Friday, January 14, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, January 14, 2011


O.K.... doin' better today!

(*SMILE*)
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12 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/13/morning-bell-no-debt-ceiling-raise-without-spending-cuts/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

On March 16, 2006, when our national debt stood at $8.27 trillion, a young Senator from Illinois announced his intention to vote against raising our nation’s debt ceiling to $9 trillion, explaining: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit."

That Senator, of course, was Barack Obama.

* OF COURSE AT THE TIME OBAMA KNEW FULL WELL THAT HIS COLLEAGUES HAD ENOUGH VOTES TO ACTUALLY PASS THE DEBT INCREASE... (*SMIRK*)

* EMPTY RHETORIC. THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FROM BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA.

[N]ow that President Obama is [President], and now that our national debt stands at $14.01 trillion (a more than 70% increase from 2006), he is singing a different tune. His Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, sent a letter to Congress last week claiming that unless they raised the debt ceiling by “the end of the first quarter of 2011,” the “full faith and credit of the United States” would be “called into question” and there would be “catastrophic damage to the economy.”

* HYPOCRITICAL PIECE OF "YOU KNOW WHAT" - YOU TELL ME? (*SHRUG*)

* BY THE WAY...

This is, of course, completely false. The United States government will not default on its debt. Federal taxes will still be collected by the Treasury, from which interest and principal on the debt should be paid. The creditworthiness of the U.S. is not in danger.

Just look at history. In the fall of 1995 the federal government reached its $4.9 trillion debt ceiling. Congress refused to raise it. The world did not end. Instead, Treasury took several measures during the period to raise funds to meet federal obligations without exceeding the debt ceiling. In March 1996, the debt ceiling was raised to $5.5 trillion. Was, as Geithner warns, the “full faith and credit of the United States …. called into question”? No. Was there “catastrophic damage to the economy”? No.

* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... JUST AS WITH TARP AND THE OTHER BAILOUTS, OUR OWN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WILL LIE THEIR ASSES OFF TO JUSTIFY AND FURTHER THEIR IRRESPONSIBLE AND DAMAGING POLICIES.

* AND ALL THE WHILE.... (*PURSED LIPS*)... THE OLIGARCHS CONTINUE TO GROW RICH AS MIDDLEMEN TAKING A CUT OFF THE TOP.

The Obama administration is creating a rushed atmosphere, but Members of Congress have time for full consideration and deliberation before making a decision on the debt limit and necessary spending cuts. Gross federal debt has reached $14 trillion. Ongoing deficit spending (projected at $1.4 trillion for 2011) means the ceiling of $14.29 trillion will initially be reached around mid-March. Treasury’s traditional financial toolbox and revenue surges in April and June should delay the final moment of reckoning to mid-May and possibly as late as July. There is time to take the correct actions on behalf of the American people.

(*NOD*)

The 112th Congress should remember these facts and refuse to be rushed by Obama Administration scare tactics on the debt ceiling issue.

* NAN. A WHILE BACK YOU ASKED MY OPINION. MY OPINION IS THAT YOU NEED TO VOTE NO ON INCREASING THE NATIONAL DEBT LIMIT.

January 14, 2011 at 10:47 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/11/morning-bell-obamas-anti-drilling-agenda/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Offshore drilling bans currently prevent exploration in about 85% of our coastal waters. Those bans are crippling job creation and making America more reliant on foreign sources of oil.

Just two new deep-water permits have been issued since [Obama's] politically motivated [drilling] moratorium "ended" three months ago. That’s down 88% from the historical average. Shallow-water permits, which weren’t even subjected to the moratorium, are down 11%.

* RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOUR CAR RUNS ON WATER? HOW'BOUT YOUR HOUSE? RAISE YOUR HAND IS YOUR HOUSE IS HEATED BY WATER!

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The Interior Department announced last month that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific coasts would be off limits for the next seven years. That news came after the administration canceled four pending lease sales in Alaska.

* YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND, PEOPLE... OBAMA IS THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. NO... NOT IN THE SENSE OF "WORKING FOR" A FOREIGN ENEMY. NO. OBAMA SIMPLY WANTS AMERICANS TO PAY MORE FOR LESS... HE WANTS TO LESSEN THE GAP BETWEEN THE WORLD'S POORER NATIONS AND OURSELVES BY BRING DOWN OUR STANDARD OF LIVING.

* FOLKS... THOSE OF YOU WHO READ MY NEWSBITES... THERE'S JUST NO QUESTION OF WHAT OBAMA IS DOING OR WHY HE'S DOING IT.

(*SIGH*)

For the first time since 1959, the United States could go an entire year without a lease sale. That means the loss of more than $1 billion in bonus bids, less revenue from rental payments and significantly fewer royalties. State governments, already grappling with fiscal problems of their own, could forfeit upwards of $100 million in tax revenue, according to Louisiana State University finance professor and economist Joseph Mason.

