Thursday, September 25, 2014
Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, September 25, 2014
It's a shame my friend Michelle doesn't own a television and so rarely watches "entertainment" television.
Of course... it's also a blessing in the sense that she's spared the "in your face" filth that is all too prevalent across cable and yes, network television.
Elements of the Left ARE definitely using "entertainment" as a wreaking ball against traditional moral and ethical values. (Surely no one would deny this?)
At the same time, there ARE wonderful shows... family shows... that I would highly recommend to all my readers.
One such show: The Goldbergs.
Anyway... no review... just this plug.
(*SHRUG*)
My television viewing habits are all over the field. I admit... I watch more than my fair share of inappropriate crap - but I'm an adult... an adult raised during the 60's and 70's. I can compartmentalize and place my viewing in context.
Watching Family Guy occasionally (or Archer - admittedly one of my "never miss" shows) won't have the same impact upon me and my continuing "development" as I fear it has... and does... on our youth watching such shows. (Why? Again... because I have decades of off-setting context; today's youth... doesn't. There's little popular culture counter-balance!)
Anyway... watch The Goldberg's, folks! Believe me... it'll grow on you. It's a good family show!
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/24/porn-peeping-federal-workers-rarely-face-time-or-a/
An employee at the U.S. Office of the Trustee — an arm of the Justice Department charged with overseeing the integrity of the bankruptcy system — spent up to five hours a day on the job looking at pornography, visiting more than 2,500 adult websites during 2011, investigators found.
The case was just one of more than a dozen investigations into computer misuse closed by the Justice Department’s office of inspector general from 2013 through early this year, according to records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Federal prisons seemed to have particular problems. At a prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, 13 correctional officers were found to be scouring porn sites during work hours. Pornography also turned up on work computers at federal prisons in Oregon and Arkansas.
Yet porn peepers are rarely charged with time and attendance abuse, according to investigative memos on computer misuse from agencies across government. Prosecutors seem to pursue cases aggressively only when there is evidence of child pornography.
Agencies dole out discipline administratively in some cases, and the identities of the employees are shielded from public disclosure, records show.
Kevin Evans, a lawyer in Colorado, sued to try to pry loose the names of executives who embroiled the Securities and Exchange Commission in a porn scandal a few years ago, but a judge ruled that privacy interests prevailed.
Mr. Evans said that once he learned where the unidentified SEC employees were based, he contacted federal prosecutors in more than a half-dozen jurisdictions to alert them to the cases. He said he asked whether they intended to prosecute, but nobody got back to him.
Last year, a similar question confronted the Montana Supreme Court. The Billings Gazette newspaper sought the names of five city employees disciplined for looking at porn, but the state’s highest court said privacy interests trumped the public’s right to know.
The Justice Department’s inspector general redacted the names of the subjects in reports of computer misuse investigations released to The Washington Times, citing two exemptions in the open records law.
One exemption permits agencies to withhold documents that might result in an unwarranted invasion of privacy. The other permits withholding documents compiled for law enforcement purposes.
In the case of the Office of the Trustee, the investigation found numerous websites that promoted escorts and foreign brides, while the employee spent hours communicating with “advertisers” on various sites. The employee also bid for porn star memorabilia on eBay from his government computer.
Internet use logs found multiple days when the employee “spent the majority of his duty time viewing inappropriate websites,” investigators wrote in a case summary, estimating as many as five hours a day were wasted.
“The individual who was the subject of the redacted document no longer works for the U.S. Trustee Program,” spokeswoman Jane Limprecht said in an email Wednesday.
The case of the Trustee’s Office employee bears similarity to the highly publicized investigation into an Environmental Protection Agency employee whose porn viewing — which investigators said ranged from two to six hours a day — angered lawmakers this year.
“Fire him. What’s the question?” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican, demanded of an EPA official at a hearing in June.
The employee remains with the EPA pending the outcome of an investigation, according to a report by Greenwire.
The Bureau of Prisons declined to discuss disciplinary actions against any of its employees caught looking at pornography, including the 13 correctional officers at the prison in Louisiana. A case memo said the officers had their computer access suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/09/25/351363171/eric-holder-to-step-down-as-attorney-general
* NOTE: THIS IS PBS "REPORTING"
Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general...
