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2010
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July
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- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 30, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 29, 2010
- U.S. v. Arizona -- No. CV 10-1413-PHX-SRB
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 28, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 27, 2010
- Summer Reading 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 26, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., July 24 & 25, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 23, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 22, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 21, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 20, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 19, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., July 17 & 18, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 16, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 15, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 14, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 13, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 12, 2010
- Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., July 10 & 11
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 9, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 8, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 7, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 6, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat., Sun., & Mon., July 3/4/5
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, July 2, 2010
- Operation Wetback
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 1, 2010
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July
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
16 comments:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.
* WELL... WE DIDN'T NEED A WASHINGTON POST "INVESTIGATION" TO TELL US THIS!
* OH... BTW... I WAS AGAINST CREATING "HOMELAND SECURITY."
Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored. These are not academic issues; lack of focus, not lack of resources, was at the heart of the Fort Hood shooting that left 13 dead, as well as the Christmas Day bomb attempt thwarted not by the thousands of analysts employed to find lone terrorists but by an alert airline passenger who saw smoke coming from his seatmate.
Underscoring the seriousness of these issues are the conclusions of retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs. Vines, who once commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq and is familiar with complex problems, was stunned by what he discovered. "I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities," he said in an interview. "The complexity of this system defies description." The result, he added, is that it's impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste," Vines said. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."
* WHEN IN DOUBT... CUT! THAT'S MY PREFERRED POLICY!
* FOLKS... WE'RE IN DEEP, DEEP, DEEP SHIT. READ THE FULL ARTICLE - IF YOU HAVE THE STOMACH FOR IT.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0719/breaking7.html
Credit agency Moody's has downgraded Ireland's government bond ratings to Aa2, blaming banking liabilities, weak growth prospects and a substantial increase in the debt to GDP ratio. The general government debt-to-GDP ratio was at 64% at the end of last year, up from 25% before the financial crisis took hold, and is continuing to rise.
“Today’s downgrade is primarily driven by the Irish government’s gradual but significant loss of financial strength, as reflected by its deteriorating debt affordability,” said Mr. [Dietmar] Hornung [,Moody's lead analyst for Ireland]. (The move comes just over a year after Moody's last downgraded the country's rating. On July 2nd 2009, the agency gave the bonds a Aa1 rating, with a negative outlook.)
The agency said it expect expects economic growth to be below historical trend over the next three to five years due to the weak banking and real estate sectors, and the fall in private sector credit.
* "...BELOW HISTORIC TREND..." YEP. SURE. RIGHT. (*ROLLING MY EYES*)
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.4e398c464a3cc2b9ad0e1f39a8aa0c73.3f1&show_article=1
To cries of "Kill them all!" gunmen opened fire at a weekend birthday party Sunday, mowing down at least 17 people in an attack that laid bare the brutality of Mexico's long-running drug war.
A dozen people were also wounded as the killers sprayed more than 200 bullets indiscriminately at the private celebration outside Torreon, an industrial city in the northern state of Coahuila.
* JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO, FOLKS... WALK AWAY... NOTHING TO SEE HERE...
Some 9,000 people were killed in Mexican drug violence in 2009 - and in less than six months this year some 7,000 people have been already been killed, according to government figures.
Nearly 25,000 people have been killed since December 2006...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38304435/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Monday to convince skeptical Pakistanis that American interest in their country extends beyond the fight against Islamist militants by announcing a raft of new aid projects worth $500 million.
* SCREW "SKEPICAL PAKISTANIS." HOW ABOUT SKEPICAL AMERICANS...?!?! HOW ABOUT CONVINCING US THAT BARAK OBAMA HAS AN INTEREST IN OUR COUNTRY!
The projects, which included new dams for badly needed electricity and hospitals, are part of a $7.5 billion aid effort...
* SEVEN AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS... IN THE MIDST OF "THE GREAT RECESSION"... AT A TIME OF EVER-GROWING DEFICIT AND DEBT... (*SIGH*)
Clinton said the U.S. will complete two hydroelectric dam projects to supply electricity to more than 300,000 people in areas near the Afghan border, will renovate or build three medical facilities in central and southern Pakistan and will embark on a new initiative to improve access to clean drinking water in the country.
