Friday, October 31, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 31, 2014


HAPPY HALLOWEEN...!!!

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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-snow-possible-weather-story-20141031-story.html

Halloween started with a record snowfall for many Chicago-area residents. As of 8 a.m. Friday, O'Hare and Chicago Rockford Airport had one-tenth of an inch of snow, the most snow on record for Oct. 31 for the city of Chicago, according to the National Weather Service.

* GLOBAL WARMING...

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/arctic-halloween-weather-snow-record-lows-eastern-u-s-n238116

An arctic blast is giving millions of people a real reason to shiver on Halloween.

Trick-or-treaters from the Midwest to the Mississippi Valley to the East Coast face a deep chill Friday, and strong, freezing winds are taking hold across the Great Lakes region...

The southern Appalachians are expected to get up to 8 inches of snow by Saturday morning, forecasters say.

Record low temperatures are expected as far south as Miami.

* MORE... er... GLOBAL WARMING...

(*SNICKER*)

http://www.tribtown.com/view/story/8cd7491f5dbc415b82f45dd0eb1ef8ff/AL--Alabama-Weather-Cold-Air

A freeze warning has been issued for all of northern Alabama as cold air begins to push into the state.

The freeze warning issued by the National Weather Service also includes some parts of central Alabama, including areas just north of Montgomery.

Forecasters say temperatures are expected to plunge into the early 20s in some parts of the state by early Sunday morning.

* G*L*O*B*A*L W*A*R*M*I*N*G... DOES... NOT... EXIST...!!!

October 31, 2014 at 2:15 PM
michellez said...

It feels like the late 1970s again! (Economically, too, lol!)

October 31, 2014 at 2:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/Federal-Government-Made-20-Billion-in-Secret-Purchases-in-Recent-Months-280997562.html

The federal government has spent at least $20 billion in taxpayer money this year on items and services that it is permitted to keep secret from the public, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team.

The purchases, known among federal employees as “micro-purchases,” are made by some of the thousands of agency employees who are issued taxpayer-funded purchase cards.

* LET ME GUESS: SHABBY AUDITING (IF ANY AUDITING) AND LITTLE (IF ANY) OVERSIGHT.

The purchases, in most cases, remain confidential and are not publicly disclosed by the agencies. A sampling of those purchases, obtained by the I-Team via the Freedom of Information Act, reveals at least one agency used those cards to buy $30,000 in Starbucks Coffee drinks and products in one year without having to disclose or detail the purchases to the public.

* WE NEED TO KILL THESE PEOPLE.

The I-Team’s findings have been the subject of a Congressional hearing and created scrutiny from taxpayer watchdogs for the Department of Homeland Security, which made the Starbucks purchases and declines to publicly detail them.

After reviewing the I-Team’s findings, Rep. John Mica (R-FL), chair of a U.S House Oversight subcommittee said, “When you have $10,000 being spent at one Starbucks by DHS employees in one city in six months, someone is abusing the purchasing permission that we have given them."

Anne Richards, an agency auditor, told Mica and committee members, "Most of the purchases seem to be legitimate use of the cards.” She said, “We will be looking at all of those purchase. And as part of our audit ... we will be looking at the types of purchases in which coffee shops jump out at you.”

Some of the Starbucks purchases cost less than $40, indicating a potential small-scale, individual gift-cards or drink purchases.

* MONEY LAUNDERING. (*SHRUG*) PURE AND SIMPLE.

Brian Miller, a former Inspector General for the U.S. General Services Administration, said the coffee purchases raise concerns. “I don’t know the agency’s needs or contingencies, but going to Starbucks seems like a really hard sell,” he said.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Sy Lee said, “These purchases were made for various reasons, following standard purchase card policy and guidance. The Department of Homeland Security is required to follow the Federal Acquisition Regulation when using appropriated funds to purchase supplies or services on behalf of the federal government. To ensure accountability, all purchase card transactions are approved in accordance with DHS purchase card policy.”

* I'VE NEVER MET SY LEE... BUT I WANT HIM DEAD.

