Linkaround 5-7-2010

Just Michigan:

The Oakland Press: Orion marks National Day of Prayer
MLive: A new tactic for creating jobs in Michigan: 'Economic gardening' 
The Oakland Press: Protesters target BP along Woodward Avenue near 12 Mile Road. I was there and will post on it soon.
Warrendale (Detroit) Blog: Pension Protest. "The Michigan Legislature introduced bills last month that could potentially dismantle the City of Detroit’s two public pension funds and bring them under the management of a nonprofit trust based in Lansing. This move has been bitterly contested by the various labor unions that are served by those funds."
Michigan Taxes too Much:  PA 312 Forces Unreasonable Conditions Upon Community Management
The Detroit News: DHS workers protest labor conditions. "State employees are scheduled to hold a rally at noon today protesting work conditions marked by insufficient staffing." Translation: give us more money!
 

Real racism:

American Thinker: Dissonance and Victimhood. "Why are so many blacks willing to believe that the AIDS virus was invented by whites to exterminate them?" 
Freedom Works Action: Stop The Haters: Black Conservatives Respond

It's the economy, stupid!:

Business Insider: The "Real" Unemployment Rate Jumps To 17.1%. Minus the Enron accounting that is.
WSJ: Illinois Budget Woes Come to a Boil. "Illinois lawmakers were in disarray Thursday as they groped for stopgap measures to address a $13 billion deficit equaling nearly half of the state's general-fund revenue.
The state faces one of the nation's worst budget crises, spilled over in part from the broader national economic crunch, and its current bond ratings lag only California's. But the confusion in the legislature indicates that serious steps to fix state finances won't be taken until after the November elections—if then."
Doug Ross: It's the Obama Recovery! Removing Census Jobs and Other Chaff From Employment Numbers Reveals That Only 36K Jobs Were Added Last Month

Volokh Conspiracy: The Further Left You Are the Less You Know About Economics:

Some of the results in this new article by Zeljka Buturovic and Dan Klein in Econ Journal Watch (a peer-reviewed journal of economics) are startling:

• 67% of self-described Progressives believe that restrictions on housing development (i.e., regulations that reduce the supply of housing) do not make housing less affordable.
• 51% believe that mandatory licensing of professionals (i.e., reducing the supply of professionals) doesn’t increase the cost of professional services.
• Perhaps most amazing, 79% of self-described Progressive believe that rent control (i.e., price controls) does not lead to housing shortages.

Note that the questions here are not whether the benefits of these policies might outweigh the costs, but the basic economic effects of these policies.

Hollywood:

NewsBusters: Actress Scarlett Johansson Gushes She's Drunk the 'Kool-Aid' of 'Amazing' Obama
Big Hollywood: Whoopi Says Without Abortion Parents Just Kill Kids Later. "Goldberg attempted to explain why she supports abortion. It’s because, you see, if parents can’t kill their kids in utero she thinks parents will just kill their kids later on in their lives." Good grief.
Wizbang: Another Hollywood Hypocrite. "...the last few times I saw her interviewed she talked about her husband, Dario Franchitti -- the race car driver. She attends the races and supports him. I don't know much about Judd,but I do know that much. I just don't get it. Is Judd so clueless that she doesn't see how hypocritical it is to talk about her carpooling when her husband is burning all that oil running around and around a track? Or does she just assume no one in the media will call her out on it?"
Yahoo! News: World's biggest beaver dam discovered in northern Canada

Media matters:

American Power: You Can't Be Serious! Elisabeth Hasselbeck Forced to Apologize for Tame Erin Andrews Joke?
Gateway Pundit: Andrew Breitbart: “The Left Is, in Essence, The Media”
Dan Riehl: The GOP, Twitter And Social Media
A for P: Why is Net Neutrality Bad?

Miscellaneous:

Nice Deb: Jason “Crash The Tea Party” Levin Still Blaming “Teabaggers” For Time Square Bomb
AP via The Detroit News: 'Twilight' effect? Isabella top name for girls; Jacob No. 1 for boys
The Politico: Facebook turns on Sarah Palin. "Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin's endorsement of Carly Fiorina in California's Senate race has prompted a fervent blowback on her Facebook page, long Palin's safe haven for delivering her message. The revolt is coming from Palin supporters who also back Chuck DeVore — a tea party favorite who is campaigning against Fiorina in the Republican primary."
Lew Rockwell: Render Unto Caesar:A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage. From Kathy Hoekstra on FB: As Dorothy Day is reputed to have said, "If we rendered unto God all ...the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar."
Fausta's Blog: So easy, even a caveman could do it

related at Story Balloon: Humans And Neanderthals Interbred.

