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2010
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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.
17 comments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/us/10access.html
* IN CASE ANYONE THINKS I'M SIMPLY BEING A WISEASS WITH THIS "AGE OF OBAMA" STUFF...
When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request.
A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.
* NOTICE THE TIMES SPIN ABOUT "A BP CONTRACTOR" IN THE SECOND PARAGRAPH. SORRY, FOLKS... THE TIMES WAS CORRECT IN THE FIRST INSTANCE - THE FIRST PARAGRAPH: IT ISN'T BP WITH THE POWER TO ALLOW OR DENY, IT'S THE UNITED STATES COAST GUARD AND THE FAA.
* OH... AND LAST TIME I CHECKED... BOTH THE COAST GUARD AND FAA WORK FOR OBAMA - NOT BP. (*SMIRK*)
“We were questioned extensively. Who was on the aircraft? Who did they work for?” recalled Rhonda Panepinto, who owns Southern Seaplane with her husband, Lyle. “The minute we mentioned media, the answer was: ‘Not allowed.’”
The F.A.A., responding to criticism following the incident with Southern Seaplane, has revised its flight restrictions over the gulf to allow for news media flights on a case-by-case basis.
* SEE WHAT I MEAN, FOLKS... TRY AS THEY MIGHT TO CONFUSE THE ISSUE OF "OWNERSHIP" AND THEREFORE RESPONSIBILITY, CLEARLY ONLY GOVERNMENT ENTITIES HAVE THE LEGAL AUTHORITY TO CREATE "FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS" IN THE FIRST PLACE.
[R]eporters and photographers continue to be blocked from covering aspects of the spill.
Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.
“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,’” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator. “No further elaboration” was given, Mr. Gulley added.
(*SHRUG*)
* SEE WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT, PEOPLE...! AS WITH THE COAST GUARD AND THE FAA, HOMELAND SECURITY WORKS FOR OBAMA. PERIOD. THE BUCK STOPS AT HIS DESK. THESE ARE HIS POLICIES.
CBS News reported last month that one of its news crews was threatened with arrest for trying to film a public beach where oil had washed ashore. The Coast Guard said later that it was disappointed to learn of the incident.
* THE AGE OF OBAMA... (*SIGH*) IT'S REALITY.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100615/D9GBF9UO0.html
As countless tar balls washed ashore on a beach along Alabama's Gulf Coast, cleanup workers sat and watched because they didn't have the proper plastic covers to protect their shoes.
* AGAIN, FOLKS... NOT THE ONION... NOT A COMEDY SKETCH... THIS IS REALITY IN THE AGE OF OBAMA!
* HEY... I'VE GOT A FRIGG'N IDEA; RUN TO THE NEAREST STORE AND GET SOME FRIGG'N PLASTIC BAGS...!!!
Almost two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, shortages of government-required protective gear and cleaning equipment are slowing work to remove the sticky mess and keep beaches and marshes along the Gulf Coast safe and oil-free.
* HEY... I'VE GOT AN IDEA; EITHER RELAX THE FRIGG'N REGULATIONS OR ELSE USE YOUR GODDAMNED BRAINS AND COME UP WITH ALTERNATIVE "PROTECTION GEAR."
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
As the oil first stained the Alabama coast, officials say some people hired to pick up tar balls off the sand couldn't lift a finger because they didn't have the bright yellow boot covers...
* BRIGHT... YELLOW... BOOT... COVERS... (*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
One day the shortage may be white disposable coveralls worn by cleaning crews, Hyer said, while the next day it might be gloves. Both are required under rules set out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, he said, so crews can't work without them.
* HMM... IMAGINE: "IF OSHA HAD RUN WW-2" (*SMIRK*)
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... THIS IS INSANE. WE'RE TALKING RAW PETROLEUM - "ORGANIC" IF YOU WILL.
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100614/capt.b46f4efd32b7448f9d622aaa3a9917b6-b46f4efd32b7448f9d622aaa3a9917b6-0.jpg?x=400&y=318&q=85&sig=QmUT3LJ4_NHCADSuvNM8sA--
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100614/480/urn_publicid_ap_org_b46f4efd32b7448f9d622aaa3a9917b6/
* COULD YOU IMAGINE... JUST IMAGINE... IF THIS HAD BEEN PRESIDENT BUSH DURING KATRINA...
