Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Folks... I love my Les Mills BodyPump classes... but something extremely disturbing has just come to my attention:
I apparently also love... er...
(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)
(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)
...Pink.
I know... I know... Bill Barker is not supposed to respond favorably to... er... Pink.
Am I... evolving...???
Or... devolving...???
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http://cnsnews.com/news/article/treasury-ran-98-billion-deficit-july-debt-stayed-exactly-16699396000000
The Treasury Department's Financial Management Service (FMS), which publishes both the federal government's official Daily Treasury Statement and its official Monthly Treasury Statement, is reporting that in July the federal government ran a deficit of $98 billion but...
* BUT... BUT... BUT...?
...but that the federal government's debt remained exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for the entire month.
* GOVERNMENT MATH, FOLKS!
The FMS said that the deficit went up $98 billion ($97,594,000,000) in the Monthly Treasury Statment for July, which it released on Monday.
At the same time, the FMS said the debt stayed at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in its Daily Treasury Statements, which are published every business day.
(*SMIRK*)
The Daily Treasury Statements show the daily value of the federal government debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress.
* AS I SAY, FOLKS, DAY AFTER DAY AFTER EXAMINING THE EVIDENCE... THE CONSTITUTION... THE RULE OF LAW... BASIC HONESTY AND ACCOUNTABILITY ITSELF...
(*SIGH*)
* AMERICA? NO. NOT ANYMORE. TODAY WE'RE "AMERIKA."
At the static $16,699,396,000,000 level that the Treasury reported for every day of July, the debt was just $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,000,000 that was set in a law passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama.
* SCREW THE LAW...
* LAW? WHAT LAW?!
(*SADLY SHAKING MY HEAD*)
If Treasury's daily statements were to declare that the government had borrowed an additional net $98 billion to cover the $98 billion deficit the Treasury declared in its monthly statement for July, the Treasury would be conceding that the government had already surpassed the legal limit on the debt - and has been violating the law by continuing to borrowing additional money.
* YEP...
* RINOs AND DEMOCRATS UNITE! OLIGARCHY UBER ALLES!
Instead, even as the Treasury was running up the $98-billion deficit it reported in the July Monthly Treasury Statement, every one of the 22 Daily Treasury Statements published for July said the Treasury had closed out the previous business day with exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in debt.
* I KNOW... SOME OF YOU JUST... DON'T... CARE.
(*SHRUG*)
* WHICH IS HOW AND WHY OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC IS NO MORE...
(*ANOTHER SHRUG*)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/eliot-spitzer-new-york-city-poll-95535.html
Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is pulling further ahead in the Democratic primary for the city’s comptroller race, a new poll finds.
* CLIENT #9.
The poll also addressed Spitzer’s prostitution scandal. Although 23% said this behavior disqualifies him as a candidate, 44% said it is a factor but did not disqualify him and 32% said it is not a factor.
* HOW MUCH FURTHER CAN WE DEFINE DEVIANCY DOWN, FOLKS?
* AGAIN... FOLKS... BEYOND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS... BEYOND "MORALITY"... SPITZER WAS A MEMBER OF THE BAR... SPITZER WAS AN OFFICER OF THE COURT... SPITZER WAS MANHATTAN ADA... SPITZER WAS NEW YORK'S ATTORNEY GENERAL...
* ELIOT SPITZER NOT ONLY PUT HIMSELF ABOVE THE LAW HE WAS SWORN TO UPHOLD FROM THE MOMENT HE BECAME AN ATTORNEY... BUT BEYOND THIS... SPITZER WAS A MAN WHO - ESPECIALLY AS GOVERNOR - WAS THE MAN ELECTED TO UPHOLD THE LAWS... INCLUDING THE ONES HE BROKE... INCLUDING THE LAWS HE HIMSELF HAS PROSECUTED OTHERS FOR IN HIS FORMER ROLE AS A PROSECUTOR.
* HOW CAN A MAN LIKE THIS BE A LEADING CANDIDATE FOR A FAIRLY MAJOR PUBLIC OFFICE? (SIMPLE... HE'S A DEMOCRAT.)
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/what-global-warming-2012-data-confirms-earth-cooling-trend
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] recently released its “State of the Climate in 2012” report, which states...
