Blake. Jordin.

This is the first finale in six seasons of Idol where neither finalist is from the South.

Ron Paul Killed His Candidacy Last Night

Ron Paul wasn’t going to win this Republican nomination, but he was probably the most important candidate in the race.

The reason I say that is that, if he could move his needle up to 5% or more in the polls, he might bring the other Republican candidates to their senses. Most acutely, his increasing popularity might have gotten the most credible of the “Good Three,” that being Duncan Hunter, to edge off his propensity to be a Bushbot on the Iraq question.

But by saying last night in the Republican debate in South Carolina that (pph) “we should pay attention to our enemies in order to see what we did to provoke them,” not only is insane, and comes across as blatantly unpatriotic, it implies pandering to non-whites with criminal intent. I think that statement alone has ended Ron Paul’s chances to be a significant factor in this nomination process.

Heck, most conservative Iraq occupation opponents don’t stoop to that level of racial pandering.

Using the same logic, non-white domestic thugs shouldn’t be punished for crimes they commit, because we have to “understand them,” and to find out “what we did to enrage them,” and those answers always involve white racism, discrimination and bigotry, and always lead to “solutions” that entail big government spending, racial pandering, white racial dispossession, surrendering urban areas to non-white control, and pervasive affirmative action, among other wrong-headed things.

I wonder what some people are thinking that Ron Paul would do vis-a-vis the radical Islamic enemy that is similar to the way the left patronizes to non-white constituencies. I have seen many a white conservative southern politician get thrown out on his ears because he backpedaled on race just enough to cause trepidation in white voters. For the same, reason, I think Ron Paul is under 1% to stay.

Lou Barletta vs Lou Barletta

No need to scrape the name off that door anytime soon

“Oh, no, Pennsylvania doesn’t have an immigration problem.”

Really?

Not only did Hazleton, Penn. mayor Lou Barletta win the nomination from his own Republican party for another term, he also won the town’s Democratic nomination. Enough of the town’s Democrats gave him write-in votes such that he dispatched the top contending Democrat, who himself was a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the city’s immigration ordinances.

This is in a town where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-1 margin, and where two Hispanics lost in their primary bids for seats on the Hazleton City Council, one of whom is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the City.  Barletta won 94% of the Republican vote, and 61% of Democrats’ votes.

Perhaps Mayor Barletta might want to consider a new and better job about an hour-and-a-half to the southwest along I-81, in another Pennsylvania town that begins with “H.” I understand that it’ll come open in 2010.

New Job

A St. Louis City Public Schools administrator leaves the district to take a similar job in Wellston.  I’m thinking about something that has “frying pan” and “fire” in the phrase.

Strange Jeff City Bedfellows

We knew that black state legislators didn’t want to bump up seat belt enforcement from a secondary factor to a primary factor, and why they didn’t want it.  But rural legislators were also opposed, and the article doesn’t make it clear why.  So the two factions, which usually want nothing to do with each other, teamed up to kill provisions that would have made seat belt enforcement a primary factor.

Waiting For MALDEF, ACLU, US-DOJ to Complain

KSDK-NBC-5:

That fact has caught the attention of Sen. Bill Stouffer (R-Napton). He’s introduced legislation in the General Assembly to set up a way to identify drivers who shouldn’t be on the road.

For example, if a driver has had his license revoked for more than six months, he has to surrender the license plate of any car on which his name is listed as a owner. Then he gets a new plate that authorities know to double check.

Stouffer said it may not solve the problem, but it can’t hurt. He says 20 percent of all fatal accidents involve revoked drivers.

The rest of this article states that most unlicensed drivers were licensed drivers who had their license yanked because of non-payment of child support. One of those little taboo racial facts of life is that a lot of unlicensed drivers are also illegal aliens, so it’s only a matter of time before the usual suspects start complaining about racial discrimination.

Who Are They Talking About?

