Thursday, April 3, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, April 3, 2014


Another day closer to seeing Vicki, Pat, and the Boys...

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9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2591304/Obama-sucked-Romney-Former-Sen-Bob-Kerrey-DEMOCRAT-uncorks-Nebraska-sized-tornado-president-slamming-Obamacare-lies-saying-hes-not-saving-Social-Security.html

Former U.S. Senator [and presidential candidate] Bob Kerrey (D) thinks President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat, was re-elected in 2012 because he 'sucked less' than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

* NOPE. OBAMA SUCKED MORE. THE REASON HE ONE RE-ELECTION IS TWOFOLD: 1) ROMNEY DID SUCK TOO; 2) THE MSM HAD OBAMA'S BACK AND ALLOWED HIM TO GET PAST BANGHAZI.

* ALSO... MANY AMERICANS ARE STUPID. (YEP. IT'S THAT FRIGGIN' SIMPLE.) ALSO... A FAIR AMOUNT OF URBAN VOTER FRAUD...

(*SHRUG*)

The Nebraskan straight-talker...

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

* YEAH. LIKE MCCAIN IS A "MAVERICK." (KERREY WAS ALWAYS GOOD WITH THE MEDIA...)

...told MailOnline in an exclusive interview that Obama isn't up to the job of bringing liberals and conservatives to the table to rescue America's slowly choking entitlement programs.

And Obama, he said Wednesday in his Manhattan office, knew full well he was lying when he promised that the Affordable Care Act would allow Americans to keep insurance plans they liked.

'He had to know he was misleading the audience,' Kerrey said quietly, recalling the newly minted president's countless promises as Congress and the public debated his signature health insurance overhaul.

Obama's infamous four-Pinocchio pledges, Kerrey explained, never stood a chance of being fulfilled because there were 'a million people out there with policies that, for one reason or another, run short of the minimum standard. I mean, they bought something cheaper!'

The White House understood the numbers, Kerrey said, and Republicans did a poor job of explaining the basics of the insurance industry to low-information voters.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

April 3, 2014 at 4:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The worst lie Democrats told about Obamacare, Kerrey reasoned, 'is not "If you want to keep your health care plan..." – the worst one is, "Everybody deserves high-quality, affordable health care."' 'Excuse me? Uh, I don't know if you've heard about the bell curve?' he snarked. 'If I've got 1,000 doctors, 100 are great, and 100 are not so good.'

He outlined the shape of a bell curve with his hands, and then threw them skyward. 'It's absolutely impossible,' he said. 'And affordable? Forget about it.'

Obama compounded his rhetorical mistakes with political ones, he said, by agreeing to ditch a proposal allowing Americans to buy into the Medicare system the way they would buy a policy from a private insurer.

A lack of political will and a healthy dose of electoral fear, he said, has virtually guaranteed a climate inside the U.S. Capitol where no one will take the first step toward cutting benefits or ratcheting up the national retirement age. 'We're robbing from the future to pay for the past,' he told MailOnline on Wednesday. 'We just are.' 'And we're shoveling more and more money to people over the age of 65.'

'It's the one thing "R"s and "D"s can agree on,' Kerrey explained. 'Don't screw with seniors.'

* AND TO HELL WITH THE COUNTRY...

The result, he said, is a set of financial chains clamped tightly on future generations.

During an ill-fated 2012 run to recapture his old Senate seat, Kerrey totaled up Uncle Sam's spending on Medicare, Social Security, and the long-term care portion of Medicaid, and divided it by the number of Americans in the work force. 'All workers,' he insisted, 'including government workers! And the source of their contribution is entirely tax money! But take all of it.'

Asked how to break the congressional logjam, Kerrey thought for a moment and said, softly, 'It takes a president. It takes a president.'

Is Barack Obama that president?

Kerrey stayed silent but shook his head. 'I'm shaking my head "no,"' he acknowledged, finally. 'If he was up to it, he would have done it. He can't run for re-election.'

