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POPSObama's Idol Status Overseas Many in Washington were scratching their heads while he (McCain) was traipsing through the jungles of Colombia last month. But then came the freeing of hostages held by the FARC Colombian rebels, and McCain looked, well, presidential. And really, that’s the whole point of these “fact-finding” missions – looking good for the cameras. Perhaps these work vacations by politicians are more sophisticated than they first appear. Maybe Americans appreciate the fact that their presidential candidates are traveling beyond the confines of America and seeing the world firsthand. Perhaps, but do not be deceived. These are trips staged to the finest detail, with little left to chance and happenstance. Obama and McCain know this, and they have treated it as such – an extension of their political campaigns. Why do you think the network anchors are along for the ride? It is surely not because of the news quotient that the “surge” is working.
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POPSNYT Rejects McCain's Editorial Shipley continues: 'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.' Follow link for McCain's rejected op-ed
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POPSDinosaur Media March Deeper Into The Tar Pit Barry O is on his preemptive victory lap around the world and he steadfastly refuses to take questions from the foreign press. I wonder why? it's not like he isn't great reading off a prompter ?off the cuff?answering tough questions right? What would our media say if it was the Maverick dodging tough questions? I kinda doubt they would let it slide, but the Obama slinks along unmolested by any serious scrutiny from our self-selected watchdogs of the Fourth Estate. It is refreshing as a member of the newest type of new media to know that every day the solons of the liberal e-light who make up the dinosaur media march ever deeper into the tar pit.
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POPSObama Now Supports The Bush Policy?...And How 'Bout The Worshipping Media The press isn’t just acting like Obama is already president - they’re exceeding the sort of international coverage they have given the sitting president, who could barely buy a headline while in Africa and whose recent trip to Japan - which occurred during his birthday - went widely unnoted. But that’s the honest, balanced, unbiased mediating intelligence” of the modern day mainstream media. You do realize, don’t you, that if a GOP candidate with weak foreign policy was doing the same thing - making a “world tour” with dramatic backdrops - the press would be sneering about how the whole thing is a “stunt” meant to “deflect his inexperience.” I know you know it, but I had to say it, anyway. But hey, no bias here.
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POPSABC Poll: A Careful Balance Between Left And Far-Left 3 for Obama and 2 for Clinton... No mention of the 54 for McCain. Maybe it wasn't bias --- maybe they just randomly picked five out of the 60 who didn't favor McCain. Never mind the odds of that happening are roughly 1 in 100,000. It was just luck of the draw! Luck of the draw, I tell you!
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POPSHyped up drug studies If you read the full article, some of the methods they use to make drugs look good are shocking. For example, if a drug doesn't reduce deaths from strokes, but does reduce the incidence of disability in survivors, they add the two numbers together in one column and claim that the drug reduces "death and disability" (meaning "death + disability," but people assume it means that the likelihood of death is reduced, too).
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POPSBBC's First Warped Headline Before It Gets Changed Our Special One Year Analysis of the BBC demonstrated how its headline selection for stories focused on combat and terrorist attacks was inconsistent and favored the Palestinian side. Stories about Palestinian attacks never directly named the aggressors, headlines such as "Rocket injures dozens in Israel" were used. Indeed, even the latest BBC headline "Bulldozer rampage hits Jerusalem", is also fundamentally flawed, failing to attribute the attack to the Palestinian individual who carried it out. It was not the city of Jerusalem, the subject of the headline, that was murdered, but at least three innocent Israelis. For accurate coverage and the latest developments from Jerusalem on this breaking story, see English-language Israeli sources such as The Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz and YNet News. You can also read the thoughts of HonestReporting's Backspin blog editor who happened to be in downtown Jerusalem at the time of the terror atttack.
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POPSPolitical Junkies: Why it Feels Good to Be an Extremist In The Political Brain , psychologist Drew Western summarizes fMRI experiments exploring the neuro-psychology of systematic bias and rationalization in the brains of political extremists. Finding ways to dismiss contradictory evidence triggers pleasant emotional releases in partisans' brains, eventually becoming a pleasurable, learned behavior. Once partisans had found a way to reason to false conclusions, not only did neural circuits involved in negative emotions turn off, but circuits involved in positive emotions turned on. The partisan brain didn't seem satisfied in just feeling better. It worked overtime to feel good, activating reward circuits that give partisans a jolt of positive reinforcement for their biased "reasoning." These reward circuits overlap substantially with those activated when drug addicts get their "fix," giving new meaning to the term political junkie.
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POPS'Mind's eye' influences visual perception The new findings offer an objective tool to assess the often-slippery concept of imagination. This is an interesting and fascinating experiment. It is perhaps a far shot but this may point towards the roots of human's ability and inclination to envision a future reality and than change the world around to fit this reality.
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POPSObama’s Weakness With Voters: Democrats Problem With White Voters
has become the hot topic among many who say racial bias explains it. Of course it would be naive to believe that race is not a factor in America today. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Mr. Obama’s relative weakness among white voters is solely, or even mainly, due to the fact that he is black and that three quarters of voters this year will be white. In 1991, when I wrote a book about how the Democrats were failing to deal with their white voter problem, I ran into a number of editors who wanted to know why anyone would care — and not too subtly wondered whether looking at the reasons for their disaffection might be too politically touchy. White voters, as a group, are more likely to favor a limited role for government here at home and a more aggressive posture overseas. In general, polls show Democrats — and a disproportionate share of black voters — favor a smaller, less adventurous military and a larger role for government on the domestic front.
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POPSSurvey shows Obama 51 percent More than six in 10 African Americans now rate race relations as "not so good" or "poor," while 53 percent of whites hold more positive views. Opinions are also divided along racial lines, though less so, on whether blacks face discrimination. There is more similarity on feelings of personal racial prejudice: Thirty percent of whites and 34 percent of blacks admit such sentiments. At the same time, there is an overwhelming public openness to the idea of electing an African American to the presidency. In a Post-ABC News poll last month, nearly nine in 10 whites said they would be comfortable with a black president. While fewer whites, about two-thirds, said they would be "entirely comfortable" with it, that was more than double the percentage of all adults who said they would be so at ease with someone entering office for the first time at age 72, which McCain (R-Ariz.) would do should he prevail in November.
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