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POPSForecasts for the 25 Years... From the page: "A Crisis or an Opportunity? What Makes the Difference? The critical difference is whether you are prepared. If you’re aware of possible developments… if you see changes coming… you can take action and prepare yourself. In a rapidly changing world, new opportunities are emerging everywhere. If you get an advance notice of these possible changes, you can be ready. You can ride these waves of change to benefit your career, your business, your family and your investments." Why not changing ourselves as well? it seems as if all that will come should not affect us on deep levels, but why? part of preparation is accepting the changing of human that may come.
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POPSWhat's McCain's Plan On The Gang of 20 Energy Legislation?
Republicans in the gang appear to have seriously underestimated their party’s strength on this issue. Two-thirds of the public supports opening the Outer Continental Shelf to new drilling. The gang is undermining Republicans in a fight they are winning politically and policy-wise. McCain opposes wasteful spending and supports offshore drilling. The Gang of 20's bill contains a lot of the former and very little of the latter, and it raises taxes on domestic energy production. Americans for Tax Reform has announced that a vote for the gang's bill would constitute a violation of its taxpayer protection pledge, which McCain has signed. Obama will probably end up supporting the gang's bill. Why wouldn't he? Its drilling provisions are a sham, but it lets him claim he supports drilling. McCain needs to strongly oppose this bill. By doing so, he would be holding out for a better policy (the expiration of the drilling ban) and denying Obama valuable political cover.
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POPSAlaska's anti environmentalism could sink Florida Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole… the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming. The resulting opening of Arctic sea lanes will affect American foreign and energy policy for years, implying that the economy in Alaska will boom while Florida sinks.
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POPSSNL Parody Of Palin and Clinton: Michael Phelps Hosts "I believe that diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy," she said. "And I can see Russia from my house," Fey's Palin replied. Poehler continued, "I believe global warming is caused by man." "And I believe it's just God huggin' us closer," Fey responded. "What an amazing time we live in to think that just two years ago, I was a small-town mayor of America's crystal meth capital, and now I am just one heartbeat away from being the President of the United States," Fey chirped. "It just goes to show that anyone can be President - all you have to do is want it," Fey continued, prompting a cackle from Poehler. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBFk9XC3YLs PHOTOS: WHICH CELEBS COULD PLAY PALIN? http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/galleries/which_celeb_could_play_palin/which_celeb_could_play_palin.html
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POPSCentral Banks At Risk Just Like Wall Street's Finest This really is a bucket of cold water. The author is Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics and public policy at Harvard, writing in the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper. His core point is that central banks, in shoring up national banking industries by taking on financial firms' bad debt, are only putting themselves at risk.
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POPSAbout That Pelosi, Pickens Plan To Pick Our Pocket
but the then necessary development of the infrastructure and conversion to such energy will take even longer. We are not going to abandon gas and oil any time soon, no matter what the loudest advocates of renewable energy sources insist. As a writer noted at Fosters.com, a sane energy policy will require tuning in to a program of multiple sources. Fossil fuels -- developed and yet to be developed -- wind power nearing a scope envisioned by T. Boone Pickens, solar power, nuclear power, biomass, geothermal power and sources we haven't thought of yet are in our future - as in waaay in our future. Pickens' plan is bold — too bad it won't work The Pickens Plan isn't the boon for energy independence that it purports to be. Dallas billionaire investor and oilman-turned-wind-farmer Boone Pickens unveiled an audacious plan that he hopes will prod policymakers into a more realistic discussion of energy issues. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5882292.html
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POPSWall Street Likes The Bailout Plus Drill, Drill, Drill
But my thought is that a Senate victory might just blow Pelosi out of the water and open the floodgates to Democratic defections in the House. If a drilling bill ever passes Congress, oil prices will keep on plunging — perhaps all the way to $75 a barrel, which is the profitable break-even point for lifting the extra barrel of oil. That would drive the Dow to somewhere between 15,000 and 16,000, and it would have a huge tax-cut effect on the economy. And, of course, it could completely change the November election outlook in a highly favorable way for the GOP. The conventional wisdom says Republicans are gonna get clobbered again this fall. But drill, drill, drill would overturn that wisdom. More drilling today would have the potency of the Reagan tax cuts 28 years ago in the 1980 landslide race. But the GOP has got to make the case. And deregulating oil, which is great policy, would offset much of the bad policy pain coming out of the Fannie-Freddie housing bailout.
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POPSHot Air And the back-up coal or natural gas power generators can not be started and stopped on a whim.
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POPSThe coming famine "In light of all these hurdles, as I see it, the challenge is to double world food output by 2050 using less land, far less water and fewer nutrients – all in the teeth of increasing rates of drought. And we need to do it sustainably." "I believe we are quite capable of solving these issues through good science and good policy. In the first instance, we need to massively increase global public investment in agricultural research and development. Then we need to make sure the fruits of that research reach farmers everywhere. I also think that commercial wild harvests, such as fishing and forestry, should be phased out in favour of sustainable farming that dovetails with the local environment."
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POPSPentagon to EPA: You and What Army? Refuse to clean up If it were a private polluter and not the Pentagon, the EPA would most likely go to court to force compliance, but an executive branch policy prevents federal agencies from suing one another. Other agencies, including NASA and the Department of Energy, have complied with the EPA’s Superfund cleanup orders without protest. This is the second time in a week that it’s been revealed that the EPA’s authority has been ignored by others in the government. The New York Times reported last Wednesday that, when the EPA sent an e-mail to the White House concluding that greenhouse gasses can be regulated by the Clean Air Act, the White House simply refused to open it, successfully getting the EPA to backtrack.
