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kamui

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Everything posted by kamui

  1. I guess this doesn't change the fact that Whites of European decent aren't being in the majority anymore. Considering that the median age of WASPs is 42 their birthrate will decline even more. I wonder how the two political parities, especially the GOP will look like in a decade? And how they talk about immigration, education, e. g.? PS: It won't disturb me to see more Jessica Alba's, Salma Hayek's, e.g. in Hollywood movies.
  2. Cheers C-Steve, even though I presume you are not involved in this. Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S. By SABRINA TAVERNISE WASHINGTON — After years of speculation, estimates and projections, the Census Bureau has made it official: White births are no longer a majority in the United States. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 49.6 percent of all births in the 12-month period that ended last July, according to Census Bureau data made public on Thursday, while minorities — including Hispanics, blacks, Asians and those of mixed race — reached 50.4 percent, representing a majority for the first time in the country’s history. Such a turn has been long expected, but no one was certain when the moment would arrive — signaling a milestone for a nation whose government was founded by white Europeans and has wrestled mightily with issues of race, from the days of slavery, through a civil war, bitter civil rights battles and, most recently, highly charged debates over efforts to restrict immigration. While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,†said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.†Signs that the country is evolving this way start with the Oval Office, and have swept hundreds of counties in recent years, with 348 in which whites are no longer in the majority. That number doubles when it comes to the toddler population, Mr. Frey said. Whites are no longer the majority in four states and the District of Columbia, and have slipped below half in many major metro areas, including New York, Las Vegas and Memphis. A more diverse young population forms the basis of a generational divide with the country’s elderly, a group that is largely white and grew up in a world that was too. The contrast raises important policy questions. The United States has a spotty record educating minority youth; will older Americans balk at paying to educate a younger generation that looks less like themselves? And while the increasingly diverse young population is a potential engine of growth, will it become a burden if it is not properly educated? “The question is, how do we reimagine the social contract when the generations don’t look like one another?†said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of Immigration studies at New York University. The trend toward greater minority births has been building for years, the result of the large wave of immigration here over the past three decades. Hispanics make up the majority of immigrants, and they tend to be younger — and to have more children — than non-Hispanic whites. (Of the total births in the year that ended last July, about 26 percent were Hispanic, about 15 percent black, and about 4 percent Asian.) Whites still represent the single largest share of all births, at 49.6 percent, and are an overwhelming majority in the population as a whole, at 63.4 percent. But they are aging, causing a tectonic shift in American demographics. The median age for non-Hispanic whites is 42 — meaning the bulk of women are moving out of their prime childbearing years. Latinos, on the other hand, are squarely within their peak fertility, with a median age of 27, said Jeffrey Passel, senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. Between 2000 and 2010, there were more Hispanic births in the United States than there were arriving Hispanic immigrants, he said. The result is striking: Minorities accounted for 92 percent of the nation’s population growth in the decade that ended in 2010, Mr. Frey calculated, a surge that has created a very different looking America from the one of the 1950s, when the TV characters Ozzie and Harriet were a national archetype. The change is playing out across states with large differences in ethnic and racial makeup between the elderly and the young. Some of the largest gaps are in Arizona, Nevada, Texas and California, states that have had flare-ups over immigration, school textbooks and priorities in spending. The nonrural county with the largest gap is Yuma County, Ariz., where just 18 percent of people under 20 are white, compared with 73 percent of people over 65, Mr. Frey said. Perhaps the most urgent aspect of the change is education. A college degree has become the most important building block of success in today’s economy, but blacks and Latinos lag far behind whites in getting one. According to Mr. Frey, just 13 percent of Hispanics and 18 percent of blacks have a college degree, compared with 31 percent of whites. Those stark statistics are made more troubling by the fact that young Americans will soon be faced with caring for the bulging population of baby boomers as they age into retirement, said William O’Hare, a senior consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, on top of inheriting trillions of dollars of government debt. “The forces coming together here are very clear, but I don’t see our political leaders putting them together in any coherent way,†he said, adding that educating young minorities was of critical importance to the future of the country and the economy. Immigrants took several generations to assimilate through education in the last large wave of immigration at the turn of the 20th century, Mr. Suarez-Orozco said, but mobility was less dependent on education then, and Americans today cannot afford to wait, as they struggle to compete with countries like China. “This is a polite knock on the door to tell us to get ready,†said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “We do a pretty lousy job of educating the younger generation of minorities. Basically, we are not ready for this.†But there are bright spots. Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said the immigration debate of recent years has raised the political consciousness of young Latinos and he is hopeful that more will become politically active as a result. Only half of eligible Latino voters cast ballots in 2008, he said, compared with 65 percent of eligible non-Hispanic voters. “We have an opportunity here with this current generation,†Mr. Vargas said. About 50,000 Latinos turn 18 every month, he said. And the fact that the country is getting a burst of births from nonwhites is a huge advantage, argues Dowell Myers, professor of policy, planning and demography at the University of Southern California. European societies with low levels of immigration now have young populations that are too small to support larger aging ones, exacerbating problems with the economy. “If the U.S. depended on white births alone, we’d be dead,†Mr. Myers said. “Without the contributions from all these other groups, we would become too top-heavy with old people.†NY Times
  3. Therefore you are unfit to become president of the United States! BTW, wasting billions by sending your people to an unjust war will bring you at least 150.000 USD per lecture after your retirement. You just think too small. You should think in pennies at all.
