Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, July 21, 2010


How does your light shine...?!

Happy hippies - gotta luv 'em!
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11 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.shakopeenews.com/news/general_news/county_attorney_rails_against_illegal_immigration-107

* FOLKS... SIT DOWN... TAKE A DEEP BREATH BEFORE READING THIS ONE!

A man in the country illegally who committed a $27,000 identity-theft crime in Scott County [Minnesota] obtained tens of thousands of dollars in governmental medical assistance, including surgery for an inflatable penis pump.

In response to heightened concern about illegal immigration since a gang-related stabbing in Shakopee, Scott County Attorney Pat Ciliberto has been tallying known costs to taxpayers and gave this example.

“There’s no logical argument for why that should have been approved,” Ciliberto told county commissioners on Tuesday. “I don’t know how many illegal aliens are getting emergency medical assistance for such a procedure.”

It is impossible to know the full cost of illegal immigrants in Scott County receiving public assistance or going through the court system, but the burden on the jail alone is staggering. The county’s cost for housing inmates with immigration holds has grown nearly tenfold in recent years, reaching more than $307,000 last year.

The impact over the last four years totaled $843,600, which doesn’t even include medical coverage.

* OH... AND BTW...

[T]hese numbers represent just a portion of the illegal immigrants actually housed in Scott County's jail.

* YEP. ONLY THE ONES OFFICIALLY IDENTIFIED AS ILLEGALS AND REPORTED AS SUCH TO I.C.E.

* I DARE MY READERS - CALL UP YOUR LOCAL COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE - OR YOUR LOCAL DAILY NEWSPAPER - AND SEE IF YOU CAN GET A STRAIGHT ANSWER TO A DIRECT QUESTION CONCERNING WHAT YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT SPENDS ON JUST ILLEGAL ALIENS WHO GET JAILED FOR COMMITTING FURTHER CRIMES WHILE HERE ILLEGALLY.

* I DARE MY READERS - CALL UP YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE AND ASK HOW MUCH OF YOUR YEARLY SCHOOL BUDGET GOES TOWARDS SCHOOLING ILLEGAL ALIENS.

July 21, 2010 at 8:59 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379630796707448.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_newyork

* JUST MORE DEMOCRATIC CORRUPTION, FOLKS... WALK ON BY... NOTHING TO SEE HERE...

(*SMIRK*)

July 21, 2010 at 10:12 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379353511744676.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_news

* OH... AND SPEAKING OF CORRUPTION CONNECTED TO PROMINENT DEMOCRATS...

Countrywide Financial Corp.'s controversial "VIP" mortgage program made 153 loans to employees of Fannie Mae, the giant federally backed financial institution that helped fuel Countrywide's growth, according to a letter released Tuesday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

* HOW MUCH CORRUPTION ARE YOU WILLING TO STOMACH...

Another 20 such VIP loans, which often provided mortgages on terms more favorable than those available to the general public, went to employees of Freddie Mac, another big government-backed buyer of mortgage loans, the Issa letter said.

(*SIGH*)

In 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the federal government, which has spent about $145 billion to keep them afloat.

* SUBSIDIZING CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE...

(*SIGH*)

Last week [Rep. Issa] released a letter saying that 30 VIP loans had gone to U.S. Senators or Senate employees. He says the investigation is ongoing and is also turning up information on loans to others in government.

A Fannie Mae spokesman declined to comment on the Issa letter. A Freddie Mac spokeswoman deferred comment...

(*SMIRK*) (*SNORT*)

House investigators Tuesday also released an internal 2001 Countrywide email regarding a loan made to Daniel Mudd, who served as Fannie Mae's chief operating officer and later as its chief executive. The email spoke of the need to "understand the sensitivity of this deal. We already are taking a loss, it would be horrible to add a service complaint on top and lose any benefit we generate." (While Mr. Mudd's refinancing of a home loan with Countrywide had been previously reported, the internal details from the company about it hadn't.)

