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POPSWall Street's Naked Swindle This was a brokered bloodletting, one in which the power of the state was used to help effect a monstrous consolidation of financial and political power. Heading into 2008, there were five major investment banks in the United States: Bear, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Today only Morgan Stanley and Goldman survive as independent firms, perched atop a restructured Wall Street hierarchy. And while the rest of the civilized world responded to last year's catastrophes with sweeping measures to rein in the corruption in their financial sectors, the United States invited the wolves into the government, with the popular new president, Barack Obama — elected amid promises to clean up the mess — filling his administration with Bear's and Lehman's conquerors, bestowing his papal blessing on a new era of robbery. Read the whole nasty sociopathic scam
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POPSIt is quite disturbing, but true story! Read @ the site the full story: The life of a young boy/man has been spoiled by the research and medical sciences... What is unqualified success to you? The nightmare of living such a life is quite unimaginable...
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POPSJohn Maynard Keynes: Don't call it a comeback And yet today, you can't click your way three links through the econoblogosphere without stumbling into a flame war between reenergized triumphalist Keynesian supporters of government intervention in the economy and bewildered, angry market fundamentalists who have just watched their painstakingly constructed world crumble around them. Just a few years ago the heat of the debate would have been unthinkable -- Keynes seemed to have about as much relevance to current economic policymaking as Winston Churchill does for the Middle East peace process.
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POPSReport: ‘Death panels’ author worked with big tobacco to scuttle health reform Susie Madrak, in her blog at Crooks and Liars, cites key parts of the Rolling Stone article: W]hat has not been reported until now is that McCaughey’s writing was influenced by Phillip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton’s health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company’s strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to “work on the development of favorable pieces” with “friendly contacts in the media.” The memo, prepared by a Phillip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:
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POPSGoldman Profits. Do We Lose? From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression - and they're about to do it again. In a brilliant article that appears in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, "The Great American Bubble Machine" by Matt Taibbi, we can see in all its gory and horrendous detail what is so wrong with "the invisible hand of the marketplace." From the article: “any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.”
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POPSTop 25 YouTube Beatles Hits 
Perhaps because of yesterday's release of software: Beatles: Rock Band, a mag put together this list. If you want to enjoy and watch 25 Beatles tunes, this page got it. MY favorite, clipped here, is number 18 (gasp!) so I wouldn't get all uptight insisting Number One on this list is Absolutely Number One best Beatles tunes....everyone has and certainly entitled to their own faves. There seems to be a certain "sober joy," in the author's choices. I was glad to see "Imagine," was not here -- somehow, after John Lennon's murder, the Rolling Stone put it on the cover (along with that 'unbalanced,' Leibovitz photo) and suddenly this was the "Image," of the Beatles, but way off the mark, imo. They were a little more fun than that, a little more raucous, a little more Liverpool Caravan Club, a little more Hamburg Pub, a little more irreverent, a little more playful. (I saw "Love," in Las Vegas....that was pretty cool. All their movies full of fun. A great band, nice guys. Ve
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POPSBob Dylan frogmarched to collect ID 
'I'm afraid we all fell about laughing,' said Craig Spencer, a senior officer in Long Branch, New Jersey. 'If it was me, I'd have been demanding his autograph, not his ID. 'The poor woman has taken rather a lot of abuse from us. I offered to bring in some of my Dylan albums. Unfortunately, she doesn't know what vinyl is either.' It was in 1965 that Dylan wrote Like A Rolling Stone, with its line: 'How does it feel to be on your own, a complete unknown?' He found out while staying at the Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch. Before taking part in a concert with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, he decided to take a stroll through the town's Latin quarter. 'Residents called to complain there was an old scruffy man acting suspiciously,' said officer Spencer. 'It was an odd request because it was mid-afternoon. But it's an ethnic Latin area and the residents felt he didn't fit in.' Age profiling by the police? Unlike Louis Gates, Bob Dylan is not screaming about police prejudice
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POPSGoldman Sachs Pumping and Dumping Our Economy An excellent article and video by Matt Taibbi, from Rolling Stone Magazine, about how Goldman Sachs has been systematically, repeatedly, "pumping and dumping" the American economy, creating bubbles, then positioning themselves to profit from the popped bubbles, then being in good position to help "fix" the inevitable recession.
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POPSGonzo Gastronomy: How the Food Industry Has Made Bacon a Weapon of Mass Destruction
Rolling Stone paints a grim picture of what goes on inside a hog CAFO: "Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs …" Manufacturing Pandemics Factory farms are a hot spot for new infectious diseases. According to a former chief of the Centers for Disease Control's Special Pathogens Branch, "Intensive agricultural methods often mean that a single, genetically homogeneous species is raised in a limited area, creating a perfect target for emerging diseases, whic
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POPSGoldman Sachs The Wizard of Oz and primed to spearhead an assault on the mortgage banks, bringing suits against any suspected of practicing unlawful discrimination, whether on the basis of race, gender or disability." Goldman Sachs played a major hand in these Clinton-era financial policies through Robert Rubin, former Co-Chairman of the firm, who actually announced them on December 8, 1993. Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone: During his (Robert Rubin's) tenure at Treasury, the Clinton White House made a series of moves that would have drastic consequences for the global economy - beginning with Rubin's complete and total failure to regulate his old firm during its first mad dash for obscene short-term profits. Taibbi adds that other Goldman graduates played a major hand when the market crashed, including another Goldman-ex turned Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson: Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers -- one of Goldman's last real competitors -- collapse without intervention...