Another of Obama's failings, according to Kerrey, is an inflated sense of Americans' appetite for programs to correct what the White House calls 'income inequality,' through new taxes and other income-shifting initiatives that transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. The president's re-election 17 months ago wasn't a mandate to conduct class warfare, he said.

April 3, 2014 at 4:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2014/03/29/bob-kerrey-calls-obama-delusional-liar-renders-himself-msm-nonperson

Imagine if a former Republican presidential candidate and U.S. senator had called a current Republican president a delusional liar whose programs are wasteful. Would the mainstream media not be all over the story? Such a person would be interviewed at length by Wolf Blitzer on CNN as well as made the rounds of the morning talk shows and the Sunday news programs as well. The media buzz would be red hot on this topic for days extending into weeks.

Well, there is such a person but because he is a Democrat saying these things about President Obama, we can expect him to become an MSM nonperson. Such seems to already be the fate of former presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey. It is no surprise that his extended criticisms of Obama appeared in a Daily Mail article in Britain, not in America where the shunning seems to have already begun.

* OBVIOUSLY THIS REFERS TO THE PREVIOUS TWO-PART NEWS BITE.

(*SHRUG*)

* ANYONE WANNA DENY IT...?

April 3, 2014 at 4:36 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/article4051905.ece

* AND OVER ACROSS THE POND... (ENGLAND!)

Ministers who question the majority view among scientists about climate change should “shut up” and instead repeat the Government line on the issue, according to MPs.

The BBC should also give less airtime to climate skeptics and its editors should seek special clearance to interview them, according to the Commons Science and Technology Committee. Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labor chairman, said that appearances on radio and television by climate skeptics such as Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, should be accompanied by "health warnings."

* WOW...

* JUST... WOW...

April 3, 2014 at 4:44 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/04/03/amazing-graphic-shows-chicagos-middle-class-disappear-before-your-eyes/

The graphic that you are about to see is sobering, perhaps depressing, and you can’t take your eyes off it.

We have the exhaustive work of Daniel Kay Hertz, a masters student at the University Of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, to thank for that.

At the risk of sounding like an old carnival barker, step right up and watch the middle class of Chicago vanish before your eyes.

However, this is no side-show. It shows the demise of the foundation of an American city. Watch as the grey squares, which illustrate the middle class that dominated the most of the city’s neighborhoods in 1970s, quickly vanish over 40 years. The poor, represented by the orange and red colors, explode across the map.

And watch what happens in the green areas representing the upper middle class and wealthy. Not surprisingly, it spreads from downtown to the north side, but not with the same ferocity as the reds and oranges.

Especially in 2000, the greens - the color of money – grow much darker. It seems the rich simply got richer.

In later years, the wealthy pushed the poor out of the near West Side. It appears that area bypassed the middle.

The data comes from the U.S. Census.

http://danielhertz.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/incseggif.gif?w=500&h=597

* OBAMA'S CHICAGO, FOLKS... RAHM EMMANUEL'S CHICAGO, FOLKS... A DEMOCRATIC CHICAGO... A LEFTIST CHICAGO... ALL LEADING TO A DYING CHICAGO. (WAIT UP, DETROIT! WE'RE COMING!)

April 3, 2014 at 5:10 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/375021/dems-voter-fraud-denial-john-fund

The spin doctors who deny the existence of voter fraud have no boundaries.

“Plans to fight voter fraud are based on nightmares, tall tales, and paranoid fears,” says Scott Keyes of the liberal Center for American Progress. Voter fraud is so rare “you’re more likely to get hit by lightning than find a case of prosecutorial voter fraud,” asserts Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the liberal Advancement Project.

Kim Strach, the new director of North Carolina’s Board of Elections, disagrees. She just searched a database that comprises about half the registered voters in the U.S. and found 35,750 voters in her state whose first and last names and full date of birth match with someone in another state who also voted in the 2012 election. A smaller number (765) had exact matches on Social Security numbers, but that total is artificially low because only some states provide that number for any or all of their voters.

Remember: In 2008, Barack Obama only carried North Carolina by 14,177 votes out of 2.3 million cast.

Strach is turning over her findings to the state legislature along with recommendations on what laws would help clean up the rolls.

