Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, March 20, 2012
It's come to my attention that some readers find my word-based emoticons - (*SMIRK*) (*CHUCKLE*) (*GRIN*) (*SNICKER*) etc. - distracting.
Tough.
Apparently some readers even find my "reading between the lines" commentary and insertion of additional facts and context to be "a bother."
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Here's the deal, folks: If reading the actual "newsbite" is too much for you, feel free to simply avail yourselves of the link and read the "straight" news and analysis with no... er... distractions. Then... if you want to get my reaction... browse the actual newsbite in question.
Simple, right?
Listen... folks... a huge part of newsbiting entails cutting through the manipulation of the reporter and/or editor of each piece. The worse the bias... the more "confused" the reporter/editor... the more work for yours truly adding facts and context!
And, heck... it's not even always bias! Often it's simply sheer ignorance on the part of the reporter/editor, and thus yours truly must "intervene" in order that readers who themselves might not be aware of the complete "context" of the news report, analysis, or punditry can better understand the full picture - in context.
Anyway, folks, let's be clear: While I consider this blog a public service and I do sincerely hope each and every one of you - whether you read it regularly, semi-regularly, or whether you just happen to stumble up it and quickly browse it before going on to the next blog - gain knowledge via my blogging... in the final analysis... this is my blog.
I do things the way I do them and if that doesn't meet someone's expectations and desires... tough.
And now... onto today's newsbites!
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6 comments:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/why-is-the-story-about-malia-obama-vacationing-in-mexico-disappearing-from-the-web/
* KINDA INTERESTING...
(*SMIRK*)
* ESPECIALLY SINCE I "NEWSBIT" THE TELEGRAPH STORY IN QUESTION YESTERDAY!
Have you heard that Malia Obama, the president’s daughter, is reportedly spending her spring break in Oaxaca, Mexico? Allegedly, she’s jetting off with some of her classmates and 25 Secret Service agents to a country that the State Department has said all Americans should avoid.
But something is different about the latest “Obama vacation controversy”: references to it are disappearing from the Internet — and fast.
Around 3:00 EST, a Telegraph story reporting on the event was the first to vanish...
Then, the related Huffington Post article was found to be linking back to a completely unrelated Yahoo News page titled “Senegal Music Star Youssou Ndour Hits Campaign Trail.”
The Yahoo News story that HuffPo links to makes no mention of Malia Obama or her Mexican vacation. That raises two possibilities: either HuffPo has made an error in its link, or Yahoo has also removed its “Malia in Mexico” story.
In addition to larger news organizations, smaller sites are also removing their stories. Free Republic removed a related discussion thread... And “Global Grind” removed its related article...
Buzzfeed is now reporting that it is a “long tradition” not to report on presidential kids’ vacation plans, citing this as the possible reason for the many unexplained retractions.
(*SNORT*)
If this is the case, it still raises questions as to why Malia was allowed to vacation in a country that the State Department recommends no American travels to.
Neither AFP nor the White House responded to Buzzfeed’s request for comment.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/03/19/chicago-police-supt-promises-to-curb-gang-violence/
Chicago’s police superintendent says the city is re-tooling its anti-gang strategy, following a particularly violent weekend during which several people, including a 6-year-old girl, were killed.
* "RE-TOOLING," HUH?
(*SMIRK*)
So far this year, there have been 94 murders in Chicago.
There were 66 in the same period last year.
There have been 408 shootings so far this year, compared to 296 in the same period in 2011.
* FOLKS... IT'S MARCH! IT'S FRIGG'N MARCH...!!!
The Fraternal Order of Police union, meanwhile, says the Chicago Police Department is in a manpower crisis. FOP spokesman Pat Camden tells WBBM Newsradio Lisa Fielding [that] the department loses 50 officers a month to attrition, leaving police short-handed on the street. “I don’t think they’ve hired 600 officers in the past five years,” he said.
* YA EVER NOTICE THAT WHEREVER DEMS RUN THINGS... THINGS TURN TO SHIT FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON?
The police superintendent said much of the violence that occurred over the weekend was gang-related.
“Our gang issue is as strong, if not stronger, than L.A., which is recognized as the biggest in the country,” McCarthy said.
* LA. ANOTHER GREAT "DEMOCRATIC" TOWN IN A DEMOCRATIC STATE.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* DETROIT... PHILADELPHIA... AND ON AND ON AND ON...
(*SIGH*)
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/20/us/tax-refund-scam/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
* READ THIS AND TELL ME THERE'S ANY HOPE.
(*SIGH*)
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/
The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama's three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.