Popsci via Instapundit: The Internal Combustion Engine Is Not Dead
LA Times: Al Franken takes over the U.S. Senate floor to explain a newspaper cartoon to the waiting nation
American Thinker: OK to Celebrate the National Day of Prayer the Obama Way? "The National Day of Prayer was designated by the US Congress as the first Thursday in May, and approved by President Truman in 1952.  President Obama completely ignored this year's observance on May 6, just as he did during his first year in office in 2009."
Big Government:The American Promise-Our First Principles. "In 1831, a French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville’s recognized how different America’s infant democracy was from other democratic republics. He issued warnings to our young republic, “One also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom”. De Tocqueville continued, “…when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power”."
John Hawkins:  Polling Conservative Bloggers On The Arizona Immigration Law, Illegals, & Legal Immigration
The Other McCain: Austerity Measures Cause Unrest

Just for laughs: 

NewsBusted 5/7/10:

HotAir: Comedy gold: Stock market “webinar” freaks out during Wall Street crash

The Right Scoop: Open Thread 

The Troglopundit: Current Favorite Picture

Ann Arbor schools teaching institutional racism, 'whiteness', ban white students from field trip as a result - Part 3

This is the 3rd in an ongoing series regarding outright apartheid in Ann Arbor schools in Michigan where white children were banned from a field trip to see a NASA astronaut. In part 1 (Ann Arbor elementary school bans white students from field trip, principal defends discrimination), I simply laid out the facts of this sad episode. The principal of the elementary school that spearheaded the discrimination defended it saying, in part:

“as I reflect upon the look of excitement, enthusiasm and energy that I saw in these children’s eyes as they stood in the presence of a renowned African American rocket scientist in a very successful position, it gave the kids an opportunity to see this type of achievement is possible for even them.

“It was not a wasted venture for I know one day they might want to aspire to be the first astronaut or scientist standing on the Planet Mars.

White students apparently wouldn't get the same inspiration?

“The intent of our field trip was not to segregate or exclude students as has been reported, but rather to address the societal issues, roadblocks and challenges that our African American children will face as they pursue a successful academic education here in our community.”

Yet he did exactly that. Worse yet, when the black children came back to school the other students booed them, and instead of seeing the racist error of his way, Madison scolded the booing children for more than an hour bringing some to tears, including a Muslim girl who said she had experienced discrimination. In part 2 (Ann Arbor elementary school bans white students from field trip, principal defends discrimination - Part 2), I pointed out that Michigan passed proposal 2 in 2006 that barred school districts from discriminating on the basis of race, gender, or other factors. Now, it turns out that the effort to install racism in the curriculum started in 2004 with the hiring of a consultant - Pacific Educational Group. Turns out, there is a lot of info on the PEG out there and none of it good. From Ann Arbor.com: Ann Arbor school district looking into legality and principal's actions in black-only field trip

District administrators said the intent of the program was to work in a mentoring relationship with black students to help boost their achievement. They said it was part of the district’s work to combat the achievement gap, which in Ann Arbor is commonly referred to in terms of the difference in test scores, grade-point average, discipline and graduation rates between white and black students.

Much of that work is being led by a consultant, Glenn Singleton, and his Pacific Educational Group. The district has been employing the company since the 2004-05 school year and has paid it $341,000 so far, Roberts said.

The PEG is a racist organization and Glenn Singleton is a racist bigot. I dug around and there is no shortage of information on this group, or on Singleton. From Open Market back in 2007: Embarrass Your Employer, While Getting Rich Off of “Diversity” Scams

Glenn Singleton of Pacific Educational Group has become a rich man by preaching racism, hate, and scapegoating. School systems hire him for hundreds of thousands of dollars to insult and scapegoat teachers and students based on their race under the guise of “diversity training.” That embarrasses the school systems that hire him in high-profile legal cases. Yet foolish school superintendents continue to hire him at exorbitant rates, as the Discriminations blog notes, citing a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Previously, Singleton embarrassed the Seattle Schools. In 2002, they hired him to indoctrinate their students and staff about racism. As a result, they redefined racism consistent with Singleton’s extreme and radical beliefs. The Seattle Schools defined “individualism” as a form of “cultural racism,” said that only whites can be racist, and claimed that planning ahead (”future time orientation”) is a white characteristic that it is racist to expect minorities to exhibit.

Singleton promotes the basest racial stereotypes, such as claiming that “’white talk’ is ‘verbal, impersonal, intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented,’ while ‘color commentary’ is ‘nonverbal, personal, emotional’ and ‘process-oriented.’” He also blathers about “the ubiquity of white privilege and racism,” and depicts Asian students as being “majority students” just like whites because they have the temerity to succeed academically in a predominantly white society. But although he views minority culture as not being “intellectual” and “task-oriented,” it is white teachers whom he blames for the underperformance of many minority students, since he claims it would be a “racist statement” to place any responsibility for minority underperformance on minorities themselves.

Singleton’s rantings would have passed unnoticed had it not been for the legal challenge to the Seattle Schools’ use of race in student assignment. Lower courts had upheld their use of race, and the case was pending before the Supreme Court, which had the option of declining to review the case without comment, as it had more than a dozen prior cases involving the use of race by public schools in student assignment.

