VIDEO: Democratic House candidate calls it what it is

Further to "Did you 'celebrate the power' today?", posted here just yesterday... More than one of our readers has congratulated us for resisting the cheap joke by not substituting, for the "the" in the headline, a two-syllable word which can refer to a cat or to the female pudendum.

We admit to shyness about using said word. After all, this is a family publication! Besides, we are not "male feminists", like Just In Trudeau, the former Governor of Canuckistan. Apparently feminists like to not only use the p-word but to shout it from the rooftops. One such is Michigan House candidate Shelby Campbell. Here's an actual video of Ms Campbell, posted on Libs of TikTok and reposted on Blazing Cat Fur.

We've only seen this clip, and hope there's not more. Kinda makes you want to run right out to the voting booth, doesn't it? Ms Campbell is a Democrat, running in Detroit's District 13.

"Allahu Akbar!" in Michigan

Isn't it the truth I told yez yesterday when I wrote, "Islamic terrorism -- coming soon to a locale not far enough from your home!" You never know where the jihadis are going to strike next. For instance...

If you go north from Detroit on US 24, passing through the majority-Arab city of Dearborn as quickly as you can, you will come after a few minutes to a nicer place, just off to the west, called West Bloomfield Township. Being a cleaner, more prosperous exurb, it has a population of Jews large enough to support a nice temple called Temple Israel -- the largest Reform temple in America.  

There, yesterday, while more than 100 children were going to school, someone drove a pickup truck "purposefully" into the synagogue, where he exchanged gunfire with security guards, and was shot dead.

30 police officers were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation as the synagogue became engulfed in flames from the truck. One security guard is being treated at hospital for injuries and is expected to recover. The school's 140 students, staff, and teachers have all been accounted for and are safe. 

Jennifer Runyan, the DEI special agent in charge at the FBI's Detroit Field Office, told the meeja "We are leading the investigation right now as a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community." Strangely, though, Ms Runyan would say nothing about the dead suspect's identity, ethnicity or religion other than "There is one subject involved in this incident, who is now deceased." 

Why not tell us more? Because, she said, she had to "protect the integrity of this investigation." And to prevent the spread of Islamophobia, of course, although she didn't say that. 

However, our suspicions were confirmed within hours when the Department of Homeland Security identified the suspect, as Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, 41, who was born in Lebanon. The late Mr Ghazali entered the United States on 10 May 2011. [How? Ed.] The DHS said he then married an American, obtained an immigrant visa and became an American citizen in 2016. That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Trudeau ready to meet Trump (and Mexicans) to renegotiate USMCA

During President Trump's first term, the US of A entered into negotiations with Canada and Mexico to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which the President called a "terrible deal". While the Donald frequently expressed his love for Canada, he took aim at Prime Minister Blackie McBlackface, calling him "two faced", "weak", and a "far-left lunatic."

The result was the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced NAFTA, effective in 2020. 

This past August, as the campaign for the 2024 election started to heat up, President Trump said, "I terminated NAFTA. That's a pretty big thing. A lot of people said it would be impossible to do. I got it done, and we have a great deal now. What we have to do is make it much better even, and we'll be able to do that very shortly."

Just three weeks prior to his landslide victory, President Trump vowed to renegotiate the USMCA.  "I am announcing today that upon taking office, I will formally notify Mexico and Canada of my intention to invoke the six-year renegotiation provisions of the USMCA that I put in," he told the Detroit Economic Club.

The USMCA agreement is up for review on its sixth anniversary [not "six-year anniversay"! Ed.], when the three countries will have to confirm in writing if they wish to extend the pact or re-evaluate it. "That was the hardest thing I had to get, they didn't want that," Mr Trump said of the unique review clause. "I said, 'Nope, I want to be able to renegotiate in six years, otherwise we're not making the deal.' And I got it, and it's coming due very soon. Oh, I'm going to have a lot of fun." 

President Trump said he wanted to better protect and promote the American auto industry, which has long been centred in Detroit. "I'll also seek strong new protections against transgender ["transshipment" shurely, Ed.] so that China and other countries cannot smuggle their products and auto parts into the United States tax-free through Mexico to the detriment of our workers and our supply chains. They smuggle this stuff in. They don't pay anything. We're going to have very strong language on that."

Car-makers and car-buyers, stay tuned!

