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POPSReport: 237 millionaires in Congress
Senators’ estimated median reportable worth sunk to about $1.79 million from $2.27 million in 2007. The House’s median income was significantly lower and also sank, bottoming out at $622,254 from $724,258 in 2007. But CRP’s analysis suggests that some lawmakers did well for themselves between 2007 and 2008, even as many Americans lost jobs and saw their savings and their home values plummet. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gained about $9.2 million. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) gained about $3 million, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) had an estimated $2.6 million gain, and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) gained about $2.8 million. Some lawmakers have profited from investments in companies that have received federal bailouts; dozens of lawmakers are invested in Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Vice President Joe Biden has often tagged himself as an original blue collar man. The CRP backs him up, putting his net worth at just $27,000.
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POPSGibbs: Obama 'not watching returns' He's probably playing basketball. He can say what he wants but it was obvious to the political hounds that he was stumping for his guys. Now it's time to distance himself. Hypocrites, ALL!!!!
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POPSU.S. Official Resigns Over Afghanistan War Policy Hoh's letter caused a stir in the Obama administration, and he was hastened to meetings with senior U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington. They praised his record of service and begged him to stay, offering him new positions in both locations. Hoh initially accepted the Washington job, but changed his mind a week later. Hoh said that his act of protest and decision to speak out were painful, even "nauseating" at times, but he was strongly motivated by the friends he had lost on the battlefield and the mental anguish he has experienced since returning home. "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right,' " he explained, adding that he "is not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love."
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POPSThe Flip Flop is back Same old Kerry. He was for the war before he was against it. Kind of like our cowardly president votes "present" rather than take a stand.
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POPSThe Record is Clear' - Dick Cheney is Not Credible For certain, Cheney is not the only one pressing Obama to hurry his Afghanistan strategy. The Neo-Conservatives have taken to every media outlet that will have them; and, if they're not talking about Afghanistan, they're second guessing the president's diplomacy with Iran, Russia, etc... For reasons I find incomprehensible, media outlets -- and not just Fox News, mind you -- treat them as if their credibility isn't completely lacking when it comes to matters of national security. That ship sailed months, if not years before Obama's election. Consider the scathing rebuke of Cheney issued by Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), senior adviser for the National Security Network:
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POPSExcuses Wearing Thin for Obama, Media Pals 
Yet just a few months ago, the Obama camp was singing a little different tune. It was under criticism for the $787 billion stimulus package it bulldozed through Congress on grounds that massive spending was needed to keep the unemployment rate from breaching 8 percent. When joblessness hit 9.5 percent in June, Vice President Joe Biden said, "We misread how bad the economy was." They inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression, or the economy turned out to be worse than they thought. Which is it? It can't be both -- unless your brain is completely addled by the Obama charisma. That's the backdrop to the story of Rush Limbaugh getting booted from a group bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams. He was smeared on CNN and MSNBC with false accusations of making two racist comments. He is an abrasive critic of Obama, so he must be racist.. . Recently an MSNBC personality accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of lobbying for policies that amount to being "treasonous . . .
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POPSJoe Biden: the worrying rise of Barack Obama’s Mr Wrong The real difficulty with Mr Biden, however, is his judgment. On all the big questions, he has been – to put it politely – on the wrong side of history. The problem is that Mr Obama may now be listening to Mr Biden. Having supposedly already settled on an Afghan strategy in March, he is giving a very public impression of Hamlet as he wrings his hands and conducts endless White House debates – with details leaked to the press – about what to do.
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POPS Hammer Wants An Anvil Fawning “Inconvenient Truth Teller” article inside paints him as a sort of goof savant … a bit like Chauncey Gardiner of “Being There,” he’s been in Washington DC his entire life, everyone likes him, and suddenly they think he’s a genius. The three-decade gaffe-and-reverse record requires some acrobatics, though. The Newsweek scribblers clearly like his go-lite, wack-a-mole strategy though they are big enough to admit at the end that people who actually know what they are talking about say it won’t work. It’s not exactly the Joe Biden embed that I wished out loud NYT’s Dexter Filkins would do as a counterbalance to his McChyrstal piece earlier this week,* but close. Some administration officials, led by Biden, appear to hope that American forces can rely more on counterterrorism operations"attacks by Predator drones and small elite units on terrorist hiding places"to hold Afghanistan together and defeat Al Qaeda. But critics call this “splitting the baby" and say . . .
