2013 September

3rd month of the 3rd quarter of the 24th year of the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression

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updated: 2019-03-25
 

  "More precisely, [in the USA], the 1932 money supply was incapable of buying the 1929 level of output at 1929 prices.   Prices began declining as a result of unsold goods, but prices did not fall fast enough or far enough to restore immediately the full production needed to create full employment." --- Thomas Sowell 2000 _Basic Economics_ pg327  

 
 
2013 September
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  "As is true with many consumer goods industries, the textile or needle-trade industry works with a very low profit margin and must compete with foreign manufacturers as well.   Here, labor costs constitute 50% or more of the total cost of producing sewn goods.   A significant problem is the high turn-over rate of a relatively low-skilled labor force -- it is not unusual to hire 100 wrkers per year in order to maintain a 100-man work force.   Thus, it is important to keep the training period for new workers as short as possible." --- Robert M. Glorioso & Francis S. Hill ii 1975 _Introduction to Engineering_ pg28  

 
 

 

 


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

2013 September

3rd month of the 3rd quarter of the 14th year of the Bush-Clinton-Shrub-Obummer economic depression


 
 

2013-09-01

2013-09-01
Anthony Watts
climate of failure: pie in the sky "alternate energy"

2013-09-01
Anthony Watts
Australia-based 50:1 project posts data and interviews of people involved in climate debate

2013-09-01
_KGO San Francisco CA_
plans for patent office in Sili Valley have been shelved
"Silicon Valley firms seek more U.S. patents than any other region in the world, and San Jose is the nation's top patent-producing city, with 7,074 patents last year.   And California is the nation's patent leader, with seven of the top 10 patent-producing cities.   The U.S. Patent Office currently has a backlog of 590K nationwide, and it can take more than two years to have an application reviewed...   'It would be a godsend if we could meet with a patent examiner; It would cut our costs and time in half, and cut our anxiety by 60%.', said Clark.   'Nothing compares to a face-to-face conversation.'"
There goes the copyright office for Hollywood...jgo
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Daniel Morgan] had planned to go after Cornwallis's army when he finished off Tarleton's, but his superior officer, general Nathanael Greene, forbade it as too reckless.   Disgruntled again, the Old Wagoner soon resigned and took his assorted ailments back to Winchester, where he used the labor of captive Hessian mercenaries to build himself a comfortable house.   There he lived a gentlemanly plantation-owner's life at 'Saratoga' until he died in 1802.   By that time he had accumulated more than 250K acres on teh Monongahela and Ohio rivers by buying up soldiers' grants." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg157  

 
 

2013-09-02

1898-09-02: Herbert Kitchener defeated the khalifa Abdallahi ibn Muhammad outside Omdurman helping stop slavery in Sudan

2013-09-02
Steve Wilaj _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
judge says that undocumented driving is #1 issue

2013-09-02
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
Mark Twain took umbrage at sir Walter Scott's influence on 19th century Southern society

2013-09-02
Tim Ball
chemtrails/contrails just another alarmist issue without scientific context

2013-09-02
Warner Todd Huston _Breitbart_
citing ObummerDoesn'tCare, 40K longshoremen quit AFL-CIO
Doug Powers: Michelle Malkin
Western Center for Journalism
Before It's News
"ILWU president Robert McEllrath cited quite a list of grievances as reasons for the dissolution of their affiliation, but prominent among them was the AFL-CIO's support of [ObummerDoesn'tCare rather than something even worse]...   The ILWU president made it clear they are for a single-payer, nationalized health-care policy and are upset with the AFL-CIO for going along with Obama on the confiscatory tax on their 'Cadillac' health-care plan...   Sundet slammed Obama's immigration plan saying it is 'designed to give [only] highly-paid workers a real path to citizenship'.   Private sector unions have fallen to an all time low participation rate in the US workforce.   Unionized workers now account for only 11.3% of the US work-force...   If the ILWU is upset at [ObummerDoesn'tCare's] negative effect on their 'Cadillac' health plans, wait until their dream of single payer is a reality (the wreckage of [ObummerDoesn'tCare] is merely a stepping stone to single payer, according to Harry Reid, who accidentally told the truth recently).   This is kind of like trying to halt your arteriosclerosis by funneling hydrogenated oil."

2013-09-02
"ChemJobber"
ACS employment and salary survey says... LFPRs down
Sophie L. Rovner: Chemical & Engineering News
"Salaries for U.S. chemists have edged up 2.2% in 2013 compared with 2012, while unemployment has continued to fall, from 4.7% in 2011, to 4.2% in 2012, and 3.5% in 2013...   Some 4.6% of chemists who hold a BS degree are unemployed and looking for a job, while 3.0% of those with a PhD are out of work and looking.   Similarly, the overall improvement in the median salary for chemists can be attributed entirely to a rise in pay for PhDs, who saw a 1.4% boost over last year, the data show.   Chemists who hold a bachelor's degree actually suffered a 2.6% drop in median salary from 2012 to 2013."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "If the current World Bank projections are correct, the population in countries now classified as 'developing' is expected to increase from roughly 4G today to roughly 8G by the year 2050.   Meanwhile, the poor countries of the world lack the West's well-established rule of law traditions.   As a result, political transitions in the 'developing' world tend to be marked not by continuity and compromise, but rather by abrupt upheavals, military intervention, violence, and blood-shed." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg195  

 
 

2013-09-03

2013-09-03
_Billings MT Gazette_
booming Bakken oil shale field puts strain on Watford City, ND

2013-09-03
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the socially elite, Southern writers of the 19th century, and their legacy

2013-09-03
Willis Eschenbach
get your kicks in Stepney: visit to London
pix of Thames, Tower Bridge and city-scape, tower of parliament, WestMinster cathedral, British Museum

2013-09-03
Tom Krisher _San Jose CA Mercury News_/_AP_
computerized cars open windows for hackers... so tell us something we did not already know

2013-09-03
Robert N. Charette _IEEE Spectrum_
Is there a US IT worker shortage or glut? and Will it hamper or facilitate more privacy violations?
Joe McKendrick: Smart Planet/Ziff Davis/CBS
Slash Dot discussion

2013-09-03
Allison M. Vaillancourt _Chronicle of Higher Education_
priorities
"Will this activity move me toward my long-term goals?...   Will this activity be energizing, or will it suck the life out of me?...   Will anyone notice or care if I am missing?...   Will this be the same old conversation?...   Will this choice disappoint the right people?...   There is no question that I disappointed the wrong people, and I count this as one of my very worst decisions."

2013-09-03
Antony Savvas _CFO World_/_IDG_
off-shoring has resulting in slashing almost half of "corporate IT" jobs in Europe
"While the number of jobs being lost will decline over the next few years, says Hackett, it estimates that by 2017, almost half of all the 'corporate IT' jobs at the companies it started studying in Europe in 2002, will have disappeared -- a total loss of 770K jobs.   This figure equates to 48% of the 1.6M jobs in 'corporate IT' that existed in 2002...   Hackett's research estimates nearly 83K 'IT' jobs will disappear in Europe in 2013 alone..."
Derek du Preez: ComputerWorld UK: CSC tells employees to train off-shore workers, after announcing 750 will be dumped

2013-09-03
Jed Babbin _American Spectator_
What is USA's national security interestin Syrian civil war between autarchy and terrorists?

2013-09-03
Chris Nelder _Smart Planet_/_Ziff Davis_/_CBS_
If/when petroleum runs out, population is likely to fall

2013-09-03
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
unintended consequences
Jewish World Review
"One of the many unintended consequences of the political crusade for increased homeownership among minorities, and low-income people in general, has been a housing boom and bust that left many foreclosed homes that had to be rented, because there were no longer enough qualified buyers.   The repercussions did not stop there.   Many homeowners have discovered that when renters replace homeowners as their neighbors, the neighborhood as a whole can suffer.   The physical upkeep of the neighborhood, on which everyone's home values depend, tends to decline.   'Who's going to paint the outside of a rented house?', one resident was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times story.   Renters also tend to be of a lower socioeconomic level than home-owners.   They are also less likely to join neighborhood groups, including neighborhood watches to keep an eye out for crime.   In some cases, renters have introduced unsavory or illegal activities into family-oriented communities of homeowners that had not had such activities before.   None of this should be surprising.   Individuals and groups of all sorts have always differed from one another in many ways, throughout centuries of history and in countries around the world.   Left to themselves, people tend to sort themselves out into communities of like-minded neighbors."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "in 1983 when Barry Marshall, a doctor in Perth, Western Australia, found that many stomach cancers and most stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori.   Even though his findings were easily tested, the notion was so radical that more than a decade would pass before they were generally accepted.   America's National Institutes of Health, for instance, didn't officially endorse the idea until 1994.   'Hundreds, even thousands of people must have died from ulcers who wouldn't have.', Marshall told a reporter from Forbes in 1999." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pp315-316  

 
 

2013-09-04

2013-09-04
Linda M. Linonis _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
for a sweet new year: Rash Ha Shanah at sun-down

2013-09-04
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
a manifestation of sir Walter Scott's reflections, in the Shenandoah Valley

2013-09-04
Christopher Monckton 3rd viscount Brenchley
the bull and the Borg
"Australia has more poisonous critters than any other continent -- including the spooky, spiky officials of the ever-expanding Natural Resources Management Borg, who now out-number police officers by a handsome margin in the country districts, where former precinct houses and cop-shops have been Assimilated and are now nests of Borg, dedicated to the eradication of farming throughout South Australia in the name of Saving The Planet against non-existent 'global warming'."

2013-09-04
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet

2013-09-04
Robert N. Charette _IEEE Spectrum_
is engineering now only a young person's game?

2013-09-04
Anthony Watts
Swensmark et al.'s theory that cosmic rays drive more cloud formation, which reflects more of some frequencies of insolation

2013-09-04
Richard Danielson _Tampa Bay FL Times_
Tampa Chamber of Communists call for ramming through immigration perversion

2013-09-04
Anthony Watts
UCSB says West Antarctic ice sheet is 20M years older than previoiusly believed
"The findings indicate that ice sheets first grew on the West Antarctic subcontinent at the start of a global transition from warm greenhouse conditions to a cool icehouse climate 34M years ago.   Previous computer simulations were unable to produce the amount of ice that geological records suggest existed at that time because neighboring East Antarctica alone could not support it.   The findings were published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union."

2013-09-04
John O'Brien & Brad Pasanek _Chronicle of Higher Education_
Thomas Jefferson, the development of _Notes on Virginia_ vs. Apples "app store"

2013-09-04
Anthony Watts
Diffenbaugh delusion

2013-09-04
P. David Hornik _PJ Media_
in Israel a rash ha shanah (head of the year) of apples and gas-masks
"The time when the shofar (ram's horn) is blown in flat, eerie blasts in the synagogue, calling us to repent and get inscribed for another year in the Book of Life."

2013-09-04
David Francis _Fiscal Times_
6 of pres. Obummer's foreign policy mistakes
"these officials and others within the administration lobbying for action in Syria have one big problem: On international affairs and matters of war and peace, their credibility is shot."
George Mirsky: Fiscal Times: playing into Moscow's hands
Elliott Abrams: Commentary; reducing USA's power

2013-09-04
_National Journal_
Many disagree on low-skill H-1B visas: Why no improvements?
MSFT executives want to see more visas granted to let them exploit more cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled foreign labor with flexible ethics.   Millions of bright, knowledgeable, creative, industrious US citizen STEM professionals would prefer to see some reform.   In fiscal year 2012, alone, over 135,991 H-1B visas were granted, according to State Department statistical reports.   Problems in the current system are well known.   US citizen STEM professionals complain that far too many student, exchange, guest-work visas and green cards are issued, that the numbers should be more market based in an effort to restore full employment of US citizens, and standards are non-existent.   Dozens of statistical studies, and reports from executives over the last 13 years have consistently shown that guest-workers are paid less than similarly capable US citizens.   Other studies have shown that H-1B visas are abused to facilitate off-shoring...jgo

2013-09-04
"ChemJobber"
the state of the economy

2013-09-04
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
an history of neglect to enforce immigration laws
"Americans thought, and Congress had promised, that the problem of illegal migration would be solved by the requirement that companies check the citizenship status of those they hired.   It only became clear much later that the promise contained an enormous loop-hole; businesses did need to check, but they didn't need to verify what they were told.   As a result, the number of illegal aliens began to grow, gradually at first and then with increasing speed.   The secretary's adjective 'silent' is a good one because most Americans were not aware of what was happening and when they became aware of it they wanted the loop-hole closed and they wanted the immigration enforcement they had been promised.   They still do...   There is wide recognition that there is an enormous problem with our immigration laws and their enforcement.   The proof of that fact is that we have 11.5M illegal aliens living and working in the United States and no effective border, work-place, or visa enforcement mechanisms to keep that number from going higher.   In the mean-time, lack of public confidence in the government's ability and willingness to enforce our immigration laws contributes to the view that the government doesn't care and is beholden to large special interests."

2013-09-04
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
L-1 non-immigrant visas should be scrutinized more carefully

2013-09-04
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
Syria and amnesty for illegal aliens
map of Syria

2013-09-04
_MarketWatch_/_UBM_/_Conference Board_
HWOL up 86,800 in August to 4,974,900
"This year's down-turn in demand has hit higher-wage professional professions: architecture/engineering (-18,800); computer and math (-35,500); and management (-11,800).   The growth has been in relatively low-wage service occupations such as transportation and material moving (+36,200); food service workers (+18,800); and building and grounds workers (+8,300).   Demand for production workers also turned down this year, dropping 11,200.   In 2013 employers are, however, seeking more construction workers (+14,800) and legal workers (+8,400)."

2013-09-04
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
serious about Syria?
Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Part of the answer is the American Dream.   Significant numbers of Americans believe that anyone, high or low, can move up the economic ladder as long as they are talented, hard-working, entrepreneurial, and not too unlucky [and the longitudinal surveys show that this is generally what does happen].   A driven VietNamese-immigrant student once explained to me, 'I may be poor now, but the reason I vote Republican is because I don't plan to be poor for very much longer.'" --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg196  

 
 

2013-09-05

2013-09-05 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & 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 268,843 in the week ending August 31, a decrease of 9,781 from the previous week.   There were 309,537 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.1% during the week ending August 24, 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 2,749,880, a decrease of 76,868 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,826,748.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.4% and the volume was 3,085,324.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 17 was 4,395,712, a decrease of 72,061 from the previous week.   There were 5,470,041 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   No state was triggered "on" the Extended Benefits program during the week ending August 17...   States reported 1,494,742 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending August 17, a decrease of 16,877 from the prior week.   There were 2,263,614 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-09-05
Willis Eschenbach
going around in great circles

2013-09-05
_Silicon India_
Why are Americans upset with Indian bodyshopping firms?
"[S744] is expected to lay down [extremely weak and small] restrictions on the attainment of H-1B visas like make it [microscopically] more expensive and difficult to obtain.   This will compel Indian IT firms to modify their business model that will cost a fortune...   companies who rent out computer programmers to other countries.   India is not the only country to use H-1B visas for cheap labor; many U.S. companies hire foreign workers as their programmers too.   Both types of companies under-pay their foreign workers...   This under-payment is, however, not illegal...   The profit or savings of Indian companies from using cheap labor may go up to 20% when foreign workers are employed instead of young Americans.   And the savings go up to 50% when H-1B visa holders replace older Americans."

2013-09-05
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
IEEE Spectrum article says there is no STEM talent shortage
 
A lot of people have been bringing to my attention an article in this month's _IEEE Spectrum_, titled "The Myth of a STEM Crisis", which I will indeed discuss below.   But I'd like to put this in a larger context.
 
I've been writing about H-1B and related issues for -- are you sitting down? -- 20 years.   Yep, started in 1993, with testimony to the California state legislature.   During these 20 years, I've found it fascinating to watch the press' take on H-1B, especially starting in 1998, the year of the industry's first big push to expand the program.   It's my tentative view that after all this time, the press is now starting to "get it" regarding the H-1B issue.
 
Journalists are handicapped in their reporting on this issue, first because they typically are of the sort who fervently avoided STEM courses while in college, but more importantly, because they cover completely different topics every day, and thus don't have time to confirm whether the Emperor is indeed wearing any clothes regarding H-1B.
 
Another handicap is that even among critics of H-1B, a number of people have a misunderstanding of the issue, based on an incorrect view that the main abuse of H-1B is limited to the Indian bodyshops [I know of no one who believes this...jgo]; this muddies the already murky waters, as I've explained before.
 
I credit Computerworld with "getting it" about H-1B, starting very early (1998).   Businessweek also has done some good pieces here and there, and except for a couple of overtly biased staffers who are now long gone, the San Jose Mercury News has been pretty good, as has the San Francisco Chronicle.   The Washington Post has generally done a good job, though with a drought during the time that Melinda Gates was on the Post board.   There are also a number of individual writers who have been first-rate, but here I'm trying to speak of general publications that have covered the topic well across multiple reporters; but you people know who you are, thanks.
 
The National Journal has done some very good articles too, though today they ran a pretty outrageous one.   I say "outrageous" not because I disagree with the contents (which I do), but because for an article of this length, the author should have done better research.   For instance, she shouldn't have taken as her only source on the cheap labor issue the badly flawed Brookings study, especially given Brookings' close relationship with MSFT.
 
But in general, the press has fallen down on the job, not giving the industry PR people and their allies proper skepticism.   Having said that, I have to say that I have the impresssion that the press is finally starting to understand H-1B as cheap labor, especially its relation to the age issue (employers hiring young H-1Bs in lieu of qualified Americans over 35).
 
Why the change?   I first must credit EPI for having the courage to publish a number of research papers (including mine) on H-1B, especially this year.   They have name recognition and a fair amount of gravitas, and I believe this got the attention of the press.
 
Second, the self-contradictions in the industry PR machine's story may have reached critical mass.   For instance, I think most people in the press know someone -- a spouse, sibling, friend etc. -- who is well-qualified in STEM but has had trouble finding a job in the field.   This causes considerable cognitive dissonance when journalists are told by industry PR people that we have a dire STEM shortage.
 
Mind you, just because many journalists now understand that the industry lobbyists' claims are problematic, that doesn't mean that members of congress understand -- or, for that matter, that they even WANT to understand the issue well.   Ignorance is bliss, especially when ignorance brings in campaign donations -- and in the Democrats' case, also when the H-1B issue is used to leverage legislation on undocumented workers [illegal aliens].   Sadly, based on a number of disparate bits of information, I believe the president and his advisers also take an ignorance-is-bliss view.
 
The IEEE Spectrum article -- and there is an interesting discussion page -- is of interest not only because it reflects this trend in the press, but also because it's IEEE.   That makes it a man-bites-dog story in its own right.
 
The IEEE article has a lot of people scratching their heads.   What, IEEE says there is no STEM shortage?   Spectrum is IEEE's flagship magazine, and the "shortage myth" article is totally out of character with the organization.
 
Remember, IEEE, an organization dominated by those with heavy vested interests in the H-1B program (industry and academia), bullied its U.S. suborganization, IEEE-USA, into doing a U-turn on H-1B in 2000.   Up to then, IEEE-USA was in the vanguard of the movement to scale back the H-1B program, pointing out its use as a tool for cheap labor.   Cowed into submission (fearing dissolution), IEEE-USA did back down.
 
As noted above, a very important aspect of the use of H-1Bs as cheap labor is hiring young H-1Bs instead of older (35+) Americans.   One good thing IEEE-USA did in the late 1990s was to set up its Misfortune 500 web page, which profiled 500 older engineers who had difficulties finding work, right in the middle of the [so-called] Dot Com Boom.   Well, this was politically incorrect, as it undermined the industry's case for H-1B expansion, and one of the things IEEE-USA did in response to IEEE pressure was to dismantle the Misfortune 500 page, (IEEE-USA also started its "green cards, not guest worker" push, which exacerbates the age problem, rather than solving it, as I've explained before.)
 
This IEEE Spectrum article is especially interesting in light of the recent remark by senator Schumer, author of the Senate immigration bill that would greatly liberalize foreign tech worker policy: "Because this bill helps high-tech companies and highly skilled immigrants, it is endorsed by every major high-tech organization and groups representing highly skilled immigrants".   The "groups" likely means just one, IEEE-USA, referring to their support of automatic green cards and punitive policies toward the Indian firms.   But IEEE-USA did object to the bill's raising of the H-1B cap, and as to the word "representing", IEEE-USA has never polled its members on the issue, and I believe most aren't even aware that IEEE-USA is "representing" them on it.
 
But taking Schumer's remark at face value, it's interesting that this "endorsing organization" has an article titled "The Myth of a STEM Crisis" in the flagship magazine of the parent group.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-09-05
Anthony Watts
whirlpools seen for the first time in the South Atlantic

2013-09-05
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
5 foreign ambassadors touring Montana with eyes on trade
"5 foreign ambassadors will travel across Montana on a trade promotion tour with U.S. senator Max Baucus, D-MT, next week.   Representatives from China, Germany, Japan, Peru and Canada will spend 3 days discussing Montana trade and investment in advance of an economic summit in Butte on Sept. 16.   Past tours organized by the senator have included business announcements at every stop...   Canada and China rank first and second as destinations for Montana products, according to the State Commerce Department, while Japan buys half of the state's exported wheat.   In 2012, Montana exported $1.6G in non-farm products, according to the U.S. Trade Representative.   Exports to Canada totaled $634M and China $105M.   Chemicals were the leading non-farm export, followed by minerals, machinery, oil and coal.   Billings exports totaled $102M...   Japanese companies now have ownership of 13 of Montana's 21 largest grain elevators...   Japanese-owned Takeda Vaccines bought the Bozeman-based pharmaceutical research laboratory LigoCyte for $60M last Fall.   LigoCyte specializes in treatments for inflammatory and infectious diseases, including the only vaccine in clinical trials for norovirus, the leading cause of food borne illness in the United States...   Applied Materials in Kalispell, which makes parts used in cellphones, flat screen televisions and other electronics [assembled] in China and Japan...   China-based Goldwind constructed its first Montana wind farm in Shawmut last year.   China-made parts also are used in some Montana manufacturing, including golf bags assembled at Sun Mountain Sports in Missoula.   Ambassador Cui Tiankai will tour Sun Mountain late next week.   Currently, the U.S. tariff on parts Sun Mountain imports from China is 7%, up from 1.5% in 2012.   Baucus has a bill to lower the rate again."

2013-09-05
_SlashDot_
people line up in Colorado to buy UAV hunting licenses

2013-09-05
Bob Fernley-Jones
how wind affects weather-station temperature readings

2013-09-05
Nicole Perlroth, Jeff Larson, Scott Shane & John Markoff _NYTimes_
NSA has been able to destroy privacy safeguards... so, what's new?

2013-09-05
"ChemJobber"
daily dump trap
"Between September 3 and September 4, there were 25 new [chemistry] positions posted.   Of these, 1 (4%) is academically connected and 8 (32%) were from Kelly Scientific Resources [bodyshop]...   Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 244, 658, 2629 and 12 positions for the search term 'chemist'.   LinkedIn shows 137 positions for the job title 'chemist', with 3 for 'research chemist', 16 for 'analytical chemist' and 2 for 'organic chemist'."

2013-09-05
Bill Snyder _InfoWorld_/_IDG_
Off-shoring and productivity gains are expected to blow away 750K "enterprise IT" jobs by 2017
"Large companies in North America and Europe are now losing over 250K jobs each year in 'IT', finance, and other key business services [data processing] areas...   A recent report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a net gain of 18,400 jobs in July across 4 industry job segments commonly associated with 'IT' professionals, the second largest monthly gain in 2013."

2013-09-05
Susan Hall _Dice_
there was a big increase in tech lay-offs announced in August
"Technology layoffs soared in the month of August, with job cuts rising by roughly 3 times the level of the previous month for the computer and telecom industries, according to a report released Thursday by out-placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas."

2013-09-05
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
outlandish, but PC, DHS grants to locations that are unlikely to attract any right-minded terrorist
"Every year the Department of Homeland Security distributes funds to local government entities to help prevent terrorism and every year it makes some outlandish (but politically correct) grants to locations that are unlikely to attract any right-minded terrorist.   Clearly New York, Boston, and Washington have been targets of terrorist attacks and the local defenses need to be shored up, but the grant-makers also have other, and more exotic, ideas.   My candidate for the strangest grant of the year is the $305,747 awarded to the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska.   Now there are places in Alaska, as Sarah Palin has instructed us, from which you can see Russia, and Russia is a worrisome state...   if you examine a map, you will find it is about 280 miles off the Mainland of Alaska, and about 500 miles from the nearest part of Russia.   One of the Pribilof Islands, it is a cold outpost in the Bering Sea with fishing and fish processing being the main economic activities.   It is also about as unattractive to would-be tourists as it is to would-be terrorists; and even the indigenous people are leaving; the population was 491 in 2012, and that was down 7.7% from 2000.   So, with a population of 491, the grant came to $633 for each resident of St. Paul, perhaps a per-capita record of some kind.   Every year the Homeland Security Grant Program distributes $10M to tribal governments as shown in this DHS press release.   This year the largest grant ($1,514,206) went to Arizona's Pascua Yaqui tribe, which has a tiny (by Western standards) reservation of less than 1K acres near Tucson.   The tribe also has members in Mexico, and also has been given by DHS the unusual privilege of issuing its own passport-type documents for its own members."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The chief virtue of the Conestoga [wagon] was its large and well-balanced body.   Built with its sides sloping inward like a well-made boat, it held its assorted cargo firmly in place, no matter how rough the terrain of the Great Wagon Road might be.   As the road grew longer and wider, so did the Conestoga wagon, ultimately reaching a length of 26 feet adn a height of 11.   Built of hickory, white oak, and poplar, it had hubs of black gum or sour gum and tires of iron.   No wonder that it weighed 3,500 pounds at the height of its growth and required 6 horses to pull it!..." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp165-166  

 
 

2013-09-06

2013-09-06
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet

2013-09-06
_SlashDot_
Epic: a privacy-focused web browser

2013-09-06
_SlashDot_
Bruce Shneier: the US government has betrayed the Internet and we need to take it back

2013-09-06
_SlashDot_
NIH wants to collect every baby's gene sequence at birth

2013-09-06
Anthony Watts
largest volcano on earth about 1K miles East of Japan covers about 120K square miles

2013-09-06
Willis Eschenbach
rolling with the Saracen stones: henges and Salisbury cathedral and "library"

2013-09-06
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
computer science starting salaries DOWN
 
When discussing H-1B-related analysis with people who hated their statistics course in college -- almost all members of congress, probably most journalists, and probably most engineers and programmers -- nothing beats couching things in terms of wages.   People's eyes may glaze over when one talks of regression models, but everyone understands that if wages are flat, there ain't no shortage.
 
Well, then, everyone will get this one: According to the latest NACE survey, starting salaries for new Computer Science grads are not just flat, they are DOWN by 2.5%.   See NACE Salary Survey: Average Starting Salary for Class of 2013 Grads Increases 2.4%.
 
The wages for Computer Engineering majors are also down, though the above summary didn't say how much.
 
Starting salaries for new engineering majors in general were up a bit, 2.3%.   An exception was for Bioengineering, still an infant field yet to stabilize, at 10.1%.   But hey, Sociology majors beat that, at 10.8%.
 
As you know, though, for relevance to the H-1B issue, the computer field is dominant.   Though the figures vary from year to year, about 50% of all H-1Bs are in that field, with the next largest one, electrical engineering, being far smaller, at about 5%.   It has consistently been the case that the loudest corporate voices for expanding the H-1B program have been from the computer field, notably MSFT.
 
Wages for new college grads in computer science are of special interest.   As I've pointed out, by many employers' own public admission, they are focusing on hiring new or recent grads, shunning older applicants.   So, starting salaries should be going up.   The fact that they are actually DOWN slightly highlights the fact that, in spite of the industry lobbyists' claims, hiring in the computer field is a buyer's market.
 
IOW, NO SHORTAGE.
 
Speaking of wage analyses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reacted sharply to the IEEE Spectrum article I reported on yesterday.   Their response, U.S. Immigration Reform/Perversion and STEM Jobs...By The Numbers (pdf) also brings up wages.   I don't know whether they are counting on innumeracy in the press and congress, or the author of the piece is him/herself is innumerate, but the Chambers' numbers actually prove my point.   For example, they say from 1999 to 2011, we had inflation of 36% but wages for computer and mathematical occuptions grew by 44%.   That as increase in real wages of a minuscule 0.5% per year!   That's not a shortage, folks.
 
The Chamber's report also brings up the fact that not enough American students go to grad school, as the master's and PhD levels.   I've explained many times that H-1B is the CAUSE of this, not the solution: The large influx of foreign workers has held down salary growth at those levels, with the result that financially speaking, it's best for American tech students to stop their education after getting their bachelor's degrees.   This was forecast by a National Science Foundation report years ago, and the forecast turned out to be quite accurate.
 
The Chamber also cunningly chooses its wording.   They keep referring to "native-born" workers, when the term doesn't appear in the Spectrum piece (the Chamber hopes the term will read "nativist", I guess), and they refer to IEEE as a union, which of course is far from the truth.   If IEEE-USA were a union, it might solicit its members' views on H-1B, instead of "representing" them to congress regarding policies to the members' detriment.
 
Norm
Robert N. Charette: IEEE Spectrum: STEM pay

2013-09-06
_Billings MT Gazette_
725K people visited Yellowstone park in August, 2.55M year to date
Detailed park visitation information and additional information on how these statistics are calculated.
"The total number of recreational visitors to Yellowstone through August was down 5.77%, but vehicle traffic was up 4.37% compared to the same period in 2012."

2013-09-06
Gina Stewart _Chronicle of Higher Education_
locations of STEM PhD employment concentrations

2013-09-06
"ChemJobber"
interesting graph over-laying unemployment rates for each recession since WW2, indexed to start of recession
"Chemical manufacturing employment was down 3,200 jobs to 793K from July's 796,200."