It must be nearly over for Harris, because the fat lady has sung

Pop star Lizzo unintentionally put a huge spike into the coffin of the Cackler's campaign yesterday when she promised ["warned", shurely. Ed.] that America would look like Detroit if Ms was elected to the presidensity. For those who've never been there, here's how Detroit looks.

The nation's LOL (Leading Obese Lady), who was born in the Motor City, appeared alongside Hock Ptui at Western International High School in the city. Quoth she, "I'm so proud to be from this city. You know they say if Kamala wins then the whole country will be like Detroit."

Her comments have since been blasted on social media after users pointed out that the city has been in a state of decay and decline for decades. Just over a decade ago, the city filed for federal bankruptcy protection after a years-long financial crisis. 

One commenter wrote: "Regardless of Lizzo's strenuous efforts to spin it, all that will be ringing in people's subconscious is: 'Kamala will turn America into impoverished, run down, and unsafe, Detroit.'" [My emphasis. WW]

Another added: "If Kamala is elected the whole country will look like Detroit. A decimated car industry. A top ten city in crime statistics."

One other commented: "Lizzo just told us the entire country will go to hell just like Detroit if we vote for Kamala!" 

After the clip was widely shared on X, another said: "That was a Trump endorsement if I've ever had one. LOL."

Victor Davis Hanson on the sad state of America's cities... and society

 Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, and political commentator. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. His clear thinking has been reposted on WWW; plug his name into the search window to find earlier posts. 

Yesterday, Mr Hanson's latest thoughts on the decline and fall of the Disunited States of America were published on the American Greatness website under the headline "America’s Decline?". Subhead: The remedies are agreed upon, but the needed medicine is feared more than the disease. Because today, the government is the cause of our many crises. Here's the first part of his commentary.

Now with the election of Joe Biden, what had been a fast-tracked decline has accelerated at such an astonishing rate we can scarcely recognize our country.

Our largest cities are becoming uninhabitable—dilapidated, dangerous, and dysfunctional. The challenge is not just rampant crime, but the realization that if you, the citizen, are stabbed, shot, or beaten up on the street, the perpetrators may well be exempt from most punishments. And the victim either will be forgotten in his misery or, indeed, blamed for bringing such violence upon himself.

Urban schools are not places of instruction anymore. That fact is accepted by teachers’ unions, whose operative principle seems to be that the more hopeless the idea of educating urban youth is understood to be, the less burdensome the workload, and the greater their hazardous duty pay.

Urban chain stores are closing down on the principle that if police cannot or will not stop consumer violence and theft, then consumers there should not have any store to buy anything, anyway. If there is no store, how can it be looted or shop-lifted? [That's called "reparations shopping"! Ed.]

The only mystery remaining is how long these Democrat-controlled, racially charged, and corrupt municipalities can sustain their budgets and pension commitments with increasingly declining revenue. One can tax the well off, and perhaps even gouge them as California does. But one cannot insult and ridicule them in the process. Being highly taxed is one thing, being highly taxed while hated is quite another.

How eerie that medievalism—defecting, urinating, fornicating, injecting in the street—is relabeled “homelessness—as if the problem is merely a shortage of apartments or tent cities. Somehow cities developed the notion that it was crueler to be told not to pull down one’s pants and defecate in the street than it was for a pedestrian to step into infectious human excrement.

In the next five years, either cities will seek new governance to reduce taxes, break up municipal unions, mandate charter schools, restore police funding and manpower, recalibrate pensions, and prosecute criminals and corrupt officials—or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and a score of others will become Detroit. [And let's not forget Chicago! Ed.]

One of the strangest phenomena amid our current debility are the millions of affluent leftists and liberals who have fled their unworkable, now unlivable blue-run, but naturally beautiful cities like San Francisco or Portland. They seem to lack an abstract recognition why they are leaving, or why and how their new chosen destinations are so different and therefore so inviting to them. Is their motto, “I am fleeing what I created, but I still hate those who created what I want”?

Mr Hanson is not one to post a jeremiad without suggesting some solutions, and he does so in the latter part of this article. Click here to read the whole thing. But will Mr Hanson's sensible solutions be enacted? Walt says there are two chances... slim and none!

"Summer of rage" = Civil War v 2.0? - NOT a new idea!

This morning's headlines... 

1 dead, 5 critically wounded after shooting at church in gun-controlled California 

2 killed, 3 injured after shooting at busy Houston flea market 

33 Shot During Weekend in Mayor Lori Lightfoot's Chicago

Biden: Buffalo shooting "racially motivated act of white supremacy and violent extremism"

And so it begins... No. That should be: And so it continues.

