Thursday, June 4, 2015

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 4, 2015


Today has been a good day...

(*NOD*)

Started out my morning with nearly two hours of root-canal work...

(*GUFFAW*)

WHAT...?!?! You mean you folks don't normally associate "good day" with "root-canal...?"

(*STILL CHUCKLING*)

Here's the kicker: $557

Yep... $557... not $1,500... not even $1,200!

MY dentist did the work! And... he did a fine job!

I consider $557 a fair price for two hours of a dentist's efforts - his and his assistant's... plus materials. (Indeed... I'd say it's a DAMN fair price!)

Of course I'll still need to purchase the crown and pay the dentist bill for THAT procedure... but... again... things cost money and I'm more than willing to pay a FAIR price...

Anyway... off to newsbiting...!

Or should I say... NEWS "BITING."

(*GUFFAW*)


11 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/03/paul-ryan-cornered-claims-obamatrade-more-transparent-than-iran-deal-even-though-text-still-hidden-in-capitol-basement/

House Ways and Means chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on Fox News that he believes the "ObamaTrade" process is more transparent than President Barack Obama’s negotiations with Iran — even though the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Pacific Rim trade deal that Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would fast-track is currently being kept in secret in the basement of the U.S. Capitol and press and the public are not allowed to read it.

* ONE MORE TIME...

...even though the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Pacific Rim trade deal that Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would fast-track is currently being kept in secret in the basement of the U.S. Capitol and press and the public are not allowed to read it.

* FOLKS... ALLOW ME TO REITERATE: PAUL RYAN IS A RINO. HE'S A BOHNERBOT. HE'S A FAKE, PHONY, FRAUD. HE'S ABOUT AS "TEA PARTY" AS JUAN VALDEZ!

(*SNORT*)

Ryan’s comments follow a Breitbart News exclusive with a leader on national security issues - former U.S. Navy Seal Commander and Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT).

Earlier this week, Zinke confirmed to Breitbart News that he would vote against giving President Obama fast track trade authority and questioned why Republicans who believe in a strong national defense would allow the president more authority to negotiate with foreign leaders in the wake of his negotiations with terrorist sponsored nations such as Cuba and Iran.

* GOOD... FRIGGIN'... QUESTION...

“I support a robust economy where agriculture and businesses are able to compete in a fair and open global market,” Zinke told Breitbart News. “However, we are talking about giving Barack Obama — a president who negotiates with rogue nations like Iran and Cuba — exorbitant authority to do what he thinks is best."

* ZINKE CONTINUED...

"Just look at the bad deal he’s crafting with Iran. At this time, I don’t have faith that President Obama will negotiate in the best interest of Montana or America.”

* MEANWHILE...

A spokesperson for Speaker of the House John Boehner, Matt Wolking, has not immediately returned a request for comment to Breitbart News on whether the Speaker has actually visited the secret room to read the text of ObamaTrade.

(*SNORT*)

William R. Barker said...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2015/06/04/leaked-tisa-documents-reveal-privacy-threat/

Under the draft provisions of the latest trade deal to be leaked by Wikileaks, countries could be barred from trying to control where their citizens’ personal data is held or whether it’s accessible from outside the country.

Wikileaks has released 17 documents relating to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), currently under negotiation between the U.S., the European Union and 23 other nations. These negotiating texts are supposed to remain secret for five years after TISA is finalized and brought into force.

* ONE... MORE... TIME...

These negotiating texts are supposed to remain secret for five years after TISA is finalized and brought into force.

(*SILENCE*)

The deal, which has been under discussion behind closed doors since early 2013, is intended to remove barriers to trade in services. It’s a sort of companion piece to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which cover trade in goods – but potentially far bigger, with Wikileaks claiming that ‘services’ now account for nearly 80%of the U.S. and EU economies.

Like TTIP and TPP, TISA could be sped through Congress using Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also known as fast-track authority, which has been passed by the US Senate and may be taken up in the House this month.

Under TPA, Congress is barred from making amendments to the trade deals, and most simply give yes-or-no approval.

* "FAST-TRACK" BASICALLY RE-WRITES THE U.S. CONSTITUTION WITHOUT GOING THROUGHT THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROCESS.

Wikileaks has previously leaked parts of the TPP deal, and on Tuesday, announced plans to try and raise $100,000 to be used as a reward for the remaining chapters.