(*SPLITTING HEADACHE*)
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/15/morning-bell-the-obama-energy-tax-game-plan/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Now that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has turned into an environmental disaster, the White House is again trying to turn public anger at one corporation into massive government intervention of an entire sector of the economy.
In an email to his leftist Organizing for America activists, President Barack Obama previewed his Oval Office address tonight calling on Congress “to move forward on legislation to promote a new economy powered by green jobs, combat climate change, and end our dependence on foreign oil.”
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Separately, Joel Benenson, a pollster for the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s presidential campaign, circulated a memo on Capitol Hill arguing that a comprehensive energy bill “could give Democrats a potent weapon to wield against Republicans in the fall.”
* NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE... HMM? (*SIGH*)
Politico reports that Benenson’s recommended “messaging architecture” includes the slogan “Making BP Pay Isn’t Enough” and adds: “frame the opposition” as “Big Oil and corporate polluters who have blocked energy reform for decades” and “politicians protecting the special interests that fund their campaigns.”
* PARTISAN POLITICS UBER ALLES... (*SIGH*)
The irony here is that BP has been a special interest pushing for carbon pricing on Capitol Hill for years now.
* NOT TO MENTION A SPECIAL INTEREST WHICH HAS "CONTRIBUTED" A GREAT DEAL OF MONEY TO OBAMA CAMPAIGNS AND OTHER POLITICAL LOBBYING OVER THE YEARS. (*NOD*)
It was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a corporatist entity that exists to enact “fair climate change.” And of course by “fair” they mean whatever subsidies and mandates they can extract from the federal government to best protect their bottom line. ([T]his February, BP actually pulled out of USCAP because they thought: “We can be more effective if we show up in the discussion as BP.”)
As The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney reports: “They made out particularly well in the House’s climate bill, while natural gas producers suffered.”
(*SNORT*) SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, FOLKS... IT'S NOT FUNNY. THE OLIGARCHS ARE RUNNING A SCAM ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. IT'S THAT FRIGG'N SIMPLE. WE PAY MORE... THEY PROFIT MORE. THAT'S THE GAME.
The Left knows that the American public has been educated about the economic harms of cap-and-trade, and they are hoping they can use the BP oil spill to pass "renewable energy standards" before the public wises up. Don’t be fooled: [this] is just another way for the Enviro-Left to inflict an economy-killing energy tax on the American public.
* THAT'S US, FOLKS - YOU AND ME!
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis has crunched the numbers and found that [Obama's] "renewable energy standards" would: 1) Raise electricity prices by 36% for households and 60% for industry;
* WE'LL PAY DIRECTLY FOR INCREASED HOUSEHOLD ENERGY COSTS AND INDIRECTLY TO COVER THE INCREASED COSTS OF DOING BUSINESS. SOUND LIKE SOMETHING YOU WANT...??? (*SMIRK*)
2) Cut national income (GDP) by $5.2 trillion between 2012 and 2035; 3) Cut national income by $2,400 per year for a family of four; 4) Reduce employment by more than 1,000,000 jobs; and 5) Add more than $10,000 to a family of four’s share of the national debt by 2035.
* FOLKS... THIS IS INSANITY!
In The Godfather, at Vito Corleone’s funeral, the family consiglieri Tom Hagan leans into the new Don Michael Corleone and whispers: “Do you know how they’re gonna come at’cha?” If the American public wants to avoid a self-inflicted economic disaster on top of the existing environmental one, they need to know how President Obama is going to come after them.
Now you know.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7149576.ece
A high-level British offer of help to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was rebuffed by America shortly after the accident...
A few days after the BP-leased rig sank on April 22, the [British] Cabinet Office made a direct offer to the US State Department to airlift half of Britain’s 1,200-tonne stockpile of chemical dispersants, The Times has learnt.
At the time there was an urgent demand for fresh supplies. The offer to provide the chemicals, at the cost price of £3 million, was made through diplomatic channels and via the Civil Contingency Secretariat, the Government’s emergency planning unit.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which was also involved in drafting the plan, said that the US had chosen not to accept the offer.
* YEP. I'VE BEEN COVERING THIS, BUT SUCH NEWS BEARS REPEATING SINCE OUR OWN AMERICAN MSM SEEMINGLY HAS LITTLE ENTHUSIASM FOR COVERING THIS FACET OF OBAMA ADMINISTRATION POLICY... (*SHRUG*)
[British] Officials said the US claimed that the chemicals held in Britain did not have the correct paperwork...
