0
POPSAuthor Peter Shianna His first novel, Take Off: A Time for War, A Time for Love, is a picaresque novel of self-discovery, a journey that both men and women relate to because they’ve taken the journey, or wish they had—or still want to.
4
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.
5
POPS"Joker" Posters: Florida Teenager Charged With Felony Vandalism Jensen said witnesses initially told investigators that a "couple of kids" were responsible for gluing the posters. He said the teenage suspect admitted to affixing dozens of the "hundreds" of posters throughout Clermont, a suburb of Orlando. Dozens of the posters first appeared earlier this month throughout Los Angeles. They portray Obama as Batman's nemesis from "The Dark Knight," with the word socialism printed above and below the president's face. U.S. Postal Inspector Ed Moffitt said Clermont Postmaster Willie Montgomery scraped off the "very, very adhesive" substance used to hang the posters with a pen knife or putty knife, which removed the mailbox's blue paint. The mailbox then had to be primed and repainted, adding to labor costs, which totaled roughly $200. "It wasn't like a Post-It note where you could easily pull it off," Moffitt said. "Nothing's free anymore."
1
POPSSavorChat- This New App Rocks
The possibilities of this new application are infinite. It can be even used to further discussion a topic on amplify. Savor Chat is a chat room application that lets you easily build a chat bridge between Facebook and Twitter Friends. You can keep your room private and limit it to those with a password. The room can also be made public if you wish. The beauty of Savor is that you can create multiple rooms for almost any subject, event, or interest. A Chat room can be open indefinitely or just for an hour, which is great for a meeting. The host of the room can purge all messages when they are finished with the chat. One can even delete the room if it was just a one time event. Savor Chat keeps a list of your rooms, so you can easily manage them. It also keeps a list of rooms recently visited, which makes it nice, so you can return. Opening different rooms in your browser tabs will let you participate in multiple chats at the same time. Clicking on the "who's online" wil
3
POPSThe Future of Social Networking is...Email?!
I've been thinking about this very idea recently and then came across this article from @jeremiah. I was mostly coming at it from a product and user experience perspective. It seemed that a some of the 3rd party services based on Twitter (and Twitter too) have been coming full circle and deploying email-like strategies for both functionality (routing, groups, etc.) as well as the presentation layer (check out seesmic's list view on the web). Think also about how important email is to Twitter and facebook's user experience: where would they be without "now following" or "comment" emails? In the meantime, while those guys duke it out, Google has been infusing the social piece into their apps, and they've been doing it for some time now. With the recent social networking enhancements to GReader (in addition to GShare) they seem to be at it in ernest. Given the reliance on emails to bridge relationships between user/service and user/user, plus the adoption of gmail (among other G built pl
1
POPSMUST read!! Read the full article at: http://www.newswithviews.com/Levant/nancy135.htm
1
POPSFabulous collection of Luxury hotels Fusing modern-day chic with classic luxury, the 5-star London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square is London's best address. Situated in stylish Mayfair, just seconds from Park Lane and Oxford Street, this vibrant core of the historic West End brings together iconic shopping, theatre, dining and attractions while the city's financial hub is only moments away. Originally built as a stately townhouse, bedrooms are tastefully designed with plush bedding, garden views, flat screen televisions and WiFi internet. The new Club Floor pairs a contemporary sensibility with the building's grand proportions and features wooden flooring, four-poster beds and luxurious bathrooms with raindance showers. Select rooms open onto private garden terraces with fireplace. The hotel also boasts an exceptional array of Gordon Ramsay dining experiences from Michelin-starred maze and the relaxed maze Grill to indulgent In-Room Dining and Private Dining.
0
POPSCase Studies - Private Bridge Realstone have been involved in many varied projects, using rainscreen, cladding and other building materials. A superb example of what can be done in Natural Stone. This bridge, built in Peakmoor Sandstone, was commissioned by a private client and fixed by Universal Stone.
