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POPSNidal Hasan Terrorist Threat 'Not That Big a Deal'....Matthew Yglesias
I think a pretty good case can be made that this kind of situation actually is the main face of the terrorist threat. Not a big well-thought-out plot centrally directed from a “safe haven” in South Asia and undertaken by brilliant covert operatives, but the desperate violent act of a clearly disturbed individual. It’s going to be very hard to prevent this sort of thing. As long as the United States remains a country in which firearms are widely available"for the foreseeable future, in other words"we’re going to be unusually vulnerable to mentally ill spree killers of various kinds, including spree killers who nod in the direction of Islamist thinking. But the larger point is that while these incidents are serious crimes and major tragedies for the victims, they hardly rise to the level of a major macro-level social crisis. They’re certainly not a first-order national security threat. And even put in the lower-stakes context of violent crime in America
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POPSPolitical Correctness Deadly Consequences “We don’t know all the answers yet, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” Obama said. “What we do know is that there are families, friends and an entire nation grieving right now for the valiant men and women who came under attack ... in one of the worst mass shootings ever to take place on an American military base.” Obama followed up in his weekly address Saturday, noting that U.S. troops are “Americans of every race, faith and station. “They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and nonbelievers,” he said. “They are descendants of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America. But what they share is a patriotism like no other.” Even as Obama treads cautiously, Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, called the shooting “a terrorist act” and said he plans to begin an investigation into whether . . .
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POPSPalin & the Dysfunctional Political Class The current GOP seems to look for mediocrity...someone who will *fit*...a person who appears *electable*, a vanilla-type. It seems to stand for everything and yet nothing. Whether Mrs. Palin would make a good Presidential candidate, I don't know. But I'm weary to death of the clandestine people who mouth conservative rhetoric and then fold when the game is on. Give me a candidate who gives me a clear choice; not one who bows to the current political breeze blowing through Washington. I've just about lost all "Hope" because I don't see any on the horizon.
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POPSShhhh! Census Worker May Have Committed Suicide * The Democratic Underground quickly posted a ‘Handy Guide to how Republicans and Fox News are responsible for Census worker being hanged'. * Rachel Maddow suggested Sparkman was killed simply because ‘he was a federal employee'. * Time chalked it up to government distrust, a sentiment fanned by ‘talk media, tea parties and white-hot town-hall meetings'. * The Huffington Post immediately assumed this was a case of right-wing paranoia. * True/Slant opined that the body of Sparkman should be shipped to Glenn Beck. * Think Progress pointed the finger at Michelle Bachman and her ‘inflammatory and fear-mongering rhetoric against the Census'. * New York Magazine linked the death to that of ‘some wide-eyed, hysterical woman' named Michelle Bachman. (The irony in this is that the reference to a wide-eyed, hysterical woman was made in an article mentioning Nancy Pelosi).
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POPSThe ‘Costs’ of Medical Care by Thomas Sowell NRO countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors’ income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences. Any one of us can reduce medical costs by refusing to pay them. In our own lives, we recognize the consequences. But when someone with a gift for rhetoric tells us that the government can reduce the costs without consequences, we are ready to believe in such political miracles. There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced, but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them. The high costs of “defensive medicine” " expensive tests, medications, and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits, rather than
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POPSNo Bundler Left Behind in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections.” Yup, they’re just haggling over the price. Many Obama bundlers have secured slots on federal advisory panels and commissions. Still more have benefited from the time-honored patronage tradition of rewarding political benefactors with ambassadorships. Clinton did it. Bush did it. And despite all his fantastical, Balloon Boy-level rhetoric of bringing a “new politics” to Washington, Obama’s done it, too. His ambassador to London, Louis Susman, is a Chicago crony with no diplomatic experience who bundled between $200,000 and $500,000 for Team Obama and is known as “The Vacuum Cleaner” for his fundraising prowess. His ambassador to France, entertainment mogul Charlie Rivkin headed up Obama’s California fundraising operations, raking in $500,000 for the campaign and another $300,000 for the inaugural. His ambassador to Spain, Boston money
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POPSA Beckean Slip: Confusing the president with bin Laden, while touting theory that Obama is a Marxist
This is what we'll call a Beckean Slip: An apparent slip of the tongue that is most likely intentional, and at the bare minimum clearly exposes the desire to confuse the public. It isn't the first time Beck has slipped and mixed up Osama bin Laden's name with President Obama's. And it certainly won't be the last. However, it does tend to undermine Beck's subsequent claim to having this high-level, all-seeing mind that is "right" about a whole host of things (that he's actually been wrong about). Indeed, it reveals a confused mind incapable of clearly distinguishing between the president of the United States and a cave-dwelling terrorist. Beck also adds that "I could be wrong" but "I haven't been before"? Um, yeah, except for the dozens of times he actually has been wrong. (Remember when he was predicting that Americans would eventually go for McCain at the polls? That prediction turned out well, didn't it?)
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POPSCDC Massive Misinformation Campaign: Error Rate Up To 97% Back then, the media was all over the shortage and the incompetence it exposed. Once again, the vast majority of the vaccine will have been made available too late to have any significant impact on the spread of the disease. Whether it will have any impact on the public’s perception of the government’s competency to control health care is a matter of speculation, entirely, but it seems liable not to help. And that is perhaps why Obama determined that this is the moment in which it was most propitious to declare an emergency, so that when the epidemic ends he can recycle his rhetoric regarding jobs created or saved. Whether the administration will use the declared state of emergency to stifle the babblings of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan remains to be seen. Likely the decision will be made by CDC poobah Eric Holder.
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POPSReady to Revolt: Oath Keepers pledge to prevent dictatorship in U.S.
They are armed and promise to keep the oath they took to protect the Constitution. Founder Stece Rhoades: "We say if the American people decide it's time for a revolution, we'll fight with you." That type of rhetoric has caught the attention of groups that track extremist activity in the United States. In a July report titled "Return of the Militias," the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center singled out Oath Keepers as "a particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival." SPLC now monitors Oath Keepers on its Web site blog "Hatewatch." Oath Keepers is not preaching violence or government overthrow, Rhodes said. On the contrary, it is asking police and the military to lay down their arms in response to unlawful orders. Group supporters compare President Obama's America to Adolf Hitler's Germany. They also liken Obama to England's King George III during the American Revolution. One member calls Obama "the domestic enemy the Constitution is talking about."
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POPSCalif. Lawyer Who Challenged Obama Citizenship Fined $20,000
For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of watching one of her press conferences, then you can't truly appreciate the "train wreck" that is Orly Taitz, Attorney-at-Law. Ms. Taitz is a leader in the so-called "Birther Movement," the movement that challenges President Obama's right to hold office on the grounds that he is not a U.S. citizen. The ABA Journal Law News Now reports that a federal judge in Georgia fined Taitz $20,000 for her wild accusations in court and ordered her not to pursue any further frivolous actions in court - ever. In my opinion, this should render Taitz unable to practice law. Not to be dissuaded, Taitz filed a motion for reconsideration the next day. This motion was apparently denied, the judge writing, “Counsel’s wild accusations may be protected by the First Amendment when she makes them on her blog or in her press conferences, but the federal courts are reserved for hearing genuine legal disputes, not as a platform for political rhetoric and
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POPSRemebering the roots of a REAL Civil War
More: After decades of mistrust and recrimination over the conflict between slavery and free labor, many in the North and South now found themselves even more fundamentally at odds. As Northerners increasingly hailed Brown as a hero, panicky Southerners execrated him as the devil himself. The tempest over John Brown appeared to shatter any hope of regional reconciliation. As one South Carolina editor put it, "The day of compromise is passed there is no peace for the South in the Union." It would be too much to claim that John Brown's raid made the Civil War inevitable. But it is fair to say that it helped to create an unbridgeable gap between the free states and the slave power that could only be, as Brown himself put it, "purged away with blood." There are many lessons that can be drawn from John Brown's raid, but the experience of the Civil War ought to stand as a permanent rebuke to the irresponsible incitement of contemporary political figures who trade so easily
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POPSObama and the Nobel Prize: When War becomes Peace
At this critical juncture in our history, the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President and Commander in Chief Barack Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly supports the Pentagon's "Long War": "A War without Borders" in the true sense of the word, characterised by the Worlwide deployment of US military might. Apart from the diplomatic rhetoric, there has been no meaningful reversal of US foreign policy in relation to the George W. Bush presidency, which might have remotely justified the granting of the Nobel Prize to Obama. In fact quite the opposite. The Obama military agenda has sought to extend the war into new frontiers. With a new team of military and foreign policy advisers, the Obama war agenda has been far more effective in fostering military escalation than that formulated by the NeoCons. Since the very outset of the Obama presidency, this global military project has become increasin
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POPSWhy Obama Should Not Have Received the Peace Prize — Yet Any one of these would have been worthy of global praise. Perhaps the Nobel committee can give him half the prize now and withhold the other half until he accomplishes one or more of these crucial missions. robert reich Why Obama Should Not Have Received the Peace Prize YetGiving the Peace Prize to the President before any of these goals has been attained only underscores the paradox of Obama at this early stage of his presidency. He has demonstrated mastery in both delivering powerful rhetoric and providing the nation and the world with fresh and important ways of understanding current challenges. But he has not yet delivered. To the contrary, he often seems to hold back from the fight — temporizing, delaying, or compromising so much that the rhetoric and insight he offers seem strangely disconnected from what he actually does. Yet there’s time. He may yet prove to be one of the best presidents this nation has ever had — worthy not only of the Peace Prize but of every global accol
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POPSJust give us the money... The thugs want the money but don't want to reform. These elites making noise are the ones who take bundles of American aid, eat the funds in corruption, still spout anti-American rhetoric, and support the Taliban while suppressing democracy and human rights of smaller nations like the Sindhis. Let's hope President Obama sticks to his guns and follows through with trying to enforce it. He may have to then finally give up this strategy and face the fact that he will not get honest cooperation out of Pakistan and its brutal, fanatic and dangerous military.
