kamui

As a GOP candidate you can f@ck any women you want, married or not - as long as you pretend to be a conservative Christian. As the current GOP candidates show, it not about substance at all, just posture and saying what the conservative audience wants to hear.

The USA are neglecting a major future market! Instead of pumping millions into research and giving tax breaks for clean energy they still give tax breaks to big oil and ignore all warning signs in regard to Global Warming, e.g. . Another field were they are shoveling their own grave. PS: China is pumping billions into research and production of sun collectors e.g.. At the moment they are destroying German sun collector companies by slashing prices by half or more...

I just read his biography. Before he founded the company he was a real hippie. He traveled to India in search for a guru and he did a lot of meditation (Zen). He went barefoot most of the time. He was a strict vegetarian and in his early years he had phases when he almost only ate fruit. Because of this he thought that he his body wouldn't become smelly. After he founded the company had to be frequently reminded to take a shower at least once a week... When he and Steve Wozniak earned their first money (Steve acquired the contract, Wozniak did the work) Jobs defrauded Wozniak, by not telling him the full amount earned and by not paying him the 50% they had agreed upon. Wozniak learnt about this only decades later. I guess what made him special was his extreme personality, his extremely independent mind, his constant challenge of rules (society, how to run a business, how things are getting done, e.g.) mixed with a really good education and a good upbringing by simple, but strong and caring parents. And very important: this was mixed with the Zeitgeist of the Hippie movement which wanted to change the world. But he didn't want to change the world with free sex or spiritual awaking, but through technology. In regard to his personality: he seemed to have some severe emotional deficits - he must have been a complete asshole in his early company years. He frequently tried and succeeded to destroy people working for him by abusing them verbally. At 25 he was already a multi millionaire, nevertheless he refused contact to his first daughter, born to his former girl friend. Even later when was even more rich his daughter had to borrow money from a friend of Steve for to pay for college. Steve was everything the conservatives hated and hate, except that he was one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 20th century and lived the American dream to the fullest.

I am constantly surprised to see Obama painted as that bad. I mean GWB gave the chicken-hawks control over the military and to the major companies control over the government. He was in power when the US economy imploded and the USA went to two wars which are being lost and waste of billions of tax payers money. While Obama is pulling out of Afghanistan as well as out of Iraq, got Bin Laden killed and got Libya solved without any US solider being killed. In regard to the economy Obama is in fact weak and he doesn't seem to be clever/tough enough to run the complex political machine in Washington. But actually he didn't make it really worse, he just kept on doing what GWB did before. The rich are getting richer and the rest is getting poorer. That is how it is since 2-3 decades in the USA. Anyway more and more the world sees that the US political system is corrupt to its core and completely dysfunctional. The politicians - led by the corps, directly or through K-street, think tanks and astro turf groups - are neither interested in the good of the country nor in the welfare of the people (like declaring Pizza as vegetable for to keep certain companies in business, while feeding junk food to the kids at school). Seeing all the dopes on the GOP side who want to become president I wonder how you can believe that they could do any better. Most of them seem to lack basic knowledge, some of them have a terrible political and personal past, some promote crazy right wing talking points, which are so stupid that the world media outside the US just need to quote them to have the people rolling laughing on the floor. Until now none of the GOP candidates went ahead because of his qualities, but because one candidate after another imploded. In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Soon the (still) most powerful country of the world will be ruled by a handicapped president. I couldn't happen at a worse time.

Following this logic the blow job Clinton received was worth billions of US$ for the common Americans. When GWB took office - a man who probably even did not have sex with his wife - everything went down. The difference between the Dems and GOP: The GOP tried to put Clinton out of office for one proven blow job with an intern. McCain did want to become president with three known cases of sexual harassment and an extramarital affair which lasted for several years. Now the GOP has the problem that their candidates are being measured by the GOP's forcefully promoted moral standards when they tried to impeach Clinton: being faithful to your wife 100%. This of course might/should eliminate McCain as well as Newt Gingrich. I guess the GOP never expected that their moral standards would become an Boomerang to their own candidates.

