clipped from pajamasmedia.com Slowly, relentlessly, the regime is dying.  But it is taking a lot of good people with it.  The recent rise in violence in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan can be tracked back to Tehran.  Western intelligence services are aware that Khamenei has given the Revolutionary Guards carte blanche to kill as many infidels as possible, wherever they have the opportunity.  And within Iran, they are hanging their children.  Listen to my brave friend, Potkin Azarmehr, tell the awful story of a boy executed for a crime he could not have committed (he was actually in prison when the event occurred). The State Department condemned the recent executions, which is to its credit.  But there will be many more hangings and stonings, of Kurds, of Baha’i, of random dissidents.  It’s time to put this evil regime out of its misery.  Help the Iranian people win their freedom, and thereby change the world.  Is there no leader in the West who will do it?

catOclysm

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com In the real world, as opposed to what French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama's "virtual world," America faces the reality of Iran's intransigence and aggressiveness; China's headlong pursuit of its own national, regional, and global interests; Russia's determination to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states' refusal to accept any kind of a reasonable settlement of the kind that Israel has already offered under several governments President Obama's foreign policy agenda of gradual American retreat will have inexorable consequences: When erstwhile allies see the American umbrella being withdrawn, they will have to accommodate themselves to those from whom we were protecting them. If Obama proves impervious to empirical evidence and experience, all these accommodations, the weakening of alliances, the strengthening of centers of adversarial power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, and elsewhere will continue until we are awakened by some cataclysm.

Kissing Reality Goodbye

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Today the Obama administration unveiled its budget for FY 2011. The budget ostensibly covers the next ten years, but its projections for future years are meaningless. The only year for which it has any significance is 2011, in which it anticipates $3.8 trillion in spending and an astonishing $1.6 trillion deficit. In 2006, the last year in which the Republicans controlled Congress, the deficit was $248 billion--one-seventh what Obama proposes for next year. In his budget announcement today, Obama said: "[O]ur government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy." So he proposes to put the country far more deeply in debt through profligacy of a sort that was undreamed of just a few years ago. Either Obama has completely lost touch with reality, or he thinks we have. Obama won in 2008 with what Michael Barone called a "top and bottom coalition." Now, Obama can kiss the top part of that coalition goodbye.

Both Ways Now

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com No one expects consistency from Democratic politicians, but the Institute for Energy Research notes an egregious contradiction in President Obama's FY 2011 budget: [Obama's budget] contained $36.5 billion in new taxes over ten years on the oil and gas industries, while heaping new billions in taxpayer support for politically-favored energies. The White House budget request claims that, "Oil and gas subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices." In the first place, it is odd to hear the White House worrying about high energy prices, and also to hear it deny that tax policy gives incentive for production. Both of these points flatly contradict the whole philosophy behind the White House's favored cap-and-trade scheme, which is expressly designed to (a) raise the price of fossil-based energy and (b) reduce the incentives to use such energy sources. The White House can't have it both ways

Put Them In Restraints

clipped from www.moonbattery.com In unveiling his record budget, with its record deficit, Chairman Zero read the following words off his Teleprompter: "We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money, as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation," - B. Hussein Obama, February 1, 2010 Oh, really. "We can't?" Because it sure as heck looks to me like that's what you're doing. His budget plan does not cancel the remaining TARP spending, does not cancel the remaining Spendulus spending, does not cut back discretionary spending to where it was before he and his Congressional majority increased it 24%, and does not cancel his increased health care spending. Tell me, does this graph look like fiscal restraint to you? 'We Are Trying on Every Front to Increase the Role of Government' - Barney Frank, (Dumb-Mass) 26 October 2009

2.29 Lies O Minute

clipped from www.fireandreamitchell.com

Lost?

