Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 16, 2011


Com'on, kiddies... relive those days of yore!
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9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704343404576146890723519596.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

An agent for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was shot and killed and another agent wounded by unknown gunmen in central Mexico on Tuesday, according to U.S. officials.

The incident is sure to raise fresh concerns about Mexico's deteriorating security in Washington and elsewhere.

* YOU'D THINK... BUT...

U.S. officials would not speculate about the motive for the attack.

(*SHRUG*)

Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed at least 34,000 lives in the past four years as rival drug gangs have fought for control of lucrative drug-smuggling routes.

[I]n December, a U.S. border patrol agent was fatally shot just north of the border in Arizona while trying to catch bandits who target illegal immigrants cross the border. [T]hree people with ties to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juárez, including a pregnant consular employee, were killed in March...

(*SHRUG*)

The U.S. provides equipment and some training to Mexican security forces under the $1.4 billion Merida Plan...

* SO, FOLKS... RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU'RE THRILLED ABOUT U.S. TAXPAYER DOLLARS (SOME PERCENTAGE BORROWED FROM CHINA AT INTEREST) GOING TO MEXICO. (OH... AND IF YOU'RE THRILLED... WHY DON'T YOU USE YOUR MONEY TO SUBSIDIZE MEXICO, NOT MINE?!)

* BTW, THE NAME OF OUR MURDERED FELLOW CITIZEN: Special Agent Jaime Zapata, on assignment to the ICE Attache in Mexico City from his post in Laredo, Texas... (HAT TIP -- http://apnews.myway.com/article/20110216/D9LDRARO1.html)

February 16, 2011 at 9:04 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146001069880040.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

* LET'S TALK ABOUT...

...the Department of Defense's official report on the Foot Hood killings - a "study" whose recital of fact made no mention of Hasan's well-documented jihadist sympathies.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* LET'S TALK ABOUT...

...the multiculturalist zeal that had driven Army and medical school superiors to smooth Nidal Malik Hasan's rocky way through training, promote him, and, despite blatant evidence of his unfitness, raise not a single concern.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

In [a new] report, titled "A Ticking Time Bomb" and put out by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, there is a detail as dazzling in its bleak way as all the glowing misrepresentations of Dr. Hasan's skills and character, which his superiors poured into their evaluations of him.

Department of Defense memoranda portray the [Ft. Hood] bloodbath - which began with [Major] Hasan shouting "Allahu Akbar!" - as a kind of undefined extremism, something on the order, perhaps, of work-place violence.

(*LOOK OF DISGUST*)

In November 2010, each branch of the military issued a final report on the Fort Hood shooting. Not one mentioned the perpetrator's ties to radical Islam. Even today, "A Ticking Time Bomb," co-authored by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME), reminds us that DoD still hasn't specifically named the threat represented by the Fort Hood attack - a signal to the entire Defense bureaucracy that the subject is taboo.

(*SIGH*)

* I WONDER HOW MANY MORE "MAJOR HASANS" ARE EMBEDDED WITHIN OUR MILITARY AND WITHIN OUR GOVERNMENT. I'M NOT SAYING THERE ARE MANY... BUT I'M GUESSING THERE ARE A FEW.

(*SHRUG*)

* To be continued...

February 16, 2011 at 9:30 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

For the superiors in charge of Hasan's training at Walter Reed and his two years at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the taboo was of a more complicated order - one that required elaborately inventive analyses through which Hasan's stated beliefs, ominous pronouncements, and evident unconcern with standards of behavior required of an officer could all be represented as singular virtues, proof of his exceptional value to the Army.

