December 22, 2013

Who parodies whom?

As 2013 comes to an end, I'd like to thank the institutional media for providing me with another year of material that turns itself into parody just by being featured in block quotes on iSteve. But, really, you don't have to make my life this easy:
Latino Academic Achievement Gap Persists
PAJARO, Calif. December 22, 2013 (AP) 
By MARTHA MENDOZA Associated Press National Writer
As Hispanics surpass white Californians in population next year, the state becomes a potential model for the rest of the country, which is going through a slower but similar demographic shift. 
But when it comes to how California is educating students of color, many say the state serves as a model of what not to do. 
In California, 52 percent of the state's 6 million school children are Hispanic, just 26 percent are white. And Hispanic students in general are getting worse educations than their white peers. Their class sizes are larger, course offerings are fewer and funding is lower. 
The consequence is obvious: lower achievement. 
Just 33 percent of Hispanic students are proficient in reading in third grade, compared with 64 percent of white students. By high school, one in four Hispanic 10th graders in California cannot pass the high school math exit exam, compared with 1 out of 10 white students. 
And while overall test scores across the state have gone up in the past decade, the achievement gap hasn't changed. 
... Nationally, an achievement gap is also showing up as Latino enrollment has soared from one out of 20 U.S. students in 1970 to nearly one out of four, and white students account for just 52 percent of U.S. first graders. 
"We're falling behind," said Antioch University Los Angeles provost Luis Pedraja. "Ultimately we will face a crisis where a majority of the U.S. population will be economically disadvantaged, which will reduce their spending power and contribution to taxes and Social Security, impacting all segments of society and our country's economic health." 
There are many factors contributing to California's educational divide; many Hispanic students are children of Mexican immigrants who did not complete high school and who cannot provide the academic and social support and advocacy of their white counterparts. The state also has a tax system that allows communities to increase local taxes for their schools — thus wealthier communities have wealthier schools.

That's why there is no achievement gap in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District; it's all one huge community.
All too often, black and Latino students are disproportionally taught easier material than white or Asian kids, said Alan A. Aja, who teaches Latino studies at Brooklyn College. 
"No one wants to see themselves as racist," Aja said, "but educators have this ingrained belief that black and Latino kids are cognitively inferior and they lower expectations. It's racialized tracking. So if they assume these kids are going to underachieve, if they assume they don't have capacity to tackle hard topics, well, no wonder there's an achievement gap." 
 

79 comments:

Bert said...

We're quickly developing an aristocracy of university professors.

Fortunately, I think fewer and fewer people are listening to them.

Anonymous said...

Alan A. Aja is an assistant professor and deputy chair in the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies. His latest publications include commentaries in the Huffington Post, a collaborative piece with Miranda Martinez in Latino/a Research Review (Fall 2012), an essay in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society (Fall 2012) and a forthcoming piece in Social Research (Fall 2013) with Darrick Hamilton, William Darity, Jr. and Daniel Bustillo. Before academia, Aja worked as a labor organizer with the Texas State Employees Union, an environmental education researcher in Cuba, a human rights organizer with Amnesty International-Argentina and a participation coordinator at a refugee hostel in London. He is currently working on a book project on Afro-Cuban immigration experiences in South Florida and co-producing a documentary and news piece on the effects of mandatory minimum sentencing policies.

An "environmental education researcher in Cuba"???

He sounds as though he works for the Cuban intelligence services - presumably in some sort of an agitprop capacity?

Anonymous said...

Oh, wow, check out his picture.

He might be even whiter than Xochitl Hinojosa.

Grumpy Old Man said...

Sigh.

The things educrats will do to reduce their cognitive dissonance.

Anonymous said...

It would all be very funny if it were not so sad...

Anonymous said...

I was just waiting for the ritual 'let's blame whitey'.

Whitey is to blame for his totally ineffectual border control that allowed Mexicans to flood into California in the first place.

Now whitey is to blame for the fact that these Mexican kds are actually there and failing.

Whitey just cannot win.

Ed said...

I think there some truth to what Mr. Aja said but the teachers can only do so much with what is in front of them. If the teachers give these kids hard work they'd be denounced as mean and bigoted better to play it safe.

rightsaidfred said...

Maybe the Martha Mendozas and Alan Ajas of the world should become high school teachers and show us how to close the gap.

Anonymous said...

Bert said...
We're quickly developing an aristocracy of university professors.

Fortunately, I think fewer and fewer people are listening to them.


Interesting comment. As a parent whose youngest are now teenagers, I'm encountering an increasing number of people in everyday life that consider universities to be useless collections of windbags. Recently I have been privy to discussions amongst wealthy, normally status-whoring parents about the possibility of their kids taking top notch university classes online, thus avoiding Professor Nincompoop at a particular college. Many of those kids have talked amongst themselves about the university application process as a ridiculous Kabuki Dance to be gamed for personal benefit. Some of these kids could even be iSteve commenters with their views on Asian grinds, Dragon mothers and affirmative action admissions. I have a reasonably capable nephew who, upon high-school graduation this year will be joining the Army instead of going to State U. The Emperor's clothes are becoming more transparent.