clipped from www.politico.com Democrats knew they lost reform with the Massachusetts election and some of them like Rep. Barney Frank essentially said so. “The first reaction to the Massachusetts election was the honest reaction,” O’Donnell said. Frank later walked back his comments. But since Election Night, he said, Democrats have moved into “full bluff mode.” “We’re absolutely in full fake cheerleading mode. I think Nancy Pelosi has absolutely no moves left. I think she knows that now. I think Harry Reid knows that. And that’s why they don’t bring it up,” he said. “They had a Senate leadership press conference (Thursday) and it was as if (reporters) were asking about World War I” when they asked about reform. O’Donnell attributes the theatrics to the need to deal with a liberal base that will go bonkers if Democrats quit on reform. “I’ve never heard leadership admit publicly to being so lost,” O’Donnell said. “In ’94, we never admitted we didn’t know how to proceed after we crashed and burned in the Senate.

Lame

clipped from pajamasmedia.com A REALITY CHECK FOR A LAME WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT TALKING POINT: From the comments to my Tea Party column in the Washington Examiner: And how many times did you take to the streets to protest the deficit during the Bush presidency? I’m guessing zero. You see this kind of thing pop up in comments a lot, and sometimes even out of the mouth of the less-honest variety of pundit. Which means, of course, that once again it’s time to roll out this graphic: Notice anything? Like maybe how Bush’s deficits are dwarfed by Obama’s? And maybe how the deficit was falling throughout Bush’s second term? Related: The White House will predict a record budget deficit in the current fiscal year and more big shortfalls for the next decade in its upcoming budget proposal, a congressional source told Reuters on Sunday.

Bush: ~$2 Trillion in Deficits. It sucks to be us.

O Duce: Nearly $2 Trillion in 2009 alone and CBO projections of ~$8 Trillion if he does two terms. That's over 4x Bush's deficits. Oh, and the "what about the off balance sheet money" doesn't work because BOTH OF THEM DO THAT.

And if we're lucky enough to get rid of O Duce after just one term then CBO projects ~$5 Trillion. "Only" 2.5x what Bush did in 8 years. But in 4.

There are simply no words to describe this.

And of course if O Duce was a CEO put in this situation he would be given a year, maybe 2 tops to get rid of the red ink. Or be history.

4%

clipped from www.rasmussenreports.com Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters nationwide now hold populist, or Mainstream, views of government. That’s up from 62% last September and 55% last March. Mainstream Americans tend to trust the wisdom of the crowd more than their political leaders and are skeptical of both big government and big business (see crosstabs). While Republicans and unaffiliated voters are more likely to hold Mainstream views than Democrats, a majority of those in the president’s party (51%) hold such views. Only four percent (4%) now support the Political Class. These voters tend to trust political leaders more than the public at large and are far less skeptical about government. When leaners are included, 81% are in the Mainstream category, and 12% support the Political Class.

So Screwed

clipped from pajamasmedia.com “WE ARE SO SCREWED.” “Perhaps more than anything else, failure to recognize the precariousness and fickleness of confidence-especially in cases in which large short-term debts need to be rolled over continuously-is the key factor that gives rise to the this-time-is-different syndrome. Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang!-confidence collapses, lenders disappear, and a crisis hits.”

Something Big

clipped from pajamasmedia.com PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON OBAMA AND THE BCS: One day shortly after the Second World War ended, Winston Churchill and Labour Party Prime Minister Clement Attlee encountered one another at the urinal trough in the House of Common’s men’s washroom. Attlee arrived first. When Churchill arrived, he stood as far away from him as possible. Attlee said, “Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Churchill said: “That’s right. Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.” I’m reminded of that story by news that President Obama plans to regulate the college football playoff system. . . . With the government already running the banks and the auto industry, and trying to take over the health care industry, however, one might have hoped that sports would escape the ravening maw of Leviathan. But I guess Attlee and Obama are kindred spirits. Well, let’s hope that Obama doesn’t do for America what Attlee did for Britain, though that does seem to be the goal . . . .

