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POPSNew Study: No Cancer-Marijuana Connection More: While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.
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POPSJimmy Carter - "Hillary supporters must accept outcome of pledged delegates" More: Mr Carter emphasised that he and many other super-delegates would not countenance this. “It would be undemocratic if the super-delegates blatantly went against the decision of Democratic voters across the nation. "And I think that many super-delegates who have not yet declared their preference have the same feeling that I do, including the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She’s said over and over that whoever gets the most delegates by June 3rd ought to be the nominee.” It would be “too bad” and damaging to the party if the battle went to the nomination, he said. The role of super-delegates, he argued, was to swing behind the winner chosen by the voters and not to usurp them.
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POPSTokyo's Cat Cafes Offer Serenity Mr. Maeda, of Neko JaLaLa, started the cafe with a neighbor who shared his interest in increasing public awareness of cats, particularly strays. He explains that he hopes his little cafe is the first step in raising a larger awareness of cats in a country where about 240,000 are euthanized each year, partly as a result of pet dumping. busy lifestyles of Japanese people dearly longing for a moment of peace and comfort. "I always used to play with cats back home, but now I can't, since I live on my own," says Yuka Sato, a college student who came to cafe Neko no Mise in Tokyo's Machida region after a recent long day of job interviews. "I wish I could live together with cats like this." "Basically, the visitors of this cafe are stressed," Mr. Hanada says of the escape his customers seek.
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POPSMcCain's Miserable Record on Hurricane Katrina More: He voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane, and in 2006 voted against appropriating $109 billion in supplemental emergency funding, including $28 billion for hurricane relief. Shortly after the disaster in New Orleans, McCain did introduce a bill that sought to improve communications mechanisms for first-responders and authorities. The bill failed to go anywhere, and McCain later voted against other bills that had similar provisions. McCain may talk sympathetically about New Orleans' recovery this week, but the record shows that when it mattered most, McCain failed to act.
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POPSCivilization's First Attack Ads - The Attack Poem Here's a poem he directed at a rival (all translations are from Brooks Haxton's book Dances for Flute and Thunder from Viking Press): Swept overboard, unconscious in the breakers, strangled with seaweed, may you wake up in a gelid surf, your teeth, already cracked into the shingle, now set rattling by the wind, while facedown, helpless as a poisoned cur, on all fours you puke brine reeking of dead fish. May those you meet, barbarians as ugly as their souls are hateful, treat you to the moldy wooden bread of slaves. And may you, with your split teeth sunk in that, smile, then, the way you did when speaking as my friend.
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POPSIs Hillary Clinton Push Polling? More: The questions started out normal enough, but got progressively more ridiculous. Early in the conversation Ed asked my preference among the Democratic candidates and I told him I was an Obama supporter. Then the questions turned to long Hillary-praising and Barack bashing policy statements with the response options being "Do you consider that a very strong, strong or weak or very weak reason to support her candidacy for president?" which is kind of an unanswerable question, and clearly not the point. At the end of the conversation they asked "Now based on everything we've discussed, who would you vote for?" The questions were often based on statements that I wouldn't agree with in the first place. It's classic push polling as I've read about it, though never experienced it before. The questions are of the "Are you still beating your wife?" variety. No way to answer with any sense of veracity and integrity
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POPSOklahoma Republican wants to replace U.S. made military rifle with German made gun. More: More than $300 million has been spent on 221,000 of the carbines over the past two years alone. And the Defense Department is asking Congress to provide another $230 million for 136,000 more. Lord, if republicans are going to deliver us BS wars couldn't they at least spend our taxpayer dollars on U.S. pork. Here's somemore brilliance from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn's senatorial twin Jim Inhofe, For example my area of expertise is the English language. -- Sen. James Mountain Inhofe (R - OK)
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POPSFirst Frog without Lungs More: The frogs have flattened bodies, shaped more like a cookie than an apple, with plenty of surface area for gas exchange. So they probably get all the oxygen they need through their skin, the researchers will report online April 17 in Current Biology. The Borneo frog's closest living kin, evolutionarily, lives in the Philippines and does have lungs. That sister species' conventional breathing apparatus supports the idea that the Borneo frog evolved from ancestors with lungs that were later lost them in the highly aerated water, Bickford says. Lungs could even be a disadvantage in white water, making a frog more buoyant and easier for the current to sweep away.
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POPSHillary slipping amongst white women in Pennsylvania
The most familiar echo among many Pennsylvania women when they discuss Clinton is disappointment. Ask them when they became disillusioned and they can cite the exact moment. For Clare Howard, from Southhampton, it was the night when Bill Clinton suggested that Obama did well in the South Carolina primary because of his race. That went too far, said Howard. "It was like they would do anything to win," Joan Schmidt, in Levittown, grew tired of hearing Clinton exaggerate her experience. Jane Dovel, 68, turned away from Clinton after the New York senator's reaction to Obama's comments that Reagan had been a "transformative political figure." Clinton fired that Republicans hadn't had better ideas. "I don't think it's a better idea to privatize Social Security," she said. "I don't think it's a better idea to eliminate the minimum wage." That's not what Obama had said, recalled Dovel. "What Clinton said was a blatant lie," "From that moment on she was not to be trusted."