* NOT A JOKE, FOLKS... NOT A SATIRE.
* THE LONDON TIMES ARTICLE GOES ON TO NOTE:
[T]he US had accepted similar offers from other countries, including Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, sent a large batch of the chemicals to the Gulf shortly after the accident.
* NOW I JUST RECEIVED SOME WHITE HOUSE TALKING POINTS LAST NIGHT INSISTING THAT THE ADMINISTRATION HAS NOT BEEN REJECTING "ALL" OFFERS OF HELP; APPARENTLY "ALL" IS THE ESSENCE OF THEIR MEDIA RESPONSE STRATEGY. (*SMIRK*)
British stocks of dispersant are kept in 11 different locations around the UK and are overseen by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. A large part of the stockpile is stored at Coventry airport, where specially equipped DC6 aircraft are kept on standby for an oil spill in British waters. Additional supplies are held in Aberdeen and Southampton.
* TO BAD THE BRITS HAVEN'T BEEN RUNNING THE SHOW ALL ALONG; THEY SEEM COMPETENT!
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2010/06/14/radical-ideas-from-a-federal-housing-bureaucrat/
As the chief economist of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Patrick Lawler is usually confined in his public remarks to discussing such matters as the seasonal adjustment of home-price indexes. So I wasn’t expecting much excitement when Mr. Lawler rose to speak last week during a panel discussion at a housing-policy conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
It turns out, however, that Mr. Lawler has been quietly pondering some radical notions about how the U.S. might reorder its housing policies – insights acquired during more than 20 years as a regulator and Senate banking committee staff economist.
Mr. Lawler launched a frontal assault on the most sacred element in U.S. housing-policy dogma: the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loan, providing the right to refinance at any time, with no prepayment penalty.
Americans are very attached to their 30-year fixed-rate freely prepayable mortgages. ... They love to refinance every time rates drop and then brag to their neighbors about how much they are saving per month. What they don’t stop to realize often enough is that they are paying a very large price for that privilege - twice.
In the first place, mortgage rates are higher than they otherwise would be. That’s because lenders and mortgage investors must build in protection for the risk that we will prepay and stick them with a lower yield than they were anticipating.
Mr. Lawler estimates that Americans pay at least an extra 0.25 to 0.50 percentage point in rates because of this option to prepay without penalty. They also pay another premium - sometimes a percentage point or two–for having a long-term fixed rate. Over 30 years, that translates into some real money, but no one ever mentions that when bragging to the neighbor.
(*SNORT*) (*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
In the second place, our nation has created the likes of Fannie, Freddie and the FHA to facilitate these oddball 30-year fixed-rate loans, which aren’t normally provided by the private market. For a long while, that seemed like a free lunch. Fannie and Freddie, we were told, were far better able to handle those complex risks than we dumb consumers ever could. But since the government had to rescue Fannie and Freddie in 2008, the taxpayers’ tab for this indigestible lunch has swollen to $145 billion, and it’s still rising. So that’s the second time we’ll pay for our irrational love of American-style mortgages – only this time, we all pay, not just mortgage borrowers.
Meanwhile, other wealthy nations – notably Canada – do without our kind of mortgages and yet somehow manage to have homeownership rates similar to ours. They do not pretend that there are risk-free ways to buy houses on credit.
(*NOD*)
Lawler then skewered one of the favorite arguments of those who assert that we need Fannie and Freddie – their ability to borrow money all over the world, drawing in foreigners’ savings to finance ever-larger McMansions (which then need to be filled with Asian gadgets and European gewgaws).
"But why exactly do we need all of that foreign investment in our mortgages," Lawler asked. “A good case can be made that we massively over-invest in housing.”
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
Indeed, we might be better off investing any money foreigners lend us in something that would help us sell more of our goods and services to those foreigners so we can hope to pay them back one day.
(*STANDING OVATION*)
All too soon, Mr. Lawler’s time was up, but he blurted one last revolutionary chant before resuming his role as a bland bureaucrat:
“We can do with a lot less government involvement and still get what we want, just by making some fundamental changes.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703685404575306761351347170.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_newyork
Nearly half of all Newark teachers took at least two weeks of sick leave last year, and more than a quarter of them took three weeks or more off.
