2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
immigration, politics
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The anti-anti-immigration marchers seem to have a problem with the Jews:
The great success of “La Gran Marcha” also means that the time has come to organize and politicize our great number of youths that are just festering in many of our school districts. The walkouts in Los Angeles of thousands of Mexican and Latino students from Huntington Park, South Gate, Southeast, Jordan, Montebello, Garfield and Roosevelt High Schools on Friday, one day before “La Gran Marcha”, only shows that they are now ready to be mobilized and advised on how they can improve their educations. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villagairosa, a Los Angeles Unified School District victim himself before he turned his life around, is already undertaking a bold moved to wrestle control of the district from a Jewish dominated school board and a White superintendent that are just fleecing the schools of much needed funds. School board Jews like Julie Korenstein, Marlene Canter, David Tokofsky, Jon Lauritzen and Mike Lansing are just enriching themselves and their cronies through crooked deals involving school construction projects, and contracts with so called consultants and vendors. The LAUSD is the second largest in the nation, next to New York, with a multi-billion dollar annual budget. It has an overwhelming Mexican and Latino student population. Jews have their own private schools so why are 5 Jews out of 7 school board members interested in governing the school district?
And once they gid rid of the Jews, what then?
A major reason for the great success of “La Gran Marcha” was the strong participation of labor unions and the Catholic Church. This same alliance contributed to the success of Lech Walesa’s “Solidarity Movement” in the Republic of Poland. This can be done in Aztlan as well. If the racist “Sensenbrenner Legislation” passes the US Senate, there is no doubt that a massive civil disobedience movement will emerge. Eventually labor union power can merge with the immigrant civil rights and “Immigrant Sanctuary” movements to enable us to either form a new political party or to do heavy duty reforming of the existing Democratic Party. The next and final steps would follow and that is to elect our own governors of all the states within Aztlan.
Ah, Aztlan. The original home of the Aztecs, ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. Many Chicano activists consider the American Southwest their native land, not the European immigrants who settled after the Aztecs moved south into Mexico. Consider El Plan de Aztlan:
2. ECONOMY: economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and developing our own talents, sweat, and resources. Cultural background and values which ignore materialism and embrace humanism will contribute to the act of cooperative buying and the distribution of resources and production to sustain an economic base for healthy growth and development Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended. Land and realty ownership will be acquired by the community for the people’s welfare. Economic ties of responsibility must be secured by nationalism and the Chicano defense units.
5. SELF-DEFENSE of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The front line defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their involvement as protectors of their people will be given respect and dignity. They in turn offer their responsibility and their lives for their people. Those who place themselves in the front ranks for their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of liberation and for La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.
7. POLITICAL LIBERATION can only come through independent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feed from the same trough. Where we are a majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group; nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de La Raza!
Granted, this document was written in 1968 and has been disavowed by many leaders of the latino community. But the Aztlan nativist sentiment is still strong:
I’m no supporter of Michelle Malkin on immigration, and I think the Minutemen are mostly a bunch of thugs. I don’t even have a problem with amnesty for the illegals already here. But we do have immigration laws on the books, and they should be enforced until amended (a better solution than throwing up a wall from texas to California is to expand legal immigration so that people wanting to become Americans don’t have to come here illegally).
But these marchers are their own worst enemy. Why all the Mexican flags? Why compare Americans to Nazis? Why insult your neighbors by saying Europeans are the real illegals? Why push to fly the Mexican flag at public schools in Houston? Why the plans to take back Aztlan? I generally support expanded immigration, and this turns me off. Come here because you want to be Americans, and show some sign that you’re willing to assimilate in some manner.
[via Strange Women Lying in Ponds, Captain’s Quarters and Wizbang]
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
Tags: none yet
,
One might think that fluency in English would be a job requirement for teachers. Apparently not.
Three Lowell [Mass.] teachers, who were fired for failing the district’s English fluency tests in 2003, should be allowed back in the classroom and receive full back pay, an arbitrator has ruled.
Pedro Espada, 62, Vandy Duch, 43, and Vong Oung, 39, have been unable to find work as teachers since they were dismissed, their lawyers said yesterday. The teachers, who were advised to refer questions to their lawyers, were unavailable to comment.
