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POPSThe Christian Party George W. Bush transformed the center-right party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and his father, George H.W. Bush, into the political instrument of the religious right, tying the party to the evangelical protestants and to such Catholics as made the culture war central to their politics. In 2000 Bush-Cheney got 75 percent of the white evangelical vote.
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POPSFear Factor: How Herd Mentality Drives Us
"Whether it's the fear of being the odd person out, whether it's the fear of uncertainty or the fear of losing your shirt in the market, the fear starts to compel you to do something, because a million years ago, that fear meant you probably had to run or fight," Berns said. But reactions that saved our ancestors from saber-toothed tigers don't make as much sense on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Financial historian Jeff Madrick says that's how we got into trouble in the first place - by developing the notion that the stock is highly rational. "That encouraged this herd behavior," he said. "People would say, 'The stock market is right. Let's get in here.' That was the mythology that fed the herd behavior." So the group think that helped build the bubble is now leading the charge to pop it. "I think there's probably a panic now," Madrick said. Berns agreed: "You could call it panic; I would." But the Bronx Zoo's Pat Thomas says, "It's definitely a survival mechanism."
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POPSUkraine Market Crashes With all the stocks markets around the world taking a hit, it does seem like Babel is falling, or course that could just be GW's babble.
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POPSMishaps mark John McCain's record as naval aviator McCain says he knows how to "win a war." Where did he learn this? He was the very bottom of his class (so he didn't learn it there), he crash three jets during peace-time (so he didn't learn it there), the explosion on the carrier was actually his panicking and dropping his bombs into a fire on the deck (so he didn't learn it there), he was downed and became a POW (so he didn't learn it there), the war he was in was Vietnam, the only war the U.S. ever lost (so he didn't learn it there). So where exactly did McCain acquire this great ability to "win a war?" I don't see it!
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POPSPanics & Crashes A year after that, the American economy collapsed from top to bottom. ... American staple prices and land values dropped by anywhere from 50 to 75 percent; and backward the dominos fell, from ruined speculator to merchant farmer. ... "Early in 1819, pushed by Astor and Girard, the bank's directors finally dismissed Jones and replaced him with the South Carolinian Langdon Cheves. The new president ... tightened the screws, reducing the bank's liabilities by more than half, sharply cutting back the total value of bank notes in circulation, and more than tripling the bank's specie reserve. "Without question, Cheves's decision to contract instinctually made sense, both in halting the runaway inflation and in doing right by his stockholders. ... Yet, for the national economy, his timing and the extent of his actions could not have been worse, ... turning what might have been a sharp recession into a prolonged and disastrous depression. Just as the ban
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