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updated: 2023-10-10
 

"Instead of the political idea that all individuals & groups should be treated equally under the law, multi-culturalism asserts the normative idea that all cultures are in fact equal.   No moral differences are allowed, for to suggest that one culture is better, more virtuous, & more excellent, & others are worse -- why, this would be 'undemocratic'.   To suggest that some cultures, values, beliefs, or ideals are more true, more healthy, or more humane -- this would be 'ethnocentric' & 'intolerant'." --- James Davison Hunter & Carl Bowman 1994 _Before the Shooting Begins_

 
 

2012 September

U	M	T	W	R	F	S
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2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

 

"new kind of servitude [when] after having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned him at will, the supreme [government] power then extends its arm over the whole community.   It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd.   The will of man is not shattered by softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting.   Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not [openly] tyrranize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd.   I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedoma dn that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people." --- Alexis de Tocqueville _Democracy in America_ part2 book4 chapter6 (quoted in Friedrich A. Hayek 1944, 1963 _The Road to Serfdom_ pg xvi (forward))

 
 
 

captain William Scott's flag for the Republic of Texas.

2012-09-01

2012-09-01
Scott McCabe _Washington DC Examiner_
17 illegal aliens who had committed additional crimes were arrested in MD by ICE

2012-09-01
Lindsay Reubens _Charlotte NC Observer_
advocates for illegal aliens pull into Charlotte for leftist party convention
"Jim Pendergraph, who served as Mecklenburg County Sheriff for 13 years and is now a county commissioner, was the first to bring 287(g) to the east coast in 2006.   'I think it's outrageous that they're thumbing their nose at federal and United States law by parading themselves around the country and advertising that they're illegal aliens in the country, and no one is taking action against them.', Pendergraph said.   He said he's heard that local law enforcement was told not to arrest people on the Undocubus.   'Actually, I've spoken to people from Homeland Security, and that's what people have told them, is hands off.', he said.   Since 2006 May, 20,710 inmates at Mecklenburg county jail have been identified as [illegal aliens]."

2012-09-01
_Houston TX Chronicle_
Opponents of US national security up in arms over plans to eventually fence 13 miles out of 8,607 miles of US borders
"the International Boundary and Water Commission. The U.S. arm of the IBWC, the binational agency charged with applying boundary and water treaties concerning the shared Rio Grande, says hydraulic modeling shows the three segments can be built with minimal potential for exacerbating floods.   Opponents, including environmentalists, city mayors and people who live and work along the river, fear the paced vertical posts will act as a strainer for flood debris, trapping and pooling water.   'There's a long history of modeling by DHS and by us since 2008.', Padinare Unnikrishna, the U.S. IBWC's lead hydraulic engineer...   The segments are not currently funded, said Abel Anderson, U.S. Custom and Border Protection's division director for tactical infrastructure.   Should they be, constructed contracts are in place to keep them clear of debris...   Aleida Garcia of Los Ebanos, a floodplain community where a 1.7-mile segment is proposed.   'Actually, we're wasting our time here.'...   Mexico's steadfast opposition to the blue-prints...   The three segments, planned for Roma, Rio Grande City and Los Ebanos, total [only] about 13 miles...   the areas 'have historically been subjected to significant illegal border activities'..."

2012-09-01
Mark Steyn _National Review_
Are there any words left that are not racist?
index of Mark Steyn columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-02

2012-09-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
John Albert Racer of Page county... was he a Southern Unionist?

2012-09-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
MD's "treason law" of 1862 & the "sharp tune" it played between a Southern Unionist and his Confederate son

2012-09-02
"just the facts"
Sea Ice

2012-09-02
Philip Walzer _Stripes_
sailors dumped over-board say out-placement consultant was a waste of time and money
Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot
"The Navy paid Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based placement firm, $5M to provide career coaches, job leads, resume help and other services to the affected sailors, who spent 7 to 15 years in uniform.   That's the equivalent of $1,666 per sailor.   It was a waste of money, say at least a half-dozen members of the service who worked with Challenger -- and a waste of their time.   'If I hadn't contacted them, I think I would have been farther along than I am now.'"

2012-09-02
Carri Geer Thevenot _Las Vegas NV Review-Journal_
re-entries of illegal aliens add up
"For judge Larry Hicks, illegal re-entry was the lead charge in more than 19% of the cases he handled during a recent 5-year period.   For 2 senior judges, Edward Reed ii and Lloyd George, that crime was the lead charge in more than 30% of the cases they handled.   Senior judges have the option of carrying reduced case-loads.   Chief judge Robert 'Clive' Jones specifically said he wants his sentences in illegal re-entry cases to be as low as possible, except for the worst offenders...   'Hopefully I'm giving long sentences to those with a heavy and violent criminal background.', the chief judge said.   Daniel Bogden, the U.S. attorney for Nevada, said his office always has targeted the 'worst of the worst' in illegal re-entry cases...   According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, nearly 62% of the sentences imposed by Nevada judges in fiscal 2011 fell within the guideline range.   Less than 2% went above.   The median sentence imposed in immigration cases that year was 26 months...   Weksler estimated that 60% of the illegal re-entry cases in Southern Nevada qualify for the [plea bargain] program.   Typical reductions in those cases range from 6 to 16 months, she said."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-03

2012-09-03
Anthony Watts
oops We can't blame carbon soot, either
"field study finds soot particles absorb significantly less sunlight than predicted by models"

2012-09-03
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
an ironic newspaper ad dated 1862-08-31, published 1862-09-03 in Hagerstown MD
"Now, I guess it seems more ironic because of 1) Hagerstown's proximity to Sharpsburg/Antietam... and 2) the fact that, in just 14 days, the battle there was a key element in the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.   What seems even more ironic is the fact that the EP didn't really impact Maryland...not directly.   It did, however, influence the state to act on its own in passing legislation that emancipated slaves there, in 1864.   No matter what some folks may say, yes, the EP did have an impact in the South...and in more ways than one."

2012-09-03
Anthony Watts
solar activity below predictions

2012-09-03
_abc_
biggest lay-off announcements of 2012
HP: 27K
American Airlines: 10K
PepsiCo: 8,700
Food Lion: 4,900
P&G: 3K
Buffets/Old Country Buffett/HomeTown Buffet: 3K
Albertsons: 2,500
Best Buy: 2,400

2012-09-03
Girma Orssengo
empirical model of global mean surface temperatures

2012-09-03
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
the terrifying new normal
index of Victor Davis Hanson columns at Jewish World Review

2012-09-03
Michelle Malkin _Del Mar VA now_
condensed leftist hand-book of racial code words
index of Michelle Malkin columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-04 USA election 9 weeks from today

2012-09-04
_Polling Report_
USA citizenry continue to express disapproval of pres. Obummer and congress-critters -- both Rep and Dem
Real Clear Politics: from 2012-07-09 to 2012-08-20, 79.2% disapprove, from 2012-08-09 to 2012-08-12, 83% disapprove according to Gallup

2012-09-04
Analyn Censky _CNN_
elections won't stop the Fed from wreaking additional destruction

2012-09-04
_Rasmussen_
47% of US citizen likely voters back Romney, 45% Obummer, 2% other candidates

2012-09-04
_Rasmussen_
70% in swing states say USA is not heading in the right direction
"In the 11 swing states, Mitt Romney now attracts 46% of the vote, while [pres. Obummer gets] 44%. 5% prefer some other candidate..."

2012-09-04
_Rasmussen_
52% say economy is getting worse

2012-09-04
Dan Nowicki _Arizona Republic_
Immigration law perversion in spot-light at leftist party convention
Chicago IL Sun-Times
"Democrats highlighted their commitment to a 'comprehensive illegal-immigration solution'...   Earlier in the evening, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro became the first Latino to deliver a key-note address at a Democratic National Convention.   His remarks included reflections on his family's immigrant roots and America's promise as a land of opportunity.   'Because he knows that we don't have an ounce of [non-US-citizen] talent to waste...'   The differences were further highlighted by the adoption Tuesday of the party's 2012 platform, which includes a plank backing comprehensive immigration reform while recalling the Obama administration's election-year decision to defer deportation for some potentially [NIGHTMARE] Act-eligible [illegal aliens]...   A demonstration by [confessed illegal aliens, who were blocking the road] near the convention resulted in 10 arrests."

2012-09-04
Michelle Malkin
leftist propaganda clip asserts that we all belong to the government
PJ Media

2012-09-04
Scott Uhrig
Recruiting Intensity Index
"The RII is basically a measure of companies' aggressiveness towards hiring.   Normally, the RII is 1.0 Currently, it is between 0.8 and 0.9, well below its peak of 1.1 in 2006 and well below its value during the last recession...   In other words, the low current RII indicates that employers are taking a very relaxed approach to hiring, waiting passively for candidates, screening candidates slowly, setting the bar high for experience, and offering less attractive compensation packages."

2012-09-04
_Business Wire_
Wanda group & Red China rulign criminal gangsters complete acquisition of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc.
Wan Jianlin, Wanda Group profile

2012-09-04
_Dice_
Dice Report: 84,268 job ads

2012-09-04 (5772 Elul 17)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's dreams, Americans' nightmares
Longview TX News-Journal
Anchorage AK Daily Planet
BlueGrass Bulletin
A Arte de Fuga/die Kunst der Fuge
"After reading Barack Obama's book _Dreams from My Father_, it became painfully clear that he has not been searching for the truth, because he assumed from an early age that he had already found the truth -- and now it was just a question of filling in the details and deciding how to change things.   Obama did not simply happen to encounter a lot of people on the far left fringe during his life.   As he spells out in his book, he actively sought out such people.   There is no hint of the slightest curiosity on his part about other visions of the world that might be weighed against the vision he had seized upon...   The era of the Atlantic slave trade and the era of European conquests across the continent of Africa were different eras.   During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, most of Africa was ruled by Africans, who sold some of their slaves to white men.   European conquests in Africa had to wait until Europeans found some way to survive lethal African diseases, to which they lacked resistance.   Only after medical science learned to deal with these diseases could the era of European conquests spread across sub-Saharan Africa.   But the Atlantic slave trade was over by then.   There was no reason why Barack Obama had to know this.   But there was also no reason for him to be shooting off his mouth without knowing what he was talking about...   For thousands of years, people enslaved other people of the same race as themselves, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western Hemisphere...   This fear of European 'exploitation' prevailed widely in the Third World in the middle of the 20th century.   But, by the late 20th century, the falseness of that view had been demonstrated so plainly and so often, in countries around the world, that even socialist and communist governments began opening their economies to foreign investments.   This often led to rising economic growth rates that lifted millions of people out of poverty.   Barack Obama is one of those people who are often wrong but never in doubt...   But confident ignorance is one of the most dangerous qualities in a leader of a nation.   If he has the rhetorical skills to inspire the same confidence in himself by others, then you have the ingredients for national disaster."
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-05

1791-09-05
_Westmoreland VA News_
Robert Carter iii freed about 500 slaves

2012-09-05 05:44PDT (08:44EDT) (12:44GMT) (14:44 Jerusalem)
Mike Pare _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Wolfsburg Germany-based IT bodyshopping firm Honigsberg & Duvel hiring 116 in Chattanooga TN
Chattanooga TN Times Free Press
"Honigsberg & Duvel, which now has 13 employees here, plans to invest about $600K mostly in equipment, though some could go into facilities, Miller said.   Currently, the company's Chattanooga office is at One Central Plaza on Georgia Avenue downtown.   Miller said most of the people it adds will work at the clients' locations...   Honigsberg & Duvel Corp. specializes in consulting, project management and out-sourcing [i.e. bodyshopping].   It's part of H&D International Group, a global concern of more than 1,600 employees and 22 offices."

2012-09-05
Vik Rubenfeld _PJ Media_
Zombies: how the left took control of academia, the media, foundations, and other organizations
"'many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.   The more [leftist] respondents are, the more willing they are to discriminate.'...   'the relative absence of conservative, libertarian, and neoliberal thinkers and thought from the academy is in part caused by discriminatory academic personnel practices.'...   'According to a recent (2007) Zogby poll, a majority (58%) of the public now believes that the problem of faculty political bias is a very serious one.'...   These are the very institutions that were to promote freedom of speech [and the scientific method of making hypotheses and exerimental results public for refutation]...   'Among intellectuals, the left-liberal religious faithful are often not merely pious but zealous, even fanatic.   To conservatives, they seem irrational and intellectually unserious, unable to hold their own in political argument, often unwilling even to try -- all too apt, when pressed, to slouch off in a sulk or flare up like a burnt-out light-bulb with no more watts to spare on you.'...   conservatives believe in a free exchange of views; conservatives believe in public debate.   This Alinsky-style behavior appears to be primarily in use among [leftists]."

