Thursday, May 13, 2010

Racist, tea-bagging federal agents first profile, then arrest illegal aliens, accusing them of complicity in Times Square bombing

Three Pakistani men were arrested in Watertown, Massachusetts (a small suburb located just to the west of Boston) and Brookline as suspects in the recent Times Square bombing attempt. All three persons were taken into custody on immigration violations*.

*Pro-illegal immigration officials in Los Angeles and Highland Park, Illinois could not be reached for comment at press time.

...authorities say [they] supplied funds to Times Square car-bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad were arrested Thursday in a series of raids across the Northeast as the FBI followed the money trail in the failed attack.

One of the men had recently been deported:

The raid in the Bay State kicked off at 6 a.m. in Watertown, where one man - appearing to be Middle Eastern - was seen shackled and arrested outside 39 Waverley Ave., according to multiple eyewitnesses.

The sweep then spread to Brookline, where FBI agents were seen at two gas stations - one on Harvard Street and the other on Cypress Street... The brother of the owner of both stations tells the Herald today the man targeted in the sweep had just been hired...

...Gov. Deval Patrick today said the “safe and successful” sweep is being carried out by the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and state police. He added he had been “fully briefed” ahead of time about the raid.

Expect a breathless CAIR press release expressing faux outrage in 3... 2...


Larwyn's Linx: Conservative. But Also Republican.

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email. You can also install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget.

Nation

Conservative. But Also Republican.: RedState
Illegal Immigration Proponents Support Slavery: RWN
Judge Richard Posner vs. Academic Elena Kagan: BigGovt

Obama: Information is Bad: RWN
How Much Does A Federal Judgeship Cost? $432,000: LegalIns
L.A. to boycott AZ; time to turn off the lights?: GWP

Economy

Depression 2010?: Samuelson
Obama’s First Stealth EFCA Styled Rules Implementation: RWN
How to Pay Down the Debt: Pethokoukis

A New and Powerful Lawsuit on ObamaCare: Volokh
Dems reject 5% down payments as too much: IBD
Free markets help the poor more: Williams

Climate & Energy

Cap & Trade is Back: Pundette
Kerry-Lieberman Bill an Economy Killer: PJM
Welcome to the Era of Expensive Energy: AT

Media

Profile of Elena Kagan: DiscoverTheNetworks
Whoa: Even MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Derides Obama for 'Pseudo' Kagan Interview: NewsBusters
Oh good grief: TV cooking queen Ray meets with obese Senator on fighting childhood obesity: BlogProf

Kagan Finally Caught on Tape Saying Something Important…Damn, Barack Obama is Awesome: Verum Serum
Kagan, Obama, and the Harvard Legacy of Literary Fraud: Cashill
'Manchurian' smear misfires: Cashill

World

Pattern of Death: Belmont
Obama fiddles, a rogue schemes: The U.S. strategy toward North Korea leaves us in danger: Bolton
Quebec Says ‘Non’ to the Niqab: PJM

Muslim Student Association Member: We Need Another Holocaust: GWP
Dancing with the Devil: David Cameron's Path to Power: AT
Despite Harsh Words From Obama & Chavez, Americans Broadly Support AZ Immigration Law: GWP

SciTech

Create your own talking avatar: OddCast
SMS case study - Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper: MobileMarketer
Cougars Beware: Guardian

Cornucopia

You Can't Make This Up: Congress Ponders 'Potty Parity' Act : JWF
Drunk Germans + Playground Toy + Motorcycle = Awesome FAIL: Ace
Farrell pitches for Round Rock: 1360 KKTX


Image: Maktoob.
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Feed Your ADHD


Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Janet Incompetano strikes again: New York City air traveler arrives in Egypt with guns, bullets and knives in baggage

I feel like I'm wrapped in a warm cocoon of safety knowing that Janet Napolitano is always on watch. Like a falcon. Or a crow. Or something scary.

Egyptian authorities detained a passenger arriving at Cairo airport from New York on Wednesday after finding guns, bullets and knives in his baggage, an airport official told AFP.

Mohamed Ibrahim Marei, a US university professor of Egyptian origin, had flown in on an Egyptair flight from New York's JFK airport.

Customs officials noticed the passenger looked nervous and decided to open his luggage. They found two handguns and 250 bullets hidden in metal boxes, the official said on condition of anonymity.

In a secret compartment in the bag, authorities also found two swords, five daggers and six knives, he added.

