Obama – Page 7 – praag.org

Obama has placed the US press under surveillance

by Ilana Mercer

No wonder the language being deployed to describe the forlorn Associated Press reporters is something redolent of a jilted lover.

The AP has been violated by its beloved Barack Obama and his gang-bangers. The news agency has gone from sexting, so to speak, with the president, to being snooped on by him.

Politico offered readers an endearingly intimate glimpse, “Inside the AP,” where the flaccid folks were overcome by feelings of “fear” and “determination.” Nevertheless, they had not lost their resolve and were proceeding with “heads-down determination.”

What made The Beloved and his dream team turn to rough play?

According to the (idiomatic) mainstream, Obama’s Justice Department had been monitoring AP phone lines in D.C., in the Hartford and New York bureaus, and in Congress. Subpoenaed too were the phone logs, “credit card receipts, airplane records and other digital information” belonging to individual AP editors and reporters. All this in violation of Fourth Amendment protections; without presenting a judge with evidence of probable cause and absent a search warrant (all SOP, or standard operating procedure, at the Transportation Security Administration).

The Justice Department in the person of Attorney General Eric Holder has claimed, comically, to have been looking to plug a “very, very, very, serious leak.” Perhaps “the most serious” since the AG started his prosecutorial career in 1976.

A pesky detail has eluded all those invincibly stupid special interests who’re piping up for the privacy of the press, as opposed to fighting for the privacy of all Americans.

Have the various tele-lawyers, the director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and protesting members of the House Judiciary Committee forgotten the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, whose provisions were extended until Dec. 31, 2017, by the people’s representatives?

There is nothing new about warrantless wiretapping – other than that the American people haven’t been particularly exercised about them. They’ve trusted Uncle Sam to go about this activity judiciously.

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

Peeping Sam had promised, after all, that covert surveillance would never be executed against “United States persons.” Were a “United States person” to fall under suspicion, he or she would not be subjected to surveillance without “judicial and congressional oversight,” puled the same perverts.

It’s not as if the National Security Agency (NSA) under George W. Bush was not accused of bypassing the courts to spy on the 43rd president’s many critics. It was! Sideshow “O,” however, has done Bush one better. Obama is using the FISA provisions against “friendlies.”

George Bush, you’ll recall (or maybe not), also authorized the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP). Subsumed within the PSP are activities whose scope has yet to be disclosed. Attorney General Holder – at the behest of President Obama, no doubt – is expanding the remits of the Surveillance State, as did “W” before him.

The incontinent coverage of the AP outrage has a delusional quality. Contra those whose job it is to feign indignation on TV – America is not a free country. Media convulsions notwithstanding, the government is reading over your shoulder – has been doing so for some time. It can spy on Americans without breaking the law.

It is perfectly permissible for the state to monitor you, me or The Other Guy, without a “perfunctory nod to due process and legal restraint.” In other words, without a court order.

National Journal is agreed, writing that “the Obama administration technically broke no rules.” Companies that give up this information to the government have “immunity,” which has been “built into a 2008 revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

Here’s the other rub: FISA permits surveillance sans court order, explains Wikipedia, for “the period of one year provided it is only for foreign intelligence.”

And provided the president has authorized the fishing expedition.

In my understanding of the impossibly complex and cancerous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Obama has to have authorized the dragnet that was cast at the Associated Press.

Reflections On The Boston Bombers & Boyhood In America

by Ilana Mercer

Whereas American media has shed mostly darkness on the “apparently” mysterious motivation behind the ruthless, savage, April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon—a Chechen leader offered some valuable insights about these homegrown terrorists:

[The] Tsarnaevs … were raised in the United States, and their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. It is necessary to seek the roots of this evil in America.

The man makes a profound point. Here, and not in Chechnya, did the Tsarnaevs receive a liberal, lax, progressive education, emphasizing the wicked ways of the West and the righteousness of its “victims.” It is here in America that these invertebrates matured into aggrieved ignoramuses.

“If we Americans cannot even agree on what is right and wrong and moral and immoral, how do we stay together in one national family?,” prodded Patrick J. Buchanan, in a recent column.

“A common faith and moral code once held this country together. But if we no longer stand on the same moral ground, after we have made a conscious decision to become the most racially, ethnically, culturally diverse people on earth, what in the world holds us together? The Constitution, the Bill of Rights? How can they, when we bitterly disagree on what they say?”

As Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam discovered, reluctantly, diversity in fact immiserates. The greater the diversity in a county or country, the more distrustful and depressed are its inhabitants.

America’s practically pornographic rituals of public grief—what are they if not a neurotic symptom of this disconnect? A diverse and distrusting people, lacking in a shared national DNA, are thrust together by the crisis of the day. In the absence of any core value over which to unite, we Americans meet on the only common ground we share: the graveyard. We come together to bury or remember our dead. We unite to grieve over tragedy and misfortune that have befallen us for no other reason than that we exist in the same space in time.

As to America’s ingenious and inspired founding documents aforementioned: The vast majority of the people in this variegated land remain ignorant of them. Or, if familiar with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (or better still, the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers)—they’ll have been taught contempt for their framers and the philosophy these magnificent men espoused. When he hears parents, pedagogues, politicians and media sycophants pound on about the country’s Founding Fathers as the archetypical pale, patriarchal oppressors—a young man quickly learns to reject his adopted country’s heritage and look elsewhere for roots.

Boys, especially, require strong, moral men in their lives—men who affirm their masculinity. American boys, however, are mired in an estrogen-infused, cloistered world where real men in authority are a threatened minority. The nation’s schools have been, for the most, drained of manliness. Almost to a man are they staffed by feminists (mostly bereft of the Y chromosome).

Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was a product of a freewheeling, fatherless household. The tele-experts have been mum about a mother who was weak and ineffectual. Nancy Lanza was filled with fear. She used a menacing gun collection to overcompensate for her parental inadequacies. A strong, caring male might have taught the troubled Lanza to handle firearms responsibly; might have helped diffuse the lad’s rage. A manifestly weak woman playing at make-believe manhood only added fuel to that fire.

