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 : How Quickly Can Obama Totally Destroy the US? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/10/2013 6:19:42 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

Gutierrez tried to get Illinois to give home loans to illegal aliens, with a better interest rate than veterans got.

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/10/2013 6:26:26 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

Shelton Orders Shutdown of Space Fence (critical decades-old missile defense system axed!) ........................................................................................ Space News ^ \| 8/6/13 \| Mike Gruss A two-mile array that makes up a part of the U.S. Air Force Space Fence. Credit:Navy photo/SpaceNews artist's concept UPDATED 1:45 p.m. EDT WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is shutting down a key part of its network for tracking satellites and orbital debris, possibly as soon as Oct. 1, according to an Aug. 1 memo obtained by SpaceNews. Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, “has directed that the Air Force Space Surveillance System be closed and all sites vacated” effective Oct. 1, the memo said. The letter, signed by Austin Frindt, a contracting officer with Air Force Space Command, was addressed to Five Rivers Services of Colorado Springs, Colo., operator of the current Space Fence tracking system. The Space Fence, a planned replacement for which is on hold pending a Pentagon-wide review, is a line of VHF radars stretching across the southern United States. Deployed in the 1960s, the VHF Space Fence includes three transmitter sites and six receiving stations. It is responsible for approximately 40 percent of all observations performed by the Air Force-run Space Surveillance Network, which includes other ground-and space-based sensor assets, said Brian Weeden, technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to space sustainability. The memo explained to Five Rivers Services that the Air Force was not exercising its option for a fifth year of a contract to provide management and logistical support for the nine field stations. Lori Thomas, president of Five Rivers Services, declined to comment and referred questions to the Air Force. ‘This is your notice to begin preparing the sites for closure,” the memo said. “A specific list of action items will be provided as soon as it is finalized. A specific date to turn off the mission system has not been established yet, but will be provided to you immediately upon determination.” Andy Roake, a spokesman for Air Force Space Command, pointed to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, in an email Aug. 5. “In this tough, sequestered budget environment, we’re considering many options, but for FY14, no final decisions have been made,” he said. Though part of a broader surveillance network, the VHF Space Fence is crucial because it can track objects up to 24,000 kilometers away. Other sensors in the network generally track objects at altitudes lower than a few thousand kilometers, Weeden said. “The Space Fence is very important as it gives an ‘uncued tracking’ capability,” Weeden said. “Because it’s constantly transmitting, it can detect objects without being tasked to do so. There are some other sensors in the network that can do uncued tracking to some degree, but the Space Fence is rather unique in the sheer size of the detection coverage it has.” The Space Fence, along with operators at the Joint Space Operations Center, can observe objects down to the size of a basketball and make precise determinations of their characteristics, location and movement. Each month the system is responsible for logging more than 5 million satellite observations, according to an Air Force fact sheet. In April, Shelton said two of the Space Fence’s receiver sites had been placed in cold storage, one in Glennville, Ga., and one in Hollandale, Miss., reducing the overall accuracy and effectiveness of the system. The change was made as part of the Air Force’s response sequestration. In July, the Air Force released a request for proposals to operate the aging system beginning in September 2015 — one year after the Five Rivers Services’ contract was set to expire. The request said the Space Fence “has been identified as a critical defense system and, therefore, shall be manned on a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year basis at transmitter sites and 8-hour, 7-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year basis at receiver sites.” A full-scale development contract for an updated version of the Space Fence had been expected in 2012 or early 2013, but on July 16, Shelton said the multibillion-dollar project is being held up due to a wide-ranging Pentagon review that includes major acquisition programs. The review is examining scenarios under which the Pentagon’s budget is cut by $150 billion, $250 billion and $500 billion during the next decade. Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors of Moorestown, N.J., and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems of Tewksbury, Mass., have developed competing designs for the new network of ground-based radars, which would be capable of tracking greater numbers of smaller objects than the current Space Fence. Shelton said in July that engineers at Eglin Air Force base in Florida were looking for ways to improve the current Space Fence as a contingency plan should the Pentagon elect not to go forward with the next-generation system. In April, Shelton said one-third of the Space Fence’s receiver sites had been placed into cold storage, reducing the overall accuracy and effectiveness of the system as part of the Air Force’s response to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/10/2013 6:43:41 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