Jill said...

I love the story of Miguel Estrada who was George Bush's choice for the D.C. Court of Appeals in 2001.He came to the U.S. when he was 17 and knew little English. He graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1983. He then received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree magna cum laude in 1986 from Harvard Law School.

Anonymous said...

Whitey just cannot win.

And if Komment Kontrol hadn't censored the best of my Komments, then we could talk about just exactly WHY Whitey can't win.

ARGH!!!

This is so frustrating - fighting the war for the future of [really the very survival of] Western Civilization with one arm tied behind our backs!!!

Sometimes I wonder if iSteve is just a great big honeytrap fifth-columnist operation run by the Mossad.

Anonymous said...

PUSH DAMNIT! PUSH!

What's wrong with this horse? Why won't he go? We've got him in the traces, behind the cart and all he has to do is walk straight ahead. Can't figure it out.

Anonymous said...

"Mexican Americans
Believe in education,
So they go to night school
And take Spanish
And get a B."

Cheech & Chong

Big Bill said...

"Hispanic students in general are getting worse educations than their white peers. "

I love the rhetorical spin. It is as though the Great White Father is responsible for "giving" educations to our Little Brown Brothers, and, like supplicants, they they hold out their poor outstretched hands to "get" one.

As the PISA statistics show, Mexicans in American do better than Mexicans in Mexico. But there is only so much you can do with the raw material you are given.

Until they are willing to thank the Great White Father for "giving" them a better education than their own friends, families and people "gave" them in their homeland, I see no reason to waste time and money turning them into brain surgeons and rocket scientists.

Jonathan Silber said...

"Latino Academic Achievement Gap Persists."

Or in other words:

"In Search of a More Prosperous Future, America Looks to Illiterate Children of Mexican Peasants."

Anonymous said...

Texas has made dramatic strides in two decades, when its birth rates for teens 15 to 19 fell from 78.4 per 1,000 in 1991 to 52.2 in 2010, according to the CDC data. That’s a drop of 33 percent. But teen birth rates for the nation as a whole have been falling faster, from 61.8 per 1,000 in 1991 to 34.3 per 1,000 in 2010, a 44 percent decline.

California is at about 34 per 1,000 in teen births and its Latins average at 42 per 1.000. So teen births lead to more poor kids and Hispanics and Texas has a higher rate than California Something that Steve's dirt poor of whites wanting to go to Texas because the housing is cheaper is not going to off set those facts.

Anonymous said...

Yes, but at least they don't have a problem with police brutality.

Anonymous said...

Also, Sailer notice the difference between the mormons of Utah and the Evangelical Whites of Texas and the South. The Mormons score much better on the morality score like less out of wedlock births, drinking problems and violence. In fact the mormons have a lot of the very early families in the US like the Ashbys and Utleys and Udalls and so forth in their background from Mass or CT.

Chicago said...

We were told they were needed to pay for our Social Security. Now we're told they won't be able to even pay for their own. It's been turned around and has become a question of what can we do for them. As is well known whites wield powerful magic, being able to turn water into wine and workhorses into racehorses.
At bottom it all seems like yet another version of the old pitch, half sales and half implied threat: Send mo' money. If not, dire things will happen, and just think of da chillun, all for da chillun who are yearning to become great thinkers. Sort of like the famous National Lampoon's cover of a dog with a gun held to it's head.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

An "environmental education researcher in Cuba"???

He sounds as though he works for the Cuban intelligence services - presumably in some sort of an agitprop capacity?"

At the very least, Alan Aja is a parasite - a consumer of resources who does absolutely nothing of any tangible value.

Anonymous said...

Of course he's right. If their results are worse, then they MUST be getting a worse education.

Because all children are the same.

Anonymous said...

The state with the highest incidence of repeat teen pregnancies? Texas – where 22 percent of teens under 20 who give birth have already had at least one child.

Anonymous said...

For some reason Fox News aired an episode of Firing Line from 1967 yesterday. Buckley was talking to then-Governor Reagan.

Buckley introduced a segment on education policy by noting that California was widely regarded to have the best education system in the country.

Well, a half-century of mass immigration has taken care of that!

Anonymous said...

It is so incredibly vexing to see how the ruling class talks about demography:

"Now that the country is becoming another Brazil, let's think about how to best respond to this natural and inevitable (and indeed desirable) Third-Worldization."

They, the ruling class, have done this. And they continue to do it. And there's almost nobody in public life who will speak up against it.

J'accuse, you bastards!

