August 12, 2013

World War G

When I recall the Cold War, I think:

- I'm glad we won

- And I'm glad it's over

But, apparently, lots of people look forward to another ideological struggle with Russia, this time over Russia's recent law restricting the dissemination of "gay propaganda" among children. The New York Times is particularly offended, what with gay propaganda comprising so much of its daily output. Thus, with zero sense of irony, the NYT's two top World stories tonight are:
World » 
Gays In Russia Find No Haven, Despite Support From The West 
Tell Us About Your Experiences Being Gay In Russia / Быть Геем В России: Расскажите О Вашем Личном Опыте

August 11, 2013

Schumer: House GOP bumbling into my hands

Via The Z Man, a story from Breitbart:
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a member of the Senate's Gang of Eight, told CNN on Wednesday that he thinks the House GOP’s plan to approach immigration reform through piecemeal legislation is acceptable since the bills will simply be combined in conference. 
“We would much prefer a big comprehensive bill but any way that the House can get there is okay by us,” Schumer said. “I actually am optimistic that we will get this done. I’ve had a lot of discussions with members of both parties in the House. Things are moving in the right direction.” 
Schumer said House Republicans now appear more open than ever to granting amnesty to illegal aliens, and are going to use the strategy of passing a large group of bills addressing specific immigration issues to get to a conference with the Senate bill. “My initial reaction was the House wasn’t going to take up any bill,” Schumer said. “That would have been very bad, no bill. Now they’re doing it in pieces.”

The problem with conspiracy theorists is that they don't notice the giant conspiracies that really exist, the ones where the brains behind the operation go on CNN to explain the mistakes the opposition (such as it is) are making.

