June 20, 2012

The Wisdom of Marco Rubio

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Cuba), prominent Vice-Presidential Timber, has written (according to Matthew Yglesias in "The Wisdom of Marco Rubio on Illegal Immigration"):
"Many people who came here illegally are doing exactly what we would do if we lived in a country where we couldn't feed our families," he writes in An American Son, which was released Tuesday. "If my kids went to sleep hungry every night and my country didn't give me an opportunity to feed them, there isn't a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here."

Here's an interesting graph:

46 comments:

David said...

Which leaves me to wonder: exactly how are they starving in a nation almost as obese as the U.S.?

Anonymous said...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/keenan/what-taxi-driver-would-look-like-if-it-were-made

Davis said...

From the look of my county South Koreans are starving too.

I see many of these Latin American refugees on my daily travels and they have taken full advantage of America's abundance. They are outpacing all other "people of color" in terms of childhood obesity from what I've seen.

Anonymous said...

carrie underwood now for 'gay marriage'. Con(per)version continues. The conformist conservative mind eventually bends to the prevailing wind.

Anonymous said...

Cheap chalupas.

Anonymous said...

Why don't they have a Revolution like every other people?

They are too lazy to revolt, so instead they squat on someone else's land, that the other person worked hard to free from elite control (well originally)

Anonymous said...

carrie underwood now for 'gay marriage'. Con(per)version continues. The conformist conservative mind eventually bends to the prevailing wind.
___________________________________


Those in the public eye are usually finally cornered by the press. A decision not to comment either way on controversial issues is taken as an attack on the prevailing politically correct stance.

Careers are derailed by a lot less.

Anonymous said...

I've never met a hungry Mexican, never.

rho said...

Oh, goody, this probably means we can Zoe Baird the hell out of Marco Rubio.

Pat Boyle said...

Marco Rubio appears to be a typical Cuban of 100% Castillian Spanish background. In Cuba before the revolution these people certainly knew who they were and they went to some troble not to be confused with those with black or Indian ancestry.

But America instead of using purely racial classifications as they do for the White, Asian and Black categories insist on confounding race with language. So what people expect from the so-called Hispanics is a mixture of of peoples with Mayan and Aztec ancestries as well as a smattering of those with European ancestry.

Rubio is damn smart. That's not surprising. His people (Europeans from Spain) have an average IQ of about 100. He is speaking however for native Americans who have an IQ of about 90. This is relevant because the estimate is that one point of IQ results in .11% less growth in GDP. Letting in Rubio and others like Rubio is good for the country but most Hispanics just make us poorer.

There are illegals in some part of town on every street corner. None of them look like Marco Rubio.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

When are you going to get on the paleo diet bandwagon?

Anonymous said...

They are too lazy to revolt, so instead they squat on someone else's land, that the other person worked hard to free from elite control (well originally)

Isn't that most Americans? Aren't most Americans descended from people who came after the American Revolution?

Anonymous said...

native Americans.. have an IQ of about 90...

You're high [in your estimate of the average] by at least 10 points.

DR said...

1) Mexico has incredibly high inequality. 30% of the country can be obese and 30% can be starving. Anyone who doesn't believe this should actually, you know, visit there. Compare the way a white Mexican lives in DF to indigenous peasants in Oaxaca.

2) Starving isn't the only justification for desperately wanting to leave a country. Drug cartels putting people's heads on spikes in town squares would probably make you want to hightail it out of there too. Also consider that those cartels only exist because your neighbor to the North insists on simultaneously consuming more narcotics than anywhere in the world AND fighting the most intense war on drugs of any nation in history.

3) This is attacking a straw-man. The fact is there is zero net immigration from Mexico to the US today. I've noticed you left off the obesity numbers for countries where people actually still do want to come to the US. I'd like to see the obesity numbers for Cambodia, Guatemala and Nigeria.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2012/0408/Home-again-in-Mexico-Illegal-immigration-hits-net-zero

Anonymous said...

Well in fairness, Mexico isn't exactly an egalitarian society. The people coming here are unlikely to be particularly well fed.

But in any case, they don't come here because they are starving...that's goofy politicospeak. They come here because America pays more. All of us here would do it too.

Anonymous said...

"The fact is there is zero net immigration from Mexico to the US today."

"Straw man?" you say. Take a look in the mirror.

"Zero net?" Why the f does that mean a thing? There are millions here and there'll be millions more coming when the economy picks up, one day.

Anonymous said...

Oh DR,

There is zero net illegal immigration, not zero net migration. Also, 30% of Mexico is starving and not one person has noticed besides you? Not the New York Times or the Washington Post or even one piddly internet news outlet?

The drug cartels are America's fault, just as any problem in any country has an American root. I believe all homophobia in Sub-Saharan Africa is the fault of Evangelicals from the States.