Anonymous said...

http://www.good.is/posts/7-ways-imagination-ruled-the-world-in-2013

Gladwell was so wrong. You don't need 10,000 hrs. You just need one, the Genius Hour:

5. Genius Hour: The Genius Hour movement really gained momentum this year. For a set period of time each week, students are empowered to explore their own passions during class time. Kids have made films, websites, and all kinds of other wonderfully creative projects during the allotted time period.

It didn't start in the classroom, however. Genius Hour was actually modeled after Google's 20 percent program—an initiative where employees at one of the most innovative companies on the planet were encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time at the office working on something company-related that they were extremely passionate about. What came out of this small window of time was incredible. First, there was Google News, then Google Adsense, and then Gmail.

Soon enough, this idea found its way to other companies—and then it was quickly adapted for the classroom. Teachers can join into the #GeniusHour Twitter chat to learn more!

Eastside School said...

What are the roots of this bizarre charade? Who was the first person who suggested that every ethnic group must have identical mental ability? And as always, cui bono?

Melanie said...

Yes, throwing millions at the Kansas City School District worked out perfectly for them /s

Anonymous said...

"We're falling behind," said Antioch University Los Angeles provost Luis Pedraja. "Ultimately we will face a crisis where a majority of the U.S. population will be economically disadvantaged, which will reduce their spending power and contribution to taxes and Social Security, impacting all segments of society and our country's economic health."

Translation: you can't have a First-World welfare state with Third-World levels of human capital and productivity. I couldn't agree more, Senor Pedraja.

Anonymous said...

I was just waiting for the ritual 'let's blame whitey'.

Whitey is to blame for his totally ineffectual border control that allowed Mexicans to flood into California in the first place.

Now whitey is to blame for the fact that these Mexican kds are actually there and failing.

Whitey just cannot win.


Right. It's not enough for Americans to take in Mexico's surplus peasantry and dramatically improve their standard of living. We also have to ensure that their progeny receive the same level of funding as schoolkids in Pacific Palisades or Palo Alto. Never mind equality of results; equality of opportunity is a subversive enough doctrine in this context.

I would like very much to believe in Citizenism, not least because I'm a bit of a mongrel myself. But to my mind, this Chicano chutzpah illustrates a fundamental weakness of Citizenism: taken to its logical conclusion, it becomes a mandate for racial socialism.

The accumulated social capital and productive wealth of the historic nation must be expended to further the triumphal ascendency of la raza.

In the absence of reciprocal feelings of national solidarity (which clearly are absent), at what point does the historic nation get to seek the preservation of its property and sovereignty? Unrequited Citizenism is a sucker's game.

Anonymous said...

"So if they assume these kids are going to underachieve, if they assume they don't have capacity to tackle hard topics, well, no wonder there's an achievement gap."

Yeah, that's why.

Bert said...

"But to my mind, this Chicano chutzpah illustrates a fundamental weakness of Citizenism: taken to its logical conclusion, it becomes a mandate for racial socialism."

That sort of thing is rampant in the Third World. Everyone looks out for their own group, and coming to power means showering them with the spoils of power. Other groups are forced to live outside of the national society until such time as they gain power, and the cycle repeats itself.

One thing I find extremely distressing is how many Westerners (and especially Europeans) don't seem to understand this reality at all. The concept of nationally guaranteed wealth and property rights are very much an Anglo-Western creation. Down in the Global South they believe in the benevolent Big Man ideology, and don't much care how many whiny white nerds tell them otherwise.

Whiskey said...

Let me add, I know a good many Christians who fervently believe in the absolute equality of population academic potential if enough "uplift" and magic dust is sprinkled around.

I give you: Science@OC . I know the founder somewhat well. She is a nice lady of a certain age who once told me that she patted little Mexican kids on the head and told them they would become engineers. And how her heart broke at the kids having to walk through gang territory. Which she blamed on White racism. She is a very nice Christian lady active in her church.

What White people do not have is an ideology of hearth, home, people, kin, and nation. One that is "small" and not large. Sure there are the "Little Englanders" like Philip Larkin and such, but not a movement. By its own intrinsic demands, such a hearth and home movement could not appeal to widespread different White people, who are very different. A Frenchman is different from a Briton who is different from an Irish man who is different from an American who is different from a Canadian. You can't get common ground in an ideology there.

having ngbyric said...

OT, Gen. Kalashnikov just died. Big Soviet and Russian patriot.

"It cemented its place in martial history in the 1960s in Vietnam, where a new American rifle, the M-16, experienced problems with corrosion and jamming in the jungles, while Kalashnikovs, carried by Vietcong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers, worked almost flawlessly. "

Is this true? I've heard it before but it may be so much urban myth.

I always come to Steve's readers to verify things like this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/europe/mikhail-kalashnikov-creator-of-soviet-era-ak-47-weapon-is-dead-at-age-94.html?hp&_r=0

Anonymous said...

OT, Gen. Kalashnikov just died. Big Soviet and Russian patriot.

