Ethnic Studies and Drunken Journalists

I agree with the Republic's Sunday (7/19/15) letter writer who says people who immigrate to the US need to abandon their foreign identities, just be Americans and learn to speak English.   In that vein we need to immediately end all ethnic studies programs.   We should start with the most egregious and widespread of these.   We need to stop force feeding English literature to our public school children.   For Heaven's sake Beowulf, and Shakespeare aren't even written in language that anyone speaks anymore.

The Divil made me say this... as my Gaelic speaking grandmother used to say.  Her oldest son won the Navy  Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star and two DFCs in separate actions during America's darkest hours of World War II.   Her oldest daughter was one of the US Navy's first women officers.  Her children earned her the right celebrate St. Patrick's Day and speak any damn language she wanted.
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The eminent journalist Russell Baker of Pulitzer Prize and NY Times fame also once opined that "We should all stop parading [ethnic heritage] and just all be Americans."   His column on this thought appeared while Baker was hosting the BBC's Masterpiece Theatre on US public television.   His introduction was accompanied by imagery primarily of British icons including Union Jack flags and RAF Spitfire model aircraft.   The background behind Mr. Baker during his introduction included the Union Jack flag of Britain's United Kingdom.

Baker like my uncle was a Navy aviator, but Baker was barely able to make it out of flight school.   He managed to calm his nerves to pass his last chance flight test by spending a night with a prostitute, but claimed he was too drunk to perform (the "I didn't inhale defense"), confessed in his Pulitzer Prize wining autobiography, Growing Up.

Trumped: The Republic's Irish Problems

There's nothing like the drunk of the Irish.
Oh, wait. That's supposed to be "luck."
Well, never mind. A little drunken Irish bull will cover any mistake.
-- Linda Valdez, Editorial Writer, Arizona Republic, 3/17/2015

If you want an example of "progressive" hypocrisy, look no farther than the recent Clarence Page column published in the Arizona Republic/AZ Central (5/10/2015), denouncing "professional Muslim-baiter Pamela Geller."  Page condemns Geller and others who "unfortunately think that the best way to respond to the intolerance of Muslim fanatics is to insult all Muslims."  Unfortunately, Ms. Geller is just taking a page from the same playbook Mr. Page uses.   Back on St. Patrick's Day some years ago in an essay published by the Arizona Republic, Mr. Page condemned all the Irish for the alleged sins of Irish gangs who formed "across the country to chase black workers away from the jobs on the next rung up the American success ladder."  It's highly dubious that the America's small Irish minority was responsible for segregation and slavery in America, but Mr. Page playing the collective guilt card was especially egregious.   And in light of his thoughts on Geller, especially hypocritical.

*  *  *  *  *

To date the Editorial and Opinion editors of the Arizona Republic,  Phil Boas and Robert Leger, in keeping with the newspaper's ongoing Irish problem, have refused to print any complaint about or an apology for Mr. Page's hypocrisy.

Mr. Page's has refused to apologize for his collective guilt remarks, responding abusively to those who raise the issue, in a noble American tradition:

*  *  *  *  *

Mr. Page's Irish column was published in the Chicago Tribune, the Arizona Republic and other newspapers to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in 1998.

For a fair and balanced history of the American freedom in the US, see Pulitzer Prize-winning Eric Foner's:

The Story of American Freedom
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

Also informative on who did what to whom:
The Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-society-for-diffusion-of-political.html
Ivy League Confederates
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/05/ivy-league-confederates-harvard-and.html
New York's Passion Play
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-york-citys-passion-play.html

The Assassination of Father Coyle
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-assassination-of-father-james-coyle.html
New York's Soldiers' Monuments
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/04/new-york-citys-soldiers-monuments.html
The Union's Irish Soldiers and Sailors
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-unions-irish-soldiers-and-sailors.html

Reddit and Popular Cliches

Reddit’s Ellen Pao and Alexis Ohanian Explain Site Shut Down
http://time.com/3945718/reddit-moderator-shut-down/

How many currently popular clichés appear in Reddit's response.  Here's three:


"I want to apologize to our community..."  If you want to apologize to your community, why don't you just apologize.

“We handled the transition in a way..."

"we should have done a better job..."