We're in the best of hands.


Update: Pamela Geller has more troubling information.

A Panoply of Headlines Sure to Please the Administration...

...as they hasten to destroy capitalism once and for all -- before the November elections get here.

U.S. posts 19th straight monthly budget deficit


The United States posted an $82.69 billion deficit in April, nearly four times the $20.91 billion shortfall registered in April 2009 and the largest on record for that month, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.

It was more than twice the $40-billion deficit that Wall Street economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast and was striking since April marks the filing deadline for individual income taxes that are the main source of government revenue... officials said that in prior years, there was a surplus during April in 43 out of the past 56 years.

It's another Obama record!

U.S. must avoid Greece-style crunch: Orszag


U.S. lawmakers must act quickly to tackle a large budget deficit if the United States wants to avoid the kind of debt crisis that hit Greece, the White House's top budget official said on Wednesday.

Say, Wally, if that's the White House adviser, what are the alarmists saying?

US More Bankrupt Than Ever - $83 Billion April Deficit Is Record


Well, if nothing else, we now know officially just how great those tax receipts were. Good thing too - we can end that whole superficial tax receipt debate and focus on important things. April's tax deficit of $83 billion was the highest April deficit on record. America is now more bankrupt than ever. Income was $245.3 billion, 8% below the total recorded last April. Spending was $328.0 billion, up 14% year-over-year. A year ago in April the deficit was $20.9 billion. And here is the data: tax receipts down 7.9% YoY, Individual Income Tax down 21.5% YoY...

Is there a way that President Axelrod can blame Bush?

California Now One Of The Top 10 Government Default Risks In The World


Per the credit default swap market, California cracked the top ten for highest default risks yesterday -- overtaking Iceland and Iraq...

Public-sector unions rule!

The U.S. Government Is About To Get Hit With 'The Perfect Storm' Of Debt


Hearing President Obama’s economic peptalks, you might be under the impression that the U.S. needs to keep spending for just a little while longer to stimulate the economy – but then will swear off big deficits... [But] what happens if the government hits all three landmines – the revenue landmine, the interest expense landmine, and the military spending landmine?

...At $50 trillion, the national debt would be 208% of the CBO’s projected GDP for 2020, and the 2020 deficit would be $4.2 trillion, or 17% of projected GDP. The interest expense on U.S. debt alone would represent 12% of 2020 GDP and 55% of the total federal budget.

In other words: total economic collapse.

In the midst of a self-induced fiscal calamity, Democrats in Congress and President Obama plan to ram $200 billion in new deficit spending through before the Memorial Day recess. I have no adjectives left to describe the level of irresponsibility that our ostensible leaders are exhibiting.

Congress faces a crush of votes on big-ticket items before the Memorial Day recess, setting up a debate on deficits less than six months before the November elections... Democratic leaders are looking in the next three weeks to send President Barack Obama a slew of measures that cost more than $200 billion, including a multiyear extension of unemployment benefits, an extension of expiring tax provisions and Medicare doctor payments totaling $180 billion and a $33 billion Afghanistan war supplemental bill.

Because most of those costs won’t be paid for, Republicans plan to use those bills and the Democrats’ budget blueprint to highlight massive deficits ahead of the congressional midterm election. Republicans have recently been pointing to Greece’s dismal fiscal situation as a warning, claiming that the U.S. will be headed for a similar fate unless the deficits are curtailed.

What happened to the much-celebrated Pay-Go rule, passed recently as "evidence" that Democrats were "fiscally responsible"? Swept aside in an orgy of deficit spending the likes of which the world has never seen.

Aren't Democrat-run economies swell?

It's November or never.


Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

The Obama era of post-partisanship ends as we move to the post-post-partisanship stage: U.S. Special Envoy to Islam trashes President Bush

Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard reports on another chorus of apologia by our beloved administration and its diplomatic corpse. [Update: The State Department offers its own transcript of the interview and claims Hussain was misquoted.]

U.S. Special Envoy to Islamic Conference Trashes George W. Bush


May 12, 2010

U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference Rashad Hussain gave a particularly disturbing interview to Arab English daily Asharq Alawsat. The interview should be read in full, but here is one choice exchange:

Q) Do you think it will be easy to overcome the hostility in the Islamic world towards certain US policies, especially in light of the actions taken under the previous US administration?

A) We are concerned about this but we are determined to move forward, without looking to the past and the negative effects of this, in order to erase the hostile feelings caused by the administration of former President George W. Bush.