* GOD BLESS WIKILEAKS!

William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/us/hunting-for-hackers-nsa-secretly-expands-internet-spying-at-us-border.html?_r=0

Without public notice or debate, the Obama administration has expanded the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international Internet traffic to search for evidence of malicious computer hacking, according to classified N.S.A. documents.

* DON'T YOU MEAN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION...??? (*SAID BILL SARCASTICALLY*)

* WHERE ARE ALL THE LIBERALS...??? WHERE HAVE THEY GONE...???

In mid-2012, Justice Department lawyers wrote two secret memos permitting the spy agency to begin hunting on Internet cables, without a warrant and on American soil, for data linked to computer intrusions originating abroad — including traffic that flows to suspicious Internet addresses or contains malware, the documents show.

* "...WITHOUT A WARRANT AND ON AMERICAN SOIL..."

* IS THERE SUCH A THING AS "AMERICAN SOIL" ANYMORE...??? I KNOW WE STILL CALL OURSELVES "AMERICA" - BUT ARE WE...?

The Justice Department allowed the agency...

* THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAS NO MORE AUTHORITY TO ALLOW WHAT THE CONSTITUTION CLEARLY DISALLOWS THAN DOES OBAMA - OR BUSH BEFORE HIM! (WHY CAN'T PEOPLE SEE THIS...?!?!)

...to monitor only addresses and “cyber-signatures” — patterns associated with computer intrusions — that it could tie to foreign governments. But the documents also note that the N.S.A. sought permission to target hackers even when it could not establish any links to foreign powers.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The disclosures, based on documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, and shared with The New York Times and ProPublica, come at a time of unprecedented cyberattacks on American financial institutions, businesses and government agencies, but also of greater scrutiny of secret legal justifications for broader government surveillance.

As the threat of malicious hacking has grown, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have secretly expanded their surveillance of Internet communications flowing to and from the United States, documents provided by the former intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden show.

* THE PROBLEM ISN'T THE "SURVEILLANCE" - THE PROBLEM IS THE WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE!

While the Senate passed legislation this week limiting some of the N.S.A.’s authority, it involved provisions in the U.S.A. Patriot Act and did not apply to the warrantless wiretapping program.

(*SMIRK*)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Government officials defended the N.S.A.’s monitoring of suspected hackers as necessary to shield Americans from the increasingly aggressive activities of foreign governments. But critics say it raises difficult trade-offs that should be subject to public debate. The N.S.A.’s activities run “smack into law enforcement land,” said Jonathan Mayer, a cyber-security scholar at Stanford Law School who has researched privacy issues and who reviewed several of the documents. “That’s a major policy decision about how to structure cyber-security in the U.S. and not a conversation that has been had in public.”

(*NOD*)

It is not clear what standards the agency is using to select targets.

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

It can be hard to know for sure who is behind a particular intrusion — a foreign government or a criminal gang — and the N.S.A. is supposed to focus on foreign intelligence, not law enforcement.

(*NOD*)

The government can also gather significant volumes of Americans’ information — anything from private emails to trade secrets and business dealings — through Internet surveillance because monitoring the data flowing to a hacker involves copying that information as the hacker steals it.

Brian Hale, the spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said, “It should come as no surprise that the U.S. government gathers intelligence on foreign powers that attempt to penetrate U.S. networks and steal the private information of U.S. citizens and companies.” He added that “targeting overseas individuals engaging in hostile cyber-activities on behalf of a foreign power is a lawful foreign intelligence purpose.”

* I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY DO ABROAD! AND I DON'T VIEW FOREIGNERS AS HAVING THE SAME RIGHTS AS AMERICANS! HOWEVER... WE'RE TALKING ABOUT AMERICANS... ON AMERICAN SOIL...

(*HEADACHE*)

The effort is the latest known expansion of the N.S.A.’s warrantless surveillance program, which [unconstitutionally] allows the government to intercept Americans’ cross-border communications if the target is a foreigner abroad.

* FOLKS... WHEN YOU SEND THAT BIRTHDAY CARD OR CHRISTMAS CARD TO YOUR COUSIN IN IRELAND... OR WRITE TO YOUR COUSIN IN ISRAEL OR LONDON... DO THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO OPEN AND READ YOUR SNAILMAIL...?

