|
Email
me
iSteve
home
Search
engine users:
Just
hit Ctrl-F to find the word you are looking for.
For
other commentaries, go to:
iSteve.com
Exclusives Archives
Oct.
16-31,
2004 Oct.
1-15,
2004 September
2004 August
2004 July
2004 June
2004 May
2004 April
2004 Mar
2004 Feb
2004 Jan
2004 Dec
2003 Nov
2003 Oct
2003 Sep
2003 Aug
2003 Jul 2003
Jun 2003
May 2003
Apr 2003
Mar 2003
Feb 2003
Jan 2003
Dec 2002
Nov 2002
Oct 2002
Sep 2002
Aug 2002
July 2002
May-Jun 2002
Mar-Apr 2002
Jan-Feb 2002
Dec 2001
November
1-15, 2004 Archive
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#schoch
The
Jewish Century -- Here's a fascinating interview
in the UC Berkeley alumni magazine with Berkeley history professor Yuri
Slezkine about his important new book The
Jewish Century. It was only about five years ago that I realized
that I couldn't understand the central events of the 20th Century by
continuing to conceive of Jews as merely passive victims of history.
Instead, Jews played a variety of active roles in making history happen.
The Moscow-born Slezkine, who is half-Jewish, puts the crucial Jewish
role in 20th Century history into perspective in this interview.
Dynamite stuff. Here's the opening:
Russell Schoch:
In your book, you say that Jews experienced three Paradises and one Hell
in the 20th century. Hell of course refers to the Holocaust. What are
the Paradises?
Yuri Slezkine: These are the destinations of the three great
migrations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are the two
we all know about--from Eastern Europe, mostly the Pale of Settlement in
the Russian Empire, to America and to Palestine. Then there is the one I
am particularly interested in: from the Pale of Settlement to the Soviet
cities. Most of the Jews who stayed in Russia moved to Kiev, Kharkov,
Leningrad, and Moscow, and they moved up the Soviet social ladder when
they got there. This third, invisible or less visible, migration was
much bigger than the one to Palestine and much more ideologically
charged than the one to America. And, for the first 20 years or so of
the Soviet state, it was also seen by most people involved as the most
successful. But, by the end of the 20th century, it was seen by most
people involved--the children and grandchildren of the original
migrants--as either a tragic mistake or a non-event.
All three migrations were, in a sense, pilgrimages, and all three
represented different ways of being Jewish, and of being modern, in the
modern world: non-ethnic liberal statehood in the United States; secular
ethnic nationalism in Israel; and communism--a world without capitalism
or nationalism--in the Soviet Union. That, plus the Holocaust, of
course, which stands for the dangers of not going on one of those three
pilgrimages, represents much of the 20th century, I think. [More...]
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#ahmed
Powell
is gone -- For the second term, it would be most efficient for Bush
to streamline his foreign policy operation by cutting out the middle
men. Just appoint Ahmed Chalabi as Secretary of State and be done with
it. Hey, Chalabi has plenty of experience running American foreign
policy already, more than Condi Rice whose main job during the first
term was reassuring Bush that he wasn't too lazy and ignorant to be
President, keeping Bush from exclaiming, "I had this terrible
nightmare. It was like I was back in school during Finals Week, except I
was President of the U.S. but I hadn't studied anything at all!"
Come
to think of it, with the way things are going with Bush so far, that
might be the only way to keep us out of a war with Iran -- put an
Iranian agent in charge.
A
reader writes:
What
a disaster this is shaping up to be. With Gonzalez at AG, Rice as SoS
and the housecleaning at CIA, one can only conclude that the president
really does think he can do no wrong, and that his cabinet's only
function is to agree with him and implement his policies. It's going to
be a long four years.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#rbreq
Request:
What's your Red-Blue theory? I've got a commission to write a big
article this week on the underlying cause of the regional differences in
the vote for Bush and Kerry. I've got my pet theory, but I'd like to
hear yours.
Also,
does anybody out there know how to find out from General Social Survey
data the average number of children for white Republicans and white
Democrats?
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#IQ417
IQ
Hypocrisy, Chapter 417 -- Among the most heavily advertised products
on the Web are online IQ tests. Evidently, there is a huge market out
there for IQ testing. (In case you are wondering, I have no opinion on
the quality of online IQ tests. I recall an email discussion where John
Derbyshire asked Charles Murray to help him interpret the score he'd
gotten on a free IQ quiz. Murray replied waspishly, "You took a
heavily advertised, free, seven-minute IQ test and you want me to tell
you what that says about your intelligence? Haven't you answered your
own question already?")
Yet,
despite this vast interest in IQ (see various IQ
hoaxes for more evidence of America's IQ obsession), the tenth
anniversary of the publication of The Bell Curve has passed with
almost no mention by either the mainstream media or those
oh-so-courageous bloggers. So far, I have only been able to find a single
10th anniversary comment anywhere on Google that isn't by a friend of
mine.
It
is irresponsible of the press to provide almost zero informed commentary
on a topic of pervasive interest, thus leaving the field wide-open to
the ignorant crackpottery evident in the various hoaxes about high IQ
Democrats and low IQ Republicans.
Here's
a new interview with
Murray by my pal Philippe
Gouillou, the French science writer (page down to read it in
English.) An excerpt:
PG : After TBC, you have published the impressive "Human accomplishment". What will be the topic of your next book ?
CM : The working title is "Decadence." It extends some of the themes of Human Accomplishment through its stopping point at 1950 through the rest of the century.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#oskwat
Oscar
Watch -- The Academy Awards face a big problem this year. In a lousy
year for films, the three best movies so far, in my unhumble opinion,
are The Passion of the Christ, Hero, and The Incredibles,
all of which did well at the box office but none of which is likely to
get a Best Picture nomination. No doubt, some good movies will be
released over the next six weeks (God I hope so), but this year's Oscar
ceremony is likely to be most interesting for who is not there.
Similarly, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, while hardly in a
class with the Big 3 aesthetically, was at least lively and highly
profitable. If it misses out on a Best Oscar nod, that will add to the
sense that all the most interesting movies are excluded.
