Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, July 16, 2013


Have a good time at the game, today, buddy!

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5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/four-children-gunned-down-chicago-during-zimmerman-trial

In the 20-day period of the George Zimmerman trial, four minors – three teens and a five-year-old boy - were gunned down in Chicago...

* WHERE'S ERIC HOLDER? WHERE'S AL SHARPTON?

On June 28, five-year-old Sterling Sims was killed in a double murder that also claimed the life of his mother, 31-year-old Chavonne Brown. Both were shot in their apartment, and police believe the motive was robbery.

On July 1, 16-year-old Antonio Fenner was gunned down on the sidewalk next to the body of a 32-year-old man who had gang ties. No arrests were made, and no suspects have been named. Fenner’s mother believes her son was in the wrong place at the wrong time, because no one in her family knew the other victim or what Fenner’s association was to him.

On July 3, 14-year-old Damani Henard was murdered outside a high school. His body was found next [to] a bicycle.

On July 9, 15-year-old Ed Cooper was shot and killed while spending time with friends at the park. A gunman got out of a black van and began firing as the boys ran away. Cooper was shot in the street and continued running to a vacant lot where he died.

* HEY, STEVIE... YA GONNA BOYCOTT?

(*SNICKER*)

July 16, 2013 at 2:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/07/15/alan-dershowitz-disbar-florida-prosecutor-conduct-almost-criminal-79741

Alan Dershowitz, nationally known professor of law at Harvard, blasted Florida Special Prosecutor Angela Corey’s handling of the George Zimmerman prosecution on Sunday and called for her to be disbarred.

* AT THE VERY LEAST!

On Fox’s “Mike Huckabee Show,” Dershowitz accused Corey of being deliberately misleading when she sought a second-degree murder charge against Zimmerman in the February 2011 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Dershowitz said Corey withheld photos from her presentation that showed Zimmerman had suffered injuries to his face and the back of his head during his struggle with Martin.

* WHICH IS A CLEAR VIOLATION OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS - AT THE VERY LEAST!

“She submitted an affidavit that was, if not perjurious, completely misleading,” Dershowitz said. “She violated all kinds of rules of the profession, and her conduct bordered on criminal conduct.”

* I BELIEVE SHE CROSSED THE LINE. CHARGE HER... TRY HER... AND LET A JURY DECIDE!

He said Corey turned the trial into a farce by trying to get a “compromise” manslaughter conviction mid-trial. “And then, she went even further and said that she was going to charge him with child abuse and felony murder,” Dershowitz said. “That was such a stretch that it goes beyond anything professionally responsible.”

Besides being a supporter of liberal causes – particularly involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – Dershowitz is a celebrity lawyer who acted as an appeals-level adviser to O.J. Simpson’s defense team and whose clients in a long career have included Mike Tyson and Patty Hearst.

He said that kind of experience made him particularly harsh toward Corey.

“She was among the most irresponsible prosecutors I’ve seen in 50 years of litigating cases,” Dershowitz said. “And believe me, I’ve seen good prosecutors, bad prosecutors, but rarely have I seen one as bad as this prosecutor.”

* AND YET... WHERE'S THE NATIONAL UPROAR? WHY THE DEAFENING SILENCE FROM DERSHOWITZ'S PEERS ACROSS THE IDEOLOGICAL SPECTRUM?

* FOLKS... WELCOME TO AMERIKA!

July 16, 2013 at 2:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323740804578601472261953366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up — that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam.

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

If only it were true.

* IT'S NOT!

The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period.

* A "RECOVERY" WHERE WE'RE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO HAVING "RECOVERED."

The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government's Household Survey reported that since the start of the year the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000 — but there are jobs and then there are "jobs."

No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time.

The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000...

(*SIGHING*)

...while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000 — three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.

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

That's just for starters. The survey includes part-time workers who want full-time work but can't get it, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking. That puts the real unemployment rate for June at 14.3%, up from 13.8% in May.

* YEP! THAT' THE INFAMOUS U6 UNEMPLOYMENT RATE - aka "THE REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE!" YEP... UP .05-POINTS IN A FRIGGIN' MONTH!

The 7.6% unemployment figure so common in headlines these days is utterly misleading.

* WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY IT'S THE COMMON HEADLINE!

(*SNORT*)

An estimated 22 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed; they are virtually invisible and mostly excluded from unemployment calculations that garner headlines.

(*NOD*)

At this stage of an expansion you would expect the number of part-time jobs to be declining, as companies would be doing more full-time hiring. Not this time. In the long misery of this post-recession period, we have an extraordinary situation: Americans by the millions are in part-time work because there are no other employment opportunities as businesses increase their reliance on independent contractors and part-time, temporary and seasonal employees.

* I'M SURE "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED" BELIEVES THIS IS ALL SIMPLY... er... "COINCIDENCE." YEP. "NOTHING" TO DO WITH OBAMA'S POLICIES. NOTHING TO DO WITH STATE POLICIES IN BLUE STATES.