But then Seattle’s bizarre and racist definitions of racism, closely tracking Singleton’s own extreme beliefs, came to my attention. At my suggestion, the widely-read Volokh Conspiracy law blog, which has been cited in federal appellate court opinions, and is read by Supreme Court clerks, publicized those definitions on May 17, 2006 (citing me), and shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court, which had previously held over the case for discussion, decided to review it. The Seattle Schools, embarrassed by public ridicule, took down the Singleton-influenced definitions of racism, which I used to urge the Supreme Court to hear the case.

In June 2007, the Supreme Court struck down Seattle’s use of race, and 4 of the 9 justices cited Seattle’s wacky, Singleton-influenced, definitions of racism in the course of their opinions. Justice Thomas, for example, cited those definitions as an object lesson in why not to defer to school districts when they use race. I filed the brief that brought those wacky definitions to the Supreme Court’s attention; it was one of the few amicus briefs filed in the case that opposed Seattle’s use of race. As a result of losing the case, Seattle is expected to pay more than a million dollars in attorneys fees to the lawyers who challenged its use of race.

Despite greatly embarrassing the Seattle School District, which hired him, Singleton continues to be hired by school superintendents to preach his weird message of racism and scapegoating. The Greenwich, Connecticut schools have hired him as a diversity consultant. So, too, has Jack O’Connell, California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, who has hired Singleton and given him the opportunity to scapegoat white teachers for the poor performance of some minority students. And so has a Colorado school district that gave Singleton a “six-figure consulting contract.” Singleton has received hundreds of thousands of dollars to barrage a captive audience with racism and hate. Yet he thinks he’s oppressed!

That's a pretty good roundup. Here another snippet regarding yet another CA school district: Good riddance, Pacific Educational Group — now let's be choosy about a replacement

The Lodi Unified School District's decision not to renew the Pacific Educational Group's consulting contract is the correct one.

The two columns I wrote about the organization's accusatory, guilt-laden approach to what the Pacific Educational Group calls "equity" might have had some influence. Many district teachers told me that my critical articles expressed their own disgruntled feelings toward the consultants. And I know too that since interim superintendent Len Casanega announced that LUSD "will have a different approach," no teacher I know has expressed any regrets about the change of direction. Their collective sentiment is "good riddance."

That's a pretty common sentiment out there in the blogosphere. Local radio personally Frank Beckmann of 760 AM Detroit interviewed Todd Roberts, the Ann Arbor School Superintendent, who ended up obfuscated and dodging Frank's questions regarding the black-only field trio and the PEG:

Previously:
Ann Arbor elementary school bans white students from field trip, principal defends discrimination - Part 2
Ann Arbor elementary school bans white students from field trip, principal defends discrimination
Cal School District Segregating Students By Race! Call it "Heritage Assemblies"
"Disproportionate Representation" in Special Ed?
Teaching racism

Video of Pelosi: Cheaper to Treat Teens for Drug Use Than "Interdict Drugs at Border"

The majority of drugs coming into the US are from Mexico, and instead of sealing the border, which the federal government has a constitutional responsibility to do and has subsequently abdicated that very responsibility leading to states like Arizona having to enforce the federal statutes, Pelosi is arguing on fiscal responsibility grounds - grounds which she has yet to step foot in - that it's cheaper to teat the effect than the cause. And here I though Democrats were for preventative medicine that goes after the cause rather than the effect. Here's the dimmest bulb in the House essentially arguing against protecting the border:

CNS News asked this question that prompted Pelosi's response: “Are you committed to sealing the border against the influx of illegal drugs from Mexico and, if so, do you have a target date in mind for getting that done?”

By all accounts, it would take roughly $4 billion to build a fence across the entire span between the US and Mexico and secure the boarder. Even if the costs would be four times that, it's simply a drop in the well compared to what Obama is spending. Our monthly deficit is around $100 billion. Fact is, our political class doesn't want the boarder sealed, and they are running out of excuses as to why they don't.

Reprint of The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, slapped with a WARNING LABEL: "This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today..."

Good grief. You read that headline right. Check out this warning label:

© Wilder Publications 2008

This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.

Its not a work of fiction but rather a reprint of the US Constitution,  Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation. From The Volokh Conspiracy via Instapundit:

The language is apparently boilerplate from the publisher, and appears on (among other things) The Wind in the Willows, The Federalist Papers, Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (good idea, there, especially as to “interpersonal relations,” though have views really changed so much since then?), and Marx & Engels’ Manifesto of the Communist Party.

The Federalist Papers too? Ugh...

Video of Pelosi: 'Thank God for the Nuns' Who Helped Pass a 'Life-Affirming' Health Care Bill

From a rabidly pro-abort Democrat, these words are sickening and twisted:

This woman has a truly depraved mind, and has been given over to it. A bill that will mandate federally-funded abortion is life-affirming? She's out of her mind. That's just plain sick. Then again, that's nothing new either. From CNS News:

In a statement following passage of the bill, the head of the USCCB, Cardinal Francis George, wrote: “(F)or whatever good this law achieves or intends, we as Catholic bishops have opposed its passage because there is compelling evidence that it would expand the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion. The statute appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion, and it provides federal subsidies for health plans covering elective abortions. …

“Many in Congress and the Administration, as well as individuals and groups in the Catholic community, have repeatedly insisted that there is no federal funding for abortion in this statute and that strong conscience protection has been assured. Analyses that are being published separately show this not to be the case, which is why we oppose it in its current form.