***
"The
2004 IQ Wars:
So much for the candidates, what about the voters?" My new
VDARE article is up. I publish, for perhaps the first time anywhere, a
table of average IQs by states from a study of Vietnam Vets. It won't
tell you anything about who deserved to win the election, but it is
interesting.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#julian5
Were
the "hobbits" of Flores Island modern humans instead of Homo
Erecti? In the NYT, Nicholas
Wade ponders some of the puzzles. Australian blogger Julian
O'Dea may have been the first to raise this theory.
By
the way, another posting
of Julian's is quite
interesting. He quotes British biologist Anthony Barnett's description
of an experiment Barnett carried out in his refrigerator:
" Evolution by natural selection is about adaptive change, adjustment to circumstances, especially changed circumstances. My experiments concerned adaptation to cold. I kept house mice for many generations in refrigerators. They were 'selected' simply by being left to breed. And, after only ten generations, the 'Eskimo' mice were heavier and hairier, they produced larger litters, the females secreted more, and more concentrated milk, and they looked after their young better. The males were very parental too."
Among
humans, ten generations would be about 250 years, so when people tell
you that humans haven't been around long enough to evolve different
behavioral tendencies in different regions, just act snooty and say,
"Apparently, you've never heard of Barnett's mice."
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#hispads
What
issues appealed to Hispanics? A reader writes:
Enjoyed
your statistical analysis, but you did not discuss a possibly more
important aspect of the Hispanic vote- ... the reasons Hispanics
supported Bush. See the New York Times story a week after the election
which analyzed not the vote itself, but the actual Bush and Kerry
advertising appeals to Hispanics. Other analyses support the reporters'
evaluation. It seems that in their ads aimed at Hispanics, the
Bush-Cheney campaign used the moral issues of gay marriage and abortion
and the empowerment themes of education and small business development.
Surprise: No mention of immigration. The Kerry campaign on the other
hand did use immigration as an issue. The actual size of the Hispanic
vote for Bush is less important than WHY they voted for him, and they
did so NOT in response to promises of immigration reform. This is
consistent with both common sense and real-politik: Left to their own
devices and charged with the task of increasing Hispanic votes for Bush,
campaign managers selected issues and themes they knew would work.
Conclusion: The Bush reelection may owe something to Hispanic voters,
but it owes nothing to the immigration lobby.
Right,
Hispanic voters tend to have sensibly ambivalent feelings about illegal
immigration. In contrast, Hispanic political consultants and politicians
are all for it because it means more money in their pockets.
***
Bush's
Brain -- My American
Conservative article on the Bush-Kerry IQ whoop-tee-do is now online:
For
a moment, I thought Sen. John F. Kerry was the exception to the rule
that all liberals are secretly obsessed—even though they tell each
other they don’t believe in it—with IQ...
When
Kerry insouciantly replied to Brokaw as if he didn't care what he scored
on a 90-minute exam 38 years ago, as if he believed that all that he had
accomplished since then was the proper measure of the man, I was
impressed.
But
then, Kerry broke the spell by quibbling about my research, "I
don't know how they've done it, because my record is not public. So I
don't know where you're getting that from." Evidently, IQ mattered
to Kerry, too.
A
few days later, Brokaw went on Don Imus' radio show and revealed just
how much it bugged Kerry that I had said Bush probably had a slightly
higher IQ. After the cameras had stopped rolling, Kerry had rationalized
to Brokaw, "I must have been drinking the night before I took that
military aptitude test." [More...]
***
AEI
conference on race and medicine on CSPAN: A reader writes:
I've
enjoyed reading the articles on your website and at VDare. I
was first introduced to your works from an Amazon.com review you
submitted. I don't know if you're aware or not, but a conference
about race, anthropology, and population genetics is currently on C-Span
2 (as of 8:20 pm CST Friday evening). It is surprisingly
fascinating, and borderline politically incorrect! In fact, a few
moments ago, Professor Vincent Sarich of Berkeley mentioned you by name
as a friend. Hopefully this presentation will be replayed in full
on the network. Perhaps you could spread the word to other loyal
readers.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#lovihoax
The
funny thing about the Lovenstein Institute Presidential IQ hoax that
The Guardian and Doonesbury fell for is that the email
announcing it ended:
About
the authors : Cristina L. Borenstein and Lana Taamar are both recently
off the campaign trail where they served as receptionists for the
Pennsylvania chapter of Gore For President, Inc., and have co-written
the eBook Gore Got Gored. Together they publish the The Pennsylvania
Court Observer which has a circulation of 5.
Dr. Lovenstein lives in a mobile home in Scranton, Pennsylvania with his
long time companion Patricia F. Dilliams. When the two are not
publishing reports for their Lovenstein Institute, they run an internet
business www.collegedegreesforsale.com.
And
they still didn't get it.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#bridget2
Bridget
Jones: The Edge of Reason -- Because the sequel to the 2001 hit
is exactly the same as the original, only more so, here's an excerpt
from my review
of the original movie in 2001:
Probably the only
people who will be disappointed by the film will be those who loved the
howlingly funny book. The moviemakers have turned what was a tart satire
on feminism into a pure romantic fantasy. In the book, the ditzy,
incompetent, and adorable Bridget slowly comes to realize that by
letting her stridently feminist friend Sharon bully her into believing
that her (dismal) career was more important than marriage, she has
reached the verge of wasting her life.
The novel's subversive perspective elicited howls of protest from
feminists in the press. Just this Sunday, an author of a book of
feminist film criticism named Molly Haskell wrote in the New York
Times that the novel is "grotesquely reactionary." She
went on to plaintively ask, "[H]aven't we all evolved" past
Bridget's emotional states?
Considering that a couple of million more women have bought
"Bridget Jones's Diary" than have bought Ms. Haskell's
theorizing, the answer seems clear. As Darwin pointed out, humans don't
evolve very fast. Modern women feel the same emotions as their cavewomen
ancestors.