Anonymous said...

Mexico has incredibly high inequality.


So does the US. In fact we have worse inequality than Mexico does. And people like you are doing your best to bring more dirt poor people here, to increase your own wealth.

Anonymous said...

The fact is there is zero net immigration from Mexico to the US today.


There's no way of knowing whether or not there is zero net immigration from Mexico to the US today, because much of Mexican immigration to the US is illegal. By definition illegal immigration is difficult to track.

jody said...

the fattest man in the world was, for several years, this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Uribe

mexicans get plenty to eat, especially thanks to NAFTA. in a rare benefit to the US, american agricultural output destroyed mexico's domestic corn production, and now mexicans mainly eat a giant mountain of corn imported from the US every day. i'm not sure what other grains and foods mexico imports from the US, but america is feeding mexico now.

when the price of oil goes up, the price of corn goes up, and the poor people in mexico do, for a time, have more trouble getting the corn they want. but that's transient and has no long term effect on how heavy they are. short, fat, run slow, jump low. and coming to america one high school dropout at a time. "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." obama has put select illegals on double secret probation.

he also has the dubious distinction of damaging the US economy so much, that many mexicans have decided to hang out in mexico instead for the time being. this is keeping millions of new diabetes cases from becoming america's problem. don't worry though, they're only waiting for the US economy to pick up. they'll be coming in waves again soon enough.

if mexican oil production falls much lower than it is currently, they'll start coming to the US in waves again anyway. mexico will still have to deregulate pemex to prevent that. new production methods may be able to increase oil output in their depleting fields, but they aren't smart enough to figure out how to do that themselves. they still need the supermajors to come in and do it for them on a contract.

jody said...

"Also consider that those cartels only exist because your neighbor to the North insists on simultaneously consuming more narcotics than anywhere in the world"

as you said in a previous post, it doesn't affect you, so why would you care?

anyway, i hear this idea a lot about the drug war in mexico, but it doesn't make sense. all of a sudden, americans just started taking drugs from mexico in 2006? what was happening for the previous 50 years? americans weren't taking drugs then? i'm pretty sure mexico fell into a drug war in 2006 because of felipe calderón. not because of americans.

"The fact is there is zero net immigration from Mexico"

there are still 400,000 legal mexicans moving in every year. well, i haven't checked the official government numbers in about 2 years. so it might be up to 500,000 or down to 300,000. but i'm pretty sure net migration from mexico is way, way above zero.

between 2000 and 2010, puerto rico lost 83,000 people. that is to say, the population of a third world country actually went DOWN over the last 10 years. most of them disappeared...to america. also in 2011, puerto rico went through the most violent year in its history. 1130 murders on an island with 3 million people. puerto rico is also in a drug war. why is a drug war in mexico "because of america" but a drug war in puerto rico is just a bunch of drug dealers killing each other?

Anonymous said...

Has it ever occurred to you - racist Steve - that WE are responsible for Mexico's obesity rate? Obviously our Gringo 'Eat,eat,eat' advertising and Fast food corporations are mostly responsible. The Mexicans are probably drinking all the surplus 7-11 Slurpies from NYC.

Plus, if all the thin starving Mexicans move here, the obesity rate (Fat people/total people) will go up in Mexico. Its simple math - but then that kind of math is hated by racists like YOU.

Anonymous said...

mexicans get plenty to eat, especially thanks to NAFTA. in a rare benefit to the US, american agricultural output destroyed mexico's domestic corn production, and now mexicans mainly eat a giant mountain of corn imported from the US every day.

NAFTA pushed a lot of Mexican subsistence farmers off the land, causing them to migrate:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-30.htm

That was arguably one of the purposes of NAFTA.

The same thing happened a couple generations earlier in the US when family farms were destroyed by big agribusiness and people were herded into the workforce.

This kind of clearing natives especially farmers off the land is nothing new of course. There were the Scottish Highlands Clearances and many other examples throughout history.

Getting Americans and foreign countries dependent on major American agribusiness for basic sustenance has been a part of American policy for decades:

http://truth-out.org/news/item/9769-democratic-unfreedom-social-technique-and-the-manufacture-of-control

Anonymous said...

Uh, genius, the high obesity rate is of middle and middle-upper class people. That doesen't mean that there aren't a few million people in Mexico who aren't starving and wouldn't be saved from death from inanation by immigrating to the U.S.

Steve Sailer truly thinks he strikes gold with these arguments, when in reality anyone with half a brain who can interpret information more accurately than him sees that there is no contradiction.

Anonymous said...

Uh, genius, the high obesity rate is of middle and middle-upper class people. That doesen't mean that there aren't a few million people in Mexico who aren't starving


Uh, genius, that doesn't mean that there are "a few million people in Mexico" who are starving.