(*DRUM ROLL*)
...that “worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record.”
* ONE OF...
* ON RECORD... (MEANING OF ALL TIME... OR AT LEAST AS LONG AS MEASUREMENTS ARE RECOGNIZED AS BEING ACCURATE.)
* BUT WAIT! READ ON!
[What] the report “fails to mention [is that 2012] was one of the coolest of the decade, and thus confirms the cooling trend,” according to an analysis by climate blogger Pierre Gosselin.
* COOLING TREND... MODERN COOLING TREND...
(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)
“To no one’s surprise, the report gives the reader the impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control,” writes Gosselin. “But their data shows just the opposite.”
(*SMIRKING WHILE NODDING*)
Although the NOAA report noted that in 2012, “the Arctic continues to warm” with “sea ice reaching record lows,” it also stated that the Antarctica sea ice “reached a record high of 7.51 million square miles” on Sept. 26, 2012.
* FOLKS... YA JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!
And the latest figures for this year show that there’s been a slowdown of melting in the Arctic this summer as well...
(*SMIRK*)
...with temperatures at the North Pole well below normal for this time of year.
(Meteorologist Joe Bastardi calls it “the coldest ever recorded.”)
The Associated Press had to retract a photo it released on July 27 with the caption, “The shallow meltwater lake is occurring due to an unusually warm period.”
* HA! HA!
(*POINTING MY MIDDLE FINGER IN THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF AP HQ NYC*)
“In fact, the water accumulates in this way every summer,” AP admitted in a note to editors, adding that the photo was doubly misleading because “the camera used by the North Pole Environment Observatory has drifted hundreds of miles from its original position, which was a few dozen miles from the pole.”
* THE AP... "MISLEADING"... NAH... (ONLY WHEN THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT!)
(*SNORT*)
NOAA also reported that the “average lower strastospheric temperature, about six to ten miles above the Earth’s surface, for 2012 was record or near-record cold, depending on the dataset” even while the concentrations of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, continued to increase.
* FOLKS...
(*JUST THROWING MY ARMS OPEN*)
"Even with all this data manipulation, the trend is down as shown by this Hadley global plot," writes Joseph D'Aleo, former director of meteorology at The Weather Channel.
* DOWN!
“When one carefully reads the report, we find that the NOAA findings actually do confirm precisely what the skeptics have been claiming all along:
1. The Earth has stopped warming.
2. The climate models exaggerated future warming [caused by] CO2 climate sensitivity; it is much lower than we first thought.
* OH... AND THEN THERE'S THIS...
On August 7th, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten quoted Irish solar expert Ian Elliott predicting that lower levels of sunspot activity over the next few years “indicates that we may be on the path to a new little ice age.” “That’s the real issue at hand,” he added.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57598487/more-fast-and-furious-guns-surface-at-crimes-in-mexico/
Three more weapons from Fast and Furious have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, CBS News has learned, as the toll from the controversial federal operation grows.
* HOLDER OPERATION. THE ERIC HOLDER OPERATION.
According to Justice Department tracing documents obtained by CBS News, all three guns are WASR-10 762-caliber Romanian rifles. Two were purchased by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino in May and July of 2010. Sean Steward, who was convicted on gun charges in July 2012, purchased a third. The rifles were traced yesterday to the Lone Wolf gun shop in Glendale, Ariz.
During Fast and Furious and similar operations, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged the Lone Wolf and other gun stores to sell massive amounts of weapons to questionable purchasers who allegedly trafficked them Mexican drug cartels.
* ONE... MORE... TIME:
During Fast and Furious and similar operations, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged the Lone Wolf and other gun stores to sell massive amounts of weapons to questionable purchasers who allegedly trafficked them Mexican drug cartels.
* AND, BTW... FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH... THIS BIT ABOUT "AND SIMILAR OPERATIONS" IS BULLSHIT AS FAR AS I KNOW. CBS IS SIMPLY TRYING TO MAKE IT LOOK AS IF THIS WEREN'T TOTALLY A HOLDER JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DEBACLE. (IT WAS!)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Patino is said to have purchased 700 guns while under ATF's watch.
* REMIND ME... DID THE ATF LOAN HIM THE MONEY...? (KIDDING!) (I THINK...)
