Thursday, April 4, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, April 4, 2013


Now this would make one hell of a Bond franchise title song!

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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecoveryData/Pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIDSUR=13966&qtr=2012Q3

* JUST FRIGGIN' LOOK AT THIS, FOLKS... LOOK AT "JOBS CREATED;" LOOK AT "INFRASTRUCTURE EXPENDITURE AMOUNT."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/stimulus-program-correct-condom-use-costs-half-million-dollars-yields-zero-jobs_714500.html

The details of a "stimulus" grant awarded to Indiana University to study condom use have now been released on a government website. The study, titled "Barriers to Correct Condom Use," is now completed, according to the website, and the university received $423,500 of stimulus funds to perform the study.

The "stimulus" project yielded a total of 0.00 jobs created, according to the federal government. "No jobs created/retained," the form says under "Description of Jobs Created."

* SAME FOR "INFRASTRUCTURE EXPENDITURE AMOUNT!" ZERO!

* NOW... FOLKS... KEEP THE ABOVE SQUANDERED AMOUNT - $423,500 - IN MIND AND READ THIS:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/post/armys-formal-birthday-ball-a-sequester-casualty/2013/04/04/cf6acdd2-9c86-11e2-9a79-eb5280c81c63_blog.html

An Army spokesman said canceling the event would save $400,000.

* $423,500 PISSED AWAY vs. $400,000 "SAVED." THAT'S FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MATH FOR YOU, FOLKS.

April 4, 2013 at 11:04 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/us/politics/white-house-seeks-to-change-international-food-aid.html?hp&_r=0

An Obama administration plan to change the way the United States distributes its international food aid...

* AGAIN, FOLKS... ALLOW ME TO REMIND YOU... WE'RE BROKE. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MUST BORROW SOMEWHERE BETWEEN 40/46-CENTS OF EVERY DOLLAR IT SPENDS JUST ON BASIC OPERATING COSTS. FOR FOUR YEARS IN A ROW WE RAN DEFICITS OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS AND IF THIS YEAR'S DEFICIT IS UNDER A TRILLION... WELL... IT WON'T BE MUCH UNDER A TRILLION. DEFICITS EQUAL DEBT. DEBT PILES UP. INTEREST PAYMENT RISE. YOU FOLKS "GET" THAT WE'RE BORROWING MONEY TO GIVE IT AWAY TO FOREIGNERS - RIGHT?

According to people briefed on the soon-to-be released fiscal year 2014 budget, the administration is expected to propose ending the nearly 60-year practice of buying food from American farmers and then shipping it abroad.

* AND I'D APPROVE OF THIS... (BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! READ ON!)

The administration is proposing that the government buy food in developing countries instead...

(*BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL*)

The United States spends about $1.4 billion a year on food aid...

* SPENDS $1.4 BILLION THAT IT DOESN'T HAVE... THAT IT BORROWS... THAT IT PLACES THE BURDEN FOR REPAYMENT (WITH INTEREST!) UPON THE BACKS OF PRESENT AND FUTURE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS!

* ANYWAY... READ THE FULL ARTICLE. EVEN IF ONE BELIEVES IN BORROWING MONEY, INDEBTING U.S. TAXPAYERS TO FEED FOREIGNERS WHEN WE CAN EVEN BEGIN TO BALANCE OUR OWN BUDGETS, YOU'LL FIND THAT OBAMA'S PROPOSED "REFORMS" SCREW U.S. SHIPPERS, U.S. PORT WORKERS, U.S. RAIL WORKERS, TEAMSTERS, OTHER TRUCKERS, LONGSHOREMAN, FARMERS... AND ON AND ON AND ON.

April 4, 2013 at 11:20 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2013/04/04/a_libyan_report_card_105055.html

In the starkest terms, a state is defined by a bureaucratic hierarchy that monopolizes the use of force over a specific geography.

Ideally, nobody need fear the authorities except those who break the law. And because the authorities monopolize violence, nobody need fear his fellow man. Of course, tyrannical states induce general fear among much of the population. And weak states have a difficult time monopolizing the use of force -- the reason why they are weak in the first place.