Nor is North Carolina the only state with voter fraud in the news. Cobby Williams, a former 2012 independent congressional candidate in Mississippi, was sentenced to five years in prison this week for knowingly registering a convicted felon.

Last month, police in Pontiac, Mich., found the mummified body of Pia Farrenkopf in the garage of her foreclosed home. She had apparently been dead since 2008, but was listed as having voted in the 2010 election for governor.

Texas Democratic state representative Lon Burnam filed suit in March claiming he was defeated by 111 votes in his Democratic primary because of an illegal vote-by-mail operation which might have been orchestrated by his opponent.

Even when fraud is obvious and proven, some liberals will dismiss or even defend it. In 2012, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, former staff director of the Senate Finance Committee, insisted it was “perfectly reasonable” for voter fraud to occur occasionally. When challenged, he repeated himself.

Also recently, former Cincinnati election official Melowese Richardson, who was released early from prison after being convicted of voting six times for Barack Obama in 2012, was called up on stage at a rally for Al Sharpton’s National Action Network for what Cincinnati National Action Network president Bobby Hilton called a ““welcome home.”“ She was also hugged by the Reverend Al Sharpton.

I myself witnessed a disturbing example of indifference to voter fraud at the Democratic convention in Charlotte in August 2012. A documentary team was premiering their new film on voting rights, called “Electoral Dysfunction,” hosted by comic Mo Rocca and later shown on PBS nationwide that fall. What was awkward about the premiere was that the producers had to acknowledge after the lights came up that one of the main subjects of the film, former Democratic state representative Mike Marshall of Indiana, was sitting in the audience. Marshall had been indicted on several counts of voter fraud since the film had been completed. A Marshall representative told the audience the indictment as an “unfair persecution by a partisan prosecutor.” The Democratic crowd gave Marshall a standing ovation after it was explained his indictment prevented him from taking questions.

(*DRUM ROLL*)

* WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...

Marshall pleaded guilty to voter fraud in early 2013 and in May was sentenced to 18 months in prison for running an absentee-ballot racket.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

April 3, 2014 at 6:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Circuit-court judge Jon Webster noted that he had taken special measures to ensure the integrity of the prosecution. “When this case first came about, I knew there was a possibility for political overtones,” the judge said. “That’s why I appointed special prosecutors for this case from both [political] parties.” The judge went on to say Marshall’s crimes were indeed serious. “Those who tinker with the election process are tinkering with the foundations of democracy,” he said. “I worry that this will only serve to further voter apathy and voter cynicism. I don’t want the citizens of Jennings County to question the appointment of elected officials and wonder if it was really their votes that put them there.”

Marshall’s supporters were of a different mind. “I am just really disappointed. There are no victims in this case,” said Jennings County Democratic-party chairman Karen Snyder. After his plea agreement, she promised he would be hired to work for local Democrats in the future: “I know Mike as well as most people and I trust him. Without question, we will welcome Mike back to work for the party.”

* GEEZUS...

No one is suggesting that liberal acceptance of voter fraud is universal. Nevada’s Democratic attorney general Catherine Cortez Masto vigorously pursued the voter registration fraudsters of the now-defunct ACORN and charged the group itself with voter fraud, which included hiring people from a prison work-release program who had been convicted of identity theft.

* NO. BUT I'M SURE IT'S MUCH MORE WIDESPREAD THAN CONSERVATIVE ACCEPTANCE OF IT.

But liberals who consistently deny the existence of voter fraud — even absentee-ballot fraud — help contribute to a climate in which such offenses against democracy are too often excused or ignored.

“Voter fraud harms people in the Democratic coalition more than most,” says former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama, “I have seen up close how Democratic primaries have been stolen in Alabama by corrupt machines that then deliver bad services and poor schools and rob people of their future.” Davis, who is now a Republican, says measures to prevent voter fraud shouldn’t be controversial. “There is a reason that polls consistently show over 60% of African-Americans and Hispanics support voter ID,” he told me. “They realize voter fraud isn’t a myth, and saying it is doesn’t make it so.”