Novelist Helen Fielding modeled Bridget's misleading mentor Sharon on
her own friend, the documentary filmmaker Sharon Maguire. Perhaps in
repayment for fictionalizing her as a hypocritical harpy, Fielding
promised to let Maguire direct the movie version. Not surprisingly,
Maguire's movie fails to lampoon her own ideology.
Instead, Maguire has made a fantasy about an ugly duckling with pudgy
jowls and lank hair who somehow entrances both Hugh Grant and Colin
Firth. That other British sex symbol plays Mark Darcy (who is modeled
upon Mr. Darcy in Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"). Firth's
character is the unfashionable but rich and reliable human rights lawyer
who slowly comes to worship Bridget from afar.
Much of the hype surrounding the movie claims that by putting on about
20 pounds to play Bridget, Zellweger has undermined Hollywood's
obsession with actresses who, as Bridget would say, "look like
stick insects." Unfortunately, Zellweger's portrayal will only
reinforce Hollywood's infatuation with near-anorexia because the extra
weight makers her look awful. Many of the new pounds went to her face
and arms. Since Zellweger has the scrunched up features of someone
suffering an allergy attack, the only time her face appears even
moderately attractive is when she's concentration-camp thin.
Now, Zellweger's an excellent actress, so it may seem harsh to dwell on
her physical shortcomings. But it's necessary because the fact that
Zellweger puts her pounds on in unappealing places made it hopeless for
the movie to even try to get across the book's satirical point about
Bridget's neurotic obsession with her weight. The character in the
novel, whose weight fluctuates between 119 and 133, isn't fat by any
rational standard. She's just overweight by the unnatural norms that
women in her fashionable social strata apply to each other.
If Jennifer Aniston of "Friends" had played Bridget, she could
have helped make the movie a terrific satire on the media business' diet
frenzies. Plump Aniston up and most of the added weight would have gone
to her hips and breasts. In any normal human culture that values
child-bearing capacity in women, a voluptuous Aniston would have been
viewed as a goddess.
But the upper reaches of Anglo-American society have become deeply
suspicious of women who show evidence of an ample supply of womanly
hormones. A thoroughly modern man worries that a woman who grows her own
breasts, rather than buying them from a plastic surgeon, might want to
use them someday. If he married her, she might quit her job and stay
home to breastfeed her babies. And then how could he afford the trendy
life?
(The rest of my movie reviews are here.)
A few notes about the new film. The book
it's based on is even funnier than the original, but they don't keep
much of it. Most of the new inventions aren't as good as the unfilmed
material in the book -- especially the film's groaningly stupid lesbian
plot twist starring the world's least likely lesbian. And they eliminate
the climax of the novel when Bridget is finally freed from a month in a
Bangkok prison on a rice and water diet, rushes to a scale, and records
in her diary:
114 lbs. (Yess!
Yess! Triumphant culmination of 18-year diet, though perhaps at
unwarranted cost.)
Women moviegoers love the moment when the
ugly duckling turns into a swan, and this would have been a great
parody, but the movie completely passes it up. They could have filmed
Zellwegger's release at a 114 pounds first, then checked her into a
hotel in, say, Bologna for two weeks of intensive fattening up while
they filmed the mandatory Hugh Grant - Colin Firth fistfight over her,
then filmed the rest of the movie. It would have been easy, but they
didn't do it.
One reason they couldn't stick to the
book is that Zellwegger is 42 months older and looks even worse than in
the first movie, while the second book's plot is predicated on Bridget
actually being a definite hot number by anybody's standard except for
that of the dating market she competes in, which consists of the top 2%
of the U.K.'s eligible bachelors and bachelorettes.
On
the other hand, the filmmakers do pump up the role of the cad Daniel
Cleaver, and since he's played by Hugh Grant, who is the best cad in the
business right now, that's a more than welcome change.
As Bridget's
two-timing boss, Grant (who played cute but fluttery leads in the
similar British romantic comedies "Four Weddings and a
Funeral" and "Notting Hill") had women in the preview
audience audibly gasping at his leering sexiness. Like Pierce Brosnan
before him, the 40-year-old Grant has finally matured out of his pretty
boy youth. More importantly, he has also brought under control his
always-remarkable ability to cycle rapidly through facial expressions.
In the past,
Grant has tended to come across as a twitchy, dithering cross between
Ally McBeal and William F. Buckley Jr. Here, though, he uses his face's
ability to send multiple messages in a fraction of a second to show off
dominance rather than diffidence. When flirting with Bridget, his
lustful looks tell Bridget that not only does he want her, but that he
knows she knows he wants her, leaving her feeling arousingly checkmated
by his masterful control of the situation.
Interestingly,
Zellweger appears to have responded to the challenge of playing against
Grant's famously mobile features by raising her own game. She's always
been a fine actress, but now you can watch one emotion after another
flit momentarily across her face.
UPDATE:
A reader writes:
Zellweger's
"scrunched
up features" are from a Swiss father and Norweigian
Lapp\Saami mother, which explains her Oriental facial features.
Cool!
The invaluable IMDB.com
reports:
Her
Norwegian mother, Kjellfrid Irene Andreassen, is of sami origin (a
minority originating mainly from the northern parts of the Scandinavian
peninsula often referred to as Lapland). Zellweger herself has many
typical sami features, such as the strong cheekbones and the squinty
eyes.
(Zellweger's
dad was born in St. Gallen canton in Switzerland where the Sailers are
from, but that's of only local interest.)
Now,
can anybody fill me in on why Icelandic singer Bjork
looks the way she does? Is she part Lapp too, or is she part Eskimo?
Were her ancestors the last Vikings to make it out of Greenland alive
back around 1400?
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#guardianz
British
Journalism's Fact-Checking Standards Are Abysmal: You'll recall that
the most important mainstream publication to fall for the state IQ hoax
last May was The Economist, and that the main purveyor of the
Lovenstein Institute hoax claiming Bill Clinton's IQ was 182 and George
W. Bush's was 91 was The Guardian. Now, the Guardian is back with
a long think
piece about the state IQ hoax:
Mr
[Chris] Evans was
careful to cite the Economist magazine as his source - he did not
vouch for the table that so many had rushed to consult. The Economist
(May 15 2004) had cited as its source the book IQ and the Wealth of
Nations, by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (2002).
