Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 28, 2014


Early gym tomorrow... yuck... already dreading it...


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12 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/get-there/wp/2014/10/28/a-father-of-eight-explains-why-he-hasnt-saved-a-penny-for-his-kids-college-education/

* JUST... READ... IT...

October 28, 2014 at 5:45 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://news.sky.com/story/1362022/boston-bombing-suspects-friend-lied-to-fbi

* NOTICE... SKY NEWS... FOREIGN (UK) NEWS...

A college friend of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted of lying to federal investigators.

* HAS HE BEEN SENTENCED YET? (IS HE AN AMERICAN CITIZEN?)

Prosecutors said Robel Phillipos, 21, lied [to FBI agents] about being in Tsarnaev's dorm room while two other friends removed potential evidence three days after the bombing.

His friends, Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, were both charged with obstruction of justice for removing a laptop and a backpack containing fireworks casings emptied of gunpowder. Tazhayakov was convicted by a jury in July. Kadyrbayev entered into a plea deal a month later.

* AND...??? (DETAILS...?!?!)


Phillipos' lawyers ... called on family friend former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis to testify on his behalf. Mr Dukakis told the court that he spoke to Phillipos five days after the attacks. He said the teen told him that he so confused during questioning that he could not remember what he told the agents.

* AGAIN... WHEN'S THE LAST TIME YOU HEARD OF A FORMER REPUBLICAN GOVERNNOR BEING FAMILY FRIENDS OF TERRORISTS?

* THESE... ARE... THE... DEMOCRATS...!!!

Phillipos faces a maximum of eight years for each of the two counts he was convicted. Sentencing is set for 29 January.

* SEEMS LIGHT.

Three people were killed and more than 260 others injured in the 15 April 2013 attack.

* AS I SAY... SEEMS LIGHT.

Tsarnaev is accused along with his older brother of planting two pressure cooker bombs that exploded near the marathon finish line. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed during a shoot-out with police days after the bombings. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges and is awaiting trial.

* PERHAPS FORMER DEMOCRAT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE DUKAKIS WILL OFFER TO TESTIFY AS A "CHARACTER WITNESS" FOR HIS YOUNG FRIEND.

* I WONDER... ARE THE BOSTON PAPERS CARRYING THIS STORY? THE MAINSTREAM AMERICAN MEDIA?

October 28, 2014 at 5:46 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://online.wsj.com/articles/hans-von-spakovsky-here-comes-the-2014-voter-fraud-1414450805

In the past few months, a former police chief in Pennsylvania pleaded guilty to voter fraud in a town-council election.

That fraud had flipped the outcome of a primary election.

(*SIGH*)

Former Connecticut legislator Christina Ayala has been indicted on 19 charges of voter fraud, including voting in districts where she didn’t reside. (She hasn’t entered a plea.)

A Mississippi grand jury indicted seven individuals for voter fraud in the 2013 Hattiesburg mayoral contest, which featured voting by ineligible felons and impersonation fraud.

A woman in Polk County, Tenn., was indicted on a charge of vote-buying — a practice that the local district attorney said had too long “been accepted as part of life” there.

Now come the midterm elections on Nov. 4. ... Unfortunately, we can’t know. But one thing is almost certain: Voter fraud will occur.

Many states run a rickety election process, lacking rules to deter people who are looking to take advantage of the system’s porous security. And too many groups and individuals — including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder — are doing everything they can to prevent states from improving the integrity of the election process.

* YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE! AND YOU KNOW WHY! DEMOCRATS FEEL VOTER FRAUD BENEFITS THEM ON THE WHOLE.

(*SHRUG*)

Polling shows that the November general election will likely have many close races, particularly on the local level. Nothing new there. In 2014, 16 local races in Ohio were decided by one vote or through breaking a tie. In 2013, 35 local races in Ohio were that close.

Voting by non-citizens alone could swing such races.

A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, found that 6.4% of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2% voted in the 2010 midterms.

* 6.4% AIN'T BEANBAG, FOLKS! IMAGINE IF YOU COULD GET 6.4% INTEREST ON YOUR SAVINGS ACCOUNTS?

