Monday, July 27, 2009

Larwyn's Linx: Deadly Doctors

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

The Vulnerability of Black Men in America: Doc Zero
Liberals Support Crime, Not Punishment: TAB
Czars of the Obama Underworld: Malkin

Deadly Doctors: Post (McCaughey)
Massive Fraud Uncovered: NY Public Hospitals: LawHawk
Indulging Craziness: AT (Lewis)

It is now illegal to arrest illegals: Atlas
Obama jumps the shark: Surber
ACORN angst: Tea partiers vs. Obamabots: AT (Moran)

Top Obama Adviser Supports Euthanasia: GWP
5 freedoms you'd lose in health care reform: CNN
How to ruin a professional agitation group’s day: Red State

Palin Says Goodbye: Surber
Join Operation Waiting Game: CollegeRepublicans
Dealergate: Rockefeller Calls for Audit of Dealer Closures: HNN

Bad Craziness at Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty Website: LGF
Making of a Secret Service agent: WaPo

Economy

Knowing the Endgame -- in Chess and the Economy: PJM (Solway)
Dear Leader Squeezes in 10th Round of Golf in 10 Weeks: GWP
Green Jobs, Brown Economy: NC Times

Immense Bureaucracy drives up health care plan's costs: Times
Don't Talk About Rationing!: Commentary (Rubin)
Video: Why California really, really needs Race to the Top funds: Hot Air

Climate & Energy

Journal of Geophysical Research: Al Gore is Full of Crap: YWL
Deep Cool: the Mole within the Hadley CRU: Watts
Global Warming is Good: Surber

Media

Hume: Obama Couldn't Bring Himself To Apologize, Yet Travels The World Apologizing For His Country: HAP
Non-stop Campaigning: Examiner
CNN president to Lou Dobbs: Stop covering the birth certificate story: Hot Air

Rick Sanchez: Hispanics who work for Fox News have “sold out”: Hot Air
Was an FNC Guest Hitting on Ainsley Earhardt?: MediaBistro

World

UN to West: Hey, Give the Poor $5 Billion!: Greenroom
"First the 1967 Borders, then the 1948 Borders, Until there is No More Israel": Babushka
Syria’s Imelda Marcos on Facebook; Check Out the Shoes: PJM (Rosett)

Cornucopia

Straight Out of the Oval Office: Treacher

Subject: How to Lose Your Job at the Times

"I parodied the arrival of Bill Kristol to the op-ed pages of the NYT and foreshadowed his departure, as well, in tongue-in-cheek emails I sent around last year. As I guessed, Kristol, a heavyweight conservative, proved too much for Times management and scared the living daylights out of their dwindling readership of aging Trotskyites holed up in their SROs on the Upper West Side. Kristol was promptly terminated with extreme prejudice at the end of his 12-month contract and his "conservative slot" filled by some young lightweight who presumably "takes direction" and plays between the lines, you know, like David Brooks.

All of this - and what a bad fit it was - came back to me after I ran across this video featuring Kristol's assessment of President Obama aired today on Fox News. New York Times people just never say such things - if they want to keep their jobs.

And while you're at it, have a look at this great piece by Mark Steyn, another brilliant writer you'll never read in The New York Times." -- Dan from New York.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Can the price of lumber help predict the S&P 500?


A couple of months ago, our resident financial guru -- 'The Maestro' -- suggested that lumber prices might offer a preview of coming attractions as far as the financial markets are concerned.

...lumber is bulky and therefore requires a huge amount of warehouse space... Unlike steel and copper, lumber has a shelf-life. It is perishable, even if it is stored in excellent condition... Thus, vendors manage their inventories very carefully to avoid spoilage...

Using this suggestion, I overlaid a five-year S&P 500 chart on top of Chicago Mercantile Exchange lumber prices. But I slid the S&P chart to the left by about two years to determine whether lumber could, in fact, predict the future.

