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POPSIs the Web making young people vote? Youth voter turnout has increased in recent elections, including this year's primaries. I believe the Web has made it easier and more interesting to be politically engaged -- and young people are connecting online.
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POPSObama’s No-Brainer on Education The stakes couldn't be higher. The United States now ranks 25th among 30 industrialized countries in math. "If I told you your basketball team finished in 25th place, you'd be outraged," says former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education. When the landmark "A Nation at Risk" report was issued 25 years ago, the education system was ailing, but the United States was still No. 1 in college-graduation rates. Now we are No. 21. "We simply have not progressed," says former Colorado governor Roy Romer, who heads a commission that recently updated the report. "The rest of the world has." For example, the average European nation has 13 more school days than we do.
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POPSAre Facts Obsolete? Thomas Sowell now that he has gotten their votes in the Democratic primaries and needs the votes of others in the coming general election. The question of how to raise more revenue may be the economic issue but the political issue is whether socking it to “the rich” in the name of “fairness” gains more votes. What matters politically is the image of coming out on the side of “the people” against “the privileged.” When ABC's Charles Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.
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POPSObama and McCain Both Changing Now The Maverick is not and the "Change" candidate is shifting. Politicians are like Chameleons, changing color depending their context to fit in. Trustworthiness and forthrightness are not to be found, and considered detrimental to obtaining power, ironically, when most Americans want to reverse the present course without question, instead of simply tailoring and amending it. Don't think the BBC article is correct about McCain however, he is shifting left, distancing from Bush, since republicans are left without an alternative (except for increasing third party candidates).
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POPSMany Dems Not With Obama on FISA Barack really needs to talk to Feingold about this one. Who cares about immunity other than Republicans? There is no downside to siding with the damned Constitution.
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POPSObama Shifts on Abortion Another disappointment , really. Obama's not a doctor -- and it shows. By making a distinction between "mental distress" and "a serious physical issue," he makes the far too common mistake of discounting mental illness -- like depression -- as a "real" and damaging illness. What he should do is leave the medical stuff alone and think like a lawyer -- which he is. Is there a reason to limit a woman's choices at a certain stage of pregnancy and, if so, what are they? Arguing from a position of ignorance is never a good idea.
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POPSOpen Revolt Takes Top Position at BarackObama.com
Do you think Obama will listen to his own supporters? It is sad to see that so much of what he offered up during the primaries has been tossed aside and he has "CHANGEd" his positions on, or rather, he has become more forthright with his positions on matters since the nomination was given to him. For me, that was why he never got my attention or vote to begin with, it was never very clear what his positions were from the start, I would always ask, "what are his values", "what is his position on such and such" and the answer was most often a rhetorical, "well, he is going to "change" things!" So now, what can people do? McCain is the same, 3rd parties rarely triumph, staying home doesn't really do much of anything except save the gas you might use to drive to the polls. Myself? I have joined in with the http://www.campaignforliberty.com/ There's a peaceful revolution going on, everyone is welcome to be a part of it. As Obama has quoted, "be the change"! (~ Ghandi )
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POPSAfter the Primaries - Politics as Usual Normally, flip-flopping presidential candidates have to worry about the press. Not Obama. After all, this is a press corps that heard his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech -- designed to rationalize why "I can no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I can disown my white grandmother" - then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. 3 months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great "race speech" now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes. Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting evinced only the mildest disappointment.
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POPSObama caves on the spy bill Great, get others to spy for you and then go to congress to give them immunity. No, I don't feel like my civil liberties are being eroded.
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POPSMcCain's Playbook: Hate, Fear and Caveman Politics ..in!" McCain is enthusiastically jumping aboard with every low-rent, fearmongering, cock-sucking presidential aspirant who's ever traveled the Lee Atwater/William Safire highway. Even the briefest of surveys of the supporters gracing McCain's events underscores the kind of red-meat appeal he's making. Immediately after his speech in New Orleans, a pair of sweet-looking old ladies put down their McCain signs long enough to fill me in on why they're here. "I tell you," says one, "if Michelle Obama really doesn't like it here in America, I'd be very pleased to raise the money to send her back to Africa."
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POPSGoing Ba(ra)ck On His Word? Obama opts to pursue private financing, resulting in a blitz of protest from McCain's camp. This was expected as Obama raised an unprecedented level of cash during the primaries. It also invites more scrutiny of his donors.
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POPSA First Lady to be PROUD of! A stand by your man of the 21st century type of female? And with brains to burn. Not someone who left their best years in the 20th century and whose claim to fame is how much daddy left me so I can indulge my last hope of fame.
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POPSMatt Taibbi: Full Metal McCain You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"
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POPSWho is the real Obama? Obama leans to the right on certain issues, like Iran but compared to Neocon McCain he is a Gandhi. Watch the video at: http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1645
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POPSObama, Religion and the Public Square
Yet there is more to Mr. Obama and religion than the recent headlines might suggest. Here is how he put it: "Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their 'personal morality' into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition." In his now-famous address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, John Kennedy called for "an America where the separation of church and state is absolute." He went on to state that a president's faith should be "his own private affair."
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POPS"...I Dream Things That Never Were & Say Why Not" Remembering Robert F. Kennedy... June 5, 1968: After midnight, shortly after winning the South Dakota and California primaries and announcing " ... now it's on to Chicago," Kennedy is shot in the Ambassador Hotel by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant. He dies the following day in Los Angeles. This speech is Ted Kennedy delivering the closing part of the eulogy at the funeral of his brother Bobby, using excerpts from Bobby's famous speech to the students of a South African university in 1966. Bobby's speech to the students is one of the most beautiful speeches I have ever heard...I am glad that Ted Kennedy read it because it represented the kind of man his brother was and the great leader that this country lost. To read the entire eulogy: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ekennedytributetorfk.html
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POPSObama Team Responds to McCain 'Town Meeting' Proposal A follow up to an an earlier post in which I wondered if McCain had polling showing trouble. That Obama would be open to debates should surprise no one -- for one, Obama needs headlines about something other than Hillary Clinton and the primaries. Still, this is all hypothetical at this point.
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POPSNASA Admits Misleading on Climate This is what you call a 'dump.' Normally, these sort of things come out on friday, when they'll get little coverage. If you really want to hide something, you put it out when all of the media are looking elsewhere -- like say, for instance, the day of the final two Democratic primaries.
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POPSSuperdel 'Tsunami' for Obama I'm not even going to bother to keep track of the superdels as they move to Obama. McClatchy confirms 10 House members, 10 Senators, and 10 other SDs moving today. Obama needs between 30 and 40 delegates to close and these numbers, with expected numbers from primaries, would put him over the top.
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POPSOBAMA CLINCHES! According to AP, Obama clinches democratic nomination with a flood of superdelegates today.
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