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POPSStill Second Class Citizens “There’s a perception in Washington that you can throw little bits of partial equality to gay people and that gay people will be satisfied with that. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places."
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POPSAn Open Letter "Every day, LGBT Americans face discrimination and are being denied their constitutional rights. There is no one in public life who could, and based on your stated principles and promises should, do more to move America forward toward becoming a country in which LGBT people are respected and treated as fully equal under our Constitution and laws. We ask for your leadership and voice. When you lead, we will back you with every bit of heart and determination we can muster."
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POPS71 Things You Can Do Here's a few: # Stand up straight and have good posture. # Look people in the eyes when you talk to them. # Smile. # Be polite. # Keep your promises. # Never speak worse about a person behind their back than you do to their face. (Feel free to say nicer things about a person behind their back than to their face.) # Don't gossip and don't have a big mouth. # Never judge other people harsher than you judge yourself. # Forgive, but never forget. # Don't have skeletons in your closet. # Keep as few secrets as reasonably possible. # Despite the rule before this one, keep your friends' secrets. # Privately question your own values. # Avoid questioning other people's values, especially in public. # Listen more than you talk. # Never tell other people that you think they or something they are doing is immoral or sinful. # Keep your moral values and religion to yourself. Use them to direct your own actions. # Don't be camera shy. # Say "I love you" often.
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POPSHow Polygamy Causes Wars The only defense Islam has been able to construct for itself is to recruit these unattached males, inculcate them into the religion, and convince them that if they turn their violence and sexual frustrations outward¸ they will be rewarded with "70 virgins in heaven." This is how the ranks of martyrs and suicide bombers are created. When Muslim warriors proclaim, "We love death," they are not kidding. In a polygamous Islamic society, some men's lives have very little intrinsic value. They are literally better off seeking death. Monogamy is the social contract that lies at the heart of the relatively peaceful societies of Europe and the Orient. It is no accident that Islam has "bloody borders" with both these civilizations. We practice different social customs that give human life very different values. If the UN wanted to something really useful, it would declare reproductive equality a "human right" and ban polygamy throughout the world.
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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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POPSTop 10 GOP Moderate Moments (via Rush) As I was in the car I switched him on and he was just beginning his countdown. Yes. Either the 'moderates' form their own party or the true conservatives must. I'm tired of voting for the lesser of the 2 evils and violating my true convictions. While these 'moderate' Republicans may be very nice people with good intentions...few actually shared my values. And he's right! The #1 'moderate' revealed so much about himself.
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POPSThird-party runs are for real in N.J., N.Y. races But the impact of those candidacies on the high-profile contests points to an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment sentiment that could be a prevailing theme in the 2010 congressional elections and beyond. "What it says is the public is looking for less self-interested parties and candidates who can reflect the needs of a very frustrated public," said Douglas Astolfi, a history professor at Florida's St. Leo University. "We have two wars and we're in a recession that neither party seems to address in any positive way. There's a deep sense that government has abandoned the common man. People are frustrated and angry."
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POPSWill AMERICA wake up too late? Nothing so epitomizes President Obama’s own contempt for American values and traditions as trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed.
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POPSDismantling America Great comments Dr. Sowell. FTA: "Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are." And he tells us that how much Obama succeeds in his dismantling of America will depend on how much resistance he meets. The resistance is mounting and it's time for a complete roll.
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POPSSperm Whale Classified Carbon Neutral Prior analysis of whale carbon dioxide emissions attributes 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions total to the animals in the Southern Ocean region. Subsequent computation lowers the whales’ carbon dioxide emissions estimate to 0.3 percent, which is equivalent to 17 million tons of carbon a year. Lavery and team explain that there are low levels of iron in the Southern Ocean, and the sperm whales each contribute about 10 grams of iron to the surface. Since the iron comes from the whales’ waste material, it takes the form of liquid plumes, effectively acting as a fertilizer and encouraging growth of plankton. Depending on the exact values and environmental conditions, sperm whales can then be classified “either a net carbon sink or as carbon-neutral,” Discovery writes.
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POPSThe Obama-McChrystal Gap He answered, “I’m always worried about using the word “victory” because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.” … Obama either doesn’t understand " or, worse " doesn’t take seriously McChrystal’s report when it says, “While not a war in the conventional sense, the conflict in Afghanistan demands a similar focus and an equal level of effort, and the consequences of failing are just as grave.” Obama is neither smarter nor more politically astute than his generals. He tried to snooker McChrystal by requiring the general to send three options for Afghanistan catalogued as “low”, “moderate” and “high” risk. That way, he thought, he could accept a lower number of troops to be sent and still say that he followed McChrystal’s advice. But the general " seeing through that (according to a senior House member who I spoke to last week) " beat the president at his own game. The “moderate risk plan . . .
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POPSReal Slime: An Open Letter To Bill Maher
But the most pathetic thing is when you expose your lack of education (both formal and informal) with your crackpot “theories.” This was no more evident than in the season finale of Real Time this past friday, where you asserted that it was doctors and patients “colluding together” to “corrupt” the healthcare system. This statement was so absurd and bizarre that your entire guest panel (all liberals) and even your reliably sycophantic studio audience just stared at you in disbelief. After three seconds of uncomfortable silence both the audience and panel (that included Chris Matthews and Alec Baldwin) erupted in laughter—not with you, but AT you. Things unraveled further when you launched into a diatribe defending more stupid comments you’d made the previous week about vaccines being “dangerous medical procedures.” Both Matthews and Baldwin were visibly disgusted by this, which resulted in Matthews aggressively confronting you and making you look like an idiot—again.