2013-09-06
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
families of soldiers at Camp Bastion still trying to find out what happened and why

2013-09-06
David Stockman _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
_The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America_ and the bail-outs

2013-09-06
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
top users/abusers of L-1 visas are off-shore out-sourcers/cross-border bodyshops (with table)
"In the recently released report, the Dept. of Homeland Security's Inspector General (DHS IG) called some of L-1 visa program's rules vague and in need of improvement.   With no changes, the program is at risk for fraud and abuse, the IG's report said...   The largest users of the L-1 visa are companies either based in India or with operations there, according to the report, compiled at the request of the U.S. senate's leading H-1B critic, senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA).   The L-1 visas are used by many of the same firms that use H-1B visas...   The largest users of the L-1 visa program are out-sourcers like Tata Consultancy Services and Cognizant.   From 2002 to 2011, Tata and Cognizant received 26K and nearly 20K petitions, respectively, making them the top users by far.   The third largest user was IBM India operations, which received 5,722 L-1 petitions...   Tata... Cognizant... IBM... Wipro... Infosys... Satyam... HCL... Schlumberger... Price Waterhouse Coopers... HP..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The reality of the Jews' economic situtation in the Weimar Republic was as follows.   Relative to their tiny numbers -- Jews formed just under 1% of the total population of Germany -- they were disproportionately represented in certain professions and occupations.   Between 1918 and 1933, nearly three-quarters of German Jews earned their livelihood from trade, commerce, banking, and the professions, particularly law and medicine.   By contrast, only about one-quarter of the non-Jewish population of Germany was similarly employed.   Thus in 1933, Jews made up around 10% of Germany's doctors and more than 16% of its lawyers and notaries public.   Commerce and finance, however, were the major pursuits of most German Jews.   In 1930, Jews owned 40% of Germany's wholesale textile firms and nearly 60% of the country's wholesale and retail clothing businesses.   In 1932, Jews owned roughly 80% of all department store business. Weimar Jews were also prominent in banking.   Nearly half of the country's private banks were owned by Jewish banking families like the Bleichroders, Mendelssohns, and Schlesingers.   OTOH, Jews controlled almost none of Germany's more numerous and increasingly important credit banks; nor were the modern large banks that financed the German industrialization principally controlled by Jews.   Although a significant number of German Jews were extremely well off, the great majority of them belonged to the middle classes, and many Weimar Jews were poor." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pp202-203  

 
 

2013-09-07

2013-09-07
Jamison Cocklin _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
US auto industry gets tougher on Japan in trade agreement talks
"Initially conceived as an 11-country bloc when it was announced in 2011 November, the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] agreement aims to create a free-trade group with countries such as Vietnam, New Zealand and Malaysia.   In July, during the 18th round of negotiations, Japan joined the talks, and the countries involved ambitiously hope to wrap up the discussions in October.   Japan's place in the negotiations has the AAPC wary, as the country has long been protectionist and it is considered among one of the most-closed automotive markets in the world, with a 6% import penetration rate versus most other countries that have a 45% import penetration rate...   the organization is lobbying for enforceable currency disciplines and the elimination of nontariff barriers...   Overall, the TPP agreement calls for increasing U.S. exports to a region of expanded growth that accounts for more than 40% of global trade.   In 2012, the U.S. auto industry was the country's largest exporter, shipping $132.7G over-seas.   Yet, while the U.S. exported $2G worth of product to Japan in 2012, Japanese imports to the U.S.A. were $53.9G last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department...   Since October 2012, Japan's currency, the Yen, has depreciated by 30%... According to the automotive information website Edmunds.com, Honda employed 28K U.S. employees last year while Toyota employed 31K at the same time to build and export vehicles from the U.S.A."

2013-09-07
Anthony Watts
Australian elections reject green-reds

2013-09-07
"Just the Facts"
tough times for sea-ice melt enthusiasts
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "the wealthiest Germans in the Weimar Republic by and large were non-Jews: members of the nobility or land-owning aristocracy as well as powerful industrialists such as Robert Bosch, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, and Hugo Stinnes.   OTOH, almost no Jews were peasants, farmers, or members of the urban proletariat, and the average income of Jews was 3.2 times that of the general Weimar population." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg203  

 
 

2013-09-08

1565-09-08: St.Augustine, FL founded by Pedro Menéndez marquis

2013-09-08
Ed Kemmick _Billings MT Gazette_
former computer tech support guy turns piano mover/tuner: "It makes people happy"
"He had previously worked as a MSFT-certified technician, and when he came here, 'I didn't find any computer work, which was great.'   He said his most recent computer work was in technical support, fielding phone calls from people having trouble with their computers.   'When people's computers crashed and I was working on that, people were never happy.', he said.   By contrast, people love when he delivers a new piano, or brings an old one into tune or does some refurbishing that makes their piano play better and sound better.   'It's a great job, you know, because people are happy.', he says.   A job counselor at Montana Vocational Rehabilitation was the one who suggested the career change.   Brekke told him what he was after: 'What can I do that I can have fun, be good at and make money?'   He asked Brekke if he had ever tuned pianos.   Brekke said no, but he'd played guitar all his life and figured he had the ear for it.   He trained with a tuner in Sheridan, WY, then tuned pianos for All About Pianos from 2006 to 2010.   To expand his skills, he attend the School of Piano Technology for the Blind in Vancouver, WA, in 2010 and 2011, where he learned how to restore and rebuild pianos, and how to make the sort of repairs and adjustments that keep a piano sounding good and playing with precision."

2013-09-08
Kip Hansen
a curious climate analogy badly reported by the NYTimes: Use direct quotes, stick to the facts, don't make stuff up, don't trust other journalists to have done these things; check them yourself

2013-09-08
David Archibald
solar activity, climate, growing degree days, grain production, prices, imports, exports, population, showshoe hares, lynxes and "carrying capacity"

2013-09-08
Willis Eschenbach
the call of the running tide: Liverpool

2013-09-08
Roger L. Simon _PJ Media_
the blind, deaf, insensate commander-in-chief of Benghazi
"The deceptions about Benghazi runs through Barack Obama and, of course, through Hillary Clinton.   I wouldn't trust either of them to mow my lawn, let alone command the American military."

2013-09-08
Patrick Poole _PJ Media_
tectonic shifts in the Middle East

2013-09-08
Rober Kimball _PJ Media_
fundamentally degrading the United States of America

2013-09-08
Edwin S. Rubnstein _V Dare_
immigrant displacement of US citizens from jobs is off the charts
"In August: Total employment fell by 115K, or by -0.08%; Native-born employment fell by 338K, or by -0.28%; Foreign-born employment rose by 223K, or by +0.95%."

2013-09-08
Devvy Kidd _News with Views_
why I son't support supposedly "conservative" organizations and candidates
"DeMint was a Band Aid pusher.   As a 'conservative' DeMint was popular because of his position on issues like abortion and the Second Amendment.   He also voted consistently to kill American jobs: Voted YES on promoting free trade with Peru (2007 Dec); Voted YES on free trade agreement with Oman (2006 Jun); Voted YES on implementing CAFTA for Central America free-trade (2005 Jul); Voted YES on implementing US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (2004 Jul); Voted YES on implementing US-Singapore free trade agreement (2003 Jul); Voted YES on implementing free trade agreement with Chile (2003 Jul); Voted NO on withdrawing from the WTO (2000 Jun).   Keep good paying jobs that used to belong to Americans going in communist China, India and other countries while Americans stand in unemployment lines.   DeMint, like the rest of the 'conservatives' in Congress, ignored the clauses in article 1 section 8 in the U.S. Constitution on a daily basis.   In 2010, he voted to 'Devolve education to states without abolishing the Department'.   The Federal Department of Education...is 100% unconstitutional."

2013-09-08
P. David Hornick _PJ Media_
Some Europeans love Jews, but hate Judaism and Israel

2013-09-08
Devvy Kidd _News with Views_
why I don't support "conservative" organizations
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Smallpox in the 20th century alone killed an estimated 300M people." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg316  

 
 

2013-09-09

1513-09-09: battle of Flodden Field

2013-09-09
"ChemJobber"
Chemical & Engineering News is 90 years old

2013-09-09
Christopher Kochera _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
pres. Obummer's insane call for CO2 emission restrictions may hit Ohio hard

2013-09-09
David Skolnick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Americans of Hungarian heritage savor tradition

2013-09-09
Duane Oldsen
"on the present halting of global warming" by Syun-Ichi Akasofu

2013-09-09
Anthony Watts
count-down to hurricane lateness record

2013-09-09
Anthony Watts
Stanford U on energy costs to store wind and solar electricity

2013-09-09
Rob Preston _InformationWeek_/_UBM_
beware the fake "innovators": what innovation is not

2013-09-09
Steve Kolowich _Chronicle of Higher Education_
the web log post that came in from the cold
"Matthew Green, an assistant research professor in computer science at the Johns Hopkins University, sparked outrage on Twitter on Monday when he tweeted, 'I received a request from my Dean this morning asking me to remove all copies of my NSA blog post from University servers.'   professor Green, who specializes in cryptography, had written about the National Security Agency on his personal web log last week.   In the post, he speculated on details of the agency's efforts to bypass data encryption in light of recent revelations by The New York Times and The Guardian.   The tweet immediately drew responses from professor Green's followers, some of whom were surprised and disappointed by what they [concluded] to be an act of censorship...   the dean had simply banished a 'mirror' copy that had resided on a university server [i.e. censored it].   At this point, professor Green's account went silent.   Meanwhile, The Chronicle's attempt to interview the dean -- Andrew Douglas, interim dean of the engineering school at Johns Hopkins -- was interrupted and hastily shut down by a member of the university's 'communications team'.   The research professor did not respond to several [e-mail messages]...   Several hours later, The Chronicle received a statement from a different member of the university's public-relations team, Dennis O'Shea...   'Upon further review, we note that the NSA logo has been removed and that he appears to link to material that has been published in the news media.   Interim Dean Andrew Douglas will inform professor Green that the mirror site may be restored.'...   Eventually, professor Green—or perhaps a person writing in his likeness—did emerge on Twitter to elaborate on what had happened.   The complaint allegedly had come from someone at the university's Applied Physics Laboratory, professor Green wrote.   (Mr. O'Shea would not confirm this.)"
dean Andrew Douglas has apologized for the fuss

2013-09-09
_Billings MT Gazett_/_MT Standard_
10-year-old grew 16-pound 6-ounce head of cabbage in Butte

2013-09-09
_KTRE abc_/_IEEE-USA_
top H-1B and L-1 sponsors specialize in off-shoring and cross-border bodyshopping
Fox
"In February, ComputerWorld magazine found that the top 10 users of H-1B visas in FY2012 were companies [which] specialize in sending American jobs off-shore.   A recent report shows a similar pattern among L-1 visas.   In 2013-08-15: Implementation of L-1 Visa Regulations (pdf), from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General [DHS OIG], the top 7 L-1 users in FY2002-11 and 8 of the top 10 were once again companies whose business model includes the off-shoring of American jobs.   'This report proves that out-sourcers have come to dominate the L-1 visa program the same way they dominate the H-1B program.', IEEE-USA president Marc Apter said.   [These guest-work visa programs have] 'become another tool for shipping American jobs over-seas'...   L-1B employees work 'often at wages that under-cut the salaries paid to U.S. workers'."
DHS OIG reports for FY2012 & FY2013

2013-09-09
Adam Lewis _Fox_
privacy violator Google has very low employee retention rate

2013-09-09 (5774 Tishrei 05)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
blunt words about Muslim backwardness
"In 2010, the best-selling atheist Richard Dawkins, in the 'On Faith' section of the Washington Post, called the pope 'a leering old villain in a frock' perfectly suited to 'the evil corrupt organization' and 'child-raping institution' that is the Catholic Church.   Nobody seemed to mind very much.   3 years later, in a throw-away Tweet, Professor Dawkins observed that 'all the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge.   They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.'   This time round, the old provocateur managed to get a rise out of folks.   Almost every London paper ran at least one story on the 'controversy'...   None of the above is Muslim.   Indeed, they are, to one degree or another, members of the same secular liberal media elite as Professor Dawkins.   Yet all felt that, unlike Dawkins's routine jeers at Christians, his Tweet had gone too far.   It's factually unarguable: Trinity graduates have amassed 32 Nobel prizes, the entire Muslim world a mere 10...   Yet simply to make the observation was enough to have the Guardian compare him to the loonier imams...   It's creepy and unnerving how swiftly the West's chattering classes have accepted that the peculiar sensitivities of Islam require a deference extended to no other 'identity group'...   Whatever its virtues, Islam is not a culture of inquiry, of innovation.   You can coast for a while on the accumulated inheritance of a pre-Muslim past -- as, indeed, much of the Dar al-Islam did in those Middle Ages Dawkins so admires..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "By the time of the American Revolution, a Conestoga wagon sold for $250, while the 6 heavy wagon horses cost nearly $1,200." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg166  

 
 

2013-09-10

2013-09-10
Anthony Watts
ATI has filed an FOIA suit for release of U of AZ climate data, e-mail messages
"Included in U of A's production was a first-ever, 213-page roadmap of several hundred [e-mail messages] the academics insisted could not be released about either the 'Hockey Stick' or IPCC.   Unfortunately the indexes were also deliberately and uncharacteristically scarce on details, though they do lay out correspondence between the Hockey Stick and IPCC authors (they also identify, e.g., [e-mail messages] about professor and IPCC coordinating lead author Jonathan Overpeck's work at the University for the environmentalist pressure group Union of Concerned Scientists, and [e-mail messages] to or from Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, home to ClimateGate).   ATI filed suit under Arizona's Public Records Law after the University declined ATI's request to provide sufficient detail in these indexes about withheld records, or produce the responsive records...   Through these leaks, and releases under various freedom of information laws, the public learned of troubling practices by a network of publicly funded academics involving, inter alia, questionable use of statistics, organized efforts to subvert transparency laws in the United States and United Kingdom, campaigns to keep dissenting work from publication, recruiting journalists to target opponents and retaliation against scientists and editors involved in publishing dissenting work."

2013-09-10
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet

2013-09-10
Steve Gorham
science rebuts warmist hysteria
Washington DC Times

2013-09-10
Sara Haimowitz _Trade Reform_
Abbott and Costello explain unemployment statistics
U3 vs. U6 vs. ShadowStats

2013-09-10
Laura Shin _Smart Planet_/_CBS_
"big data" courses/research/applications are weak on ethics
"[only] 86% of Internet users have made steps to remove or mask their identities on-line...   Acxiom Corp., which collects and sells data about individuals to companies, just launched Aboutthedata.com, a site where Internet users can see and manage what Acxiom knows about them...   'Generally speaking, fields such as statistics, computer science and the hard sciences don't teach ethics.', says Dr. Rachel Schutt, an adjunct professor at Columbia's Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering.   'There are privacy concerns, such as how much corporations and the government should know about individuals...   But software engineers [are taught] about the elegance or the mathematical beauty of the thing that they're building, not how it will affect people's lives.'   That doesn't mean these university programs aren't trying.   Karrie Karahalios, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that she teaches her students how to sample data ethically and protect subjects in academic studies.   For example, in a FB study, the researcher should replace all the participants' names, all their friends' names and all their friends of friends' names with numbers.   'If you do these large social network studies, you don't have what they call participant-informed consent.   Let's say I have you in one of my FB studies, and you're coming to my lab and we are analyzing the strength of the connections between you and your friends.   I'm getting information about your friends and their friends without their consent.   It's a very, very ethically sensitive area.'   Many ethics guidelines come from the Belmont Report, created in 1978 to protect human research subjects.   It requires universities that receive funding from the government to have what's called an Institute Review Board perform an ethics review of proposed studies involving human subjects.   'This is where it gets interesting with big data, because there are a lot of things you can do with big data that don't involve talking with people.', Karahalios says.   'If your study involves just scraping the web, and not talking to a human, you don't have to talk to the board.'   If academics find that big data allows them to obtain more information than they would be able to gather when dealing with subjects in person, imagine what companies like Google and FB know."

2013-09-10
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
statistical trends that should prompt a slowing of immigration but don't: births, marriages, crime

2013-09-10
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
immigration, Chespeake Bay, and environmentalists' refusal to acknowledge the connection

2013-09-10
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
Syria and Obummer part 1
Jewish World Review

2013-09-10
Thomas Sowell _Town Hall_
Syria and Obummer part 2
Jewish World Review
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  As in PA, a few skilled gun-smiths lived in the Valley and supplied their customers with the long barrels which the Indians feared.   Henry Spitzer in New Market, Adam Haymaker in winchester, the Sheetz family near Luray, and several others were producers of these jaeger rifles, which Virginians called 'squirrel guns' or 'Virginia rifles'.   Henry Spitzer, who had come from PA, produced a rifle each week at his home work-shop, charging about 4 pounds apiece.   These he decorated with brass-work hex designs, in-laid into their wooden stocks, to give the hunter luck.   Following the practice in Germany, the earliest Germanic rifles in America were of large caliber to kill bear or deer.   However, the size was soon reduced for greater utility and lighter weight.   Virginia and Kentucky rifles by the time of the Revolution were usually of .36 caliber.   Each local militia-man was required to own such a rifle plus a bayonet or tomahawk for hand-to-hand fighting." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg187  

 
 

2013-09-11

2013-09-11
Jeremy Beck _Numbers USA_
identifying those who have been perpetuating the STEM talent shortage myth

2013-09-11
Anthony Watts
deep-sea breakers reveal potential mechanism for global ocean mixing
"A University of Washington study for the first time recorded such a wave breaking in a key bottleneck for circulation in the world's largest ocean.   The study was published online this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters...   huge waves form between layers of water of different density.   These skyscraper-tall waves transport heat, energy, carbon and nutrients around the globe."

2013-09-11
Jeffrey S. Patterson
DSP analysis of temperature data time series suggests cooling ahead
"Abstract: The observed temperature anomaly since 1900 can be well modeled with a simple harmonic decomposition of the temperature record based on a fundamental period of 170.7 years.   The goodness-of-fit of the resulting model significantly exceeds the expected fit to a stochastic AR sequence matching the general characteristic of the modern temperature record."

2013-09-11
Rodrigo Sarmeno _PJ Media_
former EPA administrator defiant over abuse of e-mail aliases for official communications, attempting to dodge FOIA
"Allegations that Jackson used her personal email account to circumvent federal records laws are largely based on one [e-mail message] in which Jackson told a Siemens [executive officer] to contact her using a personal account instead of the Winsdor account.   In December 2009, Jackson told Alison Taylor, a vice president at Siemens, to use her home e-mail account if Taylor needed to contact Jackson directly...   When the e-mail exchange happened, Taylor was a lobbyist for Siemens and had asked Jackson if she could meet with Siemens' chief sustainability officer, Taylor's boss.   Jackson agreed and shortly after sent an [e-mail message], saying: 'P.S. Can you use my home email [e-mail address] rather than this one when you need to contact me directly? Tx, Lisa.'   The EPA has said Jackson's second account was hosted on the agency's servers and fully accessible under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.   Nevertheless, the agency has also informed the committee that most of the information it requested no longer exists...   The report accuses the EPA of being unresponsive to FOIA requests, often redacting information and mismanaging its electronic records system.   'From day one of the Obama administration, the EPA has pursued a path of obfuscation, operating in the shadows, and out of legally required sunlight.', the report said.   'Specifically, the agency established an alias identity to hide the actions of [Jackson].'   David Ferriero, the U.S. archivist, said that use of an alias [e-mail address] is allowed as long as the messages are preserved and produced in response to a request for records."
senate committee report (pdf)

2013-09-11
Willis Eschenbach
the Romans be stylin'

2013-09-11
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
"Humberto came within about 2 hours of beating the satellite era lateness record for formation of Atlantic hurricane, though it looks to me like NOAA was trying to beat the deadline by giving credence to estimates..."

2013-09-11
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Courtland AL paper mill to close: 1,100 employees dumped
"because of waning demand for the paper the facility makes...   The mill makes paper for forms, envelopes, labels, copiers, printers and magazines."

2013-09-11
Christopher Monckton 3rd viscount Brenchley
Remote Sensing System: no global warming for 202 months

2013-09-11
Robert Curry
it took a century for the leftists to put us in this situation

2013-09-11
Byron York Washington DC Examiner_
Companies lay off thousands, then demand immigration perversion for cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled new labor with flexible ethics
alternate
Alex Jones's InfoWars
Power Line
Visual Politics Pundit
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Lucianne
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News Max
Free Republic
"On Tuesday, the chief human resources officers of more than 100 large corporations sent a letter to House speaker John Boehner and minority-leader Nancy Pelosi urging quick passage of a comprehensive immigration [perversion] bill... All want to see increases in immigration levels for low-skill as well as high-skill workers, in addition to [yet another] path to citizenship for the millions of immigrants currently in the U.S.A. illegally... HR Policy Association... The way for the United States to win that war for talent, they say, is more immigration... Of course, the U.S. unemployment rate is at 7.3%, with millions of American workers at all skill levels out of work, and millions more so discouraged that they have left the work force altogether. In addition, at the same time the corporate officers seek higher numbers of immigrants, both low-skill and high-skill, many of their companies are laying off thousands of workers. For example, Hewlett-Packard, whose Executive Vice President for Human Resources Tracy Keogh signed the letter, laid off 29K employees in 2012. In August of this year, Cisco Systems, whose Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer Kathleen Weslock signed the letter, announced plans to lay off 4K -- in addition to 8K cut in the last 2 years. United Technologies, whose Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Organization Elizabeth B. Amato signed the letter, announced layoffs of 3K this year. American Express, whose Chief Human Resources Officer L. Kevin Cox signed the letter, cut 5,400 jobs this year. Procter & Gamble, whose chief-human-resources-officer Mark F. Biegger signed the letter, announced plans to cut 5,700 jobs in 2012. Those are just a few of the lay-offs at companies whose officials signed the letter. A few more: T-Mobile announced 2,250 lay-offs in 2012. Archer-Daniels-Midland laid off 1,200. Texas Instruments, nearly 2K. Cigna, 1,300. Verizon sought to cut 1,700 jobs by buy-outs and lay-offs. Marriott announced 'hundreds' of lay-offs this year. International Paper has closed plants and laid off dozens. And General Mills, in what the Minneapolis Star-Tribune called a 'rare mass lay-off', laid off 850 people last year. There are more still. In all, it's fair to say a large number of the corporate signers of the letter demanding more labor from abroad have actually laid off workers at home in recent years. Together, their actions have a significant effect on the economy. According to a recent Reuters report, U.S. employers announced 50,462 lay-offs in August, up 34% from the previous month and up 57% from 2012 August."

2013-09-11
Anna Palmer & Jake Sherman _Free Republic_
Mark Zuckerberg to meet with 4 House RINOs 2013-09-19 to pitch immigration law perversion
Politico
"In addition to contributing $15K to FB's political action committee Zuckerberg has also contributed heavily to Newark mayor Cory Booker's senate bid, writing a check in mid-June to his campaign for $10,400.   FB spent $3.5M on lobbying during the first half of 2013 with several lobbying firms on retainer, including Elmendorf Ryan, Patton Boggs, Peck Madigan Jones, Steptoe & Johnson and Stewart Strategies and Solutions."

2013-09-11
Rich Lowry _Free Republic_
the plumber taught the billionaire a lesson
Ross Kaminsky: Amerian Spectator
Investor's Business Daily
Michelle Malkin: Jewish World Review
DNC: We lost because we were prevented from cheating

2013-09-11
Janeen Zapizola _Biz PAC Review_
thousands of motorcyclists drive through DC in memory of those killed 2001-09-11 in NY and DC, and 4 killed 2012-09-11 in Benghazi2013-09-03 report
WJLA abc (video)
Dave Miller: Flickr
YouTube
2 dozen attend government- and media-approved "million" Mohammedan march

2013-09-11
_Free Republic_/_National Black Republican Association_
articles of impeachment filed against pres. Obummer
Watch-Dog Wire
NBRA

2013-09-11
Liz Peek _Free Republic_
the crushing racism of low expectations
Fiscal Times

2013-09-11
_Free Republic_
children educated at home continue to out-pace public school students
Martha R. Gore: Examiner

2013-09-11
Mark Peplow _Free Republic_
genetically modified E. coli hunts down invading pathogenic bacteria
Nature
"Synthetic biologist Matthew Chang at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has armed Escherichia coli bacteria with a 'seek and kill' system that targets cells of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an invasive bacterium that causes pneumonia and other illnesses1.   In preliminary tests with infected mice, the modified bacterium left a trail of dead P. aeruginosa in its wake.   Chang and his team had previously developed an E. coli that could brew up an antibacterial peptide called pyocin, and then explode to release its deadly cargo whenever it detected a chemical signal emitted by its prey2.   Now the bioengineered vigilante is back -- and it is tougher than ever.   The researchers inserted genes into E. coli to make a killing peptide called microcin S (MccS).   This is smaller than pyocin, so the E. coli can secrete it..."

2013-09-11
Daniel Zolnikov _American Legislator_
government threatens Montanans' privacy

2013-09-11
_Free Republic_
Judicial Watch has issued special report on attack on Benghazi consulate and cover-up
Judicial Watch
John Sexton: Breitbart: Why the US government was in Benghazi

2013-09-11
Ari Soffer _Israel National News_
Pew poll: majority of Palestinian Authority Muslims support terrorist suicide bombings

2013-09-11
Michael Ledeen _PJ Media_
Obummer and the Red Queen: forget about Syria, back the opposition to the Iranian regime

2013-09-11
Jeff Sessions _Hill_
we need to help US citizens find jobs, not replace them using immigration policy
"While the Gang of Eight legislation [S744] provided special interest groups -- from La Raza to the Chamber of Commerce -- with their desired provisions, the core interests of the American people were sacrificed completely.   erhaps the least discussed but most important feature of the Gang of 8's immigration plan is its arrangement with certain business groups to provide them with multiple avenues to avoid hiring U.S. workers by bringing in record numbers of workers from abroad -- many of whom will be granted permanent residency and thus eventual citizenship.   Over the next decade, the Senate plan provides roughly 30M mostly lower-skill immigrants with permanent residency through green cards.   Less than 10% of these green cards are allocated through the Gang's alleged merit system.   Moreover, green-card holders will be able to petition in future years to bring in their relatives, including elderly parents, commencing a permanent expansion of chain migration unrelated to skill set.   On top of the 30M green cards [S744] also doubles the number of non-immigrant guest workers admitted each year from approximately 600K today to an average of 1.2M annually over the next decade.   In the first year of the bill, due to the inclusion of family members, the number will spike to 1.6M, with only 7% doing agricultural work.   The other 93% will be hired to fill jobs in virtually every sector, including construction work, nursing, teaching at public schools, driving trucks, heavy equipment operators, mining and manufacturing.   At the same time, a record number of Americans have either left or been pushed out of the work-force.   Less than 60% of U.S. adults are working, a record 11M are on disability, another record 47M are on food stamps, median household net worth has dropped 60% since 2007, and inflation-adjusted wages are lower than in 1999.   The number of people who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer is 4.3M, and 11.3M people -- including nearly a quarter of all youths -- are looking for a job but can't find one.   There is not a shortage of workers, but a shortage of jobs."

2013-09-11
Jon Feere _Center for Immigration Studies_
100 execs lobby for amnesty for illegal aliens
"It is difficult to understand how these companies can feel justified in demanding the importation of cheap labor with a straight face at a time when tens of millions of Americans are unemployed.   The number of working-age (16 to 65) native-born Americans who are not working -- unemployed or out of the labor market -- stood at 57.5M in the second quarter of 2013.   The unemployed population is spread throughout the labor market and includes 25M with no more than a high school education, 16M with some education beyond high school, and 9M with at least a bachelor's degree."

2013-09-11
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Who's on first at DHS?

2013-09-11
Walter E. Williams _Town Hall_
you don't have to stay poor
Jewish World Review
"many of today's black multi-millionaires started out poor or worse.   So what were their strategies?   _The Wealth Choice_ argues that wealth (millionaireship) is not a function of circumstance, luck, environment or the cards you were dealt.   Instead, wealth is the result of a conscious choice, action, faith, innovation, effort, preparation and discipline.   Or, in the words of billionaire W. Clement Stone, founder of Combined Insurance, whom Kimbro met with and mentions early in the book, 'Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.'   He also said, 'If you cannot save money, the seeds of greatness are not in you.'   Saving is necessary for investment and wealth accumulation.   Therein lies much of the problem for many black Americans.   Kimbro gives us some statistics to highlight some of the problem.   The median net worth, or wealth, of white households is 20 times that of black households.   In 2009, 35% of black households had no wealth or were in debt.   24% of black Americans spend more than they earn, compared with 14% of all Americans.   32% of blacks do not save at all, compared with less than 25% of all Americans.   To under-score these statistics, Earl Graves ii, CEO of Black Enterprise magazine, said that blacks are 6 times as likely as whites to purchase a Mercedes-Benz and that blacks who purchase Jaguars have an income one-third less than whites who purchase the same vehicles."

