Monday, July 1, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Monday, July 1, 2013
Geezus....
R.I.P. the heroic "Hotshot 19" firefighters who lost their lives while trying to defend the people of Yarnell and Glen Isla, Arizona, and their property.
An estimated 200 homes were lost. Thankfully no civilian deaths or even injuries have been reported.
My prayers are with the heroes who lost their lives. My confidence resides in the people who lost their property... that they will rebuild... that they will get beyond this tragedy.
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http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/01/world/meast/egypt-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Hundreds of thousands of protesters fill the streets of Cairo on Sunday, June 30, calling for the ouster of President Mohamed Morsy from office on the one-year anniversary of his inauguration. Protests for and against the president have spread across the country.
* SO... WHOSE SIDE IS OBAMA ON? HEY! SERIOUS QUESTION!
* GREAT JOB OBAMA! GREAT JOB HILLARY! GREAT JOB FOLLOWING IN HILLARY'S FOOTSTEPS, JOHN KERRY...!!!
At least 16 people were killed and more than 780 were wounded Sunday and Monday during the unrest in Egypt, the nation's health minister said, according to the official Egypt News agency.
On Monday, protesters stormed the main headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the party that Morsy led before his election. Armed with Molotov cocktails, the mob set the office on fire, shouting, "The people have toppled the regime."
* CORRECT ME IF NEED BE... BUT DIDN'T "THE PEOPLE" INSTALL MORSY AND THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD...???
* AGAIN, FOLKS... WHOSE SIDE IS OBAMA ON - AND BY WHAT INTELLECTUAL YARDSTICK DOES THE PUTZ BASE HIS DECISION...? (YEP... GREAT FUCKING IDEA SUPPORTING THE TOPPLING OF THE RELATIVELY STABLE AND PRO-AMERICAN MOBARACK REGIME AND THE RELATIVELY PRO-AMERICAN EGYPTIAN MILITARY LEADERSHIP LAST YEAR!)
On Friday, Andrew Pochter, a 21-year-old American in Alexandria to teach children English, was stabbed to death while watching the demonstrations, his family said.
Well, at least CNN has it at "hundreds of thousands" while NBC had it at tens of thousands. The Egyptian military has it in the millions. Who's right? Dunno. What gets me is that this has been going on for almost a week and our press is just starting to cover it. Crickets on the Catholic priest beheaded in Syria by the rebels we are supposedly supporting (I wonder if one of them was in the photo-op with McCain) while all the men and boys were shouting "alahu akbar."
By the way, hope all is well.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351883/John-Kerry-hits-claim-US-bugged-38-foreign-embassies-Angela-Merkel-brands-unacceptable.html
The U.S. spying scandal deepened today as Secretary of State John Kerry said it is 'not unusual' for governments to bug the offices of their allies.
The extraordinary statement has angered leaders across the world after leaked documents revealed America spied on 38 foreign missions and embassies including the European Union's Washington nerve centre.
As outrage grew across the EU over the damaging revelations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was first to lash out, declaring: 'Bugging friends is unacceptable.'
* TO MY FRIEND "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED," HOW ABOUT THAT AMAZING OBAMA POPULARITY, HUH? YEP... EVERY DAY HE SEEMS TO BRING THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD CLOSER TOGETHER...
Meanwhile, Martin Schulz, president of the EU Parliament, told French radio the United States had crossed a line. 'I was always sure that dictatorships, some authoritarian systems, tried to listen ... but that measures like that are now practiced by an ally, by a friend, that is shocking, in the case that it is true.'
* FOLKS... OF COURSE IT'S ALWAYS HAPPENED... BUT DO YOU RECALL US LOOKING LIKE SUCH FOOLS PUBLICLY PRIOR TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION? FOLKS... THIS ADMINISTRATION IS TOTALLY INCOMPETENT!
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said U.S. spying was 'out of control, adding: 'The U.S. would do better to monitor its intelligence services instead of its allies.'
