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2010
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October
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- Nancy Calhoun, Roxanne Donnery, and Chris McKenna
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 29, 2010
- Hide Your Young Daughters...!!!
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 28, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 27, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 26, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 25, 2010
- Weekend Newbsites: Sat. & Sun., Oct. 23 & 24, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 22, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 21, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 20, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 19, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 18, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun.; Oct. 16 & 17, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 15, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 14, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 13, 2010
- I Need A Vacation To Recover From My Vacation!
- Vacation Time! "See" You On Tuesday, Oct. 12th!
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, Oct. 4, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Oct. 2 & 3, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 1. 2010
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October
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
12 comments:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/us/politics/16campaign.html?_r=1&ref=us
In speech after speech lately, President Obama has vowed to oppose a Republican proposal “to cut education by 20%,” a reduction that would “eliminate 200,000 children from Head Start programs” and “reduce financial aid for eight million college students.”
Except that strictly speaking, the Republicans have made no such proposal.
(*SMIRK*)
* IT REALLY SPEAKS TO WHAT A FRAUD OBAMA IS THAT THIS STORY IS APPEARING IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!
The expansive but vague Pledge to America produced by House Republicans does promise deep cuts in domestic spending, but it gives no further detail about which programs would be slashed. So Mr. Obama has filled in his own details as if they were in the Republican plan.
(*MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE*) (*SNORT*)
On issues like taxes, Social Security, health care, economic stimulus and foreign campaign financing, Republicans say Mr. Obama has distorted their ideas or the facts to scare voters.
* ACTUALLY, I SEE EVIDENCE OF THIS EVERY DAY IN THE CAMPAIGN LITERATURE I RECEIVE FROM OUR INCUMBENT DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN, JOHN HALL. THE MAN SIMPLY LIES. THERE'S REALLY NO OTHER WAY TO PARSE IT. (I GUESS THIS MAKES HALL A CHIP OFF THE OLD OBAMA BLOCK.)
Mr. Obama is employing the biggest megaphone in politics, and his words are parsed like no other politician’s. While Mr. Obama’s general points about the scale of Republican spending cuts and fiscal effects of high-end tax cuts have a solid factual basis, some independent organizations that examine political statements, like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org, have questioned the veracity of some specific claims on economic policy and other topics.
(*SMIRK*) WELL IMAGINE THAT... (*SNORT*)
* FOLKS... KEEP READING NEWSBITES. I'LL CONTINUE TO GIVE YOU THE TRUTH.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/science/earth/16westvirginia.html?ref=us
A top federal regulator has recommended revoking the permit for one of the nation’s largest planned mountaintop removal mining projects, saying it would be devastating to miles of West Virginia streams and the plant and animal life they support.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
In a report submitted last month and made public on Friday, Shawn M. Garvin, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, said that Arch Coal’s proposed Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County should be stopped because it “would likely have unacceptable adverse effects on wildlife.”
* BOTTOM LINE, FOLKS... YES, THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS ACTIVELY HOSTILE TOWARDS DEVELOPING DOMESTIC ENERGY RESOURCES. DON'T BELIEVE A WORD THEY SAY... FOLLOW WHAT THEY ACTUALLY DO!
Kim Link, a spokeswoman for Arch Coal, said in a statement that the company intended to “vigorously” challenge the recommendation.
“If the E.P.A. proceeds with its unlawful veto of the Spruce permit - as it appears determined to do - West Virginia’s economy and future tax base will suffer a serious blow,” Ms. Link said. She said the company planned to spend $250 million on the project, creating 250 jobs and tens of millions of dollars in tax revenues in a struggling region
“Beyond that, every business in the nation would be put on notice that any lawfully issued permit - Clean Water Act 404 or otherwise - can be revoked at any time according to the whims of the federal government,” she said, referring to the federal law under which the original permit was granted. “Clearly, such a development would have a chilling impact on future investment and job creation.”
(*NOD*)
* SCREW THE RULE OF LAW... THAT'S THE OBAMA WAY! SCREW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE... THAT'S THE OBAMA WAY TOO.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/business/16rum.html?ref=us
* CRONY CAPITALISM WRIT LARGE. (IN THE AGE OF OBAMA!)
[Rum] has set off a bitter dispute between two United States islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, over a tax that the federal treasury collects on rum.
The fight began when the Virgin Islands persuaded the world’s largest distiller, which said it was leaving Puerto Rico, to move to St. Croix by offering a staggering $2.7 billion in tax incentives.
* I.E. CORPORATE WELFARE.