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POPSObama Quietly Deploying 13,000 More US troops to Afghanistan In addition to the deployments under way, McChrystal has also requested an extra 40,000 troops he says are necessary to prevent the country falling into the hands of the Taliban. The Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai, today expressed support for McChrystal's request. "I'm fully behind him for what he's seeking in this report," Karzai told ABC's Good Morning America. As part of the internal debate, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, who is cautiously supporting McChrystal, is due to meet later today the vice-president Joe Biden, who is opposed to the troop increase and favours a shift in priority to tracking down al-Qaida in Pakistan. A decision on McChrystal's troop request appears to have been postponed for a few weeks. Any extra troops will come as a result of a parallel reduction in the number of US troops in Iraq. A US military planner told the Army Times: "We've increased forces in Afghanistan before we've reduced forces in Iraq in a meaningful way.
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POPSObama: Taleban can be involved in Afghanistan future I can't decide if I'm surprised or in a coma. Sending only enough troops to keep al-Qaeda at bay places those already there in increased danger. No wonder the moral has taken a huge dip over the last months. No leadership = demoralization. And this guy is a 'Commander-in-Chief'?
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POPS Chaos-istan The big question now is whether this is going to be about Obama’s ego, or about winning in Afghanistan. If any general is ill-advised to shoot his mouth off, this business may also teach the administration something about blowing off generals at (unnecessarily extended) criticial moments and insisting that political parameters trump military ones in wartime. Maybe if he wasn’t so distracted with trying to have Democratic Christmas in October … an expensive tax-and-fee-subsidized health care giveaway in the middle of economic crisis and war. To be followed on by cap-and-trade’s assault on business, industry, utilities and consumers. And then you’ve got Iran, unresponsive to the extended hand of friendship. AFP, “On Afghanistan, US military puts Obama on the spot,” NYT with a look at Petraeus includes the unfortunate news that this president is less interested in listening to his generals than his predecessor was.... LA Times: “Afghanistan assault points out .....
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POPSObama Can't Outsource Afghanistan FTA: Biden in 2002.... "Security is the basic issue in Afghanistan. Whatever it takes, we should do it. History will judge us harshly if we allow the hope of a liberated Afghanistan to evaporate because we failed to stay the course." One commentator has suggested that he's going to "outsource" it to NATO.
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POPSObama to Meet High-Powered Aides for Afghan Review were the top ranking civilian officials expected for a bracing session on a war some supporters fear could swamp Obama's presidency. War commander General Stanley McChrystal, who warned in a leaked report that the conflict could be lost within a year without more troops, was also due to to take part, either in person or by video link-up, the White House said. Other top military brass included were General David Petraeus who heads US central command, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair. CIA chief Leon Panetta was also due to take part, along with Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the US ambassadors to Islamabad and Kabul. Obama warned after meeting NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday that the United States could not fight the battle in Afghanistan alone, in remarks apparently aimed at European partners.
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POPSWill NATO's 60th Anniversary Be Its Last?
The painful truth is that NATO may be suffering from a terminal illness. Its current mission in Afghanistan, the alliance's most significant and far-flung muscle-flexing to date, might be its last. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of many an imperial power from the ancient Macedonians to the Soviets. It now seems to be eyeing its next victim. For NATO, this year should have been a celebration, not a dirge. After suffering a transatlantic rift of epic proportions during the Bush years, the alliance thrilled to the election of Barack Obama and his politics of conciliation. The new American administration swore it would shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to give NATO more of what it wanted to fight "the right war." Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both promised to push the "reset button" on U.S.-Russian relations, potentially removing one of the greatest obstacles to NATO's health and well-being. And in a final flourish for the alliance's diamond jub
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POPS Obamlet What any prosecutor or defense attorney will tell you about jury deliberations … how long they’re out doesn’t necessarily tell you anything. It could mean they are trying really hard to convince themselves that abandonment will work … and to find a way to convince America and the world that an easy out is the considered, sensible thing to do. Or it could be that they know what they need to do, they are just afraid to do it. Afraid of the consequences of angering their anti-war lefty base, afraid of remaining committed to a war with a horizon past 2010 and 2012. But that’s about as charitable and optimistic a view as is possible, and assumes they actually want to find a way to do the right thing. Unfortunately, there has been little to indicate that is what they are interested in doing. What makes this less like jury deliberations and more like a Shakespearean tragedy, though, is that every now and then, a major player sticks his head out to shout something.
