"Because We Live Here"

"Because we live here."

New column over at VDare.com is a brief look at the new Red Dawn remake movie in theaters today, and a much longer look at the man who directed/wrote the 1984 Red Dawn -- John Milius [“I Would Have Done It About Mexico.” American Hero John Milius Denounces RED DAWN Remake, VDare, 11-21-12]:

Well, don’t worry: in the upcoming remake of Red Dawn, the cast has the Politically Correct mandated diversity that we’ve come to love and expect from Hollywood.

More significantly, and ignominiously, the original story of the Chinese invading America—standing in for the now defunct USSR from the first film—was scrapped after filming was finished, with the North Koreans (!!) digitally interpolated...so as not to offend our Chinese overlords. [‘Red Dawn’ Villains Switched from China to North Korea, ScreenRants.com, November 21, 2011]

Milius had already blasted the upcoming remake, which he deemed completely unnecessary. 24 Frames’ Rachel Abramowitz reported:

"I think it’s a stupid thing to do. The movie is not very old," says Milius, who’s not involved in the new film but was given a chance to read the new script. "It was terrible. There was a strange feeling to the whole thing. They were fans of the movie so they put in stuff they thought was neat. It’s all about neat action scenes, and has nothing to do with story."

In the original film, the Soviet Union has invaded the continental United States, and a group of young men and women (Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey) band together as a guerrilla group, nicknamed the Wolverines, to fight off the occupiers. In the 2010 edition, directed by Dan Bradley and starring Chris Hemsworth and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the villains are the Chinese.

While the new baddies might tap into American fears about a rising China, to Milius it makes little political sense. “There’s only one example in 4,000 years of Chinese territorial adventurism, and that was in 1979, when they invaded Vietnam, and to put it mildly they got their [butts] handed to them,“ says Milius, noting that China built a wall to separate itself from invaders. “Why would China want us? They sell us stuff. We’re a market. I would have done it about Mexico." [ Original 'Red Dawn' director takes aim at the remake, March 26, 2010]

Mexico, eh? Judging by the state of California, Arizona, Texas and, increasingly, the entire United States, Milius might be onto something.

Read the rest there. Comment on it here. Just remember Milius is known for writing some of the most gripping dialogue in all of American cinema history.

But one line uttered with righteous indignation from Patrick Swayze in the original Red Dawn is all that matters: "Because we live here."

Reckless Eyeballing

Harold Washington: One of Obama's undiscovered Heroes?

It was in a 1993 Chicago Magazine article "Vote of Confidence" that we learn the 1992 election saw more voter registrants in the 19 primarily black wards then in the 19 primarily white wards (consider: in 1930, less than seven percent of Chicago's population was black) -- 676,000 to 526,000. Who helped accomplish this task? A young Barack Obama:

In 1984, after Columbia but before Harvard, Obama moved to Chicago. "I came because of Harold Washington," he says. "I wanted to do community organizing, and I couldn't think of a better city than one as energized and hopeful as Chicago was then."

Harold Washington. There's a name you don't hear often. The first black mayor of Chicago, his election culminated - well, almost - the "Manifest Destruction" of the Second City. As has been documented at SBPDL, Chicago has merely limped along like a once proud, now lame race horse waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.

Washington would defeat Republican Bernard Epton by fewer than 50,000 votes (of the more than 1.3 million cast) in 1983 election.

Black turnout was 85 percent - two percentage points higher than white registration. Washington won over ninety-nine percent of the black vote - or, as one Epton adviser put it, every black "except for the accidents."

It's in Gary Rivlin's book Fire on the Prairie: Chicago's Harold Washington and the Politics of Race that we learn a key anecdote that, not inconcidentally, played a factor in the 2012 Presidential election (p. 195):

The Latino vote proved key to Washington's victory. Washington had won only fifteen percent of the Latino vote in the primary despite Latino activists who tried to convince voters of a natural alliance between minorities. In the general election Washington captured around 82 percent of the Latino vote. Had the opposite occurred - had 4 of the 5 vote Latino voters gone with Epston instead - Washington would have lost. 

Ninety-nine percent of the black vote; 82 percent of the Latino vote. Roughly 33 percent of those votes cast by white liberals who lived along the north lakefront.

What does this election, one from 1983, remind you of?

