Minorities go GOP

 

THERE IS A RISING TIDE OF R’S OF COLOR in case you hadn’t noticed. 14% of Af-Am voters went R in 2022 vs. 8% in 2018.  Trump won 12% in 2020.  Hispanic voters were 39% in 2022 vs. 29% in the 2018 midterms and 32% when Trump won in 2020.  In 2020, the House margin narrowed from a 38 Dem margin to 5 and in 2022 to +5 R’s.  In 2020, 13 R’s beat incumbent D’s and among the R’s were an Af-Am, an Iranian-Am 2 Korean-Ams, a Cherokee, 3 Hispanics, and son of Portugese immigrants. The Caucasian share of voters went from 72% to 67% in 2020, so this is significant. And in 2022 the 2 Af-Am House R’s were joined by 2 more.

     Texan Wesley Hunt and MI, John James were those 2 new Af-Am R’s. Both are West Pointers. Hunt says, “A lot of people in general think the big thing is that you are black. That’s about #10 for me.  I want to get ot the point to where we stop talking about it at all.” He’s a father, husband, a combat vet and now a congressman. The guys in the barber shop, he relates have gone from never-Trump to “please tell me he is running.” They don’t like everything about him but they miss his economy, prior to $5 gas and inflation well over 5%.  The issues of crime and the economy are high on everyone’s list.  “If the Republican Party can get 20% of the black vote, Democrats can’t win,” Mr. Hunt says. “Black men are moving.” And everyone worries about how their cities are dying. To win more, R’s will have to have a message of getting ahead and how to overcome the bad guys in the neighborhood.

     The rise of R’s among minorities came from a post-mortem after we lost the 2012 elections that urged R’s engage nonwhites.  But after Trump engaged white working class voters in 2016, many Republicans scoffed at the 2012 study.  Kevin McCarthy was an exception who recruited minority candidates.  This is what has fueled the secret rise. Even among the close losses in S. Texas and Arizona, very competitive R’s had Hispanic surnames. And some like FL’s Luna won. So did Juan Ciscomani who upset an apparent solid Dem in AZ.  . His theme was the American Dream, opportunity and freedom. And he advocates better border patrol, (illegals crush those who come according to the rules) while opening border entry ports.  “Some border towns have 80% of their economy in Mexican tourism. “The American experiment is alive and well among the common people worldwide.” And it was critical that he is very Spanish fluent to have interviews on Telemundo and Univision. When Biden did his SOTU, Ciscomani gave the Republican’s Spanish rebuttal and it was hailed as ‘what America should be all about’ by scores of writers.  He notes that lower income minorities rallied to AZ Gov. Doug Ducey’s school choice.  Choice is a big deal to Af-Ams too since the inner city schools are often horrid. Mr. Hunt of TX is an unabashed supporter of the oil and gas industry but also all other forms of energy.  “God gave us all these resources.  We need to be in the business of using our own resources to fuel ourselves and our allies.”  At West Point he lived in the Robert E. Lee barracks and his grandfather was a Louisiana slave. He opposes the Army changing the name  on the barracks.  “It’s a reminder of where we were and how far we’ve come.”  Both men spoke often of their Christian faith on the campaign trail. Mr. Ciscomani  used to help his dad wash cars in the rich part of Tucson and his father pointed out that his campaign headquarters was just two blocks from where they washed fancy cars. “Only in America,” became his campaign refrain. What struck him was how much his family’s history resonated with voters. People would always come up to me afterwards and say, “Your story is my story.” So he would ask about their story. “It was nothing like mine!” but the story of opportunity was.