2013-09-11
Rick Edmonds _Poynter_
Newspaper Association of America has stopped releasing quarterly ad revenue data

2013-09-11
Jeff Berwick _Gold-Eagle_
Poland, Ireland, Hungary, France, Bulgaria confiscating private pension balances; yours are next (as fraudulent Socialist Insecurity Abomination is perpetuated)
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "In NY city, Koreans, less than 0.1% of the city's population, own 85% of produce stands, 70% of grocery stores, 80% of nail salons, and 60% of dry cleaners.   In portsion of downtown Los Angeles, Koreans own 40% of the real estate but constitute only 10% of the residents.   Korean-American businesses in Los Angeles county [CA] number roughly 25K, with gross sales of $4.5G.   Nationwide, Korean entrepreneurs have in the last decade come to control 80% of the $2.5G African-American beauty business, which -- 'like preaching and burying people' -- historically was always a 'black' business and a source of pride, income, and jobs for African-Americans." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg207  

 
 

2013-09-12

2013-09-12
Jeffry Bartash _MarketWatch_
Why the following jobless claims report is messed up

2013-09-12 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & 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 228,399 in the week ending September 7, a decrease of 40,250 from the previous week.   There were 299,729 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.0% during the week ending August 31, 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 2,569,200, a decrease of 174,830 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,744,030.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.3% and the volume was 2,930,825.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 24 was 4,272,741, a decrease of 122,971 from the previous week.   There were 5,391,420 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   No state was triggered "on" the Extended Benefits program during the week ending August 24...   States reported 1,454,824 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending August 24, a decrease of 39,918 from the prior week.   There were 2,223,071 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-09-12
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
1870 vs. antebllum literacy rates in the Shenandoah Valley

2013-09-12
_Free Republic_
Ft. Lauderdale FL Sun-Sentinel reporter goes berzerk in community council meeting
additional coverage
Joe Saunders: Biz PAC Review

2013-09-12
_Free Republic_
Syrian terrorists reject Russian proposal, want USA to attack Assad for them
CBS
Kimberly Dozier: Free Republic: US CIA has ben supplying arms to Syrian terrorists for weeks
Talking Points Memo

2013-09-12
Matthew Boyle _Free Republic_
Arizona GOP passes formal rebuke of John McCain
Breitbart

2013-09-12
Anthony Watts
tornado records being altered
"Interpolation of tornado sighting data just isn't sensible, but they are going to try anyway..."
Felonious State U
Paul Homewood: a statistical model for tornado intensity

2013-09-12
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet

2013-09-12
Diane Ravitch
Is there a STEM talent shortage?
"We hear repeatedly about the shortage of qualified engineers and the need for more science, technology, and mathematics majors. I am all for that. I would also like to see more majors in the arts, philosophy, history, government, literature, and world languages... As CEO at Martin Marietta, Augustine brokered the merger of that company with Lockheed to produce Lockheed Martin and got [tax-victims] to subsidize nearly a billion dollars of the merger cost, including tens of millions in bonuses for executives (Augustine netted over $8M). And then the merged company laid off thousands of workers. The promised efficiencies and cost savings to the government (and [tax-victims]) have yet to materialize. Lockheed Martin is is now the largest of the big defense contractors, yet its government contracts are hardly limited to weapons systems. While Lockheed has broadened its services, it is dependent on the government and the taxpayers for its profits. It's also #1 on the contractor misconduct data-base which tracks contract abuse and misconduct. Meanwhile, while Norm Augustine touts the need for more STEM graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and STEM teachers for public schools, Lockheed is laying off thousands of engineers. Research studies show there is no STEM shortage..."
2007-10-29: Urban Institute study
2008: RAND Corporation: U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology found "no evidence of a current shortage of qualified S&E workers" nor one on the horizon.
2013-04-25: EPI study
Highly-skilled US citizen STEM workers are plentiful

2013-09-12
George N. Schmidt _Substance News_
Lockheed Martin dumping thousands while disingenuously crying "talent shortage"
"For a guy who has snubbed the annual Chicago Public Schools Science Fair since he returned to town 3 years ago, Rahm sure likes to (a) talk about STEM and (b) pretend to promote it in the face of (c) a 'shortage' that isn't.   Since Jerry Bracey first published -- in Phi Delta Kappan (before it went into the arms of the Broad Foundation) and Substance -- that the 'STEM Shortage', there is really no STEM shortage in the USA.   What the American ruling class wants to do is create a surplus of science and engineering people so that they can drive down the pay of those people in the USA.   As Diane Ravitch updates (below), the 'STEM shortage' never was.   But facts -- whether about Longer School days or charter schools that have the 'secret sauce' or STEM -- have never bothered the guy who majored in thespianism in college and then got a multi-million dollar gig as a 'relationship banker' from his buddies during a couple of years he left public service..."

2013-09-12
Adam Andrzejewski _For the Good of Illinois_
governor Quinn awarded $71.4M contract to out-source ObummerDoesn'tCare project
"Cognizant Technology Solutions, which ranks in the top 7 for procuring H-1B visa workers...   Job listings in India offer further evidence of job out-sourcing: Cognizant is in India recruiting consultants, coders, architects, MBAs [i.e. B-school bozos] and programmers...   Cognizant's recruiting agency posted jobs in India looking for medical billing specialists and system programmers with knowledge of Medicaid and the [anti-privacy] HIPPA laws...   posted job descriptions show that once hired, the H-1B employees will work in Chennai and Bangalore, India...   Adding to [tax-victim] cost, the Quinn administration lets Cognizant charge an additional $200K in first year travel costs.   It's a long way from India to Springfield, IL...   Cognizant's out-sourcing business model isn’t an industry secret.   In the company's 2011 SEC filings, they explained it this way, 'The vast majority of our technical professionals in the United States and Europe are Indian nationals.'   In 2006, the United States Homeland Security Office of Inspector General [reported that] Cognizant and their 'computer visa' applications primarily benefit India.   In 2013 January, Bloomberg News touted Cognizant as a leading out-sourcing firm specifically citing their bidding on the Illinois health care exchange.   Revenues from writing code for state governments and pharmaceuticals make up 25% of Cognizant's revenues.   In a 2013 March Boston Globe editorial 'Outsourced at Home', Cognizant was highlighted after being sued for their H-1B recruiting on behalf of Molina Corporation -- a company working on the California MMIS upgrade.   It was alleged that Cognizant recruited the replacement of 40 America workers at Molina with H-1B visa holders from India.   The editorial argued that 'this isn't [just a little] off-shoring [to tap unusually highly-skilled individuals] but a quiet replacement of American workers on domestic soil'."

2013-09-12 (5774 Tishrei 08)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
the president's embarrassment

2013-09-12 (5774 Tishrei 08)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
California: bi-polar state of mania
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "In 1916, in one such case, people in Europe and America began to come down with a strange sleeping sickness, which became known as encephalitis lethargica.   Victims would go to sleep and not wake up.   They could be roused without great difficulty to take food or go to the lavatory, and would answer questions sensibly -- they knew who and where they were -- though their manner was always apathetic...   In 10 years the disease killed some 5M people and then quietly went away." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg317  

 
 

2013-09-13

2013-09-13
Jan Falstad _Billings MT Gazette_
Computers Unlimited celebrates 35th anniversary

2013-09-13
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
another assist to southern unionists, under the Bowman and Tucker acts

2013-09-13
Tom Blumer _PJ Media_
this depressing economy
graphs

2013-09-13
Anthony Watts
Nationaly Academy of Sciences says climate models are still decades away from being useful

2013-09-13
Jodi S. Cohen & Alex Richards _Chicago IL Tribune_
percentage of in-state students at U of IL continues to decline in face of policies by admins with that aim
Johnathan Hettinger: Daily Illini (with map/graph)
"The percentage of in-state freshmen at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign this Fall has dropped to a new low, with about 73% coming from Illinois compared with 90% less than a decade ago...   U of IL's admissions director, Stacey Kostell...told the Tribune last year that having in-state freshmen make up 75% of the class was the right balance...   The shortfall provides new ammunition for critics who have complained that the state's flagship publicly funded university is educating too few Illinois residents and focusing too many resources on students outside the state, especially from overseas.   U of IL officials argue that their admissions approach encourages diversity and provides much-needed funding from higher-paying out-of-state students.   Still, Kostell said the decline below 75% 'wasn't intentional' and resulted from more international students accepting offers of admission than predicted.   What's more, the smallest-ever percentage of Illinois applicants accepted the university's offers of admission, 'something we are concerned about', Kostell said...   Coming mostly from China, the number of international freshmen increased 29% from last Fall, climbing to about 1,170 students, or 16% of the class.   Kostell said there are 200 more international freshmen than the campus [admins] had predicted, which brought the freshman class to about 7,330 instead of the planned 7,100...   While the under-graduate population has ballooned to 32,300 this Fall, only about 76%, or 24,650 students, are from Illinois -- 400 fewer than last year...   About 44.7% of Illinois residents who were offered admission to this Fall's freshman class decided to attend, down from 45.8% last year...   Meanwhile, there were more international applicants than ever before, and a larger percentage of those admitted decided to attend -- 27.7%, compared with 22.2% last year.   The number of foreign undergraduates has more than quadrupled in the past decade and now totals 4,990 students.   Nearly 80% of the U of IL's international enrollees come from China, India and South Korea, and more than half -- about 2,600 -- come from China alone.   In fact, the U of IL has more international students overall than any other public university in the country, according to a survey by the Institute of International Education.   Including graduate students, there are more than 9,400 international students at U of IL this Fall, university data show...   In this year's freshman class, about 21% of students are the first in their family to go to college.   More than half of the students were ranked in the top 10% of their high school classes, and their average ACT score was 28.6, up slightly from last year."

2013-09-13
Ruth Mantell _MarketWatch_
UMich consumer sentiment index changed from 80 in mid-August to 82.1 in late August to 76.8 in early September
ForEx Live
Tory Barringer: M Report
Econoday
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis

2013-09-13
Matt Ridley _Wall Street Journal_
dialing back the climate alarmism
follow-up

2013-09-13
Chris Edwards _Daily Caller_
end federal pork/crony socialism photo-ops by ending federal crony socialism
"Some people may think that the purpose of this grant program is to build America and boost the economy, but that is naive.   The actual purpose is to give politicians photo ops and generate positive news stories.   The Baltimore event generated substantial media -- and it was all favorable because everybody loves Santa Claus...   The Maryland Port Administration reports that public and private businesses operating at the port generate a $1.7G in annual revenues, so they surely could have funded their own $10M project.   Here is the big picture: Congress faces ongoing budget deficits and is wondering how to restrain spending to meet the lower sequester levels.   Why not cut the $560G in annual spending on aid to state and local governments?   Nearly every federal department can find savings in this area since aid is handed out through 1,100 separate programs...   the federal government has hundreds of costly but more obscure aid programs for such things as Nursing Workforce Diversity, Boating Safety, and Healthy Marriages.   All these activities could be funded more efficiently by state and local governments or the private sector."

2013-09-13 (5774 Tishrei 09)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Israel's 20 year nightmare

2013-09-13 (5774 Tishrei 09)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
epic melt-down of the hoplophobes
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "the Arab-Israeli conflict -- pitting the region's 221M, largely poor Arabs against Israel's starkly more prosperous 5.2M Jews -- is a classic example of an intesely popular, majority-supported etho-nationalist movement directed against a hated, market-dominant minority." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg212  

 
 

2013-09-14

1814-09-14: Francis Scott Key wrote poem "The Defence of Fort McHenry" now sung to the tune "To Anacreon in Heaven", and better know as "The Star-Spangled Banner"

2013-09-14
Willis Eschenbach
Falkirk wheel

2013-09-14
Anthony Watts
science PhD candidate's resignation letter provides window into today's academia
"While I could give a multitude of reasons for leaving my studies -- some more concrete, others more abstract -- the essential motivation stems from my personal conclusion that I've lost faith in today's academia as being something that brings a positive benefit to the world/societies we live in.   Rather, I'm starting to think of it as a big money vacuum that takes in grants and spits out nebulous results, fueled by people whose main concerns are not to advance knowledge and to effect positive change, though they may talk of such things, but to build their CVs and to propel/maintain their careers.   (1) Academia: It's Not Science, It's Business...   (2) Academia: Work Hard, Young Padawan, So That One Day You Too May Manage!..."

2013-09-14
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
Where are the jobs?   Who has them?   Who's likely to get them?
Global Economic Analysis
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Here and there along the Wagon Road, colonies of inter-mixed whites and Indians took root.   Near Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia, a hybrid group called 'the brown people' clustered on the hillsides.   In Amherst county VA, a similar group called 'the issues' lived.   Nearby were other self-contained colonies calles 'melungeons' and others called 'ramps'.   Similar mixed-breed groups were found along the Carolina and Georgia frontier.   'The frontier draws both the very best and the very worst.', it was said, and it was true." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg191  

 
 

2013-09-15

2013-09-15
Anthony Watts
climate "science" is "fluxed up"

2013-09-15
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
the reach of religion in the Shenandoah valley in 1860

2013-09-15
Faine Greenwood _Global Post_
children with higher verbal abilities are more likely to consume ethanol
"A Finnish study to be published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, followed 3K Finnish twins, looking at both their drinking behavior and their verbal development.   The researchers discovered that kids who developed verbal abilities earlier -- correlated with higher cognitive abilities -- were almost twice as likely to drink as their less cognitively gifted twin.   Further, kids in the more gifted group of twins were almost four times as likely to get drunk during any given month than their more cautious counterpart...   Children with an IQ at or above 125 were nearly one full standard deviation more likely to drink than those with an IQ at or less than 75, notes Psychology Today."

2013-09-15
Lydia X. McCoy _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
former STEM student alleges test administrators helped her cheat on exam

2013-09-15
Isaac Wolf & Jim Osman _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_Scripps Howard_
"Lifeline" ObummerPhone applications were privacy violation scam in 21 states
"DN studied the completed application form in his hands.   He'd never heard of TerraCom Inc., a company offering subsidized phone service through the federal Lifeline program.   But there was his home address in San Antonio, TX, and his [Socialist Inecurity number, SIN].   There was his signature on the bottom -- misspelled and in someone else's hand-writing...   Likewise, a Milwaukee woman was surprised to find her name, improperly spelled but linked to the correct address, on a TerraCom application...   TerraCom and its affiliate, YourTel America Inc., together provide Lifeline phone service in 21 states."

2013-09-15
_Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
many USA's bridges are old, run-down, and risky

2013-09-15
Devvy Kidd _News with Views_
here's how to clean out bad politicians
"Americans are becoming increasing enraged by the unconstitutional actions and spending pouring out of the District of Criminals every day.   Unfortunately, members of the Outlaw Congress cannot be recalled and the imposter in the White House cannot be impeached.   I doubt John Boehner will allow any impeachment effort to move forward, but if he did and it were successful, it would set one of the most horrific, dangerous legal precedents this country has ever seen.   Agenda 21 is the master plan to destroy personal property rights and control the way we live...   The one thing the power brokers do not want is for the states to flex their sovereign power and reject what's coming out of Washington.   The shadow government does not want the other 49 states to do as Alabama did in June last year: Pass a law stopping Agenda 21 and UN for their whole state...   Nothing like Alabama where their state legislature made it very clear: 'The State of Alabama and all political sub-divisions may not adopt or implement policy recommendations that deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to Agenda 21', the law states, adding a brief background on the UN plan hatched at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro...   'It was Truman who pushed the Federal Immigration and National Act of 1952 through Congress in the closing days of his administration.   Under Section 8 USC 1324[a](1)(A)[iv][b](iii) any US citizen that knowingly assists an illegal alien, provides them with employment, food, water or shelter has committed a felony.   City, county or State officials that declare their jurisdictions to be Open Cities, Counties or States are subject to arrest; as are law enforcement agencies who chose not to enforce this law.   Police officers who ignore officials who violate Section 8 USC 1324[a](1)(A)[iv][b](iii) are committing a Section 274 federal felony.   Furthermore, according to Federal Immigration and National Act of 1952, if you live in a city, county or State that refuses to enforce the law for whatever reason, the officials making those rules are financially liable for any crime committed within their jurisdiction by an illegal alien.'"
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Such sharp-shooters made up the county militia who protected the frontier in the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution.   'Colonels' and 'captains' abounded.   Wrote a frontier visitor who signed himself Porte Crayon, 'There is not a tavern-keeper or stage-owner in all western VA, or a great wood chopper, who has not some military title.   And anyone who kills a rattlesnake is made a major on the spot.'" --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg193  

 
 

2013-09-16

2013-09-16
Bjorn Lomborg
climate models' predictions are running way too hot as compared with observations
"Over the past 30 years, they are at least predicting 71% too much heat. Maybe 159% [depending on which data-set is examined]."

2013-09-16
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
tiny, obscure agncy dilutes already far to low penalties for employers of illegal aliens
"Virtually no one outside a small subset of immigration lawyers has any knowledge of the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, which is the smallest of the three parts of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the home of immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA); EOIR, in turn, is an entity within the U.S. Department of Justice.   Tiny though it is, and quasi-independent as it is, OCAHO plays a dutiful role in the government-wide trend to downplay the enforcement of immigration law, as displayed in this all-too-typical headline in the immigration bar's trade paper, Interpreter Releases (IR) on 2013 September 2: 'OCAHO Again Slashes Penalties in Employer Sanctions Case Against Small Business'   One of OCAHO's roles in life is to review proposed fines laid against employers who either hire illegal aliens or fail to keep staff records (the I-9s) in keeping with the employer sanctions part of immigration law.   The fines are proposed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)...   Some employers caught by ICE appeal the fines and get, at the very least, a postponement of the payments if not a reduction or an elimination of them by OCAHO.   The misbehaving employer in the instant case is Platinum Builders of Port Charlotte, FL.   IR called it a 'small, family-owned and operated construction business' despite the fact that the files show that ICE had charged it with violations involving 69 workers, some of whom were [illegal aliens].   ICE also said that the firm operated with bad faith.   ICE wanted to charge what sounds to me like a substantial business $70,966.50 in fines, but administrative-law-judge Ellen K. Thomas reduced the fine by more than two-thirds, to $23,700."

2013-09-16
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
more on the environment, immigration, and SPLC

2013-09-16
Anthony Watts
leaked UN IPCC AR5 summary

2013-09-16
Rebcca D. Williams _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Communist Corpse cost and indoctrination
Communist Corpse part 2: English Language Arts Standards

2013-09-16
Alfred Lubrano _Cumberland PA Sentinel_/_Philadelphia PA Inquirer_
80% of cash illfare hand-outs being rejected in PA, 17 othr states
"The state of Pennsylvania has denied as many as 8 of every 10 applications for cash welfare in 2013, a major increase over previous years, an Inquirer review of Department of Public Welfare figures shows.   It's a pattern being repeated in 17 other states...   Before Pennsylvanians apply for welfare, they now must seek at least 3 jobs and document their efforts...   State officials disagree, saying the new rules are meant to encourage people to find work and to avoid getting on welfare in the first place...   Bale said that in July alone, as many as 6 out of 10 applicants who were denied welfare were turned away because they had found work and no longer needed welfare.   The aid they were seeking is known as TANF -- federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.   A typical pay-out is $314 a month for a low-income mother and child...   the spike in welfare denials peaked at 81% in February after a decades-long norm ranging from 50% to 60%...   Many poor people don't have cars, making it harder to get to potential job sites [or interviews], and have trouble leaving children somewhere safe...   In Pennsylvania, 196,795 people -- mostly children -- were on TANF as of July.   That number is down from 536,863 in 1996..."

2013-09-16
Anthony Watts
non-governmental international panel on climate says warming is not a crisis in report to be released Tuesday

2013-09-16
Bob Tisdale
What the low-information public will see with the UN IPCC lead-off illustration from AR5 summary

2013-09-16
Charles S. Johnson _Billings MT Gazette_
Max Baucus says we should keep our best and brightest in Montana
"A crowd of 3,500 people heard ideas from some of the nation's top corporate executives [apparently, no scientists, engineers, machinists, janitors, tool & die makers, software architects, carpenters, ranch-hands, software engineers, masons, doctors or nurses were invited to speak] Monday on how to create jobs and grow the Montana economy...   'One of the goals of our jobs summits is making sure our best and brightest don't have to leave the state to find good-paying jobs.', Baucus said.   'This new call center is going to be a big win for Montana jobs that will be a game changer for Great Falls.'"

2013-09-16
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
British court enforcing sharia over equal protection of the law

2013-09-16
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
new House Oversight & Government Reform committee report on attack on consulate at Benghazi found troubling gaps in State Dept. blue-ribbon commission report
"The controversy centers on the 2012 Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, by a heavily armed terrorist group that resulted in the deaths of ambassador Chris Stevens and three others...   some key witnesses only appeared to provide testimony before the board once and some, like Clinton, were not questioned at all."

2013-09-16
Lou Frenzel _Electronic Design_
Is there really a glut of engineers?
"companies create their own shortages by so narrowly defining job openings that there is little hope of ever finding just the right mix of education and specific experience."

2013-09-16
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
Yellen 100% assured to make a mess
Global Economic Analysis

2013-09-16
Andrew Shea King _World Net Daily_
leftist Dems stomping angry over being exposed in their attempts to violate freedom of the media (with pictures)
"Interestingly, it was an on-line reporter who in 2007 wrote a 3-part investigative expose published in Metroactive, an online Silicon Valley news journal, which forced Feinstein to resign her post as chair of the Military Construction Appropriations sub-committee.   Investigative reporter Peter Byrne uncovered evidence that exposed Feinstein's involvement in her husband's 2 major defense contractors being awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein and her committee.   The ethics violation also was reported by WND.   Intended to be the cover story for the leftist paper The Nation, the story was spiked by editor, publisher and 'wealthy Democratic Party partisan' Katrina Vanden Heuvel, just prior to the 2006 Democratic elections...   Twitchy reported last week that Feinstein 'thinks a proposed media shield law should be applied only to real reporters, not basement-dwelling, pajama-clad bloggers with no professional credentials.'   Not surprisingly, president Obama has pledged 'strong support' for the senate's 'media shield' bill...   This is how a Greek newspaper described the bikers legion going to DC, a beautiful piece of writing: 'From LA they pour out, from New York they fill the roads, the Mid West, like a moving sea of humanity witnesses the Patriot Tsunami as they roll on towards Washington DC!   And still they come, on Harleys, on every brand known, the Biker Patriot Army rolls on towards DC in an unstoppable tidal wave of metal, fumes and leather to pay homage and defend the honor of all the people of EVERY nationality who were butchered by Islamists on 2001/09/11.   Not since the Revolutionary War have so many fighting men took to the road in America!   Never have we seen the likes of such a vast citizen army mobilize and deploy in defense of all the free world holds dear and our governments despise: FREEDOM AND LIBERTY!'"

2013-09-16
Alexander Hart _V Dare_
ACLU failed to mention that its "legalize marijuana" poster-boy is a convicted gangster
"Looking into the case, I found that prior to Sanders' arrest for marijuana, he had shot a rival gang member.   According to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls IA Courier...   Prosecutors described the clash as a 'gangland shooting'.   Sanders pled guilty to 'intimidation with a weapon, willful injury causing bodily injury and going armed'."

2013-09-16
David Catron _American Spectator_
ObummerDoesn'tCare's Useful Idiots: One by one, the dupes have been double-crossed by Obummer and the Leftists

2013-09-16
Jessica Vaughan, Bryan Griffith & William Riley _Center for Immigration Studies_
former ICE agent discusses weak enforcement strategies

2013-09-16 (5774 Tishrei 12)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
USA at risk of being laughed off the world stage
"For generations, eminent New York Times wordsmiths have swooned over foreign strongmen, from Walter Duranty's Pulitzer-winning paeans to the Stalinist utopia to Thomas L. Friedman's more recent effusions to the 'enlightened' Chinese Politburo.   So it was inevitable that the cash-strapped Times would eventually figure it might as well eliminate the middle man and hire the enlightened strongman direct.   Hence Vladimir Putin's impressive debut on the op-ed page this week.   It pains me to have to say that the versatile Vlad makes a much better columnist than I'd be a KGB torturer.   His 'plea for caution was an exquisitely masterful parody of liberal bromides far better than most of the Times' in-house writers can produce these days."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "called Great Swine Flu epidemic...Great Spanish Flu epidemic, but in either case it was ferocious.   World War 1 killed 21M people in 4 years; swine flu did the same in its first 4 months.   Almost 80% of American casualties in the First World War came not from enemy fire, but from flu.   In some units the mortality rate was as high as 80%...   A fifth of victims suffered only mild symptoms, but the rest became gravely ill and often died.   Some succumbed within hours; others held on for a few days.   Between the Autumn of 1918 and Spring of the following year, 548,452 people died of the flu in America.   The toll in Britain was 220K, with similar numbers dead in France and Germany.   No one knows the global toll, as records in the Third World were often poor, but it was not less than 20M and probably more like 50M.   Some estimates have put the global total as high as 100M...   Even in normal out-breaks, about 10% of people have the flu but are unaware of it because they experience no ill effects.   And because they remain in circulation they remain in circulation they tend to be the great spreaders of the disease...   Even more mysterious is that it was primarily devastating to people in the prime of life.   Flu normally is hardest on infants and the elderly, but in the 1918 out-break deaths were overwhelmingly among people in their 20s and 30s.   Older peopel may have benefitted from resistance gained from an earlier exposure to the same strain..." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pp317-319  

 
 

2013-09-17: Constitution Day observed

2013-09-17
Trevor Burrus _Daily Caller_
on Constitution Day remember the far-sighted anti-federalists

2013-09-17
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Navy Yard killer was "IT" body shopped through HP and "Experts", with history of firearms abuse, concealed carry permit, "secret" clearance
Chelsea J. Carter, Ed Lavandera & Evan Perez: CNN
KGO abc San Francisco CA
WKMG Orlando FL
Christian Science Monitor
Wall Street Journal: deceased perp had record of firearms abuse
WSJ: deceased perp held "secret clearance"
Bryan Preston: PJ Media: about Aaron Alexis
National Report: registered Democratic? Obummer supporter?
Rachel Pulaski: Gateway Pundit
John Nolte: Breitbart
SmasHits: Tapper guest identifies killer as Obama supporter
World Net Daily: how did he get "secret clearance"?
Ben Wolfgang: Washington DC Times
All Things Digital
"Aaron Alexis, 34, who was killed by police, was upgrading the Navy and Marine Corp.'s network.   He was working for a Fort Lauderdale, FL-based firm called 'The Experts'...   There isn't much information available on Alexis' IT skills, but there is much detail about Alexis' prior arrest record of reckless gun behavior, and it's going to raise a lot of questions...   The firm where Alexis was employed, The Experts, was a sub-contractor for Hewlett-Packard.   According to HP, 'Alexis was an employee of a company called The Experts, a sub-contractor to an HP Enterprise Services contract to refresh equipment used on the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) network.', HP said late Monday...   In June, HP announced that it had been awarded a $3.45G project to build the Navy's 'Next Generation Enterprise Network', or NGEN.   The project is intended to provide secure data and 'IT' services, including data storage, e-mail and video tele-conferencing to the Navy and Marine Corps, according to the GAO...   Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, a former news reporter who now writes for the Seattle PD's web log, wrote that police learned that 'Alexis had stared at construction workers at the job site every day over the last month prior to the shooting."
Heard on radio reports: Owned hand-gun, recently bought shot-gun.   All victims were 45 or more years old...jgo

2013-09-17
_MarketWatch_
earnings depend on both major and specific university... as job market dysfunctionalities continue

2013-09-17
Breanna Deutsch _Daily Caller_
median household income is lower than it was in 1989
"Near the end of the Reagan era, a middle of the road family brought home $51,681 in today's dollars.   In 2012, the [middle] family made $51,017...   The annual median income for African Americans has decreased by 15.8% since 1999.   Hispanics have a median income that is 11.8% lower than it was in 1999."

2013-09-17
Stanley Renshon _Center for Immigration Studies_
White House's contribution to redefining immigration law violations away

2013-09-17
Jonathan Vankin _Opposing Views_
pres. Obummer unconstitutionally/illegally "waives" law, and sends arms to terrorists in Syria
"President Barack Obama yesterday announced that he would set aside a provision of the 1978 Arms Export Control Act (AECA) that prevents shipping military supplies to nations that support terrorism."

2013-09-17
Willis Eschenbach
Scots, Scottish, and Scotch
"Edinburgh...drives the GPS crazy... Because the city exists on two levels, one of which is about 50 feet (15 metres) above the other... We'd be driving along the street, following the directions from Google Earth on my iPhone, and it would tell us to turn right on some street. We'd look around... no such street visible. Then we come to a bridge, look over the edge, and there's the street we're supposed to turn left on, but it's way, way down below us... we're on the ground level up here, and there's a whole 'nother world of shops and people far down underneath."

2013-09-17
Anthony Watts
Australia has dissolved their climate hysteria ministry

2013-09-17
Christopher Monckton 3rd viscount Brenchley
dodgy statistics and UN IPCC assessment reports

2013-09-17
Ed Marcum _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
Merchant House to move shoe plant back from Red China to TN: 109 jobs
"The Footwear Division of the company has bought a 40K square-foot building in Jefferson City Industrial Park and will start making a line of men's leather boots and shoes.   The operation, known as Footwear Industries of Tennessee Inc., represents a $5.4M investment and is to begin production in March."

2013-09-17
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet

2013-09-17
Steve Goldstein _MarketWatch_
richest households live near DC
median household income by city

2013-09-17
Charles S. Johnson _Billings MT Gazette_
low-life ethically-challenged executives talk about moving into Montana
Missoulian

2013-09-17
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
M1 money supply vs. real GDP
Global Economic Analysis

2013-09-17
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Obummer/Holder DoJ sued over Fast and Furious stone-walling and contempt of congress
"Judicial Watch, a legal watch-dog group based in Washington DC, has sued the Department of Justice over continuing Fast and Furious stone-walling and documents surrounding attorney-general Eric Holder's contempt citation.   A Freedom of Information [FOIA] request submitted in 2013 March has gone unanswered.   Making the announcement today, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA law-suit on 2013 September 5 demanding [that] the DoJ comply with FOIA requests as required by law.   Judicial watch is looking for all records of communication between the House Oversight committee and DoJ is relation to settlement discussions surrounding Holder's contempt of Congress charge from 2012 June.   It has been reported the Oversight Committee is working on a 'deal' with Holder and DoJ and that negotiations are making progress.   'Eric Holder is using his legal battle with Congress to keep the American people from knowing the full truth about the Obama administration's Fast and Furious killings and lies.', Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.   'And yet, Eric Holder has been dragging out the settlement talks to the point where Congress has called them a waste of everyone's time.   The Obama gang would rather stall for time than defend the Obama administration's secretive claims of executive privilege on Fast and Furious in court.'"