Mexico doesn't even make the list of "hungry" countries described by the World Food Program.

http://www.wfp.org/countries

I don't know where this notion that Mexico in 2012 is similar to Ireland in 1850 originated, but it's flat out moronic.

Anonymous said...

Also consider that those cartels only exist because your neighbor to the North insists on simultaneously consuming more narcotics than anywhere in the world AND fighting the most intense war on drugs of any nation in history.


It's amusing that you can brag about how you don't give a crap about your fellow Americans, but you turn into such an emotional puddle of mush when it comes to people in other countries.

The great majority of people pretending to be "libertarians" online are lefties in drag.

Matthew said...

"It's amusing that you can brag about how you don't give a crap about your fellow Americans, but you turn into such an emotional puddle of mush when it comes to people in other countries."

This.

Just like moral relativists who say that all morality is relative, then follow by claiming that some oppising moral view is superior.

If morality is just relative then I'll favor that moral viewpoint which favors me.

Matthew said...

USA, New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Canada: what is it that causes Anglosphere countries to be so much fatter than other white countries? British genes? More minorities? Better television?

Steve Sailer said...

"what is it that causes Anglosphere countries to be so much fatter than other white countries?"

Victory.

From 1607 onward the English grabbed and held the biggest chunks of temperate arable land in the world. The English-speakers wound up with more good farm land per person than anybody else. Ben Franklin explained how the game worked back in the 1750s

CJ said...

The English-speakers wound up with more good farm land per person than anybody else.

Maybe so, but France surely has some superb farmland. BTW, the higher obesity rates of the United States compared to the other English-speaking countries are mostly due to its black and Latino residents, who are considerably more likely to be obese than white Americans.

Anonymous said...

"If my children are starving at night, the there's no law that will stop mw immigrating", or words to that effect.

I'm sorry but desperation is absolutely no defence in law. If I tried to justify a mugging or burglary by the fact that my children were starving o death, the Judge in so many words would tell me to 'F*ck Off'.
Harsh but true. You try to play the cod emotionalism of these silly little newspaper pieces with any type of administrative/judicial setting and see how far it gets you. The fact that literally millions of American kids depend on the wages of a bread-winner for their health and happiness is no bar to economists, politicains, billionaires etc destroying those jobes in a heart-beat.

Steve Sailer said...

"When are you going to get on the paleo diet bandwagon?"

I'm not going to get up on a soapbox until I lose another 15 pounds, and probably not then either.

What I do advise folks to do is to try the different major diet philosophies for themselves, since there is so much biodiversity. Personally, not eating breakfast cereal or drinking orange juice and avoiding other carbs is a pretty easy way for me to avoid being hugely fat, and I would recommend people give it a try, but I'm definitely staying out of the role model racket.

Anonymous said...

USA, New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Canada: what is it that causes Anglosphere countries to be so much fatter than other white countries? British genes? More minorities? Better television?

Fluoridation?

These five English-speaking countries, along with Chile (ranked #7, just behind Canada, on the obesity list), Brazil (#16), and Israel are the only countries that practice large-scale fluoridation of water. American cities that recently began fluoridating their water -- often in response to legislation enacted by state legislators with little or no public notice or debate -- soon watched their obesity levels rise.

There are numerous plausible mechanisms by which fluoridation can lead to obesity:

1. Fluoride depresses thyroid function, leading to slowing metabolism, reduced energy for exercise, and depression. (The latter is often treated with drugs that themselves cause weight gain.)
2. Fluoride seems to impair glucose tolerance while at the same time affecting numerous metabolic enzymes, insulin receptor function, serum IGF-1 levels, bone turnover, and bone mass. Gray-topped Vaccutainers – used to measure blood glucose levels – contain sodium fluoride in order to take advantage of its tendency to inhibit enzymes that metabolize glucose and which could, if left unchecked, would consume the glucose in the sample before it could be analyzed.
3. Fluoride may, repeat may, cause reduced impulse control in susceptible people.
4. In animal studies, the deleterious effects of fluoride become more pronounced with each generation of animals that are exposed.

Most European countries have banned fluoridated water on health and/or civil rights grounds.

Anonymous said...

Personally, not eating breakfast cereal or drinking orange juice and avoiding other carbs is a pretty easy way for me to avoid being hugely fat, and I would recommend people give it a try, but I'm definitely staying out of the role model racket.

Orange juice has about the same amount of calories and sugar as cola. It's like drinking a Pepsi every morning for breakfast. It's really not healthy at all to be drinking every morning.

Kai Carver said...

"what is it that causes Anglosphere countries to be so much fatter than other white countries?"

Freedom?

