Sleepless in Midland

USA Today writers surprised that many voters would not vote for a Muslim for president

We can thank Ben Carson for opening people's eyes to this when he remarked that he wouldn't want a Muslim president who subscribed to the harsh language of Islam. While it might seem logical to assume most Americans would agree with Carson, there are exceptions, especially if the question is worded just right.

Susan Page and Paulina Firozi wrote this: A surprising number of Americans wouldn't vote for a Muslim to be president. Here's an excerpt:

In a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, most of those surveyed don’t think it’s a realistic possibility, at least at the moment. By 53%-39%, they say a Muslim couldn’t be elected.

Even so, by 49%-40% they said they themselves would vote for a qualified Muslim.

What about other groundbreaking categories?

-By 53%-40%, they would vote for a qualified atheist. Notably, resistance to an atheist as president is as strong as resistance to a Muslim.
-By 93%-3%, they would vote for a qualified Catholic. The 2016 field includes several Catholics, among them Republicans Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio, and Democrat Martin O’Malley.
-By 95%-4%, they would vote for a qualified woman. That’s presumably good news for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Carly Fiorina.

The nationwide poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken by phone from Thursday through Monday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The surprise is that anyone was surprised. Of course there's that word "qualified" in there. That's going to have a different meaning to different people.

Emily Badger digs into stats -- debunks myths about millennials

It's generally reported as a given that millennials eschew car ownership in favor of public transportation, presumably so they can apply themselves to social media while they commute. This contrasts with older people who relish the right to own their own vehicles, whether it's a pretentious Prius or a 440 horsepower super duty pickup.

However, Emily Badger at WaPo's Wonkblog looked at a recent poll and announced Millennials are not who you think they are. She concludes that the determinant is whether they live in urban areas or suburbs. In other words, millennials are not that much different from their neighbors.

Very interesting.

Sitting too long is unhealthy -- how much longer before OSHA starts dictating how long we can sit at work?

We've been hearing for a while now that prolonged sitting can lead to health problems. And here's another study purporting to confirm that theory. See “Our Chairs Are Killing Us,” Say Researchers. To wit:

In the current study researchers examined the association of sitting time and physical activity level with NAFLD in Korean men and women to explore whether any observed associations were related to the amount of body fat. They studied records of nearly 140,000 Koreans who underwent a health examination between March 2011 and December 2013. Physical activity level and sitting time were assessed using the Korean version of the international Physical Activity Questionnaire Short Form. The presence of fatty liver was determined using ultrasonography.

Of the people studied, nearly 40,000 had NAFLD. Importantly, the researchers found that both prolonged sitting time and decreased physical activity level were independently associated with increasing prevalence of NAFLD. Remarkably, these associations were also observed in patients with a body mass index (BMI) of less than 23.

NAFLD stands for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Here's the scariest part:

This association was still observed among patients participating in high levels of moderate to vigorous physical activity, indicating that regular high levels of physical activity do not fully protect against the risks associated with prolonged periods of sedentary behaviors.

So a daily work-out doesn't seem to matter, at least with this health problem. That's a stunner.

In any event, many of us probably need to stand up more often. But with all these studies telling us not to sit too long, one has to wonder when the nanny state will start trying to regulate chair time.

Via boingboing.net.

Clock Boy Ahmed had a history of pranks

The Dallas Morning News tells the story in Before Ahmed’s fame: fantastic inventions and a fight with authority. Here are a few passages:

If you want to know Ahmed Mohamed — not the hoax bomb suspect or the vindicated celebrity, but the motormouth kid with a schoolbag full of inventions and a head full of questions — ask a teacher.

Ask at Sam Houston Middle School, where the boy from Sudan mastered electronics and English, once built a remote control to prank the classroom projector and bragged of reciting his First Amendment rights in the principal’s office.

It’s also the school where Ahmed racked up weeks of suspensions, became convinced an administrator had it in for him and — before he left for the high school where he turned famous — prompted Irving ISD to review claims of anti-Muslim bullying.

Seems there was also a lefty teacher at Sam Houston who had significant influence on him.