     It should be pointed out that 30 of the 60 House districts represented by minorities have majority white voters.  What sells is a message that transcends both European/Caucasians and minorities. (Sourced from Wall Street Journal)

Leftist Hippies now come to fruit

DON’T BE MYSTIFIED BY WOKEISM AND IT’S EVERMORE HEAVYHANDED TREATMENT. I ran into some leftist-type atheist/agnostics in college 54 years ago during the Vietnam anti-war era. I went to several Young Democrats meetings. Everything they said then is working its way into society now.  Leftists want control.  So they told me they saw all manner of evil in this world and what God would design something so bad?  Thus they didn’t believe in any sort of God.  And if there is no God, therefore there must not be any set morality. (Many atheists would choke on this. Nature dictates morals too.) If morality is just personal choice, we shouldn’t be too hard on people who do crime or heinous things. They are just acting by nature and can’t be responsible.  So I asked how then, if there are no morals, does one set rules by which government must act.  Oh, that is the design of really smart people like us, they alleged.  That is why we are here at this Party meeting.  The Party tells everyone what to think and do, and anyone who disagrees will be subject to persecution.

            In a nutshell, they want to control people.  Design a utopia and make everyone conform. I left the mtg. thinking how Marxist this was.  Today it is everywhere, many people accepting it dumbly. From the history you learn to the choices you have for lunch, you are threatened with control. It sneaks in. An example: Pocahontas.  Her true story is quite documented.  Young girl comes curiously to meet the Jamestown settlers. Becomes acquainted, learns English, admiring their winter clothing and tools and amazed at how determined and optimistic they are. She disappears for 3 years which her family says was a marriage and child where she was widowed and lost the baby. Came back to the colony stockade, was held in house arrest when skirmishes broke out between her tribe and the Anglos. Asked to become a Christian, was baptized, met John Rolfe who was also young and widowed.  They married, she had a son, Grandpa Powhattan and wives came to see the new grandson.  Big feast, 15 years of good will followed. Then she showed Rolfe how to plant tobacco.  He reaped an enormous profit, thereby providing England with a profitable reason to continue the colony. They went to England and she was a celebrity, but died on the return trip, her dying words were deeply Christian, full of love for son, Tom, and husband John.

            So what are a minority of modernist historians trying to say now?  They insist that they English captured her and made her accept Christianity, made her marry Rolfe and cough up the secret of tobacco cluture. All this flies against the duly recorded stories, but the historians are revisionists, trying to promote exploitation, racism, slavery, and European evil.

            The CRT, revisionism, and wokeism are just the angry demands of the “control leftists.” Truth be damned; they want their utopia. I heard this through the long unkempt manes and Vietcong sandals of these lefty hippies in 1969. 

Tony Snow's faith

Tony Snow was an American journalist, news anchor, columnist, radio host, musician and White House Press Secretary under President George W.Bush. There have been about 30 Press Secretaries in 4 decades and none came close to handling the difficult job so smoothly as Snow. His dad was a social studies teacher and after college Tony taught physics for a year, but soon began his career in journalism. He was an avid musician who played in a rock band with musicians who later played with Jethro Tull and the Doobie Brothers.  He began work for a newspaper in Greensboro, then went to Norfolk, Newport News and The Washington Times.  In 1991 he quit the Times to become a speechwriter for Pres. George H.W. Bush, an unusual move since he was a Democrat.  In the 90s Snow appeared on radio and television programs worldwide including The McLaughlin Group, The MacNeil–Lehrer NewsHour, Face the Nation, Crossfire, and Good Morning America. He was host of the PBS news specials The New Militant Center. He substituted for Rush Limbaugh and became the first host of FOX News Sunday. (He also worked for CNN)  In 2005 he was diagnosed with colon cancer and fought losing 4-year battle, yet in 2006-7 he was Bush 43’s Press Secretary.