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POPSThe Brainy Bunch by Thomas Sowell based on those beliefs and hatreds. Starting from a position of Germany's military weakness in the early 1930s, Hitler not only built up Germany's war-making potential, he did so in ways that minimized the danger that his potential victims would match his military build-up with their own. He said whatever soothing words they wanted to hear that would spare them the cost of military deterrence and the pain of contemplating another war. He played some of the most highly educated people of his time for fools-- not only foreign political leaders but also members of the intelligentsia. The editor of The Times of London filtered out reports that his own foreign correspondents in Germany sent him about the evils and dangers of the Nazis. In the United States, W.E.B. Du Bois-- with a Ph.D. from Harvard-- said that dictatorship in Germany was "absolutely necessary to get the state in order." In an age when facts seem to carry less weight than the visions of
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POPSCynic's Dictionary samplings more: LAWYER A personal advocate hired to bend the law on behalf of a paying client; for this reason considered the most suitable background for entry into politics. HALF LIFE The span of time required for a thing to deteriorate to 50 percent of its original potency: about 24,000 years for plutonium atoms... a few centuries for great civilizations... three weeks for a hit song... four days for a child's enthusiasm over a new $90 toy... 24 hours for the fresh sense of purpose acquired at a motivational seminar... 15 minutes for the warming afterglow of a "feel-good" movie... ten seconds for a sudden impulse to shove the papers off your desk, slug the boss, and board the next plane to Tahiti.
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POPSLegendary Davy Crockett This is SO-O-O Good ! Dontcha wish we had more peeps like this in the BIG Swamp? Will send the rest in next post.
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POPSDisconnected From The Real World Living in a fantasy place where my actions have no repercussions. Where I can do whatever I want and there are not opposite reactions. Now that's the life: Insanity
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POPSWhite House Blogs About Glenn Beck Regardless, let's look at some of the carping and whining: RHETORIC: BECK SAID VANCOUVER LOST $1 BILLION WHEN IT "HAD THE OLYMPICS." Glenn Beck said, "Vancouver lost, how much was it? they lost a billion dollars when they had the Olympics." REALITY: VANCOUVER'S OLYMPICS WILL NOT TAKE PLACE UNTIL 2010. Vancouver will host the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games from February 12 " 28, 2010 and March 12-21, 2010, respectively. Yes, Beck was clearly in error about when the Vancouver Olympics will be held. However, his point about that city's financial problems as a result was nevertheless valid and relevant as it pertains to the question about Chicago getting the Olympics in 2016. As the Vancouver Sun reported in January: The City of Vancouver's liabilities to construction of the 2010 Olympic Athletes Village may cost it its favourable credit rating with Standard & Poor's
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POPSThe Two Faces of Granny Rictus Botox "And remember her promise of the most transparent, ethical Congress in history. Try not to laugh so hard, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Murtha. You might drop your bags of money. Another lying, hypocritical progressive Obamacrat. I know it's "dog bites man," but there you are"
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POPSDistinguishing Science and Pseudoscience # Penetrating political systems, it justifies atrocities in the name of racial purity # Penetrating the educational system, it can drive out science and sensibility; # In the field of health, it dooms thousands to unnecessary death or suffering # Penetrating religion, it generates fanaticism, intolerance, and holy war # Penetrating the communications media, it can make it difficult for voters to obtain factual information on important public issues
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