There is now a suitable opportunity to overcome the past, and open a new page in relations between the US and the people in the Islamic region.

For a representative of the U.S., Hussain's words are reprehensible. Jennifer Rubin writes:

This is not, to say the least, what we expect our envoys to communicate to foreign audiences. And then there is the substance of his remarks. Hostile feelings caused by the Bush administration’s policies, he says? Which were those — the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which Obama has continued? The focus on human rights, which Obama has ignored? And notice the assignment of blame to the country he pretends to represent, not to the bad actors — Syria and Iran, for example — that continue to promote terror and brutalize their people. It appears that Hussain is telling the Muslims that the real source of trouble in the Middle East was George W. Bush.

But it is obsession with the peace process as the key to ending such “hostility” and the conviction that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the source of our woes that are the most jarring — and perhaps revelatory of the administration he represents.

Barry Rubin highlights the fallacies inherent in the administration's worldview.

But let's consider what's going on meanwhile in the real world. Palestinian Media Watch reports that on the PA's own television station this week the program "We Are Returning," shows a map in which all of Israel is erased and covered with a Palestinian flag.

The program explains that Israeli Jews should go to places like the Ukraine and Ethiopia: "Please, I ask of you, return to your original homeland, so that I can return to my original homeland. This is my homeland; go back to your homeland!"

This kind of thing goes on in PA-controlled mosques, classrooms, media, and in speeches by PA or Fatah officials on a daily basis. The U.S. government virtually ignores it. There are no programs, articles, classes, sermons, and speeches in which PA officials and employees urge their people to live peacefully side by side with Israel and accept that country's existence permanently."

The sad truth is that the Palestinians will never settle for just the West Bank and Gaza, even with their own capital in a redivided Jerusalem. They are not fighting to reverse the results of the 67 War, or even the results of the 48 War, but the original partition plan of 1947 and before that the British Mandate for Palestine , both of which contemplated some land reserved for a Jewish majority state. Such a state has always been unacceptable to the Arab world and the Muslim world. It still is.

As Daniel Pipes points out, the only factor that will determine whether peace can be achieved is one the administration never considers: will the Palestinians accept Israel in any form?

And all of us, save the Obama Democrats, know the answer.


Hat tip: Dan from New York.

It's those layers and layers of fact-checking and editorial review

The magnificent website BorderInvasionPics -- which uses hidden cameras to document the unceasing flow of illegal aliens into this country -- was recently ripped off by legacy media.

CBS affiliate KPHO Channel 5 in Phoenix removed our copyright labels and added their own logo to our videos.

 

They didn't even have permission to use them in the first place.

On top of that, the report was sympathetic to illegal aliens.

American Patrol first reported it, and then the Media Research Center created a very professional You Tube production detailing the entire incident...

You can voice your disapproval to Ed Munson, the VP and General Manager of KPHO. His email is ed.munson@kpho.com.

Postscript: In our opinion, Mr. Munson should also review the performance of his production staff. KPHO also waylaid Santa Cruz County Attorney George Silva. Their report showed [a] video of a drug run, and then immediately showed Silva saying the intruders were just coming here to work.

Knowing the way legacy media operates, I fully expect KPHO to win a Pulitzer or two for their courageous, Johnny-on-the-spot reporting.


Larwyn's Linx: Obama sends his love to our troops

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email. You can also install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget.

Kagan

Obama sends his love to our troops: RWN
Kagan wrote the Clinton gun ban law: Volokh
On Robert Clark: Kagan and the Military: BenchMemos

'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'... Anything about Shariah Law: AT
Obama nominates himself: AmSpec
The professor and the dean: Times

Nation

Michelle Obama: Food profiteer-turned-food cop: Malkin
Dem sleazebag Mollohan falls in primary: Ace
Hillary's not getting any love from the administration: RWN

Economy

Do these teachers ever get fired?: RWN
Organizing for America: IBD
Hmm: Obama to Control Children's Food & Toys: Ace

Shocking: CBO hangs another $115B on ObamaCare: Toldjah
Taxed enough already: even USA Today says it: RWN
Senate calls for audit of three years of Fed deals: Times

Climate & Energy

Leak of the day! Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill: GreenHell
President Hamlet's Energy Policy: AT
Is a university a "law free" zone?: MoneyRunner

Media

A confluence of leftism caused five students to be punished for wearing Old Glory: Hanson
What Did You Say About Muhammad?!: PJM
The Obama State Senate Transcripts: Jumping In Pools