2013-09-17
Todd Starnes _Town Hall_
TN public school took students to mosque, gave them copies of Koran
World Net Daily
Fox
"The students were in an honors world studies class at Hendersonville High School and the field trips to the mosque as well as a Hindu temple were part of a three-week course on world religions.   But some parents objected to the trips and wondered why the school would tour a mosque but not a Christian church or a Jewish synagogue...   parent Mike Conner... 'Our kids are being indoctrinated and this is being shoved in their face.', Conner told Fox News.   'It tells me they are pushing other religions and they want Christianity to take a back seat.   They want our children to be tolerant of everything except Christianity.'...   [A student] decided not to attend the trip.   So her teachers instructed her to write a paper comparing and contrasting the Christian, Hindu and Islamic faiths.   That's when [someone] noticed something strange.   'There was 1 page on the sayings of Jesus, two-thirds of a page on the sayings of Gandhi, and 5 pages on Muhammed.', Conner said."

2013-09-17
Sid Roth _World Net Daily_
Muslim Brotherhood's quiet infiltration into US government

2013-09-17
Mickey Kaus _Daily Caller_
Twit drops pretense of democracy, puts kabosh on open discussion
"The new Twitter model resonates most obviously with The Atlantic‘s failed attempts to divide the world into elite conversants and powerless observers...   For myself, I prefer even a slightly fake democracy to an official aristocracy.   The new policy seems almost British, like those parties where some guests are instructed not to come before 21:00 and others are invited for 22:00."

2013-09-17
Matt K. Lewis _Daily Caller_
Radley Balko notes that police like "no-knock" attacks because they think they're fun
"I was reminded of this recently when talking with Radley Balko about his new book, _Rise of the Warrior Cop_.   It's all about the militarization of America's police that has increased since the so-called 'war on drugs' began.   And, of course, it also coincides with an increased [abuse] of paramilitary 'no-knock' raids.   These raids are dangerous for the police and for the home-owner (who assumes it's a burglar -- or worse) and for the dog (who is almost always shot.) What is more, sometimes the police get the wrong house.   So why do they do it?   'It's just easier to do it, this way.', Balko explained when I asked why the police didn't just apprehend suspects when they go grocery shopping or...to a car wash.   'You have to get to know somebody's routine to catch them as they're coming and going...and there's just not enough man-power to do that.   It's much easier to just go busting in, in the middle of the night.'   But according to Balko, there's another reason: 'These raids are fun.', he says.   'When I interviewed police officers for the book who've been on these raids', Balko continued, 'the words that they would use to describe how they felt during the raids are the same adjectives we use to describe the effects of the drugs that they're conducting these raids for in the first place.   I mean, they're described as intoxicating and you get this huge rush, and they talk about it...   it's just a thrill.'"

2013-09-17
Michael Bastasch _Daily Caller_

senator Joe Manchin says pres. Obummer's anti-coal thugocracy is beating us up

"'They just beat the living daylights out of little West Virginia, but they sure like what we produce.', Manchin added.   'We could do it a lot better if we had a government working with us as a partner.'   Manchin's remarks were made while questioning Ron Binz, Obama's nominee to head up the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates electric grids, gas pipelines, natural gas export terminals and hydroelectric power plants.   Binz's nomination has been hotly contested by Republicans and conservative groups who argue that he used his post as lead utilities regulator in Colorado to push an activist [anti-liberty] agenda, rather than acting as an unbiased regulator."

2013-09-17
Caroline May _Daily Caller_
Los Angeles county expects to pay $650M in illfare benefits to illegal aliens in 2013
"Los Angeles county supervisor Michael D. Antonovich has revealed the most recent Department of Public Works figures showing that through July $376M in CalWORKS benefits and food stamps have been paid out to illegal immigrant parents, the CBS affiliate reports.   According to the report, about 100K children of 60K illegal immigrant parents receive about $54M in welfare payments a month -- $20M in CalWORKs benefits and $34M in food stamps -- up from $53M in 2012 July.   'When you add the $550M for public safety and nearly $500M for health-care, the total cost for illegal immigrants to county taxpayers exceeds $1.6G a year.', CBS Los Angeles quoted Antonovich.   'These costs do not even include the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually for education.', he added."

2013-09-17
Frosty Wooldridge _News with Views_
the "massive immigration will save the Socialist Insecurity Abomination" myth, and S744

2013-09-17 (5774 Tishrei 13)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
minimum wage madness part 1
"Switzerland is one of the few modern nations without a minimum wage law.   In 2003, 'The Economist' magazine reported: 'Switzerland's unemployment neared a 5-year high of 3.9% in February.'   In February of this year, Switzerland's unemployment rate was 3.1%.   A recent issue of 'The Economist' showed Switzerland's unemployment rate as 2.1%.   Most Americans today have never seen unemployment rates that low.   However, there was a time when there was no federal minimum wage law in the United States.   The last time was during the Coolidge administration, when the annual unemployment rate got as low as 1.8%.   When Hong Kong was a British colony, it had no minimum wage law.   In 1991 its unemployment rate was under 2%...   Minorities, like young people, can also be priced out of jobs.   In the United States, the last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate -- 1930 -- was also the last year when there was no federal minimum wage law.   Inflation in the 1940s raised the pay of even unskilled workers above the minimum wage set in 1938.   Economically, it was the same as if there were no minimum wage law by the late 1940s.   In 1948 the unemployment rate of black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was 9.4%.   This was a fraction of what it would become in even the most prosperous years from 1958 on, as the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation."

2013-09-17 (5774 Tishrei 13)
Thomas Sowell _Jewish World Review_
minimum wage madness part 2
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams." --- Jonas Salk  

 
 

2013-09-18

2013-09-18
Phyllis Schlafly _Eagle Forum_
Boehner pseudo-Republicans are heading for a big mistake
"What in the world is the matter with Boehner Republicans in the U.S. House?   Haven't they had enough of Obama exceeding his presidential authority, disobeying the Constitution by refusing to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed', and issuing executive regulations to 'legislate' what congress refuses to pass, such as the Dream Act?   We've never had a president who so arrogantly grabs and uses such unlawful power.   He repeatedly granted waivers or exceptions or delays to groups from laws that gave the president no such authority, such as welfare reform and [ObummerDoesn'tCare].   The latest example of speaker John Boehner's coziness with Barack Obama is the current plan to give the President a grant of tremendous power, not authorized in the Constitution, called 'Fast Track'.   The Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority 'to regulate commerce with foreign nations', but 'Fast Track' would give the president power to sign trade agreements before congress has an opportunity to vote on them and then unilaterally write legislation [regulations] making those agreements U.S. federal law...   Among its obnoxious provisions is allowing the president to appoint for the trade negotiations 700 industry advisers who are given access to confidential negotiating documents that are denied to Congress and the U.S. public...   For example, Obama promised that our free-trade deal with Korea (KORUS FTA) would be a major U.S.-job creator.   That was a lie: after the KORUS went into effect, sales of U.S. goods to Korea fell 17% (costing 40K U.S. jobs), and imports rose 18%, so KORUS was a jobs-creator in Korea, not the [United States of America]."

2013-09-18
Kalea Hall _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
long-time gardener has been growing banana trees on the west side

2013-09-18
Bob Tisdale
UN IPCC to once again show failings of climate models in AR5 summary
"It looks as though the IPCC is content with highlighting the models' failures to properly simulate natural coupled ocean-atmosphere processes that can cause surface temperatures to warm -- or to stop that warming without notice."

2013-09-18
Barry Brill
costs to reduce green-house gas 100 times benefits

2013-09-18
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
House to vote on continuing resolution that defunds ObummerDoesn'tCare

2013-09-18
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
it is amazingly simple to balance the federal government budget; slow spending increases

2013-09-18
Glenn Jacobs _Daily Caller_
"Fair" tax is no substitute for actually reducing government extortion

2013-09-18
Kevin Glass _Town Hall_
CBO: 4 ways federal government debt will continue to drag down the economy

2013-09-18
Harry R. Jackson ii _Town Hall_
when government extortions "lien" too far

2013-09-18
Patrick Howley _Daily Caller_
House Oversight committee concluded that Washington DC Post's attempts to smear tea party inspired federal extortionists to target non-leftists

2013-09-18
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
pres. Obummer says he wants to engage in more crony socialism with business executives
"the DC-based Business Roundtable, an association for the CEOs of major U.S. companies, which, combined have more than $7.3T in annual revenues and employ nearly 16M [aliens].   The proposed partnership would have CEOs lobby congress for passage of Obama's goals, including passage of a senate bill [S744] that triples the rate of immigration to add 33M immigrants over the next decade, and passage of a budget that doesn't cut [ObummerDoesn'tCare's] federally-run health-care system, Obama suggested...   Many major CEOs ask Obama's deputies for exemptions from painful regulations and taxes.   They also ask his regulators for valuable subsidies, targeted tax breaks and favorable regulations, such as access to cheap foreign labor...   Obama also praised some of the CEOs for working with him on the establishment of federal [Communist Corpse] education standards, and winning senate passage of a bill to triple immigration over the next 10 years."

2013-09-18
Heather Ginsberg _Town Hall_
many of the homeless people in NY, NY are employed

2013-09-18
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
opposed to Obummer's policies? That'll get you audited by federal extortionists

2013-09-18
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
AR-15 was used by police to stop Aaron Alexis at Navy Yard
Glenn Foden: media's guide to stuff (political cartoon)
Nate Beeler: wielding a derangeed man (political cartoon)
Glenn McCoy: I got an Obamagun! (political cartoon)

2013-09-18
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
Why is it that while city police have bcome militarized, our military installations have been ordered to be "gun-free zones"?
"Yet, if there is any place in the United States where firearm restrictions should have worked at preventing a shooting tragedy, it is the Navy Yard -- a highly secure military installation in a city with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the nation; not to mention the most advanced security systems on the planet.   However, in spite of all these 'safety protocols' and gun constraints -- and, perhaps in part as a result of these factors -- the shooting still occurred."

2013-09-18
Christine Rousselle _Town Hall_
in city of Chicago more murders are committed in 18 days than annually in these 8 states
"Chicago has experienced 21 homicides so far this September.   The following states all had fewer homicides in the 12 months of 2011 (the most recent year statistics are available)...   In 2012, 532 people were murdered in Chicago, which is more than the [annual] homicides of [each] state in 2011 except for California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas."

2013-09-18
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
move over, Detroit, fiscal crisis in Chicago is bigger
"Pensions 31% funded.   Moody's down-graded Chicago Debt 3 Notches (just 4 steps above junk).   City debt on negative watch.   Pension liability is $61K per household ($23K per capita)."
Global Economic Analysis

2013-09-18
Terry Jeffrey _Town Hall_
will Boehner defend even his own religious liberty?

2013-09-18
_Town Hall_
Warren Buffett's grand-son discusses "Our plans to change the world" (video)

2013-09-18
_World Net Daily_/_Reuters_
meanwhile, pres. Obummer is pushing for even more excessive federal government debt

2013-09-18
_One Old Vet_
in Mexico, citizen militias defend their communities against drug gangs, corrupt government and police
Daily Caller

2013-09-18
_One Old Vet_
representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) says CIA employee who refused to sign after-the-fact NDA on attack on the Benghazi consulate has been suspended
Adam Kredo: Washington Free Beacon

2013-09-18
_One Old Vet_
2nd amendment is your carry permit
AWR Hawkins: Breitbart

2013-09-18
_One Old Vet_
Obummer, NLRB, Mexican government conspire to amnesty illegal aliens in the USA
Allan Wall: V Dare

2013-09-18
Julie Miller Vick & Jennifer S. Furlong _Chronicle of Higher Education_
How the job market for people with PhDs reached this point, part 1
"Jenny: Much of what's being discussed today regarding the weak job market for PhDs has been a matter of concern for doctoral students, post-docs, their advisers, and their departments for many years...   Julie: ...The first programs on career options for PhDs were offered in the early 1980s.   The tenure-track market for PhDs wasn't strong at the time, but in addition, some PhDs were letting it be known that they didn't want to pursue academic jobs...   Another factor: Faculty jobs at universities, particularly in the sciences, were changing; scientists were spending more time on grant writing than on research, and many graduate students didn't want that kind of career...   Jenny: ...Congress had eliminated the tax-exempt status of graduate stipends in 1986.   That action, I am told, was the catalyst for graduate students from four universities to form the National Association of Graduate and Professional Students in the same year.   Julie: Yes.   The association held its first conference in 1988...   Jenny: In 1989, the now infamous Bowen report ('Prospects for Faculty in the Arts and Sciences: A Study of Factors Affecting Demand and Supply, 1987 to 2012' by William G. Bowen, then president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Julie Ann Sosa) was released...   Julie: The 1990s, when you were in college, was a transformational period for much of PhD education.   In 1992, a national report entitled In Pursuit of the PhD, by the aforementioned Bowen and Neil L. Rudenstine, then president of Harvard, was published by Princeton University Press.   Their study looked at reducing attrition and time-to-degree in doctoral programs, as well as at improving quality.   In subsequent years many universities cut the number of students accepted to some doctoral programs, increased financial support for them, and took measures to shorten the time to degree.   1993 was the first year of Preparing Future Faculty, a national movement..."

2013-09-18
Paul Hsieh _PJ Media_
electronic medical records: the prying eyes of big government and big medicine
Privacy Rights ClearingHouse

2013-09-18
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
Clintons and the Muslim Brotherhood
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-09-18
Stephen Dinan _Washington DC Times_
illegal aliens chained themselves to White House fence in publicity stunt... ho hum

2013-09-18
John Derbyshire _V Dare_
Scandinavians becoming alarmed at excessive immigration
"The performance of Norway's conservative/populist/classical-liberal Progress Party in that country's September 9th election caused much shrieking and swooning on the multi-cultural left...   What disturbed Mr. Nilsen was rather the overall performance of the rightist parties, which together attained a wafer-thin parliamentary majority of 2 seats over the left-green coalition, which has been ruling since 2009 with a majority of 7...   Indeed, analysts discount the drop in support for Progress by noting that the Conservative Party, which did exceptionally well—from 30 seats to 48—has adopted some of the Progress Party's ideas, leading Progress supporters to some strategic vote-switching...   Progress is pretty much what VDARE.com urges our own Republican Party to be: low-tax, small-government, classical-liberal, culturally conservative, and immigration-restrictionist.   It is led by 44-year-old, agreeably-Scandinavian-looking Siv Jensen...   Progress went through a schism in the early 1990s over open-borders libertarianism...   The immigration being spoken of in the NHO report, which it is now quite respectable to oppose, is of Muslims and Africans -- 'asylum seekers', in the Euro-jargon of immigration.   Immigration of Swedes, Poles, and Russians into Norway's small (5.1M) population is quite high and not objected to by anyone much, certainly not by business groups.   And traditional Scandinavian xenophilia remains intense among Norwegian elites...   The 10 days of rioting in immigrant areas of southern Sweden this May showed how far Sweden has gone down the path of national suicide.   The city of Malmö is now a by-word for Muslim violence and intolerance.   The city's small number of Jews are particular targets..."

2013-09-18
_FAIR US_
legislative update: executives ask House to increase immigration while dumping thousands of employees; illegal aliens protest outside US capitol; GOP "losership" to meet with Zuckerberg on immigration; CA passes wave of legislatoin to aid illegal aliens

2013-09-18
Steve Scalise & David P. Rose _Republican Study Committee_
American health care reform act: a better way
: HR3121: David P. Rose of TN: unconstitutional federal government meddling in health care, and repeal unconstitutional national socialist ObummerDoesn'tCare/PPACA (introduced 2013-09-18)

2013-09-18
jgo
pres. Barack H. Obummer and Harry Reid are threatening to "shut down federal government" rather than see evil, unconstitutional national socialist ObummerDoesn'tCare defunded

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14)
R' Ron Yitzchok Eisenman _Jewish World Review_
how a hut inspired humanity
"Brooklyn, 1971. A young man looks forward to Succos [Sukkoth], the Jewish religious festival known in English as the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles.   Although he attends yeshivah, his family has no succah of their own.   In the early 1970s there were many frum (religiously observant [Yiddish, from the German fromm, meaning pious or devout]) Jews who did not 'yet' have their own succah [Sukkah].   People made due with the synagogue's succah.   The young man and his family were one of those families.   The young man asks his parents if this year they could have their own succah.   His parents tell him they can't afford one.   It's the Shabbos (Sabbath) before Succos.   That evening, with less than 24 hours before Succos, the young man sits silently dreaming about a succah to call his own.   Suddenly his parents tell him, 'Friends just called.   They have the frame of their old succah and you can have it.'"

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
make honest trade, not war
Town Hall
"Historian Thaddeus Russell says it's not.   He says it's always been 'progressive Democrats [i.e. leftists] who led America into war: Woodrow Wilson in World War 1, FDR in World War 2, Harry Truman in the Korean War, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in VietNam and Bill Clinton in Somalia and Kosovo...   'The so-called neocons who drove us to war in Iraq actually all began in the Democratic Party.   They all began as progressives [i.e. leftists].', says Russell.   'They supported intervention in Iraq to remake Iraq in our image, and they support intervention in Syria to do the same.'   Both neocons and progressives call those of us who oppose most intervention over-seas 'isolationist'...   I want to be engaged with the world without us being in charge of it.   Let us trade with people of every nation.   It's said that when goods cross borders, armies don't.   History backs that up.   A report funded by several governments found that the level of armed conflict in Muslim countries is lower today than two decades ago, and trade is the reason.   You're less likely to bomb the people with whom you engage in commerce."

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14)
George Friedman _Jewish World Review_
strategy, ideology and the Syrian "crisis"
"In the past month, the president of the United States treated the act of bombing Syria as a gesture intended to convey meaning rather than as a military action intended to achieve some specific end."

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14
Robert J. Samuelson _Jewish World Review_
how various countries have handled their excessive debt burdens

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
"our" government is a threat to public safety
Town Hall
"Time and again, it's the control freaks in Washington who have fallen down on their jobs, allowing crazies, creeps and criminals to roam free and wreak havoc while ignoring rampant red flags [and harassing innocents]."

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14)
Adrinne Lu _Jewish World Review_
associate's degrees and certs sometimes have bigger pay-back than bachelor's
"Short-term credentials, such as 2-year degrees and technical certificates, can be worth more than bachelor's degrees in early years.   The study found that in Texas, those who graduated with technical associate's degrees earned over $11K more on average in their first year after graduation than those with four-year degrees.   Those who graduate from flagship campuses who entered the job market directly after graduation did not earn more than graduates of regional college campuses.   In all 5 states [studied], those who graduated with engineering degrees earned the most.   Graduates with degrees in technology, engineering and math earned more than other majors, but the study found no evidence that those with science degrees in subjects such as biology or chemistry earned higher wages...   Funding for the study was provided by the Lumina Foundation, which has provided additional funding to examine the wages of students beyond the first year after graduation and who move out of state."

2013-09-18 (5774 Tishrei 14)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
student indoctrination
Town Hall
"William S. Penn, Michigan State University professor of creative writing, greeted his first day of class with an anti-Republican rant.   Campus Reform, a project of the Arlington, VA-based Leadership Institute, has a video featuring the professor telling his students that Republicans want to prevent 'black people' from voting.   He added that 'this country still is full of closet racists' and described Republicans as 'a bunch of dead white people -- or dying white people'.   To a student who had apparently displayed displeasure with those comments, professor Penn barked, 'You can frown if you want.'   He gesticulated toward the student and added, 'You look like you're frowning.   Are you frowning?'   When the professor's conduct was brought to the attention of campus authorities, MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said, 'At MSU it is important the class-room environment is conducive to a free exchange of ideas and is respectful of the opinions of others.'   That mealy-mouthed response is typical of university administrators.   Professor Penn was using his classroom to proselytize students.   That is academic dishonesty and warrants serious disciplinary or dismissal proceedings.   But that's not likely.   Professor Penn's vision is probably shared by his colleagues, seeing as he was the recipient of MSU's Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003.   University of Southern California professor Darry Sragow shares Penn's opinion.   Last Fall, he went on a rant telling his students that Republicans are 'stupid and racist' and 'the last vestige of angry old white people'...   University officials are [sometimes] aware of this kind of academic dishonesty and indoctrination; university trustees are [sometimes] not.   For the most part, trustees are yes men for the president.   Legislators and charitable foundations that pour billions into colleges are unaware [or simply try to maintain plausible deniability], as well.   Most tragically, parents who pay tens of thousands of dollars for tuition and pile up large debt to send their youngsters off to be educated are unaware of the academic rot, as well...   Students should record classroom professorial propaganda and give it wide distribution over the Internet.   I've taught for more than 45 years and routinely invited students to record my lectures so they don't have to be stenographers during class.   I have no idea of where those recordings have wound up, but if you find them, you'll hear zero proselytization or discussion of my political and personal preferences.   To use a class-room to propagate one's personal beliefs is academic dishonesty.   Vladimir Lenin said, 'Give me 4 years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.'   That's the goal of the leftist teaching agenda."
Campus Reform.org
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "the Middle East can be roughly divided into 3 sub-regions: North Africa, the Gulf States, and the 'Levant' or 'Mashriq' countries.   The North African countries include Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia.   The Gulf States include Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen.   The Levant, a colonial term (al-Mashriq is the Arabic equivalent), usually refers to the countries of the eastern Mediterranean including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, [Israel, Palestine/Gaza], and Iraq.   In addition, Iran and Turkey, while not always considered part of the Middle East because their populations are not predominantly Arab, are often included in the description of the Middle East region as they share the same religious traditions and an inter-woven political history." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pp212-213  

 
 

2013-09-19

2013-09-19 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & 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 271,747 in the week ending September 14, an increase of 42,262 from the previous week.   There were 330,454 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.9% during the week ending September 7, unchanged from the prior week's revised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,505,514, a decrease of 13,496 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,519,010.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.3% and the volume was 2,927,923.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 31 was 4,037,491, a decrease of 235,250 from the previous week.   There were 5,173,597 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   No state was triggered 'on' the Extended Benefits program during the week ending August 31...   States reported 1,454,824 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending August 31, unchanged from the prior week.   There were 2,162,532 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-09-19
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet

2013-09-19
Paul Driessen
real climate science the UN IPCC does not want to see

2013-09-19
Ronald W. Mortensen _Center for Immigration Studies_
expanding "lower class" and dragging down "middle class" through immigration law perversion
"At a time when millions of Americans, including 5.8% of college graduates, describe themselves as lower class, the president of the United States, the United States senate, faith leaders, high tech billionaires, labor organizers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican luminaries such as Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) [Harry Reid (D-NV), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)] are determined to drive still millions more Americans [down] into the lower class."

2013-09-19
Peter Rudegeair _Reuters_
Wells Fargo dumping 1,800 employees
Dakin Campbell: Bidness Week
Zacks Equity Research

2013-09-19
Brian Fung _Washington DC Compost_
privacy violator Mark Zuckerberg still has a lot to learn about politics
"'My view is that the system is set up to avoid making catastrophic mistakes.   And right now, the country is actually really divided and therefore few things should get done -- except for the things people really agree on.'...   Zuckerberg may be one of the [millions of] people here who thinks grid-lock is a useful [part] of politics.   For the momentous issues like health care and immigration, maybe it is better not to move too hastily.   But this is also an exceptionally grid-locked time in American politics, to the point that what should be fast-moving and routine winds up clogging up the pipes.   Executive nominations are being blocked on purpose.   Some aren't being made at all.   [That's 2 good things...jgo]   Congress can't pass a budget.   [Congress refuses to pass a balanced budget...jgo] Nor can it agree these days to pay the debts it's incurred without throwing an annual fit.   [They haven't paying off federal government debt for nearly 65 years...jgo]...   The campaign was meant to give right-wing law-makers cover in exchange for their support for immigration [perversion]...   Zuckerberg added that he was shocked to learn that senior Democrats in Congress would recoil at the idea of being funded [in relation to some positions on some issues] by the same group that was also funding Republicans [in relation to some positions on other issues]...   The FB founder may be an engineering and cultural [dimwit].   But his political education is still just beginning."

2013-09-19
Tammie Gitt _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
middle-PA employers prefer hiring older workers
"About 200 employers, from Google to AT&T to MetLife, have signed an AARP pledge recognizing the value of experienced workers and vowing to consider applicants 50 and older.   One of them, New York-based KPMG, has found success with a high proportion of older workers, who bring experience that the company says adds credibility.   The auditing, tax and advisory firm says older workers also tend to be more dedicated to staying with the company, a plus for clients who like to build a relationship with a consultant they can count on to be around for years...   About 20% of the roughly 26K customer service, sales and technical support agents working for Miramar, FL-based Arise Virtual Solutions are 50 or older, and chief executive John Meyer said they often find ways to connect with the caller on the other end of the line...   long-term unemployment has plagued older adults: Nearly half of those 55 and older who find themselves jobless remain out of work for 27 weeks or more.   Many companies still tend to overlook older applicants.   Peter Cappelli, a University of Pennsylvania professor who co-authored _Managing the Older Worker_, said because the economy has remained relatively weak and demand for jobs has been so high, many employers haven't been pressed to directly recruit older individuals.   Stereotypes have prevailed.   Hiring managers often still view older applicants as having lower job performance, higher absenteeism and accident rates, and less ability to solve problems and adapt to changes.   But Capelli said research has found older workers outpace younger ones in nearly every metric.   And in jobs where age might be a detriment -- say, a highly physical job beyond a particular older person's ability -- seniors tend to exclude themselves from applying in the first place.   'The evidence is overwhelming that they're better.', Cappelli said.   'But the hiring managers are just going with their guts, and our guts are full of prejudice.'...   But older workers are just what Michelle Benjamin, CEO of TalentREADY, a New York-based [bodyshop], is looking for."

2013-09-19
Andrew C. McCarthy _PJ Media_
withhold funding of ObummerDoesn'tCare
"public resistance to a law the public has never liked -- and about which the public grows increasingly anxious as its deleterious consequences and exploding costs begin to materialize -- has forced [losership's] hand even as it demonstrates, yet again, the divide between the Beltway and the country...   it seems Republican leadership only resists when doing so is futile, when the resistance is token.   Thus the prior votes to repeal Obamacare, all forty of them, taken in the comfortable knowledge that they had no chance of succeeding -- just going through the motions in faux fulfillment of a commitment to the base to work tirelessly to undo the law.   But when something might not be futile -- when it could actually work, and therefore entails hard work and risk -- we generally find leadership in folderoo mode, babbling its one-half-of-one-third mantra.   [Withholding funding] could work for several reasons.   First it puts the lie to the one-half-of-one-third blather.   The United States Constitution does not set up government by percentage; it sets up government by enumerated power."

2013-09-19
Clayton E. Cramer _PJ Media_
2nd amendment violation and the definition of insanity

2013-09-19
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
Democrats walk out of Benghazi hearing before families of those killed testified
Jason Howerton: Blaze
"AllahPundit": Hot Air
Dancing Czars
Ask Marion
News Max
Herman Cain: SoundCloud (audio)
"The far side of the room, shown empty in the photo, belongs to the Democrats.   The only Democrats who stayed were ranking-member Elijah Cummings and representative Jackie Speier.   UPDATE: It turns out there weren't a whole lot of Republicans in the hearing room for Smith and Wood's testimony either.   They should have been there.   That being said, here's the difference: Republicans have promised Smith and Woods answers about what happened in Benghazi and their continued efforts to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, etc. prove it.   Charles Woods went out of his way during testimony to thank Republican representative Jason Chaffetz for his help."

2013-09-19
Paul D. Shinkman _US News & World Report_
citizenry demanding that NSA be driven back within its purview
"privacy experts and many in the public say this is not enough, citing the need for fundamental change at the agency, founded in the wake of World War II and honed against Soviet intelligence during the Cold War.   Two former directors of the agency recognize the growing disconnect between these cyber spies and the people they are trying to protect.   'I never contemplated in 1978 what would happen with the digital revolution.', says Bobby Ray Inman, a retired U.S. Navy admiral whose tenure as director from 1977 to 1981 included the implementation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.   'I also never contemplated people coming to the U.S. on legitimate travel visas [because of the lack of background investigations of visa applicants], and then engaging in reconnaissance, training, and then flying planes into buildings...   Suddenly the need to track individuals moving around the country as opposed to identifying foreign representatives was a totally different problem.', says Inman, 82, now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin's LBJ School of Public Affairs.   He cites the Edward Snowden leaks as an example of why the closest-guarded intelligence should be more compartmentalized, to prevent one person from being able to hack it...   Web giants such as FB and Google [gather and] sell advertising information from what they gather on a particular user's preferences [by snooping into their private files and messages]...   'Respect for individuals' autonomy, anonymous speech, and the right to free association must be balanced against legitimate concerns like law enforcement.', EFF says.   'National governments must put legal checks in place to prevent abuse of state powers, and international bodies need to consider how a changing technological environment shapes security agencies' best practices.'"
And professional associations and university courses need to put more emphasis on intellectual property rights and respect for privacy... both in what they say and in what they do... and put pressure on executives of the likes of Google, FB, LinkedIn, Friendster, Yahoo, GE, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Oracle and SAP to clean up their acts.   They are bad and in many cases they are criminals, but neither DoJ nor others are prosecuting them...jgo

2013-09-19
Chand John _Chronicle of Higher Education_
the PhD vs. industry gap
"after getting my master's and doctorate in computer science from Stanford University, where I built software that revolutionized the study of human movement, became an early expert and core developer of software featured in Scientific American, and was 1 of 4 PhDs chosen from Stanford's engineering school for a research award..."