The moving average of lumber appears, in fact, to do a decent job of predicting major movements in the S&P 500. But perhaps it's just my imagination.

The Pre-Post-Racial President


"A teachable moment."

That is how President Obama described the incident involving Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley -- and his own controversial reaction.

Recall that in February, Obama's Attorney General -- Eric Holder -- received national attention for calling the United States "a nation of cowards" for its failure to honestly deal with race relations. He claimed that most Americans avoid discussion of lurking racial issues. He went on to justify a significant expenditure of Justice Department resources in pursuit of the traditional straw-men:

• Investigating whether police stop and arrest blacks at disproportionate rates because of racism
• Whether blacks are disproportionately in prison because of racism
• Whether blacks are failing in school because of racist inequities in school funding
• Whether the black poverty rate is the highest in the country because of racism
• Whether blacks were given mortgages that they couldn’t afford because of racism

While Obama and Holder jumped instantaneously to the same, racially-fired conclusion, some formidable statistics and truths stand in their way.

Of 23 peer-reviewed U.S. studies since 2000, 20 found that family structure directly affects crime and/or delinquency. Most research "strongly suggests both that young adults and teens raised in single-parent homes are more likely to commit crimes, and that communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unwed childbearing) suffer higher crime rates as a result."

One two-decade study found that nearly 90% of the change in violent crime rates can be attributed to the change in percentages of out-of-wedlock births. Conversely, divorce rates had no relationship with crime.

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted that the "relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime."

Let me repeat: Control for single-parent families and there are no differences between the races when it comes to crime.

In addition, the statistical link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is conclusive. There have been dozens of studies that link the availability of welfare benefits to out-of-wedlock birth.

One study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Additional research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.

In 1995, Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote a seminal summary of the situation: "Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers... High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers... The rate of violent teenage crime corresponds with the number of families abandoned by fathers... Neighborhoods with a high degree of religious practice are not high-crime neighborhoods... Even in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable homes do not become delinquents. By contrast only 10 percent of children from unsafe, unstable homes in these neighborhoods avoid crime... Criminals capable of sustaining marriage gradually move away from a life of crime after they get married."

Statistics demonstrate that welfare is a primary contributor to the breakdown of the American family.

In 1994 the Maryland NAACP published a report that concluded "the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today."

Author Robert Rector argued that "[f]or thirty years, the welfare system has paid for non­work and non­marriage and has achieved massive increases in both." Rector noted that when New Jersey began denying increases in cash welfare benefits to single mothers who have additional children while on welfare, out-of-wedlock births decreased 10% with no increase in abortions.

Idealogues like Obama, Gates and Holder notwithstanding, experts offer a series of legislative proposals that strengthen the family:
  • identifying every child's father, by having states ensure that a document exists at birth to identify the name and social security number of both parents
  • forcing fathers to take responsibility for their children through programs like Charles Ballard's National Institute for Responsible Fatherhood, in which fathers are strongly encouraged to legitimate their children, attend school, and find gainful employment
  • rescinding no-­fault divorce laws for parents with children
  • purging the destructive incentives of the welfare system

So what did the Obama administration and Democrats do? They passed a pork-filled Stimulus package that helps dismantle the 1996 Welfare Reform Act and will increase the number of single-parent families.

Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new "stimulus" bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

"Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund," Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

In other words, while Gates, Holder and Obama market racist straw-men, their own Democrat-controlled government has unleashed more single-parent families, more poverty and more violent crime that directly target the African-American family.

They cry racism while undermining the very freedoms that protect minorities and the urban poor.

It can't be called a 'teachable moment' if Democrats fail, decade over decade, to learn.


Update: Liberals Support Crime, Not Punishment.

Minimum Wage Hike Stabs Business Owners in the Heart


Just when businesses need a break, Democrats jammed through a bill that raises the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

To add insult to injury, the MIT Press published a book earlier this year by David Neumark and William Wascher, which is the first recent, comprehensive overview of the evidence on the economic effects of minimum wages (hat tip: Ed Morrissey). Their conclusion lays waste to the liberal contention that minimum wages help the poor or underemployed.