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* FOLKS... THERE'S MORE TO THE ARTICLE AND I URGE YOU TO READ THE REST... BUT I'M GONNA LEAVE IT HERE WITH THE QUESTION: IS THIS TRULY AMERICA? I'M SORRY TO SAY... MY ANSWER IS "NO."

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/4/epa-fracking-doesnt-harm-drinking-water/

In a major blow to environmental activists, the Obama administration said Thursday that the controversial drilling technique known as fracking has not caused any widespread impacts on drinking water, removing a key argument among those who want to limit U.S. oil-and-gas development.

* "CONTROVERSIAL" ONLY BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY IDIOTS OUT THERE...

* GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO...

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

The Environmental Protection Agency study, while identifying “potential vulnerabilities” in the fracking process that could affect water supplies, debunked the claim that the drilling practice is contaminating drinking water all across the country and represents a fundamental danger to clean water.

* AND, FOLKS... DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS DELAYED THIS STUDY'S CONCLUSION?

“After more than five years and millions of dollars, the evidence gathered by EPA confirms what the agency has already acknowledged and what the oil and gas industry has known,” said Erik Milito, director of the upstream group at the American Petroleum Institute. “Hydraulic fracturing is being done safely under the strong environmental stewardship of state regulators and industry best practices.”

* AFTER MORE THAN FIVE YEARS...

William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/3/3700-illegal-immigrant-threat-level-1-criminals-re/

Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress.

Some of those released were the worst of the worst — more than 3,700 “Threat Level 1” criminals, who are deemed the top priority for deportation, were still released out into the community even as they waited for their immigration cases to be heard.

* HEADS SHOULD ROLL. (BUT INSTEAD - THIS BEING THE AGE OF OBAMA - THOSE RESPONSIBLE WILL PROBABLY GET PROMOTIONS AND BONUSES!)

Homeland Security officials have implied their hands are tied by court rulings in many cases, but the numbers, obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, showed 57%of the criminals released were by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s own choice, and they could have been kept instead.

* ISN'T IT A CRIME TO LIE TO CONGRESS?

“Put aside the spin, and the fact is that over 17,000 of the criminal aliens released last year were released due to ICE discretion, representing 57%of the releases,” said Mr. Goodlatte. “The Obama administration’s lax enforcement policies are reckless and needlessly endanger our communities.”

* IT'S BEYOND "LAX ENFORCEMENT." IT'S A CONSPIRACY. IT'S DELIBERATE. IT'S POLICY!

ICE officials insist that those who are released are still monitored, often by electronic ankle bracelets but also through a system of phone checks or by paying a bond.

* KEEP READING...

However, nearly all of those released under electronic monitoring broke the terms of their release, according to ICE numbers.

* AGAIN... TOP ICE OFFICIALS SHOULD BE IN JAIL FOR LYING TO CONGRESS.

In fiscal year 2014, ICE put about 41,000 immigrants through electronic monitoring, and more than 30,000 of them broke the terms of their release — many of them racking up multiple violations. All told, they notched nearly 300,000 violations in one year alone, or an average of 10 instances per violator.

ICE said violations can include what they deem minor problems, such as someone lacking a strong enough cell signal for voice verification by phone or someone calling in too early or a few minutes late. Low batteries or jostling an electronic bracelet during sports can also cause a monitoring alarm to go off incorrectly, ICE said.

* ANYONE... ANYONE AT ALL... WILLING TO BE MONEY THAT THIS IS THE CASE IN MOST CIRCUMSTANCES?

(*SNORT*)

Of the more than 30,000 detainees who broke the conditional terms of their release and monitoring in 2014, only 2,420 were deemed to have been serious enough breaches to re-arrest them.

* FOLKS... THE MATH SPEAKS FOR ITSELF!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Part of ICE’s problem is that it doesn’t have enough beds to go out and pick up violators, according to an inspector general’s report released earlier this year.

* WHICH IS WHY DEPORTATION SHOULD BE IMMEDIATE! (AND IN THE MEANTIME... LET 'EM SLEEP ON BED-ROLLS... SLEEPING BAGS... BAILS OF HAY FOR ALL I CARE!)

Agency officials said they would like to be able to hold those who willfully break the rules, but...

