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POPS Lucid Links 11.09.09 Only when you get to Obama’s page do you learn that Obama a) wasn’t president, and b) didn’t make any speech at the site of the Wall last year when he campaigned for the U.S. presidency in Europe. In remembrance on the 8th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, our president …. sent Joe Biden to Ground Zero in New York City. Deliberate ignorance: The British press was out front (HT Hot Air) in telling the world that the perpetrator of the Fort Hood attack “worshiped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ’spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.” That the attack was jihad-inspired is not open to real dispute. Meanwhile, the PC-addled American press does all it can to minimize the enormity (HT Mark Finkelstein at NewsBusters) of what occurred at Fort Hood and makes excuses for the perpetrator, even to the point of claiming that he might (even though he never experienced
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POPSUSA Prepares to Attack Russia in 3 or 4 Years? “I would also like to pay your attention to the fact that the US Military Academy at West Point has recently launched extensive courses to study the Russian culture and language. They started teaching the Iraqi culture and the Arab language three years before invading Iraq.
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POPS23 Americans Convicted in Italy for CIA Kidnapping The Americans were accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He was released after four years in prison without being charged. The trial is the first by any government over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, which transferred suspects overseas for interrogation. Human rights advocates charge that renditions were the CIA's way to outsource the torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted. Italy's government has denied involvement. Among the Americans acquitted was Jeffrey Castelli, a former Rome CIA station chief, who prosecutors had alleged coordinated the abduction. The two other acquitted Americans were also assigned to the U.S. Embassy in the Italian capital and thus were covered by broad diplomatic immunity.
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POPS The Obama Work-Out War-weary Obama manages a decision … more golf! Boston Herald: WASHINGTON - President Obama has outperformed former President George Bush in a key area - he’s hit the links as many times in nine months as Bush did in nearly three years, political Web sites reported. Politico, a political news and gossip site, and the Chicago Tribune’s The Swamp, reported that CBS’ Mark Knoller - who documents presidential statistics - Tweeted Sunday, “Today - Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24. Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months.” The Swamp noted that after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Bush quit golf, saying, “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf . . . I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal . . . ” Come on, guys. Iraq was different. That was Bush’s war. Afghanistan? That’s Bush’s other war! http://www.julescrittenden.com/2009/10/27/golf-for-we-not-for-thee/
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POPSThe Open House Party at the White House Luaus, Superbowl parties, salsa dancing, dunking booth, golf outings, movies with the 3d glasses, breathless plane trips to dinner, Beverly Hills, hula-hooping....wtf? Oprah and Clooney. Fergie and the Easter bunny.... The economy crumbles while the White House parties their ass off. Ridiculous and embarrassing. And the Democrats say they best represent the common man, Joe Sixpack? Please. The common man is in bankruptcy or being foreclosed on and working day in and day out. The is a bleeping travesty.
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POPSTea Party Movement's New Target :The GOP
They feel they were had by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who urged them to stomach earmarks for the good of the party; by George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove, who urged them to stomach a massive expansion of education and Medicare for the good of the party; and by the rest of the Washington gang that collaborated in the largest expansion of government in their lifetime for the good of the party. Erick Erickson, founder and editor of the conservative RedState blog, said grass-roots activists are done listening. “Republicans are going to have to come our way,” he said, before going on to trash NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for backing Scozzafava. Their “level of disingenuousness ... is disgusting,” Erickson said. His influential blog is now calling for Sessions to get the boot from the NRCC as a penalty for mishandling the race. Erickson’s bombast may seem overboard, but it captures the dep
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POPSUSS New York: "Strength Forged Through Sacrifice. Never Forget." At the prow - prominent and proud like the twin towers themselves - is a 19-foot-long bow stem, forged from 7.5 tons of Trade Center steel. Up from its homeport in Norfolk, Va., the ship will begin its New York odyssey with entry into the harbor about 7:30 this morning. At 8, there will be a 21-gun salute at Ground Zero. Then the New York will sail up the Hudson to the George Washington Bridge, turn around about 9:30 and dock at Pier 88, near 48th St. Along the route, thousands of New Yorkers are expected to greet their namesake. Prominent will be cops, firefighters and other responders, people who survived the conflagration and survivors of those who did not - brave souls to whom the ship is a floating memorial. For the living heroes and for 9/11 families, special privileges are due. They will have exclusive onboard visiting hours, a private reception and tickets to the shipboard commissioning ceremony Saturday.
