americaninthenews Category

Mike Keefe, Cagle Cartoons

See the latest polls on the coming presidential election in the U.S.A. Mind you some polls are conservatively slanted, for example Rasmussen. But it's clear November 12 is gonna be an exiting day.

Associated Press/GfK: Obama d. Romney (50-42)
Gallup: Romney d. Obama (47-44)
PPP for Daily Kos/SEIU: Obama d. Romney (48-45)
Rasmussen: Romney d. Obama (49-44)
YouGov/The Economist: Obama d. Romney (44-43)
Angus Reid: Romney d. Obama (49-46)

For the first time an American President has come out in support of marriage equality for homosexuals.Presodent Obama said in an interview with ABC News: 'I think same sex couples should be able to get married'.

The respons of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today: “My view is that marriage itself is a relationship between a man and women, and that’s my own preference, I know other people have differing views.”

Statement by Mitt Romney to Log Cabin Republicans (openly gay R's) in 1994: "We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern."

Log Cabin Republicans: Obama 'finally speaking up for marriage equality for political gain is offensive and callous'.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson: "With @MichelleObama & @JustinMikita permission I would like to marry @BarackObama right now!"

Shep Smith on Fox News shows ABC's clip of Obama and says: "The president of the United States has arrived in the 21st century."

@daveweigel: "Okay, Biden. Now say something about decriminalizing pot."

Patrick Chappatte, NZZ am Sonntag

The Department of Motor Vehicles in Nevada has given Google a license to test autonomous vehicles. The first such license issued in the world. Google! 
An autonomous car is able to drive without the help of a human being.

Last year Nevada - one of the least populated states - passed a law that permits testing of driverless cars. Google has equipped eight vehicles to drive autonomous: six Toyota Priuses, an Audi TT and a Lexus RX450h.

The U.S.A. is a very violent country, you see violence is in every aspect of it's culture: the adoration of the gun, the adoration of the army. That despite what this Missouri Democratic Party spokesperson said: "What makes America different from the rest of the world is that we settle our political disagreements without threats of violence."

He responded to this statement at a rally supporting Missouri Republican challenger Sarah Steelman of Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill.

Scott Boston, a St. Louis Tea Party activist, “She walks around like she’s some sort of Rainbow Brite Care Bear or something but really she’s an evil monster.”
“We have to kill the Claire Bear.”

Republican Sarah Steelman was at the rally and didn't respond to that statement. When later asked, she said: “I may disagree with the words Mr. Boston chose in his statement, but I understand his frustration and I emphatically support his right to express his views”

No one has been arrested but police have assigned extra security to Senator McCaskill.

Republican financail expert Paul Ryan wants more tax cuts for the rich. One way to finance this is to cut down on food stamp aid. Tens of millions of Americans live on food stamps. In fact, in that shining beacon of hope for the world. one in six people lives in poverty, Ryan's own numbers.

In his federal budget proposal Ryan cuts food stamps by $134 billion. Stop the Bush taxcuts for the rich is no option for him as is cutting on defence. In a meeting with voters this is how the Republican politician explains it and a voters response:

RYAN: We want to have people go from welfare back to work. That’s why we conjoined in our budget the job training programs, consolidate the 47 different job training programs spread across 9 different agencies to scholarships to go to people so they can get new training.

KEYES: But with something like food stamps isn’t that kind of a necessary thing, to eat in order to work?

About what did Warren Buffett, an American billionaire investor, talk with Princess Diana just some weeks before her death?

Glenn Greenwald hates election years in the U.S. Mostly because American politicians almost never talk about what's really important. For example the endless wars promoted by people funded by America's warmachine. The necocon promoted Wars against Israel's enemies. The endless War on Drugs. The transformation of America into a full-scale Surveillance State. The barbaric American prison state. The ever growing power of the oligarchy.

Greenwald: Like almost all of the most consequential and destructive policies — endless war, the Drug War, the sprawling and barbaric American prison state — the domestic Surveillance State expands with equal fervor under both Democratic and Republicans administrations, and opposing it thus affords no partisan gain and it is therefore entirely off the table of debate. In lieu of any dispute over these types of actually consequential government policies, we instead endure a series of trivial weekly scandals that numb the brain, distract attention, and produce acrimony as virulent and divisive as it is petty.

Even for those issues that are actually significant and receive election-year...

The American rightwing was annoyed by President Obama's ad celebrating the killing of Osama bin Laden one year ago. They claim he's unfairly belittling his opponents and is spiking the football. ('Spiking the football' is an American expression for slamming the ball violently in the ground in exagerated celebration.)

