Friday, August 31, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, August 31, 2012


Busy, busy, busy day in front of me, folks!

Yep...

(*PAUSE*)

There's a Doctor Who marathon starting at 10:00 a.m. on BBC America!

I need to catch up! The Sci-Fi Channel ran Doctor Who for a few years but then stopped doing so. I've missed a whole season - perhaps more!

Oh...? What's that...? You're asking what I thought of Clint Eastwood at the GOP Convention last night?

Um... well... er...

(*WINCING*)

I choose to believe that...

(*AWKWARD PAUSE*)

Oh... screw it! It was awful. Don't know whose fault it was... whether that's what Clint wanted to do or whether it was the idea of a bunch of lame Republican consultants... but it didn't work.

Mitt?

Well... he gave a damn good speech. Gotta give him props for that. The "entrance..." No. Bad idea. I'm assuming they were mimicking a president's State of the Union Address entrance... but Mitt's not president (yet!) and some convention hall in Florida ain't the Capital.

(*SIGH*)

Thank God the Convention is over - that's my bottom line. 

Depressing

Depressing that things have reached the point where I'm praying Mitt Romney becomes the next President of the United States.

Folks... we don't have the luxury of cutting our noses off to spite our faces this time around. 

No... you can't vote for Ron Paul!

No... you can't write-in someone!

Folks... this is the "hope and change" election. It's not "good" against "bad," it's "the possibility a Romney-Ryan presidency will do the right thing more often than not" vs. "the certainty that a re-elected Barack Hussein Obama will complete his 'fundamental transformation' of America."

Yep... it's that friggin' simple.

2 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonguardian.com/disability-double-dip

As many as 117,000 Americans simultaneously collect unemployment benefits and federal disability each year, a form of double-dipping that investigators say costs taxpayers $850 million annually and should be ended.

* YA THINK...?!?!

[I]nvestigators at the Government Accountability Office reported this week...

* LINK TO THE ACTUAL GAO REPORT PROVIDED WITHIN THE GUARDIAN STORY.

... the Labor Department that funds unemployment benefits and the Social Security Administration that funds disability payments don't compare notes, leavings tens of thousands of Americans each month to collect two checks from a stretched-thin government treasury.

* "STRETCHED THIN" GOVERNMENT TREASURY...?!?! WHAT ARE THESE BOZOS BABBLING ABOUT...?!?! "STRETCHED THIN" IS WHEN YOU HAVE BARELY ENOUGH MONEY TO GET BY; THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BORROWS 43-CENTS OF EVERY DOLLAR IT SQUANDERS! I'D SAY THAT'S BEYOND SIMPLY "STRETCHED THIN!"

Those who take advantage can make out quite well. One double-dipper identified by the GAO, for instance, racked up a handsome $62,000 in 2010 by tapping both programs simultaneously, even though it appears the person also held a job, investigators found.

(*HEADACHE*)

Another received $107,000 in overlapping payments between 2008 and 2011, despite working for construction companies, auditors found.

* ANYWAY... YOU GET THE IDEA...

(*SIGH*)

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/business/majority-of-new-jobs-pay-low-wages-study-finds.html?_r=2

While a majority of jobs lost during the downturn were in the middle range of wages, a majority of those added during the "recovery" have been low paying, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project.

* GOTTA LUV HOW THEY KEEP ON REFERRING TO THIS IMAGINARY "RECOVERY" EVEN AS THEY PROVIDE EVIDENCE IT DOESN'T EXIST.

“The overarching message here is we don’t just have a jobs deficit; we have a ‘good jobs’ deficit,” said Annette Bernhardt, the report’s author and a policy co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a liberal research and advocacy group.

* AND TO MAKE THINGS WORSE, FAR TOO MANY "GOOD JOBS" ARE SIMPLY CREDENTIALED POSITIONS WHICH DON'T ADD MUCH TO THE ECONOMY AND INDEED OFTEN TAKE AWAY FROM TRUE ECONOMIC GROWTH VIA CREATING NEEDLESSLY BLOATED BUREAUCRACY AT INFLATED SALARIES.

Lower-wage occupations, with median hourly wages of $7.69 to $13.83, accounted for...58% of all job growth.

(*PURSED LIPS*)