* EVEN LUXEMBOURG...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/06/24/the-palin-doctrine/
On U.S. military intervention in Syria’s civil war, where “both sides are slaughtering each other as they scream over an arbitrary red line ‘Allahu akbar’ … I say let Allah sort it out.” So said Sarah Palin to the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference.
And, as is not infrequently the case, she nailed it.
Hours later, Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, at length, echoed Palin: “Those who are urging the U.S. to get more deeply involved in the Syrian conflict now are living in the past.”
* AGAIN... TO MENTION "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED"... HE HATES PALIN. WHY...? HE DOESN'T THINK SHE'S SMART. DOES HE THINK SHE'S RIGHT HERE? PROBABLY. BUT RARELY DOES LOGIC SWAY "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED." INDEED, I'D GUESS THAT MY FRIEND STILL WOULD REFUSE TO CONCEDE THAT HILLARY CLINTON SHOWED HERSELF TO BE TOTALLY INCOMPETENT AS SECRETARY OF STATE. (THE LAST TIME I CHECKED... MY IMPRESSION OF HIS IMPRESSION WAS THAT HILLARY DID JUST FINE REGARDING BENGHAZI.)
Four fundamental changes make it “no longer realistic, or even desirable, for the U.S. to dominate” the Middle East as we did from the Suez crisis of 1956 through the Iraq invasion of 2003: the Great Recession, the Arab Spring, emerging U.S. energy independence, [and of course] the failures of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. [W}ith $2 trillion sunk, 7,000 U.S. troops dead, 40,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead, and millions of refugees, what do we have to show for this vast human and material waste?
* ASK YOURSELVES THIS:
Can a country with an economy limping along, one that has run four consecutive deficits in excess of $1 trillion, afford another imperial adventure?
* PALIN SAYS "NO." OBAMA SAYS "YES." WHO'S RIGHT? (OBVIOUSLY PALIN!)
On the Shiite side of the Syrian civil war are Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar Assad. On the Sunni side are the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, Sunni jihadists from across the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Is victory for either side worth yet another U.S. war?
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have made a comeback, and the United States is negotiating with the same crowd we sent an army to oust in 2001.
(The press reports we will be leaving behind $7 billion in U.S. military vehicles and equipment when we depart.)
Did those clamoring today for intervention in Syria learn nothing from Ronald Reagan’s intervention in an earlier Arab civil war, the one in Lebanon? Result: 241 dead Marines, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut bombed and hostages taken.
* HELL THEY'VE LEARNED NOTHING FROM BENGHAZI!
[I]t is not only in the Middle East that we are “living in the past.” As Ted Galen Carpenter writes in Chronicles, under NATO we are committed to go to war with Russia on behalf of 27 nations.
* WHO WOULD YOU WILLINGLY FIGHT AND DIE FOR, FOLKS? BESIDES FELLOW AMERICANS?
If Russia collides with Estonia or Latvia over the treatment of their Russian minorities, we fight Russia. For whose benefit is this commitment?
* NOT OURS! (NOTHING AGAINST ESTONIA OR LATVIA...)
Today Japan spends 1% of its gross domestic product on defense. Yet the USA is committed to go to war to defend not only the home islands but the Senkaku islets and rocks in the East China Sea that China also claims. Are the Senkakus really worth a war with China?
NATO was established to defend Europe. Yet Europe spends less on its own defense than we do. Sixty years after the Korean War, we remain committed to defend South Korea against North Korea. Yet South Korea has an economy 40 times as large as North Korea’s.
Former Rep. Ron Paul asks: Why, when U.S. debt is larger than our GDP and we are running mammoth annual deficits, are we borrowing money abroad to give away in foreign aid?
Good question.
As for those ethnic, sectarian and civil wars raging across the Middle East, let Allah sort it out.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/06/25/the-pentagons-surrender-to-feminism/
“The Pentagon unveiled plans Tuesday for fully integrating women into front-line and special combat roles, including elite forces such as Army Rangers and Navy SEALs.”
So ran the lead on the CNN story.
And why are we doing this?
* POLITICAL CORRECTNESS RUN AMOK.
Did the young officers leading troops in battle in Afghanistan and Iraq, returning with casualties, say they needed women to enhance the fighting efficiency of their combat units and the survival rate of their soldiers?
