U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said this week that, despite the federal government’s best efforts to “stay ahead of the bad guys,” the nation’s energy infrastructure remains “a major target of cyberattacks.”
“The energy infrastructure is a major target of cyberattacks. That is increasing in frequency and perhaps source,” Moniz, said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
According to Moniz, U.S. natural gas pipelines represent a particularly weak link in the infrastructure chain.
“The natural gas system, the distribution pipes, are a big issue,” he said. “About half of the distribution pipes in the country are 50 years old or older, so that’s a very obvious area.”
According to the energy official, small gas distribution pipelines that carry fuel to gas customers are aging and at capacity. Some high-volume pipelines, meanwhile, remain “underutilized” despite the U.S. shale boom of the past decade. (Read more from “Energy Official: Cyberattack Could Bring U.S. Grid Down” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-29 03:03:462015-04-29 03:03:46Energy Official: Cyberattack Could Bring U.S. Grid Down
By James Simpson. At the outset of the riots that are now sweeping Baltimore, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake held a press conference, telling reporters that the city was allowing violence in an effort to defuse the situation. “It’s a very delicate balancing act, because while we tried to make sure that they [meaning the rioters, not the victims] were protected from the cars and the other things that were going on, we also gave those who wished to destroy, space to do that as well…” she said. She thought that would put the city in “the best position to deescalate.”
Under orders, police held back and did nothing while rioters engaged in repeated acts of violence, including smashing car windows, destroying police cars and attacking individuals and private businesses. At least 7 police have been injured, some seriously. This was the mayor’s idea of respecting the rioters’ First Amendment rights.
How is it possible that anyone could be so delusional, so mind-numbingly stupid, so utterly incompetent, that they would believe allowing rioters to go nuts would somehow pacify them. Predictably, they took her encouragement as opportunity for even more violence and widespread looting. The city is burning and the governor has declared a state of emergency. Now she is calling those very same people, thugs.
Stephanie Rollins-Blake personifies the mindless entitlement mentality that has ruined inner cities throughout the U.S. The residents of these places will not get “justice” until they figure out that they can only blame themselves by continually re-electing such clowns. (Read more from “Baltimore Mayor Decries Violence After Deliberately Encouraging It” HERE)
[Editor’s note: The following is a recent interview with this article’s author]
By Holly Yan and Miguel Marquez. Streets in Baltimore looked like a war zone early Tuesday after a night of riots, fires and heartbreak.
“Too many people have spent generations building up this city for it to be destroyed by thugs who — in a very senseless way — are trying to tear down what so many have fought for,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.
Buildings and cars across the city were engulfed in flames. About a dozen businesses looted or damaged. At least 15 officers were wounded, six of them seriously, the police commissioner said.
Late Monday night, CNN crews saw looters breaking in through the roof of a Baltimore liquor store. They were tossing bottles and cans of alcohol onto the street below.
All this came just hours after the funeral for Freddie Gray, who died of a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. (Read more from this story HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-28 01:46:542015-04-28 01:46:54Baltimore Mayor Decries Violence After Deliberately Encouraging It [+videos]
Before Hillary left office in 2013, the Clintons appeared bound and determined to slurp up as much money into their Foundation as possible, spending as little on direct aid as one could imagine for a “charity”. The New York Post reports:
The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.
The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.
The group spent the bulk of its windfall on administration, travel, and salaries and bonuses, with the fattest payouts going to family friends.
In 2013, according to the Clinton Foundation’s IRS Form 1990 filing [PDF], the organization actually spent more than twice as much on travel, conferences, conventions and meetings than on actual, eh, grants.
Even the grants that were made were dubious “investments”. One such grant was nearly half a million dollars to a San Francisco-based group called “Architecture for Humanity”. Earlier this year the group announced it was closing its doors.
The average compensation for the top Clinton Foundation executives we know of was roughly a quarter of a million dollars a year. In fact, as Karl Denninger explains:
You might be interested in knowing that the “charity” had 35 employees with reportable compensation (that is, over $100,000) and their top five combined had $2.6 million in direct (that is, cash) compensation and another $278,000 in benefits for approximately $3 million — or 1/3rd of all spending on “charitable causes”. On a grossed-up basis the charity spent $21.8 million on salaries and wages or approaching three times what it spent on “charity.”