The new distillery, for Captain Morgan spiced rum, will provide no more than 70 permanent jobs on the south shore of St. Croix - but it will entitle the Virgin Islands to collect billions in rum tax revenue from Washington.
* FOLKS... HOW OFTEN DO I HAVE TO SAY IT? OUR TAX CODE IS F--KED...?!?! AND WHO CREATES THE TAX CODE...??? POLITICIANS - SPECIFICALLY CONGRESS. (AND WHO PRESENTLY CONTROLS BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS...??? SO MUCH FOR "HOPE" AND "CHANGE," HUH?)
That bounty comes at the expense of Puerto Rico, where 90% of the revenue from the rum tax had been used for public projects and social services rather than corporate incentives. The Virgin Islands has promised to give nearly half its tax revenue back to the distiller, the British company Diageo...
(*MASSIVE MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)
The aftershocks could even change what people drink in the United States. The tax incentives are so generous that Virgin Island producers might ultimately try to use highly subsidized sugar cane to make blended whiskeys, vodka and gin, distillers on the mainland say. That could threaten the jobs of grain farmers and distilleries in the American heartland.
* AGAIN, FOLKS... BY WHOSE COMMAND IS SUGAR PRODUCTION SUBSIDIZED BY YOUR AND MY TAX DOLLARS...??? (*SMIRK*) THAT'S RIGHT... CONGRESS.
The deal could also cost American taxpayers. With Puerto Rico’s economy reeling and its government budget already strained, some island officials say they cannot rule out needing to ask Washington for aid to cover basic expenses once covered by the rum tax.
(*THROWING UP MY HANDS*)
Diageo, based in Britain, will get a new plant built at taxpayer expense, exemption from all property and gross receipt taxes for the length of the deal, a 90% reduction in corporate taxes, plus marketing support and production incentives totaling tens of millions a year.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
“If our own federal government is also letting its taxes subsidize foreign corporations and offshore producers, it makes it harder to survive,” said Philip E. Prichard, whose independent distillery in Tennessee makes rum and bourbon. “It flies in the face of entrepreneurship.”
* AMEN.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7249505.html
In the month after Homeland Security officials started a review of Houston's immigration court docket, immigration judges dismissed more than 200 cases, an increase of more than 700% from the prior month, new data shows.
* THIS TRULY IS A CRIMINAL ADMINISTRATION. OBAMA IS DELIBERATELY VIOLATING HIS CONSTITUTIONAL OATH OF OFFICE TO ENSURE THAT THE LAWS ARE FAITHFULLY EXECUTED. THERE'S JUST NO WAY AROUND THIS CONCLUSION.
The number of dismissals in Houston courts reached 217 in August - up from just 27 in July...[in] September, judges dismissed 174 pending cases... Roughly 45% of the 350 cases decided in that court in September resulted in dismissals, the records show.
* DISGRACEFUL. ABSOLUTELY APPALLING. THE RULE OF LAW MEANS NOTHING TO THESE PEOPLE!
The EOIR data offer the first glimpse into Homeland Security's largely secretive review of pending cases on the local immigration court docket. In early August, federal attorneys in Houston started filing unsolicited motions to dismiss cases involving suspected illegal immigrants who have lived in the country for years without committing serious crimes. ... In recent weeks, some immigration attorneys reported the dismissals have slowed somewhat, while others reported they now have to ask ICE trial attorneys to exercise prosecutorial discretion in order to have their cases dismissed. Others, however, said they are still being approached by government attorneys seeking to file joint motions for case dismissal. "They're still doing it," said immigration attorney Steve Villarreal. "They're just doing it quietly."
* BACK DOOR AMNESTY, PLAIN AND SIMPLE. NOTICE THAT OBAMA DOESN'T HAVE THE BALLS TO ISSUE INDIVIDUAL PARDONS - AS IS HIS UNQUESTIONED CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT - BUT RATHER HE ALLOWS HIS EXECUTIVE BRANCH TO BASICALLY CONSPIRE WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS IN ORDER TO HELP THEM GET AWAY WITH BREAKING OUR LAWS.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials declined this week to discuss specifics of the docket reviews and dismissals, which are also going on in several other cities, including Dallas and Miami.
(*NOD*) YEP. THAT'S THE M.O. OF THESE PEOPLE. EITHER LIE THROUGH OMISSION OR LIE DIRECTLY; BUT THE KEY WORD IN BOTH CASES IS "LIE."