(*SNORT*)
* YEAH... BECAUSE HOW COULD ANYONE BE EXPECTED TO WORK AN ENTIRE (*SNORT*) 191 DAYS A YEAR (*CHOKING*) WITHOUT TAKE AN ADDITIONAL 14-28 DAYS OFF - WITH PAY!?
The district instituted an attendance-improvement program in October, but even so about 7% of the district's teachers are absent on an average day...
* HEY... HOW'BOUT THIS: NO PAID SICK DAYS - PERIOD! IF THE TEACHERS' UNION WANTS TO PAY ABSENT TEACHERS THEN FINE, BUT AS FOR THE TAXPAYERS... GIVE US A BREAK!
With more than 40,000 students, Newark represents one of the largest and most vexing school systems in the Northeast. The district was taken over by the state in 1995 and since then has seen three state-appointed superintendents and little change in student performance.
* GOTTA LOVE GOVERNMENT! (*SMIRK*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704324304575307111725173500.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The BP oil spill is already a calamity for the Gulf Coast ecosystem and economy, but now that Washington is looking to deflect all political blame it could also became a disaster for the rule of law.
Exhibit A was the public announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that his Department had opened a criminal probe of the spill, a fact usually kept under wraps to protect the innocent.
* YOU KNOW... THIS ONE I'M NOT BUYING AS AN EXAMPLE OF A BREACH OF THE RULE OF LAW. LET JUSTICE INVESTIGATE. IF AN INVESTIGATION TURNS UP CREDIBLE EVIDENCE THAT CRIMINAL LIABILITY MAY EXIST THEN WE MOVE ON FROM THERE.
* YES... IN OTHER WORDS... I'M "DEFENDING" THAT IDIOT HOLDER AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IN THIS INSTANCE.
Then came the President's suggestion that BP suspend its dividend, which is crucial to the retirement of thousands of shareholders. BP may decide it is prudent to suspend its dividend while it gets a better handle on its ultimate liability. But the White House has no legal basis to compel such a decision.
* OK. AGAIN... (*PAUSE*)... UNLESS AND UNTIL "SUGGEST" BECOMES "COMPELS" I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS.
* YEP... TWICE IN A ROW I'M "DEFENDING" PRESIDENT OBAMA... (*LOOPSIDED SMILE*)
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are preparing to lift their own $75 million liability cap and apply that retroactively to BP, another move of dubious legality.
* NOW THERE'S WHERE I'M WITH THE JOURNAL 100%! SUCH A MOVE WOULD BE BLATANTLY EXTRA-CONSTITUTIONAL - A CLEAR ASSAULT UPON THE RULE OF LAW.
None of this is to absolve BP...[but the] more pertinent question is whether BP will survive, despite its ample cash flow, once the U.S. political and liability systems are done making the company pay.
Neither punishment-by-bankruptcy nor extralegal looting will help Gulf victims.
* ANYONE CARE TO ARGUE THAT SIMPLE FACT...??? (*SIGH*)
* FOLKS... THIS OP-ED IS A "MUST READ." SERIOUSLY... READ THE OP-ED IN ITS ENTIRETY.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/traders_play_around_with_stocks_cVgkz4DDerxWoMiGK4XxbP
* I LOVE THIS GUY!
It is time for some summer hijinks on Wall Street. So sit back and enjoy the stock market rally that probably won't last very long.
Stock prices rose nicely for a while yesterday because . . . well, just because.
(*CHUCKLE*) I COULDN'T HAVE PUT IT BETTER MYSELF...! (*HUGE FRIGG'N GRIN*)
But by the end of the trading session, market indicators were all showing a loss as investors grew increasingly nervous.
You'll see different explanations in today's papers for yesterday's initial gains. For instance, one statistic coming out of Europe suggested that the economy over there is suddenly looking better.
Two weeks ago, the European economy was a wreck. How did it improve this week?
* OH... AND DON'T OVERLOOK http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1286480/EU-chief-warns-democracy-disappear-Greece-Spain-Portugal.html
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... YA GOTTA READ THAT ONE! ("EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso set out an ‘apocalyptic’ vision in which crisis-hit countries in southern Europe could fall victim to military coups or popular uprisings as interest rates soar and public services collapse because their governments run out of money.")
* CONTINUING WITH CRUDILE...