Drunken Journalists and the Light Rail

Help Phoenix SPJ congratulate Robert Leger on the Wells Memorial Key

"For his devotion to its principles and mission, Robert Leger [famous for his defense of the Republic's drunken Irish St. Patrick's Day quip - 3/2015] was honored by the Society of Professional Journalists with its highest honor: the Wells Memorial Key!
The Valley of the Sun chapter of SPJ invites members to quaff a few cold brews in Robert’s honor at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 9 (that’s tonight!), at Angels Trumpet Ale House, 810 N. Second St. in downtown Phoenix’s Roosevelt Row Art District."
http://phoenixspj.org/2012/10/09/help-phoenix-spj-congratulate-robert-leger-on-the-wells-memorial-key/

Angels Trumpet Ale House is famous as the destination bar for Phoenix's notorious "No Pants Light Rail Ride."   When asked about riding downtown on the light rail, my 12-year-old daughter says, "No Thanks.  It's too creepy."  No wonder. 
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts/no-pants-light-rail-ride-a-field-guide-to-sundays-event-in-phoenix-6561401

Kristof Does Brian Williams

"That's me interviewing rebels in Sudan's Nuba Mountains. In my newsletter, I talk a bit about the challenges of reporting in a place with no electricity, phones, flights or taxis--as the government is dropping bombs on you."  - Nicholas Kristof

Mr. Kristof shouldn't be suggesting he's having bombs dropped on him if that hasn't actually happened.   A reporter should not say that he's being bombed because somewhere in the country he's in a bomb, which he's never even seen, has been dropped...allegedly.   Brian Williams got fired for indulging in this sort of malarkey.  Is there any proof that Kristof has had bombs dropped on him?

Is the Pope is a Red Diaper Baby

‘Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali!’

So much for Papal infallibility.  According to the NY Times (6/21/2015), the Pope thinks the great powers did nil to stop the Holocaust.  Seriously?   How did the Pope  miss the horrific fighting that went on in WWII and the reasons the fighting started.  England, France, Poland and the US suffered 4,000,000 casualties fighting the Axis.  The US alone had a million casualties.

 

In August, 1943, the first long-range bombing raid into central Europe, hundreds of miles south of Auschwitz, was a military disaster for the US.  Flying out of recently captured airfields in North Africa 177 B-24 heavy bombers attacked the Ploesti oil refineries -- a 2,000 mile round trip, at the extreme limit of the bombers' capability.  The Germans shot down 54 bombers with the loss of over 600 crewmen.  Another 53 aircraft were heavily damaged.  The US raid caused minimal damage to the oil refinery.  The US never again attempted a low level mission against German air defenses, and concentrated its bombing campaign on closer more vulnerable strategic targets in central Germany and in support of the offensive in France where air power was needed to pin down German reinforcements and negate German superiority in armored weaponry.

England and France went to war with Germany to stop the German takeover in Poland.  This was actually years before Auschwitz went into operation.  The US, which in fact had virtually no army in 1939, began its undeclared war against Germany in support of Britain in 1940.  In July of 1941, a US fleet and marines took over the occupation of Danish Iceland, freeing 25,000 British troops to fight in North Africa, equipped with American tanks and artillery.  Severe US sanctions against Japan, levied to stop Japanese aggression in China, and US military aid to China, including the famous flying Tiger airmen, resulted in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and formal entry of the US into WWII.  All through 1940 and 1941, the United States undertook an immense mobilization, creating from virtually nothing an Army and Navy capable of defeating the Axis.  It wasn't until the second half of 1943 that the US was able to begin deploying the results of this astonishing industrial mobilization.  The  revolutionary long-range P-51 fighter wasn't deployed against the Luftwaffe  over Germany until the winter of 1943-44, making a strategic bombing campaign against the German heartland militarily feasible.  At that, strategic bombing was still so inaccurate that thousands of bombs had to be dropped to destroy important targets.