* SO IN OTHER WORDS WE'RE "NATION BUILDING" IN PAKISTAN. WE'RE BORROWING MONEY FROM CHINA TO GIVE TO PAKISTAN.
These projects and several others focused on promoting economic growth will cost some $500 million and will be funded by legislation approved by Congress to triple nonmilitary aid to $1.5 billion a year over five years.
* TRIPLE...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/health/policy/18health.html?_r=1&ref=politics
When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
* FOLKS... OBAMA LIES.
* FOLKS... OBAMA AND THE DEMS LIED ALL ALONG ON HEALTHCARE AND THERE'S JUST NO WAY TO SPIN YOUR WAY OUT OF THAT.
Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.
Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.
In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.
Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said.
* IT'S NOT A STRETCH TO IDENTIFY THIS CLAIM AS THE PATHWAY TO DICTATORSHIP.
While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.
“For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” the president said last September, in a spirited exchange with George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.”
When Mr. Stephanopoulos said the penalty appeared to fit the dictionary definition of a tax, Mr. Obama replied, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
* FOLKS... WAKE UP!!! LIES... MISINFORMATION... DECEPTION... POWER GRABS... THESE ARE THE TOOLS OF A DICTATOR, NOT OF A PRESIDENT OF A REPUBLIC... (*SIGH*)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/18choice.html
As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals. [M]ore Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.
* ARE YOU FOLKS SEEING A CERTAIN "TREND" WHEN IT COMES TO THE TRUTHFULNESS OF PAST OBAMA PROMISES...??? (*SMIRK*)
[C]hoice - or at least choice that will not cost you - is likely to be increasingly scarce... Aetna, Cigna, the UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint are all trying out plans with limited networks. The size of these networks is typically much smaller than traditional plans.
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/07/19/morning-bell-whats-attorney-general-holder-hiding/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Imagine arriving at your neighborhood polling place on Election Day and seeing two men "guarding" the entrance, dressed in [fatigues], [one man] wielding a...billy club, shouting racial epithets and menacing voters.
Would you walk through the door?
* NO. I'D CONFRONT THE IDIOTS. ON THE OTHER HAND, I'M SIX FOOT FOUR AND WEIGH IN AT OVER 300 LBS... (*SMILE*) (*SHRUG*)
* HUMOR ASIDE... I GET THE POINT THE AUTHOR IS MAKING. THIS WAS VOTER INTIMIDATION - NO QUESTION.
Now imagine political appointees in the Department of Justice (DOJ) refusing to pursue the case, the U.S. Attorney General stonewalling and refusing to enforce lawful subpoenas in the face of questions about that decision, and the mainstream media remaining silent on the story for a year.
This isn’t a case of pure imagination.
This is, in a nutshell, the true story of the New Black Panther (NBPP) voter intimidation case, and it’s one dramatic example of the increased politicization of the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama’s administration.
In Sunday’s Washington Post, ombudsman Andrew Alexander lamented the paper’s long silence on the NBPP story, said that “ideology and party politics are at play,” and noted that the paper’s national editor “wished The Post had written about it sooner.” Alexander concluded, “Better late than never. There’s plenty left to explore.”
* WHICH WE'LL GET TO NEXT...
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071604081_pf.html
Thursday's [Washington] Post reported about a growing controversy over the Justice Department's decision to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. The story succinctly summarized the issues but left many readers with a question: What took you so long?
* OBVIOUSLY WHAT HAPPENED WAS THAT THE POWERS THAT BE AT THE WP SPIKED THE STORY FOR AS LONG AS THEY COULD.
For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case. The calls increased recently after competitors such as the New York Times and the Associated Press wrote stories. Fox News and right-wing bloggers have been pumping the story.
* HMM... RIGHT WING BLOGGERS, HUH? CUTE! OK... MICHELLE MALKIN AND ANN COULTER BLOGGED ABOUT THE CASE, SURE, BUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL HAS BEEN "ON THE CASE" FROM THE START. NO... SORRY... NICE TRY TO SOFTEN THE BLOW OF HIS OWN COMING INDICTMENT OF HIS NEWSPAPER'S BIAS, BUT BOTTOM LINE, THIS WAS FAR FROM A "FRINGE" STORY AS THAT SHOT ABOUT "RIGHT WING BLOGGERS PUMPING THE STORY" WAS MEANT TO IMPLY.
