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Welcome to another installment of No Obama Bundler Left Behind. This chapter stars an elite Hollywood fundraiser who scored a plum diplomatic appointment, slacked off on the job and left her public office in disgrace, and then rebounded from failure as a new Obamacare promoter. Nice crony "work" if you can get it.

This failed celebr-ambassador is Nicole Avant. Her father, Clarence Avant, is a prominent Democratic activist and music executive. Her husband, Ted Sarandos, is the chief content officer at Netflix. Her godfather is music legend Quincy Jones. On Monday, Avant turned up at an Obama administration confab with pop stars (Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo), comedy stars (Amy Poehler, Kal Penn, Aisha Tyler) and other assorted Beautiful People (public relations teams for Oprah Winfrey and Alicia Keys). The liberal glam squad members all have agreed to spread Obamacare propaganda to the masses.

Avant, billed as an "Obama administration veteran" by The Hollywood Reporter, represented "industry" at the Ministry of Health Care Misinformation meeting this week. The Wrap, another Hollywood gossip outlet, describes Avant as having been "tasked with helping boost Obama's relationship with Hollywood."

But what exactly has this "veteran" accomplished? What are her qualifications? How has she used taxpayer dollars, and what exactly is her "industry"?

By all appearances, the industry of Nicole Avant is Nicole Avant. The Beverly Hills socialite and "power player" has appeared in highbrow magazines like "Uptown" with glossy photo spreads of her 1-percenter mansion -- designed, we must all be made aware, by Max Azria. Avant's personal website describes her as a "businesswoman," but her biography mentions no actual business. Instead, Avant exults

Victor Davis Hanson’s Tuesday column “Facing Facts About Race,” published at the National Review Online website, continues to draw commentary.  I passed some brief remarks myself here at VDARE.com the day it appeared.

Since most of the subsequent commentary points out the undeniable parallels between Prof. Hanson’s NRO column and one that I published on TakiMag last April titled “The Talk, Nonblack Version”—the piece that caused National Review to drop me from their contributor lists—I thought I’d say something more substantive.

The first thing I’ll say—I see no reason to strike a pose of false modesty—is that Prof. Hanson’s piece isn’t half as good as mine.  As web opinion journalism, in fact, it isn’t very good at all. 

For example:  My piece contained 37 hyperlinks, most of them to sites supporting some statement of fact I made.  Prof. Hanson’s piece contains no links at all.  Nor did his NRO editors bother to add any.  (The weekly columns I send in to VDARE.com always contain lots of links; but the VDARE editors invariably add more, and sometimes upgrade the ones I’ve included to better, more apt ones.  That’s editing.)

And then, right there in Hanson’s paragraph 2, we get some wobbliness with the facts.

Pace the president, the Zimmerman case was not about Stand Your Ground laws.

Here’s what the President said:

I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the stand your ground laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.

Having said that, of course, the President indeed went ahead and talked about SYG anyway (apparently oblivious to the fact that these laws disproportionately favor blacks!). But he had at least conceded, albeit in passive-aggressive, self-referential Obamaese, that Florida’s SYG laws not having been used in George Zimmerman’s defense was a “fact.”  Which is not what you would gather from reading Prof. Hanson.

There followed some Hanson speculations on the President’s reasons for speaking, none of them one-tenth as penetrating—let alone as witty—as Steve Sailer’s riff on the speech. 

Then—The Talk! Prof. Hanson writes:

Attorney General Eric Holder earlier gave an address to the NAACP on the Zimmerman trial…Holder noted in lamentation that he had to repeat to his own son the lecture that his father long ago gave him. The sermon was about the dangers of police stereotyping of young black males.

That gives Prof. Hanson a segue into his version of “The Talk, Nonblack Version”—hence the comparisons with my April 2012 piece.

His “lifelong Democrat” father, says the Prof., after a mugging experience in San Francisco, advised him: “When you go to San Francisco, be careful if a group of black youths approaches you.” 

After suffering some similar experiences of his own, Prof. Hanson tells us, “I offered a similar lecture to my own son.”

He hastens to assure us that the lecture contained “constant reminders to judge a man on his merits, not on his class or race.” 

Yeah—that and $2.50 will get you a ride on the subway, pal.  My Talk had those reminders, too, as did my column:

Any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship . . . While always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals…

It does no good. You may as well not bother. I won’t, in future.

Prof. Hanson further assures us

[Peter Brimelow writes: “Stuff-Up” is British/ Australian English for “a bad mistake, or something that has been done very badly.” Diversity Is Strength! Also, Paul Gottfried’s new website is The Gottfried Report]

Jack Hunter a.k.a. The Southern Avenger bent the knee. He denounced his own career and his own beliefs, as reported by his own former editor. [Former editor of Rand Paul’s Neo-Confederate staffer talks about the Southern Avenger | Jack Hunter asked me to delete columns, By Chris Haire, Charleston City Paper, July 18, 2013] He prostrated himself before the gods of Political Correctness, he said all that our masters could have required of him, and he gave them everything they could have wanted.