2013-09-19 (5774 Tishrei 15)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
government spying and lying
"We know that the Fourth Amendment was written to restrain the government for all purposes because the British government tormented the Framers and violated their right to privacy for many non-criminal-based governmental purposes, such as tax collecting, speech suppressing and intelligence gathering.   The government's argument, if accepted, would permit the government to engage in a vast array of unlawful human indignities from torture to pre-crime detention to the presence of the government in the bed-room, the board-room and the confessional, so long as it was not trying to solve a crime.   The reason you probably have not heard this argument is that the feds will only make it in secret to their favorite secret court.   In 2009 March, judge Reggie B. Walton, the chief judge of that secret court, the FISA Court, complained in secret about what the court had been told in secret.   In that court, only NSA agents and Department of Justice lawyers appear.   The court's only source for its facts and legal arguments is the NSA.   We don't know what deceptions the NSA visited on the court from which it receives general warrants and the involvement of which forms a basis for Obama's laughable argument that his spies are supervised by the judiciary.   But we know that Walton was lied to."

2013-09-19 (5774 Tishrei 15)
Larry Elder _Jewish World Review_
PC gun-free zones are deadly

2013-09-19 (5774 Tishrei 15)
A. Barton Hinkle _Jewish World Review_
leftists reap what they sow
"The question concerns a redevelopment plan in the Philadelphia suburb of Mount Holly.   Officials there have been razing homes in the low-income Mount Holly Gardens neighborhood with an eye toward building fancier homes (some costing 5 times as much) in their place."

2013-09-19 (5774 Tishrei 15)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
the decline of college
"At the California State University system, the largest university complex in the world, well under 20% of students graduate in 4 years despite massive student aid.   Fewer than half graduate in 6 years."

2013-09-19
Lynn O'Shaughnessy _CBS_
STEM grads don't get big bucks (with graph)
"A new study by College Measures, a non-profit firm that helps state governments gather and disseminate salary data on new college graduates, shows that not all students who major in these rigorous disciplines end up making the big bucks..."

2013-09-19
Doug Short _Before It's News_
introduction to the Civil War amendments to the US constitution

2013-09-19
Doug Short _Advisor Perspectives_
American dream (with graphs)
"if you adjust for inflation using the Census Bureau's method, that nominal 614.2% total growth shrinks to 18.8%, a 'real' annualized growth rate of 0.39%...   [median household income growth nominal vs. inflation adjusted]...   What [the ShadowStats] deflator is telling us translates into something like this: The 1967 median household income of $7,143 chained in 2012 dollars would have had the purchasing power of $185,588.   On a personal note, my first full-time university faculty job in 1969 paid me $9K ($7,500 base plus $1,500 for teaching the summer session).   Our household income that year was approximately $13K, which would have been about 55% above the median $8,389.   According to the Shadowstats CPI, our 1969 income had the purchasing power of $307K in 2012 dollars.   Somehow, that does not, even with the rosiest-colored glasses of imagination, square with my memories of our 1969 financial situation."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The lowlanders who first reached the uplands built in rustic American style: walls of adzed timbers or of woven rushes, or wattle covered with heavy mud or daub.   The early houses were small, usually about 16 by 20 feet. Roofs were covered with wide boards, chinked with clay or covered with skins.   Swedes who had settled along the Delaware river beginning in 1638 first built the log huts which became the favorite abode of the frontiers-man.   Its stout walls, pierced with small gun-ports, offered better protection against Indians.   70 to 80 trees were felled to build a log house. &nnbsp; Working steadily, a half-dozen men could erect one in a week or two.   The avantage of the Delaware log house was that it could be built with no tools except an axe and and adze..." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp193-194  

 
 

2013-09-20

2013-09-20
Judith Curry
gate-keeping at the geo-physical research journals
Judith Curry: peer review

2013-09-20
Willis Eschenbach
it isn't a good Britain, it's a Great Britain... and giant bird and bat shredders
"They are 'WIND TURBINE WARNINGS', and very real ones.   The maximum tip speed on those blades is on the order of 200 miles per hour (320 Km per hour).   Think about the damage that say a 20 kg (44 lb) chunk of ice moving at 200 miles an hour might do to a house or a car or a child...and they build these near highways, schools and homes?...   During the tour Sir Humphry told us the story of the Battle of Flodden Field, which happened almost exactly 500 years to the day before our visit.   He is a most accomplished raconteur, giving us all of the details large and small, describing the position of the armies and how they moved, how they dressed, and what they were thinking.   At one point when he was describing a skirmish in astonishing (and likely accurate) detail, I said, 'Sir Humphry, where on the field of battle were you standing at that time?'   It took him a moment to bring his mind forwards out of the mists of time, and then he laughed, shook his head, and said, 'It may surprise you, Willis, but I actually wasn't there!', as if it were surprising to him as well...and then he was off again with tales of a hunted criminal forced to serve as a guide after his brother was captured and threatened with death, and the disposition of the archers, and, and...I now know a whole lot more than a man should ever know about that battle, which took place about 10 miles from Chillingham Castle...   But the fire was warm, as was the convivial atmosphere.   The other dinner guests were the head of one of the Colleges at Cambridge and his wife, and the conversation ebbed and flowed with passion and pleasure.   My greatest thanks go to Sir Humphry and Lady Katharine for their hospitality, for their stories, and for restoring a marvelous piece of English history.   The next day, I got the chance to go salmon fishing with Matt Ridley and my gorgeous ex-fiancée.   We went to a stretch of the River Coquet, here's Matt and Ellie on the river...   In the evening we had dinner at Matt's house with his good lady Anya and their son Matthew.   Anya is another one of those amazing folks, a neurobiologist with both a PhD and an MD, and the dinner guests were there for a neurobiology conference.   Glamorous surroundings, glistening candelabras, and glittering conversation made it a most memorable evening...   In addition, I give my greatest appreciation and thanks to those people who I was lucky enough to actually meet and spend time with..."

2013-09-20
Steve Goreham
sea level
Washington DC Times

2013-09-20
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
an essay on shaking hands, published in 1820 in the Boston Daily Advertiser, Farmer's Repository and Charles Town papers by Edward Everett
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Weddings brought out young and old, dinner often being sered on the church grounds before the ride home.   An amorous young Scotsman was described as 'brigady' and a truculent one was 'feisty'.   At night-fall, after the bride and bride-groom had nervously entered the sleeping loft, friends serenaded them with a 'shivaree' (from 'charivari'), beating on kettles to proclaim the glad tidings." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg197  

 
 

2013-09-21

2013-09-21
Norm Matloff _H-1B/ L-1/ Off-Shoring News-Letter_
Federal Reserve Board says increasing numbers of H-1B visas is unwarranted
 
About 10 days ago, an article by Computerworld's veteran reporter on H-1B issues, Pat Thibodeau, caused a stir among some people who follow the H-1B/green card issue:
2013-09-09: CIO/IDG.
 
As is often the case, the head-line turned out to be rather misleading (head-lines are written by editors, not the authors of the articles). The sub-head-line is a fairly accurate summary of the article, though: "The IT employment outlook has provided nothing but mixed signals.   Tech employment is showing signs of slowing, but not everywhere.   Now the Federal Reserve is saying that in some markets -- Boston and San Francisco -- demand for certain types of tech skills is out-stripping supply."
 
However, though the sub-head-line is an accurate summary of the article, I don't think the article is quite so good a summary of the Fed's report.   (Again, this may be due to cuts by the editor.)   Let's first look at the case of the Boston region, for which the Fed's report.
 
(If the URL gives you trouble, plug "Fed Beige Book" into [ixquick or DuckDuckGo], chose the Sept. 4 issue, and click on "Boston".)
 
Though the CW quote from the report is correct, the report also said, under the category Software and Information Technology Services,
 
"New England software and information technology services contacts generally report weaker than expected business activity through August, with slow revenue growth...   Four out of five contacts continue to be cautious in hiring, and plan to remain close to their current head-counts through 2013...   Looking forward, New England software and IT firms are cautiously optimistic, with most expecting only modest growth through the second half of 2013."
 
That hardly supports the notion that there is a tech labor shortage in Boston.
 
By the way, note that sample size, n = 5.   Who said this is the era of Big Data? :-)
 
Similarly, the San Francisco part of the report states,
 
"Reports indicated that overall wages at technology firms have been mostly stable or modestly increasing. However, firms in various industries continued to compete vigorously for a limited pool of qualified workers to fill certain technical positions, spurring significant wage growth in these slots."
 
Putting aside the presumably small value of n there too, again the Fed's own report counterindicates a raging general tech labor shortage in the Bay Area.
 
It's interesting how the industry lobbyists have retrenched recently.   Some of them continue to claim we've got a nationwide shortage, but I've increasingly seen them claim only small regional shortages.   Vivek Wadhwa also makes this assertion.   Yet even the report by the Fed doesn't really support the claim.
 
Dice.com data is controversial, but since the industry PR people like to cite it, it is of interest to note that a survey in 2012 Fall found that IT salaries in Silicon Valley were DOWN 2.8% from the year before.
 
They did find that wages in Boston were up 6.9%, possibly reflecting the recruiter's point in the CW article that Google and several other big guys have recently been opening offices.   Google greatly expanded its Kendall Square office in 2011 December, according to Boston Magazine, 2011 Dec.   Kendall Square is MIT's subway stop, 2 stops from Harvard, 3 from Tufts, a short bridge away from Boston University, etc.   The article shows the youth theme throughout, consistent with my continuing point that the industry is hiring the young, including young H-1Bs, while shunning the older workers.
 
That of course is the other point to keep in mind when one sees claims of shortages and wage increases: The "shortage" is often one of young workers, not qualified workers in general.
 
At any rate, though a sudden new influx of tech firms into a region may create a temporary "shortage", it is no reason to bring in the H-1Bs.   Let the market do its job.
 
The CW article makes brief mention of specific skill sets, such as setting up Apache (or other) web servers to handle high volume traffic.   Yes, this is nontrivial, but no, it's not rocket science.   This is not some wizard stuff, limited to select cogniscenti, and there should be people available, if employers stop automatically rejecting the older workers.
 
As to the recruiters' mention of Python, I must say this irritates me, as I've written before, I'm actually a big Python fan -- that's the programming language, not Monty Python :-) -- and I know good Python programmers who have had trouble in the job market in the last year or so.   It's just a phony issue.
 
Bottom line, though, is that the Fed report for the most part confirms that we do NOT have a general tech labor shortage, including in the Boston and San Francisco regions, so an expansion in the H-1B and green card programs is NOT warranted.   Given that the Fed has long been a vigorous supporter of the H-1B program, this is saying a lot.
 
Norm
---30---

2013-09-21
Anthony Watts
climate hysteria images of Manhattan

2013-09-21
Ric Werme
weather before and after the "Long Island Express" hurricane of 1938

2013-09-21
Roger Kimball _PJ Media_
res ipsa loquitur
"what is going to make the imminent collapse of the higher education establishment pass without much public sorrow is the rottenness at the core of the system."

2013-09-21
Kathy Knechtges _V Dare_
America's forgotten victims of excessive immigration since 1865

2013-09-21
Gene Nelson _Californians for Population Stabilization_
the STEM talent glut
"Around the world, employer interests long ago determined that an inexpensive way to attract trusting young people into the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields is to falsely claim that there is a 'looming shortage' of scientists and engineers.   Such a public relations approach is far less expensive to employers than raising salaries or improving working conditions.   The 2013 August 30 IEEE Spectrum article, 'The STEM Crisis Is a Myth', provides an excellent post-1934 myth chronology.   By attracting young people, the desired talent glut is far more likely.   Talent gluts drive down wages and facilitate illegal employment age, gender, disability and national origin discrimination.   Low wages maximize the gains for the economic elite.   What is surprising about this article is that its publishers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), have tended to be supportive of the 'shortage shouters' to satisfy their corporate sponsors and academia.   Academia wants their lecture halls and labs to be full.   Since 1990, Americans have become more wary about the lack of STEM career opportunities [because] so many in academia [and business] have turned to third-world students [and labor].   IEEE's flagship magazine, IEEE Spectrum, is widely read.   The publication of this article implies the employers' public relations campaign is now encountering strong headwinds, because the work-place experience of millions rebuts the mythical shortage claims...   Often, experienced American citizen technical professionals are required to train their imported replacements (pdf) as a condition of receiving their meager out-placement benefits."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "DNA... about 6 feet of it squeezed into almost every cell.   Each length of DNA comprises some 3.2G letters of coding, enough to provide 103.48G possible combinations, 'guaranteed to be unique against all conceivable odds', in the words of Christian de Duve...   'It would take more than 5K average-sized books just to print that figure', notes de Duve.   Look at yourself in the mirror and reflect upon the fact that you are beholding 10P cells, and that almost every one of them holds 2 yards of densely compacted DNA, and you begin to appreciate just how much of this stuff you carry around with you...   you may have as much as 20Gm of DNA bundled up inside you." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg399  

 
 

2013-09-22

2013-09-22
_CNBC_
10 not so surprising ways companies are abusing your personal private information

2013-09-22
Willis Eschenbach
volcanic eruption over UN IPCC AR5

2013-09-22
Steve Sailer _V Dare_
Why are government census planners so fixated on race and ethnicity and religion?

2013-09-22
Laurie Roth _News with Views_
John Boehner is talking tough... now he should shock us by taking appropriate action to stop ObummerDoesn'tCare, cut federal government spending, restore freedom of speech and religion and government respect for the right to own and carry arms and the right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures...

2013-09-22
Devvy Kidd _News with Views_
connecting the Americas 2022

2013-09-22
P. David Hornik _PJ Media_
is Israel a leper or Light unto the nations?: part 8, Jerusalem dig strikes rare gold
"Also this year Mazar's team discovered the oldest known inscription in Jerusalem -- from around 1000 BCE at the time of King David, a period of Jewish sovereignty in Israel.   The medallion, however, comes from almost half a millennium after the loss of Jewish sovereignty and attests to the ongoing attachment to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.   An attachment that continued up to the astounding restoration of Israel in our era.   And yet, as the archeological evidence of Jews' presence in Jerusalem and Israel keeps growing, so does the campaign to deny that such a presence ever existed."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "When the Boys are 18 and the Girls 14 they marry -- so that in many Cabbins You will see 10 or 15 Children.   Children and Grand Children of one Size -- and the mother looking as Young as her Daughter.   Yet these Poor People enjoy good Health; and are generally cut off by Endemic or Epidemic Disorders, which when they happen, makes Great Havock among them." --- Charles Woodmason (quoted in Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg206; citing Richard J. Hooker 1958 _The Carolina BackCountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason_ pg39)  

 
 

2013-09-23

2013-09-23
_NTA Lagos channel 10_
massive privacy violator Zuckerberg says US government spying reduces citizens' trust, but that his spying is just great for everyone
CNBC

2013-09-23
_NASDAQ_
RIM/Blackberry to dump 4,500 employees
Scott Neuman: GPB/National Socialist Radio

2013-09-23
Ed Runyan _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
fun science and engineering
"Kaitlyn's father, Jason, an engineer and the director of operations at General Extrusions of Boardman, which makes aluminum extrusions, said one of the kids' favorite things on Sunday was playing with robots inside OH WOW!...   He found a steel-making demonstration by YSU chemistry professor Howard Mettee interesting because Mettee put an iron oxide (rust) and aluminum mixture together in the bottom of a flower pot, leaving room for a mixture of glycerol and potassium permanganate [oxidizer] to be added at the top to raise the temperature to 1K℉.   The chemical reaction caused a flash, an explosion, the breaking of the ceramic flower pot and the dropping of a piece of iron encased in slag into a pan of sand below.   The professor picked up the iron with a magnet to prove that it was metal...   Jason said the study of STEM fields is about asking 'How? How do I make it better, faster, easier.'"

2013-09-23
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet

2013-09-23
Quentin Fottrell _MarketWatch_
in response to over-population, over-crowding, and economy Americans are having fewer children, and paying more to raise them

2013-09-23
Anthony Watts
Optical Society examines using catalyst-coated spinning disks to clean sewage
"Tsai and his colleagues from National Taiwan University, National Applied Research Laboratories in Taiwan, and the Research Center for Applied Sciences in Taiwan used the large surface area of optical disks as a platform to grow tiny, upright zinc oxide nanorods about a thousandth the width of a human hair.   Zinc oxide is an inexpensive semiconductor that can function as a photocatalyst, breaking apart organic molecules like the pollutants in sewage when illuminated with UV light."

2013-09-23
Willis Eschenbach
catching my breath

2013-09-23
Natalie Houston _Chronicle of Higher Education_
4 simple ways to improve your day
"Close your eyes and breathe... Smile... Take a short walk in a green space... Stand like superwoman to boost your confidence."

2013-09-23
John Hawkins _Town Hall_
5 reasons defunding ObummerDoesn'tCare is smart politics

2013-09-23
Andrew Klavan _PJ Media_
the holy war at home
"OT1H, the Islamists slaughtered Christians and others in Pakistan and Kenya.   OTOH, the new pope gave an interview in which he expressed a fresh and beautiful vision of God's merciful love for his human creation...   the western media...did everything they could to mis-represent them both in context and in themselves.   According to the Media Research Center, major media tied themselves in knots to keep from conveying the news that the attacks in a Nairobi mall and a Peshawar church were the work of Islamists.   Journalists know that religion may be criticized as a retrograde and violent force in the world, but when a religion is criticized it can only be Christianity.   That's a central tenet of the journalistic religion! Which is Stupidity."

2013-09-23
Richard Fernandez _PJ Media_
the flowers of evil
"In other news we hear that one handgun in Kenya saved 100 lives.   'An off-duty member of the SAS emerged as a hero of the Nairobi siege yesterday, after he was credited with saving up to 100 lives.   The soldier was having coffee at the Westgate mall when it was attacked by Islamists on Saturday.   With a gun tucked into his waist-band, he was pictured helping two women from the complex.   He is said to have returned to the building on a dozen occasions, despite intense gunfire.   A friend in Nairobi said: What he did was so heroic.   He was having coffee with friends when it happened.   He went back in 12 times and saved 100 people.   Imagine going back in when you knew what was going on inside.'"

2013-09-23
John W. Schoen _CNBC_
global resource shortages loom due to over-population

2013-09-23
Shawn Day _Hispanic Business_/_Hampton Roads VA Pilot_
time to stem the STEM emphasis
"But the Spectrum report systematically dismantles the hyperbole deployed by state and federal politicians, who stoke worries about an under-supply of scientists and engineers and the consequences for national security and the economy.   It notes the same warnings have been issued for generations.   Meanwhile, many STEM workers' salaries have been stagnant or lagged growth rates of non-STEM workers' for a decade or more, a detail inconsistent with signs of a labor shortage.   It points out 11.4M STEM graduates work in unrelated fields, with more graduates looking for work every year, and just 277K related job openings annually in the nation.   It highlights risks inherent in such jobs today, including the shift toward contract work, out-sourcing, the use of H-1B visas to bring in foreign workers and a decline in employer-sponsored training, 'so out-of-work engineers find they quickly become technologically obsolete'.   The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes data on jobs and industries, including employment out-looks.   Chemical, aerospace, mechanical and electrical and electronics engineering jobs are expected to grow slower than average through 2020; positions in nuclear and civil engineering, computer programming and information systems management are projected to grow at about an average clip.   Software developers, database administrators and actuaries will increase faster [but still only about one-third to one-half as fast as the supply has been growing]."

2013-09-23
Eric Owens _Daily Caller_
now they're arresting people who object to Communist Corpse
J.D. Longstreet: Before It's News
Michelle Malkin
Kris Anne Hall
"A YouTube video went viral over the weekend showing a parent who got violently arrested for expressing his frustrations about the implementation of the [Communist Corpse] at a public forum Thursday night in the suburbs of Baltimore.   Somehow, Ellicott City parent Robert Small was then charged with assaulting a police officer in the second degree, reports The Baltimore Sun.   Small stood up out of order during a question-and-answer forum held by the Maryland State Department of Education.   He interrupted Dallas Dance, the Baltimore county school superintendent.   Small explained -- calmly, though not particularly fluidly -- his belief that the [Communist Corpse] lowers standards of education for children in the district...   Criticism of the [Communist Corpse] has risen sharply.   Opposition has brought together conservatives who stand athwart a federal takeover of public education and leftists who deplore ever-more standardized testing...   'Look, I am being manhandled and shut down because I asked inconvenient questions.', Small told The Sun on Friday.   'Why won't they allow an open forum where there can be a debate?   We are told to sit there and be lectured to about how great [Communist Corpse] is.'"

2013-09-23
Tom Fitton _Daily Caller_
the left's war on dissent
"The far left, led by the Obama administration, has declared a retroactive War on Dissent.   Lest you have any doubts, consider this: Were Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin alive today, the Obama administration would label them 'extremists' and ban them, at a minimum, from military service.   According to a Defense Department training manual recently uncovered by Judicial Watch, our Founding Fathers, or as described by the Obama administration 'colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule', were'examples of extremist ideologies and movements'.   But, it doesn't stop there.   According to a 'student guide' from the Defense Department's Equal Opportunity Management Institute entitled 'Extremism', if you are an American who 'talks of individual liberties, states' rights, and how to make the world a better place.', you can join the Founding Fathers as enemies of the state.   If that sounds Orwellian, it's not.   It's Obamian.   And it's not about some fictitious country called Oceana buried in the pages of some futuristic novel.   It's about the United States of America, here and now, where leftists ruthlessly, recklessly equate basic conservative values with terrorism...   According to a document obtained by Fox News in May, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration discovered that when the IRS targeted Tea Parties in 2010 and 2011, it included groups focused on government spending, government debt, and, chillingly, ways to 'make America a better place to live'."

2013-09-23
Jonathan Emord _News with Views_
why not shut down the federal government
"In a government debt crisis, the only thing worse than a weak and feckless spendthrift president, like president Obama, is a strong and efficient spendthrift president."

2013-09-23
Alton Parrish _Before It's News_
stretchable, foldable, transparent electronic displays: Organic light-emitting device

2013-09-23
Mort Amsel _Before It's News_
earth-quake swarm rocks Yellowstone

2013-09-23
John Rolls & Rick Wells _Before It's News_
386K foreign troops in USA? (with GIS map; video)
Free Patriot

2013-09-23
Audrey Williams June _Chronicle of Higher Education_
do you know where your PhDs are?
interactive graph

2013-09-23
Peter Schmidt _Chronicle of Higher Education_
U of FL director of program for economically disadvantaged students says being white cost him his job
"Dana Peterson, whose office was merged with another, says his law-suit against the university, claiming bias and retaliation, is 'more about valuing diversity'."

2013-09-23
Audrey Williams June _Chronicle of Higher Education_
3 things I've learned about PhD students and getting a job

2013-09-23
Patrick Goodenough _Cybercast News Service_
corrupt head of UN WIPO provided US computer tech to North Korea and Iran
"The equipment shipped to North Korea, valued at around $118K, was to upgrade database systems and printing facilities in the Stalinist regime's Invention Office.   Equipment worth some $80K went to Iran to update computing equipment in advance of receiving WIPO's proprietary software, used by IP offices around the world."

2013-09-23
Dan Stein
senators Sessions and Lee are wary of attempt to enact piece-meal amnesty for illegal aliens
Breitbart

2013-09-23 (5774 Tishrei 19)
Jonathan Tobin _Jewish World Review_
the "Jewish problem" with Judaism's most sacred site
"the Jews are not the problem in Jerusalem.   That's because the dispute in the city isn't really so much about who controls the Temple Mount but the Muslim effort to deny the Jewish history that is literally under their feet.   Were it just a question of sharing sacred space, reasonable compromises that would give full Muslim autonomy over their holy sites while allowing Jewish prayer at the spiritual center of Judaism would be possible since Jewish extremists who want to evict Islam from the place are a tiny minority.   Yet as long as the official position of both the Muslim Wakf religious authority, which has been allowed by Israel to govern the place since the 1967 Six-Day War, and the Palestinian Authority is that the Temples never existed and that Jews have no rights to their ancient capital, that will constitute the real obstacle to peace...   In the face of their intransigence and the fact that such intolerance is main-stream Palestinian opinion rather than the view of a few extremists, the desire of many Jews to visit a place that is the historic center of their faith (the Western Wall is, after all, merely the vestige of the Temple's outer enclosure) [seems perfectly reasonable]."

2013-09-23 (5774 Tishrei 19)
Dana Milbank _Jewish World Review_
what's super-bugging you?
"You may be worried about a government shut-down, but I'm not.   I'm not worried about a shut-down because we're all about to die anyway.   Super-bugs are going to kill us.   'Drug-resistant bacteria pose potential catastrophe, CDCP warns' was The Post's head-line this week about a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that did indeed use words such as 'nightmare' and 'catastrophic threat'.   'We're just getting closer and closer to the cliff.', CDCP official Michael Bell cautioned reporters in a conference call.   CDCP director Tom Frieden warned of being 'thrust back to a time before we had effective drugs'.   They spoke of the infamous 'flesh-eating bacteria', but even that horrid streptococcus is a minor problem compared to the 'urgent health threat' posed by Clostridium difficile, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae and other nasties you most definitely don't want to meet.   There's now even a super-fungus -- fluconazole-resistant Candida -- that can kill you.   I reacted as I usually do to such reports.   I covered myself head to toe in Purell, donned a respirator and hid under my bed.   I was so concerned about the superbugs that I temporarily forgot to worry about avian flu and the deadly coronavirus coming from Saudi Arabia.   To help me keep track of these threats, my Post colleague Alan Sipress, author of ProMED, a daily e-mail update from the International Society for Infectious Diseases.   This week, ProMED informs me that there have been four new cases of MERS (the Middle East respiratory syndrome), and that there's a potentially problematic development with H7N9 influenza in China (not to be confused with H7N7 in Italy or H5N1 in Cambodia).   The trouble is, ProMED also introduces me to all kinds of threats I never thought to worry about.   As I write this, the daily bulletin includes news of a paralytic shellfish poisoning in Australia, E. coli in Canadian cheese, waterborne diarrhea in Armenia, a superbug in Brazil, hemorrhagic fever in Uganda, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in Russia, cholera and dysentery in Africa, something called 'Meloidogyne enterolobii root knot' involving South African potatoes, and the dread 'lumpy skin disease' related to bovines in Turkey..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Besides the pack train and the wagon, a fast-moving vehicle called a stage began to rumble over the rough dirt thoroughfare.   Pulled by 4 to 6 horses, these scheduled carriers began after 1750 to replace express riders and 'for hire' wagons which had carried mail and passenters.   Starting in New York and Philadelphia, stage wagons and stage-coaches were soon operating on major roads.   A northern newspaper about 1750 began advertising John Butler's Philadelphia stage wagon.   By 1780, a more comfortable coach with 5 passenger places and a 'boot' for mail had replaced the canvas-covered wagons.   Horses were changed at 'stages' along the way -- usually taverns, but occasionally a newspaper office where mail was exchanged with the printer, who doubled as post-master.   The new stage-coaches were far faster than wagon travel.   Embarking from Philadelphia at 02:00, the Lancaster stage traveled 33 miles to reach Downing Mill (later Downington) by night-fall.   The second night brought the traveler to Lancaster, another 33 miles away.   By traveling 12 to 18 hours a day, the stage-coach covered from 25 to 40 miles, depending chiefly on the muddiness of the road." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp213-214  

 
 

2013-09-24

2013-09-24
M.S. Hodgart
an impartial look at global temperatures

2013-09-24
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
Warning: government control of health-care is hazardous to your health

2013-09-24
Armstrong Williams _Town Hall_
Navy yard massacre
"what contributed to the massacre: mental instability, poor security, and a failure of the vaunted clearance system and NSA."

2013-09-24
Chris Edwards _Town Hall_
US federal government spending from 1790 to 2050

2013-09-24
Reema Abi-Akar _Daily Illini_
a world of connections in 6 steps

2013-09-24
Anthony Watts
WUWT weather/climate hot sheet

2013-09-24
Alana Semuels _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_/_McClatchy_
many college-educated workers are in jobs that don't really require college degrees
"A college degree once all but guaranteed a well-paying job and higher earnings than high school graduates.   But fewer of these good jobs are now available because of both long-term economic changes and the lingering effects of the Great Recession.   People such as Flagherty with college and advanced degrees are working jobs that don't require them, whether by choice or necessity.   That in turn pushes people without college degrees out of those jobs.   In 1970, only 2% of firefighters had college degrees; now 18% do, according to Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University.   Less than 1% of taxi drivers had a college degree in 1970; now 15% do.   About 25% of retail sales clerks have college degrees, Vedder said.   'The main reason is a pretty simple one.', he said.   'The number of college graduates has grown vastly faster than the number of jobs that require high-level education skills.'...   She now works in a lab and makes only about two-thirds of what she did as a bar-tender, despite her master's degree in biochemistry."

2013-09-24
_Reuters_/_CNBC_
2013-09-24
Anthony Watts
"Popular Science" frowns on popular science, opts for argument from authority, instead
Daily Caller
World Net Daily
Manchester Guardian
"The 'popular consensus' is eroding? Wahhhhh!   Yeah, that's what science is all about: Getting people to shut up and do as they're told."

