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2015
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February
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- He Lived Long... and Prospered
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 27, 2015
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 26, 2015
- The Clock is Ticking on the Future of the Internet
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, February 25, 2015
- Is Your Beloved Blog Host Right... or Wrong... Con...
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 23, 2015
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 21 & 22, 2015
- For Mrs. Clinton, Does Charity Begin at Home?
- Peggy Noonan (and yours truly) on The Atlantic's E...
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 20, 2015
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 19, 2015
- Even if ONLY Michelle Reads This... I'm Posting It!
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 16, 2015
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 14 & 15, 2015
- How'bout "Mothers Against Obama"? (Drunk Illegals ...
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 13, 2015
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 12, 2015
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, February 10, 2015
- The Difference Between a Scumbag Like Ron Fournier...
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 9, 2015
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Feb. 7 & 8, 2015
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, February 6, 2015
- 26 Ways the Media Botched Their Reporting on the L...
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, February 5, 2015
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, February 2, 2015
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February
(26)
About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
14 comments:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/02/gallup-ceo-number-of-full-time-jobs-as-percent-of-population-is-lowest-its-ever-been-video/
Gallup CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton doubled-down on his comments earlier in the week on the misleading Obama unemployment rate.
“The number of full-time jobs, and that’s what everybody wants, as a percent of the total population, is the lowest it’s ever been...
"The other thing that is very misleading about that number is the more people that drop out, the better the number gets. In the recession we lost 13 million jobs. Only 3 million have come back. You don’t see that in that number.”
* FOLKS... HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I EXPLAINED THIS...?
(*SHRUG*)
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/02/05/five-infants-from-palatine-daycare-center-diagnosed-with-measles/
Cook County and Illinois public health officials have begun investigating a cluster of measles cases linked to a daycare center in Palatine.
* GEEZUS... EVEN I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED THAT OBAMA WOULD BRING BACK THE MEASLES...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/4/army-ranger-prep-course-passed-5-out-26-women/
The U.S. Army’s preparatory course for the next Ranger School cycle ended with 5 out of 26 women completing the course. All were officers.
Out of 122 soldiers to start the course, 48 percent passed. There were 43 male dropouts in addition to the 21 women, Army Times reported Wednesday.
The army considers its two-week Army National Guard Ranger Training and Assessment Course to be a reliable litmus test for which soldiers are likely to have a chance at passing Ranger School. The army hopes that 40 women will pass the preparatory course between now and April.
“This first iteration of an integrated RTAC has provided significant lessons learned as we conduct a deliberate and professional way forward to the integrated assessment in April,” Maj. Gen. Scott Miller, commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence, Fort Benning, said in a statement, Army Times reported.
Any female soldiers who attend Ranger School in April will be tested on a variety of skills, including land navigation, a Combat Water Survival Assessment, the Ranger Physical Assessment and a 12-mile road march. There is also a 62-day course comprised of jungle, mountain and swamp phases.
The next RTAC will begin at Fort Benning, Georgia, in two weeks, the newspaper reported.
* FUNNY... I'M GUESSING YOU FOLKS HAVE THE SAME BASIC QUESTIONS I HAVE... AND YET NONE OF THEM ARE ADDRESSED.
* QUESTIONS LIKE... IS THIS THE SAME COURSE THE ARMY HAS BEEN OPERATING FOR YEARS? IF SO... HOW MANY YEARS? DO MEN AND WOMEN FACE THE EXACT SAME COURSE?
* HEY... MORE POWER TO 'EM IF THEY CAN PASS... BUT THESE ARE PRETTY BASIC QUESTIONS I'M ASKING AND NONE ARE ANSWERED. THAT'S A BAD SIGN.
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/04/oh-shes-going-down-rand-paul-comes-out-swinging-against-loretta-lynchs-nomination/
Sen. Rand Paul will oppose — very publicly — the nomination of U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States.
* AS SHOULD ALL SENATE REPUBLICANS... (AND IN A PERFECT WORLD... ALL SENATE DEMOCRATS!)