Responsibilities

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com But as the president was quick to point out, with a 41st vote in the Senate and the ability to block legislation through filibuster come pressure on Republicans to share in the political risks of making hard choices. “The responsibility to govern is now yours as well,” Mr. Obama said in his State of the Union speech, a message that was certainly heard by party leaders here in Honolulu. Hmm.  The Democrats have had outright majorities of the House and Senate since 2006; they enjoyed a brief Senate majority from the summer of 2000 until January 2003, and have always had more than 41 Senate votes. So when Obama rails against the failed policies of the past eight years, is he running against Pelosi, Reid, Senator Obama, and the rest of the Democrats?  I don't think so. Mr. Nagourney also fails to mention the Republican "Better Solutions" package offered to Obama as inoculation against the "no ideas" charge.

Enemies

clipped from justoneminute.typepad.com Former CIA head Michael Hayden blasts Obama's legalistic approach to the war on terror and ends with this zinger: There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG [High Value Detainee Interrogation Group] for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway. Eric Holder knows who the enemy is.

The Mansourian Candidate: A Reminder Again

clipped from www.moonbattery.com When Obama dissed the Supreme Court in his State of Obfuscation Preach, he famously and incorrectly stated that their decision on Citizens United v. FEC threatened to allow money from foreign corporations to enter our political system. Funny choice of attack, thought I, as I was reminded of the influence that foreign money had on Dear Leader's own election campaign. A wee reminder of how things stood at the end of 2008: In addition to the $259 million with undisclosed donors, studies of the reports filed with the FEC, by the Obama Campaign, through the 2008 Year End Report, show the following irregularities in their submissions: • $1.8 million -- Contributions over the $4,600 limit (1,608 contributors) • $26 million -- Contributions over the $2,300 per campaign limit, reallocated without contributor affirmation. • $4 million -- Contributors with Foreign Addresses (4,158 contributors)

The Pretender

clipped from www.moonbattery.com Chairman Zero is suddenly pretending he likes nuclear energy. The Obama administration moved vigorously on two fronts Friday to promote nuclear power, proposing a tripling of federal loan guarantees for new projects and appointing a high-level commission to study what to do with nuclear waste. First of all, we had a solution to nuclear waste. It was called Yucca Mountain. Engineers and scientists spent decades developing it as the safest possible repository for nuclear waste. Obama and Harry Reid killed it within weeks of taking power. Second, while he offers loan guarantees to the nuclear industry, he has stacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with anti-nuclear activists. He has replaced Bush's NRC Chairman (a strong pro-nuclear guy) with a former Harry Reid anti-nuclear Senate staffer. He has also left two (of the five Commission positions) vacant. Basically, this "push" for nuclear power is just a ruse to try and get cap and trade passed.

More Dictionary Good!

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com Stupid American people have strange mad love for Constitution. Crazy right-wing Tea-Party people always making big fat deal out of it. Want to know where it say Congress can make people buy insurance. Freaky house speaker think that Constitution business nonsense. "Are you serious?" she want to know. Crazy right-wing Tea-Party people dead serious. Say government that can make you buy insurance can make you do anything, anything at all. Some even ask what crazy right-wing president and Congress with that kind of power might do. Me not like to think about that! Whole issue make brain hurt. Good thing man with nice voice in charge. Him have right ideas. Just need to try new angle, that all. Talk slower. Talk louder. Use small words. Treat American people like kid who got held back in elementary school. That bound to work eventually. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right. --Judge Learned Hand.

Dictionary Good!

clipped from www2.timesdispatch.com It mighty big of man with nice voice to take blame like that. Him not need to. Head honchos not often take blame. Most times after big screw-up, head honchos say they have "full confidence" in someone who work for them -- right before pushing someone off edge of cliff, or letting someone twist "slowly, slowly" in wind, like tricky Nixon guy did with man who ran FBI. Man with nice voice not like those other head honchos. Him bring change to Washington already, see? But him right. Him not explain health care good. Use too many big words. Say too many compound-complex sentences. Confuse American people. American people not want that. American people want simple explanation. Simpler the better. Me feel kind of sorry. It must really get on nerves for man with nice voice and people on his side, like lady on TV and cheerleaders in White House press pool. Why can't lamebrain American people get idea through thick skulls? Them not know how to make choices in own best interests!