2013-09-24
Sarah Jean Seman _Town Hall_
corrupt pres. Obummer tells corrupt UN that despite US citizens' preferences, despite the US constitution, despite the ever severely unbalanced federal government budget, he will supply $340M to Islamic terrorists in Syrian

2013-09-24
Christopher Monckton 3rd viscount Brenchley _World Net Daily_
between Harry Reid and reason there is a great gulf
"The occasion was a senate debate on whether the bankrupt administration should continue to be funded till mid-December.   The GOP has learned from Newt Gingrich's experience that if one wants to threaten spendthrift 'Democrats' with defunding, one should ensure that the 'Democrats' get the blame if and when the music stops and the pay-roll stops getting paid.   The Republicans in the senate are maneuvering to put Reid in the hot seat, making sure that he will be forced to decide either to put up with the GOP's plan to defund [ObummerDoesn'tCare] or to shut down the government as the funds to pay for it run dry...   Here's the thing, Harry, baby.   The duty of the party elected to opposition is to oppose.   And that -- at last -- is what the GOP are beginning to do.   They are holding the administration to account, and not before time.   It is the job of any administration to administer the government and its finances.   That does not mean keeping the show on the road month to month with vast loans from one's brutal Communist pals in China at an undisclosed political price, together with a trillion a year of money-printing that ought to have been stopped before it started and is now to be continued because Obamadebt has skyrocketed.   The duty of an administration is to live within the nation's means.   [ObummerDoesn'tCare] -- like it or not -- is well beyond Uncle Sam's means.   It is a pointless extravagance.   It will not provide hospital care for anyone who cannot get it at the moment.   Judging by the opinion polls, it has largely failed even in its primary purpose of buying votes...   Mr. Reid's unreasoning hate-speech against Republicans is an indicator of the fundamental unreason of the 'Democrats' in Washington and of the hard left in politics everywhere."

2013-09-24
Pamela Geller _World Net Daily_
CAIR is culpable in Nairobi mall massacre
"The very week the Muslim Brotherhood front group known as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a report deriding opponents of jihad, and most particularly representative Peter King's hearings on jihad recruitment of Muslims to Somalia for terror training, there came the horrific news that American Muslims were part of the Muslim militia that slaughtered non-Muslims (mostly women and children) in an attack on an upscale mall frequented by Westerners in Nairobi.   CAIR and its affiliated organizations are the jihad enemy within working to disarm us.   Nihad Awad, CAIR's founder and executive director, has said, 'I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO.'...   they go after congressman King for holding a hearing on 'Al Shabaab Recruitment and Radicalization Within the Muslim American Community and the Threat to the Homeland', implying that this radicalization was a non-existent myth created by King to drum up 'anti-Muslim sentiment'.   The jihadis in Kenya say that there are 5 American Muslims among them: Ahmed Mohamed Isse from St. Paul, MN; Abdifatah Osman Keenadiid from Minneapolis; Gen Mustafe Noorudiin from Kansas City; Abdelkarem Ali Mohamed from IL; Abdishakur Sheikh Hassan from ME; and Shafie Die, from Tucson, AZ.   If this is true, Al Shabaab recruited these jihadis here.   But CAIR tried to impede the investigation of this recruitment.   Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali leader in Minnesota, has been trying to stop that recruitment -- but then CAIR targeted him...   The facts are that American Muslims took up arms to slaughter non-Muslims at an upscale shopping mall in Kenya.   American Muslims joined a multi-national force of Muslims to wage holy war in Kenya; hostages and victims were told 'all Muslims leave...   we only want to kill non-Muslims.'   They released anyone who could prove they were Muslim by reciting a prayer.   They attacked American and Jewish shops.   Women and children were slaughtered if they could not recite the Quran.   The jihadis cut the hands off the bodies of their victims and burned their faces, bodies everywhere...   Could these American Muslims have been stopped? Of course, but Muslim Brotherhood groups in America, like CAIR, are not only smearing those who tried to stop them, but are disarming and dismantling our counter-terror programs.   All this makes it clear: The Muslim Brotherhood group CAIR is culpable in the terrorist attack in Kenya.   They have wielded their considerable influence and power to impede the investigation by lawmakers and human rights activists fighting recruitment of American Muslim youth.   They strong-armed Muslims not to talk with law enforcement.   Yet Obama's Department of Justice dropped the terror prosecutions of unindicted co-conspirator CAIR.   U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis ruled, 'The Government has produced ample evidence to establish the association' of CAIR to Hamas, upholding their designations as unindicted co-conspirators.   And back in 2008, the FBI formally ended all contact with CAIR because of its links to a designated terrorist group, Hamas.   Demand a hearing as to why the prosecution of this terror-linked group was scuttled.   Further, after 3 years of litigation in federal court in Washington, DC, the American Freedom Law Center uncovered facts demonstrating that CAIR has been running a global criminal money laundering operation out of the nation's capital.   Demand prosecution of CAIR.   Now.   Call your congressman."
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-09-24
Derek Khanna _Daily Caller_
114K tried to sustain legality of idiot-phone unlocking
"As of 2003, consumers have had the right to change providers while keeping their wireless number.   Since 2007, consumers have also had the right to 'unlock' their wireless device.   But the Librarian of Congress recently [decreed that the federal government should vioalte] consumers' right to use their own device after their contract expires...   Unlocking is a simple technique by which a software patch allows a phone to use SIM cards from a different carrier.   This technology, while acknowledged by market experts as beneficial and lawful in other countries, is now 'illegal' for Americans.   This agency's ruling hurts consumers, stifles innovation and makes millions of average Americans guilty of a felony punishable by 5 years in prison and a $500K fine.   Overall, it's a classic example of crony [socialism], where a few dominant companies with significant lobbying assets change [laws and regulations] for their own benefit, [e.g. by] creating higher barriers to entry for their competitors."

2013-09-24
Lloyd Marcus _Daily Caller_
it is long past time we should help the victims of Nidal Hasan at Ft. Hood
"Now get this folks, while awaiting his trial, Hasan remained on the government's pay-roll receiving $300K.   Meanwhile, twice victimized by Hasan and the administration, those wounded were up the creek without a paddle, left to fend for themselves, forced to pay their own medical bills out of pocket.   I thought the trial would expose to the world that the shooting was irrefutably a terrorist attack, and the DoJ will reclassify the shooting and the victims will get their rightfully deserved benefits.   And while I was elated by the recent guilty verdict in the Hasan trail, that doesn't seem to have happened -- despite overwhelming evidence, the off-the-chain arrogant, evil, and cold-hearted [Obummer regime] still refuses to [properly classify] the shooting."

2013-09-24
H. Leighton Steward _Daily Caller_
the Obummer regime's anti-scientific war on carbon

2013-09-24
Brendan Bordelan _Daily Caller_
John Kerry (who served in VietNam) to sign anti-constitutional UN treaty
Craig Andersen: Before It's News
Tea Party Tribune
"Secretary of State John Kerry will sign the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty on Wednesday, the State Department confirmed, setting up a senate show-down over an international agreement many in Congress believe would usurp the Second Amendment..."

2013-09-24
Alex Pappas _Daily Caller_
Obummer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi refuse to negotiate on ObummerDoesn'tCare, willing to shut down federal government

Quincy IL Herald-Whig
"When it comes to funding the government, senate majority leader Harry Reid is making it clear: it's his way or the government shuts down."

2013-09-24
Tara Dodrill _Off the Grid_/_Current Events_
Modesto junior college student ordered to stop handing out copies of the US constitution on Constitution Day
"First Amendment rights are under attack at Modesto Junior College in California.   A student attempting to exercise his free speech rights by handing out copies of the Constitution was told to stop any such activity on the campus.   On Constitution Day (September 17), the California college student was informed that he must have prior approval to distribute free materials and even then could do so only in an extremely small designated space at the school.   Robert Van Tuinen was able to capture the entire exchange between himself and campus authorities on video.   The California student stated that he had reviewed the Modesto Junior College's rule and regulations regarding material distribution and did not expect to be run off from the student center grounds.   Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), said the college went too far."

2013-09-24
Kathy Shaidle _PJ Media_
Canada revokes charity status of Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), CAIR-Canada changing its name in attempt to hide terrorist ties
"The trouble is that Canada is forever taking two steps back after taking one step forward, in terms of fighting Muslim terrorism."
Clarion Project: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
anti-CAIR
Discover the Networks: Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
Clarion Project: Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-09-24
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
declining enforcement is a likely contributor to increasing numbers of illegal aliens

2013-09-24
Matt Vespa _Cybercast News Service_
merely delaying "individual mandate" could save $35.4G and unravel ObummerDoesn'tCare
"Last month, a poll from the Morning Consult found that 77% of Americans want the Individual mandate to be delayed.   Broken down along party lines, 65% of Democrats agree -- and 43% of them oppose the mandate outright."

2013-09-24
_Science Daily_
neurological basis for psychopaths' lack of empathy
Medical Xpress
News Max Health
WFMJ
Fox
"When individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making, reports a study published in the open-access journal _Frontiers in Human Neuroscience_...   The rate of psychopathy is about 23% in prisons, compared with about 1% in the general population, research shows...   When the highly psychopathic individuals imagined the accidents happening to themselves, their brains lit up in the anterior insula, the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, the somatosensory cortex and the right amygdala -- all areas involved in empathy.   The response was quite pronounced, suggesting psychopathic individuals were sensitive to thoughts of pain.   But when the highly psychopathic in-mates imagined the accident happening to others, their brains failed to light up in the regions associated with empathy.   In fact, an area involved in pleasure, the ventral striatum, lit up instead.   Furthermore, these individuals showed abnormal connectivity between the insula and the ventro-medial pre-frontal cortex, an area important for empathetic decision-making."
2013-07-24: Tanya Lewis: LiveScience: psychopaths have less empathy, but can experience it if they try to
2011-01-26: Future Pundit: psychopaths resemble the brain-injured in their lower empathy
I wonder how many politicians and government officials (all 3 branches and local, county/parish, state, and federal), executives in business and academia, and bureaubums they've scanned...jgo

2013-09-24 (5774 Tishrei 20)
Cal Thomas _Jewish World Review_
extortionists
Town Hall

2013-09-24 (5774 Tishrei 20)
David Limbaugh _Jewish World Review_
defund now, for when shall we be stronger
Town Hall
"'They tell us, sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary.   But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week or the next year?...   Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?   Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope?...   Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power...   [We are] millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty.'...   It is high time that the conservative movement, the Republican Party and every American patriot united together to actively and fiercely oppose the statist assaults on our freedoms and, in particular, the legislative menace known as [ObummerDoesn'tCare]...   You want to talk pragmatism? Once Obamacare is fully implemented, it will not implode of its own weight as our pragmatic Pollyannas predict.   Behemoth entitlements never do.   If we are to roll back Obama's destruction, we have to begin, at long last, to fight as if the future of the country is on the line -- because it is."

2013-09-24 (5774 Tishrei 20)
Michael Reagan _Jewish World Review_
idiots against arms

2013-09-24 (5774 Tishrei 20)
Paul Greenberg _Jewish World Review_
the foreign policy that was
Town Hall
"this president's address to the nation was the perfect mirror-image, the complete inverse, of the rallying cry that was John F. Kennedy's eloquent inaugural address of 1961 January 20: 'Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage -- and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.   Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'"

2013-09-24 (5774 Tishrei 20)
Laura Ingraham _Jewish World Review_
printing currency can't buy us love... or real economic growth

2013-09-24
David Gordon _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
the American economy is not a free-market economy
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "In the Middle Ages, explains Bernard Lewis, the terms Ashkenaz and Sepharad (actually 2 ancient place names from the Hebrew Bible) were used to refer to Germany and Spain, respectively.   Over time, Ashkenazim came to refer to Jews or European or Russian origin, most of whom in the past spoke Yiddish, a German dialect.   By contrast, the term Sephardim came to denote Jews who came from the Arab-speaking Muslim lands, even though only a small portion of these Jews actually originated in Spain.   Ashkenazim founded modern Israel, but by far the largest immigration to the country after independence was from Muslim countries.   At least until recently, Sephardim made up roughly 55% of the Jewish population in Israel.   Generally speaking, Sephardic Jews are said to be darker and to 'look Arab' whereas Ashkenazi Jews 'look European'.   Historically, Sephardic Jews from the Muslim countries were linguistically Arab and today often still speak Hebrew with an Arabic accent.  Other cultural differences, more pronounced 3 years ago but still evident, include demographic patterns (orthodox Sephardim have higher birth rates), family organization (Sephardim are more patriarchal), religious observance, and so on." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg215  

 
 

2013-09-25

1789-09-25: 12 amendment Bill of Rights proposed by congress to the states

2013-09-25
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
state governments plan to have bodyshops do work on ObummerDoesn'tCare
IT World
"In Illinois, Cognizant was awarded a $74.1M contract in June to upgrade the state's Medicaid systems to meet the requirements of [ObummerDoesn'tCare]...   In January, the District of Columbia awarded Infosys a $49.5M contract to develop [an ObummerDoesn'tCare project]...   Illinois said that Cognizant has assigned 13 workers, all U.S. citizens or permanent U.S. residents with Medicaid experience and expertise, to work on [ObummerDoesn'tCare].   Seven of the staff members are former state of Illinois employees with extensive knowledge of the state's Medicaid system, according to spokeswoman Kelly Jakubek, communication manager for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.   Cognizant has submitted paperwork to hire 60 or more visa holders to work on the project -- a proposal that the state wasn't aware of, Jakubek said.   Computerworld sent Illinois officials emails with copies of the paperwork that Cognizant filed with the U.S. Department of Labor to hire 60 senior system analysts at a pay rate of $76,814.   The documents, known as Labor Condition Applications (LCA), are part of the H-1B approval process and are used in salary determinations.   As a general rule, though, the filing of an LCA doesn't [necessarily] mean that a visa worker is on the way [though a single LCA can also be abused inconjunction with hundreds of H-1Bs]...   Actions in Illinois are being carefully watched by some citizen groups, such as the Edgar County Watchdogs and Open the Books, which had made public the LCAs and the state contract.   Adam Andrzejewski, who heads the Open the Books project, is expecting that visa workers will be used on the Illinois Medicaid systems project.   He pointed to the state's high unemployment as one reason why using such workers is wrong.   The Illinois unemployment rate of 9.2% is the second highest in the U.S. Nevada tops the list at 9.5%..."

2013-09-25
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
the illusion of prosperity: deflating the American dream as there is not recovery of inflation-adjusted incomes
graph
Global Economic Analysis

2013-09-25
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
House Judiciary committee expected to take action on immigration reform/perversion before the end of the year

2013-09-25
Neil Munro _Daily Caller_
White House official says John Boehner wants to pass an immigration bill
"a former top Republican legislator says he could lose his speakership by trying to push a bill past opposition from his GOP caucus...   The small bills would cover younger illegals, immigrant workers or guest workers...   However, polls backed by reduced immigration groups show public opposition to increased immigration, and opposition -- including among Latinos -- to continued illegal immigration."

2013-09-25
Ira Mehlman _Town Hall_
new illegal immigration data belie claims of enforcement, deportations and removals
CNN
Longview TX News-Journal
Hope Yen: San Antonio TX Express-News/Hearst/AP
David Seminara: Center for Immigration Studies
"New data from the Pew Research Center reveal that the number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. has increased by about 400K since President Obama came to office.   According to Pew, the illegal alien population of the U.S. stood at 11.7M in 2012, up from 11.3M in 2009...   Even in Washington, where fuzzy math is the norm, it is a little hard to explain how 4 years of zero net illegal immigration, plus 1.4M (claimed) deportations, could result in a 400K increase in the illegal alien population." f

2013-09-25
Laura Matthews _International Bidness Times_
Nasty Pelosi proposed immigration perversion plan, no one takes it seriously

2013-09-25
Tom Lutey _Billings MT Gazette_
sugar beet harvest begins

2013-09-25
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet

2013-09-25
Hans von Spakovsky & Tiffany Bates _PJ Media_
Georgia's voter ID bill 7 years later
"When Common Cause Georgia originally filed a federal lawsuit in 2005 over Georgia's voter ID law...   The plaintiffs lost their law-suit (as well as a state court action) after the federal court concluded that the law was neither discriminatory nor a burden on voters, and that none of them would be unable to vote.   Was the court wrong? Were the claims of these witnesses true? Were these individual Georgians prevented from casting their ballots?   Official state voting records show that the court was right.   Many of these witnesses -- again, who signed affidavits -- went on to vote in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections...   These Georgia voters managed to meet the requirements of the law and to vote after the court rejected their hyperbolic claims.   Further, and contrary to what opponents said would happen in Georgia and Indiana, whose ID law was upheld up the U.S. Supreme Court, the turn-out of minority voters went up, not down, in those states after the ID law was implemented.   So the next time you read a story about the supposed martyrs who will never be able to vote because of these 'terrible' new ID laws, keep in mind what actually occurred in Georgia, and the deceitful tactics of the ID law opponents."

2013-09-25
L. Brent Bozell iii _Town Hall_
leftists believe that only propaganda is "good journalism"
Cybercast News Service

2013-09-25
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
ObummerDoesn'tCare will raise insurance premiums
World Net Daily
USA Finance Post
Caroline May: Daily Caller: HHS confirmed that Americans "will pay more for health care"

2013-09-25
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
with lieutenant Rivers "on point"

2013-09-25
Bob Barr _Town Hall_
Why are corrupt government thugs never held fully accountable?   Why do they never pay restitution?   Why do they never serve the same kinds of sentences others do for comparable offenses?

2013-09-25
Christine Rousselle _Town Hall_
Little Sisters of the Poor have filed suit against unconstitutional HHS mandate
National Catholic Register/CNA/EWTN

2013-09-25
John Ransom _Town Hall_
senate Republicans came, saw, and surrendered again
"David Limbaugh joined us today and excoriated the GOP for surrendering to Obamacare without even fighting.   What's worse, they've been downright nasty to senator Ted Cruz, who -GASP- may [along with millions of other US citizens] actually want to get rid of [ObummerDoesn'tCare]."

2013-09-25
Jacob Sullum _Town Hall_
how congress ignorantly or malignly approved the mass collection of Americans' communications and records
"The administration argues that Congress approved the NSA's mass collection of Americans' phone records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act because it 'twice reauthorized Section 215' after information about the program 'was made available'.   A ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) published last week endorses this view, even though it appears the existence of the NSA's phone record database came as news to most members of Congress when it was revealed last May by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.   According to the 'doctrine of ratification', FISC Judge Claire Eagan notes in the August 29 opinion, 'Congress is presumed to be aware of an administrative or judicial interpretation of a statute and to adopt that interpretation when it re-enacts a statute without change.'   She allows that 'in the national security context where legal decisions are classified by the executive branch and, therefore, normally not widely available to members of Congress for scrutiny, one could imagine that such a presumption would be easily overcome'.   But 'that is not the case here', Eagan says, because the executive branch gave members of the House and Senate intelligence committees a report describing the NSA's phone record dragnet, and that document was 'made available to all members of Congress'.   She adds in a foot-note that 'it is unnecessary for the court to inquire how many of the 535 individual members of Congress took advantage of the opportunity to learn the facts about how the executive branch was implementing Section 215'.   Such an inquiry certainly would be inconvenient for the Obama administration. Eagan reveals in another footnote that legislators were informed of the opportunity to view the report via 'Dear Colleague' notices, commonly ignored messages they have been conditioned to treat as spam."

2013-09-25
Niger Innis _Daily Caller_
one more stand against ObummerDoesn'tCare
"Still, as unpopular as the law is, the showdown in the senate is bound to be complicated as establishment [RINOs] are planning to sell Americans down the river to make peace with the Democrats.   Only principled Tea Party and conservative leaders like senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee stand between the American people and the long-lasting effects of socialized health-care."

2013-09-25
Ann Coulter _Daily Caller_
let's talk about something on which we all agree: ObummerDoesn'tCare is an unmitigated disaster
"And by 'we all', I mean a majority of the American people, the Teamsters, many Democrats and every single last Republican [and Libertarian]...   It was passed illegally without the House ever voting on the Senate bill and became law absent a single Republican vote -- even 'the girls from Maine' and 'the girl from Arizona' -- the only major legislation ever enacted on a strict party-line vote.   The Supreme Court had to violate the Constitution's separation of powers to uphold [ObummerDoesn'tCare] as a 'tax' -- despite the fact that no elected body could ever have enacted such a massive tax hike even with the sleazy parliamentary tricks used to pass this bill.   [And despite the fact that it was not referred to in the bill as a 'tax' but as a 'fine', and the White House had argued that it was not a 'tax' but a 'fine'.] Proving that everyone hates it, Congress has now exempted itself from [ObummerDoesn'tCare's] provisions, having asked for, and received, a waiver from president Obama...   Those guys waived Obamacare for themselves.   If national health care is so great, why don't they want it?   In every single category of Crap Forced On the Country by the Left, [leftists] always have a work-around for themselves.   They love the public schools and denounce school choice -- but their kids go to St. Albans or Sidwell Friends.   As AlGore responded to a question from a black journalist for Time magazine who asked him why he opposed school vouchers while sending his own kids to private schools, 'My children -- you can leave them out of this!'...   They love the homeless, but try putting a homeless shelter in their doorman buildings.   They tell us guns won't protect us -- and then we find out the loudest of them all have armed guards.   Staunch gun-control advocate Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago had three armed guards with him at all times, as well as an armored car.   Mayor Rahm Emanuel also has armed guards and an armored car.   Chicago aldermen are allowed to carry any guns they like.   But until very recently (we hope!) the people of Chicago were virtually prohibited from being armed."

2013-09-25
_Before It's News_
watch senator Ted Cruz absolutely PWN Dick Durbin
The Real Revo

2013-09-25
Kate Gibson _MarketWatch_
S&P 50 tallies longest losing streak since December

2013-09-25
Jim Steele
unwarranted adjustments to observed temperatures, and Algore's unwarranted call for intellectual tyranny
"For example the raw data for minimum temperatures at Mt Shasta suggested a slight cooling trend since the 1930s.   In contrast the adjusted data suggested a 1 to 2 degrees F warming trend.   What to believe?   The confusion resulting from skewing trends is summarized in a recent study that concluded their 'results cast some doubts in the use of homogenization procedures and tend to indicate that the global temperature increase during the last century is between 0.4℃ and 0.7℃, where these two values are the estimates derived from raw and adjusted data, respectively'."

2013-09-25
Michael Walsh _PJ Media_
zero-funding ObummerDoesn'tCare may be turning point away from extreme leftism, cleaning up and re-invigorating Republican party (with great pictures)
"This time, there's no pitched battles in the streets of Chicago as Obama's mentor, Bill Ayers, and others went up against Mayor Daley's pigs and came out broken, bloodied but unbowed as they fought for control of the party of slavery, segregation, sedition and secularism.   4 years later, they had replaced Hubert Humphrey with George McGovern as part of their long march through the institutions...   And this is the key.   I've been out of the country for the past several months, so I'm just now catching up to my good friend Mark Levin's wonderful new book, _The Liberty Amendments_, which strikes at the heart of the great divide in our current political system: the gradual and deliberate corruption of the Constitution at the hands of the 'progressives' and the concomitant reduction of personal liberty and individual aspiration in the name of a Marxist 'collective good'.   (It speaks well of the dishonest genius of the Left that crude, mid-19th century atheism can be successfully repackaged as quasi-Christian do-gooderism and practically no one the wiser.)   Here we are, more than 20 years after the complete collapse of Marxism-Leninism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and we're still having the same argument."
It's time non-leftists stood up to the asininity of McCain, McConnell, Grahamnesty, Cornyn, Rove, Bush41, Bush43, Corker, Alexander, Cochran, Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Lofgren, Boxer, Waters, Rangel, Wasserman-Schultz, Hoeven...jgo

2013-09-25
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
zero-funding ObummerDoesn'tCare fuels plans of challenging incumbents in primaries

2013-09-25
_KGO San Francisco CA_
Boeing tested QF-16 UAV at Tyndall AFB last week
Tomo News
Leo Kelion: BBC
London Daily Mail
Daily Star

2013-09-25
James Morgan _BBC_
computer made from carbon nano-tubes
Signe Brewster: Giga OM
Tom Abate: Stanford U
Signe Brewster: CNN
Serdar Yegulalp: InfoWorld/IDG
Rachel Courtland: IEEE Spectrum
Catherine Bourzac: MIT Technology Review
"Cedric is the most complex carbon-based electronic system yet realised... Max Shulaker... Subhasish Mitra... H.S. Philip Wong... practical carbon-processor fabrication is still at least decades away by any measure."

2013-09-25
Susan Jones _Cybercast News Service_
illegal aliens being held pending deportation got preferred jobs in US prisons
"Federal Prison Industries (FPI), the government-owned corporation that operates factories in federal prisons, employed 37 inmates as of 2012 June who had been issued final deportation orders and were therefore ineligible for FPI employment."

2013-09-25
Charlie Daniels _Cybercast News Service_
my trip to Israel, part 1

2013-09-25
_Pittsburgh PA Tribune-Review_
ObummerDoesn'tCare is unsustainable, insupportable

2013-09-25
_FAIR US_
legislative update: Goodlatte supports more paths to citizenship for all illegal aliens; House gang falls apart; executive amnesty ignores law; illegal aliens hand-cuff themselves to White House fence; Pew says illegal alien population increasing; SF considers anti-detainer ordinance for illegal aliens

2013-09-25 (5774 Tishrei 21)
Betsy Mccaughey _Jewish World Review_
leftists' appalling ignorance about US Constitution is shameful
American Spectator
Betsy McCaughey/Investor's Business Daily
"Displaying their ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, Democratic big-wigs are excoriating Republican members of the House of Representatives for attaching a condition -- no [ObummerDoesn'tCare] -- to a stop-gap bill to fund the government when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.   Senate-majority-leader Harry Reid called it 'extortion'.   Senator Steny Hoyer labeled it 'hostage-taking'.   Representative Nancy Pelosi termed it 'legislative arson'.   In truth, what the House Republicans are doing is not black-mail.   It's checks and balances in action.   Congress has always had the power to attach almost any condition -- including repealing or changing a law -- to appropriations.   The framers wrote the Constitution that way for good reason.   The nation's first plan of government, the Articles of Confederation, had no president.   When the framers gathered in 1787 to write a second, more effective plan, they reluctantly created the presidency.   Reluctantly, because the founders worried that a president would accumulate power and spend flagrantly as they had seen the despotic kings of Europe do.   To prevent that, the founders created checks and balances.   In the words of James Madison, the Constitution's chief architect, each branch of government is 'effectually checked and restrained by the others'.   Congress was given power over the purse -- the power to appropriate money and to borrow it or raise it through taxes, because locating the power in Congress would force the president to constantly negotiate with Congress...   Wrong again, Mr. President.   Congress' most basic duty is to protect and defend the Constitution, and withholding the money is the chief way to do it."

2013-09-25 (5774 Tishrei 21)
John Stossel _Jewish World Review_
innovation or stagnation
Town Hall

2013-09-25 (5774 Tishrei 21)
Michelle Malkin _Jewish World Review_
Obummer lied, my health plan died
Town Hall
National Review
Cybercast News Service

2013-09-25 (5774 Tishrei 21)
Anat Berko _Jewish World Review_
confusing evil: terrorists vs. other criminals
"As an Israeli criminologist who has studied suicide bombers for almost two decades—making extensive observations of and conducting numerous interviews with those who failed, as well as with those who dispatch the bombers, with family members of suicide bombers and decision makers and elites in their society -- I can say with confidence that the differences between mass killers in the West such as Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine, and yes, Aaron Alexis at the DC Navy Yard, and suicide bombers are categorical and insurmountable.   The over-riding distinction between the two is their native cultures: the suicide bomber's education and attack preparations are diametrically opposed to that of mass killers, as is their socialization.   Suicide bombers are radical Islam's celebrated heroes, its darlings, whose acts are viewed by the larger culture as exemplary and heroic; in contrast, the West's mass killers are aberrant individuals isolated from their resolutely life-affirming culture.   Specifically and most importantly, Western culture in general, and American culture in particular, cherishes life.   American children are raised in the belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; they are raised to embrace life and respect the lives of others.   Clearly there are a disturbed few who kill others, but those are not the heroes of the American people: their murders and subsequent own deaths do not bring honor to their families or elevate them in their society's collective memory.   But that is exactly what does happen in radical Islamist culture.   In Gaza, for example, children collect cards of shaheeds, the same way American children collect baseball cards.   It is absurd to think that anyone would propose National Park Stadium be renamed Aaron Alexis Stadium, and the absurdity illustrates and emphasizes the difference between American mass killers and Muslim suicide bombers whose names emblazon schools, sports teams, stadiums and public squares.   The Western mass killer's acts are motivated by individual pathology rather than by collective ethos...   The suicide bomber is not driven by psychological pain, although he is selected because others see him as weak or vulnerable.   A culture that celebrates death and declares to the West that 'we love death as you love life' is the petri dish in which suicide bombers develop."