In 2013 The Clinton Foundation employed 400 people, which means it doled out only $22,000 per employee.
In other words, it was — as the Sunlight Foundation describes it — “a slush fund”, not a charity. (See “STUNNING NEW CHART O` THE DAY: How the Clinton Foundation Spent its Money in 2013”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-28 01:43:382015-04-28 01:43:38STUNNING NEW CHART O’ THE DAY: How the Clinton Foundation Spent its Money in 2013
Former President George W. Bush blasted President Obama’s Middle East policies Saturday night at a closed-door meeting with Jewish donors in Las Vegas.
At the tightly controlled event (off the record, with a “no notes” rule), hosted at the Venetian hotel and casino by wealthy owner and Republican supporter Sheldon Adelson, Bush answered guest questions for an hour on topics ranging from national security threats to the 2016 presidential campaign, the New York Times reported Sunday.
Bush, who has largely refrained from criticizing Obama since leaving office, opened up about Obama’s pursuit of a nuclear deal with Iran, which most Republicans oppose strongly.
Bloomberg reported on one audience member as saying Bush noted that Iran has a new president, Hassan Rouhani. “He’s smooth,” Bush said. “And you’ve got to ask yourself, is there a new policy or did they just change the spokesman?”
Bush remarked on how there is “no transparency in Iran,” because the supreme leader, and not the will of the people, picks the presidents. He regretted that lifting sanctions against Iran just when its government may be caving in would cost the United States leverage, according to others who attended. (Read more from “George W. Bush Breaks Silence; Blasts Obama on Iran, ISIS” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-28 01:43:012015-04-28 01:43:01George W. Bush Breaks Silence; Blasts Obama on Iran, ISIS
Ian Reisner, one of the two gay hoteliers facing boycott calls for hosting an event for Senator Ted Cruz, who is adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage, apologized to the gay community for showing “poor judgment.”
Mr. Reisner put the apology on Facebook, where a page calling for a boycott of his properties, the gay-friendly Out NYC hotel and his Fire Island Pines holdings, had gotten more than 8,200 “likes” by Sunday evening.
“I am shaken to my bones by the emails, texts, postings and phone calls of the past few days. I made a terrible mistake,” wrote Mr. Reisner.
The New York Times first reported on the event, a dinner and on April 20, at the duplex Mr. Reisner and his business partner Mati Weiderpass co-own on Central Park South in Manhattan. The event was a “fireside chat” for about a dozen people, but was not a fund-raiser.
The two men are prominent figures in the gay rights community, and Mr. Reisner has been especially vocal about same-sex marriage. He’s also a staunch supporter of Israel, as is Mr. Cruz. (Read more from “Homosexual Businessman Who Hosted Ted Cruz Event Apologizes” HERE)
If it looks like a bubble, smells like a bubble and walks like a bubble, it is a bubble.
What we have in the certain stocks today is a bubble every bit as epic as the one that took the NASDAQ Composite Index (INDEX:.IXIC) to its previous record of 5048 back in 2000.
There are few certainties in this world, but one of them is that bubbles pop.
And like all previous bubbles, this bubble will pop too.
One of the key signs of a bubble is when investors and the analysts that cheer them over the cliff refuse to acknowledge facts that contradict their bullishness.
The Evidence Is Irrefutable
Exhibit “A” is Tesla Motors, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA). At the beginning of the year, analysts were forecasting that the company would earn $2.78 per share and had an average price target on the company’s stock of $269 per share – $49 per share higher than where it was trading at the time. Since then, a series of setbacks have led analysts to radically lower their earnings estimates to a mere $0.53 per share – a reduction of 80%.
But instead of lowering their price target on the stock by a commensurate amount, analysts have only lowered it by $19 per share to $251 – a reduction of a mere 7.1%.
That is bubble thinking. The psychological term for that is denial. The Wall Street term for that is careerism.
Exhibit “B” is Amazon.com Inc. . . (Read more from “Desperate “Bubble Thinking” Takes Hold on Wall Street” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-27 03:50:032015-04-27 03:50:03Desperate “Bubble Thinking” Takes Hold on Wall Street
The United States is moving toward “criminalization of Christianity” as a result of legalizing same-sex marriage, Mike Huckabee told a group of conservative pastors in a conference call organized by the Family Research Council.