In any event, the sympathy Ahmed Mohamed got from his clock-in-a-box stunt just shows how politically correct President Obama and many others in the country have become on the whole "Islamophobia" thing.

Also in the news: Clock boy lawyers up.

NSA chief sees government employees in a way the rest of us don't

NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers testified before a Senate committee on Thursday, and that testimony is being rebroadcast on C-Span as I write. Watch the video here.

Admiral Rogers has a high admiration of his employees. In fact he says they're better than workers outside of government. Rudy Takala at Washingtonexaminer.com notes this: NSA chief: Feds are better at cyber than private sector. Here's an excerpt:

The National Security Agency is capable of doing a better job at cybersecurity than companies in the private sector, the agency's head said on Thursday, because its employees have a culture that gives them a greater sense of purpose.

"It's the sense of serving something bigger than yourself. That's the advantage that we have. That's not something you can easily replicate on the outside," said Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the NSA. "It's that sense of mission, that sense of purpose, that ethos of culture and compliance, I think, that is our greatest advantage."

Is this true in the present atmosphere? There's that pesky theory about Public Choice which holds that government employees are motivated by their own best interests. That implies they may put their own interests ahead of the government interest. We certainly saw that happen at the IRS, the VA, and countless other agencies where government workers put service to the country at a pretty low priority.

So can we believe Admiral Rogers. I want to. I really do.

Pamela Geller speaks out on Ben Carson's Muslim president remark

When Ben Carson made remarks recently about his opposition to a devout Muslim running this country, the media piled on. Recall that a police officer dispatched two terrorists at a conference in Garland that Pamela Geller organized, and the left leaning media piled on trying to put the blame on her.

Who better to defend Ben Carson? Here she is in Ben Carson Zooms to Top of Media’s Kill List:

Ben Carson was speaking of a devout Muslim, a sharia-compliant Muslim, becoming President. The idea that we have to talk about “peaceful Muslims” every time jihad and sharia come up is a straw man argument. We don’t have to pat on the back every Muslim who doesn’t want to kill us. We expect that. That’s our bar. But the media insists. We don’t talk about “peaceful Buddhists,” “peaceful Sikhs,” “peaceful Christians,” etc. — so why must Muslims be treated like a special needs case? It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. ...

This is a battle for the American agenda. The media monsters mean to dictate what we can and cannot talk about. It is an attack on freedom of thought and freedom of speech. We must fight this battle with every cell of our being. ...

ISIS has a kill list, and so does the media. Carson is on the top of that hit list now. This is a defining moment in the 2016 presidential campaign.

If anyone has street cred in the fight against lefties in the media in the battle against radical Islam, it's Geller.

Apparently Hillary's aids thought "delete" meant "erase"

Most computer users have known since the days of the floppy disk that hitting the delete key doesn't make information on a storage device disappear but merely removes the document name from the content list and allows the user to reuse that space for something else. If the space wasn't overwritten, it was still there.

Apparently Hillary Clinton's aids didn't know that. Washingtonexaminer.com tells us this: Report: FBI said finding deleted Clinton emails 'not very hard'.

Platte River Networks, the technology company that has managed Clinton's server since 2013, said the server was unlikely to contain any useful data after it handed the device over to FBI investigators in August.

But computer experts with the law enforcement agency were able to pull copies of the deleted emails off the server with relative ease, according to a report by the New York Times.

Although the number of personal emails recovered was not immediately clear, the report said FBI investigators could access deleted emails because Clinton's aides may have only made a cursory attempt to purge the records.

In this instance we should probably be grateful for incompetence. Unfortunately, foreign sources have probably taken advantage of it, too. Furthermore, with the increasingly bad news about the hacks on OPM we might be justified in thinking that incompetence is widespread in the government.

Walter Williams -- Dems understand the law of supply and demand but suspend that understanding when it comes to the minimum wage

There is no law preventing a politician from lying to constituents. But what's depressing is that people who should know better believe them.

Walter Williams made an excellent point in Liberal Reasoning: Idiotic or Dishonest?. He points out several instances in which progressives -- he calls them "liberals" -- demonstrated that they understand that if you make some activity more expensive people will do less of it. Cigarettes taxes are a good example.