            “Painful experiences can lead to big questions and critical insights in the state of one’s soul,” he told the usually hardened press corps at an awards gathering. “The key is to look in the mirror, stop making excuses and move forward with open eyes.” At his commencement address at Catholic University in 2007, he added, “You begin to confront the truly overwhelming question: Why am I here? And one more thing.  It’s hard to ask ultimate, eternal life-and-death questions without thinking about God.  You see, it’s trendy to reject religious reflection as a grave offense against decency.  But faith and reason are knitted together in the human soul.  Don’t leave home without either one.”  Clearly, Snow had decided long ago not to be crushed by the question of death.  His one-liners as Press Sec. were always sharp and he handled the kind of tough questions that haunt a Pres. with declining approval polls.  Contentiousness seemed to fly out the window at his conferences.  Bill Kristol summed it well in the NY Times, “His deep Christian faith combined with his natural exuberance gave him an upbeat worldview. The Jew in me came to wonder: Could it be that a stance of faith-grounded optimism is in fact superior to one of worldly pessimism or sophisticated fatalism.?” 

            In his Catholic U. speech, Snow urged the grads to take risks and to always strive to serve others.  “Religious faith is not an opiate that helps people avoid hard questions.  Instead, the ups and downs that accompany the life of faith should be seen as part of the ultimate extreme sport.” About his cancer battle he concluded, “Our maladies define a central feature of our existence.  We are fallen.  We are imperfect.  Our bodies give out.  But despite this—because of it—God offers the possibility of salvation and grace.  We don’t know how it will end, but we get to choose how to use the interval between now and the moment we meet Him face to face.”

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What intelligence research tells about social problems

I’ve been reading about intelligence, education and social behavior and some interesting things have been proven.  You probably suspected a lot of this.  All these stats are for white people only, no racial component.

Remember those plots that show if you have only a high school education you’ll likely make $30,000 a year, but if you have a bachelor’s you’ll make $50K and advanced degrees = $90K?  It turns out, while this is true, the distribution for each education level is extremely broad. There are Phds on welfare. There are CEOs who have 8^th grade ed.   The correlation between education level and earnings is about .3 (1.0 or 100% correlation is perfect; zero is none whatsoever)  IQ correlates at about .6 so it is a better predictor of earnings. 

The people who study intelligence were highly persecuted in the 60s and 70s for their proofs that intelligence gives a lot of advantage and it is somewhat inherited.  That was the era when people believed that environment caused everything.  (Well, why try to breed smart sheepdogs? You could just make any old mutt a shepherd.) So the researchers went underground by the way they stopped talking about test scores and began talking about standard deviations away from the curve peaks.  Apparently it worked.  Media and many others couldn’t understand what they were talking about.  Then came the 90s demand for education accountability and testing.  Once again, intelligence measures became important.  A guy with 80 IQ doesn’t make a very good elementary particle physicist. 

The popular concept is that college education skyrocketed after WW II.  No, it actually began growing rapidly about 1920. 1920—2% of population had a bachelors; 1940—8%; 1960—16%;2016—35%.  That reflects the fact that in 1950 the traditional 55% of top quartile of SAT scorers went to college but by 1965 it was 80%.  And it was since about 1960 that the prestigious colleges began to compete for the top HS grads.  Why?  College costs quadrupled from 1950 to 1960, and a lot of middle class families could no longer afford it unless they had a smart kid who could get scholarships.

The result is that people of a certain intelligence and education often only associate with others of similar status, especially in urban areas where many technical people are employed.  The tech revolution has insulated many of the best and brightest from the rest of the people.  This explains why so many of our best politicians come, not from mega-metros but cities of 400,000 or smaller where everyone rubs elbows.  The tech skills are accountants, architects, engineers, professsors, dentists and physicians, mathematicians and scientists and the like.  These 8 jobs suck up 25% of the top 10% in IQ. And as the federal regulations have grown by a factor of six in the last 20 years, it takes a smart guy to start a successful business. Average Joe finds it hard.  Thus in 2014 for the first time in 400 years, America’s number of newly closed businesses exceeded the number of start-ups for the first time. 5-year running average) And interestingly the Supreme Court has forbidden employers from giving intelligence tests, yet these correlate better with successful job performance than anything else—reference checks, interviews, education, or age.  As kids are strongly encouraged to follow education as far as they can make it go, education is now strongly tied to intelligence.  The upper technical fields have seen a real salary increase of about 60% since 1963 while others are up only about 10% in constant dollars.  Hence the new success of Trump’s appeal to lower middle class.   And the nerds mate together just as they live close, thereby producing smart kids.  But it’s a loose correlation.  Ben Carson’s mom will surely object.

