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POPS“A History lesson….Cry for Me, Argentina” 12.9.2009
Among Irigoyen’s changes: mandatory pension insurance, mandatory health insurance, and support for low-income housing construction to stimulate the economy. Simply put, the state assumed economic control of a vast swath of the country’s operations and began assessing new payroll taxes to fund its efforts. With an increasing flow of funds into these entitlement programs, the government’s payouts soon became overly generous. Before long its outlays surpassed the value of the taxpayers’ contributions. Put simply, it quickly became under-funded, much like the United States Social Security and Medicare programs. The death knell for the Argentine economy, however,came with the election of Juan Perón. Perón had a fascist and corporatist upbringing ; he and his charismatic wife aimed their populist rhetoric at the nation’s rich. This targeted group “swiftly expanded to cover most of the propertied middle classes, who became an enemy to be defeated and humiliated.”
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POPSThe Marine Building - Vancouver (on Burrard St.) I used to work right across from this building. I went in once, and was just amazed. (of course i haven't seen much, but it's still beautiful) At the bottom of the page are links to see beautiful interior shots, as well as history on the building.
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POPSFemale Sexual Dysfunction: Myth or Malady? Don't you know that no artificial love can exist? That this is nonsense as it is. Can some magic pill (that is in fact sneak oil, pure and simple) replace whole history of relationship from very beginning, from that first excited glance, first rose, first sign of attraction to the real collisions in rough stormy life with forgive and forget and swearing to the very end... Real love is beautiful openwork construction has to be built every day non stop one step after another, and cherished, and guarded, and nurtured, and can be stomped and demolished with one cruel step... As in fact whole life itself...
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POPSEarmarks This sort of stuff makes my blood boil. Leave no incumbent in office.
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POPS Cash for Cloture: Demcare Bribe List, Pt. II
1. The Hill reports that while Nelson credited Nebraska’s governor for giving him the idea to lobby for the government preference, Nebraska’s governor assailed the payoff: “Nebraskans did not ask for a special deal, only a fair deal,” Heineman said in a statement Sunday. In response, Nelson fired off a letter Sunday to Heineman saying he’s prepared to ask that the provision covering Nebraska’s Medicaid share “be removed from the amendment in conference, if it is your desire.” 2, Vermont and Massachusetts will get similar (though less generous) special treatment by the feds in covering Medicaid expansion costs. Combined with Nebraska’s tab, the exclusive clique’s payoffs will cost taxpayers $1.2 billion over 10 years. At least. 3, He’s plunging in the polls and in need of a little bacon to bring home. A $100 million item for construction of a university hospital was inserted in the Senate health care bill at the request of Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn ......
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POPSIsrael vows action against settlers Who are they kidding? Those settlers are more extreme than the rest of Israel, including the old religious nutters. It can only result in a bloodbath if they go through with this. WW3 started by two Israeli tribes - bloody ironic.
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POPSThe role of land use in global warming Forested areas provide the combined benefits of directly cooling the atmosphere and of absorbing greenhouse gases, leading to additional cooling. Green architecture in cities, including green roofs and more highly reflective construction materials, would further contribute to a slowing of warming rates. Stone envisions local and state governments taking the lead in addressing the land use drivers of climate change, while the federal government takes the lead in implementing carbon reduction initiatives, like cap and trade programs.
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POPSKiller Tripped on Baggy Pants, Plunged to Death after Slaying Three The horrified woman managed to slam and lock the door just in time, only to find the bloodied bodies of her brother and dad inside. A relentless Quinones kicked the door in and lunged for Leyanis, but she was able to make it to a fire escape, screaming for help to construction workers on the roof of the building next door. "She just ran in and told the contracting guys there was a shooting, there's somebody who got shot," said the building manager, who declined to identify herself. "She was hysterical, she couldn't talk." Meanwhile, her wounded mother scrambled to safety out the front door. Fleeing empty-handed, Quinones ditched his gun, a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol loaded with hollow-point bullets, and made a dash down a rear fire escape. But again, his low-slung pants fell to his ankles, tripping him and sending him falling three stories to his death, authorities said.
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POPSNew York’s Largest Mosque to Be Built Next To –- Ground Zero The building has no sign that hints at its use as a Muslim prayer space, but these modest beginnings point to a far grander vision: an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors. Unreal. Lest We Forget I’m a history buff. There’s a constant struggle at our house over the remote control and whether we watch what my wife and kids want, or the Discovery, TLC, or the History Channel. I won’t go into who usually wins (ask Pam), but suffice it to say we’ve added several televisions in the house. My mom instilled in me my fascination with history long ago. I think it was her way of passing onto a son, growing up ten thousand miles away from his country and family, his heritage. Around the dinner table in the Philippines her stories of my grandparents and life on the farm during the Depression and World War 2 .....
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POPS Obama's Legacy That far exceeds what's needed to turn on the lights, but it's also beyond what's needed for a basic nuclear weapons program. Consider North Korea, which manufactured two limited yield nuclear weapons using only a plutonium reactor, a plutonium reprocessing facility, and -- presumably -- some sort of weapons laboratory. Why is Iran pumping billions more into building and protecting triple the number of facilities required to build a basic nuclear weapon, akin to the Fat Man or Little Boy bombs detonated in 1945? The answer could be that Tehran is skipping basic weapons construction and moving towards an advanced thermonuclear design. Consider that they've already experimented with advanced weapons designs like two-point implosion, nuclear triggers, and have built their own facility at Arak that could be used to produce both tritium, which is a suspected boosting agent in hydrogen bomb designs, as well as weapons-grade plutonium.
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POPSPuffing the great wind scam What is dangerous is that even contemplating such a mad waste of resources is diverting attention from the genuine need to build enough proper, grown-up power stations to keep our lights on. For that the time is fast running out, if it hasn't done so already
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POPSThe Great Wall of Israel Ever heard of it? Neither have I. Makes for interesting, if depressing reading. Probably makes the anti-immigrationists jealous in this country, though. What a waste!
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POPSUsing the web in teaching: some resources This is a link list that's very much under construction, courtesy of Jetpak.com. Mostly these were recommended to me. Some are sites for specific courses, others are more general resources. For updates, grab the feed: http://snipr.com/1pk7a
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POPSEl Centro Holds Position for Highest Jobless Rate To outlast the economic crisis, Duggins Construction has adapted its business from a new commercial construction focus to include remodels and renovations. But until banks loosen their grips and start lending again, Duggins said business won't return to normal. "Lenders have gone from one extreme to another. Before, you could get a loan with just a signature. Now we joke that if you want a $500,000 loan, you better have $500,000 sitting in the bank," he said. "Banks just need to go back to how they were doing business in the late 1970s and 1980s, where they are lending so that people can put that money back into the economy and get it going." Read full CNNMoney article http://bit.ly/8tf5C6 By Hibah Yousuf, CNNMoney.com staff reporter
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POPSSo much for cutting PORK - $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid. - $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla. - $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla. - $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades. - $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased. - $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn. - $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill. - $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota. - $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan. - $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money. - $1.5 million f
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POPSSwiss and Muslims compromise
For many years the major Swiss export import has been unemployment. The number of immigrants allowed in depends solely on the requirement for waiters and chamber maids. However, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel because Paul-Andre Guex representative for the Canton of Vaud and keen ornithologist has suggested that any Minarets built from now on should be embellished in a rather unconventional yet possibly more acceptable way. "It is well-known that the only thing we ever invented in this country was a couple of Type Faces nobody uses and the Cuckoo Clock. I have proposed to the Berne Government that problems could be avoided if all Minaret domes were in the form of Chalet-shaped Cuckoo Clocks or weather indicators instead of looking like oriental lollipops. "Here in Switzerland we have a bird called the wall creeper which has a call that sounds exactly like "Allahu Akbah", we could put them in the clocks so the Imams could call the faithful to prayer as they usu