Thursday, March 7, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, March 7, 2013


Somebody loves yours truly!

How do I know...? Well... I've received an anonymous gift in the mail - a subscription to "Draft: Life on Tap," addressed to... Big Bill!

(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)

Joey Baby... was this you...?

Jonathan...???

Carl...???

You "Whose Name Dare Not Be Mentioned?"

Well, whomever set me up... thank you! 

And now... on to today's newsbiting!

8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/mar/7/rand-pauls-filibuster-little-help-his-friends/

Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster Wednesday to bring attention to drone strikes turned into a committee affair, with a dozen other GOP senators coming to the chamber floor to help carry the speaking load by asking long-winded questions, giving Mr. Paul a chance to rest his voice and stretch his legs as the others spoke.

Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah did the most to help, with Mr. Cruz at one point holding the floor for a single question that lasted 50 minutes.

In addition to Mr. Cruz and Mr. Lee, others who showed up and spoke included Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, John Cornyn of Texas, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Mitch McConnell, the GOP floor leader, who made a late-night appearance to congratulate his fellow Kentuckian.

(Most of those senators were newcomers, elected in 2010 or 2012.)

* FOLKS... DON'T LET THE "APPEARANCE" OF MITCH MCCONNELL FOOL YOU. IF MCCONNELL AND THE SENATE GOP "LEADERSHIP" HAD WANTED THE FILLIBUSTER TO SUCCEED... THEN IT WOULD HAVE.

(*SHRUG*)

Late in the evening Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus even issued an all-hands alert for help: “Attention all Republican US Senators -> Please go to the floor and help out.”

* AND AGAIN... ASIDE FROM SEEKING "CREDIT" FOR HIS WORDS, WHAT DID PRIEBUS' "ALL HANDS ALERT" DO...? (AGAIN... MOST GOP SENATORS DIDN'T JOIN WITH RAND PAUL!)

While the filibuster, televised live on TV, captured the attention of conservatives and libertarians, for much of official Washington the bigger event was on the other side of town, where President Obama held an old-style closed-door dinner with Republican lawmakers, including Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

* THREE SCUMBAGS: MCCAIN, GRAHAM, AND ESPECIALLY OBAMA. FOLKS... WHERE WERE THESE DINERS PRIOR TO LAST NIGHT...?!?! AGAIN... IT'S ALL FOR SHOW! THERE'S NO SINCERITY!

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, also came to the floor to help out at one point. Mr. Wyden and Mr. Paul are ideological allies on the issue of seeking more information on drone strikes.

* AND I APPLAUD MR. WYDEN! (BUT WE'RE TALKING ONE DEMOCRAT... ONE...!!!)

William R. Barker said...

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130305/DA4R6QL03.html

The U.S.-led military command in Afghanistan will no longer count and publish the number of Taliban attacks...

(*SILENCE*)

The move comes one week after the coalition, known as the International Security Assistance Force, acknowledged in response to inquiries by The Associated Press that it had incorrectly reported a 7% drop in Taliban attacks in 2012 compared to 2011. In fact, there was no decline at all, ISAF officials now say.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The mistake...

* "MISTAKE," HUH...

...attributed by ISAF officials to a clerical error...

* UH-HUH...

...called into question the validity of repeated statements by allied officials that the Taliban was in steep decline.

(*SMIRK*)

There are now about 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

(*SIGH*)

Last Tuesday, on his final day as defense secretary, Leon Panetta indicated that he was disappointed in the mix-up.

* "DISAPPOINTED...?!?!" "MIX-UP...?!?!"

* FOLKS... IT'S NOT FUCKING FUNNY! BENGHAZI WASN'T FUCKING FUNNY! NONE OF THIS SHIT IS FUCKING FUNNY...!!! THESE BASTARDS ARE INCOMPETENT AND UNTRUSTWORTY. AND THESE ARE THE PEOPLE "LEADING" AMERICA.

The previous report to Congress, covering the period from April 2012 through September 2012, said ISAF and Afghan forces had continued to "degrade the cohesion and capability" of the insurgency, while acknowledging that the militants were still capable of carrying out high-profile attacks like a stunning assault on Camp Bastion on Sept. 14 in which 15 Taliban fighters breached the security perimeter, killed two U.S. Marines and destroyed six U.S. Marine aircraft.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323628804578343970483995156.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

In September 2008, amid the financial panic and collapse of the housing market, the federal government bailed out and took control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises that dominated the mortgage market.

