Friday, March 8, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, March 8, 2013


Ya never know what you're gonna be exposed to here at Usually Right...

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10 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/03/08/mccain-calls-paul-cruz-amash-wacko-birds/

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)...

* A PIECE OF SHIT...

...is continuing to criticize his fellow Republicans for their filibuster of incoming CIA Director John O. Brennan over drone policy.

* FILLIBUSTER OVER. BRENNAN CONFIRMED. MCCAIN STILL... A PIECE OF SHIT.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, McCain referred to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) as “wackos.”

“They were elected, nobody believes that there was a corrupt election, anything else,” McCain said. “But I also think that when, you know, it’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone.”

* LISTEN... MCCAIN SHOULD HAVE RETIRED AFTER LOSING THE GOP THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2008. WHATEVER INTEGRITY THE MAN ONCE POSSESSED IS LONG GONE.

Asked to clarify, McCain said he was referencing ”Rand Paul, Cruz, Amash, whoever.”

Amash, who has sparred with McCain on Twitter before, replied: "Sen. McCain called Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Ted Cruz, & me "wacko birds." Bravo, Senator. You got us. Did you come up with that at #DinnerWithBarack?"

* BUT HERE'S THE BOTTOM LINE, FOLKS: PEOPLE LIKE MCCAIN AND MITCH MCCONNELL CONTROL THE GOP SENATE CAUCUS. THEREFORE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE NO ALLY IN THE SENATE... NO TWO-PARTY CHOICE IN THE SENATE. IT'S SIMPLY "REAL" DEMOCRAT vs. DEMOCRAT "LITE."

March 8, 2013 at 12:36 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/record-89304000-americans-not-labor-force-296000-fewer-employed-january

The number of Americans designated as "not in the labor force" in February was 89,304,000, a record high...

(*SIGH*)

...up from 89,008,000 in January, according to the Department of Labor.

This means that the number of Americans not in the labor force increased 296,000 between January and February.

* ONE... MORE... TIME:

This means that the number of Americans not in the labor force increased 296,000 between January and February.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) labels people who are unemployed and no longer looking for work as “not in the labor force,” including people who have retired on schedule, taken early retirement, or simply given up looking for work.

* AND YET...

The nation's unemployment rate decreased to 7.7% in February, down from 7.9% in January.

(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

* UH-HUH.

March 8, 2013 at 12:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/officials-most-nyc-high-school-grads-need-remedial-help-before-entering-cuny-community-colleges/

NEW YORK (CBS New York) — It’s an education bombshell.

Nearly 80% of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system. When they graduated from city high schools, students in a special remedial program at the Borough of Manhattan Community College couldn’t make the grade. They had to re-learn basic skills — reading, writing and math — first before they could begin college courses.

* SO CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW THOSE HIGH SCHOOL "GRADUATES" WHO DON'T ASPIRE TO COLLEGE WOULD FAIR...?!?!

The number of kids behind the 8-ball is the highest in years, CBS 2′s Marcia Kramer reported Thursday.

* BLOOM-Y... BLOOM-Y... BLOOM-Y...

(*SARCASTIC APPLAUSE*)

Officials told CBS 2′s Kramer that nearly 80 percent of those who graduate from city high schools arrived at City University’s community college system without having mastered the skills to do college-level work.

In sheer numbers it means that nearly 11,000 kids who got diplomas from city high schools needed remedial courses to re-learn the basics.

To meet the needs of the students, City University has launched a special program called CUNY Start. It provides low-cost immersion classes. Sherry Mason teaches a writing class.

* BUT... BUT... BUT... ISN'T K-12 A NO-COST IMMERSION CLASS...???

(*SNORT*)

* YEAH... SPEND MORE MONEY... NEW PROGRAMS... THAT'S THE TICKET...

(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)

“They get lost sometimes in the classroom and in CUNY Start we give them a lot more one-on-one attention, small group work. It helps them achieve more in a short amount of time and so they’re able to get on with their credit classes,” Mason said.

* "LOST...???" WE'RE TALKING 13 FRIGGIN' YEARS... K-12... OF PUBLIC EDUCATION! AND, AGAIN, THE "THEY" ISN'T 3%... IT'S NOT 7%... IT'S 80% OF NYC PUBLIC SCHOOL GRADUATES - THE "BEST AND BRIGHTEST" WHO ARE HEADING OFF TO COLLEGE!

