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POPSGeorge H. W. Bush's Entry into Politics Bush served as Chairman of the Republican Party for Harris County, Texas in 1964, but wanted to be more involved in policy making, so he set his stakes high: he aimed for a US Senate seat from Texas. After winning the Republican primary, Bush faced his opponent, incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough. Yarborough attacked Bush as a right-wing extremist, and Bush lost the general election.
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POPSThe Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti Notably, in 2005, a year after the Bush-Cheney Administration de facto deposed the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Baptiste Aristide, a team of geologists from the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas began an ambitious and thorough two-phase mapping of all geological data of the Caribbean Basins.
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POPSBarack Hoover Obama In 1932, Herbert Hoover turned away thousands of starving veterans who had traveled thousands of miles to Washington looking to receive the bonus due them, never once addressing them in the 2 months the veterans where camped there. He got rid of them by calling out the military lead by General Douglas MacArthur himself with troops and tanks. Instead, Hoover shelled out millions to the banks to keep them afloat.
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POPSMoney isn't speech & corporations aren't people Read the full piece for a more detailed analysis on the rationale the SCOTUS used, and how the same justices have failed to use the same arguments when it comes to people who aren't rich or a transnational corporation. Protesters, religious solicitors, whistleblowers, lots of people get their speech curtailed by SCOTUS decisions. Corporations? They get to buy what's left of our democracy. Game of Rollerball anyone? NOTE: Comments disagreeing that make it clear the commenter has read the article and is engaging it's arguments will be debated. But if you don't address the specific arguments it makes and the court cases it cites, if it's clear you haven't read the article AND have a disagreeing opinion, I'm just going to delete your comment and wait till you come back having read the article. Disagreement and debate is welcome. But do your fucking homework first or you're wasting both of our times.
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POPSIs it racist when white people deny that racism exists? It's a subconscious choice. It's to avoid the pangs of guilt that they would otherwise feel if they acknowledged racism does exist. And finally, I have come across white people who purposely deny that something is racist just to get a rise out of you. This situation is racism. Bottom line. You don't have to look to white people to acknowledge racism. You cannot count on them to identify racism. They are simply not capable of that. When you feel down or upset talk to someone else who's been through it. I am Somali and in those situations I have tried to talk to white people in the past. They just cannot fathom that in 2009 things like that happen. Talk to a black or Asian ,Latino person. They'll know where you're coming from. It always helps to bounce things off of people who share your experiences. Yours Faithfully Mowlid
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POPSSotomayor, Evangelicals, and Racism The Evangelical understanding of salvation and spiritual life is built around the ongoing relationship the Christian has with Jesus. Being “born again” is the beginning of a lifelong one-on-one relationship with Jesus, that will change the Christian from the inside out, making him or her more holy and Christ-like. The focus here is on the individual and the locus of change is within the individual.
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POPSThe Destabilization of Haiti: February 29, 2004 The self-proclaimed Front pour la Libération et la reconstruction nationale (FLRN) (National Liberation and Reconstruction Front) is led by Guy Philippe, a former member of the Haitian Armed Forces and Police Chief. Philippe had been trained during the 1991 coup years by US Special Forces in Ecuador, together with a dozen other Haitian Army officers. (See Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News, 24 February 2004).
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POPSUS Accused of MIlitarizing Relief Effort in Haiti HAITIAN MAN: These weapons they bring, they are instruments of death. We don’t want them. We don’t need them. We are a traumatized people. What we want from the international community is technical help—action, not words. SEBASTIAN WALKER: And beyond the well guarded perimeter, there’s something else going on. Here, the United States has taken control. It looks more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a center for aid distribution. Heavily armed US forces patrol the entrances. Even within the airport, these soldiers are never without weapons. There are several thousand on the ground already, and that number is expected to grow. America now decides who lands in Haiti, and there’s a constant stream of US aircraft arriving with thousands of US boots on the ground. Meanwhile, aid flights from other nations are being turned back. Two Mexican aircraft with vital life-saving equipment were told they couldn’t land on Saturday.
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POPSIs the Haiti Rescue Effort Failing? And there is a deeper fear -- a political fear. With President Aristide, the man the US considers too radical for its tastes, anxious to return, there is fear that a possible revolt against the lack of help could turn angry and political. Hillary Clinton keeps telling the Haitians that we are their friends -- but many doubt it.They know that Aristide's Lavalas party is the most popular in Haiti and wants a more profound transformation than the US wants to allow. It had been banned from taking part in scheduled elections next month, that are likely to be canceled now. Haiti's president Preval is weak and dependent on US largesse.
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POPSBruce Almighty If anyone has any strong opinions about this movie, I would like to hear them. :)
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POPSHaiti Didn't Become a Poor Nation All on Its Own -- The U.S's Hidden Role in the Disaster True enough. But that's not the whole story. What's missing is any explanation of why there are so many Haitians living in and around Port-au-Prince and why so many of them are forced to survive on so little. Indeed, even when an explanation is ventured, it is often outrageously false such as a former U.S. diplomat's testimony on CNN that Port-au-Prince's overpopulation was due to the fact that Haitians, like most Third World people, know nothing of birth control.
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POPSGoogle Alternative Needed If within the time options you click "last 24 hours" or one of the other short time frames, the results are indeed postings from the last 24 hours and there are multiple pages, but (a) they are not in time order but are in "Google priority order" and (b) there is definitely the same heavy bias toward the 1990's vintage sites that you see in the ordinary results.
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POPSMilitary's Use of Drones on the Rise in Afghanistan Idus7 January 12th, 2010 5:33 pm figured this was a MSM piece before looking - sure enough, WaPo. Typically, such a piece will purportedly reveal something previously unknown, 'Using more drones now in Afghanistan', but fills out the word-count with self-serving quotes from those with a vested interest. "We use those more and more all the time as they become available." As someone said above, the mil. will use whatever they get their hands on - they are long since desensitized to the effects of their weaponry. They just 'want to get the job done'. "Marines said they have taken about three-quarters of the area they set out to control. ... 11 of the 13 people killed were confirmed Taliban members, and the other two were known associates. ... killing three suspected insurgents carrying weapons..." We only have their word for all this, and I for one no longer believe them or those reporting such data or the news source from which it came.
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POPSWhen is a "terrorist" not a "terrorist"? Great article from Slate.com This article makes a great point. Calling everything "terrorism" is just a method used to justify the so-called "war on terror". But how do you justify the costs in terms of all the lives lost, trillions of dollars wasted that could be better spent, or restrictions placed on our constitutional rights in the interest of safety?