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POPSThe Oil Cartel Of Our Own Making the 85.9 billion barrels of crude offshore won't be tapped. The May BLM report explains why most onshore oil won't be tapped, either. Of the 279 million acres of federal land "with potential for oil or natural gas resources," 60 percent is off limits to leases as a matter of federal statute or administrative policy. Another 23 percent is open to leases with "restrictions." These include such things as "lands that can be leased but ground-disturbing oil and natural gas exploration and development activities are prohibited" and "lands that can be leased, but stipulations ... limit the time of the year when oil and gas exploration and drilling can take place to less than 3 months." While compliance with these laws may delay, modify or prohibit oil and gas activities, these laws represent the values and bounds Congress believes appropriate to manage Federal lands." You elected Congress. It paid you back with $4.00-per-gallon gas.
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POPSMickey Mouse-opatamia: Disneyland comes to Baghdad
But, just like in a Disney fairy tale, the souls of these dead animals will inhabit the bodies of the cartoon characters who will serve as ushers and greeters at the thrilling new "Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience." The $525 million project, says C3's owner, "will be managed by the Iraqis" (ha, ha, that's a good one, just like the oil fields) and the "experience" will be "culturally sensitive" (ha, ha, that's an even better one). Even though there's no running water in parts of Baghdad, the electricity is sparse at best, and suicide bombers are still killing an average of 100 civilians a week, this will, in the words of C3's director, be a welcome sight to Iraqis. He told the London Times, "The people need this kind of positive influence. It's going to have a huge psychological impact." Another big supporter of the Disney "experience" is Bush lapdog, General David Petraeus, who said Baghdad was otherwise "lacking in entertainment." If this weren't all so predictably ha
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POPSWhy I Left Greenpeace-Patrick Moore Phthalates are the new bogeyman. These chemicals make easy targets since they are hard to understand and difficult to pronounce. Sadly, Greenpeace has evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas. Its antichlorination campaign failed, only to be followed by a campaign against polyvinyl chloride. We all have a responsibility to be environmental stewards. But that stewardship requires that science, not political agendas, drive our public policy.
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POPSBIOFUELS – A MAN MADE DISASTER BIOFUEL DISASTER_THANK CONGRESS AND GREENIES! Contrary to popular belief, the production of biofuels is extremely unfriendly to the environment. The increased use of fertilizer needed in the growing corn crop has resulted in additional soil and water pollution. The National Academy of Sciences recently reported that the 15% food to fuel mandate will increase the size of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone by 10 to 19% as a result of water pollution caused by fertilizer runoff. The production of ethanol requires copious amounts of water, thereby draining local water tables. Congress never learns. Manipulating the market with subsidies and taxation can have disastrous, deadly results. If ethanol is such a great product, then it will thrive in the free market. How many people will have to starve before Congress and the do-gooder environmentalist lobby admit that our biofuel policy is a complete disaster and a potential threat to our economy and global stability.
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POPSWater Policy in Israel and Palestine - There's Enough Water for Both The increasing difficulties with water availability, concludes the hydrogeologist, result from Israel using the majority of water resources for agricultural purposes, although this sector today represents a very small portion of the Israeli economy. Despite this, the Israeli state remains unswervingly committed to the Zionist foundation myth, which regards the promotion of agriculture as a central tenet in the Jewish settlement of Palestine. Messerschmid, in turn, sees the priorities of Israeli water policies as fundamentally flawed, leading to a wasteful use of the precious resource. Large areas of land, for instance, are still intensively watered even during conditions of very high temperatures, although most of the water immediately evaporates. The Palestinians, by contrast, do not even have the amount of water at their disposal that was promised in the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Deutsche Fassung
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POPSPalestine/Israel: Water and international law - Things could get worse The United Nations' General Assembly reaffirmed in several resolutions that the Geneva Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) is applicable to the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and again and again condemned Israel's policies and practices against the population in the occupied territories. Very startling, the chutzpah with which Israel withstands the imminence of being classified as a rogue state.
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POPSMay I Quote You, Mr. President? 22-"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." 25-"Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." 31- "The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." 32- "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." 36-"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." 47-"I'm the commander — see, I don't need to explain — I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being president." 50-“I don’t have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy.”
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POPSThank You, Jimmy Carter Don't let the right-wing propaganda machines convince you that Carter is anti-Semitic when he is not! More from Rabbi Lerner: "In an interview...in the January issue of Tikkun magazine, Carter points out that he is “not referring to racism as a basis for Israeli policy in the West Bank, but rather the desire of a minority of Israelis to occupy, confiscate and colonize Palestinian land.” To enforce that occupation of Palestinian land, Israel has built in the West Bank separate roads for Jewish settlers and Palestinians, built separate school systems, has totally different allocations of money, water, food and security for each population, wildly privileging the Jewish settlers and discriminating against the Palestinians whose families have lived there for centuries." "What Carter is arguing is that the best interests of Israel and the United States are not served by the current policies."
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POPSSea Shepherd, "Steve Irwin to join (!?) Greenpeace in Tracking Whalers! Go get 'em Capt. Watson! kick some whaler butt. I'm soooo tired of seein' the videos of dead and bloody whales and dolphins and hearing their screams in my dreams. Once you have met cetaceans in the water, it changes you life. My brothers and sisters of the Sea....yes..... Time to draw the line in the water.