Reflecting this warped reality are America’s revised history textbooks, which are short on heroic figures and long on “history from below.” Physicist Myron Pauli, a featured writer on BarelyABlog.com, recently recounted his surprise at learning from his daughter’s “history” book that “World War II was fought primarily by women, Navahos, Mexicans, blacks, and Japanese-Americans.” The next edition, presumably, will illuminate the “neglected” role of the homosexual, hermaphrodite, and transgendered community in winning that war.

Boyhood today means BB guns and “bang-bang you’re dead” are banned. Tykes have a choice: undergo anger management and anti-bullying instruction or be chemically neutered by way of ADHD meds. Concomitantly, although your kids (boys and girls) desperately need discipline, the rare classroom disciplinarian risks litigation (from you!).

And, as his real nature craves heroic tales about yesteryear’s warriors and explorers, a little boy is required to hack his way through a page-turner like “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads.” The smashing success of politically incorrect books such as “The Dangerous Book for Boys” proves just how much little boys want to be boys again. The book reintroduced a new generation of youngsters to the joys of catapult-making, knot-tying, stone skimming, astronomy (concocting rocket fuel from saltpeter and sugar is not in the book, but is a lot of fun—or so my husband tells me). In short, more of the stuff of Boy Scouts, before the organization was hounded and hogtied by politicized girls and gays.

This very sexual activism is practiced by the president of the United States. No other than Barack Obama tinkled basketball player Jason Collins to congratulate him on stepping out as the first openly gay player in NBA history. Imagine Vladimir Putin or the president of Chechnya doing the same. Impossible!”

A huge step forward for our country” is how a hugely hyperbolic (and frightfully masculine) First Lady tweeted out about Collins’ “accomplishment.” Small mercies, Michelle Obama did not call the festive affair a giant leap for mankind.

In the unmanly (because so undignified) mosaic described so far, pride-of-place must be reserved for the American president. To a boy from a Muslim culture, America’s man-in-chief has to represent a mass of contradictions. This president and those before him lead the lavish and licentious lifestyle of an emperor. This as they bomb and obliterate other people from afar. Hardly honorable, much less manly.

Mandela, Obama and the end of democracy

One of the best means of enslaving an entire people is to weave them an illusion that they are free.

Significant cornerstones in achieving this grand illusion have already been set in the West, and regardless whether one believes in conspiracy theory or no, the outcome is undeniable. The only true difference is that under the incumbent US president Obama, the drive towards the extinction of the Free West has accelerated.

Even though this process has been in the making for many decades, South Africa’s fictional portrayal to the rest of the world has played a formidable part in all this.

The world was filled with a peculiar kind of absolution when Nelson Mandela was released from prison back in 1990, and even though he has continually threatened with violent sedition, he is hailed as one of the world’s most renowned peace makers. His “peaceful” motives were further cast in stone when he pocketed The Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1993 alongside the last white president of South Africa FW de Klerk. We are now being misled that South Africa is a nation at peace, occasionally disturbed by some bigoted Boers. At least, this is the cover story we are supposed to believe. Yet almost everybody who experienced South Africa intimately knows that an overwhelming part of this fabrication is just that – a fabrication. The divide between rich and poor has widened, infrastructure is failing, taxes have increased rapidly and millions of people are forced to accept a life of humiliating subsistence. Not to mention the daily dose of extreme violence, rape and murder. Any desperate questions toward government regarding the rising tide of squalor is answered with the insincere negation that “the consequences of apartheid” are to blame, revealing in fact that the ANC is incapable of governing – all under the aegis of their British puppet masters of course, who are still secretly longing for those days when the Union Jack was hoisted over Pretoria in 1877.

Important public figures such as Oprah Winfrey however, has swallowed the South African myth hook, line and sinker. In a misplaced show of philanthropy she had a smiley-face gulag (aka Leadership Academy) built for young black schoolgirls in the southern outskirts of Johannesburg, where the Frankensteinian pageant of multiculturalism is being indoctrinated with relish. While originally claiming that the blacks-only school was because she didn’t think the “whites needed appeasement”, Winfrey has in the meantime appointed a white Afrikaner woman as principal after a few scandals drove her to tears under the erstwhile black headmistress. Once again an Afrikaner is called to the rescue by none other than Ms. Aparthate herself. I don’t expect to see Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony in her Book Club very soon.

Regardless of all these histrionic attempts at “healing South Africa’s wounds” extreme savagery still prevails and appears to be on the rise. The Afrikaners have been reduced to personae non gratae in the country that they had founded, with an estimate of 80 thousand of their kinsmen brutally murdered since their political demise. Many Afrikaners are in a state of abject poverty and are hurling insults at FW de Klerk for their fate, branding him the worst traitor their nation has ever had. The fact that De Klerk has thus far had ample time and opportunity to voice his concern for the state his people are in – as one would expect from a (former) statesman – he has chosen to turn a blind eye, once more reinforcing the notion that he has truly abandoned his people. Silence after all is consent.

The muffled voices of desperate Afrikaners seems to be a welcome gesture to political opportunists elsewhere, though. Was it not the knock-on effect of the feigned “South African miracle” that helped put Obama in the White House? A kind of yearning for a “Mandela Miracle” once again? On a similar note the coveted Nordic peace prize was awarded to America’s first non-white leader, but under his watch Guantanamo Bay is today markedly worse than ever under Bush. The overwhelming majority of inmates are held without any formal charge and the UN considers many practices to be legally defined as torture.