In its defense, the NYC Department of Education said it has raised high school graduation rates by 40% over the last seven years.

* OBVIOUSLY BY LOWERING STANDARDS...!!!

March 8, 2013 at 1:01 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/tsa-allowed-least-11-airport-employees-criminal-backgrounds-receive-security-badges

* OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN ACTION...

(*SIGH*)

* JUST READ IT...

March 8, 2013 at 1:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/newark_tsa_bomb_boozled_eTIZBp2X7B299qO5WCWvAK

An undercover TSA inspector with an improvised explosive device stuffed in his pants got past two security screenings at Newark Airport — including a pat-down — and was cleared to get on board a commercial flight, sources told The Post yesterday.

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

The breach took place Feb. 25, when the Transportation Security Administration’s special operations team — the agency’s version of internal affairs — staged a mock intrusion at the airport. “This episode once again demonstrates how Newark Airport is the Ground Zero of TSA failures,” a source said.

The “bomber” was part of the four-person “Red Team” that posed as ticketed passengers and filed through the B1 checkpoint of Terminal B — home of American Airlines, JetBlue and Delta, sources said.

With the inert “bomb” stashed somewhere in his pants, he got through the magnetometer undetected at around 11 a.m. He was then pulled aside for a physical screening, and a TSA agent failed to discover the IED and allowed the “bomber” to go to his gate.

“He did have a simulated IED in his pants,” the source said. “They did not find it.”

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

Only one member of the TSA’s terror team was stopped at the checkpoint — a female agent “carrying a simulated IED inside her carry-on that was inside a child’s doll,” the source said.

It had “wires sticking out” and was obviously suspicious and she was pulled aside, sources say.

* AND... THEN... ALLOWED... TO... PROCEED...???

Newark Airport, which has 1,400 screeners and supervisors, has long struggled with security. Last year, 52 baggage and traveler screeners were fired and another 19 disciplined for major security lapses and thefts.

March 8, 2013 at 1:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342494/living-large-obama-white-house-charles-c-w-cooke

We are now firmly ensconced in the brutal Age of the Sequester, and things in America are grave.

(*CROOKED SMILE*)

The federal government, we learned on Wednesday, is so strapped for cash that the president has been forced to cut off the People’s access to the home he’s borrowing from them. He didn’t want to have to do this, naturally — “particularly during the popular spring touring season” - but then Congress just had to go and acquiesce in measures that the president himself had suggested and signed into law.

* MEANING... THE SEQUESTER LEGISLATION ITSELF!

(*SNORT*)

How beastly! We axed 2.6% from a $44.8 trillion budget...

* A BUDGET OF COURSE BIGGER THAN LAST YEAR'S, SO, IN REALITY THERE'S BEEN NO "AXING" IN REAL TERMS...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

...and now the president can’t even afford the $18,000 per week necessary to retain the seven staff members who facilitate citizens’ enjoying self-guided tours around the White House.

* FOLKS... SERIOUS POINT: FORGET THE SEQUESTER. LET'S JUST ADDRESS BASIC BUDGETING. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BORROWS WHAT... SOMETHING LIKE 46-CENTS OF EVERY DOLLAR IT SQUANDERS. IT'S CALLED DEFICIT SPENDING. THIS DEFICIT SPENDING HAS TAGGED IN AT OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR SINCE OBAMA HAS BECOME PRESIDENT. ALL OF THIS DEFICIT SPENDING CREATES ADDITIONAL DEBT THAT HAS TO BE PAID BACK AT INTEREST. SO... BACK TO THE $18,000/WEEK SPENT ON WHITE HOUSE TOURS... SHOULD WE BE SPENDING $18,000/WEEK ON WHITE HOUSE TOURS IN THE FIRST PLACE WHEN DEFICIT SPENDING IS OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR...???

* ANYWAY... JUST A POINT TO PONDER. (AND NOW... WE CONTINUE WITH THE OP-ED)

The executive mansion is not in that much trouble, of course. It’s certainly not in sufficiently dire straits for Air Force One ($181,757 per hour) to be grounded, or to see the executive chef ($100,000 per year) furloughed, or to cut back on the hours of the three full-time White House calligraphers ($277,050 per year for the trio)...

* YEP... YOU READ THAT RIGHT... THREE FULL-TIME WHITE HOUSE CALLIGRAPHERS...