A Confederacy of Douches

Speaking of giant conspiracies hiding in plain view, from the Los Angeles Times:
Immigration reform creates odd political alliances 
Liberal organizations are working alongside GOP operatives, faith groups and high-tech companies to sway Republicans in Congress to overhaul immigration policies. And a lot of money is being spent to do so. 
By Brian Bennett and Joseph Tanfani 
WASHINGTON — When television ads aired in South Carolina this spring attacking Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham for supporting immigration reform, a GOP group came to his aid. So did the other team. 
"We came up with the money," said Frank Sharry, founder and executive director of America's Voice, a Washington-based group with close ties to the Obama White House. "We were just frustrated that nobody was doing anything, and Graham was under attack. We said, 'Fine, we will put money in.'" 
Sharry's group, knowing an ad sponsored by a left-leaning advocacy group could hurt Graham, donated $60,000 to Republicans for Immigration Reform, a super PAC started by President George W. Bush's former Commerce secretary, Carlos Gutierrez, and GOP fundraiser Charlie Spies. 
An unprecedented collection of political bedfellows has coalesced this year on the reform side of the immigration debate: liberal Latino organizations and Republican operatives, the Chamber of Commerce and labor unions, faith groups and high-tech companies. And as with the Sharry contribution, some left-leaning groups are financing Republican pro-immigration groups. 
The result is a flood of money for advertising, lobbying and field organizing aimed at convincing Republicans in Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally, authorize more temporary work visas and increase security on the border with Mexico. 
During the first half of the year, reform backers outspent opponents in advertising by more than 3 to 1: $2.4 million to $700,000, according to Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group. They also hired a battalion of lobbyists. In the second quarter, 527 businesses, advocacy groups and others reported lobbying on immigration, up from 389 in the first three months of the year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. 
Some of that spending is about to show up in targeted campaigns in House districts. Advocates are trying to keep up the pressure when members are home during the five-week August recess — or "Action August," as President Obama called it last month. But the biggest spending is likely to come this fall, when the House is expected to take up a series of immigration bills. 
"We will see a significant ramp-up of activities in August and September," said Tom Snyder, who runs the campaign effort for the labor giant AFL-CIO. Some Republican House members have already started to soften their opposition to reform, he said, especially in districts with tens of thousands of union members. "What you are seeing is not an avalanche but a stream starting to trickle in our direction." 
The last time Congress took up the issue, in 2007, anti-immigration groups mounted a fierce grass-roots campaign and succeeded in defining the bill as "amnesty" for lawbreakers. This time, advocates have launched a preemptive strike. 
"I've heard it said, it could be lost in August but not won in August," said Spies, a lawyer who formed Republicans for Immigration Reform to provide "political cover." 
The AFL-CIO has spent $418,998 to run ads in at least six states and plans to spend more than $1 million in August and September targeting 40 Republicans in the House. The Service Employees International Union started a $200,000 radio campaign aimed at Republican congressmen in 10 districts with growing Latino populations, including four Californians: Jeff Denham (Atwater), Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Santa Clarita), Gary G. Miller (Diamond Bar) and David Valadao (Hanford). 
Two moderate Republican organizations also have participated. The American Action Network spent $182,085 on television ads, and Americans for a Conservative Direction spent $105,251 for ads in six states, according to Kantar Media. 
FWD.us, an advocacy group founded by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and funded by top tech executives, announced plans last week to spend more than $500,000 on ads featuring a young Chicago man who wants to become a Marine but can't because he came to the country illegally as a 7-month-old. 
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes boosting immigration levels, said his side was badly outgunned. The tide of corporate money has moved the debate away from the promise of the poem on the Statue of Liberty to welcome the tired, the poor and the freedom-seekers, he said. 
"Now, it's give us your industrial and farm workers who are low-wage and poorly educated, or give us the technical talent from somebody else's economy," Stein said. 
The immigration debate has drawn attention, and money, from a vast array of businesses: notably the tech industry, which wants more H-1B visas for highly trained foreign workers, but also other industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor, including agriculture and hotels. Since March, companies and trade groups signed up 76 more lobbying firms, according to the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. 
Microsoft Corp. has been among the most active. In addition to its in-house lobbying operation, the company has paid lobbyists from 15 firms this year to press the case on Capitol Hill. 
Fred Humphries, vice president for government affairs, said Microsoft supported reform efforts that would increase high-tech visas because U.S. colleges do not graduate enough computer scientists. "In the U.S. today, Microsoft has approximately 3,500 research and engineering jobs we can't fill," he said. 
The business lobby's influence on Republican lawmakers was on vivid display this spring. In March, Utah's Republican senators, Orrin G. Hatch and Mike Lee, urged the Senate to slow down on immigration reform. That didn't sit well at the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce, where many members had been agitating to increase high-tech visas. At a news conference, the chamber's president threatened to mount a recall of Hatch and Lee. 
Hatch soon changed course. He became a key player in the talks that led the Senate to approve a bipartisan bill authorizing up to 180,000 high-tech visas — nearly triple the current number. 
The business spending has been welcomed by immigration advocates. 
"For the first time, I am seeing business actually put political muscle into this campaign. In the past, it was more like lip service," said Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union and a key strategist for the immigration reform forces. 
One congressman who has felt the squeeze is Rep. Mike Coffman, a Colorado Republican elected in 2008 in the district once represented by the vociferously anti-immigration Tom Tancredo. In 2012, the district was redrawn to include Aurora, one of the most immigrant-dense cities in the state. 
Among the pro-reform groups lobbying Coffman were evangelical church members, part of a grass-roots effort financed by Zuckerberg's FWD.us, a Christian family foundation and a hedge-fund manager who is a major Republican donor. 
"That has never happened before," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which was the conduit for the money. Noorani's organization typically draws financial support from progressives. 
During the Senate debate this spring, Coffman's Colorado office was deluged with calls and petitions, said Dustin Zvonek, his district director. Ten days in a row, evangelical churchgoers held prayer vigils in the office. 
Coffman endorsed comprehensive reform last month. 
That decision brought him $275,000 worth of positive TV commercials from Americans for a Conservative Direction — also funded by FWD.us. "On immigration, too many members of Congress argue with each other, but our congressman, Mike Coffman, listened to us," the ad said. 