The Kentucky Republican unveiled his opposition to Lynch on Greta Van Susteren’s On The Record program on Fox News last night.
Earlier Wednesday, in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, Breitbart News watched as the senator’s legal and press team briefed him final time before the interview. Sergio Gor, Paul’s communications director, his press secretary Eleanor May and attorney Brian Darling were all present.
Paul asked the team about Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) question during Lynch’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing about whether she’d oppose using a drone to kill an American citizen on American soil.
When Paul heard about her non-answer (she wouldn’t commit that the federal government does not have such authority) he was incredulous.
* FOLKS... THIS SHOULDN'T BE A REPUBLICAN VS. DEMOCRAT THING. (AND YET IT IS... THE DEMS WILL SUPPORT HER NO MATTER WHAT!)
(*SIGH*)
Furthermore, Paul was appalled that Lynch came out in favor of President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty and the use of asset forfeiture — where the federal government seizes people’s property sometimes with flimsy reasoning, something even the Obama administration has offered slight opposition to — and then told his office staff he’s going to oppose her and aim to derail her nomination chances. “Oh, she’s going down,” Paul said to the room.
* FROM HIS LIPS TO GOD'S EAR!
“I think ideally you want an attorney general who, if there were a problem, would be independent and objective looking at the executive branch,” Paul said in a previous interview with Breitbart News this past weekend aboard a flight to Dallas, Texas, where he had several speaking engagements and publicly welcomed Texas GOP chairman Steve Munisteri to his likely 2016 presidential campaign.
* YEP. THAT'S WHAT THE JOB ENTAILS.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
"That’s kind of what you want an attorney general to do. I’m concerned that a big part of her fame as a federal prosecutor was through civil forfeiture. She was asked specifically about this by Sen. Lee, and her response was ‘oh, everything is fine, it’s done with a court order.’ She seems to not quite understand that innocent people are having their stuff taken by government – their cars, their money, their hotels, their stuff is being confiscated by government even if they’re never charged or even if they’re never convicted."
* APPARENTLY PAUL UNDERSTANDS THE LAW - NOT SIMPLY THE CONCEPT - WITH MORE CLARITY AS A DOCTOR THAN LYNCH DOES AS A MEMBER OF THE BAR!
Lynch didn’t seem to grasp that point and this is a week after parts of the administration said they were not going to enforce some of the civil forfeiture.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Paul added that while “that alone” (Lynch’s position on civil forfeiture) would be "enough for him" to oppose her nomination, her position on Obama’s executive amnesty was even more troubling. “The separation of powers is probably the most important underpinning of our constitutional system,” Paul said last week. “If her position is that the executive branch can write laws or amend laws, that would be a real problem with me.”
* AGAIN... FOLKS... THIS SHOULD BE A NON-PARTISAN ISSUE. THE FACT THAT IT'S NOT... TELLS YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PRESENT STATE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Paul isn’t a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee so he didn’t sit in on the hearings. He joins Cruz, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) in announcing his opposition. Cruz has called on Senate Republicans to join together in public opposition to Lynch’s nomination until Obama reverses his executive amnesty.
(*THUMBS UP*)
“For several months now, I have called on the Senate majority leader to halt confirmations of every nominee executive and judicial, other than vital national security positions, unless or until the president rescinds his unconstitutional amnesty,” Cruz told Politico in an interview. “We have an opportunity in front of us right now with Loretta Lynch — a nominee for attorney general — who has fully embraced and flat-out promised to implement the unconstitutional amnesty.”
Sen. Sessions, another senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the chairman of that committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, came out in public opposition to Lynch’s nomination right after she wrapped her testimony, saying, "The legal opinion attempting to justify this circumvention of Congress was issued by the Attorney General’s Office of Legal Counsel. At the outset of this nomination process, I said that no Senator should vote to confirm anyone for this position — the top law enforcement job in America — who supported the President’s unlawful actions. Congress must defend its constitutional role, which is clearly threatened. Unfortunately, when asked today whether she found the President’s actions to be ‘legal and constitutional,’ Ms. Lynch said that she did. I therefore am unable to support her nomination."