2013-09-25
Gary Galles _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
liberty delivers a better world, while utopians promise a perfect one... some day

2013-09-25 (5774 Tishrei 21)
Walter E. Williams _Jewish World Review_
honesty and trust
Town Hall
Cybercast News Service
"Dishonesty, lying and cheating are not treated with the right amount of opprobrium in today's society...   Examples of honesty and trust abound, but imagine the cost and inconvenience if we couldn't trust anyone.   We would have to lug around measuring instruments to make sure that it was in fact 10 gallons of gas and 1 pound of steak that we purchased.   Imagine the hassle of having to count out the number of pills in a bottle.   If we couldn't trust, we'd have to bear the costly burden of writing contracts instead of relying on a buyer's or a seller's word.   We'd have to bear the monitoring costs to ensure compliance in the simplest of transactions.   It's safe to say that whatever undermines honesty and trust raises the costs of transactions, reduces the value of exchange and makes us poorer.   Honesty and trust come into play in ways that few of us even contemplate.   In my neighborhood, workers for FedEx, UPS and other delivery companies routinely leave packages that contain valuable merchandise on the door-step if no one answers the door...   In neighborhoods where there's less honesty, deliverymen's leaving merchandise on doorsteps and stores leaving merchandise outdoors unattended or at entryways and exits would be equivalent to economic suicide.   Dishonesty is costly...   Crime, distrust and dishonesty impose huge losses that go beyond those suffered directly.   Much of the cost of crime and dishonesty is borne by people who can least afford it -- poor people.   It's poor people who have fewer choices and pay higher prices or must bear the transportation costs of going to suburban malls to shop.   It's poor people in high-crime neighborhoods who are refused pizza delivery and taxi pickups.   The fact that honesty and trust are so vital should make us rethink just how much tolerance we should have for criminals and dishonest people."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "It is mildly unnerving to reflect that the whole of meaningful human history -- the development of farming, the creation of towns, the rise of mathematics and writing and science and all the rest -- has taken place within an atypical patch of fair weather.   Previous inter-glacials have lasted as little as 8K years.   Our own has already passed its 10Kth anniversary." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pp426-427  

 
 

2013-09-26

2013-09-26
Frosty Wooldridge _News with Views_
congress-critter gangs are breaking up
"John Carter and Sam Johnson...In a joint statement, Congressmen Carter and Johnson said: 'We want to be clear.   The problem is politics.   Instead of doing what's right for America, president Obama time and again has unilaterally disregarded the U.S. Constitution, the letter of the law and bypassed the Congress -- the body most representative of the people -- in order to advance his [extreme leftist] political agenda.   We will not tolerate it.'...   'The Democratic members of the House Gang are John Yarmuth of KY, Xavier Becerra and Zoe Lofgren of CA and Luis Gutierrez of IL.', said Beck...   Johnson and Carter said they are committed to: 'Immigration reform that starts with a genuinely secure border, full implementation of E-verify, effective enforcement of current and future laws, and a commitment that any proposal contributes to a healthy economy.   There is a way to fix this problem that will instill the authentic accountability that has been missing in immigration for the past 25 [make that 50] years.   The American people deserve no less.'"
2013-09-24: Adrienne Royer: FAIR US: House amnesty gangsters down to 4 Dems and 1 Rep

2013-09-26 05:30PDT (08:30EDT) (12:30GMT) (14:30 Jerusalem)
Tom Stengle & 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 253,668 in the week ending September 21, a decrease of 19,250 from the previous week.   There were 303,685 initial claims in the comparable week in 2012.   The advance unadjusted insured unemployment rate was 1.9% during the week ending September 14, unchanged from the prior week's unrevised rate.   The advance unadjusted number for persons claiming UI benefits in state programs totaled 2,464,570, a decrease of 41,762 from the preceding week's revised level of 2,506,332.   A year earlier, the rate was 2.2% and the volume was 2,841,521.   The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending September 7 was 3,921,399, an increase of 22,769 from the previous week.   There were 5,173,998 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2012.   No state was triggered 'on' the Extended Benefits program during the week ending September 7...   States reported 1,348,526 persons claiming Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) benefits for the week ending September 7, an increase of 32,563 from the prior week.   There were 2,160,448 persons claiming EUC in the comparable week in 2012.   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;
to 128,066,082 beginning 2012-10-06;
to 128,613,913 beginning 2013-01-05;
to 129,204,324 beginning 2013-04-06;
to 129,827,178 beginning 2013-07-06.]
EUC (Excel)
EB
graphs
more graphs

2013-09-26
"Aquanomics" _Before It's News_
jobs create costs and sometimes create net benefits

2013-09-26
"Pirate's Cove" _Before It's News_
pseudo-scientists say that science is not necessary for new UN IPCC AR5 climate hysteria

2013-09-26
Kris Anne Hall
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace"

2013-09-26
Kris Anne Hall
individual sovereignty of our united states
"The Sovereignty of the States is the foundational cornerstone of this Constitutional Republic.   It is the thing that makes the Unite States unique.   It is the reason that United Nations hates our Constitution.   Our States were Sovereign and Independent PRIOR to the creation of the federal government.   Note the Declaration of Independence, ratified 1776 July 4: 'We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled,...solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.'   Declaration of Independence 1776 July 4 (emphasis added)   Each State, free and independent, holding the same [status] as every other free and independent country in the world (NOTE: 'the State of Great Britain') [with power delegated by the citizenry, and limited by the constitution]."
more

2013-09-26
David Skolnick _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
Mahoning Valley blacks criticize Dem party chair Dave Betras
"Valley black leaders used harsh words against not only Mahoning county Democratic chairman David Betras' decision to remove 3 African-Americans from the party's executive committee but how it was handled.   'It seems as though in the mind of [Betras that] we are still on the plantation and should be forced to do what he wants, and not what we believe is good for our community.', said the reverend Kenneth L. Simon, chairman of the Community Mobilization Coalition and an organizer of Wednesday's news conference.   The leaders, surrounded by about 100 supporters, sharply criticized Betras, who is white, for removing councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st; her husband, Artis Gillam; and councilman T.J. Rodgers, D-2nd; from the executive committee.   The 3 learned about their removal from an article in Friday's Vindicator.   The 3 were removed because they support DeMaine Kitchen, a black independent candidate for Youngstown mayor, and not John McNally iv, who is white and the Democratic candidate...   Betras also is moving ahead with removing Artis Gillam as the city's 1st Ward district leader, which can be done by a majority vote of the party's officers, and has called for Jaladah Aslam, the party's vice chairwoman of labor relations, who is black, to resign because she doesn't publicly support McNally.   Aslam refuses to resign, and Gillam said he isn't interested in being involved in the party if Betras is chairman...   Annie Gillam and Rodgers said Betras never asked who they supported before they were ousted.   Along with Gillam's husband, they said Wednesday that they back Kitchen, the mayor's chief of staff and secretary."

2013-09-26
Anthony Watts
U of MO-Columbia: late cretaceous was likely ice-free (with map)

2013-09-26
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet
BBC News
Der Spiegel
Judith Curry
Donna LaFramboise: Wall Street Journal...

2013-09-26
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
literacy in ante-bellum Shenandoah Valley -- libraries, taxes and public schools

2013-09-26
Jerry Kammer _Center for Immigration Studies_
illegal immigration and the damaged "social contract"
"In a 1983 editorial headlined 'Time to Turn the Illegal Tide', The New York Times said that while the country needed immigration, 'What it does not need is such an uncontrollable flood of illegal migrants that it tries public patience and foments a back-lash against all new-comers.'"

2013-09-26
David North _Center for Immigration Studies_
Board of Alien Labor Certification Appeals

2013-09-26
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
will Republicans please cut spending or shut up
Global Economic Analysis

2013-09-26
_Town Hall_
the zero deficit line: How much would the US federal government have to trim spending to balance the budget?
federal government spending per household vs. median household income

2013-09-26
Katie Pavlich _Town Hall_
hundreds of USA guns now in the hands of Muslim Brotherhood terrorists
"highly armored vehicles... roughly 100 Glock pistols and more than 100 M4 rifles... night-vision goggles..."
Investigative Project: CAIR-Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood links
Discover the Networks: Muslim Brotherhood (MB)

2013-09-26
Kimberly Hefling _News Talk 980 CJME_/_Canadian Press_
SAT scores generally the same as last year
Cybercast News Service

2013-09-26
Robert Schroeder _MarketWatch_
61% of Americans oppose increasing debt limit without restrictions

2013-09-26
Paul Driessen
desperate times in climate hysteria
"the climate cataclysm cabal out-spends the 'deniers' by at least $1K to $1; ExxonMobil hasn't supported skeptic groups for years; and the real Big Oil money has gone to extreme green groups.   Chesapeake Energy alone gave $25M to the Sierra Club, to advance the radical organization's anti-coal campaign."

2013-09-26
Michael W. Chapman _Cybercast News Service_
Catholic bishops: "We will not comply with this unjust [ObummerDoesn'tCare] law"

2013-09-26
Delcan Finn _Examiner_
Vatican chief-justice-cardinal Burke says Nancy Pelosi should be banned from communion
Jimmy Akin: National Catholic Register
Cheryl K. Chumley: Washington DC Times
"Burke referenced Canon 915, a part of Canon law which states those Catholics who obstinately persevere 'in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion'.   As cardinal Burke noted, '[Pelosi] is a person who obstinately, after repeated admonitions, persists in a grave sin--cooperating with the crime of procured abortion -- and still professes to be a devout Catholic.'"

2013-09-26
_CBS Boston MA_
Boston profs have created light-saber-like photon interactions
Ryan Whitwam: Geek

2013-09-26
Ric Werme
can wind turbines cause developmental deformities in horses?
Turn 180
Wald, Quitoriano, Heaton, Kanamori: threshold for sensing vibrations (pdf)
Equi Podiatry
Chapman: U of Sydney (pdf)
Garstang: vibrations (pdf)
Wind Turbine Syndrome (pdf)
2010-06-09: Journal of Low Frequency Noise, Vibration and Active Control: 14th International Meeting on Low Frequency Noise and Vibration and its Control
The KnockOut Enigma: How your mechanical brain works
Science and Public Policy (pdf)
Keele: Applied Seismology: report on low frequencies generated by wind turbines (pdf)
use of ultra-sound to accelerate healing of fractures (pdf)
enhancement of bone re-generation by ultra-sound
American Bird Conservancy on wind turbines
:B-)   It is amazing what gets people fired up and causes them to leap to conclusions.

2013-09-26
Edward Morrissey _Fiscal Times_
rising premiums expose ObummerDoesn'tCare deception

2013-09-26
Susan Jones _Cybercast News Service_
pres. Obummer: "We will not negotiate"

2013-09-26
Betsy McCaugl _Daily Caller_
Obummer the intractable refuses to negotiate
"Barack Obama has [said] he will not negotiate on a continuing resolution to fund the government, and he will not negotiate on raising [or lowering] the debt ceiling in the coming month.   But the Constitution requires him to do so.   The framers of the U S. Constitution gave Congress power over the purse -- the power to appropriate money and to borrow it or raise it through taxes, in order to compel the president to negotiate.   And for good reason."

2013-09-26
Bill Straub _PJ Media_
Hous Reps still negotating, Obummer and senate still want to "shut down the government" rather than negotiate
2013-09-24: Alex Pappas: Daily Caller: Obummer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi refuse to negotiate on ObummerDoesn'tCare, willing to shut down federal government

Quincy IL Herald-Whig

2013-09-26 (5774 Tishrei 22)
Jack Kelly _Jewish World Review_
charges of "isolationism" are mere name-calling, not based on reality
"An isolationist believes the United States should not be involved in the affairs of other nations, period.   The term was popularized by captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, America's first grand strategist, in an article in the Atlantic magazine in 1890.   'I'm an imperialist', captain Mahan said, 'simply because I am not an isolationist.'   The 'isolationist' tag was affixed with reasonable accuracy to those who before Pearl Harbor opposed military aid to Britain.   But there is simply no comparison between the war in Europe in 1940 and the Syrian civil war in 2013.   To imply there is is shameful...   It is not 'isolationist' to think the United States should go to war only when an interest more substantive than a president's prestige is at risk; when a clear-cut benefit can be achieved by military action, and when the president is willing to do what it takes to win.   Nor is it 'isolationist' to lack confidence in an indecisive, inexperienced commander in chief, or to fear the consequences of a botched military action are likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction.   It isn't 'isolationist' to believe a president ought not to be permitted to launch an attack on a country that hasn't attacked us (or isn't about to) without the consent of Congress.   And it isn't 'isolationist' to note the strain the U.S. military has been under after 12 years of war; to fret about the consequences of defense budget cuts, or to ask from whence will come the money to pay for yet another war.   The purpose of name-calling is to intimidate, not to persuade."

2013-09-26 (5774 Tishrei 22)
Victor Davis Hanson _Jewish World Review_
the late, great "middle class"
Town Hall

2013-09-26 (5774 Tishrei 22)
judge Andrew P. Napolitano _Jewish World Review_
the FISA court itself is unconstitutional
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The first stone-surfaced turn-pike undertaken was from Philadelphia to Lancaster in 1792.   This 66 mile project was completed in 2 years, at a cost of $465K, and it became the pattern for many others...   9 toll-gates (called Schlagbaume by the PA Dutch) collected fares from passers-by.   In the next 100 years PA chartered 428 toll-road companies, largely financed by the investment of farmers and businessmen.   The growth of stage-coach lines and turn-pikes brought into use the macadam road, which was introduced by John MacAdam in England about 1815 and soon adopted in the United States.   Sections of the Great Road were soon covered with a macadam surface of compacted layers of small stones, cemented together by stone dust [limestone powder] and water.   The cost of such surfacing limited its use at first to a few heavily traveled segments of the Great Road." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg218  

 
 

2013-09-27: Simchat Torah

2013-09-27
Tanvi Sharma & Mark Magnier _Los Angeles CA Times_
pres. Obummer and PM Manmohan Singh to conspire today: economics, trade, security and nuclear energy will figure prominently
WorldNews

2013-09-27
Neil Cavuto _Real Clear Politics_
ObummerDoesn'tCare is the problem

2013-09-27
Thomas J. DiLorenzo _Lew Rockwell_
don't pull in front of a Vatterland Sicherheitsdienst bureaucrat or he may murder you as this one did
Brett Clarkson: Palm Beach FL Sun Sentinel
"...he may follow you to a parking lot and fire a 40 caliber pistol into the side of your car, like this moron did in Boca Raton, Florida a few weeks ago.   Fortunately, the round did not hit the 2-year-old boy who was in his car seat at the time with his dad at the Boca Raton mall."
"Federal agent arrested after day-time shooting at Boca Raton mall.   Angel Echevarria accused of shooting man's car after Sept. 7 driving dispute...   'You can't just take out your gun and start shooting at people.'..."

2013-09-27
Michelle Malkin _Town Hall_
education's "shiny toy" syndrome is just the latest phase in fadism, thwarted by clever students
"students from at least 3 different high schools breached the devices' security protections.   It was a piece of iCake.   The young saboteurs gleefully advertised their method to their friends, fellow Twitter and Facebook users, and the media.   'Roosevelt students matter-of-factly explained their ingenuity Tuesday outside school.', the L.A. Times told readers.   'The trick, they said, was to delete their personal profile information.   With the profile deleted, a student was free to surf.   Soon they were sending tweets, socializing on FB and streaming music through Pandora, they said.'   Goodbye, [Communist Corpse] apps.   Hello, Minecraft!"

2013-09-27
Terry Anderson & Shawn Regan _Town Hall_
unlocking the wealth of the Amerindian Nations
"one ingredient is widely recognized as essential for prosperity: a system of secure property rights...   Crossing into most Native American reservations reveals islands of poverty in a sea of prosperity.   Per capita incomes on Indian lands are nearly a third of those for all U.S. citizens.   Unemployment rates are no better, reaching almost 4 times [as high as] the national average.   The difference is due to a lack of property rights on reservations.   Unlike other American citizens, Native Americans on reservations cannot even own land.   The title to most reservation land is held in trust by the federal government.   This means Native Americans cannot manage their own resources or use their land as collateral for loans.   The result is what Peruvian economist Hernado de Soto calls 'dead capital'.   The amount of dead capital on reservations is enormous.   Reservations contain almost 30% of the coal reserves west of the Mississippi, 50% of potential uranium reserves, and 20% of known oil and gas reserves.   The Council of Energy Resource Tribes recently estimated the total value of these resources at nearly $1.5T...   Without property rights, Native Americans are unable to control their own energy resources.   The Bureau of Indian Affairs approves and over-sees all energy development on Indian lands, adding layers of bureaucratic red tape to tribal resource development.   When resources are eventually developed on reservations, the returns to the tribe are usually low.   On the Crow reservation in Montana, for instance, the annual return on its massive coal reserves amounts to a mere 0.01%."

2013-09-27
Michael Schaus _Town Hall_
EPA says its draconian rules are silly

2013-09-27
Patrick J. Buchanan _Town Hall_
fix bayonets!
"[on ObummerDoesnt'Care, Ted Cruz's] analysis is right, his instincts are right, his disposition to fight is right...   If [ObummerDoesnt'Care] is funded, the subsidies starting in January will constitute a morphine drip from which America's health care system will not recover.   If not stopped now, [ObummerDoesnt'Care may saddle us forever]...   Americans don't want a dignified surrender on [ObummerDoesnt'Care].   They want someone to drive a stake through [ObummerDoesnt'Care]...   Is the GOP willing to shove its whole stack into the middle of the table, for a show-down over Obamacare?   Or will the House GOP in the end cast the decisive vote to make [ObummerDoesnt'Care] permanent?"

2013-09-27
Hugh Hewitt _Town Hall_
leftists going nuts over Ted Cruz speech
"Cries of anger and outrage from the Morning Joe panel early Wednesday suggested a horrible event had happened the night before.   David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Mia, Joe and more wailed and wailed in a long chorus of keening that would have been appropriate to a national tragedy of some sort.   But what had set them off was just a long, long speech by Texas senator Ted Cruz..."

2013-09-27
David Limbaugh _Town Hall_
the audacity of the left's irresponsibility
"What word could describe better than audacity [Obummer's] refusal to accept responsibility for his dreadful policies; his standing before the American people -- even today -- in the face of the avalanche of evidence proving how terrible Obamacare is and continuing to lie about what it will do; his persistence in mislabeling his unaffordable monstrosity"

2013-09-27
Rand Paul _Washington DC Times_
Why must the American people suffer when even most of the Dems don't want ObummerDoesn'tCare?

2013-09-27
Donald Lambro _Town Hall_
along with zero-funding ObummerDoesn'tCare, let's cut the rest of the federal government down to size
"Somewhere in the contentious debate over defunding [ObummerDoesn'tCare], we seem to have lost sight of the much larger need to sharply reduce the size and cost of government from top to bottom.   Don't get me wrong.   If [ObummerDoesn'tCare], the most unpopular federal program in decades, is not repealed and replaced with something better that will control health care costs, it will add trillions of dollars to the government's budget over the ensuing years.     So it's a key target in the big spending battle...   In 1980, I wrote _Fat City - How Washington Wastes Your Taxes_.   That book began with this sentence: 'Our federal government has become a bloated, extravagant, paternalistic, remote, cluttered, disorganized, inefficient, frivolous, duplicative, archaic wasteland.'   Back then, the government was spending a mere $550G a year in fiscal 1980 and edging toward $616G in 1981.   The 1980 deficit was over $40G, minuscule by today's numbers, and the government's debt was running around $839G.   Interest payments on that debt were $57G.   Of course, in the last 3 decades it has gotten much worse.   So here we are with federal spending skirting $3.6T a year, a string of $1T+ budget deficits over the previous 4 years, and total debt nearing $17T."

2013-09-27
Josh
LOL at the UN IPCC AR5 SPM fete
Anthony Watts: more reactions to UN IPCC AR5 SPM

2013-09-27
Jack Dunphy _PJ Media_
main-stream media jumped to blame man who was not there and firearm that was not used in attack on 46-years and older victims at Navy Yard

2013-09-27
Anthony Watts
UN IPCC fails to come clean over global temperature stand-still

2013-09-27
Patrick J. Michaels & Paul C. Knappenberger
UN IPCC AR5 is already obsolete

2013-09-27
Willis Eschenbach
expensive energy kills poor people

2013-09-27
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
tallying agricultural statistics for losses during the Civil War burnings in the Shenandoah Valley
"Since we are, at present, at the beginning of the 149th anniversary of 'the Burning' in the Shenandoah, I thought I could detail...a bit more exactly...what specific grains (and other agricultural products) stood to be lost as a result of general Phil Sheridan's activities between 1864 September 26 and October 7.   More importantly, how do these figures align with the figures given by Federal commanders, regarding the damage done to the Valley?"

2013-09-27
Patrick Thibodeau _ComputerWorld_/_IDG_
Northeast Utilities brings in cheap, young, pliant, low-skilled H-1B guest-workers with flexible ethics
"Connecticut state law-makers held a press conference Thursday demanding answers from Northeast Utilities about its unofficial plans to ship IT jobs to India.   This press conference was mostly wind and fury.   The state may have lost its leverage over NU when it put its stamp on a merger last year.   At this press conference, state-representative Lonnie Reed, who chairs the state's Energy committee, said that during the merger talks with Boston-based NStar, NU 'promised not to do any lay-offs, but to do it through attrition, and to let us know in advance', Reed said, according to a report in the New Haven Register.   'There is a process in place and they have not adhered to it.   That just undermines their credibility.', she said, according to the newspaper...   Infosys... The applications [LCAs] list 107 Selden St., Berlin, which is a NU facility, so the link seems clear.   Many of the jobs are for computer systems analysts and are typically paying anywhere from around the upper $60K through low $80K range."
$60K is a few thousand dollars below the national average for new wet-behind-the-ears CS grads; $80K is below the pay for the genuinely best and brightest, nationwide.   But costs of living, taxes, regulatory burden, and pay in the MA and CT area are considerably above average...jgo

2013-09-27
Dawn Kawamoto _Dice_
DoJ reached settlement with Ill-Begotten Monstrosities over discrimination against USA software developers to favor F and H-1B visa holders
Jeremy Kirk: ComputerWorld/IDG
IT News/IDG
NASDAQ/RTT
Charlie Osborne: Ziff Davis/CBS
Slash Dot
"IBM agreed to: Pay $44,400 in civil penalties to the United States [government -- about the amount they gain from hiring only 1 cheap, young, pliant foreign worker with flexible ethics over hiring 1 US citizen at local market compenation levels]."
 
John Miano: Center for Immigration Studies
"the examples that come out just scratch the surface of the abuse that goes on underneath.   Discriminatory advertisements like this are mistakes.   Some low-level person sees that IBM has a policy of giving preference to foreign workers and then, without thinking, puts that policy into advertising.   Third, the reason this kind abuse does not come out into the open is that large companies require employees to relinquish the right to bring a legal action in order to collect severance packages."

2013-09-27
Mickey Kaus _Daily Caller_
"talent shortage" is so severe that some farmers are even training new workers
"'[Labor contractor Noe Cisneros] said he even trained and hired high school students this summer to pick grapes -- something he was not willing to do in the past.'   It's even likely that many of these high schoolers were actually Americans who needed the money.   Other farmers have had to...raise wages to $12.75 an hour.   Is there no relief?..."

2013-09-27
Mark Krikorian _Center for Immigration Studies_
alien terrorists/criminals are like fish in the sea of USA population

2013-09-27
Jessica Vaughan _Center for Immigration Studies_
Obummer regime gives de facto amnesty to those younger than 18 years who made fraudulent claims of US citizenship
"On 2012 December 6, [DHS's] General Counsel [unilaterally] informed the State Department [DoS] and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS] that consular officers and benefits adjudicators should stop denying applicants under Section 212(a(6)(C)(ii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.   This section says:   (I) IN GENERAL- Any alien who falsely represents, or has falsely represented, himself or herself to be a citizen of the United States for any purpose or benefit under this Act (including section 274A) or any other Federal or State law is inadmissible.   Pretty clear.   The only exception Congress created is for the extremely rare case where the alien's parents are or were U.S. citizens and the alien lived in the United States before the age of 16.   Congress, in its sole authority to write immigration laws, has deemed it fit to provide exceptions for juveniles in other parts of immigration law, notably other criminal offenses, but not this one...   This new (illegal) directive came to light after senate-majority-leader and amnesty-enthusiast Harry Reid (D-NV) wrote to the State Department on 2013 August 1, complaining about a case in which a consular officer followed the law and denied an immigrant visa to an applicant who apparently had made a false claim to citizenship as a juvenile."

2013-09-27
Barry Rubin _PJ Media_
how the left turned a university into an indoctrination center

2013-09-27
Donlyn Turnbull _Daily Caller_
liberty, minarchy, anarchy, tyranny
"Neither senator Ted Cruz nor the Tea Party supports any state of lawlessness or political disorder.   Their demonstrations, or Cruz's [non-filibuster], were models of respect for order; rules were followed, at least the written ones.   The unspoken law, however, that one is never allowed to buck the establishment or progressive ideology, was very much broken.   [ObummerDoesn'tCare] is wholly against all this country was founded upon.   When Reid said, 'Any day Government is hurt is a good day for the Tea Party' he forgets this country isn't about our government.   This country is about our people.   It was made by the people, for the people...   The worst thing about Obamacare is that it's a central planning scheme under the guise of caring for people and keeping them safe.   Yet how safe will it be to wait a year for an MRI to determine if a small abnormality is cancerous?   That's how it works in Canada.   Compare that to a friend who was diagnosed with Stage 0 breast cancer and was given an MRI approximately a week later.   The American example is the success story because she was able to quickly get the medical care she needed without jumping through bureaucratic hoops.   What if she had to wait a full year for her MRI?   And just how safe will the so-called death panels be?   [ObummerDoesn'tCare] will punish those who are married with higher premiums and will punish those couples who also earn more....   '[ObummerDoesn'tCare] will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97% to 99%, and for younger women by an average of 55% to 62%.'   If you are in this country illegally you will be rewarded, like businesses, with an exemption from [ObummerDoesn'tCare] mandates.   As will Congress.   Those that fought hardest to [foist this evil on America] have now exempted themselves from it."

2023-09-27
Neal Boartz _Daily Caller_
Rick Scott's successes for the FL economy mean an awkward election for leftist Dems
"In just the last three years over 2,600 regulations have been eliminated.   Taxes on families and businesses have been cut over 25 times.   The state's debt has been paid down by $3.6G [3.6 giga-bucks].   Florida has paid back to the federal treasury $3.5G in unemployment insurance, and Florida now has a $1.5G rainy day fund...   They've seen the unemployment rate drop from 11.1% to 7.0% -- below the national average [though more than twice the full employment level].   While the Democrats are absorbing the good news from Republican-led Florida, they're watching the bad news pour in from Democrat-controlled states.   Kentucky, with its Democrat governor, has an unemployment rate of 8.5%.   Kentucky residents are saddled with a hefty state income tax rate as high as 6% and the third highest state debt as a percentage of GDP.   Move to Kentucky from Florida to start a business or look for a job?   I think not.   And Democrats can't help but be dismayed at the story from their leader's home state, Illinois.   From 2006 December to 2010 December, the Prairie State experienced a 5 percentage point jump in their unemployment rate.   Since then, Illinois Democrat leadership has only managed to ease that pain by 0.3%.   Illinois Democrats have had 4 years to implement smart policy decisions to revive their economy and yet they remain 49th in the nation for unemployment recovery."

2013-09-27
Jeffrey Meyer _Cybercast News Service_
senator Inhofe notes that UN IPCC AR5 ignores 15 years of climate stasis to advance leftist agenda

2013-09-27
Doug Short _Before It's News_
UMich consumer sentiment index fell from 82.1 in late August to 76.5 in late September
Federal Reserve Board St. Louis

2013-09-27
Kris Anne Hall
debt spending dead-beats
ConBustible
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "There are roughly 5.2M Jews in the Middle East, almost all of them living in Israel.   By contrast, there are over 221M Arabs in the region.   In terms of per capita wealth, Israel is starkly more prosperous than all of the neighboring Arab countries.   According to the World Bank, in 2000 Israel's per capital income was roughly $16,700, compared to $7,230 in Saudi Arabia, $1,710 in Jordan, $940 in Syria, and $370 in Yemen...   Israel's infant mortality rate was roughly 5.5 per 1K live births, compared to approximately 43 per 1K live births in the rest of the Middle East.   Also in 2000, 4% of Israel's population over the age of 15 was literate, compared to 44% in Iraq, 45% in Egypt, and 54% in Yemen." --- Amy Chua 2003, 2004 _World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability_ pg218  

 
 

2013-09-28: National Hunting & Fishing Day

2013-09-28
Andrew Carr _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
the make of radios that failed when Aaron Alexis attacked at the Navy Yard are being deployed in Cumberland county PA
"Russell said the problems prevented fire-fighters inside Building 197, where the shooting occurred, from communicating with each other and were so bad that the department had to send one of its officials outside the building to transmit messages and commands.   The portable radios used in that incident were Harris Corp. M/A-COM P7100 and P7200s, he said, which are manufactured by the same company that Cumberland County uses for their radio communications...   While the system in Washington is a P25 operating systems, Cumberland County uses an Open Sky System, she said.   Both are manufactured by the Harris Corp. but operate on different wavelengths.   The counties Open Sky system operates on 800MHz, which allows interoperability between agencies, which Silverstrim said would be an issue with the P25 system, which operates on 380MHz...   The systems may be different, but the portable radios themselves are the same, both officials confirmed.   Currently the county uses the P7200 models, amongst others, for several agencies.   With the transition from the Carlisle dispatch center to county services, she said Carlisle Police would most likely be buying a newer model radio manufactured by the same company."

2013-09-28
Bob Tisdale
another way climate models fail: land vs. sea surface temperatures and rates of change

2013-09-28
Willis Eschenbach
the power-house school concept
"The PowerHouse School is a 10-foot shipping container that is set up to recharge 12-volt automobile batteries and cell phones, using whatever renewable sources are available locally—solar, small-scale wind, micro-hydro, or some combination of all 3.   It would be run as a for-profit battery-charging business by a school, with the children being trained in the operation, care, and maintenance of the equipment and the charging and feeding of the batteries.   It would also sell (by order only, no stock in hand) a variety of 12- and 24-volt lights, equipment and tools.   The older students would also be taught the business side of the operation—keeping the books, maintaining the supplies, figuring the profits and losses.   Any excess power would be used by the school itself, for lighting classrooms and powering electronics.   The advantages of the PowerHouse School concept are: The education about how to use (and more importantly how to maintain) the technology is provided along with the technology.   The home-owner is not expected to purchase ($$$) the charging system (solar panels, etc.).   More importantly, the homeowner is not expected to maintain the charging system.   Students will be trained to do the business side as well as the technical side, supporting entrepreneurship.   There is no monthly cost to the home-owner.   It's purely pay-as-you-go.   This allows participation by those without regular income.   It uses existing technology.   It can be sized appropriately, and increased incrementally (one additional solar panel or storage battery at a time).   Finally, it fulfills my own First Law of Rural Development, which states: If it doesn't pay -- it doesn't stay.   IOW, if someone can't make a profit implementing your whiz-bang idea for improving the lives of the poor, your scheme will go to an early grave."