(*SIGH*)

January 14, 2011 at 12:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.concordcoalition.org/tabulation/medicare-you-get-substantially-more-you-pay

For Social Security, prior generations received substantially more benefits than taxes paid, while current retirees and those in the future who earn average and above-average wages are scheduled to receive slightly less cash benefits than taxes paid. The lowest income workers are scheduled to still get more in benefits than taxes paid.

* SOUND LIKE A GOOD DEAL TO YOU, FOLKS...? IT DOESN'T SOUND GOOD TO ME.

For Medicare, however, their conclusion is that, "Past and current retirees, and most working age adults, will never pay for all of their benefits."

* NOR (ASSUMING YOU HAVE HALF A BRAIN) SHOULD THIS SOUND GOOD TO YOU.

Medicare payroll taxes, which only go towards Medicare Part A (hospital insurance), combined with premiums (which are set at levels to pay for about 25% of Medicare Part B costs), only cover 51% to 58% of total Medicare expenditures over time. The remaining Medicare expenditures are paid for out of the general revenue pool or by Treasury borrowing, like almost all other spending programs of the federal budget.

* SOUNDS LIKE A REAL "GIFT" TO OUR KIDS, HUH?

(*DISGUSTED SNORT*)

* HEY... YA THINK THEY'RE TEACHING THIS IN SCHOOL? YOU THINK OUR NATION'S "EDUCATORS" ARE EDUCATING OUR CHILDREN TO UNDERSTAND WHAT'S BEING DONE TO THEM... DONE IN THEIR OWN NAMES...?

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

January 14, 2011 at 12:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40811733/ns/business-oil_and_energy/

The global economy can withstand an oil price of $100 a barrel, Kuwait's oil minister said on Saturday...

* A FINE FRIEND AND ALLY.

Iraq's new oil minister and the head of Libya's National Oil Corporation both told Reuters that $100 was a fair price...

* OH, YEAH... THE OBAMA/CLINTON FOREIGN POLICY IS REALLY WORKING OUT WELL FOR US...

January 14, 2011 at 12:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/ikes-last-stand/the-liberal-complex/

January 20, 2011 is the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s first and only inaugural speech, which contained many memorable phrases that would crystallize the bipartisan consensus in favor of an overly ambitious American foreign policy. In it, the new president promised to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

He enthusiastically welcomed “the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.”

These stirring sentiments would seduce Americans across the political spectrum, from human-rights liberals to neoconservatives, and lead them to coalesce behind a series of foreign-policy debacles from Vietnam to Iraq.

The problem with American liberalism, as the Harvard government professor Louis Hartz observed, is that it has a tendency toward excess in opposite directions: on the one hand, liberalism underestimates the difficulty of transforming the world in its own image because liberalism assumes that it is the natural culmination and aspiration of humanity - that it is, as Francis Fukuyama would later put it, “the end of history.”

On the other hand, liberalism contains a deep fear of the non-liberal - whether a Communist/nationalist rebellion in Southeast Asia in the 1960s or an Islamicist rival today - and fosters the sense that America could never survive in the face of such opposition.

In a classic manifestation of the hubris-nemesis complex, these two very different faces of American liberalism combine Janus-like to produce a self-righteous yet trembling colossus stumbling around the world.

* To be continued...

January 14, 2011 at 2:28 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

[L]iberalism - specifically a desire to spread democracy and protect human rights - was the fount of America’s most recent exercise in overreach, the Bush administration’s Iraq War...

Bush himself outlined how he saw liberalism and America’s national interest being simultaneously served by the Iraq War: "A free, democratic, peaceful Iraq will not threaten America or our friends with illegal weapons. A free Iraq will not be a training ground for terrorists, or a funnel of money to terrorists, or provide weapons to terrorists who would be willing to use them to strike our country or allies. A free Iraq will not destabilize the Middle East. A free Iraq can set a hopeful example to the entire region and lead other nations to choose freedom. And as the pursuits of freedom replace hatred and resentment and terror in the Middle East, the American people will be more secure."

This rationale served not only to win many converts to the Iraq War among the American public - over 70% of whom supported it in March 2003 - but its democratic and humanitarian elements also garnered support from the so-called liberal hawks on the Left who might not otherwise have hopped on the war’s bandwagon.

[T]he most compelling piece of evidence that liberalism plays a central role in sustaining a broad coalition for an expansive foreign policy is the fact that after campaigning on a platform of international restraint, President Barack Obama has subsequently embraced and expanded a longer-term commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan and is in many respects taking an even more aggressive stance toward waging the war against terrorism than his immediate predecessor did.

President Eisenhower famously warned his fellow Americans about the pernicious influence of what he termed “the military-industrial complex.” Eisenhower cautioned that the country needed to be careful in how it used its growing might.

Recognizing the dark side of such unrivaled power, the retiring president warned against America’s “recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” He pointed to the need to strike a balance - to become a military superpower while not undermining our free-market economy and the liberty of our citizens. The danger, in the old soldier’s view, was that we would give in to “the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.

[O]n the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, we should re-read the speech and celebrate it as a seminal conservative warning against foreign-policy mission-creep and as the Right’s most eloquent brief on behalf of a posture of strategic restraint. [But] we need to read it in conjunction with President Kennedy’s inaugural address three days later to grasp the origins of our current predicament.