'War On Coal': 207 Coal Plants Will Close In The Next Decade

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/12/2013 1:30:05 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

In The Event That You Don’t Get An Obamacare Waiver ........................................................................................... Townhall.com ^ \| August 11, 2013 \| Austin Hill The day started with an American CEO ringing the opening bell at the NASDAQ in New York. And it ended with that same CEO announcing plans to cut his company’s American workforce. It was Friday, August 9th. Mark Durcan, CEO of the global Micron Technology, Inc. had traveled from the company’s headquarters in Boise, Idaho to visit the NASDAQ trading epicenter in Times Square. The company has been enjoying good news over the past several months, including a rise in its’ stock value, additional contracts to sell its’ computer memory systems to additional tablet manufacturers, and its’ recent acquisition of the Hiroshima, Japan based Elpida Corporation. Ringing the bell at the stock exchange seemed like a great way to cap-off a string of celebration-worthy events. But late in the day on August 7th, and continuing through August 8th, an internal memo from Mr. Durcan began circulating to Micron’s American-based employees (the company has operations throughout the North American continent, including the state of California, Colorado, Idaho, Virginia, Minnesota, Texas and Utah). In announcing what was described as a “workforce optimization” plan, Durcan noted to employees that “steps like these to improve efficiency and competitiveness are difficult, but our business is heading in a positive direction and we must build the foundation for a bright future. Success will not be achieved without some tough decisions, and this is one of those.” The “steps” he announced amounted to an across-the-board reduction in Micron’s workforce. But this wasn’t aimed at Micron employees worldwide – no, it’s a reduction in the company’s American workforce specifically. Durcan was offering a generous severance package to those who voluntarily wanted to leave, and if the company’s American workforce reduction goals aren’t met within a specified time frame then official “layoffs” will be the next step. Micron, by the way, is a great American business success story. Begun at the dawn of the new “computer revolution” era in 1978 with, among others, some very young and eager graduates of hometown Boise State University, it would eventually be infused with investment capital from an billionaire Idaho potato grower named J.R. Simplott on its way to becoming a publicly traded global enterprise. Like other players in the highly competitive computer memory industry, Micron has had its ups and downs over the decades. Job layoffs have happened before within the company, and twice last decade – during the post “Nine-Eleven” recession of 2001 and during the “great recession” of 2009 – former CEO Steve Appleton chose to sacrifice his entire salary as a means of helping restore profits during lean times. Through it all the company has remained charitable, as its’ logo appears on engineering and computer science buildings at college and university campuses as a sponsor of “tech education” throughout its’ home state of Idaho. But this time Micron’s “unfortunate news” is different. The company isn’t merely reducing its’ workforce. It’s cutting jobs in America, even as it will soon be expanding its work in Japan and Singapore. One can imagine that President Barack Obama and lots of disingenuous members of Congress are already prepared with talking points to bash the “un-patriotic” Micron, and vow to “crackdown” (whatever that means) on corporate America. But Americans need to wake up and realize that it’s the policies of these disingenuous politicians that are making the United States a lousy place to do business. The U.S. has the highest corporate taxation rate of any country in the world right now. When Japan lowered its corporate income tax rate from 39.5 percent to 37 percent in 2012 it went from the highest rate to the second highest, and now the Japanese government is talking about lowering it even further. And then, of course, there’s Obamacare. The President’s signature policy initiative is driving insurance costs sky-high, and most of that burden is being carried by individual American workers and their employers. Companies whose CEO’s are on “good terms” with President Obama – companies like McDonalds and GE Corporation, for example – have gotten themselves exempted from the Obamacare horrors. Micron hasn’t received our dear President’s blessing, apparently, and so must make some moves to protect the interests of its’ investors. Do Americans want a thriving economy that produces career opportunities and productive lifestyles? Or do we simply want to continue in our fantasy-based pattern of believing politicians’ promises of “free” things as we pay no attention to their actual policies? The choice is ours to make.