But when it comes to the minimum wage they suspend their belief. If they raise the cost of hiring someone, there will be less hiring. Here's Williams:

.You want less of something? Just raise its cost. ...

What the liberals believe — and want us to believe — is that though an increase in the cost of anything will cause people to use less of it, labor is exempt from the law of demand. That's like accepting the idea that the law of gravity influences the falling behavior of everything except nice people. One would have to be a lunatic to believe either proposition.

He asks in his title whether they are idiotic or dishonest. That's a fair question, but there's a third answer. The desire to feel good about themselves trumps logic.

Asking a important question at the Federalist -- why the sudden concern for fugitives now that all the Christians are dead

Leslie Loftis at the federalist.com has an interesting observation in Why Do Refugees Matter Only After The Christians Are Dead?

There she notes all the angst created by the photo of the dead child on the beach and the news of the poor refugees merely seeking a safe place of late. But there was none of that when Christians were being rounded up, killed, or enslaved. She speculates that it is because the legacy media ignored it, and many people only consider something to be "news" when sources like the New York Times tells them about it.

She offers a couple of other theories:

When stories of Christian persecution get told, they are questionably dismissed or billed as stories about something else.

For instance, the Boko Haram girls story played in the Western public as a story of sexism, when really the story was about persecution of Christians. ... Their hope got attention, but not help. The United States is not in an intervening mood. A few of the girls did manage to escape on their own, long after the hashtag died. ...

The last theory I have—the one I hope is wrong—posits that the story is surging now because we can offer help when there is no chance we will ever be judged on success. At this point, really, there are so many intervening factors that any specific bit of help could never, ever be negatively consequential.

Now that's depressing. But we have to face the lesson from the Iraq war. Most Americans are more concerned with feeling good about themselves than about saving lives.

Pundits, you make the case for a Muslim president instead of criticizing Carson for his opposition to same

Political writers are sifting through every utterance by Republican contenders for something to make into a controversy, and one of the latest treasures they've uncovered is Ben Carson's remark that he wouldn't want a Muslim running this country. That's a common sense observation that is probably shared, but unspoken, across the nation.

But saying it out loud is politically incorrect. Right on cue, CAIR is calling for Carson to drop out of the race.

As for those pundits who criticize Carson for this, get out there and make the case that Carson is wrong. Be sure to include in your evidence an explanation for the silence of those you would refer to as "moderate Muslims" regarding atrocities committed in the name of Islam and the hostility directed at those who do have the courage to speak out.

Who would oppose gun safety education for kids? Anti-gun groups, that's who.

Ricochet writer KevinC notes Democrats' motive regarding gun safety in The Gun Grabbers’ Mask Slips. He sums it up nicely, to wit:

When Democrats and gun control advocates talk about “gun safety,” they mean only one thing: banning guns and attempting to confiscate them from law-abiding citizens. Sure, they may talk about “gun safety” or “gun violence*,” but what they really want are guns out of the hands of the private citizens.

The post is about the Department of Justice award of $2.4 to Project Childsafe, a program sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

KevinC notes opposition from an anti-gun group, and they claim their opposition is due to past mismanagement. But the underlying theme is most decidedly anti-gun. What's remarkable is that the DOJ made the award in the first place, given their anti-gun actions in the past.

Those us us in the small-government camp could make a legitimate argument that it isn't the government's job to teach gun safety or use taxpayer money for that. However, it's far better to do that than do what the government has been doing to advance the anti-gun agenda since Obama took office.

You didn't build that, Ahmed

The incident in Irving with the young Muslim and the clock-in-a-box is looking more and more like one of those contrived confrontations designed to provoke a confrontation over which the grievance industry can show some very public outrage.

Right on cure, CAIR is complaining about the official reaction, and Obama is complementing the youth's innovation. Then there was the kid's attitude toward to law enforcement officers. Breitbart.com nails it in If It Walks Like an Influence Operation….

But let's look at that clock. On Wednesday a blogger named Anthony posted this: Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed’s Clock… and Ourselves. (Link via Ed Driscoll.)

