Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Hiya, folks; I hope you've been tuned in to the Drudge Report (or doing your own aggregating) while I've been on hiatus.
(Seriously, folks... you should ALL be using Drudge as your home page!)
I may... or may not... find time to do some newsbiting today, but whether I do or don't has no bearing on your own personal responsibility to make yourselves aware of what's being done by our government officials in our name!
Folks... if Obama were indeed a "Manchurian Candidate," I can't imagine him having done more damage to America on the behalf of a foreign master than he's done as titular head of the Democratic Party.
I don't wanna hear "what about Bush..." Bush is gone. Bush is out of office. And compared to Obama... Bush respected the Constitution and its built-in safeguards and power limitations upon the presidency.
Clinton and Gore didn't do anywhere near the damage to this country over eight years that Obama has done over five and a half.
James Earl Carter was a selfless patriot and American hero in comparison to Barack Hussein Obama!
And, folks... God gave us Ronald Reagan to clean up the messes left by LBJ, Nixon, Ford, and Carter; there is no "Ronald Reagan" sitting in the wings waiting to fight for and win the presidency come 2016; as far as I can tell God has turned His face from us and left us in the "care" of the Leftists of the Democratic Party and RINOs of the GOP Establishment.
Folks... I'm NOT giving up all hope... BUT... I'm a realist. At best, 20% or so of the country stands behind the ideals of the Tea Party (which are the ideals of the Constitution... of our Founders... of common sense... representing and fighting for individual liberty and against the ever spreading encroachment of government into our lives) and as the 2012 Election demonstrated, the hard Left is capable of beating the RINOs who campaign and "govern" as "me too" progressives - "Lite" Democrats.
Folks... whether you accept the truth or not, it's staring you in the face: America is now Amerika. Fascism, socialism, communism, however you want to frame the descriptives, the fact remains that those who believe in individual responsibility and individual freedom are outnumbered by the Sheeple whose votes and allegiances are often for sale to the highest bidder - or worse... to those who simply can't separate competence and correctness from adherence to cults of personality - be the personality Obama or Clinton.
I hope and pray that "The Barker Minority" can pull off a miracle over the next few years and drag the nation back from the brink.
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http://www.militarytimes.com/article/20140602/NEWS/306020055/Gold-Star-mom-guy-worth-my-son-s-life-
Sondra Andrews’ son, 2nd Lt. Darryn Andrews, is one of six soldiers killed reportedly while searching for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
“It gets really hurtful when I think, this guy was worth my son’s life? My son who was patriotic? Who was a true soldier? Who defended his country with his life?” Andrews told Army Times via phone on Monday. “That guy was worth that? I don’t think so.”
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Andrews also was upset to hear the U.S. government agreed to release five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for Bergdahl’s freedom.
* NO. NOT "THE U.S. GOVERNMENT." BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA.
“I bet you anything there were soldiers killed or wounded capturing those five guys,” she said. “So what does that do for their sacrifice? They sacrificed for nothing, because they turned right around and let them go.”
* PRETTY MUCH...
(*SHRUG*)
Bergdahl disappeared June 30, 2009, from a base in Paktika province, near the border with Pakistan.
* DESERTED. HE DESERTED.
He and Darryn Andrews were deployed with 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. Soldiers who say they served with Bergdahl have since spoken out on social media and in news reports that the then-Pfc. abandoned his post, wandering away from the combat outpost on his own. Many expressed anger that soldiers were killed while searching for Bergdahl. Darryn Andrews was one of those men. He was killed Sept. 4, 2009, when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device and a rocket-propelled grenade, according to the Defense Department notice announcing his death. He was 34.
The military told the Andrews family that their soldier died after a mission to capture a top Taliban fighter, Sondra Andrews said. “By omission, we assumed they were just pursuing the Taliban,” she said. “Then the guys [Darryn Andrews served with] started contacting me. They said, ‘No, ma’am, we were looking for [Bergdahl].’ ”
Within hours of Bergdahl’s disappearance, her son and his soldiers went out on foot patrols to search for him, Sondra Andrews said. “They found his gear. They knew [he’d left],” she said. “You don’t get captured and leave your gear in neat little stacks. They knew he had walked away from his post.”
