How disgusting segregation was in the USA in the 1950s but ...?

An article in last week's Spectator (I am way behind with my reading) entitled 'Post-racial America? Forget it' was an interesting read but one little bit really caught my eye:

'Even as late as the 1950s, black people were unable to buy privately owned property in New Orleans, because the white landowners exercised their right not to sell it to them. Those days are long gone...'

Despicable & vile and not that long ago really. A part of American history that most people, especially 'liberals', would look back on with disgust and disquiet.

I wonder how many of the same people would see anything wrong with this from an August post of mine:

'Almost no notice was taken of another pre talks decision that the PA chairman revealed, as he announced clearly that if a Palestinian Authority state is created in Judea and Samaria, no Israeli citizen will be allowed to set foot inside... "I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land,” Abbas declared. Israel is home to a sizable proportion of Arab citizens, who have the vote and are represented by Arab parties in the Knesset.'

So if segregation in 1950s America was wrong why is creating a Judenfrei Palestine acceptable? 'Is it coz they are Jewish?'

Creating an American "client state"

Just as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown used public spending to create a Labour voting client state, Barack Obama is trying the same trick in America. As Mark Steyn writes:

"If you expand the bureaucratic class and you expand the dependent class, you can put together a permanent electoral majority. By “dependent”, I don’t mean merely welfare, although that’s a good illustration of the general principle. In political terms, a welfare check is a twofer: you’re assuring the votes both of the welfare recipient and of the vast bureaucracy required to process his welfare. But extend that principle further, to the point where government intrudes into everything: a vast population is receiving more from government (in the form of health care or education subventions) than it thinks it contributes, while another vast population is managing the ever expanding regulatory regime (a federal energy-efficiency code, a government health bureaucracy) and another vast population remains, nominally, in the private sector but, de facto, dependent on government patronage of one form or another – say, the privately owned franchisee of a government automobile company, or the designated “community assistance” organization for helping poor families understand what programs they’re eligible for. Either way, what you get from government – whether in the form of a government paycheck, a government benefit or a government contract – is a central fact of your life."

The land of the free is about to become the land of state dependency; welcome to socialism America.

Alaska some facts - interesting or not

With John McCain's appointment of Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate, the spotlight has been shone on Alaska, so I thought the time right to bring up one of my favourite quiz questions.

A great quiz question is to ask:
1) which American State is the most Northern
2) which American State is the most Eastern
3) which American State is the most Southern
4) which American State is the most Western

Virtually everyone plumps for Alaska as the most northern, California or Florida as the most Southern, Maine as the most Eastern and California or Hawaii (if being smart) as the most Western.

In fact the answer to Northern, Eastern and Western is the same - Alaska. Northern and Western, people will normally believe, but Eastern? It's all due to Alaska's Aleutian Islands which stretch right up to the edge of the Western Hemisphere at the 180º line of Longitude, thus making Alaska the most western state in the country; but they also stretch across the 180º line of Longitude, into the Eastern Hemisphere, and up the edge of the Russian Federation, making it the most Eastern state as well. The most Southern US State is Hawaii.

Just as interesting is if you just count the contiguous American States; then:
The most Northern State is Minnesota
The most Eastern State is Maine
The most Southern State is Florida
The most Western State is Washington State


Tomorrow I may blog about where the geographic centre of America is, or I may not...