Peruse Anthony's previous posts and it's pretty clear that he knows a thing or two about science. And he contends that Ahmed's clock was not really homemade but was a simple, old, electric clock -- like one available on E-bay -- which Ahmed removed from its plastic case and reinstalled in a new housing. Sounds highly credible.

He's no Steve Jobs. But that doesn't matter to Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

Since when is it an obligation of a political candidate to correct misapprehensions about opposition?

Donald Trump is catching heat from the msm because he didn't correct a questioner who made a remark about Obama being a Muslim. See, for example, Trump Refuses to Deny Accusation that Obama Is Foreign Muslim in NH Q&A.

If politicians followed a rule like that we might have a President Romney right about now.

Obama to use behavior psychologist to help people swallow what's crammed down their throats

It's no secret that Americans are undertaking a quiet revolution against President Obama's autocratic way of governance and the heavy regulatory atmosphere that has resulted. So what's a president to do?

This sounds like something out of the novel 1984 where certain thoughts were crimes and Big Brother hovered ominously over everyone. However, it's happening now. President Obama has instructed agencies to employ psychologists who are supposed to figure out ways to placate the populace. See Obama orders federal agencies to hire psychologists to see the executive order. Here's the intro to that order:

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights -- research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them -- can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people.

Or make the people more obedient.

Well, it has worked before. Psychologists were Obama's secret weapon in the 2012 election.

Kurt Schlichter's delightful questions for GOP debate participants -- actually some are kinda funny

Here's Schlichter's aricle at Townhall.com: The Obnoxious and Important Questions I Would Ask At The GOP Debate.

He's got a little jab at each of them, and here's one of the good ones which happens to be aimed at Rand Paul:

Like your father, I can listen to you for a couple minutes, find myself nodding in agreement, and then BAM! you say something nutty, usually about foreign policy. How can I be sure you will do the most important thing a president must do – relentlessly and ruthlessly kill America’s enemies?

Chemtrails. Are they a thing?

I had not heard him expound on chemtrails, but if he did, it wouldn't be a surprise. Poor Rand Paul. He was flying high for a while. But he is who he is. To his credit, he certainly isn't a slave to the focus groups.

As for the CNN questioners, they're who they are, too. We don't know just yet which Republican the Democrats want to run against, so maybe we'll get a clue tonight.

How to detect a nuclear explosion if you can't see it

The Obama administration is putting a lot of stake in the ability to detect whether or not Iran cheats on his deal with them. And one of the theories at play is that Iran would test any nuclear bomb it makes before trying to destroy the Great Satan with it.

Technologyreview.com tells us about efforts to detect nuclear testing in How International Monitors Spot Nukes and Other Rumblings. There we learn that as a result of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1996, the International Monitoring System has four ways to detect a nuclear explosion anywhere on earth:

1. Atmospheric radionuclide sensors -

Eighty monitoring outposts and 16 laboratories in IMS are equipped to pick up and analyze atmospheric traces of noble gases and radioactive particles that provide a definite “smoking gun” sign of a clandestine nuke blast, such as those from North Korea’s nuclear tests. The IMS radionuclide network got an unexpected but vital workout in March 2011, measuring and tracking the radioactive plume released by the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

2. Seismic equipment -

With 50 primary and 120 auxiliary stations, the IMS seismic net identifies about 130 events per day: earth tremors, mining explosions, or anything down to the equivalent of a magnitude 3.0 quake, a nearly undetectable rumble.

3. Underwater listening stations -

The capabilities of the seismic net are supplemented and extended by 11 stations listening for the acoustic underwater signature of a nuclear explosion. Five of the stations are on shore, detecting sound waves that travel through water and then change to seismic waves upon hitting the coastline. The other six stations are hydrophones—underwater microphones moored about a kilometer beneath the surface in order to detect and determine the direction of acoustic waveforms. Because sound travels so efficiently under water, 11 stations can cover the entire world, says George Haralabus, head of the IMS hydroacoustics section.

