Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass. Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes: Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the [...]
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]
I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby [...]
Yes, I know I’m considered to be a real bug about such things, especially in alternate history fiction…. For my Swedish and Swedish-American readers in particular: Does THE EMIGRANTS / THE NEW LAND (Utvandrarna / Nybyggarna) strike you as real, as something that sounds/feels/is right in regards to the Swedish emigration to North America? (Others [...]
Languages are a hot item of discussion at our house, because – well, there’s a big language gap here. Susan’s family is a mix of Norwegian, Danish and variations on British Isles, and there’s a little bit of the ‘Fargo’ Scandinavian-American accent there. Not much, mostly in word choice and the occasional ‘ya, sure‘ delivered [...]
Harbors open their doors to the young searching foreigner Come to live in the light of the big L of liberty Plains and open skies billboards would advertise Was it anything like that when you arrived? Dream boats carried the future to the heart of America People were waiting in line for a place by [...]
Another bit of Rittenhousia, about the beginnings of paper-making in America, circa 1688 – this is from the Historical Magazine, 1857. Again, for the record.
More excerpts from the journal, this time from the day we actually adopted Meredith (the day after we got her). Again, see some pictures of the day on Flickr – the picture below is something the Jiangmen paper later got out of the files of the orphanage when the paper was running that stupid ‘Dick [...]
Hollywood Democrats shifting to Obama as a perceived winner and cutting off donations to Hillary. Major flip-flop on immigration by Romney caught; in 2006, he says ‘but you can’t just deport 12 million people’, and now, he says ‘oh, yes, you can and must.’ The Republican blooger who caught this one says: Flip, pander, flop, [...]
For British expatriates in the USA, it’s a challenge. In Mexico, you better be a legal resident. “When it comes to foreigners, we’re a little more strict here,” said Alejandro Ruíz, director of education at the Mexican Automobile Association.
Turns out that the big ol’ fence on the Mexican border is being built with Chinese-made steel. Needless to say, the nativists who are big for the fence in the first place didn’t like that.
McClatchy: But even if the immigration agency were able to double the number of expelled fugitives – as it maintains it will – from the 17,817 deported in fiscal year 2006, it would take 20 years to return the 632,189 fugitives already identified. That doesn’t take into account the thousands of others immigration judges would [...]
Cut and run – from George Bush – if you want to get re-elected. ‘Hey, aren’t you a Republican?’ ‘Who, me?’ “Sen. Barack Obama urged Kenyans to take control of their country’s destiny by opposing corruption and ethnic divisions in government during a speech Monday in Nairobi.” Heck, it’s good practice here, too. Various GOP [...]
Tenneseean: The Social Security Administration had written to IFCO at least 13 times during the past two years about problems it flagged on company payroll records. About 53% of Social Security numbers used by the 5,800 employees on the company’s payroll in 2005 were either invalid, did not match the true name for the number [...]
It appears that while the whole issue of immigration is hot, the Department of Homeland Security and other related organizations are suddenly deciding to push the idea of actually enforcing the existing laws against, say, employers of illegal immigrants. Goodie. Are they going after the guys who employ non-Hispanic illegal immigrants as well? I wonder. [...]