Two letters of note to the editor of Missouri newspapers:

(1) U.S. Marine Corprs Col. J. Karl Miller (Ret.), in a letter to the editor of the Columbia Missourian:

Unfortunately, folksy, family-style politics seldom exist in the metropolitan areas of our state. The dense populations — which include an abundance of the lesser-affluent, least-educated and most-defenseless people — naturally attract a criminal element and provide a fertile ground for the incidence of fraud. In Missouri, allegations of fraudulent voting and election irregularities have been concentrated in St. Louis and Kansas City.

I wonder what group of people he is speaking about here?

Col. Miller gives a few suggestions on voting reform. I have a few more.

(2) St. Louis City Police Sgt. Kevin Ahlbrand writes to the P-D, stating that St. Louis City control of the SLPD (as opposed to current state control), isn’t a good idea. I don’t think it is either, because, as this writer once said in another medium:

We also support the concept of state control and supervision of certain large city police departments by the state government which the cities are in. A model of this control mechanism is the state government of Missouri’s over the St. Louis City Police Department. The purpose of the control is to allow the occasional conservative governor of that state the authority to appoint most of that department’s directors or commissioners in order to prevent that city’s police board from enacting inane anti-police policies like bans on “racial profiling,” prohibiting police chases, “sensitivity” or “diversity training,” establishing a “civilian review board,” and affirmative action in hiring and promotion, which they would do if they were fully locally controlled by a cabal of white-hating, police-hating black “ministers” and welfare-dependent “community activists,” who would not only constitute that city’s board of police commissioners, but would also be on the “civilian review board” they created.

Auf Deutsch Sprechen

P-D Political Fix:

Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, did his best to not be understood on the Senate floor today, speaking in German – or some mangled version of the language – to make the point on an English-only bill.

With an accent that channeled Colonel Klink of Hogan’s Heroes’ fame, Engler read from a German script to introduce a constitutional amendment making English the official language of all state proceedings.

Few, if any, in the Senate could be sure exactly what was said. At least one non-German speaker swears the word “Fuhrer” emerged during the incoherent remarks. Nonetheless, his German speech was accepted as a valid motion, bringing the legislation up for debate.

Sen. Jeff Smith, D-St. Louis, continued on the same theme, seeking to question Engler in French. But Engler wouldn’t take the bait.

“I don’t speak French, but I shouldn’t have to understand the official proceedings of the state of Missouri,” Engler said.

The irony of that is that the region of Missouri where Sen. Engler represents is one where French was historically the “second” language, and before the advent of radio, the dominant language. Look at a map, and you’ll notice a fair number of French-named towns. Meanwhile, Sen. Smith’s St. Louis City district used to be predominately Kraut.

McCaskill vs Wheeler

Missouri U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is a co-sponsor of the D.C. Voting Rights Compromise that would give D.C. a voting member of the U.S. House, in exchange for giving Utah one additional Congressional seat.

Once again, aside from the racial aspects of this all, I have a big Constitutional problem with the concept of giving D.C. such “voting rights,” either for President (which has been done) or for the House and/or Senate. The District of Columbia is a possession of the Federal government for a national capital, whereas the President, and House and Senate members are elected by people of the several states. Washington, D.C. is not a state, and should not be, so they shouldn’t get voting members of Congress.

However, David Wheeler has a good compromise, and one that would not fundamentally alter the body politic of the House and Senate too much. His solution is to count Washington, D.C. residents as part of Maryland’s population for Congressional apportionment, and allow them to vote in Maryland U.S. Senate elections. Even without D.C., Maryland will forever send two Democrats to the Senate and mostly Democrats to the House, and just adding D.C’s mostly black voters to that mix won’t make things any worse.

Demographically, Washington, D.C. itself and D.C.’s Maryland suburbs are fairly similar.

Bill Clinton Starts New Career As Baseball Scout

He and HilRod buy beachfront in the Dominican.