuba

Forget the Good Old Days

Prepare yourself for your eventual
Cuban Vacation...
This Ain't Ricky Ricardo

Now, This had me rolling...

In 1999 Cuban Minister of Culture declared Rap to be "an authentic expression of Cuban Culture".  In 2002 the Cuban government formed the Agencia Cubana de Rap, or the Cuban Rap Agency. Enjoy your government approved music...

For those whose tastes tend toward the more cerebral, the Instituto Superior de Arte has more to offer...

So, what do you think, are you ready for your Cuban Vacation?

Rod McKuen, RIP

NEW YORK (AP) — Rod McKuen, the husky-voiced "King of Kitsch" whose music, verse and spoken-word recordings in the 1960s and '70s won him an Oscar nomination and made him one of the best-selling poets in history, has died. He was 81.

[...]

Sentimental, earnest and unashamed, he conjured a New Age spirit world that captivated those who didn't ordinarily like "poetry" and those who craved relief from the war, assassinations and riots of the time.

"I think it's a reaction people are having against so much insanity in the world," he once said. "I mean, people are really all we've got. You know it sounds kind of corny, and I suppose it's a cliche, but it's really true; that's just the way it is."

His best known songs, some written with the Belgian composer Jacques Brel, include "Birthday Boy," ''A Man Alone," ''If You Go Away" and "Seasons In the Sun," a chart-topper in 1974 for Terry Jacks. He was nominated for an Oscar for "Jean" and for "A Boy Named Charlie Brown," the title track for the beloved Peanuts movie. (USA Today)

* * *

I remember Rod McKuen playing a warm, quirky version of himself on one episode of the cartoon series, The Critic ("What is a poem but a song without a tune?"), but I really loved his lyrical and vocal contribution to A Boy Named Charlie Brown.  He captured the innocence and melancholy of Charles Schultz's work.  I saw that movie as a youngster at a Saturday matinee, and I'm not ashamed to say I have the DVD and still watch it every now and then.

I never knew much about Rod McKuen, but he always struck me as a kindly grandfather who would play children's games with you without fear of being seen as silly or sappy.  I missed out on McKuen's best years, but here are a few of my musical favorites.


Title Track from A Boy Named Charlie Brown



Seasons in the Sun, by Terry Jacks



Rod McKuen playing himself in the cartoon series, The Critic

Checkers and Chess

The Obama Administration, seeking to "make history" and provide an opportunity for Mr. Obama to appear presidential, is rushing to normalize relations with Cuba at any cost.

President Obama is like that naive man, wet behind the ears, who walks into the Castro Car Dealership wanting that sexy hot rod so badly, he'll pay anything for it. A cardinal rule of negotiations is that whoever wants the deal more is at a disadvantage.

Meanwhile, the Castro Brothers play chess:

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) — Cuban President Raul Castro demanded on Wednesday that the United States return the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, lift the half-century trade embargo on Cuba and compensate his country for damages before the two nations re-establish normal relations.

The Communist dictator also "demanded that the U.S. end the transmission of anti-Castro radio and television broadcasts and deliver "just compensation to our people for the human and economic damage that they're suffered.""  He insisted, "if these problems aren't resolved, this diplomatic rapprochement wouldn't make any sense."

Why isn't President Obama Making the Following Demands?

• Repatriate stolen property.
• Open shuttered opposition newspapers and let the satirists, artists and dissidents out of the communist dungeons. 
• Allow dissidents to travel in and out of Cuba freely. 
• End Russia's military presence on the island.

Instead, we get hopium-filled platitudes from Obama Spokesmouths:

The Obama administration says removing barriers to U.S. travel, remittances and exports to Cuba is a tactical change that supports the United States' unaltered goal of reforming Cuba's single-party political system and centrally planned economy.

So, in a nutshell, Obama's Grand Strategy is:  

Step 1:  Open embassies and remove travel restrictions
Step 2: Cuba is free.

But seriously, does anyone know what President Obama's goals and objectives are in dealing with Cuba?

Anti-communist Nixon went to China, ending an uneasy partnership of convenience between China and the USSR, building trust and dialog between our governments, opening up trade markets between our countries, and setting China on its course of liberalization.  All wins for the United States as well as the Chinese people.