Hehe, as if the Birthers, Fox and friends, et al, would not have used this issue to destroy Obama's presidency from the beginning. The Internet can't be suppressed as the US fringe groups show daily... I guess you also will find websites claiming that Obama is infact an alien from outer space, as well that he is KGB sleeper, as well that he is a Muslim terrorist. - In addition to all the stories that he is born in Kenya, a secret Muslim, a radical Christian, a socialist, a communist and a Nazi, a dictator, an enemy of the USA. Did I forget something?

From an European perspective, the Dems might do bad politics, but they seem to be far less crazy than the current field of GOP candidates. Or could you provide equally crazy quotes and information on leading Dem pols from the past 3-4 weeks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpAcbC1Gs6g

Foreign view on the GOP candidates: A Club of Liars, Demagogues and Ignoramuses A Commentary by Marc Pitzke The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation. Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed -- well, they shouldn't make such a big deal about it. Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they've been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what's still the most powerful job in the world. As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop. It's true that on the road to the White House all sorts of things can happen, and usually do. No campaign can avoid its share of slip-ups, blunders and embarrassments. Yet this time around, it's just not that funny anymore. In fact, it's utterly horrifying. It's horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They're ruining the reputation of the United States. 'Freakshow' They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They've shown such stark lack of knowledge -- political, economic, geographic, historical -- that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe. "When did the GOP lose touch with reality?" wonders Bush's former speechwriter David Frum in New York Magazine. In the New York Times, Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's former chief-of-staff, called this campaign season a "reality show," while Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan confidante Peggy Noonan even spoke of a "freakshow." That may be the most appropriate description. Tough times demand tough and smart minds. But all these dopes have to offer are ramblings that insult the intelligence of all Americans -- no matter if they are Democrats, Republicans or neither of the above. Yet just like any freakshow, this one would be unthinkable without a stage (in this case, the media, strangling itself with all its misunderstood "political correctness" and "objectivity") and an audience (the party base, which this year seems to have suffered a political lobotomy). Factually Challenged And so the farce continues. The more mind-boggling its incarnations, the happier the US media are to cheer first one clown and then the next, elevating and then eliminating "frontrunners" in reliable news cycles of about 45 days. Take Herman Cain, "businessman." He sat out the first wave of sexual harassment claims against him by offering a peculiar argument: Most ladies he had encountered in his life, he said, had not complained. In the most recent twist, a woman accused Cain of having carried on a 13-year affair with her. That, too, he tried to casually wave off, but now, under pressure, he says he wants to "reassess" his campaign. If Cain indeed drops out, the campaign would lose its biggest caricature: He has been the most factually challenged of all these jesters. As CEO of the "Godfather's" pizza chain, Cain killed jobs -- but now poses as the job-creator-in-chief. Meanwhile, he seems to lack basic economic know-how, let alone a rudimentary grasp of politics or geography. Libya confounds him. He does not believe that China is a nuclear power. And all other, slightly more complicated questions get a stock answer: "Nine-nine-nine!" Remember? That's Cain's tax reduction plan that would actually raise taxes for 84 percent of Americans. Has any of that disrupted Cain's popularity in the media or with his fan base? Far from it. Since Oct. 1, he has collected more than $9 million in campaign donations. Enough to plow through another onslaught of denouements. No Shortage of Chutzpah Then there's Newt Gingrich, the current favorite. He's a political dinosaur, dishonored and discredited. Or so we thought. Yet just because he studied history and speaks in more complex sentences than his rivals, the US media now reflexively hails him as a "Man of Ideas" (The Washington Post) -- even though most of these ideas are lousy if not downright offensive, such as firing unionized school janitors, so poor children could do their jobs. Pompous and blustering, Gingrich gets away with this humdinger as well as with selling himself