2012-09-05
Doug Powers _Michelle Malkin_
Steve Spinner, Solyndra backer, promotes "let's move" slogan at leftist party convention

2012-09-05
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
Obummer's UnAmerican auto bail-out
index of Michelle Malkin columns at Jewish World Review
help find Marizela

2012-09-05
Jeff Jacoby _Town Hall_
media need to be honest about their biases
"Wrapping up 2 years as public editor of the New York Times, veteran journalist Arthur Brisbane last week reflected on the [leftist] slant that often pervades the news coverage of what is still the most influential brand in American newspapers.   'The hive on Eighth Avenue', he wrote, referring to the head-quarters of the New York Times Company (which owns the Boston Globe), 'is powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds -- a phenomenon, I believe, that is more easily recognized from without than from within.'   He credited the papers' editors and reporters with trying to enforce 'fairness and balance' in their presidential campaign coverage.   But by and large, what appears in the Times 'virtually bleeds' with political and cultural [leftism]... Large pluralities of the public routinely tell Gallup that the news media are too [leftist]."

2012-09-05
Neal Boortz _Town Hall_
the "risk" of being poor
"seldom have I heard a more idiotic statement from someone in a position to know better...   I mean this is so magnificently ignorant -- even stupid -- that if this woman's ignorance were radioactive Democrats could build the mother of all nuclear brain bombs.   Just one could wipe out all intelligent life on Earth.   The woman we're talking about is Melissa Harris-Perry.   Apparently she has a weekend show on MSFTNBC.   No surprise there.   At last check MSNBC had about 2,200 centrifuges at work 24/7 trying to purify stupid...   The topic had turned to welfare and income mobility.   Melissa apparently lost it when a guest on her show suggested that people move from lower to higher income brackets by taking risks.   Oh my! Now THAT yanked Melissa's chain.   She actually started screaming and thrashing about on the air like a beached barracuda."

2012-09-05
Aaron Klein _World Net Daily_ aaron@kleinonline.com
Obummer's plan to circumvent congress for de facto amnesty for illegal aliens

2012-09-05
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
"God-given potential" and Israel's capital controversial at leftist party convention
CBN
Matzav (with video)
Bearing Drift (with video)
Joe Newby: Examiner (with video)
Real Clear Politics
Fox
CBS
CBS video
World Net Daily (with video)
Wall Street Journal (with video)
World Jewish Daily (with video)
YouTube video
YouTube video
"The first amendment says that the government should help people 'make the most of their God-given potential', and the second says 'Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.'   'This is a huge embarrassment and it exposes where rank and file Ds are on support for Israel.', tweeted former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.   'A railroad just passed thru the floor of the D convention.   No way was that a 2/3rd vote.'   'Thank God, literally, that Ted Strickland repaired the damage from oversights in Dem platform.', Democratic strategist Paul Begala tweeted."

2012-09-05
J. Christian Adams _PJ Media_
Obummer's outlaw, job-killing immigration policy
"President Obama has granted effective amnesty to 1.7M illegal aliens under the age of 31.   He has done so deliberately, turning a blind eye to crimes which may have been committed by some of these illegal aliens.   And on cue, lawless open-borders advocates have launched a nationwide bus tour titled 'No Papers, No Fear' to promote Obama's policies...   If an illegal alien is younger than 31, and says that he satisfies any number of options, such as working toward a high school education, he gets to stay.   The rules don't even force the illegal aliens to actually prove in an immigration court that this is the case in some instances.   It is a word-of-mouth, get-out-of-jail-free card when they are picked up by the Border Patrol...   The policy also takes jobs from 22M unemployed Americans...   While tens of thousands seek to come to American through the legal process, only aliens who are in the United States illegally are eligible for Obama's new policy.   If an immigrant meets all of the criteria, such as coming to the United States before age 16, but was in legal status, he cannot benefit from the program.   Thus, the program rewards illegal aliens but punishes those who come to the United States legally.   It is another example of rewarding illegal immigration at the expense of legal immigration.   Once again, Obama has taken the side of the lawless at the expense of the law abiding.   Not only does the program reward lawless behavior, the program itself is lawless...   The program is so radical and lawless that career employees of DHS recently sued DHS Secretary Napolitano.   They rightfully argue that the new policy forces them to exceed their authority and violate immigration law or face insubordination charges from their superiors if they do not.   The administration claims it is simply giving its employees prosecutorial discretion.   Prosecutorial discretion is the province of prosecutors, not Border Patrol agents.   As the president of the ICE union explained, 'The administration's new policies do not provide officers new options or increased flexibility, but instead orders officers not to enforce laws.'"

2012-09-05
_Leftist party_
platform

2012-09-05 (5772 Elul 18)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
upward mobility barriers?
Town Hall
DelMarVa/Gannett
"It doesn't take a lot of money to become a taxi owner-operator and earn more than $40K a year.   One needs a car, an insurance policy and ancillary interior equipment to make a car a taxi.   In New York City, to be a taxi owner you'd have to purchase a license -- called a medallion -- that in June 2012 cost $704K.   New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission restrictions that generate such a license price outlaw taxi ownership by people who don't have access to a $704K loan.   By contrast, in Washington, DC, the annual fee for a license to own a taxi is $125.   I'll let you guess which city has more taxis per capita, cheaper fares and more black taxi ownership.   For decades, the Institute for Justice has been successfully bringing suit against egregious taxi regulations.   Last year, it filed suit, Ghaleb Ibrahim v. City of Milwaukee.   In Milwaukee, a taxi license costs $150K.   The suit will be argued before the Milwaukee county Circuit Court in 2012 December.   Taxi regulations such as those in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Boston and other cities just didn't happen.   There are vested interests who benefit from keeping outsiders out and therefore enrich both companies with large fleets and single taxi owners at the expense of would-be owners and the riding public through higher prices...   the intentions behind those laws do not change their effects.   Their effects are to prevent people with meager means and little political clout from getting a foothold on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder."
index of Walter E. Williams columns at Jewish World Review

2012-09-05 (5772 Elul 18)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
"Bait and switch" government extortions
St. Augustine FL
Redding CA Record Searchlight/Scripps
Real Clear Politics
Contra Costa CA Times
National Review
Union Leader
Town Hall
Booker Rising
"The actual tax increase plans being proposed by Obama do not start with people who have an income of a million dollars a year.   They start with people with incomes of $250K and up.   That is more than most people make, but it is far short of [$1M one mega-buck = one million dollars], and miles away from [$1G one giga-buck = one billion dollars].   How many of the people who stand to get hit with Obama's higher tax rate plan are in fact either millionaires or billionaires?   According to the Internal Revenue Service, there are more than 2.7M people who earn $250K a year or more -- and fewer than one-tenth of them earn a million dollars or more.   So more than nine-tenths of the people who would be hit with the higher taxes supposedly aimed at 'millionaires and billionaires' are neither."
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-06

2012-09-06
Terril Yue Jones _Reuters_
MSFT to hire another 1K in Red China bringing total to 5,500 there

2012-09-05 23:15PDT (2012-09-06 02:15EDT) (2012-09-06 06:15GMT) (2012-09-06 08:15 Jerusalem)
Aaron Klein _World Net Daily_
Sheldon Adelson backs republicans, George Soros the left
"The interviewer asked Klein about the electoral influence of casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to Republican candidates.   Klein immediately turned the question around and asked about billionaire Soros' considerably larger contributions to groups that influence the Democratic Party.   'I said Adelson gives only a trickle of money compared to what George Soros gives.', Klein said.   'What do you think about Soros giving money to Moveon.org and a who's who of radical progressive leftists, many of whom are very friendly with Democracy Now!?' Adelson, a self-made billionaire in Las Vegas, is worth some $25G.   He gave millions to the campaign of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.   According to a Forbes profile, Soros is worth about the same as Adelson.   Soros made his money in hedge funds and over the years has given $8.5G to 'human rights, education and public health groups'.   Responding to a question, Klein said, 'Are you saying Noam Chomsky and people like him represent the average American Jewish community?   Are you saying that people who go on solidarity visits to Hezbollah, solidarity visits to Hamas, people who say that Iran should have a nuclear capability, represent the American Jewish community?   So I'm asking how you can even ask such a question?'...   Here are just a few examples from dozens of specific [Obummer] schemes: Detailed plans to enact single-payer health-care legislation controlled by the federal government, regardless of any Supreme Court decisions regarding Obamacare;   The creation of a 21st century version of FDR's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program within the Department of Labor that would oversee a massive new bureaucracy and create millions of new federal government jobs;   Further gutting of the U.S. military in shocking ways, while using the 'savings' for a new 'green' stimulus program and the founding of a federal 'green' bank to fund so-called environmentally friendly projects;   The vastly reduced personnel resources of the U.S. armed forces will be spread even thinner by using them to combat 'global warming', fight global poverty, remedy 'injustice', bolster the United Nations and step up use of 'peace-keeping' deployments;   An expansive new amnesty program for illegal aliens linked with a reduction in the capabilities of the U.S. Border Patrol and plans to bring in untold numbers of new immigrants with the removal of caps on H-1B visas and green cards."

2012-09-06 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 307,831 in the week ending September 1, a decrease of 4,280 from the previous week.   There were 348,582 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.4% during the week ending August 25, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 3,075,994, a decrease of 39,314 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.7% and the volume was 3,436,188.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 18 was 5,467,752, a decrease of 63,076 from the previous week.   There were 7,167,416 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were NOT available in any states during the week ending August 18...   States reported 2,263,614 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending August 18, a decrease of 9,703 from the prior week.   There were 3,060,622 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2011.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14, and seasonal adjustment factors were revised.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-09-06
_UPI_
32,239 lay-offs announced in August, 352,185 year-to-date (37,670 computer workers ytd)
Bloomberg
Chicago IL Sun-Times
Fox
NASDAQ

2012-09-06
Anthony Watts
solar variation drives Mars climate variation

2012-09-06
Willie Soon & William M. Briggs
sun-spot activity effects on earth climate
Washington Times

2012-09-06
_NY Sun_
Obummer foreign policy: dump the USA's friends

2012-09-06
Janet Morrissey _NYTimes_
foreigners buying green cards not so concerned about rate of return
"Under the Citizenship and Immigration Services' [USCIS's] Immigrant Investor Program, foreigners can obtain EB-5 visas -- essentially temporary residency status -- by investing $1M, or $500K in high unemployment areas, in a commercial venture that [is expected to possibly generate] 10 jobs over 2 years.   It has proved to be a relatively cheap source of financing.   Hotel developers can raise money through the EB-5 program by offering returns of less than 4%.   In contrast, the interest rates on debt starts at 6%, with some riskier forms of financing running at 10% or higher.   Investors who take an equity stake in a hotel project aim for returns of 20%.   'Foreigners are buying visas and are much less concerned about the rate of return they earn on their investment.', said David Loeb, a senior analyst at Robert W. Baird...   So far this year, the government has issued 3,002 temporary visas through the program, up from 640 in 2008.   Most have gone to Chinese immigrants, with a number handed out to investors in Britain, India, the Netherlands and South Korea...   It was suspended from 1998 to 2003 over complaints of fraud and corruption, according to the government agency that over-sees that program.   In some cases, a foreign investor would commit money with a promissory note, then never hand over the cash.   There were also cases where middlemen would siphon off cash, leaving little for the developers.   Other times, developers took the cash but never built the project.   'There were some issues with investors trying to circumvent the capital and job-creation requirements.', said Claire Nicholson, a spokeswoman for USCIS...   Investors are now required to pay the full amount upfront and any fees to middlemen must be paid separately."

