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POPSThe US is Shooting and "Amazing Number" of Innocent People in Afghanistan This, of course, was perfectly predictable and has been known for some time, but the USA is just now admitting it. We have no right to use rules of engagement that result in our killing innocent people in their own country. We are behaving as an imperial power does in foreign territory. Only fool would think that such actions will not result in more terrorism. There will be blowback someday.
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POPSGet It, America: Obama Lowered Your Taxes! The Republicans lie that Obama hasn't lowered the taxes of the vast majority of Americans has taken seed. The Republicans are proof that if you tell a lie long enough in time the public will come to believe that it's true. This is what happens when regaining power is more important than integrity.
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POPSNewt Gingrich Lying in Order to Smear Obama Well, Newt Gingrich has told another whopper. This time he was caught in short order. His lie was clearly intended to smear Obama. Apparently, these right-wing lunatrons feel they are entitled to simply invent facts to achieve their rhetorical aims.
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POPSCredit Card Companies Skimming Charitable Donations Do you think that every charitable dollar you send to help Haitians actually goes to their benefit? Think again if you use a credit card. Like the mafia skimming the profits from a casino, credit card companies skim as much as 3% of your donation for their profits. You'd think that they would waive these fees on charitable organizations, especially during a time of disaster.
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POPSMilitary Service Suicide Rates on the Rise We don't count them among the casualties of our wars, but perhaps we should. I'm talking about those we think who return from war safely, only to kill themselves later. What horrors they must have witnessed. And often we ask them to experience these horrors in conflicts that have no clear national security necessity. For some, skewed by depression and pain, that must make their service seem meaningless. We need to do more to help them, to identify the ones that are hurting, and to provide them the care they need. A responsible nation cannot simply wink at the problems it creates.
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POPSRudy Giuliani: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush" Given that Dana Perino and Mary Matalin made similiar statements, writing off Giuliani's omission of 9/11 as a memory lapse could be a mistake. It could very well be that some in the GOP are trying to rewrite history for the purpose of making the public think that a domestic attack by terrorists on US soil only occurred under Obama. Don't mention 9/11. Maybe the public will forget. What audacious historical revisionism.
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POPSPatriot Act Used in Non-Terrorism Cases Yes, you don't have to be a suspected terrorist for the US government to sneak into your home and search your premises without serving you a search warrant. Let's call it by its real name: a police state tactic.
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POPSTed Kennedy is Dead He lived too long to receive the mythologizing that his older brothers received and, so, strode among us more like a man than a demigod. Of course, the mythologizing of Jack and Bobby placed them at level Ted Kennedy would never achieve. His lot was to stay behind and watch over the Kennedy clan and do the hard work in the Senate over decades, work that has wrought justice and help for millions of Americans. He has always been my favorite of the three and I have often wished that he could have been President. I think he would have made a good and principled president. I'm sorry that he's gone. I'll miss his fire and compassion and fearlessness in promoting a righteous cause. Many are the better because Ted Kennedy lived.
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POPSLeon Panetta Should Be Fired If CIA Director Leon Panetta cannot accept that it's a proper role of the Department of Justice to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute anyone in the CIA for possibly breaking federal laws against torture, then he should be removed from his job. He should be fired. His primary duty is NOT to give cover to potential criminals within the CIA but to help in upholding the law.
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POPSAnonymous Blogger Unmasked by Court Anonymous blogging is supposed to give the blogger a level of protection that the self-identified blogger lacks: freedom from the repercussions that come from self disclosure. But the veil of protection has just been pierced by a court. The court ordered Google to give up the IP address to the plaintiff of the blogger who used words like "skanky," "ho", and "whoring" beneath the photographs of the plaintiff (a model). Be careful my anonymous blogger friends.
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POPSUnion Jobs Provide More Vacation Time Leave it to the marketplace and workers would get very little, if any, vacation time. In the USA there are no federal laws requiring paid vacation time, a position the USA alone occupies among industrialized nations. Union representation, however, makes a difference. But the paid vacation act, pending in Congress, hopes to address the larger problem of mostly non-unionized workplaces. It's hardly adequate. It requires firms with 100 employees or more to provide only a week of paid vacation. But it is a start and it deserves our support.
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POPSObama Abandons Public Option
Many progressives had hoped for a single-payer, universal health care system, the kind that many industrialized countries have and which have a demonstrable history of working well. But it was clear that when Obama ran for president that possibility would never materialize during his administration. The "public option" was the best one could hope for. Now Obama is ready to abandon that idea in favor of co-ops, a sort of Fanny-Med approach to public health care. Because these co-ops will be required to maintain the same financial reserves as private insurerers, the competitive adavantage they will provide to private insurers will probably little better than marginal. The upshot will be the continuation of millions of Americans without health insurance of any kind. Continued bankruptcies, the continuation of people dying from the lack of health care, etc. A slight improvement perhaps, but everything remaining much the same. The political need for Obama to declare victo
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POPSLying Works Well, the end of life counseling, which would have allowed Medicare to "pay to pay doctors who counsel patients about planning for end-of-life decisions," has now been removed from the Senate health care bill. The lies about the "death panels" worked.
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POPSAnd Some Think Nothing Scary is Going On When you hear people suggest that frightening speech isn't going on in the USA right now, think again. Just remember: it's a characteristic of ideological apologists of any persuasion to mitigate the extremism of their comrades, especially when that extremism represents a valid, if distant, conclusion of their ideology. Keep that in mind and all the special pleading of the ideological apologists won't seem confusing.
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