Friday, July 23, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 23, 2010


1980...?!?!

I mean, think about it... in 1980 the Beach Boys had been around for, oh... twenty years...?!?!

And now it's 2010...?!?!

Wow...
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4 comments:

William R. Barker said...

* SPEAKING OF THE SLOOP JOHN B...

http://bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view.bg?articleid=1269698

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.

(*SMIRK*)

Isabel - Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage - was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.

* NEW ZEALAND-BUILT, HUH? OH, YEAH... HERE'S A GUY CLEARLY "CONCERNED" ABOUT U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT!

[I]nstead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern.

(*SNICKER*)

The senior senator’s chief of staff David Wade denied the old salt was berthing his boat out of state to avoid ponying up to the commonwealth.

* YEAH... SURE... (*CHUCKLE*)

July 23, 2010 at 8:48 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/nyregion/23immig.html?_r=1&hpw

Three decades after the Supreme Court ruled that immigration violations cannot be used as a basis to deny children equal access to a public school education, one in five school districts in New York State is routinely requiring a child’s immigration papers as a prerequisite to enrollment, or asking parents for information that only lawful immigrants can provide.

* SOUNDS GOOD TO ME! THE ONLY WAY IT COULD SOUND BETTER WAS IF IT WERE FIVE OUT OF FIVE SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN NYS!

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which culled a list of 139 such districts from hundreds of registration forms and instructions posted online, has not found any children turned away for lack of immigration paperwork.

* HMM. TOO BAD!

But [the ACLU] warned in a letter to the state’s education commissioner on Wednesday that the requirements listed by many registrars, however free of discriminatory intent, “will inevitably discourage families from enrolling in school for fear that they would be reported to federal immigration authorities.”

* TWO POINTS: 1) THERE SHOULD BE "DISCRIMINATORY INTENT!' THE INTENT SHOULD BE "DISCRIMINATORY" IN THE SENSE THAT TAXPAYERS SHOULDN'T BE RESPONSIBLE FOR EDUCATING ILLEGAL ALIENS! 2) AT A BARE MINIMUM WE WANT LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO REPORT ILLEGAL ALIENS TO FEDERAL IMMIGRATION AUTHORITIES!

For months, the [ACLU] has been pushing the State Education Department to stop the practices, which range from...requiring a Social Security number...to demanding that noncitizen children show a “resident alien card,” with the warning that “if the card is expired, it will not be accepted.”

* BOTH PRACTICES SOUND PERFECTLY LOGICAL TO ME!

The [NYS] Education Department has resisted doing anything to address the issue directly, in contrast with several other states including Maryland, Nebraska and New Jersey where education officials have taken strong steps in recent years to halt similar practices.

* WOW... SO NYS IS 'THE GOOD GUY" WHILE MARYLAND, NEBRASKA AND NEW JERSEY ARE ACTIVELY CONSPIRING WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS TO DEFRAUD STATE AND FEDERAL TAXPAYERS.

* READ THE FULL ARTICLE, FOLKS. THEN READ THIS: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0457_0202_ZD.html

* THEN AFTER YOU READ THAT, RECALL PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS PROMISING THAT ILLEGAL ALIENS WON'T GET THEIR HEALTHCARE SUBSIDIZED UNDER OBAMACARE.

* RECALL THAT ILLEGALS ARE SPECIFICALLY DENIED BENEFITS SUCH AS FOOD STAMPS.

* CLEARLY PLYLER V. DOE WAS BAD LAW AND YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF A ROGUE JUDICIARY - PARTICULARLY SINCE THE LATE 1930'S.

July 23, 2010 at 3:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/541314/201007221919/JournoGate-Continued-Pouncing-On-Palin.aspx

On Thursday, the Daily Caller published exchanges from a private forum called JournoList that showed how 400 top mainstream reporters and their activist buddies conspired in an attack against [Sarah] Palin the minute she entered the presidential race.

Wrote Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation: "This seems to me like an occasion when the nonofficial campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official (Obama) campaign shouldn't say - very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here (on JournoList) - scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia (sic) wing-nut a heartbeat away."