After four years and $180 billion of taxpayer funds to keep them afloat, they are beginning to make profits from their near monopoly.

This week, the head of the federal agency that supervises Fannie and Freddie, Edward DeMarco, outlined a sensible plan that would prepare the companies — which remain the dominant players in housing finance — for either full privatization or government ownership.

These are the obvious alternatives, but there is a third idea in the mix, one that is as seductive as it is dangerous: a private system but with an explicit government mechanism for future bailouts when they prove necessary.

* OH, GEEZUS FRIGGIN' CHRIST... (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The rationale? If there's a problem in housing finance, the government will inevitably step in as it did in 2008. So why not create a government insurance program now, compensating taxpayers for the burdens they will have to shoulder eventually anyway? This argument has been advanced many times since Fannie and Freddie went under, most recently by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank. The center's plan, released to the public late last month, is already getting some favorable media attention.

* I'VE GOT A BETTER IDEA - NOT EXPLICIT OR IMPLICIT FUTURE BAILOUTS!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

A system for private housing finance with a government insurance backstop may sound reasonable, even sophisticated. But it is seriously flawed. First, such a system cannot logically be contained. There is nothing special about housing. Lest we forget, the government also stepped in to rescue the domestic auto makers five years ago. Why not a backstop now for Detroit? At the end of this road is bailout nation: a government insurance backstop for every industry. Second, taxpayers never get compensated by establishing insurance funds. Congress, when it passed the Hurricane Sandy aid bill, bailed out the National Flood Insurance Program to the tune of $9.7 billion. That program had collected insurance over many years to protect against events like Hurricane Sandy — but it wasn't enough.

* GOVERNMENT LARGESS COMES OUT OF TAXPAYER POCKETS!

Other federal insurance systems that have gone or are going broke include the Federal Housing Administration, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. To stave off insolvency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2009 ordered banks to pay three years of insurance premiums in advance.

(*SNORT*) YEP... I REMEMBER THAT!

Congress lacks the incentives of private insurers to charge risk-based rates or to create and maintain the large funds necessary to deal with catastrophic losses. There is always an incentive to keep rates down to placate interest groups, or to say the fund is large enough — until disaster strikes and the country learns it isn't.

* VIO-LANCE! VIO-LANCE! VIO-LANCE!

Third, federal insurance encourages careless behavior by those who know that if things go bad, someone will be there with a bailout.

(*BITING LOWER LIP WHILE NODDING*)

Consider the Bipartisan Policy Commission's plan, "Housing America's Future." The government's role would be to backstop a private system of mortgage insurance. The backstop will only come into play if private insurers can't meet their obligations.

The downside?

Investors in mortgages or mortgage-backed securities created under the plan would have little incentive to care about the quality of the loans — precisely because they would ultimately be protected from losses by the government. Nor would the creditors of the private mortgage-insurance companies care about the quality of the mortgages or the companies' capital positions. The government would bail them out too if the insurers failed.

* REVOLUTION! DOWN WITH THE OLIGARCHS! KILL THE BASTARDS...!!!

This would make it all the more likely that mortgage insurers wouldn't be able to cover low-quality mortgages that the government backing induced investors to buy.

* DUH!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

Fourth, Congress will do what it always does — expand the program so that it covers more and more mortgages of lower and lower quality.

(*NOD*)

This is what happened after affordable housing goals were imposed on Fannie and Freddie in 1992, and when the Clinton administration made the Community Reinvestment Act into a quota system in 1995. Congress has also authorized increases in the size of mortgages that Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration could acquire, most recently by raising the maximum for FHA mortgages to $729,000 (from $625,000) in 2012.

* YEP... (*GNASHING MY TEETH*)

These changes were strongly backed by a variety of interest groups, including "community activists," real-estate agents and home builders. The pressures from these groups, beginning in 1992, succeeded in degrading mortgage underwriting standards, causing the mortgage meltdown that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.