* WP OMBUDSMAN ANDREW ALEXANDER CONTINUES:
The Post has been virtually silent.
The story has its origins on Election Day in 2008, when two members of the New Black Panther Party stood in front of a Philadelphia polling place. YouTube video of the men, now viewed nearly 1.5 million times, shows both wearing paramilitary clothing. One carried a nightstick.
* To be continued...
CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Early last year, just before the Bush administration left office, the Justice Department filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against the men, the New Black Panther Party and its chairman. But several months later, with the government poised to win by default because the defendants didn't contest the suit, the Obama Justice Department decided the case was over-charged and narrowed it to the man with the nightstick. It secured only a narrow injunction forbidding him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of Philadelphia polling places through 2012.
(*SNORT*) (*SNICKER*) YEP... THROUGH 2012.
The controversy was elevated last month when J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department lawyer who had helped develop the case, wrote in the Washington Times that his superiors' decision to reduce its scope was "motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law." Some in the department believe "the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation," he wrote. Adams recently repeated these charges in public testimony before the commission.
(*SNORT*) (*SNICKER*) AND BY WRITING "ADAMS RECENTLY REPEATED THESE CHARGES IN PUBLIC TESTIMONY" WP OMBUDSMAN ALEXANDER MEANS..."ADAMS SWORE UNDER OATH - ON PENALTY OF PERJURY - WITH NOT ONE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TAKING THE STAND TO COUNTER UNDER OATH THAT ALEXANDER WAS LYING.
(*SHRUG*)
The Post didn't cover it.
Indeed, until Thursday's story, The Post had written no news stories about the controversy this year. ... That's prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, "Lord, there'd have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months."
To be sure, ideology and party politics are at play.
* YES. (*SMIRK*) TO BE SURE.
The Post should never base coverage decisions on ideology, nor should it feel obligated to order stories simply because of blogosphere chatter from the Right or the Left. But in this case, coverage is justified because it's a controversy that screams for clarity that The Post should provide.
If Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and his department are not colorblind in enforcing civil rights laws, they should be nailed.
National Editor Kevin Merida, who termed the controversy "significant," said he wished The Post had written about it sooner. The delay was a result of limited staffing and a heavy volume of other news on the Justice Department beat, he said.
(*ROFLMAO*)
http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?BLOG,tx14_paul,blog,999,All,Item%20not%20found,ID=100719_3723,TEMPLATE=postingdetail.shtml
* BY CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL (R-TX) --
Last week ended with some promising news on finally stopping the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Unfortunately, the administration still seems to believe that shutting down working oil wells is a higher priority than effectively dealing with the broken one. They are again issuing a moratorium on off-shore drilling, while maintaining a de facto ban on new permits even for shallow water drilling, which they previously stated would be unaffected.
* ONCE AGAIN, FOLKS... WE'RE DEALING WITH SERIAL LIARS... IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE.
The courts have twice declared this unconstitutional, over 70% of the people see this as unreasonable, yet the administration seems determined to simply end off-shore drilling, at least for those producers that cannot afford to sit idle for an unknown period of time until the ban is lifted.
[M]any smaller oil producers in the [American] Gulf [of Mexico] see the writing on the wall, and instead of waiting around and risking their livelihoods on the whims of American politicians and judges, they are leaving for friendlier business climates.
Regime uncertainty is the opposite of the rule of law. It is the rule of the whims of the people in charge and what mood they are in on any particular day. It is usually associated with third world dictatorships and plays a major role in why some countries remain poor.
When a business cannot predict whether a government will issue a permit, confiscate or nationalize their capital investments, tax them into bankruptcy, or arbitrarily stall their operations, they tend to do business elsewhere.
This type of government hostility is not conducive to wealth creation and it is tragic to see it chasing away businesses here when we need the jobs and productivity more than ever.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://article.nationalreview.com/438112/the-jobs-americans-should-not-have-to-do/john-derbyshire
* THIS IS A "MUST-READ."