* THAT'S WHAT THEY LEAD WITH. (RACE OBSESSED ANYONE?!?!)
...is preparing to announce his resignation Thursday after a tumultuous tenure marked by civil rights advances...
* WHERE...?! WHEN...?! JUST THE OPPOSITE IS CLEARLY TRUE...!!! (FRIGGIN' PBS...)
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
...reforms to the criminal justice system...
(*LITERALLY SCRATCH MY HEAD*)
* WHAT COULD THE WRITER/EDITOR POSSIBLY BE REFERRING TO...???
...and 5 1/2 years of fights with Republicans in Congress.
* HOW'BOUT 5 1/2 YEARS OF ABUSING HIS OFFICE, OVERSTEPPING HIS POWERS, AND SHREDDING THE CONSTITUTION?
* FOLKS...
(*SIGH*)
I am glad there are some good shows on television, and it's just a personal choice on my part. I do think there is a difference between generations NOT raised exclusively on electronic media and the 24 hour programming cycle and the generations that have known nothing else. As you said...you can put it in context.
It seems to me, though, that younger generations pretty much live life as a continuation of television conditioning and fantasy. One just has to observe trashy girl behavior and thug attitude blossoming in rural America to see the impact. The complete lack of interest in serious issues UNLESS CNN decides to glamorize it and co-opt the script for ratings.
I remember the beginning of the 24 hour cycle. I also see MY generation having more interest in duck hunters than the destruction of our nation. Duck hunters that can apparently lead people to amen the "convert em or kill em" philosophy of our enemies.
It's highly disturbing...
If privacy rights trump the people's right to know...LOL WHY is it a-okay to publish names of suspects in child porn cases?
And why arent these sites blocked on the computers of people SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING?
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/federal-court-denies-doj-motion-delay-orders-release-fast-furious-documents-list-judicial-watch-october-22/
* A CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION...
(*SHRUG*)
* PROTECTED BY A CORRUPT DEPARTMENT OF (IN)JUSTICE AND A "CONTEMPTIBLE" ATTORNEY GENERAL.
* R*E*A*D...!!!
http://online.wsj.com/articles/ferguson-chief-apologizes-to-brown-family-in-video-1411662506?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird
Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson has issued a video apology to the family of Michael Brown, saying the 18-year-old's body was left in the street for too long last month after he was fatally shot by an officer in the St. Louis suburb.
The video was released by a public relations agency Thursday, the same day Mr. Brown's parents were in Washington with civil rights leaders.
* BROWN WAS A PIECE OF $HIT. I'M GLAD HE'S DEAD. HE WAS A THUG AND A MENACE TO SOCIETY.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-big-money-democrats-1411599398
Democrats are trouncing Republicans on fund-raising, fueled by those "big donors" and "special interests" they claim to despise.
That Democrats remain competitive in so many close Senate election races despite low incumbent approval ratings is in large part a function of this spending advantage.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has so far this cycle raised $111 million, or $30 million more than the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
* THIRTY-MILLION DOLLARS MORE THAN THE REPUBLICANS...
The DSCC has spent or reserved nearly $42 million for this fall in TV advertising — 55% of it in Iowa, Colorado and North Carolina. The $23 million it will spend in those three key states — which could determine Senate control — is $4 million more than the NRSC will spend across the country.
* FOUR MILLION DOLLARS MORE THAN THE REPUBLICANS...
After the DSCC, the biggest spender has been Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's very own Senate Majority PAC. Run by former Reid aides...
* WELL-COMPENSATED FORMER AIDES I'M SURE... (WHO KNOW DOUBT SHOW THEIR APPRECIATION BY "KICKING BACK" A CERTAIN PORTION OF THEIR INCOME BACK UP THE LADDER...)
Senate Majority PAC can take unlimited donations, which makes it an ideal campaign vehicle for Democratic billionaires. Nearly two-thirds of its $32 million have been contributions of $500,000 or more.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/surge-in-student-debt-forgiveness-1411650529
Last week we told you about the $20 billion annual rise in Department of Education outlays, due to an increase in student-loan borrowers using income-based repayment programs. Today the Journal reports the disturbing details for taxpayers.
