americaninthenews Category

FORWARD, is the new campain slogan Barack Obama decided to use for the 2012 reelection campaign. 

It was unveiled yesterday in a video. The slogan's quite obvious subtext is that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will take the country backwards.

American conservatives know where President Obama got the word.

Breitbart.com explaines that Obama took the slogan from decades of communist iconography. From Marx, Stalin, and Mao, to Benito Mussolini, to Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa.
How does writer Joel Pollak know that? “Communist leaders frequently used - and still use - the word ‘forward,’”

The Washington Times agrees that the word Forward has a “rich association with European Marxism.”

Tea Party blogger Jim Hoft found an even worse character to connect the slogan with... who else than Adolf Hitler. He writes that Forward was a marching song of the Hitler youth. He proves it with a picture of the Hitler Jugend wearing Obama pins.

Note:
Forward is the state motto of Teaparty led Wisconsin.
Forward is also the 642th most commonly used English word out of 868,000, according to...

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney today had to let go his recently appointed spokesman on foreign policy, Richard Grenell. The reason Grenell resiged? He is gay. No worse... he's openly gay.

The American Family Association, who led the rightwing attacks on Grenell’s appointment because 'his homosexual behavior is offensive to God', called his resignation a 'huge win'. Especially because, according to the rightwing organisation, Romney 'will not make the mistake again of putting a homosexual activist in any position of importance'.

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Republicans are furious over reminders that Mitt Romney was wrong about Osama bin Laden.

Americans are raised with the view that violence is the answer to most problems. That's probably why a majority of Americans think that bombing is the best answer to prevent other people getting bombs.
In the last Reuters/Ipsos poll 56 percent of Americans support an attack on Iran if that country is trying to get an atom bomb. If an attack would lead to higher oil prices, still 53 percent of Americans favor a military attack on Iran. Only 39 percent oppose a military strike on Iran in whatever circumstances.

Most military experts think that Israeli premier Netanyahu would like to bomb Iran and President Obama doesn't want to.
In the view of James Risen, expert on the Middle East, Obama is winning for the moment. An attack on Iran has become less likely in the last months.
Iran has tempered it's most inflammatory talk  with the threat of even more strict economic sanctions. And they are more flexible in their dealings with the US and Israel, accepting direct negotiations.

Also in Israel a growing divide between political leaders and military and intelligence officials over the wisdom of attacking Iran has begun to...

This joke was recently made by Jimmy Kimmel, America's most popular late night show comedian where President Obama brought a visit last week.
Is this really new?

The Dutch company Philips has made a revolutionary new light bulb that can last for twenty years. Do you think when the developer thought of this, a light bulb went off over his head?

Are the promises Mitt Romney is making going to blow up in his face? Does anyone expect the Republican presdential candidate to create an economic miracle or just another list of broken vows:

Babington, AP: Romney will put the nation on a path to a balanced budget while cutting an array of taxes, building up the Navy and Air Force and adding 100,000 active-duty military personnel. He says he would slash domestic spending and reduce tax loopholes but has offered few details...
Even conservatives have their doubts.

President Obama visited Jimmy Fallon's late night comedy show, the same day that Mitt Romney became the unofficial presidential candidate for the Republican Party. Obama had to answer some tough questions from Jimmy, like this tweet from the public:.

Fallon: If Mitt Romney was in the room right now, what would you say to him?
Obama: I'd say, 'Hey, Mitt.'

Even in conservative (Gallup) and rightwing (Rasmussen) polls Barack Obama is ahead of Mitt Romney now. That's pretty amazing since the Republican presidential nomination race is over. All viable othe candidates have withdrawn. You would expect more voters for the Republican candidate by now.

Gallup Poll: Obama d. Romney (50-43)
Rasmussen: Obama d. Romney (47-46)

This is a graph with shows how many low paid workers there are in the developed countries. Not unexpected the U.S. has the highest share of low paid workers of the developed world.
The Netherlands is quite high on the list too.
Income inequality is directly correlated with less economic growth, more crime and less stability in a country.

In America the word is spread that wind turbines kill millions of birds every year. It's based on research by thinktanks financed by Big Oil and Coal and other enemies of renewable energy sources. Bird experts and statisticians don't agree.
Now there's a report on the damage 84,000 communication towers in the U.S. does to birds. Tv and radio towers kill almost 7 million birds a year. Some of the towers are hundreds of meters high.

The taller the tower the greater the threat, the study found. The 1,000 or so towers above 900 feet accounted for only 1.6 percent of the total number of towers. Yet these skyscraper towers killed 70 percent of the birds, about 4.5 million a year.