Also apparently a lifetime member of the NRA.

Big lovefest over at Jim Robinson's right now.


Anonymous said...

Given the topic of this post is about the achievement gap between white and hispanic kids, this should make us all feel better.

The number of children caught crossing the U.S. border has surged over the last two years, raising questions about whether the Obama administration's changing immigration policies are creating a magnet.

blogger said...

It's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If American schools gave the same kind of schoolwork to Blacks and Latinos(as what white kids and Asians receive), there will be complaints of schools not being sensitive to the 'special' needs of 'disadvantaged' students.

But if American schools give easier assignments to blacks and Latinos, the schools will be accused of what Bush called the 'bigotry of low expectations'.

It's like the NY TIMES scandal over that black reporter Jason something-or-the-other. The newspaper was pressured to be more 'inclusive', and so it hired and promoted a black who wasn't qualified.
But once the black guy messed up, the paper was accused of tolerating bad job performance out of bigotry of low expectations.

Indeed, all of 'affirmative action' works this way. It forces institutions to recruit or hire inferior talent, but then, if something goes wrong, the institution is accused of having used inferior talent just because it happened to be black or latino. Never mind that the inferior black or brown talent was the BEST that the institution could find under the circumstances of their mandated requirements.

We hear the same kind of two-faced bitching from the sports culture. If colleges were to suggest tougher standards for accepting student-athletes, blacks will bitch about 'racism'.
So, colleges end up recruiting a lot of dumb blacks who are fit for academic life. So, they are assigned easy courses like 'philosophy of football' or some such, but then the colleges are accused of not treating the black 'student-athletes' as capable students and 'keeping them down' with the bigotry of low expectations.

As the population of blacks and browns with such attitudes and mind-set grow, we are headed for a massive educational crisis built on an empire of lies.

sunbeam said...

Anonymous wrote:

'"We're falling behind," said Antioch University Los Angeles provost Luis Pedraja. "Ultimately we will face a crisis where a majority of the U.S. population will be economically disadvantaged, which will reduce their spending power and contribution to taxes and Social Security, impacting all segments of society and our country's economic health."

Translation: you can't have a First-World welfare state with Third-World levels of human capital and productivity. I couldn't agree more, Senor Pedraja.'

Problem with that, is that technology is going to do the same thing to a sizeable fraction of the white population. Heck it's already started.

If you want identify with whites, and say they perform some classically useful activity twice as good as blacks or hispanics, go ahead.

But in the world of tomorrow, being twice as good as someone else at something useless, or rather economically devalued, is just that: useless.

And it is going to reach up the food chain to people who are quite proud of themselves and educated. A sizeable number of doctors look at sonograms, x-rays, blood tests, and the like looking for cancer or other things.

This is exactly the same problem as finding and recognizing a face in the crowd at a football stadium, something which has been done for a few years now.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's going to take time to work out the kinks. It's going to take time to be accepted.

But the explosive growth in medical costs is going to bust through all artificial barriers organizations like the AMA lobby for.

Feel free to think it science fiction. Personally I don't see a thing to stop it.

Same with driverless cars. Quite a few low level jobs depend on someone being able to drive a vehicle. I have every confidence that this is feasible in five to ten years. I may live to see the day when the idea of having a one and a half ton vehicle driven by a fallible human is considered ludicrous or a third world thing.

So what then? You don't need to have HAL from 2001, or a functional AI (one that "thinks") to throw an assload of people who have productive employment now out of work.

Then what? They really aren't any different from any other ghetto dwellers at this point. Why should someone from the Gated City of Boston, or San Francisco view the motley inhabitants of Wichita or Bismarck any differently from the inhabitants of Detroit?

In the end they are the same thing: useless.

This isn't some kind of defense of aristocracy, meritocracy, capitalism, socialism, democracy, or what have you.

It is a problem I see coming, just as surely as what third world immigrants are doing to change this country.

And I don't like it one bit. And there is absolutely nothing I can do to change it.

Anonymous said...

My M-16 didn't jam all that often but I had a chromed chamber, threw away the magazines that were in it when it jammed, cleaned it constantly, and only loaded 18 rounds out of the possible 20. I also routinely carried *at least* 15 loaded magazines at all times and didn't fire long bursts at full auto while not aiming.

Currahee said...

OT, Gen. Kalashnikov just died. Big Soviet and Russian patriot.

"It cemented its place in martial history in the 1960s in Vietnam, where a new American rifle, the M-16, experienced problems with corrosion and jamming in the jungles, while Kalashnikovs, carried by Vietcong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers, worked almost flawlessly. "

Is this true? I've heard it before but it may be so much urban myth.

I always come to Steve's readers to verify things like this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/europe/mikhail-kalashnikov-creator-of-soviet-era-ak-47-weapon-is-dead-at-

Well, yes and no. The Ak will keep on ticking regardless; but so will and M16 properly care for.