"Enrollment in the plans has surged, thanks in part to a continuing administration publicity campaign. As of June, the number had swelled to 1.91 million Americans holding more than $101 billion in student loans — nearly a 10th of all outstanding federal student debt. The number of borrowers and debt covered roughly has doubled in the past year," reports the Journal.
These plans allow borrowers to reduce monthly payments to just 10% of discretionary income. The loans can then be forgiven after ten years if borrowers work in government or for a non-profit — basically any job as long as it doesn't involve a profit-seeking business.
* THIS IS WRONG. IT'S UNFAIR. IT ROBS THE GENERAL TAXPAYER WHILE REWARDINGING THOSE WHO CHOOSE ONE EMPLOYER OVER ANOTHER - A DIRECT GOVERNMENTAL ASSAULT UPON FREE WILL. (ATTEMPTED EXTORTION AT THE VERY LEAST!)
So the government is spending taxpayer dollars to encourage young people to avoid repaying loans to taxpayers...
* INSANITY.
...while at the same time encouraging these young people to work for outfits that don't pay taxes.
Margaret Thatcher might have called it a perfect formula for eventually running out of other people's money.
But in the meantime, the publicity campaign continues. In a Tuesday speech, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, said, "This loan forgiveness can enhance the affordability of public service careers." It sure can, because it amounts to significant unreported tax-free compensation for government workers and community organizers.
* EXACTLY...!!!
And it relieves any pressure on universities to reduce prices, because it transfers the unbearable costs from borrowers to taxpayers.
* YEP...
"We want everyone eligible to be signing up for the loan forgiveness that federal law provides, which they are earning by virtue of their public service work," added Mr. Cordray.
* FEDERAL WORKERS ALREADY ENJOY BETTER PAY AND BENEFITS ON AVERAGE THAN THEIR PEERS IN PRIVATE INDUSTRY! THIS ADDS INSULT TO INJURY!
The government reported yesterday that defaults on federal student loans declined this year, to 13.7% from 14.7%. But given the generous programs to avoid repayment, one wonders why the default rate remains so high. And in fact it's even higher. As the Journal notes, "the government's default measure vastly underestimates the problem. The government considers people in default if they have made no payments in 360 days. A broader measure by the New York Federal Reserve — which accounts for all Americans with student loans — shows that roughly one in four borrowers are at least 90 days behind on a payment."
And of course middle-class taxpayers who never went to college will pay to clean up this mess.
* AND FOLKS... IT IS INDEED SOME MESS. (DELIBERATELY CAUSED!)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-latest-mideast-breakdown-1411599978
President Obama spoke at the United Nations Wednesday to rally the world to combat the Islamic State...
Meanwhile, a threat to U.S. security that Mr. Obama didn't mention is unfolding in Yemen, where on Monday Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized most of the capital city of Sanaa, leaving hundreds dead and dictating the terms of surrender to the U.S.-allied government.
(This is the same Yemen that the President has called a model for his counterterrorism in Iraq and Syria.)
The Yemen government's collapse comes after Houthi protesters paralyzed the capital for weeks, ostensibly to demand the restoration of fuel subsidies that the government slashed over the summer. Government attempts to meet the protesters halfway failed, and on Sunday Houthi gunmen swept into the city. A U.N.-brokered ceasefire is supposed to provide more Houthi representation in government, but the rebels are refusing to disarm.
The Houthis — members of Yemen's minority Shiite Zaidi sect — now control 14 of Yemen's 21 provinces. They've inherited a broken economy, a bankrupt government, and a long-running battle against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This is the same battle the U.S. has been fighting as part of a semi-covert effort using drones, CIA agents and special forces working with Yemeni soldiers. Whether the U.S. can continue this fight is now in doubt.
* EVERYTHING OBAMA TOUCHES TURNS TO $HIT.
Though Shiite grievances against Yemen's Sunni majority are an old story, the Houthis — named after their late commander Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, who was killed a decade ago — are a more recent creation. Formed in 1994 as "the Society of Young Believers," the group is vociferously anti-American and has longstanding ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has supplied it with arms and military training.
(Houthi fighters have in turn fought for the Assad regime in Syria.)
This week Iran has loudly refused to join the coalition against the Islamic State, so don't expect a Houthi government in Yemen to work with the U.S. against AQAP. The Houthis may want to wage their own war against AQAP, but there's a limit to their reach, especially in the country's largely ungoverned south. Before ISIS emerged, AQAP was the jihadist group posing the most serious threat to the U.S. homeland.