It makes no sense because business conditions don't turn on a 10-cent euro (it does sound better when you say a "dime") even if the Europeans had a plugged five-cent piece (nickel) with which to stimulate their economies.
(*MORE CHUCKLING*)
The truth of the matter is that stock prices have improved over 4 percent in the past week only because professionals investors -- as happens almost every year -- are able to push them higher when summertime trading volume goes south to the beach.
And this week is a particularly good for market manipulation because it's one of those options expiration periods.
A source of mine and I started looking into this phenomenon a few years ago and we noticed that the stock market tends to have spiffy triple-digit gains within days of options expiration.
The expiration is this Friday, which also happens to be one of those famed quarterly triple-witching periods when options as well as futures contracts all go off the board at the same time.
We aren't sure why it happens, but the guess is that traders want to roll their options positions over into the next month to keep their portfolios stable. And in doing so, they create artificial demand that sends stocks higher.
But my point is, stocks have been benefiting from nothing more than the calendar for a little over a week.
[A]t the same time the US economy is suddenly looking (predictably) weaker - miserable retail sales, a lousy employment report, [unheeded] calls for budget restraint - while the European business situation really hasn't changed much.
* STAY TUNED, FOLKS... (*SIGH*)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100043479/i-admit-it-i-was-wrong-to-have-supported-barack-obama/
* Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He writes:
There’s little point, I know, in reminding readers that my support for Barack Obama was qualified; that I simultaneously endorsed GOP Congressional candidates; that I never saw Obama as a messiah and, indeed, was repelled by the millenarian fervour of his supporters. Nor is there much purpose in rehearsing John McCain’s shortcomings. The fact remains that I backed the Democrat.
I was wrong.
[Under President Obama] the federal government is 30% larger than it was two years ago
[Yes,] it was [George W. Bush,] the 43rd president who began the baleful policy of bail-outs and pork-barrel stimulus packages. But it was Obama who massively extended that policy against united Republican opposition. It was he who chose, in defiance of public opinion, to establish a state-run healthcare system. It was he who...adopted the asinine cap-and-trade rules, and he who re-federalised social security, thereby reversing the single most beneficial reform of the Clinton years.
* NOT QUITE SURE WHAT HANNAN MEANS BY 'RE-FEDERALIZED" SOCIAL SECURITY... (*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)
These errors are not random.
They amount to a comprehensive strategy of Europeanisation: Euro-carbon taxes, Euro-disarmament, Euro-healthcare, Euro-welfare, Euro-spending levels, Euro-tax levels and, inevitably, Euro-unemployment levels.
Any American reader who wants to know where Obamification will lead should spend a week with me in the European Parliament. I’m working in your future and, believe me, you won’t like it.
Unsurprisingly, given his enthusiasm for corporatism at home, Obama is an unqualified supporter of the EU. ... His fondness for the EU is matched by his disdain for the United Kingdom.
It’s not the diplomatic snubs that bother me: the dissing of Gordon Brown, the insulting gifts, the sending back of Winston Churchill’s bust. It’s not even the faux-anger towards the company he insists on calling “British” Petroleum. (No such firm has existed since the merger of BP and Amoco nine years ago. Thirty-nine per cent of BP shares are American-owned, and 40% British-owned. The stricken rig in the Gulf is owned by Transocean, and the drilling was carried out by Halliburton, yet Obama isn’t demanding compensation from either of these American corporations.)
* WELL... IN FAIRNESS... THAT'S BECAUSE BP EXECUTIVES WERE CALLING THE SHOTS AND WHEN TRANSOCEAN AND HALLIBURTON PERSONNEL URGED CAUTION, RESTRAINT, EVEN MORE TESTING WITH RESULTANT DELAYS, BP DEMURED. (*SHRUG*)
All these things are minor irritants compared to the way the Obama administration is backing Peronist Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands – or, as Obama’s people call them, “the Malvinas.”
* UNBELIEVABLE, HUH...??? (*SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
British troops were the only sizeable contingent to support the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have fought alongside America in most of the conflicts of the past hundred years. Yet, when the chips are down, Obama lines up with Hugo Chávez and Daniel Ortega against us.
* HEY... DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY... MANY AMERICANS FEEL OBAMA DELIBERATELY UNDERCUTS OUR OWN SECURITY INTERESTS! (*RUEFUL SHAKE OF THE HEAD*)
No one denies that Obama was dealt a rotten economic hand; but he has played it ineptly. His policies are serving to make his country poorer, less free and less respected. And that is a problem for all of us.
* DON'T FORGET... THIS "ROTTEN DEAL" THAT OBAMA WAS DEALT... HE VOTED "AYE" FOR ALL THE BAILOUTS AND "STIMULUS" PACKAGES SUBMITTED BY BUSH! ALSO RECALL... PRIOR TO WINNING THE PRESIDENCY, OBAMA WAS A SENATOR OF THE PARTY IN POWER SINCE JANUARY 2007!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/business/16oil.html?hp
The chief executives of the world’s largest oil companies faced a Congressional panel of inquisitors on Tuesday and...cast the BP spill as a rare event that their companies were not likely to repeat.
* CORRECTLY CAST BY THE WAY!
In their remarks, the executives said that continued offshore exploration and drilling were essential to American oil and gas supplies and to the health of their industry.
* AND CONTINUED OFFSHORE EXPLORATION AND DRILLING IS ESSENTIAL TO AMERICAN OIL AND GAS SUPPLIES, THE AMERICAN ECONOMY AS A WHOLE, AND OUR BASIC NATIONAL SECURITY!
Rex W. Tillerson, chairman of Exxon Mobil, testified that if companies follow proper well design, drilling, maintenance and training procedures accidents like Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 “should not occur,” implying that BP had failed to do so.
* THE TRUTH WILL OUT; IN THE MEANTIME, INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON BLAME, LET'S FOCUS ON ACTION AND AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE!
John S. Watson, chief executive of Chevron, also pointed an implicit finger at BP, saying that every Chevron employee and contractor has the authority to stop work immediately if they see anything unsafe.
Congressional investigators charge that BP went ahead with risky procedures even after repeated warnings from company workers and contract employees on the ill-fated rig.
* YEP. THAT'S WHAT THE REPORTING HAS BEEN. AGAIN... THE TRUTH WILL OUT.
“Our internal review confirmed what our regular audits have told us,” Mr. Watson testified. “Chevron’s deepwater drilling and well control practices are safe and environmentally sound.”
* AND THERE'S NO REASON IN THE WORLD THAT I KNOW OF TO DOUBT HIM!
Lamar McKay, the president of BP America...did...issue a plea for forbearance from Congressional and executive branch officials, saying: “America’s economy, security and standard of living today significantly depend upon domestic oil and gas production. Reducing our energy production, absent a concurrent reduction in consumption, would shift additional jobs and dollars offshore and place millions of additional barrels per day into tanker ships that must traverse the world’s oceans.”
* ABSOLUTELY 100% RIGHT...!!! THIS IS NOT DEBATABLE!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/06/myths_about_the_teacher_layoff.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
* FIRST... THE FICTION:
Due to shrinking state and local budgets, up to 300,000 teachers could be laid off, with devastating educational consequences for our children, such as burgeoning class sizes. The only cure is $23 billion in fresh federal deficit spending, rushed through Congress as part of a bill to fund U.S. overseas military operations.
“The urgency is high,” President Obama warned congressional leaders in a June 12 letter.
(*SMIRK*)
* NOW... THE FACTS:
Start with that scary number of 300,000 teacher layoffs, which has been bandied about in numerous newspaper articles.
The sources for it are interested parties: teachers unions and school administrators, whose national organizations counted layoff warning notices that have already been sent out this spring and extrapolated from there.
(*SNICKER*)
Notably, however, even these sources usually describe the threatened positions as “education jobs” – not teachers. That’s because the figures actually include not only kindergarten through 12th grade classroom instructors, but also support staff (bus drivers, custodians, et al.) and even community college faculty. And 300,000 is the upper end of a range that could be as low as 100,000.
(*SNORT*) (*CHUCKLE*) (*SMIRK*) (*ROLLING MY EYES*) (*SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Moreover, springtime layoff notices are a notoriously unreliable guide to actual job cuts in the fall, because rules and regulations in many public school systems require administrators to notify every person who might conceivably be laid off - whether they actually expect to fire them or not.
As the New York Times recently reported: “Everywhere, school officials tend to overestimate the potential for layoffs at this time of year, to ensure that every employee they might have to dismiss receives the required notifications.”
(*SHRUG*)
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Given these facts, it’s unclear how the bill’s supporters came up with its $23 billion price tag.