Malignant

clipped from www.newsrealblog.com When the Cold War was over and freedom had won — thanks to all the political forces and figures (e.g., Reagan and Thatcher) that Zinn opposed – Zinn continued his malignant course. He supported America’s enemies right to the end including the Islamic Nazis whose first agenda is to finish the job that Hitler started and then to impose a totalitarian theocracy on the infidel world. Zinn’s wretched tract, A People’s History of the United States, is worthless as history, and it is a national tragedy that so many Americans have fallen under its spell. It is a political cartoon which even the socialist magazine Dissent described as an intellectual fraud, which it is. All Zinn’s writing was directed to one end: to indict his own country as an evil state and soften his countrymen up for the kill. Like his partner in crime, Noam Chomsky, Zinn was a wicked man and his life’s work was a pernicious influence on the young and ignorant, with destructive consequences for people everywhere.

Not The Case

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The second point, though, is that it’s more than a little irritating to see Obama speak so well of Ryan’s plan and say that it’s the sort of thing that deserves “serious discussion.” Problem is, throughout the health care debate, Obama didn’t want to have that discussion. He didn’t want to talk about any plans to significantly reduce entitlement spending, or severing the links between insurance and employment. Indeed, not only did he make almost no effort to incorporate opposition ideas into his legislation, he wasn’t willing to recognize the existence of legitimate opposing ideas at all. Instead, he chose to caricature his opponents as having “no solutions.” His conversation today with Rep. Ryan, I think, is a tacit admission that that’s just not the case.

And This Year?!

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk 192 laser beams are focused through holes in a target container called a hohlraum Inside the hohlraum is a tiny pellet containing an extremely cold, solid mixture of hydrogen isotopes Lasers strike the hohlraum's walls, which in turn radiate X-rays X-rays strip material from the outer shell of the fuel pellet, heating it up to millions of degrees If the compression of the fuel is high enough and uniform enough, nuclear fusion can result Crucially, the recent experiments provided proof that the plasma did not reduce the hohlraum's ability to absorb the incident laser light; it absorbed about 95%. But more than that, Dr Glenzer's team discovered that the plasma can actually be carefully manipulated to increase the uniformity of the compression. The 130-tonne target chamber is kept under vacuum for the experiments But Dr Glenzer is confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, "It's going to happen this year."

Some Hopeful News

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A major hurdle to producing fusion energy using lasers has been swept aside, results in a new report show. The controlled fusion of atoms - creating conditions like those in our Sun - has long been touted as a possible revolutionary energy source. However, there have been doubts about the use of powerful lasers for fusion energy because the "plasma" they create could interrupt the fusion. An article in Science showed the plasma is far less of a problem than expected. The report is based on the first experiments from the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US that used all 192 of its laser beams.

I wonder what premise the watermelons will use to ban this if it proves out? You can count on them having one.

Revealing

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com the economy's strong resurgence in the fourth quarter--great news, seemingly. Yet the stock market was down on Friday. Why? Investors Business Daily offered this explanation: [R]ight now, the market seems to be saying: "It's the policies, stupid." Specifically, the socialistic policies that the Obama administration keeps pushing at Americans who know that's not the way this great country was built. It isn't just the efforts to socialize medicine or nationalize the car industry or control banks or punish both consumers and industry for climate variations that have little to do with it either. It's every initiative that comes out of this White House. Of course, you can't draw any conclusions from a day's or a week's performance of the market. But IBD offers this comparison, which seems revealing: President Obama's lack of private sector experience is probably his single biggest weakness. The fact that he does not value such experience in his top advisers shows a serious lack of judgment.

