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POPSSEAL Awarded Medal of Honor There's not a more deserving warrior patriot. I read of his courage under fire as written by the survivor mentioned, his fellow SEAL and best friend, Marcus Luttrell, in his book Lone Survivor. They were all incredible men, thus it was an incredible loss.
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POPSAncient Chinese Bells The importance of that discovery grows when we realize that it took the West a thousand years to develop the cathedral bell, and we didn't have it until the middle ages. Bells are very hard to make, yet China had these remarkably sophisticated Zhong bells during the Golden Age of Athens. The bells produce a rich tone, they take far less bronze to get it than a cathedral bell, and then they deliver two sounds for the cost of one. It's easy to look right at something that's very sophisticated without seeing the sophistication. It took us eighty years to catch on to these remarkable, but unassuming, bells. The best inventions are like that. In the best inventions, elegance masquerades as simplicity.
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POPSMedia Dishonesty Matters - 101 Frauds 21 - 101 at the source, along with brief summaries on each link. Quite a collection of deception and plagiarism. No, I didn't triple check on or even read most of these.
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POPSA Few Things Moore Forgot in Sicko Michael Moore forgot to mention what the United States does have that other countries do not: A Declaration of Independence. A Constitution. A Bill of Rights. The concepts of individual rights, personal choice, free markets, private investment that develops most of the world's new medications, and the benefit of a private relationship between physicians and their patients without third-party interference. In his hymn to every other nation's superiority to America—in proportion to their commitment to collectivism—Michael Moore forgot to mention any American values at all.
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POPSCigarette Tax Burnout In New York City and State, tobacco taxes have been raised so many times that the retail cost can exceed $9 a pack -- about double the national average. Few budget-savvy smokers in the Big Apple pay that tax. Patrick Fleenor, an expert on tobacco taxes at the Tax Foundation, estimates that there is "now a 75% gap between cigarette sales in the city and cigarette consumption." In other words, three out of four cigarettes are bought elsewhere or are contraband. In New Jersey, about 40% of the Marlboros and Virginia Slims that are lit up escape the $2.57-a-pack tax. In Washington State, evasion was so rampant that the legislature decided in 2005 to lower the 75% tax on cigars and other tobacco products as a way to raise revenue and help state retailers.
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POPSErrors in "An Inconvenient Truth" "All of the errors point in one direction – towards undue alarmism. Not one of the errors falls in the direction of underestimating the degree of concern in the scientific community. The likelihood that all 35 of the errors listed below could have fallen in one direction purely by inadvertence is less than 1 in 34 billion." Perhaps errors is too forgiving of a term...these are blatant lies. The source covers 35 "errors", with the 1st nine being those recently illustrated by a judge in Britain.
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POPSNavy SEAL Chief Killed in Iraq Carter’s C.O. “I am honored to serve with and lead men and women like Chief Mark Carter. He was an outstanding SEAL, teammate, and great American...I urge those who knew him to honor his life, in the best way we know how.”
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POPSThe True Liberalism "The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand." First published in German, 1927 Liberalism - In the Classical Tradition Ludwig von Mises
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POPSThe Price of Gas Again, while just over nine percent of the price of a gallon of gas goes to oil company profits, approximately twenty percent of the price of a gallon of gas is composed of federal, state, and local taxes. Those who want the government to step in and do something about the high price of gas are either forgetful of recent history or too young to remember the oil crisis of 1979. During that time, restrictions on the price of gasoline led to the inability of some to find gas at all. Price ceilings always lead to shortages. The only thing worse than having to pay "too much" for gas is not being able to find gas at any price. Let us not be swayed by politicians out for power or by reporters out to create news where none exists. Facts and economic logic should prevail rather than rhetoric.
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POPSSocialist Oil Venezuela, despite having perhaps the sixth-largest oil reserves in the world, has falling production because of the mismanagement by the Chavez government. Mexico also is suffering from falling oil production because the government refuses to allow private oil exploration and production companies, and the state-owned oil company, Pemex, is corrupt and incompetent. By contrast, the U.S. only has about 2 percent of the world's oil reserves, but produces little more than 8 percent of global production, largely because they are privately owned and managed. If there were a truly free market in oil, with both the reserves and production owned and controlled by many competitive companies, the price of oil would be a fraction of today's price.
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POPSEconomics in One Clip One reason that Bastiat's example has power is that it applies not just in one area of policy but all areas. If it isn't true that breaking windows creates wealth, it is not true that government spending and inflating is a boon to the economy. It only ends up draining wealth from the private sector, which is the only source of wealth creation.
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POPSMigrant Air Serves Border Crossers " Return flights south are often nearly empty, and some routes offer only one-way service. One of the airlines, Tijuana-based Avolar, estimates that 70% of its customers have the USA as their final destination." I saved the best lines for last. It's almost funny.