It works out to about $77,000 per job saved in the 300,000-layoff scenario, but $230,000 per job if only 100,000 jobs are at risk.
Maybe that’s why the bill’s fine print allows states to spend any excess funds left over from education hiring on other state employees.
* YA THINK...?!?! (*CHUCKLE*)
By the way, the bill distributes funds to states according to how many residents they have, not how many threatened layoffs.
* UNFRIGG'NBELIEVABLE...!
But what about class size?
Well, 300,000 teacher layoffs would increase the national student-teacher ratio in public schools from 15.3 to 1, to 16.6 to 1 – roughly where it was in 1997.
(*SNORT*)
100,000 teacher layoffs would increase it to 15.6 to 1 – the 2005 level.
(*SNORT*)
* OH... BTW... SOME ADDITIONAL INSIGHT ON HOW THE STUDENT-TEACHER RATIO WORKS OUT COST-BENEFIT WISE...
Student-teacher ratios shrank by roughly 10% nationally between 1996 and 2008, but reading scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress stayed essentially flat.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... THE MORE YOU KNOW... (*SHRUG*)
[G]iven that the unemployment rate among health and education workers is only half that of the work force as a whole, you could argue that it’s the teachers’ turn to absorb some of the pain that they have been spared to date.
(*SHRUG*)
If [the the Administration really] wants to keep teachers on the job, it could support mayors - such as Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, a Democrat - and governors such as Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican - who are calling on teachers and other unionized public employees to make reasonable sacrifices to avoid layoffs.
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
Let's be serious. This $23 billion bill - fifteen hundredths of one percent of the United States’ $14.6 trillion economy - is not enough, all by itself, to bankrupt the nation. But it is also too paltry to jump-start the giant economy.
The real point is that both the costs of the bill in increased federal borrowing and its benefits in purported economic stimulus are probably outweighed by the social costs of squandering an opportunity to wring concessions and reforms from the special interest groups that dominate public education, to the detriment of parents and children everywhere.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/White-House-press-challenges-pols-with-___-squirt-guns_-96324524.html
Hollywood for the Ugly was in full-frolic mode a week ago Saturday, when Vice President Biden brought D.C. reporters over to the Naval Observatory for a "pool party." "There was pizza and watermelon," the Politico's Mike Allen enthused, "Supersoakers and a rock climb."
The New York Times' David Sanger was there, along with Wolf Blitzer and Ed Henry of CNN. Rahm Emanuel's a caution with a squirt gun, Henry's Twitter feed tells us: "Rahm was chasing Mrs Biden & I got caught in his crosshairs." Tee hee, OMG!
"It doesn't take much," former White House correspondent and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon once lamented. "We're like schoolgirls." If the chief of staff returns your calls, Cannon said, "it goes a long way." And if he deigns to douse you with a Super Soaker, well then, bliss it was on that day to be alive.
Is the Veep mansion splashfest yet more evidence of liberal media bias? You bet. But that bias is only one facet of a larger problem.
More troubling than liberal bias is the growing sense of journos' chumminess with pols and their desperate desire for "access." It has warped what ought to be an adversarial relationship between those in power and those who are supposed to keep them honest.
Jefferson warned that abusive governments keep around "a kind of standing army of newswriters" who "put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers." Greenwald notes an increasing trend toward quoting "White House officials," allowing them to pass along the administration line without any regard for whether anonymity is necessary.
For decades after the abuses of Vietnam and Watergate, a newly emboldened Fourth Estate asked tougher questions, making it harder for presidents to hide incompetence and abuses of power. A 2006 study sampling presidential press conferences from Eisenhower through Clinton found that "the Nixon era marks the beginning of an extended period of increasingly vigorous questioning" that persisted regardless whether the president was Democratic or Republican.
That spirit is on the wane, unfortunately.
Lately it seems, all too many reporters are getting giddy over the romance of power. The result, as Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald puts it, is that they serve as "Royal Court Spokespeople regardless of which monarch is ruling."
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/15/bailing_out_politicians_now_105955.html
[Re:] Obama's weekend letter to Capitol Hill calling for a $50 billion bailout of state and city governments...
[President] Obama is calling for a taxpayer rescue of the political class to which he belongs, to spare it the painful duty tens of thousands of business executives have had to perform.
