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POPSMcCain and Michigan In its "Insiders Poll" this week, the National Journal asks 77 Republican luminaries (pollsters, lobbyists, strategists, and so on) which states McCain has the best chance of picking up. At the top of of the list is Michigan. A handful of Democrats, polled on the same question, put New Hampshire at the top of the list and Michigan second. The clip delves into the political dynamics at work in Michigan.
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POPShair cuts! mine is long and staying long, so many hairstyles when long!
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POPSDon't Look Now--but the Surge is About to Backfire as Iraq poised to Explode
The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq’s Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa (”Awakening”) movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) The final crisis-to-be is the Sadr vs. Badr one. The Times today suggests that Sadr is weakening: The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq. Don’t believe it. Sadr’s rivals, ISCI, don’t have anything like the popular base that Sadr has. And underneath Sadr is a volatile mix of neighborhood, local and regional militias, mosques, and econom
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POPSTips from Thomas Edison on Living Optimistically Dr. Martin Seligman, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, and author of Learned Optimism, has studied optimists and pessimists for 25 years. His research has found: Optimists * Less depression than pessimists * Better results than pessimists in most areas of life * Longer lifespan * Healthier than pessimists * Better than pessimists at work and in school * More friends and better social lives Pessimists * More depression than optimists * Inertia rather than activity in the face of setbacks * Feels bad subjectively–blue, down worried, anxious * Poor physical health * Self-fulfilling; pessimists don’t persist in the face of challenges and thus fail more frequently, even when success is attainable * Even when pessimists turn out to be right, they still feel worse than deluded optimists
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POPSOn the very real possibility of transformational change The most provocative and optimistic article I've read in a long while - points to emergence as a reason to believe in the possibility of a genuine societal transformation. Clip doesn't do it justice - if you're interested in change, go read it. Probes world outcomes, in light of current crises, by thinking on how human systems transform: "Fundamental transformation is not only possible, it is the routine way natural systems evolve. Radical change is as common as grass in world history, because it is as common as grass in the life of all living systems. But here’s the critical point: What unlocks social transformation is a shift in values, because values are at the core of a self-organizing human system"
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POPSCan we change? I saw this article at PsychologyToday.com and found it very interesting. I'm convinced that major changes in personality are not possible, but I do believe some modification of our outlook and reactions is possible. What do you think?
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POPSMcCain Makes Stuff Up Still, when some of the U.S. broadcast networks – including NBC evening news – played the clip of McCain lashing out at Obama’s purported dissing of the Constitution, they didn’t correct McCain's falsehood. That fits with a long-standing pattern of the political press corps giving McCain a break when he makes statements at variance with the truth. Even in the rare moments when he is caught in an inaccuracy – such as accusing Shiite-ruled Iran of training Sunni extremists in al-Qaeda – the falsehood is minimized as an unintentional gaffe.