“The military really owes the parents of these fallen soldiers the truth,” she said. “Just the fact that they’re calling that man a hero just took me to my knees.”
* FOLKS...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Sondra Andrews said she wants people to know her son was a good man and a good leader who always wanted to join the Army. Darryn Andrew’s son was just 2 years old when his father was killed. His daughter was born four months later. “He was a wonderful father and family man, an amazing son, a great brother,” she said.
* AND HE DIED...
* FOR WHAT?
http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/03/team-leader-bowe-bergdahl-wanted-to-talk-to-taliban/
Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow was the team leader with Bowe Bergdahl the night Bergdahl disappeared.
"Bergdahl is a deserter, and he's not a hero," says Buetow. "He needs to answer for what he did."
Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He's looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban.
"I heard it straight from the interpreter's lips as he heard it over the radio," said Buetow. "There's a lot more to this story than a soldier walking away."
The night Bergdahl disappeared, says Buetow, the platoon was at a small outpost, consisting of two bunkers and a perimeter of military trucks. Buetow was in one of the bunkers, and Bergdahl was supposed to be in a tent by one of the trucks. Then a call came through on the radio. "I'll never forget that line, 'Has anyone seen Bergdahl?'" says Buetow.
Firsthand accounts from soldiers in his platoon say Bergdahl disappeared while he was "on" guard duty. Buetow says Bergdahl was "about to go on" guard duty, but when a fellow soldier went to wake him, he was not in his tent. He had left behind his weapons, his bullet-proof vest, and night vision gear. "I immediately knew, I said, 'He walked away. He walked away,'" said Buetow. Bergdahl walked off the observation post with nothing more than a compass, a knife, water, a digital camera and a diary, according to firsthand accounts from soldiers in his platoon.
Buetow was involved in the immediate search for Bergdahl, pushing a patrol into a nearby local village. "Immediately as we left the base, two small boys walked up to us, and they told us that they saw an American crawling in the weeds by himself," said the former Army sergeant. The search followed that lead, and others, for months. "For 60 days or more, I remember, just straight, all we did was search for Bergdahl," said Buetow, "essentially chasing a ghost because we never came up with anything." At least six soldiers were killed in subsequent searches for him, according to soldiers involved in those operations.
* AT LEAST SIX SOLDIERS WERE KILLED IN SUBSEQUENT SEARCHES FOR BERGDAHL...
The Pentagon was not able to provide details on specific operations in which any soldiers were killed during that time were involved.
* YET ANOTHER COVER-UP.
Buetow says even though those operations were not "directed missions" to search for Bergdahl, there was an underlying premise of acting on intelligence to find the missing soldier. "The fact of the matter is, when those soldiers were killed, they would not have been where they were at if Bergdahl hadn't left," says Buetow. "Bergdahl leaving changed the mission."
Many soldiers in Bergdahl's platoon said attacks seemed to increase against the United States in Paktika province in the days and weeks following his disappearance. "Following his disappearance, IEDs started going off directly under the trucks. They were getting perfect hits every time. Their ambushes were very calculated, very methodical," said Buetow. It was "very suspicious," says Buetow, noting that Bergdahl knew sensitive information about the movement of U.S. trucks, the weaponry on those trucks, and how soldiers would react to attacks.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/06/03/unit-comrade-bergdahl-was-that-one-guy-that-wanted-to-disappear/
Matt Vierkant, 27, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was a team leader of another squad in Bergdahl’s platoon.
(He’s now out of the military and studying mechanical engineering.)
Soldiers from his unit and other units were wounded or killed on missions to chase down leads related to Bergdahl, he said.
Asked about the statement Sunday by National Security Adviser Susan Rice that Bergdahl served “with honor and distinction,” he said: “That statement couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t know if she was misinformed or doesn’t know about the investigations and everything else, or what.”