Rivlin supplies a key quote in his Fire on the Prairie that deserves deep reflection: Washington's campaign was seen as largely ineffective and disorganized, with political columnists in Chicago lampooning him for financial mismanagement early in his career that forced him to serve a prison sentence. Could he run a city with a budget of $2 billion? (p. 190):

"I'm no racist, and I resent the way that word is hurled at whites who are voting for Epton," said a white woman featured in one of [Chicago Tribune's Anne] Keegan's columns. "There are blacks and whites alike that are voting because of race. But there are a lot who aren't. Why are only whites labeled racists?"

Why indeed?

White people in America will cling to their abstractions until the bitter end, pointing to some mythical Constitution that safe-guards their freedoms while that same document is used to strip them of all dignity.

The race for mayor of Chicago in 1983 offered a glimpse of this; the 2012 race for the Presidency of the United States offered yet another.

Never forget that Barack Obama went to Chicago based on Harold Washington. Never forget the night Washington won the Democratic Primary, he would give this speech (p. 147):

"We've been pushed around, shoved around, beat, murdered, emasculated, destroyed," Washington said. "There's been an unfair distribution of all the goodies. No system works for us. We influence no institutions in this country except our own. We have no power. We have no land. ...

"We've been giving white candidates our vote for years and years, unstintingly hoping that they would include us in the process, " Washington said. "Now it's come to the point where we can say, 'Well, it's our turn. It's our turn."

Manifest Destruction... in a nutshell.

Psycho America: The Future of Chicago

Eight-seven percent of the 404,151 students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) come from "low income families."

Recall that the CPS system is: 

41.6% Black
44.1% Latino
8.8% White
3.4% Asian

Psycho America: Putting black interests above the interests of America

One could reasonably surmise that the white and Asian percentages, when added together, account for virtually all of the students from middle-class families in the CPS system. Also, recall that 86 percent of the 404,151 students in the CPS system qualify for a free or reduced lunch.

Thanks to the New York Times 2009 EBT Usage Map, we know that 450,000 black people (34 percent of the black population of Cook County) receive food stamps in the Chicago area. Odds that in 2012, this number is hovering over the 50 percent range? You might even be able to go towards 60 percent based on the augmentation of the EBT card rolls since President Obama took office.

Why does this matter? Why even bring this up? Because since Mayor Harold Washington died in office, Chicago has been living on borrowed time.

Two recent stories illustrate the demographic tidal wave about to swamp the city, and help showcase why the state of Detroit in 2012 is the only possible future for Chicago (if currents trends continue unabated).

Our first story revolves around a job fair [First Ever City Job Fair Leaves Many Frustrated With Hiring Process, CBS Chicago, 11-9-12]:

 About 3,000 people lined up for the city’s first-ever jobs fair on Friday – some of them waiting in line for up to six hours – hoping to apply for work with the city, but many left frustrated after learning the only way to apply for a job was to go online. WBBM Newsradio’s Bernie Tafoya reports Mayor Rahm Emanuel stopped by the job fair, expecting a warm welcome from job seekers, but instead ran into lots of ticked-off people. 

More than 3,000 people showed up for the 55 posted job openings, but city hiring rules require all applications be filed online, so many of those who attended left frustrated at having to stand in line for hours, without being able to actually apply for a job. 

City officials were not conducting job interviews, or hiring anyone on the spot. Officials said all job applications for city jobs must be done online, because of city hiring rules and the federal Shakman decree that bans political-based hiring for most city jobs. 

However, city representatives did offer assistance in applying for jobs online using computers provided by the city, and also informed job seekers about workshops on résumé writing and job interview skills. 

CBS 2’s Suzanne Le Mignot reports the event left many of those job seekers wondering why someone didn’t tell them from the start to use their computers to apply for a city job, rather than stand in line for hours in the cold. Cherrie Moore said, “They just got fliers of resources, things we could have got on the Internet, things we probably already know about.” 

Rodney Booker said, “I stood in line for four hours. They better give me a Wal-Mart gift card, or something.” Job seeker Keyonya Mills was frustrated by the miscommunication. 

“They could have said, go online, fill out the application. If you do not know how to fill out a application, come to Kennedy-King College and we’ll train you. They have people wrapped around this entire building thinking this is a job fair and this is not a job fair”, Mills said. 