4. Infrasound sensors -

The earth is never quiet in this acoustic realm, with infrasound generated not merely by nuclear explosions but by the motions of the atmosphere and the earth’s crust, volcanoes, human activities of all kinds, and even meteors and space junk penetrating the atmosphere. Forty-eight infrasound stations are currently operational out of a planned 60, featuring arrays of microbarometers.

Iran could probably buy a pretested nuke from North Korea, so never mind.

As we import more and more refugees our best hope is that they don't turn on us

The problem many conservatives have with the current immigration program is that new entrants don't plan to assimilate, and in many cases they're encouraged not to.

Now we learn that Obama Seeks Admission for 10,000 More Syrian Refugees. From what we've seen of Obama, it probably won't stop there.

It would be nice to think they'll assimilate and become good Americans. But that's probably a wild dream as that hasn't worked out all that well lately. See Ian Tuttle's Before Welcoming Thousands of Syrian Refugees, We Should Consider What Somali Immigrants Have Brought the U.S. Never mind the burden those individuals have put on government assistance programs, they tax the shelters, food banks, and local charities as well. And there's this:

But, as the Somali experiment makes clear, it is not just the short-term consequences that are worrisome. Notably, the terror threat from the Somali-American community comes not from refugees, but from their children — American-born Somalis who have never been to Africa. Setting aside the near-certainty that at least some Syrian refugees will be connected to the Islamic State, refugee resettlement is sure to incubate national-security threats that will not manifest themselves for 20 years. ...

Tuttle concludes:

We know much more now about the threats we face, and we have the Somali community as an example of the consequences of a generous refugee policy in an age that eschews assimilation. It would be entirely humane to rescue those suffering from Syria’s mayhem. It would be inhumane, though, to gravely threaten American security in the process.

It has already started. See The Twin Cities have an ISIS problem.

Images like the dead kid on the beach tug at the heartstrings. It takes courage to resist being led on a leash by a need to be liked.

Hack of the week -- counterfeit master TSA keys to luggage locks

Thank the Washington Post for this after they published a photo of the TSA master keys. Apparently, software is available that allows users to duplicate a key from a photo of the key. The photo was deleted from WaPo's article but not before it got circulated online by other sources. Photos of the keys are still available online. So now there are probably duplicate master keys out there somewhere. Don't you know baggage handlers in some of those high theft airports would like to get their hands on them, that is, if they don't already have a set.

NakedSecurity tells the story in TSA master luggage keys are 3D printed after photo published online.

Meanwhile, TSA itself has had to settle up with travelers to the tune of around $3 million from 2010 to 2014. See Lost, stolen, broken: TSA pays millions for bag claims, USA TODAY investigation finds. Click the link and scroll to the bottom of that article for a search engine for specific airports.

Same great taste! Same great price! Now in a smaller container!

This would be Folgers coffee. You may have noticed that the container size has gotten smaller. This morning I happened to see Folgers coffee at a big box store, and they had plenty of the new, smaller containers. But there were two of the old, larger, containers nestled on the shelf along with the new ones. I bought both of the big ones for the same price the store was charging for the smaller ones, $8.59.

The small one says it contains 24.2 ounces. The larger one says it contains 27.8 ounces. The calculator says the new, small one sold for $0.35 per ounce, and the large one sold for $0.31 per ounce. It's not a huge difference for the occasional shopper, but you know it means a lot of money for Folgers.

Meanwhile, the price of coffee as a commodity is going down. Too bad they couldn't pass the savings along to the consumer.

Fox Friday 9-11-2015

As promised, here's a periodic update of the goings on at the Bone Yard, an undisclosed fox sanctuary in the heart of Midland, Texas. Cats dominated the place for a while. But once I stopped putting food out the foxes came back to make to take advantage of the peace and quiet. Here are a few shots from the last couple of months. click on the image to see a bigger version of it.

The camera makes a slight noise, and it sure has this fox's attention.

Two foxes tail to tail.

Showing off in the morning sunlight.

Yellow Cat and fox have a standoff. The cat is fearless with those weaponized paws, and the foxes give him wide berth.

Here he is again in the sunlight.