* AND THERE'S ALSO A REASON 40% (OR WHATEVER THE NUMBER IS) OF BLACKS AND HISPANICS OPPOSE VOTER ID REQUIREMENTS.

(*SHRUG*) (*SIGH*)

April 3, 2014 at 6:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/04/03/Coming-Obamacare-Shock-170-Million-Americans

“The Affordable Care Act is here to stay,” the President insisted as he announced that 7.1 million people had enrolled in private insurance through ObamaCare.

As Jimmy Fallon pointed out later the same evening, the numbers were neither impressive nor reliable. “It’s amazing what you can achieve when you make something mandatory,” Fallon told his laughing audience, “fine people if they don’t do it — and keep extending the deadline for months.”

A new study from the American Health Policy Institute – recently launched by former Bush administration Deputy Secretary of HHS Tevi Troy – shows that large employers expect to face steep compliance costs, starting in the fall. Their cost estimates range between $4,800 and $5,900 per employee over the next decade. The total cost to large employers over the next decade will run between $151 billion and $186 billion, according to the 100 companies surveyed by AHPI that employ 10,000 or more people.

That doesn’t include additional price increases from insurers attempting to cover bad bets in their 2014 premium rates after the first round of ObamaCare.

"I do think that it's likely premium rate shocks are coming,” CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield CEO Chet Burrell told Reuters. “I think they begin to make themselves at least partially known in 2015 and fully known in 2016.” The consensus is that premiums will rise by double-digit percentages next year from their already-inflated levels for 2014 coverage.

The Obama administration unilaterally delayed a portion of the employer mandate, but it still takes effect for those employing more than 200 workers at the beginning of January 2015. Large employers have to budget as soon as this summer to deal with those costs. Most of them will start scaling down their so-called “Cadillac” health care plans to avoid the taxes those will accrue by 2016, getting ahead of the curve. Many may choose to give up on offering health insurance at all.

The data from HHS after the passage of ObamaCare showed that the Obama administration expected as many as 93 million Americans to be thrown out of their existing coverage, with employers opting to either scale down or get out, paying the fine instead.

Either way, the ACA imposes massive costs on employers, whether those come in the form of fines, higher premiums, red tape, or a combination of all three. Businesses that have new and massive costs imposed on them by regulatory changes no longer can use that capital for investment, risk-taking, and expansion. That means fewer new jobs for Americans, and fewer opportunities to move up the economic ladder as well.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

April 3, 2014 at 11:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Now, perhaps this would make sense if the program that plans to impose all these costs actually did what Democrats promised it would do – insure the uninsured. However, the numbers offered up by Obama on Tuesday fall very far short of the numbers his administration used to argue that a systemic overhaul was needed to address “the fierce urgency of now” with the uninsured, which the LA Times recalls as between 45-48 million. In fact, it’s not clear at all that the so-called enrollments hailed on April Fool's Day offer a break-even point with the uninsured the ACA created. Those numbers are estimated at five to six million Americans in the individual market, many of whom now pay higher premiums and have to clear higher deductibles as the cost of buying more insurance coverage than they believed they needed in the first place.

So how many of these seven-million-plus claimed by Obama actually started off without any insurance at all? The Times reported that from an unpublished Rand Corporation study that of the six million who signed up through ObamaCare exchanges for private insurance, a third of those had no insurance previous to the rollout.

That would come to 4.4% of the low end of the LA Times estimate, if that number represented actual enrollments – but it doesn’t.

The Daily Mail’s David Martosko reports that the same Rand study shows that only 53% of those previously uninsured have actually paid premiums for their selection.

The Rand estimate of the newly covered comes just short of 859,000 – or just 1.9% of the total number of uninsured that Democrats insisted had to be helped through a costly and disruptive overhaul of the health-insurance industry.

Even adding in the estimated six million added to Medicaid – most of whom would have qualified without ObamaCare – the first pass only accounts for 15% of the problem - as defined by Obama and his fellow Democrats in 2009-10.

April 3, 2014 at 11:15 PM

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