The
article then goes on to give four paragraphs detailing the fictitious IQ
data. It never mentions that The Economist issued a retraction
on May 20, 2004:
Clueless
in St James's
Last week we published a list that purported to show the IQs of states
voting for George Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Alas, we were the victim of
a hoax: no such data exists. By way of apology, here are two very crude
ratings of states' intelligence—and how they voted.
Eventually,
The Guardian gets around to admitting:
More
tellingly, the Evans-Economist table is, as bloggers such as the
(ultra-conservative) Steve
Sailer [hmmhmmh, I prefer "level-headed, truth-telling realist
Steve Sailer," if you please] have protested, probably something of
a hoax: a concoction of Democratic wishful thinking and statistical
manipulation. It does not, in fact, come from the book cited, although,
as other corrective
bloggers pointed out, for example) there are correlations that
generally agree with the Lynn and Vanhanen thesis as regards (a) levels
of income and levels of intelligence, and (b) levels of income and
recent American voting patterns. But the issue is a whole lot fuzzier
than everything above IQ 100 Blue: everything below IQ 100 Red.
No,
it's not "something of a hoax," it is a hoax, 100% a hoax.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#marquardt
More
on IQ and Voting: Here's the education levels of voters in the 2002
Midterm elections broken out by race. This comes from the long-lost
exit poll data that I bought and personally number-crunched. GOP candidates
for the House of Representatives did exceptionally well with the well
educated in 2002, especially compared to Bush's rather downscale
re-election campaign in 2004.
As
you can see, with each race, the GOP did the worst with high school
dropouts. With whites and Hispanics it did the best with college grads,
and among blacks, Republican candidates greatest appeal was to those who
had done postgrad studies (not necessarily a postgrad degree -- and all
this is self-reported so there is likely some exaggeration of
credentials, although voters do tend to be better educated than
nonvoters.)
So,
overall, there was a positive correlation between educational level and
Republicanism. Still, the fact that for whites, there was a drop-off
between college grad and postgrad in support for the GOP indicates
| 2002 House Elections |
|
|
Education
Level |
%
of total |
GOP
Share |
| White |
|
|
|
No HS |
3% |
53% |
|
HS Grad |
22% |
56% |
|
Some College |
30% |
61% |
|
College Grad |
26% |
63% |
|
Some Postgrad |
20% |
54% |
|
|
|
|
| Black |
|
|
|
No HS |
7% |
2% |
|
HS Grad |
25% |
4% |
|
Some College |
38% |
10% |
|
College Grad |
22% |
16% |
|
Some Postgrad |
8% |
19% |
|
|
|
|
| Hispanic |
|
|
|
No HS |
14% |
27% |
|
HS Grad |
22% |
31% |
|
Some College |
35% |
35% |
|
College Grad |
18% |
55% |
|
Some Postgrad |
11% |
40% |
For
comparison, here are the GOP candidates for the House's share of whites
in 2002 versus Bush's share of whites in 2004. The 2004 numbers come
from a post-election phone poll of 1800 respondents conducted by James
Carville and Stanley Greenberg's Democracy Corps (see p. 34 of this big
PDF):
|
GOP
House 2002 |
Bush
2004 |
| No
HS |
53% |
NA |
| HS
Grad |
56% |
62% |
| Some
College |
61% |
61% |
| College
Grad |
63% |
58% |
| Some
Postgrad |
54% |
48% |
Republican
House candidates in 2002 got 59% of the white and Bush in 2004 got 58%,
so it's a clean comparison. Clearly, Bush's re-election campaign
appealed to people farther down the educational ladder than the 2002
House candidates, although the difference is not huge.
*
Scott
Marquardt graphs IQ,
income, and voting by state. IQ comes out a wash but Kerry states tend
to be richest, followed by very heavily Bush states, with moderately
Bush states the poorest.
On
an individual level, Bush did somewhat better with high income people,
but something that jumps out from the county maps showing the vast,
empty red counties and the small, crowded blue counties is that while
liberals may not be particularly rich themselves, liberals like to
live near rich people.
I'm
actually quite serious about this. One of the big things going on in the
country is that people with bigger families are moving to the emptier
Red states where it's easier to afford a bigger family. People with no
or few kids are moving to the more crowded Blue states, where cultural
amenities are denser.
***
"From
the Folks who Brought You President Kerry ..." My new VDARE
column showing
that the exit poll's claim that 44% of Hispanics voted for Bush is not
just unrealistic, but it's internally inconsistent, assuming that
Hispanic voters in small states cast over 100% of their voters for Bush.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#gonzo
Bush
thanks religious conservatives for their votes by dumping their hero
John Ashcroft and replacing him with Alberto Gonzales, who gutted
Ted Olson's objections to racial quotas at the U. of Michigan, which is
the main reason the Supreme Court validated affirmative action last
year. Randall Parker has the ugly
details on what Gonzales' nomination means for immigration (Prop.
200 voters -- you've been warned) and quotas.
I
just found out today that Gonzales was a year ahead of me at Rice U.
Funny, Rice has only 2600 undergrads, but I can't recall ever hearing of
him while I was there.
So
far, in the week since Bush's re-election, it looks like
Invade-the-World-Invite-the-World is his highest priority for his second
term.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#arrrrgggh
Our
Infallible Leader's pet obsession is back: From the Washington
Times:
President
Bush yesterday moved aggressively to resurrect his plan to relax rules
against illegal immigration, a move bound to anger conservatives just
days after they helped re-elect him. The president met privately in the
Oval Office with Sen. John McCain to discuss jump-starting a stalled
White House initiative that would grant legal status to millions of
immigrants who broke the law to enter the United States...
"We are formulating plans for the legislative agenda for next
year," said White House political strategist Karl Rove. "And
immigration will be on that agenda." He added: "The president
had a meeting this morning to discuss with a significant member of the
Senate the prospect of immigration reform. And he's going to make it an
important item."
While the president was huddling with Mr. McCain, Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell was pushing the plan during a visit to Mexico City.