as a Washington outsider -- despite having made millions of dollars as a lobbyist in Washington. At least the man's got chutzpah. The hypocrisy doesn't end here. Gingrich claims moral authority on issues such as the "sanctity of marriage," yet he's been divorced twice. He sprang the divorce on his first wife while she was sick with cancer. (His supporters' excuse: It's been 31 years, and she's still alive.) He cheated on his second wife just as he was pressing ahead with Bill Clinton's impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky affair, unaware of the irony. The woman he cheated with, by the way, was one of his House aides 23 years his junior -- and is now his perpetually smiling third wife. Americans have a short memory. They forget, too, that Gingrich was driven out of Congress in disgrace, the first speaker of the house to be disciplined for ethical wrongdoing. Or that he consistently flirts with racism when he speaks of Barack Obama. Or that he enjoyed a $500,000 credit line at Tiffany's just as his campaign was financially in the toilet and he ranted about the national debt. Chutzpah, indeed. Yet the US media rewards him with a daily kowtow. And the Republicans reward him too, by having put him on top in the latest polls. Mr. Hypocrisy, the bearer of his party's hope. "I think he's doing well just because he's thinking," former President Clinton told the conservative online magazine NewsMax. "People are hungry for ideas that make some sense." Sense? Apparently it's not just the Republicans who have lost their minds here. The Eternal Runner-Up And what about the other candidates? Rick Perry's blunders are legendary. His "oops" moment in South Carolina. His frequently slurred speech, as if he was drunk. His TV commercials putting words in Obama's mouth that he didn't say (such as, "Americans are 'lazy'"). His preposterous claim that as governor of Texas he created 1 million jobs, when the total was really just about 100,000. But what's one digit? Elsewhere, Perry would have long ago been disqualified. But not here in the US. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann has fallen off the wagon, although she's still tolerated as if she's a serious contender. Ron Paul's fan club gets the more excited, the more puzzling his comments get. Jon Huntsman, the only one who occasionally makes some sort of sense, has been relegated to the poll doldrums ever since he showed sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Which leaves Mitt Romney, the eternal flip-flopper and runner-up, who by now is almost guaranteed to clinch the nomination, even though no one in his party seems to like or want him. He stiffly delivers his talking points, which may or may not contradict his previous positions. After all, he's been practicing this since 2008, when he failed to snag the nomination from John McCain. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. As an investor, Romney once raked in millions and, like Cain, killed jobs along the way. So now he says he's the economy's savior. To prove that, he has presented an economic plan that the usually quite conservative business magazine Forbes has labeled "dangerous," asking incredulously, "About Mitt Romney, the Republicans can't be serious." Apparently they're not, but he is, running TV spots against Obama already, teeming with falsehoods. Good for Ratings What a nice club that is. A club of liars, cheaters, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites and ignoramuses. "A starting point for a chronicle of American decline," was how David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, described the current Republican race. The Tea Party would take issue with that assessment. They cheer the loudest for the worst, only to see them fail, as expected, one by one. Which goes to show that this "movement," sponsored by Fox News, has never been interested in the actual business of governing or in the intelligence and intellect that requires. They are only interested in marketing themselves, for ratings and dollars. So the US elections are a reality show after all, a pseudo-political counterpart to the Paris Hiltons, Kim Kardashians and all the American Idol and X Factor contestants littering today's TV. The cruder, the dumber, the more bizarre and outlandish -- the more lucrative. Especially for Fox News, about which the Fairleigh Dickinson University found out that its viewers are far less informed than people who don't watch TV news at all. Maybe that's the solution: Just ignore it all, until election day. Good luck with that -- this docudrama with its soap-opera twists is way too enthralling. The latest rumor du jour involves a certain candidate who long ago seemed to have disappeared from the radar. Now she may be back, or so it is said, to bring order into this chaos. Never mind that her name is synonymous with chaos: Sarah Palin. http://www.spiegel.d...,800850,00.html

