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POPS After Bailout, Economy Will Still Be Lousy
You'll simply be spared some sort of wipe out. Meanwhile, the economy is likely to continue its down drift, with all the hallmarks of a recession. If strained consumers expecting some kind of immediate relief grow cynical when it doesn't arrive, it could even deepen a downturn as consumer confidence quakes once again. So, do the economy a favor, and curtail your expectations. Here's what the bailout will and won't do, in the areas that matter most to consumers: Housing. Homeowners at risk of foreclosure won't enjoy much of a bailout at all. The plan calls for the government to "encourage" banks to help out borrowers who are in arrears by writing off some of the loan amount or negotiating more agreeable terms. But voluntary programs to help stressed homeowners have been marginally effective at best. The ultimate financial fix would be a fast-forward button that rushed us to the end of the housing bust, which underlies the entire meltdown. But that's beyond the government
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POPS$85 bil. for Wall St., No Ice for Hurricane Survivors Hey, the feds have their priorities. They've been busy making sure that profit stays private, while loss is socialized -- just not all loss. If some Bushie had money invested in your health, that'd be a different story. It's the ownership society, people. If you've got trouble, you're on your own. We are most definitely not all in this together. Unless you're one of the guys in the corner offices in huge glass towers, you ain't squat.
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POPSChristians see good in the god's wrath Nothing like the wrath of god (In the destructive wake caused by hurricane Ike) to give christians perfect targets for their aid. Shame they don't give out just the stuff people need (food, water, shelter) without all the proselytization. This article is being discussed here; http://www.atheistthinktank.net/thinktank/index.php?topic=5227.0 Please join in the discussion.
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POPSAl-Qaeda breeding ground in Pakistan no international relief agency (United Nations, Red Cross, etc) is in sight. Some efforts made by the local government have also run aground by rampant corruption and lack of will to acknowledge the plight of these people at the highest government level. Worst of all, neither the Pakistan or American army, whose bombs have displaced thousands of children, women and old men, fail to acknowledge the consequences of their actions. To them the matter is closed and is not worth discussing. Let us write to our senators, congressmen, our national and provincial assembly members, our presidents and prime ministers and ask them one question. “We can authorize billions of dollars for the bombardment of the region, but can we also authorize a few bucks for the betterment of the local people?” I have said it before, and I will repeat again, “No amount of bombing can win the hearts and minds of the disgruntled populace.”
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POPSSelf Assembly Robots Will Save Your Life Self assembling robots is the beginning of autonomous embodies artificial intelligence. Terminator scenarios are just our outdated need to understand a complex world in terms of bad guys good guys sort of mentality.
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POPS McCain To Katrina Victims In 2005: You're On Your Own
It must be nice to have staffers writing that stuff for you. Too bad he spent the months to follow leading the Republican charge against every Senate bill that would have actually helped Katrina victims or mandated investigations on how the Bush administration could have blown disaster response so thoroughly. Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden jumped immediately to the aid of hurricane victims in the week after the 2005 disaster, authoring S.Amdt. 1661 "…to provide emergency funding for victims of Hurricane Katrina." But with John McCain's help, the Republican-led Senate shot down the funding on a 41-56 vote with McCain voting against, while Biden and Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama voted for the funding. the Republicans wanted no part of it and despite his post-Katrina pledge to "do all that is necessary to fund essential relief and recovery efforts and help those in need," John McCain was right there to shoot down every initiative that would have
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POPSPragati,ngo puri orissa india Pragati an organization focusing on the progress of the society through economic development and women empowerment,providing equality and social justice.
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POPSDrilling’s Lure Congress should not give into the pressures of a restless public and a campaign by sacrificing long-term environmental protections for short-term political gain.
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POPSMcCain Adviser: US 'a Nation of Whiners' I'd be completely remiss if I didn't point out that McCain's economic whiz, "Foreclosure Phil" Gramm, has left economic disaster in the wake of his career as a Senator . Enron was largely his fault and the mortgage meltdown has his fingerprints all over it, too. Not only is Gramm a dick, but he's grossly incompetent too boot. Want a supremely effed up economy? Vote McCain.
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POPSNatural Disaster Evolves Into Man-Made Catastrophe "We have small helicopters to drop food, and we have doctors." The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship, and its battle group have been waiting to join in the relief effort as well. U.S. Marine flights from their makeshift headquarters in Utapao, Thailand, continued Saturday — bringing the total to 500,000 pounds of aid delivered. Britain's prime minister accused authorities in Burma of behaving inhumanely by preventing foreign aid from reaching victims. "This is inhuman," Gordon Brown told the British Broadcasting Corp. Brown said a natural disaster "is being made into a man-made catastrophe by the negligence, the neglect and the inhuman treatment of the Burmese people by a regime that is failing to act.
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POPSNatural Disaster In Beichuan: A Vision Of Hell Anger, too, is growing about the poor quality of buildings. In Mianzhu, an apartment block collapsed on itself. The flats had been built using contributions from a local work unit, a group of workers organised by the Communist Party at a factory or office. Residents searching for survivors said it was because corrupt officials had demanded so much in kickbacks that the building fell. The neighbouring buildings had not collapsed, including one which housed cadres from the Communist Party. "Show me the structural steel in that building," said one woman, whose mother is missing in the rubble. "It all went into some official's pocket," she spat. The foreign media have a poor image in China This makes reporting the disaster difficult; before the anti-Chinese riots in Tibet, and the sympathetic view of Tibetans in the Western media, foreign journalists were popular. Now we are seen as a threat.