“As bishops of the Catholic Church, we speak in the name of the Church and for the Catholic faith itself.”

Pelosi is another one of those supposedly Catholic politicians that support abortion as well as a plethora of policies that are diametrically counter to biblical teaching. John Rosenberg over at discriminations recently commented on the Catholic liberal politician:

In several posts over the years I have painted a critical (and, to me, depressing) picture of a parade of liberal Catholic politicians struggling to reconcile the pro-life dictates of their faith with the pro-choice demands of their party. These attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable were uniformly unsuccessful, sometimes pathetically so, and thus it is not too much to say — and I have either said it or strongly implied it — that in each case these politicians remained loyal acolytes of their Church ... while changing churches from Catholic to Democrat.

That's about as good of a description as I have seen yet.

Previously on Pelosi:   

Pelosi on ObamaCare: "It’s like the back of the refrigerator. You see all these wires and the rest. All you need to know is, you open the door. The light goes on."

Audio of Michael Savage: Power Hungry Nancy Pelosi Steamrolling the Constitution

Video of Pelosi: Health Reform "Model" For Future Reform Efforts

With Video: Pro-abort Pelosi prays to St Joseph to pass pro-abort ObamaCare bill

Video of CNN's Jack Cafferty: Pelosi 'Beyond Sleazy' For Endorsing Slaughter Solution

Video of Pelosi: Health-Care Reform Will Finally Allow Artists to Focus on Being Comfortably Unemploye

Video of Nancy Pelosi: “We Have to Pass Our Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It”

Video: Nancy Pelosi's abortion lie exposed 

Video: Another Pelosi Lie At ObamaCare Summit: "no public funding of abortion in these bills" 

Video of Pelosi on ObamaCare: It’s not a healthcare reform bill, it’s a jobs bill! 

Lying sack of botox! Declassified documents prove Pelosi was indeed briefed on waterboarding and approved! 

Pelosi: Pres. Obama’s misguided economic policies have failed to create jobs... worst record since President Hoover 

Report: U.S. Military Serving as Chauffeurs, Babysitters for Pelosi's Kids 

Your drink's on us! Taxpayers pay $101,000 for Pelosi's in-flight 'food, booze' 

MI Rep. Gary Peters (D) On Pelosi Coming To Detroit Auto Show: “completely clueless” about the auto industry 

Pelosi compared Michigan to undeveloped plantation before coming to the auto show 

CNN Überliberal Jack Cafferty on Nancy Pelosi: "what a horrible woman!" 

Pelosi On Jail For No Healthcare: "The Legislation Is Very Fair ," Legislation A Christmas Gift! 

Pelosi can't answer question of constitutionality of healthcare mandates, claims such questions are not serious! 

Video: Nancy Pelosi Worries About Tea Protest Violence. Chokes Up. Likens It To What Killed Harvey Milk 

Serial Liar Nancy Pelosi To Try And Punish Truthteller Joe Wilson

Video: Nancy Pelosi To Protesters In 2006: "I Love Disruptors!
Video: Nancy Pelosi On Taxes - "Everything Is On The Table!"
CIA Director Leon Panetta To Pelosi: "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
Video: Pelosi Admits Politics More Important Than National Security
Breaking Video: Pelosi - "The CIA Lied About Waterboarding"
Jon Stewart Skewers Pelosi On Waterboarding
What Democrat Rule Has Wought
WSJ: The Politics of Liberal Amnesia
Nancy Pelosi on Waterboarding - Summed Up in 5 Seconds
U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra on Pelosi on Waterboarding
Malkin Slams Pelosi For Tea Party Smear
Nancy Pelosi Workout Video: Sweating to the Socialists
The Democrat Blame Game Over AIG
Pelosi: Enforcing Immigration Laws "un-American!"
Queen Pelosi Living the High Life
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - National Edition
Pope Benedict meets blinking eyes, deaf ears
Why not to trust the village idiot
Pelosi: "500 MILLION AMERICANS LOSE JOBS EVERY MONTH"
If you want a good laugh this morning, read this:
The worst non-answer answer I have ever seen
Pelosi: BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMY!!!

Los BS: CA Students Kicked Out of School For Wearing American Flag Shirts on Cinco de Mayo, TX student suspended for Removing MEXICAN Flag

A first-hand account from one of the students in California:

From NBC Bay Area via Gateway Pundit:

On any other day at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Daniel Galli and his four friends would not even be noticed for wearing T-shirts with the American flag. But Cinco de Mayo is not any typical day especially on a campus with a large Mexican American student population.

