Friday, May 20, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, May 20, 2011


And now...

(*PAUSE*)

One of the most recognizable opening guitar riffs in all of rock and roll history!
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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/05/19/morning-bell-nlrb-comes-to-big-labors-defense/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

* FOLKS... I KNOW YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH THIS ISSUE, BUT PLEASE READ ON AND INDEED UTILIZE THE LINK TO READ THE FULL STORY. (YOU'LL LEARN STUFF YOU DIDN'T KNOW; I DID!)

It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sam telling Walt Disney where to make movies or McDonald’s how many hamburgers to make...

* NO... NO, IT'S REALLY NOT... (*LONG SUFFERING SIGH*)

...but if you take a look at the case of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) versus Boeing, you’ll see that the federal government is trying to do just that: dictate where and how private industry may do business.

And it’s doing so to bolster one of President Barack Obama’s favorite special interests - labor unions.

Boeing Corporation decided to build a new assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to produce the 787 Dreamliner.

The NLRB (which is responsible investigating unfair labor practices) got wind of the decision and last month filed a complaint against Boeing...

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

...alleging that the company decided to build the plant in South Carolina out of retaliation for union strikes at its Washington state facilities. (Nevermind that Boeing actually added 2,000 jobs in Washington on this particular project.)

* YOU KNOW WHAT, FOLKS... I DON'T CARE WHY BOEING CHOSE TO BUILD A NEW PLANT IN SOUTH CAROLINA. THIS IS AMERICA. (OR AT LEAST IT USED TO BE!) YOU CAN MOVE FROM STATE TO STATE AT WILL!

The Washington Examiner reports that a leaked NLRB memo “makes clear that President Obama and the radical labor advocates he put on it are embarked on a calculated campaign to make unionized firms even harder to manage.”

* AND AT THIS POINT, FOLKS... FOLLOW THE ABOVE PROVIDED LINK AND READ THE FULL STORY. THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS OUT OF CONTROL!

May 20, 2011 at 8:43 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/05/19/the_young_and_the_betrothed

* 13 PHOTOS, FOLKS. I URGE YOU TO LOOK AT EACH ONE. THE READING IS MINIMAL.

* OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS, FOLKS... THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN LIVES AND LIMBS LOST...

* IN YOUR NAME...? (NOT IN MINE... NO... NOT IN MINE..)

May 20, 2011 at 9:19 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/asia/20pakistan.html?_r=2

China has agreed to immediately provide 50 JF-17 fighter jets to Pakistan, a major outcome of a visit by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to Beijing this week, Pakistani officials said Thursday.

(*SARCASTIC CHEER*) HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY!

Last week, Pakistan’s spy chief denounced the United States in a rare briefing before Parliament in which he condemned the American raid for breaching Pakistan’s sovereignty. Parliament, in turn, called for the government to revisit relations with the United States.

* HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY!

While the Obama administration would still like Pakistan’s cooperation to wind down the war in Afghanistan and to root out terrorist groups, some American lawmakers are now calling for aid to Pakistan to be cut or suspended.

(*SINCERE AND ENTHUSIASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*) YEP...! LET'S STOP PISSING OUR (BORROWED) MONEY AWAY!

At a landmark meeting on April 16 in the Afghan capital, Kabul, top Pakistani officials suggested to Afghan leaders that they, too, needed to look to China, an ascendant power, rather than align themselves closely with the United States, according to Afghan officials.

* HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY!

May 20, 2011 at 9:41 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/19/nhs-hospital-waiting-times-longer

[The UK's most recent] National Health Service (NHS) performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait [for medical treatment] more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

The British Medical Association said the longer waits and fewer treatments were inevitable: "Given the massive financial pressures on the NHS, it was always likely that hospital activity would decrease and waiting times would increase," said a spokesperson.

* FOLKS... DON'T DOUBT FOR A MOMENT THAT THANKS TO OBAMACARE, WE ARE FOLLOWING IN "GREAT" BRITAIN'S FOOTSTEPS.

"The capacity of hospitals has been limited by staffing freezes, and commissioners of care are under pressure to ration surgical procedures considered to be of low value. As well as the personal impact on individual patients, there is a potential long-term consequence for NHS hospitals, which are at risk of being financially destabilized as they lose income."

* IN OTHER WORDS, FOLKS... THE MORE SOCIALIZED MEDICINE "GIVEN" - THE LESS ACTUAL MEDICAL CARE GIVEN. (*SHRUG*)

May 20, 2011 at 9:42 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=43620

Who emerged triumphant from the post-Cold War era, 1991-2011?

Indisputably, it is China, whose 10-12% annual growth vaulted her past Italy, France, Britain, Germany and Japan to become the world's second largest economy and America's lone rival for first manufacturing power. If we use a metric called "purchasing power parity," China overtakes America in 2016.

