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POPSAdmirals, generals: Let gays serve openly The issue of gays in the military became a flash point early in the Clinton administration as Clinton tried to fulfill a campaign promise to end the military's ban on gays. His efforts created the current compromise policy — ending the ban but prohibiting active-duty service members from openly acknowledging they are gay. But it came at a political cost. The resulting debate divided service members and veterans, put Democrats on the defensive and provided cannon fodder for social conservatives and Republican critics who questioned Clinton's patriotism and standing with the military.
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POPSCould Bill Cost Hillary Cabinet Position?by
Wisco Yesterday 12:41 PM At issue are questions about the Clinton Global Initiative and possible conflicts of interest. " t could prove problematic for Obama if the former president continues to seek donations from foreign countries – at the same time his wife is asking them for diplomatic concessions as Secretary of State," Politico reports. "The Clinton Global initiative, which has raised more than $30 billion since 2005, has solicited major donations from a handful of foreign governments, including a $1 billion pledge from Norway in 2007." "The ball is very much in her court," a source told the website.
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POPSRangel Wants To Cut* Taxes! 44% would be the highest top marginal rate in 23 years, eliminating even the fallacious "we did well enough with higher taxes under Clinton" argument.
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POPS The Myths Of Clintonomics The media assume the Clinton tax hikes somehow stimulated the economy, and are cheering on Obama's plan. Obama would raise the top rate "back to where Bill Clinton had it at the time of the greatest bull market, the greatest economic growth in the history of the country," Best Life editor Jack Otter told CNN. "Bill Clinton's tax rate was not a punitive tax rate. It didn't harm the economy." In fact, the economy grew in spite of, not because of , the Clinton tax hikes. The bull market took off precisely when then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan took his foot off the brakes and hit the gas in 1995. It was also then that Republicans took control of Congress — further blunting the effects of the Clinton tax torpedo that had taken effect the previous year. Their "deficit-reduction plan" didn't create the surpluses at all. They were a direct result of a tidal wave of capital-gains revenues generated by the GOP-led stock boom.
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POPSDeaf Jam Determined to bring the deaf and hard-of hearing community into the music world, D-PAN has further partnered with the University of Michigan's College of Engineering. The university is championing ways to apply new wireless technology that will aid the deaf and hard-of-hearing community in a live concert setting, and augment their capacity to "feel" the music. Forbes has his eyes on the hearing-centric music festivals. "I would love to see myself and other deaf artists going out performing on stage. Like at Lollapalooza. I think people would think it's cool to see deaf artists signing."
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POPSUh, who said that? "those who saw... may wonder..." Come on, name a few names. Please don't ascribe opinions to vague groups of people -- who may not even exist. I for one, see the Obama presidency as a clean break from the anti-science, self-interest-driven Bush years. Exaclty what he does and how he does it, I will leave to his creative genius. Along with the smart, ethical, capable and humane people he picks for advisors no matter whom they worked for previously.
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POPSObama Transition Team Scrubs (change.gov) Fannie Mae Bios Tom Donilon is a partner at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers and serves on the firm’s global governing committee. Tom served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of State during the Clinton Administration. Since leaving the Department he has remained deeply involved in the national security arena. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Strategy Group, the National Security Advisory Group to the Congressional Leadership, the Brookings Institution Board of Trustees, the Miller Center of Public Affairs Governing Council, and the Trilateral Commission. Wendy R. Sherman's revised bio . . .
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POPS Valkyrie For War Czar
that in the event of blood actually being shed, all operations should be immediately terminated and forces extricated in the most humiliating way possible, with strategy to be determined by regular polling. However, that was the 1990s, and we also know that in the post-9/11 era, Clinton briefly grew a set and strongly favored invading the heck out of belligerents who had made her husband look like an ineffective skirt-chaser. It was only the prospect of being president herself that made Hillary turn into a peacenik, but we know from the Democratic primary that Hillary does not give up. She will gouge the eyeballs out of anyone who stands in her way. News reports indicate we are being increasingly quagmirized by a bunch of 19th-century dishcloth-wearing savages in the rocky passes of the Hindu Kush, with al-Qaeda thumbing its aquiline nose from across the border in Waziristan, and the mullahs of Iran insisting on becoming a world-class nuisance, not to mention the Putinistas
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POPSClinton to Head State Dept.? Politico describes this as a "secret meeting," but it's got to be one of the worst-kept secrets ever. The tone of the piece is rumor, but the fact that there's a specific cabinet post being talked about suggests there's probably something more. Previous reports had Sec. of State as a contest between John Kerry and Bill Richardson. I liked Richardson for the post, but I would've been happy with either. To tell the truth, at this point in time, I've got nothing against HRC taking it either.
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POPS So Good The Washington Independent on the prospect for “Church-Pike” hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee, another great idea to hamstring and distract intelligence services in wartime that Obama may discover, sort of like closing Guantanamo, isn’t the greatest idea. Human rights groups want some drama with their national angst. Detainee Truth Commissions, please. Because fighting al-Qaeda = Apartheid.
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POPSinteresting two minute video on destroying these weapons The headline is quite misleading. The biggest cluster bomb users aren't signing the treaty. The US has used them in every recent war: Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan, and Iraq and has not renounced their continued use. Obama voted for an amendment that would have prevented the use of such weapons against civilians, but if these weapons are used in war, they inevitably will kill civilians. The only sure way to stop killing civilians with cluster bombs is to eliminate them. A Google search for "cluster bombs" on Obama's website came up empty; I didn't find any indication of what Obama intends to do about them. If Bill Clinton were back in office, you can bet he'd find a way to continue to use these God-forsaken devices, even as he convinced everyone of the opposite. We'll see if Obama is a president in the Clinton mold.
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POPSRubin-Enron-Citi-One more reborn savior??Not! (Recall this from 2002) "But the Democrats have been unsure about whether to pursue the investigation into the political realm. Part of this timidity is a desire to avoid the appearance of partisan excess that, in the Clinton scandals, drew a backlash against the Republicans. But they are undoubtedly afraid that some of their own luminaries, Rubin chief among them, might end up on the wrong side of a subpoena. It would be a shame if these fears, and the media's reluctance to pursue these issues independently, kept the public from learning the truth about the political corruption involved in Enron's rise and decline."
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POPSLiberals clinically mad "The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind," he says. "When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious."
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POPSObama Faces Competition for Health Care Plan The big news in health care policy this morning is that Senator Max Baucus has debuted a new plan that's similar to Obama's in many ways with one major exception: it requires everyone to buy insurance. This will no doubt rankle those on the right who loathe the idea. It'll be interesting to see which other members of Congress roll out plans in the coming weeks and months. To read Baucus' plan, follow this link: http://finance.senate.gov/healthreform2009/finalwhitepaper.pdf
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