geld Category

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.

Illegale wietverkoop rijst pan uit in Eindhoven
Opec wekt hard aan lagere olieprijzen
Christina Curry twittert naaktfoto
PvdA eist frietverbod rond scholen

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.

Geweldig meid die is echt heel goed van pas gekomen.

Foto: warhoofd

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer has commissioned a shipyard in China to build an exact replica of the Titanic, complete in every detail. The ship, that will be ready in 2016, will be equipped with all modern technology to prevent a repeat of the fateful maiden voyage a hundred years ago.

"Of course, it will sink if you put a hole in it," the billionaire said. "So it will be designed that it won't be easy to get a hole in it. But if you are superstitious you never know what could happen.".

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...

Yaakov Kirschen, Dry Bones, Israel

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.

Foto: Ergens Anders

a)  Doordat de belletjes uit elkaar spatten.
b)  Door een chemische component in de belletjes.
c)  Door de prijs van de fles.

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.

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune

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::

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

Osama Hajjaj, Abu Mahjoob Creative Productions

The War on Women, on Christmas, on Pizza's, on Fox news....

The Vatican is angry with America's 55,000 Catholic nuns - organised in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious - because they supported President Obama's compromise with bishops over insurance coverage for birth control for women. .

American Catholic bishops like Daniel Jenky are angry too:

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Sister Simone Campbell, head of the organization for nuns, responded:

I've no idea what they're talking about [...] Our role is to live the gospel with those who live on the margins of society. That's all we do.