One must wonder what kind of society we have become.
In the dismaying-but-not-surprising category of news stories recently, this one in the July 2 New York Times got my attention. It describes how the Obama administration is killing off the summer-internship programs, many of them unpaid, that are so popular with high-school seniors and college students. Sample quotes:
"In April, the Obama administration issued a fact sheet listing six criteria aimed at preventing employers from violating the Fair Labor Standards Act with their unpaid internship programs. . . . The guidelines, from the Labor Department, have left employers scrambling to bulletproof their internship programs. . . . Some employers . . . have converted to paid internships but in the process have cut back on the number of posts they can offer. Others have abandoned their programs altogether."
What seems to be going on here is a war against the notion that any American citizen should do any kind of non-academic work before the age of 25 - before, that is, a college degree and a couple of years of law school have been completed.
(*SYMPATHETIC SMIRK WHILE NODDING*)
If that is indeed the mentality we are drifting into, it is based not on the real America, but on a fantasy America that exists only in the imaginations of our cognitive elites.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
I hope nobody in Georgetown or the Upper East Side will fall off his chair in shock if I point out that of U.S.-born 20-year-olds in 2008, 42% had no additional schooling after high school.
If you force facts like that on the attention of the overclass, their response is that, so long as a single 18-year-old anywhere is not going on from high school to college, then our schools are failing!
There’s nothing abstract about that “overclass,” either: I can name names.
President Barack Obama: “All students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career - no matter who you are or where you come from.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan: “By 2020 all students will graduate ready to succeed in college and the workplace.” (Note, by the way, that Duncan’s conjunction there, like the president’s, is an “and,” not an “or.”)
Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust: “We think that getting all kids college-ready is absolutely the right aspiration. It’s the right goal and it’s absolutely achievable.”
The superintendent of public schools in Prince George’s County, Md.: “We believe that every kid can learn at a high level and that college is for every child.”
(*SKULL-SPLITTING MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)
A person acquainted with the real world would recognize this for what it is: the romantic piffle of fools living in money-padded cocoons.
(*NOD*)
There, however, you see the circularity of the issue. The overclass types who extrude this gibberish are not much acquainted with the real world; and one reason for this is, they have never done low-paid, low-skill work. They may have done higher-status internships for little or no pay, but it seems the administration now wants to shut youngsters off from even that much acquaintance with the world of work.
I have noticed that if, among 30-something colleagues, I mention one of my own school or college summer jobs - factory or construction work, dishwashing, retail sales, bartending - my colleagues will look amused, and a bit baffled. How come a guy as well-educated as Derb was shoveling concrete? Boy, he’s a real eccentric!
No, I’m not. Those experiences were perfectly normal for a person of my generation. They’re just not normal any more, not for children of the American middle and upper classes.
(*SIGH*)
Steve Sailer has noticed the same thing. From his review of the movie Adventureland:
Writer-director Greg Mottola . . . explains the origin of his quasi-autobiographical film with an ingenuous snobbishness that would have annoyed and amused John Steinbeck.
"I was talking with a bunch of writer friends, and I was telling them these embarrassing stories about a summer in the '80s that I spent as a carnie working at an amusement park. . . . It was the worst job I've ever had . . . I should have had a good job — I should have been a tutor or gone to Manhattan and been an intern at a magazine or something respectable — but no, I was working for minimum wage, handing out stuffed animals to drunk people."
Please note that Mottola isn't, personally, a jerk. Judging from Adventureland he's an insightful yet gentle observer. That's just the way people think nowadays.
* END QUOTE (NOW BACK TO DERB'S COMMENTARY...)
Yes, it is.
The word that stands out there is “embarrassing.”
For a guy like Mottola (who, I note, was born in 1964 to a non-rich family, so my “30-something” may even be understating the case), it’s embarrassing to admit having done low-level work. We’re embarrassed when we admit to something shameful.
To 21st-century Americans, low-level work is shameful.
(*DISGUSTED SIGH OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT*)
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 3)
Well, I don’t suppose anybody ever did drudge work if better options were available. Until recently, though, a great many people reconciled themselves to it: as a means to support a family, as a pathway to as much independence as their abilities would permit, and even as something in which satisfactions might be found.
