Monday, February 18, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 18, 2013


Yep... been shirking my blogging duties...

 I freely admit it: The 2012 Election results knocked me for a loop that quite frankly... I'll never recover from.

 With no end at the light of the tunnel... blogging just isn't fun anymore.

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5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/17/news/economy/gas-prices/

Gas prices have risen for 32 days straight, according to AAA.

* AND THE OBAMAS ARE ON SEPARATE VACATIONS...

* NO CAMP DAVID FOR BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA - OR MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON OBAMA.

February 18, 2013 at 6:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/18/democratic-senator-pushing-higher-taxes-faces-outstanding-1200-tax-penalty/#ixzz2LGdDG7vj

Just last week, Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu argued during a Capitol Hill hearing that the government needs more tax revenue.

But in a twist of hypocrisy, the Louisiana senator and her husband appear to have not yet paid $1,206.95 in tax penalties to the District of Columbia government on their Capitol Hill home, The Daily Caller has learned.

The house is worth about $2.3 million dollars, according to online assessments.

* AND THAT'S JUST THEIR WASHINGTON HOME...

February 18, 2013 at 6:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.infowars.com/dhs-purchases-21-6-million-more-rounds-of-ammunition/

A study funded by the Department of Homeland Security that was leaked last year characterizes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

* THAT WAS THEN AND THIS IS NOW... (READ ON...)

The Department of Homeland Security is set to purchase a further 21.6 million rounds of ammunition to add to the 1.6 billion bullets it has already obtained over the course of the last 10 months alone...

To put that in perspective, during the height of active battle operations in Iraq, U.S. soldiers used 5.5 million rounds of ammunition a month. Extrapolating the figures, the DHS has purchased enough bullets over the last 10 months to wage a full scale war for almost 30 years.

In August 2012, the DHS censored information relating to the amount of bullets purchased by the federal agency on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement, citing an “unusual and compelling urgency” to acquire the bullets, noting that there is a shortage of bullets which is threatening a situation that could cause “substantial safety issues for the government” should law enforcement officials not be adequately armed.

While Americans are being browbeaten with rhetoric about the necessity to give up semi-automatic firearms in the name of preventing school shootings, the federal government is arming itself to the teeth with both ammunition and guns. Last September, the DHS purchased no less than 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles, labeling them “Personal Defense Weapons.”

February 18, 2013 at 6:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/15/buchanan-why-are-we-still-on-the-dmz/

North Korea has just pulled off an impressive dual feat — the successful test both of an intercontinental ballistic missile and an atom bomb in the 6-kiloton range.

Pyongyang’s ruler, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, said the tests are aimed at the United States.

* TO REPEAT...

Pyongyang’s ruler, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, said the tests are aimed at the United States.

(So it would seem. One does not build an ICBM to hit Seoul, 30 miles away.)

Experts believe North Korea is still far from having the capability to marry a nuclear warhead to a missile that could hit the West Coast. But this seems to be Kim’s goal.

Why is he obsessed with a nation half a world away?

* THE QUESTION IS: WHY ARE WE...???

America has never recognized Kim's, his father’s or his grandfather’s regime. We have led the U.N. Security Council in imposing sanctions. We have 28,000 troops in the South and a defense treaty that will bring us into any war with the North from day one, and a U.S. general would assume overall command of U.S. and Republic of Korea troops.

* WHY...???

Why is this our crisis in 2013?

* WHY INDEED!

President Eisenhower ended the Korean War 60 years ago. The Chinese armies in Korea went home. Twenty years ago, the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia abandoned communism and ceased to arm the North, and Mao’s China gave up world revolution for state capitalism. Epochal events. Yet U.S. troops still sit on the DMZ, just as their grandfathers did when this writer was still in high school.

Why?

North Korea represents no threat to us, and South Korea is not the ruined ravaged land of 1953. It has twice the population of the North, an economy 40 times the size of the North’s, and access to the most modern weapons in America’s arsenal.

Why were U.S. troops not withdrawn from Korea at the end of the Cold War?

Why should we have to fight Seoul’s war if Pyongyang attacks, when the South is capable of fighting and winning its own war?

Why is South Korea’s defense still America’s obligation?

Had the United States moved its soldiers out of South Korea, and its planes and ships offshore, and turned over to Seoul responsibility for its own security, would the North be building missiles that can hit the United States?

Undeniably, Kim Jong Un runs a tyrannical, wretched regime. But its closest neighbors are South Korea, Japan, Russia and China. Why is Kim Jong Un not primarily their problem, rather than ours?

Had we departed 20 years ago, the South would have built up its own forces to contain the North. Instead, we have allowed it to remain a strategic dependency. And the same holds true for Japan.

Sixty years ago, U.S. commitments to go to war to keep South Korea and Japan from falling into the Stalin-Mao sphere were supported by Americans, who willingly sent their sons to the Far East to defend the “frontiers of freedom.”

But South Korea and Japan long ago became economic powers, fully capable of undertaking their own defense. And the Cold War enemies we confronted no longer exist.

Why have we failed to adapt to the new world we are in?

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not Stalin’s. If Putin is in a quarrel with Japan over the Kuriles, why should that be our quarrel? If Japan is in a quarrel with Xi Jinping’s China over the Senkakus, why is that our quarrel?

* WELL... WE SHOULD BE ON JAPAN'S SIDE... BUT AS TO BUCHANAN'S OVERALL POINT... OBVIOUSLY HE'S RIGHT.

Are our war guarantees to Japan and South Korea eternal?

Undeniably, should the U.S. seek to renegotiate its defense pacts with Seoul and Tokyo, each would consider, given the rogue regime in the North, a nuclear deterrent of its own. This would stun and shock China.

But what help have the Chinese been to us lately?

(*SMILE*)

February 18, 2013 at 7:32 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congressional-staffers-often-travel-on-tabs-of-foreign-governments/2013/02/17/25e39938-7625-11e2-8f84-3e4b513b1a13_story.html?hpid=z1

About a dozen congressional staffers flew business class on a trip to China last summer and stayed at luxury hotels while touring the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and receiving a “briefing on ancient artifacts and dynasties” at the Shanghai Museum.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The all-expenses-paid visit came courtesy of China.

(*SILENCE*)

More and more foreign governments are sponsoring such excursions for lawmakers and their staffs...

* AND... THEIR... STAFFS...

A Washington Post examination of congressional disclosures revealed the extent of this congressional travel for the first time, finding that Hill staffers had reported taking 803 such trips in the six years ending in 2011. Lawmakers themselves are increasingly participating, disclosing 21 trips in 2011, more than double the figure in prior years.

* AND THE AGE OF OBAMA JUST KEEPS MARCHING ON...

The number of congressional trips could be far higher, because only lawmakers and senior congressional staff members are required to disclose the travel.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Some Hill employees have gone on repeated trips to the same country, and others chain them together, traveling directly from one expenses-paid visit to another.

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)

February 18, 2013 at 7:58 PM

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