In the end, it didn't matter.

He was purged anyway, forced out of the staff of Senator Rand Paul supposedly to return to the life of a political columnist. Of course, he's also retiring the persona of the “Southern Avenger,” raising the question of why anyone should read him at this point. After all, what does he have to say?

This kind of conservative self-emasculation is shameful, but it is merely the logical conclusion of what I have called “Goldbergism,” the terminal stage of conservatism, the official ideology of the Beltway Right, named after former NRO Editor Jonah Goldberg, in whose earlier career I took an appalled interest. “Goldbergism” represents the ideological acceptance of Leftist narratives on Civil Rights, feminism, homosexuality, and most importantly, immigration. At the same time, it tries to maintain the pretense of political opposition through trivial partisan cheerleading. The result is an ideology both dumb and doomed to fail. But, within the Beltway, it has won this round.

The dismal quality of Goldberg’s thought is fully evident in his recent column Rand Paul’s Big Fat Paleo Problem [New York Post, July 17, 2013], Here we are told the Kentucky senator, a much-Mentioned presidential candidate, has “hit some turbulence” because he allowed Hunter to work on his staff even though he once wore a “wrestling mask made from a Confederate flag,” uttered strong statements about states’ rights, and compared Lincoln to Hitler. Although Hunter had already proclaimed “I abhor racism” and said nice things about gay marriage and Obama last year, Goldberg views him as just the kind of rightwing kook

Although Speaker John Boehner just ludicrously refused to tell Face The Nation what he thinks about “immigration reform” a.k.a. the 2013 Amnesty/ Immigration Surge, it’s all too obvious what the House Republican leadership really wants: a sell-out. That’s why House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is holding hearings today (July 22) on his personal version of the DREAM Act—to be called the KIDS Act. (DREAM spells “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors”,  KIDS spells I-don’t-know-what at this point. But the “D” stands for “Donor.”)

If the GOP really was a GAP, rallying patriotic opposition to this nation-breaking legislation, it would be holding hearings that expose its weakness (see my suggestions below). Instead, it’s steering debate into a sob swamp—which might well result in a bill going to conference into which  S.744 could be stuffed.

Ironically, the Washington Post story on the press conference announcing this showed John Boehner and Cantor posing behind a lectern with a banner that says GOP.GOV/JOBS. [House panel plans hearing on children of immigrants, By Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post, July 17, 2013. Actually that’s “illegal children of illegal aliens,” but, hey, this is the Washington Post].

But what Boehner and Canto are talking about a plan to give American jobs and subsidized college educations to millions of foreigners—at a time when 37 million Americans are struggling to pay off student loans and over half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed.

One man understands what the bankruptcy of Detroit represents—in an op-ed, he has cut to the heart of what the Motor City symbolizes.

• It’s not Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, who lamented that “50 years of liberal policies” had doomed Detroit [Morning Bell: Jim DeMint’s First Day As Heritage President, Heritage Foundation, April 4, 2013].
• Sorry, Dr. Tim Stanley (who wrote an interesting biography on Patrick J. Buchanan), but 51 years of voting for Democrats doesn’t quite explain the fall of the Paris of the West either [Detroit bankruptcy – this is what happens if you vote Democrat for 51 years, Daily Telegraph, July 20, 2013]
• Nor is it Kevin D. Williamson of National Review— not for the first time, he fails to mention the elephant in the room when purportedly describing Detroit’s decline [Detroit Goes Down: A lesson for American cities, July 19, 2013].
• Nor Dave Hodges, host of something called The Commonsense Show, who wields what Steve Sailer has called “Occam’s Butterknife” to obfuscate Detroit’s demise [Who Killed Detroit City and Why?, CommonSense Show, July 18, 2013]. (Funny, because the motto of Hodges’ show is: Freeing America, One Enslaved Mind at a Time. And nothing, nothing, emancipates us from the dogma of racial denial than contemplating the bankruptcy of Detroit in 2013).

That one man: Black studies professor Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis [Twitter], who published Abandon Detroit, Abandon Black America back on June 2, 2010 at the now defunct black paper, the Atlanta Post. It lives on at the black website Madame Noire (and here’s the Archive.org link). It gave me the idea to write my own book Escape from Detroit: the Collapse of America’s Black Metropolis.

[VDARE.com note: Since publication of this piece, Lewis has changed his name to "R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, also known as Dumi Eyidiyiye". Don’t ask us why. ]

Right in Lewis [whatever]’s first paragraph, any confusion about the origins of Detroit’s collapse is blowtorched away:

Detroit is a microcosm of Black America. I believe if you cannot love Detroit, you cannot fully love Black people. The Detroit Metropolitan area

As long-time VDARE.COM readers know, I resided for a decade and a half in Mexico. A few years ago, I moved back to the United States. Since my wife is from Mexico, we go back at Christmas and in the summer. Of course, I can follow Mexico on the internet, but these visits allow me to get a real feel for the country.

