Usually Right: Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, March 4, 2010

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, March 4, 2010

N*E*W*S*B*I*T*E*S...

...inside the Comments Section of this thread!

24 comments:

William R. Barker said...: * MULTI-PART POSTING... (PART 1)

http://patriotpost.us/alexander/2010/03/04/second-amendment-still-the-palladium-of-liberties/

"The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. ... The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition." -- James Madison

James Madison's words regarding the "ultimate authority" for defending liberty (Federalist No. 46) ring as true today as in 1787, when he penned them.

Likewise, so do the words of his appointee to the Supreme Court, Justice Joseph Story, who wrote in his "Commentaries on the Constitution" (1833), "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."

In June 2008, the Supreme Court, by a narrow 5-4 vote (Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Kennedy), reaffirmed, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the people's inherent right to keep and bear arms is plainly enumerated in our Constitution. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment ensures an individual right, that DC could not ban handguns, and that operable guns may be maintained in the homes of law-abiding DC residents.

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, the next test case for the Second Amendment, which will determine if Chicago's onerous gun restrictions are in violation of the Constitution's plain language prohibition of such regulations by states and municipalities.

Otis McDonald, the 76-year-old plaintiff in this case, is challenging Chicago regulations that make it unlawful for him to keep a handgun in his home for self-defense.

My colleague Dave Hardy, a scholar of constitutional law, particularly the Second Amendment, summarized the arguments as follows: "McDonald v. Chicago illustrated the dichotomy between a government of laws and a government of men. One wing of the Court (perhaps the majority) looked to the essential enumeration of the right to arms; the other seemed to argue that since they, as powerful individuals, did not care for the right, or thought it was one of the Framers' bad ideas, they could disregard it."

That is an apt summary of how all cases are handled by the federal judiciary.

* TO BE CONTINUED...; March 4, 2010 at 1:24 PM
William R. Barker said...: * CONTINUING... (Part 2)

Typical of Leftmedia summations, The New York Times opined, "At least five justices appeared poised to expand the scope of the Second Amendment's protection of the right to bear arms."

Expand?

Only the most uninformed opinion would suggest that asserting the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms in Chicago is an expansion of the Second Amendment's scope. But considering the source...

Mr. McDonald's lawyers insist that the 14th Amendment's "privileges or immunities" clause ("no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States") is grounds for overturning Chicago's gun restrictions, and those of other states and municipalities across the our great nation.

Unfortunately, trying to establish a 14th Amendment precedent in and of itself undermines the authority of our Constitution's Bill of Rights.

* FOR THOSE WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN THEIR MIDDLE SCHOOL LESSONS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, THE "BILL OF RIGHTS" COMPRISE THE FIRST 10 (ORIGINAL) AMENDMENTS TO OUR (ORIGINAL - AS ADOPTED) CONSTITUTION.

[Our] Bill of Rights was enumerated to ensure against encroachment on our inherent rights. Read in context, the Bill of Rights is both an affirmation of innate individual rights and a clear delineation of constraints upon the central government. Note that the Second Amendment is unique in the Bill of Rights in that it expressly asserts the "right to keep and bear arms" is "necessary," more so than just important, to a "free state."

[C]iting the 14th Amendment's "privileges or immunities" clause suggests the Second Amendment was and remains amendable.

* AMENDABLE BY LEGISLATIVE OR JUDICIAL ACTION ALONE - NOT VIA THE PROPER AND INDEED ONLY CONSTITUTIONAL AVENUE OF A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. (IN OTHER WORDS, THE AUTHOR IS USING THE WORD "AMENDABLE" IN THE COLLOQUIAL RATHER THAN CONSTITUTIONAL SENSE.)

Much of the debate about the need to infringe upon the right to bear arms is framed in terms of safety. Gun-control advocates argue that more guns equal more crime. Those advocating for more lenient gun laws argue that more guns equal less crime. Only one of these diametrically opposed views can be true.

While the latter group is factually and demonstrably correct, basing Second Amendment arguments on the issue of safety is as fallacious as attempting to assert the 14th Amendment argument.

In an editorial this week, the conservative Washington Times opined, "The year after the Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and gun-lock requirements, the capital city's murder rate plummeted 25 percent. The high court should keep that in mind..."

No, they should not.

After all, violence is a cultural problem, not a gun problem, and certainly not a Second Amendment problem.

What each member of the Supreme Court must only keep in mind is the plain language of the Constitution, the Second Amendment and the First Principle of his or her oath: "To support and defend our Constitution," as should everyone who has taken that oath.

Accordingly, the High Court should find that the gun restrictions in Chicago, and by extension, those in any other state, are in direct violation of the inherent rights of the people "to keep and bear arms."; March 4, 2010 at 1:24 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2076

How hard is it to cut $10 billion out of the $3.6 trillion federal budget? That’s what Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) wanted to know.

With the national debt now reaching the uncanny heights of $12.4 trillion, soaring towards 100% of the GDP within a few short years, it is a question that may come to haunt lawmakers. By 2020, interest owed on the national debt will total $840 billion. That’s 38.79% of present day revenue - just to pay interest on the debt.

Controversy ensued last week when Bunning objected to unanimous consent on H.R. 4691, forcing a floor debate on the issue of whether or not to pay for an unfunded $10 billion extension in unemployment benefits. At first, Bunning proposed paying for it out of a portion of the unspent $787 billion “stimulus.”

Despite pressure from Democrats, the media, and even members of his own party, Bunning stood his ground, demanding a debate on how to fund the $10 billion without borrowing money from Japan, China, and Saudi Arabia.

It appeared that Bunning had prevailed when he accepted a deal that would have allowed an up-or-down vote on the amendment that would have funded the deal. In the lead-up, Bunning made the case for the very pay-go rules that had just been enacted into law by the Democrat majorities of Congress.

Bunning relished the opportunity, and in a statement after the deal was reached, he said, “I hope Senate Democrats tonight vote for their own pay-fors and show Americans that they are committed to fiscal discipline. I will be watching them closely and checking off the hypocrites one by one.”