President Brandon, and all the other liberal loonies acting like this weekend's mass murder in  Buffalo is something new (and obviously the fault of President Trump!) seem to have forgotten about "race riots" (as they were called in more innocent times) in:

Detroit - June 1943 - President FDR (Democrat)

Watts - August 1965 - President LBJ (Democrat), the great champion of equal rights and "freedom now"

Newark - July 1967 - President LBJ (again)

Detroit - July 1967 - aka the 12th Street Riot, aka the Detroit Rebellion - President LBJ (yet again) 

I don't remember the 1943 event very well, but the Detroit Rebellion is clear in my mind. You could see the smoke from across the river in Canada, which is where sensible Americans went to wait it out. And of course there was the TV news. Images of mobs of black people (they weren't "Black", back then) in the streets, protesting discrimination and racism, demanding equality and justice...

...and maybe doing a bit of "reparations shopping". Of course it wasn't called that, in those more innocent days. It was called "looting", `cause that's what it was! Martin Luther King would be horrified, I think, to see what's being done nowadays, in his name and in the name of "justice".

"No justice, no peace!" That's what they're yelling now. In the long hot summer of 1967, it was "Burn, baby, burn!" The point of yesterday's  post was to predict another long hot summer, a "summer of rage". Lifetime pct .991. 

I think now that I should have added "and riots" to that phrase. But the message was clear enough for our sponsor to call to let us know that a civil war between blacks and "others" was predicted in  the January 1980 "Fantasy Issue" of National Lampoon, "the Humor Magazine for Adults". Check this out!

This excellent piece of satire, written by John Hughes and superbly drawn by George Evans, could never be published today. The editors would probably report the creators to the Department of Homeland Security's new "Disinformation Governance Board", so they could be re-educated in a pleasant summer camp somewhere in Alaska.

Fortunately, the DHSDGB has not yet been able to destroy the archives of National Lampoon and other politically incorrect publication. Our sponsor has made a .pdf file of this prescient piece, which you can buy for only $2.00. Hard copy is also available. Tell `em Walt sent ya!

Wayne Co. GOP Canvassers swear they were forced to certify vote

In yesterday's update to the continuing drama of the attempted theft of the November 3rd presidential election, Walt wondered what happened in the office of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers after the lights went out. Now we know!

Last night the two Republican members of the board swore affidavits saying they were bullied and coerced into certifying the election. They had voted against certification on Tuesday, but changed their minds in a darkened room Tuesday night.  It was then annoounced that the vote to certify the results was unanimous.

Townhall reports Board chair Monica Palmer and GOP member William Hartmann swore that the county's corporate counsel, Janet Anderson-Davis, advised board members that their job was "ministerial" and any concerns they expressed were outside of the board's authority.

In her affidavit, Ms Palmer swore that "After the vote, public comment period began and dozens of people made personal remarks against me and Mr. Hartmann. The comments made accusations of racism and threatened me and members of my family. The public comment continued for over two hours and I felt pressured to continue the meeting without a break."

Mr Hartmann, for his part, swore that "Late in the evening, I was enticed to agree to certify based on the promise that a full and independent audit would take place. I would have not have agreed to the certification but for the promise of an audit. Vice-Chairman Jonathan Kinloch then assured us that if we voted to certify the election, a full, independent, and complete audit of Detroit's election, would be undertaken. I relied on this assurance in coming to an agreement. Without this assurance, I would not have agreed to certify Wayne County on November 17th."

Click on the link above to read the rest of the Townhall story. Will the will of the people (real live people, not dead ones) be subverted? Will Democrats succeed in stealing the 2020 election? Will justice and common sense prevail? Watch this space!

UPDATED: Wayne Co. GOP election officials flip-flop, certify vote

Cazart! Cracks are starting to appear in the "sure it was a fair election" stonewall. Officials in Wayne County MI - home to the city of Detroit, in whose cemeteries reside 1000s of voters -- have refused to certify the results of the November 3rd election.

In a vote along party lines, the Board of Canvassers deadlocked 2-2, which means the certification process cannot go forward. Just The News says that the decision (or lack thereof) "injects new drama into a legal fight waged by President Trump's campaign in several battleground states."

Both Republican members of the Board refused to certify the results after discrepancies were discovered in absentee ballot poll books. Similar problems were discovered in the county's summer primary and the November 2016 election but did not affect the board's vote then. But to have this happen three times? It's either incompetence or -- dare we name it? -- fraud!