2012-09-06
Jeanette Pryor _PJ Media_
cults: the mind enslaved part 1
"Cults promote a non-human way of knowing that by-passes both the sensory evidence we gather and the individual's rational processing.   Cultic knowledge is a body of truths not acquired by experimentation and reasoning, but by virtue of the authority of initiated leaders."
part 2
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-07

2012-09-07
Patrice Hill _Washington Times_
unemployment rate slightly down, numbers not employed up
Peter Morici: CNBC
graphs

employed/ population	BLS series ID	1948 (1972) January	2012 August	historical maximum	arbitrary optimum estimate
Emp/CNIP16+:	LNU02300000	54.9%	58.5%	64.9%	64.3%
Emp/CNIP16+ men:	LNU02300001	81.6%	64.8%	86.2%	85.3%
Emp/CNIP16+ women:	LNU02300002	29.7%	52.7%	58.0%	57.4%
Emp/CNIP16+ black (1972-2012):	LNU02300006	51.4%	52.8%	61.4%	64.3%

	BLS series ID	1948 January	2012 August	historical maximum emp/pop	optimum employed estimate	currently employed
CNIP16+ men:	LNU00000001	49.821M	117.492M	86.2%	100M	76M
CNIP16+ women:	LNU00000002	52.782M	126.073M	58.0%	72M	66M
total	calculated	102.603M	243.565M	64.9%	173M	143M
total	LNU00000000	102.603M	243.566M	64.9%
					jobs deficit:	30.1M

employed/ population	BLS series ID	1948 January	2012 August
LFPR Men:	LNU01300001	85.2%	70.4%
Emp/CNIP16+ men:	LNU02300001	81.6%	64.8%
LFPR:	LNU01300000	57.2%	63.7%
Emp/CNIP16+:	LNU02300000	54.9%	58.5%

2012-09-07
Chris Isidore _CNN_
young adults drop out of the job markets
graphs

2012-09-07
Christin Erazo, Will Greenlee & Eric Pfahler _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
Digital Domain closed Port St. Lucie FL office, laid off about 280
"Less than a year after completing a $40M city-backed facility, Digital Domain Media Group laid off about 280 of its Port St. Lucie staff.   The company announced Friday plans to cut the Port St. Lucie staff down from 300 to about 20 while keeping intact its businesses in California and Vancouver along with its for-profit college in West Palm Beach.   CEO John Textor resigned at the end of the day Thursday.   'I am in profound disagreement with the decision to close our animation and visual effects studio in the wonderful community of Port St. Lucie.', Textor wrote in his resignation letter."

2012-09-07
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
across the Potomac and into Maryland

2012-09-07
George F. Will _Washington DC Post_
Obummer: the real extremist
"He is a conviction politician determined to complete the [regressive] project of emancipating government from the Founders' constraining premises, a project Woodrow Wilson embarked on 100 Novembers ago...   Wilson, the first transformative [regressive], called this the 'New Freedom'.   The old kind was the Founders' kind -- government existing to 'secure' natural rights (see the Declaration) that pre-exist government...   Crises, said Wilson, are periods of 'unusual opportunity' for gaining 'a controlling and guiding influence'.   So, he said, leaders should maintain a crisis atmosphere 'at all times'."

2012-09-07
Pat Buchanan _Town Hall_
godless political party tries to expel that which is
"But when the amendment was offered to the convention by its chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, the idea of restoring the name of God to the platform was hooted, jeered and booed by half the delegates on the floor, who 3 times howled, 'No!'   The omission of God is being called an oversight.   But the [visceral] reaction to returning God, even when Obama asked that it be done, testifies that this was no accident.   God was deleted deliberately.   This process has been under way for a decade.   In the 2004 platform, there were seven references to God.   In 2008, one.   Like the European Union, whose Christian heritage is being excised from official documents by its secularist elite, the country led by the Democratic Party of Obama is being de-Christianized.   Still, why would Democrats do something so seemingly stupid, something that will inevitably cause a backlash among believers?   Answer: Millions of Democrats are themselves offended when God is included, because for them, the God of the Old and New testaments is an impediment to the [regressive] march of mankind."

2012-09-07
Shiraz Maher _Gatestone Institute_
last synagogue in Egypt has been closed

2012-09-07
_NY Daily News_
illegal alien used ID of murdered man to work as airport security supervisor for 20 years

2012-09-07
Ania Monaco _IEEE Institute_
do lay-offs target older workers?
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-08

2012-09-08
Jeff Condon
dueling letters on Antarctic bore hole data

2012-09-08
Alan Abelson _Barron's_
weak economic reality, driven in part by government actions, runs contrary to overtly stated government aims
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-09

1513-09-09: battle of Flodden Field

2012-09-09
Jim Kouri _Examiner_
House judiciary committee to probe DHS record
"Among the abuses addressed will be an accusation that president Barack Obama's minions are 'cooking the books' in order to achieve a so-called record number of deportations of illegal aliens...   many believe the figures given to back up his assertions are fabricated.   In fact, members of the Department of Homeland Security have been critical of Obama and his DHS appointees especially those in charge of border security and immigration enforcement...   The agents also assert that the Administration's directive violates the Administrative Procedure Act, unconstitutionally usurps and encroaches upon the legislative powers of Congress, and violates the obligation of the executive branch to faithfully execute the law...   'it is illegitimate to count illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol along the Southwest border as ICE removals'...   The DHS internal documents also reveal a discrepancy between arrests and actual removals.   Specifically, ICE has reported 221,656 arrests yet report 334,249 removals for 2012 so far -- a discrepancy of nearly 112K removals.   ATEP accounts for 72,030 removals within this discrepancy, but there are over 40K removals that remain unknown."

2012-09-09
Naomi Creason _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
16 known West Nile Virus cases in PA
"As of Friday, there were 2,960 mosquito samples testing positive statewide, 107 avian mortality cases and 18 veterinary cases.   In Cumberland County, there have been 148 positive samples -- 4 avian and 143 mosquito samples...   Though Franklin County is one of the few in the area with a positive human case, it has only had 54 positive samples taken total, including the human case and 53 mosquito samples.   Perry County has the least number of positive samples.   Of the 116 mosquito samples collected, Perry County only had 8 positive samples."

2012-09-09
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
43 months and more of depressing misery

2012-09-09
Rand Simberg _PJ Media_
Obummer regime's economic narrative vs. reality (with graphs)
and more graphs

2012-09-09
Rick Moran & Mort Zuckerman _PJ Media_
behind the unemployment numbers: it's worse than you can imagine
"'We are experiencing...a modern-day depression.'"
and more graphs

2012-09-09
Thomas E. Brewton
leftist self-contradiction
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-10

2012-09-10
Kristin Deasy _Global Post_
political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi arrested for criticizing government corruption, "spontaneous demonstrations" by children carrying slick pre-printed signs erupt
Hrmph. I wonder what's really going on...jgo

2012-09-10
Willis Eschenbach
volcanic corroboration

2012-09-10
_KGO_/_AP_
HP to dump 2K more workers than previously announced: total 29K by 2014 October
Pete Carey: San Jose CA Mercury News
Paul McDougall: Information Week/UBM

2012-09-10
Nacha Cattan _Business Week_
3 Hezbollah arrested in Mexico
Yucatan Times
Lebanon Daily Star
Jerusalem Post
Gateway Pundit
Baltimore MD Jewish Life

2012-09-10 14:45:45PDT (17:45:45EDT) (21:45:45GMT) (23:45:45 Jerusalem)
Nicole Perlroth _NYTimes_/_San Jose CA Mercury News_
hackers breached BlueToad in Orlando FL to get Apple device IDs
"DeHart said his company had contacted law enforcement, as well as Apple, to alert them to the breach and had hired an outside security firm to patch its systems.   He said BlueToad had 'nowhere near' the 12M identification numbers that the hackers claimed to have stolen.   Apple's unique device identifiers -- known as UDIDs -- are 40-character strings that are tied to a particular device.   Apple started to discourage app makers from using UDIDs last year after learning that developers and advertisers could [abuse] them to track users as they moved from app to app, compiling a profile of user behavior that could be sold or [abused] for ad targeting...   DeHart said BlueToad collected UDID information to keep count of how many people used its services but reengineered its code to stop collecting identifiers after Apple discouraged their use last year.   He said the stolen file contained identifiers collected by older BlueToad mobile apps.   That file, he said, contained only 3 pieces of information: the identifier, the type of device used and the device names that owners gave their devices..."

2012-09-10
Paul Craig Roberts _Lew Rockwell_
spinning bad financial news into good as the economy slides down a hole
Daily Bell
Foreign Policy Journal
Intrepid Report
Federal Observer

2012-09-10
Anthony Watts
Government gone wild!

2012-09-10
J. Christian Adams _PJMedia_
Obummer DoJ sheisters waste your money on fonts, ObummerDoesn'tCare, attacking states which enforce federal laws, and circumventing the Constitution with which they're sworn to comply

2012-09-10
Patrick Winn _Global Post_
Levi Strauss & Company price 501 jeans made in the USA at $178
"a single line of jeans produced at a factory called 'White Oak' in Greensboro, NC.   The mill is staffed by old hands who've narrowly survived the American garment manufacturing industry's collapse...   $300 to $400 fashionistas pay for celebrity-endorsed luxury jeans hand-crafted in Los Angeles...   A pair of Gusset Jeans, made in Georgia, will cost you $55.95.   A pair of Texas Jeans, made in North Carolina, goes for $29.99...   Texas Jeans even produces a 'conceal and carry' line stitched to accomodate hidden pistols.   These brands are hardly hip but they are American through and through: even the buttons and denim are sourced stateside.   The same can't be said for the 'Made in the USA' Levi's, which are 'meticuously crafted' in America -- out of 'imported fabric'."

2012-09-10
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the alarm went out in Clear Spring MD 150 years ago today: prelude to Antietam

2012-09-20
Steve Rossie _Family Foundation_
Voices without a Vote
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-11 USA election 8 weeks from today

2012-09-11
David Stockman _Lew Rockwell_
the lunatics at the Fed

2012-09-11
Jim Rogers _Lew Rockwell_
we will have an even worse recession in 2013-2014, Fed is already cranking up the virtual currency printing presses

2012-09-11
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
record sugar beet crop harvest begins

2012-09-11
Anthony Watts
micro-organisms gobbled up Deepwater Horizon spill

2012-09-11
Anthony Watts
NC State U researchers devise more accurate method for predicting
"Conventional models used to predict seasonal hurricane activity rely on classical statistical methods using historical data.   Hurricane predictions are challenging, in part, because there are an enormous number of variables in play -- such as temperature and humidity -- which need to be entered for different places and different times.   This means there are hundreds of thousands of factors to be considered.   The trick is in determining which variables at which times in which places are most significant.   This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that we only have approximately 60 years of historical data to plug into the models.   But now researchers have developed a 'network motif-based model' that evaluates historical data for all of the variables in all of the places at all of the times in order to identify those combinations of factors that are most predictive of seasonal hurricane activity...   Using cross validation -- plugging in partial historical data and comparing the new method's results to subsequent historical events -- the researchers found the new method has an 80% accuracy rate of predicting the level of hurricane activity.   This compares to a 65% accuracy rate for traditional predictive methods.   In addition, using the network model, researchers have not only confirmed previously identified predictive groups of factors, but identified a number of new predictive groups."

2012-09-11 (5772 Elul 24)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
THIS is an economic plan!?: contrary to what really worked in the past
St. Augustine FL
Lew Rockwell
Contra Costa CA Times
San Angelo TX
Redding
Los Angeles CA Daily News
index of Thomas Sowell columns

2012-09-11
Anthony Watts
Oxygen isotope-based temperature reconstruction using tree core samples

2012-09-11
Kim Noe _PR Web_/_Vocus_
Populus Group execs to speak at Contingent Work-Force Risk Forum
"2012 Contingent Workforce Risk Forum sponsored by Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) on September 18 -19 in San Diego, CA...   The SIA Risk Forum is a fantastic event to gain access to the latest educational and up to date information regarding all aspects of risk mitigation, [bodyshop] management, and independent contractor compliance...   risks and compliance issues that accompany [bodyshopping]..."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-12

2012-09-12
Anthony Watts
ORNL roof design with more, ventilated layers, saves energy

2012-09-12
Anthony Watts
Vienna U of Tech finds that rain-fall is more likely over drier soil
"The scientists examined imagery from weather satellites which track the development of storm clouds across the globe.   When they matched up where new storms appeared alongside images of how wet the ground was, they were somewhat surprised.   Dr. Chris Taylor from NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology said, 'We had been looking at storms in Africa and knew that rain clouds there tended to brew up in places where it hadn't rained in the previous few days.   We were surprised to see a similar pattern occurring in other regions of the world such as the USA and continental Europe.   In those less extreme climates, with more vegetation cover, we expected the soil wetness effect would be too weak to identify.'"

2012-09-12
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Washington DC Times_
What if the November election changes nothing?

2012-09-12
Lance Wallace
errors in estimating average earth temperature part 2

2012-09-12
Phyllis Schlafly _Eagle Forum_
Democrats have no plan to create jobs
"The National Employment Law Project reports that occupations in construction, manufacturing and information, with median hourly wages of $13.84 to $21.13, accounted for 60% of job losses and only 22% of job growth.   Meanwhile, 58% of the job growth Obama bragged about was lower-paying jobs with hourly wages of $7.69 to $13.83."