Who Is Rachel Tabachnick, and Why Is She Attacking Phyllis Chesler?: RSM
The 'Logan's Run'-ning of America: Shayne
Union film spanks Obama pal Penny Pritzker: Marathon

World

OTMs Crossing the Southwest Border: SIGIS
Seriously. Obama Lectures Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero on Reining in Debt.: GWP
UK Chaos: Labour, Lib Dems 'Coalition of Losers' Angers Britain: PJM

Jawa Exclusive: Capture Of Mullah Omar Confirmed: Jawa
USG pays Mosque it considers radical: IPT
Tory Coalition Partner Wants to Recognize Hamas: TAB

SciTech

Google and Verizon to Launch Tablet Computer: Mashable
Twitter to Launch Twitter Business Center: Mashable

Cornucopia

Roots of the Democrat Party: AmDigest
Two pictures that intrigue: C&S
The Ultimate Doomsday Chart: Zero Hedge

Image: Lars Larson.
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Grand Rants.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Crony Capitalism -- Statistical Evidence that the Government and the Investment Banks Have Rigged the Stock Market

Earlier this week, financial news junkies heard that investment banking giants Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan achieved improbable proprietary trading performances this past quarter. Each had a record number of profitable, prop-trading days: all of them.

Proprietary trading refers to the trades that are executed on behalf of the investment bank itself. In other words, not for clients.

In fact, for all of 2009, the majority of GS' prop-trading days resulted in profits of over $100 million each.

What are the odds of this sort of thing occurring in a natural market, in which all participants are on a level playing field? According to Karl Denninger, about 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- or roughly the odds that Juliette Lewis will be named the next Pope.

I will leave it to you, and those who investigate frauds, to determine whether the application of skill, without any sort of cheating such as front-running client orders, insider information or other forms of rigging the markets, can turn the random chance odds of 8.67 x 10-19 into an event that has, in fact, actually occurred.

To see the Goldman trading platforms in action, one need only examine the 90-degree "ramps" in equity prices that seem to occur when normal investors have dropped out of the market. Like most of us since 2008. And today after the whip-saw insanity last week.

"The market is melting straight up without interruption, and without any volume. Retail is now completely out of the market, and our advice to everyone is to stay out and let the computer blow themselves up again. In the meantime, please don't ask how and why Goldman and JPM can both have a perfect quarter. The chart below says it all."

This is a four-day trading chart. Notice the rightmost quadrant, representing today (Tuesday), in which volume went to nil while the Goldman and Morgan trading computers ratcheted the market up as they have for months on end.

How do they do it? And, more importantly, how do they get away with it?

Earlier today, Themis Trading published a white paper (PDF) that describes these trading operations as pure "theft on Wall Street".

Most institutional and retail investors have no idea that the private trade information they are entrusting to the market centers is being made public by the exchanges. The exchanges are not making this clear to their clients, but instead are actively broadcasting the information to the HFT's in order to court their order flow. The exchanges are likely to counter that when a subscriber signs up to their exchange they then allow the exchange to use this data as they see fit.

However, how many investors would have signed that agreement knowing that their hidden orders were being exposed? This practice has been going on for years but not many investors have read the market data specifications. Every day high frequency traders are using the information that some exchanges are supplying to disadvantage unsuspecting investors.

Every time a trader places an order in certain market centers, whether at the market centers directly, or through a third-party DMA, those market centers are collecting data regarding the trader’s order flow. They are supplying the information to HFT's that allows them to track when an investor changes price and how much stock has been accumulated. This information is helping HFT's predict short term price movements.

Institutional as well as retail footprints are being detected, and 'modus operandi' and trading profiles are being created. Traders believe that their trading strategies are protected, when actually their strategies (personal data) -- including variables such as displayed quantity, time stamp, side, revisions, reserve orders, linked executions, order id numbers, accumulations, number of shares -- are being misappropriated for sale by the market centers.

The exchanges seem to think that they own the data and have the right to sell it. Why are the exchanges allowed to do this? We think this is an outrage and demands immediate action by the SEC. How can the public trust the very organizations that are supposed to be protecting them, when these organizations are turning around and selling their personal data. The only difference between personal data theft, and the data-feed issue we highlight in this paper, is the degree of public awareness.