Fox News is heavily promoting this video that attacks Barack Obama as the 'celebrety president'. The attack ad is financed by Karl Rove, the man who made George W. Bush. Rove is also a paid political analyst at Fox News. The tv network thinks the video is devastating for President Obama. They called it a "bombshell" and "fabulous" and "the most effective anti-Obama ad I have seen."
Is it?

It was  buy four primaries, get one for free-week in the U.S.A. So Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won all five primaries.
It proves again that in America even a multimillionaire white guy from Harvard can go to the top.

Like everything in the U.S. the politics of drugs is heavily influenced by money. The American prison industry - a quarter of all prisoners worldwde is sitting in an American prison - is spending millions of dollars every year supporting political candidates who want to prolong the endless War on Drugs. People who hoped that President Obama would change that counterproductive policy were wrong. Obama is not a president with bold moves. This week he gave an interview to Rolling Stone and was asked why his government was cracking down aggressively on medical marijuana producers in the U.S., even in states where medical marijuana is legal.
This is how the president responded, followed by comments by Glenn Greenwald, a strong proponent of the liberal drug policies of Portugal and the Netherlands::

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

The same day that Mitt Romney became the unofficial presidential candidate for the Republican Party, now that Newt Gingrich has withdrawn his candidacy, Barack Obama hit the news hard in America. And got attacked for it by Republicans.
Not so much what the president said - reducing the debt burden for students - but where he said it, annoyed the hell out of Republicans. Compare the presence of this man to Mitt - 'severely conservative' - Romney. I really can't wait for the debates.

The popularity of the three most important women in the U.S.A. as recorded in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's wife, Ann and former American president Bill Clinton's wife, Hillary. The popularity of Secretary of State Clinton is at an historical high.

Fox News hates Jesus and that's why Glenn Beck got fired ... left the news network that wasn't rightwing enough for Glenn - 'Obama has a deep seated hatred for white people' - Beck. 
Apparently, the Lord spoke to Beck that he had to leave Fox News by sending Fox-boss Ailes into his office and fire his crazy ass.
Indeed, the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Glenn Beck walked up to a floor-to-ceiling window in his New York apartment and asked his wife, “How could this possibly be God’s plan?”
“As I stood there, the Lord whispered to me, ‘If you do not leave now, you will lose your soul,’” Beck said. “It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.”

Jimmy Margulies, The Record of Hackensack, NJ

Rightwing bully Rush Limbaugh doesn't want you to see this video. He demanded that the video, made by the leftwing blog DailyKos, was removed from YouTube. It was pulled. You can still see the video now in numerous other places, among them here on drasties.
DailyKos has asked YouTube to restore the video.

The video is a compilation of Rush Limbaugh himself talking on his radio show about the sexual habits of female law school students. And about the sexual habits of one law student, Sandra Fluke, in particular 53 times.
Sandra Fluke is a law student who was asked to testify in Congress about birth control. She didn't testify about herself but on behalf of a friend who needed access to contraceptives for non-reproductive medical reasons.
As a result of Rush' diatribe tens of U.S. companies stopped advertising on the Rush Limbaugh Show.

This is what the great leader of the American rightwing, Rush Limbaugh, made of it: "She wants us to pay for her sex. What does that make her... .. it makes her a slut, right. a prostitute?"

DailyKos has asked YouTube to restore the video:

A closing question for Google: Want...

The, for American standards, well informed blog ThinkProgress writes that the government in the Netherlanders has fallen over austerity measures.

American actress Eliza Dushku had a crush on her bishop, Mitt Romney, now the Republican presidential frontrunner.

Dushku was raised as a Mormon.

Dusku: “I mean, he was my first crush at six years old but when I was old enough to hear what was coming out of his mouth, it was all over.”

Where is George Zimmerman when you need him? Meet the neighbors:

Jean Kalonji and his wife Angelica, both legal immigrants from Congo, were moving into the house they had just bought when they were confronted at gunpoint by two neighbors, arrested and forced to spend the night in jail.

The neighborhood watchmen didn’t believe they had bought the home and since the Kalonji's didn’t have the closing papers with them, deputies arrested them, charged them with loitering and prowling and took them to jail.

Gallup Poll is scoring constistenly lower in it's polls for Democrats compared to Republicans.
This is the approval rating for President Obama according to Gallup. In most other polls Obama scores around 50 percent.

Like in other polls in Gallup Poll Obama's approval rating is also improving. But it remains below the averages at the same point in time for presidents who were re-elected.
All presidents since Eisenhower who were re-elected enjoyed average approval ratings above 50% at this time of the election process.

While living in Indonesia as an 8 year old kid Barack Obama was introduced to some unusual meats. The president ate dog, according to his memoirs. 
Would that be where the floppy ears come from?