Luke Ford | No sacred cows.

The American Nativists Were Right

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Luke Ford

American Nativism was a movement in the 1800s which said that the original founding population of America was Western European and that adulterating that with non-Western European immigrants would destroy it. In particular, these Anglo-Saxons argued that bringing in Southern, Eastern, Mediterranean and Irish European groups would destroy our culture.

It turns out they were right, about everything. These new groups voted Leftist, having lower IQs and being more prone to unrealistic thoughts which they then defensively asserted preemptively as reality. These groups introduced lower standards of social behavior. And they voted, so soon corruption became the norm in politics. Anyone who remembers Tamany Hall shepherding Irish voters or the Chicago machine herding Eastern Europeans knows what this was like.

The fact remains that Western Europeans are the world’s only real minority and are an exceptional group that most closely resembles the historical European ideal. These historical Europeans ranged throughout Asia and India, came over the steppes and dwelt in Northern and Western Central Europe. From there, many other civilizations prospered as offshoots, possibly reflecting caste divisions in this ur-European tribe or its re-integration with the population that once produced it.

What will destroy Western Europeans is assimilation, including by “trace admixture” groups like the non-Western Europeans. Eastern Europeans are part Asiatic; Southern Europeans, part Persian; Irish, part North African; Jewish, part Persian, Arabic, Asiatic and Armenian; Greeks, park Turkic. Mixing these groups into the Western European gene pool will destroy Western Europeans just as surely as breeding them with sub-Saharan Africans. It is not what they are mixed with that counts, but that they are mixed at all, just as diversity of any kind is destructive, no matter what groups are involved.

Posted in America, WASPs | Comments Off

Admit It, White America: You’re Scared Of Cam Newton’s Success

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Luke Ford

BY STEVEN PREEZYDAKID BROWN (FEB. 4, 2016):

In 1990, rap group Public Enemy declared that mainstream America was fearful of a Black Planet, which became the theme and focal point of their third LP.

At the time, hip-hop was becoming the music of choice for American youth and Public Enemy were well aware of it. Now, the kids from the suburbs were being exposed to unfiltered black culture.
But what frightens bigots and racists even more is when a black man seems to hold the world in the palm of his hand. And in 2016, that description fits Cam Newton to a tee.
The starting QB for the Super Bowl-bound Carolina Panthers and likely NFL MVP, is the man at the moment, whether his detractors like it or not. Over the course of the 2015 season, many pundits took umbrage with what they deemed to be Cam’s excessive touchdown celebrations, particularly his propensity for doing the dab after making a big play.

But, apparently, there is a growing contingent of those that aren’t entertained by Cam’s antics. As is the case with most debates involving minorities, many in the black community feel that these critiques are racially motivated.
Cam Newton is the polar opposite of the docile, African American player that’s just happy to get along. Instead, he’s the type of self-assured black talent that white America loves to hate.

Cam Newton is not the black quarterback of old and is at the beginning stages of what looks to be a dominant run as the NFL’s face. It scares his critics shitless because there’s nothing they can do about it.
He is not Doug Williams or Donovan McNabb, two former black quarterbacks who reached the Super Bowl, but preferred to shy away from the responsibility that comes with it. They wanted to be “ordinary” quarterbacks.
And while I hold the utmost respect for these legends, they aren’t Cam. Newton’s far from timid and mainstream America despises him because he’s confident, borderline cocky, and doesn’t fit the mold of the traditional, white quarterback.
Today’s feelings about Cam are similar to how people despised him when they failed to nail Cam on those pay-to-play allegations levied against him in 2010 when he was a member of the Auburn Tigers. At the time, it was alleged that Newton’s father, Cecil Newton, sought $120,000 to $180,000 for the quarterback to sign with Mississippi State out of junior college prior to ending up at Auburn.
The timing of the investigation was a bit peculiar for some considering that Newton was the NCAA’s darling player. The NCAA would eventually clear Cam and Auburn of all wrong-doing in October 2011, concluding that it found no major violations in its investigation.

Posted in Blacks, Football | Comments Off

Pride Cometh Before A Fall

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Cam Newton bites the dust. Humiliation. His comment last week “nobody’s seen a skill-set like mine” will live in infamy.

Cam threw sportsmanship into the trash, then the Broncos threw Can into the toilet. Say goodbye to the nutcase narcissist, Carolina.

Hardest hit: ESPN tries to incite a black power proxy race war on the field and it all blows up in their face! More layoffs to come, boys, and you know cable subscribers are pulling the plug after this game.

Defense wins Super Bowls.

* The most unapologetically black football team in history goes down in defeat to the most unambiguously white quarterback in the league.

Regardless of what you think about the game itself, every alt-righter should be feeling about two inches taller tonight.

* ESPN: Only line I could hear from Panthers quarterback Cam Newton was: “It was nothing special they did.” The player that smiled all week was sulking.

* I was shocked by how Denver shut Newton down. I’m still shocked. I was almost as sure Carolina would win as I am Jim Gilmore will lose the primary. And Denver won by 2 touchdowns and kept Carolina to 10 points. Stunning. I feel bad for Ron Rivera who seems like a good guy and is an outstanding coach. How do you come back of your Carolina next season? They dominated and had a near-perfect season until the final game, where they were shut down. Newton was a much better QB tonight than Manning, but the Denver defense was beyond belief.

* Boy, what a crappy Superbowl. Just the amount of stupid plays, especially by the Panthers, especially by Cam Newton, made it completely annoying to watch.

Cam Newton is the “new face of the NFL”? God help us.

Is anybody going to bring up how he pissed away any chance to get back in the game when he wouldn’t deign to go down to the ground to fight to recover his own goddamn fumble? Would asking that question be a microaggression — or even something bigger these days?

I was rooting for Denver — though certainly not my own team. But I could hardly enjoy the victory, because of so much idiocy and bad character on the way there.

* I used to say the same thing about gridiron, and I still don’t watch it that much, but I’ve found that it helps once you stop trying to map it onto other oval-ball sports like rugby. I grew up in Australia playing both versions of rugby, and for a long time I tried to understand NFL/CFL football through that template–and like you, found it utterly baffling.

In fact, American football is much more comparable to a war game or turn-based strategy game played with live pieces than it is to the rapid, free-flowing improvisation of the rugby codes. Players have to memorize a dizzying array of complex setpiece plays, each game tailored to the particular opponent and to the venue. Once the play starts, the quarterback has some ability to alter the approach, but he has to do so under the unbelievable cognitive load of tracking rapidly moving targets and looking for unplanned opportunities while huge armored men are bearing down upon him with the intent to do him harm. And once he lets fly, it’s in the hands of fate. Then the play stops and we get ready for another setpiece.

Having said that, I don’t so much mind the black-heavy team distribution–it’s what they’re good at, and you could argue it gives blacks some legitimate reasons for pride, compared to the illegitimate ones so common in their community–but I could really, really do without the ludicrous showboating and preening they do after every successful play, let alone touchdowns.

And did anyone actually enjoy yesterday’s halftime show?

* My second thought after watching Lady Gaga’s rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner was: “Did Trump just win?”

Like everyone else in the world, I was dreading the thought of her massacring the National Anthem. To my surprise and delight, what she delivered was dignified and beautiful. Her slow tempo emphasized the words, and she relied on the strength of her voice, with only a token use of those moronic fluctuations all the contemporary singers use. She was dressed glamorously, but tastefully.

Trump should use the performance in a commercial. A lot of people can’t envision him as president because of his past antics. But if Lady Gaga can clean up her act to do justice to the National Anthem, then why should it be hard to believe that Trump could deliver a serious turn as president?