2013-09-28
Kevin Glass _Town Hall_
attempts to restrict speech are un-American

2013-09-28
Theresa Myers _Cumberland PA Sentinel_
Liberty Amendments to restore the USA
"60% of Americans believe the federal government has too much power, according to a recent Gallup Politics Governance survey conducted Sept. 5-8...   In 1974, Gallup began asking the question 'Do you approve or disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job?'   Historically, the average has been a 33% approval rating.   The last 3 years, however, it has consistently been below 20 percent.   Americans' dissatisfaction with the federal government is growing, but what can be done about it?   On Aug. 13, author Mark R. Levin released his book _The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic_.   For the last 5 weeks it has been on the New York Times bestseller list."

2013-09-28
_Town Hall_/_AP_
Obummer refuses to negotiate
Town Hall/Reuters: Reid refuses to negotiate, refuses to fund federal government without ObummerDoesn'tCare

2013-09-28
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
House GOP to offer compromise: 1-year relief from imposition of ObummerDoesn'tCare
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Th success of the Lancaster TurnPike encouraged the building of many other toll roads, including the Valley TurnPike through much of Virginia in the 1830s. &nnbsp; Lacking state funds to modernize the road, the governor and General Assembly of VA in 1834 chartered a corporation of up-country investors and authorized them to hard-surface 'the old stage road' from Winchester westward through Staunton as a toll turn-pike.   Describing the efforts of Bushrod Taylor, president of the turn-pike company, to improve the Great Road, his great-niece [Harriet Milton Hammond] wrote:   'Up to 1825 VA had been the most populous state in the Union, but the opening of the Erie Canal, connecting the Hudson river with the Great Lakes, made central NY a highway for the movement of population westward.   Large cities grew up there, capital was attracted, adn manufacturing began on a large scale; the result was that the population soon went beyond that of any other state.   Uncle Bushrod craved a similar prosperity for his own state...   When the National Government woul not favor the scheme, he turned hopefully to the power of the state of VA.   In the rapid growth and expansion of our country the question of 'Internal Improvements' had sprung into such importane as to constitute a political issue in the campaigns of 1825 and 1830, and had brought about a new division of parties.   The Democrats denied any constitutional authority to the government to build roads, canals, etc.   The States' Rights Whigs likewise denied to the National Government the authority to build such works, but conceded it to the state.   Uncle Bushrod had been a steady Whig from the formation of the party; so, pocketing his documents, credentials, etc., and accompanied by his valet, Billy Button, he posted down to Richmond [from Winchester] to urge his project by special legislation.   There he found no lobbying could make a breach in the wall of Democratic opposition to the use of state aid for internal improvements, and he coul obtain no concession beyond a charter permitting the road to be made by private enterprise, were that possible.   Having secured this much, Uncle Bushrod then proceeded to engage engineers, contractors, labourers, etc. and in a short time the work was well under way.'   Taylor at last persuaded VA's conservative Board of Public Works to subscribe to two-fifths of the stock as soon as three-fifths had been bouht by the public.   The turn-pike company then proceeded to macadamize the 93 miles of the Great Road from Winchester through Harrisonburg to Staunton.   The improed road plus bridges cost $425K.   As each 5 miles was completed, a toll-gate was installed and the section opened to the public.   Like most turn-pikes, the Valley Road hardly repaid more than its maintenance cost, but it increased the tempo of the expandign nation.   Under common law, farmers taking grain to mill could pass a turn-pike free.   As a consequence, shrewd travelers sometimes defrauded toll-takers by carrying grain bags full of bran.   Resentment frequently arose against toll-takers to the point that toll-gates were torn down.   Local travelers also developed back-woods 'shun-pikes' to avoid paying tolls." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pp219-220 (citing letter from Harriet Milton Hammond of Clarke county VA 1900; quoted in John W. Wayland 1967 _The Valley TurnPike, Winchester to Staunton_ pp12-13)  

 
 

2013-09-29

2013-09-29
Tom Cohen _CNN_
House passed compromise bill to continue government funding, delay ObummerDoesn'tCare for a year, repeal tax on medical devices: Left continues to refuse to meet Sunday, refuses to negotiate, prefers shut-down to paring back ObummerDoesn'tCare
TownHall/AP

2013-09-29
_Town Hall_/_AP_
leftist senators refused to meet at all Sunday, nor Monday morninig
"Congress was closed for the day after a post-midnight vote in the GOP-run House to delay by a year key parts of the new health care law and repeal a tax on medical devices, in exchange for avoiding a shut-down.   The Senate was to convene Monday afternoon, just hours before the shut-down dead-line, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, had already promised that majority Democrats would kill the House's latest volley."

2013-09-29
Paul Jacob _Town Hall_
corrupt politicians tell citizenry: "Go play in traffic."

2013-09-29
Austin Hill _Town Hall_
don't let this happen to your profession: AMA is partly to blame for ObummerDoesn'tCare
"how would you like to spend between 12 and 16 years of your life in grueling and expensive academic training, only to have politicians and bureaucrats dictating to you years later how you will practice your craft and how much money you'll be allowed to earn?...   Over the years the AMA has also supported tight government limits on medical school entries -- likely because doing so limited the supply of new MDs, drove up the demand for existing MDs, and thereby enhanced the wages of those who actually managed to get in to the profession.   On this point the late economist Milton Freidman once noted that the AMA had become a 'guild', and was shielding its present-day members from the potential competition of future would-be doctors."

2013-09-29
Derek Hunter _Town Hall_
ObummerDoesn'tCare's failures are already causing the left to become unhinged
"Manhattan Institute's Avik Roy brought some honesty to the table.   He writes, 'HHS compared what the Congressional Budget Office projected rates might look like—in 2016—to its own findings.   Neither of those numbers tells you the stat that really matters: how much rates will go up next year, under [ObummerDoesn'tCare], relative to this year, prior to the law taking effect.'   In fact, Roy found that comparing apples to apples and not apples to Subarus, '[ObummerDoesn'tCare] will increase underlying insurance rates for younger men by an average of 97% to 99%, and for younger women by an average of 55% to 62%.'"

2013-09-29
Emmalee C. Torisk _Youngstown OH Vindicator_
1st rocket-delivered snail in USA sent from Struthers to Poland OH and back, on 1931-07-01 Rocket Snail post-card

2013-09-29
Robert Moore _Cenantua_
immersing in the 19th century... Middleway (formerly Smithfield), Jefferson county VA
"the town was settled in 1734...   What started with Smith's grist and hemp mills, moved forward to see an active little community.   By 1795, the Smith family had the town surveyed and began selling lots.   In time, (and as I already mentioned, 'Smithfield', to prevent confusion with another Virginia town by the same name, had to change its name to Middleway (though the town was still known as Smithfield well into the 1800s.   At one point (exactly when, I have yet to figure out), the village, filled with 'numerous shops and crafts people', became known as the 'Paris of the [Shenandoah] Valley'... Middleway Historic District... First settled in 1729."
Now, that is interesting because documents (land grant records and such) I've seen suggest that this part of the Shenandoah valley was not settled until the winter of 1730-1731... though there may have been a small number of "sooners"...jgo

2013-09-29
Cortney O'Brien _Town Hall_
doctors and patients hurting from ObummerDoesn'tCare's mandate for digital records and associated massive privacy violations
"According to a study published in December by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority, the number of reports about medical errors associated with electronic records is growing.   Of 3,099 incidents reported over an 8-year period, 1,142 were filed in 2011, more than double the number in 2010."

2013-09-29
Bruce Bialosky _Town Hall_
leftists don't like ObummerDoesn'tCare, either, because, as extreme as it is, they really want something even worse
"Some news organizations have been stringing together video of prominent Democrats speaking the truth.   What they want is a single-payer, government-run healthcare system where insurance companies are obliterated from the healthcare process and every health-care dollar runs through their hands and the hands of unionized government employees.   Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) is the latest to state that obvious.   He said [ObummerDoesn'tCare] is 'absolutely' a step toward single-payer.   This should not surprise anyone.   Democrats have been trying to implement government run health care since President Franklin Roosevelt.   In 1947, Harry Truman followed him with a proposal for a national health care system.   The Left is patient in achieving its goals, which they typically do incrementally.   Just look at the time-line on how they have expanded the [Socialist Insecurity Disability 'Insurance' (SIDI)] program, which will give you an idea where they are heading with health-care: Discussed adding Disability Insurance to [Socialist Insecurity] in 1930s.   First offered legislation in 1943; it did not get out of Congressional committee.   In 1948, [Socialist Insecurity] Advisory Board recommended adding benefits for the permanently disabled.   In 1950, signed into law subsidies for state disability payments by states.   In 1956, [SIDI] signed into law for workers between 50 and 65 years old.   Children disabled before the age of 18 were also eligible.   Established 0.5% tax and bill was signed by President Eisenhower reluctantly.   In 1958, added benefits for children of disabled.   In 1960, age restrictions were erased making anyone eligible for benefits.   In 1965, made eligibility requirements easier for all applicants.   In 1967, added benefits for widows of disabled.   In 1972, reduced the waiting period for [SIDI] benefits, made it easier to qualify as a disabled child and added Medicare for SSDI recipients."

2013-09-29
John Ransom _Town Hall_
they're at the bottom of the barrel at the George Soros Institute for Internet Trolling

2013-09-29
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
here's why federal government shut-down is a great idea

2013-09-29
_abc 15 Phoenix AZ_/_Scripps_
long history of federal government shut-downs

2013-09-29
Michael Bastasch _Daily Caller_
MIT scientist notes UN IPCC AR5 is "hilariously" flawed

2013-09-29
Paul Homewood
UN IPCC trying to hide the decline

2013-09-29
Ed Driscoll _PJ Media_
climate hysteria from Eric Holthaus
Twitchy
Marie-Louise Olson: London Daily Mail

2013-09-29
Victor Davis Hanson _PJ Media_
over-seas contingency operations and such
"On the occasion of the outreach from Iran, and the embarrassment in Syria, it is wise to remember why and how our 'leaders' became so inept at dealing with Islamists...   thousands will die on the altar of multi-cultural piety, so that millions more will not live in any sort of harmony."

2013-09-29
Steve Peacock _World Net Daily_
Obummer White House Trade & Development Agency to publish book to teach people how to get more unconstitutional hand-outs from the US government
"USTDA similarly financed an analysis of Mexico's planned modernization of Tijuana as a modern transportation center just south of the California border...   Recently, USTDA separately began evaluating contractor proposals to conduct a DM on behalf of the Mexican Association of Railroads...   USTDA separately agreed to provide a $455K grant to the State of Puebla Secretariat of Transportation to conduct a feasibility study of a proposed 'intelligent transportation system' project...   the U.S. Agency for International Development is prohibiting U.S. contractors from participating in a recent assistance scheme...   Other USTDA global ventures that WND has uncovered include a plan to modernize [Red China's] energy grid, hire private-sector consultants to help its Ministry of Environmental Protection and separately help to modify the nation's corporate laws.   Coinciding with cancellations of various federally funded celebrations of Independence Day, USTDA began helping Chile deploy a National Emergency Network, assist Ghana in expanding electrical transmission lines and enable U.S. energy equipment providers to use taxpayer funds in search of international clients.   USTDA also has take action to boost the viability of Kenyan power companies and provide greater stability to the Pakistani power grid."

2013-09-29
Heather Mac Donald _National Review_
let's not get carried away with this diversity thing
"Bill de Blasio repeatedly intones, which he will remedy with a bracing dose of [regressive over-government] in City Hall.   The revelation that de Blasio cut his 'activist's' teeth as a long-time 'organizer' and fund-raiser for Nicaragua's left-wing Sandinistas...   Guess which of the '2 New Yorks' de Blasio's white [leftist] supporters are fanatically dedicated to staying in? It's not the 'diverse' one..."
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "The Louisiana Purchase also encouraged emigration over the Great Wagon Road into Texas.   Sharing a common border with Louisiana, this Spanish province began to lure Southerners further south in 1821, after Moses Austin had sols his Fort Chiswell lead mines in VA and obtained a Mexican grant.   Austin's son Stephen, who had been born near Fort Chiswel in 1793, began settling his fellow Southerners below the Rio Grande [beyond the Sabine] in 1822.   San Houston, who had migrated as a boy from Rockbridge county VA, to TN, freed Texas from Spanish rule and became its president in 1836." --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg222  

 
 

2013-09-30

2013-09-30
Barry Brill
to UN IPCC: forget about "30 years"

2013-09-30
Jeffrey J. Selingo _Chronicle of Higher Education_
the new, non-linear path through college
"What students are clamoring for now is easier entrance and exit ramps, for them to take breaks, transfer, or mix their class-room instruction with on-the-job training or on-line courses."

2013-09-30
Megan O'Neil _Chronicle of Higher Education_
government agencies revamp standards for cyber-security program
"There are currently 181 cyber security programs with the designation at 2- and 4-year institutions, teaching everything from introductory programming to offensive hacking techniques.   The label can be a game changer, attracting money, students, and prestige, according to some college officials...   government officials, educators, and private companies wrestle with how best to educate the right number of workers with the right skills needed to protect critical infrastructure, economic interests, and personal data in an increasingly networked world."

2013-09-30
Bob Tisdale
to the haughty John Kerry, who served in VietNam, regarding the difference between computer-aided speculation and science

2013-09-30
Anthony Watts
UN IPCC AR5 final release

2013-09-30
Amber Barno _Daily Caller_
on verge of shut-down, agencies are still wasting hundreds of thousands
"Most agencies' primary concern over the past week has been to spend the remainder of their fiscal year budget instead of relinquishing the unused funds to help save money.   This so-called 'use it or lose it' culture promotes wasteful spending and an overall lack of concern for fiscal responsibility.   It's part of the dysfunctional bureaucratic attitude in [DC] that prevails across all sections of the federal government...   This weekend, The Washington Post reported, 'The Department of Veterans Affairs bought $562K worth of art-work.   In a single day, the Agriculture Department spent $144K on toner cartridges.   And in a single purchase, the Coast Guard spent $178K on Cubicle Furniture Rehab.'   Now you would think that in a time of budget cuts and austerity those agencies could find a better use for their funds.   Instead of buying artwork, the VA could have met some veterans' disability claims, or implement a bonus incentive to employees who are processing the most.   How about hiring more medical staff at VA hospitals?   And 'Cubicle Furniture Rehab' is a fancy way of saying they bought a large amount of unnecessary office furniture to make employees offices shiny and pretty.   If congress is serious about spending reform and budget cuts they must acknowledge the perverse incentives at work."

2013-09-30
Jim Treacher _Daily Caller_
what could happen if the federal government "shuts down"
"If the government shuts down, who's going to monitor your phone calls and texts and e-mail [messages] and Instagrams and whatever else they feel like, and suffer no consequences for it?   If the government shuts down, who's going to subject you to a tax audit if you've ever attended a Tea Party event?   If the government shuts down, who's going to tell you what to eat and drink, and which light bulbs to use, and which opinions to hold, and how to make every single 'decision' in your day?   If the government shuts down, who's going to tell you whatever lies they need to tell in order to inexorably expand their power?"
Matt Walsh: ObummerDoesn'tCare
Tim Cavanau: Daily Caller: USA economy boomed during 1995-1996 "shut-down"
update: if the federal gov't "shut down" we could lose the Panda cam!

2013-09-30
Guy Benson _Town Hall_
if Obummer refuses to negotiate, the result belongs to him: pres. Obummer was AWOL from bargaining
Jeff Poor: Daily Caller
"'It's on the president's head.   He's got to lead.   He's got to talk.   And the absence of discussion here, I think, is baffling element.'...   Woodward is talking about the next 'looming crisis' -- i.e., the debt limit."

2013-09-30
Caroline May _Daily Caller_
Pelosi was absent during CR vote Saturday
"Friday, Republican senators Orrin Hatch (UT), and Jeff Flake (AZ) missed votes to keep the government open due to family weddings."

2013-09-30
Rand Paul _Town Hall_
"It's the president who's refusing to come to the negotiating table."

2013-09-30
Star Parker _Town Hall_
defending principles vs. compromising on tastes
"The founders of the United States drew up a Constitution to serve as an operating manual, in its checks and balances, for peaceful, deliberative government.   They understood human nature and set up a system in which competing interests would have to give in.   Compromise, they understood, is a necessary lubricant for the wheels of government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people' to turn and allow us to move forward.   But compromise is meant for those competing interests -- not for the core principles of the country that the Constitution exists to protect and secure.   When the principles of our free nation under God are under siege, it is a time for confrontation, not compromise.   The other day, I watched a short video of Rafael Cruz's presentation at a July event by FreedomWorks, a Washington, DC-based political action committee that usually supports tea party causes.   Cruz is the father of the junior Republican senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, who is now in the spotlight.   Rafael Cruz is a self-made businessman, an immigrant from Castro's Cuba, and a born-again evangelical Christian pastor.   Most of the time when someone cites the Declaration of Independence, they mention its famous opening sentences.   But Rafael Cruz, in this brilliant summation of what America is about, quoted the signers' closing words: '...with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.'...   The principles of freedom have been drowned out by the power elite -- whether politicians, big business lobbyists or big media -- who use their influence to feather their own beds."

2013-09-30
Daniel J. Mitchell _Town Hall_
playing hard-ball against the left is the only way to make progress

2013-09-30
Rachel Alexander _Town Hall_
even the leftists are starting to object to Communist Corpse

2013-09-30
Chuck DeVore _Daily Caller_
which party has the lead in the most affordable states?
"a young person making minimum wage in Texas ends up with about 43% more buying power than a minimum wage earner in New York.   According to the Council for Community and Economic Research's analysis of population-weighted U.S. Census Bureau metropolitan area cost of living data, from the fourth quarter of 2012 to second quarter of 2013, the cost of living in Texas relative to the rest of the nation dropped from 92% of the USA average to 91.4% of the USA average.   Texas was the nation's 10th-least expensive state...   California's poverty rate soared by 7.3% to 23.5%, the highest in the nation, under the new measure while Texas' poverty rate dropped 1.3% to 16.5%.   There are proportionately 42% more people living in poverty in California than in Texas and the high cost of living driven by government policies has much to do with it.   Since public policy has such a huge impact on cost of living, let's look at the top 10 most costly states and the 10 most affordable states and see what party runs the state.   Most Costly: Hawaii: 161.7% of the USA average; New York: 134.5% of the USA average; Connecticut: 133.8% of the USA average; Alaska: 131.1% of the USA average; New Jersey: 129.5% of the USA average; California: 128.6% of the USA average; Rhode Island: 125.8% of the USA average; Maryland: 122.3% of the USA average; Massachusetts: 121.2% of the USA average; New Hampshire: 120.2% of the USA average.   Most Affordable: Mississippi: 88.7% of the USA average; Nebraska: 88.9% of the USA average; Idaho: 89.4% of the USA average; Tennessee: 89.7% of the USA average; Indiana: 90.0% of the USA average; Oklahoma: 90.0% of the USA average; Kentucky: 90.1% of the USA average; Arkansas: 91.0% of the USA average; Iowa: 91.3% of the USA average; Texas: 91.4% of the USA average."

2013-09-30
Mike Pare _Knoxville TN News Sentinel_
9 sue Wacker Chemie for not getting jobs after apparently successfully completing training
Chattanooga Times Free Press
"Court papers said they went through extensive training at the Wacker Institute at Chattanooga State Community College, but were left without work after the company delayed the opening date of the plant by at least 18 months.   They are seeking damages from the German polysilicon maker for lost wages and training costs...   L later was provided with a written offer of employment as a chemical operator with a starting wage of $19 per hour on the first day of employment, which was scheduled for 2013 April 1.   However, on 2012 Oct. 25, he received a personnel announcement that the job offer would be deferred until the second half of 2014, the suit said.   Tennessee governor Bill Haslam, who was at Chattanooga State on Friday for a grant announcement, said he believes Wacker will eventually get into production.   But he said the state needs to be certain about projects when it provides state money to companies for training and incentives.   A key competitor of Wacker, Hemlock Semiconductor, laid off three-fourths of its employees in Clarksville, TN, shortly before the planned start of production at its new $1.2G polysilicon plant earlier this year.   The state of Tennesee provided $6.4M for Austin Peay State University to develop a chemical engineering program at the Hemlock Semiconductor Building on its campus.   Hemlock is yet to begin production at the new Charleston solar facility, which originally was supposed to create 500 jobs."

2013-09-30
Susan Jones _Cybercast News Service_
Gallup poll says at least 25% of Americans without health care insurance say they will stay that way despite ObummerDoesn'tCare

2013-09-30
Bryan Preston _PJ Media_
Obummer wants a "shut-down", so he'll get a "shut-down"
"The senate could also pass the House version and Obama could find a pen and sign it.   He could agree to delay the parts of his law that haven't already been delayed...   Other congresses have also fought over spending and attached conditions to debt ceiling hikes, going all the way back to the time of Eisenhower [and John Adams].   Democrat congresses shut the government down under Reagan, about a dozen times."

2013-09-30
Bridget Johnson _PJ Media_
"shut-down": GOP compromises again, but leftist Dems still won't negotiate

2013-09-30
Michael W. Chapman _Cybercast News Service_/_abc radio news_
Harry Reid: "We are not going to negotiate, and I've said that for 2 weeks."
With a bully, like Obama, Reid, or Pelosi, you cannot let them slap you around.   Because if they slap you around today, they slap you 5 or 6 times tomorrow.   The American peopel are not going to be bullied into ObummerDoesn'tCare.   We've been reasonable, but we have barely begun to defend ourselves against these extreme leftist bullies...jgo

2013-09-30
Leah Barkoukis _Town Hall_
if Reid forces government "shut-down" Ted Cruz will donate his salary for the duration to charity

2013-09-30
Carol Platt Liebau _Town Hall_
Obummer says: "I shouldn't have to offer anything"

2013-09-30
Diana Furchtgott-Roth _MarketWatch_
ObummerDoesn'tCare would discourage hiring and marriage
"Bob Funk, president and founder of Express Employment Services, the fifth-largest employment agency in America, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published last week, '[ObummerDoesn'tCare] has been an absolute boon for my business...   We're up 8% this year.   But it's just terrible for the country.'   Funk continued, 'Firms are just very reluctant to hire full-time workers.   So they are taking on more temporary help, which is what we do.'   Companies can get around the penalty by hiring part-time workers, because they do not owe the $2K penalty on those who work fewer than 30 hours a week."

2013-09-30
Anthony Watts
WUWT climate/weather hot sheet

2013-09-30
Kerri Houston Tolozcko _Daily Caller_
Clintons get a pass on shady contracting

2013-09-30
Brendan Bordelon _Daily Caller_
company with $1.2G ObummerDoesn'tCare contract is under investigation for "serious fraud"

2013-09-30
Jessica Chasmar _Washington DC Times_
NY, NY obesity rate up 25% since Bloomberg became mayor

2013-09-30
Mike Shedlock _Town Hall_
Is the USA headed in the correct direction?
Global Economic Analysis

2013-09-30
Robert Stacy McCain _American Spectator_
leftist extremists

2013-09-30 (5774 Tishrei 26)
Caroline B. Glick _Jewish World Review_
Obummer's power-madness and its limitations

2013-09-30
Jason Howerton _Blaze_
Rush Limbaugh points out "flat-out journalistic malpractice" among MSM
"Rush Limbaugh blasted the media for placing the blame of a potential government 'shut-down' solely on Republicans, essentially reinforcing the Democrats' narrative for them.   'It's just flat-out journalistic malpractice.   There is no pretense, there's not even an objective pretense here to portray the Republican position on this anywhere near accurately.', Limbaugh said.   He mocked the Washington Post and the Associated Press for publishing articles about the so-called consequences of a government 'shut-down'...   'It's just a repeat...of everything that's happened and been said before.'   Limbaugh went on to call a report on the potential government shut-down by the Associated Press a press release for the Democrats.   'It is a multiple-hundred word hit piece.', he said."

2013-09-30
Sharon Fisher _TechTartet "IT" Knowledge Exchange_
NASA's Voyager used 8-track tapes for data storage which was sent back in bursts
"when the spacecraft started to near the edge of the solar system, explains the New York Times.   NASA wanted to be able to record more data with it.   As in many other organizations that have dealt with digital preservation issues, NASA engineers -- some of whom probably hadn't been born yet when Voyager took off -- didn't know how to deal with the antiquated technology.   'NASA's young programmers were accustomed to working with virtually unlimited storage capacity.', writes Dale McFeatters in a Scripps-Howard News Service editorial.   'The solution was to bring out of retirement 77-year-old NASA engineer Lawrence Zottarelli, who had worked with the 8-track units.   The team successfully fed data into 2 computers [Suns] made by a company that was merged out of existence three years ago.'   Just remember that the next time somebody tries to tell you that engineers over 40 aren't good for anything."

2013-09-30
Robert Spencer _PJ Media_
"It never occurred to us that Muslim neighbors would betray us..."
"Ideally a neighborhood is a small family, a community of people who are kind and sympathetic to one another, who share the common interests of their locality even if they differ in other ways.   But just as the vision of the family in Islamic law is that of a community of a man and his slaves rather than a community of love between a man and a woman, so also the ideal neighborhood that Islamic supremacists envision is not exactly the kind of place where you might lean over the fence and have a friendly chat with your neighbor.   We have seen illustrated anew in Syria recently, as Robert Fisk (of all people!) reported last week in the Independent: 'The X family', Fisk wrote, 'can never return to Maaloula.   Not since the Christians of this beautiful and sacred town saw their Muslim neighbours leading the armed Nusrah Islamists to their homes.'   'We knew our Muslim neighbours all our lives.', says one Christian whose home was destroyed.   'Yes, we knew the Y family were quite radical, but we thought they would never betray us.   We ate with them. We are one people.'   The Christians, he said, had even looked after the wives and children of local jihad fighters while they were away..."

2013-09-30 (5774 Tishrei 26)
Anna Mulrine _Jewish World Review_
code warriors: the new arms race
"Cyber-operations is one of its few areas that will see a considerable budget increase -- from $3.9G this year to $4.7G in 2014.   And its cadre of cyber-warriors manning computers will expand 5-fold over the next 2 years...   Mandiant Corporation — which uncovered a series of cyber-attacks on US networks by a branch of China's People's Liberation Army -- was hired by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal when they were hacked.   And Mandiant's professional hackers consult with a number of Fortune 500 companies at a reported rate of $450 an hour...   Former FBI cyber lawyer Steven Chabinsky argued at a recent cyber symposium that a company attacked should be able to counter-attack in order to retrieve data: 'It is universally accepted that in the physical world, you have the right to protect your property without first going to law enforcement.'...   financial firms have spent millions of dollars responding to cyber-attacks and 'can't be expected to fend off attacks from a foreign government'...   A recent report by the Ponemon Institute, an independent security policy research group, surveyed 56 multi-national companies and found the average annual cyber-theft losses were $8.9M per company, up from $8.4M in 2011.   Companies in the study reported a total of 102 successful attacks per week.   (By way of comparison, there are more than 15K DoD computers in 100 countries, which are probed 'thousands of times a day', according to a top Pentagon official who briefed reporters in February.   'And we have not always been successful in stopping intrusions.')   Against this back-drop, plans leaked earlier this year that the US military is quickly working to increase the size of its cyber forces in its premier computer defense arm, US Cyber Command, from 900 to 4,900 during the next 2 years."

2013-09-30 (5774 Tishrei 26)
Mark Steyn _Jewish World Review_
are Western nations "rich enough to be stupid"?
"To take only the most obvious example, President Obama has added $6.5T to the national debt, and has nothing to show for it.   As Churchill would say, had his bust not been bounced from the Oval Office, never in the field of human spending has so much been owed by so many for so little...   China's Ukraine deal may sound kinda wacky, but the People's Republic consumes about 20% of the world's food yet has (thanks to rapid industrialization) only 9% of its farmland.   As Big Government solutions go, renting 5% of a sovereign nation to use as your vegetable garden and pig farm is a comparatively straightforward answer to the problem at hand...   You could rent the entire Ukraine for about 3% of the cost of [ObummerDoesn'tCare], and what does it solve?"

2013-09-30 (5774 Tishrei 26)
Morgan Housel _Jewish World Review_
Q&A about the federal government debt ceiling

2013-09-30
John P. Cochran _Ludwig von Mises Institute_
new lessons from the "rescue" and the failed porkulus
 
Proposed Bills 2013
 
 

  "Mitochondrial DNA was only discovered in 1964, but by the 1980s some ingenious souls at the University of California at Berkeley had realized that it has 2 features that lend it a particular convenience as a kind of molecular clock:   it is passed on only through the female line, so it doesn't become scrambled with paternal DNA with each new generation, and it mutates about 20 times [as fast as] normal nuclear DNA, making it easier to detect and follow genetic patterns over time...   In 1987, the Berkeley team, led by the late Allan Wilson, did an analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 147 individuals and declared that the rise of anatomically modern humans occurred in Africa within the last 140K years and that 'all present-day humans are descended from that population'." --- Bill Bryson 2003 _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ pg462  

 
 

2013 September
_Delta Cost Project_/_American Institutes for Research_
how much does it cost to produce STEM degrees? (pdf)
American Institutes for Research: price and cost of science degrees (series)
USA Dept. of Educationism: Institute of Education Sciences: ERIC




 
Proposed Bills 2013


Congressional candidate fund-raising, expenditures, and debt
 

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

  "That new era was foreshadowed in 1834 April, when the first steam locomotie of the Philadelphia and Columbia RailWay rode over the rails paralleling the Lancaster TurnPike.   'Within a month after the first train went down the road, drawn by the Black Hawk, matters changed.', a Pennsylvanian wrote.   'It was the 20th of May, a dark rainy day, when the last regular stage passed the Warren on its way eastward...   The various local stages stil ran, so did the Pitt teams, but neither were accustomed to stop at the Warren, nor could the old tavern keeper bring himself to cater to that lass of custom...'" --- Parke S. Rouse ii 1973 _The Great Wagon Road_ pg223  

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