Let’s talk social difficulties.  Less intelligent women have most of the out-of-wedlock babies.  But of course there’s debate.  Some would say parent’s socioeconomic status (SES) is the cause.  It turns out that intelligence is more fundamental but SES plays a role too.  A graph of Americans below the poverty line is stunning.  Poverty decreased in a straight line from 1940 when 50% were “poor” to 1969 when the curve flat-lined in the 12-15% range it has had ever since.  The Great Society was supposed to reduce this!  Instead it halted the decline of poverty.  When a group goes from 50% to 15%, who is left behind?  Those who lack thrift, energy, determination and brains, it is likely. 

The statistics about unwed mothers are staggering.  Married women of lowest 2% of IQ are 18% likely to live in poverty.  Those in upper 2% are 1% likely.  But single moms of the lowest 2% IQ are 70% likely to live in poverty.  Upper 2% are still 15% likely. It is as if marriage makes you rich.   And the numbers cut across all reasons for single motherhood—widowed, divorced, and never-married.  This almost says, “If you want kids and means, get married and stay married.” Why are women so adversely affected?  I think it is because men are hard-pressed and measured by career while women who have children will often compromise a job if it adversely affects the children. Equal pay for equal work is the Law.

A HS education has become the norm. The dropout rate doesn’t correlate very well with SES but does correlate strongly with IQ.  It figures.  If you struggle with classes, you are more likely to drop out. The number of disabled and collecting Social Security has increased 50% during the Obama presidency, causing Bill O’Reilly to exclaim, “Has America gotten more hazardous?  That can’t be!”  No, but here’s what the stats tell us.  Low intelligence workers opportunistically claim far more disability.  There is a slightly better safety behavior among the intelligent workers, but the real story is that discouraged workers, finding it harder to keep and find a job, find it more socially acceptable to claim disability and get a sympathetic doc to approve it. And they won’t go crazy watching daytime TV and living leisurely.  Employment of teens who aren’t in school has gone from 85% in 1954 to 63% in 2009 to 51% today.  And when you study the SES of these workers, it suddenly gets interesting.  Unemployed teens drop in unemployment rate as they go to higher IQ.  But it’s the other way around for SES.  The ones who have wealthy parents are more long-term unemployed.  Living in the proverbial basement, I guess.    

Armada

Do you believe that the war Islamic fanaticism is waging against us is JV? Will not effect our way of life or thinking? Let me tell you a story of what happened 428 years ago this week.

Elizabeth I of England came to the throne and looked doomed.  She was just a young girl and Parliament, under her Catholic sister had declared her a bastard and bastards could not sit on the throne.  Protestant nobles, who had gotten the booty of church lands when Henry VIII declared himself Protestant, feared Catholic takeover and installed Elizabeth.  But ¾ of the people were still Catholic.  The government was broke and had to pay 14% interest because of the spendthrift Tudors before her.  The nation was backward and had far more paupers than the continent.  France claimed Britain and already had troops in Scotland.  But the heart of an emperor lived behind the young girl’s smiles. 

She saved and cut back on government, getting finances in order, installed William Cecil, and other commoners as advisors until she had Parliament under her thumb.  She curbed Catholic rebellion by stiff laws and hangings, yet with some tolerance.  She flirted with first France’s crown prince, then King Philip of Spain triangulating the two super-powers.  And she played cat-and-mouse with Spanish shipping by funding privateers to raid.  Hawkins, then Drake plagued Spain all the while she played hard-to-get with Philip. Spain was in total control of the Americas with over 100 colonial cities and incredible wealth.  There was just one man who couldn’t live with that, Francis Drake—trained from youth to pirate, Lutheran and strong about his faith, and dreaming of leading a yet-to-be-built British navy.  From 1580 to 1587, Drake sailed against those American settlements, extracting ransoms and gold and slaves.   Finally, Philip had had enough, broke off the relationship and declared war. 