  4. Romney's friends(?) didn't say that the incidents didn't happen at all. They just they give a character assessment, that this shold not have happened, considering Romeny was such a nice guy. So why did Romney already apologize almost immediately for his behavior during his youth? Is he so weak that he apologizes for things he didn't do? And the WAPO had 5 different sources (much more than for the Watergate scandal). Anyway the Romney campaign has of course the disadvantage that the whole right wing media and related groups spend already 4 years researching the life of Obama ever. By now nothing really stuck (the Birther Stuff was a boomerang obviously, which puts off non right-wing independent voters, e.g.). One reason of course is, that Obama had been so clever to reveal his "sins" during his youth by himself. We can expect that the media will do much more digging in regard to Romney's past. By the way, don't forget: The term "swift boating" was coined in regard to a very ugly and dirty right wing campaign.
  5. As your really trustworthy source says [/irony off], this was already in the mainstream media (Chicago Post) in 2007 and Obama provided the information himself... It seems that the WP scoop caught Fox et al on the wrong foot. By the way, as a teacher, don't you agree that mobbing and attacking classmate(s) for being gay (or just being perceived as gay) and smoking a joint are really different things?
  6. Yeah, right, as if the whole right wing media (Fox and co.) wouldn't jump on this kind of story if it wasn't Romney. The timing of the story was of course perfect: a day after Obama supported gay marriage, Romney is being described as a homophobe who personally attacked and abused a gay classmate and mobbed another classmate who just looked gay in his eyes...
  7. In Germany there are nearly no millionaires in the parliament - as far as I know. Our party and election system is completely different. Parties as well as elections are funded mostly by public money. Therefore the candidates mustn't neither be rich nor be funded by (super)rich supporters/corporations.
  8. I guess it will become an extremely expensive (I read somewhere the number of one Billion USD) and almost probably a very dirty election campaign. I fear that the super rich will simply buy the next president. Wallstreet has turned against Obama and conservative billionaires are already spending big.
  9. Nope, I don't prefer any of those right or left wing voices and have never quoted any of them. Unfortunately it seems that in the US those radical voice get a lot of attention. The reasonable voice from the center seem to have lost ground in the past decade.
  10. Ah Buchnan, isn't it this right wing, anti-semitist commentator, who was recently fired by MSNBC for racist slurs. And this is the person you choose to present a valid opinion on the racially loaded Martin case?
  11. US health insurance companies are more than happy to pay for birth control. Because unwanted pregnancies, pre- and postnatal care are much more expensive...
  12. George Zimmerman Video Outrage: Where Are Injuries From Travyon Fight? by Jesse Singal Mar 29, 2012 1:42 AM EDT Newly released police video of George Zimmerman reveals none of the injuries he said he received from Trayvon Martin. Jesse Singal on how the footage lays bare the worst, most dangerous tendencies of the Internet—and ourselves. If the police video of George Zimmerman being taken into questioning shows what it appears to show, if Zimmerman really was devoid of the injuries that had been so feverishly and eagerly recounted by his defenders, then we have on our hands an absolutely catastrophic failure on the part of the media, and one of the most dramatic, devastating examples in recent memory of the Internet’s power to decide “the facts†long before anyone has a clue what they are. http://www.thedailyb...vyon-fight.html
  13. This is Zimmerman's lawyer's version. It is still not clear at all what happened in the minutes/seconds before he killed Trayvon. It still really surprising that Zimmerman hasn't been arrested, considering that the US police sometimes takes school children in for minor offenses.
  14. The murder has become a battle field between the right, the dems and the blacks. A lot of stuff doesn't add up currently. Both sides are fighting for their version of what happened at that night. Clear seems to be that the guy walked home, without provoking anybody or even showing any signs that he was about to commit a crime. Zimmerman followed him in his car and against the advice of the 911 person left the car and confronted him. What happened is not clear at the moment, except that the Zimmerman killed the guy. Only a proper trial at court would be able to clear things up (the media almost probably won't). I wonder if/how "Stand your ground" will be applied. If so, it's a license to kill. Just follow someone you want to murder, confront him/her with a gun in a place without witnesses and shoot him/her. Afterwards you just need to tell the police that you thought that the person looked suspicious and when confronted attacked you... PS: How does the NRA say: Guns don't kill, but people do. They might add that laws help people to kill (with a gun).
  15. Isn't it the case, that 80% of the US citizens don't own a passport?
  16. Flash, I said this before. Please look for more reliable sources. Breitbart.com is a right wing noise machine which has posted a lot of bs and falsehoods in the past. Breitbart was known to manipulate information so much that it got a complete different meaning. Remember Shirley Sherrod? When you rely solely on those sources you are not better informed than an undereducated Fox News/Limbaugh fan. You really should know better.