(*SHRUG*)

At an October hearing of the U.S. House Oversight Committee - a hearing triggered in part by the findings of the I-Team - federal auditors revealed instances of misuse of “micro-purchase” authority by the U.S. Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Labor Department audit showed a government purchase card was used for JC Penney clothing. The EPA audit showed a credit card holder used the card for a gym membership.

Miller said he unearthed instances of “micro-purchase” malfeasance at the General Services Administration, too. “We’ve had a case where a high-level executive used the purchase card for hotel rooms and spas,” he said. “It was a purely personal (purchase).”

* WHO IS THIS HIGH-LEVEL EXECUTIVE?

Miller said if federal agencies must make large coffee purchases, they should use the traditional federal procurement system, to ensure the best value for taxpayers.

An I-Team review of federal agency purchase records shows each major federal agency spends millions of dollars a year on “micro-purchases.” The General Services Administration and Department of Interior each shared details about the “micro-purchase” items bought by their agency employees, but [most] other federal agencies declined.

* I URGE YOU TO READ THE LAME EXCUSE GIVEN - SEE THE LINK!

October 31, 2014 at 2:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://online.wsj.com/articles/a-lesson-from-my-great-aunt-1414708082

On a bookshelf in my home in a glass-and-brass frame I keep my great-aunt’s Ellis Island health card.

It’s cardboard, about as big as your hand.

She wore it on her coat during her nine-day journey from Ireland.

Mary Jane Byrne, last residence Glenties; SS California out of Londonderry, 1909.

Every day the ship’s surgeon (possibly brusquely, probably officiously) examined her for signs of acute or long-term illness. The card noted her details — immigrant, steerage, age about 20 — and other facts.

On the back it says, “Keep this Card to avoid detention at Quarantine and in Railroads in the United States.”

If she failed the physicals she would be held at Ellis Island or sent back. There’s a little notch to mark each day the doctor found her healthy. In the end there were nine.

She disembarked at Ellis Island where, so enraged at this crude, assaultive violation of her civil liberties — being subjected to intimate questioning by a stranger, feeling harassed by the daily threat of rejection and expulsion, being, in effect, immigrant-shamed—she got a lawyer, sued the U.S. government, and, with Emma Goldman and Floyd Dell, started a civil-liberties movement that upended American immigration law.

Wait, that’s not what happened!

(*GUFFAW*)

She accepted with grace the needs and demands of her new nation, took no offense, and acknowledged the utility of a quarantine or ban.

Why would America be bringing in sick people who could spread disease?

* WHY INDEED...

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 31, 2014 at 4:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

[My grandmother settled in Brooklyn near the Navy Yard and became a maid, a job she worked as a true profession - for half a century! Thus was America built.

(*NOD*)

The card she wore on her coat? She kept it as a souvenir. She didn’t know it was a relic of "abuse," she thought it was a first palpable sign of citizenship. And so, 50 years later, she passed it on to me.

* GOD BLESS MARY JANE BYRNE - AMERICAN!

I miss such humility, don’t you?

* YES. YES I DO.

An American nurse returns from Sierra Leone after treating Ebola patients. She did that on her vacation. We are proud of her. After she lands at Newark Airport she is hustled into quarantine. She is greatly shocked and indignant, loudly protests in the media. Her rights are being violated, her treatment is “inhumane.” By that she perhaps meant uncomfortable — a tent, paper scrubs, no shower. It was all on-the-fly and disorganized, a state scrambling to do what the federal government would not.

The nurse got sprung and is currently in Maine, refusing quarantine, threatening legal action, and gaily bicycling past media scrums. (I see a future in politics!)

Should she have been quarantined? Of course! [Why?] Because she is at higher than normal risk of developing and transmitting a deadly virus!

* FOLKS... JUST FOR THE SAKE OF FULL DISCLOSURE... I'VE CHANGED A FEW PERIODS TO EXCLAMATION MARKS. (*WINK*)

She has been tested for the disease, tests came back negative, and she has no symptoms. But — do we need to keep saying this? — the same was true of Thomas Duncan, the Liberian visitor who later developed Ebola and died.