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
The Senate’s number two Republican, Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, announced his opposition to Lynch: “While she has an impressive record as United States Attorney, as you know, she will become the chief advocate for the President’s policies as Attorney General, and her testimony expressing support for the President’s unconstitutional executive action, and for her support for a number of the President’s other policies, make it impossible for me to vote for her nomination.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has told Politico that “absolutely” he would let Lynch have a floor vote.
“I can’t imagine any circumstance in which a president’s nominee for a Cabinet position would not be given a courtesy of a vote on the floor of the Senate,” McConnell said.
But if McConnell allows her to the floor, he’d almost certainly be allowing her confirmation — even if he personally votes against her. Doing so may be considered by many who supported his re-election efforts against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes a violation of a pre-election promise McConnell made to voters and the public that any nominee for Attorney General Lynch hadn’t been picked yet who supports Obama’s executive amnesty shouldn’t be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
* WHICH REPUBLICANS WOULD VOTE FOR LYNCH? HOW COULD SHE BE CONFIRMED...??? I'M NOT FOLLOWING THE AUTHOR'S CONJECTURE HERE.
“As attorney general, Eric Holder too often put political and ideological commitments ahead of the rule of law,” McConnell said in his pre-election statement. “That’s not something the American people expect in the nation’s highest law-enforcement official, and it’s something Mr. Holder’s replacement should commit to avoiding at all costs as a condition of his or her confirmation — whether it relates to the President’s acting unilaterally on immigration or anything else.”
McConnell’s office refuses to say whether the Majority Leader will personally support or oppose Lynch’s nomination until the Senate Judiciary Committee makes an official recommendation. But Paul also vowed to block a pro-amnesty AG nominee (so did Cruz, Lee and Sessions) before the election hours before McConnell joined him. Given their close relationship due to Paul’s work to help McConnell through a GOP primary in Kentucky last year, Paul’s very public opposition to Lynch could open the floodgates in the Senate.
Paul frequently uses Senate procedures aggressively when he wants something done, for example leading a 13-hour talking filibuster against drones on the very question Lynch didn’t answer from Cruz. It remains to be seen if he, or anyone else, will go to those lengths on this nomination battle.
But there’s definitely buzz on Capitol Hill that it just might come to that because the support of even a few Republicans in the Senate, potentially Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) or Jeff Flake (R-AZ) could ensure Lynch’s confirmation even if all the other Republicans vote no.
* THEY WOULDN'T DARE.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/brian-williams-admits-that-his-story-of-coming-under-fire-while-in-iraq-was-false/2015/02/04/d7fe32d0-acc0-11e4-9c91-e9d2f9fde644_story.html
* AH... AND NOW TO OUR SCUMBAG OF THE WEEK...
NBC News anchor Brian Williams conceded on Wednesday that a story he had told about being under fire while covering the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was false.
Williams said he was not aboard a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire and forced down — a story he retold as recently as last week during a televised tribute to a retired soldier during a New York Rangers hockey game.
* AND SO FAR... HE HASN'T BEEN FIRED... (AMAZING... ISN'T IT?!)
On “NBC Nightly News” Wednesday evening, Williams read a 50-second statement apologizing for his characterization of the episode. “After a groundfire incident in the desert during the Iraq war invasion, I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” he said.
* A "MISTAKE...???" YOU LIED! DELIBERATELY! (AGAIN AND AGAIN!)
NBC has not said whether he will face discipline for perpetuating the false story.
* I WOULD EXCLAIM MY TRADEMARKED "UNFRIGGIN'BELIEVABLE," BUT... UNFORTUNATELY... IT'S ALL TOO BELIEVABLE!
(*SILENECE*)
* THE LYING SCUMBAG CONTINUED...
“It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women in the air crews who were also in that desert. I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by [rocket-propelled grenade] fire. I was instead in a following aircraft. . . . This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and, by extension, our brave military men and women, veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not.”
* YOU... PIECE... OF... SHIT...