"The president remains committed to comprehensive immigration
reform as a high priority in his second term," he told a meeting of
the U.S.-Mexico Binational Commission. "We will work closely with
our Congress to achieve this goal."
Bush
should name his bill "The George
P. Bush Dynastic Succession Enablement Act."
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#arrrrgggh
Our
Infallible Leader's pet obsession is back: From the Washington
Times:
President
Bush yesterday moved aggressively to resurrect his plan to relax rules
against illegal immigration, a move bound to anger conservatives just
days after they helped re-elect him. The president met privately in the
Oval Office with Sen. John McCain to discuss jump-starting a stalled
White House initiative that would grant legal status to millions of
immigrants who broke the law to enter the United States...
"We are formulating plans for the legislative agenda for next
year," said White House political strategist Karl Rove. "And
immigration will be on that agenda." He added: "The president
had a meeting this morning to discuss with a significant member of the
Senate the prospect of immigration reform. And he's going to make it an
important item."
While the president was huddling with Mr. McCain, Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell was pushing the plan during a visit to Mexico City.
"The president remains committed to comprehensive immigration
reform as a high priority in his second term," he told a meeting of
the U.S.-Mexico Binational Commission. "We will work closely with
our Congress to achieve this goal."
Bush
should name his bill "The George P. Bush Dynastic Succession
Enablement Act."
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#aced
Education
levels and voting: From my upcoming article in the Dec. 6th American
Conservative:
A
more direct comparison of the parties' voters can be found in the 2000
exit poll, where Bush voters reported an average educational level
negligibly greater than Gore voters. Gore did best among high school
dropouts and those who had undertaken post-graduate studies, with Bush
leading among those in-between. (Many Democrats with advanced degrees,
by the way, are public school teachers with credentials in the easy
field of Education.)
In the 2002 midterm elections, voters supporting Republican House
candidates were particularly well-educated. The GOP won 58% - 40% among
college graduates and even captured a majority among postgrads for the
first time in many years.
In 2004, Bush's majority was more downscale. If you assume that high
school dropouts averaged 10 years of schooling, high school grads 12
years, those who attended college but didn't graduate 14 years, college
grads 16, and postgrads 18, then Kerry voters claimed 14.64 years of
education and Bush voters 14.48 years, or only about six weeks less
schooling.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#polarx
The
Polar Express - From my upcoming review of Robert Zemeckis' $160
million G-rated Christmas pageant, starring Tom Hanks, in the Dec. 6th American
Conservative:
Chris
Van Allsburg, author of 1985's The Polar Express, writes and
paints the kind of hardcover picture books that win the Caldecott Medal,
bedtime books that, at $18.95 each, only grandparents can afford. This
format tends toward bland multiculturalist fare of the Lo-Ming and N!xau
Celebrate Cinco de Mayo ilk that libraries feel obligated to buy,
but Van Allsburg creates mysterious, sometimes sinister tales that kids
actually enjoy.
When Van Allsburg's Jumanji was made into a 1995 Robin Williams
picture, the paucity of his plot required the screenwriters to tart up
the movie with an elaborate backstory. His Polar Express is even
sketchier, consisting, along with his lovely but oblique paintings, of
no more than a few hundred words. On Christmas Eve, a boy who is not
sure he believes in Santa Claus anymore finds a magic train in front of
his house, which takes him to the North Pole where Santa gives him a
bell from his sleigh.
Zemeckis add a few characters, some rollercoaster action, and two
musical numbers, but, on the whole, he stoically resists injecting
conflict, motivation, humor, or even incident into the soporific
storyline, which Van Allsburg devised, after all, to lull excited
children to sleep on Christmas Eve.
While placid, the G-rated "The Polar Express" is pleasant and
unobjectionable. It's endorsement of the will to believe is in tune with
the times. It's even mildly admirable for bucking the "War
against Christmas" waged by the bureaucrats to replace
Christmas with a diversity-sensitive "Winter Solstice Holiday"
-- a top-down cultural revolution opposed by 50 million Christmas-loving
children. Now, that could
inspire an exciting Christmas fantasy.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#melg
Conservative
anger at Hollywood - A clear theme since the election is how much
conservatives resent the huge influence of Hollywood liberals. But,
guys, the solution isn't to write snarky blog items about it. The
solution is to do what Mel Gibson did: Make really good conservative
movies.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#incredibles
The
Incredibles - From my upcoming review in the Dec. 6th American
Conservative:
Superheroes
normally have wards or
nephews instead of children because real kids hate to imagine their
own parents engaging in derring-do. Brad Bird wisely sidesteps this by
having the adventurous couple's daughter raise to her younger brother
the specter of the only fate that scares modern children more than death
- divorce: "Mom and Dad's lives could be in danger, or worse --
their marriage!"
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#foxbutter
Flat
Learning Curve at the NYT: A friend writes:
Sensing
I had heard the song before, I went to Nexis immediately after noting
the following hilarious headline over Fox Butterfield's entry in today's
New York Times: "Despite
Drop in Crime, An Increase in Inmates."
Other Butterfield-based headlines, from Nexis:
"Number In Prison Grows, Despite Crime
Reduction" -- Aug. 10, 2000
"Prison Population Growing Although Crime
Rate Drops" -- Aug. 9, 1998
"Crime Keeps On Falling, but Prisons Keep
On Filling" -- Sept. 28, 1997
Jayson Blair at least kept changing the subject.
***
The
absurdity of the exit poll's Hispanic figures: A reader adds a
telling fact to my VDARE.com article
attacking the NEP exit poll's claim that Bush's Hispanic share leapt
upward by 9 points:
Did
you see the Oklahoma
exit poll numbers for Hispanics? Supposedly 74% voted for Bush!
That's 3 points higher than for white Oklahomans!
What
a joke...