(*DISGUSTED SNORT*) (12 DEAD; 32 WOUNDED)

To fulfill Walter Reed's academic requirement for a presentation on a psychiatric theme, Hasan proffered a draft consisting almost entirely of wisdom from the Quran arguing for the painful punishment and liquidation of non-Muslims. Hasan evidently viewed the Quranic verses as a sufficient presentation - a view his superior didn't share, given its lack of any mention of a psychiatric theme. When that guide warned him the presentation was "not scholarly" and might prevent his graduation, Hasan revised. The finished product was not much different. Still, Hasan was allowed to graduate.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*) (12 DEAD; 32 WOUNDED)

He went on to his medical fellowship, where he soon delivered another class lecture, this one on the Islamist theme that the West, in particular the U.S military, had mounted a war on Islam. The presentation brimmed with views sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, the motives of the 9/11 perpetrators, and suicide bombers. It so infuriated his classmates that their outraged eruptions caused the instructor to end the presentation.

There would be more of the same to come. One classmate witness told investigators that Hasan sought every possible opportunity to share his radical Islamist sympathies. His highest obligation, he told classmates, wasn't to the Constitution, which he had sworn to protect and defend, but to his religion.

His Islamist sympathies would attract the interest of the FBI, which soon picked up on this U.S Army major's contacts with a terrorist suspect, unnamed in the Senate report. The agency would, however, have no continuing great interest in Hasan. Among other reasons, its agents had seen the impressive evaluation reports characterizing Hasan as an authority on Islam - one whose work even had "extraordinary potential to inform national policy and military strategy," as one of his superiors put it in his officer evaluation report.

(*SIGH*) (12 DEAD; 32 WOUNDED)

The same Hasan who set off silent alarms in his supervisors - the Psychiatric Residency Program Director at Walter Reed was one of them - would garner only plaudits in the official written evaluations at the time. He was commended in these as a "star officer," one focused on "illuminating the role of culture and Islamic faith within the Global War on Terrorism." One supervisor testified, "His unique interests have captured the interest and attention of peers and mentors alike."

No single word of criticism or doubt about Hasan ever made its way into any of his evaluations.

(12 DEAD; 32 WOUNDED)

[Hasan] was a consistently mediocre performer, ranking in the lowest 25% of his class, but to his evaluators, he was an officer of unique talents.

* FOLKS... EVEN IF YOU WERE TO IDENTIFY AND "PURGE" EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE OFFICERS WHO GREEN-LIGHTED HASAN'S REVIEWS IT WOULDN'T GET TO THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM: THE "TONE" WHICH "REQUIRED" SUCH BLATANT DISREGARD FOR BOTH REALITY AND NATIONAL SECURITY CAME FROM THE TOP... NOT FROM THE COLONELS... NOT EVEN FROM THE ONE-STAR GENERALS.

February 16, 2011 at 9:31 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146681486152152.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Only seven months too late, official Washington is starting to acknowledge "flaws" in the architecture of the Dodd-Frank law passed last July.

(*SMIRK*)

Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo admitted in testimony to the House Committee on Financial Services that by forcing much of the derivatives market through central counterparties, the government would now be creating new too-big-to-fail institutions and new potential sources of systemic financial risk.

* FOLKS... WHEREEVER YOU ARE... WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING... STAND UP, WALK OVER TO THE NEAREST WALL, AND... START BANGING YOUR HEAD AGAINST IT.

Somehow this wasn't one of President Obama's talking points last year...

(*SMIRK*)

Like ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank was rushed through by Democrats before the curtain came down on their one-party control of Washington. Also like health care, we are now finding out what they really passed and its very costly consequences.

February 16, 2011 at 7:38 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.usnews.com/news/washington-whispers/articles/2011/02/16/border-patrol-controls-just-44-percent-of-south

[T]he Border Patrol only has "operational control" of 44% of the southern border, and of that only 15% is air tight, according to new General Accountability Office report.

(*SNORT*) BTW... THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS "AIR TIGHT."

The GAO said that the Mexican border with Texas has the most holes, especially between Fort Hancock and Brownsville, where 70% to 90% of the state line is at the two lowest levels of protection, "monitored" and "low-level monitored." The GAO said that efforts to detector stop illegal immigrants from crossing there were poor. "Border Patrol reported that these two levels of control were not acceptable for border security," said the GAO.

"Protecting" the southern border costs taxpayers $3 billion a year.