...the deeper they fall....

Definitely. Anyway looking from abroad this endless campaign becomes really disgusting. There is nothing of substance happing - just posture, demagogy, falsehoods, attacks and counter attacks - while _absolutely_ nothing is being getting done. Just to think, that this is just a preliminary phase of the election gives a really dark outlook for 2012. While the major parts of the Western world are imploding the US political elite is most busy with infighting, using up most of their resources and energy.

Support for Tea Party Falls in Strongholds, Polls Show By KATE ZERNIKE Support for the Tea Party — and with it, the Republican Party — has fallen sharply even in places considered Tea Party strongholds, according to an analysis of new polls. In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagree with the movement has risen significantly since it powered a Republican sweep in midterm elections; almost as many people disagree with it as agree with it, according to the analysis by the Pew Research Center. Support for the Republican Party has fallen even further in those places than it has in the country as a whole. In the 60 districts represented in Congress by a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Republicans are now viewed about as negatively as Democrats. The analysis suggests that the Tea Party may be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives just a year ago. Other polls have shown a decline in support for the Tea Party and its positions, particularly because its hard line during the debate over the debt ceiling and deficit reduction made it less an abstraction than it was a year ago. In earlier polls, most Americans did not know enough about the Tea Party to offer an opinion. “We know that the image of the G.O.P. has slipped, but to see it slip so dramatically in Tea Party districts is pretty surprising,†said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Center. “You think of those as bedrock Republican districts. They are the base.†The number of people who disagree with the Tea Party has also risen among the general public, according to the most recent of the polls in the Pew analysis, taken this month. Among the public, 27 percent said they disagreed with the Tea Party and 20 percent said they agreed — a reversal from a year ago, when 27 percent agreed and 22 percent disagreed. In Tea Party districts, 23 percent of people now disagree with the Tea Party, while 25 percent agree. A year ago, 18 percent of people in those districts disagreed with the Tea Party, and 33 percent agreed. In another poll in the Pew analysis, conducted in October, 48 percent of people in Tea Party districts said they had a negative view of the Republican Party, while 41 percent said they had a favorable view. The favorable rating had dropped 14 percentage points since March. That drop was steeper than it was among the general public, where the percentage of people with a favorable opinion of the Republican Party had fallen to 36 percent, from 42 percent in March. Opinions about the Democratic Party have shifted less, nationally and in Tea Party districts. Among the general public, favorable ratings for the Democratic Party fell to 46 percent in October from 50 percent in August. In Tea Party districts, favorable ratings for the Democrats stayed about the same — at 39 percent in October and 37 percent in August. There was even some evidence that Tea Party Republicans were viewing Democrats a little less harshly. The share of people in Tea Party districts who viewed the Democrats unfavorably had fallen to 50 percent in October, from 57 percent in August. How much this affects Republican chances in the presidential contest next year, Mr. Kohut said, probably depends on which candidate wins the nomination. “If the candidate is of a more conservative bent, he or she will have to deal with this complaint about the Tea Party among the general public, of being too extreme and not willing to compromise,†he said. “The focus has been very much on the candidate and not on the party, but going into this election, the party has problems,†he said. “Which isn’t to say that people are wildly enthusiastic about the Democratic Party, but it hasn’t lost the kind of favor the G.O.P. has.†The analysis is based on polls conducted by the Pew Research Center from March 2010 through November. NYT

I guess it is too late for a white GOP knight, right?

US Congress rules that pizza is a vegetable Does this look like a vegetable to you?Image: Jyoti Das via Flickr PIZZA CAN BE classed as a vegetable – at least according to a decision made by the US Congress. Who knew? American lawmakers have ruled that the amount of tomato paste in pizza sauce means that pizzas can be counted as a vegetable. The bizarre move, which was decided in a vote on the annual spending bill for the Department of Agriculture, happened for purely political reasons. The crucial bill had oversight over subsidised school meals, and the department was seeking to restrict pizza, chips and starchy vegetables from the menu for school children in a bid to combat child obesity. MSNBC reports that politicians had been lobbied heavily by the frozen food industry who didn’t want to see a major revenue stream cut off given how often pizza is found on the menus of school canteens in the US. School meals subsidised by the government are mandated to include a certain amount of vegetables and the Department of Agriculture’s plan would have pushed pizza-makers at least partly out of the school lunch business. The salt industry, potato growers, and some conservative politicians who said that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in telling children what to eat, also lobbied against the change. After some debate, Congress voted that anything containing two tablespoons of tomato sauce can be labelled a vegetable, putting pizza into the vegetable categor The Obama administration is fighting to make school lunches healthier in the face of a growing obesity problem across the country. http://www.thejourna...282033-Nov2011/

Sometimes I think some you Americans are really small minded people. Complaining about the fact that the president is traveling too much... As if Obama and his family could - or even should - travel on the cheap. But this article doesn't come as a surprise, since it is not the first of this kind. Before there where complaints that his summer holiday was too expensive (Martha's Wineyeard) or the the stupid allegation by Fox and co. that Obama's trip to India last year did cost 200 mio USD _per day_. This would be more than the war in Tip to Mumbai Anyway, spending for Airforce One is just peanuts in the US government's budget. Compare this to the military budget of 663.84 billion USD (2010). In the year 2000 it was below 300 billion USD. Strangely most Americans seem to ignore the military budget when talking about exploding costs.