The real villain in this tragedy was the Soviet Union, which allied with Germany to carve up Poland.  If the Soviet Union hadn't undercut England, France and Poland at the beginning of WWII, millions of lives would have been saved.  Indeed even after the Soviet Union ended up on the Allies side,  they halted their armies at the gates of Auschwitz for months and in close proximity to the death camp dropped not a bomb on it to stop the Nazis.  The red diaper babies, of course, don't want to hear any of this.  Not only was the Soviet Union an ally of Hitler in the division of Poland, but the Communist front organizations in the West, at the direction of Stalin, opposed US and Britain going to war over Poland.  Among the Left's anti-war crowd:  Bertrand Russell, the American Communist Party, and Pete Seeger, famous for the anti-war song Plow Under [Every fourth American boy].

"I will argue that if the Germans succeeded in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters, and invite the Commander in Chief to dine with the Prime Minister. Such behaviour would completely baffle them."  -- Bertrand Russell

Who'd have thought the Pope is a red diaper baby. 

By the way, doesn't the Pope care about the millions and millions of Chinese the Japanese killed during WWII.  

Of course, after its perfidy in Poland, helping Hitler start World War II in Europe, the Soviet Union mounted a massive resistance when Hitler turned on his ally,  aided by immense quantities of munitions, tanks, artillery, truck and aircraft from the United States.  Indirectly at the very least the Red Army offensive that reached the gates of Auschwitz in late 1944 ended its operations.   Nazi leader Himmler ordered extermination operations ended in November of 1944, as the Red Army approached.   When Auschwitz was evacuated in January of 1945, the Allies offensive had so degraded Germany's transportation system that the Auschwitz inmates were marched to Germany by foot.   20,000 survived the march and were liberated by the British in the spring of 1945.

In the North Atlantic, in North Africa, at Stalingrad, on the beaches of Normandy, at Imphal, at Midway and Guadalcanal, at Bataan and Shanghai, the Axis came very close to defeating the "great" powers.  US Marines fixing their bayonets for their desperate stand in the darkness on Edson's ridge.  Ammunition gone, Gurkhas unsheathing their Kukris, to continue the fight hand-to-hand at the gateway to India; the Gurkhas' martyrdom on Hangman's Hill at Monte Cassino.  Russian peasant snipers crawling through the rubble into the German lines.   US paratroopers surrounded at Bastogne saying "Nuts" to Nazi demands for surrender.  Wave after wave of US aircraft continuing to attack the Japanese fleet at Midway, sacrificing themselves again and again to clear the way for the last desperate attack, which finally won the battle.  Today, many, some maliciously, forget the desperate hours of WWII and those who sacrificed their lives to stop Hitler, Tojo and their genocidal agenda.

Misrepresenting Racial Identities

Regarding Rachel Dolezal misrepresenting her racial identity (New York Times, 6/17/2015),  while Ms. Dolezal's behavior appears to be that of a disturbed person, it's really not so unusual.   For 150 years the New York Times and many otherwise reliable historians have portrayed the victims of the 1863 draft riots as black.  In fact, thanks to Adrian Cook's scholarly The Armies of the Streets,  we have long, but very quietly known, that the overwhelming majority of the riot dead were white "rioters" and bystanders, a disturbing number of the dangerous rebels women and children.   The motivations for changing the racial identities of the riots' dead give rise to very interesting questions that have yet to be answered.   The failure of otherwise ethical journalists and historians to object to the distortion of the identifies of the dead raises questions, too.

Draft Riots Death Map (red = "rioter", green = bystander):

 

http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/04/new-york-citys-soldiers-monuments.html

 

http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-society-for-diffusion-of-political.html

 

http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-unions-irish-soldiers-and-sailors.html

 

http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2013/08/new-york-citys-passion-play.html

 

Child Abuse: Steve Benson

It is very sad that the Arizona Republic and its Steve Benson have joined in the "Progressive" left's vilification of the Duggar family and their children.   Not liking someone's religion and politics is no excuse for violating the privacy of juvenile police records, as has happened egregiously in the case of the Duggar children.   This sets a precedent that many will regret, and underscores the hypocrisy of the "Progressive" left.

*  *  *  *  *

Steve Benson doesn't get to leave comments here to opinions that the Arizona Republic refused to publish.

Moreover, he doesn't get to say the identities of the juveniles including the girls were legally obtained when they weren't.   In any event, a decent man would not have further violated the children's privacy under any circumstances.