Strategically, too, the United States seems in retreat, nowhere more so than in [the Middle East]. And no nation reflects more the relative loss of U.S. power and influence than does Israel, whose isolation is today unprecedented.

A decade ago, Turkey, a NATO ally of 50 years, was a quiet friend and partner to Israel. Today, the Palestinians in Gaza view the Turks as among their staunchest friends in the Middle East.

President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt scrupulously adhered to the terms of his predecessor's peace treaty with Israel and maintained the western end of the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Since he fell, the interim Egyptian regime has midwifed a unity government of Fatah and Hamas, moved to establish diplomatic relations with Tehran for the first time since the fall of the Shah and begun to lift the Gaza blockade. (September's elections are almost guaranteed to deliver to parliament a huge if not controlling bloc from the Muslim Brotherhood.)

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader who had looked to President Obama to bring a halt to new Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and preside over peace talks, appears to have given up on the Americans. Though the beneficiary of hundreds of millions in U.S. aid, he has entered a coalition with his old enemy Hamas, and together --if they can stay together - they plan to seek recognition of an independent Palestine by vote of the U.N. General Assembly in September. The likelihood is that the overwhelming majority, including many of America's allies, will vote to recognize Palestine and seat it in the General Assembly, where it can make demands on Israel, backed by U.N. sanctions, to terminate its "occupation" and vacate its national territory.

The General Assembly resolution will set as the borders of Palestine those that existed between 1948 and 1967. But, today, beyond those borders live no fewer than 500,000 Israeli Jews.

While the United States [has the right to exercise our veto over U.N.] Security Council resolutions...we have no veto in the General Assembly. If Obama opposes the U.N. resolution, we and Israel will stand virtually alone.

Nor are these the only crises Israel confronts.

To Israel's north is Hezbollah, which has become the dominant force in Lebanon. To the south is Gaza, dominated by Hamas, which has never accepted Israel's existence. To the east is the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority appears to have given up on U.S.-sponsored peace talks. Beyond lies Jordan, whose King Abdullah rules over millions of Palestinians, who is under pressure to take a tougher stand against Israel and who has no love for Bibi Netanyahu.

* YEP, FOLKS... OBAMA/CLINTON DIPLOMACY IS REALLY... er... SOMETHING...

May 20, 2011 at 10:09 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704904604576332991749967626.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

The U.S. Treasury reports that the federal government ran up $870 billion in red ink in the first seven months of this fiscal year.

That is $70 billion, or 9%, higher than at the same point in fiscal 2010...

(*PURSED LIPS*) AND THAT'S WITH THE HOUSE IN REPUBLICAN HANDS!

America's energy policy is as bad as our fiscal policy. The federal government is focused on producing not more energy but less of it, on making costs higher rather than lower, and on expanding regulation.

* BY "AMERICA'S ENERGY POLICY" THE AUTHOR REFERS TO PRESIDENT OBAMA'S ENERGY POLICY.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

[O]il production: our government is limiting it...

In 1970 the U.S. produced 3.5 billion barrels; by 2010 that figure was down to two billion.

The federal government has prohibited oil and natural gas drilling on 83% of federally owned land...

(*BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE DESK-TOP*)

In 1970 only 500 million barrels were imported; last year it was 3.3 billion barrels. That means that in 1970 U.S. oil production was 88% of consumption, and today it is only 37%.

(*SIGH*)

[T]he basic belief of our current administration and the environmental Left has been to restrict our exploration and extraction of the 163 billion barrels of crude oil that the Congressional Research Service says are off our coasts and on our land.

To put it all in the perspective of the environmentalists and the current administration, consider the statement of Energy Secretary Steven Chu in The Wall Street Journal: "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the prices of gasoline to the levels in Europe." The current gasoline price is about $8.50 a gallon in England and $8.80 in France and Germany.

(*JUST SHAKING MY - NOW BLOODY - HEAD*)

Take the case of the oil in Alaska: the amount of oil we produce there now has decreased from 2.0 billion barrels a day in the mid-1980s to about 600 million today. There is more oil off the coast of Alaska, but for the last five years the federal government has not given approval for drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

* LET US DRILL, MR. PRESIDENT...!!!

Today [after decades of both publicly and privately subsidized research] solar power...accounts for less then 0.5% of global electric power output. (And it isn't cheap: subsidized solar energy costs between $220 and $300 a megawatt hour, compared with $110 for electricity nationwide.)

Sound and significant energy resources are vitally important to our economy and our people. Energy should be reasonably priced, plentiful and be managed by its producing industries. Market prices are better than government subsidies and regulation. The government (and the green lobby) should get out of the way so that we can develop the new technologies we will need over the long term.

May 20, 2011 at 12:58 PM

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