* “On the other hand: the fact that a side effect of the White Death is constipation didn’t seem to cause the makers of a pill for opioid-induced constipation any worries about political reaction:”

What a very strange ad. It’s unbelievable that it features three very white-looking people having bathroom issues – the main guy, the guy coming out of the bathroom in the beginning, and the white woman with toilet paper attached to the bottom of her shoe at the end. Meanwhile, the many diverse people in the background seem to be getting along with their lives fine.

The Brave New World propaganda throughout the Super Bowl was pretty strong from what I saw (I didn’t see the whole thing) – the rainbow half-time that featured a disproportionate representation of black performers (though not surprising) and concluded with the smaltzy, pro-gay marriage message “Believe in Love”, many of the commercials that were pro-multiculturalism pro-globalization, or related to White Death, and I think some other things that I can’t remember

Stir up the American people to watch the Super Bowl and then use it as an opportunity to feed them propaganda.

* I found the “Opioid Induced Constipation” ad utterly appalling. Not the subject but the reason for it.

Back in the 90′s, a long-time heroin addict told me the drug is so constipating that some addicts use their fingers to claw out weeks worth of fecal matter from their bodies.

I’m guessing this ad is aimed at opiate addicts, in whatever form they ingest the opiates. Instead of encouraging addicts to deal with their addiction, this drug makes it easier for them to continue using.

Nice message to send, especially during one of the most-watched televised events of the year.

* I’m disappointed to see no commentary on the thinly veiled Beyonce nods to Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and black power militancy.

Posted in Football | Comments Off

Cam Newton: I’m a black QB loving my job — deal with it

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

New York Post Jan. 27, 2016:

Cam Newton enters Super Bowl 50 as the front-runner for the NFL MVP, having led the Panthers to a 15-1 regular season and to the brink of the first championship in franchise history with a dual-threat, fan-friendly skill-set.
Yet, despite having never been a part of any major incidents during his five-year pro career, the star quarterback remains as criticized as he is celebrated, drawing particular ire over his penchant for dancing after touchdowns.
What remains a mystery to many — how Newton is as popular as he is polarizing — isn’t as challenging for the 26-year-old quarterback to understand.
“I’ve said it since Day One, I’m an African-American quarterback that might scare some people, because they haven’t seen anything they can compare me to,” Newton said at a press conference Wednesday. “Oftentimes, it’s funny, I get inspired, it makes me go out there and practice even harder because I remember when I was working out for the draft and I would see the Senior Bowl playing, I see these guys out there busting their tails, trying to get drafted, trying to have a job to provide for their family or themselves and it’s like, here I am, I’m doing exactly what I want to do, how I want to do it.”
Super Bowl 50 marks the fourth straight title game featuring a black starting quarterback, though Newton is just the sixth black quarterback to start in the game.
The former No. 1 overall pick, who threw for 3,837 yards and 35 touchdowns, while running for 636 yards and another 10 scores, could join Doug Williams and Russell Wilson as the only black quarterbacks to win a Super Bowl, but Newton believes no amount of success will allow him to win over his numerous detractors.

When Newton fumbled with his team down six points and just four minutes to go, he stepped back away from the ball and allowed Denver to recover it on the Carolina four yard line, costing his team any chance at winning the game.

Skip Bayless tweets: “Cam obviously should have given himself up and gone after his fumble. Pulling back not a good look with the game on the line.”

Steve Sailer writes: “…everybody in the NFL scrambles like a madman for a loose ball, well, except for Cam Newton in the 4th quarter (presumably he was hoping the ref would call it an incomplete pass if he just stood there and sulked).”

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Folks forget that Saints Coach Sean Peyton famous ballsy move of a surprise onside kick to in the second half of 2009 season Super Bowl, would have been the “WTF” bonehead call of all time, if the Colts ST “hands specialist” Hank Baskett had the sense to hold onto the football he recovered until the whistle.

Instead the Saints won the Super Bowl, Sean Peyton became a genius coach, and Baskett went on to become a side car on his sex tape peddling, Playboy Bunny, F-Buddy of Hugh Hefner, former stripper, wife’s reality TV show.

* Americans like football because it’s the closest thing we get to war without actual killing. It also serves as a regional adhesive, bringing people together to support the local franchise (esp. in northern cities w/ lots of white ethnics.) There’s a ton of moving pieces, which, as we get smarter, we can appreciate them moving in precise movements in order to gain yardage. Nothing can be more American – conquering territory for one’s people.

One of the things that piss me off about the alt-right movement is it’s seeming hatred of sports in which blacks dominate. Dude, I am not gonna spend all day obsessing about my progeny’s loss of their country. I can still fight the good fight and enjoy a beer and a game. And, apparently, so can most Americans…you know, the one’s you’ll need to appeal to if you ever a chance to get your message out. So let’s take a step back, enjoy the sport for the awesome spectacle it is, note its flaws, and appreciate how it serves as the quasi national religion in a time when most people can’t agree on much, they can agree that the Super Bowl is the most American of creations.

* What I wanted Manning to say post-game: “We just wanted to keep the game close and give the Defense a chance to come out and win it.”

MORE COMMENTS:

* Brian Tuohy has written several books about how pro sports are fixed. Writes a very interesting blog: http://www.thefixisin.net
Anyway, a few months ago he wrote “Manning is done. So he will be benched under the guise of an injury. Then he will come in as a back up and save the day. Then he will win the Super Bowl.”

* They coasted this year because they had an unusually soft schedule, they play in probably the third worst division in the league, ( The other 3 teams are bad ) and their in-conference and out-conference division match ups were against the worst and second worst divisions in the NFL, that accounts for 14 out of 16 games. The two games they played against good teams in the regular season were good teams that at the time they played them were decimated by injuries (Green Bay and Seattle).

They beat Seattle in the playoffs despite being shut out in the second half at home because Seattle put themselves in a 31-0 hole by the half and Seattle was down 21-0 before Newton did much of anything, the run game and defense got them that huge lead. They got an early lead against Arizona and Carson Palmer was playing with a bad index finger on his throwing hand so he was incapable of throwing deep against them and as many people have noted, Carolina has a very elite defense.

They knew that they way to beat Newton is hit him early and often, both Roethlisberger and Brady got the same treatment by them, but they didn’t fold like Newton did, trap him in the pocket and his accuracy fails and his ball sails on him. He really only makes a handful of good plays in most games, but the defense and the running game usually gave him a nice cushion because of the soft schedule.

* It’s easier to appreciate Manning when you watch the Newton post game press conference from tonight. Manning came up short in 3 Super Bowls and always faced the media and responded to their questions while Newton’s post game press conference was a joke tonight.

People will pick his play apart but that was one hell of a career and you get the sense that pro football players appreciate him more than the media/fans.

* The NFL got lucky, its still a team game where coaches and assistant coaches and defense matters. The NFL is not the NBA — where one supremely athletic player can dominate.

As noted, Newton is bad at making those touch passes. Many drops were because he threw the ball too hard. The Denver defense rushed, loaded up the line of scrimmage, and played man coverage daring Newton to beat them deep. He connected a few big plays, but not enough and not enough strung together to score more than 10 points.

Manning was the better quarterback. There is a reason Brett Favre, Bart Starr, Kurt Warner, etc. played so late in their career. QB requires a minimum level of athletic ability but the primary responsibility is reading defenses, changing plays at the line, and making those very quick touch passes that only the receiver can make, and can make with a defender draped across his back.