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere - 2.0

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was a propaganda device used by Imperial fascist Japan at the beginning of World War II.  Japan claimed that it was promoting Asian unity and prosperity, but the propaganda was really cover for Japan's racist, fascist agenda of subordinating Asia, its peoples and resources to the Japanese.

"Noting the military usefulness of the islets China is constructing in the disputed Spratly Islands [of the South China Sea], Adm. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Liberation Army’s general staff, said they would mainly enable China to provide “international public services,” including maritime search and rescue, disaster relief, and scientific research." 
-- Adm. Sun Jianguo, Deputy Chief of Staff People's Liberation Army, Red China
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-military-official-defends-island-building-in-south-china-sea-1433045698

Red China's aggressive island building within the internationally recognized exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines and other Asia countries is reminiscent of the Imperial fascist Japan's aggression during World War II.  Especially when fascist Red China's aggression is portrayed as a benevolent form of Asian brotherly love.

What is particularly galling about this is for Red China to treat the U.S. as an unwelcome interloper when the U.S. objects to Red Chinese aggression.   The U.S. is China's biggest trading partner, and commerce with the U.S. has fueled Red China's era of immense economic progress.  Moreover, while the U.S. has legitimate economic and trading interests in the Western Pacific, since the days when Europeans fought wars to force opium on China, the U.S. has been a guarantor of East Asian freedom. 

The U.S. entered World War II as a result of protecting China from Japanese aggression.   The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was direct result of America providing military aid to China and enforcing severe economic sanctions on Japan.  America fought a long and bloody war to drive Japan out of China and Southeast Asia, costly in lives and resources.   After its defeat of Japan, the U.S. voluntarily withdrew from all of the lands and seas it had conquered and ordered the defeated Japanese to do the same.  Japan, the Philippines and South Korea were all granted their independence along with many other island nations.

Red China showed its gratitude by waging war against America in Korea and Vietnam, when the U.S. had no other agenda than maintaining those countries as independent democracies.   The economic transformation of Red China hasn't changed much.   Instead of a Red China spreading its hegemony across Asia via Maoist revolution,  Red China has transformed itself into a corporate socialist state: fascism and The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere - 2.0.

Why Hillary?

The AZ Republic's Phil Boas in his Sunday quip (5/31) seems to be arguing that Hillary Clinton should be president because of her gender.   Hope beyond hope, I'd like a candidate with a long and distinguished record of serving the country, e.g., a Colin Powell.   Mrs. Clinton's long record consists primarily of being the victim in America's longest running, raunchy political soap opera.   In the Senate she voted to invade Iraq.  Her tenure as Secretary of State was marred by feckless U.S. intervention in the debacle once known as the Arab Spring.  Her State Department legacy includes Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and wife of neocon historian Robert Kagan.  Ms. Nuland is famous for handing our cookies to demonstrators who overthrew the Ukrainian government and saying "Fuck the EU" when asked about having the European Union mediate Ukraine's problems.

Quo vadis, Dwight D. Eisenhower?

Immigration: What's the Right Number

Immigration: what's the right number?   Something I've never seen or heard in our discussion of immigration is what's the right number.   There is a limit to the number of immigrants U.S. infrastructure can sustain, e.g., educations and health care.  Some level of immigration is good for the U.S. economy, but it also has contributed to our problem of "inequality."   The U.S. Congress has set the annual allowance for immigration at about 1,000,000 (although the mechanism for figuring this is so complicated who knows what the real number is).  Good or bad for the economy, the allowance set by the U.S. Congress is very generous compared to the rest of the world, especially considering that the U.S. does not limit immigration to highly skilled and educated, employable people as many other countries do. 

Nevertheless, without even proposing a change to the immigration allowances set by Congress, "immigration" activists demand that people  who have circumvented the U.S. immigration system be given legal status and allowed to remain in the country.  Anyone who disagrees is committing a crime against humanity, even though what the activists propose is a 1,000 percent increase to the allowance set by the U.S. Congress.   This is not a rational basis for compromise: it's just pawn shop bartering. 

 

What we need from immigration activists is a proposal on what the right annual immigration number is for the U.S.   For example, if 1,000,000 a year immigrants is the right number, then we'd close the door to all other immigration for ten years to accommodate the 10,000,000 undocumented immigrants believed to be in the U.S. today.  