Elsewhere, laws awarding citizens legal counsel have been watered down by presidential decree, and this disbarred lawyer-turned president now holds the right to arrest anybody anywhere he sees fit. Citizens are nowadays under scrutiny by drones in their own country and the legal protection of genetically modified food has been approved by Congress, regardless of potential health hazards that this food source could cause. By further exploiting heinous crimes such as shooting incidents at schools, the Administration is slowly denying citizens the right to own weapons and ipso facto grants freer licence to law enforcement officials to operate without warrant. The Second Amendment was after all instated solely for the purpose of preventing an elitist authority from reducing citizens to subjects.

Yet all the while, similarly to the Mandela Miracle, the traditional founders of Puritan America are awfully quiet about these developments. Perhaps out of fear of being slandered as racists, they choose not to be too vocal. Not only was Mandela’s glory exported to America, but also the apathy of the conservative whites, who seem to be complacent with being airbrushed out of their own country. Both in South Africa and the US, the rant of Nikita Khrushchev that “We will bury you!” is starting to come about. Mandela, who took to the communists for support during his ordeal has indeed founded a younger incarnation in Obama – the latter who considered it prudent to adorn the White House Christmas tree with ornaments of Mao Zedong, the greatest mass murderer the world has ever known.

Just as philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler had predicted, the once powerful West is on the decline. Similar to many great civilizations throughout history, the social fabric was torn apart by sectarianism and internal strife following mass emigration. Demographic shifts, the excessive demand for energy to sustain population growth and a disappearance of well internalized moral bearings had all assisted the collapse of once great civilizations. Democracy then becomes unworkable and a demand for a strong leader to help create order in the chaos becomes the new norm. In fact people will welcome the demise of democracy when the time is due.

It appears as if the rise of the West has deliberately been sabotaged. Whereas Europe represents the older Western civilization, the Western emigration states such as the US, Canada, the former South Africa and Australasia formed its younger offspring. Being more flexible, energetic and imbued with youthful vigour, the emigration states have kept the spirit of the West alive while Europe was slowly starting to stiffen with age. Mass emigration of non-Western people to these younger lands has caused them to age faster and to prematurely nip their growth in the bud, sowing confusion, dissent and disillusionment in the once hailed ideal of liberal democracy.

It is an open question how long these nations could sustain themselves amidst growing dissent. The Marxist ideal of the universal human was after all no more a thought experiment than Rousseau’s Noble Savage; ostensibly universal but in reality just an artefact of the occidental soul.

After a while, these nations are going to be driven back to their own traditional core values and beliefs, disillusioned with this unworkable quagmire they find themselves in. Under the candy-coated guise of freedom, emancipation and equality a grim hedonism is going to fill the void where a firm basis of traditional values ought to be. By robbing people of their higher freedoms and focusing attention on immediate gratification, people will be reduced to confused child-like states, justifying authoritarianism even further.

It would be wise if people of all backgrounds keep an eye on their traditional belief systems, for only in settings peculiar to their own could a nation grow towards democratic and mature systems while keeping demoralisation at a minimum.

And this new struggle has already begun.

Joseph Secreve

Obama shuns diversity

Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Marcia L. Fudge is escalating her campaign to urge President Barack Obama to pick African Americans for his cabinet, publicly releasing a letter that slams the first black president for a lack of diversity among his closest advisers.

“The people you have chosen to appoint in this new term have hardly been reflective of this country’s diversity,” the Ohio Democrat said in the March 11 letter.

Fudge adds that CBC members’ offices have received phone calls from angry constituents questioning why Obama hasn’t nominated anyone with the ability “to speak to the unique needs of African Americans. Their ire is compounded by the overwhelming support you’ve received from the African American community.”

By releasing the letter, Fudge is escalating a campaign by the CBC to push Obama on his cabinet diversity and continuing to demonstrate her willingness to push Obama aggressively to embrace her group’s priorities.

The Ohio Democrat previously moved to promote three CBC members for open Cabinet positions, highlighting a long-standing sore spot in the relationship between the CBC and the president, who was a member of the group during his one Senate term.

Obama, in turn, dispatched top aide Valerie Jarrett for her first Capitol Hill meeting of the second term to meet with the CBC for a State of the Union preview and listening session with members.

White House officials have assured CBC leaders that they will be pleased with future decisions. But Fudge apparently has lost patience, hence the letter Monday.

In the letter to Obama, Fudge said the CBC “looks forward to meeting with you to discuss this and other pressing issues.” CBC spokeswoman Ayofemi Kirby said a meeting with Obama has been requested, but no answer has yet come back from the White House.

Privately, the relationship between Obama and the CBC has been complicated for a long time, with members complaining about social snubs and Obama’s reluctance to address the high black unemployment rate head on.

The rift over Obama’s Cabinet is a case in point. For example, there was some jealousy in Obama’s first term that a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, then-Rep. Hilda L. Solis, D-Calif., was chosen to lead the Labor Department but that no member of the CBC was even vetted for a Cabinet slot. Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia was discussed for Agriculture secretary but not formally vetted. – Roll Call Staff

Drones, Kill Lists and Machiavelli

I am deeply, deeply disturbed at the suggestion in “A Court to Vet Kill Lists” that possible judicial review of President Obama’s decisions to approve the targeted killing of suspected terrorists might be limited to the killings of American citizens.

Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are? I cannot believe it.

I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims. Your response as a society to Osama bin Laden and his followers threatens to undermine your moral standards and your humanity.

DESMOND M. TUTU
Aboard MV Explorer, near Hong Kong Feb. 11, 2013

The writer, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town.

Neighbours, not brothers

No sooner did President Barack Obama and a group of senators separately outline proposals to revamp the nation’s immigration system than the phone lines on several African-American-oriented talk radio shows heated up with callers blasting the plans.

“Amnesty,” complained Frankie from Maryland recently on the nationally syndicated “Keeping it Real with Al Sharpton.”

A political payback to Hispanic voters that does little or nothing for African-Americans, reasoned Sam from Milwaukee on Wisconsin’s 1290 WMCS AM’s “Earl Ingram Show.”