The three fired and reinstated teachers were all teachers of bilingual classes prior to a 2002 requiring English-only classes. Two of the three were long-time math teachers.
It really doesn’t seem too much to ask that a teacher be able to communicate well in English. It also doesn’t seem beyond the pale for the district to test only non-native speakers, as the district here did. Teachers and their unions simply don’t want any objective assessment of their skills and performance. Anyone in a job where communication of information is the sole job requirement should be fired if they can’t speak the language in which they are asked to communicate such information.
[via Wizbang]
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
BALCO, Barry Bonds, baseball, Bud Selig, George Mitchell, John Dowd, steroids
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What the hell is wrong with Bud Selig?
An essay question, to be sure, but apparently the man, who has yet to utter a single word of contrition for his personal role in allowing baseball’s Steroids Era to go unaddressed for a decade, can only be spurred to action by publication of a book. First it was Juiced, which led to a lot of hand-wringing, a Congressional investigation and a close-but-not-good-enough steroids testing policy.
Now, with the publication of Game of Shadows, Selig has decided to appoint former Senator and itinerant negotiator George Mitchell to head an “independent” investigation into steroid use, including the connection between Barry Bonds and BALCO. It’s entirely unclear what this is meant to accomplish. If Mitchell confirms the obvious, that Bonds has been juicing since McGwire and Sosa stole the spotlight from His Royal Barryness in 1998, what exactly is Selig going to do? Suspend Bonds for using drugs that baseball neither tested for nor seemed to give much of a damn about? Put an asterisk next to Bonds’ 73 homers or his career home run record?
Its just more ass-covering from the ass-covering king. A far better use of resources would be an investigation of what the owners and commissioner knew, when they knew it, and why they didn’t do anything about it. Luckily for baseball, ESPN The Magazine already started that investigation:
[Selig’s] implication was clear. If team executives hadn’t known about the scourge of steroids, how was the commissioner supposed to have known? If baseball writers, who saw players up close every day, hadn’t reported the problem, how could they accuse Selig of turning a blind eye to it?
In short, who knew?
Who knew? We all knew: the trainers who looked the other way as they were treating a whole new class of injuries; the players who saw teammates inject themselves but kept the clubhouse code of silence; the journalists who “buried the lead” and told jokes among themselves about the newly muscled; the GMs who wittingly acquired players on steroids; and, yes, owners and players, who openly applauded the home run boom and moved at glacial speed to address the problem that fueled the explosion.
And stop already comparing George Mitchell to John Dowd, who headed the investigation into Pete Rose as Special Counsel to Commissioner Bart Giamatti. Dowd was a lawyer who served in the Justice Department as a trial attorney in the Tax Division and chief of an Organized Crime Strike Force in the Criminal Division. He supervised an internal investigation of the FBI and the investigation of Congressman Daniel Flood of Pennsylvania. He represented a senator of Nevada before the Department of Justice and the Senate Ethics Committee; an Air Force Colonel in the Iran Contra hearings; a senator before the Senate Ethics Committee; and a governor of Arizona in litigation with the Resolution Trust Corporation and in a fact-finding hearing before the House Subcommittee on General Oversight and Investigations, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, inquiring into the failure of the savings and loan industry. He served as an arbitrator for the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris. In short, Dowd was an experienced investigator with a track record of taking on high-profile targets.
Mitchell, on the other hand, is a negotiator. He played a major role in brokering the Good Friday Accords in Northern Ireland and is a perennial contended for Secretary of State in a Democratic administration. He’s a former Senator and Senate Majority Leader, a body known mostly for deliberation and not for action. Further, Mitchell is a baseball insider. He serves on the board of the Boston Red Sox, and is Chairman of the Walt Disney Company, which owned a franchise until recently and currently owns baseball partner ESPN. He, therefore, has an enormous conflict of interest, and his appointment appears to be no more than window dressing for Bud Selig’s ongoing efforts to cover up the role baseball executives played in allowing the Steroid Era to continue unabated.
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
humor, Microsoft, Search
,
Results of egosearching on MSN. My favorite:
“It’s just quicker this way,” Ochsenhirt says. “I mean, sure, I’m never totally clean — but I’m always wide awake! If I’m running the dishwasher at the same time, I have to shower in decaf, but otherwise it’s been great!”
