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POPSThe U.S. Needs to Open Up to the World It's better for everybody to have a stake in society than to have a resentful underclass bent on wrecking things. To many Americans, this sounds like socialism, big government, the nanny state. But so what? The result is: Europe has less gun crime and homicide, less poverty and arguably a higher quality of life than the U.S., which makes a lot of us wonder why America doesn't want some of what we've got. America as a gated community won't work, because not even the world's sole superpower can build walls high enough to shield itself from the intertwined realities of the 21st century. There's a better form of security: reconnect with the rest of the world, don't shut it out; stop making enemies and start making friends. Perhaps it's asking a lot to expect America to act differently from all the other empires in history, but wasn't that the original idea?
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POPSChemical BPA in workers linked to sex problems I cannot imaging how this hazard can be eliminated from our life. It is everywhere. Look around. Clear plastic bottles or cans made from polycarbonate with bisphenol A leashing into product it contain. Before it was fragile, but chemically stable, indifferent glass. Can we afford to pay with our health (and lives, after all) for this fruit of chemical progress? It damaging everything inside a body, it's just happen to discover some of its symptoms. What was impossible to suppress already... :cool:
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POPSShhhh! Census Worker May Have Committed Suicide * The Democratic Underground quickly posted a ‘Handy Guide to how Republicans and Fox News are responsible for Census worker being hanged'. * Rachel Maddow suggested Sparkman was killed simply because ‘he was a federal employee'. * Time chalked it up to government distrust, a sentiment fanned by ‘talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings'. * The Huffington Post immediately assumed this was a case of right-wing paranoia. * True/Slant opined that the body of Sparkman should be shipped to Glenn Beck. * Think Progress pointed the finger at Michelle Bachman and her ‘inflammatory and fear-mongering rhetoric against the Census'. * New York Magazine linked the death to that of ‘some wide-eyed, hysterical woman' named Michelle Bachman. (The irony in this is that the reference to a wide-eyed, hysterical woman was made in an article mentioning Nancy Pelosi).
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POPSHealth Insurance Model & The Honor System
With the right personalities, I'm sure that there would be far more in common than not in this struggle to make the system of providing health care make sense and work for nearly everyone. I believe much of the opposition means well, deep down inside, and they would just as soon see all citizens provided with reasonable health care. For policymakers, as well as those who feel the need to understand, it is important to learn enough so as to balance a sense of empathy and caring with a knowledge that self-sufficiency and motivation are robbed and diminished every time we just submit to the government and let them say, "Come to papa." Of course, it's the intuitive part that lets one know that those are even factors important to investigate, I do believe. My insight of the day is nothing more than a given basic regarding the concept of insurance. There seems to be a widely held delusion that health care costs are of certain values but that suddenly the buying of insurance coverage someho
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POPSUntil Medical Bills Do Us Part A complicating factor was that this was a second marriage. M.’s first husband had died, leaving an inheritance that he had intended for their children. She and her second husband had a prenuptial agreement, but that would not protect her assets from his medical expenses. The hospital told M. not to waste time in dissolving the marriage. For five years after any divorce, her assets could be seized — precisely because the government knows that people sometimes divorce husbands or wives to escape their medical bills. “How could I divorce him? I loved him,” she told me.
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POPSSocialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India
What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? This paper seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither. by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar Swaminathan Aiyar is a research fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity
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POPSFamed pastor says there's a cure for Parkinson's "This is giving people false hope," said Bob Kendall, 48, who was diagnosed seven years ago. "To me this is really sad. If there was a breakthrough and a cure, it wouldn't be a televangelist announcing it, believe me. There are a lot of people up in arms."
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POPSFirst Nations Meet with President Obama - 400 tribes The last such meeting - of this size - took place more than one hundred years ago. Let's hope much progress is made and that more than 200 years of shameful exploitation by Washington of the tribal nations takes a positive path now.
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POPSYou Are A Wimp (So Am I) "Any Neanderthal woman could have beaten former bodybuilder and current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in an arm wrestling match"
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POPSGrading Obama "After U.S. President Barack Obama's first 100 days in office, Foreign Policy asked a group of experts to grade him on everything from North Korea to nukes. On the anniversary of his historic election, we've reprised the experiment -- and found out that the White House isn't doing so well." - FP
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POPSJohn "the Penguin" Bingham: On whether "slow" runners should be allowed in marathons More: The Grumpy bar has been pushed back to 4 hours which means, I think, that anyone running UNDER 4 hours is safe from bashing by the new elite. If you extrapolate out it won’t be long before the 5-hour marathoners will be the new elite and they will complain about the slow marathoners. Where will it end? It won’t. As long as there are people who need to use others to feel good about themselves it won’t end. As long as there are people for whom excellence is relative it won’t end. So, I’m not going to worry about it.… Standing at the start line of a marathon – or any race – or any training run – you only have to answer one question; am I prepared to do my best today? And that’s all I have to say about that.
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POPSJob Creation??Yeah Right Even though the White House is now acknowledging that there have been errors made in calculating the true number of jobs created with stimulus money, that isn’t stopping them from keeping the inflated 30k + figure on the recovery.org website. You’d think a website that was created with $18 million would have a way of self-correcting, but apparently it doesn’t. But hey, there’s a whole bunch of employed czars. So, you know, we have that.
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POPSNK calls for direct talks with US Oh what a crock. "trust" with Them?? Playing us like the stupids we appear. I would never make a diplomat. Give me Bolton or someone who will look out for the interests of America...not appeasement with the 'global community'.
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POPSBarack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
This news, announce today, appears to have surprised almost everyone. But what is no surprise is that if you are on the side on warmongers, neocons, racist, those who ok torture, corporate exploitation of people and the land than you want to destroy this president. If you have hopes for peace, progress in alternative energies and new directions, national health care, unions and decent wages than this is the man who is on the frontlines fighting for these things. Closing down the suicidal plans for putting nuke missiles on the border with Poland was one clear change that we can see -- because it meant direct European and USA military conflict with Russia. This fact maybe lost in the madness of 24-hour news but it was 4sure. That dangerous and unnecessary Bush Era program is ended...and Obama gets attacked at home by the warmongers for "backing down to Russia." Like the Nobel Committee said....we see he is for real, we see he is trying, and we add our hopes to his and encour
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POPSOvercoming Fear! "Time's UP!" We can try to deny fear and dismiss it. It doesn’t work for any length of time, no matter how many times we tell ourselves that we shouldn’t be afraid.
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POPSApproved by White House ~ Reform Media.Transform Democracy Is Dissent ‘Legitimate’? Not According to Campaign Finance Laws by Bert Gall and Robert Frommer -- Pajamas Media After the administration decreed that Fox is not a “legitimate news organization” and that people shouldn’t watch it, more people than ever are tuning in to see Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly fight back. Fundamentally, it’s because the administration’s media war against Fox is but a minor display of the tremendous power the government has to stifle speech it views as illegitimate. Much of this power is the result of long-standing “campaign finance” laws. These laws impose all sorts of restrictions on political speech, and it’s no coincidence that the most draconian of these restrictions are targeted at those who can speak the most effectively against a politician’s reelection. The most effective speakers tend to be those who can spend the most money. Corporations, many of which have lots of money, receive particularly harsh treatment under
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POPSHow The FCC and Liberal Churches are Scheming to Shut You Up from staunch critics of illegal immigration. Open-borders groups have sought to marginalize, criminalize, and demonize those of us who have raised our voices for years about lax immigration enforcement " and to impose an Orwellian Fairness Doctrine-style policy on illegal alien amnesty opponents. During the presidential campaign, the National Council of La Raza launched a “We Can Stop the Hate” project to redefine tough policy criticism from the Right as “hate.” Unsurprisingly, far Left billionaire George Soros’s money is backing the “So We Might See”/National Hispanic Media Coalition effort. And remember that the Soros-funded Center for American Progress has provided the Obama White House with its Fairness Doctrine-embracing “diversity czar,” Mark Lloyd. Jeffrey Lord, who happens to belong to the United Church of Christ, reported in the American Spectator that not long after that speech, the UCC sent out a mass e-mail to its millions of members urging them.......
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POPSChildren Who Suffered Bullying Are More Likely To Develop Psychotic Symptoms In Early Adolescence
A study including 6,437 early adolescents with an average age of 12.9 was carried out by Andrea Schreier, Ph.D., and his colleagues of The Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, England. The children participated in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Questionnaires were regularly sent by mail to parents concerning their child's physical condition and progress since birth. Beginning at the age of seven, the children were submitted to physical and psychological evaluations on a yearly basis. During the yearly visits, they were rated by skilled interviewers on whether during the preceding six months they had experienced hallucinations, delusions, thought disorders or any other psychotic symptoms. Peer victimization is defined as harmful actions and unfair treatment by one or several other students with purpose to harm. Children, parents and teachers were required to account on whether the child had suffered such oppression.
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POPSAlternate Iraq War Universe … Obama Won! Never mind that the surge was initiated by President George Bush, and the current withdrawal was negotiated by the Bush administration with a sovereign, elected Iraqi government which his actions allowed to come into being, in place of the prior despot he had deposed, while Democrats, including Obama, were howling for abandonment. Obama deserves some credit, of course. For staying Bush’s course and throwing his own boneheaded pandering demands for a precipitous pullout under the bus. OK, I thought Friedman had got about as weird as he could. Silly me. This next step is particularly important, which is why we cannot let Afghanistan distract U.S. diplomats from Iraq. Remember: Transform Iraq and it will impact the whole Arab-Muslim world. Change Afghanistan and you just change Afghanistan. Fascinating. The big clamor for the last few years of course has been that Iraq was distracting us from Afghanistan, and now every jackanape out there, to include Friedman . . .
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