Obama still seems to be the big story at the moment. Four articles about Obama and friends just up on my OBAMA WATCH blog


Weird California corrupts Latinos too

Every Sunday Elias Loera stands behind a pulpit made from motorcycle parts and preaches family values to the people of Fresno. He rails against sinful living and neglectful fathers, yet is careful not to offend. Mr Loera reckons more than half of the women in his almost entirely Hispanic congregation are single mothers. He tries to avoid speaking of "father God", so dismal are many people's experiences with fathers in this struggling Californian city.

Whether Cuban, Mexican or Puerto Rican, most Latinos revere la familia. But the Hispanic family is changing. In the past ten years the birth rate among unmarried Latinas has risen from 89 to 100 per 1,000. It is now much higher than the rate among black or white women (see chart). Late last year came a significant but little-noticed announcement: probably for the first time, half of all Hispanic children in America were born out of wedlock.

The Latino family is not in such a dire state as the black family, where 71% of children are born to single mothers. Yet the gap appears to be closing. In 1995 the unmarried teenage birth rate for Latinas was 20% lower than the rate for blacks. It is now 12% higher. This is not just a worry for socially-conservative preachers. More than half of all young Hispanic children in families headed by a single mother are living below the federal poverty line, compared with 21% being raised by a married couple.

Many blame these changes on the decay of traditional mores. Ed Moreno, Fresno's public-health officer, points to the enormous differences between recent immigrants from rural areas-at the moment, the city is seeing an influx from the Mexican state of Oaxaca-and American-born Latinos. The new arrivals rule their children with an iron hand. Among them teenage pregnancies are rare and often followed by marriage, sometimes at the point of a metaphorical shotgun.

By the second or third generation such old-fashioned attitudes are generally forgotten. Among the poor, cohabitation is seen as normal and single parenthood merely regrettable. Research by Wendy Manning of Bowling Green State University and others shows that unmarried Mexican-American couples who have children while living together are slightly more likely to break up than are blacks or whites in similar circumstances.

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There is a great short video here about where Hillary, Obama and all the other socialists are trying to lead us. It is actually a hamburger advertisement for Wendy's made when the old Soviet beast was still with us but its message is still as relevant as it is amusing. We forget the Soviet Union at our peril and this video is not far off in describing it.

Cellphone hell: "Raised voices, disputes over money, abrupt hang-ups. Asad Baig has experienced all the hallmarks of a stormy relationship with his cell phone company-actually five different ones over the last four years. Once, he fought with his carrier over charges for text messages that resulted in a $400 monthly bill despite signing up for an unlimited texting package. Another time, he got socked with an unexpected phone upgrade fee. Baig said he has encountered customer service representatives ranging from friendly to incompetent to openly hostile. "The most discouraging thing is that in order to get anything accomplished, I have to get angry," said Baig, 25, a law student at the University of Illinois. "It's such a waste of energy and time." Consumer discontent with wireless service has been brewing for years, resulting in lawsuits across the country and requests for government intervention. Now there's movement at the federal level to address long-standing concerns such as mandatory contract extensions, early termination fees and confusing billing." [If ever there's a good cellphone company, it will get a rush of customers. I have yet to find one. See here]

Ted Kennedy Dumps Fuel into Nantucket Sound: "Ted Kennedy has called Nantucket Sound near his Massachusetts estate "a national treasure" - but that didn't stop the senator from having oil dumped from his yacht into its waters. A local photographer spotted an oil slick coming from Kennedy's yacht Mya as Kennedy and his guests left the vessel in a launch following a race that ended in Hyannis, the Cape Cod Today newspaper reported. The lensman was so shocked that he rowed his dinghy out to question the crew member left aboard the yacht. He asked the crewman, "What the hell are you doing?" The crewman said that diesel fuel had gotten into the bilge and he was told to dump it. When the photographer pointed out that the yacht was moored in coastal waters near shellfish beds and people swimming, the crewman replied, "Whatever." Cape Cod Today published a photo showing the oil slick emanating from Mya. As Newsmax reported earlier, Kennedy has opposed a proposal to construct a wind farm in Nantucket Sound to produce cheap, clean energy. Asked why, he said: "That's where I sail."

Switzerland Re-Affirms Bank Secrecy: "Tax-loving politicians in Europe and tax-harmonizing bureaucrats at the European Commission in Brussels and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris are not smiling today. They have already received bad news from Austria and Luxembourg and now Switzerland has announced that it has no intention of weakening its human rights laws regarding privacy simply because money is escaping high-tax nations"

Harvesting Taxpayers: "The Wall Street Journal opines about the shameful excess in the farm bill being crafted by Congress .....farmers are about to score the most lavish subsidies in American history. ...Corn producers will get subsidies of $10.5 billion over five years, which is on top of the deal of a lifetime these farmers were handed when Congress expanded ethanol subsidies. ...There's also a new $5.1 billion emergency "trust fund" for farmers, with almost all the money directed to Georgia, Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas. ...The giveaways are so large that the House version is the first farm bill ever that would raise taxes to pay for it -- by $14 billion, mostly on the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. This only discourages new foreign investment in the U.S. at a time when the weak dollar is already chasing it away. ...Congress has also spurned the Bush Administration's sensible proposal to establish a $200,000 income ceiling in order to receive subsidies. Instead, full-time farmers will be able to earn up to $1 million per farm ($2 million for a married couple) and still be eligible for a USDA handout."

Britain's stupid Leftist government driving out hi-tech employers through high taxes: "Internet search giant Yahoo is moving its European headquarters from London's Shaftsbury Avenue to Geneva after being driven away by British taxes. Yahoo becomes the latest of a host of multinational businesses being lured away from the UK by rival countries with lower corporation taxes. The move came as a particular blow to Britain's efforts to keep technology companies here. Google, despite employing several hundred staff in London's Victoria, opted to base its European headquarters in Zurich. Video games maker Electronic Arts moved its engineering HQ from London to Zurich. EA's arch rival SCI last month announced it was moving dozens of jobs from its Wimbledon HQ to Canada. Swiss councils have been directly approaching wealthy London non-doms running hedge funds and other investment businesses to highlight the benefits of moving to the Alpine haven. Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive-the giant US companies, both elected to site their European HQs in Switzerland. Kraft recently upped sticks from offices near Kew."

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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