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December
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- Barker's New Year's Eve Newsbites: 12/31/2010
- Happy, Happy, Happy New Year...!!!
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, December 30, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, December 29, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: December 28, 2010
- Happy Birthday, Jesus...!!!
- (*GRITTING MY TEETH*) (*BLOOD PRESSURE RISING*)
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, December 23, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, December 22, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, December 22, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Dec. 18 & 19, 2010
- Please Read Nick Carey's Full Piece
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, December 17, 2010
- Absolutely Irresponsible; A Pox on Both Their Houses
- Who's Lying?
- Two Californias (by Richard Davis Hanson)
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, December 16, 2010
- This "Newsbite" Deserves Its Own Stand-Alone Post!
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, December 15, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, December 14, 2010
- Barcelona Travelogue
- What It Means To Be Bill
- Back From Barcelona... (and Milan!)
- Barker's Pre-Vacation Newsbites: Friday, Dec. 3, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, Dec. 2, 2010
- As Everyone Who's Anyone Knows...
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010
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December
(27)
About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
11 comments:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101231/wl_nm/us_france_newyear
France will deploy extra police and keep vandalism statistics under wraps on New Year's Eve to fight what authorities say has become an annual "sweepstakes" of disaffected youths competing to see who can burn the most cars.
* HEY... (*SMIRK*)... I'VE GOT AN IDEA... (*PAUSE*)... WHY NOT JUST SHOOT ANYONE SEEN ATTEMPTING TO SET A CAR ON FIRE!
Youths in depressed suburbs of French cities have been torching hundreds of vehicles on New Year's Eve and Bastille Day since the early 1990s.
* HMM... AND WHAT SORT OF "YOUTHS" ARE WE TALKING ABOUT...??? (*SMIRK*) MIGHT THEY BE MUSLIM "YOUTHS?"
"I have decided to put an end to the competition, the sweepstakes, and will no longer publish the number of burned vehicles," Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said this week, adding that publishing statistics encouraged vandalism.
(*SMIRK*) SO... THE LOGIC OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT IS THAT IF THEY DON'T PUBLISH THE NEWS... THEN THE NEWS DIDN'T HAPPEN...??? (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Last year, the Interior Ministry said 1,137 cars had been torched, a 30% rise on 2008. French media reported at the time that several thousand cars had been burned.
(*STILL SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The image of burning cars remains particularly evocative in France in the wake of urban riots in December 2005. Sarkozy came to power in 2007 promising to quell violence, but crime and vandalism have inched up in the past year.
Arson in France's "sensitive urban areas"...
* MEANING WHERE MUSLIMS LIVE!
...rose by 17.2% between 2008 and 2009, according to a 2010 study by the Observatory of Sensitive Urban Zones. In 2009 a total of 12,874 cars were burned, it reported.
* AGAIN. YOU SIMPLY SHOOT THE ARSONISTS. IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLY.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/30/AR2010123003482.html
The Dodd-Frank legislation passed in the summer...created a structure of almost unlimited, non-reviewable and sometimes secret bureaucratic discretion, with no constraints on concentration - a breakdown of the separation of powers, which were created to guard against the exercise of arbitrary authority.
(*NOD*)
Take, for example, the resolution/seizure authority of Title II, ostensibly designed to end bailouts and "too big to fail" risks.
The Treasury can [now simply] petition federal district courts to seize not only banks that enjoy government support but any non-bank financial institution that the government thinks is in danger of default and could, in turn, [in their opinion and their opinion alone,] pose a risk to U.S. financial stability.
If the entity resists seizure, the petition proceedings go secret, with a federal district judge given 24 hours to decide "on a strictly confidential basis" whether to allow receivership.
* YOU'RE READING THIS... RIGHT...??? "IF THE ENTITY RESISTS...PROCEEDINGS GO SECRET..." DOES THIS SOUND LIKE AMERICA TO YOU...???
* OH... AND BY THE WAY...
There is no stay pending judicial review.
* FURTHERMORE...