The Issa letter said that a cluster of VIP loans to Fannie Mae employees came in 1998, a year before Fannie Mae agreed to buy billions of dollars of Countrywide loans.

(*SMIRK*)

July 21, 2010 at 10:13 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379523839926554.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

From 2007 until last month, some 300 liberal journalists and policy wonks exchanged ideas and commentary on a secret, off-the-record Internet email group called JournoList.

[JournoList] was shut down after portions leaked, leading to the resignation of Washington Post writer David Weigel last month over his intemperate criticism of conservatives he was covering.

But someone who belonged to JournoList continues to leak information from its archives, providing a fascinating glimpse into how some liberal journalists coordinate their story lines to protect their favorite politicians and ideas.

The Daily Caller website reports that at several times during the 2008 presidential race, "employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how [Barack] Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage."

Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent, now at Wired, urged fellow journalists to kill the story of Mr. Obama's ties to the controversial Revered Jeremiah Wright by going after some of his critics. "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares - and call them racists," he urged. "What is necessary is to raise the cost on the Right of going after the Left. In other words, find a Rightwinger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the Right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically."

* FOLKS...

(*SIGH*)

Chris Hayes of the Nation magazine urged "those in the ostensible mainstream media" who were on the list to ignore the Rev. Wright story. He insisted the real issue had nothing to do with Mr. Obama's pastor and instead "has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country."

Apparently, many on JournoList had an agenda that had little to do with covering legitimate news stories, but instead were concerned with protecting their friends and trying to ensure they had "control of the country."

* LET'S BE CLEAR - "OPINION WRITERS" ARE FREE TO "CONSPIRE" WITH EACH OTHER TO THEIR HEARTS' CONTENT. EDITORIALISTS OPERATE UNDER FAR DIFFERENT RULES THAN STRAIGHT JOURNALISTS. THE PROBLEM IS WHEN JOURNALISTS SPIKE STORIES AND MANIPULATE NEWS COVERAGE IN ORDER TO SERVE IDEOLOGICAL AND PARTISAN ENDS.

July 21, 2010 at 10:13 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2010140720100721

Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total "support" for the "financial system" by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the increase was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market.

Increased guarantees for loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Government National Mortgage Association and the Veterans administration increased the government's commitments by $512.4 billion alone in the year to June 30, according to the report. "Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall Federal support for the nation's financial system...has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3.0 trillion to $3.7 trillion - the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program...

* HMM... "THE PAST YEAR," HUH...??? AND WHO HAS BEEN PRESIDENT FOR THE PAST YEAR... FOR THE PAST YEAR AND A HALF...???

* HMM... "THE PAST YEAR," HUH...??? AND WHO HAS CONTROLLED CONGRESS - BOTH HOUSES - SINCE... oh... JANUARY 2007...???

The increased government commitments more than offset about a $300 billion decline in the U.S. Treasury's TARP commitments in the past year as programs have closed and banks have repaid taxpayer funds.

(*SNORT*)

* BTW... ABOUT THOSE "REPAYMENTS"... (*SMIRK*)... THE WAY IT WORKS IS THAT THE GOVERNMENT LOANS MONEY TO BANKS AT ZERO OR NEAR ZERO INTEREST AND THEN THE BANKS USE THAT MONEY TO PURCHASE TREASURY BONDS WHICH GUARANTEE THE BANKS A PROFIT ON THEIR... er... "INVESTMENT."

* FOLKS... IMAGINE IF YOU COULD GET A GOVERNMENT LOAN AT ZERO OR NEAR ZERO PERCENT; YOU COULD BECOME RICH THE SAME EXACT WAY THE BANKS ARE "MAKING MONEY." IMAGINE IF UNCLE SAM LOANED YOU A "MEASLY" $100 MILLION AND YOU THEN BOUGHT TREASURIES... (*SMIRK*)... AT A 1% RATE OF RETURN YOUR "INVESTMENT" WOULD NET YOU A MILLION BUCKS PROFIT!