The dramatic deadlock came just a week after a city of Detroit elections worker named Jessy Jacob submitted an affidavit saying she personally witnessed and was instructed by supervisors to backdate absentee ballots the day after the election to make votes look like they had arrived on or before November 3rd. Jacob testified she believed thousands of ballots had been altered.

Under Michigan law, a county that fails to canvass within 14 days after the election must yield its documentation to the Secretary of State's office and Board of State Canvassers to determine if the results should be accepted. If the state board follows suit, the Republican state legislature will select the electors. So stay tuned. The fat lady hasn't sung yet!

UPDATE ADDED 18/11/20: Bad news, campers. Late last night, when we were all in bed, the Republican canvassers flipped and voted with the Democrats, while the live video stream was down. 

The Detroit News reported that "After hours of angry responses from Wayne County residents, the change in course was approved by the two Republican and two Democratic canvassers with the demand that the Secretary of State's office conduct a 'comprehensive audit' of precincts with unexplained out-of-balance tallies."

It is not clear if the approval was conditional on the "comprehensive audit", or if the investigation was merely requested. Also unclear is what happened after the lights went out. In Motown, strange things happen in the dark.

Want to see the smoking gun? Look here!

This is the to part of the first page of the summons in Constantino and McCall v. City of Detroit and Detroit Election Commission et al. Click here to read the entire document, particularly the affidavits (don't worry, it's black on white, not reversed as you see it in the scan), and tell me if you don't think there was "widespread fraud" in the counting of ballots in Michigan. You be the judge.

Breitbart News reports that Attorney General William Barr yesterday authorized the Justice Department (DOJ) to look into voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election. Mr Barr's memo (which you can read in the Breitbart article) was addressed to US Attorneys, the assistant attorneys general for the DOJ's criminal division, civil rights division, the national security division, and Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI.

"Now that the voting has concluded," the memo said (in part), "it is imperative that the American people can trust that our elections were conducted in such a way that the outcomes accurately reflect the will of the voters."

Mr Barr's action comes after 39 House Republicans pressed him in a letter on Friday to allow available DOJ resources to look into allegations of voting irregularities across the country in several key battleground states. The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in some of those states. Constantino and McCall v. City of Detroit and Detroit Election Commission et al is one of those suits. Stay tuned.

Further reading: 

"It's possible that 2020's election fraud is way bigger than we thought", by Andrea Widburg, in American Thinker, 9/11/20.

"Ronna McDaniel Presents 131 Affidavits, 2800 Incident Reports of Alleged Voter Fraud in MI: Media Still Demands 'Evidence'", by Megan Fox in PJ Media, 9/11/20.

"Pandemics, race riots are part of the price we pay for having big cities"

The headline is adapted from a line in "The City is Killing America: America's real problem are urban problems", by Daniel Greenfield, in Frontpage Mag, 21/10/20. Mr Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

In this lengthy and thoughtful article, Mr Greenfield traces the rise of American cities, and their problems, from the early days through the Civil War and the industrial age into the urban decay and despair which blight the once-great cities of todays Disunited States.

He concludes that cities like New York and San Francisco, not to mention Seattle and Portland -- all of them run by Democrats -- are the breeding grounds and incubators for pandemics (Covid-19 is just one) and "mostly peaceful protests" (read: race riots) which are destroying America, literally.

The photos above were taken in Seattle in June. 46 more can be found in "Seattle Riot: 46 devastating photos of Downtown destruction, vandalism", a photo gallery posted on mynorthwest.com, 1/6/20. By why pick on Seattle? Google images for Chicago, Buffalo, Newark, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston or virtually any US city, especially those on the "blue coasts".

And then there's Detroit. You may remember seeing "Quiz: Which American city has been occupied 3 times by the US Army?" on WWW 3/12/19. Walt shared a positive review of Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff, Penguin Press, 2013, along with just two of the excellent photos to be found in an excellent photo essay at the end of that book. It's depressing but compelling reading.

Mr Greenfield writes: Pandemic maps of the death toll show the deaths concentrating around major cities before making the slow trek from urban into suburban and eventually rural areas. The urban lockdowns didn’t stop the spread of the virus. What they really did was trap poor and middle class residents in urban areas, while the wealthy fled, and the virus spread to urbanites with the least mobility.