Newton has improved from where he was before, but he still emphasizes the easy stuff for him — taking off and running. And that’s fine until he runs into a defense that dares him to do what he can’t consistently do — make those soft touch passes which QBs like Manning, even with nerve damage, can do, let alone Brady, or Rodgers, or Roethlisberger. Yeah the NFL owners would rather pay an athlete like Newton $2 million a year for five years until his knees resemble RG3′s, and he’s replaced by the next model, as opposed to say $10 million a year for ten years to an athlete like Brady. But the Brady/Manning model is the only proven way to win Super Bowls.

And give credit to Manning — he changed his game from aggressive passer to conservative play action passer to let the defense and coaching staff particularly Wade Phillips win games. Newton has not shown that adaptability. I doubt he ever will — he’s coasted on his athletic ability his whole life.

* Let me add, the mighty Atlanta Falcons beat the Panthers in the regular season. I expect a big falloff for Newton next season, as he’ll be rushed, and the line of scrimmage stacked, until he proves he can beat that by making soft first down throws. Which I don’t expect him to do.

Hats off also to John Elway, who totally rebuilt the Broncos from an offense first team to one oriented around defense and spent money on top free agents for the offense. A big change from his whole football life oriented around offense.

* If Manning had any self-respect (or cared about his team) he would have pulled himself out of that game after the first or second quarter. The way Denver’s defense was playing, the score would have been in the forties something against 10 with Osweiler in the game. Manning put on one of the most cringe-worthy QB performances in SB history and yet his ego refused to do the right thing. Doesn’t say much for the guy if he earnestly believed him being out there was better for his team than Osweiller.

Newton follows in the long line of Great Black Hopes at the NFL QB position. This hybrid/passer/athlete nonsense has been going on for decades. Griffith and Kaepernick were only just a year or two ago being heralded as game changers and the rest. Before them it was Vick and Cunningham. We know why it’s still the favorite narrative out there, but most NFL fans see it for what it is and ignore it. It’s just too brutally true that white QBs, over the course of a career, outplay black QBs. More to the point, the money guys in the NFL must be secretly relieved that this is so. If most of the QBs weren’t white (and not just white, but unabashedly so with names like Dalton, Rodgers, Cutler, Palmer, Brady, Manning, etc) the NFL would no longer be the country’s favorite sport.

* The last time I saw officiating this blatantly rigged was a Spurs-Suns series about a decade ago, almost directly preceding the controversy/firing of an NBA ref for rigging games.

* Newton’s stats were a little better than Tom Brady’s 2 weeks ago against Denver. Adjusting for the nicer weather they were about the same. Denver has a really tough defense.

* As it was the 50th superbowl, the promoters obviously went out of their way to make it bigger, kitschier, cheesier, Americanier. A whole mixed service choir sang the lyrics of “America the Beautiful” to – apparently – some other melody. Lady Gaga sang the national anthem in some kind of mash-up of styles: Barbara Streisand and Whitney Houston. I’m kinda surprised she didn’t wear an outfit made entirely of bacon. The crowd cheered whenever they showed a bunch of poor chumps stuck in Afghanistan somewhere – yeah that makes me feel so patriotic – knowing that fifteen years after 9/11 we still have an occupation force in A-stan and likely will for (approximately) ever.

They should have just had “America! F**k Yeah!” blazing out of the jumbotrons, and President Camacho shooting off a SAW into the air while a hundred guitarists strummed out the opening bass-line of “I can’t go for that”.

* [Cam Newton] still made $20m in salary, roughly the same in endorsements, went 17-2, has a hot stripper girlfriend, and won offensive player of the year, and MVP…

So how was your year?

* Most alt-righters were virtue signalling that they weren’t watching the game, but lifting weights or something instead. Of course while most of them weren’t watching, they probably weren’t lifting weights either. They were probably surfing the internet.

* “They knew that they way to beat Newton is hit him early and often, both Roethlisberger and Brady got the same treatment by them,”

Not quite accurate. Ben’s offensive line held up quite well and he wasn’t rattled hardly at all, compared to NE (whose O’line, to be fair, was decimated due to injuries). But Newton completely had no idea what was coming. Remember, PIT didn’t have WR Antonio Brown and they led for 3.5 quarters. But that’s how it goes. But Ben wasn’t rattled much less pressured hardly at all by Denver because their O’line was the best of the three teams faced in playoffs/Superbowl.

I mean, Brock Osweiler could’ve won tonight with that defense supporting him.

Now that Carolina made the Super Bowl, they wont have an easy soft schedule next yr. so that will be the true test for how they perform.

* I think the Denver fans (and the rest of the Denver team) wanted to see whoever could assure them the win playing. Manning’s awful play made what need not been competitive, a game Carolina could have won easily if Newton had had a little more composure in the second half (the way he jumped away from trying to recover his own fumble at the end was almost unique). Denver’s offense had fewer yards than any winning SB team, just a bit more than half of Carolina’s, they were down 11 to 21 in first downs, the only offensive touchdown was off of another turnover caused by the Denver defense in the red zone. It was really an ugly game for Denver offensively. I think Osweiler couldn’t have done any worse and very likely would have done better.

And comparing Brady against Denver with Newton against Denver is revealing. Newton’s two fumbles led to both Denver touchdowns and were the difference in the game. Newton also got intercepted in the red zone. More to the point Newton looked baffled back in the pocket in the second half and was hesitant to run after taking a couple of nasty hits in the first half. I don’t remember any of that happening with Brady and I think he was punished about as much as Newton. Yet New England was in the game until the end. And of course Brady was at Denver (a notoriously tough place for visiting teams).

* Russell Wilson is the great black quarterback the media has been desperately hoping for 20+ years since the heyday of Warren Moon. In just a four year career, Wilson has won a Super Bowl, two NFC championships, and seven playoff games. Wilson has the discipline, intelligence, and self control of a good white man. Interestingly, his blackness was ignored during the two previous Super Bowls, unlike Newton. Also unlike Newton, there have been teammates questioning whether he is authentically black, and he has been mocked in the last year for his Christianity.

Blacks are capable of being championship QB’s. But they need to match their black athleticism with white intelligence and character. Even though the media could never admit it or even think it, the secret to black QB success is more oreos like Wilson. But those are incredibly rare, so we will continue to see over hyped black QB’s crash and burn.

Expect Wilson to dominate over the next decade as the great aging white QB’s retire.

* Peyton Manning’s QB rating was 57.4 in the Super Bowl. He didn’t play well at all.

* And that unambiguously white quarterback was also unambiguously over-the-hill to a painful extent. He went down to defeat to father time. It was his black teammates on defense and another even older white guy (Wade Phillips) who won this game.

* Wilson is under 6 feet, which is tough for an NFL qb. I root for him as an underdog in the Doug Flutie mode. I doubt if he could have eluded Von Miller tonight either, though.

Newton is a giant who is fast and strong-armed, perhaps the most amazing physical specimen ever at QB in the NFL, so he’s kind of fun as a Wilt Chamberlain-style heel-hero.

* Might there someday be a way to estimate all movies’ and tv-shows’ emotional intelligence, and use these ratings plus viewership stats to visualize the slow evolution of US/human social intelligence?

I’m starved for any hint that we as a species are getting smarter, which we surely must be (!?), but there’s a least-common-denominator paradox that makes it very hard to detect or measure.

It appears Americans are still overwhelmingly suckered by the war-on-terror military ‘patriotism’ hoax… but shouldn’t there be some measurable hints that increasing numbers of us are able to see thru it?

* Defensive pass rush is the key to Super Bowl wins. It’s been the defining element of the Super Bowl. Dolphins, Steelers, Cowboys, Raiders in 70s. Bears, Packers, Ravens, Giants, Bucs, Seattle, Broncos. No matter how good the QB is, the receivers will always need time to get open.

* I think the Snickers commercial was in part an inside Hollywood joke considering that Willem Dafoe has been said on numerous occasions to have a “confusingly large” penis for a man of his stature 5′ 10″.