Since 80% of non-citizens vote Democratic, according to the survey, the authors concluded that these illegal votes were “large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections.” Those that might have been skewed by non-citizen votes included Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the Minnesota race for the U.S. Senate. As a senator, Mr. Franken would cast the 60th vote needed to make ObamaCare law.

* FOLKS... YOU KNOW IT'S TRUE! ONE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A REPUBLICAN TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRUTH OF WHAT YOU'RE READING. (ONE JUST HAS TO BE HONEST WITH ONES SELF...)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 28, 2014 at 6:07 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Kansas and Arizona have put in place new proof-of-citizenship requirements for registration to prevent illegal voting. It is a common-sense and needed reform. In recent weeks North Carolina found more than 100 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote.

* AND YET..

Yet opponents - including the League of Women Voters and Common Cause - are challenging citizenship requirements in the courts.

* WHO ARE THESE WOMEN "IN LEAGUE" WITH? AND WHAT IS THE "COMMON CAUSE" OF THESE PEOPLE? IT SEEMS TO BE PARTISAN... AND IN LEAGUE WITH AND IN COMMON CAUSE WITH DEMOCRATS! (IN EXAMPLE AFTER EXAMPLE AFTER EXAMPLE...)

Some states have also tried to eliminate same-day registration, which is a recipe for fraud since it prevents election officials from verifying the eligibility of voters and the accuracy of voter-registration information. States also are reducing early voting days, a relatively new phenomenon that has its share of election-administration problems.

These moves to shore up election integrity have been resisted by progressives at every turn...

* THEY HAVE BEEN. THIS IS JUST A FACT!

South Carolina’s voter ID law will be in place in the November election, but it cost the state $3.5 million in 2012 to beat Eric Holder’s Justice Department in court.

As John Fund and I outline in our new book on Attorney General Holder, the Justice Department refuses to enforce the federal law requiring states to keep accurate voter rolls — even though a 2012 Pew study found that the rolls are riddled with errors and ineligible voters.

* MAKING... FRAUD... EASIER... TO... COMMIT...!!!

How far are some liberals willing to go in undermining ballot integrity? This month, the conservative guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe caught a director of the “social change” organization Work for Progress and an employee for the Greenpeace environmental group voicing their approval of absentee-ballot theft and fraudulent voting in Colorado.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

* FOLKS... THESE ARE THE DEMOCRATS! (AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN...!!!)

Greenpeace fired the worker who was caught approving voter fraud, but too many on the Left shrug at the prospect of tainted elections. At a Cincinnati “voting rights” rally in March, Rev. Al Sharpton and other liberal activists celebrated Melowese Richardson, who was convicted last year of voter fraud by using her position as a poll worker to vote more than once in the 2012 presidential election. Her five-year prison sentence was amended to five years of probation earlier this year — a delayed wrist-slap that further erodes respect for the ballot box.

* FOLKS... THIS ADMINISTRATION IS A CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE. (OVERSTATED? PERHAPS. BUT HOW CAN MEN AND WOMEN OF INTEGRITY SIT BY AND ALLOW THIS TO CONTINUE? SHOULDN'T THE DEMOCRATS BE PUNISHED...???)

For too long, America has basically used the honor system in the voter-registration and election process. That approach is increasingly being revealed as indefensible in a vibrant democracy, where we should make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

October 28, 2014 at 6:07 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/articles/more-risky-loans-allowed-1414450917

Washington has settled on a perfect credit-allocation strategy to stunt economic growth. Step One: Hand out mortgages with little or no money down. Step Two: Discourage loans to businesses.

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)

Last week we told you about Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt ’s plan to bring back down payments as low as 3% to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government mortgage monsters that helped create the last financial crisis. Along with Mr. Watt’s other initiatives to expand credit, it could lead to another boom and bust housing cycle.

* GEEZUS... FRIGGIN'... CHRIST...!!! (97% MARGIN!)

Now the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators have approved new rules for private mortgage-backed securities that don’t require the underlying loans to have any down payments at all.