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#turk
The
IQ Hoax makes the Turkish newspapers! From Vatan, under the
headline "Bush'a
oy verenlerin IQ'su düsük çikti:"
Kerry'nin
eyaletleri
Connecticut: 113
Massachusetts: 111
New Jersey: 111
New York: 109
Hawaii: 106
New Hampshire: 105
California: 101
bush'un eyaletleri
Ohio: 99
Teksas: 92
Oklahoma: 90
Güney Carolina: 89
Idaho: 87
Utah: 87
Missisipi: 85
UPDATE:
A friend writes:
This
data was displayed this morning on Japanese national television as the
truth by Dave Specter, an American who speaks Japanese fluently and
appears frequently as a "commentator."
For
my debunking of this resurgent hoax, click here.
You can see the full phony-baloney table, in English, here.
In
contrast, here is a
good-faith attempt at making up a realistic list of states by IQ and
voting. (By the way, in most of the red states at the bottom of the
list, the main reason they are at the bottom is because of the lower
average IQs of the Democrats in those states.)
***
My
new VDARE.com column
on the election is up:
It
took four years, but the conventional wisdom has finally accepted the
“Sailer Strategy”—my oft-repeated argument (which got VDARE.com
banned by Free Republic) that the simplest way for the GOP to win
national elections is not outreach to minorities, but inreach, to its
white base.
No doubt my check is in the mail.
We ridiculed Karl Rove's widely celebrated minority outreach initiatives—such
as Bush's misbegotten promise in the 2000 campaign to weaken
anti-terrorist efforts in pursuit of the Muslim vote (which turned out
to only make up 0.3 percent of the electorate anyway).
And we applauded when, in the crunch before the 2002 midterm election,
Rove abandoned trying to broaden the tent in favor of turning out the
base, with excellent results.
Bush got his 2004 re-election campaign off to a potentially disastrous
start by calling for Open Borders last January. But Congressional
Republicans quickly hushed it up. Indeed, Bush benefited from a bit of
his patented luck—his proposal to allow unlimited numbers of the
world's six billion foreigners to move to America to work at minimum
wage jobs was so insanely beyond comprehension that it simply didn't
register with the media or the public. John Kerry never even attacked
him for it.
That almost nobody could grasp that their President wanted to open the
borders to hundreds of millions of aliens reminded me of that 1996
Simpsons' election episode where Kodos, the green space monster, kidnaps
and impersonates Bill Clinton, but the public can't bring themselves to
notice the hideous truth about their President:
Kodos
[disguised as Clinton]: "I am Clin-Ton. As overlord, all
will kneel trembling before me and obey my brutal commands." [Crosses
arms] "End communication."
Marge
Simpson: "Hmm, that's Slick Willie for you, always with the
smooth talk."
Indeed,
by the end of the campaign, Bush, who never lacks for effrontery, was
scoring points by denouncing Kerry for advocating amnesty for illegal
aliens!
I
also debunk
the claim that Bush did radically better among Hispanics.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#edincpol
Sailer's
Theory of Education, Income, and Politics: "An individual whose
educational level is higher than his income would predict will tend to
vote Democratic. An Individual whose income is higher than his
educational level would predict will tend to vote Republican."
Any
thoughts?
A
reader writes:
Your
theory needs a little fine tuning, in my humble opinion. Engineers and
scientists seem to vote Republican. They're real smart, but don't make
nearly as much money as say, an ambulance chasing lawyer (John Edwards)
or a high-level bureaucrat in an NGO with a degree in "Art
therapy" or "Underwater Basketweaving."
Pseudo-intellectuals
tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, as I learned in my years going
to college in Washington, D.C.
That's
true. I grew up around conservative-voting Lockheed engineers, including
Henry Combs, the chief designer of the most magnificent industrial
artifact of the 20th Century, the SR-71,
and they didn't make too much money.
*
Actors
and singers would be exceptions in the opposite direction -- make lots
of money with little education and vote left.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#canadanogo
Hey,
Democrats thinking of moving to Canada! How do you know Canada wants
you?
Back
in 2001, I wrote about Canada's system for choosing immigrants. I know,
I know, the concept of choosing immigrants sounds downright
un-American, but that's how the Canadians do it. Unfortunately for
American Democrats, they may not get in:
Canada
doesn't want me. I just found out that, if necessary, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police would bar me from immigrating into Canada. Why?
Because I'm just not good enough to be a Canadian.
With possible immigration reform much in the news in America, I decided
to research Canada's system for choosing immigrants. Perhaps America
could learn something from its northern neighbor.
The Canadian government has a voracious appetite for new immigrants. The
ruling Liberals intend to boost the legal immigration rate to 1 percent
of the population annually, about three times the American rate. Despite
that, I discovered, its official position is that the people currently
living in Canada would find my joining them to be less of a blessing
than a curse.
In 15 minutes, on the government's "self-assessment worksheet"
at Web site cic.gc.ca, I was able to learn that Canada's considered
judgment of me is, "Don't call us, we'll call you."
On this nine-question test, a would-be immigrant to Canada must score a
minimum of 60 points out of 100 to qualify to be interviewed by a visa
officer.
It's not that I particularly want to become a Canadian. I'm a loyal
American, born and bred. I've only spent about six days in Canada in my
life. From what I saw (mostly the insides of Holiday Inn Crowne Plazas),
Canada seemed to be a fine country; one blessed with Holiday Inn Crowne
Plazas every bit as nice as those in my native land. Still, I couldn't
resist the challenge. Was I man enough to be a Canadian?
I sat down to take the test. First, I found, you get 8 points just for
having a pulse. "Hey, how hard can this be?" I said to my
wife.
Then the test inquired into a series of important facts about oneself.
How old are you? I'm 42, which won me the maximum of 10 points for being
in my immigrating prime. But not for long. I'll soon enter a rapid
decline. By age 49, I'll get zero points.
How much schooling have you had? High school dropouts get zero; high
school graduates, five; college grads 15; advanced degree holders 16.
Those two long years I spent getting an MBA have finally paid off! Chalk
up 16 more points for me.
I'm rolling now, with a running total of 34 points.
Can
you speak English and/or French fluently? I get nine points for English,
but what about snagging those additional six for French? Perhaps they'd
be a good sport and give me a few points just for trying to parlez la
(le?) Francais? No. As anyone who has attempted to speak
French has learned the hard way, trying isn't good enough. You have to
be able to "comprehend and communicate effectively on a range of
general topics" -- and that's just to score three points.