By these standards, many states in the world are weak. And Libya has gone from being a tyrannical state to being barely a state at all.

* BUT, HEY... OBAMA AND HRC DID A BANG-UP JOB, RIGHT?! THEIR FOREIGN POLICIES WORKED MAGNIFICENTLY... RIGHT...??? (THAT'S WHAT THE PUBLIC OPINION POLLS - SURVEYING THE IGNORANT AND DECEITFUL - SHOW!)

The authorities in the capital of Tripoli openly acknowledge the fact that they do not monopolize the use of force and have wisely opted for compromise and arbitration in eastern Libya (the Benghazi region) and in the far-flung Sahara to the south. It is difficult to predict whether Libyan affairs will carry on in the form of a benign and relatively mild anarchy (with some institutions working and others not) or will advance in the direction of a more coherent democratic state. Of course, a descent into worse chaos cannot be ruled out.

Libyan authorities do not govern so much as negotiate the terms of geographic control. If anyone doubts the fact that the Libyan state barely exists, they should investigate the situation on Libya's borders. In Libya, borders - with their connotation of specific, legal lines characterized by passport and security surveillance - have given way in the direction of frontiers, a term implying overlapping movements of gangs, militias and tribes. Modern states have borders; weak and failed states have frontiers.

For example, the collapse of Gadhafi's regime brought about the second-order effect of war and anarchy in nearby Mali.

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

Ethnic Malian Tuaregs who had backed Gadhafi fled Libya en masse, taking with them large-scale caches of weapons upon the Libyan leader's demise. The Tuaregs headed back to Mali, where they wrested control of the desert north of that country from a government located far to the south in the capital of Bamako. After the Tuareg rebellion was co-opted by jihadists, there were reportedly almost 2,000 deaths and wholesale raping and looting, in addition to the sacking of world heritage sites.

* CHANT IT WITH ME, FOLKS: O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! HIL-LA-RY! HIL-LA-RY!

The French government subsequently intervened with troops. Now there are multiple patches of sovereignty in a confused battlefield all across the Sahel and Sahara.

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

The stability of regimes in places like Mauritania and Niger are somewhat more in doubt than before Gadhafi's collapse.

(*SARCASTIC STANDING OVATION*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

April 4, 2013 at 11:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Libya, for that matter, is now an ungovernable space in significant parts of the country where al Qaeda can very possibly find refuge. The killing of the American ambassador in Benghazi was indicative of the terrors that a chaotic, post-Gadhafi Libya can offer up.

* YES! YES! GOD BLESS BARRACK AND HILLARY! WHAT A MAGNIFICENT FOREIGN POLICY THEY GAVE US!

* AND, HEY... NOW THAT KERRY'S IN CHARGE... WE CAN LOOK FOR MORE.. er... "INTERACTION" WITH NORTH KOREA! YEAH, BABY! GO, BABY!

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)

It would seem from this accounting that the Obama administration's decision to militarily intervene in Libya (along with its NATO allies) was a blunder of the first magnitude.

* UMM... YEAH...

As long as Gadhafi was secure in power, the Libyan state was also secure, borders throughout North Africa were more reasonably maintained and al Qaeda had no dominion inside Libya itself, even as the Libyan intelligence services cooperated with those of the West. A post-Gadhafi world now clearly presents the CIA with greater security challenges than it had before.

* OOPS...

The trigger for intervention was reportedly the fear that Gadhafi's troops were marching on rebellious Benghazi, bent on perpetrating a massacre.

* MASSACRE OF...??? (OF THE BAD GUYS...?!?! OF AL-QIADA...?!?! OF THE FOLKS WHO ABSENT GADHAFI BURNED DOWN OUR BENGHAZI CONSULATE, KILLED OUR AMBASSADOR, AND MURDERED SEVERAL OTHER AMERICANS... AND GOT AWAY WITH IT...?!?!)

Those reportedly in the forefront of arguing for intervention on such grounds were then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and National Security official Samantha Power.

* THREE FUCKING IDIOTS!