Were have these people been these past ten years?

George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier dressed in a bomber jacket and, under a Mission Accomplished banner, celebrated the defeat of Saddam Hussein before the game had even started.

Veterans For A Strong America is looking for Navy Seals who are willing to attack President Obama. It is unknown who has financed the rightwing group lead by Joel Arends who has worked for organisations funded by the rightwing Koch brothers.

'Spiking the football' is an American expression for slamming the ball violently in the ground in exaggerated celebration.

Veterans for a Strong America: “In the wake of a warm conservative reception for a web video trashing the president for ‘spiking the football’ on the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden’s death, the conservative group Veterans for a Strong America plans to gather Navy SEALs and Special Forces operators to criticize the White House during the 2012 campaign.”

Kirk Walters, Toledo Blade  

Mitt Romney (R) last week had to let go his just appointed spokesman on foreign policy, Richard Grenell. That's because the American rightwing didnt accept an openly gay spokesman.
The attack on Grenell was led by the American Family Association, who states that homosexual behavior is offensive to God' and doesn't want Republicans to put 'a homosexual in any position of importance'.

Grenell is gone so you expect the rightwing spokesman Bryan Fischer to be happy... Well, no!
Today, Fischer asked the voters if they should trust a man to stand up to the Chinese and the North Koreans if he can’t even stand up to a “yokel” talk show host?:

FISCHER: If Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, co-opted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership.

After being ridiculed in the American press and drasties yesterday, the conservative Heartland Institute, an anti-science thinktank financed by the oil, coal and tobacco industry, decided to take down their billboards on Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago.
On the billboards climate scientists are compared to serial killers, marxists and terrorists like Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Charles Manson, Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden.

Amazingly, apart from Big Oil and Coal, Heartland gets money from companies like Microsoft, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Nucor, and Time Warner. So apparently supporting hateful morons is good for your image in the U.S.

This is what Heartland wrote on their website about the campaign:

Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants. ... The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune

For the first time there are more people employed in the private sector in the U.S. than when President Obama took office. Righ after the Bush years, in the midst of the Great Recession, there were 110,985,000 American workers. The last month of George W. Bush in office the American economy lost almost a million jobs.

Now there are 111,020,000 people employed in the private sector and rising. That's how long it takes to fix the stupidity of others.

This is a billboard you can see on the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago. This one is with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. There are more with Charles Manson, Fidel Castro and Osama bin Laden.

The billboards are the product of the conservative Heartland Institute, an anti-science thinktank heavily sponsored by the oill and coal industry. This is what the Heartland thinks of 99 percent of the climate scientist and of journalist who report accurately on it.

The argument is probably that people who believe in global warming are more out of touch with reality than Charles Manson and the Unabomber.
Amazingly, ten years ago more than sixty percent of Americans believed that manmade global warming is real, now it's less than 50 percent. Thanks to well funded institutes like Heartland.

By the way, these are the same people who are gonna spent lots of money to stop the reelection of President Obama.

Mitt Romney's message... once and for all: WE'RE NOT STUPID

Obama's message

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is more patriotic than Barack Obama.

All Repblicans know that.

That's why he had special lapel pins made after 9/11. To bring America together.

Funny thing: The pins were made in China.

In the last 34 years the pay for executives has risen 127 times faster in the United States than the pay of average workers, writes the Economic Policy Institute. CEO's earned 26.5 times more than the average worker in 1978, now they earn 206 times more.

Patrick Chappatte, The International Herald Tribune  

America is the place to be for conspiracy theories. Like religions they are simple constructions of reality for simple people.
It's now one year ago since Bin Laden has been killed and the rightwingers have their own theories on what really happened:

1. It never happened and President Obama was Photoshopped into the situation-room photo.

2. President Obama ordered an opinion poll before deciding on the raid.

Blogger Uncle Jimbo: "John Weisman said in his book Kill bin Laden, and confirmed to me personally, that Obama had a poll taken on the potential fall out if the public found he didn't pull the trigger, and that this delayed the raid while he waited on the answer." He's right, there is indeed a Weisman book and it's a novel.

3. A guy called Warren doesn't believe the Obama administration and says he knows where Osama bin Laden is.

I have located where they threw the body away. I'm the only one with this information. He's 200 miles to the west of the Indian city of Surat.

Warren is trying to rent Russian deep sea diving equipment to get to the body. Please sent money!
His fear is that the US...

Matador, El Tiempo, Colombia