The court can eliminate all judicial review simply by doing nothing for 24 hours, after which the petition is granted automatically and liquidation proceeds.
* REVIEW BY NON-REVIEW IN OTHER WORDS!
* OH... AND GET THIS:
Anyone who "recklessly discloses" information about the government's seizure or the pending court proceedings faces criminal fines and five years' imprisonment.
* AND YOU'RE GONNA TELL ME WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THAT WE'RE NOT ON THE ROAD TO TYRANNY?
* FOLKS... PRESIDENT OBAMA - FORMERLY CONSTITUTIONAL LAW LECTURER PROFESSOR OBAMA - SIGNED DODD-FRANKS INTO LAW. OBVIOUSLY THE CONSTITUTION MEANS NOTHING TO HIM.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
As for judicial review of the liquidation itself, the statute says that "no court shall have jurisdiction over" many rights with respect to the seized entity's assets (thus apparently eliminating many actions that would otherwise be permitted to seek compensation in the federal Court of Claims).
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
This means the U.S. Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are acting as a sometimes secret legislative appropriator, executive and judiciary all in one.
There is little precedent for this kind of unreviewable "Star Chamber" proceeding... Some have suggested that the legislation's secrecy and discretion are designed to permit the kind of favoritism seen in the rescue of bankrupt automakers and the AIG bailout, with an indirect taxpayer subsidy available as government loans to favored creditors and to be repaid by "assessments" (also known as taxes) on large banks and non-bank financial firms.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Financial Stability Oversight Council created by the legislation suffer similar defects. The director of the consumer bureau is independent of both the Federal Reserve, which houses and funds it, and the White House. Dodd-Frank precludes the House and Senate Appropriations Committees from reviewing the bureau's budget.
* AGAIN, FOLKS... YOU'RE READING WHAT I'M READING - RIGHT...???
As for the judiciary, the courts must accept statutory interpretations written by the director, who can thus refashion, without any effective judicial, legislative or White House oversight, all of the country's credit-related law, including the 18 or so federal consumer finance statutes that are administered by six agencies (some of which must also yield exclusive enforcement as well to the consumer bureau).
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The stability council - composed of 10 representatives of the Treasury, the Fed and other regulators - has the authority to (1) determine which non-bank financial institutions are subject to Title II seizure and (2) control virtually all of the activities of any financial institution for almost any purpose on a two-thirds vote of its members. The courts are not authorized to review whether the council has correctly interpreted the statute, though there isn't much statutory direction for the courts to interpret in any event.
* FOLKS... OUR REPUBLIC IS BEING DISMANTLED BEFORE OUR EYES ONE BRICK AT A TIME.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/ex-car-czar-rattner-settles-ny-probe-10m/
The investment banker who helped lead the Obama administration's auto industry "overhaul" has agreed to pay $10 million to settle influence-peddling allegations in New York.
(*SMIRK*)
Former "car czar" Steven Rattner admitted no wrongdoing as part of the deal, which was announced by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on Thursday.
Mr. Cuomo's office filed civil lawsuits against Mr. Rattner in November, accusing him of paying kickbacks to help his company land $150 million in state pension fund investments in 2004 and 2005. He denied the charges. The attorney general initially sought $26 million in fines and penalties and a lifetime ban from the securities industry.
The settlement announced Thursday only bars Rattner from doing further business with any public pension fund in the state for five years.
* FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... ASK YOURSELVES... WOULD ANDREW FRIGG'N CUOMO HAVE GONE AFTER PRESIDENT OBAMA'S HAND-PICKED CAR CZAR WITHOUT HAVING HIM DEAD TO RIGHTS - AND FURTHERMORE WITHOUT ENOUGH PEOPLE KNOWING ABOUT RATTNER'S SCAM THAT IT COULDN'T SIMPLY BE SWEPT UNDER THE RUG...???
* ASK YOURSELF, FOLKS... IF RATTNER WAS INNOCENT WOULDN'T HE HAVE TAKEN THE MATTER TO COURT... WOULDN'T OBAMA HAVE PUBLICLY BACKED HIM RATHER THAN GET TARNISHED BY THE "DEAL" MADE WITH CUOMO...???