The actress Dana Delany who dated both men got a lot of attention for commenting on several occasions that while Liam Neeson was obviously well known for his “large hands” he surprisingly had nothing on Dafoe.

Just Google “Willem Dafoe Penis” for all the Internet lore.

NPR’s Terry Gross even asked Dafoe if he attributed his willingness to do nude scenes to his obvious “comfort being in his own skin”.

Was the commercial in part an attempt at an edgy rebellion against folks having to knuckle under the whole WWT nonsense? I certainly hope so. After all testosterone challenge teenage boys love their Snickers.

The idea of Eugene Levy, the actor who became famous for the scene where he walks in on his son making love to an apple pie, having to be the one to looking up at Dafoe as Marilyn’s junk was a nice touch.

* I have to honestly second that comment about feeling a couple inches taller tonight, though of course, yeah, the Great Black QB Hope was demolished by an equally black Denver defense. But for decades serious historians have touted George Frasier as the champion of traditional values white America, while the much lighter-skinned Mahomet Ali was the representative of minorities and radicals, so how is this any more absurd? Finding, richly rewarding, and then shoving in our faces the most obnoxious and unsportsmanlike black sportsmen (a la Richard Sherman) is a favorite POZ hobby, and it would have been no different if Newton had won (sorry, Steve, no self-parodying Salon click-bait comparing a tired, out-to-pasture Manning to a tired, out-to-pasture Trump this year). And remember, a decade before you could be stripped of property due to illegally-recorded private conversations, it was already perfectly fine to lock you out of business opportunities for simply pointing out- a la Rush Limbaugh- the self-evident fact this WAS a favorite POZ hobby.

So, no, this is not important and the more cynical part of me almost suspects it to be a dumb distraction for the benefit of the powers that be. Heck, a Trump Presidency could be a dumb distraction by the powers that be if the Supreme Court ultimately rules any immigration restrictions unconstitional due to the 0th Amendment (“It’s not who we are.”). Still, I found this one nugget mildly amusing. In its write-up of the game, the NYT mentioned that with this win Peyton finally matched his little brother, who’s led the illustrious hometown Giants. If there is one undeniable truth in sports, it is that Eli Manning is by the far the worst quarterback ever to win 2 Super Bowls. So is the self-evident homerism in the TIMES’s implication that Peyton is just now worthy of Eli for real, or is it really trolling? As in- “Hey Joe Sixpack, we’re not the rootless, loyalty-leapfrogging cosmopolitan elitists they say we are. Just look at our absurd partiality to the hometown quarterback- we think he’s the peachie-est! So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way and established it’s nothing but us regular Joes here, let’s talk about amnesty for millions of Mexicans and Syrians. That would totally prove how exceptional America is, and how patriotic we are too. Because the only thing more patriotic than paying more Federal taxes is paying them in support of increased social services for Syrian refuges in order to prove how exceptional America truly is!”

* Russel Wilson may be 5′ 11″ but he has NBA Forward size hands combined with tremendous grip strength . The speedy Wilson has the unique ability to be able to run outside the pocket holding the ball in one hand and then throw it way downfield with out bringing his hands together to adjust his grip on the ball.

I don’t think I have ever seen a QB be able to do all what Wilson does consistently.

* Anyone else almost puke when they saw what a plastic surgery disaster the widow of the Bronco’s owner was? I don’t mean to be mean here, but that is the second worst botched plastic surgery I’ve ever seen.

* Osweiler would have been mauled by Carolina’s Defense and thrown a mess of interceptions

Osweiler won a few games until opponents started making an effort and figured out a way to game plan against him. Lots of physically talented young QBs have initial success but then struggle as defenses figure out their weaknesses. All great QBs are able to use their minds to help offset their limitations and counter specific defensive game plans.

Osweiler will have next year to show he is not another RGIII.

The best Colts team Manning ever had was in 2005. It struggled at the end of the season when Tony Dungy’s teenage son committed suicide. Still it was only a “Wide Right” from making the Super Bowl when it loss to the champion Steelers.

In 2009, Manning strapped a flawed Colts team on his back and would have been able to carry it to a perfect regular season while executing a record number of 4th quarter comebacks. Manning lost to a top seeded Saints team in a second half when the Colts pass rush collapsed due to Dwight Freeney with an already severely strained ankle and was no long longer able to pass rush Brees in the second half.

In 2013/14 was anybody going to able to stop the Legion of Boom.

All his career Peyton has been able to show that he is capable of calling plays that allow him to overcome injuries and advancing age. Few QBs can do that.

* Quicken’s Rocket Mortgage super bowl commercial seemed very political in that it spent a lot of time explaining why handing out mortgages in 8 minutes is Good for the Economy. I assume that was intended to persuade regulators and politicians not to crack down on Rocket Mortgages.

In contrast, the commercial about how you should take this pill if you have opioid-induced constipation was strikingly non-political. The message was: You are one of the millions who are scarfing opioid painkillers and a side effect is constipation so take our pill. There was no message to politicians about how the White Death is, when you stop and think about it, Good for the Economy.

* At a recent Academy Awards show, Lady Gaga came out in an elegant evening gown and sang a tribute of Julie Andrews songs in a tremendous voice, much to the surprise of us oldsters.

* Denver should put the trophy in Wade Phillips’ office. I thought he’d retired after Jerry Jones fired him. There’s also a lesson in there about knowing your limits. Phillips stepped back to DC and he gets to write his own history.

Manning is a QB in the old ‘field general’ style. So regardless of his lower numbers he still carries that team.

* I agree that Newton is the most physically impressive QB ever. A big problem is that he is a front runner, excessively happy/smiley when things are going well and a sulker when the going gets tough. The contrast to Brady, who went down to Denver like a warrior, is stark.

In Newton’s defense, Carolina’s personnel at WR and RB is below average. If he can mature and the talent around him is upgraded, he likely has 1-2 SB wins in him.

* Osweiler probably would have lost the Broncos the game. Peyton was mediocre at best last night but he didn’t lose them the game and that’s all that was expected of him. In that situation you want a veteran, like Dilfer, who isn’t going to make many dumb mistakes. Osweiler was making those mistakes as the season wore on and teams learned more about him.

Newton played bad last night. He missed open guys and proved that right now he only has Favre one speed passing. Plus he looked completely out of shape and winded. His failure to dive in the pile to go after the fumble is going to haunt his career for a long time. Plus Denver leveled enough hard hits on him that he seemed hesitant to run. Even the DB’s were flying in to get hits.

Except for the incomplete pass call that should have been overturned, I thought the calls for the game were fairly consistent.

Rivera is not a good game day coach. He wasted his second challenge (even though he won it) on a Denver incomplete pass just to get an extra negative seven yards. This with Denver already inside the 20 and not being able to move the ball.

* I thought the analysis by Simms during the game was overly timid. The drama of the game was whether Manning would lose it for his team by being on the field or by trying to throw the ball.

* Geeze, the guy is 39 years old. The amazing thing is that he continued to play at a high level of excellence (think 2 years ago) at an age when most players have long ago hung up their cleats. The same thing can be said about Tom Brady who continues to excel at 38. But you never know. In August 1961, the NY Giants acquired about-to-be-35 year old Y.A. Tittle from the San Francisco 49ers, where he had been an outstanding QB until replaced by the younger John Brodie. The Giants went on to have outstanding seasons in 1961, 1962 and 1963, and Tittle was the MVP each season. Suddenly, in 1964, the Giants went 2-10-2, the worst record in the league, and Tittle almost overnight (at age 38) turned dreadful and retired at season’s end. So, sudden loss of ability to play can happen to elite athletes when they reach their 30′s. While Peyton Manning’s falloff in skills as a result of age and injury may seem obvious to us, it is because we got used to such a high level of excellence from this truly great QB. I hope he makes the right decision and retires. Going out on top is really sweet. Ted Williams retired after hitting a home run in his last at bat, even though the season still had a game or two left, which he refused to play.