* AND REMEMBER, FOLKS... FOR FULLY ONE-QUARTER OF BUSH'S TWO TERMS IN OFFICE BUSH HAD TO DEAL WITH SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI AND SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID RUNNING CONGRESS - THE SPENDING BRANCH!
The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.
The latest posting from the Bureau of Public Debt at the Treasury Department shows the National Debt now stands at $15.566 trillion. It was $10.626 trillion on President Bush's last day in office, which coincided with President Obama's first day.
The National Debt also now exceeds 100% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services.
The federal budget sent to Congress last month by Mr. Obama, projects the National Debt will continue to rise as far as the eye can see.
* THE PRESIDENT'S OWN BUDGET...!!!
The budget shows the Debt hitting $16.3 trillion in 2012, $17.5 trillion in 2013 and $25.9 trillion in 2022.
Federal budget records show the National Debt once topped 121% of GDP at the end of World War II.
* WORLD WAR FUCKING TWO...!!!
If Mr. Obama wins re-election, and his budget projections prove accurate, the National Debt will top $20 trillion in 2016, the final year of his second term. That would mean the Debt increased by 87%, or $9.34 trillion, during his two terms.
* TWO-PARTER... (PART 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/293878/race-and-rhetoric-thomas-sowell
* BY DR. THOMAS SOWELL
One of the things that turned up, during a long-overdue cleanup of my office, was an old yellowed copy of the New York Times dated July 24, 1992. One of the front-page headlines said: “White-Black Disparity in Income Narrowed in 80’s, Census Shows.”
The 1980s? Weren’t those the years of the Reagan administration, the “decade of greed,” the era of “neglect” of the poor and minorities, if not “covert racism”?
More recently, during the administration of America’s first black president, a 2011 report from the Pew Research Center had the headline, “Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics.”
While the median net worth of whites was ten times the median net worth of blacks in 1988, the last year of the Reagan administration, the ratio was 19 to 1 in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. (With Hispanics, the ratio was 8 to 1 in 1988 and 15 to 1 in 2009.)
Race is just one of the areas in which the rhetoric and the reality often go in opposite directions. Political rhetoric is intended to do one thing — win votes. Whether the policies that accompany that rhetoric make people better off or worse off is far less of a concern to politicians, if any concern at all.
Democrats receive the overwhelming bulk of the black vote by rhetoric and by presenting what they have done as the big reason that blacks have advanced. So long as most blacks and whites alike mistake rhetoric for reality, this political game can go on.
A Manhattan Institute study last year by Edward Glaeser and Jacob Vigdor showed that, while the residential segregation of blacks has generally been declining from the middle of the 20th century to the present, it was rising during the first half of the 20th century. The net result is that blacks in 2010 were almost as residentially unsegregated as they were back in 1890.
There are complex reasons behind such things, but the bottom line is plain. The many laws, programs, and policies designed to integrate residential housing cannot be automatically assumed to translate into residentially integrated housing. Government is not the sole factor, nor necessarily the biggest factor, no matter what impression political rhetoric gives.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (PART 2 of 2)
No city is more liberal in its rhetoric and policies than San Francisco. Yet there are fewer than half as many blacks living in San Francisco today as there were in 1970.
Nor is San Francisco unique. A number of other very liberal California counties saw their black populations drop by 10,000 people or more, just between the 1990 and 2000 censuses — even when the total population of these counties was growing.
One of the many reasons why rhetoric does not automatically translate into reality is that the ramifications of so many government policies produce results completely different from what was claimed, or even believed, when these policies were imposed.
The poverty rate among blacks was nearly cut in half in the 20 years prior to the 1960s, a record unmatched since then, despite the expansion of welfare-state policies in the 1960s.
Unemployment among black 16- and 17-year-old males was 12% back in 1950. Yet unemployment rates among black 16- and 17-year-old males has not been less than 30% for any year since 1970 — and has been over 40% in some of those years.
Not only was unemployment among blacks in general lower before the liberal welfare-state policies expanded in the 1960s, rates of imprisonment of blacks were also lower then, and most black children were raised in two-parent families. (At one time, a higher percentage of blacks than whites were married and working.)
None of these facts fits liberal social dogmas.
While many politicians and “leaders” have claimed credit for black progress, no one seems to be willing to take the blame for the retrogressions represented by higher unemployment rates, higher crime rates, and higher rates of imprisonment today. (Or for the disintegration of the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of government-imposed discrimination in the Jim Crow era, but began coming apart in the wake of the expansion of the liberal welfare state and its accompanying social dogmas.)
The time is long overdue to start looking beyond the prevailing political rhetoric to the hard realities.
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