* TELL ME HOW A REAL LIFE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE WHO WON THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES AND WANTED TO KEEP IT FOR THE FULL EIGHT YEARS COULD HAVE POSSIBLY DAMAGED AMERICA MORE THAN OBAMA HAS? SERIOUSLY... COME UP WITH SCENARIOS - SCENARIOS WHICH WOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN HIM IMPEACHED.

* FOLKS... IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER OBAMA SEEKS TO SIMPLY "FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE" AMERICA OR SPITEFULLY DESTROY HER; HIS ACTIONS HAVE BY AND LARGE BEEN DISASTROUS!

October 28, 2014 at 6:32 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/28/calibration-issue-in-maryland-voting-machines-swit/

A "calibration issue" in multiple Maryland voting machines is reportedly switching voters’ picks from Republican to Democrat.

* M*U*L*T*I*P*L*E MARYLAND VOTING MACHINES...

“When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the ‘x’ on the candidate I chose — a Republican — but it would put the ‘x’ on the Democrat candidate above it,” said Donna Hamilton, who voted at the Frederick County Center, Watchdog.org reported.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

“This happened multiple times with multiple selections. Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat. Sometimes it required four or five tries to get the ‘x’ to stay on my real selection,” she said.

* AGAIN...

"Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat."

(*SMIRK*)

Queen Anne’s County Sheriff Gary Hofmann, a Republican, said the same thing happened to him when he voted early in Queen Anne’s County. “This is happening here as well. It occurred on two candidates on my machine. I am glad I checked. Many voters have reported this here as well.”

Two other Maryland voters reported the same issue Friday in Anne Arundel County. A Diebold touchscreen voting machine switched their Republican votes to Democrats, Watchdog.org reported.

Joe Torre, election director in Anne Arundel, called it a “calibration issue” involving a single machine...

(*SILENCE*)

A similar issue was reported in a Chicago-area voting machine last week, as a Republican candidate for the Illinois state legislature tried to vote for himself and ended up selecting his Democratic opponent.

“While early voting at the Schaumburg Public Library today, I tried to cast a vote for myself and instead it cast the vote for my opponent,” Jim Moynihan said in a blog he linked to on Twitter. “You could imagine my surprise as the same thing happened with a number of races when I tried to vote for a Republican and the machine registered a vote for a Democrat.”

He said he also tried to vote for fellow Republican Larry Kaifesh in the 8th Congressional District race, but the vote was again cast for the Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth. Mr. Moynihan said he brought the error to the attention of a judge, who determined the machine hadn’t been calibrated correctly.

* AND WILL THERE BE AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION...??? WILL THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR CORRECTLY CALIBRATING THE MACHINES FACE ANY RAMIFICATIONS...???

Jim Scalzitti, deputy communications director for the Cook County clerk’s office, said the machine in question was removed from service to be re-calibrated immediately and that there were no other reports of voters having similar problems.

Mr. Moynihan was eventually able to cast the correct votes.

* EVENTUALLY...

October 28, 2014 at 10:21 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/10/23/now-there-can-be-no-doubt-obamacare-will-increase-non-group-premiums-in-nearly-all-states/

Remember this categorical assurance from President Obama: “We’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year. .  .  . We’ll do it by the end of my first term as president of the United States!”

* OH, YEAH... I REMEMBER... I'M STILL WAITING.

A new study from the well-respected and non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research (and published by Brookings Institution - a liberal think-tank...examined what happened to premiums in the entire non-group market.

The bottom line? In 2014, premiums in the non-group market grew by 24.4% compared to what they would have been without ObamaCare.

Of equal importance, this careful state-by-state assessment showed that premiums rose in all but 6 states (including Washington DC).

The non-group market can only be accurately assessed on a state-by-state basis. ObamaCare creates a single risk pool in each state for non-group coverage. That is, health insurers can sell policies inside or outside the Exchanges but they all are part of the same risk pool. Unlike virtually all other studies that have been conducted to date, this new study examined premium data from both Exchange and non-Exchange plans, i.e., providing a picture of the complete non-group market rather than one segment. This is crucially important since in nearly one third of states (16), Exchange coverage constitutes 40% or less of the entire non-group market.