A young'un with his crooked tail held high. (Son of Old Crooked Tail?)

Ships passing in the day.

"Ho Hum! Can't a guy catch a nap around here?"

They sure do have great balance. He's walking on that little broken branch.

He's watching me change the camera memory card, and he doesn't like that one bit.

That's it for this Fox Friday. The last couple of weeks the foxes have been residing at another habitat where there's frequent lawn watering. But they'll be back eventually.

Tell us again how exactly is immigration helps the economy when so many are on welfare

Many economists contend that increased immigration is good for the economy in spite of the increased competition for jobs. The theory is that immigrants are consumers, and the increased demand for goods and services will have a positive effect on the economy. See previously on these pages: Finally, a plausible explanation of why increased immigration might not hurt local workers.

But the theory doesn't account for the increased demand for public services like welfare and health care. Most of us assume that illegal immigrants are taking advantage of any government largess they can get. But what about legal immigrants? Steven Camarota writes about that at Nationalreview.com. See It’s time to give preference to immigrants who are unlikely to use welfare programs:

We estimated that 49 percent of households headed by legal immigrants used one or more welfare programs in 2012, compared with 30 percent of households headed by the native-born. Legal immigrants have significantly higher use rates than native-born households overall and for cash programs, food programs, and Medicaid; use of housing programs is about the same as for natives. Among legal-immigrant households with children, the rate of welfare use is an astonishing 72 percent. There is no evidence that these numbers represent fraud; instead, they represent a profound problem with the selection criteria we use to admit legal immigrants.

The problem is the importation of uneducated, low skilled workers. Once they get to vote, they will probably vote for politicians who promise them more in the way of government benefits. That's bad for the economy and ultimately a threat to the country. Hence Mr. Camarota's premise: It’s time to give preference to immigrants who are unlikely to use welfare programs.

Meanwhile, President Obama plans to bring in 10,000 Syrian refugees next year. It's unlikely the government will utilize Mr. Camarota suggestions in selecting who gets in.

Deal for data strengthens NBC's goal of helping Democrats

Washington Examiner tells us about a new agreement between NBC and TargetSmart, a data mining company which was hired by the DNC in 2014 to help elect Democrats. See NBC partners with Dem political firm for 2016.

What does TargetSmart do? They're data miners. A Politico.com article calls it one of the most powerful engines of the Democratic Party’s data operation.

Here's TargetSmart's mission statement about their voter data base:

VoterBase is the nation’s market-leading national voter file, containing accurate contact information and voting information on over 191 million voters, and 58 million unregistered voting age consumers. Thousands of campaigns each year rely on VoterBase data to power their fundraising, research, and voter contact programs. And now, through VoterBase Digital, you can leverage the same powerful political data online and through addressable TV and reach voters in a truly integrated campaign across multiple mediums, consolidating online, offline, and addressable television advertising platforms.

That's about 250 million people in their data base. It might be interesting to see how NBC uses this information to manipulate voters. But that would require actually watching NBC.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is probably taking advantage of the service. So whenever we see her changing tack in her campaign we could guess that TargetSmart pulled up some info about her base that she should be addressing.

Juan Williams is worried that Black Lives Matter movement will hurt Dems

Juan Williams is a popular commentator on the Fox News show, Special Report with Bret Baier, because he can be relied on to express the Democrat position articulately but without reliance on false narratives.

He seems to have an inside track with the Obama administration. So one wonders if he's delivering the administration's line in Juan Williams: #BlackLivesMatter is playing with fire. Some excerpts:

When they interrupt Democrats running for the presidential nomination, such as Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, they are alienating longtime political allies and their supporters. When they videotape Hillary Clinton after she generously agrees to meet with them privately — in an apparent attempt to embarrass her — they are distancing themselves from the likely Democratic nominee. And imagine how local and state officials will react now to any request for a meeting with the group. ...

Lobby Congress, hold voter registration drives, quiz candidates on their plan for sentencing reform, but don’t heckle the candidates and incite violence by calling for cop-killing. The movement could be critical to securing and mobilizing black support for criminal justice reform that actually would improve black lives.