* FOLKS... ALL THIS SAID, WHAT DOES IT SAY THAT RATTNER ENDED UP GETTING A (RELATIVE) SLAP ON THE WRIST...???
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* FOLKS... IN THE AGE OF OBAMA, AMERICA IS MORE AND MORE RESEMBLING A THIRD WORLD KLEPTOCRACY.
Eight people have pleaded guilty to criminal charges as a result of the case, including former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi...[ANOTHER DEMOCRAT]...who admitted taking campaign contributions and luxury vacations from a financier seeking a multimillion-dollar pension fund investment deal.
* OH... AND BTW...
A long list of financial firms and money managers, including Mr. Rattner, have agreed to collectively pay $170 million in civil penalties in connection with the investigation.
(*SMIRK*)
Mr. Rattner, a former New York Times reporter who made millions on Wall Street and became a highly respected policy adviser and campaign fundraiser for Democrats...
* STOP... STOP... STOP... I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE!
[Rattner is also] an unpaid financial adviser managing the personal fortunes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg...
* FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/people-pay-less-for-medicare-than-they-get-back/
You paid your Medicare taxes all those years and think you deserve your money's worth: full benefits after you retire. [Right?]
* UNFORTUNATELY...
[N]ewly updated financial analysis shows that what people paid into the system doesn't come close to covering the full value of the medical care they can expect to receive as retirees.
Consider an average-wage, two-earner couple together earning $89,000 a year. Upon retiring in 2011, they would have paid $114,000 in Medicare payroll taxes during their careers.
* GOT THAT... PAID IN $114,000
But they can expect to receive medical services - from prescriptions to hospital care - worth $355,000, or about three times what they put in.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* FOLKS... IT'S SIMPLY MATH: THE POLITICIANS HAVE BUILT A PONZI SCHEME THAT'S DESTINED TO DESTROY THE COUNTRY UNLESS THIS CONGRESS STARTS BREAKING PROMISES THAT IRRESPONSIBLE PAST CONGRESSES HAVE MADE.
Although Americans are worried about Medicare's long-term solvency, few realize the size of the gap.
* AND THAT'S BECAUSE THE SCHOOLS DELIBERATELY FAIL TO TEACH ABOUT THE SITUATION AND THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA LARGELY FAILS TO TRUTHFULLY REPORT THE FACTS.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/29/disabled-feds-workers-comp-better-retirement/
The Federal Employees' Compensation Act of 1916 was never intended to be a retirement plan, but critics say for thousands of government employees, that's just what it's become. That's because under the federal system, disabled employees unable to return to work get to choose between receiving higher-paying workers' compensation benefits or the lower-paying federal retirement plan.
For most, the choice is clear.
The money is almost always better under the workers' compensation program, which pays up to 75% of the employees' salaries tax-free, compared with the 60% they would receive under the retirement system.
Across government, more than 7,000 injured employees continue to collect workers' compensation after retirement age, and a few have even gotten payouts lasting decades well into their 90s, government records show.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Recent legislation by Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, proposes to transfer workers' compensation recipients to the retirement system when they reach retirement age.
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*) (GIVE THE WOMAN CREDIT WHEN SHE DESERVES IT!)
Dan Adcock, legislative director for the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said the organization opposes such a move.
* WHICH IS WHY ALL GOVERNMENT WORKERS UNIONS SHOULD BE ABOLISHED - OUTLAWED - JUST AS THEY WERE TILL JOHN F. KENNEDY SCREWED EVERYTHING UP!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/go-ahead-gop-make-my-year/
* TED NUGENT MAKES SOME GREAT GODDAMNED POINTS!
Mom and Pop America are hoping and praying for forward momentum from the GOP. They want their country back from the kamikaze death-grip of the...Democrats.
* AMEN!