Did men from the 101st and 82nd airborne, the Marines, the SEALs and Delta Force petition the Joint Chiefs to put women alongside them in future engagements to make them an even superior force?
No.
(*SIGH*)
In the history of civilization, men have fought the wars. This decision to put women in combat represents a capitulation of the military brass, a surrender to the spirit of our age, the Pentagon’s salute to feminist ideology.
This is not a decision at which soldiers arrived when they studied after-action reports, but the product of an ideology that contradicts human nature, human experience and human history, and declares as dogma that women are just as good at soldiering as men. But if this were true, rather than merely asserted, would it have taken mankind the thousands of years from Thermopylae to discover it?
“You don’t hit a girl!” was something every American boy had drilled into him from childhood. It was part of our culture - the way we were raised.
Nothing matches mortal combat where soldiers fight, kill, and are wounded, maimed and die for cause or country. Domestically, the closest approximations are combat training, ultimate fighting, boxing and that most physical of team sports, the NFL. Yet no women compete against men in individual or team sports. They are absent from boys’ and men’s teams in high school and college, be it football, basketball, baseball, hockey or lacrosse. Even in the non-contact sports of golf, tennis and volleyball, men compete with men, women against women.
In the Olympics, to which nations send their best athletes, women and men compete separately in track and field, swimming and gymnastics.
Undeniably, some women might handle combat as well as some men. But that is true of some 13-, 14- and 15-year-old boys, and some 50- and 60-year old men, yet we do not draft boys or men that age or send them into combat.
We have had Navy ships become “love boats,” with female sailors returning pregnant.
* HOW'S THAT HELP "READINESS?"
* I KNOW WHAT SOME OF YOU MAY BE THINKING. "TECHNOLOGY IS THE GREAT EQUALIZER." YEAH... MAYBE UNDER PERFECT CONDITIONS. WHEN THE SHIT HITS THE FAN BRUTE STRENGTH IS STILL OFTEN REQUIRED.
* AT THE VERY LEAST, INSTEAD OF THESE BROAD "REFORMS" WOULDN'T IT BE BEST TO STUDY WHICH MILITARY OCCUPATIONS BEST SUIT WOMEN vs. MEN (WHERE WOMEN CONSISTENTLY OUT-PERFORM MEN) AND START INTEGRATING FROM THERE...? AND FOR GOD'S SAKE... LET'S DO A COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS FOR EACH AND EVERY NEW POSITION WE OPEN UP.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/06/28/does-the-south-belong-in-the-union/
Is the Second Reconstruction over?
The first ended with the withdrawal of Union troops from the Southern states as part of a deal that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the disputed election of 1876.
The second began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a century after Appomattox.
Under the VRA, Southern states seeking to make even minor changes in voting laws had to come to Washington to plead their case before the Justice Department and such lions of the law as Eric Holder.
* BTW... THE VRA WAS AND IS ARGUABLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL. (THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF SPELLS OUT STATE RIGHTS WHEN IT COMES TO VOTING.)
Southern states were required to get this pre-clearance for any alterations in voting laws because of systematic violations of the 14th and 15th amendment constitutional rights of black Americans to equal access to polling places and voting booths.
* TRUE... BUT THIS DIDN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT THE CONSTITUTION WAS AND IS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND... AT LEAST IN THEORY. (THUS, THE CONSTITUTION REQUIRED THAT EACH CASE BE JUDGED AS A INDIVIDUAL CASE AND DEALT WITH SEPARATELY - BY THE COURT.)
The South had discriminated by using poll taxes, gerrymandering and literacy tests, among other tactics. Dixie was in the penalty box because it had earned a place there.
* THAT'S THE PRAGMATIC ARGUMENT - IT'S NOT A VALID CONSTITUTIONAL/LEGAL ARGUMENT.
What the Supreme Court did Tuesday, in letting the South out of the box, is to declare that as this is not 1965 you cannot use abuses that date to 1965 but have long since disappeared to justify indefinite federal discrimination against the American South.