Galli says he and his friends were sitting at a table during brunch break when the vice principal asked two of the boys to remove American flag bandannas that they wearing on their heads and for the others to turn their American flag T-shirts inside out. When they refused, the boys were ordered to go to the principal’s office.

“They said we could wear it on any other day,” Daniel Galli said, “but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it’s supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today.”

The boys said the administrators called their T-shirts “incendiary” that would lead to fights on campus.

They said if we tried to go back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended,” Dominic Maciel, Galli’s friend, said.

The boys really had no choice, and went home to avoid suspension.

Which, basically, is what a suspension is. It's not just California. This form of political correctness works its way through our public indoctrination centers schools in every state no matter how red. From KTRH in Texas via drudge: Local School Suspends Student for Removing MEXICAN Flag

Yesterday, a listener’s son was offended that his school, Klein Collins High School, displayed the Mexican flag prominently. His mother called to complain, and the school wouldn’t return her call. The student took the sign down.

The school pitched a fit, reviewed the surveillance tapes, found the student, and suspended him for 3 days. AND he has to pay for the flag. In light of the SF story of students sent home for wearing the AMERICAN flag because it offended the Hispanic students, I thought you’d like to know about a story closer to home.

Not even in Texas are students safe from multicultural indoctrination by liberal busy bodies. There is only one culture here - the American culture.

UPDATE: Another video via Instapundit:  “I never thought I’d be on national TV for wearing an American flag shirt.” “What seems to elude people in this incident is that everyone has the right to express themselves on every day of the year in the US, and that ’some people may be offended’ is no just cause for censorship.”

Rotarians to staff Detroit's Center For Adults Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too

How bad is Detroit's public indoctrination education system? 33% of working-age adults, and 44% of all adults, read below the 6th grade level. That amounts to about 300,000 people. Not good enough to 'graduate' from elementary school. 60% of students entering community colleges need to take remedial courses.That's about the state of public education. And yet, the politicians that are supposed to look out for Detroit are instead continuing to trap children in that school system that insures failure more than anything else, instead of fighting for a full voucher system that will let them go to private schools not under the iron fist of the teacher's unions.

Thus as a 'solution' the bobbleheads in Detroit are expanding 'education' to cover the huge chunk of the population who can't read good and wanna to do other stuff good too. It will of course be run by the same incompetent boobs that have run Detroit Public Schools (DPS) into the ground and then some. But there is one silver lining - adults who can't read good and wanna to do other stuff good too may get teachers imported from somewhere - anywhere - outside Detroit. 6 metro-Detroit chapters of the Rotary Club have pledged some 3,000 volunteers. From The Detroit Free Press: Rotarians mobilize to aid adult literacy

Six metro Detroit Rotary Clubs have pledged 3,000 volunteer tutors over three years to help adults improve their reading -- all part of a massive new effort to improve literacy across southeast Michigan ... designed to eventually help most of the more than 300,000 residents 16 and older in Detroit who read below a sixth-grade level.

Over the next year, the Rotarians plan to not only recruit the first volunteers, but to encourage Rotarians across the state and in Ontario to also sign up. The project also plans to reach 800,000 people through televised tutorial sessions on WHPR 33.

The center for adults who can't read good and wanna to do other stuff good too will be housed in a wing of the Detroit Public Library that it is hoped will expand to be just one of hundreds of reading centers to dot southeast Michigan to make up for the corrupt public school system that children are shackled to. And believe you me that taxpayer money will be made available for the endeavor. In fact, U.S. Rep. John "too many white people on your staff" Conyers attended a meeting with Rotary officials and  pledged help to find federal funding for the effort. So Detroit's center for adults who can't read good and wanna to do other stuff good too is in the best of hands? I'm not holding my breath...

Change! Unemployment increases to 9.9%

The unemployment rate in April rose to 9.9% even as jobs were added for the first time in a long time due largely to census worker hiring (which will only be temporary). Being that the unemployment rate is still essentially 10%, recall that Obama rammed through his stimulus boondoggle to keep unemployment from going into the double digits:

How's that stimulus working out for you all? Here is what has been happening with Biden's 3-letter word last year:

January US jobs lost: 598,000 jobs
February US jobs lost: 706,000 jobs
March US jobs lost: 742,000 jobs
April US jobs lost: 545,000 jobs
May US jobs lost: 345,000 jobs
June US jobs lost: 467,000 jobs
July US jobs lost: 247,000 jobs
August US jobs lost: 216,000 jobs
September US jobs lost: 263,000 jobs
October US jobs lost: 190,000 jobs
November US jobs lost: 11,000 jobs
December US jobs lost: 85,000 jobs
January US jobs lost: 20,000
February US jobs lost: 30,000
March US jobs lost: -162,000
April US jobs lost: -290,000

Total US jobs lost under Obama: 4,013,000 jobs

4+ million fewer jobs to lose, and that's neglecting the corrections that were made to the jobs numbers from last year that showed even bigger losses. Recall that the stimulus package was supposed to stop the unemployment rate at 8%! A crisis could become a calamity? Remember that? Here's how that looks (via Michael's Comments):

Note that the blue lines are the numbers that Obama's team came up with. So the actual unemployment rate is not only worse that what would happen with porkulus, but even worse than was predicted without it. And the jobs picture:

From the AP, which went with only the positive news in the headline, via The Detroit News: Employers add 290,000 jobs in April

Employers stepped up job creation in April, expanding payrolls by 290,000, the most in four years. The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as people streamed back into the market looking for work.