Big advantage-M16: when I was an Infantryman in the 101st Abn., we carried on average 30-40 mags on our web gear as we humped the Central Highlands (540-700+ rounds per man).

I never saw a dead PAVN with more than 6 mags (180 rds.) on his belt.

He who first runs low on ammo, first withdraws. When they are fighting backward is a good time for killing.

P.S. wiseasses, we only loaded 19 rounds per mag for functionality.

RVN 1969-1971

Anonymous said...

That sort of thing is rampant in the Third World. Everyone looks out for their own group, and coming to power means showering them with the spoils of power. Other groups are forced to live outside of the national society until such time as they gain power, and the cycle repeats itself.

I'm finding this happening here in a professional organization. The South Asians have banded together to get their guys elected to office, then they gift themselves spoils and punish anyone who objects to their winner-take-all strategy. I need to resign to keep my dues out of their wallets.

Anonymous said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/best-of-2013-winemaking-with-high-tech-robotics-j2cdokgbQLSKkWV0HDQNtg.html

It's okay everybody! California can start to send some of its guest-workers back home now.

Or we might have been able to, anyway, if we hadn't insisted upon draping foreign economic migrants in the flag via green cards, birthright citizenship, the 1986 amnesty, etc.

So now even if Mexicans become decreasingly useful to California Anglos, California Anglos will only be at the beginning of their permanent usefulness to Mexicans. Enjoy!

E. Rekshun said...

"...many Hispanic students are children of Mexican immigrants..."

Aren't many of the hispanics 4th and 5th generation Americans by now?


"All too often, black and Latino students [employees] are disproportionally taught [given] easier material [work] than white or Asian kids...but educators [employers]... lower expectations [for the black and hispanic employees]."

There fixed it.

E. Rekshun said...

@Melanie: "Yes, throwing millions at the Kansas City School District worked out perfectly for them /s"

Not millions, billions! And still clicking.

Anonymous said...

"I'm finding this happening here in a professional organization."

Care to anonymously drop us a hint as to what organization or at least what field this is in? Maybe the IEEE?

Anonymous said...

""We're falling behind," said Antioch University Los Angeles provost Luis Pedraja."


Why, yes, it seems we are.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

For some reason Fox News aired an episode of Firing Line from 1967 yesterday. Buckley was talking to then-Governor Reagan.

Buckley introduced a segment on education policy by noting that California was widely regarded to have the best education system in the country.

Well, a half-century of mass immigration has taken care of that!"

I saw a little of that. It was also interesting to note how clear, well-spoken, and seemingly well thought-out Reagan's comments were. Much more so than any of the recent clowns who have occupied the office of President. GW would have floundered around and instantly betrayed the vapidity of his mind. Obama would have talked in broad sweeping circles in an effort to conceal the vapidity of his.

Anonymous said...

In his memoir, David Hackworth wrote about being one of the people the Army tasked with testing the original prototypes of the M-16. He flatly stated that the only thing it did with any consistency was jam. As some have pointed out, extra cleanliness and workarounds helped keep it functional in the field.

Later in the book, Hackworth also wrote about the time his troops unearthed a decomposing VC with his mud-caked AK-47 while plowing up the berms at their firebase in the Mekong Delta. He said he jumped into the hole, said "Watch this, guys, and I'll show you how a real infantry weapon works!", pulled the bolt back and fired, the AK functioning like it had just been cleaned and oiled.

My uncle, who seldom speaks of his time in Viet Nam, did say he carried an M-2.

slumber_j said...

"No one wants to see themselves as racist," Aja said. How true.

Aja, when all my dime dancing is though, I run to you...

ben tillman said...

He might be even whiter than Xochitl Hinojosa.

Yes, he might -- I'm not seeing any Indian ancestry there. It just depends on whether his "white" ancestry comes from Southwest Asia as Ms. Hinojosa's does.

ben tillman said...

Problem with that, is that technology is going to do the same thing to a sizeable fraction of the white population.

It's about time we realized that most of the work these days is done not by people but by petroleum. They really don't need us in the short/medium term.

However, we are needed in the long term, as Paul Kantner and Grace Slick suggested ("Whites want out of this world"), because ultimately our survival depends on technology. We will have to leave this planet.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Will you do a year-end predictions post

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

Or escrow bets on predictions

Anonymous said...

Leftists have run California for almost a generation, and the schools forever. Why can't they fix the gap?

Anonymous said...

It just depends on whether his "white" ancestry comes from Southwest Asia as Ms. Hinojosa's does.

Wow - now how did that make it past Komment Kontrol?

I had been guessing Iberian Peninsula, pre-1492, but my guessing got the hammer.


Anonymous said...

PAVN? We ALWAYS referred to them as the NVA in I Corps.