Even the federal government payroll is turning to part-timers: In June 2012, 58,000 federal workers were part-timers. This year it's 148,000 and we still don't know how the budget sequester will play out for many agencies have resorted to furloughs rather than layoffs.

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

This anemic growth is all we have to show for the greatest fiscal and monetary stimuli in 75 years, with fiscal deficits of over 10% of GDP for four consecutive years. The misery is not going to end soon.

ObamaCare is partially to blame.

The health-insurance law requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance or pay a $2,000 penalty per worker. Under the law, a full-time job is defined as 30 hours a week, so businesses, especially smaller ones, have an incentive to bring on more part-time workers.

(Little wonder that earlier this month the Obama administration announced it is postponing the employer mandate until 2015, undoubtedly to see if the delay will encourage more full-time hiring. But thousands of small businesses have been capping employment at 30 hours and not hiring more than 50 full-timers, and the businesses are unlikely to suddenly change that approach just because they received a 12-month reprieve.)

July 16, 2013 at 3:02 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/15/196756/food-stamps-and-the-farm-bill.html#.UeWY_6zfLXQ

House of Representatives Republicans passed a version of the long-delayed farm bill last week that upset the apple cart because it was missing a key political ingredient – the food stamp program.

(*STANDING OVATION*)

A part of the bill since the 1970s and which helped smooth its passage, the removal of food stamps raised concerns among low-income families, farmers and lawmakers in both parties.

Q: What is the food stamp program?

* AN INCOME REDISTRIBUTION SCAM!

Q: How much does it cost?

A: This year the cost was $78.4 billion, up from $20.6 billion in 2002.

* GEEZUS...!!!

Q: Why are food stamps in the farm bill?

* BIPARTISAN PORK.

It became part of the farm bill in the 1970s. Urban lawmakers supported the legislation’s nutrition policies, while rural lawmakers favored its price supports for crops like wheat and cotton.

Q: Why did House Republicans remove food stamps from the farm bill?

A: Both parts of the farm bill – food subsidies and nutrition – have grown over time and became targets of the growing influence inside the House Republican caucus of Tea Party supporters and others who want to cut federal spending.

(*HIGH FIVES ALL AROUND*)

Q: Were other nutrition programs eliminated in the House bill, too?

A: Yes. Republicans also dropped the Emergency Food Assistance Program, as well as others aimed at children, seniors and Native Americans.

(*MORE APPLAUSE*)

President Barack Obama warned lawmakers that he would veto any bill that doesn’t include nutrition policy.

(*GIVING OBAMA THE FINGER*)

July 16, 2013 at 3:30 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/353502/still-america-thomas-sowell

There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done will be transient or irreparable.

Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace - as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate.

More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public’s faith in that system and in their country. People who have increasingly asked during the lawlessness of the Obama administration, “Is this still America?” may feel some measure of relief.

* BELIEVE ME - I DO! (BUT THEN THERE'S THOSE WHO FEEL JUST THE OPPOSITE... AND THEIR BELIEFS TERRIFY ME BECAUSE THEIR HOPES, DESIRES, AND BELIEFS ARE TOTALLY AT ODDS WITH EVERYTHING IT MEANS TO BE AN AMERICAN!)

But the very fact that this case was brought in the first place, in the absence of serious evidence — which became ever more painfully obvious as the prosecution strained to try to come up with anything worthy of a murder trial — will be of limited encouragement as to how long this will remain America.

* YEP.

(*SIGH*)

The political perversion of the criminal-justice system began early and at the top - with the president of the United States. Unlike other public officials, who decline to comment on criminal cases that have not yet been tried in court, Barack Obama chose to say, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

(It was a clever way to play the race card, as he had done before, when professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested.)

* AND THAT TOO BLEW UP IN HIS FACE...

(*SHRUG*)

But it did not stop there. After the local police in Fla., found insufficient evidence to ask for Zimmerman to be prosecuted, the Obama administration sent Justice Department investigators to Sanford, Fla., and also used taxpayers’ money to finance local activists who agitated for Zimmerman to be arrested.

* YEP! (UNFRIGGIN'BELIEVABLY SO!)

Political intervention did not end with the federal government. The city manager in Sanford intervened to prevent the usual police procedures from being followed.

* YEP!

[T]he testimony of prosecution witness after prosecution witness undermined the prosecution’s own case. Some critics faulted the prosecuting attorneys. But the prosecutors had to work with what they had — and they had no hard evidence that would back up a murder charge or even a manslaughter charge.

You don’t send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like “shooting an unarmed child” when that “child” was beating him bloody.

* AH... BUT YOU TRY TO! THEY TRIED TO!

The only real heroes in this trial were the jurors. They showed that this is still America — at least for now — despite politicians who try to cheapen or corrupt the law, as if this were some banana republic.

July 16, 2013 at 3:43 PM

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