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POPSCNN's Tea Party Audience Cheers Idea Of Leaving A Sick Uninsured Man To Die News flash for Ron Paul and his minions: Churches can't do it all. They just can't. It's ridiculous to think so. And since Ron Paul has been in Congress longer than he ever practiced medicine, I doubt he has a clue as to just how expensive it is to get even basic health care, much less treatment for what might be a fatal disease.
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POPSA Decade After 9/11, Police Departments Are Increasingly Militarized The trend toward a more militarized domestic police force began well before 9/11. It in fact began in the early 1980s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs." Reagan declared illicit drugs a threat to national security, and once likened America's drug fight to the World War I battle of Verdun. But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In 1981 he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment.
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POPSA revealing outbreak of candor Chait exposed how he and most of his fellow elites in Washington see the general public: "At the time, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus was seen by Congress, pundits and business leaders -- that is to say, just about everybody who mattered -- as mind-bogglingly large." (emphasis added)
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POPSWikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says But Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.
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POPSThe decade's biggest scam Last year, McClatchy characterized this threat in similar terms: "undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism." The March, 2011, Harper's Index expressed the point this way: "Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 -- Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29." That's the threat in the name of which a vast domestic Security State is constructed, wars and other attacks are and continue to be launched, and trillions of dollars are transferred to the private security and defense contracting industry at exactly the time that Americans -- even as they face massive wealth inequality -- are told that they must sacrifice basic economic security because of budgetary constraints.
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POPSOmitted facts from the 9/11 commemoration The guidelines say the absence of Al Qaeda playing any significant role in the "Arab Spring" uprisings against longtime autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa should be cited as evidence that Bin Laden’s organization "represents the past," while peaceful street protesters in Egypt and Tunisia "represent the future." Left unsaid was that many of the deposed leaders were close American allies and partners in counterterrorism operations.
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POPSHurricane forecasting one of the many things GOP doesn't want to spend money on Remember when Louisiana governor and poor public speaker mocked the concept of funding for "volcano monitoring" and then a volcano promptly erupted in Alaska? And remember how after Eric Cantor pushed for across-the-board budget cuts for the United States Geological Survey, his district was hit with an earthquake? And remember how the House Republican budget cut funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and then there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan?
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POPSCongressional tourists avoid apartheid in Israel As a member of the Israeli Knesset, I am concerned that they're on a propaganda tour run by an affiliate arm of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which bills itself as "America's leading pro-Israel lobby," yet has helped stymie Palestinian freedom aspirations for decades. Yes, the members will have a token meeting or two with officials of the Palestinian Authority, but they certainly are not going to learn of the discrimination and occupation that the state of Israel imposes on the Palestinian people in its midst.
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POPSRick Perry Sought State Profits From Teacher Life Insurance Scheme According to the notes, which were authenticated by a meeting participant, the Perry administration wanted to help Wall Street investors gamble on how long retired Texas teachers would live. Perry was promising the state big money in exchange for helping Swiss banking giant UBS set up a business of teacher death speculation. All they had to do was convince retirees to let UBS buy life insurance policies on them. When the retirees died, those policies would pay out benefits to Wall Street speculators, and the state, supposedly, would get paid for arranging the bets. The families of the deceased former teachers would get nothing.
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POPSArmy Reservist Told He's Barred From Re-Enlistment for Speaking to Truthout About Guantanamo "In accordance with your security clearance agreement during 2003-2004, you are not authorized to freely talk to the press about your duties at GITMO or what you might think have occurred there to the press," states an April 2 "developmental counseling form" presented to Pfc. Albert Melise that was signed by Alphonso Holt, a lieutenant colonel in the US Army reserves and the battalion commander of Melise's reserve unit. "I have reported your actions to the security manager and I am initiating a bar to re-enlist."
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POPSAs Defense Industry Lobbies Against Cuts, Rhetoric Overshoots Reality Budget cuts proposed by "extreme voices", it says, would "devastate our military, weaken our economy, and force us to cede global leadership in a time of increasing threats." But even the most drastic defense budget cuts being considered wouldn't come anywhere close to dislodging America from its top spot in global defense spending.
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POPSNew Chinese stealth jet starts talk of Russian help A highly placed source close to Russia's defense industry said the similarities suggested Mikoyan technology had been passed into the hands of Chinese arms designers. "It looks like they got access...to documents relating to the Mikoyan -- the aircraft that the Ministry of Defense skipped over in its tender to create a stealth fighter," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
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POPSU.S. Chamber Of Commerce Battles Anti-Bribery Statute Not only is the Chamber taking on something as seemingly unassailable as an anti-bribery law, but it's doing so just as the movement the FCPA launched is finally taking hold across the globe, corruption fighters say. And without much organized opposition -- at least so far -- the Chamber's army of lobbyists is making serious headway in Congress, even among Democrats.
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POPS Israel Settlements: Government Set To Approve 4,300 New Flats In East Jerusalem Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office knew the construction plans were moving ahead, Interior Ministry spokesman Roi Lachmanovich said. An earlier approval for the 1,600-apartment project badly embarrassed Netanyahu and caused a diplomatic rift with the U.S. because it coincided with a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
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POPSAs China Launches Aircraft Carrier, Taiwan Touts "Aircraft Carrier Killer" The missile was being displayed as part of a preview ahead of the annual Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition. Though there were no markings to indicate the carrier in the background illustration was Chinese, the ship featured a sloped runway similar to that of the Varyag – the Ukrainian carrier whose empty hull was used in the building of the new Chinese carrier, which has yet to be named.
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POPSMichele Bachmann Repeatedly Sought Stimulus, EPA, Other Government Funds A Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Huffington Post with three separate federal agencies reveals that on at least 16 separate occasions, Bachmann petitioned the federal government for direct financial help or aid. A large chunk of those requests were for funds set aside through President Obama's stimulus program, which Bachmann once labeled "fantasy economics." Bachmann made two more of those requests to the Environmental Protection Agency, an institution that she has suggested she would eliminate if she were in the White House.
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