|
Faithful husband, soccer dad,
basset owner, and former cowboy
Return to TboggHomePage
FELLOW TRAITORS
*The Nether-Count*
100 Monkeys Typing
Ain't No Bad Dude
Alicublog
Americablog
American Leftist
Attytood (Will Bunch)
Bad Attitudes
Balloon Juice
Better Inhale Deeply
Bitch Ph.D
Bloggy
Bob Harris
Brilliant At Breakfast
BusyBusyBusy
Byzantium's Shores
Creek Running North
Crooked Timber
Crooks and Liars
Cursor
Daily Kos
Dependable Renegade
David Ehrenstein
Democratic Veteran
Dohiyi Mir
Down With Tyranny
Echidne of the Snakes
Edicts of Nancy
Elayne Riggs
Eschaton (Atrios)
Ezra Klein
Failure Is Impossible
Feministe
Feministing
Firedoglake
First Draft
Freewayblogger
The Garance
The Group News Blog
Guano Island
Hairy Fish Nuts
Hammer of the Blogs
Hullabaloo(Digby)
I Am TRex
If I Ran the Zoo
I'm Not One To Blog
Interesting Times
James Wolcott
Jesus' General
Jon Swift
Juan Cole
King of Zembla
Kung Fu Monkey
Lance Mannion
Lawyers Guns and Money
Lean Left
Liberal Oasis
Main & Central
Majikthise
Making Light (Nielsen Hayden)
Mark Kleiman
Martini Revolution
MaxSpeak
MF Blog
MyDD
Needlenose
The Next Hurrah
Nitpicker
No More Mr. Nice Blog
Norbizness
Norwegianity
Oliver Willis
One Good Move
Orcinus
Pacific Views
Pam's House Blend
Pandagon
Pharyngula
Political Animal(K.Drum)
The Poorman
Progressive Gold
Right Hand Thief
Rising Hegemon
Roger Ailes
Rude Pundit
Rumproast
Sadly, No
Seeing The Forest
Shakesville
Sisyphus Shrugged
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Slacktivist
SteveAudio
Suburban Guerilla
TalkLeft
The American Street
The Left Coaster
The Road To Surfdom
The Sideshow
The Talking Dog
The Talent Show
Tom Tomorrow
Tom Watson
Whiskeyfire
UggaBugga
Wampum
Wonkette
World O'Crap
TOSS ME
A BONE
Amazon Wish List
SOURCES
MSNBC
CNN
The Washington Post
Media Matters
The New York Times
The Guardian
Yahoo News
Salon
The Raw Story
Common Dreams
Media Transparency
The Nation
Alternet
Joe Conason
Talking Points Memo
THE VAST WASTELAND
Captain Corndog & Friends
Cheerleaders Gone Spazzy
80% True
Corner of Mediocrity and Banality
Village Idiots Central
Darwin's Waiting Room
News for Mouthbreathers
Mailbox
Your e-mail may be reprinted sans name and e-mail address. Think about how stupid you want to appear.
Blogroll Me!
Site Feed
|
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Fear of a brown planet
I stumbled into the blog of one Stefan Sharkansky today and was quite impressed at his high-toned racism. He almost sounds reasonable.
Here's Stefan riding the MECHa horse hard:
Can you think of many of other immigrant groups (e.g. Jews, Poles, Irish, Koreans) who speak in terms of self-determination, of building a "nation within a nation" and equating their identity with a particular part of the United States? I can't. Put this mural and the Aztlan movement in the broader context of: demands for bilingual education, demands for preferential treatment in hiring and admissions, demands for full privileges for illegal immigrants; not to mention Mexican irredentism.
Yes, I think there is a significant separatist movement among Mexican Americans. I don't know how many Mexican Americans support it and to what extent, but it seems to be enough of a force that it should be taken seriously and actively rejected. Cruz Bustamante has failed to renounce it, and is therefore encouraging it. He has in my view, disqualified himself as a viable statewide official.
But the problem goes beyond Bustamante. The separatist movement is being encouraged and nourished in the public universities at taxpayer expense. Okay, the UW mural above is 30 years old. But that's not an excuse for the university to continue to celebrate it. Public policies that encourage separatism will inevitably lead to something like this.
He thinks there is a "significant separatist movement among Mexican Americans" but he doesn't know "how many Mexican Americans support it " and so he feels that since Bustamante hasn't "renounced" this thing that may or may not exist, he must be supporting it. Evidence of a "separatist movement " being encouraged at our public universities? A thirty year old mural.
Hey. You can't argue with that kind of deductive reasoning. Well you could, but it looks like it would be a big waste of time.
Meanwhile, he seems to be proposing that we could save the young black men of Washington DC by sending them to Iraq.
According to this week's story from Scripps Howard News Service, there are 140,000 troops in Iraq, and there have been 286 fatalities from all causes since the war began in March (about 24 weeks ago). That gives us an annualized death rate of 443 per 100,000. Only about half of these deaths (147) were in combat, for a combat death rate of 228 per 100,000.
According to Center for Disease Control / National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, there were 21,836 young black men (age 18-30) in Washington DC in 2000, the latest year that mortality data is available. The total number of deaths in this group from all causes was 132, with 95 homicides. i.e. the death rate for this group was 604 per 100,000 and the murder rate was 435 per 100,000.
In other words, a young black male soldier from Washington DC would have been 36% more likely to die by staying at home than by serving in active duty in the Iraq war, and almost twice as likely to be murdered at home than to be killed in combat. Yes, that's horribly sad, but it puts a few things in perspective.
I'm glad he threw that "horribly sad" in there so we wouldn't think that he was insensitive or something.
|
|