2012-09-12 (5772 Elul 25)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Who may tax and spend?
Town Hall
Cybercast News Service
Biloxi MS Sun Herald
Amarillo TX Globe-News
World Net Daily
"Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, generally known as the 'origination clause', reads: 'All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.'   Constitutionally and by precedent, the House of Representatives has the exclusive prerogative to originate bills to appropriate money, as well as to raise revenues.   The president is constitutionally permitted to propose tax and spending measures or veto them.   Congress has the authority to ignore the president's proposals and override his vetoes.   There is little intellectually challenging about the fact that the Constitution gave Congress ultimate taxing and spending authority.   My question is this: How can academics, politicians, news media people and ordinary citizens continually make and get away with statements such as 'Reagan's budget deficits', 'Clinton's budget surplus', 'Bush's tax cuts' and 'Obama's spending binge'?   I know that the nation's law schools teach little about Framer intent, but I wonder whether they tell students that it's the executive branch of government that holds taxing and spending authority.   Maybe it's simply incurable ignorance, willful deception, sloppy thinking or just plain stupidity...   a president cannot spend one dime that Congress does not first appropriate...   The fact of the matter is that Washington has been on a spending binge no matter who has occupied the White House.   In 1970, federal spending was $926G.   Today it's $3.8T.   In inflation-adjusted dollars that's about a 300% increase.   Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire.   Of course, if you're a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want...   The California Navel Orange Commission is a government-sanctioned grower collusion that establishes production quotas so as to restrict supply in order to keep orange prices high.   In 1980, the Federal Trade Commission was going to study such agriculture collusions, euphemistically called marketing orders, as a result of increasing criticism from economists, reformers in federal agencies, consumer groups and some orange growers.   Big growers descended on Congress to protest the threat to their collusive behavior that an FTC study might create.   Congress, as a part of its FTC appropriation, prohibited the agency from monitoring marketing orders.   In November 1983, Congress started using a legislative rider to prohibit the Office of Management and Budget from spending any money to review marketing orders...   Congress has ultimate spending power and that when it suits favored interest groups, it will use it.   Most members of our Republican-controlled House of Representatives say they're against Obamacare.   If they really were, they surely would attach a legislative rider or some other legislative device to the Department of Health and Human Services' appropriation bill to ban spending any money on Obamacare; they have the power to.   But they don't have the political courage to do so..."
index of columns by Walter E. Williams

2012-09-12 (5772 Elul 25)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obummer leftists are depending on dependency
News Max
Real Clear Politics
Town Hall
"When an empirical study of the actual behavior of American conservatives and [leftists] was published in 2006, it turned out that conservatives donated a larger amount of money, and a higher percentage of their incomes (which were slightly lower than [leftist] incomes) to philanthropic activities.   Conservatives also donated more of their time to philanthropic activities and donated far more blood than [leftists]...   Ronald Reagan donated a higher percentage of his income to charitable activities than did either Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ted Kennedy.   Being willing to donate the [tax-victims'] money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.   Milton Friedman pointed out that the heyday of free market capitalism in the 19th century was a period of an unprecedented rise in philanthropic activity.   Going even further back in time, in the 18th century Adam Smith, the patron saint of free market economics, was discovered from records examined after his death to have privately made large charitable donations, far beyond what might have been expected from someone of his income level.   Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life."
index to columns by Thomas Sowell
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-13

2012-09-13 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 297,402 in the week ending September 8, a decrease of 12,058 from the previous week.   There were 328,868 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending September 1, a decrease of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,912,245, a decrease of 173,235 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.6% and the volume was 3,293,105.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 25 was 5,391,576, a decrease of 78,465 from the previous week.   There were 7,143,572 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were NOT available in any states during the week ending August 25...   States reported 2,223,071 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending August 25, a decrease of 40,543 from the prior week.   There were 3,066,671 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2011.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14, and seasonal adjustment factors were revised.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-09-13
Danielle Douglas _Washington DC Post_
Americans opting to stay away from overly expensive, privacy violating banks
"Released Wednesday, the study (pdf) found that 821K households opted out of the banking system from 2009 to 2011 and that the so-called unbanked population grew to 8.2% of U.S. households.   That means that roughly 17M adults are without a checking or savings account.   Another 51M adults have a bank account, but use [more expensive but also more convenient] pawn-shops, pay-day lenders or rent-to-own services, the FDIC said.   This 'under-banked' population has grown from 18.2% to 20.1% of households nationwide...   28.3%, either had 1 or no bank account.   A third of these households said they do not have enough money to open and fund an account...   'Banks need to have pricing and practices that consumers can trust and allow them to build wealth and have economic mobility.', said Deborah Goldstein, chief operating officer at the Center for Responsible Lending...   Ness Feddis, VP and general counsel at the American Bankers Association...estimated that it costs banks up to $300 a year to maintain a checking account because of expenses such as processing transactions [which runs about 12 cents per card transaction and over $2 per teller transaction].   [Pass-book savings accounts were eliminated in the 1980s.]"

2012-09-13
Jeff Masters, Christopher C. Burt & John L. Daly
why siting (and instrumentation) matters: El Azizia, Libya; Cloncurry, Queensland, Australia; and Death Valley, KaliFornia

2012-09-13
Richard Lardner _Contra Costa CA Times_/_AP_
MSFT found malware on their brand-new computers
"Now, they say malicious software and computer code could be lurking on computers before the bubble wrap even comes off.   The shopper in this case was part of a team of MSFT researchers in [Red China] investigating the sale of counterfeit software.   They received a sudden introduction to malware called Nitol.   The incident was revealed in court documents unsealed Thursday in a federal court in Virginia.   The records describe a new front in a legal campaign against cybercrime being waged by the maker of the Windows [poor excuse for an] operating system, which is the biggest target for viruses.   The documents are part of a computer fraud law-suit filed by MSFT against a web domain registered to a Chinese businessman named Peng Yong...   The laptop was made by Hedy, a computer manufacturer in Guangzhou...   Bitcomm... 3322.org"

2012-09-13
Anthony Watts
UN IPCC ignores authors' corrections to factual errors in AR4

2012-09-13
Ilya G. Usoskin
solar activity reached a grand maximum in late 20th century

2012-09-13
Abby Ohlheiser _National Notary Association_
Pew says Asian legal and illegal aliens surpass Hispanics as employers demand more cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics
"In 2010, approximately 430K people or 36% of all immigrants arrived from Asia compared with 31% (about 370K) from Hispanic countries.   That includes legal and [illegal] immigrants.   Three years previously, 540K people came from Latin nations and 390K from Asia.   Asians also now hold the majority of the H-1B skilled worker visas allotted annually by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).   Of the 129,134 H-1B visas granted in 2011, India led the pack with 72,438 (56%), with [Red China] in a distant second place with 10,849, or 8%.   The UK, South Korea, and Mexico round out the top 5."

2012-09-13
Suzanne McGee _Fiscal Times_
Fed launches yet another round of inflation

2012-09-13
Thomas E. Brewton
Fed's inflation as unlikely to revive US economy as the last 6 times it was tried

2012-09-13 (5772 Elul 26)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
the brass standard
Daily World
"Politics takes a lot of brass...   That is world class brass.   Bill Clinton's own administration, more than any other, promoted an unsustainable housing boom, which eventually and inevitably led to a housing bust that brought down the whole American economy...   mortgage loans were made to people who did not meet the long-established qualification standards for getting a mortgage loan.   And why did that happen? Because the Clinton administration threatened law-suits against lenders who did not approve mortgage loans to minority applicants as often as to white applicants.   IOW, racial quotas replaced credit qualifications."
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-14

1814-09-14: Francis Scott Key wrote "The Defence of Fort McHenry" to be sung to "To Anacreon in Heaven"

2012-09-14 03:00PDT (06:00EDT) (10:00GMT) (12:00 Jerusalem)
Patrick Thibodeau e-mail _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Republicans ready STEM jobs destruction act
National Journal
House Judiciary Committee: Smith releases draft of STEM jobs destruction act
draft bill (pdf)
"make green cards available to as many as 55K foreign nationals who have earned advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering or math -- the so-called STEM fields.   Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), who, as head of the House Judiciary Committee, is the lead law-maker on immigration matters, is preparing to introduce legislation as early as Friday to create [yet another] STEM visa...   Those who took courses on-line also qualify, but they must be physically present in the U.S.A.   Employers must petition for the visas on behalf of job candidates.   A U.S. employer that wants to hire a foreign national and secure a green card for that individual must go through a labor certification process, similar to what is now used in employment-based green cards, [which immigration lawyers call a charade, to pretend] that there are no 'qualified' U.S. citizens who are available for the job...   action on any high-tech-related immigration issue is inevitably entangled in the broader debate over immigration reform...   On Thursday, one lobbying group released a letter signed by the heads of 165 U.S. universities, including Stanford and MIT, in support of [yet another] STEM bill [to worsen the already hideous flood of cheap, young, pliant foreign labor with questionable ethics]...   Next week's vote gives Republicans the chance to support a 'fairly non-controversial' piece of immigration legislation on an issue where Democrats have tried to claim the high ground...   traditionally Democratic leaning tech industry has begun more aggressively building relationships with top Republicans and holding Silicon Valley fundraisers for them.   The K Streeters attending this morning's meeting include: Bloomberg's [corrupt] Carl Thorsen, BSA's [Bidness Software Association's corrupt] Katherine McGuire, Cisco's [corrupt] Paul Redifer, CEA's [Competitive Enterprise Association's corrupt] Veronica O'Connell, Engine Advocacy's [corrupt] Ryan Triplette, FB's [corrupt] Joel Kaplan, ITIC's [Information Technology Industry Council's corrupt] Andy Halataei, Lugar Hellman Group's [corrupt] Ralph Hellmann, MSFT's [corrupt] Fred Humphries, NAM's [National Association of Manufacturers's, corrupt] Joe Trauger, Oracle's [corrupt] Jason Mahler, Qualcomm's [corrupt] Alice Tornquist, SIA's [Semiconductor Industry Association's corrupt] Patrick Wilson, Texas Instruments' [corrupt] Paula Collins, U.S. Chamber's [corrupt] Ron Eidshaug and Jeff Lungren, Yahoo!'s [corrupt] Margaret Nagle."

2012-09-14
_WCTV_/_Gray Television_
Florida university board of governors discussed performance-based funding, student debt, FAMU appointments, STEM grads
"The Board heard an update on System enrollment, which has grown steadily over the past few years, now up to about 335K students.   The number of students in STEM degrees grew as well, by 25% over the last 5 years -- out-pacing non-STEM degrees."

2012-09-14
Michael Kan _PCWorld_/_IDG_
Red China's Huawei and ZTE grilled by US House intelligence committee over spying

2012-09-14
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_/_Fox_
UMich consumer sentiment up from 74.3 in late August to 79.2 in early September
NASDAQ
NBC
MarketWatch
St. Louis Fed

2012-09-14
Ann Saphir _NBC_/_Reuters_
Fed's insane inflation push could be as big as Obummer stimulus 1... and equally ineffective at improving economy

2012-09-14
Thomas E. Brewton
a century of leftist indoctrination

2012-09-14
Mark Steyn _Investor's Business Daily_
Obummer's ham-fisted response to attacks on the USA

2012-09-14
Caroline B. Glick
multi-national observers attacked in Sinai

2012-09-14
Alex Kowalski _Bloomberg_
UMich consumer sentiment rose from 74.3 in late August to 79.2 in early September

2012-09-14 (5772 Elul 27)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
God and Jerusalem
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-15

2012-09-15
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Catching up: day 3 of the Harpers Ferry - Antietam sesquicentennial week-end

2012-09-15
_Mountain View CA Patch_
National Merit Semi-Finalists

2012-09-15
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Hurrah for Thomas Walter!: a sesquicentennial reflection

2012-09-15
David Archibald
F10.7 flux, sea level and the holocene

2012-09-15
Caroline B. Glick
Michele Bachmann
"As long as the US has leaders like Bachmann, I continue to have faith that America's best years are still ahead of it.   She does America proud.   May she go from strength to strength."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-16

2012-09-16
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
"It is a good time of the day": Antietam

2012-09-16
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
the truth about the latest wave of anti-American demonstrations

2012-09-16
Jennifer Martinez _Hill_
Dems, Reps disagree over best way to render the most US citizen STEM workers unemployed

2012-09-16
Joseph Curl _Washington DC Times_
Protecting and defending president Obummer through his failures and blunders and gaffes is a full-time job for America's media -- and they're worried Americans are seeing through them
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-17: US Constitution Day: Rash HaShana

2012-09-16 19:19PDT (2012-09-16 22:19EDT) (2012-09-17 02:19GMT) (2012-09-17 04:19 Jerusalem)
Keith Perine & Michelle Quinn _Politico_
Reps & Dems work to displace even more US citizen STEM workers
David Grant: Christian Science Monitor
"'Representative' Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who has talked to Smith about the issue, said he supports boosting STEM visas without reducing visas elsewhere [which would be even more devastating to US job markets]."