Arguing that the usual focus on employment effects is too limiting, they present a broader, empirically based inquiry that will better inform policymakers about the costs and benefits of the minimum wage.

Based on their comprehensive reading of the evidence, Neumark and Wascher argue that minimum wages do not achieve the main goals set forth by their supporters. They reduce employment opportunities for less-skilled workers and tend to reduce their earnings; they are not an effective means of reducing poverty; and they appear to have adverse longer-term effects on wages and earnings, in part by reducing the acquisition of human capital. The authors argue that policymakers should instead look for other tools to raise the wages of low-skill workers and to provide poor families with an acceptable standard of living.

Just to recap, the Democratic Party's incessant cries for increasing minimum wages:
  • reduce employment opportunities
  • reduce earnings
  • do not reduce poverty
  • and have adverse long-term effects on wages and earnings
Just add this ludicrous policy to the Democrat Party's 150-year track record of failure.

Standing on the side of slavery during the Civil War; creating the budget-busting Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs; opposing civil rights legislation; transferring trillions in wealth under the failed "Great Society" programs; undermining Reagan's Peace Through Strength doctrine; crushing the American auto industry with damaging labor laws and outrageous regulations; opposing missile defense; spurning every effort at energy independence; utilizing lawfare to fight terrorism; claiming welfare reform would lead to mass starvation... well, you get the picture.

As Papa B says: When you vote Democrat, you vote for failure.

Two Books


Well, well well. Look what Sarah Palin is reading.

A book that describes the rationale for the very founding of the United States; and the philosophers who inspired the Framers; the economic, legal and moral principles underpinning the Constitution.

Compare and contrast: several months ago, President Obama was reading The Post-American World.


Other Items of Interest

Somali Coast Cruise Brochure
Dealergate: 40 Democrat-friendly Dealerships Become 42
Star Trek: The Stimulus Doomsday Machine
Rx for Disaster
An open letter to Colin Powell
Illustrated Results of Barack Obama's Community Organizing
True Life Fannie Mae Testimony
Jamie Gorelick, Mistress of Disaster
The Bidens: Hedge Funds, Hair Plugs and Ponzi Schemes
Unintended Consequences

Hat tips: Motivation: Truth and C. K. MacLeod. Linked by: Cold Fury. Thanks!

Another Luxury Sedan from Detroit


New for 2010:



Related: "Let them drive Buicks."

Lord of HDR Photography


Dave Hill is a professional photographer best known for his "HDR" techniques.











Hat tip: IZI.

Larwyn's Linx: Community-Organized Crime

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

Community Organized Crime: Spectator
Thank God The CBO Works On Saturdays: LegalIns
The Empty Pantsuit: Sailer

Palin Ethics Investigator Worked for Obama Campaign: Riehl
He knows 'Stupidly' when he doesn't see it: Steyn
Every White Man's Nightmare: AT (Joyce)

Health Care Hypocrisy & The Emanuels: AT (Kemp)
History Tells Us Where Obamacare Leads: Q & O
Obama: Government Care is 'Good for Small Business': GWP

The Path Not Taken: Hansen
Barack Flanagan on Health Care: STACLU
Health Reform's Hidden Victims: WSJ (Fund)

Economy

What's in the Frickin' Bag?: Zero Hedge
Texas Health Care: Bigger and Better: Examiner
High-Frequency Trading: My View: Denninger

Repeating all the mistakes of Japan's 'Lost Decade': Examiner
How Democrats Destroy Economies: All American
The Actuary-in-Chief: Surber

Climate & Energy

3,000 Record Lows in July: Surber
Has Global Warming Stopped?: Corner
Irony: Thomas Friedman's Phat Footprint: Vanderleun