...or to limit the invaluable work of the chief of staff to the president’s dog ($102,000 per year)...

* THIS REQUIRES A POST-POSTING GOOGLE... (I'LL GET BACK TO YOU!)

...or to trim his ridiculous motorcade ($2.2 million).

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 8, 2013 at 4:01 PM
William R. Barker said...

* OOPS! MAKE THAT... THREE-PARTER (Part 2 of 3)

If Ellen DeGeneres wants another dancercize session or Spain holds another clothing sale, the first family will be there before you can say “citizen executive.” Fear ye not, serfs: Austerity may be the word of the week, but the president is by no means in any danger of being forced to live like the president of a republic instead of like a king.

* FOLKS... READ THE FOLLOWING... READ IT CAREFULLY... THINK ABOUT IT...

When Calvin Coolidge was president in the glitzy 1920s, he took the republican ideal so seriously that he ended up in a series of tiffs with the White House housekeeper, Elizabeth Jaffray, over the cost of state dinners, and took to admonishing the executive branch for using too many pencils. Such behavior now serves only as a punchline to a joke that is not funny.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The current annual cost of the White House — just in household expenses, not the policy operations for which it exists — is $1.4 billion: Annually, presidential vacations cost $20 million (the low estimate for one presidential vacation to Hawaii is $4 million, but the true cost is probably five times that); the first family’s yearly health-care costs are $7 million; more than $6 million is spent on the White House grounds each year. Transporting the president cost $346 million last year. But as Michelle Obama might say, America is basically a downright mean sort of place, so the tours will just have to go. One hopes at least that the calligraphers were recruited to sign the docents’ pink slips.

* FOLKS... IT AIN'T FUNNY.

It’s not just the cost that stuns — it’s the pomp, too. The expense is often justified on the grounds of security. But for someone who wishes to remain inconspicuous, the president isn’t exactly subtle about things. In the 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt tried to refuse Secret Service protection but was overruled. Nonetheless, for fear that “their presence made her look more like a Queen flanked by an Imperial Guard,” she refused to let the agents who tailed her make themselves known to the public, notes Philip H. Melanson.

(*THUMBS UP*)

I was in Washington, D.C., once when George W. Bush’s presidential motorcade came past. It was like watching a Michael Bay movie about traffic, but with more special effects. “Imperial Guard” doesn’t do it justice. One can imagine Noel Coward: “Dear boy, I simply loved you in Pennsylvania Avenue!”

* FOLKS... I CAN STILL RECALL COMPLAINING ABOUT ALL THE SECURITY FOR RONALD REAGAN! AND I LOVED RONNY! AND RONNY HAD BARELY SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT! ENOUGH WITH THE IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY REGARDLESS OF WHICH PARTY THE EMPEROR... er... PRESIDENT... REPRESENTS!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 8, 2013 at 4:02 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

Like many of his predecessors, President Coolidge recognized that Americans looked up to the president as the only nationally elected politician and he sought to behave accordingly. His example has been forgotten.

John F. Groom, who has written a book about the growth of the White House, contrasts the expectation that presidents “should run their lives as examples to the nation, with frugality and simplicity,” with the conduct of President Obama, who, despite constant harping about “income inequality” has displayed “the very height of unbridled personal excess in his own lifestyle.”

It has been a long while since an incumbent lived frugally or simply. For all his virtues, Ronald Reagan positively encouraged a renaissance of Kennedy’s Camelot — bringing Hollywood into the mix for good measure. Fondly as many might remember his years in office, it was not a good look. And by all measures, George W. Bush was as bad as Obama — if not worse. America, “let’s not go to Camelot,” as Monty Python said. “’Tis a silly place.”

* ACTUALLY... NO... I DON'T BUY THE ABOVE STATEMENT. WHEN NANCY REAGAN "SPIFFED UP" THE WHITE HOUSE SHE DID SO LARGELY VIA PRIVATE DONATION, NOT TAXPAYER MONEY. AND COMPARE AND CONTRAST BUSH'S VACATIONS WITH OBAMA'S. (NOT TO MENTION BUSH GIVING UP GOLF ONCE THE WAR BEGAN SO AS TO MAKE A STATEMENT THAT HE WASN'T GOING TO BE GOLFING WHILE OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN UNIFORM WERE FIGHTING ABROAD.)