Williams’s apology came after the Stars and Stripes newspaper contacted crew members of the Chinook helicopter that Williams had said he was aboard when it was hit by two rockets and small-arms fire. They said that Williams was not aboard the aircraft during the incident at the onset of the war in March 2003. They said Williams arrived on another, undamaged helicopter an hour after the crippled Chinook had landed.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams told the newspaper. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
* NO, SCUMBAG... WHAT YOU "WOULD NOT HAVE CHOSEN" IS TO GET CAUGHT. PERIOD. END OF STORY. (YOU DOUCHE!)
In the hockey broadcast last week, Williams told viewers, “The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG. Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
(*SNORT*)
* THIS GUY SHOULD BE COMMITTED! (TO A MENTAL INSTITUTION!) HE... MADE... IT... ALL... UP...!!! (AND YET "NBC NEWS HAS NOT YET DECIDED WHETHER HE WILL "FACE DISCIPLINE.")
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Williams’s claim of surviving an air attack bothered several soldiers familiar with air operations at the time, including Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the helicopter that carried the NBC News crew. “No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” he told the newspaper. The soldier’s complaints prompted Williams to issue his first apology Wednesday afternoon on the “NBC Nightly News” Facebook page.
“I spent much of the weekend thinking I’d gone crazy,” Williams wrote. “I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in ’08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp.”
* DOES HE ACTUALLY BELIEVE ANYONE IS BUYING THIS...???
He added, “Because I have no desire to fictionalize my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatize events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area — and the fog of memory over 12 years — made me conflate the two, and I apologize.”
* UH... FOLKS... THIS SON OF A BITCH THINKS THAT WE'RE ALL STUPID! (AND SO FAR NBC NEWS SEEMS READY TO MAKE THAT SAME BET!)
He continued, “Nobody’s trying to steal anyone’s valor. Quite the contrary: I was and remain a civilian journalist covering the stories of those who volunteered for duty.”
* HE "CONTINUED," ALL RIGHT; CONTINUED LYING!
* WHAT A FAKE, PHONY, FRAUD!
The episode dates to a report by Williams on March 26, 2003. During the prime-time “Dateline NBC,” he recounted the dangers faced by U.S. helicopters. But in that broadcast, he noted that the helicopter that was hit was not the one he was aboard. Over footage of a damaged Chinook, he said. “That hole was made by a rocket- grenade, or RPG. It punched cleanly through the skin of the ship, but amazingly it didn’t detonate. . . . We learned [the helicopter] was shot at by some of those waving civilians.”
But over the years, the story began to morph into an incident that involved Williams himself.
Williams has told the [false] helicopter-under-fire story before.
In a 2013 appearance on David Letterman’s talk show, he said, “Two of the four helicopters were hit, by ground fire, including the one I was in, RPG and AK-47.”
A somewhat ambiguous recounting appears in “Operation Iraqi Freedom: The Inside Story,” a book written by NBC Enterprises in 2003. That account has Williams in the helicopter and details such as the grenade round grazing a crewman’s face.
* OH... MY... FRIGGIN'... GOD...!!!
It’s unclear in the book which Chinook Williams was riding in, but he comments: “There was some symbolism in all of this. A Vietnam-era RPG going clean through the tail of a Vietnam-era Chinook helicopter.” And a caption describes a photo taken inside a helicopter, saying “With NBC anchor Brian Williams . . . aboard, Army Chinook helicopters are forced to make a desert landing after being attacked by Iraqi Fedayeen.”
(*SMIRK*)
Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on the Chinook that was hit, told Stars and Stripes: “It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it. It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.”
* FOLKS... BRIAN WILLIAMS IS A PIECE OF SHIT. HIS BOSSES ARE PIECES OF SHIT. NBC IS A PIECE OF SHIT NETWORK. PERIOD.
Reynolds told the newspaper that Williams and the NBC cameramen arrived in a helicopter 30 to 60 minutes after his damaged Chinook made a rolling landing at an Iraqi airfield and skidded off the runway into the desert.
* AGAIN... PIECE OF SHIT...
http://www.stripes.com/news/us/brian-williams-apology-leaves-out-key-details-of-iraq-incident-1.327935
* FROM STARS AND STRIPES, FOLKS...