PropaBamaGanda: Anchoress

Media

Associated Press Declares War on the Internet: LGF
Fact Checking? At the Times? Shirley You Jest: Vanderleun
Hating Sarah Palin -- and Hating Us: AT (Schwartz)

Paul Harvey vs. Walter Cronkite: TAB
Devolution: AP Waters Down Obama-Gates-Crowley Report: NewsBusters (Blumer)
Why Newspapers Are Failing, Part Hojillion: Roberta X

World

Battle for Helmand: Charlie Foxtrot
30,000 China Steelworkers Clash With Police: AP
Warfare by Remote Control: Charlie Foxtrot

Iran threatens to hit Israel's nuke facility: Prairie
The Plot Against Honduras: Kincaid
CAIR claims victory in 'Flying Imams' lawsuit: Atlas

Sci-Tech

Why Google won't last forever: Forbes (Gomes)

Cornucopia

Joe Biden, Police Inspector: YouTube
The incredible 10ft 'photographs' drawn with a ballpoint pen: Daily Mail (UK)
Chuck Norris vs. Bruce Lee: All American

Obama at the All-Star Game: Hatless
I meet Sarah Palin (again): Motivation: Truth

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Amnesty disguised as Health Care Reform


What could be the real rationale for Democrats ramming health care reform down our throats? A witness to a conference in Washington last month described the nature of their efforts.

I want to tell you that last week I attended a conference on health care reform sponsored by La Raza. And I will tell you that what they had to say, Mark, is scarier than anything that's been said so far on the health care plan.

The kind of comments that were made and the notes that I took... they started the conference out by saying "America does not need health care reform, but Latino immigrants need health care reform."

And someone from Menendez' office [Ed.: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ] promised that he would make sure that "the useless barriers of citizenship would not be in this bill" and that he would make sure that they would use keywords like "streamline"...

It was La Raza, the Childrens Defense Fund and Senator Menendez from New Jersey, a representative from his office...

...Yes [they said they would get free health care for illegal aliens], these are my notes, Mark. They actually got up and said "Latino children need health care more than whites". And then they would say things like "you must go out into your communities, use words like 'streamline', use phrases like 'all workers' and 'all families'," because they said -- and I quote -- "If the American people find out that this bill is about giving health care to non-citizens, they will rise up against it."

...One of the quotes they said was, "We want to make sure we take care of barriers like verification, but we can streamline programs to the more affluent" and, quote, "Useless treatments for the elderly can be gone because we don't need to spend money for people who are going to die anyway."

That's a direct quote from that meeting. They also said, "We are very concerned there will be an effort to include" the illegal immigrants in this argument, so "we must make sure that we focus this" to the American people that it's looking like we want "health care for everyone".

And they also said that 75% of the children who will be picked up in this will be non-citizens and that 44% of the uninsured are non-citizens and they can't possibly allow the American people to know this." [Ed: Oops!]

Menendez' office said that he's going to make sure that "a family of four that makes $66,000 a year or less will pay nothing at all for the new health care. And he was the one who said he was going to get rid of specifics like "citizenship status" and focus on, quote, "equity for all workers".

And he said he's going to make sure that the Latino immigrants are the focus of the health care reform.

And La Raza said if they get this, they don't even care about amnesty, because they've fixed it so that one family member can apply for all extended family members. And... Mark, if you think we have a problem with illegal immigration now, wait 'til you see the borders when this thing gets passed.

"If the American people found out?"

Gee, what a surprise. A group that preaches racial superiority and divisiveness wants to enact a stealth illegal immigration bill -- not dissimilar to chain migration. The bill will reward illegal immigration to the direct detriment of all American taxpayers and especially the elderly.

Kind of puts Judge Sotomayor's membership in La Raza in a new light, doesn't it?

Groups like La Raza encourage the Balkanization of America. They promote mutually hostile political groups that do not form a "melting pot", that do not utilize a common language, and that do not share the principles of America's founding.

