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POPSThe Republicans' Reagan Amnesia And what were those principles, exactly? No. 1—according to the resolution—was “smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes.” Let’s take those from the top. Smaller government: Federal employment grew by 61,000 during Reagan’s presidency—in part because Reagan created a whole new cabinet department, the department of veterans affairs. (Under Bill Clinton, by contrast, federal employment dropped by 373,000). Smaller deficits and debt: Both nearly tripled on Reagan’s watch. Lower taxes: Although Reagan muscled through a major tax cut in 1981, he followed up by raising taxes in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1986. In 1983, in fact, he not only raised payroll taxes; he raised them to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Let’s put this in language today’s tea-baggers can understand: Reagan raised taxes to pay for government-run health care.
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POPSKindle killer Publishers have long assumed that, once Amazon has the Kindle locked in as the default e-reader and has accustomed buyers to that $10 price point, the company could compel publishers to lower their wholesale prices on e-books.
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POPSCIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story. On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up. "What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence." But never mind, he says now. "I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."
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POPSHistorians stand up to 'Liberal Fascism' and its abuse of history, while Beck blithely promotes it
Today, at History News Network, you can read the initial essays. In addition to my introduction, there are four essays: -- Robert O. Paxton, professor emeritus at Columbia University and the author of The Anatomy of Fascism, leads off the essays with "The Scholarly Flaws of Liberal Fascism." -- Roger Griffin, professor of political science at Oxford Brookes and the author of The Nature of Fascism, has a piece titled "An Academic Book - Not!" -- Matthew Feldman, professor of history at University of Northampton, and a co-editor of several academic texts on fascism, offers his assessment on why refuting Goldberg still matters: "Poor Scholarship, Wrong Conclusions". -- Chip Berlet, senior researcher at Political Research Associates and the co-author (with Matthew Lyons) of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, has penned a history of Goldberg's arguments, "The Roots of Liberal Fascism: The Book."
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POPS Glenn Beck intimates that progressives will try to assassinate Obama if he moves to the center Because that sure as hell was what you were getting at yesterday on your show. You fretted in the opening monologue, talking about that looming internal "civil war" among Democrats: Beck: I believe it could get ugly -- so ugly, not only do I think the Republic is in danger, I think that we need to pay real attention -- I think this president could be in real danger as well -- something I have said for awhile. However, he never fully explained what he meant by this remark -- mostly dropping further intimations, including the remark about progressives' supposedly violent tendencies, and then explaining "why the president is in danger" by running through one of his chalkboard talks showing Obama's connections to such nefarious progressive entities as SEIU and ACORN. Later, he added that these "radical revolutionaries" running the White House were planning to "deal a final death blow to the Constitution if they can."
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