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POPSNORTHCOM Plans 5 Day Martial Law Exercise There is no question that Vigilant Shield 08 is either government preparation for the implementation of martial law or a way for criminal elements within the government to distract emergency responders in order to conduct a false flag terror attack as a pretext to actually implement martial law and engage in foreign war. Hmm... I don't like the sound of this, but as my S.O. always says: "Hope for the best, but expect the worst".
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POPSRediculous Propaganda from FEMA FEMA is a disaster all its own. The next president will need to give them a serious overhaul! Of all the people who shouldn't be afraid to face an ugly situation, it's FEMA's job to face disasters, not create them! Scolding is not enough for this. They should all lose their jobs. Immediately. Once again this shows that the administration only cares about pats on the back and looking out for its own interests, not in actually getting things done. Which is probably why in the last 6 years, Bush has achieved nothing except for ardent self-congratulation. These people are totally insufferable politicians! On a side note, the state department is having trouble filling positions at the Iraqi embassy. I can't think of a better place for Bush and his cronies to serve their retirements. Maybe they might actually do something for their country!
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POPS White Radical Evangelicals Get a Pass "Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people...By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers."
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POPSIs anyone surprised? Meanwhile, back at the homefront, soldiers and their families continue to bear the burden and suffering of the present conflicts, ALONE. Often, those who express their deepest concern and have the highest level of awareness, are NOT in a position of power to do anything about the present debacle, and the coming avalanche of human misery. We veterans and families of military easily discuss our expereinces of betrayal we have with our governmental agencies and organizations. Yet we are somehow silent when we look at or sit next to our neighbor and fellow citizens. We accept our isolation and alienation as our fate as if we will always be misunderstood or disregarded misfits.
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POPSWhen can empathy move us to action? And so cognitive empathy alone is not enough. We also need what Ekman calls "emotional empathy"—when you physically feel what other people feel, as though their emotions were contagious. This emotional contagion depends in large part on cells in the brain called mirror neurons, which fire when we sense another's emotional state, creating an echo of that state inside our own minds. Emotional empathy attunes us to another person's inner emotional world, a plus for a wide range of professions, from sales to nursing—not to mention for any parent or lover.
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POPSHomeland Security confiscates Songwriter Hard Drive Take a guess at the nature of the songs. From the article: "And though Walla's laughing when he mentions Guantánamo, he's not joking when he adds that his record — which he's calling Field Manual — is "very political," packed with songs about issues both foreign ("The Score" tackles the war in Iraq) and domestic ("Everyone Needs a Home" deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; "Sing Again" is about so-called "morning after" pills and whether they're a form of contraception or abortion). Easy listening, this is not."
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POPSPrediction: More alarmism in 2008 “In the last few months,” Mr. Gore said, “it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter.” But he was being too modest. Thanks to availability entrepreneurs like him, misinterpreting the weather is getting easier and easier.
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POPSArmy Brigade Stationed inside US Since the end of the Civil War deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (except National Guard and Coast Guard, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina).
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POPSTop Scientist cools to global warming From Moonbattery.com: Kerry Emanuel of MIT used to get his name in the papers by claiming that global warming caused Katrina. His opportunistic findings were eagerly seized upon by the deranged Robert Kennedy Jr., who tried to spin them as proof that George W. Bush caused the hurricane. In an attempt to retain some credibility, Emanuel is now backing away from his hysterical claim that global warming will cause a plague of hurricanes. Now he says there will be a reduction in the number of hurricanes over the next two centuries.
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POPSPoverty Is Poison "America’s failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses. Some of these excuses take the form of assertions that America’s poor really aren’t all that poor — a claim that always has me wondering whether those making it watched any TV during Hurricane Katrina, or for that matter have ever looked around them while visiting a major American city."
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POPSMuseum of Unintended Use An interesting new blog. And oh yeah, that last pic was taken in a pet supply store; it's a dog beg with an unintended sleeper inside. :)
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POPSRumsfeld: Mixing God with Intelligence and Bush???!!!! OMG One of the images was from March 31, 2003, showing a US tank roaring through the desert about 10 days after the US invaded Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. Over the image was printed a verse from Ephesians: "Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand." The report by Robert Draper, who wrote a well-received book about Bush called "Dead Certain," also detailed the frustration and occasional fury of former officials who said Rumsfeld constantly undermined the president's goals. Draper said: "Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina."
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POPSIs the GOP out to lunch?
The GOP is "out to lunch" as in porch light on-nobody's home. The GOP has not been mentally there, for some time now. Strange how it could hold so many minds captive with its utterly insane propaganda. What is wrong with people? The GOP should have been laughed off the world stage at the beginning of the Bush reign of nincompoopery. But no, people embraced the blunders, starting with the preemptive Invasion of Iraq and the GOP’s cooked intelligence to launch this phony war. Then, the Terri Schiavo debacle when the GOP joined the religious right to interfere in a local matter. Also, The Marriage amendment, the GOP stuck its nose where it doesn't belong. The GOP JUSTICE SUNDAY frenzy, The GOP hurricane KATRINA incompetence The GOP Bush strut on the deck of the USS Abe Lincoln declaring "Mission Accomplished."Insanity all the way. The GOP lives in fantasy but maybe, since people are growing up, the unhinged, hateful world of the GOP might be fading away. But don't hold your breath.
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POPSTea Party Bus Sponsor's Negligence Killed 23 Seniors In Fire, Blames Federal Government. Global Limo's owner Jim Maples even listed Global Charters as his employer when he gave $5000 to the RNC in 2004. *BusBank CEO Bill Maulsby blamed insufficient federal oversight, "We're not safety experts," he said. "We clearly need to depend on the federal government." In November 2006, a federal court convicted Maples and sentenced him to five years' probation for failure to maintain his buses. Investigators found 168 violations in Maples' four-bus fleet. The following month, US Fed News reported that BusBank had been awarded a Homeland Security contract worth up to $55 million. In June, BusBank and Global Limo settled out of court for a total of $11 million, a pittance when split between the families of the 23 victims and the patients who survived the crash. BusBank's legal troubles are far from over. According to one report, more lawsuits are getting underway this month.
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POPSImpeachment is rightful course - G. McGovern McGovern says that American democracy has been "derailed" by the administration's commitment to "a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq … done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949." Impeach! Can we impeach Pelosi also? She is an accessory after the fact, maybe even more.
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POPSMyths and misconseptions about Global Warming. Go to the page and click the link, they take you to studies and articles. Here are the rest: • Warming will cause an ice age in Europe • Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming • Ice cores show CO2 rising as temperatures fell • Many leading scientists question climate change • It's all a conspiracy • Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming • Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production • Polar bear numbers are increasing <b>http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462<b>
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POPSAround The World Newspapers Say So Long To Bush “A web of manipulation has cost America $900 billion and the lives of 4,000 soldiers — along with at least 500,000 Iraqis.” Perhaps the most original, however, was Pan-Arab al-Hayat newspaper, which “recalled his controversial election win in Florida and how he once nearly choked on a pretzel, watching television.” “Perhaps we could say that fate, which let the American people down first in Florida and then with the issue of the pretzel in the president’s throat, ultimately helped them by making sure the president would spend half his time on vacation,” wrote the paper’s editorial writers. “Indeed, he would have caused twice the damage if he had been more active and focused.” Not everyone wrote badly of Bush. Most complementary, according to Reuters, was the Jerusalem Post, which remarked that Bush had been the best friend to Israel in 60 years.
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POPSFollow The Money - Republican Execs Going Democratic Jeffrey Volk, a managing director at Citigroup in New York, says he grew disenchanted with Republicans after the federal government failed to provide more help to the Gulf region after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He says he's supporting Clinton. It was absolutely inconceivable to me that after 9/11 another catastrophe could hit a major American city, and the United States government was not prepared. John Canning, a deputy board chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago and CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, expressed similar misgivings. He described the Republican Party in an April interview as neanderthal for its positions on stem-cell research and global warming. He says he liked Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq and his approach to reducing greenhouse gases. I no longer find myself on the same page as Republicans.
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POPSBeing the Featured Clipmarks Clipper Helping your fellow clippers to be more knowledgeable about what is important is an excellent motivation for clipping. With a bit of cooperative organisation groups of clippers will be able to provide each other and other groups with professional monitoring services.
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POPSTerror Alerts used in 2004 to help Bush win reelection More: Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Independent, notes that in the past, Ridge has denied manipulating security information for political reasons. In 2004, for example, he said, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security." The Bush administration was forced to admit in the days after the 2004 alert that it was based on intelligence three or four years old. Officials then claimed there was a previously unmentioned "separate stream of intelligence" that justified the warning -- but offered little tangible information to support their new story.. Ridge's book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again," comes out September 1. Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election: