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POPSThe Massacre that Haunts the Pentagon given the Taliban's horrific record, the prisoners had it coming. Newsweek concluded that there was enough evidence to justify a "fully-fledged criminal investigation". "Politics is the art of the possible," The Pentagon has so far declined to answer several tricky questions, among them, were US soldiers present when the containers were first opened at Shiberghan prison?
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POPSLarwyn's Links: Why Oh Why Did We Kick Hillary to the Curb? 
Larwyn is in the process of moving, but I was able to connect with Larwyn's link: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/8/10/22149/9588 John Edwards' New Age Friends First, there's Newsweek reporter Jonathan Darman's new article about his relationship and many meetings with Rielle Hunter. She's very new age -- astrology, auras, energy fields, etc. He was covering Edwards in Iowa in 2006 when he met Rielle and they stayed in touch and met several times. Very strange story. Then, there's the real mystery man in all this: Bob McGovern. He's the guy who separately drove both Rielle and Edwards to the Beverly Hilton for their meet-up. Edwards told Nightline that McGovern was the one who called him that afternoon and asked for the meeting. Edwards also told Nightline that he only agreed to the meeting if McGovern would be there too. Edwards' never said how he knew Bob McGovern. So who is Bob McGovern? Apparently, a new age healer from Santa Barbara.
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POPSChevron: Don't let little countries "screw" with big companies - a Chevron lobbyist, who asked not to be identified, speaking about a lawsuit brought on behalf of thousands of Indigenous Ecuadorian peasants over the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic oil wastes into their region's rivers and streams. Chevron is pressuring the Bush administration to eliminate special trade preferences for Ecuador if its government doesn't quash the case.
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POPSNewsweek: Education system is broken As a former NYC teaching fellow (similar program to Teach for America), I agree: 1. The educational system is broken. 2. The impact of an uneducated populace cannot be underestimated. However, I strongly disagree that teachers are the single most important factor in student achievement. As a teacher in a crisis school (and now a parent), I strongly believe that PARENTS are the single most important factor in student achievement. Quality teachers ARE correlated with student achievement, because the best teachers find the highest job satisfaction in working with families that embrace the responsibility of learning. Schools with responsible, engaged parents CAN and do attract and retain good teachers. The key to solving the educational crisis is to engage and equip parents LONG before their children reach school age, since the first 5 years are the most critical years of development. For one creative way to do just that, check out tumblon.com.
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POPSOn A Pint Sized Stage Later, Seán's brother Gerry, who runs the pub, tells me an old Paddy Coyne's story. Long ago, there was apparently a "sign rivalry" between Mannion's in Clifden, Hamilton's in Leenane, and Paddy Coyne's in Tullycross, all of which were not only pubs but general merchants and undertakers. Mannion's traded under the slogan "For All Your Needs, from Maternity to Eternity". So, Hamilton's went one better: "For All Your Needs, from Womb to Tomb". Paddy Coyne and Sons thought hard, and eventually settled on their own slogan. "Paddy Coyne's - For All You Wish For, from Erection to Resurrection." Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that there's storytelling going on here.
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POPSMedia rip McCain ads: "Dishonest, disreputable, dishonorable" Followed by brief video mashup of David Gergen, Andrea Mitchell (who was present at the alleged dodge of troop visit), CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Chuck Hagel calling out McCain on falsehoods, along with Cindy's March claim that her husband will never resort to negative campaigning.
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POPSAvoiding ‘CSI Kandahar’ they’ve just invalidated — decided the job is better done by politically unaccountable courts … the better to spare Nadler and his cohort from telling voters exactly what protections they’d lavish on the people trying to kill us. The attorney general begs to differ. The justices ruled that detainees get judicial review, but, as he posits, they “stopped well short of detailing how the habeas corpus proceedings must be conducted.” Many significant questions remain open, and, Mukasey rightly insists, “it is well within the historic role and competence of Congress and the executive branch to attempt to resolve them.” LAYING DOWN MARKERS The Justice Department has to live with the chaos caused by Boumediene’s dumping of approximately 270 combatants on the district courts with no guidance about how the cases should be handled. Fans of Kennedy & Co. laughably point to this as a demonstration of the high Court’s restraint. In Justice Antonin Scalia’s apt dissenting phrase
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POPSObama and Iraq But he can’t alienate his supporters on the left or commit another “flip-flop” on a major issue, so — against all evidence — he maintains that he was right to oppose the surge even though it has worked. His political tap-dance on the war continues apace. It’s easy now to pretend that the surge and its success was inevitable. It wasn’t. President Bush had to implement it against stiff political headwinds, made all the stiffer by the likes of Barack Obama. If Obama had had his way, we would have lost in Iraq. But he positioned himself exactly right in the Democratic primaries. This is shameful. The disgrace is not John McCain’s in pointing it out, but Barack Obama’s in having been so wrong — and letting politics so influence his mistaken position — on the war.
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POPSWhat Should Uncle Sam Do? I like the sound of the phrase "socialized capitalism"..... Every time someone mentions that there should be more regulation of the greedy corporations, some ditto-head conservative yells "Socialism!". I gues they would rather have "Socialized Capitalism" in which the CEO's of these large corporations get to go home each year with millions of dallars in income, while the rest of us bail out their failed businesses.....nothing but greed and corruption!
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POPSGeologic Evidence of the Cause of Global Warming and Cooling The warming over the past 50 years is hardly even noticeable on the 15,000 year graph above. Compare the peaks about every 800-1000 years for the past 10,000 years (since the last full ice age), all are much warmer than what we're experiencing now. In fact the last 1,000 years has been unusually cool for this interglacial period, just looking at the graph it certainly looks like we've been over due for warming (or if our interglacial period is over another full ice age which would be much worse).
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POPSIs The Thrill Gone For Obama Supporters?
Obama Fades? I can't speak for anyone else but for me his glow has dimmed, since he started wearing that flag lapel pin. While living through years of the worst president the US has had at the helm, I could identify the enemy or the Bush supporters by their Bush/Neocon fraternity pins. And I could direct my anger even before the Bushy sycophants opened their bombastic collective rhetorical pie-holes and blather the some ole, same ole. So the flag label pin had become a symbol of pretentious superciliousness to me. Of course, with Obama pandering to the "R's" and the "I's" who voted for Dubya and helped ruin our country and make us a laughing stock all over the world (Remember the headline from the UK’s Daily Mirror: How Can 1,230,065 People Be So Dumb?) may have a little to do with the Obama Fade From Grace. But that PIN is all I see when this eloquent orator takes center stage and its glare has a blinding effect on the reflection of the man behind that "R" studded brooch. :-(
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POPSPentagon Report Calls for Steep Iraq Drawdown So, does this timetable mean the Pentagon wants the terr'ists to win or does it make them Nazi appeasers, like Neville Chamberlain? I get my GOP talking points mixed up. Either way, it's 180 degrees away from what Bush and McCain have been saying.
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POPSNational Race Tightens When will Democrats learn that decisions based on politics only work for Republicans? Still, it'd be nice if the media equal weight to McCain's reversals . But that'd require some sort of journalistic ethics -- they don't have any. That's why only Republicans get away with making decisions based on politics.
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POPSNewsweek - television minus electricity Read the whole piece by Scott McLemee. The Newsweek article declared Lincoln the winner, by the way. (full disclosure: I am a "Facebook friend" of McLemee's, which is to say, I'm not really a friend of his at all) CLARIFICATION: He friended me after I signed up as a fan of his blog. Other than that we have had no personal contact at all.
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