* The post's title, suggested by a commenter recently, is of course a play on the the classic comic novel by John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces, which is derived from Swift's line, "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Open Borders boys get what they're asking for, good and hard

Over at the Open Borders logo contest on Facebook, the organizers have had to close their borders because all the cleverest logos were being submitted by satirists. It's almost as if human beings are happier when their communities are allowed to regulate who is allowed in ...

Here's a recent entry that was, apparently, sincere enough to avoid being deported.
Bryan Caplan 
I think it would be really cool if someone could incorporate the familiar hue and texture of a green traffic light into the design. It's the international symbol of "You're free to go," after all.
Alexandria Fraga 
Gave the traffic light suggestion a shot. 


Or, then again, this may be yet another reductio ad absurdum -- Let's use Open Borders to spread Mexico City-style driving to the whole world! -- that the Open Borders boys are too naive to notice.

Another subversive Open Borders logo that hasn't yet been rounded up by La Migra and kicked out of the contest page due to the sponsors' terminal unworldliness is:

Trust me, you do not want to look up the photographic original for this adaptation of a disgusting meme.

Previous (intentionally or unintentionally) ironic Open Borders logos are archived here.

How immigration can solve all the world's problems

From the comments, an Anonymous replying to an Anonymous:
 Anonymous said... 
"everyone born here would have to leave. Then they would be replaced with immigrants." 
Excellent plan. Here's my implementation: 
Part the first: 
All third-world population to move to USA, supervised by the UN. All, no exceptions. America becomes an exponential-GDP economists-utopia with a population of billions of ad-revenue generators. NY-LA greater metropolitan area. World GDP doubles. Trillion dollar bills on the sidewalk. Third world poverty ended. Sally Struthers retires. 
Part the second: 
The non-vibrant portion of USA is banished to the now-vacated lands. The ultimate liberal-revenge fantasy. Now they can experience first-hand the misery they inflicted on those people by not allowing them to immigrate here. 
They can see first-hand life with the civil-wars, the gang-rapes, child-prostitution, drug-cartels, brutal dictatorships, AIDs. They will see what effect an accident of birth can have on your life. O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis
Then we will build a wall around USA so that they can never come back. They will try to climb the wall and beg for permission to immigrate, but their pleas will fall on deaf ears. See how it feels, hah. (Also, no one can leave either.) 
The low population density will really make for a miserable GDP. It will be like living in a world-wide Australia, shudder. 
I'm torn as to whether infrastructure left behind should be left intact or sabotaged. Immigrants are so industrious they won't need it.

August 10, 2013

U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Pro-Immigration Image

To promote increased immigration and lower wages, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has come up with this terrifying logo:

Why is TV cooler than movies these days?

There are a lot of reasons for the decline in Cool Factor of movies relative to television, but this new Wall Street Journal article updates the numbers behind a big contributor that I identified in Taki's Magazine four years ago. From the WSJ:
Hollywood Takes Spanish Lessons As Latinos Stream to the Movies 
In the past few years, Hispanics have become some of Hollywood's best customers. Though 15% of Americans over the age of 12 are Latino, they accounted for 25% of all movie tickets sold in the U.S. in 2012, according to a Nielsen Co. study. The average Hispanic moviegoer went to nearly 10 films in the year, compared with just over six for whites, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans. 
... The new industry focus comes at a critical time for the movie business, which is desperate for good news in the domestic market. Attendance at theaters has declined 10% in the past decade, according to industry data, while home entertainment spending is off more than 17% from its 2004 peak.

"The U.S. is a mature theatrical market," says John Fithian, chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners trade group. "But unlike any other, we have a growing population and the fastest-growing part of that population, Hispanics, also happen to be the most enthusiastic moviegoers. That's good news for the future of our business."