Ever since, a steady stream of the guns have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S.
* BE NICE TO CATELOGUE ALL THE U.S. CRIME SCENES WHERE FAST AND FURIOUS WEAPONS WERE USED... (BUT THAT TOO WOULD CAST A SPOTLIGHT UPON HOLDER... AND OBAMA.)
But the Justice Department has refused repeated requests from Congress and CBS News to provide a full accounting.
* UNDER WHAT AUTHORITY DOES JUSTICE REFUSE CONGRESS...?!?! (IF REID WOULD COOPERATE CONGRESS COULD DEMAND AS A UNITED BODY THAT HOLDER GIVE UP THE DOCUMENTS. HE WON'T, THOUGH.)
An estimated 1,400 guns are still on the street or unaccounted for.
Last November, a Fast and Furious weapon was found at a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen was killed. Two weapons used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011 also came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time. And two Fast and Furious AK-47 type rifles were recovered from the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010; he'd been shot by illegal immigrants who were smuggling drugs.
* ALL THIS BLOOD IS ON HOLDER'S HANDS...
ATF special agent John Dodson blew the whistle on his agency's gunwalking in an interview with CBS News in 2011. The government first denied any guns had been allowed to "walk" into criminal hands.
* WAS ANYONE FIRED FOR LYING? JAILED?
Later, the Justice Department acknowledged using the strategy, claiming it was intended to see where the weapons ended up in hopes of capturing a major cartel leader. But the agency ordered an immediate halt to the practice calling it highly improper.
* HUH...?!?! THEY ORDERED AN "IMMEDIATE" HALT AFTER... GETTING CAUGHT...!!!
The Justice Department's refusal to turn over certain Fast and Furious documents led to a bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives in June 2012 to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Then, the Obama administration used executive privilege for the first time, to withhold requested documents from Congress. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is suing for release of the material.
* IN ALL SERIOUSNESS... OBAMA SHOULD BE IMPEACHED FOR THIS. IF ONLY REID, BOEHNER, MCCONNELL, AND PELOSI WOULD FORM A UNITED FRONT TO RESTORE CONSTITUTIONAL BALANCE TO SEPARATION OF POWERS I HAVE NO DOUBT OBAMA WOULD BACK DOWN.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/13/sen-rubio-you-know-nothing-about-our-border-arizona-sheriff-hammers-immigration-bill-supporters-and-offers-revealing-picture-of-the-border/
Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Dannels doesn’t mince words. He’s angry that local law enforcement and the citizens who call the Southwest border home have been left out of the decision making process when it comes to security and immigration reform.
Dannels has lived along the border since 1984. He remembers when the dangers from smugglers circumventing the rocky, mountainous terrain were few and far between. Now, he says, a different breed of narcotics traffickers has amassed weapons, technology and small armies of death; threatening not only the stability of Mexico but U.S. national security as well.
Sitting at a local eatery under the shadow of the Huachuca Mountains, he questioned how much time, if any, the law makers who drafted SB 774 – known as the ”Gang of Eight” bill — had actually spent on the border.
Dannels, along with residents living on the Southwest border and local senior law enforcement officials told TheBlaze on a recent trip to Arizona that they were left out of the decision making process on border security. They say the Gang of Eight bill just isn’t good enough when it comes to addressing the complex security issues they deal with every day.
“Look at Rubio out of Florida — have you been down here, Rubio?” he questioned, noting that drug cartels had just replaced a radio relay station on the mountain that the sheriff’s team had taken down less than three weeks earlier.
* WHERE ARE THE FEDS...? THEY WANTED SOLE AUTHORITY... WHERE'S THEIR RESPONSE TO THE CARTELS - OTHER THAN FAST AND FURIOUS THAT IS!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
The Sinaloa Cartel, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug organizations, uses the receiver/transmitter to extend their communication footprint between Mexico and the Huachuca mountains, a U.S. Intelligence official, familiar with the terrain, told TheBlaze. It’s how they stay ahead of law enforcement and keep track of their contraband, the official added.
Home invasions, burglary, theft, destruction of private property — and a constant fear that it’s only going to get worse — is something Cochise County border residents live with daily.
“I say to myself, ‘Rubio, you’re making decisions for me, for my state, for my county, my city when you haven’t even been here – what an insult, what do you know about our border? You know nothing about our border. Yet you’re making those decisions without even speaking to us.’”
