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2010
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June
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- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 30, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, June 28, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 26 & 27
- Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" Left Me Cold
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 25, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 24, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 23, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 22, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 19 & 20
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 18, 2010
- A Good Man Passed On Yesterday
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 17, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 16, 2010
- I Love the WSJ, But Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Read...
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 15, 2010
- Why Has Bob Etheridge Not Been Arrested...???
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, June 14, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 12 & 13, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 11, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 10, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 9, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 8, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, June 7, 2010
- Back from South Carolina!
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June
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
9 comments:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/25/AR2010062500675_pf.html
Key House and Senate lawmakers agreed on far-reaching new financial rules early Friday...
* THIS IS BAD NEWS, PEOPLE.
Despite myriad changes in recent days, Democrats appear poised to deliver a final bill that largely reflects the administration's original blueprint unveiled almost precisely a year ago...the legislation would establish broad new oversight of the financial system.
A new consumer protection bureau housed in the Federal Reserve would have independent funding, an independent leader and near-total autonomy to write and enforce rules.
* DOES THIS SOUND LIKE AMERICA TO YOU?
The government would have broad new powers to seize and wind down large, failing financial firms...
* DOES THIS SOUND LIKE AMERICA TO YOU?
On the House side, the final tally was 20 to 11 to approve the conference committee's report. On the Senate side, it was 7 to 5. The votes fell along party lines, earning no support from Republicans on the two panels.
* THEY'RE SET TO JAM THIS DOWN OUR THROATS, FOLKS.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-medvedev-russia-joint-press-conference
Those were the same hopes of another generation of Americans and Russians - the generation that stood together as allies in the Second World War - the Great Patriotic War in which the Russian people suffered and sacrificed so much. We recently marked the 65th anniversary of our shared victory in that war, including that historic moment when American and Soviet troops came together in friendship at the Elbe River in Germany.
* THE WORDS ABOVE ARE PRESIDENT OBAMA'S.
* PERHAPS OBAMA WAS NEVER TAUGHT THAT STALIN AND HITLER WERE ALLIES - CO-INVADERS OF POLAND - IN 1939.
* PERHAPS OBAMA WAS NEVER TAUGHT THAT DURING AND AFTER WW-2 THE SOVIET UNION SNUFFED OUT FREEDOM IN EUROPE WHEREVER HER TROOPS MANAGED TO ESTABLISH A FOOTHOLD.
A reporter who was there at that time, all those years ago, said: “If there is a fine, splendid world in the future, it will largely be because the United States and Russia get on well together. If it is in trouble, it will be because they don’t get on well. It’s as simple as that.”
* THE RUSSIA THAT THIS REPORTER WAS SPEAKING OF WAS STALIN'S RUSSIA. THE "SPLENDID WORLD" THIS REPORTER WAS REFERRING TO WAS A WORLD WHERE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS (SOON TO BE BILLIONS) WERE ENSLAVED UNDER COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP.
* MY GOD... AND THIS MAN IS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES...
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37661
* PAT BUCHANAN COLUMN --
In confiding to Rolling Stone their unflattering opinions of the military acumen of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, Dick Holbrooke and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff were guilty of colossal stupidity.
* AGREED.
[But] though those remarks never should have appeared in print, they may well reflect the sentiments of not a few soldiers and Marine officers on third and fourth tours of duty in the Afghan theater.
* THE PRESIDENT CAN'T FIRE BIDEN, BUT ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN FOLLOWING THE "PROGRESS" OF THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN IS WELL AWARE THAT BIDEN IS OFTEN "OFF MESSAGE" WHEN IT COMES TO ADMINISTRATION POLICY. REGARDLESS OF WHETHER ONE BELIEVES BIDEN HAS SOME GOOD POINTS, THE FACT IS THAT BY UNDERCUTTING ADMINISTRATION POLICY AS DEFINED BY THE PRESIDENT, THE VICE PRESIDENT HAS CREATED PROBLEMS AS SERIOUS AS ANY MCCHRYSTAL HAS CREATED.