* The fact that the NFL has abandoned “the ground can’t cause a fumble” principle is a disgrace. These ambiguous and inconsistently applied new possession rules are a joke.

* Is it me, or did the Broncos have more left in the tank at the end? The two teams are pretty close in average age, (26.57 for the Panthers, 26.75 for the Broncos) but it seemed to me that the Broncos were fresher in the 4th quarter. Is it the training at altitude paying off at sea level?

Loved the booing of Brady. Is he officially a Bond villain now?

Speaking of Brady, Troofie, I’ll take his life; his high-powered, high earning supermodel wife trumps Newton’s high yella hoodrat baby momma; at least Brady’s baby momma is a highly-paid actress/model. And the 4 rings, of course!

For a New England fan, this was the perfect game. It proved that they were arguably two offensive line injuries away from being Super Bowl champions again, Newton gets a piece of humble pie big enough that it will take him the entire off-season to finish it off and Manning had less than nothing to do with the Denver victory.

Finally, the fumble and Newton’s disinterest in getting after it confirmed his punkness. Between that and his sullen schoolboy routine in his post-game “interview”, it’ll be interesting to see how the media, fully behind him all season, badgers him for explanations or gives him the AA pass.

* If you’re looking for a good laugh this morning, read this article from a few days ago.

An asshole is as an asshole, whether he’s white, black, yellow, or green.

I wanted the white guy to win, yes, but, above all, I wanted the asshole to lose. And I was very gratified when he did. I thoroughly enjoyed watching his cockiness melt away.

Dude needed a humility lesson, and he got one last night. He’s a big guy, but he needed to get cut down to size.

But who knows? Maybe next year he’ll win it all.

* I spend Super Bowl Sunday evening at the movies. Nobody is yakking on their phone during the film.

Posted in Alt Right, America, Blacks, Football | Comments Off

ABC miniseries ‘Madoff’ does not stint on the Jewish angle

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

New York Times: “If the main job of a Madoff drama is to get inside the head of a man who could pull off such a brazen scheme for so long, “Madoff” doesn’t find much there besides clichés about striving Jewish immigrants (who tend to make the best salesmen) and overbearing patriarchs.”

Washington Post: “A Jewish club? “Madoff” doesn’t shy away from this angle, nor does it explore it too deeply; but if ever there was a shanda that played to stereotype, it could very well be the Madoff saga.”

For much of the world, the word “Jew” is synonymous with dishonesty in business. Stereotypes are stereotypes because they tend to contain generalizable truths.

Whenever I hear of a big arrest for illicit trading on Wall Street, it’s usually a Jew or an Indian.

The Wolf of Wall Street movie was about the real life Jewish swindler Jordan Belfort.

Jewish Press: Eight years after the scandal, a four-hour ABC mini-series called “Madoff,” starring Richard Dreyfuss as Bernie Madoff and Blythe Danner as his wife, Ruth, will air on Wednesday and Thursday, Feb. 3 and 4. Dryfuss, 68, told the NY Post he was the natural choice to play the Jewish mega-schemer, and, in fact, when he saw he wasn’t getting the script after the project had been announced, he said he was going to call ABC and tell them, “What’s the matter with your mail? I am the logical person to play the role, I am clearly a New Yorker, I’ve made a career out of playing college-educated, Upper West Side Jewish men. That’s the way I see myself. And that’s why they would be silly to go Joe Yutz.”

The mini-series, according to the NY Times, is well scripted, certainly more lucidly than the 2009 book on which it is based, “The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth,” by Brian Ross, ABC’s chief investigative correspondent. In the opening scene, Dryfuss as Madoff is seen and heard luring a new victim by refusing to take their money, telling them he’s not taking new clients. Then we hear Madoff’s voice-over saying, “You present it as an exclusive thing, an elite club for the chosen few. Nothing on earth makes people want something more than telling them they can’t have it.”

Dryfuss told the post he empathizes with his subject, despite the larceny that earned him 150 years in prison. “When he was a young man, he did the thing that any smart businessman would do: he covered the losses himself,” Dreyfuss said. “And he knew instinctively that he was going to gain the respect and awe of his clients. He didn’t set out to cheat anybody … Did he think of himself as a criminal? He didn’t. Not until he was buying his clothes from London. And buying a house in the South of France. By then he knew he was a criminal.”

Madoff is portrayed in the mini-series as a devoted family man. His sons, brother, niece, and his wife Ruth worked for him, but not for the Ponzi scheme, which was conducted a few floors below Madoff’s main office. They spent a lot of time together. Then his sons turned him in and died tragically, one by suicide, one from cancer, shortly thereafter.

HAARETZ:

Bernard Madoff, the Ponzi schemer whose story is the subject of a TV miniseries airing this week, is “doing as well as can be expected,” according to his lawyer.
Ira Sorkin, who represented Madoff when he pleaded guilty in 2009 to defrauding investors of tens of billions of dollars, said the 77-year-old — who according to another source is a regular at Jewish worship services in prison — has a “little bit of a heart problem,” ABC News reported Tuesday.
Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence at the same North Carolina federal prison from which American Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard was recently released on parole.
Citing Sorkin and other inmates, ABC News said Madoff is upset that none of his family members, including his wife and grandchildren, visit him. His wife, Ruth, stopped visiting “years ago,” according to ABC News. Both his sons died after he was imprisoned: Mark Madoff committed suicide in 2010 at 46; Andrew Madoff died of cancer in 2014 at 48.
Bernard Madoff, the Ponzi schemer whose story is the subject of a TV miniseries airing this week, is “doing as well as can be expected,” according to his lawyer.
Ira Sorkin, who represented Madoff when he pleaded guilty in 2009 to defrauding investors of tens of billions of dollars, said the 77-year-old — who according to another source is a regular at Jewish worship services in prison — has a “little bit of a heart problem,” ABC News reported Tuesday.
Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence at the same North Carolina federal prison from which American Jewish spy Jonathan Pollard was recently released on parole.
Citing Sorkin and other inmates, ABC News said Madoff is upset that none of his family members, including his wife and grandchildren, visit him. His wife, Ruth, stopped visiting “years ago,” according to ABC News. Both his sons died after he was imprisoned: Mark Madoff committed suicide in 2010 at 46; Andrew Madoff died of cancer in 2014 at 48.
Madoff has “regret at what he put his family through,” Sorkin told ABC.
John Mancini, a fellow inmate released in 2010, told ABC that the prisoners locked up with Madoff treat him with “great respect” and admire his criminal accomplishments.
Mancini told ABC News that some inmates came to Madoff for financial advice and stock tips, and that Madoff attended Jewish services in the prison chapel.
“He felt pain, a lot of pain,” Mancini said. “I would walk the track with him almost every day and I see tears out of his eyes.”
Madoff’s crime was the largest financial crime in U.S. history. Many of his victims were Jewish and Israel-related philanthropies, as well as individual American Jews.