So, I'm at 43 points by now.
Do you have a close relative in Canada? That's worth five points. No. My
wife helpfully pointed out that one of her Italian great-uncles stayed
in Canada for a few months before he could arrange to sneak into the
United States. I appreciated her suggestion, but didn't think that would
count.
Maybe I could talk one of my uncles into moving to Canada ahead of me.
But what if he couldn't qualify unless I moved to Canada ahead of him?
Thinking about this made my head hurt, so I moved on to the occupation
questions.
Do you have a guaranteed job arranged in Canada? No. The closest I could
come to that is to point out that last year I had a part-time job in
Canada. Oddly enough, while I was living in Chicago, I was actually
hired as a columnist by one of Toronto's biggest newspapers, even though
I haven't been to Canada since 1994.
Unfortunately, I was fired almost immediately, probably because my
awareness of Canadian culture was limited to knowing that it is
intensely beaver-centric and that Wayne Gretzky is (was?) a hockey
player.
How much formal education or training does your occupation require? To
be frank, I've never noticed that journalism requires any. As irascible
basketball coach Bobby Knight likes to point out to reporters,
"Everybody learns to write by the second grade, but then most of us
move on to other things."
Yet, somebody has apparently hoodwinked the trusting Canadian
authorities into awarding journalists 15 out of 18 points, the same as
they give computer systems analysts and tree-service technicians.
Does Canada need more workers in your field? As a journalist, I only
scored three out of 10. It would appear that Canada is quite capable of
producing an ample supply of native know-it-alls and doesn't need much
help from abroad. Importing additional journalists is officially deemed
less important to Canada's well being than bringing in more blacksmiths
(5 points), not to mention extra clinical perfusionists (10 points).
Whatever it is that clinical perfusionists do, Canada can't seem to get
enough of it. I tried to assure the authorities that if they admitted me
-- while I wouldn't actually know how to clinically perfuse anybody
(anything?) -- I would definitely write hard-hitting editorials
deploring the clinical perfusion shortage and demanding that Steps Must
Be Taken. But there was no place on the form to indicate
that. [Continued
here...]
*
A
reader writes:
I've
had a lot of lefties tell me they are going to move to Canada or New
Zealand due to the election, so I then ask them why it is they don't
move to a country run by (and with a majority of) 'people of color'.
They have no real answer, so I then tell them that the only logical
explanation is that they are racists. I figure if I keep it up at least
one of them will move to the Sudan in order to prove me wrong.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#iqhoaxrec
The
State IQ hoax claiming that Democratic states have much higher IQs
(Connecticut = 113) have much higher IQs than Republican states (Utah =
87) flared up again, with just one website publishing the fictitious
table reporting 540,000
hits.. This time, however, lots of people immediately linked to my debunking
from last May, providing iSteve.com with its busiest day ever on
11/5/04. One person wrote:
Just
thought I'd drop you a note saying thanks for debunking that. I am
a diehard liberal, voted for Kerry (almost for a 3rd party leftist) and
one thing I can't stand is hateful lies from either side. A bunch
of liberal friends showed me the IQ chart, which I didn't believe, so I
looked it up and found your analysis of it. If liberals want to
attack conservatives for the truthfulness of their propaganda, they need
to first examine their own information before passing it on. I'm
with you that this is an attempt on the part of the democrats to feel
better about themselves and put down republicans, and the fact that it
is so spiteful and false is shameful.
I
just finished an essay for the December 6, 2004 issue of The
American Conservative (available to electronic subscribers
about Saturday, November 13) on the propensity of liberals to
simultaneously deny the validity of IQ while obsessing over their
supposed superiority in IQ over conservatives.
By
the way, this page makes a
good faith attempt to estimate average IQs by state from SAT and ACT
scores. The methodology is far from bulletproof, but the author's
results sound not too implausible: his estimates range from an average
of 94 in Mississippi and South Carolina to 104 in New Hampshire. If you
can think of a better way to do it, send the author an email.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#vest
Kudos
to Mickey Kaus for
guessing right on Bush's back bulge -- It apparently is his bulletproof
vest, So, here's a follow-up rumor (which I just made up out of
whole cloth): If Bush looks lean and trim while wearing a bulletproof
vest, he must in reality be wasting away down to Karen Carpenter
proportions underneath it! Is Bush anorexic?
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#alfie
"Alfie:"
From my review in The
American Conservative: This 60s-remake genre's only success
was last year's nifty updating of the Michael Caine heist flick
"The Italian Job," so it was predictable that Caine's
trademark film, the 1966 comedy-drama "Alfie" about a
womanizing Cockney chauffeur, would be redone. As Canadian seer Colby
Cosh has noted, Hollywood believes that "The public adores the
familiar, even if all they know is that it should be familiar," and
anybody who has ever set foot in a piano bar has that catchy
Bacharach-David line "What's it all about, Alfie?" tattooed to
their gray matter.
Jude Law, the cute young Englishman who is in six movies this autumn,
replaces Caine as the cad who slowly learns he should have acted like a
dad, but incompatibilities quickly surface. Caine was 33, a Korean
combat veteran, 6'-2," and every inch a man. With his bulging
Adam's apple and pop eyes, Caine's Alfie was a tad funny-looking but his
cast-iron confidence made him irresistible. In Alfie's many asides
spoken directly to the camera, Caine's rather flat affect was ultimately
less tiresome than Law's attempts to charm and seduce. In short, Caine
addressed the men in the audience, Law the women...
Changes in the script mostly dissipate the elemental power of the
original. The cad vs. dad distinction (first named by anthropologist
Henry Harpending in 1982) had been underlined by the first version's
subplot where Alfie's stand-by girlfriend, whom he won't marry or
support even though she'd given him a beloved son, wedded an unsexy bus
conductor because he'd promised to provide for her little boy. Two years
later, a despondent Alfie chanced upon the now-happy family at the
christening of their second child.
But Law's Alfie isn't even the father of Marisa Tomei's little boy, and
when she eventually dumps him, it's for a guy who is so cool-looking
that he could be the bass-player for The Strokes.