As to the poster whose uncle carried an M-2 I'm sure it was the fully automatic M-2 version of the M-1 carbine which was a massive phail in Korea.

I trained with M-1 Garands and the M-14 but was issued an M-16 in Vietnam. Of the three I greatly preferred the Garand. It really balances well, easy to carry with one hand and also get really low when firing prone since it didn't have a sharply cornered 5 pound (it felt that heavy anyway) steel magazine sticking out of the bottom like the M-14, and best of all you can reload it in less than a second with the enbloc clips once you had built up a nice callous on the outside of your right thumb.

Plus the .223 is a shitty little varmint round with no range or ability to penetrate cover.

Plus it fires the same round as the BAR and the M1919 Brownings we had which only reminds me of how badly the tin can jam-o-matic M60 sucks. We wanted to go with the FN MAG but the Army insisted on the POS M60. Now decades later they finally see the light and have adopted the MAG (M240) after all.

Harry Baldwin said...

It was also interesting to note how clear, well-spoken, and seemingly well thought-out Reagan's comments were. . . GW would have floundered around and instantly betrayed the vapidity of his mind.

Reagan looks really sharp when you see him in the Panama Canal debate in the 1970s. GW looks surprisingly sharp in his Texas gubernatorial debates, not at all like he did as president. Neither of these men were still at the top of their game when president. Considering Reagan's age, that's understandable--when he was elected he was 10 years older than I am now and I'm already losing my edge. With GW it's harder to explain.

Anonymous said...

Then what explains Hispanic IQ here?

http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2011/05/mexican-american-iq.html

Anonymous said...

"the Peoples Army of Viet Nam won the war fair and square"

If you consider the murder of a million plus of their own citizens who didn't cotton to Marxist dictatorship "fair and square" then maybe so. If you say tying one hand behind our back because we couldn't cross the DMZ to get them "fair and square" then maybe so. If you say invading Laos to get their supplies down south "fair and square" then maybe so too.

I say fuck those commie bastards and also FTA while I'm at it as well.

Currahee said...

War is murder, dude. They won, we lost.

Anonymous said...

Latins make up roughly 0% of STEM graduates despite increasing to a larger percentage of Californian population.

Anonymous said...

"War is murder, dude. They won, we lost."

Actually we didn't lose. The South Vietnamese lost. And it took the North a full two years to defeat the ARVN after we were gone.

Mountain Maven said...

Anonymous Currahee said...
War is murder, dude. They won, we lost.

Makes you happy, right you little marxist troll.

Anonymous said...

Why do Jewish groups sponsor the importation of so many Muslim refugees and asylum seekers?

Ahem, the Lutherans are in on that racket, too.

Currahee said...

"Actually we didn't lose. The South Vietnamese lost. And it took the North a full two years to defeat the ARVN after we were gone."

Good point.

Anonymous said...

Maybe if you'd just fought a little harder, Sulla...

David Davenport said...

his ianlid ...you can reload it in less than a second with the enbloc clips once you had built up a nice callous on the outside of your right thumb.

Explain why a nice callous on the outside of your right thumb was needed when dropping in a charger clip holding all of eight rounds.

David Davenport said...

Plus the .223 is a shitty little varmint round with no range or ability to penetrate cover.

If a smaller, higher velocity bullet is a bad idea, explain why the Russians switched to 5.45×39mm. From Wikipedia:

The AK-74 (Russian: Автомат Калашникова образца 1974 года or "Kalashnikov automatic rifle model 1974") is an assault rifle developed in the early 1970s in the Soviet Union as the replacement for the earlier AKM (itself a refined version of the AK-47). It uses a smaller intermediate cartridge, the 5.45×39mm, replacing the 7.62×39mm chambering of earlier Kalashnikov-pattern weapons.

The rifle first saw service with Soviet forces engaged in the 1979 Afghanistan conflict.[3] Presently, the rifle continues to be used by the majority of countries of the former USSR. Additionally, licensed copies were produced in Bulgaria (AK-74 and AKS-74U), the former East Germany (MPi-AK-74N, MPi-AKS-74N, MPi-AKS-74NK) and Romania (PA md. 86).[3][4][5] Besides former Soviet republics and eastern European countries, Mongolia, North Korean Special Forces, and Vietnamese People's Naval infantry use AK-74s.

Anonymous said...

Vietnam was one campaign in a larger war, the Cold War, which the US won. Without taking anything away from the Vietnamese communists, a lot of the outcome of the war in Vietnam was decided in the US (an unclear amount of which was due to pro-communist influence).

Even after the US left, the South still might have prevailed if the US had continued to provide military supplies. Would the South have fallen if not abandoned? We'll never really know.

North Vietnam also could have done little without Soviet and Chinese support:

"Soviet crews fired Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles...

...Russian officials acknowledged that the Soviet Union had stationed up to 3,000 troops in Vietnam during the war. ...

...Soviets sent North Vietnam annual arms shipments worth $450 million...