Of equal importance, unlike prior studies which simply compared pre-ObamaCare premiums in 2013 to actual premiums offered on Exchanges in 2014, this new study isolates the causal impact of ObamaCare statistically by using trend data in each state to figure out what non-group premiums in 2014 would have [most likely] been in the absence of ObamaCare.

Critics could dismiss many other so-called “pre/post” studies by saying “Well, premiums in the non-group have always gone up by a large amount, so what’s happening under ObamaCare is no different.”

* HOWEVER...

Such criticisms cannot be levied at this study. All of the percentage changes shown in the chart below represent the net change attributable to ObamaCare after accounting for all the other factors that would have made premiums go up.

* FOLKS... I URGE YOU TO UTILIZE THE LINK AND READ THE ARTICLE ON THE FORBES SITE WHERE YOU CAN ALSO SEE THE CHARTS!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 28, 2014 at 10:50 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Clearly, the adverse impact of ObamaCare on non-group premiums varies sizably across states. The law is estimated to result in lower premiums in only 6 states. However, it should be noted that while the author presented premium estimates for California and New Jersey, the data for these two states is incomplete due to anomalous data reporting requirements. Thus, the large estimated premium decline of 37.5% in New Jersey likely would be different were full data available, but there is no way of telling by how much.

What is disturbing is to see premium increases in excess of 35% in 9 states, including some of the nation’s largest states (Florida and Texas).

Remember, these are increases above and beyond normal premium trends.

No one can credibly claim that these massive premium increases would have "happened anyway" since the study was specifically designed to isolate the law’s impacts from all the other factors that have driven up premiums in recent years.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Of course, ObamaCare enthusiasts will argue that I’m ignoring all the subsidies provided to Exchange members. It’s certainly true that for those lucky enough to qualify for such subsidies, the typical size of a subsidy in any given state would have been sufficient to protect such individuals from the premium increases shown in the chart above. But that ignores the fact that out of an estimated 13.2 million people covered in the non-group market in second quarter 2014 (Kowalski’s estimate), only about 7 million qualified for subsidies. Thus, there were 6.2 million in the non-group market who had to absorb these premium increases without the benefit of any help from Uncle Sam.

* IN ANY CASE... AS FAR AS THE SUBSIDIES GO... EACH PENNY OF SUBSIDY EQUATES TO FURTHER HERMORRAGE OF THE FEDERAL BUDGET!

The fact that federal taxpayers were handed the "privilege" of having to offset such premium increases using their hard-earned tax dollars should in no way obscure the reality that ObamaCare caused premiums to rise in the first place.

* AND, AGAIN... FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME... SUBSIDIES ARE BAD! B*A*D! I DON'T WANT TO SUBSIDIZE THESE PEOPLE VIA GOVERNMENT! I'LL GIVE TO CHARITY AS I SEE FIT! INCOME REDISTRIBUTION IS NOTHING BUT A FANCY TERM FOR THEFT!

Higher premiums are not what was promised when the law was enacted.

Of equal importance, such subsidies represent a transfer that does not improve the welfare of the nation as a whole.

A dollar given to an Exchange member to offset these higher premiums is simply a dollar taken out of the pocket of another American taxpayer.

Indeed, had premiums not risen in the first place, the amount of subsidies required on the Exchanges could have been roughly 24% lower. Increasing the tab that taxpayers had to pay for such subsidies by roughly one fourth certainly in no way increased the nation’s [fortunes].

In short, it is harder and harder for champions of ObamaCare to ignore the plain truth that this misguided law has increased premiums in the non-group market, a burden borne by millions who have to buy coverage in that market without the benefit of taxpayer subsidies and by the taxpayers who must bankroll subsidies for those who qualify.

As I’ve demonstrated repeatedly, this law creates many more losers than winners. The many millions in the non-group market who are having to pay higher premiums due to ObamaCare are just one slice of a much larger pool of losers.