2012-09-17
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
between 600 & 1K turn out for sesquicentennial live at Antietam

2012-09-17
_Global Security_
Japanese and Chinese turn out in protests over ownership of Senkaku/Diaoyutai islands between Taiwan & Okinawa
Hilary Whiteman: CNN
Kevin Vogt: CNN: Panasonic closes plants
LATimes
Louise Watt: Beaumont TX Enterprise/AP (gallery)
Epoch Times
NYTimes/Reuters
Christian Science Monitor
Nan Rymer: Rant Gaming: Nintendo parts maker Qindao Mitsumi vandalized

2012-09-17
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
Obummer's Middle East delusions
"Since the 9/11 anniversary attacks, the Obama administration has seemed bewildered, petulant, and more or less shocked in Casablanca-style fashion about the hatred shown the United States -- whether overt among the Arab Street, or implicit among Arab governments' wink-and-nod inability to protect U.S. embassies...   The Sources of Islamic Anger.   Remember the source of premodern Islamic anger.   Why did the Zawahiri brothers, or the late bin Laden, or the Islamist of the week hate the West, and in particular the United States?   It surely is not, as their apologists plead, because of our 'foreign policy'.   We are enlightened compared to what Putin did in Chechnya or how Chinese treated their Muslim minorities.   You, readers, know the American record better than do I: we graciously accepted Muslim refugees, even ingrates like Mohamed Morsi or the 9/11 mass murderers.   We fed Somalis; helped to remove Gaddafi; freed Kuwaitis; liberated Afghans (twice); birthed Iraqi democracy; bombed Christians to save Muslim Kosovars and Bosnians; fund Jordanians, Egyptians, and Palestinians; and so on.   Instead, the wrath of the Muslim Street is elemental and existential (read The Al Qaeda Reader to fathom all the twenty or so excuses given by bin Laden for his hatred of the U.S.A.).   It can be explained in terms something like this: Islamists have convinced the Arab masses that their present mess (so easily fathomed in a globalized world in second-by-second, instantaneous comparisons with other cultures — via cell phones, the Internet, DVDs, and cable television) is not their own fault.   Discussions of the pernicious effects of endemic tribalism, misogyny, statism, anti-Semitism, fundamentalism, religious intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-modernism are taboo.   So there is never serious reflection about self-induced pathologies that keep fostering a Saddam Hussein, Muslim Brotherhood, and Ba'ath Party, or the preconditions that throughout much of the 20th century made the Arab world so susceptible to Hitlerism, then Soviet communism, then Baathism, then Western authoritarianism, then authoritarianism, and, then, or rather always back to, Islamic radicalism.   The Middle East is not fascist, communist, Baathist, pan-Arabist, or Islamist, so much as it is screwed-up-ist and blame-them-ist."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2012-09-17
Paul Driessen
Our sanity and wallets need a break from environmental hysteria

2012-09-17
Erica Ritz _Blaze_
State Dept. considering releasing terrorist leader to Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt: DoJ denies
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2012-09-17
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
Hezbollah terrorists orchestrate anti-USA protests in Lebanon

2012-09-17
_FAIR US_
House to fast-track STEM jobs destruction act

2012-09-17
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Chuck Schumer to introduce his own bill to keep/make more US citizen STEM workers unemployed

2012-09-17
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
What happened in Egypt and Libya

2012-09-17
Charles C. Johnson _PJ Media_
Barack Obummer's Marxist professors
"Obama, in _Dreams_, writes that at Occidental he chose his 'friends carefully.   The politically active black students.   The foreign students.   The Chicanos.   The Marxist professors.' (p. 100)...   There was Alan Egan, who taught Obama foreign policy with Larry T. Caldwell.   Egan was an Argentinian-born Marxist who attacked 'Friedmanite' economic policy. (Anthony Russo, 'Egan Gives a Native's View of Argentine Politics' _The Occidental_)..."

2012-09-17
Andrew Klavan _PJ Media_
Shame

2012-09-17
Angela Chen _Chronicle of Higher Education_
3-D printers spread from engineering departments to designs across disciplines
"Working with students at Cornell's Creative Machines Lab, [Hod Lipson] created the [Fab@Home] project's first home-made [3-D printer or prototyper or additive manufacturing device] in 2006, and has since helped produce 3 more versions of it."

2012-09-17
James R. Edwards ii _Center for Immigration Studies_
Islamic terrorist captured in Chicago
"Another 'Islamist' terrorist has been captured in a sting operation by the FBI.   Adel Daoud is an American citizen who lives in Chicago.   His immigration link is parents who came here from Egypt.   The 18-year-old blipped on the FBI's radar because this Middle Eastern descendent spouted jihadist bile on 'Islamist' Internet sites...   Under-cover FBI agents acted as terrorists who could supply explosives.   Daoud identified a list of possible targets in Chicago.   On Friday, he drove what he thought was a bomb-packed vehicle to outside a downtown bar, then tried to set off the explosives.   Daoud certainly hated the new homeland his parents chose.   He intended to murder innocent Americans -- just as other immigrant-related Islamic extremists in New York, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere have sought to do or have actually done over the past decade."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-18 USA election 7 weeks from today

2012-09-18
Robert Knight _Town Hall_
How Obummer is trashing the US constitution

2012-09-18
_BLS_
Employee retention
"The median number of years that wage and salary workers had been with their current employer was 4.6 in 2012 January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.   This measure, referred to as employee tenure, was higher than the median tenure (4.4 years) in 2010 January...   In 2012 January, median employee tenure (the point at which half of all workers had more tenure and half had less tenure) for men was 4.7 years, little changed from 2010 January.   For women, median tenure in 2012 January was 4.6 years, up from 4.2 years in 2010 January.   Among men, [only] 30% of wage and salary workers had 10 years or more of tenure with their current employer; among women, the figure was 28%...   For the Information industry (which includes software publishing) the median retention time was 3.3 years in 2002 January, 4.3 years in 2004 January, 4.8 years in 2006 January, 4.7 in 2008 January, 5.0 in 2010 January, 5.4 in 2012 January.   In manufacturing the median was 5.4 in 2002 January, 5.8 years in 2004 January, 5.5 years in 2006 January, 5.9 years in 2008 January, 6.1 years in 2010 January, 6.0 years in 2012 January...   In computer and mathematical occupations the median was 3.2 years in 2002 January, 4.8 years in 2004 January, 4.8 years in 2006 January, 4.5 years in 2008 January, 4.8 years in 2010 January, and 4.8 years in 2012 January.   In architecture and engineering occupations the median was 5.2 years in 2002 January, 5.8 years in 2004 January, 6.5 years in 2006 January, 6.4 years in 2008 January, 5.7 years in 2010 January, 7.0 years in 2012 January.   In biology, physical sciences and social 'science' occupations the median was 4.3 years in 2002 January, 4.2 years in 2004 January, 4.7 years in 2006 January, 4.0 years in 2008 January, 4.6 years in 2010 January, 5.3 years in 2012 January."
by general industries
by general occupational categories
In 1977 January the median duration of unemployment was 8.3 weeks, in 2002 January it was 8.8 weeks, in 2004 January it was 11.4 weeks, in 2006 January it was 8.7 weeks, in 2008 January it was 9.1 weeks, in 2010 January it was 20.6 weeks, in 2012 January it was 21.6 weeks, and in 2012 August it was 20.4 weeks.

2012-09-18
Samantha Bomkamp _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_AP_
FedEx says world-wide economy is stalling

2012-09-18
Anthony Watts
NOAA is in full damage control mode
more
quote of the week

2012-09-18
Thomas E. Brewton
making-nice with initiators of force is not a viable foreign policy

2012-09-18
Mike Cassidy _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Altierre moving 100 manufacturing jobs back to Sili Valley from Red China: automation is key

2012-09-18
J. Christian Adams _PJMedia_
DoJ attempting to attack media which report on DoJ scandals & corruption
Katie Pavlich: Town Hall: Confirmed
"Today's revelation by Matt Boyle that the Justice Department is coordinating attacks on private citizens (including me) and coordinating with Media Matters on a wider scale than I first reported some months ago here at PJMedia provokes the question -- why?...   to note peculiar characteristics common to political thuggery, regardless of the degree or nationality of the thuggery...   Some time has passed since Matt Boyle broke the story today about the close coordination between Tracy Schmaler, head of the Office of Public Affairs (OPA), and Media Matters.   Megyn Kelly's Fox report notes that Schmaler writes 'great piece' after attacking former Justice Department Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates."

2012-09-18
Stephen Green _PJ Media_
the unnamable
"This one time, Mitt Romney decided to make this election about the most important issues facing this nation: Restraining government, reforming entitlements, and getting the economy producing jobs again.   There is -- ahem -- some overlap among the three.   Romney pivoted from anti-Obama to pro-growth in one decisive stroke: He named Paul Ryan as his Veep.   And then he sort of forgot about all that stuff, it seemed.   But... The WSJ then goes on to break down the data: 26.4% of U.S. households had someone enrolled in Medicaid (the [unconstitutional] health-care program for low-income Americans); 16.2% of households had at least one member receiving [unconstitutional Socialist Insecurity payments]; 15.8% lived in a household receiving [unconstitutional] food stamps; 14.9% had a member with [unconstitutional] Medicare benefits; 4.5% of households received assistance with their rent; 1.7% had a member receiving unemployment benefits...   We now live under a system where almost $3T get hoovered out of the economy, sent to Washington DC, and then (mostly) sent back to individual Americans in the form of some kind of benefit.   People, especially people in power, enjoy this process so much that they magically conjure up out of thin air another $2T, which is then (mostly) sent back to individual Americans in the form of some kind of benefit, too."

2012-09-18
Maya M. Noronha _PJ Media_
Yes, Viviette, poor people can get IDs to use for voting, and, besides, they can cast a provisional ballot even without an ID
Paula Bolyar: How weak laws and regulations allow voter fraud in OHio

2012-09-18
Kelly McBride _Poynter Institute St. Petersburg FL_
patch-writing and plagiarism
"Rebecca Moore Howard... concluded that 17% of writing in the average college term paper [today] is patch-writing...   journalists [abuse] patch-writing as well"

2012-09-18
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
USCIS expected to waive $198M in visa fees in FY2012
"In 2009, when the Obama administration arrived, the losses in USCIS fees due to approved fee waivers were at...$27M a year, then it went to $87M in FY2011, and currently it is projected to soar to $198M a year.   The agency is 95% funded by fees..."

2012-09-18
Thomas Sowell _Creators Syndicate_
Republican candidates can talk
Opelika-Auburn News
Town Hall
Redding CA
New American
Anchorage AK Daily Planet
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-19

2012-09-19
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
[disastrous] impending STEM immigration bills
 
[Linked] is an article on a new Republican STEM immigration bill, and a Democratic alternative.   There is also an article in Computerworld.
 
The 2 bills are the latest variants in the "fast-track green card bill" family.   The idea is to give priority to certain STEM foreign students in green card processing.   But as they say, the devil is in the details.
 
Before getting into those details on the Republican bill (I don't have the text of the Democratic one), I wish to emphasize something you won't read in the press about these bills, but which will be very relevant in my discussion of the bill below: The tech employers actually don't want fast-track green cards.   As I've discussed before, e.g. in my University of Michigan law journal article (pdf), and recently in recent columns on the Bright Future Jobs press releases employers LIKE the de facto indentured servitude of their green card sponsorees, because it prevents the foreign workers from jumping ship to another company in the midst of an urgent project.
 
This stranglehold the employer has on the foreign worker is of enormous importance.   I elaborate on that in the above web pages, but here is one of the quotes from the first one, where immigration lawyer David Swaim states:
 
"...the employee is almost always interested in getting the green card and needs a sponsoring employer to do so.   This typically is also an advantage to the employer since in addition to getting a desired skill set, the green card process takes so long that it plays a major role in employee retention...
 
Wouldn't it be nice to recruit and retain talented, dedicated recent graduates who have a vested interest in their continued employment by your company?   This is the reality of the employment based immigration system.   Many companies have utilized this fact for years to secure a stable and highly motivated work force...
 
...[green card sponsorship] forces the recent graduate to commit to a company for at least 5 years in order to complete the green card process...   By far the most important advantage of this process is the fact that the employee is tied to a particular position with one company and must remain with the company in most cases for more than 4 years..."
 
Swaim, who says that he "developed many of the most innovative techniques for H-1 and labor certification cases and created the immigration procedures at dozens of companies such as Texas Instruments, i2 Technologies, Microtune and PDX".
 
IOW, Swaim is admitting that TI etc. abuse the green card process to get workers who are trapped in their employ.   It must be strongly emphasized that this is not only unethical (though fully legal), IT ADVERSELY IMPACTS AMERICAN WORKERS.   When a foreign worker and a similarly-qualified U.S. citizen or permanent resident apply for the same job, the foreign worker will likely be the one who is hired.
 