(*SNORT*)
The Obama Administration failed to oversee a peaceful transition in Yemen. Our options are now diminished...
* YA THINK...?!?!
* FOLKS... AGAIN... EVERYTHING OBAMA TOUCHES TURNS TO $HIT!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernard-trainor-the-battle-against-the-islamic-state-is-not-ours-to-fight-or-win/2014/09/24/6eb0b294-4357-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story.html
* Bernard E. Trainor, the writer, is a retired Marine lieutenant general.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his band of Islamic State zealots received international attention for their brutality and lightning sweep across Iraq, but the United States should know better than to respond with a clarion call to battle.
We have already been burned trying to solve the Rubik’s cube of the Middle East. U.S. actions in the region should remain calculating, patient — and detached.
The Islamic State presents a problem to be managed, not a war to be won. Much of what it occupies in Syria and Iraq is useless desert. The situation is stabilizing, largely because of limited U.S. airstrikes, and the immediate crisis is over. The Iraqi Kurds have stiffened their defenses, and Shiites backed by Iran are defending Baghdad. Even Anbar Province’s Sunni tribes pose a problem for the interlopers.
The Islamic State blitzkrieg can be seen as the latest iteration of the struggle for ascendancy by radical Muslims, but at the core it is a local matter, and brutality is unfortunately part of the package.
The U.S. role should be limited to helping Kurdish forces and the new Baghdad government better organize to keep the pressure on, with U.S. airstrikes contingent on their progress.
* AND IF NECESSARY USE TRUSTWORTHY ARAB TROOPS - AND EUROPEAN AND ASIAN NATO AND SEATO TROOPS - TO PROVIDE BOOTS ON THE GROUND IF THIS EVER BECOMES NECESSARY IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE OIL FIELDS, REFINERIES, PORTS... IN OTHER WORDS... THE ONLY REASON ANYONE CARES ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE FIRST PLACE!
The president’s attempt to form an international posse to assist makes sense, and the results have been reasonably encouraging. France and a fistful of Arab states are already actively engaged. But it is a stalemate in the making.
* SO... IT'S... er... REASONABLY ENCOURAGING AND MAKES... er... SENSE TO... LOCK US INTO A STALEMATE?
* FOLKS... METHINKS THE GENERAL IS BEING... er... DIPLOMATIC.
(*CHUCKLE*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The United States could break the stalemate by introducing ground combat forces, but all that would achieve is the recovery of lost ground. Meanwhile, the Islamic State could dodge and feint, drawing U.S. troops into the Syrian maelstrom. There is no appetite in the United States for that.
* AGAIN... LET THE EUROPEANS FIGHT AND DIE. LET OTHER NATIONS RELIANT UPON MIDDLE EASTERN OIL SEND THEIR YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN TO FIGHT AND DIE!
The idea of destroying the Islamic State, an expression of a centuries-old goal to establish a caliphate in the Muslim world, and restoring stability is nonsense. Stability, in the peaceful sense of the word, is a chimera. More realistic would be to accept a tolerable level of violence within the region so long as no faction that is a direct U.S. threat achieves dominance.
* FRANKLY NONE OF THEM IS A THREAT. CHINA. C*H*I*N*A. CHINA IS A THREAT! NORTH KOREA IS A THREAT! ISIS... ISIL... NOT SO MUCH.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s view is that the Islamic State poses only a “strategic threat . . . long term.” Terrorism, from myriad Islamist groups, is the more clear and present danger.
* CLAPPER HAS A HABIT OF BEING... WRONG.
The situation in Mesopotamia is a violent game of mistrust and self-interest. The Saudis despise the Iranians but will cut deals with them if doing so is in their interest. Iran will play any card necessary to achieve regional hegemony, while Turkey is coy about its own quest for preeminence. The Gulf States talk out of both sides of their mouths. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad uses the Islamic State to create problems for other rebels. Iraq plays at democracy as long as it can subjugate the Sunnis. Shiites and Sunnis fight each other while carrying on intramural warfare with their kinsmen. The double-dealing is almost endless. It doesn’t make sense to us, but it does to the players.