(*NOD*)
You cannot impose burdens on Southern states - five of which recorded higher voting percentages among their black populations in 2012 than among their white populations - based on practices of 50 years ago that were repudiated and abandoned in another era.
You cannot punish Southern leaders in 2013 for the sins of their grandfathers.
Does this mean the South is now free to discriminate again? By no means. State action that discriminates against minority voters can still be brought before the Department of Justice.
* AND THEN GO BEFORE THE COURTS... WHERE DECISIONS OF THIS SORT ARE CONSTITUTIONALLY MADE. (AT LEAST IN THEORY...) (FOR AS YOU KNOW... I FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT THE SUPREME COURT HAS NO MORE "RIGHT" OR "AUTHORITY" TO LAY DOWN UNCONSTITUTIONAL DECISIONS THAN DO THE OTHER BRANCHES TO ACT AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION THEMSELVES.)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Even the “pre-clearance” provision of the VRA remains. All the court has said is that if Congress wishes to impose a pre-clearance provision on a state or group of states, Congress must have more evidence to justify unequal treatment than what “Bull” Connor did in Birmingham back in 1965.
* WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO MY ORIGINAL NOTATION THAT ON IT'S FACE THE VRA VIOLATES THE CONSTITUTION... AND YET EVEN AFTER LAST WEEK'S RULING... IT REMAINS IN THE SENSE OF A THEORY THE HIGH COURT VIEWS AS JUSTIFIABLE.
Congress could pass a bill today authorizing Justice Department intervention in any state where the registration of blacks, Hispanics or Asians fell below 60% of that electorate.
* ACCORDING TO THE SUPREME COURT, AT LEAST.
What Congress can no longer do is impose conditions on Southern states from which Northern states are exempt. Washington can no longer treat the states unequally — for that, too, is a violation of the Constitution.
The Roberts court just took a giant stride to restoring the Union.
* WELL... IN A SENSE. (NOT ALL THAT GIANT, ACTUALLY.) BUT IN ANY CASE... (KEEP READING!)
Yet the hysterical reaction to the decision reveals a great deal. What do critics say they are afraid of?
While conceding that immense progress has been made with the huge turnout of black voters in the South and the re-election of a black president, they say they fear that without the pre-clearance provision this would never have happened. And now that the provision no longer applies to the South, the evil old ways will return.
On several counts this is disheartening.
For what the critics of the court decision are saying is that, no matter the progress made over half a century, they do not trust the South to deal fairly and decently with its black citizens, without a club over its head. They do not believe the South has changed in its heart from the days of segregation. They think the South is lying in wait for a new opportunity to disfranchise its black voters. And they think black Southerners are unable to defend their own interests — without Northern liberal help.
In this belief there are elements of paranoia, condescension and bigotry.
* SPEAKING OF "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED..." (*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*) (NO... HAVEN'T SPOKEN TO HIM ABOUT THIS... BUT I FEAR...) (*SMILE*)
Many liberals not only do not trust the South, some detest it.
(*SIGH*)
And many seem to think it deserves to be treated differently than the more progressive precincts of the nation.
Consider Wednesday’s offering by Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson. The South, he writes, is the home of “so-called right-to-work laws” and hostility to the union shop, undergirded by “the virulent racism of the white Southern establishment,” a place where a “right-wing antipathy toward workers’ rights” is pandemic.
The South is the “the heartland of cheap-labor America. … When it wants to slum, business still goes to the South.” Then there are those “reactionary white Republican state governments.”
Were a conservative to use the term “black” as a slur the way Meyerson spits out the word “white,” he would be finished at the Post.
* FOLKS... YA KNOW IT'S TRUE!
Meyerson’s summation:
“If the federal government wants to build a fence that keeps the United States safe from the danger of lower wages and poverty and their attendant ills — and the all-round fruitcakery of the right-wing white South — it should build that fence from Norfolk to Dallas. There is nothing wrong with a fence as long as you put it in the right place.”
Harold looks forward to the day that a surging Latino population forces “epochal political change” on a detestable white South.
* ME? I'M HOPING FOR A NEW SECESSION MOVEMENT!
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