Philip got a pledge from Pope Sixtus, payable when he invaded England and began building the largest invasion fleet ever seen in Europe.  Drake learned of the Armada in March and begged Elizabeth for ships to raid the fleet in port before it became unstoppable.  At Cadiz he destroyed half of it but Philip kept building.  The Spanish crews (130 ships) and soldiers  (19,000) felt they were on a holy mission to re-establish Catholicism. England waited in dread.  Then the English Catholics came out in support of their queen. All over the country militias were formed.  And pecunious Elizabeth, reluctant to tax found her people donating towards a navy. Asked for 15, the merchants of London refitted 30 merchants as warships and with the 52 from a new British navy and privateers, Drake sailed into the Channel to do battle.  On July 21, 1588 action began.  Spanish thought the Brits would fight like pirates, trying to board their ships.  Instead the English gave them broadsides and outmaneuvered them with light ships.The Iberian guns were unable to hit the Brits as they were mounted too high and the English sailed under them, splintering holes in hulls.  The fight went on for days until the slow Spanish vessels retreated to Calais harbor to re-group, July 27.  Drake wouldn’t let them.  He lit 6 small craft afire and pushed them toward the Spanish docks.  The Armada ships fled to sea where Drake picked off more, sank several and captured a major vessel.  On July 30 the wind carried the Armada into the North Sea.  English pursued for awhile but gave up the chase.  The Spanish had nowhere to go but home to Spain, north around the British Isles.  Heavy storms claimed more ships. 17 were wrecked on the Irish coast where fierce native Celts massacred the survivors.  Of the 27,000 men who had left Spain, 10,000 returned; 54 of 130 ships. Since nobody invaded England, Pope Sixtus reneged payment.

The defeat of the Armada affected almost everything in modern European civilization. It changed naval tactics from grappling to broadsides.  The weakening of the Spanish Hapsburgs helped the Dutch to win independence, advanced Henry IV to the French throne, and opened North America to English colonies.  Protestantism was preserved and strengthened.  Catholicism waned in England.  The Elizabethan energy that lifted up Shakespeare and Bacon and the sciences, would have been burned at the stake had the Inquisition come to Britain. And the British got their navy.

The ability to defend in war is a prerequisite to live and build in peace.   

Stunning Demographics?

 Okay so I admit to reading a lot of left wing stuff as well a conservatives.  Salon and Huffington Post are all abuzz with the latest on why Working Class Whites are leaving the Dems.  Conclusion, racism.  Their methodology is that they compared the number of working class whites in the North who vote Dem, 40%, and the number of Dem working class whites in  the South, 28%.  And as everyone knows, Southerners are all racists, so therefore the lack of Working class white Dems in the South proves it.  Shhhhh! Let’s let ‘em think this. 

Great methodology, hunh.  A minority both places and only 12% difference which could be all kinds of cultural things, and they conclude ‘racism’.  Study after study of Caucasian self-identifying people shows racism < 3% and indeed most studies conclude under 1%.  These studies identify racism as distrust upon sight, a desire to subjugate, and hatreds. I would suggest the reason is in the first word,” working”.  Do you want a good job or government goodies.  R’s promise the jobs.