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POPSObama phenonemon I think the idea that someone like Obama can take on the whitehouse has opened up a lot of doors where previously were locked and impossible to open
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POPS The Biden Plan Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics. The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan. Mr. Obama rejected Mr. Biden’s approach in March, and it is not clear that it has more traction this time. But the fact that it is on the table again . . .
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POPSIBDeditorials.com (”Radicals Wrote Failed Stimulus”) But buck up, Joe. The GOP, by running candidates like Mark Kirk for US Senate in Illinois and Jon Husted for Secretary of State in Ohio (to name only a couple), continues to demonstrate that it is perfectly capable of selling out sensible conservatism for the illusory and passing feel-good moment. _________________________________________ From Erick at RedState " “A Review of ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis’s Rolodex Suggests Strong White House Ties”: RedState has seen a list of Bertha Lewis’s contacts. We did not seek it out. It just showed up one day unsolicited. We did not ask for it. We did not expect to get it. But now that we have it, we should see who is in there. The President can say “I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money,” but a review of Ms. Lewis’s contacts list suggests that is not the case. What a non-surprise. But having the goods is quite helpful. _________________________________________
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POPSGood Slogan,“End of the Road, 2010!” Catchy OK, forget that last bit for a minute … there’s no indication they can make anything happen even with House and Senate majorities, and they’ve done everything they can to avoid actually saying what they are for, anyway. It’s the naked surrenderism that is truly astonishing. It’s not just that are they ready to give up if the GOP wins back some seats. Did they learn nothing from George Bush? He got what he wanted even when they took Congress. He’s still having key parts of it his way even after the opposition took the White House … on a ticket that called for doing anything but what Bush did. Now Biden, his boss and the Congressional leadership are looking for a politically viable way to lose a war Bush showed them how to win. While apparently, if that “End of the Road 2010″ statement represents their reality, in no particularly big rush to advance their agenda and not particularly hopeful about it. Help me out here. Why’d they even run in the first place?
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POPSHey America, WARS ARE STILL GOING ON!
A comment on a clip stated: “preventable deaths…how about Heart, lung disease, cancer, etc.?” Not sure what the clipper was getting at, citing these ills; calling them preventable? Anyway, it occurred to me… what about WAR; shouldn't that be at the top of this woeful list? The Bush admin, wanted WAR so badly, they started TWO! Of course, they could, 9/11, HAPPENED! (I’m still not convinced the attack occurred without a WINK & NOD.) Now 8 yrs later and still young people die because of that infamous day. We can’t blame Bush any longer, so who should bear the brunt of accountability for the bloodletting? Obama won the election, partly due to his stance against war and now he’s ratcheting up troop levels assuring its longevity? If he continues to act like Bush when it comes to WAR; He has not only misled us, he FUCKED us royally! And although I’m charmed by his eloquence, it can’t last… We, who despise war, won’t look the other way while he sends so many to die…& OVER WHAT?
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POPSBest Tea Party Signs from DC, via Twitter # http://twitpic.com/hj2jd - 'Nat'l HC is like a hospital gown. You think you're covered, but you're not' # http://twitpic.com/hi0ln - Politicians beware 2010 and 2012 # http://twitpic.com/hhxy4 - Cute boys: "Quit spending money I haven't earned yet" # RT @Heminator: RT @jordangehrke best sign of the day: "The road to hell is a shovel ready project." # http://twitpic.com/hhmx0 - "Not all registered nurses heart Ocare" # http://twitpic.com/hhmse - "Your speech was a lie. You know it. We know it. What's next?" # http://twitpic.com/hhmnc - "Yes he can! Spread the wealth! Socialism you can count on" # http://twitpic.com/hhmfv - "Astroturf my ass!" # http://twitpic.com/hhmbv - Cute girl. Also "God-fearing, gun-toting and flag waving." # http://twitpic.com/hhm25 - Gas $264, Hotel $409, Taking back my country? Priceless. # http://twitpic.com/hhlx1 - You can't fix stupid but you can vote them out.