...Soviet military schools ... training Vietnamese ... more than 10,000 military personnel. ...

... China sent 320,000 troops and annual arms shipments worth $180 million."

North Korea contributed two MIG squadrons and 200 fighter pilots.


A cynical thought is that the US could afford to lose in Vietnam. While the war in Vietnam was an important field of conflict, the war itself was never really particularly about Vietnam as Vietnam. It would have been nice to win, but perhaps simply keeping the pressure on communism was sufficient.

By the end of Vietnam, the Soviet Cold War strategy of backing wars of national liberation was clearly not going to be taking over the world, if nothing else because most third world nations by then were more-or-less liberated with established governments; the Soviets and China were backing competing sides in Cambodia; the Soviets and Chinese had briefly fought each other; and China in 4 years would invade Vietnam.

Current PC thought probably owes much to Cold War "join our side" competition during would-be wars of national liberation, so we're still living in the propaganda shadow of the cold war.

Svigor said...

Merry Christmas all.

Plus the .223 is a shitty little varmint round with no range or ability to penetrate cover.

The .223 is not the same thing as the 5.56, for one thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56mm

It is derived from, but not identical to, the .223 Remington cartridge.

M855A1:

The US Army Picatinny Arsenal stated that the new M855A1 offers improved hard target capability, more consistent performance at all distances, enhanced dependability, improved accuracy, reduced muzzle flash, and higher velocity compared to the M855 round. [...] The new 62-grain (4 g) projectile or bullet used in the M855A1 round has a copper core with a 19-grain (1.2 g) steel "stacked-cone" penetrating tip.

[...]

can penetrate a 3/8 in (9.5 mm) thick steel barrier from an M4 at 350 meters and from an M16 at 400 meters.

[...]

The M855A1 was able to penetrate 3/8 inch (9.5 mm) of steel plate at 300 meters. The round even penetrated concrete masonry units, similar to cinder blocks, at 75 meters from an M16 and at 50 meters from an M4 [...] shoot a 2 inch group at 600 meters.

[...]

Mk 262:

the Mk 262 round is capable of making kills at 700 meters. Ballistics tests found that the round caused "consistent initial yaw in soft tissue" between 3-4 in at ranges from 15 feet to 300 meters. [...] 2 minute of angle. It evidently possesses superior stopping power, and can allow for engagements to be extended to up to 700 meters when fired from an 18 inch barrel. It appears that this round can drastically improve the performance of any AR15 platform weapon chambered to .223/5.56 mm. Superior accuracy, wounding capacity, stopping power and range power has made this the preferred round of many Special Forces operators [...] In one engagement, a two-man special forces team reported 75 kills with 77 rounds. The Mk 262 has a higher ballistic coefficient than the M855 of (G7) .190, meaning it loses less velocity at long-range.[25] Hard target penetration is slightly decreased.

People who run down smaller calibers, in my experience, give no thought at all to weight:

Benefits of the 5.56 NATO claimed over the 7.62 NATO are equal lethality against soft targets, half the mass and volume

Half. That means you get to carry twice as much 5.56mm. Is 7.62mm anywhere near twice as effective as 5.56mm? Do even the 7.62mm fanboys claim that? Because that's how good it should be to justify twice the weight, as long as we're talking about primary calibers for standard service rifles.

I think this makes it clear that 5.56mm is the superior round, but there could be other considerations I haven't taken into account, obviously.

The paragraph continues:

reduced recoil, noise, and muzzle flash, better penetration of metal plates, flatter trajectory and shorter time of flight out to 700 meters, weapons chambered for it are lighter, and higher hit probability. Hit probability refers to a soldier being able to concentrate on stance, weapon control, aiming, and trigger pull in spite of their weapon's recoil and noise, which has a noticeable difference between the two cartridges. While the 7.62 mm has twice the energy of the 5.56 mm, it is only required if the target is protected by armor. Both rounds will normally pass right through an enemy out to over 600 m.

The platform has come a long way since 'Nam, btw.

Currahee said...

Hi,
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas even the fellow who called me a Marxist troll (trust me when I say that that is too funny for words to express).

Meanwhile back in the Cold War:
-the 5.56mm kills people just fine, thank you
-the Soviet disillusionment with Kruschev's "wars of national liberation" came from their African experiences (I know, surrogate Cuban troops for the most part)

I really have tried over the years to justify our involvement in Viet Nam...unsuccessfully.

As for me, I was going anyhow because as a dedicated Marxist troll I wanted to kill me some commies.

Happy New Year to all.

Peace.

Anonymous said...

""We're falling behind," said Antioch University Los Angeles provost Luis Pedraja. "Ultimately we will face a crisis where a majority of the U.S. population will be economically disadvantaged, which will reduce their spending power and contribution to taxes and Social Security, impacting all segments of society and our country's economic health." " - But they'll be better educated than they'd have been if they stayed in the 3rd world, atleast until the wheels come off.