Ann Coulter in her latest book, Adios America, shows a number of interesting facts about race and immigrants.  For years, legal immigrants aspired to WASP values, that is, the British-American system of rights for all, somewhat free markets, property ownership, rule of law, jury trials, limited government.  Okay so here’s a quiz. How many US Presidents have had British Isle ancestry?  Answer: all of them.  Barack Obama was half Kenyan and the other side of his family was named Duncan—Birtish name.  Bushes, all Anglo-Saxon.  Ditto Clinton.  Reagan was half Irish and half Brit blooded.  All the way back to our founders, Presidents have been British/Scot/Welsh in part.  Lowest portion was both Roosevelts who were French and Dutch by 7/8.  Next question.  How many have been Protestant?  Answer: All but Kennedy. The reason for this is USA was a melting pot and immigrants assimilated, adopting American values. 

Next question: If an urban city is black-white, is it less harmonious than highly diverse? Answer: black-white is most harmonious.  This comes from the Putnam study of Harvard in which the liberal authors were so stunned by their results that they refused to publish until they were forced to by peers.  Southern cities especially were harmonious.  San Fran is very distrustful. This is because, despite cultural differences and separate neighborhoods, blacks and white have come to accept one another.  I have seen other studies about how white/Hispanic Texas cities were congenial until the barrage of illegals changed everything. The new guys aren’t assimilating.  Worst assimilation is the Somalis of Minneapolis. While there are differences in assimilation rates (measured by salaries, English speaking, addresses, intermarriage rates, etc.), Legal immigrants usually come with high hopes and desires to BE American, and that usually shows up in under a generation. But that isn’t the norm in most of the world where different people live cheek by jowl with another group and hate every minute of it.  Remove the Austrian Empire and you get Balkan genocide.  Remove the Turkish empire and local dictators and you get the Middle East today. Remove the British Empire and you get Pakistan and India dividing, expelling, killing and turning into an armed camp.

Ann also notes that the oft-quoted 11 million illegal immigrants is likely much larger.  US Census bureau derives this number by  subtracting form responses. The number who check “foreign born” and “citizen” is subtracted from all forms which check only “foreign born”. The 11 million derives from 2005 datad which hasn’t been updated.   How many illegals are brave enough to fill out the government form? That led two financial bankers to check the number of different people sending money to Latin America.  Their conclusion, 20-30 million illegals from Latin America live here.

Swing voters--Hispanics--text of my talk for KCRP

 

Swing voters.  Are we interested in them? If you aren’t, you should be.  They are the difference between a squeaker and a landslide.

Let me give you some examples.  Lincoln managed to come out of nowhere in the election of 1860 by swinging the farm vote. He changed the dialog of the Republican party from abolition (“People are evil if they own slaves”) to “A man should be able to enjoy the fruits of his own labor.” The Republicans went from a 15% party to 45% and won.  Reagan found the Reagan Democrats.  They agreed with Republicans on most social issues.  But they liked the entitlements. So Reagan said we have 7 safety net programs that must be preserved. Otherwise he intended to get the government off the people’s backs.

Notice that in every case, the successful candidate didn’t change his beliefs.  He just changed the approach and the impact of what he proposed. Reagan didn’t placate the swing voters by saying he was going to expand the safety net.  But he also didn’t say that if you depended on a safety net program you were wrong.

Okay, so digging around with some statistics I have discovered a potential bunch of swing voters. I want you to think, “could we work with this group?”  This group hates debt. They have little personal debt and if you do they look at you like “is there something wrong with you, man?”  They believe strongly that hard work is the only way to succeed. They are more traditional with family values than the average American. Sometimes they say they feel like old fashioned people compared to everyone else. They are anti-abortion.  But, like Reagan Dems, they are fiscally moderate and want the safety nets.  Do you think we could work with these folks and welcome them into our party? 

Of course the group I’m talking about is Hispanics.  And of course “Hispanic” is an artificial name.  People of this group call themselves by their country of origin.  “Hey, I’m Dominican.” “When you are Mex, you just have to work harder.”    One out of 3 Hispanics is Mex, like our foster daughter.