October 28, 2014 at 10:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/10/27/usa-todays-susan-page-obama-administration-most-dangerous-to-media-in-history/

At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to this set of knives. Speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar, Page called the current White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, a clear reference to the Obama administration’s leak investigations and its naming of Fox News’s James Rosen as a possible “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.

The WHCA convened the event both to strategize over how to open up the byways of the self-proclaimed most transparent administration in history, as well as to compare war stories on the many ways in which it is not.

Correspondents took aim at large-scale “deep background” briefings — attended by up to 40-odd reporters — at which ground rules specify no names for the officials in attendance and no quotations of anything they say.

(*GUFFAW*)

* HEY... STOP LAUGHING... THEY WERE SERIOUS! THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED! I REMEMBER NEWSBITING IT!

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl spoke of covering the Boston Marathon bombings. As the story developed, Karl noted that the White House wasn’t giving out any information at all.

Saturday was an appropriate moment to air such grievances. The day before, President Obama had opened the White House doors to Nina Pham, the Texas nurse who had just completed her recovery from Ebola at the National Institutes of Health. Prior to the session, the White House announced that still photographers would be allowed to document the proceedings. But print reporters and TV cameras would be out in the cold.

In a Friday afternoon chat with the Erik Wemple Blog, recently retired ABC News White House correspondent Ann Compton struggled to fathom the rationale for restricting access, given that the White House has been aggressive in sending the message that it’s fighting Ebola: “She’s been in government medical care for the last how many days?” notes Compton. “And she walks out unexpectedly looking terrific — why wouldn’t you want the world to see that the U.S. is doing what the White House has said? So today makes no sense to me.”

Yet there’s more texture to this access question. Last November, a large group of news organizations sent a letter to the White House protesting limited access for their photographers at newsworthy events involving the president. “The restrictions imposed by the White House on photographers covering these events, followed by the routine release by the White House of photographs made by government employees of these same events, is an arbitrary restraint and unwarranted interference on legitimate news gathering activities. You are, in effect, replacing independent photo-journalism with visual press releases,” read the letter, in part.

* UMM... YES... THAT WAS THE IDEA...

(*SNORT*)

When asked about this stuff, White House spokesman Eric Schultz issued this (on-the-record) response: “We believe in the value of transparency, and that is why we work to provide as much access as we can. That said, the press has a responsibility to always push for more access and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs.”

October 28, 2014 at 11:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391269/plutocratic-populism-pays-victor-davis-hanson

In early October, Barack Obama went to a $32,000-a-head fundraiser at the 20-acre estate of the aptly named billionaire Richie Richman. The day before he charmed his paying audience of liberal one-percenters, Obama had sent out an e-mail alleging that Republicans were “in the pocket of billionaires.”

Does that mean that Republicans who accept cash from billionaire supporters are always in their pockets, but that when the president does likewise, he never is?

In mid-October, Hillary Clinton gave a short lecture at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas bewailing the crushing costs of a university education. “Higher education,” Clinton thundered, “shouldn’t be a privilege for those able to afford it.”

One reason tuition and student indebtedness have soared — UNLV’s tuition is set to go up by 17% next year — is that universities pay exorbitant fees to multimillionaire speakers like Hillary Clinton.

Clinton — or her own foundation — reportedly charged a university foundation $225,000 for a talk lasting less than an hour.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

For that sum, she could have paid the tuition of over 320 cash-strapped UNLV students.

Multibillionaire Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wants amnesty for undocumented workers. In fact, he flew down to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s estate to blast his own country’s immigration policies. But Zuckerberg also pays millions to separate himself from hoi polloi. He recently spent a reported $30 million to buy up houses surrounding his Palo Alto estate as well as other properties. That way he can enlarge his own environment and guarantee that his privacy is not impinged on by the wrong sort of neighbors. Couldn’t he spend a comparable $30 million on affordable housing for illegal aliens, or at least allow a family or two to live next to him to provide easy mentorship about the difficult transition from Oaxaca to Palo Alto?

(*GUFFAW*)

Recently Vice President Joe Biden hit the campaign trail, blasting “corporate profits” and “guys running hedge funds in New York.” According to populist Biden, big-money speculators bear much of the blame for rising “income inequality.”