The newly commissioned GOP Congress doesn't need to talk about what it is going to do. The GOP has had plenty of time for cheap chitter-chatter. Just get after it - when in doubt, whip it out, so to speak. Make some political dirt and dust fly. The following are my 2011 New Year's resolutions for the newly minted GOP Congress:
* AS EDITED BY MOI...
State publicly and often that the GOP Congress will either repeal Obamacare outright or strangle this Fedzilla health-killer beast to death by starving it of taxpayer dollars.
(*THUMBS UP*) DEFUND THE NEWLY EXPANDED FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY IN ITS CRADLE BEFORE THEY CAN DIG THEIR HEELS IN!
Strip NPR of our tax dollars. It should not be subsidized by taxpayers, period. Let NPR compete in the marketplace. Same goes for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Auld lang syne to them.
Create a volunteer, independent "Fedzilla SWAT Team" commission of retired successful business guys and gals. Charter them to conduct a top-to-bottom assessment of Fedzilla with the goal of cutting 25 percent from the federal budget over the next four years, with 100 percent transparent accountability. (No, really!)
Immediately halt all federal dollars going to cities that have declared themselves sanctuary cities.
(*WILD SPONTANEOUS APPLAUSE*)
Introduce and pass legislation that states that no law, including its amendments, can be longer than 5,000 words, which is roughly the same length as our Constitution.
* I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR YEARS...!!! FOR DECADES...!!! (GOD BLESS TED NUGENT...!!!)
Have Thomas Jefferson's words "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government" chiseled on the backrests of the chairs in Congress.
(*BACKSLAP*) HELL... I'D SAY EACH ELECTED OFFICIAL GETS TATTOOED WITH THAT STATEMENT AS PART OF HIS OR HER SWEARING IN CEREMONY...!
Obliterate the ugly Fedzilla tax code and replace it with a Fair Tax or flat tax. Make sure all Americans pay regardless of their income. All Americans need to have flesh in the game.
* AGAIN... THIS IS SOMETHING I'VE LONG BELIEVED IN!
Do you want momentum, or is it going to be politics as usual, GOP? Mom and Pop America are watching you closely. It is time.
(*STANDING OVATION*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/30/lies-damn-lies-and-death-panels/
The liberal intelligentsia, prisoners of their own conditioned reflex response, mocked Sarah Palin when she warned America in a Facebook post of the Obamacare death panels.
(*NOD*) YEP... WE REMEMBER!
Specifically, the ex-governor of Alaska referred to the Advance Care Planning Consultation provision in the Affordable Care Act, Section 1233 of H.R. 3200, which specifically called to pay doctors to discuss - some say encourage - withholding end-of-life care with their elderly patients once every five years. The White House denied impropriety but removed the provision when fellow Democrats balked. Only then did the bill pass by a single vote.
Those death panels that the White House first promised were never a part of Obamacare and then promised had been removed from Obamacare are back in Obamacare...sneaked into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - the stimulus bill, of all places. It empowered the government to decide what conditions were hopeless and therefore would be left untreated. (Gee, I sure hope your mom doesn't get one of those.) Obamacare gives even wider latitude to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Department of Health and Human Services and even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine what care will be made available.
So what is a death panel exactly? Nowhere will you find that term in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but then again, neither will a word search of the Constitution find the right to abortion or the separation of church and state. Admittedly, the term is provocative, but then again, so is the disquieting notion that a Washington panel should decide who lives and who dies. And make no mistake, when a nameless, faceless bureaucrat decides what treatments will and won't be made available to your mother, that is precisely what is happening.
Obamacare, if allowed to stand, will usher in a new crushing era of heavy-handed, European-style social-welfare bureaucracy.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Dr. Donald Berwick, President Obama's choice as Medicare chief, in a profoundly arrogant move, reinstated, effective this week, the very end-of-life provision that Congress rejected, but with an accelerated payment scheme that effectively will result in even more elderly Americans being nudged to forgo medical care.
* CLARIFICATION, FOLKS: THE "DISCUSSION" DOESN'T CONSTITUTE A DEATH PANEL; IT'S THE REFUSAL TO ALL TREATMENT THAT'S REFERRED TO AS DEATH PANELS.