"What a joke," added Jeffrey Toobin, a staff writer at the New Yorker and a senior analyst at CNN.

Ryan Donmoyer of Bloomberg News warned the forum bloggers that Palin's decision against aborting her baby with Down syndrome represented a threat to Obama because it was a "heartwarming" story.

Politico's Ben Adler (now at Newsweek) said Palin should be criticized because campaigning would take her away from her baby.

Instead of calling Adler out on his 1970s-grade sexism, Human Rights Watch's then-chief of operations, Suzanne Nossel, suggested that McCain be called the sexist: "I think it is and can be spun as a profoundly sexist pick. Women should feel umbrage at the idea that their votes can be attracted just by putting a woman, any woman, on the ticket no matter her qualification or views."

And so it went - journalists from the Nation, Mother Jones, Time, Politico, Bloomberg cooking up approaches, arguments, "narratives" and templates to paint a false picture of the candidate.

July 23, 2010 at 4:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Numbers-show-Obama-favors-lobbyists-1002863-99062599.html

New filings by lobbying firms and big businesses show that the most entrenched special interests - the companies and industries that spend the most on lobbying - are [President] Obama's allies, both in the policies they favor and the politicians they finance.

General Electric once again spent more money on lobbying than any other company - $8.3 million last quarter (Pacific Gas & Electric reported $18.2 million in quarterly spending, but almost all of that was dedicated to opposing a state-level ballot measure in California).

GE is also one of the two companies, together with Google, that is most in sync with the Obama administration.

This company is, by any definition, a leading special interest, and it's on Obama's side in both lobbying and campaign contributions. GE's political action committee has favored Democratic candidates by a two-to-one margin.

Just after Obama's inauguration, GE CEO Jeff Immelt wrote that "the government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner." Immelt told shareholders, "GE's broad technical portfolio positions us as a natural partner as the role of government increases in the current crisis." True to his word, Immelt has positioned GE to benefit from all sorts of Obama initiatives - and of course, GE's league-leading lobbying squad has worked Capitol Hill to support and craft these initiatives.

GE has supported and stands to profit from stimulus, climate legislation, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, rail subsidies, battery subsidies, solar subsidies, wind subsidies, and more.

GE's lobbyists include three former senators - John Breaux, D-LA., Trent Lott, R-MS., and Don Nickles, R-OK. - plus Linda Daschle, wife of Obama confidant and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD. Also, former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-MO., and former Rep. Jim McCrery, R-LA., are part of GE's lobbying army.

* DISGUSTING, ISN'T IT?

The top three trade lobbies - lobbying groups that represent single industries - are all health-sector lobbies that vocally and repeatedly supported Obama's health care overhaul. The AMA was first among single-industry lobbies last quarter, followed by the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the American Hospital Association. Not only did these groups help push Obamacare across the finish line, they have also rallied behind Obama's controversial Medicare chief Donald Berwick.

PhRMA has [also] run campaign ads supporting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV., and the group's new president was an Obama donor.

And that nasty oil industry? The top two Big Oil lobbying spenders last quarter were ConocoPhillips and Shell. Both companies have actively supported the Senate climate bill. Conoco's CEO told the Financial Times in March, "We like the idea of cap-and-trade for large stationary sources, with a linked fee." According to the Washington Post, BP also was ready to endorse the Senate bill, until its oil spill made an endorsement counterproductive.

AARP was the leading nonprofit lobbying spender in May, June, and July, shelling out $4.25 million. AARP, whose CEO Barry Rand gave the maximum legal contribution to Obama, was a key Obama partner in the health care fight.

Now, Obama's allies could point out that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - by far the largest lobbying spender - has generally been antagonistic toward Obama, opposing his pushes on health care, climate and Wall Street. But the Chamber differs from GE, PhRMA and Conoco in an important way: It is a broad-based lobby representing the entire business community. The term "special interest" is not quite an apt one for the Chamber.

July 23, 2010 at 4:49 PM

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