Obviously concerned about the prospects of Bunning’s up-or-down vote actually succeeding, and Bunning walking away victorious, Democrats sought to deny Bunning his opportunity to hold Congress to its word. At the eleventh hour, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) broke the deal, raising a point of order against the consideration of Bunning’s amendment, which would have paid for the unemployment benefits and other programs by repealing a $24 billion “black liquor” tax credit subsidy. Bunning at first looked like a deer caught in headlights, but quickly recovered, requesting that the Senate waive Boxer’s objection by a Yay or Nay vote.

The amendment was then defeated by a vote of 53 to 43, upholding the Boxer objection.

After being betrayed on the floor of the Senate, Bunning issued a statement, saying, “Democrats tonight showed their true colors by going back on their word on the agreement I had reached with Majority Leader Reid to have an up-or-down vote on my amendment to fully pay for the unemployment extension and other federal programs. Instead, Senate Democrats used a procedural gimmick so they would not have to vote on my pay-for amendment.

Congressional Republicans have also learned a lesson that no deal made with the Democrat leadership can now be trusted. The knife in Bunning’s back on the floor of the Senate is ample evidence of that. There can be no compromise where there is no basis for trust.

So, to answer the question: How hard is it to cut $10 billion out of the $3.6 trillion federal budget to pay for new spending? [Answer:] Next to impossible.

Ultimately, the unemployment extension did pass 78 to 19. And sadly, it was not paid for.; March 4, 2010 at 1:25 PM
William R. Barker said...: * MULTI-PART POSTING... (PART 1)

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/bbozell/2010/bb_0303p.shtml

The deficit for last year was $1.4 trillion. The deficit rose as a share of the gross domestic product from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009, the highest deficit as a share of GDP since 1945. The projected deficit for the fiscal year that ends in September is another $1.3 trillion.

So much for all that fiscal sanity blather from Team Obama in '08. How dishonest. Even worse, there's a good reason to stay pessimistic about deficits as far as the eye can see. It's called the "news" media.

Exhibit A is Sen. Jim Bunning...[who] pushed the stop button on the perpetual federal spending machine by holding up a $10 billion package to extend (yet again) unemployment benefits and keep cash flowing to the highway trust fund.

Mirabile dictu, he insisted that the Congress should find the money to pay for this - for example, in unspent "stimulus" money - instead of just adding another multibillion-dollar layer to the deficit lasagna. Break out the smelling salts! The network nightly news crews tried to manufacture instant outrage, earning their reputation as the enablers of incessant and unrestrained deficit-building.

ABC's Diane Sawyer sent her reporter to expose this mean old man: "One man's stand. A single Senator stops the whole Congress, denying thousands of people unemployment benefits. We confront him to ask why." No spin there. Sawyer framed it as Bunning simply blocking "life support for the unemployed," as if he were standing on someone's oxygen hose.

ABC reporter Jon Karl and his producer physically blocked Bunning's elevator while playing victim's advocate against this alleged victimizer: "We wanted to ask the Senator why he is blocking a vote that would extend unemployment benefits to more than 340,000 Americans, including Brenda Wood, a teacher in Austin, Texas who has been out of work for two years." (Wood lamented her plight: "I've done a lot without and drained my savings, so pretty much my daughter's been helping out, so -- I don't know what I'll do." Karl added numbers on screen: "Bunning is also blocking money for highway construction. So across the country today, 41 construction projects ground to a halt, thousands of workers furloughed without pay.")

On CBS, Katie Couric blamed Bunning for "one of the stranger episodes on Capitol Hill" before reporter Nancy Cordes warned: "Because the bill didn't pass by today, 2,000 federal transportation workers had to be furloughed without pay, 400,000 Americans risk losing their unemployment benefits over the next seven to ten days."

NBC anchor Brian Williams decried how Bunning "had angry words with and an obscene gesture for a reporter on Capitol Hill. A sign, perhaps, that public pressure on him is building over his controversial decision to block a short-term spending bill in the U.S. Senate." Reporter Kelly O'Donnell added the same numbers about the transportation furloughs and delayed unemployment checks.

* TO BE CONTINUED...; March 4, 2010 at 1:27 PM
William R. Barker said...: * CONTINUING... (Part 2)

Bunning was right to say if the Congress can't find any place in the federal budget to trim away a measly $10 billion, they won't stop spending anywhere. But the media on this story aren't really on the side of the taxpayers (and debt payers). They're on the side of Team Obama and the debt builders.

Here's what Bunning should have said to Karl and his pushy producer: "If you want to pressure someone who's savagely causing unemployment, why don't you go break into your own boss's offices?" ABC News plans to offer buyouts (and then layoffs) of 400 Americans. Does anyone point a microphone in ABC News President David Westin's face and ask him why he's cutting off "life support"?

CBS is laying off about 100 people as they still pay Katie Couric $14 million annually. Why don't some reporters break into Couric's next public appearance and ask her why she's so heartless, not trying to "save or create" a few jobs inside CBS? Would Brian Williams publicly shame her if she brushed that off with a "no comment" or an obscene gesture?

Bunning [wasn't] proposing job cuts or even spending cuts. He [was] using a hold and demanding that legislators of both parties put up or shut up when they declare they're for "pay as you go" budgeting.

When it comes to massive deficits, the media are useless as part of a solution. They are a very loud and propagandistic part of the problem.; March 4, 2010 at 1:27 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_debra_j_saunders/why_americans_hate_washington

In January, the Senate joined the House in passing "pay-as-you-go" rules to require Congress to pay for new discretionary spending. On Feb. 12, President Obama signed the bill. "Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else," Obama crowed. Less than a month later, Obama and fellow Democrats are busily demonizing a lone senator for pushing Washington to spend responsibly. It seems this administration is all for fiscal restraint - as long as you don't mean it.

The story began last week when Sen. Jim Bunning, R-KY., blocked Senate passage of a bill to extend one month unemployment and COBRA health insurance benefits, and other spending, because it did not comply with PAYGO. As the Baseball Hall-of-Famer explained, "When 100 senators are for a bill, and we can't find $10 billion to pay for it, there's something the matter, seriously the matter, with this body."