Bad, Bad O Bush

clipped from www.nypost.com The trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed won't be held in lower Manhattan and could take place in a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, sources said last night. Administration officials said that no final decision had been made but that officials of the Department of Justice and the White House were working feverishly to find a venue that would be less expensive and less of a security risk than New York City. The back-to-the-future Gitmo option was reported yesterday by Fox News and was not disputed by White House officials. Such a move would likely bring howls of protest from liberals already frustrated that President Obama has failed to meet his deadline for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It would also indicate that after years of attacking the Bush administration for its handling of the war on terror, Obama officials are embracing one of the most controversial aspects of it.

Snuck In

clipped from realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com There's been a remarkable amount of coverage of President Obama's appearance at the House Republican retreat today, but I haven't seen anyone focus on the President's rather stunning admission about the Democrats' health care legislation (Video): we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your -- if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you're not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge. [emphasis added] If we take this statement at face value, President Obama is admitting the the health care bills passed by either the House or Senate (or both) contained provisions which were "snuck in" - presumably by Democratic members and perhaps on behalf of certain lobbyists - that would have in fact prevented people from keeping their current insurance

Caught Out In Colorado

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Both WUWT and Climate Audit had posts regarding the ridiculous WaPo story about snowfall being a result of climate change. This is a follow up to those posts done by guest contributor Steven Goddard. One of the  NWF claims about global warming is that snow in the Colorado mountains is diminishing and has become very erratic, as seen in the NWF graphic at left. In this article I will show that the claim is incorrect – Colorado snowfall has been generally increasing for the last hundred years and that year over year variability has always been extremely high. In summary, snowfall is increasing annually and we see upward trends in the months of “snowfall season” in Colorado.  Year over year variability has always been very high and may actually be lower in recent years. And, the Colorado mountains no longer have extremely low snow years like they did 80 years ago. By the data, it seems the NWF claims are unfounded.

Continuous Climaquiddick

clipped from pajamasmedia.com CLIMATEGATE COVERUP? London Times: Climate chief was told of false glacier claims before Copenhagen. “Rajendra Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it. He failed to act despite learning that the claim had been refuted by several leading glaciologists. The IPCC’s report underpinned the proposals at Copenhagen for drastic cuts in global emissions. . . . Dr Pacharui has also been accused of using the error to win grants worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.” The Times coverage of this has been terrific, which is more than you can say for pretty much any mainstream American media outlet, most of which are still trying to pretend there’s no story here. It’s — again — a complete abnegation of journalistic responsibility.

The Answer Is Not

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com In connection with James Hansen’s explanation of why his GISS temperature record diverges from that of HadCRUT, I decided to check on the legitimacy of what GISS was doing. Dr. Hansen’s article is here at RealClimate. This is the specific chart of interest: So it seems that the North American side of the Arctic changed little, or even got cooler between 98 and 05, the Russian side warmed considerably.  Why is that?  I think that this ice cover map gives us the answer.  As is immediately apparent, the coastal ice cleared out far earlier in 2005 in northern Russia than it did in 1998.  This is even though the rest of the globe was slightly warmer in 1998 than in 2005.  When dealing with coastal stations, removing the ice and exposing the water is like taking the hatch off a heating source for the coastal thermometers. we need to ask if the GISS extrapolations of land based stations, particularly coastal stations,  to the poles is appropriate. The answer would seem to be that it is not

Algae Can't Do Math

clipped from www.newscientist.com ALGAE have been touted as a solution to environmental worries over biofuels, but they may be a long way from providing a truly green option. Unlike maize, soya beans and oilseed rape (canola), algal farms don't take up valuable farmland, so algae-based biofuels don't threaten food supplies. However, Andres Clarens at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville has modelled the environmental impacts of algal farms and concludes that they require six times as much energy as growing land plants - and emit significantly more greenhouse gases (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es902838n). "You have to add a whole lot more fertilisers, and the environmental cost of producing these is the primary drawback," Clarens says.