* OH... FOLKS... BTW... IF YOU WANNA REALLY BE SICK TO YOUR STOMACH CONSIDER THIS...

Each year the southern border gets harder to cross due to the hiring of Border Patrol agents, who've gone from 10,000 in 2005 to 17,000 today, and the installation of fencing that now stretches over 649 miles. Says the GAO: "Border Patrol reported achieving varying levels of operational control for 873 of the nearly 2,000 southwest border miles at the end of fiscal year 2010, increasing an average of 126 miles each year from fiscal years 2005 through 2010.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

February 16, 2011 at 8:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021604808.html

A [conservative Republican] House committee chairman renewed efforts Wednesday to obtain names of current and former federal, state and local policymakers - including congressional colleagues - who received sweetheart mortgage deals from the former Countrywide Financial Corp.

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*) (*VIGOROUS NOD OF APPROVAL*)

The subpoena by Rep. Darrell Issa of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee makes it more likely that the records could be made public.

(*MORE APPLAUSE*)

A subpoena in 2009, when Democrats controlled the committee, specified that information on discounted loans to members of Congress and their spouses go only to the House Ethics Committee - with all names deleted.

(*SMIRK*)

"Countrywide orchestrated a deliberate and calculated effort to use relationships with people in high places in order to manipulate public policy and further their bottom line to the detriment of the American taxpayers even at the expense of its own lending standards," said Issa.

"This subpoena will allow us to obtain the information needed to answer the outstanding public interest questions regarding the full size and scope of the VIP program," he said. "The American people have a right to know the totality of who participated in the Countrywide's VIP program and what they did in return for access to it."

(*STANDING OVATION*)

Countrywide had been the nation's largest home loan originator before the housing market collapse. Many of its borrowers were left unable to repay mortgages that, in many cases, required no proof of income or a down payment. ... Government employees and influential private citizens received better deals than most of the company's borrowers. Those perceived as having the most influence were designated "Friends of Angelo" - those favored by Countrywide chief executive Angelo Mozilo.

Among those who received discounted Countrywide mortgages were former Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

Issa's subpoena had a broad scope, asking for records of borrowers who were - or still are - federal officials, including members of Congress and their staffs, as well as state and local government officials and employees of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Loans to spouses also must be turned over, the subpoena said.

* GOOD FOR YOU, CONGRESSMAN ISSA; GOOD FOR YOU, SIR!

February 16, 2011 at 8:44 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bags_tsa_agents_busted_checked_jfk_FRka1bq83wcuV1xwkEwUJK

Two TSA agents were busted today at Kennedy Airport for stealing $160,000 in cash from bags, authorities said.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

* THANK YOU BUSH, PAST RINO CONGRESS, AND INDEED ALL THE POLITICAL GENIUSES WHO GAVE AMERICA... THE TSA.

* OH... AND FOLKS... DON'T FORGET THE DEMS WANT TO FULLY UNIONIZE THE TSA. FULLY UNIONIZE THEM.

Also today, the TSA confirmed that a string of security lapses took place at Newark Airport within the past month, the Newark Star-Ledger reported.

A knife inside a carry-on made it past a checkpoint and two passengers were allowed to board flights despite issues with their full-body scans, TSA officials told the newspaper.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the two incidents were among a string of five security lapses at Newark within the last 30 days.

Another incident reported by the officials involved a dead dog that was brought to the airport by its owner and loaded onto a Continental Airlines jet without ever being screened.

TSA officials had reportedly ordered that the dog's carcass be screened, but it never happened.

* I ADMIT... A BIT TOO MUCH DETAILED INFO... BUT YOU GET THE POINT.

February 16, 2011 at 8:47 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_3d93e6aa-363a-11e0-8493-001cc4c002e0.html

* THIS GOV. WALKER OF WISCONSIN - HOPEFULLY BUTTRESSED BY THE REPUBLICAN MAJORITIES WITHIN HIS STATE LEGISLATURE - IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK!