Fifty years from now, if La Raza gets its way, America will look more like Yugoslavia in 1993 than America.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Action: Contact Senator Robert Menendez at 202 224-4744, 973 645-3030 and 856 757-5353 and politely tell him we know what he's up to with this health care bill, that illegal immigration is not tolerated by the citizens of New Jersey, and that we will expose him -- as the anti-American traitor that he is -- to the public.

As for those who belong to or support either La Raza or The Children's Defense Fund, I would strongly encourage you to drop your membership and support. The racial divisiveness promoted by these outrageous groups is antithetical to America's civil society.

It's time to politically punish these cretins who are out to dismantle our country.



Update: A press release issued by La Raza on 6/15 mirrors the caller's report (hat tip: Oil for Immigration):

As our nation’s leaders consider health care reform in the coming weeks, NCLR (National Council of La Raza), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, strongly urges President Obama and Congress to make every effort to ensure that health care reform reaches all communities. No single community stands to gain as much from this important debate as Latinos. In the U.S., one out of every three uninsured persons and roughly 40% of all uninsured children are Latino. NCLR stands for health care reform that makes coverage affordable and accessible for everyone—all families and all children.

..."This debate should be about health care for all, and setting the nation on a pathway to future health and well-being. Adding layers of immigrant verification and bureaucratic red tape to a new health care system would guarantee that millions of citizen children are effectively barred from accessing preventive care and would raise the cost of health care... we are extremely concerned that some view health reform as a way to scapegoat immigrants... Making health care easier to use and accessible for all workers and children is simple common sense."



The Unemployment Waiting Game


The New York Daily News offers a photo gallery and news snippets from around the world related to the catastrophic unemployment situation. The tragic economic debacle, worsened by ideologically inclined Democrats who are squeezing the life out of businesses large and small, seems destined for the "What Not To Do" case studies of the future.



The problem extends to BRIC. China admits that at least 20,000,000 "rural migrants" are unemployed.

A flood downtown


Torrential rains swamped central Europe yesterday. Here's what downtown Minsk looked like.






Doesn't look like much fun, unless you had one of those aqua-cars.

Will Democrat-Care work as well as the "Stimulus" package?


Second quarter revenue at construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar tumbled more than 30 percent from a year earlier. And profits were down a stunning 66%.

Think about those figures for a moment. We were supposed to be in a Stimulus-inspired building boom.

There were supposed to be "shovel-ready construction projects" and infrastructure remediation projects aplenty.

So why isn't Caterpillar swamped with orders?

Because the "Stimulus" was a sham. As fraught with waste, fraud and abuse as 'The Big Dig', only a hundred times bigger.

$8.5 billion is destined for ACORN, a group with as troubled a history of law-breaking and scandal as one could imagine. A group whose very intent appears to be undermining the rule of law and interfering with American elections.

Billions to build battery plants for electric cars that may or may not attract buyers.

Hundreds of millions of dollars gift-wrapped and sent to Fatah (and possibly Hamas), as bloodthirsty a bunch of anti-American terrorists that exist anywhere on the planet.

And as much as $300 million was sent to Columbia's National Police Force in the form of Sig Sauer sidearms.

Bill Gross, the head of the world's largest manager of bonds -- which also manages commercial-paper assets for the Federal Reserve -- says that Washington is running a "Ponzi-style economy".

Now this ridiculous cast of losers, scam artists and dimwits wants to take over 18% of the economy: the entire American health care system?

Will it work as well as the "Stimulus" package?

Consider: they couldn't even get a relatively simple "Stimulus" program of infrastructure projects to work. A tidal wave of unemployment is swamping the economy and the unemployment system itself is breaking down.

Letting this crew of government hacks create a government-run health care system? As Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) stated this morning, "It's a prescription for disaster."

That's putting it kindly.


Linked by: Dan Riehl. Thanks!