Daily Beast:

At the heart of Madoff, ABC’s two-night miniseries about notorious money-managing crook Bernie Madoff, are two fundamental truths. The first is that if something seems too good to be true, it generally is. The second is that people will often ignore that first truth and accept any lie, or set aside any moral principles—be it by committing a crime, or simply by looking the other way—if they stand to benefit from doing so.
Inspired by ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross’s book The Madoff Chronicles, Madoff illustrates how those two realities formed the basis for Madoff’s stratospheric rise to the heights of the financial industry, and his vertiginous fall in 2008, when he was arrested for operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme—the largest in American history. It’s a story of rampant greed, stunning incompetence, willful blindness and unthinkable betrayal. And it’s told with enough compelling suspense and detail by director Raymond De Felitta, and led by a sturdy enough headlining turn from Richard Dreyfuss, to mostly make up for the fact that, in the end, it has no great insight to impart about its real-life villain.
That’s not, however, for lack of trying. De Felitta does his best to get up close and personal with Madoff—the embodiment of Wall Street avarice, and the shame of all Jews—who’s front-and-center in the vast majority of this three-hour series’ scenes, and whose interior-monologue narration helps propel the story toward its inevitably enraging conclusion. The man it reveals is a self-made millionaire who, determined to avoid receiving the sort of public pity that was showered upon his failed-businessman father, discovered that the key to long-lasting investment success was to cover clients’ losses with his own—or other clients’—money. In other words: to lie to them and cheat the system.

Jewish Journal:

“Madoff” includes many Jewish-themed references, scenes and some cast members (Lewis Black and Charles Grodin, among them), but was there concern about the ramifications of a Jewish villain? “We were very careful not to portray this as an anti-Semitic story. It’s a global story … a much bigger story,” Berman said.
Dreyfuss pointed out that Madoff scammed Jews because that’s who he knew, and when he discovered there were Christians in the world, he scammed them, too. The actor recalled how he responded when his starring role in “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” raised issues of anti-Semitism in 1974. “When they said, ‘You’re washing our dirty linen in public,’ I went out and washed some more dirty linen, as loudly as possible.”
“Madoff” also raises important issues about the workings of the financial industry and how Bernie Madoff was able to get away with his scheme.
“It’s been said that the only way a Ponzi scheme like this could fail is if the world fell apart, and that’s exactly what happened. If it weren’t for the fact that there was a volcanic explosion in the financial world, he could have gone on doing this forever,” Dreyfuss said.

No group only has wonderful qualities.

Irwin Stelzer writes for the Weekly Standard this year:

A sign of what might be called “progress” jogged some memories of battles fought. In reporting Governor Andrew Cuomo’s nomination of a new chief to a state regulatory agency, the New York Times identified the appointee as being a litigator in “the white-shoe law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind,” et al. The reporter seemingly did not know that the designation “white-shoe law firm” was invented to describe firms at the pinnacle of the WASP establishment, no Jews allowed, named apparently for the shoes these WASPs favored in the summer at their restricted country clubs.
In the 1960s, my partners and I were attempting to establish an economic consulting firm that marketed its services to law firms and public utilities. The “white-shoe” firms were off-limits. We identified them by adding up the Roman numerals after partners’ names—I, II, III, etc.—adding to that partners with first and last names that were interchangeable, and dividing by the total number of partners. A high result meant we had no chance.
Then there were cases in which no such arithmetic was needed. A partner in one firm told me at a cocktail party, after his usual consumption of truth-producing alcohol, that he was happy to be living in a New York suburb that did not allow Jews. That firm later merged with another; both went bust. Another pointed out that the new civil rights legislation wasn’t a problem for him because it did not protect Jews, whose upward drive would threaten him and his executives. The general counsel of a public utility invited me to lunch to congratulate me on starting the firm and added what he thought was encouraging news: “If we ever hire a firm with Jews, your firm will be the first.”
We were not the only disadvantaged group. One company CEO told me that he was certain new legislation did not force him to change a company rule that permitted men, but not women, to smoke at their desks. In the early 1960s, women were finding it difficult to procure professional positions, both in law firms and in the consulting field. Our firm took advantage of that market imperfection by hiring the best and the brightest women economics graduates, with emphasis on my mentor’s and my own former students at Cornell. When I was due to testify at an administrative proceeding at a Washington regulatory agency, I brought my assistant along to help check data, refresh my recollection during recesses, find sources, and perform other chores. The hearing officer quietly suggested to me that it was inappropriate to have a woman in the hearing room; I argued that she was entitled to see the fruits of her research and prevailed. It wasn’t easy.
With time and hard work, we managed to build a successful consulting practice. Time, because gradually the law business changed, with the bright young Jewish graduates joining predominantly Jewish firms that prospered, in many instances by accepting cases that the white-shoe firms would not take—contingency fee arrangements, lawsuits against establishment corporations—and prevailing over rivals that had denied themselves access to this portion of the most talented law school output. One WASPy partner in a Pittsburgh firm told me one evening, “We made a mistake discriminating against you guys. We should have hired you instead of giving you an added incentive to beat us.” Discrimination, especially against a group with no recourse to the law and therefore reliant only on its efforts, can be costly.
We were helped, too, by three events. A metropolitan New York utility hired as general counsel a Jewish lawyer who had an offer from a white-shoe firm rescinded a day later when the firm discovered he was Jewish. He was in the market for what we had to sell, especially in cases in which he was up against the Wall Street WASP law establishment. Second, a patrician partner in a southern law firm had no use for discrimination, interviewed several firms to handle a series of matters, and selected us on merit—for a client group led by a Philadelphia patrician who had somehow found his way into a top executive position in the utility industry. Not all WASPs wore white shoes.

Posted in Jews, Wall Street | Comments Off

The Trumpening

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Trump’s a man who understands that celebrities have a new persona in the last 50 years, and that is the television persona.

Caesar could be chummy with a common beggar he ran into and individually offer clemency to his military and political opponents, but in a business dealing, or in the Senate, or with an army behind him, he became vicious. SO too with Trump, except he realizes that television demands a third persona: bombastic entertainer. And so he delivers.

But I don’t really care how Trump acts in his personal life. To steal from and up the ante on Ann Coulter , at this point Trump could privately perform 3rd trimester abortions at the White House while kicking a puppy and burning lupus orphans alive, and we wouldn’t care. What we want is the bombastic asshole on TV to be a bombastic asshole on the job and deliver us a beautiful border fence, deport the illegals, and cut our legal immigration to 90%. If he does that, I don’t care if he’s a hero to his valet or not.

That’s what drags many politicians down: that some private peccadillo/personal behavior is so destructive to their political persona that it ends them. Hilary is paranoid about people finding out she’s a cold bitch, Cruz that he’s a two-faced liar, etc. Trump has effectively neutralized such a chink in his own armor because (1) the worst possible version of Trump’s behavior is already front and center—and so he’s innoculated, because any story about his personal behavior will either confirm what we see or else make him look like a better person; and (2) he’s running on an issue so beloved by the American people that we don’t care if he’s not our ideal president—all we care about is that he’s the ideal guy at the moment to deliver on it.

* [Hugh] Hewitt has been a butt-boy for the Republican establishment forever. As somebody else has pointed out he used to attack LA’s John and Ken as “racists” for their stand against amnesty.

* It was supposed to be a big deal Trump had never heard of the triad, problem is no-one else had either.

Ben does seems like he is a member of the choom gang.

Posted in Donald Trump | Comments Off

Marco Rubio’s Meltdown

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

From The Guardian:

Defenders of the long, arduous process by which the United States elects a president often say the marathon campaign’s chief value is that it finds people out. On Saturday night that old saw was confirmed once again – and the candidate being found out was Marco Rubio.

The freshman Florida senator went into the final Republican debate before New Hampshire votes on Tuesday as the rising favourite [lol – Svi]. Many tipped him if not to win outright then at least to become the standard bearer of the party’s establishment or (relatively) moderate wing, the man who could take on the ultra-conservative Ted Cruz or the untamed fire-breather Donald Trump. A good performance tonight would seal the deal.