Some people fear that Hispanics won’t assimilate.  Well, listen to this statistic.  1/3 of young Hispanics marry across ethnic lines.  That’s the fastest assimilation since Germans came to America in the 19^th century and gave us all those new things we seem to think are American.  There’s nothing more American than hamburgers, hot dogs and apple pie, right?   There are 17M Hispanic children and 93% were born here in USA. They think of themselves as American as apple pie.

Yeah, but aren’t they often illegals?  Of all Spanish speaking immigrant adults, how many do you think are illegals?  It’s one in six. 10.5 million illegals and 57 million total Hispanics.  The number of Hispanics has grown from 3M to 57M in 50 years.  They have lots of kids and the group is young.

From the purely economic standpoint, that is good.  Europe and Japan have aging declining populations with not enough workers to fund their versions of social security like us.  Slow economies, meager labor force.  Backbiting over shrinking government revenues. Japan lets nobody in and they have had 25 years of depression.   In Europe, they have let Muslim Turks come to fill the worker gap who absolutely do not assimilate.  USA has done 57 M abortions and replaced with 57 M Hispanic workers.  

What about the border?  The border situation was created when LBJ and the Dems disallowed migrant guest workers in 1967.  It was to make the War on Poverty numbers look successful.  You know, shut out some impoverished people and it looks like there is suddenly less poverty.  So the Latino guys started to slip in.  It became an epidemic.  So, in 1986, Amnesty was passed with a promise to enforce the border that wasn’t kept.  I asked a guy who came here legally what it cost.  In 1990 it cost about $1000 in paperwork and lawyer fees and you waited 2 years to become legal.  Now it’s $20,000 and you wait 12-13 years.  Can you see how tempting it is to climb the fence? The median income of Mexico is $5000, by the way. Congress closed door legally but in practice we have open borders.  Open borders lets in drug cartels and gangs, terribly poor and uneducated people and of course potential terrorists.   At this point, we can secure the border but we can’t turn back the clock on what has happened. If we locked the border perfectly beginning tonight at midnight, Hispanics would still grow to 35% of population by 2050.

How do we deal with these swing voters?   How did Cory Gardner and Ted Cruz win 50% of Hispanic vote in their elections in Colorado and Texas? Latinos are a passionate people and they like a passionate leader. They want to hear someone with sympathy and empathy for the sacrifices they have made and the situation they are in.  Often cultural resonance means as much as stands on issues. If you heard Ted Cruz announce his candidacy with such passion and stories about how he came close to being another Latino kid with a single mom, you understand how he appeals.  Emotion is kinda foreign to some Republicans, but it doesn’t violate what we believe.  The word Deportation is a dirty word to Hispanics.  Almost everybody has an illegal friend or family member.  But they also want a secure border.  Why? Because open borders means the Zeta gang comes in, too.  And who do they prey on most?  The Hispanic community! Crooks ruin life for the honest immigrants more than anyone else.  Romney suggested he would make it so hard on Hispanics they would self-deport. He got 27% of Hispanic vote.  Gardner speaks warmly of immigration and wants to deport only the bad guys. His election stunned the Dems by nullifying Pueblo and Adams Counties.  I don’t know if you are acquainted with Colorado politics. All the state is red, red as Oklahoma except 3 metros, Denver county, People’s Republic of Boulder and Pueblo/Adams counties.  Pueblo area is mining and smelting industry with lots of union “Hispanos”.  Cory Gardner lambasted gun control. Hispanic union guys got hunting in their blood and worry about their jobs. God, Guns, and Jobs. Sounds like an Okie, doesn’t it!

You do not leave a messed-up country to keep living in the mess. You leave behind friends, family and your possessions.   New country, new life.  32% of Hispanic immigrants leave the Catholic church and those who stay Catholic often are far more active than they were in the old country where it seemed you could only reach God through the Virgin Mary and the priest—who was in cahoots with the state.