Private employees - 25 million of whom are out of work, underemployed or have given up looking for jobs - may be expendable, but government workers [apparently] are not.
As America is running a second consecutive deficit of $1.4 trillion, however, the U.S. government has no tax revenue to send to the cities and states. We would have to borrow the $50 billion from China, Japan and the Persian Gulf nations. Obama is thus asking Congress to deepen America's fiscal crisis and put the next generation on the hook for another $50 billion so today's mayors and governors can get an exemption from their political duty.
Where is the justice here?
Government workers enjoy far greater job security than private-sector workers. At the state and local level, their average pay and benefits, about $40 an hour, far exceed the $27 per hour in the private sector. The federal worker has it even better, receiving $30,000 a year more in pay and benefits than the average worker in the private sector.
Obama's proposal is thus about taking care of his own and the Democratic Party's political base.
* (MIS)USING OUR MONEY...!!! NOT JUST "OUR MONEY" BUT OUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE EARNINGS!
Consider. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers, the Transport Workers Union of America and other government unions in the AFL-CIO are all powerhouses of the Democratic Party. Obama is proposing a $50 billion payoff for his own voters.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Democrats are the Party of Government. The more government programs and agencies there are, the more government bureaucrats and beneficiaries there are. As government grows - it now consumes close to 40% of the entire economy - the larger and more solid the base of the party becomes.
As Democrats are the party of government, Washington, D.C., is the capital of the Democratic Party as well as the nation. When the rest of America suffers a depression and recession, Washington knows prosperity. An economic crisis for the country means job opportunities here.
The fiscal crises gripping Europe and America, which could portend a crisis of Western democracy, was caused by the unbridled growth of government. And it cannot be cured without a rollback of government programs and a downsizing of government workforces on both sides of the Atlantic. As Greece is staring at unpayable debt because of government's conferring of jobs, benefits, salaries, pensions and health care the tax base could not sustain, California and New York are in the same boat and headed for the same reef.
Once the richest and most populous of states, both [NY & CA] face a steady exodus of business and taxpayers. But, of the people coming in to enjoy the cornucopia of benefits these states provide, many lack the skills, education or earning power of those departing.
* MANY ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS! MY GOD... IT'S A DOMINO EFFECT; WELFARE STATISM AND OPEN BORDERS ARE CONTRA INDICATED.
And why should states like Virginia, that said no to many benefits, have to bail out the spenders in Sacramento and Albany who could not say no?
* NO REASON. NONE! (AND I'M A NEW YORKER...!!!)
For the U.S. government to bail these states out again, as Obama did with his $800 billion stimulus, would only be to postpone the inevitable day of reckoning, to deepen the federal fiscal crisis and to raise the odds further that America herself will one day have to default.
In the recession of 1981, Ronald Reagan, with his across-the board tax cuts of 25 percent, bet the ranch on the private sector - and won his gamble.
Obama, with his $800 billion stimulus, bet it all on the public sector. It appears not to have worked. Now Obama wants to double-down.
Congress should give him no more chips.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/15/oil_vs_snake_oil_105964.html
Let's stop and think. Either the government knows how to stop the oil spill or they don't.
If they don't know, then what is all this political grandstanding about keeping their boot on the neck of BP, the attorney general of the United States going down to the Gulf to threaten lawsuits - on what charges was unspecified - and President Obama showing up in his shirt sleeves?
Just what is Obama going to do in his shirt sleeves...[?]
[Obama's] government is not about governing. It is about creating an impression. That worked on the campaign trail in 2008, but it is a disaster in the White House, where rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
If the Obama administration was for real, and trying to help get the oil spill contained as soon as possible, the last thing its attorney general would be doing is threatening a lawsuit. A lawsuit is not going to stop the oil, and creating a distraction can only make people at BP start directing their attention toward covering themselves, instead of covering the oil well. (If and when the attorney general finds that BP did something illegal, that will be time enough to start a lawsuit. But making a public announcement at this time accomplishes absolutely nothing substantive. It is just more political grandstanding.)
[An American president's] domestic policies can affect foreign leaders, as Ronald Reagan's breaking of the air traffic controllers' strike impressed the Russians with what kind of man they were going to have to deal with, as former Soviet officials said publicly many years later; [but by the same token, today's] domestic bungling by Barack Obama sends a dangerous signal to countries hostile to us, in addition to the signal sent by his displays of amateurism on the world stage.
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