The impact upon the quality of films and the quantity of quality films influenced by the Mexicanization of the American audience is rather like the widely discussed effect of globalization: famously, explosions translate into any language, witty dialogue less so. But, as Hispanics become a massive pillar in the domestic audience, explosions play better here, too.

For example, the Academy Awards gave the latest Best Picture to Ben Affleck's "Argo" largely to encourage the production of more mid-budget flicks aimed at middle-aged, educated, white Americans (like the Academy voters). "Argo" was a fine movie, but it's hard to imagine it winning Best Picture in past eras when Hollywood made a similar quality movie for grown-ups about once a month rather than as a once a year exception that proves the rules.

In contrast, television, especially subscription channels, can rope in smaller but highly articulate predominantly white audiences for shows like Downton Abbey and Mad Men.

Let me point out the peculiar aspect of white flight from increasingly Mexicanized things: it's seldom talked about as much as white flight from black things. The media is constantly full of discussions of whether or not whites are listening to enough black music or giving blacks enough Academy Awards. This kind of thing strikes white people as fun to argue over.

In contrast, white people's declining interest in all things Mexican or even Mexican-influenced is almost never mentioned. It's not a conspiracy of silence, however. It's a conspiracy of boredom.

Pew: "Integration without blacks in NYC neighborhoods"

From the Pew Research Center:
Sign of things to come? Integration without blacks in New York City neighborhoods 
New York City has always been a trendsetter for the rest of the country in art, fashion and cuisine. Now two researchers have documented a new demographic trend in the Big Apple that they suggest may be a glimpse of the future for other large American cities. 
Researchers Ronald J.O. Flores and Arun Peter Lobo call it integration without blacks. In the past 40 years they found nearly a three-fold increase in the share of integrated New York City neighborhoods with a mix of whites, Hispanics and Asians but few, if any, blacks. 
At the same time, the share of integrated neighborhoods in which blacks comprised at least 10% of the residents fell by about a third, Flores and Lobo reported in the latest Journal of Urban Affairs. 
The result, they wrote, is an “emerging black/non-black color line, where Asians and Hispanics are increasingly aligned with whites while distancing themselves from blacks.” 
Using Census data, the researchers analyzed shifts in integration patterns in 2,111 New York City census tracts between 1970 and 2010. This period marked an explosive period of demographic change in the city: During that time the share of whites-nearly two-thirds of the population in 1970-fell by about half to roughly 33%, while the proportion of blacks remained relatively stable at about 23%. At the same time, the city’s Hispanic population doubled to 28% and the Asian share grew more than six fold to 13%. 
The researchers used census tracts as proxies for neighborhoods. They defined an integrated neighborhood as one in which whites comprised more than 10% but less than 70% of all residents while some mix of blacks, Asians or Hispanics comprised the remainder. 
Within these integrated neighborhoods, they identified those that were “integrated, with blacks” And those that were “integrated, without blacks.” In order to be defined as neighborhoods that were integrated with blacks, African Americans had to make up at least 10% of the residents in the census tracts. Those labeled integrated without blacks contained fewer than 10% blacks. 
Since 1970, Flores and Lobo found that the proportion of “integrated, without blacks” neighborhoods nearly tripled from 13% to 37% in 2010. At the same time, the share of “integrated, with blacks” areas fell from 22.4% to 14.9%. The biggest changes were in neighborhoods where minorities made up at least 70% of the residents, which grew dramatically, and those where whites were the clear majority, which plummeted as a share of all census tracts.

This pattern is hardly new in some places outside of New York: it was common in Southern California a generation ago. But it is interesting to see it playing out in New York City. 

My guess is that in a half century or so, African-Americans will look back in wonder from their current residences in Section 8 podunkvilles at the fact that a century before they heavily inhabited the great liberal cities of America, that they used to live in large numbers on Manhattan, in the nation's capital, a few miles from the beach in L.A., along the lakefront in Chicago, near downtown Boston, and even in San Francisco! It will seem strange in 2063 that back in the early 21st Century, the synonym for black music and black radio stations was "urban."