 

Give us a reasonable solution and number, and tell us how states like Arizona and New Mexico would be compensated for the unequal impact on their health care, education and law enforcement infrastructure, if you want to make a deal.

Why Johnny and Jose Can't Read

Why can't Johnny and Jose read?   It is very true that our teachers are the Few, the Proud and the Underpaid, the fearless Marines of education holding out against overwhelming odds.   There is another problem, though.   Our education establishment stubbornly, pigheadedly, insists on treating English as cultural legacy, not as a communication technology.   Too much time is devoted to the usage of "like and as" and to ancient Anglo-Saxon literature like Pride and Prejudice and Beowulf.   Picture some poor immigrant kid from Sudan trying to make sense out of Pride and Prejudice, a story about rich English people who don't work, or a kid from Sonora trying to comprehend Beowulf, which isn't even written in an English language that anyone uses anymore, for heaven's sake.  The leftwing ethnic studies crowd hasn't  provided a solution, either: they've just provided an alternative biased cultural lesson.   Stop treating English as cultural legacy and a political cause,  and start treating it as a communication technology we all need to learn to use.

Why I Cancelled My Times Subscription

Didactic journalism.  There are too many sententious morality lessons in The Times, often where the author or a new friend is the hero.  Too often the morality lessons lapse into outright falsehood to spice things up.  The last straw was Michael Powell's story about leaving the glitz of Super Bowl Phoenix for the unspoiled high school basketball of the Navajo reservation: the Navajo kids, though small, play fast with unmatched intensity and for the pure joy of the game.   This is a dubious opinion since there are plenty of big, six-foot Navajo basketball players, and the other white, brown and black youngsters playing basketball in Arizona are extremely fast and intense, if not joyful.

Where Mr. Powell egregiously went astray was when he claimed that the Navajo teams do well until they go down to the Valley to play the Christian schools, which recruit giant players with holy fervor.  The problem with this is that the Navajo schools don't, in fact, play the Valley Christian schools, and recruiting is illegal in Arizona high school basketball.   It might happen but it's the "big time", big-enrollment high schools that play in Division 1 and Division II that might be guilty.   The Navajo schools are small schools that play in Division III.  This year in the state tournament Navajo competitor Chinle High School lost to Palo Verde Magnet, a public school from the poverty stricken Tucson Unified School District.  The Division III state championship was won by Snowflake, a small public high school not far from the Navajo reservation. 

As far as purity goes, it's worth noting that the state final game was played at the Gila River Arena, home of the Arizona Coyotes hockey team, sponsored by the Gila River Casinos -- a group of gambling casinos controlled by the Gila River Indian Community.  The Navajo operate four casinos on their reservation, but have yet to acquire naming rights for a major Arizona sports venue.

All of the above and the fact that David Pogue the best tech writer in the business doesn't work there anymore.

Hating your customers

Is it surprising that profits are down for "Progressive" journalism?   Hating America, your customers, isn't a smart business model... but that's predictable for a business where the featured cartoonists have as much brains in their heads as a Seattle football coach faced with a goal line choice.



They don't even know who the football fans are... sorry I don't have an action picture of the Super Bowl fans going wild after the big interception.   This will have to do...
http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-usual-suspects.html

Even the Fairest fans of Marissa Meyer were really into it... at least through the Katy Perry halftime show.

Gun Violence: Progressives in Denial

Where was Progressive outrage when Cordell Jude, a black man, gunned down an unarmed Daniel Adkins, a mentally disabled Hispanic, outside a Phoenix Taco Bell.   Progressives are in denial.  The police aren't the problem.  There are too many guns and too much gun violence in our cities.  As the CDC study shows young black men are almost 25 times more likely to be killed by a gun than young white men, and it's not the police who are doing the shooting.

The problem was summed up neatly in a documentary about urban farming (of all places) "Growing Cities" by a young black interviewee who observed that working on the urban farm in New Orleans saved him from the world of:

 "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Don't get caught without your gun."

