Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (725743)	7/11/2013 1:24:41 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 1577188

Recall efforts against Colorado gun controllers move forward Recall petition against State Senator Angela Giron deemed sufficient ^ 07/10/2013

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (725743)	7/11/2013 1:46:33 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577188

Hi TWY; Re: "I have to say that Martin could not have been much of a fighter either although he certainly fancied himself as one." Yep. And Martin was 150 pounds and 5'11" tall. That's a physique for running, not fighting. And if you look at Zimmerman's tiny fists and little fingers, I can't imagine he'd be much of a bare knuckles brawler either. Neither of them had the kind of blue collar jobs where you build up muscles by real work all day. My guess is that they were both pretty ineffective. -- Carl

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (725743)	7/11/2013 9:55:17 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 1577188

Two mediocre to poor fighters seems right. And the fight started by Trayvon ... he had to have waited in the dark for Zimmerman to catch up in order to challenge him. Moral: Don't jump on someone in a carry state.

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (725743)	7/11/2013 9:56:03 AM
From: FJB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577188

House Republicans flex muscles, drop food stamps from farm bill... GOP REPS: SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL UNCONSTITUTIONAL...

To: THE WATSONYOUTH who wrote (725743)	7/11/2013 11:19:35 AM
From: FJB	Respond to of 1577188

Big Government Implodes ObamaCare's failures are not the only sign of a great public crack-up. from greatplains_guy July 10, 2013, 7:15 p.m. ET. By DANIEL HENNINGER Mark July 3, 2013, as the day Big Government finally imploded. July 3 was the quiet afternoon that a deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy announced in a blog post that the Affordable Care Act's employer mandate would be delayed one year. Something about the "complexity of the requirements." The Fourth's fireworks couldn't hold a candle to the sound of the U.S. government finally hitting the wall. Since at least 1789, America's conservatives and liberals have argued about the proper role of government. Home library shelves across the land splinter and creak beneath the weight of books arguing the case for individual liberty or for government-led social justice. World Wrestling smackdowns are nothing compared with Hayek vs. Rawls. Maybe we have been listening to the wrong experts. Philosophers and pundits aren't going to tell us anything new about government. The one-year rollover of ObamaCare because of its "complexity" suggests it's time to call in the physicists, the people who study black holes and death stars. That's what the federal government looks like after expanding ever outward for the past 224 years. Even if you are a liberal and support the goals of the Affordable Care Act, there has to be an emerging sense that maybe the law's theorists missed a signal from life outside the castle walls. While they troweled brick after brick into a 2,000-page law, the rest of the world was reshaping itself into smaller, more nimble units whose defining metaphor is the 140-character Twitter message. Laughably, Barack Obama tried this week to align himself with the new age in a speech calling yet again for "smarter" government. It requires whatever lies on the far side of chutzpah to say this after passing a 1930s-style law that is both incomprehensible and simply won't work. ObamaCare is turning into pure gravity. Nothing moves. On July 5, the administration announced into the holiday void that because of "operational barriers" to IRS oversight, individuals would be allowed to self-report their income to qualify for the law's subsidies. If the ObamaCare meltdown were a one-off, the system could dismiss it as a legislative misfire and move on, as always. But ObamaCare's problems are not unique. Important parts of the federal government are breaking down almost simultaneously. The National Security Agency has conservative philosophers upset that its surveillance program is ushering in Big Brother. What's more concretely frightening is that a dweeb like Edward Snowden could download the content of the NSA's computers onto a thumb drive and walk out of the world's "most secretive" agency. Here's the short answer: The NSA has 40,000 employees. (Some say it's as high as 55,000, but it's a secret.) Echoing that, when the IRS's audits of conservative groups emerged, the agency managers' defense was that the IRS is too big for anyone to know what its agents are doing. Thus both the NSA and IRS are too big to avoid endangering the public. It is hard to imagine a more apolitical federal function than the nation's weather satellites. The ones we have—to predict hurricanes and such—are about to wear out and need to be replaced. Can't do it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Pentagon have been trying to replace the old weather satellites, since 1994. The Government Accountability Office says "we are looking at potentially a 17-month gap" in this crucial weather data. NOAA has good scientists whose bad luck is they work for a collapsing constellation of bureaucracies. The State Department missed signs of the Arab Spring's insurrections in late 2010 despite warnings from outside groups. Egypt is in flames, in part, because State for years has been mainly a massive, drifting bureaucracy. Little wonder Hillary Clinton spent four years in flight from the place. Even some conservatives have given up and boarded the death star. The Senate immigration bill throws $46 billion at the Department of Homeland Security to implement a "border surge" strategy that has no chance of achieving its goals. Securing the border is the conservatives' Solyndra. To call the U.S. federal government a black hole is a disservice to black holes, which have a neutral majesty. Excepting the military's fighting units, the federal government has become a giant slug, like Jabba the Hutt, inert but dangerous. Like Jabba, the government increasingly survives by issuing authoritarian decrees from this or that agency. Barack Obama, essentially a publicist for Jabba's world of federal fat, euphemized this mess Monday as the American people's "democracy." Thomas Jefferson, who must be rolling in his grave, said the way to ensure good government was to divide it among the many. Some states and cities are indeed reworking their functions in efficient, innovative ways. But Washington is oblivious to life beyond the Beltway. Those indispensable but dying weather satellites are a metaphor for the U.S. now. Whether ObamaCare or the border fence, Washington is winding down into a black hole of its own making. The debate's over. Liberalism will be swept into this vortex, too.