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POPSReal men don't read D.C. pundits
Even worse than Krauthammer's column today, though, was David Brooks in the New York Times. Partly it's because Brooks likes to pretend to be open-minded and reasonable, while spouting neocon talking points, and occasionally liberals get pulled in by him. But today was trademark lazy ideological Brooks. As Glenn Greenwald notes, unbelievably he bragged about "doing what journalists are supposed to do" -- which he defined as talking to a handful of anonymous pro-war sources, who uniformly criticized Obama's inaction to date on McCrystal's troop request. That's some brave shit. Not quite David Rohde brave, but hey, he made the calls! If it was unanimous, that means he didn't call retired Marine Matthew Hoh, who resigned from a civilian post in Afghanistan this week because he said we can't win, and our presense is only fueling the insurgency. Hoh told the Washington Post's Karen de Young he's "not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love" and that he believes
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POPSCharles Krauthammer: The Three Envelopes 
I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan. This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago. He became commander in chief two months later. He then solemnly announced his own "comprehensive new strategy" for Afghanistan seven months ago. Obama is obviously unhappy with the path he himself chose in March. Fine. He has every right -- indeed duty -- to reconsider. But what Obama is reacting to is the failure of his own strategy. There is nothing new here. The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed. In each war, quick initial low-casualty campaigns toppled enemy governments. In the subsequent occupation stage, two policy choices presented themselves: the light or heavy "footprint." In both Iraq and Afghanistan, we initially chose the light footprint. This was the considered judgment of our commanders at the time,
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POPSRights and Obligations of Liberty Fortunately, in the words of Samuel Adams, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." But, what of those like my well-educated colleague, who is among America's "best and brightest", who are, however, uninformed about their obligations as citizens of the greatest experiment in human history? What of those who, as one consequence of enjoying the highest standard of living on the planet, tend to take our legacy of liberty for granted and have become complacent about its attendant responsibilities? George Washington noted at the conclusion of the American Revolution, "The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity."
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POPSRights & Obligations of Liberty Samuel Adams assured us that, "No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."
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POPS Classroom follies TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested? HAROLD: A teacher.
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POPSPart I The Marijuana FACTS 
Quality paints and varnishes were made from hemp seed oil until 1937. 58,000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935; Sherman Williams Paint Co. testimony before Congress against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. * Henry Ford's first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONTRUCTED FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, 'grown from the soil,' had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel; Popular Mechanics, 1941. * Hemp called 'Billion Dollar Crop.' It was the first time a cash crop had a business potential to exceed a billion dollars; Popular Mechanics, Feb., 1938. * Mechanical Engineering Magazine (Feb. 1938) published an article entitled 'The Most Profitable and Desirable Crop that Can be Grown.' It stated that if hemp was cultivated using 20th Century technology, it would be the single largest agricultural crop in the U.S. and the rest of the wor
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POPSUS Press Freedom Improves At the bottom of the list were Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea "where media are so suppressed they are nonexistent," said Reporters Without Borders. Iran dropped to No. 172 from No. 166, with Reporters Without Borders saying the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had fostered a paranoia about journalists and bloggers. "Automatic prior censorship, state surveillance of journalists, mistreatment, journalists forced to flee the country, illegal arrests and imprisonment -- such is the state of press freedom this year in Iran," the group said. The ranking was compiled from hundreds of questionnaires completed by journalists and media experts around the world and reflecting press freedom violations that took place between Sept. 1, 2008 and Aug. 31, 2009. The complete ranking can be seen at www.rsf.org/en-classement1003-2009.html Read more at source.