* WHICH IS WHY IT'S NOT WORTH THE BLOOD OF ONE AMERICAN!
After more than a decade of frustration and humiliation, the United States should have learned that the Middle East is no place for Wilsonianism on steroids. Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer on the mean streets of Chicago. He should be wary of journeying too far into a bad neighborhood when he sees one.
* OBAMA VIEWS OUR TROOPS AS PAWNS - NOTHING MORE.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/upcoming-anniversary-october-1st-will-mark-18-years-no-global
According to the datasets used last year, October 1st will mark the 18th year of “no significant warming trend in surface average temperature," says Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science.
And even if the current 18-year trend were to end, it would still take nearly 25 years for average global temperature figures to reflect the change, said Michaels, who has a Ph.D. in ecological climatology and spent three decades as a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
Sooner or later, even Al Gore and the numerous scientists, academics and politicians who agree with him that “Earth has a fever” will have to admit that their climate models predicting catastrophic global warming were off by a long shot, said Michaels, who was also a contributing editor to the United Nations’ second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
“It has to be admitted eventually that too much warming was forecast too fast. That just has to happen. You can’t go on and on and on,” he told CNSNews.com.
“If the surface temperature resumed the warming rate that we observed from, say 1977 through 1998, we would still go close to a quarter of a century without significant net warming because there’s such a long flat period built into the record now. “
But there’s no indication that after 18 years, global warming will resume anytime soon.
Michaels pointed to record Antarctic ice, which “is at its highest extent measured by the current microwave satellite sounding system” since 1978, according to data from the University of Illinois’ Polar Ice Research Center.
“And if you take a close look at the Arctic data, it appears the decline stopped somewhere around 2005/2006, which means we’ve almost had ten years without any net loss in Arctic ice,” he told CNSNews.com.
Nor does it look likely that the next El Nino, which Michaels says is “really weak,” will have much of an effect on global temperatures.
“The much vaunted and predicted El Nino, which would [ordinarily] spike global temperature, is not going according to plan,” Michaels pointed out. “That’s the major known oscillation in global temperature, and we can’t even get that one right in the near term.”
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
In an El Nino, trade winds suppress the upwelling of cold water. “But that doesn’t mean the cold water isn’t still down there,” Michaels explained. “So what happens after an El Nino suppresses the cold upwelling, all that cold water that was sitting down there, which normally would have been dispersed into the tropical Pacific, comes up and so the temperature drops pretty substantially after a major El Nino.
“In fact, you can see that in 1999. We had a very large El Nino in 1998, maybe the biggest one in the 20th century, it’s not completely clear, but it was really, really big. And the next year, the temperatures were way down.
“And so what an El Nino will do is it will give you a one-year or perhaps two-year spike [in temperature]. But the net change is not very much. Now it turns out the lack of warming has gone on for so long that even throwing in a one or two-year spike into it is not going to induce a significant warming trend in that data,” Michaels noted.
Pointing to a Pew survey earlier this year in which Americans listed global warming 19th out of a list of 20 issues they considered as top priorities, Michaels responded to Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent statement that climate change is “the biggest challenge of all that we face right now.”
“I would say that his order of needs is a little bit out of whack,” Michaels told CNSNews.com.
“Given that a cogent political analysis indicates that the loss of control of the House of Representatives by the Democratic Party was the result of their passing the unpopular cap-and-trade bill in 2009 - in the 2010 election they lost 64 seats- you would think that this is kind of a political hot potato," he continued.
“And in fact, our friends in Europe, who are certainly farther Left and "Greener" than we tend to be as a country, are trying to back away from this issue,” he noted, adding that the major heads of state of China, India, Australia, Canada and Germany all declined to join President Obama at the United Nations’ Climate Summit held in New York this week.
“Angela Merkel, the German prime minister, wrote the Framework Convention on Climate Change when she was an East German," Michaels pointed out, but “Germany has resumed building coal-fired power plants because they can’t get enough electricity out of solar energy and windmills.
“We told you so,” he said with a laugh.
“I would also say that the administration’s pronouncement about three weeks ago that the climate agreement that the president would be seeking at the United Nations would not require a majority of two-thirds of the Senate for ratification is on very thin ice… If they are hellbent on going in this direction, they may be headed to legal hell.”
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