3
POPSObama Running Scared
Some 47 million Americans are uninsured -- many because some employers have dropped coverage in the economic downturn. Others lack insurance because pre-existing illnesses deny them access to private insurance. There also are millions with no way to pay for soaring health insurance payments because they have lost their jobs. Nearly all Republicans and some moderate Democrats oppose any public plan option. These are the same lawmakers who receive many government-provided perks including health insurance. In his remarks to the AMA, Obama warned against "scare tactics" and "fear mongering" by opponents of the public plan option, which the President said should be available to those who have no health insurance. Obama rejected the "illegitimate concern that's being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system." Obama should tear a page out of LBJ's vote-getting manual and shame the heartless opponents. The hea
6
POPSObama's "Public" Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation Not only will Obama's health program cost at least twice as much as his $650 billion estimate, but his original plan to fund the program by auctioning off carbon-emissions warrants (through the misbegotten cap-and-trade system) has fallen through. In an attempt to buy off hundreds of energy, industrial, and other companies, the White House is now going to give away those carbon-cap-emissions trading warrants. So all those revenues are out the window. Fictitious. Anyway, the cap-and-tax system won't pass Congress. The science is wrong. The economics are root-canal austerity -- Malthusian limits to growth. And there are too many oil and coal senators who will vote against it. So private enterprise can coexist with public health care and not be crowded out by the heavy-handed overreach of government. But the Obama Democrats are determined to force through a state-run system that will bankrupt the country.
19
POPSSarah Palin: More Earmark Hypocrisy The earmarks that Palin apparently will accept could also be ridiculed in a McCain-ish fashion. They include $475,000 to construct a "heritage center" in the Chilkat Indian Village; $150,000 to support private industry participation in two international fishery groups; $200,000 for investigating and prosecuting bootlegging; $200,000 for researching the king crab; and $855,000 for building fairgrounds. The Alaska earmarks also include $1.2 million for construction work on an airport on Akutan, a tiny island that relies on seaplane for contact with the Alaskan mainland. (The Coast Guard handles medical emergencies.) The island has roughly 800 residents. Could this be dubbed the Airport to Nowhere?
1
POPSCheering for Obama Stimulus Buys Into 1930s Myth: Amity Shlaes 
Prescott and a colleague at the Minneapolis Fed, Ellen McGrattan, reevaluated stock data from the late 1920s in light of the productivity gains from events such as the Internet revolution. Rather than look at price-earnings ratios alone, they also considered share prices in relation to other measures of corporate well-being, such as the value of advertising and research and development. They found that stocks in 1929 were, in fact, underpriced. Nor did FDR’s maneuvering cause a speedy bounce-back. The Dow waited until the mid 1950s to regain its 1929 peak. You can’t imagine Obama suggesting that his New Deal would be successful if it got the Dow back to its autumn 2007 high in 2030. What about FDR’s Public Works Administration and his promise to put millions to work by the autumn of 1933? FDR’s job results were, to put it politely, disturbing. Yes, there was an increase from the abominable lows of the early 1930s. Parks, roads, New York City’s Triborough Bridge --
1
POPSIn the land of the blind....whose in bed with who? Libyan oil exports to the US were resumed and in 2005, US energy companies invested in the country for the first time in more than two decades. In May 2006, Washington announced the full resumption of diplomatic ties with Libya. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has signed an agreement to pay Libya $5bn as part of a deal to resolve colonial-era disputes. Rome and Tripoli have spent years arguing over compensation for the colonial period. Mr Berlusconi's investment company controls Italy's three biggest private television stations. And, when he is in office, his appointees also run three public ones. Opponents complain that an Italian voter cannot escape blanket coverage favourable to Mr Berlusconi. They also say his control of the media extends beyond the news agenda, and that comedians who lampooned him when he was last prime minister never appeared on TV again.
1
POPSThe Fallacy That Government Creates Jobs The theory of government-instigated job creation overlooks the loss of resources available to the productive sector of the economy. Frederic Bastiat, the great French economist is well known for many reasons, including his explanation of the "seen" and the "unseen." If the government decides to build a "Bridge to Nowhere," it is very easy to see the workers who are employed on that project. This is the "seen." But what is less obvious is that the resources to build that bridge are taken from the private sector and thus are no longer available for other uses. This is the "unseen." So-called stimulus packages have little bang for the buck. Harvard Professor Greg Mankiw filled in the blanks and calculated that each new job (assuming they actually materialize) will cost $280,000. In reality, the cost of each government job should reflect how that $280,000 would have been spent more productively in the private sector.
2
POPSJumping off the Government Bridge The main problem with current government infrastructure spending is not its magnitude but its lack of efficiency. Privatization of federal and state infrastructure makes sense for many reasons. First, privatization would reduce the responsibilities of the government so that policymakers could better focus on their core responsibilities, such as national security. Second, there is vast foreign privatization experience that could be drawn upon in pursuing U.S. reforms. Third, privatization would spur economic growth by opening new markets to entrepreneurs. For example, repeal of the U.S. postal monopoly could bring major innovation to the mail industry, just as the 1980s’ breakup of AT&T brought innovation to the telecommunications industry.