That's a curious sentence, no? The jobless rate rose as people streamed back into the market? But that's how Enron-style unemployment accounting works. Those that fall off unemployment roles are not counted. A chunk of those jobs increases, however, were not in the private sector:

The government says the hiring of 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census helped overall payroll growth last month.

MI Democrats fighting to guarantee state employee union healthcare for life!

Michigan did a good thing more than a decade ago in switching state employees from defined pension benefits to defined contributions. That was for new hires as those already hired continue with the pensions. The only state group that wasn't switched was the teachers, which tells you exactly how much power state teacher's unions have in this state. Pensions are unsustainable by their very nature.

Now by the Michigan State Constitution pensions are guaranteed, which has let politicians and unions basically screw the taxpayers for whatever they wanted. Healthcare benefits, however, are not guaranteed and it is on this front that major cost savings can be had. Most union employees right now get full healthcare benefits when they retire, thus incentivizing them to retire as early as age 50 with full benefits at taxpayer expense. Thus, state Democrats are trying now to make healthacre in retirement guaranteed also. That drive to utterly bankrupt the state comes with a bill that is supposed to actually save money by incentivizing teachers to retire early. From The Detroit Free Press: Granholm wades into school pension standoff. The GOP-led Senate is actually moving the ball in the direction of reform, with these changes:

· School employees with at least 30 years of service and at age 55 could retire with a slightly higher pension. They would use a multiplier of 1.6% to calculate their monthly pensions with age and years of service. The current multiplier is 1.5%

· Those with a combined age and years of service of 80 years could retire using a 1.55% multiplier.

· The 3% retirement payments would go into a new trust fund.

· Charter schools would not be required to join the retirement system.

· Private contractors in schools – bus drivers, food service, custodians – would not pay into the retirement system.

· Future retirees would have to reach age 60 for full benefits, with no cost of living increases.

That last one is a biggie, and is essentially the stick behind the carrot at the top of the list. But that's not good enough for Democrats. They'll agree to the above which will save the state millions, but only at the cost of this which will cost a whole lot more than the above will save:

House Democrats have insisted on wording along with the trust fund that guarantees retirees health care coverage for life. Senate Republicans oppose that written guarantee.

If you want to know what breaking the bank looks like in political terms, that's about it. One takeaway from this article is that everyone from union member to politician knows that healthcare benefits are not sustainable and will have to be cut. That's precisely why the Democrats are making their push now, and precisely why the GOP needs to resist any such effort for the sake of fiscal sanity. The savings from the GOP plan amounts to about $680 million this next fiscal year, and more than $3 billion over the next 10, assuming half the eligible employees take the carrot and avoid the stick.

Linkaround 5-6-2010

Google noted the National Day of Prayer today:

You know - you have to have faith that there's something there... If you haven't prayed yet, please do so today, and especially for our country.

Just Michigan:

Nolan Finley: The 'Nerd' is going rogue in governor race. "...sources say (Rick Snyder) bombed in his interview two weeks ago with Business Leaders of Michigan, formerly Detroit Renaissance, which is endorsing candidates for the first time this year. ... Specifically, committee members cited his answer to a question about how he would build consensus with the Legislature to pass his agenda. Snyder, a source says, replied that if lawmakers don't back his reforms, "he will hold daily press conferences and publicly call them out.""
Detroit News: Teach for America returns to Detroit schools. Against the teacher's union's wishes.
Ann Arbor.com: Tempers flare as DDA votes to hand over $2 million to Ann Arbor with no strings attached. "Mayor John Hieftje was accused of having a conflict of interest today, along with City Council Member Sandi Smith, because they both earn paychecks from the city and were voting on a $2 million transfer of DDA funds to the city."
motorcitytimes:  Oil And Gas Drilling In Michigan 
Detroit News: Michigan auto supplier abandons pension plans. I have said it a gazillion times but dinosaur pensions need to be done away with and subsequently put up in the Smithsonian.