The three women had good arguments:

* ACTUALLY, NO... NO THEY DIDN'T.

Were Gadhafi to have massacred large numbers of civilians...

* "WERE."

* AND, GEEZUS... HOW MANY CIVILIANS (COLLATERAL DAMAGE...) HAS OBAMA MASSACRED IN AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, YEMEN, AND ELSEWHERE VIA DRONE ATTACKS...?!?!

...with U. S. warships hovering just offshore...

* BUT IF WE HAD FORCES THERE... EVEN IF GADHAFI WERE TO HAVE ORDERED A MASSACRE... OUR FORCES COULD HAVE INTERVENED!

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD AT THE ABSURDITY OF THE DOUBLE-SPEAK ON DISPLAY HERE*)

...it would have been a demonstration of American fecklessness comparable to that of European (and particularly Dutch) fecklessness when Serb troops massacred large numbers of civilians in 1995 in Srebrenica under the thumb of U.N. peacekeepers.

* WHAT IS THE AUTHOR BABBLING ABOUT? THE UN WAS FECKLESS. THE DUTCH WERE FECKLESS. AND EVEN SO... IN THE END THEIR FECKLESSNESS DIDN'T HURT THEM ONE BIT. PEOPLE HAVE SHORT MEMORIES.

And had the administration done nothing, Gadhafi's regime might well have collapsed anyway:

* YEAH...? AND THEN... AT THAT POINT... WE COULD HAVE DEALT WITH THAT! (ISN'T IT THEIR JOB TO HAVE WORKABLE CONTINGENCY PLANS...??? HMM...???)

Toppling an evil regime or stopping a war is a profoundly moral act. But taking moral responsibility for what happens next in a country is the hard part. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 18 years after the U.S.-led intervention and the Dayton Peace Accords, is a nasty, dysfunctional state.

* AND YET THE AVERAGE DOLT WILL TELL YOU THAT CLINTON'S INTERVENTION WAS A BRILLIANT - AND SUCCESSFUL - MOVE!

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

April 4, 2013 at 11:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2013-04-03/obamas-pay-cut-tax-break/

Talk about a circular transaction.

President Barack Obama could be able to claim a tax break for his decision to return 5% of his salary to the government.

Obama [say he] is giving back part of his $400,000 in salary in solidarity with federal workers facing furloughs because of budget cuts in the sequestration of federal funds.

Voluntary payments to reduce the public debt can be taken as deductions for charitable contributions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

At the 39.6% top federal tax rate — the one Obama insisted on last year – the $20,000 deduction for this returned pay would put $7,920 in tax relief back in his pocket.

* LET'S SEPARATE OBAMA OUT OF THE MIX AND TALK "CONCEPT." CHARITY ISN'T CHARITY IF OTHER PEOPLE ARE FUNDING 40% (PLUS!) OF THE "GIVING." I OPPOSE - AND HAVE ALWAYS OPPOSED - THE CHARITABLE DEDUCTION. EITHER GIVE BECAUSE YOU FEEL IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO... OR DON'T. DON'T EXPECT OTHERS TO PARTIALLY REIMBURSE YOU VIA THEIR TAXES! (THAT'S WHERE THE $7,920 COMES FROM!)

If this happens, the government would pay Obama, who would pay the government, which would then pay Obama.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The White House didn’t responded immediately to a question about whether the president would claim the break on his 2013 tax return, which won’t be filed until early 2014.

April 4, 2013 at 12:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-schools-push-a-curriculum-of-propaganda/2013/04/03/6d25550e-9bc1-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_story.html

The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling.

Especially racism.

Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

(*SIGH*)

Wisconsin’s DPI, in collaboration with the Orwellian-named federal program VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America; the “volunteers” are paid), urged white students to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

A flyer that was on the DPI Web site and distributed at a DPI-VISTA training class urged whites to “put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege,” to “make a daily list of the ways privilege played out” and to conduct an “internal dialogue” asking questions such as “How do I make myself comfortable with privilege?” and “What am I doing today to undo my privilege?”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

After criticism erupted, the DPI removed the flyer from its Web site and posted a dishonest statement claiming that the wristbands were a hoax perpetrated by conservatives. But, again, the flyer DPI posted explicitly advocated the wristbands. And Wisconsin’s taxpayer-funded indoctrination continues, funded by more than Wisconsin taxpayers.

