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POPSAtlantic Internartional Partnership Headlines: White House respond to GOP’s Consumer Bureau threat … “The consumer agency’s sole mission is to protect American families and provide the tools they need to make smart financial decisions,” said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage. “For far too long, American consumers have fallen victim to fraud, misleading claims, and powerful special interests and the President believes that American families who were the hardest hit by this financial crisis deserve an independent watchdog to protect consumers and prevent predatory lending and other abuses in the future.”
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POPSSEC Petitioned to Warn Companies Against Making False and Misleading Claims on Global Warming
We believe the Commission should take action immediately to protect investors. I. Examples of potentially false and misleading statements made by registrants. Below are but a few examples of the sort of potentially false and misleading statements being made by registrants. The problematic nature of these statements is discussed in Section II. * Exelon Corp. issued a media release and placed full-page advertisements in major newspapers on July 15, 2008 stating, "The science is overwhelming -- climate change is happening now and human activity is the primary cause." * Lehman Brothers issued a report on climate change featuring the so-called "hockey stick" graph to support the notion that humans are causing global warming. * The General Electric Company issued a "Call for Action" to "slow, stop and even reverse the damage of greenhouse gasses." * Toyota Motor Corp. states in a report, "When we drive a vehicle, it consumes fossil fuels and emits CO2,
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POPSNew Food Sprinkle Convinces the Brain to Stop Over-Eating Then, in one of the largest studies of a non-prescription weight-loss system, these Tastants were tested for effectiveness as a means of weight loss. The results were significant. Over a 6 month period, 1,436 women and men sprinkled flavorless "Tastant" crystals on everything they ate, and lost an average of 30.5 pounds - nearly 15% of their total body weight. Participants achieved these results without having to follow any special exercise regime or diet. Best of all, because it is tasteless and odorless and contains no stimulants and does not directly interact with the digestive system, there are no unpleasant side-effects. None of the horror stories associated with "fat-blockers" or stimulant based weight loss systems. A flavorless, odorless sprinkle that triggers this type of weight loss - too good to be true? Apparently the company anticipated a somewhat skeptical response from consumers, jaded by a weight loss industry spread thick with misleading claims.
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POPSfactcheck.org am going to go see what the annenburg school is all about now..............
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POPSDisingenuous statistics on support for overhauling health systems Look at the original Health Affairs article. Percentage of USA adults who say that their health system needs either "fundamental change" or "complete rebuilding": 48+34 = 82%. Comparable percentages for Canada: 60 + 12 = 72% For UK: 57 + 15 = 72% For Germany: 51 + 27 = 78% For Australia: 55 + 18 = 73% For New Zealand: 56 + 17 = 73%
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POPSSenators Warn Bush Against Attacking Iran This was a "pre-emptive strike" on the White House by 30 Senators (out of 100 total) firing a warning shot across the bow of Bush government, claiming their Congressional and constitutional authority of declaring war, saying the Executive had no authority to take any offensive military action. (Nothing about the Syria strike has appeared thus far). Note republican Hagel's remarks urging the administration to open direct talks with Iran, and noting that "regime change" was the real motivation and ambition. Again the Project for a New American Century neoconservative think tank had already outlined their "new middle east" plan in Sept. 2000, prior to 9/11. People should write their Senators who did not participate in this action of the thirty and tell them to support the same position.
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POPSFree lunch seminars can entrap seniors There are stories like this all of the time. Seniors retire, with money they plan to support themselves in retirement, or leave to their children. People with schemes to get 'unbelievable returns on investments' offer to show how to invest the money, and disappear with it. Salesmen are full of sweet talk, but the only defense can be the wealth of information available to an investor and research of that information before investing. There are often those who claim they have an investment method which is known by few so information is limited (or Fictitious)' 'get on the wagon before it leaves.' The larger the return the investment is reported to earn the more research needed. Unless it is a situation where the total is prepared to be lost. Like gambling it's dangerous to speculate with what cannot afford to be lost.
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POPSThe War on AGW Denial, Part 2 Holocaust denial is illegal in civilised countries of the world. So why shouldn't we render the orchestrated efforts of the well-funded global warming denial industry to nought, by making anthropogenic global warming denial illegal (unless it's genuine scientific research published in peer-review journals)? Advertisers are not allowed to make false and misleading claims about their products. Isn't it time we subjected fossil-fuel funded think-tanks and 'foundations' to the same scrutiny as advertisers?
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POPSThe Attack on Human Rights Watch Good overview of the controversies over HRW's reporting of the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Neier deals with the following arguments: * HRW devotes a disproportionate amount of attention to Israel (false) * HRW did not declare Hezbollah an aggressor (HRW never declares aggressors in its reporting, because it realizes that "aggression" is an inherently political concept, as Israel and the US pointed out when they protested the creation of the International Criminal Court) * He also takes down Dershowitz's argument that because sometimes Hezbollah mingled with civilians, Israel should be exonerated for all civilian deaths caused by its air strikes. Dershowitz failed to note that HRW documented two dozen cases where Israeli strikes killed civilians where there was no evidence of a Hezbollah presence. Moreover, Dershowitz himself used sloppy evidence to overstate the presence of Hezbollah among civilians. Via http://www.matthewyglesias.com/
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POPSDeath Rates, Iraq, and Philadelphia A very famous demographer just wrote an editorial in the Washington Post saying that the death rate for US troops in Iraq is lower than that for young black men in Philadelphia. Sociologist Kieran Healy challenges the implication that troops serving in Iraq do not face grave risks.
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