More Questions than Answers

Can President Obama be trusted to drive a hard bargain?  He has already handed over billions to the Iranian fascists in exchange for the privilege of continuing to talk with them.
What US goals are advanced by Obama's rapprochement with Cuba?
How does this further US interests?
How does it benefit us as a nation?
What does Cuba's communist dictatorship regime give up?
What do we, The United States of America, get out of the bargain?
Will any of this benefit the Cuban people?

Contemporary Marxist-Leninists believe Uncle Sam's sole purpose is to serve up Cuba on a platter to politically-connected oligarchs who will buy her, sell her and milk her dry all in the name of capitalism.  I hate to say it, but that is the most plausible explanation I have heard so far.

One final question:  Who do you think wants this deal more, the fascists who run Cuba's communist gulag, or the Obama Administration?

Dealing with the Devil

Wearing a disabled explosives belt and a white headscarf and wringing her hands as she spoke, an Iraqi woman calmly described how she tried and failed to join her husband in a suicide attack on a hotel wedding party. Millions of viewers across Jordan and the region watched as Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi gave her televised confession.

"My husband detonated [his bomb] and I tried to explode [mine,] but it wouldn't," the 35-year-old al-Rishawi said.  Taipei Times

Islamic State militants announced that a Jordanian pilot would be executed "immediately" if a convicted hotel bomber is not delivered to the Turkish border by sunset Thursday.  Jordan said it was ready to swap al-Rishawi, convicted of a deadly terrorist attack on a hotel, if the Jordanian pilot held by Islamic State militants "is released unharmed,'' Jordan's state-run news agency, Petra, said.  USA Today

Al-Rishawa was convicted and sentenced to death by a Jordanian court for her participation in an attack that killed 38 people and is currently pending appeal. So what do you think?  Do we deal with the devil? 

Juneau the Capital of Alaska

Okay, it's an old joke.  The picture above is of Juno, daughter of Saturn, wife of Jupiter, mother to Mars and Vulcan, and also coincidentally the Weather Channel's name for the recent northeast snowstorm.  Dare I call it a blizzard? I'm sure some of you out on Long Island, perhaps those of you in New England may agree... those of you in New York or Philly may laugh.

From Snowmageddon to Snowpocolypse, Nemo to Juno, the naming of winter storms is a marketing ploy, even the National Weather Service has accused "for-profit" forecasters of over-hyping these storms to the point of panic.  There is no doubt the advertised forecast was wrong (for most in the mid-Atlantic states), yet many of the models indicated a more eastward track of the storm, along with more accurate snowfall predictions, the NOAA GFS model nailed it.

So the question is this... are "Mediarologists" hyping storms for ratings and profit?  What do you think? 

Obamacare Update

Well the Congressional Budget Office January 2015 outlook on Obamacare is in... $1.993 Trillion offset by $643 Billion in new revenue for an offset cost of $1.35 Trillion dollars for 2016-2025.

Insuring 24-27 million Americans at a "government" price tag of $50,000 a head, and that doesn't include the increase in your insurance premiums to help offset the cost.  I don't know about all of you but the health care premium rate increase this year was  20%, on top of the 10% increase from last year.

So that's the government footing a portion of the bill at $5000 a head per year. Compare that to the British National Health Service that foots the whole bill for everyone at a cost of $3405 a head (The Economist).

That said... $1.35 Trillion dollars later there will still be between 29 and 31 million uninsured.

As P.T Barnum said "There's a Sucker born every minute".

Whose Jobs?

Obama's progressive fanboys and fangirls, desperately shouting themselves hoarse in the vain effort to paint their hero as an economic champion, resort to tricks, superficial data gathering, and have even pointed out how great Wall Street is doing!

Meanwhile, Main Street limps along, lined now with big conglomerate banks that have the lawyers, tax cheats, financial sorcerers and government connections to overcome the tons of toxic bureaucratic sludge dumped on them after Bush's gang crashed the economy in 2008.  Many local banks were sucked under in the DC mudslide or were bought out by the big guys.

The economy is recovering, but the Obama presidency has seen the weakest economic recovery ever in the nation's history.  He has also presided over the most anemic jobs recovery ever, squeaking out a bare 5 million or so net new jobs in his six years as president, for a net total of 1.2 million new jobs since December 2007, the high water mark for jobs before the Great Recession.  If you think Obama's job growth sounds good, consider we added over 12 million people to our population in that timeframe. 

