The other day I mentioned the difficulties that stores at the west end of the Beacon Street block at the St Mary Street T-stop face. There are of course other such retail cold spots. One is the northwest corner of the Comm. Ave. / Mass. Ave. intersection. Mothers, don’t let your children open up shop there. Over the past few years I have seen upscale food markets come and go in that rather large space with its huge windows. The problem, I think, is that there’s almost no parking available and little foot traffic, plus the store is wedged between the promising yet oddly distant demographics east of Mass. Ave. and the punishing student ones west of it.

After a Hmong massacred six white hunters in Wisconsin, literally hundreds of news articles in the Mainstream Media has declared the Hmongs a prosperous a community, well-integrated with mainstream America. A report from the US Census Bureau published last Wednesday destroys that silly myth. In fact, it makes it clear that Hmongs put the diversity in the Asian-American “model minority,” that is to say, they are way poorer, are mush less educated, and speak little English compared to other Asian-American groups, according to the US Census Bureau.

The sorry state of the American-Hmong will not surprise if you’ve been reading Vdare.com’s coverage of it, but, if you’ve been listening to immigration hustlers in Minnesota - America’s Hmong Central - and elsewhere, to whom Hmongs are a pot of gold, you’ll probably believe that the Bureau is a racist propaganda tool. Sorry, nothing but the facts, hma’am.

Here are the numbers:

Of course, it may be unfair to compare Hmongs to Asian-Americans or even Americans in general, since many Hmongs live in Minnesota and Wisconsin, where housing is cheaper than in California, where the bulk of Asian-Americans live. So let’s see how Hmongs stack up against people in Wisconsin and Minnesota:

Unfortunately, the Bureau did not give per capita incomes. That would have been really fun since half of all Hmongs in America are under 18.

The good news is that Hmongs only make 1.7% of Asian-Americans. The bad news is that thousands more Hmongs are in the process of moving to America.

In the meantime, let’s just say that the Hmong community is not particularly forthcoming in dealing with the aftermath of the Hmong’s Massacre in Wisconsin. Check out this quote from The Green Bay News-Chronicle:

Ker Vang, executive director of the Hmong Association of Green Bay, said as a college student in Green Bay, he was asked to leave a bar because of his race.

He urged students not to think about the race of the those in the hunting tragedy but to think about them as one hunter interacting with other hunters.

Personally, I’ll think of it as a Hmong murdering six Americans.

But there was a little bit of insight at the meeting:

Kao Vang said he wanted students to realize the power education has in combating racism. “That’s the only way we can change our path, through education,” he said. “Without education, we go nowhere.”

Yup, getting through high-school would be a good start for Hmongs.

Here’s the reality that the Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers and other Open Border Lobbyists won’t accept:

At first, the Bilingual/Multicultural Education Department didn’t seem like a good fit for Patricia Jurado.
As a student at California State University, Sacramento, she knew she wanted to be a teacher. And for many bilingual Latinas like her, the College of Education’s BMED program would have been an obvious choice.

But Jurado had not previously celebrated her Mexican American background. She hadn’t bought into the bilingual education philosophy, and she knew her uncles back home in conservative Yuba City would scoff at a multicultural education program.
Then she took “Introduction to Multicultural Education,” taught by a white professor who “was more Mexican than I was.”

She realized she had found her calling.

“Once I got to that class, I realized that the kids I’ll be teaching are going to be a lot like me,” said Jurado, now a first-semester BMED student. “They’re going to be children of immigrants. … They’re going to feel the way I feel; they’re going to be Americans that don’t feel American.

Immigration is tearing America apart and the nitwits at WSJ are only concerned about accelerating the pace.

Idiots.

My wife secured two tickets to the New England Patriots game against the occasionally breathing Cincinnati Bengals, her old hometown team. We’d been to Foxboro Stadium a couple of times, but this was our first trip to Gillette Stadium. Very impressive building. Top-notch all around. Well, Bob Kraft didn’t personally thank me for coming to his stadium, but otherwise I have no complaints.

Let’s not kid ourselves about the game, by the way. The Bengals poured everything they had into the game, while the Patriots were content just being the better team. Effort took the Bengals a long way, but it didn’t get them an A, much less a W. I wonder if Adam Vinatieri was pissed after the game? I mean, how is kicking five extra points going to win him Special Teams Player of the Week awards? No long field goals, no touchdown passes? What the heck?

I was going to say something clever about the lighthouse on top of the scoreboard, but I’ll settle for this shot of the jumbotron.

Monster.com’s psycho touchdown monster. Funny.

The New England Patriots offense at work.

The New England Patriots defense at work.

A lot of people would probably say that this cheerleader is particularly attractive, and I am not convinced they’re wrong.

As a longtime New England Patriots fan, I would like to conclude with the following: Thank you, Bob Kraft! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

The new grocery Johnnie’s Fresh Market, which recently replaced a defunct healthy-food store, is quite appealing, with a nice range of products and competitive prices (gallon of milk: $2.99). The store is located just west of popular liquor store The Wine Press at 1024 Beacon Street, which unfortunately marks the beginning of Retail Death Row at the St. Mary T-stop. Seemingly everything west of The Wine Press is in a perpetual struggle for survival, while everything east of it (think Dunkin Donuts, Chef Chang, O’Leary’s etc) seems to be doing fine. I really hope Johnnie’s makes it.

One establishment that didn’t make was of course the Ritz Camera store at the far end of the block. As I walked by there earlier tonight a number of Chinese workers (I hesitate to call them Chinese-Americans and I’m quite confident a visit from ICE would have been most inconvenient) were busy getting the space ready for the next vic…store.