By moving to dismiss cases for people who have stayed out of trouble, the agency will be better able to use its limited resources to more rapidly deport those with serious criminal records, supporters said.
* WELL FOR CHRIST'S SAKE... WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT THEM TO SAY...?!?! THEY'VE BEEN CAUGHT RED HANDED!
"It makes all of the sense in the world," John Nechman, a Houston immigration attorney, said of the review, which has led the dismissals of cases for several of his clients.
(*SNORT*) WOW! WHAT A SURPRISE! THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY APPLAUDING DISMISSALS OF CASES AGAINST HIS CLIENTS! (*SMIRK*)
"When you have this kind of mass dismissal, it sends a very clear message to illegal immigrants, and to society at large, that the government is not serious about enforcing the laws," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that advocates for stricter border controls.
"This type of action muddles the message so both the public at large as well as illegal immigrants don't know what to think."
* I KNOW WHAT TO THINK. I THINK THAT PRESIDENT OBAMA IS ENGAGED IN UNETHICAL AND FRANKLY ILLEGAL CONSPIRATORIAL ACTIVITIES!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43557.html
With a potentially competitive race developing back home in Minnesota’s 8th District, Transportation Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) collected a contribution from just one resident of the district between June 22 and Sept. 30, according to a federal election report filed Wednesday.
(*SNORT*)
Other than that, all of his contributions came from political action committees, Native American tribes or individual donors in other districts and states.
* ACTUALLY, IT'S NOT FUNNY. AND TAKING MONEY FROM NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN TRIBES - A DEMOGRAPHIC NEAR THE BOTTOM OF AMERICAN SOCIAL-ECONOMIC PROSPERITY - INDICATES TO ME AT LEAST THAT THIS GUY HAS NO CONSCIENCE AND IS OPEN TO SPECIAL INTEREST BRIBERY.
Oberstar raised more money from individuals in each of the following parts of the country: other Minnesota districts; Alabama; Arizona; California; Washington, D.C.; Florida; Maryland; Michigan; New Jersey; New Mexico; New York; Oregon; and Virginia. He also collected $500 apiece from donors in South Carolina, Georgia, Illinois and Indiana.
Oberstar’s other in-district donations were $1,000 from Allete PAC in Duluth and $300 from the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in Cass Lake.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/14/AR2010101404794.html?hpid=artslot
[W]hile practically everybody has an opinion about [Sarah] Palin, not all of those opinions are grounded in reality. Many of them are based more on a "Saturday Night Live" caricature than on the living, breathing, 46-year-old mother of five.
Now that she's laying the foundation for a possible presidential run in 2012, it's worth taking a moment to separate the facts about Palin from the fables.
[Fable #1] -- Palin cost McCain the 2008 election.
She didn't. CNN's 2008 national exit poll, for example, asked voters whether Palin was a factor when they stepped into the voting booth. Those who said yes broke for McCain 56% to 43%.
[Fable #2] -- Resigning as governor was rash.
When Palin returned to Alaska after the 2008 campaign, she confronted three problems. The political coalition on which she had based her governorship - a combination of Democrats and renegade "Palinista" Republicans - had collapsed. Her critics were using Alaska's tough ethics laws to launch investigations into her behavior, sapping her finances and her energy. Finally, every time she traveled to the Lower 48, Alaskans criticized her for putting her political interests above the state's. Palin's solution was to resign. Her agenda stood a better chance of passing if then-Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who shared Palin's goals, succeeded her as governor. As a private citizen, meanwhile, Palin could make enough money to pay her legal bills. And she would no longer be accused of neglecting her official duties. Some might say that Palin's resignation was shortsighted and showed that she was not ready for the demands of executive office. But if Palin had remained governor, she would have been denied opportunities to rally the tea party and fight in the battle over the Obama agenda. She would have been stuck on a regional stage. Instead, she's back on the national one. [Palin now] plays a far greater role in American public life than she did before she left office.
[Fable #3] -- Palin and the tea party are destroying the GOP.
The reality, right now, is that Palin and the tea party are saving the GOP by dragging it back to its roots and mobilizing conservative voters. Remember, by the time Palin arrived on the national scene, the Republican Party was depleted, exhausted and held in disrepute. An unpopular war in Iraq, an economy in recession and GOP corruption had driven away independents. Meanwhile, massive government spending and a liberal immigration policy had dispirited conservatives. This is where Palin came in. In the wake of Obama's historic victory, she and countless other grass-roots activists could have abandoned the GOP and turned the tea party into a conservative third party. They didn't. They decided instead to refashion the Republican Party from the ground up, pressuring it to live up to its limited-government ideals. Now, two years after Obama's win, Republicans are poised to reap major gains in the midterm elections. Palin and the tea party haven't hurt the GOP one bit.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
[Fable #4] -- Palin is extreme.
On many of the most important issues of the day, Palin holds positions that are squarely in the center-right of American political discourse. And many of those positions, not incidentally, are held by a large segment or even a majority of the public. For instance, neither the public nor Palin believes the stimulus worked. And while most Americans may not share Palin's views regarding "death panels," many join her in opposing Obama's health-care overhaul. Over the past two years, Pew and Gallup surveys have tracked the public as it has moved to the right -- not on just one or two issues but on a whole constellation of them. Even on the controversial topics of abortion, guns and same-sex marriage, Palin is not as far away from the center as some suppose. A May 2009 Gallup poll, for example, found that a majority of Americans identified as "pro-life" rather than "pro-choice." In October 2009, Gallup measured record-low support for gun control. The public is divided on same-sex marriage, with about half the country joining Palin's (and Obama's) opposition.
[Fable #5] -- Palin is unelectable.
Without question, a Palin 2012 campaign would be an uphill battle. Palin is unpopular -- massively so among Democrats, decisively so among independents. Even many Republicans don't believe she's ready to be president. But opinions can change. Look at the political resuscitations of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Hillary Rodham Clinton. If Palin works hard and runs an impressive campaign, wavering Republicans and skeptical independents may give her a second look. [A] presidential contest is a choice. The public might not love Palin. But by 2012, Americans might absolutely despise Obama. Two more years of a bad economy and an unpopular Afghan war, and anything is possible. Yes, there's a ceiling to Palin's support. But in 2012, there also will be a ceiling to Obama's. Whose will be higher?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/249791/obamacare-condition-serious-prognosis-grim-deroy-murdock
[President Obama's] Health and Human Services Department has permitted McDonald’s, Aetna, New York’s United Federation of Teachers, and 27 other well-connected organizations to escape new regulations on minimum-coverage levels and administrative-expense ratios for “mini-med” plans common among low-income employees.
HHS granted these waivers because, as Sub-Regulatory Guidance (OCIIO 2010-1) explains, Obamacare could cause “a significant decrease in access to benefits or a significant increase in premiums.”
These 30 groups now get a one-year reprieve from forcing their employees to enjoy less for more.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
* BUT WHY SHOULD ANYONE OR ANY COMPANY NEED A "REPRIEVE" FROM THE PERFECTION THAT IS OBAMACARE...??? (*SMIRK*) (*SNORT*)
“There’s nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance that you’ve got right now,” President Obama told Des Moines, Iowa, voters September 29.
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
[Well, either President Obama was] hopelessly uninformed, frightfully deluded, or totally lying through his perfect teeth.
Obama should know that Obamacare already is prying Americans from their health plans.
* COM'ON... OBAMA KNEW EXACTLY WHAT HE WAS DOING AND WHAT LIES HE WAS TELLING. WHILE HE'S NOT NEARLY AS SMART AS HE'S GIVEN CREDIT FOR BEING, NEITHER IS HE DUMB. THIS WAS NO "MISTAKE," NO "MISUNDERTANDING." OBAMA KNEW HE WAS LYING.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) announced September 28 that on December 31, it will jettison some 22,000 Medicare Advantage customers in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*) YEP... OBAMACARE CERTAINLY REPRESENTS... er... "CHANGE!"
“Health care reform has made it more difficult for employers like 3M to provide a plan that will remain competitive,” the Scotch Tape dispenser wrote its employees October 1. Come 2013, those who retire too young for Medicare will be barred from 3M’s plan.
The Principal Financial Group will depart the health-insurance market altogether. ... Principal executives reportedly feared that they could not survive Obamacare’s new requirement that 80% to 85% of premium revenues fund medical benefits, with just 15% to 20% financing administrative costs.
Meanwhile, Obamacare is hiking, not cutting, costs. Barbara A. Brody Associates reports that in 2011, Obamacare’s restrictions will push health premiums up 30% in New York for singles, couples, and families with children.
* WE'RE SO SCREWED... (*SIGH*)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/249763/another-mortgage-mess-editors
The scandal at the center of our latest mortgage mess is not the “robo signers” who played fast and loose with the affidavits submitted in foreclosure cases. It is that after years of propping up the banks and the alleged "reform" of the financial system under the Dodd-Frank bill, we still are teetering on the same precipice upon which we found ourselves in the wake of the Lehman Bros. collapse: Enormous amounts of toxic mortgage-backed securities remain on the banks’ books at imaginary valuations while prices for the $1.3 trillion in mortgage-backed securities are crashing, inspiring “too big to fail” institutions to seek special political favors.