* SEE, FOLKS... THE LIES... THE TOTAL LACK OF HONOR...

* FOLKS... FOR THE LEFT WINNING IS EVERYTHING. NORMAL ETHICS DON'T APPLY. YES... I KNOW I'M PAINTING WITH A BROAD BRUSH AND THAT THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS AND THAT THIS SAME CRITIQUE APPLIES TO MANY SELF-DESCRIBED "CONSERVATIVES" AS WELL, BUT LOOK AT THE EXAMPLES WITHIN THE TOTALITY OF MY YEARS OF NEWSBITING...

(*SHRUG*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

April 4, 2013 at 12:55 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

In Delavan-Darien High School’s “American Diversity” curriculum, students were urged to verify white privilege by visiting a Wal-Mart toy section and counting the white and black dolls. After objections, the school district is reconsidering this curriculum.

(*SNORT*)

Such distractions from the study of calculus and literature are encouraged by CREATE Wisconsin (the acronym stands for Culturally Responsive Education for All: Training and Enhancement), which is funded with federal tax dollars from IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The "disability" being rectified here is, presumably, the handicap of insufficient guilt — arising from false consciousness — about white privilege.

Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers.

* ONE... MORE... TIME:

Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice reports that between 1950 and 2009, while the number of K-12 students increased 96%, full-time-equivalent school employees increased 386%.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The number of teachers increased 252%...

* AND THAT'S BAD ENOUGH...

...but the number of bureaucrats — including "consciousness-raising sensitivity enforcers" and other non-teachers — increased 702%.

* YES, FOLKS, "CONSPIRACIES" DO EXIST... THOUGH ONCE THEY'RE ON AUTO-PILOT THE NEED FOR "CONSPIRING" TENDS TO DISAPPEAR.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The report says states could have saved more than $24  billion annually if non-teaching staff had grown only as fast as student enrollment.

(*SHRUG*)

And Americans wonder why their generous K-12 financing (higher per pupil than all but three of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations) has done so little to improve reading, math and science scores.

(*SIGH*)

Higher education, from which much of such diversity and sensitivity nonsense trickles down, cries poverty while spending lavishly on administrative overhead irrelevant to its teaching and research missions. The Manhattan Institute’s Heather MacDonald notes that in 2011, while the University of California at San Diego was pruning academic offerings, it created a “vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion” to augment a diversity apparatus that included an assistant vice chancellor for diversity; faculty advisers, staff, graduate and undergraduate diversity coordinators and liaisons; a director of development for diversity initiatives; the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues; the Diversity Council; the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion; and much more.

Perhaps tens of millions could be diverted from progressive gestures to academic purposes by abolishing on every American campus every administrative position whose title contains the words “diversity,” “equity,” “race,” “ethnicity,” “sustainability,” “green,” “gender,” “inclusion,” “identity,” “interconnectivity,” “globalization,” “climate,” “campus climate,” “cross-cultural” or “multiculturalism.”

(*SNORT*) (*GRIN*)

No corner of the country is immune to propaganda pretending to be pedagogy. Lincoln Brown of KVEL-AM in Vernal, Utah, says one student from the University of Utah showed him required reading that told students to “list ways your family may have colluded with or benefited from the exploitation of African-Americans.” Another reading was titled “White Privilege — Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”

Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan, paraphrasing Education Secretary William Bennett, said: “If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you’re liable to be given more money to do it with.”

* YEP...

(*SIGH*)

April 4, 2013 at 12:55 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://budget.senate.gov/republican/public/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=c53755fd-5c5e-4832-919a-760c4716a3ea&SK=564B80A30A9DA2704D547FA54748BB79

* JUST READ IT, FOLKS...

April 4, 2013 at 3:23 PM

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