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POPSBuenos Aires is for Lovers and Republican Family Values Governors It won't be easy, you'll think it strange When I try to explain how I feel That I still need your love after all that I've done You won't believe me All you will see is a girl you once knew Although she's dressed up to the nines At sixes and sevens with you I had to let it happen, I had to change Couldn't stay all my life down at heel Looking out of the window, staying out of the sun So I chose freedom Running around, trying everything new But nothing impressed me at all I never expected it to Don't cry for me Argentina The truth is I never left you All through my wild days My mad existence I kept my promise Don't keep your distance
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POPSRepublican Rep. Pete Hoekstra mercilessly heckled by Twitter users.
Hoekstra compared the mass uprising of Iranians – utilizing Twitter as an organizing tool -- to the GOP's attempt to express dissatisfaction over Nancy Pelosi's decision to adjourn Congress before an energy vote last August. More Twitter responses: Rode a packed metro into work this morning. Now know what it's like to be in a concentration camp. I burned my finger this morning on a hot plate, now I know how Joan of Arc felt. I spilled some lukewarm coffee on myself just now, which is somewhat analogous to being boiled in oil. I splashed my face with cold water this morning after shaving, which is similar to having been waterboarded. I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross. Someone walked in on me while I was in the bathroom. Reminded me of Pearl Harbor. Had to move all my stuff to a new office w/o a corner view. Now I know what the Trail of Tears was like. Ate leftover for lunch today. Just like the Donner par
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POPS2009 World Food Prize awarded to Ethiopian Scientist Born in 1950, Gebisa Ejeta grew up in a one-room thatched hut with a mud floor, in a rural village in west-central Ethiopia. Walking 20 kilometers every Sunday night to attend school during the week Ejeta’s high academic standing earned him financial assistance and entrance to the secondary-level Jimma Agricultural and Technical School, which had been established by Oklahoma State University under the U.S. government’s Point Four Program. After graduating with distinction, Ejeta entered Alemaya College (also established by OSU and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development) in eastern Ethiopia. He received his bachelor’s degree in plant science in 1973. In 1973, his college mentor introduced Ejeta to a renowned sorghum researcher, Dr. John Axtell of Purdue University, who invited him to assist in collecting sorghum species from around the country Ejeta entered Purdue in 1974, earning his Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics. Alot more good reading at t
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POPSWhy it pays to be a Moderate Republican. Collins fights oil speculators. Collins was also one of only three Republicans voting in favor of Obama's economic stimulus bill, and that only after getting a promise of spending cuts and more school construction. Obama may need a handful of Republicans to revamp of financial regulation, including the oil markets. Will Collins demand something again from the president in exchange for crossing party lines? Offering a coy smile, Collins answered, "I do think the president has been receptive when I make suggestions."
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POPSFrolicking Father Cutie quits Roman Catholics to join Episcopalians Four times as many priests involve themselves sexually with adult women than with children, says A.W. Richard Sipe. Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and author of Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis, has studied celibacy and sexuality within the priesthood for more than 30 years. At any time, he says, 20 percent of priests in good standing are involved in sexual relationships with women. Moreover, he estimates only 2 percent of those vowed to celibacy achieve it. Some Catholics expressed sympathy for Cutie and said it was time to end the celibacy rule. Others said that, given the recent scandals involving U.S. priests sexually abusing young boys, and Irish priests raping, flogging and enslaving children in Catholic schools, they were relieved that Cutie had merely become involved with an adult woman.
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POPSTop 6 Ways to convert Poop into Electricity Turd Cell Smashers Destroying the cell walls in sludge—by heating it under pressure, zapping it with ultrasonic waves, or pulsing it with electric fields—boosts its methane production by 50 percent or more in anaerobic digesters Geological Toilets Last summer, Los Angeles began injecting sludge into a mile-deep well, where pressure and heat are expected to release enough methane to power 1,000 homes. The well also dissolves and sequesters carbon dioxide that the sludge would normally release, removing the equivalent exhaust of about 1,000 cars per year. Feces Ponds As a cheaper green option, some 50 waste plants in 20 countries have installed versions of UC Berkeley professor William J. Oswald's Advanced Integrated Wastewater Pond Systems Technology--large open-air ponds that primarily rely on anaerobic digestion and photosynthesis to break down sludge and convert it into a fertilizer or animal feed of nitrogen-rich algae. The algae in turn can be used as a feedstock for biofu
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POPSMonday Night Football just got better!! Nothing against Tony Kornheiser as a person but he did not improve Monday Night Football. I thought it was a mistake from day one. Personally, I wish they would talk more about the strategy of the game instead of trying to be -- entertainers. Bravo - Welcome aborad John Gruden.
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POPSTop 10 Racist Limbaugh Quotes (Leader of the Rebubbacan Party) 9. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve. 10. Limbaugh attacks on Obama. Limbaugh has called Obama a ‘halfrican American’ has said that Obama was not black but Arab because Kenya is an Arab region, even though Arabs are less than one percent of Kenya. Since mainstream America has become more accepting of African-Americans, Limbaugh has decided to play against its new racial fears, Arabs and Muslims. Despite the fact Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law school, Limbaugh has called him an ‘affirmative action candidate.’ Limbaugh even has repeatedly played a song on his radio show ‘Barack the Magic Negro’ using an antiquated Jim Crow era term for black a man who many Americans are supporting for president. Way to go Rush.
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POPSWar on Drugs contributed to Parkinson cases To explore a potential connection to pesticides, epidemiologist Beate Ritz of UCLA and her graduate student Sadie Costello, now at the University of California, Berkeley, studied public records of pesticide applications in California's Central Valley from 1974 to 1999. Every application of pesticides to crops must be registered with the state. Working with Myles Cockburn of the University of Southern California, they developed a tool to estimate pesticide exposure in areas immediately adjacent to the fields. They then identified 368 longtime residents who lived within 500 yards of fields where the chemicals had been sprayed and compared them with 341 carefully matched controls who did not live near the fields. All so a politician can luck tough.
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POPS(No) Drill, Baby, Drill But when Costa Rica put one minister in charge of energy and environment, “it created a very different way of thinking about how to solve problems,” said Rodríguez, now a regional vice president for Conservation International. “The environment sector was able to influence the energy choices by saying: ‘Look, if you want cheap energy, the cheapest energy in the long-run is renewable energy. So let’s not think just about the next six months; let’s think out 25 years.’ ” As a result, Costa Rica hugely invested in hydro-electric power, wind and geo-thermal, and today it gets more than 95 percent of its energy from these renewables. In 1985, it was 50 percent hydro, 50 percent oil. More interesting, Costa Rica discovered its own oil five years ago but decided to ban drilling — so as not to pollute its politics or environment! What country bans oil drilling?
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POPSOkie GOP Senator who does "Jesus Thing" believes it's OK to Lie Inhofe made the outright lie over and over in his commentary that President Obama had cut the military budget. Inhofe who believes his taxpayer funded trips to meet African leaders on a spiritual level is a "Jesus Thing" must believe Jesus approves of lying. The fact is that President Obama increases the military budget by about $25 billion. Additionally the military purchased every F-22 it planned to buy when the program begin and is now purchasng the less expensive F-35. Obviously Inhofe is a hypocritical turd who is concerned about the pork that won't be going to his home state. Additionally, Inhofe is a traitor for not supporting President Obama in this time of war. Neither did he support President Clinton when America's fighting men and women were in combat in Bosnia. What an f***'ing loser.
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POPSSenator to-be Franken picks up 87 votes. Republicans still obstructing Democracy. Democratic Rep. Jim Oberstar, meanwhile, has been one of the most vocal critics of Coleman's legal strategy, saying this past week that the former Senator and national GOP "is playing not just with fire, but with dynamite ... this thing is going to blow up in their face." Former Republican Sen. Dave Durenberger has said that the party leadership in Washington does not have "Coleman's best interests in mind." "If Norm had to finance this recount on his own, he never could have gone through it," he said. "Norm couldn't afford to put a nickel into this thing, but John Cornyn could." GOP = Grand Obstructionists Party
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POPSConservatives Obstructing key Obama nominees Department of Defense: Sens. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announced today that “they are blocking President Barack Obama’s nomination of Ashton Carter as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.” The senators want assurances that Carter will not “change the criteria” on which the Pentagon considers a refueling tanker contract that could benefit defense contractors in their state. Department of Veterans Affairs: Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) asked the Senate Veterans Affairs committee to delay voting on the “nomination of Tammy Duckworth, an injured Iraq war helicopter pilot, to be an assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Contacted by ThinkProgress, Burr’s Press Secretary, David Ward said that Burr is waiting for the answers to several questions he’s put to the White House and Duckworth, but would not disclose what those questions were.
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POPS3 Backward States - Well, really only 1, a Conservative one So an always correct, irrefutable, preening popinjay makes an agenda driven claim that is obviously inaccurate on several levels. First, Indiana, is a conservative craphole (word selection determined by original clipper). Secondly, you certainly can make your first time ever initial application for unemployment benefits by phone in Massachusetts, and online in Illinois. I contacted both offices and was very specific in determining if I could file a first time ever initial unemployment benefit claim by the means "his royal jack***" claimed could not be done. I was assured that you most certainly could by a very helpful lady in Massachusetts, and a very helpful gentleman in Illinois. The gentleman from Illinois kept repeating "thousands and thousands and thousands" of people have filed their first time initial application for unemployment benefits online in Illinois. So I will leave it to his Royal Imminence Scatmaster to prove conservative Indiana is not a craphole.
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POPSBush era regulation, dump mine waste in pristine lakes, goes before Supreme Court The action deepened a fracture line between environmentalists and industry. Moreover, it casts a spotlight on two federal regulators: the US Army Corps of Engineers, which gave Coeur the green light, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, which is accused of violating its own standards. Environmental attorney Tom Waldo with the firm Earthjustice says that the impetus for the Clean Water Act was a legacy of contamination and public health concerns caused by industrial companies, municipalities, and agriculture historically treating waterways as convenient, expendable repositories for waste. He points to a benchmark ruling during the 1970s against the Reserve Mining Co. in Minnesota, which disposed of taconite tailings, laden with asbestos, into Lake Superior from its processing facility, contaminating drinking water. In the US West, water quality in an estimated 40 percent of rivers has been impaired by historic mining sites long abandoned.
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POPSBangladesh, and others, moved to Compressed Natural Gas over Oil. CNG programs work well in countries with abundant natural gas reserves like Bangladesh. Italy started using CNG in the 1930s and was the first country to put a viable program in place. Other countries now using CNG successfully include India, Pakistan, Iran, Argentina, and Brazil. CNG has been around in Bangladesh since 1982. “At that time it wasn’t an issue of environmental concerns,” says Iftikar “Sabu” Hussain, CEO of CNG Distribution Company. Compressed natural gas was initially introduced as a domestic fuel alternative to expensive imports, but did not catch on then because converting to the cheaper fuel involved an expensive engine conversion. The increasing cost of imported petroleum, however, plus a rising concern for the environment made CNG a stronger choice in the early 2000s. CNG began to succeed in Bangladesh at this time because of millions of dollars in loans from international agencies to encourage a long-term program.
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POPSIsraeli Foreign Minister advocates wiping countries off the face of the map. In May 2006, Lieberman called for the killing of Arab members of Knesset Whereas Ahmadinejad was humiliated by Columbia University president Lee Bollinger on his visit to that university, which provoked public protests, Lieberman's acceptance into the Israeli government has been greeted mildly and he was allowed to come to the Brookings Institution and meet with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Lieberman is a Central/Eastern European ultra-nationalist in the mold of Slobodan Milosevic and Jorg Haider, and it is shameful that he was allowed into the government and more shameful that this travesty has passed without a peep in the civilized world.
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POPS25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis Rebubbacans and Ayn Rand disciples abound. Kathleen Corbet Corbet ran the largest agency, Standard & Poor's, during much of this decade, though the other two major players, Moody's and Fitch, played by similar rules. By slapping AAA seals of approval on large portions of even the riskiest pools of loans, rating agencies helped lure investors into loading on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that are now unsellable. Dick Fuld steered Lehman deep into the business of subprime mortgages Lehman even made its own subprime loans. The firm took all those loans, whipped them into bonds and passed on to investors billions of dollars of what is now toxic debt. Marion and Herb Sandler In the early 1980s, became the first to sell a tricky home loan called the option ARM. And they pushed the mortgage, which offered several ways to back-load your loan and thereby reduce your early payments, over the next two decades. pocketed $2.3 billion when they sold their bank to Wac
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POPSIsrael investigating soldier testimony of war crimes against Palestinians Another veteran described an officer who ordered machine-gunners to fire at an elderly woman In the testimony, the soldiers admitted that excessive force was used because the lives of Palestinian civilians were valued far less than those of the soldiers. When asked about the revelations, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he believed the stories described were an exception, and insisted the Israeli Defense Forces are the "most moral army in the world" Danny Zamir, the chairman of the preparatory school that hosted the seminar, said that the soldiers' testimony showed that the disregard for Palestinian civilians was not an exception. "The new release testimonies raise a grave suspicion that the rules of engagement in the infantry violated the basic principles of the international laws of war," he said. "If the alleged rules of engagement are true, both the officers who gave the order and the soldiers who obeyed them might have committed war crimes."
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POPSSarah Palin: More Earmark Hypocrisy The earmarks that Palin apparently will accept could also be ridiculed in a McCain-ish fashion. They include $475,000 to construct a "heritage center" in the Chilkat Indian Village; $150,000 to support private industry participation in two international fishery groups; $200,000 for investigating and prosecuting bootlegging; $200,000 for researching the king crab; and $855,000 for building fairgrounds. The Alaska earmarks also include $1.2 million for construction work on an airport on Akutan, a tiny island that relies on seaplane for contact with the Alaskan mainland. (The Coast Guard handles medical emergencies.) The island has roughly 800 residents. Could this be dubbed the Airport to Nowhere?
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POPSBest Countries for Women - U.S. lagging Europe Sweden was 3rd at 81.4% Other countries in the top 10 include Iceland (80%), New Zealand (79%), the Philippines (76%), Denmark (75%) and the Netherlands (74%). The U.K. ranked 13th (74%), "Personally, the U.S. was a surprise," said Saadia Zahidi, one of the study's authors.
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POPSInjured bears rescued from bile farms in China From source: Animals Asia says this still causes pain and the slow death of bears. But more painful methods ranging from inserting metal catheters and rubber tubes into the bears' abdomens, which have been banned by the government, are still believed to be used in China. The bears freed Friday had a host of illnesses from blindness to liver tumors, the group said. Some had ringworm around their faces and rocked from side to side biting their cage bars. Most of the bears that arrived today had scars and wounds on their heads as a result of repetitive bar-rubbing during their years on the farm. In short, they are cage-crazy The bears were given fruit mash before being taken away for a months-long rehabilitation program, which includes health checks, medical treatment and living in recovery cages under quarantine. Of the 260 bears the center has treated, 77 have died From me: I will never understand the painful, willing, ignorance of humans.
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POPSThe Joy of Rebubbacan Hysteria From source: Scenario B -- the far more likely one, in my opinion -- is that dark Republican prayers to the economic gods will go unanswered and the economy indeed will have lifted by late 2010. In this scenario, at the rate they're going and given the spectacled manner in which they're doing it, Republicans will have effectively extinguished themselves as a national party of serious opposition.
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