* AS TO DICK HOLBROOKE AND KARL EIKENBERRY... FROM EVERYTHING I'VE EVER READ ABOUT BOTH MEN, PRESIDENT OBAMA SHOULD DEFINITELY GET RID OF BOTH OF THEM. AGAIN... MEN SUCH AS THESE REPRESENT THE PROBLEM - NOT THE SOLUTION.
* AS TO GENERAL JONES... I CAN'T COMMENT BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THE MAN, HIS STRENGTHS, OR HIS WEAKNESSES.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37678
* ANOTHER PAT BUCHANAN COLUMN --
The Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll out [yesterday] confirms that the nation that entertained such high hopes for Barack Obama has lost confidence in his capacity to lead.
62% of all Americans believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction. For the first time, more Americans disapprove of Obama than approve. 57% would prefer someone else, rather than the member of Congress they now have.
Though green shoots have appeared in the economy, Americans no longer believe it. Only one-third thinks things will get better before they get worse again. Independents are deserting Obama. One in six Democrats now disapproves of the job he is doing.
* SORRY, PAT, BUT EVEN THESE SO-CALLED "GREEN SHOOTS" ARE NOTHING MORE THAN WEEDS. (*SIGH*)
Americans have been through periods of malaise before. But where FDR raised spirits after Herbert Hoover, and Reagan did after Jimmy Carter, the optimism about an Age of Obama is vanishing like the morning mist.
* REAGAN'S POLL NUMBERS WERE IN THE TANK IN '82, YET... THAT'S BECAUSE IN '82 REAGAN WAS INSISTING UPON PRESCRIBING THE STRONG, NECESSARY "MEDICINE" NEEDED TO FIX THE ECONOMY THAT LBJ, NIXON, FORD, AND CARTER HAD BROKEN. ONE YEAR LATER - 1983 - REAGAN'S POLL NUMBERS WHERE SHOOTING UPWARDS BECAUSE IT WAS BY THEY CLEAR THAT REAGAN'S POLICIES WERE WORKING!
* OBAMA'S POLICIES ON THE OTHER HAND... (*SIGH*)... THEY'RE NOT WORKING AND THEY WON'T WORK. THEY'RE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF REAGAN'S POLICIES. EVEN THE EUROPEANS VIEW OBAMA'S ECONOMIC POLICIES AS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Disenchantment appears pervasive, and the causes apparent:
The Obama economic program - $800 billion in stimulus money piled on top of the Federal Reserve's doubling the money supply, giving us two straight deficits of 10% of gross domestic product - has failed to ignite a robust recovery. Unemployment still hovers just below 10%.
* U-6 WAS 16.6% IN MAY (LAST FIGURES AVAILABLE.)
The two-month-old oil spill, where BP's malfeasance was matched by government incompetence in preventing it from destroying the gulf ecology and economy from Louisiana to Florida, has cast a pall over America's spirit as wide and deep as the oil slick itself.
The war in Afghanistan is not going well, casualties are running at a nine-year high, and the country no longer wants to fight it, but to get out and come home.
Obama's "reset" in foreign policy seems to have yielded no more fruit than George W. Bush's crusade to "end tyranny in our world."
Three months after Iraqi elections, there is no government in Baghdad. The August deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops will likely be missed. U.S. relations with Israel have rarely been worse.
Turkey, black-balled by the European Union, a friend and ally of 60 years, is thickening ties to Tehran and Damascus and emerging as first Muslim state of the Middle East and principal patron of the Palestinian cause.
The Russians are pushing Kyrgyzstan to force the United States out of Manas air base, a critical link in the resupply chain to Afghanistan.
Brazil is bitter that America trashed the deal it helped to negotiate to transfer half of Iran's nuclear fuel out of the country.