With that in mind, let's look at the bill.   First and foremost, the bill states the special visa categories it creates (EB-6 for PhDs, EB-7 for MS holders) apply to foreign workers who "agree to work for a total of not less than 5 years in the aggregate for the petitioning employer or in the United States".   The 5-year figure echoes that used by immigration lawyer Swaim above, and clearly the "stranglehold" goal is the same.
 
Granted, the phrasing allows for an alternative, of merely working "in the United States" for 5 years.   But knowing how the legislative process generally works, and having seen managers in industry say privately how much they depend on the green card stranglehold on foreign workers, I would surmise that the industry wanted only the phrase specifying 5 years' work for the employer, and the "or in the U.S." part was added as a compromise.
 
My point here is to show the employers' motivation, which is that they hire foreign workers not because "Johnny can't do math" but because "Johnny won't stay".   Nevertheless, that "in the U.S." clause does let the foreign workers off the hook (and the entire provision is probably unenforceable anyway), so the real question is, How long would the employer stranglehold last for workers in the proposed new visa category?
 
The bill guarantees the worker a 60-day turnaround after labor certification.   The latter typically takes something like 2 years once the employer files the application for labor cert.   The employer, of course decides how long to wait before filing that application.   It used to be that an employer would typically start that process soon after hire, but my anecdotal information is that these days employers tend to wait a couple of years after hire before starting the process.
 
One provision that might help a little is that the bill would allow the foreign worker to change employers after the labor cert application is filed.   Of course, this is rather risky for the worker, because if there turns out to be something wrong with the documentation in the application, the filing employer wouldn't have much incentive to fix it.
 
All in all, the employer could easily hold on to the worker for, say, 4 years -- definitely not fast track, and thus definitely good from the employer point of view.   True, some workers currently wait for 6 years or considerably longer, but these are mainly people with only bachelor's degrees, and in any case, 4 years will look pretty good to employers.
 
The next interesting questions are (a) how many people would take advantage of this bill? and (b) how would the PhD/MS mix break down?
 
Question (a) is easy to answer, as the quotas for the new visas collectively would come from the 55K currently used for the Diversity Visa (read "the Ted Kennedy Irish visa").   Question (b) is the more interesting one.
 
It has been assumed that any of these fast-track green card proposals would produce its own demand, and I'm sure that this would be true for this bill.   As mentioned above, the reality of the bill is not as rosy for the worker as it might appear, but appearances count; many foreign students will get the impression that this is really a good deal, and will be motivated to come to U.S. for study if they had not already planned to do so.   So, EB-6 may actually fill its quota or come close to it, leaving EB-7 with very little.
 
If the bill does create its own demand, the biggest beneficiary would be the universities, who could afford to pay even lower grad student stipends, and in fact, could get away with paying no stipend at all to many of the students they admit.   That would erode overall student quality, of course, but for the lab-oriented STEM fields, what the universities often want is nothing more than someone to staff the labs.
 
A concomitant effect would be further erosion in PhD salaries.   As I've often pointed out, pursuing a PhD is a bad financial decision for domestic students, as the salaries are not high enough to compensate for the loss in income during the 5+ years of graduate study.   IOW, if the industry really wants more domestic students to earn PhDs (they don't, but they say they do), then this bill would be counter-productive.
 
The bill does take one positive step, which is to require that employers using the new visas post the jobs with state employment agencies.   This is of limited usefulness, as is labor certification, because in the infamous words of immigration lawyer Joel Stewart, "Employers who favor aliens have an arsenal of legal means to reject all U.S. workers who apply."
 
Needless to say, I do not support this bill.
 
Norm
Jennifer Martinez: The Hill

2012-09-19
Jamison Cocklin _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
gathering at Steel Museum to recall plant shut-downs
"35 years ago today, on 1977 Sept. 19, Jennings R. Lambeth, president of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, abruptly announced the company would shutter its Campbell Works, putting 5K employees out of work...   some 40K jobs were lost in the Mahoning Valley, which at one point boasted 20 miles of bustling steel mills."
resilience
"Sheet & Tube moved its headquarters to Chicago, and it was acquired by Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp."

2012-09-19
Evan Perez & Devlin Barrett _Wall Street Journal_
DoJ OIG report notes BATFE & DoJ management failures in "Fast and Furious" debacle
Riehl World View
Jordy Yager: The Hill
Pete Yost: San Jose CA Mercury News/AP
Boston MA Globe
Katie Pavlich: Town Hall
US House committee on government corruption and perversion

2012-09-19
John Stossel _Town Hall_
I like Gary Johnson for president

2012-09-19
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
in 2008 voters in the general election exceeded full-time employed by 14M
"In 1988, 1996 and 2000, full-time workers out-numbered voters."

2012-09-19
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
USA has dropped to 18th in economic freedom index, after falling to 10th last year (with graphs)
Free the World

2012-09-19
Jeff Carter _Town Hall_
Muslim bomber in Chicago

2012-09-19
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
Obummer incompetence in Middle East rivals Carter's in Iran

2012-09-19
Ken Connor _Town Hall_
Muslims misbehaving

2012-09-19
Stacey Patton _Chronicle of Higher Education_
job seekers with "stale" PhDs need not apply
"Search committees, say professors and leaders of scholarly associations, strongly favor applicants whose degrees are not more than 2 or 3 years old."
This is evidence of an extreme glut of people with PhDs...jgo

2012-09-19
Allison M. Vaillancourt _Chronicle of Higher Education_
unwritten rules

2012-09-19
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
recent events confirm info in "2016: Obama's America"

2012-09-19
Andrew Klavan _PJ Media_
Media to Romney: Stop telling the truth!

2012-09-19
Daniel Halper _Weekly Standard_
regulations cost $448G under Obummer

2012-09-19
Ameet Sachdev _Chicago IL Tribune_
software engineer Chunlai Yang pled guilty to stealing Chicago Mercantile Exchange trade secrets
Lake county IL News-Sun
Chicago IL Sun-Times
"Yang also printed numerous CME internal manuals describing how Globex operates.   He admitted to having 2 unnamed business partners trying to increase trading volume in China."

2012-09-19
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
USCIS rejects 25 EB-5 applications, not likely to employ
"What is clear is that the aliens are investing in the purchase of, and, to a lesser extent, the renovation of a warehouse, and that they are claiming that the jobs that need to be created to activate the visas will come from firms moving into the new development.   This process, called 'tenant occupancy' is a controversial one, and many critics say that it is wrong to give an investor credit for creating jobs when all the investor has done is to house -- not fund -- the new jobs.   According to a news account, USCIS has declared (correctly in my eyes): 'It is not appropriate to take credit for the employment impacts created by unrelated business ventures of future tenants.'   It does not always take this position, which may be a cause of the suit.   My worry is that once the USCIS leadership, which is extremely fond of the EB-5 program, hears about the suit they will work out a settlement that gives the alien investors, and the middlemen, what they want.   The suit involves investors apparently recruited by a major player in the EB-5 program, London-based American Life Development Company; and though the warehouse remodeling activity is in the far southwest of the country, the law firm retained, an assertive one run by Ira Kurzban, is based in the far southeast (Miami)."

2012-09-19
Joseph Walker _Wall Street Journal_
job tests are increasingly dysfunctional
"The EEOC received 164 complaints related to testing in 2011 out of nearly 100K complaints.   Part of the reason is that job applicants often don't get to see their test scores or application summaries."

2012-09-19
_Peter G. Peterson Foundation_
the state of US federal government finances
graphs

2012-09-19 (5773 Tishrei 04)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
Academic dishonesty
Anchorage AK Daily Planet
Town Hall
"Many of the nation's colleges and universities have become cess-pools of indoctrination, intolerance, academic dishonesty and an 'enlightened' form of racism.   This is a decades-old trend.   In a 1991 speech, Yale President Benno Schmidt warned: 'The most serious problems of freedom of expression in our society today exist on our campuses.   The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce correct opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.'   Unfortunately, parents, [tax-victims] and donors have little knowledge of the extent of the dishonesty and indoctrination."
index of columns by Walter E. Williams

2012-09-19 (5773 Tishrei 04)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
the great divide over government extortion
Union Leader
Town Hall
Longview TX News-Journal
"As President John F. Kennedy put it, 'it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now'.   This was because investors' 'efforts to avoid tax liabilities' make 'certain types of less productive activity more profitable than more valuable undertakings', and this in turn 'inhibits our growth and efficiency'."
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-20

2012-09-20 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 327,797 in the week ending September 15, an increase of 28,068 from the previous week.   There were 353,820 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.3% during the week ending September 8, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,925,518, a decrease of 5,307 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.6% and the volume was 3,306,720.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending September 1 was 5,173,597, a decrease of 217,823 from the previous week.   There were 6,887,930 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were NOT available in any states during the week ending September 1...   States reported 2,162,532 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending September 1, a decrease of 60,539 from the prior week.   There were 2,997,259 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2011.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14, and seasonal adjustment factors were revised.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-09-20
Bob Tisdale
extremely interesting post regarding NCAR's extreme record extremes... that are not

2012-09-20
Kim Zigfeld _PJ Media_
Under Obummer admin, food stamp costs are growing even faster than food stamp enrollment

2012-09-20
Janice Fiamengo _PJ Media_
the leftist leviathan
"left-wing foundations financially out-strip the right by a factor of 10 to 1.   In 2009, [leftist] funds totaled a hefty $104.56G.   A single left-leaning philanthropy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, had an endowment of over $33G, which alone is 3 times the total of funds accessible to the 75 viable conservative groups.   Leftist foundations, the authors show, are both dramatically richer and better organized than those on the right, with groups such as the Tides Foundation existing precisely to coordinate and support the phalanx of left-wing organizations.   Tides has received money from the most venerable of American philanthropies, including the Rockefeller, Carnegie, Mellon, and Kellogg.   When campaigning on individual public issues, the left swamps its opponents: for example, 117 [leftist] organizations devoted more than 50% of their programs to supporting open borders and citizens' rights for illegal aliens, with a total of $306.1M.   They are opposed by only nine conservative organizations that address the illegal immigration agenda, with a comparatively small financial base of $13.8M."

2012-09-20
Peggy Binette
comet impact in Canada may have triggered Younger Dryas period about 12,900 to 11,600 years ago... or not

2012-09-20
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
Conference Board's leading economic indicators fell to 95.7 in August
Conference Board

2012-09-20
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
Household debt grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.2%

2012-09-20
Steve Huntley _Chicago IL Sun-Times_
media covering for Obummer's failures in economics and foreign relations

2012-09-20
Jeffrey Mervis _AAAS Science_
STEM jobs destruction bill fell short in the House
Miami FL Herald/AP
Oregonian/AP
Christian Science Monitor
"The vote was 257-158, leaving it 20 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed under rules that had rushed the bill to the floor for a vote.   The bill, HR6429, would have created a new visa category for up to 55K graduates each year, allowing them to [get] an employment-based green card."

2012-09-20
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Canada revoked citizenship of 300 immigrants who gave "Palestine House" offices as their address
"Many people from troubled areas in the world want a western citizenship to fall back on if the troubles in their home nation become overwhelming.   So, without really leaving the nation of their birth for a substantial period, they seek a western passport (such as Canada's), while still really living in the home country.   Sometimes, as in this instance, they get caught claiming over-seas residence while actually staying at home.   More specifically, Canadian immigration officials noted that 300 Arabs had obtained landed immigrant status in Canada (equivalent to our green card), and then years later sought citizenship, each giving their Canadian residence as that of Palestine House, an ethnic organization (usually supported by the government) housed in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.   Since Palestine House is a social service and advocacy agency, not a huge apartment complex, immigration officers figured that the claims of residence at that address were phony, and Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Keeney announced recently that all 300 using that address would have their citizenship revoked.   Not denied upon application, but actually revoked, a bold move on the part of any government."

2012-09-20 (5773 Tishrei 05)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
the fallacy of redistribution
Real Clear Politics
Investor's Business Daily
Appeal-Democrat
Lew Rockwell
One News Now
Lake Tahoe NV news
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-21: POW/MIA recognition day

2012-09-21
Mary Grabar _Accuracy in Media_
terrorist professor Bill Ayers and Obummer's federal school curriculum (Communist Corpse)
"...As a terrorist, he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, had dedicated their Prairie Fire Manifesto to Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.   It was for this reason that Kennedy's son, Christopher Kennedy, chairman of the University of Illinois board of trustees, voted against bestowing 'professor emeritus' status on Ayers after he retired.   'I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy.', he said.   Back then, the former bomber and co-founder of the communist terrorist Weather Underground organization was Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.   The two had worked together closely from the year Ayers hosted a political launch party for [Obummer], in 1995, to 2002.   At the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, 'the brain-child of Bill Ayers', they funneled more that $100M to radical [leftist] groups like ACORN and Gamaliel, which used the funds to promote radical [leftist] education.   This initiative was also promoted by Arne Duncan, now Secretary of Education.   Also as board members of the Woods Fund, Ayers and [Obummer] channeled money to ACORN and the Midwest Academy..."