“I think it’s fair to say that Christian convictions are under attack as never before,” Huckabee said Thursday, according to audio of the call obtained by Right Wing Watch, a project of the progressive advocacy group People for the American Way. “Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation. We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”
The former governor of Arkansas, who is expected to announce his presidential bid on May 5, said it is his “biblical duty” to pray for the members of the Supreme Court as they prepare to rule on same-sex marriage this summer.
In an apparent defense of gay conversion therapy, Huckabee also said that the government is telling chaplains that they cannot help people “seek assistance” for a “homosexual lifestyle” and to “put their Bibles away, no longer pray in Jesus’ name.”
Huckabee said that he cringes whenever he hears people call a court decision “the law of the land.” (Read more from “Mike Huckabee: U.S. Moving Toward ‘Criminalization of Christianity'” HERE)
The Department of Justice is “monitoring” Gun Cave Indoor Firing Range owner Jan Morgan in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for banning Muslims from shooting in the facility.
At that time, Fox News reported that Morgan decided to ban Muslims after “two customers she deemed suspicious” showed up in September. Since that time, she has excluded those “she believes to be Muslim based upon their names.” She said, “We are dealing in lethal firearms. I am not going to let a Nazi shoot in here, or a Ku Klux Klan member in here, either.”
Breitbart News reported that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to intervene. In the letter, CAIR said, “Given the recent spike in anti-Muslim rhetoric, including Islamophobic statements by government officials, community leaders and media outlets, death threats, and other bias incidents targeting Muslims, I urge you to investigate this matter soon” . . .
And now, the DOJ says it is “monitoring the situation”. . .
CAIR’s Jennifer Wicks said, “We welcome this positive development and hope it leads to a thorough investigation of clear violations of the civil rights of American Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim by the gun range owner.” (Read more from “Department of Justice Monitoring Gun Range Owner Who Banned Muslims” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-27 03:43:322015-04-27 03:43:32Department of Justice Now Monitoring Gun Range Owner Who Banned Muslims
Two gay businessmen [gay night club owners Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner] who held a reception for Sen. Ted Cruz, continued to face blowback Friday as a nonprofit canceled an event at one of their nightclubs. . .
Weiderpass and Reisner hosted Cruz, the Texas senator and presidential candidate — and vocal opponent of same-sex marriage — at their duplex apartment earlier this [past] week for a “fireside chat” and dinner. . .
Cruz, a tea party favorite, has long called for a constitutional amendment that would disallow the federal government and courts from reversing state marriage laws. Most recently, he introduced another piece of legislation to prohibit the federal courts from deciding on same-sex marriage until such an amendment is put in place. In the past, the senator has called himself a supporter of traditional marriage, harshly criticized the Supreme Court for effectively allowing same-sex marriage to move forward in five states and said in a 2011 email that “engaging in homosexual conduct is a choice.”
Most recently, he dodged a question about whether he would attend a gay wedding.
Cruz spoke mostly about national security at Monday’s event at Weiderpass and Reisner’s apartment, The New York Times reported, saying only that he believes the states should decide their own marriage policies and that he wouldn’t love his daughters differently if they were gay. (Read more from “Homosexual Businessmen Hold Fundraiser with Ted Cruz, Now Face Blowback” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-27 03:41:152015-04-27 03:41:15Homosexual Businessmen Hold Fundraiser with Ted Cruz, Now Face Blowback
That piggy bank, otherwise known as “The Clinton Global Graft Initiative”, had an interesting way of doling out the “contributions” it received.
The Clintons are a malignant tumor on the body politic. They have a history of doing anything for money — including selling out their own country — and when it comes to their personal bank accounts, there’s apparently never enough zeroes. (See “CHART O’ THE DAY: How the Clinton Global Initiative Used its Funds During Hillary’s Tenure at State”, originally posted HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-04-27 03:41:012015-04-27 03:41:01CHART O’ THE DAY: How the Clinton Global Initiative Used its Funds During Hillary’s Tenure at State
By Holly Yan and Miguel Marquez. Streets in Baltimore looked like a war zone early Tuesday after a night of riots, fires and heartbreak.