He said Bergdahl’s fellow soldiers knew within five or 10 minutes from the discovery of disappearance that he had walked away.
Vierkant said he believes it’s paramount that an investigation determine whether Bergdahl deserted or collaborated with the enemy.
“It shouldn’t even be a question of whether, it should question of when,” he said.
Joshua Cornelison, 25, who was a medic in the platoon said Bergdahl was unusually reluctant to talk to fellow soldiers about his personal life or his background.
“He was very, very quiet. He kept everything very close to the vest,” Cornelison said, speaking from Sacramento, California. “So, after he actually left, the following morning we realized we have Bergdahl’s weapon, we have Bergdahl’s body armor, we have Bergdahl’s sensitive equipment (but) we don’t have Bowe Bergdahl.” At that point, Cornelison said, it occurred to him that Bergdahl was “that one guy that wanted to disappear, and now he’s gotten his wish.”
Cornelison, who completed his Army service in 2012, said he believes Bergdahl should be held accountable.
“Bowe Bergdahl needs to be held 100 percent accountable for all of his irresponsibility and all of his actions. He willfully deserted his post and he needs to be held accountable for that,” he said.
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/06/04/soldier-we-were-told-to-keep-quiet-about-bergdahl-leaving-afghan-base/
A soldier claims that he was told by his chain of command to not say anything about Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walking off an Afghan base in 2009.
* SOUNDS QUITE BELIEVABLE...
Retired Army Spc. Josh Fuller told Fox News Wednesday that he was told to keep quiet about Bergdahl leaving his post and getting captured by the Taliban.
“We had all known that he had deserted his post and there was never anything about him getting captured or a POW until a little while later when it came down from the chain-of-command that we needed to keep quiet about it, not say anything and that we’re going with the narrative that he’s captured,” Fuller told Fox News.
Fuller, who stated that Bergdahl pretty much kept to himself and didn’t socialize with other soldiers, said that attacks on the base increased after Army sergeant left. “Whenever he went and walked off the base, only stuff that we know, that we trained for, that the sports that we know on vehicles, how are moves are, stuff like that, they were getting hit very precisely,” Fuller explained to Fox News.
“And the ambushes we used, the certain tactics that we used, the Taliban was picking up on those things and the Haqqani network started using the same things as well. “So they were very precise and very accurate. You could tell it was somebody on the inside that had that info.”
Since Bergdahl was exchanged for five high-level Taliban members who were detainees at Guantanamo Bay, reports have surfaced that at least six U.S. soldiers were killed searching for him.
* "SURFACED."
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Matt Vierkant, 27, a team leader of another squad in Bergdahl’s platoon, told The Associated Press that soldiers from his unit and other units were wounded or killed on missions to chase down leads related to Bergdahl.
U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said Tuesday that the Army may pursue desertion charges against Bergdahl.
* "MAY...?!?!"
Bergdahl disappeared on June 30, 2009. A Pentagon investigation concluded in 2010 that the evidence was “incontrovertible” that he walked away from his unit, said a former Pentagon official who has read it.
* AND... YET... "MAY."
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
The military investigation was broader than a criminal inquiry, this official said, and it didn’t formally accuse Bergdahl of desertion. In interviews as part of the probe, members of his unit portrayed him as a naive, “delusional” person who thought he could help the Afghan people by leaving his Army post, said the official, who was present for the interviews.
Nabi Jan Mhullhakhil, the provincial police chief of Paktika province in Afghanistan, where Bergdahl was stationed with his unit, said elders in the area told him that Bergdahl “came out from the U.S. base … without a gun and was outside the base when he was arrested by the Taliban.”
After weeks of intensive searching, the military decided against making an extraordinary effort to rescue him, especially after it became clear he was being held in Pakistan under the supervision of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally with links to Pakistani’s intelligence service.
* AND YET OBAMA IN THE END TRADES FIVE HIGH-LEVEL TERRORISTS FOR A MAN UNWORTHY OF "EXTRAORDINARY EFFORT TO RESCUE HIM." (ANY OF THIS MAKING ANY SENSE TO YOU, FOLKS?)