Highlights of Gov. Walker's budget repair bill:

Requires employees who pay into the Wisconsin Retirement System to contribute 50% of their annual pension payment. That amount is estimated to be 5.8% of salary in 2011.

* SOUNDS REASONABLE TO ME! THAT MEANS TAXPAYERS - MANY (MOST?) WITHOUT PENSIONS OF THEIR OWN - WILL STILL BE SUBSIDIZING FULLY HALF OF THE PENSION PROGRAM!

Requires state employees to pay at least 12.6% of the average cost of annual premiums.

* 12.6%...? (AND THAT'S A RAISE!) IF IT WERE UP TO ME I'D REQUIRE STATE EMPLOYEES TO PAY AT LEAST 50% OF THEIR INDIVIDUAL HEALTH INSURANCE COSTS AND 75% OF THE "FAMILY" PLAN COSTS IN EXCESS OF INDIVIDUAL RATES!

Makes various changes to limit collective bargaining for most public employees to wages. Total wage increases could not exceed a cap based on inflation unless approved by referendum. Contracts would be limited to one year and wages would be frozen until a new contract is settled. Collective bargaining units are required to take annual votes to maintain certification as a union. Employers would be prohibited from collecting union dues, and members of collective bargaining units would not be required to pay dues. Changes would be effective upon expiration of existing contracts. Law enforcement, fire employees and state troopers and inspectors would be exempt from the changes.

* SOUNDS REASONABLE TO ME - ALL BUT THE WAIVERS. (ACCORDING TO WALKER, THE WAIVERS ARE REQUIRED BECAUSE THE STATE HAS NO BACK-UP PLAN TO DEAL WITH A STRIKE BY THESE "EMERGENCY" WORKERS.) (ME...? I SAY THAT'S WHAT THE NATIONAL GUARD IS FOR.)

Prohibits Limited Term Employees (temps...???) from being eligible for health insurance or participation in the Wisconsin Retirement System.

Authorizes appointing agencies to terminate any employees who are absent for three days without approval or any employees participating in an organized action to stop or slow work if the governor has declared a state of emergency.

Repeals the authority of home health care workers, family child care workers, UW Hospitals and Clinics employees, and UW faculty and academic staff to collectively bargain.

* WE'RE NOT TALKING PRIVATE WORKERS ENGAGED IN PRIVATE PURSUITS; WE'RE TALKING "PUBLIC" EMPLOYEES IN THE SENSE THAT THEIR EMPLOYER IS A TAXPAYER SUPPORTED ENTITY.

* FOLKS... THIS SHOULD BE A NATIONAL STORY!

* FOLKS... TRY TO GOOGLE MORE INFO ON THIS AND YOU'LL NOTE THAT THE HITS YOU'LL GET ARE ANTI-WILSON BY A HUGE MARGIN. (INTERESTING...)

February 16, 2011 at 9:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/fundraising/144689-hillary-clinton-donors-indicted

A federal grand jury indicted two Virginia men on Wednesday for allegedly trying to illegally reimburse donors who gave to Hillary Clinton’s senate and presidential campaigns.

(*SMIRK*)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has accused the two men, William Danielczyk and Eugene Biagi, of paying back $186,600 in contributions to the senate and presidential campaign committees of a candidate for federal office, and obstructing the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the FBI.

The two men are each charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of reimbursing contributions, one count of using corporate funds to reimburse contributions, and one count of obstructing justice.

“As part of the scheme, Danielczyk and Biagi allegedly created and distributed back-dated letters to 15 contributors that falsely characterized reimbursements for contributions as ‘consulting fees,’” according to the DOJ.

According to court documents, April Spittle helped Danielczyk and Biagi, and earlier this month pleaded guilty to one count of making reimbursed contributions to the 2008 presidential campaign.

* WHO THE HELL IS APRIL SPITTLE...???

* AHH... http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime-punishment/2011/02/bundlers-assistant-pleads-illegal-payment-clinton-campaign

February 16, 2011 at 9:24 PM

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