[L]iberal icon and former Enron adviser Paul Krugman let the cat out of the bag that death panels are indeed a reality and, in his ghoulish vision, killing off senior citizens and taxing the survivors is a solution to America's debt problem: "Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes." This gives a chilling new meaning to death and taxes.
* KRUGMAN'S COMMENTS WERE HIGHLIGHTED HERE ON BARKER'S NEWSBITES AT THE TIME. (FEEL FREE TO GOOGLE "KRUGMAN + DEATH PANELS".)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, famously said of Obamacare that "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it," and sadly, she was right because most of the implementation rules were left unwritten at the time. Some estimate that the 2,700-page law will generate another 100,000 pages of rules written by bureaucrats...in the ultimate end run of Congress and the American people.
Obama's choice as Medicare chief...enjoyed a recess appointment, which allowed him to avoid congressional hearings that would have forced him to defend his deeply troubling statements: He's "romantic" about the British government-run health system, he explicitly favors health care rationing, he thinks it's the role of the health care system to redistribute wealth, and, perhaps most troubling of all, he thinks the once inviolable doctor-patient relationship is "no longer tenable" without government control.
[Obama's] "death panels" exist elsewhere. The FDA's role in pharmaceuticals was limited initially to safety, but expanded decades ago to policing efficacy, a move that delayed and prohibited lifesaving pharmaceutical approval with, quite literally, incalculable resultant deaths and suffering. [N]ow FDA has gone even further, crossing an alarming moral line. For the first time in our history, the government has banned the use of a cancer drug based not on its safety or even efficacy, but on its financial cost. Just this month, the FDA revoked approval of Avastin to late-stage breast-cancer patients, dashing many women's final and desperate hope for life.
* YET ANOTHER OBAMACARE "NUDGE" WE'VE CONCENTRATED ON HERE AT NEWSBITES... (*NOD*)
Promises from the White House notwithstanding, Mrs. Palin indeed was right. Death panels are all too real, and no family deserves to be caught up in them.
Granted, some may find the term "death panel" unnecessarily provocative, but then again, what exactly should we call a panel whose decisions result in death?
(*SHRUG*)
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/2010/12/taliban-making-inroads-northern-afghanistan
Northern Afghanistan, traditionally the region most resistant to Taliban encroachment, saw a steady increase in the presence of anti-NATO insurgents in the past year, according to U.S. officials.
* GREAT. (*SMIRK*) SUPER. (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Taliban leaders developed safe havens, set up attacks against NATO forces and mustered more recruitment in Northern Afghanistan than in any previous year, helped by Islamic clerics and fighters trained in Pakistan, according to officials and private analysts.
"Taliban ... are outpowering Afghan security forces in the north in many cases, and the imams trained in Pakistan are helping them do it," an Afghan official told
http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/2010/12/planned-parenthood-severs-ties-texas-affiliate-planning-parenthoo
Planned Parenthood is severing ties with its Corpus Christi, Texas affiliate because it doesn’t perform abortions.
* YEP... YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY... (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
[T]he Corpus Christi affiliate, which will be renamed Family Planning of the Coastal Bend on Jan. 1, focuses on preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. It also runs a model program for men encouraging them to share responsibility for family planning: 20 percent of the affiliate’s patients are men.
"We have never provided abortions," Stukenberg told the local newspaper, adding that several local doctors already perform the procedure. "We don’t need to duplicate services."
But being successful at Planned Parenthood’s supposedly main goal of preventing unplanned parenthood is apparently not good enough.
(*SIGH*)
Planned Parenthood CEO Amanda Stukenberg told the Corpus Christi Caller Times that the nation’s largest abortion provider wants all its affiliates to do abortions to "standardize its operations."
"Planned Parenthood’s mission is to see more babies born dead. It’s a heartbreaking reality in a season that should be filled with joy," says Bradley Mattes, executive director for the Life Issues Institute.
"Planned Parenthood is only for ‘choice’ if the choice is abortion," Mattes added.
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