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POPSA Gift for Giving I love this concept and will investigate more. Seems a very workable way to go about supporting various causes with little effort!
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POPSLow tech best in China, Burma disasters Sometimes the only way rescuers can dig someone out of the rubble, without making the situation more dangerous, is with their bare hands, after the Human ears of the searchers recognize cries for help. People who are drowning, or buried don't have the time to wait for technology to arrive, particularly in remote areas, where the survivors in an immediate area,who can start looking straight away, may be the only chance they have. In China, many hands seem to be on the job, While the regime in Burma are trying to wash their hands. Not as Pilate, but as Lady Macbeth. The Damned spot will not disappear.
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POPSThe junta in Myanmar is cruel & callous I believe nothing highlights better how the World has "lost its way". We allow the junta in Myanmar to practice genocide, as we do in Darfur and with Mugabe the tyrant. I think at a certain point the tyrannical regimes have to be afforded a hefty response - but the free World simply watches and allows the position to deteriorate further. China is one of the World's villains - it is allowing all three regimes mentioned above to be supplied with arms and sustenance for their despot leaders. Shame on China!!!!!!
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POPSBurma's Junta Counts Its Fake Votes, Millions In Peril GRAPHIC PHOTO A US diplomat based in Rangoon claims the figure may be as high as 100,000 dead. The junta trumpeted what it claimed was a "massive turnout" in its constitutional referendum on Saturday, as thousands of tonnes of food, medical supplies and emergency relief specialists waited on tarmacs around the world for permission to enter the country. "Diarrhoea rates are very high in many of the affected townships; for children under five, diarrhoea is a disaster, adding, malaria and dengue were endemic to this region. United Nations agencies are concerned that there are hundreds of thousands of traumatised, injured people and that if they do not get medical treatment, they will die. Doctors in one hospital were treating up to 5000 outpatients a day, said Unicef's health chief in Rangoon. "They are exhausted. They are working long hours and they really need support. "They are full of patients and they cannot be treated properly due to a lack of human resources and drugs."
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POPSSunk Ship Does any one else see a little humor in this besides me.
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POPSU.N. Suspends Aid Shipments To Myanmar After Government Confiscates Donations White House: Myanmar OKs One U.S. Aid Delivery Earlier Friday, Ky Luu, director of the U.S. office of foreign disaster assistance, had said that skilled aid workers were being forced to sit on the sidelines as victims of last week's cyclone die. His comments reflect mounting frustration among the United States and other countries as they wait for permission from the military-led government to begin trying to help. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354722,00.html
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POPSBurma Cyclone--Weather Warfare for "Regime Change"? This could be a case of Weather Warfare for "regime change". Follow the comments here. It took five days to count from 1,000 to 100,000? This is similar to the Indonesian Tsunami where the death count was suppressed until days later, and then the move for military and UN posturing and pushing began. Also interesting, similar to Indonesia as well, is that there is foreign criticism of the government in the press during the aftermath, and here we see the UN pushing to force their way in "to help" (i.e. invade) WITHOUT approval of the sovereign country, invoking their hypocritical "responsibility to protect" self-proclaimed law to intervene and interfere as if no country can be responsible for themselves without World Government seeking to intrude. The UN has a "responsibility" to butt out unless they are invited. All this makes this event highly suspicious. See "weather warfare"
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POPSMcCain's Miserable Record on Hurricane Katrina More: He voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane, and in 2006 voted against appropriating $109 billion in supplemental emergency funding, including $28 billion for hurricane relief. Shortly after the disaster in New Orleans, McCain did introduce a bill that sought to improve communications mechanisms for first-responders and authorities. The bill failed to go anywhere, and McCain later voted against other bills that had similar provisions. McCain may talk sympathetically about New Orleans' recovery this week, but the record shows that when it mattered most, McCain failed to act.
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POPSDisaster relief: Does anyone in Washington, D.C. really get what's going on? , such a strategy is inexcusable in the world in which we now live. Here in Reality, the values of homes and retirement savings are plummeting, the climate is changing, people are uninsured and going insane (if this rash of mass shootings is any indication), costs are rising (am I the only person who noticed the spike in milk prices in the last week?), and an illegal war in Iraq is still sending Americans home in body bags
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POPSRepublican Plan To Kill Off Government
View the chart on the right, notice in the past 30 years, how the Repubs have been pushing us down into a deep financial hole. Why? I can only come up with the conclusion that the red side of the aisle is out to kill off government, as we know it, altogether. Allowing them free reign to privatize EVERYTHING in the world which will allow their dreams of a World Global Market, in which they become the rulers of, to come true. The damn pesky Dems keep getting elected in interims and bring the NAT'L DEBT down to a manageable size. Just imagine if they had ruled straight through this 30 year period, their fantasies of total control would be actualized by now. I know this is a simple analogy of what the hell they are up to but maybe that's how they get away with what they are doing. Just act as though their plans are SO COMPLICATED, too difficult for the average American cretin to understand. Waddayathink? :mad: Lot's of info in this link: http://www.thethinkingblue.com/natldept.html
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POPSU.S. Navy going Soft - It's About Time More: Such nonmilitary approaches are fundamental to addressing the nation's security problems, says Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In what many in and outside the Pentagon believe was a seminal speech at Kansas State University last month, Secretary Gates argued for dramatically more funding for nondefense agencies such as the State Department and the US Agency for International Development. " ased on my experience serving seven presidents as a former director of CIA and now as Secretary of Defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use 'soft' power and for better integrating it with 'hard' power," Gates said. Me: "I must be dreaming".
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