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POPSSarah Palin Takes on The Washington Establishment But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion -- I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country." On energy policies: "Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems -- as if we all didn't know that already. But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all. Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more nuclear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need American energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers."
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POPSUS Government Takes On Six Trillion Dollars of Bad Debt
This is like a bank robbery. Wall St. & Congress have conspired in the largest stealing of tax dollars in US History. This equals all the other failures of Bush/Cheeney and their cohorts. In comparrison, five (5) years messing over Iraq -- who had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD's -- has yet to cost a trillion dollars, while this government bailout takes on liability for SIX trillion dollars,,, ... buying all these bad debt mortgage loans to save banker's butts and passing on that debt to tax payers. This should be no surprise. It's like FEMA in New Orleans. It's like starting a war for false reasons. It's like letting bin Laden run around alive and free. It's like running out of money to build and repair roads and bridges. It's like joblessness hitting the highest levels in five years. It's our country going down the tubes, whether for Wall St. bankers, Oil companies, or the interests of Israel. Bend over America, this is the final screw job of evil profiteers dest
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POPSGeorge Washington's Rules of Civility
Insightful precepts of civil social behavior; as applicable now as ever. As a young schoolboy in Virginia, George Washington took his first steps toward greatness by copying out by hand a list of 110 ' Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation .' Based on a 16th-century set of precepts compiled for young gentlemen by Jesuit instructors, the Rules of Civility were one of the earliest and most powerful forces to shape America's first president.... Most of the rules are concerned with details of etiquette, offering pointers on such issues as how to dress, walk, eat in public and address one's superiors. But in the introduction to the newly published Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace , Brookhiser warns against dismissing the maxims as "mere" etiquette. "The rules address moral issues, but they address them indirectly," writes. "They seek to form the inner man (or boy) by shaping the outer."
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POPSRunning Against Themselves "Mr. McCain says he is the candidate who will better protect the country from terrorism. But about all he has to offer is his pledge to continue the war in Iraq. We have yet to hear an explanation for how he plans to do that while also salvaging the war in Afghanistan — the real front line in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban."
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POPSUnlike Hillary "Governor Palin also lives in a frontier state, a land about as far away from Washington as you can be and still hold political office in our republic. This is a theme that can resonate with voters. Delaware is right next to Washington: Biden commutes home after work. Chicago, the Daley Machine, does not seem to be much of an improvement. But Palin, and for that matter, McCain, come from another part of America completely. Alaska and Arizona are very distant from the capital whose machinations must be curbed. The image of two people from America's frontier cleaning up our nation's capital is potent."
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POPSFred Thompson Speaks on Service to Our Country She is from a small town, with small town values, but that's not good enough for those folks who are attacking her and her family. Some Washington pundits and media big shots are in a frenzy over the selection of a woman who has actually governed rather than just talked a good game on the Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail circuit. Well, give me a tough Alaskan governor who has taken on the political establishment in the largest state in the union -- and won -- over the beltway business-as-usual crowd any day of the week. Let's be clear ... the selection of Gov. Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic. She is a courageous, successful, reformer, who is not afraid to take on the establishment. Sound like anyone else we know? She has run a municipality and she has run a state. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/02/thompson.transcript/index.html Excerpt of Fred Thompson below:
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POPSWhat Choosing Sarah Palin Really Means by DavidAnderson When she was being vetted, Palin made an interesting statement which is being taken out of context now. She said that she would not leave her job as Governor unless she was assured the VP role would make a difference in its day to day operation. In other words, she understands historically that the VP can be a very important role in an administration or a one not much more influential than Miss America. She was not interested in being McCain’s token. She wanted to contribute. That tells you volumes about the Governor. She represents a turn in the party from poking fun at the vision thing to some one who believes government should represent the hockey moms, fishermen, teachers, and small business people in its policies again. The Republican Party chose to give more than lip service to majority of the people.
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POPSMcCain's Gamble On a Woman Create Headache For Obama As governor of Alaska she is about as far removed from Washington as it is possible to be. The McCain campaign intends to contrast that with the inside-Washington double-ticket of Obama and Biden. Perhaps most impressively, in just a year and a half in office in Alaska she has established a reputation as a tough reformer. She is also a staunch advocate of expanding domestic drilling for oil, popular among oil-rich Alaska and among Americans as a whole. At her first appearance on the stump yesterday alongside her running-mate, she seemed assured and steady. But her selection adds a startling new uncertainty into the presidential race, a risky gamble for the Republicans but a complicating headache for the Democrats. THROUGHOUT their long primary campaign this year, Democrats made much of the fact that their progressive party was presenting a historic choice to the nation; the first black man or woman in the Oval Office.