Instead, Rubio had a disaster. His chief antagonist was New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who seized the earliest opportunity to put the young senator through the mincer. Building on a theme that he had tried out at a packed rally earlier that day, Christie taunted Rubio as a callow ingenue who could do no more than regurgitate a “memorized 25-second speech”.

Rubio proceeded to make Christie’s point for him. Instead of answering the question put to him, he repeated the soundbite he had just uttered – a riff about Barack Obama having a deliberate plan to transform America. Christie pointed this out to the watching audience, Rubio doing exactly as he had described, retreating to the comfort zone of a well-rehearsed stump speech. Rubio promptly repeated the soundbite again.

It was a damning, jaw-dropping moment. It looked like that sequence from the 1970s thriller the Stepford Wives, when a software glitch reveals that a human-like character is in fact a robot. “I thought we were friends,” the android says over and over again.

Rubio never recovered. A small comfort, of a sort, came later when a close-up showed the Florida senator sweating under the lights and under pressure. At least it showed he was human. Pretty soon, though, there was a video mash-up of those broken-record answers and a parody Twitter account: @rubioglitch. Social media branded him the “marcobot”.

Posted in America | Comments Off

Where’s Columba Bush?

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Again, why isn’t Jeb! having Columba front and center on the campaign trail with him, by his side and making a few speeches before women’s groups? That is a fair question especially since this is something that goes back to Grace Coolidge and Eleanor Roosevelt. It is expected that presidential candidates’ spouses will indeed be front and center on the campaign trail. Unless there is an extenuating circumstance (e.g. Mammie Eisnenhower’s alcoholism, etc) there simply isn’t a compelling reason why she shouldn’t be front and center on the campaign trail. Both Laura and Barbara were for their husbands’ campaigns. And, with such a politically connected family as the Bushes, come on. Even Bill Clinton is doing that much for Hillary. He is publicly supporting her campaign, making speeches, etc.

Of course, a practical issue is raised, perhaps it is the GOPs version of a Willie Horton moment or self-inflicted one. If Columba were to accompany her husband on the trail and she’s asked numerous questions of which she has to give lengthy answers (in English) this will more than make Trump’s point; namely, that illegal aliens are taking over this country and that we need to make America great again by building the wall, etc. etc.

And yes, I do think that this would work with Melania. JFK had Jackie on the campaign trail and Jackie is considered to be the best looking First Lady in recent presidential history. A First Lady Melania might change that. And again, it is expected barring some compelling legitimate reason, that spouses assume a public role on the campaign trail. She’s a woman, she can therefore reach some women voters or at reassure them that her husband is worth voting for. I give her credit for giving People magazine an extended interview. That shows she is willing to take a more public role to help her husband’s candidacy, which nearly every spouse of a major candidate for nearly a century has done.

In the case of Columba, the only compelling reason is that once she opens her mouth it will be obvious that she really can’t speak passable competent English for any extended length of time. And she’s been residing in the US for over 40yrs. That’s not a benefit for a campaign.

I also think that many women voters would tend to think “Gee, she can’t speak English and she could be our First Lady? What’s her name, Columbo or something? Doesn’t sound American. How can she relate to me? What I’m going through if she doesn’t even speak the same language? What was she, a maid or something when she came her? Did Jeb! leave his US girlfriend for the hired help, the way Arnold was banging his maid? Couldn’t Jeb! even get a decent American born woman?? No wonder he has to speak Spanish in his house, cause his wife who’s been here for over 40yrs can’t understand English, like the hired help. Maybe Trump’s right, this “low energy” dude really isn’t all that if his own frumpy dumpy wife can’t speak English and she’s lived her for over two generations.”

Trump’s overall point regarding illegal immigration still stands and now there a few among the nominees, with Cruz’s possibly questionable US citizenship status and Columba’s as well (is she a US citizen? That’s definitely a fair question to ask in the campaign, if it is phrased correctly).

* News ‘coordination’ has become more widespread. It isn’t just the nearly identical lineup of stories nightly on the network news, or the cover stories of so-called news magazines. The corruption and dissembling run much deeper, as seen in the prior Journolist scandal and now playing out among various disinformation outlets.

Unz, Sailer et al do the thinking world a great service by researching and highlighting such topics.

* I don’t think Rubio helped himself by having his wife and kids front and center in the audience because he doesn’t seem to realize the hazards of using your family to campaign if one of your kids is a modern teenage girl.
Every time the camera switched to his family you could see the teenager slouched and sulking, clearly communicating how much she despised being there. She looked like she hated being forced to look clean cut and hang around her lame old Dad, when she would rather be anywhere else, maybe with purple hair and a nose stud. Forcing a modern kid to go that long without texting or network her clique is worse than waterboarding them.
You often see Obama’s girls on TV with that same please-beam-me-to-Patagonia look.

* I hope some ad money goes into highlighting Rubio’s meltdown in this debate. The media’s reporting it now, but calling them unreliable would be overpraise. They’re not going to play a highlight reel a hundred thousand times like they did the Dean Scream.

* I was watching NBC’s “Meet the Press” this morning, and Chuck Todd had on as one of the panelists discussing last night’s debate Hugh Hewitt, who was identified as a “Rubio supporter.” Hewitt was strongly defending Rubio’s debate performance last night. This was the same Hewitt who served as one of the moderators of the CNN debate in Las Vegas where he asked Donald Trump a question of sorts dealing with the “triad.” After Trump answered in a way that revealed he didn’t know what the “triad” referred to, Hewitt next asked Rubio, who rattled off the definition of “triad.” I wonder when Hewitt became a “Rubio supporter.” That Las Vegas debate took place on December 15. I also wonder if Hewitt may have fed Rubio that question so he could have a prepared answer ready. The way he rattled off the correct answer made me suspect at the time that he was reading off a canned response. Last night’s hilarious events involving Rubio mindlessly repeating the same canned attack on Obama over and over again merely stokes my suspicions about the Hewitt-Rubio relationship. BTW, even though Rubio correctly defined “triad,” he never did answer Hewitt’s question, which was somewhat unclear. Moreover, earlier in the same debate, Hewitt erroneously referred to Ben Carson as a “pediatric neurologist surgeon,” which is a scream coming from a man of supposed erudition.

* I am a fan of New England and Bill Belichick, best coach of all time in my opinion, but Wade Philips’ Defensive game plan was a gem. Even with his quick release Brady hardly had time to set and pass, only the quick slants were working. But, I think the Bronco -Pats game was lost during the last two regular season games. New England wins one of those and the playoff is at Foxborough. I don’t think Denver beats Brady at home. Belichick electing to kick off to the Giants in overtime is the real head scratcher. Giants score a TD and overtime over.

Posted in Politics | Comments Off

The Ferguson Effect

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* What’s so magical about 12 month periods of time? Cultural shifts may take time to sink in and spread out. They act like a ‘Ferguson Effect’ is as a light switch that gets snapped on or off. That black homicide has reached a high pitch of frenzy seems indisputable (Chicago has 72 homicides so far this year, total of 338 shot, just as of the 7th of Feb, almost all black). Ferguson was just a symptom and not a cause of what’s been changing. What it is is the legitimation of a criminal lifestyle as just another way for a black person to support themselves. Trafficking in drugs, shoplifting, burglary, robbery, car theft, occasional carjacking and other forms of low-mentality criminality are accepted by most blacks as being a justifiable lifestyle which is now considered legitimate; the ‘man’ won’t give him anything so a guy has to take it. Their rap music celebrates this; it’s being announced through their music loud and clear if anyone would bother to notice. The violence is a by-product of the thug lifestyle whereby their ‘honor’ has to be protected and they can’t afford to ‘lose face’; unfortunate but the price of doing business. What they’re doing is to try to create a safe space around these forms of criminality, to make them mere ticket offenses in recognition of it being a legitimate lifestyle on a par with others. In this view people like the thug Brown haven’t really done anything wrong or if he did it’s minor and should be given a pass. Standards are being pressed to change and accommodate the new reality of large numbers of blacks living in this gray area.

* This data is congruent with Goldstone’s well received state-centric model of revolution/breakdown, which focuses on the interaction of fiscal duress, intra-elite division, and potential for mass mobilization. The establishment of any city that’s around 1/4 or more black will have include black patrons in uneasy tension with the police and business elite, and of course persistent fiscal problems. There’s a perennial possibility of “creating space for violence”, especially when there’s a similar configuration at the national level.

* It’s the Sixties all over again regarding law enforcement and criminal justice. The babyboomers either don’t remember their own and their parents’ mistakes, they are happy with the results of hundreds of thousands more dead, or they are embarrassed by their mistakes and thus will say nothing. It’s not as if this hasn’t happened before.

Miranda was a serial rapist. Terry v. Ohio was determined because experienced police officers actually can spot a criminal by his body language and actions, locking up criminals is the only thing that keeps them from committing crimes.

If you clamp down on the police you free the criminals. If you support the criminals you embolden the criminals. If you make them victims they will responsibility for nothing and create more criminals. Half of them already believe in “The Plan” and “The Uprising”. The question is not why they are acting like they’re “half devil and half child” it’s why more of them are not joining them in their collective wilding.

Posted in Blacks, Crime | Comments Off

Note from a Trump Supporter: It’s the Immigration, Stupid!

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Luke Ford

Education Realist blogs Jan. 31, 2016:

Ann Althouse predicts a cascade of smart, educated Trump supporters in the coming months. I am kinda sorta in the ballpark of smart and educated–for a teacher, anyway—and came out early for Trump. So I thought I’d take a break from my usual education beat¹ and add my voice to the many efforts to explain my people.

Why do I support Trump?

I want another forty year pause in immigration, putting a near-total block on every possible means of legal or illegal access. In part because I’m a teacher who sees no opportunities for far too many of my students thanks to immigration, network hiring, and the constant wage pressure of a never-ending unskilled labor supply. In part because the government is incapable of enforcing the laws so necessary to our national security and well-being, since even the best-intentioned state and federal employees see themselves as providing customer service, rather than ensuring taxpayer and citizen interests.

Finally, I want to turn the flood of immigrants to something less than a sprinkle because the influx is fraying America’s cultural fabric. Immigrants sensibly exploit our cultural and political mores to their advantage, usually without malice or intent to harm. They are supported by legal interpretation of laws that simply weren’t written with any consideration of non-Western cultures. Few of the countries sending us immigrants share American values.

I’m willing to negotiate. But in order to negotiate, shutting down access through visa restriction and border enforcement (land, sea, or visa overstay) has to be speakable. For the past twenty years, the cosmopolitan elite, as Sean Trende calls it, has deliberately shrunk and shifted the Overton window for immigration by punishing opinion violators with social and economic devastation. Ordinary people like me who come out for immigration restriction could lose their jobs. I don’t mind anyone opposing my immigration goals. I mind the attempts to shut down and ruin those who support them.

I don’t hate immigrants. Like all people, they range from fantastic to criminal to every possible characteristic in between. But their merit is not the issue.

Americans deserve a vote on every aspect of immigration. For thirty years or more, the public has opposed the generous federal immigration policy, rarely getting a chance to register their disapproval—and on the rare occasion when they were given a chance to express their opinion, the courts consistently overturned their effort.

The government and the media also conspire to present immigration as a shiny wonderful gift to the country, opposed only by a few nativists and xenophobes, withholding unpleasant facts and generally operating as cheerleaders and gatekeepers.

At present, 25% of the country support deportation and a wall with no immigration at all, with another 30% supporting a wall and very limited immigration, with deportation optional. Yet no major media outlet, no politician joins Trump in catering to that view. Why not? Doesn’t the media want eyeballs, the politician votes? I’ve concluded that the wall of silence is partly ideological, partly fear of repercussions from the powerful. But I don’t know.

What I do know is that Trump comes along, supports just the tiniest fraction of my agenda, and the media and political world goes wild trying to shut him down. They fail, and in that failure, everything changes.

Immigration wasn’t expected to be anywhere on the horizon this election. And certainly, the media has done everything to keep it out of the debates. The topic barely made it into the GOP debates, on weak-tea issues that barely scratch the surface. We saw Rubio and Cruz arguing not about reducing immigration, but which one had flipflopped on amnesty—which they both supported until quite recently, along with all the other GOP candidates, in the world Before Trump.

On the other hand, immigration hasn’t made the platform much at the Democrat debates, either. No rhetorical flourishes on Republican iniquity towards immigrants, no yammering about the Dream Act, no long tirades on the plight of Syrian refugees. The Democrats looked at Trump’s poll numbers and other recent events (Eric Cantor’s unemployment, for example), and got the hint. They’re worried enough that Trump’s immigration and trade talk might peel away their union vote. No one’s making big promises about immigration on the Democratic side.

I’m well aware that Trump’s actual beliefs on immigration, as reflected in his stump speech and, presumably, his private views, are considerably more welcoming than his satisfactory official policy position, but think it unlikely he’ll do a general election pivot. If he were to win the nomination and pivot against restriction, he’ll lose the general. Full stop. The Donald doesn’t need me to point that out.

He probably doesn’t feel this way, but from my standpoint, Trump has already won. From the moment his polls rose after NBC fired him, after Frank Luntz’s idiotic focus group said Trump crashed and burned, after many experts declared him a nuisance,a clown, a bad deal, a a false conservative and through the re-evaluations of his appeal (but not his chances), Trump has understood the strength of and reason for his appeal. He never worried about the media, didn’t give a damn about elite approval. Every additional day puts the hammer on the media and the political elite who have suppressed any discussion, much less a vote, on the issues so many Americans care about.

So Trump’s willingness to court social and economic punishment has already paid off by giving Americans a chance to show how utterly on board they are with limiting immigration. He has kicked the Overton window several notches back to center, and I’ll be forever grateful.

Excellent analyses of Trump’s success abound, but they all suggest Trump’s rise is due to a variety of factors. I believe this is wrong.

Without immigration, Trump is nowhere.

His call to “bring jobs back home” wouldn’t be nearly as appealing if voters were worried all those jobs would go to cheap immigrant labor. Yes, his ferocious assaults on political correctness and elite sensibilities are attractive, but more importantly, they are essential for withstanding the media and political assault that followed his proposal. Hit him, and he’ll hit right back, upping the ante and distracting attention from the original charge with increasingly outrageous insults. Had Trump stoically stayed on message, politely trying to explain his way through the outrage, he’d have been gone before Labor Day. I’m delighted that he’s rendered the media helpless in its self-appointed task of destroying people for the wrong opinions, but that’s not why he’s doing so well.

Without immigration, Trump is just a billionaire dilettante politician with good timing, a populist touch and big hair.

This election has been amazing.

For the past six or seven months, I’ve been watching, waiting for Trump to cavil or backtrack on the essentials, holding my breath. And instead of disappointment, I’ve had the ….really, the only word for it is elation…as I watched the frustration, the astonishment, the fury at Trump’s success. Watching George Will’s head explode is—forgive me—exhilarating. Watching the Republicans–some I count among my favorite writers and thinkers–who called me stupid and desperate eat crow time and again after their earlier assurances of the desperate idiocy of Trump supporters and his imminent decline has brought me so much joy.

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