You can reform the police all you want and fire the incompetents in the Cleveland police department.  But you won't make life safer for young black men until you admit what the problem is and find a way to address it: too many guns, too many guns in the wrong hands.   Unfortunately for our country and especially young black men neither the NRA on the right nor the "progressives" on the left will admit to what the problem is. 

"We doing this shit from Cleveland to LA..."  - Tupac

Homicide Rates Among Persons Ages 10–24 Years, by Race/Ethnicity and Sex, United States, 2010

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/stats_at-a_glance/hr_male.html

Big Hair

Ihr seid verfluchte Hunden!

Benson: Truth in Advertising



Steve Benson, the thin-skinned Arizona Republic cartoonist, bristles if you address him as "young man,"  protesting that he's a grandfather.  Maybe he's just lucky or uses "Just for Men" because his Arizona Republic picture features plenty of dark hair for a granddad.   Judge for yourself and let Steve know what you think.

It's fair to say, though, that Steve doesn't take after his grandfather, Ezra Taft Benson.  Probably the only time Steve prays these days is when he gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and thanks Almighty God for that.

Homer: Steve Dilbeck

"Arguing that Clayton Kershaw just pitched the best game in history."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-dodgers-clayton-kershaw-best-no-hitter-20140619-story.html

Get serious Steve Dilbeck:
1.  It's the Colorado Rockies who hit a buck fifty when they're not playing at Mile High Field in Denver. 

2. It's Dodger Stadium where nobody hits at night.

3. It's a no-hitter not a perfect game.

4. It's not the World Series.  It's a meaningless midseason game between two mediocre teams.

5. It's the Rockies

This is the perfect example of a HOMER, ie, a hometown sportswriter, Steve Dilbeck, hyping the hometown team.  "Listen, the Rockies are a good-hitting team, but they were a deer in the headlights."   At home in their hitter friendly ballpark, the Rockies have 12 players batting over .300.  Their star Troy Tulowitzki is batting .477.  Playing away in other peoples ballparks the Rockies have only three players batting over .300, and two of them together have played in a total of 8 games.  Star Tulowitzki is batting .252 in away games. 

Pitching in hitter unfriendly Dodger Stadium, all the Dodgers pitchers look like they're headed for the hall of fame.  Pitching on the road, they look like a group of good pitchers.

Sandy Koufax pitched the best game I've ever seen pitched.  It was game four of the 1963 World Series against the New York Yankees.  In a day game at Dodger Stadium when the field is hitter friendly,  Koufax beat Hall of Famer Whitey Ford by a score of 2 to 1.  The Yankees scored their only run when Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle hit a home run.  Koufax held the heavy hitting Yankees to six hits, including two each by perennial all stars Bob Richardson and Elston Howard.  Two words sum up why Howard as a young player never played enough to make the Hall of Fame: Yogi Berra.

Don Larsen's World Series perfect game is the best ever.  He beat the best Dodger team ever, and one the great baseball teams of all time in 1956:  Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella (my favorite Dodger), Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Jim Gilliam, Duke Snider.  The only Dodger in the lineup that day, including the pinch hitter Mitchell, who wasn't an All Star was Sandy Amoros, the left fielder.  Four of the 1956 Dodgers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Pipeline Malarkey

Aren't the folks who oppose the natural gas pipeline from Tucson to Mexico (Republic 5/5/2014) getting a little carried away when they claim the pipeline right-of-way will open up a new route for drug runners and illegal immigrants.  The Republic's own map of the project shows the pipeline follows the route of state highway 286.   Who's kidding who.  An LA Times story from a few years back featured  Sasabe, Mexico as the jumping off point for smugglers of all kinds using the highway 286 route (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/18/world/fg-mexborder18), .   Moreover, how much environmental pollution will there be from a pipeline where there's already a road and actually not much vegetation.   Probably a lot less than what clean natural gas can eliminate from the Mexican power plants burning dirty fuel and polluting our Arizona air.  You'd think environmentalists would be overjoyed that Mexico is doing something to eliminate greenhouse gases.

*   *   *   *   *

 

In 2000, according to the DEA, some 50,800 pounds of marijuana were seized on Tohono land. By last year, the figure had soared to 192,225 pounds. Other authorities put the number even higher. More and more Tohono themselves, meanwhile, have been caught up in the drug trade. "Young Indians," says Coulson [DEA], "carry it over to drop houses" from which the pot eventually finds its way to the streets. 