Aside from the fact that Barack Obama and Joe Biden raised more cash from Wall Street than any other presidential ticket in history, the Biden family is knee-deep in corporate and hedge-fund lucre. Biden’s son Hunter was a top official for a hedge fund — which was co-founded by the senior Biden’s brother James. Biden’s other son, Beau, has been a corporate lawyer in between political stints. The populist Biden family is a synonym for elite crony capitalism and “guys running hedge funds in New York.”

Why do so many self-interested plutocrats indulge in populist rhetoric that is completely at odds with the way they live? Could not Barack Obama blast billionaires somewhere else than at the homes of billionaires? If Hillary Clinton is going to deplore high college costs, could she not settle for $25,000 an hour rather than ten times that? Could not Mark Zuckerberg live among those he champions rather than driving up housing prices by buying a multimillion-dollar housing moat around his tony enclave? If Joe Biden swears that hedge funds and Wall Street are toxic, mightn’t he at least first advise his brother and son to steer clear of such tainted cash?

* WHAT... FUCKING... HYPOCRITES...!!!

Zero interest rates have caused the stock market to spike. Along with globalization, sky-high stock prices have created staggering sums of money that translate into influence and power simply unimagined even in the late 20th century. The Obama administration has ushered in the greatest surge in inequality in the last half-century. The result is that a select few have struck it rich in the stock market as never before, as trillions of dollars have been transferred from zero-interest passbook accounts belonging to the middle class to fabulous speculative stock profits for the top few.

(*NOD*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 28, 2014 at 11:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Such vast sums allow a select elite to be completely exempt from the worries of most Americans about bad neighborhoods, high taxes, poor schools, and joblessness.

It is easy to be utopian when one is never subject to the consequences of one’s own ideology.

If Hillary Clinton had had to borrow thousands of dollars for her daughter’s tuition, she might resent huge college speaking fees like her own.

If Mark Zuckerberg’s kids were to enroll in first grade with mostly non-English-speakers two hours away in Mendota, he might question the value of illegal immigration, or at least its toll on the public-school system.

Populist rants against billionaires or high tuition or hedge funds also buy the very rich and powerful psychological penance. That freedom from guilt and criticism allows a Barack Obama to schmooze thousands of dollars in contributions from billionaires, or a Hillary Clinton to take nearly a quarter-million dollars an hour from universities that hike tuition rates far above the rate of inflation.

* CLINTON REALLY IS A DISGUSTING HUMAN BEING...

Joe Biden will forever be good ol’ populist Joe, given that for each populist rant he delivers, someone in his family is free to indulge in exactly the behavior that he has damned.

(*SNORT*)

Our plutocrats also feel that they deserve certain exemptions to allow them the proper landscapes from which to help "the less-well-off."

How could Obama empathize with those on federal assistance if he didn’t have billionaire cash to get re-elected? Without downtime on Martha’s Vineyard, how could he have got the Affordable Care Act passed? How could Zuckerberg find the proper contemplative privacy to lobby for undocumented workers if dozens of Mexican nationals were playing loud music on either side of his house? How could Clinton address exorbitant tuition if she did not have enough money for private jet travel and serene digs in D.C.?

* AND ELSEWHERE... INCLUDING CHAPPAQUA, NY!

Do not rule out naked self-interest.

* NOPE. I NEVER DO!

Billionaires pay to hear Obama’s boilerplate so they can translate their donations into crony-capitalist deals like Solyndra.

Clinton trolls liberal universities because they are fat sources of campaign money for her 2016 presidential bid.

Biden knows that the more he trashes the rich, the more he can get some of the rich’s money without public scrutiny.

* SIDE NOTE: JUST CONTEMPLATE HOW COMPLETELY IN THE TANK THE MEDIA IS FOR THE DEMS THAT WHILE VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN'S SON HUNTER WAS RECENTLY DISCHARGED FROM THE NAVY RESERVE AFTER TESTING POSITIVE FOR COCAINE... MOST AMERICANS AREN'T AWARE IT THIS?