Even worse is the loss of the famous climax that shattered, at least
temporarily, Alfie's regal self-assurance. After he'd impregnated a sick
friend's wife, he hired an illegal abortionist to induce her to deliver
a stillbirth in his apartment. Returning home later, the camera focuses
in on his trembling face as he found, we later learn, the dead body of
his tiny but perfectly formed child.
Forty million legal abortions later, no Hollywood movie would dare drive
home the reality of abortion so powerfully. So, Law's Alfie merely
chauffeurs his pal's girlfriend to the clinic, where, predictably, she
decides not to have the abortion. In today's films, almost nobody ever
actually has an abortion. See, everybody in Hollywood is pro-choice, but
being pro-choice isn't about having abortions, it's about, like, the
abstract, metaphysical concept of choice, you know.
Okay, sure, whatever … but it makes for a forgettable movie.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#Hisptex
Request
for help: For my VDARE column that will appear Sunday night, I need
to evaluate Dick Morris' spin:
GEORGE
W. Bush was re-elected on Tuesday because the Hispanic vote, long a
Democratic Party preserve, shifted toward the president's side. The USA
Today exit poll shows Hispanics, who had voted for Al Gore by 65 percent
to 35 percent, supported Kerry by only 55 to 43. Since Hispanics
accounted for 12 percent of the vote, their 10-point shift meant a net
gain for Bush of 2.4 percent which is most of the improvement in his
popular-vote share.
I
like ol' Dick, but even I have to admit that no pundit is more
spectacularly wrong about more things on a regular basis than Dick
Morris.
Obviously, he's totally exaggerated the size of the Hispanic vote, but
did Bush really score in the mid 40s with Hispanics? I've looked through
the troubled NEP exit poll data, and most of the states look reasonable:
California 32%, Illinois 23%, New York 24%, Colorado 30%, Nevada 39%,
Florida 56%, etc., but that national figure appears to be driven by an
eye-popping report of 59% of Hispanics for Bush in Texas, up 16
percentage points from 43% in 2000.
So, what I need your help with is in finding articles from local
newspapers evaluating on a county or precinct basis voting by ethnic
bloc. For example, if Bush really did carry 59% of the Hispanic vote in
Texas, then he should have swept the mostly Hispanic counties in the Rio
Grande Valley. Did that actually happen?
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#nclbf16
Bush
puts teeth in his No Child Left Behind law:
LITTLE EGG
HARBOR, N.J. Nov 4, 2004 — A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a
nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school with 25 rounds
of ammunition, authorities said Thursday. No one was injured.
The military is
investigating the incident that damaged Little Egg Harbor Intermediate
School shortly after 11 p.m.
Police were
called when a custodian who was the only person in the school at the
time heard what sounded like someone running across the roof.
Police Chief Mark
Siino said officers noticed punctures in the roof. Ceiling tiles had
fallen into classrooms, and there were scratch marks in the asphalt
outside.
The pilot of the
single-seat jet was supposed to fire at a target on the ground three and
half miles away from school, said Col. Brian Webster, commander of the
177th Fighter Wing of the New Jersey Air National Guard. He does not
know what happened that led to the school getting shot up.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#chalabster
What
Kerry should have done: Just as Bush ran against Saddam Hussein,
Kerry should have run against Ahmed Chalabi. Kerry should have
constantly called the war in Iraq "the Cheney-Chalabi War." He
should have ignored Bush, whom lots of people like, and focused on the
baleful influence of Cheney and Chalabi as the architects of the war.
After
9/11, Americans wanted an Ay-rab to hate. Bush gave them Saddam Hussein,
even though he didn't have anything to do with 9/11. Kerry should have
blamed the Iraq war on Cheney's infatuation with this fat Arab convicted
embezzler. It would have worked psychologically and it was certainly a
lot more honest than what the Bush Administration did.
So,
why did Kerry stop talking about Chalabi during the last months of the
campaign? Presumably, because Chalabi's supporters in the Administration
were disproportionately Jewish, and the neocons would have smeared Kerry
as anti-Semitic. Better to lose the Presidency than that!
In
reality, the voters don't know from neocons. Kerry should simply have
talked about Cheney as Chalabi's conduit to control over American
foreign policy.
***
http://www.iSteve.com/04NovA.htm#votesmart
How
smart are Bush and Kerry voters? I'm getting thousands of hits today
because last May's IQ by state hoax is hot again as Kerry supporters try
to console themselves by proving that they have higher IQs than Bush
supporters. But what about 2004?
Probably
the simplest and surest way to get actual data on this question is by
looking at the education level demographics in the exit poll data. As
I've mentioned, I'm cynical about the accuracy of Tuesday's monopoly exit
poll, but it's probably as good we've got. So, let's put education
credentials on a 1 to 5 scale with:
No
high school degree = 1
High
school degree, no college = 2
Some
college, no degree = 3
College
graduate = 4
"Postgrad
study" = 5
In
2000, Bush's voters had almost higher levels of education, with an
average of 3.29 to 3.28 for Gore voters. (A 3.29 means that the average
Bush voter fell 29% of the way between Some College and College
Graduate). Gore did best with high school dropouts and those with
postgrad study, and Bush did best in-between.
In
the 2002 midterms, GOP candidates for the House attracted a particularly
brainy bunch of voters, garnering a 3.37 to the Democratic House
candidates' voters' 3.21. GOP house candidates carried college graduates
by a 58-40 margin, and even won a majority among those with
post-graduate study. (Please note that the post-grad category gets
inflated by Democratic-voting public school teachers with advanced
degrees in Education.)
In
2004, however, Bush went slightly down-scale, with an average voter
educational level of 3.24 to Kerry's 3.32. Bush did much better among
high school dropouts in 2004, attracting 49% of their vote, compared to
only 35% in 2000.
The
gap was narrower among voters for the House candidates with Democratic
supporters averaging 3.31 to Republicans 3.28. (This suggests that the
small number of people who voted for a Republican House candidate
but not for Bush were particularly well-educated). In sum, these are not
big differences.
Alternativ | 