Fannie and Freddie are poised to insert themselves into the mix for political purposes, and normal financial processes are grinding to a halt as both regulators and the banks themselves put a hold on foreclosures. Meanwhile, thousands of would-be homebuyers have been cast into limbo because it is no longer clear that they can legally take possession of the foreclosed properties they are buying.
Billions of dollars in securitized mortgages, many of them low-quality subprime loans, could end up back on the balance sheets of the banks that sold them, setting the American financial system up for a replay of 2008. The government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, either insure or own most of the mortgages in the country, and the two politically connected firms still enjoy the outrageous privilege of unlimited financial backing from the U.S. government. Once again, taxpayers face the prospect of being on the hook.
The Obama administration was warned months ago that the foreclosure system was in trouble and chose to do nothing in response.
[The] administration has a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at its disposal, with Left-wing scold Elizabeth Warren waiting in the wings to run it, and some Democrats already are arguing that the administration should use this mess to twist the arms of mortgage lenders until they offer the significant writedowns of principal and interest that the Left has been after since 2008. Their implements of torture: Fannie and Freddie, whose enormous clout could be used to bully the banks. This “solution” would do little or nothing to alleviate the threat of a second financial crisis; it would be merely punitive. In any case, the banks risk taking another beating, either from government strong-arming or from the unraveling of mortgage-backed securities, which will dump a load of bad loans back onto their books.
[G]athering intelligence about the financial system rather than attempting to micromanage it has been comprehensively neglected by the Obama administration, which came into power on a slick of Goldman Sachs money and little appetite for intelligent, market-oriented reform. While the Democrats have been frittering away time and energy on non-issues like executive compensation and risible non-performing initiatives like the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, the deeper problems, as usual, have been ignored or misunderstood by the law professors and career politicos who have installed themselves as regents of the nation’s financial system.
* AGAIN, FOLKS... WE'RE SO FRIGG'N SCREWED...
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/how_obama_betrays_gay_rights_YCqedmCaY1PZFDcmbnS7uJ
[Carl] Paladino, the oddball Republican candidate for governor, said children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking “homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option.”
“That’s not how God created us,” he said.
(Then who created all those gay priests?)
(*CHUCKLE*)
Paladino said on WNYC that “there are some things in this world we all must be angry about,” and that among these are “Hitler’s extermination of six million Jews,” “the brutal mistreatment of black people down south” in the Civil Rights era - and gay marriage [,saying,] “I will veto all legislation that mocks our sacred institution of marriage and family. I will veto any gay-marriage or civil- union bill that comes to my desk. Yes, I’m angry. Real angry at the way our politically correct beliefs are mistreating innocent children.”
Gays are like Hitler? (Maybe he meant to say gays like “Springtime for Hitler.”)
(*LAUGHING OUT LOUD*)
Paladino also said being gay was a “lifestyle choice.” Whoops - sorry. That wasn’t him.
(*DRUM ROLL*) WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...
That was President Obama’s key political adviser Valerie Jarrett, who was specifically assigned by Obama to spread a message of tolerance for gays and meet with the family of a gay Minnesota teen who killed himself.
Paladino also said he opposes gay marriage because, “My religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”
(*PAUSE*) WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...
Whoops - sorry - that is his position, but the words are those of Barack Obama, speaking in 2004.
(*SMIRK*)
It’s Obama’s Justice Department that this week was expected to launch a court fight defending Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law (a policy so nonsensical that even the military is over it) and announced it would defend the Clinton-approved Defense of Marriage Act.
(*SHRUG*)
Obama said during his campaign that he would repeal both DADT and DOMA. Two years later, he has given gays practically nada.
* ZIP. ZILCH. ZERO. (*SHRUG*)
If he was brave enough to state those positions when he was seeking votes, why did he do so little follow-up as president? He could at the very least instruct his Justice Department not to appeal a federal judge’s ruling in Massachusetts that DOMA is unconstitutional or a California federal judge’s ruling that DADT is unconstitutional. Why is he instead expected to fight both rulings - fight his [supposed] own beliefs?
* FAIR QUESTION! GOOD QUESTION!