The people with the worst immune systems, in the densest living conditions, and the least ability to get up and leave, suffered the most, from nursing home patients to minorities with large families. The general pattern was historically familiar from the Middle Ages, and the only thing that our public health experts proved is that they weren’t any smarter than medieval peasants.

But the coronavirus is an urban problem and all the official solutions to it are urban solutions. And the urban problems and their solutions are killing us and taking down the whole country.

Urbanization has become a pyramid scheme taking over entire states, while hollowing out the more conservative rural areas, turning red states blue, and leaving everyone except those at the top of the pyramid scheme poorer with each generation.

America is no longer divided between the old geographies of North and South, but the new geographies of density, between cities and their suburbs, and rural areas and small towns. The latter represent the old American communities, while the former showcase the new feudal order in which great suburban wealth and urban poverty combine into radical political alignment. 

That’s the so-called “resistance”, not by the disempowered, but by the politically privileged....

The urban model hasn’t worked for America in sixty years. The pandemic has put it on the verge of collapse as the wealthy industries that made cities their base flee into virtual workspaces. It’s time to rethink and defund cities as the hubs of our economy and our nation....

Envisioning a less dense and more open country will heal many of our social and economic ills. Urban areas have concentrated political radicalism and blight. Universities have become their own radical cities. Municipalities have built networks of crony companies around themselves. Density has destroyed communities and families while depriving people of a meaningful life.

Reducing immigration can slow down population growth to sustainably match our economy and replacing cities with communities can allow our society to heal from its urban wounds. America was built around communities, not cities. It can be rebuilt around communities again.

The city is too big to fail and that means that the country is dying of its failures. We can either keep the city alive at the cost of the country, or let the city fail so that the country can live.

Walt regrets that limitations of space keep us from sharing the whole article. Please, dear readers, click on the link at top or here to read the whole thing.

Quiz: Which American city has been occupied 3 times by the US Army?

Got nothing? OK, I'll give you a hint. It's not Atlanta or New York or even Washington DC.
Nope, not Honolulu either.
The answer is... drum roll please... DETROIT!

In 1863, in the middle of the Glorious War of the Secession, a 10-year-old Detroit girl accused a swarthy-skinned tavern owner of rape. The barkeep claimed to be of Spanish and Indian descent, but that was close enough for a white mob who went berserk after his conviction, putting an axe in one black man's skull and burning down 35 buildings. Union troops were called in.

Detroit burned again in the race riots of 1943, in the middle of WWII, after a group of white teenagers got into a brawl with a group of black yoofs. Rumours of a white girl being raped by a gang of blacks fuelled the mobs. The black quarter of town (Detroit was 83% white at the time) was set on fire. After three days of rioting and 34 casualties, federal troops quelled the violence.

And then there were the race riots of 1967. After five days of violence, with 43 dead, more than 7000 arrested and 2000 buildings burned, the National Guard and the US Army's 82nd Airborne were brought in to restore some semblance of order. That's three -- count `em -- 3 times in just over a century that the Army has occupied an American city in the wake of racial conflict. It's always about race, isn't it.

This little bit of American trivia -- not so trivial, when you think about it -- is adapted from Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff, Penguin Press, 2013. I hadn't heard of Mr LeDuff when I picked this book up at a sale, but was intrigued by the title. Is Detroit really dead, I wondered. What killed it? Anything to do with race or the Democratic Party?

I was expecting a scholarly dissertation on such things as sociology, politics, city planning, and public administration, complete with charts, tables. I am very pleased to report that I got none of that! What I got was an intensely personal account of a reporter's journey through the wasteland that is today's Detroit, written by a native son.

To quote the dust jacket: Charlie LeDuff searches through the ruins for clues to its fate, his family's and his own.... With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation only a native son possesses, LeDuff sets out to uncover what destroyed his city. He embeds with a local fire brigade struggling to defend its city against systemic arson and bureaucratic corruption.

He investigates politicians of all stripes, from the smooth-talking mayor to career police officials to ministers of the backstreets, following the paperwork to discover who benefits from Detroit's decline. He beats on the doors of union bosses and homeless squatters, p0owerful businessmen and struggling homeowners, and the ordinary people holding the city together by sheer determination.

Detroit: An American Autopsy is not a book by a liberal professor who has studied Detroiters like animals in a zoo. Charlie LeDuff writes real stories, about real people, of whom he is one. Like Studs Terkel and Ben Hamper (I was reminded of Rivethead), Mr LeDuff gives a powerful voice to those who are not listened to by the academics and the liberal media. I recommend the book most highly!