  17. Currently all polls show that Obama is doing well against the GOP candidates. But in the end the current status doesn't mean anything. A lot of things can happen until November... Obama leads six-to-one among Latinos By BYRON TAU | 3/5/12 5:07 PM EST President Obama leads all his Republican rivals among Latino voters, according to a new poll released Monday. According to the latest national Fox News Latino survey, none of the Republican contenders for the presidential nomination poll above 14 percent in a head-to-head matchup against Obama. That's a 17 point drop in support from John McCain's 2008 share of the Hispanic vote — with McCain garnering 31 percent of that group four years ago. Obama has a six-to-one advantage among Hispanics, leading Mitt Romney 70 percent to 14 percent among likely Latino voters. Obama also beats Newt Gingrich 72 to 14 percent. And Obama is also drawing a significant well of his Hispanic support from former John McCain voters. According to the poll, 40 percent of John McCain voters are now supporting Obama over Gingrich or Romney, while 38 percent are supporting Obama over Rick Santorum. Obama's approval rating among Hispanics stands at 73 percent — with 66 percent approving of his handling of the economy. The poll is more evidence that Republican rhetoric on immigration is alienating a group of voters that was competitive for Republicans just a few cycles ago. In 2004, George W. Bush captured 44 percent of the Hispanic vote and tried to push a comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress after his victory. Since that election and the failure of immigration reform for both parties, Hispanics have abandoned the GOP in record numbers. http://www.politico....nos-116475.html
  18. I don't know about US politics, but in Germany people are rarely really enthusiastic about a candidate. Usually it is about electing the lesser evil and the candidate who _might_ be capable of offering a better future. in German politics ideology as well as personal/moral/religous matters play a much smaller role. Contrary to the US - where ideology and religion even trumps personal welfare and income during elections - in Germany it is mostly about money. When a party performs badly - like not being able to deal with a financial crises - the party will be voted out office soon. Currently we have a prime example: The liberals (the free market and pro business party) promised lower taxes during the last election, but then they only lowered taxes for a small group of supporters (like hotel chains). Within two years the Liberals fell from 15% to 3% and they even might vanish soon... But I guess in a way the German majority is kind of immune against radical ideologies, because of its history. Unfortunately this kind of immunity might weaken over the years.
  19. NBC/WSJ poll: Primary season takes 'corrosive' toll on GOP and its candidates By Mark Murray, NBC News Senior Political Editor As another round of voting takes place this week in the Republican presidential race – with 11 states holding Super Tuesday contests – a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows that the combative and heavily scrutinized primary season so far has damaged the party and its candidates. Four in 10 of all adults say the GOP nominating process has given them a less favorable impression of the Republican Party, versus just slightly more than one in 10 with a more favorable opinion. Additionally, when asked to describe the GOP nominating battle in a word or phrase, nearly 70 percent of respondents – including six in 10 independents and even more than half of Republicans – answered with a negative comment. Some examples of these negative comments from Republicans: "Unenthusiastic," "discouraged," "lesser of two evils," "painful," "disappointed," "poor choices," "concerned," "underwhelmed,†“uninspiring†and “depressed. My link
  20. Yeah, and they are all against contraception. Especially the hot young Chicas.
  21. Of course Rush and GOP want to make the topic go away. The GOP always used the right wing culture war during elections (remember the anti-gay bashing), and they used the culture war very successfully. But now for the first time since decades the GOP is losing the culture war in their fight against women's rights. - First the embarrassing struggle between the Komen Foundation (a billion USD cancer research enterprise) and Planned Parenthood which lead to firing of a high ranking GOP member from the Komen Foundation, - than the GOP had to walk back laws that would force women to get an intra-vaginal soundscan before the get an abortion, - and now the contraception issue. Since the contraception issue is a topic for _all_ women (even 98% of Catholic women use a kind of contraception, completely against the Pope's will) the GOP is alienating a whole generation of young and middle age women (and their male peers), for whom this was a struggle their mothers fought in the 1960s. And there is another difference to previous culture war battles: This fight wasn't exclusively chosen by the GOP. The GOP and the Catholic Bishops were working on this issue since some time, but Obama carried the fight to the GOP when he asked the Catholic institutions to pay for contraception. As expected the GOP's and religious right's outcry was huge. They blew the issue up to monumental proportions making it an issue of "religious freedom". And what did Obama? He just took it back a few days later and said, OK, the Catholics don't have to pay, but their health insurance companies (which are nonreligious) have to. By now the GOP campaign was rolling and couldn't be stopped: The GOP leadership called for a hearing about "Religious Freedom" (not contraception) in Washington, consisting exclusively of male panelists (including priests). And this was the hearing the GOP denied Fluke to talk... And after Rush's slurs against Fluke (the best what could happen to the Dems, since the slur hit at all women), Obama called her personnally. In the meantime Dems raised 1.6 Mio USD on Rush's slurs against Fluke. It seems that Obama is learning how to play the game, finally. Actually I am wondering, if this wasn't scripted by the Obama camp from the beginning? PS: I guess the Dems want to keep the issue alive for some time. Let's see how the GOP deals with the topic in the next weeks.
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