(*SMIRK*)

...they haven’t requested more beds.

* AND GET THIS, FOLKS...

Indeed, Mr. Obama’s 2016 budget request actually asked for fewer beds to hold detainees next year, arguing that he wants to put more emphasis on the very alternatives that are being violated.

(*SILENCE*)

In 2013, the agency released 36,007 convicted criminals who were awaiting the outcome of their deportation cases. Those released had amassed 116 homicide convictions...

* ALL ON OBAMA'S HEAD...

...15,635 drunken driving convictions...

* ALL ON OBAMA'S HEAD...

...and 9,187 convictions stemming from what ICE labeled involvement with “dangerous drugs.”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The total dropped to about 30,000 in 2014 — but the seriousness of the offenses increased, with 193 homicide convictions among the detainees and 16,070 drunken driving convictions.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

There were also 426 sexual assaults and 303 kidnapping convictions, ICE said.

* ALL... ON... OBAMA'S... HEAD.

William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-06-03/why-hillary-can-t-run-on-her-state-department-record

Hillary Clinton's record as secretary of state...

* IS A RECORD OF FAILURE, INCOMPETENCE, AND CORRUPTION...

(*SHRUG*)

...became a hot-button issue this week after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Bloomberg Television that the Barack Obama administration's failed "reset" policy with Moscow was "her invention."

* I BELIEVE HE IDENTIFIED BOTH HRC AND BHO BY NAME.

The State Department under Hillary Clinton vigorously opposed almost all of the Iran sanctions passed by Congress while she was in office. Top officials, including Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, openly advocated against...

* AGAINST...

...many bills, including the sanctions on Iran’s central bank, which dealt the true crippling blow to the Tehran regime.

The Senate passed that bill 100-0 and Obama reluctantly signed them into law. The State Department did implement them, but was criticized by lawmakers and advocacy groups for using waivers in the law to exempt several countries, including China and our allies Japan and South Korea.

* C*H*I*N*A...

* FOLKS... REMEMBER THE HISTORY OF THE BILL CLINTON ADMINISTRATION'S "DEALINGS" WITH CHINA AND CHINESE OFFICIALS - AND "BUSINESSMEN." REMEMBER THE FUNDRAISING SCANDALS (BUDDHIST TEMPLE, ANYONE?!) REMEMBER THE SELLING OF FORMERLY CLASSIFIED MILITARY (MISSILE) TECHNOLOGY!

During Clinton's State Department tenure of 2009 to 2013 there was no measurable upswing in foreigners’ views of America, according to the Pew Research Center’s polling on global attitudes. In most major countries, approval of the U.S. actually went down by the time Clinton left office, including by 11 percentage points in each of France, Germany and the U.K.

(*SNORT*)

A poll conducted in 33 countries by the BBC World Service just after Clinton stepped down as secretary found that overall world opinion of the U.S. by 2013 was the lowest since the presidency of George W. Bush. If Clinton wants to run on having polished America’s image abroad, she’ll be hard pressed to come up with data to back it up.

(*SMIRK*)

Along with Treasury Department officials, Clinton initiated a new strategic dialogue with China, but after several high-level summits, the effort has produced few if any tangible results.

* SURE IT DID... KEEP READING!

China [is now] building fake islands around the South China Sea and threatening to enforce an air-exclusion zone in the area[!]

(*SNORT*)

* GOOD JOB, HILLARY!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The State Department did succeed in creating an opening with Myanmar, an effort led by her top Asia official, Kurt Campbell. Unfortunately, the military junta has not eased up its brutal persecution of Muslim minorities, leading to a vast refugee crisis in Southeast Asia, and political reform has now slowed to a crawl.

* HMM... VAST REFUGEE CRISIS... GO, HILLARY, GO!

* BUT BACK TO CHINA FOR A MOMENT...

On her first visit to China, Clinton insisted that human rights advocacy “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis, and the security crisis." Clinton's State Department repeatedly waived laws that would have cut aid to countries guilty of gross human rights violations, such as Egypt. This record won't be helped by Clinton’s family foundation having taken millions of dollars from foreign governments that systematically abuse their citizens and deny basic liberties to women.

* YA THINK...?!?!

* BACK TO THE REST OF THE WORLD...