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POPSObama: Nothing More Than a Shrewd and Opportunistic Partisan
He could have joined the bipartisan “Gang of 14” that negotiated a halt to divisive judicial nominations, but didn't. He could have been a leader for bipartisan compromises on immigration, terrorist surveillance and energy, but wasn't. According to a Washington Post database, Obama votes with his party 96 percent of the time, which makes him tied for the eleventh most partisan member of the Senate. At 96.6 percent, his running mate Joe Biden is the eighth most partisan senator. In his next political act, he dispensed with centrism and the great middle ground of American politics and espoused the politics of “change” — change in pastors, change in churches and calculated changes in his positions on NAFTA, gun control and much else. But all those convention antics pale in comparison to the change in the man who, four years ago, briefly fired the imaginations of Americans tired of the extremes of partisan politics. That Obama has left and gone away, if he ever really existed.
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POPSPelosi's Shameful Record of Voting Against Military Despite the calls for improved military absentee voting procedures by the people affected most, not a single Democrat crossed the aisle to co-sponsor a bill introduced by Rep. Roy Blunt that would have created a clearer path to having absentee military ballots counted in the 2008 election and beyond. Democrats, led by Speaker Pelosi, ultimately killed efforts to improve GI suffrage instead of working to extend the most basic democratic right to the men and women serving our country overseas. America is not fooled by Pelosi's empty words. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Charles Henry wrote in the July issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings: 'While virtually everyone involved...seems to agree that military people deserve at least equal opportunity when it comes to having their votes counted, indications are that in November 2008, many thousands of service members who try to vote will do so in vain.' (Washington Post, 7/24/08)
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POPSThe Value of Money George Washington was paid a salary of $25,000 a year from 1789 to 1797 as the first president of the United States. The current salary of the president has recently been doubled to $400,000, to go with a $50,000 expense account, a generous pension and several other benefits. Has the remuneration improved? Making a comparison using the CPI for 1790 shows that $25,000 corresponds to over $585,000 today, so the recent raise means current presidents have an equal command over consumer goods as the Father of the Country. When comparing Washington's salary to an unskilled worker, or the measure of average income, GDP per capita, then the comparable numbers are $11 and $24 million. Granted that would not put him in the ranks of the top 25 executives today that make over $200 million. It would, however, be many times more than any elected official in this country is paid today.
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POPSDemocrat Class Warfare Now ... here's where the frustration comes in. Cavuto asks Senator Klobuchar whether or not she thinks that the 35% of earnings that the richest 1% earn now is enough; whether or not that's fair. He asked this question three times, and three times Klobuchar refused to answer it. She would launch into a discussion of rising tuition rates and health insurance premiums in Minnesota. Now excuse me ... but in what way do comments on rising tuitions and health insurance rates constitute a response to a question as to whether or not a 35% tax rate is high enough for evil high-achievers?
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POPSLou Dobbs: Media 'in the tank supporting the Obma candidacy" HANK SHEINKOPF, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Good for democrats, not so good for the nation in the long term. Barack Obama is interesting, he's new, therefore he is news. OK. The fact that a black man can reach that pinnacle of success, raise the amount of money, run this kind of organization, beat Hillary Clinton is big news. At some point there has to be some fairness in the discussion. The problem here from the beginning is from day Obama showed up, I was wondering when the reporters will start chiseling his face on to Mt. Rushmore and the guy hadn't even won the nomination yet. That's the danger here, Lou. And people know it and they're not stupid. Average guy says wait a second, I want news and he isn't getting it.
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POPSSeven Paths To Sensible Privacy "I am not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction." —George Washington, letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, 1784 That is one view of privacy. Here is another: "We must all watch one another." —Rev. Robert Browne, guiding principles, 1582
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POPSNeocons Call for War on Russia Writing in the Washington Post today, Robert Kagan goes even further, suggesting that the Georgia-Russia conflict may be the start of World War III: Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama. The mood is reminiscent of Germany after World War I, when Germans complained about the "shameful Versailles diktat" imposed on a prostrate Germany by the victorious powers and about the corrupt politicians who stabbed the nation in the back.
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POPSBayh not the guy I, along with many Hoosier supporters of Senator Evan Bayh were disappointed to learn he was not chosen to run as Barack Obama's Vice Presidential candidate this weekend. I wish the best of luck to Sen. Joe Biden whom I personally consider to be a decent choice and a good candidate for the office. His experience in Washington and his foreign relations experience will be an asset to the Obama Administration.
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POPSHypocrisy or Incompetence? The Democratic National Committee will uphold the same standard: We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. … They will not fund my party! Take a look at the top five industries that donate to Biden as well: * Lawyers/law firms * Real estate * Retired * Securities & investment * Miscellaneous finance Real estate and miscellaneous finance — wouldn’t that figure into the credit crisis and the housing market collapse?