Mr. Williams seems to be trying to rein in the monster Obama created.

Previously, Obama, like Dr. Frankenstein, was smart enough to create a monster but not smart enough to control it.

This Labor Day let's celebrate the fact that no other economy in the world rewards workers like ours

The science is settled. See Study: No economy in the world rewards smart, skilled workers more than America’s. There, James Pethokoukis cites the abstract for Returns to Skills around the World: Evidence from PIAAC, to wit:

Eight countries, including all Nordic countries, have returns between 12 and 15 percent, while six are above 21 percent with the largest return being 28 percent in the United States. Estimates are remarkably robust to different earnings and skill measures, additional controls, and various subgroups. Intriguingly, returns to skills are systematically lower in countries with higher union density, stricter employment protection, and larger public-sector shares.

Pethokoukis makes this observation:

I find particularly interesting the finding that (a) the return to skills is highest in America and lowest in Nordic-land, and (b) returns are higher in economies with more open, private-sector based labor markets. Wouldn’t this seem to argue that higher US inequality — based on pre-tax, pre-transfer market incomes — reflects 21st century market forces rewarding ability rather than some sort of breakdown in social norms? If so, shouldn’t the policy response favor creating, as much as possible, a labor force better and more broadly capable of flourishing in this environment rather than artificially lowering the return to skills and America’s growth potential?

Yes and yes.

Then there's that pesky detail about the labor force participation rate stuck at 62.6 percent, a 38-year low. Little wonder that Donald Trump -- with his promise to create jobs -- has gained so much momentum.

Obama touts Thomas Jefferson's dinner for Tunisian ambassador knowing that ardent followers know as little about early America as he does

Karin McQuillan provides us all a good history lesson in Obama is right: 'Islam has always been part of America'.

She quotes a passage from an Obama speech in which he boasts that President Jefferson hosted a dinner for the Tunisian ambassador 200 years ago. Maybe he did that to justify his own efforts to mollify Muslims rulers in the Middle East.

In any event, Ms. McQuillan talks history. The early history of the U.S., the seas were fraught with danger. There was not much left of the U.S. Navy after the revolution. And the French, who agreed to protect American merchants, didn't do such a good job.

American ships were captured at sea by Middle Eastern Muslims, and the crews were either held for ransom or put into slavery. So yes, Islam was a part of America.

Thomas Jefferson was elected president, and he took action in The First Barbary War by taking the battle to Tripoli. Note this:

A turning point in the war came in 1805 at the Battle of Derna. on the US side was a combined force of 54 United States Marines and soldiers and something like 400 Arab, Greek and Berber mercenaries. This action was commemorated by the Marine Corps in the words "to the shores of Tripoli" in their hymn. The Marines wore leather around their necks as protection from sabers, leaving them with the name leathernecks.

The U.S. prevailed, and a treaty was signed.

Why would Obama want to bring up this sordid aspect America's relationship with Islamists? Perhaps because Obama subscribes to the version of history in which America was always in the wrong. Or maybe he assumes his followers don't know much about history.

Jay Nordlinger is right -- journalists should broadcast their political positions not try to hide them

It didn't come as any surprise to conservatives that Gwen Ifill succumbed to her affection for Obama. But the animosity toward Benjamin Netanyahu she displayed with her "Take that, Bibi" tweet went a little bit farther. She basically admitted that in a political controversy, she's on Obama's side.

Well yes, the PBS ombudsman criticized her for it. But if it changes anything, journalists will simply try a little harder to conceal their loyalties to Democrats.

Jay Nordlinger gets it right in About Gwen Ifill wherein he encouraged news figures to be open about their partisanship.

We should all know where they stand. They aren't fooling anyone, but when they try to hide it they are really hurting the true non-partisans among them, if there are any, because the default position among conservatives is to think they are all in the tank for today's progressives.

Someone made a suggestions years ago which I think is apt. Require all news people to donate $1,000 each year to a political party. Then publicize the information with a TV crawl under their faces or a footnote at the end of their articles so we all know where they are coming from.

No one likes a pretender.