2012-09-21
Karen C. Fox
coronal mass ejections and prominence cavities

2012-09-21
John R. Christy
severe weather and climate are 2 separate matters

2012-09-21
Don Irvine _Accuracy in Media_
BLS says 40.6% of newspaper jobs have disappeared in the last 10 years
"According to figures released by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the newspaper publishing industry has fallen from 414,000 in 2001, to 246,200 in 2011, representing a whopping 40.6% decline in the last decade.   Between 2009 and 2010 employment fell 16.2% to 258,950...   McClatchy...chopped 53.5% of its jobs, followed by 40% cuts at both Gannett and The New York Times."

2012-09-21
Janice Kephart _Center for Immigration Studies_
Hezbollah in Mexico... and San Francisco
"What matters is that terrorist travel continues to the United States and is often not caught until after immigration has awarded the terrorist U.S. citizenship."

2012-09-21
Janice Kephart _Center for Immigration Studies_
GAO reports that State Dept. lacks serious approach to rampant visa fraud
"The number of visa issuances has climbed back to 2001 levels, with about 7.5M issuances to non-immigrants and approximately 500K to immigrants in 2011...   In addition, millions of visitors from 36 countries entered under the visa waiver program.   More than half of the non-immigrant issuances are to visitors from Brazil, [Red China], India, and Mexico.   The report noted that the percentage of applicants refused for tourist visas (by far the largest category of temporary visitor) has declined by more than half since 2006 in each of these countries except India, even though all of these countries are the source of significant flows of illegal settlers.   The report notes that in 2012 January President Obama issued an executive order to increase visa processing capacity in [Red China] and Brazil by 40% in the coming year.   Brazil has the lowest refusal rate of the high volume/high fraud countries (4%), probably because it is on the short list of countries that the Obama administration wants to add to the visa waiver program.   In 2010, the latest year that could be examined, the top 10 countries for cases referred to fraud prevention units for closer scrutiny were [Red China], the Dominican Republic, Mexico, India, Brazil, Ghana, Cambodia, Jamaica, Peru, and Ukraine.   Most cases involve applications for non-immigrant visas.   About 74K cases were referred worldwide, and 22% were confirmed to be fraudulent...   [Not only are they not running proper background investigations on every visa applicant, but] Consular officers cannot refer each and every suspected case of fraud or misrepresentation for a formal investigation; there are just too many...   3M to 5M visa over-stays now living here."

2012-09-21
John Miano _Center for Immigration Studies_
more evidence that visa abuse is deeply embedded in the IBM corporate culture
"Let's now recap the scoring: Companies claim they need more foreign workers because Americans are not available.   IBM posts a job it claims needs to be filled urgently.   When an American applies he is told IBM has to give preference to foreign workers because they are so much cheaper and that he would be considered if there are no 'visa ready workers'.   IBM posts job advertisements that no Americans can qualify for.   No wonder they 'cannot find Americans qualified for the jobs'."

2012-09-21
John Hayward Follow _Human Events_
Obummer can't run on his record: redistribution is bad on both the taking and the dispensing ends

2012-09-21 (5773 Tishrei 06)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's dangerous consistency
"The only way America can appease the Muslim world is for America to cease to be America."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-22

2012-09-22
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Southern... but at what point did "alternative roads" course outward?

2012-09-22
Claudia Rosett _PJ Media_
140-160 visas issued for Ahmadinejad's entourage

2012-09-22
_MarketWatch_
10 "best"/"most" educated countries in the world
"In the more developed countries, the percentage of adults with the equivalent of a college degree rose to more than 30% in 2010.   In the United States, it was more than 40%, which is among the highest percentages in the world."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-23

2012-09-23
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
German influence in the Shenandoah Valley... even into the Civil War

2012-09-23
J. Paige Straley _Charlotte NC Observer_
Stop discouraging home-grown talent, plenty of smarts in U.S.A.
alternate link
"First comes the H-1B program allowing companies to import cheap foreign technical persons and displace American knowledge-workers.   The fall-out is that engineering is not as attractive to American students and college enrollments drop.   The reprinted Washington Post editorial suggests we fill the empty seats with bright foreigners.   Wake up, Observer: There is no shortage of smart people in the U.S.A."

2012-09-23
Angela Chen _Chronicle of Higher Education_
statistician Mark Hansen blends computer science with journalism: moving to Columbia propaganda mill to realize John Brisbin Walker's goal of fostering improvement

2012-09-23
Anthony Watts
almost half of CO₂ transfers into the USA are due to the trade deficit

2012-09-23
David W. Schnare
EPA sued for inhumane experiments having subjects inhale diesel engine exhaust

2012-09-23
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
the fantasy house of Barack Obummer

2012-09-23
Roger Kimball _PJ Media_
Obummer should watch Condell's "Word to Rioting Muslims"

2012-09-23
Alina Mogilyanskaya _Chronicle of Higher Education_
U of SC on-line degree program

2012-09-23
Joe Pagliarulo
every month is American History month
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-24

2012-09-24
Anthony Watts
speculations on connections between stratospheric wind circulation patterns and rhythms, and ocean currents

2012-09-24
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
Los Angeles Times should release the Rashid Khalidi video

2012-09-24
_Conference Board_
will employment/population ratios ever return to pre-recession levels?: economy stuck on the lowest gear

2012-09-24
Don Irvine _Accuracy in Media_
Gallup: distrust of media hits all-time high
"When Gallup asked this question 3 times in the 1970s, trust in the media was as high as 72%, or nearly double where it stands today."

2012-09-24
Andrew Klavan _PJ Media_
for a Jew to vote for Obummer would not be wise
"1. Obama's policies are actually bad for the under-dogs and minorities...   2. Obama appeases Jew-hating Islamists...   3. Obama is no friend to Israel."

2012-09-24
Jeanette Pryor _PJ Media_
cults: the mind enslaved part 2
part 1

2012-09-24
Luke Redd _Trade Schools_
the STEM skills shortage myth
"Worse still, the HR departments of big employers often rely on special software to screen incoming applications.   This process frequently discards qualified applicants who meet most of the requirements but fall short on a few.   In some cases, even a 98% match isn't good enough.   They want 100%.   As an experiment, some HR professionals, confused about why they weren't meeting any qualified candidates, have actually put their own resumes through their employer's screening process for a posted job they were already doing.   The results? Their applications were discarded...   Increasingly, employers don't just want perfect hires; they also want them cheap.   And they want them to accept the kinds of working conditions that most Americans will no longer tolerate.   Therefore, such employers frequently decide to import foreign workers under temporary (H-1B) work visas.   These workers come from abroad and accept lower wages and more exploitative working conditions while the companies or institutions they work for incessantly promote the idea of a shortage of qualified American workers...   More STEM graduates means a bigger labor pool, which equals lower wages...   employers get to keep thumbing their noses at all those American STEM graduates they said they needed.   Meanwhile, those same employers profit handsomely from their use of low-wage foreign workers."

2012-09-24
Walter E. Williams _Biloxi MS Sun Herald_
anti-gouging statutes are non-sense
Lubbock TX
Oakland county Press
"If there's a disaster, a war, a severe drought or some other calamity that restricts future supplies of a commodity -- such as oil, coffee or corn -- what is the intelligent thing for people to do right away?   If you said 'use less now and try to produce more', you'd be absolutely correct.   That's not rocket science, but understanding the machinery involved in getting people to do so is a bit more challenging.   The best way to get people to use less and produce more is to allow prices to rise."
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-25 USA election 6 weeks (42 days) from today: 1789-09-25 Bill of Rights proposed by congress to the states

2012-09-25
_Polling Report_
USA citizenry continue to express disapproval of pres. Obummer and congress-critters -- both Rep and Dem
Real Clear Politics
Rasmussen

2012-09-25
_Houston TX Chronicle_
black and hispanic HS students largely uninterested in STEM fields
WedBush
Yahoo!/UBM
GigaCom paidContent
News Blaze
Sacramento CA Bee
Financial Content
Ad Hoc News in Germany
Brian Kirschner: University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, PA
" This survey was conducted on-line within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of the University of Sciences between 2012 April 17 & 2012 April 25 among 451 students in 9th-12th grade.   8- to 17-year-old results were weighted as needed for age, sex, race/ethnicity, parental education, school location, and region.   18-year-old results were weighted as needed for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region, and household income.   Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel [i.e. self-selecting], no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated."

2012-09-25
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
Coference Board consumer confidence index rose from 61.3 in August to 70.3 in September
"Those stating jobs are 'plentiful' rose to 8.3% from 7.2%, while those claiming jobs are 'hard to get' edged down from 40.6% to 39.9%."

2012-09-25
Mary Grabar _PJ Media_
Obummer's terrorist friends designed communist core of Dept. of Educationism's racist to the top curriculum
"Ayers' influence on the administration matters because there is a federal education initiative coming from which there will be no escape through school districts, private schools, or home schools. Furthermore, the rigorous, uniform standards promised by the Department of Education through a contest called Race to the Top are anything but -- unless you use the standards of social justice indoctrination... Be prepared to have your children tested for the right attitudes in 'social justice' through such means as 'collaborative discussion', one of the actual criteria now in place for eleventh- and twelfth-graders."
Accuracy in Media
2012 May: Emmett McGroarty & Jane Robbins: Pioneer Institute: Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for America (pdf)
"The federal Department of Education (the 'Department') is using the Standards and the assessments as vehicles to mandate the construction of massive state student databases.   The Department has also gutted federal student-privacy law to allow greater sharing of student data with other government agencies and private entities.   Partnering with the Department of Labor, the Department seeks to build a data system that allows tracking of individual students from preschool through the workforce.   This vision not only creates substantial risks of privacy breach, but it also encompasses a worldview of the proper role of government that is greatly at odds with American founding principles."

2012-09-25
Mike Rosenberg _San Jose CA Mercury News_
Sergey Brin & MoonBeam Brown join stupid transportation band-wagon to reduce liberty and privacy

2012-09-25
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
the Obummer clan capers

2012-09-25
David Evans _Chronicle of Higher Education_
college/university finance: expenditures from endowments

2012-09-25
Jeffrey Lord _American Spectator_
history of media's in-kind campaign contributions in the form of biased political polls

2012-09-25
W.D. Reasoner _Center for Immigration Studies_
Obummer admin making nice with another Iran-based terrorist organization: MEK/MKO/PMOI
"The MEK was a Marxist organization formed to oppose the regime of the Shah of Iran — and the United States, which supported the Shah in ways both obvious and covert.   From the start, violence formed a part of its strategy and tactics, as is evident even from their organizational logo, which depicts a raised arm bearing a rifle crossed with a sickle.   During the 1970s, leading up to the Shah's deposition, MEK operatives engaged in, and claimed credit for, a series of bombings and assassinations that included six Americans, some of whom were military officers posted to Iran in a diplomatic capacity...   According to the Christian Science Monitor, in 2004 -- substantially after the MEK 'change of heart' -- the FBI reported, using 'data corroborated by French and German wiretaps -- that MEK cells in the United States, Europe, and Camp Ashraf were 'actively...planning and executing acts of terrorism'...   The NCRI, with a strong presence in our nation's capital, has relentlessly raised funds, which it was smart enough to use to hire well-paid, politically connected public relations consultants, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former national security adviser James Jones, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and Rudolph Giuliani.   (Remember him? The man-who-would-be-president and mayor of New York City during the nation's most significant terrorist attack.)   Some prominent members of Congress have also stood behind the MEK.   The Christian Science Monitor published a 10-page special report in August 2011 outlining the big names of both political parties (and the big money) involved in this burnishing of the group's reputation.   It is well worth taking the time to read the report, which serves as both primer and indictment on the corrupting influence of money on even such fundamental matters as our national security interests.   It would seem that big money and big influence are having their way."