The violence in Mexico? It’s certainly a consideration for us. Coincidentally, it was getting worse about the time we moved to the U.S. Now, when we visit, we’re more careful than we used to be. We take toll roads and try not to drive at night. On this trip, there was violence in the metropolitan area where we used to live and now visit, but we did not personally encounter it.

But that’s what Mexican violence is like. It’s not like some imagine, with the whole country a free fire zone 24/7. It’s just that, in certain regions of the country, violence might erupt and you could be in the crossfire. The odds are quite low, but woe unto those to whom it happens.

Nevertheless, life goes on in Mexico. People live their lives and go about their daily business.

My family and I had a good summer visit. We spent time with my wife’s family, we saw old friends and neighbors.

We attended services in three different churches, two Protestant and one Catholic. I was even asked to preach a sermon in one of the Protestant churches, which I did, in Spanish of course.

We visited a children’s home, where we delivered sheets and towels that my church in the U.S. had donated.

We ate in favorite restaurants and bought things that aren’t available where we live

Lilia and the boys and I went to see the new Superman movie in a Mexican movie theater.

We also took a trip within a trip, by bus, to the city and state of Aguascalientes. Besides being a tranquil city, Aguascalientes has been called “The Cleanest City in Latin America,” and it may well be.

While there, I was asked by some Mexican pro-life activists to sign a petition. I told them that though I agree with them, since I’m not a Mexican citizen I shouldn’t sign it so as not to get them in trouble. (Mexico has a total ban on foreign participation in politics.)

Also in Aguascalientes, we visited a hunting supply store which was actually licensed to sell ammunition. There’s only one legal gun shop in all of Mexico, but there are stores licensed to sell ammo, and there are hunters in the region. (People who already have guns, that is. Guns, if properly maintained, last for many, many years.) The store’s manager lightheartedly told me he’d formerly been an illegal alien in the U.S. We bought our two sons bows and arrows.

Our bus was stopped by agents of the INM, (Instituto Nacional de Migración), Mexico’s immigration bureaucracy. We were sitting right at the front, and the agent got on and asked me for my identification. Fortunately, we had brought my Mexican visitor’s permit. No problem. I wasn’t offended at all. Why should I be, if I’m there legally?

At night, we watched the Mexican news broadcast.

(But before that we watched a rather silly but entertaining telenovela La Tempestad. As usual, the main characters were white, including former Miss Universe Jimena Navarrete—in her first regular televised thespian performance, pictured below. See its website here and the other major characters here.)

The ongoing U.S. Amnesty/ Immigration Surge deliberations were

In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and Ben Jealous of the NAACP are calling on the black community to rise up in national protest.

Yet they know—and Barack Obama, whose silence speaks volumes, knows—nothing is going to happen.

"Stand-Your-Ground" laws in Florida and other states are not going to be repealed. George Zimmerman is not going to be prosecuted for a federal "hate crime" in the death of Trayvon Martin.

The result of all this ginned-up rage that has produced vandalism and violence is simply going to be an ever-deepening racial divide.

Consider the matter of crime and fear of crime.

From listening to cable channels and hearing Holder, Sharpton, Jealous and others, one would think the great threat to black children today emanates from white vigilantes and white cops.

Hence, every black father must have a "conversation" with his son, warning him not to resist or run if pulled over or hassled by a cop.

Make the wrong move, son, and you may be dead is the implication.

But is this the reality in Black America?

When Holder delivered his 2009 "nation-of-cowards"

Well, we have a verdict in the Zimmerman case, and four days after it was delivered there is little sign of the Martin Luther King/Rodney King-style “cities in flames” scenario predicted by some.

Possibly the whole prosecution and trial was a media creation to which not enough ordinary citizens signed up. Possibly improvements in policing and (especially) surveillance discourage 1960s-style urban rioting. Possibly black Americans have, like the rest of us, lost their turbulence in the warm pacifying bath of welfareism and cheap mobile gadgetry.

Whatever the reason, we should give thanks.

Now that the fuss is dying down, the National Question mavens who check in to VDARE.com may want to take a break from present obsessions with race, class, and immigration. Let me therefore take you back on a brief historical trip to a simpler time.

Let us revisit the New York City draft riots, which occurred precisely 150 years ago this week.

What were the riots all about? The Civil War draft, obviously; but also, uh…race, class, and immigration.

Once it was clear, following the 1861 campaigning season, that the Civil War would not be over in mere months, both sides contemplated conscription.