“Our issues are not being highlighted and pushed, and things like gay marriage and (immigration) are being pushed to the forefront,” the caller said. “Hispanics are effectively organized. For us not to be organized and for us not to hold our leadership accountable is disheartening.”

Although the civil rights establishment, from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to the Urban League and Sharpton, squarely back Obama’s desire to tackle immigration, the president’s call has reignited complaints within the African-American community that he is addressing the specific needs of almost all major voting blocs – Hispanics, women, gays – except for the African-Americans who gave him 93 percent of their vote.

Obama is expected to address the immigration issue again Tuesday in his State of the Union address and when he travels to Asheville, N.C., on Wednesday and visits Chicago and suburban Atlanta on Thursday to sell his second-term agenda.

“There (are) clearly different views in the African-American community around immigration,” Sharpton said on his radio show last month. “Some have said they’re (illegal immigrants) taking our jobs, they dilute our strength. Others have said we’ve got to have rights for everybody or we don’t have it for anybody, and this is not just a Latino issue because immigration laws cover the Caribbean, cover Africans, cover South Americans.”

Some angst over Obama addressing immigration and other issues so soon in his second term has boiled over into public criticism of the nation’s first African-American president by many African-Americans, from the grassroots to the political levels.

Bernard Anderson, an Obama supporter and a former assistant labor secretary during Bill Clinton’s presidency, recently told an African-American economic summit at Washington’s Howard University that African-Americans should no longer give Obama “a pass” on dealing with issues that directly impact their community.

“He is not going to run again for anything. He does not deserve a pass anymore,” Anderson said. “Let him not only find his voice but summon his courage and use his political capital to address racial inequality. He owes that to the African-American.”

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus are quietly seething because Obama hasn’t met with the 42-member group since May 13, 2011. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., vented to the National Newspaper Publishers Association last month. He said the black caucus sent the White House the names of 61 potential candidates for positions in a second-term administration that already is coming under fire for being heavy on white males.

“Not one of that 61 was selected – not one,” Hastings told the African-American newspaper publishers at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., conference.

Obama administration officials reject assertions that the president is race-adverse. Obama has consistently said he takes a “rising tide lifts all boats” approach to governing and that his policies benefit all Americans, not just one group.

“I think comprehensive immigration reform is not about a specific community, it’s about a problem that we need to address as a whole,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last week.

But some African-Americans view Obama’s immigration drive as an overture to Hispanics who helped power his re-election in November with 71 percent of their vote.

“The amount of blacks who are impacted by this legislation is so small it’s infinitesimal,” talk show host Earl Ingram said. “Minuscule.”

A 2009 report by the Migration Policy Institute found that black immigrants from all regions of the world accounted for just 9 percent of the overall immigrant population in the United States.

However, a 2011 report by the same group discovered that blacks from Africa, though just 3 percent of the U.S. foreign-born population, are among the fastest-growing immigrant groups in this country.

From 1980 to 2009, the number of African blacks in the United States has swelled from 64,000 to 1.1 million, according to the 2011 report.

If that growth trend continues, Africa will supplant the Caribbean as the major source region for the U.S. black immigrant population by 2020, the Migration Policy Institute study concludes.

Still, Ingram says many of his listeners see Obama’s attempt to push forward on immigration as a reminder of what the president hasn’t done to improve economic conditions for African-Americans.

“I would say a bulk of my listenership is anti-immigration,” he said. “You have to understand that in the community in which I live the percentage of African-Americans who are unemployed. They look at what’s going on with immigration as an affront to African-Americans who can’t pay their mortgages because many of the immigrants come here, they are hired at less than minimum wage.”

The African-American unemployment rate is at 13.8 percent, according to recently released government figures, nearly twice the 7 percent jobless rate for whites. The nation’s overall unemployment rate is 7.9 percent. For Hispanics, the rate is 9.7 percent.

A 2009 study by George Borjas of Harvard University, Jeffrey Grogger of the University of Chicago and George Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, looked at 1960-2000 Census data and found that as immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular area, wages of African-American workers in that area fell, the employment rate declined and the incarceration rate rose.

“Our analysis suggests that a 10 percent immigration-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 2.5 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 5.9 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by 1.3 percentage points,” the professors wrote in the study.

Todd Shaw, a political science and African-American studies professor at the University of South Carolina, believes “the concern that African Americans are hostile to immigrant workers is a bit overplayed.”

“It’s more a concern about the opportunity ladder than it is the perception that African-Americans don’t think there should be economic fairness to other groups,” Shaw added.

Many civil rights leaders also believe that African-American concerns about the White House and Congress pushing for new immigration laws are overhyped. NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said, “Four out of five black voters are in support of immigration reform.”

But some polls tell a different story. A Pew Research poll released in January found that 56 percent of African-Americans feel there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between immigrants and people born in the United States. But perceptions may be improving –January’s figure is a drop from 61 percent in 2009.

A different Pew Hispanic poll found that while all groups of workers have seen gains in employment, Hispanics and Asians have experienced a faster rate of growth than African-Americans and whites.

Hispanic employment increased 6.5 percent between 2009 and 2011, compared with a 2.2 percent increase for African Americans and just 1.1 percent for whites.

The sensitivity of the immigration issue within the African-American community isn’t lost on African-American and Hispanic leaders who are striving for a unified front.

Sharpton and Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, an immigration advocacy coalition, walked together to their seats at Obama’s second inauguration ceremony last month.

Murguia has made strengthening ties with the African-American community a key component of her leadership. She was the first Hispanic leader to give the keynote speech at the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Unity Breakfast in Birmingham, Ala. She marched arm in arm with Sharpton, Jealous and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., at last year’s Selma-to-Montgomery march, which focused on voter rights and anti-illegal immigrant laws like those in Alabama.

“I think they see echoes of their own civil rights movement in the struggle to bring equity and dignity to people who are in the shadows,” Murguia said of the black leaders.

They also see political opportunity, said Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo.