If the numbers confuse you, here is a quick chart based upon US government statistics.  Essentially, Bush bled out jobs in 2008, and the trend didn't reverse until well into Obama's first term, where only statistical trickery kept him from being a net job loss president.

Year         Workforce Size
Dec 2007 ... 146,273,000
Jan 2009 ... 142,152,000
Jan 2013 ... 143,328,000
Dec 2014 ... 147,442,000

Who created those jobs?
Economics professor and AEI scholar Mark J. Perry makes a bold statement:

Job creation in just one state – Texas – is solely responsible for the 1.169 million net increase in total US employment (+1,444,290 Texas jobs minus the 275,290 non-Texas job loss) in the seven year period between the start of the Great Recession in December 2007 and December 2014.

The other 49 states and the District of Columbia together employ about 275,000 fewer Americans than at the start of the recession seven years ago, while the Lone Star State has added more than 1.25 million payroll jobs and more than 190,000 non-payroll jobs (primarily self-employed and farm workers).  (Texas Job Growth)

He produced this chart to illustrate his point:

Immigrants Got the Jobs
The good folks at Center for Immigration Studies point out that all net job growth went to immigrants:

The BLS reports that 23.1 million adult (16-plus) immigrants (legal and illegal) were working in November 2007 and 25.1 million were working in November of this year — a two million increase.

For natives,124.01 million were working in November 2007 compared 122.56 million in November 2014 — a 1.46 million decrease.  (Employment Growth has gone to Immigrants)

These are tip of the iceberg numbers.  There was a lot of gross job destruction and creation between 2007 and now.

My question is, does any of this matter?  Could the average citizen understand it and put it into context that matters to their lives?

Additional Resources:
A Brief History of US Unemployment
Interactive Unemployment Rate Finder
Jobs Created by Presidential Term

Do we have a Middle East Strategy?

“we’re partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.” Barrack Obama - State of the Union

Since 2012, the United States has tried to build a “partnership” against al-Qaeda with President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, training selected Yemeni counterterrorism units and providing close to $1 billion in aid. Mr. Hadi, in turn, has allowed the CIA and Pentagon to use drone strikes to directly target militants deemed to be plotting against the United States. Washington Post

Two days after the State of the Union Address Yemen fell to Iranian sponsored Houthi rebels.

So I ask again, do we have a Middle East strategy?

Saturday Sessions: Bluegrass

This isn't a post about Politics

Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the New York Assembly was arrested yesterday on corruption charges.  Silver, whose state salary is $120,000, has earned millions.

“For many years, New Yorkers have asked the question, ‘How could Speaker Silver, one of the most powerful men in New York, earn millions of dollars in outside income without deeply compromising his ability to honestly serve his constituents?’” said US Attorney Bharara. “Today we provide the answer: He didn’t.”

Silver collected more than $3.2 million in referral fees from the law firm after directing more than 100 clients to Weitz & Luxenberg for asbestos litigation, according to the complaint.  But not a single one of the firm's clients ever contacted Silver or spoke with the politician about their cases, even as the law firm kept paying the fees. New York Daily News


NY Mayor De Blasio had this to say:

“Although the charges announced today certainly are very serious I want to note that I’ve always known Shelly Silver to be a man of integrity and he certainly has due process rights and I think it’s important that we let the judicial process play out,”

Due process rights he didn't extend to Michael Grimm (R-NY) who he immediately called upon to resign when charged. 

This isn't a post about Football

This is a post about morals, ethics, and the lack thereof.

In Sunday's AFC Championship game between the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts all the footballs were inspected two hours and fifteen minutes before the game, by half-time 11 of the 12 New England footballs were under-inflated by 2-3 pounds. Coincidence? Not likely, one ball may have had a slow leak, possibly two, but when 92% of the footballs you're playing with are under-inflated it's obvious what happened... someone let the air out.

Game day was cold, it was also rainy, a cold wet under-inflated football is marginally easier to catch and grip than a cold wet fully inflated one.  Did this make a difference in the game?  Maybe, but probably not by a 45-7 margin.  If you didn't know, each team uses its own balls while on offense, how much do you want to bet that the one properly inflated ball was reserved for New England's field goal attempts?