Twenty-one Senate Democrats urged Attorney General Eric Holder not to appeal the judge’s decision to eliminate DADT. The lefty Daily Kos website called the idea that Obama must defend DOMA and DADT a “zombie lie.”
* WHICH I SUPPOSE MAKES OBAMA... umm... A ZOMBIE LIAR. (*SHRUG*)
* ONE MAY DISAGREE WITH PALADINO - AND I DO TO A LARGE EXTENT ON THE "GAY ISSUE" - BUT AT LEAST PALADINO IS HONEST ABOUT HIS BELIEFS. AS FOR THE ZOMBIE LIAR... (*SHRUG*) YOU MAKE THE CALL...
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/hady_rangel_zone_WX3lm13qh01aCQ95oO6j9N
Charles Rangel's (D-NY) pet nonprofit, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, controls hundreds of millions in taxpayer cash but defiantly refuses to explain its spending.
The group's tax forms are incomplete, and it has yet to release its 2009 annual report.
Questions are stonewalled.
Asked about its $2.7 million loan to the troubled Alianza Dominicana for its delayed multimillion-dollar Triangle Building headquarters, UMEZ's lawyer said it was "an internal matter."
(*SMIRK*) AN "INTERNAL MATTER" WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS...??? I THINK NOT!
Alianza CEO Moises Perez was recently forced by the city to take an unpaid leave of absence over allegations of self-dealing and financial mismanagement of the social-services nonprofit.
The Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone has been in business since 1995 and is one of nine such zones created under legislation written by Rangel. The UMEZ was funded with $249 million in federal, state and city money.
(*SMIRK*)
A former UMEZ employee said the organization funds its friends and "friends of Charlie's," calling it "influence-peddling at its most basic level." (Rangel sits on the New York Empowerment Zone board, which has oversight over UMEZ decisions.)
Several of the loan recipients have stiffed the UMEZ, including the Nubian Heritage beauty-products company, which owes $1 million, and the now-shuttered Ginger Restaurant, which owes $350,000, according to a yearly report filed with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
UMEZ President Kenneth Knuckles, a former city commissioner in the Dinkins administration, refused repeated requests for an interview. He earned $216,608 in 2008. He gets an additional $60,000 a year in deferred compensation - and had amassed $368,998 in those future payments by June 30, 2009.
* NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT, HUH? (THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS ONE HUGE KLEPTOCRACY... AT LEAST THAT'S THE WAY IT OFTEN SEEMS!)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/15/obama-murdered-medicare/
[ObamaCare] will have a devastating impact on elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees if its provisions are not substantially changed.
The law creates a new mechanism to reduce the rate of increase in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. As a result, Medicare payments will fall below Medicaid rates before the end of this decade, and they will fall increasingly behind the rates paid by all other payers in succeeding decades.
To appreciate what that means, consider that Medicare currently pays about 20% below what private insurance pays. At those rates, hospitals [already] lose money on Medicare patients.
Under the spending cuts called for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), payments will get worse in the future.
* AND SINCE SLAVERY IS ILLEGAL IN THIS COUNTRY... (*SMIRK*)... HOW DO YOU SUPPOSE DOCTORS, NURSES, MEDICAL TECHNICIANS AND HOSPITALS WILL REACT TO BEING TOLD "IF YOU TREAT THIS PERSON YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE FAIRLY PAID; INDEED, YOU MAY ACTUALLY LOSE MONEY"?
* UNLESS CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT - WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE SUPREME COURT - BRING BACK SLAVERY AND APPLY IT TO ALL THOSE IN THE MEDICAL FIELD... umm... I FORESEE PROBLEMS WITH "ENFORCING" GOVERNMENT MANDATES THAT REQUIRE WHAT AMOUNTS TO UNPAID WORK.
According to estimates from the Office of the Medicare Actuary, Medicare will be paying just two-thirds of what private payers spend by the end of the decade and just one-half as much by midcentury. Moreover, as Medicare rates fall increasingly below Medicaid rates, the elderly and the disabled will be the last patients doctors will want to see - if they have time for them at all.
Compounding these problems is the fact that the ACA will create a huge rationing problem systemwide. Although the law is expected to create as many as 34 million newly insured people, all funds to create new health care providers were zeroed out of the bill.
* DO THE MATH, KIDS... (*SMIRK*)... NOT PRETTY, HUH?
Additionally, Medicare spending cuts will create enormous financial stress for the nation's hospitals. According to the actuary's office, more than one in seven health care facilities will be unprofitable before the end of the decade.
(*SIGH*) AGAIN, KIDS, THE MATH IS THE MATH.
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