Michael Williams compared the job fair to standing in a soup line, only to find out there’s no soup. “This isn’t really a job fair, it’s just a meet-and-greet,” he said. “It’s nothing, they’re just telling you what’s going on with their business, but they’re not really receiving any applications, or any résumés. It’s nothing.”

What exactly is it that those people who stood in line for a faux job fair are actually qualified to do, save collect welfare checks, live in Section 8 housing (receiving some type of voucher to live in the tragically de-centralized Chicago Housing Authority) and see to it that their children fail to show up for class [F in attendance for city schools, Chicago Tribune, 11-11-12]:

A Tribune investigation has found that nearly 32,000 Chicago students in public elementary schools — or roughly 1 in 8 — missed four weeks or more of class during the 2010-11 year, as the cash-strapped district does little to stem a devastating problem. 

For the Chicago Public Schools, the empty seats undermine efforts to boost achievement and cost the district millions in attendance-based funding.
For children born into poverty, the flood of missed days threatens to swallow any hope for a better life. 

The investigation is based on internal attendance data on about 247,000 elementary-level CPS students from 2010-11, the most recent year available. To assess the total number of missed classroom days per student, the Tribune analyzed both excused and unexcused absences, as well as gaps in enrollment. 

Among the paper's findings: 

• The crushing pattern of detachment from school often begins in kindergarten, when no child can be said to have a choice in the matter. In the 2010-11 school year, 19 percent of Chicago kindergartners were officially listed as chronic truants because they racked up nine or more unexcused absences. 

• Absenteeism in the elementary grades is especially acute in African-American communities on the South and West sides. Counting truancy, excused absences and gaps in enrollment, more than 20 percent of black elementary school students missed at least four weeks of school in 2010-11, compared with 7 percent of whites and 8 percent of Hispanics. 

• Children with a learning or emotional disability also miss class in disproportionate numbers, despite federal laws designed to keep such students in school. About 42 percent of K-8 students with an emotional disability missed four weeks of classes in 2010-11, compared with 12 percent of students without a disability. 

• The district's official attendance statistics obscure the depth of the problem because officials are required to count a child as absent only if he or she is actively enrolled. The Tribune identified thousands of students who were out of school for four weeks or more because their families enrolled them late, pulled them out early or lost time while transferring between Chicago schools. But those missed days aren't counted as absences. 

CPS spokeswoman Robyn Ziegler acknowledged that "there are far too many children who are missing more than four weeks of school in a given year, and that really eliminates any ability to establish a routine and a sense of belonging or for any degree of continuity in learning."

We already know that the CPS K-12 system is basically glorified babysitting. Sadly, these children do end up growing up and becoming permanent residents of the unemployable line, subsisting on the largess of a quasi-capitalist system sustained by the ingenuity and innovativeness of white people.

It is this same abundance of wealth that this quasi-capitalist system sustained by the ingenuity and innovativeness of white people that attracted the Great Migration of black people to Chicago and other northern cities to begin with (what we have dubbed "Manifest Destruction").

It is this same abundance of wealth that this quasi-capitalist system sustained by the ingenuity and innovativeness of white people that attracts immigrants from around the world -- many of which who no longer enrich the nation and various communities where they settle, but come to simply enrich themselves by enjoying the spoils of a generous welfare system.

But what happens when an abundance of white people aren't around to sustain this system?

You get 90 percent black Detroit and Gary (Indiana).

The black unemployment rate in Chicago is approaching 20 percent, which might be why Jesse Jackson has recently reemerged to stand with Barack Obama and demand he become a Harold Washington-style politician immediately [Jackson: Black Voters Deserve A Return On Election ‘Investment’, CBS Chicago, 11-1-12]:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Saturday said that President Obama’s reelection was “a great victory,” but that it would be incomplete with a reconstruction of urban America and an investment in the communities where the blacks who voted overwhelmingly for the president live. 

“We’re happy and full of pride,” in the president’s reelection, Jackson told the crowd at the Saturday morning forum at Rainbow/PUSH headquarters, 930 E. 50th St., “but our houses remain raggedy … our schools remain closed.” 

Despite attempts at voter suppression in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida, Jackson said, blacks turned out en masse to vote, enduring waits that stretched into hours in many places. “We waited, we voted, we believed,” Jackson said. “Now we want to get well. 