On Sunday, The New York Times ran a story about the Bunning brouhaha without mentioning why Bunning was blocking the bill.

* "...WITHOUT MENTIONING WHY..." (*SMIRK*)

A CNN television crawl warned: "Thousands hurt by one senator."

A month ago, Democrats were suggesting the Republicans were phony tightwads for not joining them in support of PAYGO. It turns out, PAYGO is the phony. Two weeks after it became law, the Senate passed a $15 billion jobs bill exempt from PAYGO. As [Bunning] spokesman Mike Reynard put it, "If everyone's serious about PAYGO, let's act like it."; March 4, 2010 at 1:27 PM
William R. Barker said...: utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

President Obama has lost one of his biggest and earliest supporters on his signature issue: health care.

Yesterday, when pressed on CNBC if he would be in favor of scrapping the Senate health care bill, Warren Buffett responded: “I would be.”

Specifically, Buffett believes that the Senate bill will not contain health care costs: “We have a health system that, in terms of cost, is really out of control, and if you take this line and you project what has been happening into the future, we will get less and less competitive. So, we need something else. Unfortunately, we came up with a bill that really doesn’t attack the cost situation that much and we have to have a fundamental change.”

Buffett is correct on both fronts:

1) The President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has reported that the Senate health care bill would raise national health expenditures $234 billion by 2019;

2) Our current system is completely unable to control exploding health care costs.

So why is our current system completely unable to control costs? For the same reason most Americans over-eat at buffets: when you don’t have to pay for each plate of food, you usually eat more.

In recent decades, the percentage of health care spending paid “out of pocket” by patients has fallen substantially, from 52% in 1965 to only 15% in 2005. Instead of patients paying for the care they receive, our system is built around a third-party payment system where the government and insurance companies are the ones who actually pay for individual medical expenses. When prices are determined through administrative procedures rather than market processes, both patients and producers are anesthetized from normal market incentives to reduce prices and spending. That is why our health care costs are rising so rapidly.

And every major pillar of Obamacare makes the third-party-payer problem worse: mandates that limit out-of-pocket spending by patients, mandates that extend the minimum benefits insurance must cover, a massive expansion of Medicaid, and lower limits on the tax deductibility of out-of-pocket spending. And the one measure that the left once pointed to as its key cost-reducing measure – the taxing of expensive health insurance plans – has been gutted and pushed back until 2018, when any honest observer knows it will never be implemented.

Commenting on the state of health care reform, Buffet told CNBC yesterday: "If it was a choice today between plan A, which is what we’ve got, or plan B, what is in front of — the Senate bill, I would vote for the Senate bill. But I would much rather see a plan C that really attacks costs. And I think that’s what the American public wants to see. I mean, the American public is not behind this bill. And we need the American public behind the bill, because it’s going to have to do some tough things."

The current system is unsustainable.

We do need heath care reform. But not [counter-productive] "reform" that is opposed by the vast majority of the American people and makes the core problem of the current system worse.; March 4, 2010 at 1:28 PM
William R. Barker said...: * OOPS!

The FULL link for the previous newsbite is...

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/03/02/morning-bell-the-american-public-is-not-behind-this-bill/print/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell; March 4, 2010 at 1:29 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=2068

A nagging fear is prevalent... what if, the fear whispers, the Republicans take back the majority and immediately revert to the same weak, vapid, self-destructive behavior that characterized the Republican Congresses that so repulsed the public before?

Have they really changed? Are they willing to boldly do those things necessary to save the Republic?

Early signs coming out of Virginia are not encouraging.

* HOWEVER EARLY SIGNS COMING OUT OF TRENTON, NJ ARE! (JUST THROWING IT OUT THERE...)

In 2009, Virginia elected a Republican Governor by a landslide. The vote was as much a repudiation of Obama and his socialist policies as it was for the victor, Bob McDonnell. The GOP saw a large increase in their numbers in the State Assembly. If ever there was a mandate, McDonnell and the Republicans have it.

The outgoing Governor and now Democrat National Chairman Tim Kaine left a huge fiscal mess. McDonnell has had to face a $4 billion shortfall. But, any new Republican Congress in 2011 will face an even more daunting situation. So, how McDonnell addresses the gaping deficit can tell Americans a lot about how many inside the GOP will deal with Obama’s $1.5 trillion deficit next year.

Three items in the McDonnell approach to the budget clearly show a lack of courage and resolve, and demonstrate that the establishment GOP may not have learned a thing from their brief time in exile.

First, while joining in on the attack of the spendthrift Democrats, McDonnell has gone hat in hand to those very same left-wing Democrats begging for federal money. Seeking to avoid cuts or any meaningful restructuring, McDonnell has allied himself with Obama on extending federal bailout funds to the states.

Second, in the ultimate dodge and weave, the McDonnell Administration is calling for allowing local governments to underfund pension obligations. This is a complex area but the bottom line is that he is letting the Commonwealth and local governments use pension money for current consumption, thereby greatly underfunding the state employee pension system.

And third, a time of such fiscal austerity is also an opportunity to rid ourselves of the wasteful, needless bobbles of Big Government that have grown up over the decades. One such wasteful expense is the $6 million Virginia spends each year on so-called “public broadcasting.” In an era of hundreds of television channels and millions of Internet sites, there is no justification for government-run media; especially when such government-run media is all too often nothing more than a haven for far-Left propagandists.

So how does the McDonnell team deal with the $6 million line item? They defer elimination for four years. Why waste another $24 million for something we don’t need and that is proven to be hostile to the very principles America was founded on? Sadly, the answer is simple. Lack of courage.

Unless the GOP finds its true soul and commits itself to taking bold action, its stay in the halls of power will be very short-lived. And if tossed aside again by an increasingly frustrated and angry public, Republican majorities will not be seen again for a generation or more. Tentative, meek actions are not what the American people want nor are they what the country needs. It is time for the GOP to decide if they want to be America’s natural majority or its fading memory.; March 4, 2010 at 1:29 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/03/01/morning-bell-the-edifice-falls-2/print/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

The latest attempt to force the U.S. economy to turn away from readily available, affordable fuels and leaving it to the tender mercies of untried, experimental and expensive technologies is a bipartisan effort by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). A legislative package from them, according to The Washington Post on Saturday, would individually cap how much traditional energy the main pillars of the American economy would be able to use.

This would of course cripple our economy and threaten our prosperity. Any doubts about how broad and deep this effort is are dispelled by reading the following paragraph in the Post: "According to several sources familiar with the process, the lawmakers are looking at cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas output by targeting, in separate ways, three major sources of emissions: electric utilities, transportation and industry."

The reason the Senators could not act through their preferred vehicle, a “cap-and-trade” scheme that would put an across-the-economy ceiling on the use of traditional sources of fuel such as coal, oil and natural gas—above which companies using these fuels would have to pay for extra rights—is that the whole edifice of global warming is now falling apart. Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman had to turn away from cap-and-trade, and target industries individually [because] the idea of an iron-clad scientific consensus [regarding global warming] is now being revealed to be a bit, shall we say, exaggerated. The IPCC’s turning of hypothesis into fact now looks less like the scientific process and more like the magician you paid $50 an hour to pull flowers out of hats at your daughter’s birthday.

Unfortunately, Climategate and IPCCgate have not put a dent on the Obama Administration’s plan to (mis)use the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO2, and thereby the companies that power our nation. Its Administrator Lisa Jackson was out in front of Congress last week again repeating the same shibboleths on a scientific consensus on global warming. This should make us all wonder if stopping global warming really was ever the end game.

As for Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman, their reaction is to slap carbon controls on individual sectors of the economy separately, instead of setting a national target through cap-and-trade. The foundations for doing cap-and-trade have been torn asunder. Our research shows that cap-and-trade would be a $1.9 trillion tax on businesses over eight years, more expensive than the Vietnam War, Hurricane Katrina or the New Deal. But taxing the different pillars of our economy individually would be just as economically suicidal. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman want electric power to be first on the economic chopping block. Previous analysis of similarly severe carbon cuts project electricity prices will rise over 70 percent, even after adjusting for inflation. Not only is this a nightmare for household utility bills, the higher cost will hit consumers over and over since businesses must pass on their higher costs as well.; March 4, 2010 at 1:30 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/26/climate-data-compromised-by-heat-sources/

A critical cog in the machinery that drives the theory of global warming may be compromised, as temperature sensors across the U.S. appear to be exposed to heat sources that some critics say is corrupting their information. Sensors that are supposed to be in empty clearings are instead exposed to crackling electronics and other unlikely sources of heat, from exhaust pipes and trash-burning barrels to chimneys and human graves.

For the past three years, a group of zealous laymen has visited and photographed nearly every one of the weather stations to determine whether they have been placed properly. And what they found is a stunning disregard for the government's own rules: 90 percent of the sensors are too close to potential sources of heat to pass muster, including some very odd sources indeed:

A sensor in Hanksville, Utah, sits directly atop a gravestone, which is not only macabre but also soaks up the sun's heat and radiates it back to the thermometer at night.

A sensor in Marysville, Calif., sits in a parking lot at a fire station right next to an air conditioner exhaust, a cell phone tower and a barbecue grill.

A sensor in Tahoe City, Calif., sits near a paved tennis court and is right next to a "burn barrel" that incinerates garbage.

A sensor in Hopkinsville, Ky., is sheltered from the wind by an adjoining house and sits above an asphalt driveway.

Dozens of sensors are located at airports and sewage treatment plants, which produce "heat islands" from their sprawling seas of asphalt and heavy emissions.

"So far we've surveyed 1,062 of them," said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who began the tracking effort in 2007. "We found that 90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."

Watts readily agrees that temperatures are on the rise worldwide, but he believes the magnitude of the increase is in question, and he says his research puts the 1.2-degree [temperature increase over the past century] global figure in doubt.

* FULL DISCLOSURE - AS ALWAYS...! READ THE FULL ARTICLE VIA THE LINK AND YOU'LL GET "THE OTHER SIDE." AS ALWAYS, I LEAVE IT TO READERS TO MAKE OF THE DATA WHAT YOU WILL.; March 4, 2010 at 1:30 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101420718337134.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_world

The Obama administration is urging Congress to hold off on a resolution declaring the Ottoman era killing of Armenians as genocide.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee was scheduled to vote on the resolution Thursday, and appeared likely to endorse it.

But White House spokesman Mike Hammer said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had spoken with the committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Howard Berman, on Wednesday and indicated that such a vote would jeopardize reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia.

The move breaks a campaign promise by President Barack Obama to brand the killings genocide.

* OH... (*SMIRK*)... WHAT A SURPRISE... OBAMA BREAKS A PROMISE.

* THE IRONY IS... OBAMA IS RIGHT *NOW*. BY BREAKING HIS WORD HE'S SERVING THE NATIONAL INTEREST. THOSE IDIOTS IN CONGRESS ARE ONLY CONCERNED WITH CAMPAIGN SUPPORT FROM ARMENIAN-AMERICAN AND GREEK-AMERICAN SPECIAL INTERESTS. WE WANT AND NEED TURKEY AS AN ALLY. ANTAGONIZING TURKEY IS ANTITHETICAL TO U.S. NATIONAL INTERESTS.

Turkey, a NATO ally with a pivotal role for U.S. interests in the Middle East and Afghanistan, has warned the resolution could jeopardize U.S.-Turkish cooperation and set back negotiations aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia.

The Foreign Affairs Committee approved a similar measure in 2007, but it wasn't brought to the House floor for a vote following intensive pressure by then President George W. Bush.

Following the 2007 committee vote, Turkey promptly recalled its ambassador, and U.S. officials feared the Turks might cut off American access to a Turkish air base essential to operations in Iraq. After intensive lobbying by top Bush administration officials, the resolution wasn't considered by the full House.

On Thursday, a Turkish official suggested his country could again recall its ambassador to the U.S. if the congressional panel approves the resolution. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the resolution could damage Turkish-U.S. ties and undermine reconciliation efforts with Armenia.; March 4, 2010 at 3:21 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575099672743240584.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

So much for the argument that voters are simply in an anti-incumbent mood. Tuesday's election results from the Lone Star State blew apart this media trope...

Governor Rick Perry is the longest-serving governor in Texas history—in office since 2000. Yet he cruised to victory in the GOP primary, winning 51% in a three-way race. Mr. Perry dispatched both [self-proclaimed] Tea Partier Debra Medina and the popular U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison because the Texas economy is in better shape than the rest of the country and he ran against Washington, D.C.

Senator Hutchison hit Mr. Perry for his long tenure and some dubious policy decisions that favored the clients of long-time aides, but she could never free herself of the Beltway taint or explain why she should supplant a fellow Republican.

As for Ms. Medina, even before making bizarre comments (later amended) about a possible government role in the 9/11 attacks, she trailed well behind Mr. Perry. His history of fiscal restraint made him less vulnerable to a challenge from outside the party establishment.

On the Democratic side, voters also rejected an outsider. Hair-care magnate Farouk Shami spent millions on his maverick campaign but proposed increasing the state's gas tax, while former Houston Mayor Bill White declined to endorse the gas tax increase.

Democrats chose Mr. White.

Mr. Perry's success highlights a revealing tale of two Governors, given the struggles of his fellow Republican [in name only!] Charlie Crist in Florida. While Mr. Perry won his primary, Mr. Crist has surrendered a huge lead and now trails upstart conservative Marco Rubio in their race for the GOP nomination for a U.S. Senate seat.

The different political fortunes have a lot to do with their relative distance from Washington policies. While Mr. Perry has loudly condemned ObamaCare, Mr. Crist has waffled. Mr. Crist embraced not only the President's "stimulus" bill but the President himself during a now-infamous moment. Mr. Perry refused stimulus dollars for unemployment insurance and education because the funds would simply have increased the demand for state money once the federal aid runs out. Mr. Crist approved a $2.2 billion tax increase for the fiscal 2010 budget, even though he had promised that "stimulus" money would obviate the need for tax increases.

Regardless of Washington's plans to distribute taxpayer money, Mr. Perry has shown a willingness to cut spending, and during his tenure enacted tax relief for businesses and property owners.

Adding up Mr. Perry's 51% and Ms. Medina's 18% means that 69% of Texas Republicans voted for conservative populists. Their brand of conservatism won't sell everywhere, but Mr. Perry's win shows that the way to victory is not to demean and ignore Tea Partiers but to marshal them into a coalition. The unifying message is opposition to Mr. Obama's dependency agenda and Washington's grab for more money and power.; March 4, 2010 at 3:21 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575099890845709442.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Charlie Rangel stepped down—temporarily, he said—as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday until his many ethics travails are sorted out. Anyone who thinks this means a better direction for Washington policy hasn't met his replacement, Pete Stark, the 78-year-old Californian and ally of the Speaker who makes Mr. Rangel look like a conservative.

First elected in 1972, Mr. Stark thinks ObamaCare is too moderate because it would preserve at least the formality of private insurance.

=====

* HOLD ON! ADDENDUM! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704187204575101741694443412.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

** BREAKING NEWS: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi showed her true liberal colors when she briefly gave the nod to one of Congress's most vocal liberals to replace scandal-ridden Charlie Rangel as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. But sober second thoughts have now prevailed and Mr. Stark's reign ended before it began. The unannounced reason was undoubtedly a revolt by saner members at this morning's closed caucus meeting. Reports say that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen leaned on Mr. Stark to step aside in the interests of the party, and the caucus unanimously approved Michigan Democrat Sander Levin instead.

=====

Meanwhile in the Senate, Kentucky Republican Jim Bunning relented late Tuesday on his quixotic request to make Congress pay for what it spends. But he's already being vindicated as the Senate quickly passed the $10 billion bill he'd been holding up and is now moving on a $100 billion exercise that will also be mostly unpaid for.

And that's just the first spending bid!

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent-Socialist, wants to add $14 billion to give retirees a $250 check, among other not-so-free lunches.

The White House budget office says the deficit this year will be $1.6 trillion.

And the press says JIM BUNNING is crazy?; March 4, 2010 at 3:22 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704548604575097602436388116.html

'Every argument has been made. Everything that there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," President Obama declared yesterday as he urged Democrats to steamroll his plan through Congress.

What hasn't been heard, however, is even a shred of White House honesty about the true costs of ObamaCare, or its fiscal consequences.

At his press conference yesterday, Mr. Obama claimed that "my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions—families, businesses and the federal government." He said it is "fully paid for" and "brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next two decades." Never before has a vast new entitlement been sold on the basis of fiscal responsibility, and one reason ObamaCare is so unpopular is that Americans understand the contradiction between untold new government subsidies and claims of spending restraint. They know a Big Con when they hear one.

Mr. Obama's fiscal assertions are possible only because of the fraudulent accounting and budget gimmicks that Democrats spent months calibrating. [O]ne of the most egregious deceptions is that the bill counts 10 years of taxes but only six years of spending. The real cost over a decade is about $2.3 trillion on paper...

Mr. Obama claimed yesterday that the plan will cost "about $100 billion per year," but in fact the costs ramp up each year the program exists. The far more likely deficits are $460 billion over the first 10 years, and $1.4 trillion over the next 10 [years]. Next month Medicare physician payments are scheduled to be cut by 22% and deeper thereafter, though Congress is sure to postpone the reductions as it always does. Failing to account for this inevitability takes nearly a quarter-trillion dollars off the ObamaCare books and by itself wipes out the "savings" that the White House continues to take credit for.

Yesterday Mr. Obama again invoked the "nonpartisan, independent" authority of CBO, which misses the reality that if you feed the agency phony premises, you are going to get phony results at the other end.

Congress's spring break begins on March 29, and Democratic leaders plan on jamming this monster through Congress before then. Americans have to hope that enough rank-and-file Democrats aren't as deaf to fiscal honesty as this President.; March 4, 2010 at 3:22 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/04/for-obama-and-press-iraq-falls-off-radar/

Despite persistent violence and a critical election coming up, President Obama hardly ever mentions the war in Iraq - where more 110,000 U.S. troops remain - and leading American news outlets have drastically scaled back coverage of the conflict...

* FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS, HUH... (*SMIRK*)

In 2009, 149 American troops died in battle in Iraq...

* AHH... BUT IN 2009 OBAMA WAS PRESIDENT - NOT BUSH.

(*SNORT*)

[I]n 2010, Mr. Obama has mentioned the Iraq war just three times during formal speeches - twice in a single sentence during back-to-back events in early February for the Democratic National Committee and once in his Jan. 27 State of the Union address.

"We have begun to leave Iraq to its own people," he said in his only line about the war during remarks at the Democratic National Committee meeting on Feb. 6.

The tenuous situation still facing U.S. forces in Iraq was underscored again Wednesday, when a string of suicide bomb attacks struck in quick succession in a former insurgent stronghold northeast of Baghdad, killing 32 people just days before a crucial election that will determine who will govern the country as American forces prepare to depart.

The White House press corps hasn't asked Mr. Obama about the Iraq war in months.

The president was last asked about the conflict on Dec. 7, during an Oval Office press availability with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But the question came from a Turkish reporter - after an Associated Press reporter asked about the economy.

* I'M "SURE" IT'S JUST A COINCIDENCE. (*ROLLING MY EYES*); March 4, 2010 at 3:22 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://article.nationalreview.com/426874/unreforming-welfare/katherine-bradley

The $5 billion TANF Emergency Fund, originally created in the infamous “stimulus” package, was supposed to be a short-term infusion of money to states whose welfare caseloads were increasing. The president is now seeking an additional $2.5 billion to expand and extend the emergency fund for another year. Congress is looking for ways to make this happen,

The TANF Emergency Fund reverses exactly what made welfare reform successful. The 1996 reform changed the nation’s largest cash entitlement program, known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), to a fixed block grant to states known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Instead of Washington paying states on a per capita basis for every person who entered the welfare rolls, the states now received a fixed amount of money annually that didn’t change according to the size of their caseload. If a state shrunk its caseload by moving people off the rolls and into jobs, it was rewarded by being allowed to keep the money saved.

The 1996 welfare-reform law produced tremendous results. More than 2.7 million families left the welfare rolls for jobs and self-sufficiency. Caseloads dropped from 4.4 million families in 1996 to 1.7 million families in 2007. The poverty rate for black children fell, and the number of single mothers working dramatically increased.

Obama’s TANF Emergency Fund, by contrast, in effect pays states bonus money for increasing the size of their caseloads.

To date, according to data from the Health and Human Services Department, only $1.2 billion has been drawn down by states out of the original $5 billion allotment. Yet the administration wants to put another $2.5 billion into the program.

(*HEADACHE*)

Equally disturbing in the president’s budget is a request to end the Marriage and Fatherhood grant program. This program aimed to promote healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood in low-income communities and to spread the message about the importance of marriage. The breakdown of marriage clearly has placed a heavy burden on taxpayers, costing them nearly $300 billion annually. The national out-of-wedlock birthrate is nearly 40%, and the African-American out-of-wedlock birthrate is 70%.

In place of the Marriage and Fatherhood grant program, the administration would create a $500 million program cleverly named the “Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund.” However, lengthy summary documents from the administration reveal this to be just another federally funded jobs program.

Overall, the message the president’s budget sends to people in low-income communities is “Stay on welfare and don’t get married.”; March 4, 2010 at 7:06 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://article.nationalreview.com/426823/this-war-would-be-hell-too/clifford-d-may

If a top intelligence expert said America was not prepared for war and, indeed, that if we went to war “we would lose,” that would worry you, wouldn’t it?

Start worrying.

The expert is Mike McConnell, who served as director of the National Security Agency under President Clinton and as director of national intelligence under President Bush. He was referring not to a conventional war, a guerrilla war, or an insurgency. He was referring to a cyberwar. McConnell told a Senate committee last week that the risk we face from cyberattacks “rivals nuclear weapons in terms of seriousness.”

Cybercombatants could cause massive blackouts lasting for months. They could destroy the electronic processes on which our banking, commerce, and financial systems have been built, stealing — or simply wiping out — vast amounts of wealth. They could put our air-transportation system in jeopardy. They might even be able to cripple our defense and national-security infrastructures. It is possible to defend against such threats. But we are not doing it adequately.

McConnell has been sounding this alarm for some time. Most of the media, and therefore most Americans, have not been paying attention.

Almost a year ago, Jim Lewis, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told 60 Minutes’s Steve Kroft that in 2007 America suffered “an espionage Pearl Harbor. Some unknown foreign power, and honestly, we don’t know who it is, broke into the Department of Defense, to the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, probably the Department of Energy, probably NASA.”

After that, you’d think a serious and comprehensive cyberdefense program would have been initiated. But in an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Sunday, McConnell warned that the U.S. government has “yet to address the most basic questions about cyber-conflicts. . . . We lack a cohesive strategy to meet this challenge.”

In February of last year, Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama’s director of national intelligence, said in Senate testimony that “powerful, high-profile Eurasian criminal groups often form strategic alliances with senior political leaders and business tycoons and operate from a relative safe-haven with little or no fear of international arrest and prosecution.”

The Chinese have been candid about the opportunity opened to them by American vulnerabilities. Chinese military analyst Wang Huacheng, in a 2000 paper, described U.S. reliance on information technology and the Internet as “soft ribs and strategic weaknesses.” Chinese forces are known to have penetrated Sandia National Laboratories and several U.S. military sites. Air Force Maj. Gen. William Lord said the Chinese downloaded “ten terabytes of data, the same amount contained in the Library of Congress.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, national security was put on a back burner. One consequence was the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Today, despite military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, national security still is not the priority it needs to be. For many politicians, academics, and journalists, such issues as health care and “climate change” are much more urgent.

America has built an incredible high-tech society. But it is flying on gossamer wings. Our enemies know how fragile it is. So do we. The difference is they will do everything they can to destroy it. And we’re not doing everything we can to defend ourselves and to defeat them.; March 4, 2010 at 7:06 PM
William R. Barker said...: * TWO PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://article.nationalreview.com/426813/green-jobs-fantasy-/iain-murray

After declaring energy cap-and-trade “dead” in the Senate, the Left’s new favorite Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has been working hard to resurrect it under another name. Working with Senators Kerry (D., Mass.) and Lieberman (I., Conn.), along with lobbyists for the major electric utilities (and, err, Big Oil), Senator Graham appears to have come up with a new boondoggle that would institute a cap-and-trade scheme for utilities only, thereby creating a carbon cartel.

* HAVE I EVER MENTIONED HOW MUCH I DETEST LINDSEY GRAHAM...???

(*SNICKER*)

The plan would impose a carbon “fee” on transportation fuels, driving up the price of gas, that would be rebated in the shape of funding for highway projects — which the Big Oil lobbyists appear to believe would help offset the rise in gas prices.

All of this, of course, amounts to a new tax on energy, so Senator Graham and his cohorts are cloaking their smash-and-grab raid in the mantle of investment in “green jobs.”

Germany and Spain went down the green-jobs road many years ago... They saw it as a way to make their countries world leaders in coming technologies, provide good jobs to replace decaying industries, and insulate against energy shocks originating overseas.

It didn’t work out that way.

A recent report from German think tank Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI) sets out what happened in Germany. Titled “Economic Impacts from the Promotion of Renewable Energies: The German Experience,” it illustrates how the German green-jobs initiative failed to meet any of its objectives.

Taking jobs first, the report concluded that although at first glance the green-jobs program had been a great success, producing 278,000 extra jobs by 2009, once one takes into account offsetting factors, such as jobs lost from increased energy prices, the net number was negligible or even negative.

Moreover, the green jobs that do exist appear to depend on a robust export market, but the reality is that other nations have rapidly undercut German green-hardware prices — meaning that much of German green-energy installation simply imports cheaper foreign-produced components. The German subsidy of green energy is therefore actually subsidizing jobs in developing countries such as China.

The RWI found that the subsidy per job amounted to $240,000.

Surely, however, a decade of subsidizing renewable energy means that Germany now produces substantial amounts of it, and has freed itself from dependence on foreign powers? No. Wind power represents about 6 percent of German electricity generation, and solar power is a mere tenth of that. Most German electricity is generated from natural gas, and Germany obtains 40 percent of its gas from Russia, a figure projected to rise to as much as 60 percent by 2020.

What about strengthening the middle class? Well, consumers have borne the cost of the policy. They paid over $100 billion to subsidize wind and solar power over the last decade, with the costs of the subsidies accounting for 7.5% of household electricity prices.

As for the climate effect, subsidizing green energy is an extremely expensive way of reducing emissions. The price for a permit to emit one ton of CO2 under Europe’s cap-and-trade scheme — the market cost of reducing emissions — is about $20. Reducing emissions by subsidizing wind power works out to a cost of $80 a ton. For solar power, the cost is a staggering $1,050 a ton.

Finally, the policy has not even supported innovation. The study found that "claims about technological innovation benefits of Germany’s first-actor status are unsupportable. In fact, the regime appears to be counterproductive in that respect, stifling innovation by encouraging producers to lock into existing technologies.”

* OOPS...

(*SMIRK*)

* To be continued...; March 4, 2010 at 7:08 PM
William R. Barker said...: * CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

The story is the same in Spain, which set out to be the world leader in solar technology.

A study by a team from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid led by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez found that the opportunity costs of public investment in renewable energy were very high, resulting not just in significant numbers of jobs destroyed or never created, but in unsustainable bubbles in the renewables sector...

Having recognized their unsustainability, the Spanish government itself decided to reduce the size of subsidies to renewable energy.

Analyses suggested that the solar industry was on course to lose 40,000 jobs this year. However, it may be that the U.S. taxpayer is now subsidizing them instead.

Under a new program that allows renewable-energy providers to opt for cash payments rather than the 30 percent investment tax credit, the Treasury Department has awarded $295 million — out of a total of $502 million — to Spanish energy giant Iberdrola.

(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)

And Iberdrola isn’t the only foreign recipient. According to a report from the Watchdog Institute, there are plenty of countries that received stimulus cash to create green jobs, but created plenty overseas and few...here.

Most of the jobs that were created here were temporary. Despite all the stimulus money, the American wind industry lost permanent manufacturing jobs (while creating temporary construction jobs) last year, because demand for over-expensive energy plummeted (without the stimulus money, the industry would likely have collapsed).

There are already signs that green jobs created in the U.S. are going to be just as expensive as the German and Spanish ones. On January 8, the Department of Energy announced the awarding of $2.3 billion in tax credits to companies for the creation of 17,000 “clean-tech” jobs. At over $135,000 per job, the administration is not yet up to the spending-per-job level of Germany, but that’s probably because it hasn’t concentrated on the vastly expensive solar industry yet.

(*SIGH*)

Senator Graham’s enthusiasm for green jobs manifests in a willingness to sell out the American consumer in order to demonstrate “bipartisanship” on fluffy environmental issues. He’ll certainly see an improvement in his relations with the mainstream media, and probably get a few invitations to speak to adoring college students. After all, it worked for John McCain.

Indeed, just this week the Guardian newspaper in the U.K. said that Graham should take over from Al Gore as the face of the environmental movement.; March 4, 2010 at 7:08 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://article.nationalreview.com/426928/unhealthy-hype/thomas-sowell

If medical insurance simply covered risks — which is what insurance is all about — that would be far less expensive than covering completely predictable things like annual checkups. Far more people could afford medical insurance, thereby reducing the ranks of the uninsured.

But all the political incentives are for politicians to create mandates forcing insurance companies to cover an ever increasing range of treatments, and thereby forcing those who buy insurance to pay ever higher premiums to cover the costs of these mandates. That way, politicians can play Santa Claus and make insurance companies play Scrooge. It is great political theater.

Politicians who are pushing for a government-controlled medical-care system say that it will “keep insurance companies honest.” The very idea of politicians keeping other people honest ought to tell us what a farce this is.

One of the ways of reducing the costs of medical insurance would be to pass federal legislation putting an end to state regulation of insurance companies. That would instantly eliminate thousands of state mandates, which force insurance to cover everything from wigs to marriage counseling, depending on which special interests are influential in which states. It would also promote nationwide competition among insurance companies — and competition keeps prices down better than politicians.

Another very real and very big cost behind the high prices for medical treatment are the many forms of expensive “defensive medicine” that doctors and hospitals have to practice, in order to avoid being sued by unscrupulous lawyers. Expensive and unnecessary tests and treatments cost even more than the multimillion-dollar awards that clever lawyers can get from gullible juries.

Tightening up the laws so that junk science does not prevail in courts would create some real savings in medical costs. But, since plaintiffs’ lawyers are big financial contributors to the Democratic party, that is unlikely to happen during this administration.

Finally, there are costs that are high because people want medical care in more comfortable surroundings — a private room rather than a bed in a ward, for example — and are willing to pay for that.; March 4, 2010 at 7:08 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522828

As Congress crafts new banking rules to beef up the Community Reinvestment Act, the panel it picked to probe the subprime mess is discounting CRA's role in it. How convenient.

The "bipartisan" Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission kicked off its hearings this year by pillorying Wall Street. It also vowed to investigate the impact of housing policy. So far all it's done is farm out a study on the subject to a Berkeley economist pal of Phil Angelides, the commission's Democrat chairman.

Predictably, his 25-page paper concludes that the Community Reinvestment Act had no real role in the crisis, even though the anti-bank redlining regulation was strengthened and enforced like never before starting in 1995.

(*SNORT*)

Banks that didn't bend their rules to qualify poor and minority loan applicants with bad credit didn't pass the stricter CRA lending test enforced by bank examiners.

Flexible lending soon became the industrywide norm, adopted by CRA-covered banks and noncovered mortgage companies. Fannie and Freddie became models of underwriting "flexibility."

HUD's fair-lending programs and regulatory powers over independent lenders and Fannie and Freddie were broadened dramatically prior to the recent wave of defaults. Starting in 2000, HUD required Fannie and Freddie to position fully half their mortgage portfolios in high-risk, low-income loans — despite a spike in subprime foreclosures at the time. The "affirmative action" credit quotas, raised higher still by Bush's two Hispanic HUD secretaries, drove the mortgage giants into the subprime market — and eventually into financial insolvency.

The higher goals "forced us to go into that (riskier subprime) market to serve the targeted (uncreditworthy) populations that HUD wanted us to serve," said Freddie Mac spokeswoman Sharon McHale.; March 4, 2010 at 7:09 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522833

What is most like Alice in Wonderland in medical care reform is the fact that it is being discussed in the abstract, as if there are not already government-run medical care systems in this country and elsewhere.

Yet there seems to be remarkably little interest in examining how government-run medical care actually turns out — medically and financially — whether in Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration hospitals in this country, or in government-run medical systems in other countries.

While our so-called health care "summit" last week was going on, British newspapers were carrying exposes of terrible, and often deadly, conditions in British hospitals under that country's National Health Service. But this has not become part of our debate on what to expect from government-controlled medical care.

Neither in Britain and Canada nor in other countries with government-run medical care systems can people get to see doctors, especially surgeons, in as short a time as in the United States. It is not uncommon for patients in those countries to have to wait for months before getting operations that Americans get within weeks, or even days, after being diagnosed with a condition that requires surgery. You can always "bring down the cost of medical care" by having a lower level of quality or availability.

One of the statistics [Obamacare supporters] spin endlessly is that life expectancy in some countries with government-controlled medical care is higher than in the United States. What they don't tell you is that, in some of these countries, all the infants that die are not included in infant mortality statistics, as they are in the United States.

[C]ompare the things that medical science can have a great effect on — cancer survival rates, for example. Americans have some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, and for some particular cancers, the very highest. When you can get to see a doctor faster, and get treatments under way without waiting for months while the cancer grows and spreads, you have a better chance of surviving.; March 4, 2010 at 7:09 PM
William R. Barker said...: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c4577c0a-1409-11df-8847-00144feab49a.html

Barack Obama’s foreign policy of engagement has yet to make any breakthroughs and the US president’s second year in office is set to be tested by an intransigent Iran and North Korea, top administration officials have acknowledged.

Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, said on Sunday that neither Tehran or North Korea had “unclenched its fist” in response to Mr Obama’s invitation for better relations.

Her comments followed testimony to Congress by Dennis Blair, the top US intelligence official, that laid bare the international challenges facing Mr Obama – including a self-confident China, an “increasingly dangerous” Taliban in Afghanistan and more extremist violence in Pakistan.

The US is already embroiled in a series of disputes with China, which are set to escalate further when Mr Obama meets the Dalai Lama during the Tibetan spiritual leader’s scheduled visit to Washington on February 16-17.

* WHICH BTW HE SHOULD DO - MEET THE DALAI LAMA THAT IS. THE THING IS, THOUGH... HE'S ALREADY DISSED THE DALAI LAMA ONCE; EITHER BE "PASSIVE" *OR* "AGGRESSIVE" - DON'T BE PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE. THAT'S MY TAKE, ANYWAY...

The administration’s efforts to agree a new set of United Nations sanctions against Iran are also being blocked by Beijing.

Mr Blair, the Director of US National Intelligence, not only highlighted the limits of US power over Iran and the real “risk that its nuclear programme will prompt other countries in the middle east to pursue nuclear options”, but also emphasised the difficulty of convincing Pyongyang to give up its own nuclear status.

In markedly less upbeat language than Mr Obama used at the time, Mr Blair said the Taliban “was successful in its goal of suppressing voter turnout in [Afghanistan’s] August elections in key parts of the country”. He added that the Islamist militants were now “a countrywide threat”. While hailing Pakistan’s moves against that country’s own insurgents, he noted that “Pakistan will continue to be troubled by terrorist violence [and] extreme partisanship.”

He said that the Somalian government, which the administration has provided with arms, was “barely hanging on”, and the Cuban government, which Washington has reached out to, had “demonstrated few signs of wanting a closer relationship with the US”.; March 4, 2010 at 7:09 PM

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Thursday, March 4, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, March 4, 2010

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