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POPSPres. Obama's Speech = Huge Progress
Once again our new President Obama stepped up to the plate and blasted another home run. His speech last night to a rare joint session of Congress (i.e. all our politicians), was firm, assertive, inspiring and pointed to real and positive changes, i.e. 1) no disqualifications for pre-existing conditions and 2) Not dropping people's health insurance when they get sick! Gads! -- Not needing is much I had no idea the health insurance industry was so cruel and so criminal...criminal, imo, that someone has insurance then when they get cancer their policy is NOT RENEWED! Wow...that's evil. (If you've been reading any of the 80 posts by merri today, or only listening to USA corrosive and toxic news, you may have missed the boat on where this is going: It's going to certain victory on the two (2) points mentioned above. It surreal the vile Republican spin that trys to drag Obama down, call things failed, and the dude hasn't even gotten up to bat yet! He hit this one out of t
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POPSThe Lost "Beer Summit" Transcripts GATES: Okay, we have been here long enough for pictures, can we go now? CROWLEY: I agree. OBAMA: You see, I am the racial healer, I can bring people together. GATES: I just want to get away from the vice-president. CROWLEY: Same here. OBAMA: We are on a role. This is a historical fundamental change in American race relations BIDEN: If I drink enough of the Jamaican Red Stripe beer professor, will I get a cool accent? GATES: What the Hell does that mean? OBAMA: Shut up Joe! Go play on Malia and Sasha’s swing set. BIDEN: Cool OBAMA: Sit down Joe. I wasn’t serious about the swing set. Just sit there and be quiet. CROWLEY: This isn’t going well. Mr. President if you apologize for calling the Cambridge Police Department stupid before you knew all the facts we can all move on.
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POPS Why It’s Not Working Uncle Sam has borrowed $388 billion in the second quarter and is scheduled to borrow $406 billion in the third quarter and nearly $500 billion in the fourth. In order to provide $152 billion in so-called fiscal stimulus, the government is draining close to $800 billion from the private-sector savings supply " $800 billion that will not be invested in new-business enterprises, including small businesses. To be honest, it’s hard to know what Biden is talking about at any given moment he opens his mouth. But on the economy and the “stimulus” plan he’s even more incoherent than usual. (Actually, I suspect Biden was brought on board the ticket to provide Obama with a comic side-kick. Buddy movie politics.) The economy is a shambles directly because of the policies of the Obama administration. Kudlow predicts a minimum 500 point Wall Street rally if ObamaCare fails. (I’d bet on a lot higher, frankly).
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POPSESPN Little League World Series | Little League World Series 2009 ESPN Little League World Series: Vice President Joe Biden plans to attend the Little League World Series on Sunday, when he is enshrined into Little League's Hall of Excellence. ... espn little league world series, littleleagueworldseries, little league world series 2009, llws, llws 2009, little league world series williamsport pa.
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POPSFired up, Meet Wee-Wee’d up Now I'm PO'ed “There's something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee-wee'd up.” -- President Obama, adding to the political lexicon. Say what? What happened to the bright, articulate (and clean!) guy promised to us by Vice-President Joe Biden. Obama's pursuit of authenticity is troubling - if he really hopes to bond with the lefty bloggers he will need to drop an F-bomb or two. Per sentence. Posted by Tom Maguire Wee-Weed up Debate: “Obama’s approval rating for handling health care has fallen steadily from 57 percent in April to 46 percent today, led by a steep a 17-point slide among independents. And expectations he can successfully accomplish reform have dropped further " from 68 percent shortly before he took office to 49 percent now.” http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/08/weeweed-up-health-care-debate-slips-further-from-white-house-control.html
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POPSCelebrity Hair Transplant Photos Lots of celebrity hair transplant pictures! There are many more at the site, such as Christian Slater, Joe Biden, Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Elton John and James Nesbitt.
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