Anonymous said...

"What are the roots of this bizarre charade? Who was the first person who suggested that every ethnic group must have identical mental ability? And as always, cui bono?" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas

David Davenport said...

Furthermore, the 7.52x51mm NATO standardized cartridge has a larger propellant charge than the shortened 7.62x31mm cartridge the older Kalashnikov uses.

5.56mm cartridges fired from a full length M16 rifle have always had higher velocity and therefore more kinetic energy than the Kalashnikov's short 7.62mm.

Go here and scroll down a bit to see a photo of the three cartridges:

7.62 nato vs 7.62x39

David Davenport said...

From Wikipedia's section on "Assault Rifle:

... Following the end of World War II, the U.S. Army conducted a number of studies of what happened in the war and how it was actually fought. Several things were learned which applied directly to personal weapon design. Perhaps most important, research found that most combat casualties caused by small-arms fire took place at short range.

So the long range and accuracy of the standard rifle was, in a real sense, wasted. Second, the research found that aiming was not a major factor in causing casualties. Instead, the number one predictor of casualties was the total number of bullets fired.[19]

Third, psychological studies found that many riflemen (as much as 2/3) never fired their weapons at the enemy. By contrast, those soldiers equipped with rapid-fire weapons (submachine guns and the early assault rifles) were far more likely to actually use their weapons in battle.[20] This combination of factors led to the conclusion that a fairly short-range weapon capable of rapid fire would be the most effective general-purpose weapon for infantry.

...

In conjunction with the 7.62x51mm Cartridge, The United States had developed the M14 rifle, which was largely based on the WWII M1 Garand, the most significant change being the addition of a 20-round detachable box magazine and selective fire capability. While initial tests looked promising, and professional rifleman were able to put on favorable demonstrations, the select-fire capabilities quickly proved unrealistic once the rifle was in the hands of a more average soldier; The 7.62mm NATO cartridge is a full-power rifle cartridge and produces too much recoil to control a lightweight rifle in full automatic fire.

About the same time the M14 was entering service, Eugene Stoner of ArmaLite was developing a totally new rifle named the AR-10, which was still designed to fire the 7.62mm NATO cartridge. As testing of the Stoner rifle progressed, army ordnance finally decided to look more seriously at the intermediate cartridge concept, and the 5.56x45mm NATO was born. Stoner scaled down his design and renamed the smaller weapon the AR-15, which would ultimately be adopted by the US armed forces as the M16 rifle. The M16A1 version soon followed to rectify issues found during use in the Vietnam War. The M16A2 was a further refinement and upgrade introduced in 1986 meant to use the Belgian-updated 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge with a heavier 62-grain (4.0 g) steel-core "penetrator" bullet known as the SS109 or M855. The latest incarnation of the M16 rifle is the M4A1 selective fire carbine.

Anonymous said...

I really have tried over the years to justify our involvement in Viet Nam...unsuccessfully.

Perhaps no justification is possible, perhaps it was doomed to happen as part of a pattern stretching from the Greek civil war in 1946 till South Africa left Angola in 1988. Two power blocs fated to fight across the board. As someone said about who knows what war originally, the war was just there, like a rock. Having said that, the US sure seemed to be trying to demonstrate how not to do it. And of course the young of the world look back, assured that they could never be so stupid and it could never happen to them. Let's hope it doesn't.

Anonymous said...

"Explain why a nice callous on the outside of your right thumb was needed when dropping in a charger clip holding all of eight rounds."

Because it bags into the edge of the bolt face more often than not.

Anonymous said...

@David Davenport

Great. Don;t engage the enemy at range. Treat your untrained troops like Asiatic horde cannon fodder with short range engagements at all times.

Anonymous said...

"The platform has come a long way since 'Nam, btw."

What? By adding a Picatinny rail so you can add a bunch of useless shit all over it?

By reducing the barrel length thus reducing both velocity and accuracy.

It still blows unburnt propellant and all sort of dirt right back into the overly complicated and hard to clean bolt assembly.

It still jams in the fine sand of the Mideast. It still jams in the muddy jungle environment. And it still has that shitty varmint rifle round.

Folks defend it because they are forced to use it and need to maintain a positive mental attitude.

It sucks as a rifle but I'll admit the M-4 makes for a decent burp gun (until it jams.)

Anonymous said...

Like WWI, Vietnam may be an example of how little in control those in charge (on all sides) actually can be in complex human affairs. Books are still being written about how and why WWI started, despite almost everyone wanting to avoid war. And yet a bad war happened, worse even than anyone imagined.

The full problem is not knowable. So plans cannot be drawn up from first principles and presented in whole. No one mind truly sees the complete big picture and makes a single decision that can later be dispassionately judged to be justifiable or not. "There is a tide in the affairs of men..."