Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates
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Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate
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Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate |
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Nation of Change - Scott Keyes is reporting billionaire threatens employees if Obama Wins:
David Siegel, who owns Florida-based Westgate Resorts, sent an email to all his employees yesterday to discuss the upcoming election. “The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job,” Siegel wrote, noting that the company is “the most profitable [it's] ever been.” “What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration.” He went on to say that although he “can’t tell you whom to vote for,” if Obama is re-elected, it would mean “fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.”
Here are a few select paragraphs from the email:
Subject: Message from David SiegelDate:Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:58:05 -0400 (EDT)From: [David Siegel]To: [All employees]
To All My Valued Employees,
As most of you know our company, Westgate Resorts, has continued to succeed in spite of a very dismal economy. There is no question that the economy has changed for the worse and we have not seen any improvement over the past four years. In spite of all of the challenges we have faced, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration. Of course, as your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for, and I certainly wouldn’t interfere with your right to vote for whomever you choose. In fact, I encourage you to vote for whomever you think will serve your interests the best.
However, let me share a few facts that might help you decide what is in your best interest.
By James Dao, New York Times, May 18/19,2013
[....] As of Monday, just under 600,000 claims qualified as backlogged, meaning they had been pending for over 125 days.
Though the numbers have grown, delays in processing disability claims are nothing new, and neither are complaints about the backlog. Just last year, some veterans advocates tried to make the backlog a presidential campaign issue. They failed. But this year, something changed: the criticism grew louder and perhaps more partisan, and began reaching a wider audience.
A new conservative-leaning nonprofit organization, Concerned Veterans...
By Hunter Walker, TPM Muckraker, May 20, 2013
In a scathing new report Monday, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General accused onetime Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis K. Burke of leaking confidential documents to a reporter in a politically-motivated attempt to “undermine” a whistleblower who helped spark the investigation into the “Fast and Furious” operation.
Burke, a former aide to Janet Napolitano while she was Arizona governor and then secretary of Homeland Security, was appointed as U.S. attorney by President Obama in 2009. He resigned as he was initially being questioned about the leak in 2011.
The Inspector General...
By Brian Stelter and Michael D. Shear, New York Times, May 20/21, 2013:
The White House on Monday defended President Obama’s support for aggressive investigations into national security leaks despite new disclosures about a 2009 case in which the Justice Department searched a reporter’s personal e-mails and attempted to track his movements.
Details of the government’s investigation of the reporter, James...
Even by the standards of the TED conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse, clad in the requisite dress shirt and blue jeans, and announced a plan that—if it panned out—would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade. He dedicated himself to wiping out all mental disorders and creating a self-aware artificial intelligence. And the South African–born neuroscientist pronounced that he would accomplish all this through an insanely ambitious attempt to build a complete model of a human brain—from synapses to hemispheres—and simulate it on a supercomputer. Markram was proposing a project that has bedeviled AI researchers for decades, that most had presumed was impossible. He wanted...
Hmmm. Does he employ enough people that firing them all would bump the national average back over 8%? And get that counted in the next monthly stats? 'Cause I think that's the only way his threat might possibly affect how anyone votes. What a ham-handed move!