These are countries with less government intervention, more individualism, freer capitalism, less enforcement of traditional culture.

Or just: bad food?

Anonymous said...

Interesting to see New Zealand so high. They restrict immigration to people with "healthy" BMI.

Anonymous said...

Yglesias' newest immigration post is especially bad, and even his commenters aren't having it.

Anonymous said...

"Plus, if all the thin starving Mexicans move here, the obesity rate (Fat people/total people) will go up in Mexico. Its simple math - but then that kind of math is hated by racists like YOU." - They are punching above their weight here as well in the obesity department.

Svigor said...

"Many people who want to prevent souther-border-jumpers are trying to do exactly what Mexico does vis-a-vis their souther-border-jumpers; they'd rather preserve their own way of life than run their country like a flophouse for the world's refuse. If my kids had to do with less because of some central or South American border-jumper, I'd want to keep them out too. And no law, no matter how restrictive, would prevent me from preserving my way of life, just like the Mexicans do."

Svigor said...

Starving isn't the only justification for desperately wanting to leave a country. Drug cartels putting people's heads on spikes in town squares would probably make you want to hightail it out of there too. Also consider that those cartels only exist because your neighbor to the North insists on simultaneously consuming more narcotics than anywhere in the world AND fighting the most intense war on drugs of any nation in history.

I love leftist arguments. E.g., the drug problem is down to drug users, not dealers and traffickers. The prostitution problem is down to johns, not pimps and whores.

The cartels exist because Mexicans create and run them. Mexicans chop one another's heads off because that's what they want to do. We do not have any obligation whatsoever to allow Mexican cartels to flood our streets with drugs, just so the Mexicans will stop chopping one another's heads off. Or to prevent Mexicans fleeing the environments they make for themselves.

If morality is just relative then I'll favor that moral viewpoint which favors me.

I think you might've just explained why I'm a moral relativist better than I ever have. I'll get back to you on that.

Anonymous said...

It's amusing that you can brag about how you don't give a crap about your fellow Americans, but you turn into such an emotional puddle of mush when it comes to people in other countries.

No. 5a: Song (Ko-Ko & Chorus)

"Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own"


They'll none of them be missed, indeed.

Mr. Anon said...

".............there isn't a law, no matter how restrictive, that would prevent me from coming here."

No, but a good fence and a few mine-fields might do the trick.

Mr. Anon said...

"DR said...

Drug cartels putting people's heads on spikes in town squares would probably make you want to hightail it out of there too."

And why should we welcome a people whose inclinations run to decapitation as a motivational tool. How long before day dawns on a pile of headless corpses left at an intersection in Albuquerque and Phoenix, just as already happens in mexico? Maybe we just don't want interlopers from a country whose national pastime used to be cutting the beating hearts out of people.

"The fact is there is zero net immigration from Mexico to the US today."

The fact that you assert this "fact" as a fact does not make it a fact. Anyways, even if true, it's not good enough. I want out-migration.

NOTA said...

The zero net illegal immigration statistic is a really nice indication of the forces driving illegal immigration. Enforcement went up a bit (Obama's administration has deported a lot of people) and the economiy went down, and the net inflow stopped. Policies that make it continue to be as hard for an illegal immigrant to get a job here as it is right now, combined with enforcement no more harsh or expensive than we have now, is apparently enough to stop the inflow.

None of that looks unbearably intrusive or expensive or hard to do. Fine the hell out of employers caught hiring illegals. Deport illegals who bring themselves to the attention of the police in some way other than being a crime victim or witness. If we don't solve this problem, it's because we don't want to,because fhis isn't some super hard thing.

DCThrowback said...

Little known fact: Ann Coulter follows Steve on twitter and re-tweeted this piece. I can only hope she read the latest one on Romney.

She has been silent on Romney's latest turn on immigration despite the fact she was one of his biggest booster's during the primary season.

Anonymous said...

All of us here would do it too.

If I'd been Joe DiMaggio's neighbor in the nineties when the earthquake hit, and I knew he had millions in untaxed cash in garbage bags in his house, and I knew I could have gotten away with it I'd have burgled his house. I was in Army Intelligence and I can B&E a building the Uncle Sam way, which is pretty tough to prosecute.

My real neighbor as a (high school) kid had a second wife who was hot-think Barbara Eden in her prime with strawberry blond hair and Farrah Fawcett nips. And it was known she wasn't all that pure when hubby was away. I was buff and bejingled (think John Leslie) and damn sure tempted. Did I? Nope. Hubby was an ex-con who had beat more than one guy bad enough to go to the hospital, and I'm no street fighter. (Why I was in Intelligence rather than SF or Rangers. We're nerds.)

The point is, "youda-done-it-too" is no reason to tolerate something. It's precisely why an effort has to be made to stop it.