Apologies by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams Wednesday for his false claim of being on a helicopter forced down by Iraqi rocket fire in 2003 left out key details...
* SURPRISE, SURPRISE!
(*SMIRK*)
...and made misleading claims about his proximity to the incident, according to soldiers who were there at the time.
* AND YET NBC STILL HASN'T FIRED HIM...
Williams admitted on air that he was not on the Chinook that was struck by enemy fire, saying he was “instead on a following aircraft” and writing a Facebook apology to soldiers saying “I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG.” But Army flight crews told Stars and Stripes the NBC anchor was actually flying with a different helicopter company altogether — in a different direction, and linked to the attacked unit by radio only.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The wording appeared to be another example of the anchor muddling the facts or providing misleading details of the incident that he covered in the opening days of the Iraq invasion. Since the 2003 incident, he has written that he “came under fire” and implied that his Chinook was forced down due to an attack...
(*SILENCE*)
“I think it is misleading” for Williams to say his aircraft was following behind the Chinook hit by two rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire, said David Luke, a retired soldier from Texas who was a flight engineer with a company of the helicopters under the 159th Aviation Regiment, which was known as Hercules and based out of Savannah, Ga.
(The company carrying NBC and the company that was attacked typically flew sorties one hour apart to supply forward positions as the U.S. pushed toward Baghdad, though they happened to pass in the air before the incident, he said.)
Luke said his formation of three Chinooks was carrying Williams and his NBC crew back toward Kuwait when they spotted a white Iraqi pickup truck, which stopped to watch the aircraft. They flew past quickly and continued on. Soon after, Luke’s formation passed another company of Chinooks based out of Germany known as Big Windy heading in the opposite direction toward Baghdad, he said. Luke’s Hercules Chinooks, carrying Williams and the NBC crew, soon heard over the radio that the Big Windy company they had passed came under fire from the pickup truck, he said.
Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was a flight engineer on the Chinook carrying NBC, said the TV news crew placed a microphone in one of the helicopter’s headsets and later broadcast clips of the radio reports from the Chinook company that was attacked. Luke’s unit then ran into an approaching sandstorm that forced them to change course and return north in an attempt to find a safe haven at the forward operating base Rams, a Spartan and hastily set-up post to the south of Baghdad, Luke said.
“I have a feeling that he didn’t have a choice [but to apologize],” Luke said. “I don’t think it would ever of happened [otherwise]. He would have told that war story until he was on his dying bed.”
Others were glad Williams apologized.
When reached Thursday, Mike O’Keeffe, who was the door gunner on the Chinook hit by RPGs, said he was more or less satisfied with the apology and no longer wanted to press the issue by making public comments.
“I understand your interest and very much appreciate you getting the truth out there, but from my perspective, Mr. Williams has been outed and has enough to deal with,” O’Keeffe wrote in a message to Stars and Stripes. “Guess I just don’t want to kick the guy when he is down. Though he wordsmithed his apology to downplay what he did, he did recant and I am satisfied.”
* FORGIVENESS IS FINE. BUT IT MUST BE "PAID FOR" VIA PUNISHMENT. WILLIAMS NEEDS TO BE FIRED. PERIOD.
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/02/05/sharyl-attkisson-brian-williams-not-alone-hillary-clinton-lied-about-being-shot-at-in-bosnia/
In the wake of NBC Anchor Brian Williams apologizing for a story that he has told a number of times in which he falsely claims to have been in a helicopter that was shot at by a rocket-propelled grenade, former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson shared a similar story about presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton with WPHT morning host Chris Stigall in November of 2014.
* I REMEMBER THIS! (AS WITH MOST NEWS CRITICAL OF CLINTON THE MSM QUICKLY SWEPT IT UNDER THE RUG.)
“I had come home from an overseas trip vacation and my husband says, ‘when you went to Bosnia 12 years ago with the First Lady, were you shot at?’ and I’m like ‘No. I think that I would know if we were shot at.”