This isn't the first time New England and its coach has been involved in controversy surrounded by ethical questions and accusations of cheating.  In 2007 Head Coach Bill Belichick was fined $500,000, the team was fined $250,000 and lost a first round draft pick for filming the New York Jets Defensive Coach's hand signals.

Cheating and unsportsmanlike conduct should not be tolerated, disqualify the New England Patriots, ban Bill Belichick from the NFL (as head coach he's responsible), and send the Colts to the Superbowl against Seattle.

As a side note, I am an Eagles fan. I would have rooted for the Broncos as a current resident of Colorado if they were in it, and as a former resident of Massachusetts I would have rooted for New England against Seattle in the Superbowl as I rooted for Green Bay in the NFC Championship.  That said, I would have the same opinion of cheating if it were the Eagles at the center of this controversy.

State of the Union

So, what did you think of the State of the Union Address? Rather than pontificate with my opinion, below are some of the highlights of proposals.  I may have missed some, so feel free to add or opine on the below.

7-days Paid Sick/Maternity Leave
$3000 Childcare Tax Credit
Equal Pay for Equal Work
Free Community College
A Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan
Presidential Trade Promotion Authority
Precision Medicine Initiative
Re-energized Space Program
Fund Infrastructure and Basic Research
Close Corporate Tax Loopholes
Authorization for Use of Force against ISIL
End Cuban Embargo
Bipartisan Cyber Security Bill
Close GITMO
Reform the Criminal Justice System

Some proposals are fairly concrete, others fairly vague.  What did you think of the overall message and the highlights outlined above?

I'll go ahead and get you started: Equal Pay for Equal Work

How can you guarantee women equal pay for equal work when you can't guarantee equal pay for "equal work" between two male employees since you can't guarantee equal performance?  In my experience no two employees produce equal work, some frankly are quite better than others.  Of course we're not talking assembly line work here, we're talking exempt salaried technical professionals.  Some folks in ostensibly the same job require far more supervision, quality control, and intervention than others.  

In the company I work for, each employee negotiates his or her own starting salary based on education, experience, and expertise and while there are some across the board pay raises for such things as cost of living adjustments there are also incentive pay raises based on individual performance.  There are women that make more than their male counterparts and vice versa.  How do you equalize pay when you can't equalize performance?

GAY TV

Sappho & Erinna by Simeon Solomon 1864

Billy Crystal recently found himself in hot water with the following comment to the Television Critics Association regarding gay sex:

"Sometimes, it’s just pushing it a little too far for my taste and I’m not going to reveal to you which ones they are. I hope people don't abuse it and shove it in our face to the point where it feels like an every-day kind of thing,"

So the question is, is Hollywood pushing gay sex on TV and in the movies? According to the Washington Post the National Center for Health Statistics puts the number of gay and bisexual Americans at less than 3%. More specifically, 1.8% of men and 1.5% of women self-identify as homosexual.

So where is Hollywood at?

Curiously that liberal bastion of "thought" Thinkprogress completely ignores homosexuality in their analysis of TV character demographics although helpfully provides that 9.6% of us would be doctors if reality mirrored TV. 

GLAAD reports that among 109 scripted prime-time shows featuring 796 regular characters, 26 are gay and 771 a ratio that works out to 3.3% for the 2013-2014 broadcast year, the previous years ration was 4.1%.

So it is possible that there are slightly more homosexuals on TV as you would find in real life, but those are just characters, not characters having sex.  Demographic numbers on TV sex scenes were a little harder to come by.  

A study by the National Institute of Health for the 2001-2002 and 2002-2003 seasons found that sexual content associated with non-heterosexuals was found in 15% of content, although the overall occurrence was low. Curious to note that gay sex content increased almost 15% while heterosexual content increased only 7%.

One thing is for sure, Americans massively overestimate the number of homosexuals among us.  Overall US adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian, only 4% correctly identify that the true number is less than 5%.

In another GLAAD study of 138 shows, 86% had at least one gay character... how many do you think had an overtly self-identified Christian (76% of the population) character?

So what do you think? Is gay sex overrepresented on television?  

Eric Holder Strikes a Blow for Liberty

We had to wait six years, but finally, Attorney General Eric Holder does something good and useful.

