20
POPSFighting For The Welfare State This makes me really proud to be Danish. Anyway, why ARE we so happy? Well... we all know how we are all are in the grip of the worldwide economic crisis at the moment, right? Well, despite this, a huge number of Danes are now calling for the government to please let us pay more taxes! "Please raise taxes, so we can afford more!". :p .Now... I know this might seem odd and counter-intuitive to some, but please lend me your ear and I'll try to explain.... :) In a society like for example the US, where Wall Street reigns supreme and the gap between rich and poor just grows every day, how can it be expected that there is anything in it all, for the little guy? Capitalism is all good and fine, but money shouldn't be the goal, but merely the means. It's not about how much you have, but how much you give.
4
POPSNEA recomends Alinsky as teaching aid I love how it isn't 'personal terrorism' if you just deem someone to be a symbol and not a person. Maybe that is why the left is so sympathetic to the Fort Hood shooter. They don't consider those dead as people, but only as symbols of something they can't stand.
5
POPSNidal Hasan Terrorist Threat 'Not That Big a Deal'....Matthew Yglesias
I think a pretty good case can be made that this kind of situation actually is the main face of the terrorist threat. Not a big well-thought-out plot centrally directed from a “safe haven” in South Asia and undertaken by brilliant covert operatives, but the desperate violent act of a clearly disturbed individual. It’s going to be very hard to prevent this sort of thing. As long as the United States remains a country in which firearms are widely available"for the foreseeable future, in other words"we’re going to be unusually vulnerable to mentally ill spree killers of various kinds, including spree killers who nod in the direction of Islamist thinking. But the larger point is that while these incidents are serious crimes and major tragedies for the victims, they hardly rise to the level of a major macro-level social crisis. They’re certainly not a first-order national security threat. And even put in the lower-stakes context of violent crime in America
4
POPSHubris like this is hard to swallow. Given the enormous pain people have experienced over the past few years as a result of the mortgage crisis, and the fact that these banks wouldn't be on their feet if they didn't get a bailout from American taxpayers, it's really hard to fathom the CEO of Goldman Sachs could believe this, let alone say it publicly.
4
POPSCloward/Piven Strategy of Economic Recovery Obama adheres to the Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals method of politics, which teaches the dark art of destroying political adversaries. However, that text reveals only one front in the radical left's war against America. The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.
5
POPSFannie & Freddie NOT included in Obama's Financial Regulations In analyzing the mortgage crisis, economist Walter E. Williams has written: “Starting with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, that was given more teeth during the Clinton administration, Congress started intimidating banks and other financial institutions into making loans, so-called sub-prime loans, to high-risk homebuyers and businesses. “The carrot offered was that these high-risk loans would be purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have known that this was a prescription for disaster but there was a congressional chorus of denial,” he added. “The financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a failure of the free market because lending institutions in a free market would not have taken on the high-risk loans,” said Williams. “They were forced to by the heavy hand of government.”
7
POPSWHAT IF HE IS RIGHT?????????????????? David Kaiser is a respected historian whose published works have covered a broad range of topics, from European Warfare to American League Baseball. Born in 1947, the son of a diplomat, Kaiser spent his childhood in three capital cities: Washington D.C. , Albany , New York , and Dakar , Senegal .. He attended Harvard University , graduating there in 1969 with a B.A. in history. He then spent several years more at Harvard, gaining a PhD in history, which he obtained in 1976. He served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. He is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College. He has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College and Harvard University . Kaiser's latest book, The Road to Dallas, about the Kennedy assassination, was just published by Harvard University Press.
6
POPSGoldman Sachs Banksters Knew and Bet on Meltdown Filthy lucre on the backs of investors and then got Bailout money from taxpayers too, with the help of their "insider" (and Treasury Secretary) Timothy Geithner. (It helps to have pals in high places.--see Goldman-Geithner connections )
17
POPSDoes Economics Violate the Laws of Physics? Excellent article on how, among other things, economists treat energy as a commodity and ignore that it takes energy to produce the other commodities. This is what happens when our educational system gets taken over by people who devalue the subject of Science...not to mention common sense.
9
POPSMAINSTREAM MEDIA GETS IT RIGHT FOR ONCE
So far, it has been reported that 1,000 deaths in the U.S. have resulted from H1N1/Swine Flu. Guess what? As mentioned, CBS News just published a story over the weekend that proves we're right to be skeptical about this whole thing. Go back and read that CBS News article I referenced. Here's an excerpt: A three-month-long investigation by CBS News, released earlier this week that included state-by-state test results, revealed some very different facts. The CBS study found that H1N1 flu cases are NOT as prevalent as feared. Obviously, CBS News and the CDC are completely contradicting each other. So who is right? Well, CBS reports that in late July 2009 the CDC advised states to STOP testing for H1N1 flu, and they also stopped counting individual cases. Their rationale for this, according to CBS News, was that it was a waste of resources to test for H1N1 flu because it was already confirmed as an epidemic. So, just like that virtually every person who visited their physician with f
3
POPSReal men don't read D.C. pundits
Even worse than Krauthammer's column today, though, was David Brooks in the New York Times. Partly it's because Brooks likes to pretend to be open-minded and reasonable, while spouting neocon talking points, and occasionally liberals get pulled in by him. But today was trademark lazy ideological Brooks. As Glenn Greenwald notes, unbelievably he bragged about "doing what journalists are supposed to do" -- which he defined as talking to a handful of anonymous pro-war sources, who uniformly criticized Obama's inaction to date on McCrystal's troop request. That's some brave shit. Not quite David Rohde brave, but hey, he made the calls! If it was unanimous, that means he didn't call retired Marine Matthew Hoh, who resigned from a civilian post in Afghanistan this week because he said we can't win, and our presense is only fueling the insurgency. Hoh told the Washington Post's Karen de Young he's "not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love" and that he believes
2
POPSHonduras leader could be restored The military grabbed him from his home at dawn and deported him to Costa Rica. He sneaked back into the country Sept. 21 and took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he has remained, the compound surrounded by Honduran troops. Zelaya's removal from office has been viewed worldwide as one of the most serious challenges to face Latin America in a decade. The coup was both a throwback to the region's dark past of civil war and military takeover and emblematic of a struggle underway today in Central and South America, where several leftist leaders with authoritarian tendencies have risen to power through elections and tested the bounds of democracy.
6
POPSCharles Krauthammer: The Three Envelopes I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan. This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own "comprehensive new strategy" for Afghanistan seven months ago. Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right -- indeed duty -- to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy. There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy "footprint." In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time,
33
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update