Bubba The Rookie

clipped from gatewaypundit.firstthings.com Barack Obama can’t help himself. Today, in front of national cameras, the radical claimed that his hidden health care discussions were actually on CSPAN: Via BreitbartTV “The truth of the matter is that, if you look at the health care process, just over the course of the year, overwhelmingly the majority of it actually was on C-SPAN because it was taking place in Congressional hearings in which you guys were participating. How many committees were that that helped to shape this bill? Countless hearings took place.” Senator Inhofe was right. Obama really does make Bubba look like a rookie. He’s the best liar we’ve ever seen.

COTD: The Treserve Collective

clipped from www.zerohedge.com by strike for retu... on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 16:36 #211380 It's easy to have good numbers when you get to make them up. So long as Treserve buys what they print, the numbers will keep looking good. Didn't the Soviet collectives always report what their 5-year plans said they would? reply

Didn't Try

clipped from ace.mu.nu A former senior intelligence official told me in 2009 that he was shocked by Pelosi's claim because, he said, "Speaker Pelosi herself has stopped covert action programs that she has been briefed on by going to the White House. In that very same time frame [after she learned about waterboarding] Pelosi had gone back to the White House [over] a separate covert action program, expressed strong opposition to it. And the remarkable part to me, the White House backed off the program, changed one aspect of the program . . . she was particularly opposed to. And literally, the finding was pulled back and revised." If Pelosi had truly opposed waterboarding, he said, she had numerous ways to stop it -- but she didn't try. That move -- stopping the funding of moderate parties -- seemed to have no other point than to try to sabotage the entire war effort, by the way.

He Would If He Were A Republican President

clipped from biggovernment.com Emanuel: Look, we were involved in the legislation all the way through. Couric: Were you involved in that? Emanuel: Yeah. I’m not gonna go through all of it… Couric: But in the Ben Nelson deal? Emanuel: We were helpful in getting the bill off the Senate floor. And in retrospect the things – as I said to you just earlier, things you woulda done different. To repeat what Obama told Diane Sawyer about the Cornhusker Kickback: So let’s just clarify. I didn’t make a bunch of deals. There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked. The mainstream media has thus far ignored Obama being exposed as a liar by his own chief of staff. With Emanuel himself confirming the Obama administration’s involvement with the Cornhusker Kickback, Obama has some explaining to do. Well, he would if he were a Republican president.

Hopenchange

For while the people who sent us here have different backgrounds, different stories and different beliefs, the anxieties they face are the same. The aspirations they hold are shared. A job that pays the bills. A chance to get ahead. Most of all, the ability to give their children a better life.”
–Barack Obama, 2010 SOTU

“We’re not the first to come here with a Government divided and uncertainty in the air. Like many before us, we can work through our differences, and we can achieve big things for the American people. Our citizens don’t much care which side of the aisle we sit on, as long as we’re willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done. Our job is to make life better for our fellow Americans and to help them build a future of hope and opportunity, and this is the business before us tonight.”

–George W. Bush, 2007 SOTU

clipped from www.cato-at-liberty.org	Obama’s Quotes	Bush’s Quotes

Let Them Dig Holes

clipped from pajamasmedia.com MEGAN MCARDLE: Dude, Where’s My Job? “I’d argue that the better measure of whether the economy has returned to health is employment–at least, that’s when the improvement starts to translate into improvements in peoples’ real lives. Prolonged unemployment is one of the most crippling things that can afflict people in the modern world. Yet despite a second consecutive quarter of growth, prolonged unemployment is what we’re stuck with. . . . That has particular implications for a skilled economy. In 1930s, when FDR was trying to combat mass long-term unemployment, all he needed to do was create a construction project; most of the men in the country did some sort of hard physical labor. It was relatively easy to create jobs that they could fill. But what kind of public works projects would absorb mortgage brokers or mid-level managers? As jobs have gotten more skilled, more human capital is specific to firms, industry, and job classifications.”