The Palladium Item in Richmond, Indiana, writes about two Guardsmen just back from the peace-keeping mission in Bosnia in southeastern Europe. One of the Guardsmen is ready to quit after two overseas missions, the other wants to stay on for an expected deployment in Afghanistan.

But while Atwell is planning to get out of the National Guard in June, Mercer plans to stay on.

Both expect their Guard unit to be deploying to Iraq or Afghanistan in the years’ ahead.

“I’ve put my kids through two deployments, and that’s enough,” said Atwell, a sergeant in the Indiana National Guard. “They don’t understand why I have to leave, so I’m not going to put them through another one. And, if I stay in, I know there will be another one.”

Atwell and Mercer, also a sergeant, were deployed to Bosnia for seven months in 2002. Atwell lives in Richmond; Mercer lives just north of Webster.

Mercer said he is thrilled to be home and is excited about “getting back in a routine and getting back to work.” But he will stay on in the Guard.

“I’m planning to make it a career,” he said.

And he knows another deployment will occur.

“I’ve heard we may be setting up a stabilization force in Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said. “I know it’s just a matter of time. We’re very well trained and we’re trained to handle anything. I believe that by the time we get over there there won’t be as much shooting.”

Basketlag i gängbråk efter match

Flicklagsmatchen mellan KFUM Central och Akropol urartade och slutade med gatuslagsmål på Valhallavägen i Stockholm. Flera förbipasserande larmade polisen som ryckte ut med fem patruller. När de kom dit hade Akropols spelare redan flytt. Kvar på gatan låg en medvetslös 14-årig flicka från KFUM. Hennes kamrater berättade att hon blivit sparkad och slagen av ett tiotal spelare ur motståndarlaget.
Polisen tog upp jakten efter flickorna och hann ikapp dem på T-centralen.
Enligt ögonvittnen gjorde de kraftigt motstånd och poliserna tvingades rada upp dem mot en vägg

Arieh O’Sullivan argues in Jerusalem Post that the Second Intifada has been broken and terrorist activity has returned to pre-September 2000 level (I know nothing about this O’Sullivan person and nothing about his track record as an analyst):

The Aksa Intifada is over. No one in the IDF would be foolish enough to make such a far-reaching statement, but the statistics speak for themselves.

From the IDF’s perspective, the relative calm Israel is experiencing now is not connected to the death of Yasser Arafat or other changes in the Palestinian nation, but is rather the direct result of the aggressive action against terrorists by the IDF, aided by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Border Police. The army said it has arrested six suicide bombers since Arafat died a month ago. This shows the motivation is still there, but the capabilities are steadily deteriorating.

For the moment, the Central Command can mark for itself an impressive achievement.

“Our rate of catching terrorists is now quicker than their rate of replacing themselves,” said a senior officer.

This means that the arrests and targeting of key terrorist cell leaders happen about as often as they take up command. They are nabbed before they gain sufficient expertise. In many cases, lower-level activists find themselves at the head of a cell, and even then spend most of their time avoiding arrest.

Of course, there’s always a downside:

There is no longer any organizational discipline among terrorist groups. The groups themselves are more or less cocktails of Hamas, Fatah Tanzim, Islamic Jihad and PFLP members. IDF sources described them as “less ideological and more territorial,” employing gang-type extortion to survive.

The Palestinians are said to be in a state of anarchy, accumulated fatigue and suffering from a loss of a sense of internal security from increasing crime, murder and burglary. Only 10 percent of crimes ever reach court, and there is a return to the clan justice of old.

IDF intelligence holds that nationalist terror is on the decline and global terrorism is taking its place. This can be seen in the increasing involvement of Hizbullah in Palestinian terror. The army maintains that about 75% of all West Bank terrorist cells are funded, directed and even armed by Hizbullah. It is also expected that Hizbullah will try to infiltrate agents into the territories and terrorists may adopt some of its public-relations tactics like filming attacks.

So you have to wonder why Russia employed barbaric and close to exterminatory tactics to defeat the Chechen rebellion? Because it felt like it, is my guess… There’s a bear in the woods. Some can see it clearly. Others can’t see it at all. Some say it’s tame. Others say it’s vicious. Since we can’t know for sure, isn’t it a good idea to be as strong as the bear? If there is a bear.

According to the US Census Bureau’s Poulation Clock, America will soon have a population of 295 million. In 1980, it was 227 million. The growth has been driven primarily by immigration and high birth rates among immigrants. The Bureau projects a population of 364 million by 2030, and 420 million by 2050. You may want to consider buying some land in interior Alaska while it’s still cheap.

President George W. Bush’s pick for Secretary of the Homeland Security Department, the competent Bernard Kerik, blew up when Kerik had to withdraw after questions arose regarding the immigration status of his former housekeeper and nanny, according to Fox News. In a statement Kerik presented the most weasly defense imaginable regarding the housekeeper/nanny: “It has also been brought to my attention that for a period of time during such employment required tax payments and related filings had not been made.”

Sounds to me like Kerik knew very well that he was hiring an illegal alien, but didn’t much care, and certainly didn’t mind.

My three cents:

1) It is unfortunate that Kerik won’t become Secretary of the Homeland Security Department. He was an inspired pick.

2) It is quite sad that members of our upper class feel it’s okay to hire illegal aliens as they please, even if they are in law enforcement.

3) President Bush has practically begged for an incident like this with his complete lack of interest in securing our borders and stemming the flow of illegal aliens.

UPDATE: On the lighter side of things, ScrappleFace reports that President Bush is now looking to nominate Kerik’s nanny.