THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: Well, it depends on the topic of the conversation because the sort of "conversation" Attorney General Eric Holder envisions is a complete waste of time. But Washington Post columnist George Will makes a compelling case for the topic we should be talking about – the plight of the 70 percent of inner city black children who are born out of wedlock, for whom "progress generally halted for those born around the mid-1960s, a time when landmark legislative victories heralded an end to racial discrimination," according to "The Black-White Achievement Gap, by Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley of Educational Testing Service:
After surveying much research concerning many possible explanations of why progress stopped, particularly in neighborhoods characterized by a "concentration of deprivation," the ETS report says: "It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around - i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children." And: "It is similarly difficult to envision direct policy levers" to effect that.
So, two final numbers: Two decades, five factors. Two decades have passed since Barton wrote "America's Smallest School: The Family." He has estimated that about 90 percent of the difference in schools' proficiencies can be explained by five factors: the number of days students are absent from school, the number of hours students spend watching television, the number of pages read for homework, the quantity and quality of reading material in the students' homes - and, much the most important, the presence of two parents in the home. Public policies can have little purchase on these five, and least of all on the fifth.
President Barack Hussein Obama’s “Race to the Top” educational reform initiative should start with a race to the altar for single mothers-to-be.
† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: The Wall Street Journal reports that consumers are “stubbornly” cling to the "paycheck cycle" – timing shopping sprees to salary or government payments, then reeling in their wallets when the cash runs out:
"A lot of people are still truly living paycheck to paycheck," said Lisa Klauser, vice president for consumer and customer solutions at Unilever North America.
Consumers typically shop close to payday, but the paycheck cycle "heightened during the recession, and it's one of the behaviors we would now call the new normal," said Ms. Klauser. …
The persistence of a marked paycheck cycle suggests that some recessionary patterns will be hard to shake off - particularly among consumers with lower incomes. …
The exact cycle can be hard to predict as timings of paychecks and government payouts vary, but many companies notice a jump at the beginning of the month. The cycle has become more prominent in brands popular with shoppers on low incomes or getting government benefits. Food-stamp benefits, which more people are using, generally are received in the early days of the month in many states.
Spending what you have when you have it means not taking on personal or household debt to buy now and pay later – which, will hurt the economic recovery in the short run but will contribute to a stronger rebound as savings grow and consumers have more money to spend in between the first and middle weeks of the month.
† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: The American Bird Conservancy and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility were amongst several green activists that petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month to ban traditional lead ammunition as a "health risk," according to The Washington Times:
[T]hese activists asserted that bullets weighing less than half an ounce might hit the ground and somehow poison the planet. … The Clinton administration's EPA looked into the issue and found no cause for concern. …
This time, however, the EPA did not make its decision on the merits of the argument. The agency instead agreed with an Aug. 20 filing from the National Rifle Association that explained how Congress had specifically excluded ammunition from the Toxic Substances Control Act which governs potentially harmful materials such as lead.
Looks like the greens are shooting blanks.
† All The News That’s Fart To Print: Chemistry postdocs Shanwen Tao and Rong Lan at Heriot-Watt University's School of Engineering and Physical Sciences in Edinburgh have a $203K grant from the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop the world's first urine-powered fuel cells, Asian News International reports:
While fuel cells usually rely on flammable hydrogen gas or toxic methanol to generate electricity, Tao and Lan's cheaper prototype relies instead on urea, an organic chemical compound produced as waste when the body metabolizes protein. …
The Carbamide Power System prototype can break urea or urine from humans or animals down into water, nitrogen and CO2, and also produce electricity at the same time.
Unlike existing fuel cells that require catalysts made from precious metals like platinum, the "Youtricity" research group's prototype uses a cheaper catalyst and less expensive membranes. …
The prototype's exact components aren't being publicized, but the team is planning to have a demonstration system ready next year.
† Breasts Are Not Udders (last item): Feminists and lacto-Nazis insist that breasts are not ornamental orbs, but utile udders that give sustenance to a mewling and puking baby in some mysterious way - no double-blind longitudinal clinical trials have ever been done - that formula cannot. Yet when former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) referred to tits (AKA teats) exactly that way – comparing Social Security to "a milk cow with 310 million tits" – NOW and the Older Women's League demanded that Simpson resign from the bipartisan deficit commission or that President Barack Hussein Obama remove him. The Stiletto is confused.
† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ):
Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanding she remove a from a State Department report to the United Nations' human rights commissioner a statement that one of the ways the U.S. is protecting human rights is the Obama administration litigating the state's new immigration law, calling the reference "downright offensive," reports The Washington Times:
"The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional," Brewer wrote. …
A State Department spokesman had no immediate comment on Brewer’s letter.
Brewer … is running for election in November. Her popularity in Arizona and her national profile have soared since she signed the immigration measure in April.
It’s not just offensive that a group of Americans and their state representatives are being judged on their human rights record by the likes of Camaroon, Saudi Arabia and Cuba, but a case can be made that discouraging illegal immigration SB 1070 is a humanitarian act. Each year a couple of hundred illegals crossing the Sonoran desert die of thirst and exposure; they are preyed upon by Medican drug gangs who want to use them as drug mules or to extract ransom from their families; and are abused by Mexican authorities.
If Hillary Clinton doesn’t soon divorce herself from Obama’s “so-sorry” anti-American foreign affairs and national security policies by resigning her position she may find herself unelectable in 2012 or 2016.
† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Say It Aint So Roger, Andy, Jason …): At his arraignment on perjury and related charges, Roger Clemens told U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton that it aint so, pleading "Not guilty.”
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