U.S. attorney general bans asset seizure by local police

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - State and local police in the United States will no longer be able to use federal laws to justify seizing property without evidence of a crime, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday.

Local governments act as criminal gangs, stealing people's property. The worst of it is, if you are found not guilty, your property may be gone. If not, you have to pay massive storage fees to get your property out of impoundment.  I wrote about this back in 2010: 

How a working man in Denver lost his truck and his tools...

Mechanic Robin McAnally was driving to a work site in his GMC and needed a place to turn his rig around, so he went down a side street and as he was turning around, a woman opened the passenger side door, hopped in and offered him a Lewinski.  He turned her down, she got out and he headed back up the street.  Before he could get back onto the main thoroughfare, armed men came out of nowhere and forced him to stop and get out of his truck.

They took him to a warehouse where he realized he was not the only victim.  He was surrounded by others who had met a similar fate.  The armed men were taunting the victims as they made each man pose in front of his vehicle before it was towed away.

Criminal activity?  Yes, But...

I just described a “reverse john” sting staged by the Denver Police Department.  Robin was found not guilty by a jury of his peers after only 15 minutes deliberation.

Now exonerated, Robin went down to the Denver impound yard to retrieve his truck, only to be subjected to further abuse by the City of Denver. They informed him he must still pay $5,000 to get it back, even though he has done nothing wrong.

Illegal immigrants rob and kill, gangs run rampant, even killing a Denver Bronco football player, but the Denver Police have nothing better to do than entrap innocent citizens trying to get through a work day? And the city insists on collecting all fees even when they wrongly impounded the vehicle? This is state-sponsored theft.

Big Government Progressivism!  Behold Thy Fearsome Results!

Local talk show host Peter Boyles featured this story on his morning show, and boy did the progressive statists come out of the woodwork to criticize this man and stand up for a tyrannical government:

One person said it served him right driving through that bad neighborhood and he should learn a lesson from it.

Many noted that the man said his truck wasn’t worth the $5,000 impound fee so he should just forget it.

Activists scream that Denver's impoundment law violates the rights of illegal immigrants since they often drive with no license, no plates, no insurance, no right to be in the country...  But not one of the shrieking socialists stood up for a wrongly-charged man who needs his truck and tools to earn his bread.


Progressive Statism Destroys All It Touches, including Denver

I lived in Denver when I was a young man.  It was a nice place, full of working class people, college students and downtown yuppies.  Now it’s a fetid sewer, homeless bums wandering downtown, gangs shooting it out nightly, illegal immigrants taking over whole neighborhoods and killing citizens with drunk driving and outright murder.

Leftwing Libertinism disguised as liberalism twists a culture, causing a society to eat itself from the inside out like ants in a rotten log.

Denver can’t stop gangs from running rampant, and it has no will to stop illegal immigrants from bleeding the city dry, but it can sure go after law-abiding taxpayers to fund it all!  This dysfunction is not just confined to this once-great city.  This is a cancer that is progressively rotting the soul of this nation.
 
The heavy-handed state knows how to treat innocent citizens like criminals, but cannot stop the real criminals.  Over 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11, but nobody lost their job.  Government officials who strip search us at airports can’t stop someone with a security clearance from harvesting a treasure trove of secrets and releasing them to the public.  Those charged with protecting us have failed, so they’ve turned on us, treating us all as criminals in the process.

Progressives of all parties dream of a Utopia America, while we realists dream of simple competence where lawbreakers are rolled up and law-abiding citizens are left to their liberties.

I want to congratulate Attorney General Holder for dealing a blow to tyranny and championing personal liberty.

Now, if I could only figure out why he did it...  

Thoughts on Religion and Government

“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

~ Benjamin Frankin

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.

~ Thomas Paine

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

~ George Washington

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

Saturday Sessions: The Middle Eastern Influence

There was a time, not too long ago, in which things middle-eastern were celebrated and romanticized in the West.  

Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade celebrates the Persian Queen and storyteller of 1001 Nights

Led Zeppelin's Kashmir is based upon middle-eastern modal tuning and musical patterns common in Moroccan and Middle-Eastern music.

From the serious to the silly...