* MORTGAGE UNDERWRITING STANDARDS WERE DEGRADED SO AS TO ALLOW THE SHEEPLE TO ACT IRRESPONSIBLY WHILE THE OLIGARCHS PROSPERED AND THE TAXPAYER WAS LEFT HOLDING THE BAG.

* FOLKS... WHO WENT TO JAIL? WHO WAS EVEN CHARGED AND TRIED? HAS NOT ERIC HOLDER BEEN ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES SINCE JANUARY OF 2008...?!?!

* FOLKS... CHARLIE RANGEL... JON CORZINE... BOB RUBIN... FRANKLIN RAINES... THE REST OF THE DEMS WHO RAN FANNIE & FREDDIE INTO THE GROUND WHILE TAKING LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PAY AND BONUSES AND "INVESTMENT GAINS." (HEY... NAME SOME REPUBLICANS AND I'LL GLADLY PUT THEM BEFORE THE FIRING SQUAD AS WELL!)

If an insurance backstop program such as the one proposed by the Bipartisan Policy Center is put in place, the same dismal process will be repeated.

(*NOD*)

Congress loves programs that deliver financial benefits today with the inevitable catastrophes put off into the future. These programs are even better when lawmakers themselves can tell their constituents — and may even believe — that this is "merely a federal backstop to a private system."

* KILL... KILL... KILL... KILL... KILL...

Once a fund of any size is created to back a particular industry, the arguments against a bailout virtually disappear. After all, what is the program for? Aren't the funds already there to cover the losses? In reality, sufficient funds are not going to be there. In a perpetual-deficit world, the money also has to be borrowed, adding to the national debt.

Since Fannie and Freddie were bailed out, there has been no end of plans to maintain the government's role as guarantor of mortgages for housing and other real estate. They will all end up putting the country back on the road to another crisis. The only way to ensure a stable mortgage market is to get the government out, and keep it out.

William R. Barker said...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-holder-respond-to-rand-paul-the-answer-is-no/article/2523555

Attorney General Eric Holder wrote Sen. Rand Paul,R-KY., to confirm that President Obama does not have the authority to kill an American on U.S. soil in a non-combat situation, Obama’s spokesman announced today.

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

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney quoted from the letter that Holder sent to Paul today. “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on an American soil?” Holder wrote, per Carney. “The answer is no.”

* NOT TO BELABOR THE POINT... BUT IT'S NOT ABOUT "WEAPONIZED DRONES." WE COULD BE TALKING ABOUT A SNIPER'S BULLET. HELL... WE COULD BE TALKING ABOUT A KNIFE! WHY NOT JUST LEAVING AT "NO PRESIDENT HAS THE POWER TO ORDER THE KILLING OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN ON AMERICAN SOIL ABSENT CIRCUMSTANCES THAT WOULD JUSTIFY ANY LEGAL USE OF DEADLY FORCE BY POLICE/GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES."

Paul said that was good enough for him. “I’m quite happy with the answer,” he said during a CNN interview. “I’m disappointed it took a month and a half and a root canal to get it, but we did get the answer.”

Carney added that, “if the United States were under attack, there were an imminent threat,” the president has the authority to protect the country from that assault.

* AGAIN... WE'VE BEEN OVER THIS BEFORE.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/holders-letter-rand-paul-no-us-cant-use-drone-kill-citizen-not-engaged-combat-us-soil_706587.html

William R. Barker said...

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

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324178904578340261147214252.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Hillary Rodham Clinton was the best secretary of state in U.S. history — if the amount of travel abroad is the criterion by which we judge the success of America's top diplomat.

* OR IF KUDOS BY THE LIKES OF JOHN MCCAIN AND NEWT GINGRICH ARE COUNTED AS MORE THAN SELF-SERVING POLITICAL JIBBER-JABBER MEANT TO MAKE THEMSELVES LOOK "REASONABLE" AND "NON-PARTISAN."

Mrs. Clinton logged a million miles flying around the world during President Barack Obama's first term. It's a remarkable number: The Earth is 25,000 miles in circumference, so the secretary circled the globe 40 times in four years. Even more remarkable is that one can't think of a signature accomplishment from all this on-the-go diplomacy.

* BINGO!

The BBC's State Department correspondent, Kim Ghattas accompanied Mrs. Clinton on some 300,000 of those miles and interviewed her at least 15 times.