* MOST... PEOPLE... WOULD...
(*SMILE*)
The trip was one in which the two women were with the First Daughter, Sinbad, and among others Sheryl Crow, and was one that Hillary had called a “work trip” and Attkisson remembers as “a lovely thing.”
* YES... A LOVELY TAXPAYER SPONSORED "WORK TRIP."
“No, she must have made another trip there, because she’s not talking about our trip”, said Attkisson when asked by her husband if she was sure that she had not been shot at on that trip. “I mean it was a hostile area and they told us there was a slight chance there could be hostilities, but if anybody had shot at us, I mean, it wasn’t any place where she had to be. We would have landed somewhere else if someone was shooting at us. We wouldn’t have landed among sniper fire and ran to a car.”
Attkisson still has the video from her story notes that compared what Clinton said happened vs. what she says actually happened.
“The video showed, and I thought that this was a pretty good way to explain it — I put her in a box saying ‘we get off the plane and we had to duck and run for cover and there was sniper fire and then I show the video of what was really happening and she’s getting off the plane and she’s waving, shaking hands with a little school girl...”
* YEP! (*GUFFAW*) I REMEMBER THIS! (AND IF YOU DON'T... AGAIN... IT'S BECAUSE THOSE WHO CONTROL ACCESS TO WHAT YOU KNOW AND DON'T KNOW DIDN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW IT!)
* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)
http://buchanan.org/blog/derail-fast-track-15529
Last November, Republicans grew their strength in Congress to levels unseen since 1946. What united the party and rallied the nation was the GOP’s declared resolve to stand up to an imperious president.
Give us powerful new majorities, said John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, and we shall halt these usurpations of Congressional power.
And, so, what is the first order of business now in the Ways and Means Committee of Paul Ryan and Senate Finance Committee of Orrin Hatch?
“The first thing we ought to do,” says Ryan, “is pass trade promotion authority.”
Trade promotion authority, or “fast track,” is a synonym for Congress’s surrender of all rights to amend trade treaties, and a commitment to confine itself to a yes or no vote on whatever deal Obama brings home.
(*HEADACHE*)
Watching the GOP’s reversion to form calls to mind the term the neo-cons gave the French for refusing to join Bush II’s big march to Baghdad: “Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys.”
With the huge Trans-Pacific Partnership in negotiations, Obama wants Boehner and McConnell to agree in advance not to tamper with it. “Hands off!” he demands.
If this GOP agrees to this, it will, in its first great decision, be engaging in an act of self-castration. Why would they do this?
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
Has Obama’s record been so impressive the GOP should give up its constitutional power to amend trade treaties?
As the liberal group Public Citizen notes, the biggest trade deal of Barack’s term, the U.S.-Korea trade pact modeled on NAFTA, has been another job-killer for American workers: “Since the Obama administration used Fast Track to push a trade agreement with Korea, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea has grown 50% — which equates to 50,000 more American jobs lost. The U.S. had a $3 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea in October 2014 — the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with the country on record.”
* CONFESSION: THIS IS THE FIRST I'M READING THIS STAT! (THANKS PAT!)
Everywhere we hear that the issue of our time is the wage stagnation of the middle class. But what has caused U.S. wages to stop rising for longer than any period in our history? What caused the inexorable growth of U.S. wages, from the Revolution to Reagan, to stop dead?
Like Poe’s “Purloined Letter,” the answer is right in front of us. Wages are the price of labor, and price is determined by supply and demand. Wages have fallen because the supply of labor has exploded.
Following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, we threw open America’s doors to a flood of immigrants, legal and illegal. Some 40-50 million have poured in, an unprecedented expansion of the labor force. As these immigrants — many uneducated, unskilled, unable to speak English well — entered the labor pool, they were willing to work for less than native-born Americans who needed higher wages to sustain their standard of living. In the service industries, manufacturing, construction, U.S. employers found themselves in a buyers’ market for workers right here in the USA.