January 14, 2011 at 2:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=559843&p=1

The bailout of General Motors wasn't supposed to cost taxpayers. In fact, the promise was that taxpayers would profit.

Now the government says the bailout's a loser.

(*SMIRK*)

Washington has handed out $50 billion to General Motors and another $35 billion to Chrysler and GMAC to keep those companies in business. Taxpayers were told their money wouldn't end up lost in a rat hole.

The Congressional Oversight Panel reported Thursday that by selling 45% of the stock it had in GM, Washington has "'locked in' a loss of billions of dollars and thus greatly reduced the likelihood that taxpayers will ever be repaid in full."

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

* AND THE OP-ED DOESN'T EVEN DREDGE UP THE TAX GIVEAWAYS OBAMA AND THE LAST - DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED - CONGRESS GIFTED GOVERNMENT MOTORS WITH.

(*SMIRK*)

January 14, 2011 at 2:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257116/haiti-s-tourniquet-isn-t-healing-wound-jonah-goldberg

Ninety-five percent of the debris from the Haitian earthquake of one year ago hasn’t been moved.

In other words, billions of dollars later, with none other than Bill Clinton serving as the foreman for a massive international cleanup and reconstruction effort, most of the country pretty much looks exactly the way it did when dust and screams still filled the air.

Except, of course, for all of the tent cities. More than a million people remain homeless.

The good news? The Red Cross is building 300 semi-permanent wood homes. That would be sufficient if they could each serve a family of 3,300 people, semi-permanently.

(*SNORT*)

To get a sense of Haiti’s dysfunction, Fox News’s Steve Harrigan reports that some 64 brand-new trucks donated after the earthquake by the United States to be used by aid organizations remain parked at the airport. Apparently nobody will pay the steep import tax on the vehicles, so they sit idle, overgrown with weeds.

(*HEADACHE*)

Even before the earthquake, Haiti was not only the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, it was one of the few nations in the world to get poorer over the last 50 years. And this is despite the fact it has had some 10,000 international-aid organizations working there for decades.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

January 14, 2011 at 2:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.ketv.com/r/26480918/detail.html

(*JUST SICK TO MY STOMACH*)

* ANIMALS. THAT'S ALL YOU CAN SAY.

January 14, 2011 at 5:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8259484/Boy-9-has-Disney-World-trip-ruined-after-US-immigration-rules-him-a-threat.html

A nine-year-old boy's dream trip to Disney World was ruined when US immigration officials ruled he was a threat.

(*SARCASTIC THUMBS UP DIRECTED AT SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON*)

Civil servants Kathy and Edward Francis planned to surprise their grandson Micah Strachan with the holiday of a lifetime to Florida in February.

They were only going to tell Micah about it when they took him to the airport on February 19 for the flight to the US.

They had already spent more than £1,500 on plane tickets and had been organising the trip for months.

But this week US Embassy officials denied the schoolboy a visa to enter the US.

They said there was a risk he would not leave the US at the end of his holiday and refused his application under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

* THAT'S KEEPING US SAFE, HILLARY!

Micah was born in Britain and has lived in Middlesex all his life with his mum Claudia Lewis.

He holds a South African passport because his grandparents Kathy and Edward, who have lived and worked in Britain since 1990, only got him a South African passport.

They are originally from South Africa.

A letter from Micah's primary school was included in his visa application confirming he attended the school.

But the US Embassy's rejection letter to Micah said: "Because you either did not demonstrate strong ties outside the United States or were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the US would be consistent with the visa status, you are ineligible."

* IS THERE AN IQ TEST TO ENTER THE U.S. DIPLOMATIC CORPS? (APPARENTLY NOT!)

A US Embassy spokesman said it was "not policy" to comment on individual immigration cases.

January 14, 2011 at 5:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7381016.html

Bobby and Amanda Herring spent more than a year providing food to homeless people in downtown Houston every day. They fed them, left behind no trash and doled out warm meals peacefully without a single crime being committed, Bobby Herring said.

That ended two weeks ago when the city shut down their "Feed a Friend" effort for lack of a permit.

* HOUSTON'S MAYOR: ANNISE DANETTE PARKER - DEMOCRAT.

January 14, 2011 at 5:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110114/ap_on_re_us/us_unions_secret_ballots

The National Labor Relations Board on Friday threatened to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over constitutional amendments guaranteeing workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.

* YEP! YOU READ THAT RIGHT, FOLKS! THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS AGAINST THE SECRET BALLOT! NOT ONLY THAT, BUT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS THREATENING TO SUE STATES THAT PASS CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS... JUST BECAUSE OBAMA DOESN'T LIKE THESE CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS.

In letters to the attorney general of each state, [Lafe Solomon, General Counsel for the NLRB, claims that] the amendments are preempted by the supremacy clause of the Constitution...

(*SMIRK*)

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... WE NEED TO GET BACK TO CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT... FEDERALISM MEANS NOT TRODDING ON STATE RIGHTS.

January 14, 2011 at 5:16 PM

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