Here's an alternative possibility, however: if crime can be brought down even further in the Surveillance State, maybe African-American neighborhoods will become more attractive to white gentrifiers, even if they can't push all the blacks out.

By the way the top graph showing the steady rise in NYC's Asian population reminds me of something a New York reader told me awhile ago. She says that while today it seems inevitable that Jews like her will more or less dominate New York City politics forever, she looks around and sees an ever-growing number of Chinese competently inhabiting New York. Maybe, she says, in a half century New York will be a Chinese-dominated city?

August 9, 2013

Informative logo for Open Borders movement

The Open Borders movement is looking for a logo, so here's one that would help them get the impact of Open Borders across vividly:
C'mon, Open Borders guys, you always feel as if the media, while sympathetic, doesn't give you enough attention. By encapsulating one obvious effect Open Borders would have (the extinction of the Jewish State), this logo would get your message lots of attention.

Dr. James Thompson's Richwine / rich wine challenge

Four months ago, James Thompson made a challenge to the Ana Marie Cox-types hounding Jason Richwine out of work:
“So here is the challenge: a bottle of fine French wine sent to the first person who can show that Hispanic/Latino American intelligence and scholastic ability is on the same level as European American intelligence and scholastic ability. Data please.”

So far, the data has not been forthcoming.

Richwine: "Why can't we talk about IQ?"

Jason Richwine has finally found an outlet willing to publish his response to the tidal wave of ignorance that cost him his job. From Politico:
“IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,” the Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted in response that a search for “IQ test” in Google’s academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits — just for the year 2013.

Read the whole thing there.

From Drudge, a new flag


National blankness

At Rhymes with Cars & Girls, commenter Crimson Reach suggests this as the perfect logo for Open Borders:
We can combine the spirit of the white flag, the empty country, and the bubble by submitting this as the logo.

Along these lines, here's Richard Hell and the Voidoids' "Blank Generation."

Caplan on Sailer

Economist Bryan Caplan is a cheerful but humorless soul, so he's upset that my readers have been having fun with his Open Borders logo contest, and he projects his anger upon those having a laugh at his expense.

But Caplan does make a good point: Out of all the intellectuals in the country, when it comes to thinking about immigration (and perhaps race and a few other crucial topics), I'm the most sane, sensible, moderate responsible grown-up, which makes me widely hated. In contrast, Caplan's Open Borders views on immigration are self-evident lunacy, which makes him far more respectable. As Caplan says, "I have to admit, it's bizarre."

Caplan writes:
Citizenists strike me as extraordinarily angry people.  But I have to admit: If I were them, I'd be angry too.   
Consider their intellectual situation: Every orthodox moral theory - utilitarianism, Kantianism, egalitarianism, libertarianism, wealth maximization, Rawlsianism, Christianity, and Marxism for starters - straightforwardly endorses open borders, or something close.  Yet almost everyone in the First World strongly opposes this policy.  The moral theory of citizenism, in contrast, does not straightforwardly endorse open borders.  Indeed, combined with suitably misanthropic descriptive views, citizenism handily justifies the strict immigration restrictions that most First Worlders know and love. 
So why the anger?  Because even though people love the implications of citizenism, they wince at the doctrine itself, and stigmatize its adherents.  Adherents of orthodox moral theories, in contrast, enjoy respect and approbation.  Americans in particular want to have their cake and eat it, too. 
 They certainly don't want their country "invaded" by Latin American immigration.  But when a citizenist articulately justifies their anxiety, the typical American feels like the citizenist is too racist to acknowledge, much less endorse.
Think about it like this: Steve Sailer's policy views are much closer to the typical American's than mine.  Compared to me, he's virtually normal.  But the mainstream media is very sweet to me, and treats Steve like a pariah.  I have to admit, it's bizarre. 
Still, if I were a citizenist, I wouldn't be that angry.  Relative to the open borders alternative, the U.S. border is already virtually closed.  (Disagree?  Tell me what annual immigration would be under open borders, and compare this to what we currently get).