“African-American leadership understands, and I understand this clearly, that we must come together with the Latino community and help them address some of their issues so that down the road they help us address ours.”

In poor areas, closeness often means conflict. Los Angeles tallied more than 400 racial hate crimes in 2006—the most, as a proportion of all hate crimes, for at least a decade (see chart). Blacks fared worst: they comprise just 9% of the population of Los Angeles County but were the victims of 59% of all race-hate crimes. Seven times out of ten, their persecutors were Latino. Hispanics, who make up almost half the population, were victimised by blacks eight-tenths of the time. These numbers greatly understate the violence. They do not, for example, include the victims of a dozen interracial prison riots last year, which left two dead.

“We’re being overrun,” says Ted Hayes of Choose Black America, which has led anti-immigration marches in south-central Los Angeles. “The compañeros have taken all the housing. If you don’t speak Spanish they turn you down for jobs. Our children are jumped upon in the schools. They are trying to drive us out.” Not, Mr Hayes emphasises, that he has anything against illegal immigrants personally, or against Mexicans who are in America legally. Indeed, he says, in that useful old phrase, he is friendly with many of them.

Pew, a pollster, found earlier that one-third of blacks believe immigrants take jobs from Americans—more than any other group.

Pimping the culture

by Ilana Mercer

The marketplace doesn’t adjudicate the quality of art or pop culture – it does no more than offer an aggregate snapshot of the trillions of subjective preferences acted upon by consumers. That snapshot, in 2013, tells us that when it comes to “Bread and Circuses,” Rome and its provinces wallow in the same lowbrow popular culture.

Incidentally, to judge the quality of a cultural product is not to begrudge the preferences of the people who purchase it. It is simply to apply timeless, objective standards in assessing these products.

In its salient features, the Commander In Chief’s Ball resembles the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. There, some of the most pretentious, worthless people in the country – in politics, journalism and entertainment – convene to revel in their ability to petition and curry favor with one another, usually to the detriment of the people, whether the latter know it or not.

By and large, when it comes to entertainment, the people and the elites are on the same empty page – most of the musicians whose products they patronize, or with whom they fraternize, can’t read music, much less play it.

“Grammy and Academy Award winner” Jennifer Hudson, to whose primal screams the president and first lady attempted to dance, doesn’t sing; she screams. Voice coaches once considered the Hudson brand of “vocal wobble” a deficiency in technique and talent. But then, “Why be a musician, when you can be a success?” Such cacophony currently plays to full houses. It is to their credit that the First Couple smoothed the noise over with some smooth moves.

“We all know Beyoncé can sing,” came the response from inaugural organizers to the rumors that the singing sensation lip-synched to “The Star Spangled Banner.” Beyoncé is another performer who distinguishes herself with an obscene bump-and-grind routine and a din of discordant, jarring yelps.

Order lIana Mercer’s brilliant polemical work, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa”

We know not definitively whether Beyoncé moved her mouth to a prerecorded version of the national anthem, but much like babies banging on a play-play piano, the nation is preoccupied with the matter.

We do know this: As a studio musician close to home has explained to me, the T&A line-up at the Inaugural and Commander In Chief’s Balls would be reduced to embarrassing grunts, out-of-tune yelling and bedroom whispers, if not for the magic of Auto-Tune, which is the “holy grail of recording.” Auto-Tune “corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts.”

Auto-Tune technology is what makes a cast of vain ventriloquists like Katy Perry and Glee what it is.

More sounds that curdled the air were those of Alicia Keys pounding on the piano keys.

“Obama’s on Fire. Obama’s on Fire,” the smirking Ms. Keys chanted tunelessly over and over again. The tradition of a praise singer or a tribal poet laureate still flourishes in Africa. But the tribal poet, unlike Keys, is a splendid performing artist. I know. I’ve seen him in my native South Africa convey the glory of the African savanna – even bring to life moribund leaders – with mesmerizing words and movement.

To sing well, you need a finely tuned instrument and musicality. An example of such an instrument is Carly Simon’s voice in this live performance of “That’s The Way I Always Heard It Should Be – 1972.” Hers is an evocative and nuanced voice. As to the lyrics, you’d have to be both literate and complex to write as evocatively.

To counter the assault on the ears popularized even further by the current White House, do lend an ear to the opera group “Seven,” singing the National Anthem at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2012.

However, the National Anthem – the words to which were written in the aftermath of the Battle against the British, at Fort McHenry, Sept. 14, 1814 – is not much of an antidote to the ugliness of the Inaugural soiree.

So here are the sounds of “Seven” singing “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee,” set to Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Enjoy! (This rendition has garnered only 173 YouTube views.)

I’d rather listen to the dodecaphony of 12-tone music than sit through the guttural battle cries emitted by today’s performers.

Fatal attraction

Is it African symbolism, or just plain attraction?

The buzzing insect stole the show as the President announced two new members of his second administration, cutting wild loops around the leader of the free world before landing squarely on his forehead.

The official White House transcript simply reads: “This guy is bothering me here – (swatting at a fly.)”

Meanwhile, the pool report which describes the President’s movements throughout the day noted that “the president spoke for about five minutes while being menaced by a house fly”.

It wasn’t the first time Mr Obama has shared camera time with a fly. In June 2009, the newly-elected president dealt some tough justice to one which interrupted an interview.

And during a 2010 announcement on healthcare reform, Mr Obama cut off an emotional story about an American struggling without health insurance as a fly zipped around him.

In that instance, the fly did manage to land briefly on his face, providing an unsightly addition to the mole on the left side of his nose.

‘Hign Noon’ rallies across the US

Pro-gun activists held “high noon” rallies across the United States on Saturday to defend the right to own firearms that they say is being threatened by President Barack Obama’s gun-control proposals.

The U.S. debate over gun control erupted 20 first-graders and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, were killed with an assault rifle.

