Zimmerman emerges from hiding

And helps rescue a family of four from an overturned SUV.

George Zimmerman, who has been in hiding since he was acquitted of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin, emerged to help rescue a family who was trapped in an overturned vehicle, police said today.

Zimmerman was one of two men who came to the aid of a family of four -- two parents and two children -- trapped inside a blue Ford Explorer SUV that had rolled over after traveling off the highway in Sanford, Fla. at approximately 5:45 p.m. Thursday, the Seminole County Sheriff's Office said in a statement.

The crash occurred at the intersection of I-4 and route Route 46, police said. The crash site is less than a mile from where Zimmerman shot Martin.

By the time police arrived, two people - including Zimmerman - had already helped the family get out of the overturned car, the sheriff's office said. No one was reported to be injured.

Zimmerman was not a witness to the crash and left after speaking with the deputy, police said.  

This man that the media is convinced is a racist vigilante killer who got away with murder.  Yeah, right.

Boston Globe spreading FUD

but the basis of the claim is sound...

For the first time, NSA Deputy Director John C. Inglis disclosed that the agency sometimes conducts what is known as three-hop analysis. That means the government can look at the phone data of a suspected terrorist, plus the data of all of the contacts, then all of those people’s contacts, and all of those people’s contacts.

If the average person calls 40 unique people, three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.

So Yost says NSA taps up to 2.5 million americans for every terrorist they get a warrant for, via "3 hop analysis."  His math is wrong. 40^3 is 64,000. 40^4 is 2.56M. Perhaps he made a mistake, or 64,000 wasn't dramatic enough for him. If you ask me it's bad enough. Warrants are supposed to be specific as to the person and place to be searched, and that which is being searched for. 

 

In what world would it be ok, given a warrant, to have the police ransack the entire neighborhood and those surrounding it?  Oh yeah, Watertown.

 

 

The tragedy of Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin's parents raised a violent, drug using, illegal firearm trading criminal to adulthood.   They think of him as their angel who could never do anything wrong. They are mistaken. The President has called this incident a tragedy. He is wrong.

Let me make one thing clear - Trayvon Martin's death was not a tragedy. His life was a tragedy.

You think you've seen it all, then they propose a national park on the moon

That's right.  Two democrats have proposed setting up the Apollo moon landing areas as a national park, jointly administrated by the Dept. of the Interior and NASA.  You can't make this stuff up.

Two House Democrats have proposed legislation that would establish a national historical park on the surface of the moon to mark where the Apollo missions landed between 1969 and 1972. 

The bill from Reps. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) would create the Apollo Lunar Landing Sites National Historical Park. The park would be comprised of all artifacts left on the surface of the moon from the Apollo 11 through 17 missions.
 
The bill says these sites need to be protected because of the anticipated increase in commercial moon landings in the future. 

"As commercial enterprises and foreign nations acquire the ability to land on the Moon, it is necessary to protect the Apollo lunar landing sites for posterity," according to the text of the Apollo Lunar Landing Legacy Act, H.R. 2617. 

Under the legislation, the park would be established no later than one year after the bill passes and would be run jointly by the Department of the Interior and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

We don't have enough problems here on Earth, here in one single nation on Earth, so we should expand our problems out to two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles from home.  Hey, everyone, let me just point out something.  You're electing these people.  It's not just these democrats.  People were serious about putting Gingrich into the Whitehouse, and he promised a lunar colony in a decade.  Please stick to Earth, OK?  We've got things to do here before we tackle the moon and the stars.

Another foray into calculating the true unemployment number.

The BLS keeps track of employment and participation by education level.  You can take that data and compute how many people, over 25 years old, whatever their education level, are not participating in the labor market - these people have either retired or given up, but the numbers are huge. 72 million people are not in the labor force. The breakout is as follows, in millions:

< High school: 13.534
High School: 25.043
Some College / Associates: 17.439
Bachelor's and higher: 15.941

How many retired? How many gave up?  The Social Security Administration keeps statistics of those collecting benefts. They are either retired or disabled, or other, which they call early retirees. The number is 62.5 million, but since 4.5 million of those are children, let's take them out, giving us 58 million retirees. That means 14 million from the over 25 list are not working, nor retired, not counted. There are an additional 7 million not in the labor pool from the 16-24 age bracket who are also not enrolled as students and not counted as part of the labor pool.

So let's add this up: 11.8 million officially counted + 14 million 25+ not counted, not retired + 7 million 16-24 not counted, not in school. That's 32.8 million unemployed. Now the current civilian labor force is 155.8 million, and we've got to add in the 21 million not being counted. That gives us a true labor pool of 176.8 million, and a true unemployment rate of 18.55%. 

Underemployment is on top of that. And they are calling this a recovery.

College degrees losing value

Another validation of the Captain's Worthless. The overall value of a college degree is on the decline.  Can't really argue with that.  I wonder if we can find out how various majors look?

Looks like some Georgetown students (?) did a study on this.  What is interesting about this study is that they used 2009-2010 data.  They were catching it on the downtrend, therefore the unemployment rates in the chart below must have gotten worse, and simply not recovered.



Of course they use the same data that the government uses to tweak the unemployment rate, so they would probably tell you things have gotten better.  However, if we compare the BLS bachelor+ degree holder participation against the the labor pool, we find another 15 million bachelor degree holders that are not employed because they are not participating. 


update: moved this to it's own post.

Just reviewing that data became a lot more interesting. You can take that data and compute how many people, over 25 years old, whatever their education level, are not participating in the labor market - these people have either retired or given up, but the numbers are huge. 72 million people are not in the labor force. The breakout is as follows, in millions:

< High school: 13.534
High School: 25.043
Some College / Associates: 17.439
Bachelor's and higher: 15.941

How many retired? How many gave up? Hard to say, but we could take a look at the population by age group, and assuming more older people retire than younger, get some guestimates. Still, if 90% of these people are happily retired, the true unemployed count should be bumped up by 7.2 million poeple from 11.8 million to 19 million! That would push the true unemployment rate up by 4% to 11.7%. Underemployment is on top of that. And they are calling this a recovery.

The Social Security Administration keeps statistics of those collecting benefts. They are either retired or disabled, or other, which they call early retirees. The number is 62.5 million, but since 4.5 million of those are children, let's take them out, giving us 58 million retirees. That means 14 million from the over 25 list are not working, nor retired, not counted. There are an additional 7 million not in the labor pool from the 16-24 age bracket who are also not enrolled as students and not counted as part of the labor pool.

So let's add this up: 11.8 million officially counted + 14 million 25+ not counted, not retired + 7 million 16-24 not counted, not in school. That's 32.8 million unemployed. Now the current civilian labor force is 155.8 million, and we've got to add in the 21 million not being counted. That gives us a real labor pool of 176.8 million, and a real unemployment rate of 18.55%.