[According to] U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican..."The fact that the Obama administration is treating TARP like its own personal slush-fund is beyond egregious and a complete betrayal of what the American people were told would be then when their tax-dollars were used to bailout Wall Street,"...adding that the housing efforts were "dumping good money after bad."

July 21, 2010 at 10:14 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Mandate+mendacity%3a+The+Obamacare+tax&articleId=d9829523-ed8f-49b4-976c-824d6396a117

After successfully perpetrating his health care "reform" bait and switch on the American people, President Obama is trying to pull another one on the federal courts.

In 2008, Obama opposed requiring that Americans buy health insurance. He repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton for advocating such a mandate.

Then, a few months after taking office, he came out for a mandate and made sure his health care plan had one.

(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

After embracing an individual mandate, the President rejected all assertions that it was a tax increase. "For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," he told George Stephanopoulous last September.

* "TOLD" DOESN'T CUT IT. RATHER, OBAMA "INSISTED" - IN THE FACE OF SEVERAL OVERT ATTEMPTS BY STEPHANOPOULOUS TO GET AT THE TRUTH - THAT MANDATED INSURANCE WAS "ABSOLUTELY NOT A TAX INCREASE."

Now the administration is arguing in federal court that the mandate is a tax increase...

* FOLKS... YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! SO... HOW DO YOU LIKE THE AGE OF OBAMA SO FAR...???

If a President has to rely on one bait-and-switch to pass a law and another to defend it in court, isn't it safe to say that the law's justifications are fundamentally dishonest?

* YES...!!!

July 21, 2010 at 4:46 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-20/jeffrey-epstein-billionaire-pedophile-goes-free/?om_rid=Nd8RbA&om_mid=_BMRuBbB8PVyTOB&

Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein becomes a free man today, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast’s Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term. She reports:

Victims alleged that Epstein molested underage girls from South America, Europe, and the former Soviet republics, including three 12-year-old girls brought over from France as a birthday gift.

During Epstein’s term of “house arrest,” he made several trips each month to his New York home and his private Caribbean island. In the earlier stage of his sentence for soliciting prostitution with a minor—13 months in the Palm Beach Stockade—he was allowed out to his office each day.

Meanwhile, Epstein has settled more than a dozen lawsuits brought by the underage girls who were recruited to perform “massages” at his Palm Beach mansion. Seven victims reached a last-minute deal last week, days before a scheduled trial; each received well over $1 million - an amount that will hardly dent Epstein’s $2 billion net worth.

[T]he question remains: Did Epstein’s wealth and social connections - former President Bill Clinton; Prince Andrew; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak; New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers were just a few of the prominent passengers on his private jets - allow him to receive only a slap on the wrist for crimes that carry a mandatory 20-year sentence? Was he able, with his limitless assets and heavy-hitting lawyers - Alan Dershowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Roy Black, Kenneth Starr, Guy Lewis, and Martin Weinberger among them - to escape equal justice?

* GOOGLE THIS JEFFREY EPSTEIN DIRTBAG.

* NOTE: WHILE CLINTON, RICHARDSON, AND SUMMERS ARE MENTIONED, KEN STARR IS IDENTIFIED AS CONNECTED TO THE DEFENSE LEGAL TEAM.

* FOLKS... IS THIS YOUR AMERICA? IT'S CERTAINLY NOT MINE.

July 21, 2010 at 4:47 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Lott-aims-to-_co-opt_-critics-of-his-lobbying-racket-1001976-98858994.html

A 35-year veteran of Congress, former Senate majority leader, and now partner at K Street's most storied lobbying firm, Trent Lott knows the system. And the system has rewarded him richly - as when Patton Boggs recently wrote a multimillion-dollar check to buy his firm, the Breaux-Lott Leadership Group.

* LOTT HAS ALWAYS BEEN A DIRTBAG...

So the last thing Lott needs is a bunch of unwashed, Tea-Partying right-wingers coming to Washington on a wave of anti-establishment, free-market populism, and messing up the good thing he has going.