There's a bonus at the end of the book -- a photo essay of Detroit, so that when you close the book, you're not closing off your connection to the very real plight of the city. The images are imprinted into your head so that when you think of Detroit, you have something to remember it by. Here's just one of the evocative and provocative photos.

This photo, titled "Packard Plant, East Side", was taken by Danny Wilcox Frazier. Charlie LeDuff grew up on Joy Street, named after the founder of the now-defunct Packard Motor Car Company. Click here to find out more about the photo.

Further reading:
"Site contaminated with uranium partially collapses into Detroit River", Windsor Star, 4/12/19.
Autopsy of America, by Seth Lawless, Artivist Publishing, 2014. Haven't read it myself, yet, but looks like a good coffee-table book to give to your liberal friends for Christmas... oops, "winter holiday".

MI doctor charged with female genital mutilation; guess which religion?

Should be an interesting afternoon in beautiful downtown Detroit. [Eh??? Ed.] Protesters with "NOCIRC of Michigan" plan to gather about noon EDT outside the US District Courthouse to raise awareness of the barbaric "cultural" -- read "Muslim" -- practice of female circumcision, more accurately described as female genital mutilation or "FGM".

"The genitals of both girls AND boys needs [sic] to be protected from the harm of any genital cutting practice," said (((Norm Cohen))), executive director of NOCIRC of Michigan. "Michigan has one of the highest rates of circumcision in the world. This unnecessary custom violates a child's right to bodily integrity and normal functions."

The occasion for the protest is the bail hearing, scheduled for 1300 today, for Jumana Nagarwala, M.D., a Detroit doctor with performing genital mutilation on two 7-year-old girls, in what is believed to be the first case brought under a law prohibiting the procedure. Dr Nagarwala, an emergency room physician at Henry Ford Hospital, is alleged to have performed the procedures at an unnamed medical clinic in the Detroit suburb of Livonia.

"Female genital mutilation constitutes a particularly brutal form of violence against women and girls," said acting US Attorney Daniel Lemisch. "The practice has no place in modern society and those who perform FGM on minors will be held accountable under federal law."

Female genital mutilation typically involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris and is barred by numerous international treaties. The practice is common in several African countries, including Somalia, Sudan and Egypt, where it is often a cultural or religious tradition. What do these countries have in common? They are all Muslim countries, run according to strict interpretations of Islamic law. (Notice that Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian country surrounded by the others, is not in the list.)

Why does Michigan have one of the highest rates of FGM in the world? Because that state, and the greater Detroit area in particular, is the new home of hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants, "refugees" and asylum-seekers, who have brought their barbaric cultural practices with them. Yet it has taken two decades for the Justice Department to launch this first criminal prosecution under a law against such practices enacted in 1996!

That ole Motown magic don' work no more

Len was shocked... NOT... to learn today that Detroit has taken the pipe, so to speak... and I'm not talking about the crack pipe either. [Why would we think that? Ed.] I'm talking about the biggest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the US of A. $18 billion and counting. Wow! What kind of insane investor would have lent them that kind of money or bought their bonds? [Errr... Ed.]

So what went wrong? Wasn't Detroit too big to fail? Not to mention too prosperous -- all those cars and... errr... cars. The business and economic analysts of the lamestream media have it all figured out. Michael Babad, writing in the Globe and Mail's Business Briefing (and therefore supposedly objective, being outside the US) says it all comes down to three things -- neglect, corruption and exodus.

By "exodus", Len thinks Mr. Babad means "white flight". Flight from what? Well, from neglect, corruption and possibly... hmm... gotta be careful here lest I write something politically incorrect. Let's just have a look at a map which you'll see all over the Internet in the next couple of days.

This "social map" by Eric Fischer shows the great racial divide between Detroit and its suburbs. Each dot represents 25 people. The orange dots are Hispanics. The green dots [Where? Ed.] are Asians. Can you guess which racial groups are represented by red and blue dots? Hint: it ain't necessarily Democrats and Republicans!

That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Mother of 6 trades $96,000 house for minivan

In some parts of America, you can get a pretty good house for under $100,000. A lady in Detroit had one -- 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, located in Russell Woods (former hometown of Diana Ross & the Supremes), valued at $96,000. She traded it for a 2006 Chevy Uplander -- seats 6-8, PS & PB, only 85,000 miles, valued at around $6800.