(Rubio’s office did not return phone calls seeking comment.)
The Senate’s Gang of Eight bill, drafted this year by a bipartisan group of well-known lawmakers, was supposed to be the answer to the nation’s 11 million plus illegal immigrants. Or at least that’s what these senators hoped. Instead, it has left many lawmakers, local law enforcement officers and American residents living along the nearly 2,000 mile Southwest border scratching their heads.
A majority of House Republicans say it is nothing more than amnesty for illegal residents, worsens entitlement spending, overrides the more than 4 million people trying to enter the U.S. legally.
Critics say the border measures in the bill do not provide any guarantees for the billions of dollars allocated for security and give enormous power to the Department of Homeland Security.
Ranchers and law enforcement agents in Arizona told TheBlaze they don’t trust that anyone in Washington understands how serious the security issues are, especially with the growing power of Mexican drug cartels operating on the border.
In 1984, Cochise County had 50 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents working along its 83 mile border.
* AND THE BORDER WAS RELATIVELY SECURE - AT LEAST IN TERMS OF THE IMMEDIATE SAFETY CONCERNS OF BORDER AMERICANS - I'D GUESS.
Today, it’s increased to 1,300 agents and 200 Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement officers.
* WHO AREN'T ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOBS... WHO AREN'T ALLOWED TO DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
The Gang of Eight bill will add 20,000 more Border Patrol agents and an additional 700 miles of border fence.
* PROMISES TO ADD... THERE'S A HUGE DIFFERENCE. REMEMBER THE FENCE WE WERE PROMISED? REMEMBER THE POST-'86 IMMIGRATION REFORMS WE WERE PROMISED? FOLKS... NOTHING CAN STOP A FUTURE CONGRESS FROM SLOW-WALKING - OR INDEED DEFUNDING - PROGRAMS AUTHORIZED BY A PREVIOUS CONGRESS.
“The men and women working for the federal government have a very dangerous job out there which I respect,” Dannels said. “They do the best with what they’ve been given…It’s very frustrating. Even with 1500 federal agents (and I have only 83 miles of Southwest border) we can't stop the cartels... the drugs and human trafficking.”
He said the Gang of Eight bill doesn’t deal with the real problem. Along with Rubio, the other seven members who drafted the new immigration bill are Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Chuck Schemer (D-N.Y.); Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); Dick Durbin (D-Ill.); Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.); Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
The bill passed 68 to 32 in the Senate with 14 Republicans onboard.
It has been rejected by some House Republicans openly and others have avoided it all-together. Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, promised that he would not bring the bill to a vote on the floor because much of his party opposes it.
John Ladd, a rancher who has a close relationship with Sheriff Dannel’s office, says he doesn’t have time for Washington politics and he has very little faith the federal government.
He’s not alone.
Other ranchers that spoke with TheBlaze on condition of anonymity, out of fear of retaliation from the cartels, said lawmakers use the border issue for their own political purposes but rarely follow through with their promises.
Like many of the residents in the area, Ladd, a third generation Cochise rancher, lamented the days when drug cartels didn’t threaten his way of life. His ranch runs 10 miles along the south border and to the north it sits on state route 92. Ladd estimates that 32 trucks have illegally crossed from Mexico through his property since January. He counts the tire tracks.
* FEDERAL AUTHORITIES SHOULD HAVE INTERCEPTED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE TRUCKS!
Ladd’s also come face to face with the trucks on his ranch and watched as they made their way to route 92. He says the calls to federal law enforcement fall on deaf ears and they rarely if ever show up to check out his claims.
* THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROTECTS NEITHER OUR CITIZENS NOR OUR COUNTRY. HOW CAN THIS BE...??? IT CAN ONLY BE DELIBERATE...
“We don’t even know what or who was in those semis that crossed my property,” said Ladd. “Homeland Security is the most inept federal bureaucracy. They lie when they tell the American people the border is more secure today than it ever has been.”
A DHS Official, who works along the Southwest border, said “it’s difficult to do the job you need to do when administration officials tie your hands.”
“It’s a shell game – you think something is happening but it’s all theater,” the official said. “Ladd is speaking for a lot of us.”
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