HFT stands for "High Frequency Trading" and, in general, refers to the proprietary trading arms of Goldman, Morgan and certain hedge funds. They use massively scalable computing platforms and custom software to -- in the words of Themis -- disadvantage normal traders.

This sort of activity is outrageous. It's apparently tolerated by the SEC and Congress, despite insiders' knowledge of precisely what's going on. That goes for Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and others whose livelihoods depend upon a Dow Jones average that gives normal folks a warm-fuzzy feeling despite the real and ongoing economic debacle.

Investment bankers have been collecting billions in bonuses using sordid tactics that could legitimately be called criminal. And the SEC and Congress are simply looking the other way. Meanwhile, the public is backstopping all of the risk and eating the trading losses.

Now that's change you can believe in.


Stand up to the Bullies: the GOP Must Block Elena Kagan

It's not just that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is, in the words of Mark Levin (MP3), a judicial lightweight. She's written nothing of substance and has no litigation experience to speak of.

It's not that she's an unprincipled political hack from Chicago who pilloried the military for its Don't Ask Don't Tell policy at Harvard, but somehow overlooked the fact that it is not the military's policy. It is a lawful policy of the U.S. government, passed by a Democrat Congress in 1993 and signed into law by Bill Clinton. And Kagan went on to work for the very Clinton administration that implemented the policy she decries.

It's not that she's virulently anti-military, posturing repeatedly against recruiters on Harvard's campus even in the aftermath of 9/11 when our men and women were being sent into harm's way to protect all Americans.

It's not the fact that she has no experience that qualifies her for the post. She's never been a judge on any court, at any level -- and, she "took the extremely unusual step of declining to appear before the Supreme Court during her first term" as Solicitor General.

It's not that she's consistently advocated for the unchecked growth of unconstitutional administrative bodies controlled solely by the president. In her academic roles, she argued for "greater presidential control of [bureaucracies that are] becoming ever more entangled in the daily lives of average Americans. The president has said he wanted judges who would not give strict constitutional scrutiny to his expansive legislative agenda."

It's not that she's a crypto-radical as evidenced by her bizarre academic background and political affiliations. Her senior thesis analyzed -- you guessed it -- why socialism failed in New York City in the first half of the 20th century. She wrote longingly of an era that never was, her laments an obvious paean to a regime of Statism antithetical to our founding: "In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness."

While damning, these elements of her background pale in comparison to one simple fact: we are in a final battle for the solvency of our country.

Five people on the highest court will ultimately decide whether health care is a right. Whether the Commerce Clause of the Constitution can be twisted and perverted to compel you to buy a product from a government-approved entity.

We are at war and it was the Democrats in Congress who launched a Pearl Harbor-style attack on the American people. At midnight on Christmas Eve, they passed a massive new entitlement program against the clear wishes of the American people. They lied about its costs, they used every trick in the book and they squeaked by a tiny legislative victory at a time when our existing entitlement programs are already running dry.

The Democrats bullied Republicans, locking them out of committee meetings, smashing their faces against the metaphorical fence, heckling them and ultimately ignoring them.

The Democrats called Republicans -- black, white, brown, red and yellow -- racists for holding up copies of the Constitution at rallies and town hall meetings, while simply demanding fidelity to our highest law.

The Democrats bullied Republicans on the failed Stimulus bill, the budget-busting Omnibus Spending bill, unprecedented extensions of unemployment and new energy taxes called "Cap-and-Trade".

During the Bush era, Democrats used the unconstitutional judicial filibuster to block conservative Hispanics, African-Americans -- fine jurists of every race, religion and creed -- from serving on the federal court. Schumer, Obama, Leahy and other despicable partisans blocked Miguel Estrada and other monumentally qualified jurists from fair hearings on the Senate floor.

It's not just that Kagan is completely unqualified; that she's a closeted socialist; that she hates the military; and that she has been nominated solely because she will vote the radical Obama line on issues such as the constitutionality of a health care mandate. It's none of those.

It's war. And now it's time for Republicans to stand up to the bullying. It's time to return the favor. Elena Kagan must be stopped. With the country teetering on the edge of Grecian-style bankruptcy, the stakes are too high.

Call your Senators and demand they filibuster Elena Kagan. Call the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee and demand they block Kagan's nomination.

They drew first blood. And now they must pay. Filibuster Elena Kagan.


Hat tip: Mark Levin (MP3).

Email Campaign FAIL

Presented for your review -- what not to do when executing an email campaign.

I know I'm not very popular, but that's just downright insulting.