And, of course, the worst terrorism blow to U.S. interests since the Sept. 11 attacks happened at a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, on her watch.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

In addition, while the administration claimed in 2013 that terrorism was on the decline, the spread of the Islamic State, Boko Haram (which Clinton refused to put on the State Department’s terrorism list in 2011, despite requests from the Justice Department and the CIA) and other groups since then makes the victory laps of the first term look far too self-congratulatory.

* LIES. THEY'RE LIES.

(*SHRUG*)

Clinton was a major proponent of the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011, which has led to bloody chaos and a new bridgehead for the Islamic State.

Clinton's State Department led a failed diplomatic effort between Israel and the Palestinians.

Clinton's officials held years of talks with the Taliban that never bore fruit.

Clinton tried [and failed miserably] to build a moderate Syrian opposition.

None of these are going to help her case that she deserves the Oval Office.

Some Republicans are already looking to turn Clinton's tenure as the nation's top diplomat into a liability. "I think her time in the position of secretary of state is demonstrably one that lacks accomplishment, but that also has some real blemishes on it," said Carly Fiorina in April, just before announcing her own candidacy.

YA THINK...?!?!

William R. Barker said...

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

http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/04/noaa-fiddles-with-climate-data-to-erase-the-15-year-global-warming-hiatus/

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming: They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.

* HA! HA! HA! (FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!)

New climate data by NOAA scientists doubles the warming trend since the late 1990s by adjusting pre-hiatus temperatures downward and inflating temperatures in more recent years.

(*SNORT*)

“'Newly corrected' and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus,'” wrote NOAA scientists in their study presenting newly adjusted climate data.

* "...CORRECTED..."

(*SNORT*)

To increase the rate in warming, NOAA scientists put more weight on certain ocean buoy arrays, adjusted ship-based temperature readings upward, and slightly raised land-based temperatures as well.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Scientists said "adjusted" ship-based temperature data “had the largest impact on trends for the 2000-2014 time period..."

* YES... I'M SURE THE... er... "ADJUSTED" DATA DID!

NOAA says for the years 1998 to 2012, the “new analysis exhibits more than twice as much warming as the old analysis at the global scale.”

* "...MORE THAN TWICE..." YES... THAT'S WHAT THE... er... "ADJUSTED" DATA SHOWS...

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

* FOLKS... HERE'S THE DEAL:

Global surface temperature data shows a lack of statistically significant warming over the last 15 years...

* AND YET...

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “statement of two years ago — that the global surface temperature has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years — is [supposedly] no longer valid,” the study claims.

(*SMIRK*)

But that’s not all NOAA did to increase the warming trend in recent decades.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Climate expert Bob Tisdale and meteorologist Anthony Watts noted that to “manufacture warming during the hiatus, NOAA adjusted the pre-hiatus data downward.”

“If we subtract the [old] data from the [new] data… we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did,” Tisdale and Watts wrote on the science blog Watts Up With That.

“It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise,” Tisdale and Watts added. “Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”

NOAA’s updated data was also criticized by climate scientists with the libertarian Cato Institute. Scientists Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger argue the adjustments made by NOAA were “guaranteed to put a warming trend in recent data.” Cato scientists also argued that NOAA’s new data is an outlier compared to other global temperature records, which overwhelmingly show a hiatus in warming.

“Adjusting good data upwards to match bad data seems questionable, and the fact that the buoy network becomes increasingly dense in the last two decades means that this adjustment must put a warming trend in the data,” wrote Michaels, Knappenberger and Lindzen (who is a top climatologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

Scientists and climate experts skeptical of man-made global warming have become increasingly critical of temperature adjustments made by government climate agencies like NASA and NOAA. Skeptics charge that agencies like NOAA have been tampering with past temperatures to make the warming trend look much more severe than is shown in the raw data.

“It is important to recognize that the central issue of human-caused climate change is not a question of whether it is warming or not, but rather a question of how much,” they wrote. “And to this relevant question, the answer has been, and remains, that the warming is taking place at a much slower rate than is being projected.”

Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry also chimed in, arguing that NOAA excluded extremely accurate sea buoy data in order to erase the hiatus in warming. Curry wrote that it “seems rather ironic, since this is the period where there is the greatest coverage of data with the highest quality of measurements — ARGO buoys and satellites don’t show a warming trend.”