Nonetheless, individual units pursued leads as they came in. The Pentagon official familiar with the talks said, “I know for a fact that we lost soldiers looking for him.”
(*NOD*)
But the Pentagon maintained the circumstances of his capture were irrelevant.
* IRRELEVANT...?!?!
“He is an American soldier,” Rear Adm. John Kirby said. “It doesn’t matter how he was taken captive. It doesn’t matter under what circumstances he left. … We have an obligation to recover all of those who are missing in action.”
* IN OBAMA'S NAVY KIRBY IS A REAR ADMIRAL AND BERGDAHL IS A HERO. GO FIGURE!
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/06/02/Who-Wrote-Susan-Rice-s-Talking-Points-This-Time
I'd like to know who wrote the talking points for Susan Rice's appearances on the Sunday talk shows, yesterday.
It's not like she had any more credibility to lose, but Rice told some whoppers, yesterday, possibly...in a calculated attempt to set a false narrative, as "most voters will pay attention to this story for 48 hours after Bergdahl’s release and then tune out."
Even as the truth was gushing out about the deserter, Bergdahl, Susan Rice was on ABC News telling George Stephanopoulos that he was captured "on the battlefield" and that he had "served with honor and distinction."
* "HONOR AND DISTINCTION...?!?!" SERIOUSLY, FOLKS...???
Bill Kristol asked some good questions, today, on Morning Joe: "We need to have honesty...There was a big Army investigation – what did Susan Rice know? What did President Obama know about the investigation about Bergdahl? It’s one thing to trade terrorists for a real POW, someone who was taken on the battlefield fighting honorably for our country. It’s another thing to trade away 5 high-ranking terrorists to someone who walked away.”
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/hillary-clintons-goldman-sachs-problem
A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton delivered a much-touted policy speech at the New America Foundation in Washington, where she talked passionately about the financial plight of Americans who "are still barely getting by, barely holding on, not seeing the rewards that they believe their hard work should have merited." She bemoaned the fact that the slice of the nation's wealth collected by the top 1% — or 0.01% — has "risen sharply over the last generation," and she denounced this "throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber barons."
Her speech, in which she cited the various projects of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation that address economic inequality, was widely compared to the rhetoric of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the unofficial torchbearer of the populist wing of the Democratic Party. Here was Hillary, test-driving a theme for a possible 2016 presidential campaign, sticking up for the little guy and trash-talking the economic elites.
Mrs. Clinton decried the "shadow banking system that operated without accountability" and caused the financial crisis that wiped out millions of jobs and the nest eggs, retirement funds, and college savings of families across the land.
Yet... at the end of this week... when all three Clintons hold a daylong confab with donors to their foundation... the site for this gathering will be the Manhattan headquarters of Goldman Sachs.
(*CYMBAL CRASH*)
Goldman was a key participant in that "shadow banking system" that precipitated the housing market collapse and the consequent financial debacle that slammed America's middle class.
(A system that was unleashed in part due to deregulation supported by the Clinton administration in the 1990s.)
Goldman Sachs might even be considered one of the robber barons of Wall Street.
* MIGHT...?!?!
In its 2011 report, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a congressionally created panel set up to investigate the economic meltdown, approvingly cited a financial expert who concluded that Goldman practices had "multiplied the effects of the collapse in [the] subprime" mortgage market that set off the wider financial implosion that nearly threw the nation into a depression.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
Hillary Clinton's shift from declaimer of Big Finance shenanigans to collaborator with Goldman — the firm has donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation — prompts an obvious question: Can the former secretary of state cultivate populist cred while hobnobbing with Goldman and pocketing money from it and other Wall Street firms?
* SURE! SHE'S A CLINTON! SHE'S A DEMOCRAT! SHE'S A LIBERAL! (GOOGLE "OBAMA + GOLDMAN SACHS" FOLKS... SEE WHAT COMES UP...)