* HERE... CHECK THIS OUT: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/17/politics/who-is-hunter-biden/index.html

Modern liberalism is an ideology of the super-wealthy in alliance with those who need government assistance — often in opposition to the less liberal middle class, which bears the brunt of higher taxes, more regulations, and zero interest on savings.

The vast growth of local, state, and federal government and their workforces, the huge increase in pensions and benefits, the spectacular rise in the number of people on government support, coupled with zero interest for those with modest savings, represents a huge transference of wealth from the middle class to those classes beneath them — even as the resulting booming stock market has enriched the already rich.

The more liberal the 21st-century multimillionaire sounds, the more likely it is that he believes that not much of his progressive rhetoric applies to himself.

In sum, for the plutocratic class and the politicians they buy, faking populism is now an anti-depressant as well as a wise business investment.

October 28, 2014 at 11:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391262/voter-id-myth-crashes-mona-charen

Democrats want everyone to vote: old, young, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, citizen, non-citizen...

(Wait, what was that last one again? We’ll get to that.)

Voter-ID laws, passed by thirty states so far, are efforts by legislatures to ensure the integrity of votes. Being asked to show a photo ID can diminish several kinds of fraud, including impersonation, duplicate registrations in different jurisdictions, and voting by ineligible people including felons and non-citizens.

* NOTE: THE KEY WORD IS "DIMINISH."

The Democrats have made a number of arguments against voter-ID laws. They argue a) that the problem of voter impersonation or in-person voter fraud is non-existent; b) that black and poor voters are more likely than others to lack a valid ID; and c) that Republicans are attempting to “suppress” the votes of Democratic constituencies in a bid to revive Jim Crow.

To believe a), you must assume that Americans, who engage in widespread tax evasion (an estimated $2 trillion in income goes unreported), insurance fraud (an estimated $80 billion dollar’s worth in 2006), identity theft (15 million victims annually), and thousands of other deceptions and crimes large and small are perfect angels when they step into the voting booth.

* ANYONE BELIEVE THIS...???

(Vote fraud simply “doesn’t exist,” pronounced Attorney General Eric Holder.)

* DOES ANYONE BELIEVE HOLDER BELIEVES THIS...???

It’s extremely difficult to track vote fraud.

Most states put only half-hearted efforts into purging their voter-registration rolls of the dead or those who’ve moved out of state.

Prosecutions for vote fraud are rare.

(But prosecutions for perjury are rare, too — and not because it “doesn’t exist.”)

Earlier this year, the Virginia Voters Alliance found that more than 44,000 people were simultaneously registered to vote in Maryland and Virginia.

(*SIGH*)

Catherine Englebrecht’s True the Vote found some 6.9 million overlapping voter registrations in the 28 states they examined. For those unburdened by conscience who live close to the border, it’s more than possible to vote early and often.

(*SILENCE*)

Being registered in more than one jurisdiction doesn’t prove that you committed fraud, only that you’ve arranged things to permit it or that you’ve overlooked, perhaps by absent-mindedness, this detail of good citizenship. But persuasive evidence that vote fraud is both real and consequential has appeared. A new academic paper published in the journal Electoral Studies provides evidence of voting by non-citizens that directly contradicts the Democrats’ “nothing to see here” mantra.

* I'VE BEEN NEWSBITING ABOUT THE PAPER SINCE IT WAS RELEASED. NATIONWIDE WE'RE LOOKING AT 6.4% FRAUD IN THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

Voter-ID laws will not prevent non-citizens from voting. Green-card holders and even illegal aliens get driver’s licenses. But that’s not an argument against voter ID. It’s an argument for issuing driver’s licenses that specify non-citizenship.

* YEP!

As for blacks being “targeted” by voter-ID laws, a study by Reuters found almost no difference (2% versus 3%) in the number of white and black voters who lacked ID.

Voting is a semi-sacred act of civic religion. Trust that only those eligible are determining our future as a nation is the foundation of civic peace. Voter-ID laws should be just one part of ensuring voter integrity.

When Democrats resist those measures, it only feeds suspicion that they’re trying to steal elections.

* "SUSPICION" MY ASS!

October 28, 2014 at 11:38 PM

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