There was a reason that the Founding Fathers rejected titles and honorifics in favor of simplicity. Thankfully, the straightforward address, “Mr. President,” won out over the pretentious names that John Adams suggested, which included “His Majesty the President,” “His Mighty Benign Highness,” and “His High Mightiness.” (The Senate rather cruelly mocked Adams by suggesting it refer to him as “His Rotundity.”)

(*SMILE*)

Too many in our government have forgotten which way around this is supposed to work. Here in America, it’s supposed to be small government, Big People. This is the New World, not the Old. And yet, if you could sew Marie Antoinette’s head back on and bring her back to life, she would look around at today’s White House and nod approvingly.

As for the people queuing outside... sorry, darling, we simply can’t afford to invite them in.

March 8, 2013 at 4:02 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342479/minimum-wage-equals-maximum-confusion-john-fund

President Obama made headlines in January when he called for raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9 and tying future increases to inflation.

* WHAT... A... MORON...

* AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHY I'M SO... er... DIRECT... READ THE REST OF THE PIECE! BUT BOTTOM LINE...

A higher minimum wage would price some marginal workers out of the job market, leading to more unemployment. Even some Democrats are raising questions about the wisdom of hiking the minimum wage when 83% of minimum-wage workers are teenagers or adults earning a second income, not heads of households.

This week, Christina Romer, who chaired Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010 and now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, threw some cold water on the president’s proposal. She wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “robust competition is a powerful force helping to ensure that workers are paid” decent wages. A wage hike “may not be particularly well-targeted as an anti-poverty proposal” and could “harm the very people whom a minimum wage is supposed to help.”

* THAT'S AN OBAMA SUPPORTER'S WAY OF SAYING, "YO... BARRACK... ARE YOU FUCKING STUPID...?!?!"

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 8, 2013 at 5:19 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Noting that raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour would result in only about $20 billion in extra consumer spending — a pittance in a $15 trillion economy — she observed that “most economists prefer other ways to help low-income families,” and that “a job may ultimately be the most valuable thing for a family struggling to escape poverty.”

* AND BEYOND THAT, THIS IMAGINARY "EXTRA" $20 BILLION IS BASED UPON A STATIC ANALYSIS PICTURE WHERE NO CURRENT MINIMUM WAGE EARNERS GET LAID OFF RATHER THAN BUMPED UP TO THE NEW HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE...!!!

It’s time for conservatives to take the offense against the minimum wage, which has a sordid history rooted in the Jim Crow era.

* FOLKS... I'M NOT SURE ALL OF YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE HISTORY YOU'RE ABOUT TO READ... SO PAY ATTENTION!

The nation’s first mandated wage floor came during the Great Depression in the form of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which set permissible levels of compensation for any federally financed or assisted construction projects. The “prevailing wage” levels set by Davis-Bacon are, in effect, almost always union wage rates.

In the 1920s and 1930s, African Americans made up the majority of unskilled construction workers in the South. Construction unions largely excluded them from membership, and as more and more African Americans moved north, unions were anxious to bar them from working on lucrative projects. As economist Walter Williams points out, the “racist intents were obvious” among the supporters of Davis-Bacon. William Green, the president of the American Federation of Labor at the time, noted that “colored labor is being brought in to demoralize wage rates.”

During the brief 40-minute debate the House held on Davis-Bacon in 1931, the racial motivation behind it was palpable. Representative Miles Allgood (D., Ala.) expressed his regret at the “bootleg labor” from his state that had been given work in the district of New York Republican Robert Bacon: “That contractor has cheap colored labor . . . and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor. . . . It is very important we enact this measure.” Representative William Upshaw (D., Ga.) complained about the “superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor.” Representative John Cochran (D., Mo.) commented that he had “received numerous complaints in recent months about southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South.”

Davis-Bacon worked as intended. The next year, only 30 of 4,100 workers employed on the Boulder Dam project were black. More than 30 states followed the federal example and passed their own prevailing-wage laws.

* INTERESTING, HUH...?

* IN ANY EVENT...

Raising the minimum wage is a notion that can appeal to the public because it conjures up Grapes of Wrath imagery. But the conditions of the Great Depression that gave birth to the idea of the minimum wage no longer exist. Today, far from being a form of compassion, it is a blunderbuss approach that does more damage to its intended recipients than any help it provides.

March 8, 2013 at 5:20 PM

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