Last year, Hillary Rodham Clinton gave two paid speeches to Goldman Sachs audiences. (Her customary fee is $200,000 a speech.)
* AND YET...
In recent years, Goldman Sachs has hardly exemplified the values and principles Clinton earnestly hailed in her speech. A few reminders:
In April 2011, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who chairs the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released a report, based on a two-year investigation, that concluded that Goldman had misled clients and Congress about its investments in securities related to the housing market. Levin called on the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate if Goldman had violated the law by selling complicated securities to customers without informing the buyers that Goldman would pocket profits if these financial products dropped in value. Goldman denied the charge, but the previous year Goldman had paid $550 million in a civil settlement with the SEC regarding its sale of these securities. (When the case was first filed, the SEC maintained that Goldman had committed fraud by creating and peddling a mortgage investment that was secretly designed to fail.)
* AND OF COURSE NO ONE WENT TO JAIL...
In March 2012, Greg Smith, a top Goldman executive who was resigning, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times slamming the screw-the-client culture that permeated Goldman: "To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money…I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It's purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them…It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as 'muppets,' sometimes over internal e-mail." The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission's report also described Goldman as a first-class predator: "Despite the first of Goldman's business principles — that 'our clients' interests always come first' — documents indicate that the firm targeted less-sophisticated customers in its efforts to reduce subprime exposure." In other words, the firm knowingly peddled junk to suckers who trusted it. The report quoted an expert who noted that Goldman's actions were "the most cynical use of credit information that I have ever seen" and who compared Goldman's wheeling-and-dealing to "buying fire insurance on someone else's house and then committing arson."
* AND THESE ARE THE FOLKS THAT OBAMA WAS IN BED WITH AND THAT THE CLINTONS ARE STILL IN BED WITH!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Last year, the New York Times published a fascinating investigative article that revealed how Goldman Sachs and other financial firms engaged in shrewd maneuvers to drive up the cost of aluminum. This rigging of the market, the paper reported, "ultimately costs consumers billions of dollars." That did not help struggling middle-class families.
* AND YET, AGAIN, NO ONE GOES TO JAIL...
Given Hillary Clinton's Warrenesque address at the New America Foundation, I asked a spokesmen for the potential 2016 candidate if there was anything incongruous about her association with Goldman, and he forwarded this statement: The support the Clinton Foundation receives from companies such as Goldman Sachs, organizations and individual donors helps maximize the impact of our philanthropic work. This support is helping enterprise partnerships in South America that are creating jobs; efforts to improve access to early childhood education in the U.S.; development programs that help small holder farmers in Africa; and rebuilding and economic development efforts in Haiti.
* WOW... (HEY... ANYONE REMEMBER GODFATHER III?)
Clinton's relationship with Goldman Sachs is not unique. Bill and Hillary Clinton have always nurtured cozy ties with Wall Street — in terms of policies and funds-chasing (for their campaigns and the foundation). The chief economic guru of the Clinton administration was Robert Rubin, a former Goldman Sachs chairman, and the financial deregulation and free-trade pacts of the Clinton years have long ticked off their party's populists. In his new book, former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner recalls visiting Bill Clinton at his Harlem office and asking his advice, as Geithner puts it, on "how to navigate the populist waters" and respond to the American public's anger about bailouts and Wall Street. The former president didn't seem to have much sympathy for these popular sentiments and replied by referring to the CEO of Goldman: "You could take Lloyd Blankfein into a dark alley and slit his throat, and it would satisfy them for about two days. Then the bloodlust would rise again."
If Hillary does decide to seek a return to the White House, can she straddle the line?
* SURE! INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES SUCH AS THIS ONE DON'T REACH MOST PEOPLE; THE LIBERAL MEDIA IS WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE MOST EXPOSED TO. (AND LIBERAL ACADEMIA... AND THE LIBERAL ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY...) IN ANY CASE, DEMOCRATS AREN'T EXACTLY KNOWN FOR TURING THEIR BACKS ON "THEIR" PEOPLE NO MATTER WHAT "THEIR" PEOPLE DO.
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