Innocent Bystanders

Fertile Ground for Speculation May 12, 2010

HotAir linked to this story about rising male infertility. Interesting enough, but buried in the story was this little nugget – it’s part of the tale of a couple trying to overcome the husband’s fertility problems:

Ed says: ‘It was important for me to see an andrologist, somebody who specialises in male infertility. But they are not readily available in the UK.

Hard to find andrologists in the UK? Wonder why that is? And where do you suppose he ended up going for treatment?

Research had been carried out in the U.S. in hormonal therapy for men with fertility problems. After remortgaging their home, Ed and Rebecca went to the Cornell Fertility Center (www.ivf.org) in New York.

‘I had the first proper examination throughout all our treatment,’ says Ed.

Good thing he was treated before 2014, when Obamacare really kicks in.

.

Frontier Justice, Russian Style May 11, 2010

Russian Commandos Praying for the Somali Pirates' Safe Voyage

Somebody has to teach the Russians the old standby excuses:

“Shot while trying to escape!”

“They fell on each other’s knives!”

“Worst case of suicide we ever saw!”

…because they’re going to get themselves in a world of trouble if they can’t come up with better stories than this:

Following high level complaints about “imperfections” in international law, Russia announced Tuesday that captured Somali pirates “have all died.”
…
The official told Russian news agencies the pirates’ boat disappeared from Russian radar about an hour after their release.

“They could not reach the coast and, apparently, have all died,” the official said.

Just one of those unsolved mysteries. Yessirree, a real puzzler.

Update: Gateway Pundit has more.

*Little known fact: if you search for “Russian Commando Image” on Google Images, the first hit is this (BSFW, where B=barely).

Tiger Woods Has a Bulging D**k May 10, 2010

So he had to withdraw.

A Nation of Immigrants? Not as Much as You’d Think. May 8, 2010

[This is an updated version of a post I wrote 3 years ago at Uncommon Misconceptions. Given the current push for immigration reform, I thought it was useful to bring it back.]

We Are a Nation of Immigrants, Aren’t We?

The pro-amnesty faction likes to bring up the “Nation of Immigrants” meme to make amnesty foes feel like they’re betraying the intent of the founding fathers. The meme suggests that there is, buried somewhere in the core of the American heritage, a patriotic duty to welcome immigrants to our shores. Using the “Nation of Immigrants” line lets them call amnesty critics “unpatriotic” right after they finish calling them “racist.”

Well, we are undoubtedly a nation of immigrants in a historical sense. But over the past century it hasn’t been nearly as true as the pro-amnesty faction would have you believe. Let’s take a quick look at the history of immigration.

The plot below shows the number of foreign-born people residing in the US (click on the graph for a better view). This includes both legal and illegal residents. As you can see, the total number of foreign-born residents stayed fairly constant from 1910 to 1970, even as the population of the US doubled. The foreign-born percentage of the total population dropped to just under 5% by 1970. Today it stands at roughly 12.5%.

Click on me to make me ginormous!!

Pre-1970 America is what many of us were born to and raised in . . . an America that was successfully assimilating a modest influx of immigrants (probably a little too modest, actually), and which was suffering from a very mild version of today’s balkanization and illegal immigration problems. As the chart shows, that all changed once the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed (thanks, Ted Kennedy!). The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (Reagan’s amnesty) further accelerated the rate of foreign-born population growth.

The Bottom Line. The history of America from 1910 to 1970 was not that of an “immigrant nation” – in fact, one could argue that the US stopped being a “nation of immigrants” after the last immigration surge in 1910. And of course, there is a limit to how much any mature nation can continue to call itself a “nation of immigrants.”

Pro-immigration pundits are calling upon a century-old meme to rationalize the out-of-control immigration situation we have today.

Unemployment at 9.9%? It’s Actually Reasonably Good News! May 7, 2010

We (well, I) missed the unemployment release last month, so I wanted to be sure to hit it this month. And on this fine day the BLS tells us that unemployment has risen to . . . . . . 9.9%!

Yep, we actually added a lot of jobs last month (290,000 non-farm), but 800,000 people came back into the labor force, which increased the unemployment rate. It’s amusing that the BLS made a big point about the effect of laborers coming back, but they never discussed it when the laborers left in the first place. And the MSM followed suit.

Actually, though, this is what we’ve been waiting for – we can’t even start talking about recovery until the labor force gets back to its normal level. In previous months the unemployment rate would drop because huge numbers of people people dropped out of the labor market, so even though the administration was crowing about the success of their policies, we knew that we were still in trouble. Now they’re coming back (hopefully with good reason?), so the unemployment rate will start to more truly reflect the employment situation.

This is the economic shoe that’s been waiting to drop, and now that it’s begun, we can start talking about real healing of the job market. So even though the unemployment rate rose, it is more indicative of recovery than all those 9.7% rates we’ve been looking at over the past 3 months.

[Ed Morrissey agrees. Jim Hoft doesn't]

Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics will be having a web chat on Tuesday (May 10, 1 – 2 pm EST) to answer questions about unemployment data. More info here.

Unemployment Filings Fail to Impress May 6, 2010

It’s unemployment time again – the numbers for the April unemployment rate come out tomorrow. And, as always, the Initial Unemployment Filings report comes out on Thursday, so lets have a gander at that. (It’s all below the fold, folks)

(more…)

Respecting the Icons Is a One Way Street May 6, 2010

I’m an deisty/agnosticy/atheisty kind of guy, but this sort of news still torques me off:

Comedy Central . . . is developing a whole animated series around Jesus Christ.

I’m sure it’ll be respectful, yes?

…”JC,” a half-hour show about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his “powerful but apathetic father” and live a regular life in New York City.

Well, being all enlightened ‘n such, I’m sure it’s our job to just suck it up:

“In general, comedy in purist form always makes some people uncomfortable,” said Comedy Central’s head of original programming Kent Alterman.

Yes, Kent is absolutely correct. That’s why I’m sure that my “Martin Luther King; I Did It All For The Poontang” series is sure to be a hit. After all, if it makes you uncomfortable, it’s pure comedy.

By definition.

Why Me, Lord? May 5, 2010

Yes, I am fortunate.

Privacy Sacrificed on the Altar of Recyling May 5, 2010

The city fathers of Alexandria, VA have decided that you can’t be trusted to recycle – they’re going to have to check up on you to make sure you’re meeting your quota:

The City Council added a mandatory $9 charge to its residents’ annual waste collection fee.

That cash — roughly $180,000 collected from 19,000 residents– will pay for new larger recycling carts equipped with computer microchips, which will allow the city to keep tabs on its bins and track resident participation in the city’s recycling program.

And how much will this invasion of privacy benefit the recycling program? Try 2%:

Expected recycling rate increase using new bins: At least 2 percent

And even that tiny increase is very likely to be due to the fact that the bins are larger.

Yeesh. Next they’ll be monitoring our sewage lines to make sure we’re eating enough fiber.