I'm shocked I tell ya!

New Data Reveals Virtually No Viewers For Time-Shifted Spots:

ADVERTISERS DETERMINED TO RESIST PAYING for ads skipped with DVRs can find new ammunition in Nielsen's new minute-by-minute ratings. An analysis of the so-called "commercial ratings" obtained by MediaDailyNews reveals that virtually no one stops to view a commercial when watching a program in time-shifted mode.

Ya think? The amazing part is actually that 1% did watch the commercials on some recorded shows. Probably passed out on the couch.

The real reason the Donks love illegal aliens

At the Financial Times, Martin Wolf attempts to explain the effects of illegal immigration to the economically illiterate:

In the absence of tough sanctions on employers, the chances of stemming the inflow are negligible. The question is whether such sanctions could be justified. They might be, for two reasons: the first is that uncontrolled immigration of unskilled labour is damaging to already socially disadvantaged fellow citizens; the second is that routine violation of such laws undermines the rule of law itself.

The economist who has argued for the first of these propositions most cogently is George Borjas of Harvard University. According to a simulation exercise by Prof Borjas and Lawrence Katz of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the real wages of US high-school dropouts would have ended up 8 per cent higher if Mexican immigration between 1980 and 2000 had been thwarted, but higher skilled immigration from elsewhere had still been permitted.

Similarly, Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank in favour of tighter controls, argues that the influx of low-skilled immigrants has already harmed native-born competitors. As the proportion of immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the labour force has risen, the proportion of relatively unskilled natives in work has fallen. Moreover, many unskilled natives have left the labour force: they are discouraged workers.

A standard counter-argument, wearily familiar on both sides of the Atlantic, is that immigrants are taking jobs that natives are unwilling to do. This is doubly wrong. First, the supply of labour is dependent on its price. Business people must know this: after all, it is the argument they use to justify soaring executive pay. Without the illegal immigrants, people would have to spend more on nannies, cleaners, farm workers and so forth. Second, most of the workers doing the jobs done also by immigrants are native-born. The obstacle is not the absence of native-born workers, but that they would have to be paid higher wages if immigrants were absent.

Amidst all the whining, that's the bottom line: illegal immigration means the citizens get stiffed. So what happens to them?

If unskilled immigrants drive down wages for such jobs, too, a hapless underclass will inevitably emerge.

Does this matter? The answer depends on whether extreme inequality is compatible with successful democracy. The precedents suggest, instead, that it is a recipe for populism, plutocracy, or a miserable alternation between the two.

And if there ever was a party of plutocrats that wants and needs a dependent underclass, it's today's Democrat party. Of course, it doesn't hurt that with today's lax voting rules they can get all the illegal aliens to vote for them too.

Look who crawled out from under the rock

John Hinderaker at Powerline notes some Strange Bedfellows:

This morning's Washington Times reports the astonishing--to me, anyway--news that last week's massive pro-illegal immigrant demonstration in Los Angeles was organized by International A.N.S.W.E.R. We've written about International A.N.S.W.E.R. a number of times; for example, here. It is a Communist organization and a front for the Workers World Party. The Workers World Party has been around for quite a while. It is one of the last unapologetically Stalinist organizations in the world; it supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. More recently, the WWP and ANSWER have supported dictators like Saddam Hussein and North Korea's Kim Il Jong.

A truly charming bunch and I'm sure they have only the best interests of the citizens of the Republic at heart in promoting illegal immigration. Hinderaker mentions a little digging into their sources of financial support, being as Commies are out of fashion in most circles these days, and "while I could infer that the WWP is kept afloat by donations from a few wealthy donors, I couldn't tell who they were." He suggests it might be fruitful for one of the few real reporters remaining to do a little digging, but I'm not so sure. The wacko wealthy have insulated themselves from their radical dependents quite nicely with money laundering fronts like the Tides Foundation:

The Tides Foundation, a “charity” established in 1976 by antiwar leftist activist Drummond Pike, distributes millions of dollars in grants every year to political organizations advocating far-Left causes. The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center, which was spun off from the Foundation in 1996 but run by Drummond Pike, distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. In all, Tides has distributed more than $300 million for the Left. These funds went to rabid antiwar demonstrators, anti-trade demonstrators, domestic Islamist organizations, pro-terrorists legal groups, environmentalists, abortion partisans, extremist homosexual activists and open borders advocates.
...
The Tides Foundation is a major source of revenue for some of the most extreme groups on the Left. Tides allows donors to anonymously contribute money to a host of causes; the donor simply makes the check out to Tides and instructs the Foundation where to forward the money. Tides does so. The Tides Center will even manage a left-wing project, for a nominal fee. Drummond Pike told The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.” That becomes understandable when one views the list of Tides grant recipients.

Yep, International ANSWER is on the list of recipients and George Soros is one of the more notable contributors to the Tides Foundation.

With tax time coming up this month, it sure warms my heart to see what good these folks are doing with their tax deductible contributions.

Proof of the coming apocalypse

Billboard to Begin Ranking Ringtones Sales:

Music market tracker Billboard said Tuesday it will start publishing a chart ranking master ringtones, the audio snippets derived from original studio recordings that are used to customize cell phones.

The chart, dubbed Hot MasterTones, will be based on data compiled by Nielsen Mobile and represent the top 20 best-selling master ringtones for the week.
...
The weekly publication began publishing a chart for monophonic and polyphonic ringtones - which unlike master ringtones are based on synthesized versions of recordings - in 2004.

Since then, master ringtones have become an increasingly important slice of recording industry sales, particularly in the United States.

Master ringtones have been popular for years in Asia and Europe, where use of handsets with better ringtone fidelity is more common than in the United States. But as more multimedia-friendly mobile phones have entered the U.S. market, users have increasingly opted to customize their phones with master ringtones.

The heck with music - I want one that sounds like Hillary Clinton snorting out truffles!

Today's Hoot!

Brothers Judd has some fun with Al-Jazeera - ODDLY ENOUGH, THEIR ADULT-ONLY CHANNEL FEATURES SHEEP TOO. Be sure to read the comments as well.