The Confederacy, with a smaller pool of military-age men (about one million to the Union’s four), and facing the expiration of the one-year enlistments that had drawn in so many volunteers after Fort Sumter, passed the first conscription law—the first in North American history—in April 1862.

(There was much grumbling about it. Wasn’t the Confederacy supposed to be championing states’ rights and personal liberty against the heartless machine civilization of the North? The law also inspired a modest spike in desertions.)

The Union, with its greater resources, did not pass a conscription law until a year later. Like the Confederate law, Lincoln’s Enrollment Act of March 1863 allowed for “substitution”—a draftee could pay another man to take his place, thereby exempting himself for the entire term of service. There was also “commutation”—the paying of a $300 flat fee to exempt oneself from a single draft call. (There were four draft calls from 1863-65.)

This opened up a class divide. A New York laborer’s annual wage at the time was $600, so that substitution and commutation were beyond the reach of working men. The catch-phrase “a rich man’s war, a poor man’s fight” became current.

There was a race divide, too. The Enrollment Act applied to “able-bodied male citizens of the United States,” which was taken to mean whites only. New York City had a big black population—around 12,500 in 1860. The working classes already saw blacks as low-wage competition, and the city had strong mercantile connections to the South. The prospect of a flood of emancipated blacks further depressing wages, and a federal blockade of the South disrupting commerce, caused New Yorkers of all classes to have very mixed feelings about the war.

There was, indeed, sentiment in 1861 for New York to leave the Union a

While the Main Stream Media celebrates the Inevitable End of the Republican Party in the Age of Obama, Southerners are quietly executing a plan that could easily work for the GOP/ Generic American Party nationwide. The Sailer Strategy is already in full swing in Alabama—and the result is one-party Republican rule. It's not surprising the Yankee press up North or from the Left Coast doesn’t like Dixie.

How complete is Republican victory in Alabama? Well, state Republicans have been joking for years that, with all the insane liberal nonsense the Alabama Democrats spew, it's high time somebody just stepped in and “cut their water off.”

The joke became a lot funnier when the Democratic Party admitted they are indeed going to have their water cut off.

The Alabama Democrats are headed by one Nancy Worley (pictured), who recently wiggled free from five felony charges. [Nancy Worley waits 5 years for trial, By Phillip Rawls, Associated Press, , August 12, 2012]

Worley stepped in to take over the shattered Democrat Party in the wake of the previous chairman who departed rather hastily (see below).

In an unintentionally amusing press statement, Worley said the water company told her to pay the Party's delinquent bill at headquarters within 24 hours, or it "would cut off her water."

Bank drafts from Party donors have been cut off and diverted to a new organization formed by the former Party chairman. The landlord for the Party's headquarters has asked them to leave due to non-payment of the rent. The Party's credit cards have been maxed out and canceled. And Democrat headquarters appears to have fallen prey to a burglar, having been efficiently stripped of property, including computers, cell phones, and paper. [The Alabama Democratic Party: "We're broke, broke, broke." by Charles J. Dean, AL.com, May 13, 2013].

The Democratic Chairman preceding Worley: Mark Kennedy, an erstwhile justice on the Alabama Supreme Court who is married to George Wallace's daughter Peggy Sue. He has been accused of stealing the resources of the Democratic Party to start his own organization. (See below again). His presence on the Dramatis personae list raises this production to near-Shakespearean status.

This looks like it's going to be one of the leading cultural events of the season—and admission is free.

But while I and my conservative cabal watch these developments with mirthful Schadenfreude, it’s just one facet of a monolithic fact—apparently not noticeable from Washington, but refreshing the whole of Alabama like a cooling, refreshing shadow.

Here are the election results in 2012—when Mitt Romney’s consultants, remember, spent $1 billion and still succeeded in losing to Barack Obama:

• Republican Governor Robert Bentley was already in office, having been elected by a wide margin in 2010.
• A majority Republican House of Representatives was elected.
• A majority Republican Senate was elected.
• A Republican was elected to every statewide office.
• Republicans occupy every seat on the Supreme Court as well as on the two lower appellate courts.
• Republicans made inroads in local elections generally across the state, save in the Black Belt—named for the soil, not the population, but the two are substantially geographically coincident.

And that is not all. In this race-hypersensitive state, potentially the most consequential thing is shown in the tables below—not the Republican vs. Democratic results, but the black vs. white results.

Note that among the Democrats in the state Senate, there are only 3 whites with 8 blacks. In the House it's 12 whites and 26 blacks. Combining the House and Senate numbers, it's 15 whites to 34 blacks. In terms of percentages, the white-to-black ratios among the Democrats in the Senate, House, and the combination of the two, are 27/73, 31/68, and 31/69, respectively.

Meanwhile on the Republican side there are no blacks either in the Senate or in the House. In other words, in both the House and the Senate, the black members constitute the majority