“We are law-abiding citizens, business owners, military, and we are not going to be responsible for other people’s criminal actions,” former Marine Damon Locke said to applause at a Florida rally he had helped organize.

Some in the crowd of about 1,000 in Brooksville, about an hour north of Tampa, hoisted signs that said: “Stop the Gun Grabbers” and “Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control.”

Obama and gun-control advocates have begun a push to reinstitute a U.S. assault weapons ban following the Connecticut massacre. A number of other states have taken up gun legislation, and New York, with among the strictest gun control laws in the country, broadened its assault weapons ban on Tuesday.

Obama has also called for a ban on high-capacity magazines and more stringent background checks for gun purchasers.

In Connecticut, a rally for gun rights drew about 1,000 people at the state Capitol, where lawmakers have reacted to the Newtown shooting with proposals to tighten gun-control rules, including limiting access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

That did not sit well with gun owner Jessie Buchanan, who attended the rally in Hartford.

“They could take away the 10-round magazine today and tomorrow it would be the five-round and the next day it would be the whole thing,” Buchanan said.

In Denver, the mood was defiant as about 500 people, including families with children, gathered in unseasonably warm weather outside the state Capitol.

“I have earned the right to have my guns,” said Don Dobyns, an Air Force veteran and former police officer from Colorado Springs, who was among the rally organizers.

Sporting a shirt that read, “Girls with guns,” 31-year-old Jennifer Burk said, “My parents didn’t raise a victim and the government shouldn’t try and make me one.”

Gun-control advocates say U.S. civilians have no justifiable need for assault weapons or high-capacity magazines, and they say more background checks will help keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

The reaction has been fierce from gun supporters such as the National Rifle Association, who point to a right to bear arms that is enshrined in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and which they do not want to see watered down.

On Sunday, gun-control advocates plan to hold a National Gun Prevention Sabbath, where they say 150 houses of worship will call on the faithful to advocate for an “actionable plan to prevent gun violence.”

People who have lost loved ones to gun violence will display their photographs, organizers said. – Reuters

Obama to move on gun control

President Barack Obama is launching the most sweeping effort to curb American gun violence in nearly two decades, and New York lawmakers easily passed the toughest gun control law in the country, as gun control advocates move to act swiftly after a massacre at an elementary school last month.

Obama is urging a reluctant Congress to ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines like those used in the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 elementary school children in Newtown, Connecticut.

The broad package Obama will announce Wednesday is also expected to include more than a dozen steps the president can take on his own through executive action. Those measures will provide a pathway for skirting opposing lawmakers, but they will be limited in scope, and in some cases, focused simply on enforcing existing laws.

But Congress would have to approve the bans on assault weapons and ammunition magazines holding more than 10 bullets, along with a requirement for universal background checks on gun buyers. Some gun control advocates worry that opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats, as well as the National Rifle Association, will be too great to overcome.

The NRA released an online video Tuesday that called Obama an “elitist hypocrite” for having armed Secret Service agents protect his daughters at school while not committing to installing armed guards in all schools.

White House officials signaled that Obama would seek to rally public support for the measures he puts forward, perhaps holding events around the country or relying on Organizing for America, his still-operational presidential campaign.

For many Americans, gun ownership is a cherished right protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Others argue that the country’s founders in the 18th century could never have envisioned the sort of high-powered assault weapons used in the Newtown attack.

White House officials, seeking to avoid setting the president up for failure, have emphasized that no single measure – even an assault weapons ban – would solve a scourge of gun violence across the country. But without such a ban, or other sweeping Congress-approved measures, it’s unclear whether executive actions alone can make any noticeable difference.

“It is a simple fact that there are limits to what can be done within existing law,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. “Congress has to act on the kinds of measures we’ve already mentioned because the power to do that is reserved by Congress.”

Obama will announce his proposals in a midday event at the White House, flanked by children who wrote to him about gun violence following the massacre of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Law enforcement officials, mayors from across the country and supportive congressional lawmakers are also expected to attend.

According to a lobbyist briefed Tuesday, Obama will present a three-part plan focused on gun violence, education and mental health.

The president will call for a focus on universal background checks. Some 40 percent of gun sales take place without background checks, including those by private sellers at gun shows or over the Internet, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The president will call for banning assault weapons and limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds or fewer, and also propose a federal statute to stop “straw man” purchases of guns and crack down on trafficking rings. He’ll order federal agencies to conduct more research on gun use and crimes, something Republican congressional majorities have limited through language in budget bills, the lobbyist said.

Obama has pledged urgent action to prevent future mass shootings, and his plan – coming just one month after the Newtown attacks – is swift by Washington standards.

The president’s framework is based on recommendations from Vice President Joe Biden, who led a wide-ranging task force on gun violence. Beyond the gun control measures, Biden also gave Obama suggestions for improving mental health care and addressing violent images in video games, movies and television.

The vice president’s proposals included 19 steps that could be achieved through executive action.

Obama may order the Justice Department to crack down on people who lie on background checks; only a tiny number are now prosecuted. Such a step has support from the National Rifle Association, which has consistently argued that existing laws must be enforced before new ones are considered.

He also could take steps ordering federal agencies to make more data on gun crimes available and conduct more research on the issue, something Republican congressional majorities have limited through language in budget bills. And he may order tougher penalties against gun trafficking and give schools flexibility to use grant money to improve safety.

Gun control proponent Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat who met with Biden on Monday, said the president is also likely to take executive action to ensure better state reporting of mental health and other records that go into the federal background check database. But he, too, acknowledged there were clear limits to what Obama can do without Congress’ say-so.

“You can’t change the law through executive order,” Scott said.

States and cities have been moving against gun violence as well.

New York’s Assembly voted 104-43 on Tuesday to approve a law calling for a tougher assault weapons ban and provisions to try to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill who make threats. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo quickly signed the measure into law.

“Common sense can win,” Cuomo said. “You can overpower the extremists with intelligence and with reason and with common sense.”

