Thursday, June 10, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 10, 2010


It's true!

I did "have me a Chrysler" and it was "as big as a whale!"

Ah, man... my (dad's) '73 Chrysler Town and Country Wagon with the 440 engine with the little chrome air filter housing...

(*HAPPY SIGH*)

Ah... memories...
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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296782675625258.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

The Obama Administration is under political pressure to reverse its ill-considered deep water drilling moratorium, and the latest blowback comes from seven angry experts from the National Academy of Engineering who say their views were distorted to justify the ban.

In the wake of the oil spill, President Obama asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report on new drilling safety recommendations. Then on May 27 Mr. Obama announced a six-month deep water drilling ban, justifying it on the basis of Mr. Salazar's report, a top recommendation of which was the moratorium. To lend an air of technical authority, the report noted: "The recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering."

That would be false, sir.

In a scathing statement this week, the seven experts explained that the report draft they had reviewed did not include a six-month drilling moratorium. That was added only after they signed off. "The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions," wrote the seven in a letter to Gulf Coast politicians.

* UNFRIGG'NBELIEVABLE. THE AGE OF OBAMA INDEED. WILL THESE PEOPLE NEVER LEARN...?!?!

June 10, 2010 at 8:38 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296652965298806.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

This past Sunday marked the unveiling of a very curious bust at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. The memorial's board chose the 66th anniversary of the Normandy invasion to add a bust of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to accompany the busts already in place of FDR, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill.

* METHINKS IT'S TIME TO GET A NEW BOARD.

William McIntosh, president of the D-Day Memorial Foundation, hasn't been returning calls from reporters...

(*SMIRK*)

June 10, 2010 at 9:25 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37610064

The economic situation today is drastically worse than a couple years ago, and the euro is doomed as a concept, Nassim Taleb, professor and author of the bestselling book "The Black Swan," told CNBC on Thursday.

"We had less debt cumulatively (two years ago), and more people employed. Today, we have more risk in the system, and a smaller tax base," Taleb said.

"Banks balance sheets are just as bad as they were" two years ago when the crisis began and "the quality of the risks hasn't improved," he added.

The root of the crisis over the past couple of years wasn't recession, but debt, which has spread "like a cancer," according to Taleb...

* BUT... BUT... BUT... WHAT ABOUT THE OBAMA RECOVERY...??? (*SNICKER*)

Obama administration's efforts to pull the US out of recession haven't succeeded, according to Taleb. "It's not that they make mistakes, it's that they almost get nothing right."

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

"Obama promised us 8% unemployment through stimulus. It hasn't worked." There are significantly more liabilities in the US than in other countries around the world, [Professor Taleb] said. "Don't give a junkie more drugs, don't give a debt junkie more debt."

* AMEN!

June 10, 2010 at 4:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/10/morning-bell-how-the-white-house-is-making-oil-recovery-harder/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Five weeks ago Escambia County [Florida] officials requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola’s beaches.

County officials still haven’t heard anything back.

* THE AGE OF OBAMA MEETS THE AGE OF CRIST... (*SMIRK*)

Santa Rosa Island Authority Buck Lee told The Daily Caller why: “Escambia County sends a request to the Mobile, Ala., Unified Command Center. Then, it’s reviewed by BP, the federal government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. If they don’t like it, they don’t tell us anything.”

* AIN'T IT JUST GRAND TO HAVE A FORMER "COMMUNITY ORGANIZER" IN CHARGE... (*SNORT*)

[W]hen the federal government isn’t sapping the initiative and expertise of local governments, it has been preventing foreign governments from helping.

Just three days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Dutch government offered to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms and proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands. LA Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) supported the idea, but the Obama administration refused the help. All told, thirteen countries have offered to help us clean up the Gulf, and the Obama administration has turned them all down.

* DID YOU KNOW THIS, FOLKS...??? SERIOUSLY... HAVE YOU HEARD OR READ THIS ANYWHERE...???

* SERIOUSLY... WHAT IS THIS MORON OBAMA THINKING...?!?!