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/12/2013 11:05:47 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

Reid Ripped For 'Race-Baiting' Comment on GOP Opposition to Obama ..................................................................................................................... Friday, 09 Aug 2013 By Paul Scicchitano and Newsmax Wires Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so "based on substance and not the fact that he's an African American." The comment came during a wide-ranging interview Friday with Las Vegas-based National Public Radio affiliate KNPR, in which Reid, a Nevada Democrat, lamented Republican filibusters and claimed opponents do everything they can to make Obama fail. He recalled that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said during Obama's first term that his most important goal was ensuring Obama wasn't re-elected. "Here we are seven months into his second term and nothing has changed," Reid said. "It's been obvious they are doing everything they can to make him fail. And I hope, I hope, and I say this seriously, it's based on substance and not the fact that he's an African American." Reid's comments went unchallenged by the program's moderator, but not by Newsmax contributor and conservative African-American columnist Clarence V. McKee, who said there was no reason for Reid to raise the race issue during the interview. “It’s been typical for the last 3½ years — Obama supporters, black and white — whenever he’s criticized the first thing they yell is ‘race or racism,’” said McKee, who held several positions in the Reagan administration as well as the Reagan presidential campaigns. “For the Senate majority leader to stoop that low and go into the racial gutter is disgusting.” McKee blamed Reid’s comments and similar ones for the apparent deterioration of race relations since the election of President Obama in 2008. “He’s just race baiting and the president should disavow it as should other Democrats, but they’re all part of a race-bait chorus,” according to McKee, citing a recent Wall Street Journal poll, which found that attitudes on race relations have plummeted under the president. “They’re doing more to hurt race relations than the Zimmerman verdict will ever do.” He said Reid’s comments were tantamount to “liberal, elitist, racism.” McConnell's office referred a request for comment to Sen. Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina, who said Reid's remarks were offensive and asked for an apology. In 2010, Reid apologized for comments he made about the president’s race during the 2008 presidential campaign. Reid described then-Sen. Obama as “light skinned’’ and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’’ In his apology, Reid attributed his private description of Obama to a “poor choice” of words. “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” he said at the time. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments.’’ In his radio interview, Reid also criticized members of the tea party, comparing them to anarchists who helped spark World War I. He said that while modern anarchists don't resort to violence, they do not believe in government and rejoice in its troubles. "They have the same philosophy as the early anarchists," he said. "They don't believe in government. Anytime anything bad happens to the government, that's a victory for them. It makes it very difficult to get things done." Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com newsmax.com

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/13/2013 11:48:45 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

Zero Attendance for 'Climate Change' Rally... Not a single person shows up...

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/14/2013 12:01:52 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

Obama Forces Israel to Release Murderer of Holocaust Survivor FrontPage Magazine ^ \| August 12, 2013 \| Daniel Greenfield This is Isaac Rotenburg’s story. Isaac was born in 1927 in Boolodva, Poland. He was one of seven children, born to Nathan, a tailor. The family was sent to the Sobibor death camp during the Holocaust. He and his brother were selected to work in the camp. He had to tie together bundles of victims’ clothes. The rest of the family perished. With the outbreak of the revolt at Sobibor, Isaac and his brother managed to escape from the camp, but they lost each other mayhem that broke out in the revolt. Isaac joined the partisans in the woods and went on to travel with them, until captured by a Polish farmer who shackled him in chains in a horse stable. After several months of suffering abuse by the farmer and his family, he managed to escape and join the partisans again. After the war, he joined the exodus to Israel. The ship was seized off the coast of the country by the British, and all the passengers were transferred to a detention camp in Cyprus. Isaac reached the shores of Israel in April 1947. A year later he joined the army and fought in the War of Independence in the north, near Kibbutz Manara. Isaac married Rebecca Diamant and had two children: Zipporah and Pinchas. He worked as a plasterer and when he reached the age of retirement, decided to continue working several hours a day to keep himself busy. In 1994, on a Tuesday, Isaac was at work repairing the floor, his knees bent, when two Arab Muslims came in and struck his head with an axe. And this is where Obama enters Isaac’s story. Among those slated to be released is Abu-Musa Salam Ali Atia, a Gaza Strip resident and member of the Fatah party who was convicted of murdering Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenburg as part of an initiation into a Palestinian terror group. A group of Israeli victims of terror protested the release of these terrorists during a demonstration on Sunday in Jerusalem. They blamed the United States for pressuring Israel to release the terrorists. “Secretary of State John Kerry has an agenda that he wants to promote peace in the Middle East, and I think that he somehow pressured or even blackmailed the Prime Minister of the Israeli government into releasing terrorists,” Yossi Zur, a spokesperson for the victims, told the Washington Free Beacon. Not satisfied with persecuting living Jews, Obama has turned his attention to the dead.