"We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," Lott told the Washington Post, referring to the conservative South Carolina senator who has been a gadfly for party leadership and a champion for upstart conservative candidates. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them."

* THE FACT THAT LOTT IS SLAMMING DIMINT TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DIMENT - NAMELY, THAT HE'S ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS!

* To be continued...

July 21, 2010 at 5:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

But Lott is no longer in the Republican leadership - he resigned from the Senate in December 2007, mid-term, just before a law kicked in that would have required him to wait two years before lobbying the Senate. So who is he talking about when he says "we need to co-opt them"?

"We" means the K Street wing of the Republican Party.

* AMEN, BROTHER CARNEY (THE AUTHOR OF THIS OP-ED)! DAMN THE CRONY CAPITALISTS, THE RINOs, TO HELL!

There are Republican candidates, officials and activists who don't like the way Washington works and who seriously want to cut government back to sustainable and constitutional levels. And then there are the more "reasonable" grown-ups - Republicans, in and out of office, who like talking about this sort of thing (and may kind of believe it) but who understand Washington as a game, or even a racket: Raise a fuss, quote Ronald Reagan, attack the other side, exalt capitalism -- then get rich off the taxpayer.

* BINGO...!!! PHONY HYPOCRITES...

Look at Lott's lobbying clients: Citigroup, General Electric, Raytheon, Entergy and other Beltway bandits, subsidy sucklers and regulatory robber barons. These guys live off of bailouts, massive government spending, and earmarks. These are exactly the policies Republicans are supposed to oppose, but don't. They're also the very things Tea Partiers and Jim DeMint rail against most.

* AMEN!

Lott lobbied for energy giant Entergy on climate legislation, and Entergy supports cap-and-trade.

* I REST MY CASE AGAINST LOTT.

The other two recent Senate majority leaders are also in on this game. Bob Dole is a lobbyist at Alston & Bird, where he supported the health care law that benefited his health-sector clients. Bill Frist is a partner at an investment firm that uses its "deep expertise in the health care reimbursement and regulatory environments" to make money investing "in almost every for-profit niche of health care." Frist also backed health care "reform."

* FRIST TURNED OUT TO BE ONE OF THE BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS OF MY LIFE IN TERMS OF BEING BETRAYED BY A POLITICIAN I ONCE RESPECTED...

Other GOP candidates this cycle come more directly from K Street: former Rep. Rick Lazio, running for New York governor, lobbied for JPMorgan Chase. Roy Blunt, running for Senate in Missouri, married a top lobbyist for pro-regulation tobacco giant Altria. Dan Coats, who lobbied for cap-and-trade and represented drugmakers and big banks, is the Senate nominee in Indiana.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada are running against both Capitol Hill and K Street. In the post-bailout, post health care "reform" era, it's obvious to anyone paying attention that you can't believe in the free market and also believe in K Street. You can't fight for limited government unless you're ready to fight against big business. You can't be a true conservative and be happy with the system.

Trent Lott knows which side he's on.

July 21, 2010 at 5:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/07/the_firing_of_shirley_sherrod.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

From everything I’ve read, I’m told that the firing of Shirley Sherrod, the once and probably future Agriculture Department official in Georgia, is about race or dishonest journalism or the vagaries of the 24-hour, incessant news cycle.

Permit me a dissent. It is mostly about cowardice.

* JUST AS A SIDE NOTE... RICHARD COHEN - THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE - IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE LIBS.

The coward in question is Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack who, even though from Iowa, fired Sherrod in a New York minute, and by extension and tradition -“The buck stops here,” remember? - Barack Obama himself.

Where do they get off treating anyone so shabbily?

(*SHRUG*)

Sherrod was caught on video supposedly telling an NAACP meeting last March that she had not given a certain farmer the service he deserved because he was white. A clip of that speech made the rounds of right wing blogs and media outlets - Fox News, for instance - and in no time Vilsack ordered the woman canned.