(*NOD*)
Nor was physical labor always thought shameful.
In the older American ideal, which is now as dead as the one-room schoolhouse, physical labor was held to have a dignity to it. Even elites believed their youngsters would benefit from a taste of it. Calvin Coolidge put his 15-year-old son to work in the tobacco fields of Hatfield, Mass., as a vacation job.
(When the lad happened to mention who he was, one of his co-workers said: “Gee, if the president was my father, I wouldn’t be working here.” Cal Jr.: “You would, if your father were my father.” For a comparison with the “conservative” sensibility of our own time, recall Karl Rove’s remark: “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes.” Good heavens, Karl, of course you don’t: The poor lad might break a fingernail.)
* YEP... TO REITERATE A COMMON THEME OF MINE... KAR ROVE CAN BE A FRIGG'N IDIOT.
* BEYOND KARL ROVE, THOUGH, WHAT KILLS ME IS THAT I CAN PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEE THAT MY BEST FRIEND HAS THE SAME ATTITUDE AS HE'D APPLY IT TO MY GODDAUGHTER.
Under pressure from employer lobbies, eagerly taking advantage of the notion put about by liberals that opposition of any sort to immigration of any sort is tantamount to membership in the Klan, foreigners have been brought in under the H-2B, J, and Q-1 guest-worker visas, or just allowed in illegally, to do the jobs American teenagers once did.
The foreigners are older...they work for less, and the illegal ones are docile because they fear deportation.
From an employer’s point of view, what’s not to like?
From a patriot’s point of view, there’s a lot not to like.
* DAMN STRAIGHT DERB...!!!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-18/leslie-h-gelb-talks-to-veterans-leader-about-troops-with-ptsd/?cid=hp:mainpromo3
It was inauguration day for the nation’s most modern facility for the treatment of active-duty soldiers and veterans suffering from brain injuries and psychological disorders - 5,000 of them with families on hand.
At the podium in Bethesda, Maryland, stood Arnold Fisher, the chief fundraiser for this precious center that may need to care for hundreds of thousands of victims, searching in vain for one White House official, one Cabinet officer, one member of the Joint Chiefs, one senator. He found none. And he asked again and again, “Where are they?”
General Eric Shinseki, secretary of Veterans Affairs, couldn’t make it.
Not one among the legions of pro- and antiwar hooting senators could find the time.
Only two members of the House of Representatives found their way to the ceremony.
But there was Fisher at the podium.
There was also little media attention to the opening, and only Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, it seems, noted the event and Fisher’s plaintive “Where are they?” question.
A corporal in the Korean War, Fisher is now a successful real-estate developer, builder, and philanthropist. He avoids confrontation and the limelight, but he could not suppress his dismay about the absences that inaugural day. “Here we are in the nation’s capital, the seat of our government, the very people who decide your fate, the people who send you out to protect our freedoms. And yet, where are they?” he asked the attendees.
According to a Rand study in 2008, approximately 300,000 soldiers who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, and 360,000 soldiers report having sustained a traumatic brain injury. The same study found that of the soldiers who seek treatment, only slightly more than half receive minimally adequate care. Rand is not Chicken Little and does not cry “the sky is falling,” unless it is. It has been over two years since that study was released, and the Army has just recorded its highest suicide rate on record, 32 during the month of June.
The center is now entirely the responsibility of both the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration, the former for the active-duty personnel and the latter for the vets. Fisher and the Intrepid group raised all the money privately from thousands of Americans and got the center constructed privately as well. Every dollar went to the facility; nothing for the group. The Intrepid people brooked no government interference in procurement or construction. They just got the job done. And then… they turned over the keys to the government.
The center is ready for operations. It lacks an opening date.
The Pentagon has appointed a director who is slated to serve less than a year before retirement - and is therefore an odd choice to establish such a complicated operation. There has been minimal communication between Fisher’s organization and the Defense Department and Veterans Administration.
http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1279557825445.shtm
* I CHALLENGE YOU TO READ THIS AND THEN TRANSLATE IT INTO A PLAIN ENGLISH DESCRIPTION OF SPECIFIC DEPLOYMENTS/MISSIONS.