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POPS Waiting For Godot “The thunderstorm is there and it’s kind of brewing and it’s unstable and the lightning hasn’t struck, and hopefully it won’t,” said Nathaniel C. Fick, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who briefed Mr. Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and is now the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, a military research institution in Washington. “I think it can probably be contained and avoided, but people are aware of the volatile brew.” Last week the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Thomas J. Tradewell Sr., gave voice to the concerns of those in the military when he issued a terse statement criticizing Mr. Obama’s review of Afghan war strategy. “The extremists are sensing weakness and indecision within the U.S. government, which plays into their hands,” said Mr. Tradewell’s statement on behalf of his group, which represents 1.5 million former soldiers. Last August, in a speech to the V.F.W., Mr. Obama defended . . .
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POPSObama’s Tripling of the National Debt in Pictures In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household "the highest level in American history" and under President Obama’s budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019. The public national debt" $5.8 trillion as of 2008" is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined. To put that $1 trillion dollars into perspective, have a look at what it looks like! http://izismile.com/2009/03/10/can_you_imagine_one_trillion_dollars_6_pics.html
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POPSFarmers Arrested Planting Hemp on DEA Headquarters Lawn Hemp is not a drug and has no capacity to get someone stoned. Currently eight states -- Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia -- allow industrial hemp production or research, but federal law, which requires nearly-impossible-to-obtain-permits to grow hemp, trumps those state laws. A bill introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) would allow states to craft their own policies. Some facts from North American Industrial Hemp Council: Hemp has been grown for at least the last 12,000 years for fiber (textiles and paper) and food. Hemp oil once greased machines. Most paints, resins, shellacs, and varnishes used to be made out of linseed (from flax) and hemp oils. Rudolph Diesel designed his engine to run on hemp oil The products that can be made from hemp number over 25,000.
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POPSObama's War PBS Premiere October 13th As the debate in Washington intensifies, FRONTLINE reports the high stakes on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Martin Smith (The War Briefing) embeds with the Marines of Echo Company for an up-close look at Obama's counterinsurgency strategy. Obama's War airs Tues, Oct 13 on PBS. Video (24:46) Warning: This video contains graphic language and imagery http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamaswar/?utm_campaign=ObamasWar&utm_medium=BlogAds&utm_source=Image
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POPSObama Meeting with The Daliai Lama Is Delayed more @ clip source For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been "drop-in" visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.
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POPSDan Brown's New Book Highlights Freemasonry in Washington D.C. The Founders and Washington D.C.'s symbolic construction. Much truth included in Brown's new fiction. The National Geographic article shows the Scottish Rite Temple, which shows the incorporation of Jewish-Egyptian symbolism that looks almost Pharoah-like in their superstition. (Jewish because there is an "Ark of the Covenant" inside the temple). Note the inclusion of factor-11 numerology in what they do, as in the 33-degree. Thomas Paine wrote that Freemasonry traces back to Druidism.
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POPS9.12 Project: We The People Demand Answers Mission Statement This Web site is a place for you and other like-minded Americans looking for direction in taking back the control of our country. It is also a place to find information that will assist you in navigating the rough waters we face in the days, weeks and months ahead. We suggest that you start in your own homes. Talk to your family about the Values and Principles. Discuss the importance of what the Founders designed for America. Hold or attend a weekly meeting in your neighborhood or town. Communication with your neighbors is vital to the process of protecting our country. Gather in living rooms, coffee houses or restaurants. Share your thoughts and ideas. Visit this Web site often. Make use of the resources that are linked here. Share the ideas and resources that have worked in your home or town. This is a non-political movement. The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001.
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POPS Podesta Says Value-Added Tax ‘More Plausible’ as Deficits Grow a Washington-based public policy group, is convening a meeting of economic policy experts Sept. 30 to discuss the long- term fiscal deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in August that the budget deficit will be 11.2 percent of gross domestic product, the highest since World War II. Clinton, facing a deficit of 4.2 percent of GDP, pushed Congress to raise taxes on the wealthy to help trim the shortfall. “He passed it without a single Republican vote,” Podesta said. “It led to the longest period of growth in the United States history.” Ending Tax Cuts Podesta said Obama will begin by ending the upper-income tax cuts enacted under his predecessor, President George W. Bush. “Then you have to look at whether that gets you far enough of the way,” he said. On health care, Podesta expressed optimism that Congress will pass a health-care bill in the next couple of months even though so far none of the measures has won Republican support and Democrats . .
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