[via Weblog Tools Collection and Scoble]
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
brak, humor
,
The Church Sign Generator says
Granted, that’s not that funny. But WuzzaDem is.
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
censorship, government, Missouri, video games
,
Undeterred by the numerous court cases finding such bans unconstitutional, Missouri Democrats are pressing forward with a bill making it illegal to sell certain video games to minors
The gory excerpts, taken from the most violent of video games [Postal II], were offered as Exhibit A this week in favor of a bill banning the sale of such content to minors. The bill would make it a misdemeanor to sell games rated M for “mature,” or AO for “adults only” to anyone under age 17. It also would impose fines as high as $5,000 to retailers who fail to post information about game ratings.While shocked members of the committee echoed the need to protect children, critics warned of certain legal assault against such efforts. And they needed only to point to St. Louis County and Illinois, where similar bans have been toppled in court.
The last refuge of the censor is always “protect the children.” Parents, however, already have all the tools they need to protect their children. All video games are rated, indicating the appropriate ages for such games. Here are the ratings in question in Missouri:
MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language.
ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.
If you are a parent and don’t want your kids exposed to these games, don’t let them play games rated M or AO. Don’t know the rating of a game? Use the ESRB’s handy search feature, which will tell you that Postal 2 is rated M for “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Mature Sexual Themes, Strong Language and Use of Drugs”. Or search by rating - there are nearly three times more games rated Teen (13+) than rated M or AO.
It’s just more Sesame Street Nation - lazy parents and the easily offended would rather have a society where nothing is inappropriate for a child than put the responsibility of raising children where it belongs, on the parents.
More discussion, including lots of parents asking the government to do their jobs for them, at the Post’s Talk of the Day.
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
abortion, Missouri, science, Stem Cell Research
,
The radical anti-abortion wing of the Missouri House is ready to forego $40 million in spending on science rather than see it spent on stem cell research.
Nearly $40 million once set aside by Missouri to support life science research and commercialization could soon become a casualty of the state’s battle over the legality of embryonic stem cell research.Over the objections of Gov. Matt Blunt, the Missouri House has opted to not include the money in its version of the budget passed earlier this month. Now, many question if the Senate will restore the funds, raised from the state’s tobacco settlement.
The 2003 law that created the Life Sciences Trust Fund provides that “[p]ublic funds shall not be expended, paid, or granted to or on behalf of an existing or proposed research project that involves abortion services, human cloning, or prohibited human research.” Some legislators are concerned that the stem cell research amendment on this November’s ballot, if approved by voters, would allow some of the funds to be used for stem cell research.
If this is the House’s concern, the members should be ashamed of themselves. If the law as written bars use of funds for stem cell research, it will only be because Missourians approve a constitutional amendment that expenditure on such research becomes legal. If a clear majority of Missourians want to spend public funds on stem-cell research, a handful of anti-abortion legislators whouldn’t stand in their way.
It’s not at all clear that the 2003 law even bars use of funds on stem cell research. The law bars use of the funds on abortion services, human cloning and prohibited human research. Abortion services is defined as “performing, inducing, or assisting with abortions or encouraging patients to have abortions, referring patients for abortions not necessary to save the life of the mother, or development of drugs, chemicals, or devices intended to be used to induce an abortion.” Stem cell research does not involve abortion services.
The law defines human cloning as “the creation of a human being by any means other than by the fertilization of an oocyte of a human female by a sperm of a human male.” The type of research at issue this November does not involve the “creation of a human being.” In fact, it strictly prohibits human cloning, as the Secretary of State acknowledges. Creation of stem cells in a lab does not amount to creation of a human being.
Finally, although the constitutional amendment at issue would guarantee that Missouri lawmakers cannot prohibit certain types of research, such research is legal now. It is not prohibited in a generic sense, and it is certainly not the “prohibited human research” at issue in the Life Sciences Trust Fund law, which limits prohibited research to
a research project in which there is the taking or utilization of the organs, tissues, or cellular material of (a) a deceased child, unless consent is given by the parents in a manner provided in sections 194.210 to 194.290, RSMo, relating to anatomical gifts, and neither parent caused the death of such child or consented to another person causing the death of such child or (b) a living child, when the intended or likely result of such taking or utilization is to kill or cause harm to the health, safety, or welfare of such child, or when the purpose is to target such child for possible destruction in the future.
The Missouri House must not allow a handful of anti-abortion legislators to use irrational fear of stem cell research to block scientific progress made possible through the Life Sciences Trust Fund (whether Missouri has any business operating such a fund is another matter for another day). Unfortunately, the Senate and Gov. Blunt seem unwilling to reverse this bad decision.
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
Ballwin, government, nanny state, smoking, St. Louis
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Restaurant owners who have been harmed by the Ballwin smoking ban have banded together with other concerned citizens, vowing to defeat the re-election bids of Aldermen who voted for the ban
Opponents of a smoking ban are hoping to prevent the re-election of three aldermen who voted for the ban.Aldermen banned smoking in restaurants that don’t serve alcohol and other public places last year. On Jan. 2, the ban widened, and fires went out in ashtrays all over town in bars and restaurants serving alcohol.
Some restaurant and other business owners and residents opposed to the smoking ban have formed Concerned Citizens for a Better Ballwin. The group says that business is down at restaurants and that bar and restaurant owners blame the ban.
The targeted Aldermen include Tim Pogue, 1st Ward; Jane Suozzi, 2nd Ward; and Charlie Gatton, 4th Ward.
Elsa Barth, who owns the Seventh Inn Restaurant on Seven Trails Drive in Ballwin, said her sales were down 35 percent under the ban. Alderman Charlie Gatton, on the other hand, says that employees at local restaurants report that the businesses were doing as well if not better under the ban.
The Aldermanic candidates the group is supporting propose to replace the ban with an ordinance requiring businesses to post notices on their doors to say whether they are smoking or nonsmoking facilities. This is essentially the compromise proposal put forth in the District of Columbia during debate over the DC smoking ban. Tobacco abolitionists are unfazed with this appeal to personal choice and responsibility. According to the Post, “Martin Pion, president of Missouri Group Against Smoking Pollution Inc., said the opponents’ proposal is ‘pure tobacco-industry inspired.’”
There are a lot of non-smokers (like yours truly) who oppose smoking bans, not because we like the smell of smoke or exposure to smoke, but because it should be the exclusive province of property owners and not government to determine whether smoking is allowed. There will always be non-smoking establishments to cater to that market - why can’t there be smoking establishments for that market as well. If a non-smoker doesn’t want to be exposed to the smoke, just go somewhere else.
The last word goes to Concerned Citizens:
Peggy McCain, a spokesman for Concerned Citizens, said business owners, not the government, should decide whether to allow smoking.
“To me, it’s not about smoking or not smoking, it’s about freedom - as a citizen, to go to a smoking or nonsmoking establishment,” she said.
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2 years, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
evolution, FSM, intelligent design, science
,
As part of the previous post about the FSM, I went to the Discovery Institute site to see if they had a response to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They don’t, other than a Jeff Jacoby column from the Boston Globe in 1995 that makes this absurd assertion:
If intelligent design proponents were peddling Biblical creationism, the hostility aimed at them would make sense. But they aren’t. Unlike creationism, which denied the earth’s ancient age or that biological forms could evolve over time, intelligent design makes use of generally accepted scientific data and agrees that falsification, not revelation, is the acid test of scientific validity.
Except that they are peddling biblical creationism, and they don’t make use of “generally accepted scientific data”. From Judge Jones’ order in Kitzmiller:
- Although proponents of the IDM occasionally suggest that the designer
could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendants’ expert witnesses.
- ID proponents Johnson, William Dembski, and Charles Thaxton, one of the editors of Pandas, situate ID in the Book of John in the New Testament of the Bible, which begins, “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.â€
- Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one believes in the existence of God.
- The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism.
And what about ID’s devotion to scientific principles?
- ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.
- What is more, defense experts concede that ID is not a theory as that term is defined by the NAS and admit that ID is at best “fringe science†which has achieved no acceptance in the scientific community.
- Accordingly, the purported positive argument for ID does not satisfy the ground rules of science which require testable hypotheses based upon natural explanations.
- In addition to failing to produce papers in peer-reviewed journals, ID also features no scientific research or testing.
So, since ID is biblical creationism, the hostility directed at its proponents makes sense. Glad we cleared that up.
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