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POPSCA Air Pollution Deadlier Than Traffic Accidents The study found that the California Highway Patrol recorded 2,521 vehicular deaths in the San Joaquin Valley and South Coast Air Basin in 2006, compared to 3,812 deaths attributed to respiratory illness caused by particulate pollution. "It may be tempting to think California can't afford to clean up, but in fact dirty air is like a $28 billion lead balloon on our economy," Hall said.
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POPSAdding Up Obama + Pelosi + Reid + Frank Self-serving rubbish. McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment — a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation. An eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.
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POPS Is Wall Street Wise To Obama? He is far too smart to say what Barney Frank just said–that we should cut the military budget by 25%. But it tells you something that Morgan Stanley has just downgraded the entire aerospace and defense sector ahead of the presidential election Obama is heavily favored to win. Wonder why they figure that we won’t be spending so much on defense in the future? Maybe the financial analysts aren’t buying Obama’s centrist makeover?
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POPSThe Hidden Cost of War - (3 trillion) In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion. Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is more than 10 times that estimate. So what's behind the ballooning figures? Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilme's exhaustively researched book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, breaks down the price tag, from current debts to the unseen costs we'll pay for many years to come.
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POPSpre-election attack? They would probably do so if it helped elect McCain. Why wouldn't they want the disastrous policies of Bush continued. A couple of acts of terror and America brings itself to ruin, great investment from their point of view. They spend half a million and the response costs the USA trillions. When you factor in the all the costs it's clear who's really winning. By comparison the war of drugs is a bargain and maybe a little more effective.
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POPSAn Election Without Meaning Props, gossip, accusations, and public relations. It is impression management from a candidates’ perspective. How can we fool the most people into believing that we stand for something? It is billions of dollars of gravy for the media folks and continued profit maximization for the war machine, Wall Street, and insurance companies, no matter who is determined the winner in November.
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POPSAnyone Remember the Cost of The Wars? Estimates of the true long-term costs of the President's war of choice, including payments of health care and veterans benefits into the distant future, soar into the budgetary stratosphere. They range from the Congressional Budget Office's $1-2 trillion to an estimate by economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes of up to $4-5 trillion. So we're talking somewhere between one-and-a-half and seven bailouts-worth of taxpayer dollars flowing into the morass of disaster, corruption, and carnage in Iraq. As Chalmers Johnson, author most recently of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, the final volume of his Blowback Trilogy, has pointed out for years, the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, and America's wars are in the process of bankrupting us.
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POPSThe Talking Bush "My message to the commanders is 'You will have all the troops, you will have all the resources you need to win in Iraq. And he urged Congress to reach consensus on a "responsible" war funding bill that would not tie the hands of commanders.
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POPSProfanity Immunity I'd LOVE to have immunity on CM but heck lemme address what I think is "kinky" about GOP "family values" instead of the dreaded F word. (and I meant fudge) I find it profane that they are busy wasting people's lives and treasure on a war for political and oil industry profit. I find it obscene they they have bankrupted the government to pay for tax breaks for the rich, corporate welfare and an insane cold war military style buildup. I find it dirty that they have ignored the Constitution. I find it immoral that they tell us what we really need are some "moral values" issues to shroud their wickedness in Godliness; to keep what they are really up to out of sight and out of mind and out of the news at all costs. I find poverty offensive. I find injustice, racism, sexism, and homophobia offensive. But most of all I find the greed of empire offensive. Oh, F U D G E . . .
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POPSGOP Convention Schedule Leaked! 11:00 pm – President Bush performs his hilarious comedy routine where he looks for Iraq's fictitious WMD's under guests tables. 11:15 pm – Governor Mike Huckabee does his famous uncanny imitation of Gomer Pyle. 11:20 pm – Group intervention to get Rush Limbaugh back into drug rehab 11: 45 pm – Go up on rooftop and throw rocks down at homeless vets sleeping in alley. 12:00 am – Live satellite feed from Federal Prison – California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham 12:20 am – Convicted felon/Fox News analyst G. Gordon Liddy – "Lock Picking Secrets" 12: 40 am – Guest speakers Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – "How to Lie Your Country Into a War" 1:00 am – Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – "Tips on Money Laundering" 1:15 am – Hookers arrive for after-party http://www.StopMcCain08.com
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POPSMr. Murdoch Goes To War This would be music to the ears of any newsroom, so hope mingled with the professional dread in Murdoch’s audience that afternoon. He may be awful, but he is rich and awful, smart and awful, powerful and awful, and while he may well be crazy to still believe in the future of print, he is determined and crazy. Murdoch might be the last person The Journal would have chosen as its savior, but newspapers may well be down to last hopes. What does he see that others do not? What is his vision for one of America’s most venerated dailies? Can he really grow The Journal in such a hostile economic climate? And if he succeeds, might The Wall Street Journal as we know it, and as millions of readers have loved it, cease to exist?
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POPSUnderstanding the full cost of a nuclear power plan History has taught us that civilian nuclear programs can -- and do -- lead to the production of nuclear weapons as happened in India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. The presence of nuclear power plants has provoked acts of aggression, even war. Israel bombed nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. went to war in Iraq at least on the pretext that the country was developing nuclear weapons. The concerns surrounding Iran's nuclear intentions are indicative of the blurred line between civilian and military nuclear activities. Iran's uranium enrichment program has inspired 14 other Middle Eastern countries to express an interest in acquiring nuclear power programs, a poorly-disguised cover story for nuclear weapons posturing.
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POPSSlavery By Another Name I saw Douglas Blackmon, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of "Slavery by Another Name", on the Tavis Smiley Show tonight. I had never before heard about neo-slavery. According to Blackmon, the South was culpable; the North was complicit. Modern companies, including US Steel, profited. The system didn't come to an end until the 1940s, "partly due to fears of enemy propaganda about American racial abuse at the beginning of World War II." 13th Amendment be damned, this sale of "convicts" to private enterprises to pay of "debts" was perfectly legal until 1951.
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POPSBush War Policy, Oil Prices Chart Must see this oil price chart and pass it on! This article documents and graphically demonstrates the obvious that no one is saying, i.e the wars and war-mongering of Bush government are the main cause of high gas prices.
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POPSObscene Military Budget is much biger than Reported Legally see the article for the cuts behind the figures here: Now, imagine that, due to a little more Pentagon/Bush administration wizardry, even this black budget estimate is undoubtedly a low-ball figure. One reason is simple enough: The proposed $541 billion Pentagon 2009 budget doesn't even include money for actual wars. George W. Bush's wars are all paid for by "supplemental" bills like the $162 billion one Congress will soon pass -- so the Department of Defense's $34 billion black budget skips "war-related funding." This means that even the overall figure for that budget remains darker than we might imagine (as in "black hole"). The Pentagon not only produces stealth planes, it is, in budgetary terms, a stealth operation. If honestly accounted, the actual Pentagon yearly budget, including all the "military-related" funds salted away elsewhere, is probably now more than $1 trillion a year.
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