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POPSWho said? Economically Insecure White People...Are Scared to Death! Continued from above: They know if they can keep us looking at each other across a racial divide, if I can look at Bobby Rush and think, Bobby wants my job, my promotion, then neither of us can look at George Bush and say, 'What happened to everybody's job? What happened to everybody's income? What ... have ... you ... done ... to ... our ... country?'" Jason Linkins notes a statement from Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol to Talking Points Memo, which reads in part: I have been in meetings with the Clintons and their advisors where very clinical things were said in a very-detached tone about unwillingness of working class voters to trust government -- and Bill Clinton -- and about their unfortunate (from a Clinton perspective) proclivity to vote on life-style rather than economic issues. To see Hillary going absolutely over the top to smash Obama for making clearly more humanly sympathetic observations in this vein, is just amazing.
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POPSObama leading Hillary by 1 to 2 million votes. Therefore, in Kansas, Barack Obama gained 543,440 votes to Hillary Clinton's 189,240 votes. This is a far wider margin of victory than Clinton supporters would like to admit, but decidedly more accurate. Let's just say, for arguments sake, that we're overestimating how many people a county delegate represents. Let's call it 10 rather than 20. Then the tally becomes 271,720 votes for Obama, and 94,620 for Clinton. A substantial victory. And that is the absolute bottom lowest average estimate 13 caucus states so far in the Primary and Clinton has only won one of them. Obama defeated her in Iowa, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska, Washington, Maine, Hawaii and Wyoming. The tally of county delegates for these states, has Obama at 366,764 and Clinton at 156,563. Multiply these numbers by 10, it puts Obama at 3,667,640 and Clinton at 1,565,630, a margin of 2 million votes. Applied to the final tally, it puts Obama ahead of Clinton by 2,300,000 vo
3
POPSThe Last Days of Cheap Chinese More: China's Generation Y, the children born after the one-child policy came into effect, are increasingly aware of their rights to a legal wage, health insurance, and a certain number of days off every month. Their demands for better treatment will continue to drive up the cost of manufacturing in China. Already, southern China's Guangdong province, known as "the workshop of the world," is short 2 million workers, the equivalent of 14 percent of America's entire manufacturing workforce The problem for American retailers and consumers hooked on $3 T-shirts and $30 DVD players is that there is no other China waiting in the wings to make cheap goods reliably for American shoppers So importers are looking back to countries they once rejected in favor of China—Indonesia, Mexico, and Malaysia. And they are looking ahead to countries not yet integrated into the global consumer-goods supply chain, such as Brazil and Kenya
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POPSPentagon Overbudget by $295 Billion - Biggest Military Run-up since WW II More: This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars – already pushing a trillion – in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems purchased in the wake of 9/11. The Government Accountability Office - The Bush Administration's worst enemy. McCain? Eight more years of Bush policies.
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POPSMcCain "Death of Iraqis due to war? In the Hundreds of Thousands" Either McCain has no clue what he's talking about. Which is a very distinct possibility if anyone's been following his gaffes on what's actually taking place in the Mid-East ...... or ...... much of what the lunatic rightwing holds onto, as ridiculously low numbers of Iraqi deaths due to Bush's reckless war based on lies, is propaganda
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POPSHillary campaign fails to pay bills. More: She owed Iowa’s Sioux City Art Center Board of Trustees $3,500 for catering and venue costs, New Hampshire’s Winnacunnet Cooperative School District $4,400 in event costs, Qwest $24,000 for phone service, various branches of the Iowa-based supermarket chain Hy-Vee $15,000 for food, beverages and catering, and $7,700 to Ohio and Massachusetts branches of the theatrical stage employees’ union, for equipment costs. In fact, about a third of the nearly 700 individual debts Clinton reported at the end of February were for various types of “event expenses,” including $319,000 for catering and venue costs, $420,000 for equipment, $11,000 for photography and $9,000 for security And word is getting around that Clinton’s campaign does not promptly pay those who labor to make her events look good, “I feel insulted by the way that the campaign treated this company and treated us personally,” said the employee It's 3 AM and the bill collectors are calling....
1
POPSMcCain's Treasury Sec. pick tied to Subprime Meltdown More: For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. Wall Street firms are increasingly under scrutiny for contributing to the economic downturn by packaging and selling risky mortgage securities. When the home loans tied to the mortgages defaulted, investors and the banks lost billions, contributing to a widespread credit crunch. UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 job Now, some housing experts and economists see Gramm’s thinking in the recent housing proposal from McCain, the Republican Party’s presumed presidential nominee. Gramm is often a surrogate for the Arizona senator, particularly in meetings focused on the economy. And McCain has hinted he’d consider the former Texas senator for Treasury secretary in a McCain administration.
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POPSJohn McCain On Housing More: After casting himself as a "Maverick" in 2000, the new John McCain is walking in lockstep with President Bush, pandering to the right wing of the Republican Party, and embracing the ideology he once denounced. McCain Voted Against Over $1 Billion In Homeless Assistance. McCain voted against an amendment to restore homeless assistance funding to the 1995 level of $1.12 billion, an increase of $360 million from the bill, and offset the costs by reducing funds for the renewal of expiring subsidized private housing contracts On the campaign trail McCain has callously abandoned many of his previously held positions, even contradicted himself, in a blatant attempt to remake himself into a candidate Republicans can accept in 2008. So just who is the real John McCain?
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POPSChristian Science Monitor on Reverend Wright - Did Obama's Pastor Preach Hate? What people hear depends on their own experience and worldview, says Teresa Brown, who teaches the art of preaching at Emory U. in Atlanta. "I listen to 60 sermons a week by black and white pastors, you can find something in almost any one that is offensive to somebody." The key as to whether language is hate speech lies in a preacher's overall message, according to Martin Marty, of the University of Chicago Divinity School and renowned historian of religion. Dr. Marty, who has visited Trinity many times, says, "If Wright only had whites in his searchlight, you might call it . But he goes after the men in his church" about fatherhood, he puts himself and his people under the prophetic spotlight. "The black church took the distorted version of Christianity that provided the religious justification for slavery, carved out the racist elements ..and implanted new content that actually moved Christianity in this country closer to Jesus' message," says Dr. Braxton.
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POPSMedia gives McCain a pass on his Iraq gaffe McCain seems to have forgotten that there are two Islamic sects in a civil war in Iraq. Can't keep it straight which one is which and were their strength and allies are located. Believes Sunnis go to Iran for training. Has to be saved by Grima Wormtongue (a.k.a. Joe Lieberman)
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POPS4,000 GI's Dead - I Ain't No Senators Son, Son Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooh, theyre red, white and blue. And when the band plays hail to the chief, Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord, It aint me, it aint me, I aint no senators son, son. It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, no, Yeah! Some folks are born silver spoon in hand, Lord, dont they help themselves, oh. But when the taxman comes to the door, Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes, It aint me, it aint me, I aint no millionaires son, no. It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, no. Some folks inherit star spangled eyes, Ooh, they send you down to war, lord, And when you ask them, how much should we give? Ooh, they only answer more! more! more! yoh, It aint me, it aint me, I aint no military son, son. It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, one. It aint me, it aint me, I aint no fortunate one, no no no, It aint me, it aint me, I aint no fortunate son, no no no,
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POPSJohn McCain's Money Troubles Continue More: Virtually every campaign observer agrees that the Arizona senator, who alluded to his lackluster and unenthusiastic fundraising efforts last spring, is going to have to at least double his $11 million monthly take to hopefully stay competitive. Me: Looks like tepid support in the republican base for McCain. A devout republican cousin of mine called my Dad to discuss Obama as my cousin thinks he is going to vote for Obama. Cousin says he doesn't believe another 100 years of war in Iraq is in our country's best interest. So people are answering poll questions but they aren't reaching into their pockets to pony up the cash.
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POPSPhotos & Video - Hillary never in danger in Bosnia - Sinbad vindicated (LOL) Hillary has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, Bill, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down." Numerous problems with Clinton's version of events. As a reporter who visited Bosnia soon December 1995, I can attest that the physical risks were minimal during this period, at a heavily fortified U.S. Air Force base, such as Tuzla. Contrary to the claims of Hillary Clinton, Bosnia was not "too dangerous" a place for President Clinton to visit in 1996. In fact, the first Clinton to visit the Tuzla Air Force base was not Hillary, but Bill, on January 13, 1996.
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POPSHillary campaign insider - only 10% chance of beating Obama In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe. The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics. Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver. Avoiding predictions based on polls even before voters cast their ballots is wise policy. But that's not the same as drawing sober and well-grounded conclusions about the current state of a race after millions of voters have registered their preferences. The antidote to last winter's flawed predictions is not to promote a misleading narrative based on the desired but unlikely story line of one candidate.
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POPSGovernor Bill Richardson endorses Barack Obama for President More: when it came time to decide, Richardson said Obama "will be a historic and great president, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad." The Obama campaign provided a copy of prepared remarks Richardson is scheduled to deliver in Oregon. While Richardson called Hillary Clinton "a distinguished leader with vast experience," he said it is "now time for a new generation of leadership." He said Obama possesses "the judgment and courage we need in a commander-in-chief when our nation's security is on the line." Obama returned the praise and said he was "deeply honored" to have Richardson's support.
2
POPSHillary's weakest personal dimension - seen as less honest and trustworthy More: In both surveys, Obama is described by more traits than is Clinton. Once again, his strengths are on empathy, but he also exceeds Clinton on "would work with both parties to get things done." "honest and trustworthy," is Clinton's weakest dimension on the USA Today/Gallup poll (it wasn't asked in the CNN/OR poll). In fact, Gallup has tracking that shows Clinton to be the weakest she's ever been on this measure since 1994.
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