* YEP. WE NEED TO KEEP SAYING THIS.

As a doctor said, it takes time for the viral load to become big enough to register. The nurse probably won’t get sick — she looks like a person who knows how to protect herself — but why not be careful?

* EXACTLY...!!!

The nurse’s case of course makes us think of the New York City doctor who came back from Guinea a few weeks ago after helping people there. He ran all over New York — subways, restaurants, bowling alley — before he came down with Ebola. The New York Post this week quoted law-enforcement officials saying the doctor at first claimed he’d self-quarantined, then admitted he hadn’t. But to be blithely bopping around when he knew he might be carrying a dread illness whose spread would concern an entire city — that was, and I hope I’m not breaching protocols here, discourteous.

(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

It wasn’t nice of him to scare everyone like that.

* A TRUE DOUCHE.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 31, 2014 at 4:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

It would have been gracious if the nurse, hearing of heightened public anxiety, and concerned for the safety of others, had patiently accepted the situation and expressed understanding. Instead she, and the sick doctor, acted as if, when a microbe meets a respected and altruistic health-care professional, it, like the general public, is expected to bow.

Doctors Without Borders suggests those returning from health-care work in West Africa not go to work for 21 days. The military will quarantine U.S. troops back from West Africa for 21 days. Why can’t we have an overall national policy that establishes this? Why are the states forced to do it — then pressured not to?

* ONE WORD: OBAMA!

* O*B*A*M*A...!!!

It doesn’t seem to matter if quarantined individuals are at home by themselves, with a cop posted at the front door, or alone in another setting. The only point is that they not endanger anybody.

* SOUNDS REASONABLE...!!!

The only argument against a quarantine that makes sense is that the decision might dissuade U.S. health workers from going to West Africa. It can easily be answered. Pass a law to pay everyone’s full salary while they’re quarantined. Make it a free vacation. Get them every kind of benefit and service possible for those three weeks. And then when they’re well, thank them publicly. Have them in the balcony at the next State of the Union!

Three weeks off and the thanks of a grateful nation. That’s not a disincentive, it’s an incentive.

* I "GET" THE POINT MS. NOONON IS ATTEMPTING TO MAKE... BUT, FRANKLY... I GIVE BLOOD SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR AND HAVE BEEN DOING SO FOR DECADES. I EXPECT NO STANDING OVATION. I EXPECT NO MONETARY REWARD - EVEN THOUGH NO DOUBT MY DONATED BLOOD IS CHARGED TO THE PATIENT! THESE MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS WHO VOLUNTEER THEIR TIME ABROAD... IT'S CALLED VOLUNTEERING FOR A REASON. SUCK IT UP. THAT SAID, ANYONE WHO SEES FIT TO START A CHARITY WITH THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF PAYING FOR VOLUNTEERS' QUARANTINES... GOOD LUCK! I MAY EVEN DONATE!

It must be noted that all this — the quarantine argument, the travel ban — is another expression of the deep, tearing distance between America’s professional and political elites, who operate as if they are estranged from common sense, and normal people, who are becoming more estranged from the elites, their oblivious and politicized masters.

* FOCUS, NOW... PAY ATTENTION...

That distance has been growing all my adult life...

(*NOD*)

...but the Ebola argument has brought it into sharper relief.

The elites should start twigging onto it. They are no longer immediately respected, their guidance is not reflexively taken. They seem more immersed in political thinking — what is the ideologically enlightened position to take, where’s the boss on it? — than in protecting public health.

* EXACTLY. (WHEN HOW TO DEAL WITH EBOLA BECOMES A PARTISAN POLITICAL - IDEOLOGICAL - FIGHT... WE'RE ENDANGERING OUR CHILDREN!

All this will be part of the story on Tuesday, in the elections. It is hard to believe you can patronize people, and play them, and they will not, first chance they get, sharply rebuke you.

* WE... SHALL... SEE...

(THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT OF NOONAN'S LOGIC BEING THE FACT THAT THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT IS JUST A SHADE LESS... er... SHADY... THAN THE DEMOCRATS ARE.)

October 31, 2014 at 4:25 PM

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