It's the economy, stupid!:'

Ace of Spades: BREAKING: Stock Markets Crashing. It rebounded but was at one point down by more than 1,000.
related at CNBC: Stock Selloff May Have Been Triggered by a Trader Error 
Doug Ross: Moody's: Debt 'Contagion' Could Infect U.S. In as Little as 3 Years. My guess is it won't take that long.
Fox Business Network: Judging the Stock Selloff

Gulf OilGate:

Big Government: Salazar’s Message to Interior Employees Says Much. "In an e-mail message to employees two weeks after an explosion rocked BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar continued parroting the Obama Administration lines about “being on the job from Day One” and about BP being responsible."
moonbattery: Moonbats to Sop Up Oil Spill With Hair. Also this: Moonbats Will Use Meditation to Stop Oil Leak
Fox Business Network: Oil Spill Moves Closer to Shore

ObamaCare:

HotAir: Medical device makers mull layoffs after ObamaCare
Detroit News: Obamacare promises already busted. "The ink was barely dry on President Obama's signature before the RAND Corporation released a report concluding that not only would the hard-won health care package fail to curb premium increases, but the bill would drive premiums up as much as 17 percent for young people. This should not have been a surprise: the Congressional Budget Office had already warned that the bill would do almost nothing to reduce future premium hikes. ... In addition, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies reports that half of seniors enrolled in the Medicare Advantage program will lose their coverage under that program and be forced back into traditional Medicare." DUH!
A Conservative Teacher:  Obamacare Creates Thousands of New Jobs. All public sector.
Gateway Pundit: Top Corporations Announce They Will Likely Give Up Health Care Coverage
related at HotAir:Shocker: Major corporations may dump health insurance, pay penalties instead

Media matters:

American Power: The Country Will Be Better Off Without Newsweek
John Hawkins: The Best Quotes From Mark Steyn's 2009 Columns (51 Quotes). "The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it. We now have a government offering trillion-dollar rewards for bad behavior to the financial system, to the housing market, to the auto unions, and to individual voters."
The Other McCain: On Conservative Journalism. "Matthew Yglesia is a blogger, not a reporter, at Think Progress — edited by former DNC researcher and Democratic congressional aide Faiz Shakir — which is on the tab of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta. Despite these stubborn facts, Yglesias feels entitled to gloat — over and over — that conservative journalists are a bunch of sold-out hacks too stupid to do reporting. "
American Power: The Manchurian President: New Book Exposes Obama's Radical Past

You can order the book through Amazon:

Miscellaneous:

Bible, Math, politics and more: How's This for Public Shame? Another IRS story...
Hall of Record:  EPA Fights Economic Recovery
Villainous Company: It's Called "Due Process", Dana. "Whatever Dana Milbank has been snorting lately, I want some. It appears to be powerful stuff."

Nice Deb: Video: The Nashville Flood You’ve Heard So Little About

Ace of Spades: Kids Sent Home From School For Wearing American Flag T-Shirts On Cinco de Mayo. "It was insensitive to Mexican-American students (though the part after the hyphen is questionable. Yeah, I just questioned their patriotism, to American at least). "
Big Government: Rep. Andre Carson: Tea Party Protesters Are ‘One of the Largest Threats to our Internal Security’. By internal security he means his own job security and that of his fellow Democrats.

American Thinker: Nashville devastation downplayed by media. "Maybe we need Sean Penn to boat around down there to get someone to pay attention." President Obama doesn't care about southern white people.
Big Government: President ‘Tea Bagger’ Owes Grandma An Apology. "Just so we understand the ground rules here: 1) calling a Progressive Democrat a Socialist is bad; 2) Calling “Tea Party” protesters “Tea Baggers” is A-OKAY."
Don Surber: Byrd sells out state

Reason TV: Do Vaccines Cause Autism?

An interesting video that I saw over at Reason TV on YouTube, with one lacking key bit of information (more on that later):

The one lacking key piece of information? The correlation between stem cells from aborted babies in the vaccines and autism. I had this shocking post just a couple of weeks ago: EPA Study Confirms Link Between Autism and Use of Cells From Abortions in Vaccines. A couple of snippets:

A new study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency shows a correlation between the use of cells from babies in abortions in vaccines to an increase in autism rates. ...

The study, published in February in the publication Environmental Science & Technology, confirms 1988 as a “change point” in the rise of Autism Disorder rate.

...The 1988 date is significant because ... the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute indicates that's when the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices added a second dose of the MMR vaccine, containing fetal cells from aborted babies, to its recommendations.

Now note that the study says 'correlation' which doesn't necessarily mean causation. But you wonder why it's not being mentioned more often as a possibility precisely because of the correlation. What we have here is the possibility that virus-laden aborted baby DNA is wreaking havoc on our children's DNA. There is one other possibility as well, one that I have considered for some time, and that is that we are de-evolving; that is, that genetic errors are becoming more prevalent with every proceeding generation consistent with the demand that order naturally decays into disorder via the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, a law that I have touched on in this blog many times. Other than the fact that we have accumulated knowledge over the generations, and our nutritional environment has increased significantly as a result, we are getting dumber as individual persons in the human race, not smarter. We have more people alive today than all of human history combined, yet there are no Einsteins, or Maxwell Planks, or Isaac Newtons. Just a thought...

NAACP Opposes Bill To Outlaw Racially Motivated Abortions!