2012-09-25
Paula Solman _National Socialist Television_
applying for jobs on-line is not an effective way to find work... but for many it's the only means they have
"Your resume is going to tell me what you have done in the past.   Your marketing plan is going to tell what you want to do in the future...   Ed Ezekian of Valley Forge, PA: 'I check the e-mail and the job sites hourly...   From 07:00 in the morning until midnight.'...   Paul Solman: 'Monster.com has 55 openings for this longtime I.T. sales executive.   Unfortunately...'   Ed Ezekian: '18 of them are basically straight commission selling lighting product jobs.   They're not IT jobs.   They're not high-paying jobs...   it would be a part-time, no-benefits, no-salary job...   At my age and based on my experience, the reality is that even if I wanted an entry-level job, I wouldn't be considered.   I have tried that.   It's resulted in zero responses.'...   Peter Cappelli, author of _Why Good People Can't Get Jobs": 'So, from this point on, the companies decide, you know what, we can't just have people coming in off the street to do these jobs...   They're trying to do things cheaply and efficiently.   But, most of them, I think, don't have the historical memory to even know that they didn't used to do things this way...   I got 500 e-mails from the first article, people who have applied for jobs in their own company, for example, and couldn't get hired.   They pretended to be an applicant with the same abilities and resumes they have and they got kicked out of the process.   Somebody told me that they had 29K people apply for a reasonably standard engineering position, and nobody made it through the screening process.   The software told them nobody was qualified.'   Nick Corcodilos, AsktheHeadHunter.com: 'In my view, it is absolutely insane...   You have hiring managers who have a certain kind of work they need to have done.   They write a simple description.   They give it to HR.   This gets reduced down to a bunch of key words.   You now have people who are trying to meet the key words in the job description...   There are people I have known who have taken the entire job description verbatim and plugged it into a part of the resume, not necessarily the top, so it's not too obvious.   They plug it right in.   And they submit it.   And they make it through the first few rounds.'   Paul Solman: 'But don't companies know this?   And why would they still post ads on-line when surveys suggest that no more than a few percent of all jobs are filled this way?.'   Nick Corcodilos: 'Whenever I do a presentation, I almost always ask the question, raise of hands, who found a job through a major job board? And virtually no one.'"

2012-09-25 (5773 Tishrei 09)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obummer versus Obummer part 1
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-26: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement

2012-09-26
Sue Shellenbarger _Wall Street Journal_
each kind of activity has its optimal time of day

2012-09-26
_WCTV_
demand for post-secondary "certificates" increasing?
"The 2009-2010 academic year marked the first year that more certificates (83,670) were awarded in Florida than bachelor's degrees (83,386).   The steep rise in under-graduate certificates awarded is almost entirely accounted for by private, for-profit institutions up 107% since 2003-04.   Certificates awarded by public higher education institutions decreased by 1.8% during the same period."

2012-09-26
Ben Stein _American Spectator_
atonement

2012-09-26
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
the usual corrupt suspects have filed suit in Michigan to stop election officials from asking voters the question, "Are you a United States citizen?"

2012-09-26
Thomas E. Brewton
financial state of the US government: $2.3T in revenues, $3.6T in spending

2012-09-26
Nick Corcodilos
on-line job application forms keep America unemployed
"14.2M: That's how many Americans are looking for work.   3.2M: That's how many jobs are vacant in America.   Do the math.   What do Human Resources executives call that 4:1 advantage that employers enjoy in the market?   A talent shortage!   Give us all a break!...   Don't fill out on-line forms.   Call the employer.   Tell them you want to stand out, so you'd like to discuss your qualifications on the phone -- and if they don't have time, you'll go talk to one of their competitors that does."

2012-09-26 (5773 Tishrei 10)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obummer versus Obummer part 1
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-27

2012-09-27 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Scott Gibbons & Tony Sznoluch _DoL ETA_
un-employment insurance weekly claims report
DoL home page
DoL OPA press releases
historical data
DoL regulations
"The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 300,661 in the week ending September 22, a decrease of 29,702 from the previous week.   There were 328,073 initial claims in the comparable week in 2011.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.2% during the week ending September 15, a decline of 0.1 percentage point from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,833,088, a decrease of 94,416 from the preceding week.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.5% and the volume was 3,207,559.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending September 8 was 5,173,586, a decrease of 11 from the previous week.   There were 6,983,307 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2011.   Extended Benefits were NOT available in any states during the week ending September 8...   States reported 2,160,448 persons claiming EUC (Emergency Unemployment Compensation) benefits for the week ending September 8, a decrease of 2,084 from the prior week.   There were 3,036,635 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2011.   EUC weekly claims include first, second, third, and fourth tier activity.   [Note that the population used for calculating the "insured unemployment rate" (the divisor) changes roughly quarterly:
to 132,623,886 beginning 2007-10-06;
to 133,010,953 beginning 2008-01-05;
to 133,382,559 beginning 2008-04-05;
to 133,690,617 beginning 2008-07-05;
to 133,902,387 beginning 2008-10-04;
to 133,886,830 beginning 2009-01-03;
to 133,683,433 beginning 2009-04-04;
to 133,078,480 beginning 2009-07-04;
to 133,823,421 beginning 2009-10-03;
to 131,823,421 beginning 2009-10-17;
to 130,128,328 beginning 2010-01-02;
to 128,298,468 beginning 2010-04-03;
to 126,763,245 beginning 2010-07-03;
to 125,845,577 beginning 2010-09-25;
to 125,560,066 beginning 2011-01-15;
to 125,572,661 beginning 2011-04-02;
to 125,807,389 beginning 2011-07-02;
to 126,188,733 beginning 2011-10-01;
to 126,579,970 beginning 2012-01-01;
to 127,048,587 beginning 2012-04-07;
to 127,495,952 beginning 2012-07-14, and seasonal adjustment factors were revised.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2012-09-27
Anthony Watts
1930s & 1940s saw rapid retreat of glaciers in Glacier Park

2012-09-27
Anthony Watts
wildest lightning strike I've ever seen

2012-09-27
Janet I. Tu _Seattle WA Times_
MSFT lobbyists want 20K more cheap, young, pliant foreign laborers with flexible ethics, willing to pay 20% of annual mark-down from US STEM workers
Patrick Thibodeau: CIO/IDG
InfoWorld/IDG
Kyung M. Song: Yakima WA Herald/Seattle Times
Kyung M. Song: Contra Costa CA Times
San Jose CA Mercury News
Hispanic Business
Grant Gross: IT World/IDG
Grant Gross: ComputerWorld/IDG
"What may make this plan novel is a proposal to require that companies pay the government $10K for H-1B visas in a new 'supplemental category', and $15K for STEM green card visas...   A typical new hire for a MSFT programmer or software-engineer position might command a salary of $100K to $120K, plus a $20K signing bonus.   Add $50K in stock options, plus the cost of an office and other expenses, Smith said, and the total cost might add up to $200K."
Jon Talton: Seattle Times: But do we neeeeeed more cheap, young, pliant labor with questionable ethics?

2012-09-27
Jeffrey Lord _American Spectator_
Mugged: Ann Coulter's home-run

2012-09-27
Anthony Watts
U of IL reports Antarctic sea ice near record highs of 2007

2012-09-27
Tony Ricciuto _Toronto Ontario Sun_
never mind those murders along the US/Mexican border, we have to crack down on these maple slurple and cheese smugglers along the US/Canadian border
Stacey Leasca: Global Post

2012-09-27
"bookworm" _PJ Media_
Crazifornia: How California Is Committing Suicide

2012-09-27
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
Obummer & USCIS promise to ignore Socialist Insecurity Number fraud committed by NIGHTMARE illegal aliens

2012-09-27
James R. Edwards ii _Center for Immigration Studies_
Many Chicagoland low-wage workers are well educated

2012-09-27
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
ICE offering "social work services" to foreign students

2012-09-27 (5773 Tishrei 11)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
election could mirror 1980

2012-09-27 (5773 Tishrei 11)
Argus Hamilton _Jewish World Review_
the news in zingers

2012-09-27 (5773 Tishrei 11)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
homage to Orwell

2012-09-27 (5773 Tishrei 11)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
Arab Spring becoming Western Winter

2012-09-27 (5773 Tishrei 11)
Ann Coulter _Jewish World Review_
leftists can't break a 200-year racist habit
"Democrats spent the first century of this country's existence refusing to treat black people like human beings, and the second refusing to treat them like adults.   After fighting the Civil War to continue enslaving black people and then subjecting newly freed black Americans to vicious, humiliating Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan violence, Democrats set about frantically rewriting their own ugly history."

2012-09-27 (5773 Tishrei 11)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obummer versus Obummer part 3
"What did it accomplish? It brought the United States down a peg, in the eyes of the world, something that he has sought to do in many other ways.   These bows were perfectly consistent with his view of a maldistribution of power and prestige internationally, just as his domestic agenda reflects a felt need for a redistribution of wealth and power within American society."
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-28

2012-09-28
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index rose from 74.3 in August to 79.2 in early September to 78.3 in late September
Bloomberg
St. Louis Fed

2012-09-28
Anthony Watts
NASA shows round river rocks -- more evidence of old stream-beds on Mars

2012-09-28
Jamison Cocklin _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
additive manufacturing in Mahoning valley
"A consortium of more than 60 private companies, nonprofit organizations and universities came together to form the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute -- dedicated to further developing what's known as additive manufacturing...   Deemed the future of manufacturing by some, additive manufacturing uses advanced software to create three-dimensional images from which machines create unique programs to print a product layer-by-layer, using metals, plastics or resins.   The technology uses less time, energy, material and labor to manufacture products, and it has vast application potential across multiple industries, including biomedical and aerospace to name a few."

2012-09-28
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
What's in the bag?: Things we buy at historical sites

2012-09-28
David J. Rusin _PJ Media_
How the western world's courts are bending to sharia

2012-09-28
Nocole Rodriguez _Treasure Coast FL Palm_
former Digital Domain employees trying to pick up the pieces

2012-09-28
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Samuel Simon Schmucker's ties to the Shenandoah valley Lutheran community, and his abolitionist interests

2012-09-28
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
girl born in birth-tourism thinks of US as "foreign country"
"Back in 1989, Shih's mother boarded a jet bound for New York, tourist visa in hand.   She didn't arrange her travel in order to take in a showing of Cats, however; she was eight months pregnant and the goal was to add a U.S.-passport holder to her family.   IOW, she was engaging in fraud as admitted by Mr. Shih, who cited the quality of American schools as the impetus.   Two months after giving birth Mrs. Shih 'returned to Taiwan with her U.S. passport-bearing daughter in tow'.   In 2004, when Jennifer reached the age of 15, she returned to the United States to take advantage of [U.S.-tax-victim] subsidized high schools in Idaho, Utah, and now college in California.   Understandably, Jennifer -- who didn't speak English when she arrived -- describes the United States as a 'foreign country'.   The reporter notes that 'even after 8 years', Jennifer says she still 'thinks about Taiwan every day' and visits nearly every year.   Jennifer's honesty highlights the absurdity of a lax birth-right citizenship policy."

2012-09-28
Richard A. McCormack _Manufacturing & Technology News_
semi-conductor execs have no plans to build factories in the USA
"In 2011, of the 27 volume (or large-scale) semi-conductor fabs under construction in the world, only 1 of them was located in the United States of America; 18 were in [Red China]; 4 were in Taiwan; two were elsewhere in Southeast Asia; and one was in Japan, according to the Semiconductor Equipment Materials International (SEMI)...   In all, between 2011 and 2013, construction was expected to start on 42 new fabs.   Only 1 is in the United States...   In 2007, the United States was home to 123 fabs.   That number is projected to decline to 95 by 2017."

2012-09-28 (5773 Tishrei 12)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
Obummer versus Obummer part 4
"During the same week when the American ambassador to Libya was murdered and his dead body dragged through the streets by celebrating mobs, the President of the United States found time to go on the David Letterman show to demonstrate his sense of humor and how cool he is.   But Barack Obama did not have time to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a nation repeatedly threatened with annihilation by Iranian leaders, who are working feverishly toward the creation of nuclear bombs.   This was an extraordinary thing in itself, something that probably no other President of the United States could have gotten away with, without raising a fire-storm of criticisms and denunciations.   But much of the media sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil when it comes to [Barack Obummer]..."
index of Thomas Sowell columns at Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-29

2012-09-29
Benny Peiser
electricity system in Greece near collapse

2012-09-29
Anthony Watts
NOAA: all-time sea ice extent record set for Antarctica on 2012-09-22
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

2012-09-30

2012-09-30
Paul LePage
"renewable" power standards costing Maine $220M and 1K jobs

2012-09-30
_Gaebler_
family-owned businesses: statistics"Family businesses account for a staggering 50% of the gross domestic product.   It's tempting to believe that the majority of family business GDP is attributable to thousands of small operations, but that simply isn't the case.   Here's why: 35% of Fortune 500 companies are family companies.   That means family-based operations are represented across the full spectrum of American companies, from small businesses to large corporations...   Family companies are responsible for 60% of the nation's employment and 78% of new jobs created."

2012-09-30
Bob Owens _PJ Media_
Univision released new details of Obummer admin's "Fast and Furious" cover-up

2012-09-30
Patrick Richardson _PJ Media_
leftist war against science: Obummer admin regulations impeding research
 
Proposed Bills 2012
 
 

 
Proposed Bills 2012

USA Over-Population Clock
World + USA Over-Population Clocks
Jimbo Wales's WikiPedia on World Over-Population