Yet... over a million new low-wage workers pouring into the USA every year was not enough for our banksters and corporatists. Thus, “free-trade” Republicans and their collaborators in the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce decided to drop the U.S. labor force into a worldwide labor pool where the average wage was but a tiny fraction of an American living wage.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Like Dr. King, our transnational corporations had a dream — a dream of bypassing all U.S. regulations on wages and hours, health and safety, and the environment — a dream of getting rid of all those high-wage U.S. workers and their unions. How to realize this dream? Move production out of the United States, out from under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, into the Third World, and then bring your products back free of charge. To these folks, America is the best market to sell into, but, as a place to produce, give us China!
Like NAFTA and GATT, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enabling act for multinationals to move freely to where it is cheapest to produce while securing access to where it is most profitable to sell.
Mexicans, Latin Americans, East and South Asians, Chinese would all work for less than Americans, thus enabling corporate executives to take home fatter shares of far larger profits, in salaries, bonuses, benefits, stock options and soaring equity prices. A new Magna Carta — for the billionaires’ boys club!
For 40 years, U.S. workers have seen factories close, jobs disappear and company towns become ghost towns, the “creative destruction” of Joe Schumpeter’s felicitous phrase.
Only the wholesale destruction was no accident, it was planned.
For scores of millions, the American dream is gone, sacrificed to the gods of the global economy — a new world economic order created by and for an elite whose 1,700 corporate jets were parked wingtip-to-wingtip last week while they partied in Davos.
That is why there may be a Syriza in all of our futures.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-pharmas-obamacare-reward-1423180690?mod=hp_opinion
Wow, the breakup between President Obama and his former corporate health-care partners must have been bad. The deal he cut with the pharmaceutical industry to pass ObamaCare didn’t even last as long as his Presidency!
The news is that Mr. Obama’s new budget proposal for 2016 reneges on the quid pro quo that some of the dumber drug makers cut in return for supporting ObamaCare in 2009.
(That "transaction" was supposed to buy political protection against the Left-wing wish list of price controls, weakened patents and other extortion that Mr. Obama now endorses in his budget.)
The White House wants to cut intellectual-property shelters for biologic therapies to seven years from 12...
* FULL SPEED AHEAD - WRONG DIRECTION!
...and to slash payment rates for hospital-administered medicines.
Mandatory Medicaid “rebates” — which require drug makers to offer governments discounts from average drug prices — would be exported into the Medicare prescription benefit.
* HOW THIS PASSES CONSTITUTIONAL MUSTER...
(*SHRUG*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
In 2009 Big Pharma agreed to contribute $80 billion towards ObamaCare, largely by expanding the Medicaid discount to 23.1% from 15.1%. They also agreed to mark down prescriptions for seniors by 50% above a certain level. Mr. Obama wants to raise that to 75%.
* WHY IS THIS NOT AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL "TAKING?"
In return the White House agreed to spare the drug companies from central planning such as allowing the Health and Human Services Department to “negotiate” lower drug prices. But that was then. The budget now claims to be “deeply concerned with the rapidly growing prices of specialty and brand name drugs” and, sure enough, it rescinds the price-fixing reprieve.
Parts of this agenda were in Mr. Obama’s budget last year but never caught on. His plan is much more aggressive now, and he hopes Democrats and even some Republicans will take a second look after a year of artificial furor over specialty drug prices, like the wave of new medications that cure hepatitis-C.
* WOW... WE'VE CURED HEP-C...??? WHEN...? I WASN'T AWARE OF THIS...
Remember the business line, circa 2009, that if you weren’t at the ObamaCare table you were on the menu? Well, Big Pharma sat at the table, gave Mr. Obama what he wanted, and is now back on the menu as the cheese course.
In this double-cross lies a warning for the next CEOs and lobbyists who are deluded enough to trust Washington liberals. The mistake was letting the White House divide business by pitting one industry against another. Everyone still got devoured eventually. Business does better when it unites to fight destructive legislation.
It’s tempting to say the drug makers deserve their fate, except that the ultimate costs of their folly will be borne by Americans who won’t enjoy the longer lives, fewer hospitalizations and less suffering that new therapies can bring.
(*RUEFUL NOD*)
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