* ACTUALLY... IF YOU GO BACK TO MONDAY'S NEWSBITES, WHERE I FIRST NOTED THE STORY... YOU'LL SEE THAT I GOT MY INFORMATION FROM WCBSTV.COM - NOT EXACTLY A MEMBER OF THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY... (*SMIRK*)

The full video showed that Sherrod, after repressing some racial antipathy, treated the farmer with dignity and efficiency - and, anyway, the entire event took place more than 20 years ago.

Had Vilsack seen the entire video, he would also have learned that Sherrod’s story had a moral: She learned that poverty, not race, is what mattered. Since this is America, it is God who taught her that.

But that full video was not shown by the right wing blogger Andrew Breitbart.

* I'M PRETTY SURE BREITBART DIDN'T HAVE POSSESSION OF THE FULL VIDEO. I'M ALSO PRETTY SURE THE NAACP ITSELF DID HAVE POSSESSION OF THE FULL VIDEO AND YET... ALSO CALLED FOR SHERROD'S FIRING.

(*SHRUG*)

* HEY... DON'T GET ME WRONG, IF BREITBART DELIBERATELY MISLED FOLKS ABOUT THE COMPLETENESS OF THE VIDEO I'LL BE THE FIRST TO CALL FOR HIS HEAD... BUT NOTICE FOLKS... YOU'RE NOT HEARING THAT ALLEGATION BEING DIRECTLY MADE - EVEN BY COHEN HERE. IT'S MORE AN INFERENCE AGAINST BREITBART...

(*SHRUG*)

Sherrod was fired so quickly she says she was called on her cell phone while driving and told to pull over. Her resignation was then demanded.

* WHO EXACTLY CALLED HER? AND WHO TOLD THAT PERSON TO DEMAND SHERROD'S RESIGNATION? (BOTTOM LINE... WHO WAS AT THE TOP OF THE PYRAMID DEMANDING THE FIRING - WAS IT PRESIDENT OBAMA HIMSELF...???)

[Y]ou do not dismiss an employee, wreck a career, without doing due diligence.

* OBVIOUSLY YOU DO IF YOU'RE PRESIDENT OBAMA! (*SNORT*) (*SMIRK*)

This entire episode is only partially about race or tawdry journalism. It’s fundamentally about cowardice - about not doing the right thing until pressured and not adhering to fundamental principles of fairness.

Vilsack had a solemn obligation to treat his employee fairly. Obama, who reportedly was briefed on the matter and stood by his man, had a similar obligation. The two ought to be ashamed.

July 21, 2010 at 7:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/231197/her-own-words-kagan-will-violate-her-oath/sen-tom-coburn

The Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan provided key exchanges about the Commerce Clause, natural rights, and other issues that have convinced me to vote against her nomination.

Based on her own testimony, she’ll violate her oath as soon as she’s sworn in.

* THE AUTHOR IS DOCTOR - AND UNITED STATES SENATOR - TOM COBURN.

In her testimony, it was clear that Kagan subscribes to the progressive view that the wrongly decided precedents of the Supreme Court are more important the clear intent of the Constitution.

When I asked Kagan whether the Constitution gave Congress the authority to tell people to eat their fruits and vegetables, she answered with appropriate humor. “That would be a dumb law,” she quipped.

True enough. Her response was humorous because the underlying premise is absurd both as a matter of common sense and law. Of course, Kagan and everyone else knew I was asking a proxy question about the new health law’s individual mandate and the founder’s intent regarding the Commerce Clause.

What is less humorous is the fact that as a Supreme Court justice, she would signal that Congress does in fact have the right to tell people what to eat and, by implication, whether to buy health insurance. Kagan refused to answer the substance of my question. Her answers indicated she would support the big-government policies that created our $13 trillion debt and the welfare state that is collapsing into a fiscal black hole.

With Kagan on the Court the chances are slim that the Supreme Court will rein in Congress and throw away years of expansive precedents that have nearly destroyed the Constitution.

July 21, 2010 at 11:04 PM

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