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POPSArmy chiefs accuse extremists of exploiting Britain's servicemen The values of these extremists - many of whom are essentially racist - are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness.' The new row came as an apparent list of the party's members and their personal details were posted on the internet, in the third leak of its membership in recent years. The names include former senior members of the military, doctors and professors, according to the spreadsheet posted on the the WikiLeaks website. Everything from their street address, post code, telephone number and mobile phone number is included. It comes amid huge anger over BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time on Thursday with the corporation refusing to pull him from the line-up. The BNP has regularly used pictures of soldiers as part of its campaign, alongside quintessentially British images such as Winston Churchill's V for victory sign.
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POPSDo our brains interpret our values and beliefs as facts (objective truths)?
Such messages caused activation in the brain region that is responsible for error detection. So in other words (and yes, I am grossly simplifying here), it was as if people's brain's were indicating "error, error, error; this message does not compute." This is consistent with research by Emily Pronin (psychology professor at Princeton University), which shows that people of all beliefs see their own beliefs as LESS biased than others. In other words, republicans see themselves as less biased, and so do democrats, and for that matter, so do mailman, coperate CEO's and homeless people. I think this goes a long way in explaining the depth and extent to which people defend their beliefs. Perhaps, Berger and Luckmann are right; we do live, in some sense, in alternative forms of reality. Sure, we all know a rock won't bite us and 2 + 2 = 4, but what I "know" (George W. Bush was lousy) is not what many Republicans "knows" (George W. Bush was a good president).
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POPSSelf Proclaimed Elites and Tyranny
"there’s little or no distinction between Nazism and socialism. Even the word Nazi is short for National Socialist German Workers Party. The origins of the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Those horrors were simply the end result of long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.” "Few Americans have the stomach or ruthlessness to do what is necessary to make their governmental wishes come true. They are willing to abandon constitutional principles and rule of law so that the nation’s elite, who believe they are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us, can have the tools to implement “social justice.” "Those tools are massive centralized government power. "It just turns out last century’s notables in acquiring powerful central government, in the name of social justice, were Hitler, Stalin, Mao, but the struggle for social j
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POPS Miller Time Sure, the last Beer Summit was an empty political gesture, something Obama was forced into after he stepped in it.* This one could actually be meaningful, if everyone behaves, sincerely tries to become a better person … which is asking a lot, I know. Likelihood of it happening? Zip. But maybe the White House Press Corps, which initiated the last Beer Summit, could try to prompt this one. By asking the president about it, like they did last time. Checking Google news, not seeing that has happened. * Boston Herald, take a bow. Fired the twin rockets of Sgt. Crowley’s distinctly unracist past and his position as a police academy racial profiling instructor that blew up that race thing in Gates’ and Obama’s faces. I remember watching Gates on CNN that afternoon, and the president at his press conference that night, thinking, “Have a good time, guys. Rockets impact in the a.m.” If Skip had just returned our calls …
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POPSAnother Bad Idea
The cost of this cash handout? $13 billion. And Obama says that money cannot come out of social security trust funds. But, in typical Obama fashion, he offered absolutely no alternative way to pay for it. And get this – he’s willing to BORROW MORE MONEY to fund the payouts. Perfect! All the clowns who you’d expect to be in favor of tihs (Reid, Rangel, et al) naturally lined up to kiss ass praise Obama for this plan. People with Actual Brains, like Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) said it’d be inappropriate to mess with a system which was specifically designed to reflect the cost of living. In January, social security recipients saw their payments go up by nearly 6%, which was the largest increase since 1982. Apparently, it was to combat the rising costs of energy at that time. Meantime, the working population has seen, on average, 2% raises for the past couple of years. Did our energy costs not go up too? We’re not even going to SEE social security payments when we retire, for crying ou
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POPSMedia Ignoring Conservatives' Return to Dominance of Political Book Market
In September of that year, the Boston Globe proclaimed liberals "triumphant" against "conservatives' decade long hold on popular culture." Yes, it seemed such wonderful liberal values were finally en vogue. Barnes and Noble, reacting to the outpouring of Bush-bashing literature in August of 2003 announced that it would set up ‘political science/cultural affairs' tables at its stores to feature the newest partisan works. But conservatives have reclaimed their hold on the Times's bestseller page. The closest any of the top 15 hard-cover non-fiction books gets to a defense of liberalism or the Obama Administration is In Fed We Trust by David Wessel "The books from the left strike me as an obvious reaction to Bush," conservative commentator Tucker Carlson told the Associated Press in 2003. "And for people who buy them, it's a way of voting against him in an off-election year." With Bush gone, liberals no longer have a blatant target at whom to direct a coordinated
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POPSLaser Calibrator Calibration is the process of checking machines and making sure that values used in measurement remain standard points. It is the process of verifying machine's work and performance within a set of specifications.
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POPSTell President Obama to Cut Off ACORN Now! Petition long-term care and insurance premiums. Men and Women in Uniform We must support the men and women who protect our nation. That means giving them the tools and equipment they need, as well as the benefits and moral support they have earned. I support tax benefits to help ease the financial burdens our citizen-warriors and their families face and updated, improved GI Bill education benefits. And we must also support our first responders, who put their lives on the line to protect us in our homes, businesses, and communities. I was proud to have the MN Police and Peace Officers Association endorse my TRACK Sex Offenders Act, which gives law enforcement and officers the tools they need to keep us safe from sexual predators.