Kiss Kiss is actually an English cover of a popular Turkish song Simarik by Tarkan Tevetoglu, both versions appear below:

 

Freedom of Speech and of the Press

These are foundational principles upon which this great nation was founded.  It is not mainstream speech that needs protection, saying what everyone else is saying, doing what everyone else is doing, and believing what everyone else is believing is fairly safe, it is only the speech of the outliers, the obnoxious, those swimming against the stream that require the protections offered by the first amendment.

Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, these are the things that put the David Dukes and Westboro Baptist Churches of our world on your evening news.  The man in funny shoes, hat, and a dress (Pope Francis) says "You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others, You cannot make fun of the faith of others."  That's funny, considering his primary job is to preach the gospel of a man that was provocative and insulting to the powers that be, It's not readily documented but I'm pretty sure he made fun of the Pharisees too.  Under the rules outlined by the Pope I'm sure Jesus would have been jailed for "hate speech", he certainly would have been jailed today for vandalizing the money-lenders in the temple.  I certainly found it surprising that the #1 disciple of Jesus today would (half-jokingly) punch you for insulting his mother, but he's Latin American so culturally I suppose we need to forgive him for his machismo.

But this isn't a post about religion, it's a poach about speech.  I wonder if those of you willing to restrict the speech of those offending Islam would be willing to toss Arne Niklas Jansson and the members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster in jail?

Fair Use: (c) Arne Niklas Jansson

Are they not making fun of someone's religion?

The Creation of Adam: Michelangelo

I made fun of the Pope above, should I be jailed? My speech restricted?  Is it a hate crime?  I certainly don't hate the Pope or the Catholic Church. Now my intent is certainly different from Charlie Hebdo, I poke my fun good-naturedly, their intent is to ridicule, to expose as farcical not only Islam but the aforementioned Catholic Church, and all religion. Many Christians found this offensive, to the point of vandalism and death threats.

Piss Christ: Andres Serrano

Indeed many Christians found this next film offensive and it was banned in Ireland, Norway, and by several UK town councils. 

What is offensive is quite relative, I find none of the works displayed here offensive, I'm sure some of you will find some, or all of them offensive. Are you willing to ban them? 

There is a fine line between Freedom of Speech and oppression.

SLATE

 

Is Diversity Perversity?

Modern Western nations continue to absorb unassimilable people who flee their failed societies, treading water and clinging tightly to their cultural contagion and societal dysfunction. 

Diversity has become one more progressive shibboleth a person must bow down to in order to not be considered a closet klansman. But what's so great about diversity anyway? Here's Fred Reed's take:

"Diversity is a disaster. Why people cannot see this is a mystery. A country can ignore an unfortunate reality, but it cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring it. Why governments allow and even encourage immigration of incompatible populations is a greater mystery. Few things cause more misery, hatred, death, and destruction than does diversity. One may wish it were not so, but it is so." (Fred on Everything-Diversity)

Kneejerks on the left would rush to label Fred Reed a rightwing racist, without pausing to find out he was a beat reporter with liberal leanings and a big Pentagon skeptic. He also lives in Mexico and is married to a Mexican woman. Like Orwell, he unapologetically calls 'em like he sees 'em, admits his biases, can level criticisms at others without either demonizing them or apologizing for it, and can appreciate the good in something without idolizing it.

More on diversity from Fred:

Some examples of diversity: Chechens and Russians. Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants. Tamils and Sinhalese. French and Moslems. Dutch and Moslems. Swedes and Moslems. Germans and Moslems. Turks and Armenians. Whites and blacks in South Africans. Ugandans and Indians. Cambodians and Vietnamese. Blacks, whites, and browns in the United States. Jews and Germans. Jews and the rest almost everywhere. Hindus and Moslems. Sunnis and Shias. Turks and Kurds. Tutsis and Hutus. Moslems and Israelis in Palestine."

Indeed, even the Western diversity fetishists who enjoy token interaction with exotic peoples prefer hanging with their own kind...

"Distaste for diversity of almost any kind runs through societies. Liberals associate chiefly with liberals, conservatives with conservatives, military people with military people, the rich with the rich, the highly intelligent with the highly intelligent, the young with the young."

He continues by observing that examples of successful diversity are really due to assimilation: Jews, Italians and Irish here in America, for example. They blended into the melting pot. Same can be said of second- and third-generation Hispanics, and to a much greater extent, Asians. The better assimilated enjoy greater economic success and social mobility.

"We may tolerate others if the distinctions are not too great, or if we are not forced into excessive contact."

Same goes for Europe, which has never been a US-style melting pot. Europeans are insular, tradition-bound, and generally suspicious of outsiders.  They love traveling to distant lands and vacationing among the exotics, but they are much less joyful about a family of immigrants moving in next door. I over-generalize, but no one likes special snowflake outsiders moving in and loudly demanding a societal remodeling. The immigrants who succeed in Europe are the ones who dive in and adapt to the culture and its social mores instead of railing against them.  The nicest people in Seville, Spain are the Muslims.

What Can We Do?

Allowing unassimilable immigrants to squat down in cultural and linguistic ghettos carved out of a larger nation that is alien to them is harmful to them and to the host nation.  By studying successful immigrants, government should be able to develop methodologies to predict how well a prospective immigrant will adapt to her new surroundings.  If the prospect is low, reject the visa application.  Governments should demand that the applicant explain and demonstrate how he will fit into the society and contribute to it.

Education level, and what strata of society the immigrant is coming from are also good predictors. Asians thrive here because many arrive with college degrees, and people who hail from more advanced regions of their own nations are probably also more assimilable. Finally, if it appears likely that the immigrant knocking on our door will consider our national mode of life and popular culture a 24/7 stream of blasphemous filth that cannot be countenanced or compromised with, then we should deny the visa.

I don't want us to stop immigration. I want us to stop doing it stupidly. Inviting in Muslims with no experience living in a secular society is even dumber than beckoning rural poor from Central America who cannot even function in their own nations' capitals.  It's a bridge too far.

Also worth a read: 
Peter Skerry - Do We Really Want Immigrants to Assimilate?

King Barry

Allen Ramsay: George III

Powers George III would be envious of

 

 If you think back to that tussle we had with England over arbitrary and capricious government you might be surprised to find that...

Not even the King of England at the time of the American Revolution had the authority to suspend laws unilaterally, the Law Library of Congress expert wrote in a memorandum to the Senate committee tasked with responding to President Obama’s recent executive orders on the enforcement of immigration law.

One hundred years before the American Revolution, another British king had “attempted to suspend a number of laws,” contributing to the onset of the Glorious Revolution in England, a senior foreign-law specialist at the Law Library writes in the memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “King George III,” the specialist goes on to remind the committee, “was thus unable to enact or repeal any laws unilaterally without the involvement of Parliament.” 

National Review - Joel Gehrke

Where's Obama?

Image: Telegraph

Or Joe Biden, or even Eric Holder who was already in Paris... 

40 heads of state gathered in Paris and attended a rally in support of France, Paris, Charlie Hedbo, and the Freedom of Speech and of the Press and the best we can manage is Jane Hartley? 

Shameful or not?

Who else was there?

Why Recep Erdogan, President of Turkey and alleged NATO ally who had this to say: 


“The duplicity of the west is obvious,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference on Monday evening. “As Muslims we have never sided with terror or massacres: racism, hate speech, Islamophobia are behind these massacres. The culprits are clear: French citizens undertook this massacre and Muslims were blamed for it,” he added.” FT


Need more proof that Constantinople is still full of barbarians?

Melih Gokcek, mayor of Ankara for the ruling AK party, said on Monday that “Mossad [the Israeli intelligence service] is definitely behind such incidents . . . it is boosting enmity towards Islam.”

Unfortunately the secular Turkey of Atatürk that joined the Council of Europe is long gone and now they're as whack as the House of Saud.  Just another reason to deny EU membership and expel them from NATO... their values are incompatible with Western Civilization. We need Turkey in NATO about as much as we need thousands of Syrian refugees.

The United States accepts the majority of all UNHCR referrals from around the world. Last year, we reached our goal of resettling nearly 70,000 refugees from nearly 70 countries. And we plan to lead in resettling Syrians as well. We are reviewing some 9,000 recent UNHCR referrals from Syria. We are receiving roughly a thousand new ones each month, and we expect admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond. Anne Richard - State Department

Ain't nothing like a good ole case of stupid...eh Anne?