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/14/2013 12:10:53 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16547

The New York Times takes down the Clinton Foundation. Could be devastating for Bill and Hillary By Tim Stanley US politics August 14th, 2013 Telegraph ^ \| 08/14/2014 \| Tim Stanley An internal review of the Clinton Foundations' workings has proved troubling Is the New York Times being guest edited by Rush Limbaugh? Today it runs with a fascinating takedown of the Clinton Foundation – that vast vanity project that conservatives are wary of criticising for being seen to attack a body that tries to do good. But the liberal NYT has no such scruples. The killer quote is this: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in. Over a year ago Bill Clinton met with some aides and lawyers to review the Foundation's progress and concluded that it was a mess. But what complicated this review – what made its findings more politically devastating – is that the Clinton Foundation has become about more than just Bill. Now both daughter Chelsea and wife, and likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton have taken on major roles and, in the words of the NYT "efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs Clinton’s political future." Oh, they're entangled alright. The NYT runs the scoop in its usual balanced, inoffensive way – but the problem jumps right off the page. The Clintons have never been able to separate the impulses to help others and to help themselves, turning noble philanthropic ventures into glitzy, costly promos for some future campaign (can you remember a time in human history when a Clinton wasn't running for office?). And their "Ain't I Great?!" ethos attracts the rich and powerful with such naked abandon that it ends up compromising whatever moral crusade they happen to have endorsed that month. That the Clinton Global Initiative is alleged to have bought Natalie Portman a first-class ticket for her and her dog to attend an event in 2009 is the tip of the iceberg. More troubling is that businessmen have been able to expand the profile of their companies by working generously alongside the Clinton Foundation. From the NYT: Last year, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, Muhtar Kent, won a coveted spot on the dais with Mr. Clinton, discussing the company’s partnership with another nonprofit to use its distributors to deliver medical goods to patients in Africa. (A Coca-Cola spokesman said that the company’s sponsorship of foundation initiatives long predated Teneo and that the firm plays no role in Coca-Cola’s foundation work.) In March 2012, David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, an energy company, led a widely publicized trip with Mr. Clinton to Haiti, where they toured green energy and solar power projects that NRG finances through a $1 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. This is typical Clinton stuff. The second thing I ever wrote for this website was about how corporations invest in politicians as a way of building their brand and raising their stock price. It can lead to some funny partnerships. This, from 2011: Just this month, bedding manufacturer Serta announced that it will be sponsoring Bill Clinton’s keynote address to an industry conference in August. "To us,"’ said the head of the company, "Clinton represents leadership. This appearance shows Serta is a leader and is taking a leadership position. This singles us out." Some might say that it is beneath a former president to basically endorse Serta’s new "Perfect Sleeper" line, even with its "revolutionary gel foam mattress". The cynical might infer from the NYT piece that the Clintons are willing to sell themselves, their image, and even their Foundation's reputation in exchange for money to finance their personal projects. In Bill's case, saving the world. In Hillary's case, maybe, running for president. It's nothing new to report that there's an unhealthy relationship in America between money and politics, but it's there all the same. While the little people are getting hit with Obamacare, high taxes and joblessness, a class of businessmen enjoys ready access to politicians of both Left and Right that poses troubling questions for how the republic can continue to call itself a democracy so long as it functions as an aristocracy of the monied. Part of the reason why America's elites get away with it is because they employ such fantastic salesmen. For too long now, Bill Clinton has pitched himself, almost without question, as a homespun populist: the Boy from Hope. The reality is that this is a man who – in May 1993 – prevented other planes from landing at LAX for 90 minutes while he got a haircut from a Beverley Hills hairdresser aboard Air Force One. The Clintons are populists in the same way that Barack Obama is a Nobel prize winner. Oh, wait…

To: Bonefish who wrote (4708)	8/16/2013 4:32:52 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

JESSE JACKSON JR. TO GRAB $8,700 PER MONTH IN DISABILITY, PLUS PENSION IN PRISON Breitbart.com ^ \| 15 Aug 2013