Are there problems in the Hispanic community?  Yes. One in five girls get pregnant as a teenager.  That compares with 1 in 6 African Americans and 1 in 11 all Americans.  They romance young and don’t abort.  Dems offer free condoms and GED baby care.  Republicans can do better.  Maybe programs like W’s faith-based/state partnerships.  Republican job fairs?  R's can solve this.  Education is another need.  Many immigrants have only partial grade school education and they dream of better things for their kids.   It could be noted that successful Republican politics also has included equal opportunity of reduced in-state college tuition. See George W. Bush and Rick Perry of Texas.  

Maybe you don’t agree with all of this.  I understand.  There are a lot of right-and-wrong arguments. But, if you are an older, traditional American, and you are dismayed at society’s change and the family’s decline, then Hispanics are your allies.  They could well be the dream of the Republicans as well.

One last thought.  Estella Hernandez, our new Party Vice Chair, says that Latinos are ripe for re-registering.  When Obama said in 2009 that he was “going to fundamentally transform America”, just about everyone who came to this country full of hope, said “What!! What needs change!!”

 

 

Smart States, Dumb States

Yahoo had a fascinating headline, “Ten Dumbest States”.  What they did was rank states by the proportion of population with Bachelor’s degrees.  Hey, I have one of those, except that I wasn’t a very good bachelor.  Did better after I was married.  Apparently Massachusetts was the “Smartest” with Colorado #2 and Maryland #3. Oklahoma was 9^th dumbest but KY and WV were dumb and dumber or should I say dumbest. The smartest states are mostly in New England and the dumbest are in the South and Mid-South. And they show that median income bears a rough correlation to smartness, while SAT scores don’t seem to correlate too much.  Why not IQ?  Is it really right to say that some states are dumb and some smart?

            Why are we stopping at states?  Why not countries?  Britain and Germany I am sure have more degreed and pedigreed people. Switzerland and Norway have higher incomes.  And concerning test scores, USA is behind Slovenia at about #28.  But then I ask, when America came into being, were its people a lot smarter than other countries?  I have my doubts.  It’s worse, if you believe eugenically that smart people have smart kids and vice versa.  America has taken the tack of advertising for the dumb. 

            “Give me your tired your poor,

            Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

            The wretched refuse of your teaming shore.

            Send these the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

            I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

How then do we explain our success?  Luck and corrupt gain, like Obama claims in his books? Cheats, colonials and slave owners? Or did American exceptionalism have to do with freedom?  Perhaps we have taken the dumbest people in the world, given them opportunities and the freedom to make something of it.  Success resulted and we became a superpower.  Again, this violates the Obama Doctrine of Illegitimate Superpower.

            Thus if we were true to our ideals, we should rank the states not in smarts but freedoms.  It occurs to me that New England is just so rule-bond economically, that you have to have credentialization in order to get a good job.  You have to go to college to get a decent job.  It ranks very low in entrepreneurship.  After all, both MA and CA we first to recognize the importance of personal computers, but Silicon Valley wound up around San Fran Bay, not Boston Bay.  And do Maryland and Colorado just represent what happens when an area is recognized as a good place to lure skilled workers? Maryland is close to credentialization of Emerald City.  If you believe that Washington bureaucrats are the smartest people on the planet, please raise you right hand and repeat the Oath of the Veterans Administration led by the guy over there with the coffee cup. And Colorado lures young people who want the recreation paradise that just a few years earlier made the guys at the frat house go rapt. It wasn’t cowboys and miners who got all those degrees.

            So then if you asked for freedom, what state?  It surely looks a lot like Texas or Oklahoma and a lot of states in flyover land.  Few government regulations, low taxes, easy to start a business. “We like living right and bein’ free” Merle Haggard sang, “Okie from Muskogee”. Or maybe it’s Montana.  If we looked at which states produce the most new millionaires per capita, Montana would win.  Perhaps freedom trumps a balmy climate and makes more opportunities.

            Bottom line, I’m okay living in a dumb state.  Just as long as it’s free and welcomes the tempest-tossed.