Indeed.
If I were a citizenist, I'd be grateful that the status quo approximately equals my favorite policy.  Sure, it's frustrating when people flip out at you for forthrightly justifying the policies they already support.  But what's more important: Getting the respect you feel you deserve, or getting the policies you think are morally right?  

I'm very happy that the electorate agrees far more on immigration policy with me than with Bryan Caplan.

As for my influence, I've been writing a long time, and I'm stoic about the fact that my influence works through labyrinthine laundering processes, where my ideas eventually show up in more sonorous forms on the op-ed page of the New York Times weeks or months or years after I publish them. Eventually, I expect to be recognized as The Guy Who Figured Out the Answers to Some of the Hard Questions, but I don't expect that to happen before I'm very old. Such is the way of the world ...

On the other hand, the media conventional wisdom considers Bryan's extremism to be admirable, if perhaps a little too forthright for the peasants at the moment. Unfortunately, it's not a good idea to blithely assume that elites won't get what they keep shouting for, no matter how stupid it is. To update for the 21st Century H.L. Mencken's apothegm on democracy, “Mediacracy is the theory that the elites know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” 

The problem is that there can be a lot of collateral damage when sanity is considered unmentionable in elite discourse.

My 2009 review of Neill Blomkamp's "District 9"

Here's the opening to my long 2009 review in Taki's Magazine of the sci-fi movie District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp, whose Elysium opens today:
... Yet, few Americans (except the black critic Armond White, who has made himself wildly unpopular with fanboys of District 9 by pointing out the film’s strikingly caustic portrayal of black Africans) seem to grasp writer-director Neill Blomkamp’s subversive perspective, even though the exiled Afrikaner keeps giving interviews more or less spelling it out. 
The American press constantly refers to District 9 as an “apartheid allegory,” but the 29-year-old Blomkamp was ten when Nelson Mandela was released. Blomkamp’s press statements can hardly be more explicit that the movie is largely a post-apartheid parable about illegal immigration and Malthusian despair. 
In fact, Blomkamp is personally a victim of the gradual ethnic cleansing of southern Africa. Rampant crime under the new black government drove his family from Johannesburg to British Columbia in 1997. 
But Americans just don’t get it because they haven’t paid attention to South Africa since 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected President and then They All Lived Happily Ever After. Blomkamp told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Everybody in North America thinks of South Africa for white oppression of the black majority.” Yet, 15 years later, “what we’re not familiar with is this screwed-up Johannesburg setting.” 
Just as 1981’s Road Warrior, with Mel Gibson as Mad Max, memorably re-imagined the defining Australian experience of living on an empty continent, District 9 symbolizes the lesson of Afrikaans history: on an increasingly full continent, the weak can eventually triumph over the strong by outbreeding them. 
Much of District 9 is a video game-style shoot-‘em-up complete with the predictable teaming up of the rebel human hero and the single smart, nice alien hero (the Mandela stand-in) to battle the evil corporation. 
Nonetheless, what gives the film its distinctive ferocity is its bitter Malthusian wisdom distilled from the Afrikaner diaspora. History may be written by the winners, but some of the most bracing fiction—for example, Disgrace, the 1999 novel about gang rape in the new South Africa by J.M. Coetzee, the Nobel laureate who fled to Australia in 2002—is written by history’s losers, such as the Afrikaners.

Read the whole thing there.

By the way, here is a review of literary heavyweight (The Great Railway Bazaar) Paul Theroux's The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, a trip through South Africa, Namibia, and Angola by Marian Evans in The American Renaissance. Like his mentor, Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, Theroux is something of a misanthrope, so adjust accordingly when reading Theroux.