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POPSLiving On Less, While Banks Thrive On Excess I hold corporations & government to the same standards I hold myself. I make sure there is enough money in my checking account to pay my bills. If I create a bill, I pay it. If I cause an accident, I admit it, apologize, and pay for it. It's the right thing to do.
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POPSKing And Nonviolence Yes it's true that September 11th changed a lot of things and reminded us how vulnerable we are. It made us realize we face a dangerous and diabolically clever enemy. It strengthened our resolve and triggered important steps to prevent future attacks, actions that made us more secure as a nation. But 9/11 did not and could not change the basic ground rules: War or incitement to violence is justified only when it's in response to a deliberate attack and only when it's undertaken as a last resort. And even during wartime, nations must observe the highest moral standards. It's so easy to incite violence. And it's so wrong.
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POPSGoogle says Murdoch stories can be taken off Rupert is really struggling with the concept that he doesn't control the world. How many people who buy his newspapers are computer literate eg the laptop (with access to most news sources) on the train, or the newspaper on the train?
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POPSA media orgy of rumors, speculation and falsehoods
It's worth focusing on what the major media did last night, and one can use the Hot Air compilation to examine that. I understand that in the early stages of significant and complex news stories, it's to be expected that journalists will have incomplete and even inaccurate information. It's unreasonable to expect them to avoid errors entirely. The inherently confusing nature of a mass shooting like this, combined with the need to rely on second-hand or otherwise unreliable sources (including, sometimes, official ones), will mean that even conscientious reporters end up with inaccurate information in cases like this. That's all understandable and inevitable. But shouldn't there be some standards governing what gets reported and what is held back? Particularly in a case like this -- which, for obvious reasons, has the potential to be quite inflammatory on a number of levels -- having the major media "report" completely false assertions as fact can be quite harmful. It's often th
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POPSCall your SENATORS......today! Nor does much of the rest of Mr. Siddiqui’s résumé. The White House has touted his role in the first phase of developing national organic standards. But those standards, as they first emerged in draft form in the Clinton years, were notoriously loose about allowing genetically engineered crops and the use of sewage-sludge fertilizers to be labeled as “organic.”
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POPS Ford Beats Government Motors AP story: "Ford Reports Surprise $1 Billion Profit. Automaker now expects to be solidly profitable in 2011." But then you get halfway down the story: "But Ford still faces obstacles in its turnaround. Last week workers overwhelmingly rejected an agreement with the United Auto Workers that would have brought Ford's labor costs in line with rivals General Motors and Chrysler. Workers objected to clauses limiting their right to strike and freezing entry-level wages and felt the company was healthy enough and didn't need further concessions." So this headline, "Ford Reports Surprise $1 Billion Profit" needs to be rewritten: "Ford Surprises by Having a Profit. Angry unions vow to redouble efforts to sink the automaker."
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POPSKarzai vows to clamp down on corruption Why should he be the only one that has to run a corruption free government. Don't have to dig too deep in our own countries to find plenty. Where there are humans, there is greed. Where there is greed, there is corruption.
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POPSThe terrorists at Club Gitmo don't want to leave Obvious. What else more could they want? They have personal chefs, TVs, remote controls, beach volleyball, a library overlooking the ocean, scenic views, free laundry service, new prayer rugs to pray to Allah.....and they're getting the H1N1 vaccine before you. The libs want them out of Cuban Clown College as long as they're nowhere near their Manhattan penthouses or vacation spots in the Vineyard. As if splashing water on their damn faces is going to scare them off.....PUH-LEASE. Gitmo should be rebranded so that liberals wouldn’t reflexively scream “TORTURE!” every time they heard it’s name. How about "Misfired Martyrs Motel" or "Viva la Incarceracion!"?
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POPSJust a couple of words that speack on their own I've been responsible for hiring and overseeing the development of people in my corporate days and must confess that I've never seen any of these comments, but apparently, they have been taken from actual employee appraisals. Enjoy!
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POPSPhotos: Ansel Adams in Color An elegant book chronicles how the great landscape master — known for his black and white work — explored the possibilities of color. From the book, Ansel Adams in Color, published by Little, Brown
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POPSEPA Rules Farm Dust NOT SAFE, Must Be Regulated But the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington ruled Tuesday that the EPA had already provided the evidence necessary to determine farm dust "likely is not safe." Michael Formica, a lawyer for the pork council, said this means farmers now face the daunting task of proving a negative - that the dust is not harmful. Formica said his and other groups will consider a further appeal. Farmers said they will be hard-pressed to meet the standards. In a letter sent Wednesday to the EPA, Grassley wrote that compliance would be impossible because of the dust produced in farmers' day-to-day activities. Grassley also has noted that because many rural roads are not paved, particulate readings could be affected by wind gusts that constantly change. "After all, God decides when the wind blows, not Chuck Grassley," he said. But the EPA said the regulation was overdue. http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/030109/bus_399791974.shtml
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POPSAmerica a Rude Nation? Debating Public Decency Experts point to a variety of reasons for the apparent fall in civil standards: 1) The recession has placed many under heavy stress 2) The rise of the internet has fostered confrontational and provocative communications in which people get used to saying things they may never once have dared to utter face-to-face. These may be conditions that allow rudeness to rear its ugly head, but they are not excuses for it. Rudeness is rooted in lack of civility. If you don’t respect other people’s ideas, opinions, equality as compared to yourself, or simply their right to exist, it will be easy for you to resort to rudeness towards that person and you will be considered uncivil. We have been losing our civility for a long time now and I believe it is due to a lack of respect for others and ourselves.
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POPSMafia Hit on CCTV Journalist Roberto Saviano, who has a permanent armed escort since exposing the activities of the Naples mafia in his best selling book Gomorrah, called the killing a "classic Camorra hit, very well planned and executed without fanfare". He added that the video "shows what little value these people have for human life," in a recorded commentary posted on la Repubblica's website. "The thing that strikes you," he said, "is the absolute serenity of the killer."
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POPSProfessors want UCB to stop subsidizing sports programs at expense of academics More: "The data is eye-opening and quite troubling - athletic expenditures are rising three or four times faster than academic budgets," said William "Brit" Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland. He's co-chairman of the Knight Commission, which on Monday released a survey of university presidents' views on the cost of programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the nation's 120 top college football teams. "We're painfully aware of the global fiscal implosion and the impact it's having on academic institutions," Kirwan said. "As a result, 75 percent of presidents say we can't continue on this path."… The last time the athletes ran up a multiyear debt - owing the university $31.4 million by 2007 - the bill was forgiven, according to a written explanation of Cal's athletics budget and policies prepared in response to questions from the faculty.
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POPS I Blame Bush. And Global Warming. I on behalf of the residents went to the Suizhong Power Supply Bureau and Urban Construction Bureau to submit our petitions. However the results were various departments knowing the issues but pointed fingers to each other, no one stepped up to do anything. In the end, I reluctantly went to the county government. After several twists and turns, the county finally agreed to see us, but only limited to 5 minutes. After listened to our situation, supposedly the county government were to direct the urban construction bureau to resolve the issues. But more than two months had passed and nothing was done. When we asked the county again, the response from the county government was “we are in the process of contacting the relevant department”, asking us to wait longer. We were left with no choice and thought about the Internet. Netizens please support our 12 families and over 40 people, wake up those government officials, to solve our real problems!
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POPSSafety nets for the rich More: Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 — two-thirds! — went to the top 1 percent of Americans. We cannot continue transferring the nation’s wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid — which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so — while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day. That money is never going to trickle down. It’s a fairy tale. We’re crazy to continue believing it.
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POPSHymens: Now Made in China In places where honor killings are practiced against women who can't prove they were virgins on their wedding nights, this little, seemingly innocuous sex toy has opened quite a can of worms.
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POPSStockholm Syndrome: Swedes Held Hostage to CO2 Terrorism Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic. Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV. For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.
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POPSDump the Incumbents 4. It is partisanship over constituents-Each party's focus is on defeating and sabotaging each other. 5. Both parties love voter apathy and take the necessary steps to ensure a low voter turnout. 6. They have created an incumbency protection racket and called it campaign finance reform. 7. They have created a system where the truth is so hidden that they have to hire a staff that is skilled at cover ups, evasion, spin, lies, disinformation, half-truths, feigned ignorance, sudden memory loss, manipulation of facts, distortions, controlled polling, double standards, and blame-shifting.
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POPSMagic Numbers in Politics: Part II by Thomas Sowell
Bluntly, it means more severe injuries and death. Many of the same people who protest against "trading blood for oil" when it comes to military interventions in the Middle East seem not to see that higher miles per gallon can also mean trading blood for oil. The magic number du jour is the number of Americans without health insurance. Apparently getting more people insured is another "good thing"-- which is to say, it is something whose costs are not to be weighed against the benefits, or whose costs are to be finessed aside with optimistic projections or a claim that these costs can be covered by eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse." In real life, people weigh one thing against another. But in politics one declares one thing to be imperative, so the issue then becomes how we do it. In real life, all sorts of desirable things are not done, either because of other desirable things that would have to be sacrificed to do it or because of the dangers incurred .
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POPSScary Skies!, Union and Consumer Group Criticize Airline Maintenance Outsourcing The mechanics union says major U.S. domestic carriers dramatically increased outsourcing in recent years, and now spend nearly two-thirds of their maintenance dollars on contract repair stations here and abroad, including facilities in operations in China, El Salvador, Mexico, and the Philippines. Foreign repair stations are not required to have the same number of FAA-certificated mechanics, or the same security rules, as airline-owned repair facilities in the U.S., the union noted. While U.S. air carriers have outsourced maintenance for years to both domestic and foreign repair facilities where repairs are cheaper, the practice has grown in recent years. From 1996 to 2006, air carriers continued to increase the percentage of maintenance dollars spend on outsourced maintenance---from 37 percent to 64 percent. In 2006, $3.7 billion of the $5.7 billion spent on maintenance was outsourced, said the DOT IG. Of the heavy maintenance outsourced by nine U.S. airlines in 2006 . . .
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POPSGov't. Largely Responsible For Hi Insrnce.Costs
This has several negative effects. One is that it decreases both competition and supply, both of which raise prices for consumers. This also means that states have the power to grant licenses to insurance companies, meaning that any new insurance company from its beginnings has to meet state-mandated standards. This is a huge barrier to entry, keeping newcomers out of what would otherwise be a highly competitive market and once again increasing prices for consumers. In a free market, profits are a signal telling more entrepreneurs to enter a market. More and more firms will enter the market until the profits have dropped low enough to discourage market entry. ............ Obama has said that under his current proposal, he would eliminate these state barriers.......... This completely ignores the fact that, under the necessary and proper clause, the government is only allowed to regulate those industries that it must to carry out its stated function.
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