For the first time since the late 19th century, the United States is about to be surpassed as the world's first manufacturing power - by China, which in Mao's time was still trying to make steel in backyard furnaces.
The British, rejecting Obama's call to continue stimulating the world's largest economies until sustainable growth is achieved, have decided to follow Greece and Spain into austerity and retrenchment.
Fearing debt defaults, European nations are slashing government payrolls and pensions, just as California, New York and other states are being forced to do to meet the constitutional requirement to balance their budgets.
America is facing a crisis of confidence in government, with the nation unable to win its wars, balance its budgets, control its borders, stop the bleeding of its manufacturing base or plug a hole in the ocean floor.
Should the sovereign debt bombs start going off, as they have lately threatened to do in Greece, bringing on another financial crisis to dwarf the one we have lately gone through, the crisis of democratic governments will become a crisis of democracy itself.
Perceived to have failed the country, the Bush Republicans were summarily dismissed in 2006 and 2008. Obama's Democrats go to the wall in November. Republicans will inherit the windfall. Yet, few harbor great hopes that the GOP has the cure for what ails America.
Perhaps the answers lie beyond the parameters of our present politics.
* CERTAINLY ONLY A REPUBLICAN WILLING TO TAKE ON AND RUN ROUGHSHOD OVER THE GOP "ESTABLISHMENT" WILL BE ABLE TO DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575328493487718962.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews
The U.S. government revised downward for the second time its estimate of economic growth in the first quarter.
* "FOR THE SECOND TIME," HUH? WELL I'M... er... SURE THAT IT'S JUST ANOTHER... er... COINCIDENCE THAT OBAMA'S PAST "HAPPY TALK" CONCERNING THE ECONOMY TURNS OUT TO HAVE BEEN... er... PREMATURE. (YEAH... THAT'S IT... "PREMATURE.")
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575329130832886238.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories
Unemployed homeowners will be able to tap $1 billion in federal bridge loans to pay their mortgages, under a deal worked out by congressional negotiators in financial-overhaul legislation.
* IN OTHER WORDS, MY TAXES - AND MONEY BORROWED ON MY CREDIT (MINE AND YOURS, FELLOW TAXPAYER) - WILL BE USED TO "HELP" PEOPLE GET FURTHER INTO DEBT... (*SIGH*)
House members fought for $3 billion in such loans, but ultimately settled for $1 billion...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*) THANK GOD FOR SMALL FAVORS!
Proponents contend the bridge loans will help stabilize the housing market at little cost to the government because people will pay back the loans when they return to work.
* HMM... CAN'T HELP BUT NOTICE THAT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THESE LOANS AREN'T HIGHLIGHTED WITHIN THE STORY. (*SMIRK*) AS TO REPAYMENT... THAT CALLS FOR AN ASSUMPTION THAT THOSE TAKING ON THESE LOANS WILL NOT ONLY GET THEIR OLD JOBS AT THEIR OLD SALARIES BACK, BUT THAT EVEN IF THEY DO THIS WILL BE ENOUGH INCOME FROM WHICH TO MAKE "EXTRA" PAYMENTS TO PAY BACK THE EXTRA LOAN! (*SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
Republicans, during the two-week-long talks on the bill, tried to strike the program, saying the country couldn't afford to spend more money on homeowner help.
* AND REPUBLICANS WERE RIGHT TO DO SO!
The House and Senate negotiators also agreed to provide $1 billion in additional funds for towns and cities to buy up and rehabilitate foreclosed properties.
(*MASSIVE MIGRAINE HEADACHE*) SPEND... SPEND... SPEND... BORROW... BORROW... BORROW...
The cost of both programs will be covered by a tax on large banks and hedge funds contained in the bill.
* WHICH WILL BE PASSED ON TO CONSUMERS - ME AND YOU.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704050804575318591702015252.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
As oil continues to gush from BP's Macondo well and politicians posture, it is time for us to ask why we are drilling in such risky places when there is oil available elsewhere.
* BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE LIBERALS HAVE HAVE "BANISHED" OIL DRILLING TO!
According to 2008 Energy Department figures, nearly 80% of potentially oil-rich offshore lands are off limits to oil and gas development, and 60% of onshore lands are.
* INSANITY!
Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have introduced a bill aimed at halting oil and gas exploration in the Flathead River drainage area near Glacier National Park. They have already pressured Chevron and ConocoPhillips to relinquish their exploration leases on the land, placing 75% of the leases off limits to development.
And of course, there is the perennially contentious issue of drilling in ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The government estimates that the area could produce 750,000 barrels of oil per day.
* THE 2,000 ACRES WHERE DRILLING IN ANWR WOULD TAKE PLACE IS BASICALLY BARREN WASTELAND - TUNDRA.
In early June there was a blowout in western Pennsylvania.
Did you see it on the nightly news?
No, because it was capped in 16 hours.
The Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that regulates oil and gas production there, recorded 102 blowouts of oil and gas wells since the start of 2006, resulting in 10 fires, 12 injuries, and two deaths.
None of those made the nightly news either.
The largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope in 2006 was from a pipeline leak. It dumped only 6,357 barrels and had no disastrous impacts.
Drilling can be done with greater environmental sensitivity onshore. For many years the Audubon Society actually allowed oil companies to pump oil for its privately owned sanctuaries in Louisiana and Michigan, but did so with strict requirements on the oil companies so that they would not disturb the bird habitat. ... Until the Gulf blowout, Audubon was even considering leasing more land for development on the Louisiana coast under such strict terms.
Enforcement of stricter safety regulation on deepwater drilling may reduce disasters like the current one in the Gulf. But the only real way to reduce the risk of catastrophic spills is to say yes to drilling in our backyard.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/538450/201006241907/Will-We-Prevail-If-Led-Only-By-Politically-Hip-.aspx
* OP-ED BY THOMAS SOWELL --
It is certainly not politic for a general or his staff to express their contempt for civilian authorities publicly. But what is far more important - from the standpoint of national security - is whether what those authorities have done deserves contempt.
My hope is that [General Stanley] McChrystal will write a book about his experiences in Afghanistan and Washington. The public needs to know what is really going on, and they are not likely to get that information from politicians.
This is, after all, an administration that waited for months last year before acting on Gen. McChrystal's urgent request for 40,000 more troops, which he warned would be necessary to prevent the failure of the mission in Afghanistan. He got 30,000 eventually - and a public statement by President Obama about when he wants to start withdrawing U.S. troops from that country.
In no previous period of history has an American president announced a timetable for pulling out troops. They may have had a timetable in mind, but none of these presidents was irresponsible enough to tell the world - including our enemies - when our troops would be leaving. Such information encourages our enemies, who know that they need only wait us out before they can take over, whether in Afghanistan or elsewhere. At the same time, it undermines our allies, who know that relying on the United States is dangerous in the long run, and that they had better make the best deal they can get with our enemies.
There is another aspect to Gen. McChrystal's "resignation." Everyone seems to agree McChrystal has been a soldier's soldier - someone who knows what to do on a battlefield and is not afraid to put himself in danger to do it.
Do we need more generals like this or do we need political generals who know how to cultivate Washington politicians to advance their own careers?
* WE NEED GENERALS AND ADMIRALS WHO WILL SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER AND RESIGN IF NECESSARY RATHER THAN ALLOW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO BELIEVE THEY SUPPORT POLICIES WHICH THEY DON'T SUPPORT. THAT SAID, UP TO AND UNTIL A RESIGNATION TAKES PLACE... MILITARY OFFICERS NEED TO TOE THE ELECTED CIVILIAN POLITICAL LEADERSHIP'S LINE.
If we are creating an environment where only political generals can survive, what will that mean for America's ability to win military victories without massive casualty rates? Or to win military victories at all?
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