“We voted early, we voted long. Our votes won,” he said. 

Rev. Jackson, who spoke longer, louder, and more forcefully than he has in some time at the Saturday morning Rainbow/PUSH meeting, asked the crowd, “What do we want? We want, we want, we want, we deserve, we deserve … a return on our investment. 

“What’s good for us is good for everybody. What’s good for blacks is good for everybody.,” he said. “We bled too much, we died too young, we cried too much, we prayed too long, now we want a return on our investment.”

Mr. Jackson, why is it that "urban America" requires federal and state aid, plus outside investment to prosper? Why must a "reconstruction" take place in areas that are 90 percent + black, like parts of Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Baltimore, Birmingham, Gary, Newark, Camden, Rochester, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc?

Why do your "houses remain raggedy... and your schools remain closed" (that should be a huge 'sic' right?; what the hell is this clown talking about?)?

Well -- the answer to the "houses remain raggedy" is quite simply: black people live in them and black people are the majority demographic of the community they reside in.

What about a return on the investment white America has made in black America, through welfare, affirmative action, infrastructure building in black areas, the erection of new suburbs to avoid living near black people; which gave blacks prime real estate that they immediately turned to "blight", years of Head Start programs that did absolutely nothing, free lunches for their children at school -- which amounts to free daycare from K-12, EBT cards, and, most importantly, comfortable treatment in jail.

What do we get in return besides a momentary drop in crime rates?

And no, what's good for black people is not "good for everyone else." Since the early 1960s (well, since Restrictive Covenants were deemed unconstitutional in 1948), the official policy of the federal government - thus, the state governments - has been to make life better for "only black people, at the expense of everyone else."

This trickle down discrimination against whitey (paid for by... whitey) has now infected academia, the military, the entertainment industry and corporate America.

What if we decided that "doing the opposite of what is good for blacks in America represents doing good by everyone else?"

That's the lesson Chicago offers.

That's how you prevent the Second City from being Detroit-ed.

I Wear My Sunglasses at Night

Don't wear your sunglasses at night in 90 percent black Detroit: you'll end up dead

The Detroit Corollary. Robert Putnam's belief that homogeneous communities or neighborhoods harbor the most social trust/capital necessary to build a thriving city runs counter to all empirical evidence we have from a neighborhood/community/city/county that is 70 percent black or greater.

In 90 percent black Detroit, owning a pair of Cartier sunglasses - regardless of how they were procured - is of more value then a life [Man killed at Detroit gas station, reportedly robbed of designer glasses, Detroit News, 11-19-12]:

Police are investigating the death of a 24-year-old man who was shot to death at a gas station and reportedly robbed of his designer glasses on Detroit's northwest side Sunday.  

 According to police, the incident occurred at about 9:55 p.m. at the CITGO station in the 17500 block of Grand River Avenue near the Southfield Freeway. "On Nov. 18 the male victim (front seat passenger), exited the vehicle and went inside a local gas station," said Sgt. Eren Stephens.  

 "As he left the gas station and headed back to the vehicle, a car drove up and shots were fired. The victim was struck in the body and has died." According to the DPD the motive for the shooting remains unknown.  

WDIV-TV reports said the victim was robbed of his Cartier glasses as well as about $150 in cash.

According to the Cartier Web site, there exist 35 styles you can choose from, ranging in price from $560 - $1690 (plus tax) for a pair of Santos Dummont rimmed sunglasses.

Why in the world was this dude wearing a pair of sunglasses at 10 p.m. at night?

What are the odds the 24-year-old man shot to death was wearing "fake" Cartier sunglasses?

We are talking an eye accessory in 90 percent black Detroit, where these economic facts of life are merely a reflection of the Visible Black Hand of Economics and the type of economy black people can create:

• Median household income in the city dropped to $25,193 in 2011, according to the new figures. 

• Perhaps most staggering is the percentage of Detroit families living in poverty. It's more than three times the national rate, at 35.5 percent, compared to 11.7 nationwide. 

• The percentage of children living in poverty is troubling nationwide, at 22.5 percent. But that number in Detroit -- 57.3 percent.

The unfortunate homicide in 90 percent black Detroit over a pair of sunglasses being worn at night was, obviously, not what Corey Hart was singing about.