The former home-owner told the Detroit News "I had a lot of good offers, some from out of state. It turned out I took one of the first offers I got because I felt like it helped us both. They needed the house more than anyone I spoke with. They kept telling me it was a blessing to them. I really feel like I made a good decision."

Why did she do this? Well, the lady is disabled, and felt she could no longer rely on Detroit's troubled bus service. So, you see, a minivan made much better sense than the Corvette she was offered.

The new motorist's name is Lawanda Flake. Really.

Is there a Ford in Toronto's future?

The first part of today's musings was about the decline of the American rust belt and the impoverishment of Detroit and Buffalo. Half a century later, the virus has spread north. Torontonians are waking up these fine fall mornings to the realization that their city's glory days are over.

Toronto's position as the economic hub of Canada is waning. The auto industry is not the powerhouse of the last century. Banking and finance are still doing OK. But oil and resources are where the money is, and that means west. Hello Alberta! Even poor Saskatchewan is suddenly a player, thanks to potash. [Wat dat? Ed.] Who knew?

Meanwhile, Toronto's streets are beginning to resemble those of Buffalo or The Big Apple itself. Graffiti, sure. Street people -- burn-outs, drug addicts, and panhandlers -- on every corner and in the parks. And gangbangers ruling the night. Shootings are an every-weekend, if not everyday occurrence. And 99% of the time the shooters and the shootees are black and "known to the police".

And let's not forget ghettos. Toronto's got not just racial ghettos, like the notorious Jane-Finch, but ethnic ghettos -- south Asians in Mississauga and Brampton, east Asians in Markham and Scarborough, and Italians in Woodbridge.

That's the other side of multiculturalism. If you encourage immigrants to cling to their own languages and ethnicities there can be no "melting pot" in the American sense.

One of the losers running for mayor of Toronto -- George Smitherman -- says Toronto's diversity (by which he means its huge population of fairies) is its strength. In fact diversity breeds disharmony. There is strength in unity, not diversity. But there is precious little harmony or unity in Toronto these days.

Can Toronto be saved from becoming another Detroit, or -- even worse -- Buffalo? (Please don't get on Walt's case for that remark. It was made by another Toronto mayoralty candidate, Joe Pantalone, part of the outgoing administration that couldn't organize a two-car funeral procession.)

Out of right field comes Rob Ford, the odds-on favourite to beat Mr. Pantsonfire and Furious George. Mr. Ford is running a platform of fiscal responsibility and no more politically correct nonsense. In fact, he is Mr. Politically Incorrect, and thus the darling [How about "Great White Hope"? Ed.] of the (mostly white) suburban and working-class Torontonians who now find themselves a beleaguered minority in their own city.

If Canada had a Tea Party, Rob Ford would be its leader! That's why he's going to win in a walk on October 25th. The implications for provincial and federal politics are enormous.

Toronto: the new Detroit?

Walt's been away for a couple of days, emerging timidly from his woodland retreat to prowl the streets of three cities on the shores of the lower Great Lakes: Toronto, Detroit and Buffalo. It used to be fairly easy to tell which side of the border you were on. Now, I'm not so sure.

Just after WWII, Toronto was a small, sleepy, provincial city -- a collection of towns, really. People used to go to Buffalo for a good time. (Can you imagine?) The American border cities were where you found the nightlife and the excitement.

And the business. Detroit's booming auto plants turned out millions of exciting new cars every year, and people bought them. Canada's "Little Three" went along for the ride. Even Buffalo had businesses of some sort, not just dollar stores and pawn shops.

Then came the 60s and 70s. Toronto grew like Topsy and reorganized itself as "Metro" -- the city that worked. Torontonians started thinking of their city as "the Little Apple" -- Canada's answer to New York. Peter Ustinov called Toronto "like New York, if New York were run by the Swiss".

At the same time, the American cities of the rust belt fell apart, or, in the case of Detroit, got burned down in the race riots which marked the "civil rights" era of Kennedy, Johnson and, yes, Nixon. In my view, America has never recovered from the impact of the social engineering policies of that time and the economic turmoil of that time.

Detroit is a hollow shell. Buffalo is, by one recent estimate, the third-poorest city in the U.S.A. You can trace the beginning of the end back to the Kennedy-Johnson era and the liberal humanist economic and social policies of that time. See America in Our Time, by Godfrey Hodgson (Vintage Books, 1976).

What happened to Toronto? See following post.