The NRA criticized the bill in statement. “These gun control schemes have failed in the past and will have no impact on public safety and crime,” the group said.

The measure also calls for restrictions on ammunition and the sale of guns.

Under current state law, assault weapons are defined by having two “military rifle” features such as folding stock, muzzle flash suppressor or bayonet mount. The proposal reduces that to one feature and includes the popular pistol grip.

Private sales of assault weapons to someone other than an immediate family will be subject to a background check through a dealer. New Yorkers also would be barred from buying assault weapons over the Internet, and failing to safely store a weapon could lead to a misdemeanor charge.

Ammunition magazines will be restricted to seven bullets, from the current 10, and current owners of higher-capacity magazines will have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine will face a misdemeanor charge.

White House officials signaled that Obama would seek to rally public support for the measures he puts forward Wednesday, perhaps holding events around the country or relying on Organizing for America, his still-operational presidential campaign.

“The president’s success in using this strategy, I think, is pretty notable,” Carney said of Obama’s efforts to engage the public in previous legislative fights.

Still, it’s unclear how much political capital Obama will exert in pressing for congressional action.

The White House and Congress will soon be consumed by three looming fiscal deadlines, each of which is expected to be contentious. And the president has also pledged to tackle comprehensive immigration reform early this year, another effort that will require Republicans’ support and one in which Obama may be more likely to get their backing.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s top Republican, has warned the White House that it will be at least three months before the Senate considers gun legislation. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, has said immigration, not gun control, is at the top of his priority list after the fiscal fights. – AP

Young black women adore Obama

While Obama carried the youth vote overall, his support declined from 2008 among all young voters and among key subgroups. In particular, Obama lost ground among young whites, men and independents.

Only 44% of white voters under 30 backed Obama, while 51% voted for Romney. This is a substantial change compared with 2008, when Obama carried the young white vote by 10 points (54% to 44%). Far more young blacks and Hispanics backed Obama than Romney, and there was little fall off in his support among these groups from 2008.

Obama also lost support among young men. Overall, 53% of men under 30 supported Obama, down from 62% in 2008. Fully 66% of young women voted for Obama, similar to the 69% who voted for him in 2008.

However, Obama lost support among both white men and women. Overall, 41% of white men supported Obama while 54% supported Romney. In 2008, Obama won the vote among white men, 52% to 46%. While white women voted for Obama over McCain by a 56% to 42% margin four years ago, they were divided this year (48% voted for Obama, 49% for Romney).

Surprisingly, Obama’s vote also declined among young black men, by 14 points, while holding steady among young black women. – Pew Reasearch

Obama’s Soviet Mistake

Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.

After Obama was elected in his first term as president the then Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of 2009. Ignored by the West as usual, Putin gave insightful and helpful advice to help the world economy and saying the world should avoid the Soviet mistake.

Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.

Putin said regarding the military,

“…instead of solving the problem, militarization pushes it to a deeper level. It draws away from the economy immense financial and material resources, which could have been used much more efficiently elsewhere.”

Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.

Reading Putin’s speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:

“…we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses.

The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.

There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.

Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt – are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game.

During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself.”

President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don’t they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.

“We must seek support in the moral values that have ensured the progress of our civilization. Honesty and hard work, responsibility and faith in our strength are bound to bring us success.”- Vladimir Putin

The red, white and blue still flies happily but only in Russia. Russia still has St George defeating the Dragon with the symbol of the cross on its’ flag. The ACLU and other atheist groups in America would never allow the US flag with such religious symbols. Lawsuits a plenty against religious freedom and expression in the land of the free. Christianity in the U.S. is under attack as it was during the early period of the Soviet Union when religious symbols were against the law.

Let’s give American voters the benefit of the doubt and say it was all voter fraud and not ignorance or stupidity in electing a man who does not even know what to do and refuses help from Russia when there was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead we’ll say it’s true that the Communists usage of electronic voting was just a plan to manipulate the vote. Soros and his ownership of the company that counts the US votes in Spain helped put their puppet in power in the White House. According to the Huffington Post, residents in all 50 states have filed petitions to secede from the Unites States. We’ll say that these Americans are hostages to the Communists in power. How long will their government reign tyranny upon them?

Russia lost its’ civil war with the Reds and millions suffered torture and death for almost 75 years under the tyranny of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. Russians survived with a new and stronger faith in God and ever growing Christian Church. The question is how long will the once “Land of the Free” remain the United Socialist States of America? Their suffering has only begun. Bye bye Miss American Pie! You know the song you hippies. Sing it! Don’t you remember? The 1971 hit song by American song writer Don McLean:

“And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage.

No angel born in Hell could break that Satan’s spell

And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw…

Satan laughing with delight the day the music died

He was singing, bye bye Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry

Them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing…

This’ll be the day that I die

So, the question remains:

How long will America suffer and to what depths?

Pravda

America’s racial divide grows

In 2008, minority voters turned out in record numbers, propelling Barack Obama to the White House. Similar results fueled his second-term victory on Tuesday. A 2-percentage-point increase in nonwhite votes—to 28 percent—sealed Obama’s reelection, and data seem to indicate minority influence at the polls has grown stronger in the past four years.

Obama managed to win again, despite securing only 39 percent of white voters–who still represent the nation’s largest voting bloc at 72 percent.

Poll after poll indicated the issue atop all voters mind this election season was the still-weak economy, a color-blind issue affecting nearly everyone.

However, analysis of voter data shows that the racial divide that dominated much of the race in 2008 is getting wider. Obama failed to capture the majority of the white vote in many of the nation’s states–even the ones that traditionally bleed blue–and endured a 4-point drop among white votes over 2008.

Based on racial exit-poll data available from select states, Obama would have definitively lost 12 states to Republican nominee Mitt Romney if only white voters mattered. Add another three possible toss-up states and that’s a full 242 possible electoral votes that Obama would not have.