* HERE... LET'S SEE IF THE PRESS COVERAGE IS ANY BETTER --
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/19/national-guard-deploy-southwest-border-aug/
Administration officials on Monday announced that the 1,200 National Guard troops pledged weeks ago by President Obama will deploy to the southwest border starting on Aug. 1...
* DEPLOY. DEPLOY TO WHERE? DEPLOY TO GOVERNMENT OFFICE BUILDINGS IN THESE STATES OR DEPLOY TO THE BORDER ITSELF? AND BY "DEPLOY" I MEAN ARMED AND PREPARED TO "REPEL" ILLEGAL ENTRY UPON U.S. TERRITORY.
* SECOND QUESTION. IF AUG. 1 MARKS THE "BEGIN" DATE, WHEN IS THE DEPLOYMENT EXPECTED TO BE FULLY... er... DEPLOYED?
Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said the troops would "support" the work of Department of Homeland Security personnel already operating on the border.
* WHAT DOES THIS WORD "SUPPORT" REFER TO? SPECIFICALLY? (AND BY "HOMELAND SECURITY PERSONNEL" DO THEY MEAN ICE - IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT...???)
Some border-state lawmakers criticized the National Guard plan as too weak to make a dent in border security challenges and expressed concern that the 1,200 who are deployed would be relegated to desk jobs.
* WELL... RATHER THAN SIMPLY POSE THE QUESTION, SHOULDN'T THE PRESS BE LOOKING FOR THE ANSWER...?!?!
[O]ficials on Monday described the deployment as a "bridge" to keep border security strong while 1,000 CBP agents are added over the next year.
* I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS... (*SIGH*)
National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Craig McKinley said the Guard at the border would be working on criminal and intelligence analysis...
* HMM... "ANALYSIS," HUH?
...as well as "entry identification" - a specialty that involves surveillance.
* BUT... BUT... BUT... WHAT ABOUT PUTTING MEN AND WOMEN WITH GUNS ON THE BORDER WITH ORDERS NOT TO ALLOW... er... THE CONTINUING INVASION OF THE U.S. BY ILLEGALS...?!?! (DOESN'T SOUND LIKE WE'RE GONNA GET ANY OF THAT - DOES IT...?!?!)
He said the full National Guard force should be stationed in the four U.S. border states by September.
* "IN" THE STATES IS A PRETTY BIG AREA... HOW MANY WILL BE ON THE BORDER - THE ACTUAL BORDER?
According to the Obama administration, nearly half of the troops will be sent to the volatile Arizona-Mexico border. A total of 524 will be stationed in Arizona, with 250 in Texas, 224 in California and 72 in New Mexico.
* HMM... I'LL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT. TIME WILL TELL.
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/tea.party.naacp.2.1812710.html
On Monday, [Andrew] Breitbart posted a video of a speech by Shirley Sherrod, USDA Rural Development Georgia State Director, delivered at the NAACP's 20th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet.
The video shows Sherrod speaking of racial considerations being a factor for how much help she would give.
"The first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm, he took a long time talking but he was trying to show me he was superior to me. I know what he was doing, but he had come to me for help. What he didn't know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was, I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him," Sherrod said.
"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land. So I didn't give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough," Sherrod said. "So that when he, I assumed the Department of Agriculture had sent him to me, either that or the Georgia Department of Agriculture, and he needed to go back and report that I did try to help him."
In the video, Sherrod also spoke of referring the white farmer to a white lawyer, thinking the latter would be more sympathetic because of race. "So I took him to a white lawyer that had attended some of training that we had provided because Chapter 12 bankruptcy had just been enacted for the family farm. So I figured if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him."
The NAACP had no immediate response Monday afternoon.
* ACCORDING TO FOX NEWS THIS WOMAN SHERROD HAS RESIGNED -- http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/19/clip-shows-usda-official-admitting-withheld-help-white-farmer/
The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.
"There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. "We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.
* IF IT ME OR IS THE INFERENCE FROM THE ABOVE STATEMENT THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BELIEVES SHERROD ENGAGED IN DISCRIMINATION...??? AND SO IF THAT'S THE CASE... SHOULDN'T THE MATTER BE REFERRED TO DOJ...???
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