Writer makes credible case for Hillary just being dumb

Bruce Walker makes the argument at Hillary May Just Be Dumb, and it would be hard to refute. She's never accomplished much on her own and appears to have got a lot of mileage riding on her husband's coattails. Anyway, read the whole thing for a refresher of what she's done.

She seemed not to understand what it meant to wipe a hard drive. Even her spokesperson doesn't understand the difference between "delete" and "wipe."

Meanwhile, the thing that strikes me most was that she seemed ignorant of even the most simple technology. One of the emails that was released has her replying to Huma's missive that her iPad had arrived suggesting a time when Huma could teach her how to use it. (Go here and click on the one titled HPAD dated 6/25/2010.)

I don't own an iPad, but I've heard that they're so simple that old timers in nursing homes master them with little effort. The Clinton's are so wealthy they'll probably be able to afford care givers, so Hillary won't likely end up in a nursing home unless Bill wants her out of the house. But her lack of ability to figure out simple instructions should concern Democrats.

 

Obama, like Dr. Frankenstein, was smart enough to create a monster but not smart enough to control it

This could apply to Obamacare, the Iran deal, or any number of Obama's monsters.

However, here I'm referring to the racism that has erupted during, and was encouraged, by the Obama administration. He has injected his opinion at every opportunity to charge racism against police. Each time, without exception, he took the side against the police. And in fact, he counseled and encouraged the "Hands up don't shoot" crowd in spite of the overwhelming evidence that contradicted their version of the events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown.

Now we're seeing weekly headlines about police officers being senselessly killed by some aggrieved black person. Obama didn't actually order the killings, but he abetted them with his encouragement of the various anti-police movements.

Recall the recent chant, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" as demonstrators shadowed police officers? Now they tell us it was that was just a joke. Ha ha. Some joke.

Oh, by the way. The story of Frankenstein didn't end well for the doctor. The monster, however, survived to make appearances in several sequels.

Breitbart writer points out Jorge Ramos' hypocrisy

How's this for a clever headline? Jorge Ramos Uses Wall… but Wants Open Borders for Y’all.

Senor Ramos got some attention in the conservative media recently because of the way he tried to barge into the queue instead of waiting his turn at a Donald Trump question and answer forum. Ramos is an ardent defender of illegal immigration, and the symbolism was rich.

Anyway, Patrick Courrielche penned the referenced article. And his point is that Ramos sends his children to an exclusive school that likely isn't available to the average anchor baby. Courrielche makes a point:

Mr. Ramos’ open border policy has an interesting side effect, though. It burdens our public schools with the children of illegal immigrants that pull resources from our kids – and disproportionately so in at-risk minority communities. In places like California, as much as 13.2% of K-12 public school students are children of illegal immigrants. This open border policy has likely dragged down our schools academically as well – helping pave the way for the federal government to intervene with hugely unpopular learning standards and standardized tests in a clumsy attempt to boost lagging test scores.

Coincidently, an open border has the added benefit of increasing Mr. Ramos’ potential TV audience. What a fantástico business model!

The (not so) funny thing is that Jorge Ramos actually shelters his kids from the effects of the very policy he so adamantly advocates. How, you may ask? Well, Mr. Ramos sends his kids to elite private schools, including a Miami preK-12 school with tuition that reaches above $30,000 a year per student. I think it’s fair to say most illegal immigrants aren’t footing that bill.

Well, everyone with a position on the border policy has a motive. Those wanting an open border are expecting some sort of gain, whether it's cheap labor or something as simple as more votes for Democrats. Those who want border security think there's something far bigger at stake. Elizabeth Price Foley sums it up nicely:

Any country (or federation of countries, as with the EU) that wishes to protect its sovereignty and citizens (which is the very purpose of government) must control its borders. It’s really that simple. While one cannot help but have empathy for those individuals fleeing economically or politically volatile countries, the solution is to help stabilize those countries, not tolerate ongoing massive, disruptive shifts in population, which only leads to destabilization of stable democracies (republics), which in turn, holds the potential to destabilize the world.

As someone else once said, if you open the borders of a prosperous nation you are welcoming that nation's future rulers.