According to one Dutch newspaper, European firms could complete the oil spill clean up by themselves in just four months, and three months if they work with the United States, which is much faster than the estimated nine months it would take the Obama administration to go it alone. The major stumbling block is a protectionist piece of legislation called the Jones Act which requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens. But in an emergency this law can be temporarily waived as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff did after Katrina. Each day our European allies are prevented from helping us speed up the clean up is another day that Gulf fishing and tourism jobs die.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... IF THIS IS THE FIRST YOU'RE HEARING OF THIS, ASK YOURSELF ONE SIMPLE QUESTION: "WHY...???"

* To be continued...

June 10, 2010 at 4:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

And then there are the energy jobs that the Obama administration is killing with its over-expansive ban on offshore energy development. Experts - who were consulted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar before he issued his May 27 report recommending a six-month moratorium on all ongoing drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet - now tell The New Orleans Times-Picayune that they only supported a six-month ban on new drilling in waters deeper than 1,000 feet. A letter from the experts protesting the use of their names to support a ban they actually oppose reads:

“A blanket moratorium is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill. We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do.”

* ANYONE WANNA HAZARD A GUESS AS TO WHETHER OBAMA WILL SEE REASON? MY GUESS... HE'LL ORDER "FULL SPEED AHEAD" - WITH THE SHIP OF STATE STILL HEADED RIGHT FOR THE ROCKS... (*SIGH*)

* PEOPLE. SERIOUSLY. THIS MAN IS A MORON. HE'S A DANGEROUS MORON.

And just how many innocent jobs is Obama’s oil ban killing? An earlier Times-Picayune report estimated the moratorium could cost Louisiana $2.97 billion in revenue and 7,590 jobs directly related to the oil industry.

(*MASSIVE MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the President was the largest single recipient of campaign contributions from BP and its employees over the past twenty years. Therefore, the President has to put distance between himself and BP, which may be why President Obama has not spoken with BP CEO Tony Hayward one single time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April. The problem is, vilifying BP’s corporate leadership does nothing to stop the spill or quicken the cleanup.

After the Obama administration refused help from the Netherlands, Geert Visser, the consul general for the Netherlands in Houston, told Loren Steffy: “Let’s forget about politics; let’s get it done.” It’s sound advice, Mr. President.

Let’s free local governments to clean up their shores, waive protectionist laws that keep out foreign help, and let the oil workers who can safely do so get back to work.

Let’s get it done.

June 10, 2010 at 4:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38345.html

The Office of Congressional Ethics, a powerful symbol of Democrats’ promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington, is in danger of having its power stripped after the midterm elections.

* CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS... (*FALLING OUT OF MY CHAIR FROM LAUGHING SO HARD*)

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have led the charge, airing complaints about the "aggressive, independent panel" in a private session with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, and they’ve drafted a resolution that, if approved, would severely curtail the panel’s power.

* YEP - WHEN I THINK CONGRESSIONAL ETHICS... I THINK THE CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS... (*SNORT*)

But there’s hot competition between the CBC and the official House ethics committee over who has less regard for the Office of Congressional Ethics...

* BIG FRIGG'N SURPRISE, HUH... (*SMIRK*)

“We might have to take a fresh look, at some point, at the authority of the OCE,” said North Carolina Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield, who is a member of both the CBC and the ethics committee.

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

The OCE is “out of control,” one House Republican told POLITICO.

* NOTICE POLITICO DOESN'T NAME THIS REPUBLICAN... (*SMIRK*) (TOO BAD TOO. I'D LIKE TO KNOW HIS OR HER NAME!) (IF THE PERSON ACTUALLY EXISTS OF COURSE...) (*SHRUG*)

“They’re not supposed to be an independent prosecutor,” said one Republican lawmaker. “I think there’s a lot of regrets with having those people [OCE] there.”

* AGAIN WITH THE UNNAMED SOURCE... (*PAUSE*) WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?

* YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL RELYING UPON ANYTHING PUBLISHED IN POLITICO. (*SHRUG*)

The most immediate challenge to the OCE’s power is the CBC resolution, written by Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) and signed by 19 other members of the CBC.

June 10, 2010 at 7:10 PM

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