In "The Secretary: A Journey With Hillary Clinton From Beirut to the Heart of American Power," Ms. Ghattas wants to paint an intimate, on-the-job portrait of her subject during a period that began with broad outreach by Washington to old and new enemies, that encompassed many setbacks, including the fracturing of the American order in the Middle East, and that ended with an ambassador's murder in Benghazi, Libya.

The author, who is of Dutch-Lebanese origin and who grew up in Beirut in the 1980s during Lebanon's civil war, says that she wrote the book in part to "come to terms with my personal misgivings about American power." Her pro-Western family was dismayed when, in 1984, the Reagan administration, having resolved to stop Lebanon's sectarian bloodletting, withdrew American forces in the wake of Hezbollah's terror campaign against peacekeepers. Her own political awakening came as a teenager in 1990, when President George H.W. Bush green-lighted Syrian domination of Lebanon in return for Hafez al-Assad's participation in the first Gulf War against Iraq.

The lesson of these experiences — that America's friends pay a steep price when the indispensable nation fails to engage morally — isn't lost on Ms. Ghattas. Yet it rarely impels her to question Mrs. Clinton's lukewarm, often cynical, responses to the plight of dissidents and democrats from Iran to Russia to East Asia.

(*SMIRK*)

Ms. Ghattas takes it for granted that "the world had become allergic to U.S. leadership by the end of the Bush administration" and that, therefore, Mrs. Clinton's job was to "restore America's lost face in the world."

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Such assumptions lead her to frame age-old wisdom as the revolutionary innovations of the Obama administration. "In the twenty-first century America could no longer walk into a room and make demands; it had to build connections first," she writes at one point — as if the notion would have shocked, say, Dean Acheson or Thomas Jefferson.

In practice, the administration's "nuanced diplomacy" meant downgrading the promotion of freedom and human rights, viewed suspiciously as Mr. Bush's policy rather than a long-standing bipartisan commitment.

On her first trip to China as secretary of state in February 2009, Mrs. Clinton said that criticism of Beijing's abhorrent rights record can't be allowed to "interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crises." To Ms. Ghattas, the fact that the secretary's statement drew widespread outrage at the time was merely proof that "the world was not ready for her new style of diplomacy."

The author also approves of Mrs. Clinton's many apologies for the actions of the previous American administration. One particularly distasteful episode the author recounts came during an October 2009 "town hall" with Pakistani journalists in Islamabad. Mrs. Clinton answered a question regarding U.S. support for Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf by saying: "Musharraf and Bush are gone. I'm very happy about Bush being gone. You're apparently happy about Musharraf being gone." Such statements, the author says, "went a long way to buy goodwill."

Actually they didn't.

As a June 2012 Pew poll revealed, in much of the Muslim world, where the administration's humble posture was supposed to have had its greatest effect, U.S. popularity generally declined during Mr. Obama's first term. (Only 12% of Pakistanis, for example, held a favorable view of the U.S., down from 19% at the end of Mr. Bush's presidency.)

Meanwhile, the administration's obsession with multilateralism and the hectoring of traditional allies like Israel have yielded few concrete gains.

But Ms. Ghattas plays down or elides the Obama team's most serious foreign-policy setbacks. The now-forgotten Russian "reset" and the administration's ludicrous faith in Bashar al-Assad's reformist potential get far less attention here than Mrs. Clinton's willingness to acknowledge "American excesses of power abroad," which, the author claims, has made the U.S. a "palatable" presence around the world.

Ms. Ghattas's narrative comes to a close before al Qaeda terrorists targeted the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three staffers. This is a glaring omission and a nonsensical one as she continued in her role as BBC correspondent and could have told the full story of Mrs. Clinton's secretaryship.

Benghazi is discussed in passing in the book's conclusion, with Ms. Ghattas correctly noting that, "ever the politician, Clinton managed to dodge most of the acrimonious attacks" stemming from the incident's political fallout. The partisan rancor surrounding Benghazi, the author is happy to report, didn't derail the Obama-Clinton approach to diplomacy and their use of "soft power," which really means pleasing Ms. Ghattas and other members of the global journalistic class. What it means for American interests is a different matter.