Using the link, toggle between the reality of the 2012 vote and a projected electoral map that uses white-only voter preferences. You can also clearly see what Obama gained and lost using white-only votes from 2008 to 2012. Hint: It’s a lot. – National Journal

Whites’ ‘waning influence’ among US electorate

President Barack Obama’s election victory exposed tectonic demographic shifts in American society that are reordering the U.S. political landscape.

The 2012 presidential election likely will be remembered as marking the end of long-standing coalitions, as voters regroup in cultural, ethnic and economic patterns that challenge both parties—but especially Republicans.

Older voters and white working-class voters, once core elements of the Democratic Party, have drifted into the Republican column. Rural and small-town voters, whose grandparents backed the New Deal, now fill the swath of the U.S. that leans reliably GOP.

But in cities and dynamic suburbs, a rapidly growing force of Latinos, Asian-Americans, African-Americans and higher-income whites emerged this week as the strength of Mr. Obama’s winning Democratic coalition.

“The Democrats now own a coalition of emerging metro areas where the whites and minorities live together, and where they vote Democratic,” said Robert Lang, a demographer who directs the Brookings Mountain West, a research center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

In northern Virginia’s Fairfax County, for example, Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly represents a district where 20 years ago, he said, 3% of residents were born outside the U.S. Now, it is nearly 30%, with the majority Asian immigrants.

What County-by-County Results Tell Us About the Election

The most detailed results from the 2012 election show the voting patterns for each county in the country. Changes from the previous election give us an idea of what geographic and demographic trends are impacting national politics.

Mr. Obama won big there Tuesday, helping him to tally the once reliably Republican state of Virginia for the second straight general election.

Similar shifts throughout the U.S. help explain how Mr. Obama was returned to the White House on support from young people, minorities, women and upscale whites, a coalition virtually identical to the one that carried him to victory four years ago.

Some political analysts thought that coalition came together only because of the historic nature of Mr. Obama’s 2008 victory and wouldn’t prove durable. That belief didn’t hold up this week.

The question now is whether Mr. Obama and other members of his party can solidify this coalition into a foundation of the Democratic Party.

Republicans said their party won a smashing victory in congressional elections just two years ago, when they took control of the House of Representatives, illustrating that there is no clear claim for either party.

Decision Day in America

Voters headed to the polls Tuesday in a presidential contest defined by its intensity and razor-thin margins.

The 2010 election, they said, shows that even with modest inroads among Latino and Asian-American voters, the GOP can build a solid majority on the foundation of its strong white support. Republicans enjoy historically high levels of control over governorships and state legislatures, which they say shows the party’s potential if it can improve its message to minorities.

In any case, both Democrats and Republicans see new contours of a split electorate.

Twenty years after supporting former President Bill Clinton, a majority of white voters have returned to where they were during the Reagan administration, firmly planted in the Republican camp. Nearly six in 10 white voters told exit pollsters Tuesday that they sided with Republicans, up from 40% during Mr. Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory.

More striking is the GOP’s loose grip on minority voters: just 29% of Latinos, 25% of Asians and 8% of African-Americans said Tuesday they identified with the Republican Party.

The trend has strengthened the Democrats’ hold in cities and extended a new reach into once-white suburbs now filling with successful Asian and South Asian immigrants, as well as Hispanics.

Mr. Obama scored a big win, for example, in Denver’s Arapahoe County, a bedroom community of family farms and high-tech firms. The county, in turn, helped propel Mr. Obama to victory for the second time in Colorado, formerly a Republican-leaning state.

The presidential election also cast a spotlight on a generational shift under way.

Senior citizens, who swung to the Democrats during the Medicare and Social Security fights of the 1990s, have swerved to Republicans. Close to six in 10 seniors backed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, according to exit polls Tuesday, up from the 51% of the group siding with Sen. John McCain in 2008.

The split by age reached even deeper: A majority of voters age 40 and older sided with Mr. Romney. The majority of every younger age group voted for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls.

When former President George H.W. Bush, Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton won their respective elections, they won among all ages. But no Republican presidential candidate has won a majority of voters under age 30 since Mr. Bush in 1988.

Polls earlier this year showed cooling interest among young voters in the Obama re-election campaign. But turnout among voters ages 18 to 29, in fact, eclipsed the 2008 election, with nearly 60% siding with the president.

The robust turnout by younger voters boosted Democrats nearly as much as the strong showing among Latinos.

Concerns grew Wednesday among some Republicans that the party’s base will be hobbled in national elections if it becomes too old, too rural and too white. “What worries me is that the GOP is about to become the WOP—the White Old Party,” said Norm Coleman, a former Minnesota senator.

Nothing casts more fear in the GOP than estrangement with the swelling U.S. Hispanic population, which now accounts for 10% of the electorate.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Republican presidential candidates routinely received a third or more of the Latino vote. Former President George W. Bush garnered just over 40% in 2004. That share has since plummeted amid sometimes harsh debate over legislation to deal with millions of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico, living in the U.S.

Mr. Romney got 29% of the Hispanic vote Tuesday, the lowest share since Sen. Bob Dole ran for president in 1996.

“The party has hit a new floor,” said Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union and former chairman of the Florida Republican Party. “The reality is we face a very big, very important shifting demographic in the country, and we saw how it played out in Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Virginia.”

Mr. Obama beat Mr. Romney among Latinos by 58% to 40% in Florida; 87% to 10% in Colorado; 80% to 17% in Nevada; and 66% to 31% in Virginia, according to an ImpreMedia/Latino Decisions poll.

“Texas probably has a huge potential to trend Democratic if the Democratic Party engages the electorate there,” said Matt Barreto, co-founder of the Latino Decisions polling firm.

The Romney campaign devoted attention to Asian voters, particularly in northern Virginia. Exit polls showed the Asian vote expanding to 3% of the total U.S. electorate—an all-time high—with 75% of those votes cast for Mr. Obama. – WSJ