'José, Can You See?' U.S. Soccer Team Booed at Gold Cup Final, Rose Bowl, Pasadena

You get used to it. You're a foreigner in your own country sometimes. You get the feeling in many parts of Southern California. And in some of the small agricultural towns in the Central Valley you might as well be in Mexico. Democrats and progressives don't care, except to the extent that it keeps them in power, but we've long ago basically undergone a foreign invasion of people whose primary loyalty remains to the countries of their origin. The Los Angeles Times has the report, from Bill Plaschke, "In Gold Cup final, it's red, white and boo again." The U.S team was booed. Here's a quote from the piece (via Memeorandum):

Most of these hostile visitors didn't live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere.

Welcome to another unveiling of that social portrait known as a U.S.-Mexico soccer match, streaked as always in deep colors of red, white, blue, green … and gray.

"I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I'm proud to be part of it," said Victor Sanchez, a 37-year-old Monrovia resident wearing a Mexico jersey. "But yet, I didn't have a choice to come here, I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be."

Right.

This is an old debate, largely taboo for discussion in polite company, like academic departments. But it's not a new thing, at all. Recall Samuel Huntington's seminal essay in 2004, "The Hispanic Challenge"

Massive Hispanic immigration affects the United States in two significant ways: Important portions of the country become predominantly Hispanic in language and culture, and the nation as a whole becomes bilingual and bicultural. The most important area where Hispanization is proceeding rapidly is, of course, the Southwest. As historian Kennedy argues, Mexican Americans in the Southwest will soon have “sufficient coherence and critical mass in a defined region so that, if they choose, they can preserve their distinctive culture indefinitely. They could also eventually undertake to do what no previous immigrant group could have dreamed of doing: challenge the existing cultural, political, legal, commercial, and educational systems to change fundamentally not only the language but also the very institutions in which they do business.”

Anecdotal evidence of such challenges abounds. In 1994, Mexican Americans vigorously demonstrated against California's Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits to children of illegal immigrants—by marching through the streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexican flags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998, at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Angeles, Mexican Americans booed the U.S. national anthem and assaulted U.S. players. Such dramatic rejections of the United States and assertions of Mexican identity are not limited to an extremist minority in the Mexican-American community. Many Mexican immigrants and their offspring simply do not appear to identify primarily with the United States.

Déjà vu.

RELATED: At Pamela's, "US SOCCER TEAM VICIOUSLY BOOED IN L.A. -- MEXICO WAS "HOME TEAM" - ENEMEDIA CALLS IT "UNIQUELY AMERICAN'."

Power Line Making Switch-Over to Wordpress

John Hinderaker has the announcement, "COMING SOON: POWER LINE 3.0."

Power Line's been on a Movable Type platform for almost ten years, not Blogger, so it's interesting in light of the other recent upgrades, at Legal Insurrection, for example. But what I noticed at Power Line, at the bottom of the page, is that all three of the original bloggers are listed, John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Paul Mirengoff. But recall that Mirengoff's no longer a Power Line blogger. He's no longer featured at the "About Us" page. There is a partial archive for Mirengoff, but the timeline cutoff seems totally arbitrary. Entries are available up through February 2009, and it's something worth an explanation in the context of the shameful campaign of PC destruction against Mirengoff early this year, when he criticized the memorial services for Gabrielle Giffords at the University of Arizona in Tuscon. I watched live, and personally thought the opening blessing delivered by Dr. Carlos Gonzales of the University of Arizona College Medicine was a politically correct nightmare. It was a indigenous time-waster of Native American PC overkill, and frankly, Dr. Gonzales seemed like an amateur in performing the ritual. But you can't criticize criticize stuff like that in the U.S., or not if you want to keep your job. Mirengoff wrote a post, long since deleted, strongly criticizing the event, "An evening in Tucson — the good, the bad, and the ugly":

…I didn't appreciate the president of the University of Arizona (and master of ceremonies) telling us how lucky we are to have Barack Obama as our president and Janet Napolitano as our Homeland Security chief. Nor did the frequent raucous cheering by the huge crowd seem appropriate at what was, at least in part, a memorial service.

As for the "ugly," I'm afraid I must cite the opening "prayer" by Native American Carlos Gonzales. It was apparently was some sort of Yaqui Indian tribal thing, with lots of references to "the creator"
but no mention of God. Several of the victims were, as I understand it, quite religious in that quaint Christian kind of way (none, to my knowledge, was a Yaqui). They (and their families) likely would have appreciated a prayer more closely aligned with their religious beliefs.

But it wasn't just Gonzales's prayer that was "ugly" under the circumstances. Before he ever got to the prayer, Gonzales provided us with a mini-biography of himself and his family and made several references to Mexico, the country from which (he informed us) his family came to Arizona in the mid 19th century.

The reaction was fierce. Here's the headline at Right Wing Watch, "Right Wing Blogger In Trouble for Insulting Native American Prayer at Tucson Memorial." And here's this from a PC ayatollah at Crime & Federalism, "Paul Mirengoff Humiliates Himself and Akin Gump":

If you, Paul Mirengoff, honestly do not understand why calling someone's religious invocation "ugly" is insulting, then your professional judgment is suspect. You are a total dipshit moron whom I would never trust to handle a parking ticket for me.

Anyhow, here's hoping Mirengoff gets all the negative publicity he deserves.

Yeah, negative publicity. It happens, but in this case it was costly, because Mirengoff's firm had major contracts with Native American tribes. The backlash came swiftly and forced Mirengoff off the blog. William Jacobson, a law professor who was previously in private practice, criticized Akin Gump's handling of the complaints, "Big Law Firm Takes Down Big Conservative Blogger." Read the whole thing, and note especially William's update: "Eric Boehlert of Media Matters is practically jumping for joy that Mirengoff no longer is blogging, which is what Boehlert had been hoping would happen, 'Note To RW Bloggers: Could Obama Derangement Syndrome Cost You Your Day Job?'" (That post went down the memory hole at Media Matters, most likely because it was way too honest about the progressive program of destruction against people who break from the acceptable narrative --- more about that stuff later, as I'm still working with my lawyer about the related progressive campaigns against American Power.)

Anyway, more at The Other McCain, "Power Line Gets Scalped: Did Indian Tribe Money Influence Akin Gump Decision?," and Pope Hat, "I, Paul Mirengoff, Offer Heap Big Apology To My Indian Brothers."

'The Local Government Pension Squeeze'

We're going to be hearing more and more about stuff like this, particularly as the Obama Depression deepens.

From Stephen Malanga, at Wall Street Journal (via RealClearPolitics).

RELATED: The process is playing out in one of the cities right next door to where I live. See NBC News Los Angeles, "Costa Mesa Mayor Pro Tem Talks About Unprecedented City Cuts." And at Los Angeles Times, "Costa Mesa's police chief abruptly quits over council's plan to slash workforce," and O.C. Weekly, "Costa Mesa Police Chief Resigns With a Letter, Calling City Council 'Incompetent' and the City's Fiscal Crisis a Lie."

BONUS: "Republicans promote Costa Mesa as a pension-slashing leader."