“The great irony is that abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of” - Dr. Alveda King, niece of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ironically, the NAACP is showing its true colors here. Not black. Not colored. But a deep blue. As in liberal. The National Organization of Women (NOW) is not pro-women but rather pro-liberal women. Similarly, the NAACP is not the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People but rather the National Association for the Advancement of liberal Colored People. The AARP isn't really for seniors either. They are yet another satellite of the liberal movement and thus the Democrat Party. In fact, they threw seniors under the bus simply because they can make a profit selling supplemental insurance to seniors who will be denied care when their medicare will deny treatment based on the $500 million cut in the Obamacare bill. Organizations like these and many others show their true colors when they viciously attack those that they proclaim to support, and issues . The NAACP viciously attacked Clarence Thomas when he went up for the SCOTUS. And NOW viciously attacked Sarah Palin when she was announced to be the VP candidate of McCain. Further along this thread is the issues these organizations support.

In Georgia, a bill was introduced that would make it illegal to perform and abortion simply because of the race of the baby. Besides personhood amendments in states like Colorado and Nebraska, Oklahoma has specifically banned abortions based on gender. Gender-based abortion has led to a societal time-bomb in places like China (Nepal is following that lead) that now has a shortage of 35 million females as a result. So banning abortion based on gender is the next frontier of restrictions on what should be outright unconstitutional action anyway (abortion violates equal protection rights of the baby under the 14th amendment of the US Constitution). Fact is that organizations like Planned Parenthood were set up specifically to eradicate the black race. In Detroit, 81% black, writers in the MSM are lamenting the low birth rate and ignorant of the number of abortions there (Irony: Pro-abort Rochelle Riley laments low birth rate in Detroit putting the city at risk). Last November I wrote this post that basically tells you why the racial angle is being considered in regards to abortion: Abortion Is The New Racism: Kills More Black Americans Than the Seven Leading Causes of Death - COMBINED

With that backdrop, John Rosenberg of the blog discriminations, IMO the one person that formulates the most complete, logical arguments regarding discrimination that I have ever read, gets into the Georgia bill and the NAACP:

...last winter Georgia Right to Life put up billboards all over the state claiming that black children are an “endangered species, ” and SB 529 was introduced, a bill that made it a criminal offense to perform an abortion

(2) With the intent to prevent an unborn child from being born based upon the race, color, or gender of the unborn child or the race or color of either parent of that unborn child; (3) With the actual knowledge that the pregnant woman is seeking the abortion with the intent to prevent an unborn child from being born based upon the race, color, or gender of the unborn child or the race or color of either parent of that unborn child;.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Georgia NAACP endorsed the bill, but now the NAACP has withdrawn its support. Edward DuBose, chapter president, issued a statement explaining the NAACP reversal:

Earlier this month, the Georgia NAACP submitted a letter to support Senate Bill 529. We now fully understand the intention of this legislation and wish to retract our support for it. 

At the time, we were of the understanding that this bill would work to benefit the women in our community. However, after many conversations with membership and constituents, we now realize that this is nothing more than using women’s health as a political tool.

Women of color in Georgia need more than divisive messages and deserve better access to health care.

John doesn't see how "how prohibiting racially motivated abortions is “a divisive message.” " Nor do I. John also isn't sure that "there actually were any abortions performed with a race-based intent," but I beg to differ on this one point. Organizations like Planned Parenthood were specifically tasked with aborting what they considered to be "undesirables," and the black population was right in their cross-hairs. Here in Michigan, Planned Parenthood has strategically located their butcher shops in Detroit, Warren, Jackson, Lansing, East Lansing, Livonia, Ypsilanti, and are now eyeballing Pontiac. All of these locations are close to large minority populations. Funny that you never see their "health care" facilities in affluent suburbs. You don't have to go too far back in historical research to learn that Planned Parenthood was set up by Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist and disciple of the false god Molech, for the express purpose of elimination of what she considered "undesireables," a point recently admitted to by one Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The black community was target numero uno for Sanger:

Thus the intent in the bigger scale of things. Speaking of, recall that January 22, 1972 is the day where our very own Supreme Court took it upon itself to legislate murder-on-demand into law out of whole cloth. Never mind that that in itself is unconstitutional. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence points to life as the highest of unalienable rights. That decision has so poisoned the country that the appointment of SCOTUS justices now must go through a Roe v Wade litmus test.

Now the supremes have made other egregious decisions in the past when a majority of the court is packed with activists. Even so, Roe v Wade has resulted in the death of more than 50 million children (the population of the U.S. would be about 400-425 million right now had it not been for RvW, and we probably would have a better economy and wouldn't be as worried about the imminent collapse of social security and Medicare). Some of those people may have found a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cheap alternative energy, or other contributions to humanity large and small. Who's to know if a Mozart or Bach, Michelangelo or Shakespeare, or the next Martin Luther King Jr., were conceived but butchered. Torn apart limb from limb or burned to death with chemicals. Never had a chance. No matter life's circumstances, always imagine the possibilities: