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POPSThe Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade Go to the website for the full account of a decade of madness. " I don't like being negative, but we need to know what happened and what is broke, it we have any chance of climbing out of the hole in the ground that we find ourselves in.l Historians will look back on the Naughts as the time when Americans Lost Their Country."
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POPSA remarkably bitter take on the "top ten stories of the last decade" -- in short, we're hosed The last paragraph is worth quoting in full: "The meaninglessness of elections: This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in '64, Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In every case where he had the opportunity to confront power " in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance " Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it."
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POPS'Suspected Enemy Combatants' are no Longer 'Persons' They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.
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POPSTwo Of The Four Plotters Behind The Flight 253 Attack Were Released From Gitmo In 2007 both the Bush administration and the Obama administration. We can argue about the political pressures Bush was under, but the simple truth of the matter is that we should have created a process for dealing with these detainees long ago. The Military Commissions Act was this solution, establishing military commissions to establish the guilt or innocence of these detainees, but it came far too late in Bush’s administration to do any good (and was absurdly deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in yet another decision ignoring the constitution completely). And now our policy toward Guantanamo Bay is a mish-mash of conflicted and largely politically-motivated pap geared more, I think, toward pandering and backside-covering than any national security strategy. Some of the detainees are getting trials in civilian US courts. Some are being shipped off to Pacific islands for continued detention.
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POPSHealth Bill Creates A Massive Cash Crunch, Then Bankrupts Many Insurers
Insurers are not allowed to take into account differential risks based on pre-existing conditions. And the premium differentials based on such matters as age and tobacco use are smaller than the market spreads. If too many customers demand coverage from a given insurer to insure efficiently, it's the government that will decide how many they have to keep and who they are. Next, it's the government that requires extensive coverage including "ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance abuse disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, pediatric services, including oral and vision care." The price squeeze gets even tighter because in every required area of care a collection of government standards will help set the minimum level of required services.
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POPSChambliss: Abortion compromise 'sets up a Supreme Court challenge' May it be so. I'm sure there are other things in it that are unconstitutional as well and I wondered why no one had mentioned the SC. I guess they were waiting until the final bill was composed; but why waste time when there's some obvious problems and after all....Congress is in such a hurry!
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POPSJohn Birch Society Sponsoring CPAC From fictional death panels to communist infiltration and of course birtherism, it is time again for the conspiracy right to exert their control. Conservatives reach backwards ...
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POPSMy Top Ten List #11. Gays are not full of drama, and shame on the gays that perpetuate that myth--they should know better. Here are some things about me which are NOT myths: 1. I can be friends with straight women--yay! In fact some of my best friends are straight females. 2. I am in therapy for coming out issues and to see what I want to do with the rest of my life--she's really good if anyone wants her name and number :) 3. I have a girlfriend and I love her. 4. I have more than one cat. 5. I have a dog too! 6. I grew up very, very, poor, but I have money now-- money doesn't make you happy--but it does pay the bills :) 7. My best asset is my kindness--and I guess you could say it is my worst fault too sometimes. Any other clippers wanna chip in with their best attributes or ya know worst faults? :D
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POPS A Modest Proposal by Ken Blackwell I have a modest proposal. There is one thing we could do that would make a small contribution to lowering temperatures: We could bury, not burn, the bodies of unborn children who have been aborted under Mr. Obama’s health care takeover. Currently, the practice is to incinerate the hundreds of thousands of bodies cruelly of those denied the right to life. If we really seek “common ground” on this contentious question, we might start by giving the unborn children a decent burial. Liberal writer Naomi Wolf has written movingly of the “baby furies” that she felt were pursuing her after her abortion. She noted that in Japan, there are touching ceremonies of little paper boats with candles floated down slow-moving rivers. These ceremonies are designed to help women cope with this most terrible of choices. Part of the terrible contentiousness of this question is the unwillingness of most liberals even to concede that the unborn child is a child. In 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court .....
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POPSPulling the Plug on Capitol Punishment
Brilliant article, short and sweet, on the history of legal support and current non-support of the death penalty. Strongly recommended, people. It really is interesting. More from the article below: "Ordinarily, the decision of a non-governmental organization to reject a sentencing system it adopted in the early 1960s would richly deserve public obscurity. With states like New York and Massachusetts turning back efforts this decade to revive capital punishment, and with New Jersey and New Mexico abolishing their death penalties, why pay much attention to the American Law Institute? Because the institute has pulled the intellectual rug out from under the current system of deciding between life and death in 30 death-penalty states. The declining legitimacy of the death-penalty system in the legal profession must trouble all but the most extreme justices. The Supreme Court's close association with state killing has never been a comfortable one, and the collapse of any pretense of prin
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POPSSenators impatient With Fraud Prosecutions The deck continues to be stacked by corporate interests against the people and U.S. law (what's left of it, anyway). More from the article below: "Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Kevin Perkins, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said cases against executives and directors are especially difficult because the defendants are relatively sophisticated. "Many times they are developing defenses as they go along, and it takes a long time to unwind those," Perkins said. Breuer acknowledged that some fraud cases could soon become even more difficult if, as expected, the U.S. Supreme Court limits prosecutors' ability to bring cases against those who fail to provide "honest services." He said a ruling against the honest-services law would especially hurt cases against government officials."
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POPSNew Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor questions corporate personhood Wow. What a fantastic thing it would be to have the whole "corporate personhood" thing reexamined. Especially since "corporate personhood" arose via dictum in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad — it was never argued as a legal matter before the court, it was merely asserted as an "oh, by the way".
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POPS"The world’s greatest deliberative body has been subverted by the threat to filibuster"
More: What is clogging up the Senate these days is threatened filibusters that don’t actually happen. This is the imaginary filibuster… In 1975, party leaders in the U.S. Senate adopted a new procedure to deal with filibusters. In order to keep the Senate floor clear for other business, if senators merely threatened to filibuster, the body would automatically impose a 60-vote limit on cutting off debate.… And bills with majority support would die. For the price of a threat, the votes needed to pass a bill could be raised from 50 to 60. It’s not clear why no one foresaw what would eventually happen, but soon the number of alleged “filibusters” was rising. Delighted senators found they had a new tool to stop legislation. With just a threat to filibuster, a senator could stop a bill cold even though the Senate supported it—and without having to actually filibuster. A single senator can unilaterally make it more difficult to enact legislation.
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POPSBigotry Sanctioned by Religion The question is one of privilege over bigotry. Should certain Christian sects be allowed to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation? The theists claim they are simply following their holy book which they contend makes the practice of prejudice and bigotry against gays and lesbians legitimate. They cling to their repeatedly refuted dogma that the "homosexual lifestyle" is something voluntary. Their argument? The Bible says it's so. This anti-reality viewpoint is not confined to sexual orientation. It is seen in a general anti-intellectualism and distrust of science. No wonder that a growing segment of the public are beginning to see through this and respond accordingly.
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POPSMONOPOLY AT WORK- DOES ANYBODY CARE More of the Manufactured Consent coming your way. Less Choice, Higher Prices, Let the Private Sector Reign Supreme. No Restrictions EVER. The Dumb Sheep will pay, because there is no other Way left. Watch it Happen Here, America, setting the Example for Mass Media Control. MMC. Control the Media, Control the Masses. Spending an average of 12 years in front of a Television should be tightly controlled for a PREDICTABLE OUTCOME. Congratulations CONCAST.
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POPSSupreme Court Votes to Hide the Truth The post-Constitutional Supreme Court has voted to cover up the truth about abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. They will undoubtedly be just as interested in protecting your human rights.
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