 

Most every family, it seems, has been touched by drugs, including some of the reservation's most elite. In September, Tohono O'odham police stopped a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina for speeding and discovered six bales of marijuana under a blanket in the trunk. The driver, 39-year-old Nicholas C. Juan, was arrested and now awaits trial. He is the brother of Vivian Juan-Saunders, the Tohono chairwoman.

He isn't the first member of the chairwoman's family to be caught drug-running. Her sister, Mary Juan, was arrested in May 1999 by U.S. Customs officials after they discovered 15 bales of marijuana stashed in her Pontiac Grand Prix and in a shed on her property. Mary had once been a tribal judge. She was convicted in federal court and spent a year and a day in jail. She's out now, raising her three grandkids--her daughter-in-law, busted with her six years ago, moved off the property.

 

(http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/08/magazine/tm-tohono2)

 

*   *   *   *   *

 

 

“The third is a language that is a mystery to me and perhaps to some of your other readers. It has a degree of importance if it suggests the nationality of a group, other than Mexican, traversing that dangerous stretch of America,” wrote Godfrey Harris of Los Angeles.

The photo was taken by Scott Olson of Getty Images, and he did not address the language question in the caption information he supplied. After readers inquired, a Times photo editor contacted Olson, who in turn checked with the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol to get the answer:
Tohono O’odham.

(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2010/07/mystery-language-on-a-border-sign.html)

Millennial Marxists: The New Class

The Republic's Phil Boas probably doesn't need me to defend him against accusations of "intellectually laziness" by a defender of "Millennial Marxists."  However, young Marxists and their supporters really do need to read more.  Start with Milovan Dilas's The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.   Dilas was Marshal Tito's right hand  man until Dilas became disenchanted with Communism.  Dilas was appalled by Communist rulers who were installing themselves as the new privileged class instead of delivering economic equality and socialist democracy they promised the people.  George Orwell, another disillusioned Marxist, explored some of the same themes in his famous works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.   The prescient insight of Orwell and Dilas is astonishing when we examine the state of Communism today.  Far from delivering political and economic democracy, the remaining Communists states, e.g., China and Vietnam, are ruled by self-perpetuating (nepotism) political elites who control all the state's wealth and power.

The charge by defenders of "Millennial Marxists" that capitalism is responsible for all the world's wars and troubles is particularly galling.   Not only did Mr. Boas neglect the carnage inflicted by Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and Giap, but he did not explore Stalin's role in starting World War II.  It was Stalin after all who allied with Hitler to invade and divide Catholic Poland between them.  Moreover, though Marxist historians are quick to blame Roosevelt and the Pope for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, no Marxist is interested in examining how very close the Red Army was to liberating Auschwitz and Warsaw in 1944 when Stalin called of his offensive so that the Germans could finish off the troublesome Poles and Jews for him.

Intellectual laziness isn't the problem here.  The problem is egregious intellectual dishonesty.

What AZ Legislators and California Gangbangers Have in Common

What do our state legislature and California gangbangers have in common.  They both think it's a good idea to walk around with a gun tucked into your pants, with enough showing so that people know you're "packin."   I can't tell you how disturbing it is to walk into a popular Arcadia fast food restaurant and pass a teenager with a gun tucked into his pants headed for a car with California license plates.   The pants were so loose it's surprising they could hold up the gun.  Was he just a teenager strutting his manhood for his gangster pals, or a Jared Loughner stalking his next victim?  How the heck was I supposed to know.   I don't care if a rancher needs a gun to keep the coyotes at bay or someone wants to go turkey hunting, but there's got to be limits.   I am way done with shooting at people and being shot at.   I am now too old to duck for cover and would like a little peace of mind in my old age.

Krauthammer and the Crimea

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-obama-vs-putin-the-mismatch/2014/03/27/e26a27f2-b5d5-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html

Charles Krauthammer who was born in New York City and grew up in Montreal sat out the Vietnam war when he was still an able bodied man.  Now he wants our children to shed their blood in faraway Crimea fighting Russians of dubious character defending Ukrainians led by people of dubious character.  My answer is NO.

Scotland and Crimea

I've never found explanation anywhere on why the US cares about Crimea seceding from Ukraine, but isn't sending the Marines to Scotland to stop their vote to secede from England.  Maybe it's because England has been taken over by Russian oligarchs and aiding Scottish secession is about the most meaningful thing the US can do to annoy the Russians.

Women Ogling Women's Bodies

Thank you very much, AZ Republic (10/29/13), for alerting us to research saying girls as well as boys are ogling women's bodies,  a vice attributed to our sex-charged culture.   When we take our children to see The Nutcracker ballet this Christmas,  I will admonish my children only to look at the ballerina's faces.

China: The Dangerous Trading Partner

Communist China's recent and reckless sabre rattling in the South China Sea and East China tell us that China is an unstable trading partner and unreliable manufacturing location.  American companies like Apple and Walmart need to relocate that supply sources from Communist China to America and Mexico. 

Steve Dilbeck - California Knucklehead

For want of anything intelligent to say or simply a genetic disposition to boorishness,  Steve Dilbeck of the LA Times calls Arizonans "knuckleheads," a reckless generalization.   Los Angeles may have Clayton Kershaw, a fine pitcher who's never been to college.   Arizona has Roger Angel. 

Firstly, to paraphrase Russell Baker,  people become journalists because they are mathematically challenged, need an occupation less intellectually demanding than engineering or medicine, and aren't motivated enough to get up early in the morning to do something productive like work on a farm.  Of these, the most marginal are left to babble about sports.

Next, California would be better served if its babblers toned down the babble and urged the knuckleheads in their state to stop killing each other over baseball games.   Aping the public bad behavior of its brawling sports teams.  Arizona is the least of California's problems.

Last, Mr. Dilbeck's defense of boorish behavior by Dodgers baseball players, i.e., urinating in a public swimming pool and bragging about it, is substantive evidence that its newspapers employ individuals with a genetic disposition for boorishness and who are very much a part of fueling the mayhem in California.

But perhaps I'm mistaken.   Mr. Dilbeck, being one, is probably California's foremost authority on knuckleheads.

*   *    *   *   *

How sad for you and Mr. Dilbeck if you think Dr. Angel is a sportswriter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Angel

Lower Expectations

We've attended the Arizona Opera for many years.   So did my wife's friend, the priest who baptized my son and his longtime friend and opera date.    The priest's opera buddy was very much unknown back then and we were the only people the priest and his date had to talk to during intermissions.   After the opera we'd escort them back to the diocese parking lot where they parked their car.   I was the closest thing they had to a security detail.   Back in those days I was more than enough to drive off the stray homeless guy who tried to ask the priest's opera buddy for a date.    This little convoy went on for years until the priest's opera date won an election earning her a limo and a better parking space and bodyguard than me.

Years later sitting in the airport waiting for a ride back from grandma's house in Boston I look up and who do you think is sitting right next us?    Our opera buddy and her new bodyguard.   I leave "celebrities" alone.   She never got around to acknowledging us.   I admit that I'm pretty forgettable, but my wife isn't.   And what Arizona politician would pass up the opportunity to kiss an Arizona baby.

Living in a Crazy World

A Native American tribe that has no connection to Phoenix whatsoever, except the phone number of a lawyer who can drive a moving van through a pinhole in the law, can build a big a casino in Glendale.    A local hospital that used to be run by caring nuns but now is owned by a big medical conglomerate headquartered in  San Francisco can run a multi-million dollar raffle complete with a big TV media campaign.  An American Legion post that's been serving veterans in Phoenix for generations can't have a few slot machines to entertain the old timers and keep the doors open.  We live in a crazy world. 

Steve Benson calls Nurses Pigs

Regarding Steve Benson's cartoon (5/22) depicting Medicaid recipients and providers as pigs, most of the recipients are children and mothers.   Most of the providers are nurses and very dedicated.  I know my wife is one.   I don't always agree with Steve, but I'd never call his children and wife pigs.   "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last..."

District 9

The voters of Arizona District 9 sent Kyrsten Sinema to represent them in the United States Congress, its first openly bisexual member.   They made a science fiction movie about District 9; it was set in South Africa for dramatic effect.  No wonder they call us Zonies.