4
POPSPrivate Sector Caused This Mess, The Government Has To Get Us Out from government bondage. Right. There's also a bridge to the Kremlin they'd like to sell you. Which brings us back to the current subprime mortgage crisis. When we strip away all the complexity, we discover that social planning largely led to this debacle. Government politicians and bureaucrats forced lending institutions to make un-creditworthy loans and helped create unnatural demand in the housing market by priming the pump on bad loans. I don't pretend to have enough information or expertise to know whether the Bush-Paulson bailout proposal, or some iteration of it, is necessary to avert a horrifying financial meltdown, but apparently, many experts, including conservative ones, do. Now the stability of our entire financial system is said to be at risk. It's so bad that even conservatives are considering supporting an unprecedented plan None of this would be half as troubling to me if I believed both political parties would address it in good faith.
1
POPSFlashback to 3/31/04:Falluja (cont.)In the Oval Office the killings were taken as "a challenge to America's resolve," according to the Los Angeles Times. President Bush issued a statement through his spokesperson. "We will not be intimidated," he said. "We will finish the job." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt vowed, "We will be back in Falluja.... We will hunt down the criminals.... It's going to be deliberate. It will be precise, and it will be overwhelming." Within days of the ambush, US forces laid siege to Falluja, beginning what would be one of the most brutal and sustained US operations of the occupation.
2
POPSWolves, Whales and Warming in Alaska Whales Beluga Whale, U.S. Navy Conserving Cook Inlet Belugas You can help conservation efforts! Defenders will soon be launching a Cook Inlet Beluga Citizen Scientist program to monitor beluga sightings in and around Anchorage. Email Karla Dutton at KDutton@Defenders.org if you’re interested in helping out! We’re also fighting to make sure belugas are protected against the construction of the Knik Arm Bridge, one of the famous pork-barrel Bridges to Nowhere.
1
POPS"New"Economy NeedsNewTalent Romney brings that without puppet strings. Let's bag the extremists~ right AND left. Here's a guy worth a look for knowing eye to our economy as it fits into the global model. Is Mitt the best one to recognize what is unavoidable about the international economy, blending and revitalizing the elements that are and can remain America's economic prosperity? Who else has the skills? And the ability to bridge the gap politically so that we get out of this B.S. where no matter what he might do is counteracted by hateful radicals who will maybe stop crapping on our forward attitude just to "win" little daily one-up,ego games. Personally, I appeal to anyone to rethink their choices made on religious basis. OR "anti". Let's not ask for trouble and no progress. Hmm? :-)
0
POPSHard Money: what it is, how to use it Hard-Money lenders will give you a Pre-Approval (not PreQual) letter within an hour or so. They can also close fast (days not weeks) once their appraisal has been done. Hard-Money lenders qualify the property NOT the borrower unlike a loan from a "conventional" lender!! This means that you can be making $0 income and still qualify for a loan to buy a property!!! Is that incredible or what! If the deal is good enough don't hesitate to close it and use Hard-Money!
0
POPSNon-Partisan Bridge to Anger The nice thing about the unbiased MSM and Democrats is that they don't play negative politics like Republicans. We all understand that more money and more taxes solve all problems in the public sector, but are a negative in the private sector. It is just a fact. We also know that nobody should expect a bridge to last over 40 years, and that Government in '67 was all under Republican control and being done "on the cheap". All it takes for humans to create perfection is more dollars in the public secoor--there is no reason to even look for a cause before we reach that conclusion. More public money is a universal good, a more private money is a universal evil. Life is simple, let the righteous anger begin. "Everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps". Once we get the fairness doctrine back we can get rid of those nasty right-wing oafs like Limbaugh and only have unbiased decent guys like Coleman so our politics can be "civil".
1
POPSWait, There Actually Is a Bridge in Brooklyn You Can Sell Me? The common good is flying out the window in this new world of privatization. We will all feel the effects of corporate creed in the course of our daily life. (Government = Bad Corporations = Good} Private Enterprise is the answer to everything. God Bless America! Also, God Help America!
5
Pops
Newest Clips
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Print
Save
Turn on live update