US Immigration Over 100 Years

"We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being."

- Theodore Roosevelt, in speech to the Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, New York, 12 October 1915.

Link:  Tomgram: Aviva Chomsky, The Criminalization of Immigrants From Clinton to Trump

This Year's Coming Summer Olympics

I would nearly bet this year's 2016 Summer Olympics will be the least attended games in years and there are 2 rather significant reasons in their own right. 

'Rio's filth' spoiling 2016 Summer Olympics

Rio de Janeiro water quality concerns 

continue to rise

and

Zika virus 'spreading explosively' in 

North and South America

We shall see.

I certainly wish them well (for what it's worth).

Lessons from Bolivia for us?

So it would seem:

Problems with soccer

For Americans, anyway (with tongue firmly and deeply in cheek):

1)  The field is the size of a runway for a Boeing 747

2)  Having the game last--what?--8 hours each, with no breaks, commercials, half-times, songs or anything

3) Who knows WHEN the match will actually end because at any time, they may well add ADDITIONAL minutes to the time clock

4) Then there's the fairly old problem Americans have with soccer that--gasp--IT CAN END IN A DRAW.

No one wins, no one loses.

Oh, yeah. That's Socialism or Communism or some dang thing right there.  That just isn't right.

5) Finally, when does this thing end, this World Cup?  September?  November?

Edward R Murrow on America

Famed reporter, journalist and author Edward R Murrow on America and our history:

"They were ahead of the law, ahead of education and established institutions. They made their own...There grew up a tradition of violence and lawlessness... They fought a four-year civil war. And the status of the Negro...is still one of the greatest problems facing the nation. I believe we lynched only three or four of our black fellow-citizens last year, which is some improvement...

We...engineered a frontier incident with Mexico. We took that huge territory of Texas, and what is now California... Later on, we were to land marines in Nicaragua and Haiti, narrowly avoid war with Germany over Venezuela, and create a heritage of mistrust amongst the South American peoples as a result of high-handed methods and dollar diplomacy. Cuba and the Philippines came into our Lebensraum...

And all the time we were despoiling a continent. We cut the top off it, and sent the timber floating down the rivers. We ploughed the prairies, wasted our soil... Later on in this series you will hear about the New Deal, our racial problems, and how we came to be a nation of which one-third is ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-fed. You will also hear something of our achievements."

--Edward R. Murrow from his "Meet Uncle Sam" series.  Quote taken from the book

MURROW: HIS LIFE AND TIMES by A. M. Sperber

Links:   Edward R. Murrow - Wikipedia

Great local group

I just ran across this local South American group on Facebook, surprisingly and liked what I saw and found. You can check out their Facebook page and website here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cachecanto/130726757030979; http://cachecanto.com/

And in case you missed Matt's outtakes

from that last video: Enjoy.

More reasons why, maybe, we should also "come down a few notches"?

Thanks to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and his blog for this.