Newt has a company for historical advice to financial institutions? I am becoming even more jealous. Why did I not come up with this... I am just trying to figure out what advice he must have given to them just before they needed to be bailed out with billions of US taxpayer's money. It was probably on the level of "Pecunia non olet".

While I think that the president of the USA is much more powerful than many other heads of states, it seems that the system is so dysfunctional that even the strongest president can't win against the vested interests, the extremely powerful lobby groups and the corruption. The failure of the super committee has shown that there are extremely strong groups which are not interested in a solution which would pull the USA out of the mess. For those groups their own interests are more important than the fate of the USA.

Yeah, Newt, the one who started f@cking upcoming wife 2, while still being married to wife 1. He asked wife 1 for divorce while she was in hospital recovering of cancer. Next he left wife 2 with whom he was still married for wife 3. While being married with wife 2 and f@cking upcoming wife 3 (of course a House staffer and 23 years younger) Newt lead the impeachment of Bill Clinton because the Monica L. scandal. The Newt who received 300.000 USD from Fannie (or was it Freddie) for advice he gave as an historian for ca. 1 hr. a week? I guess that was the best paid job a historian ever had. Too bad that I did study history for just one year - I could have beene a rich man by now. I guess that's the candidate who represents the GOP's values best.

double post

How to make friends with the biggest investor in Alabama. By the way Mercedes intends to invest 2 billion USD in Alamba in 2014 - if Alamba is able to keep the German managers out of jail until then... Police arrest visting Mercedes executive under Alabama immigration law Published: Friday, November 18, 2011, 7:25 PM TUSCALOOSA, Alabama -- A German manager with Mercedes-Benz is free after being arrested for not having a driver's license with him under Alabama's new law targeting illegal immigrants, police said Friday. Tuscaloosa Police Chief Steven Anderson told The Associated Press an officer stopped a rental vehicle for not having a tag Wednesday night and asked the driver for his license. The man only had a German identification card, so he was arrested and taken to police headquarters, Anderson said. The 46-year-old executive was charged with violating the immigration law for not having proper identification, but he was released after an associate retrieved his passport, visa and German driver's license from the hotel where he was staying, Anderson said. It wasn't immediately known how long the man was in custody or the status of his court case. The law -- parts of which were put on hold amid legal challenges -- requires that police check citizenship status during traffic stops and take anyone who doesn't have proper identification to a magistrate. Anderson said that's what was done, but someone in the same situation wouldn't have been arrested before the law took effect. "If it were not for the immigration law, a person without a license in their possession wouldn't be arrested like this," he said. Previously, drivers who lacked licenses received a ticket and a court summons, according to Anderson. Mercedes-Benz spokeswoman Felyicia Jerald said the man is from Germany and was visiting Alabama on business. The company's first U.S. assembly plant is located just east of Tuscaloosa. "This was an unfortunate situation, but the incident was resolved when our colleague ... was able to provide his driver's license and other documents to Tuscaloosa police," Jerald said. http://blog.al.com/b...g_mercedes.html

Why do you think a change in the White House will change much? The current GOP candidates are as incompetent as an politician can be. While this doesn't seem to matter on state level (see Rick Perry), it would have severe consequences if one of the current GOP loonies would become president. You can say about Obama what you want, he actually knows what he is talking about, while McCain, Perry, Bachman, e.g. seem to have failed in high school latest. I am sure the 1% are feeling really terrible at the moment. GWB and the other GOP players kissed their asses for many, many years and now this: people demand that they pay as much tax as the middle class does. I guess the 1.000 USD psycho therapy sessions in N.Y. are booked out for months.

From an outside view it doesn't matter anymore whom to blame for the current crisis. What matters now is that the political system has become so dysfunctional that it is incapable of finding and implementing proper solutions to overcome the self-caused mess. First the Reps blocked any solution in spring, now the so called super committee failed completely with Dems and Reps blaming each other, and soon the election campaign will be in full swing. In the worst case there won't be a real solution until 2013. IMHO US politics are as deeply split as in LOS. Dems against Reps, like Red Shirts against Yellow Shirts. While the people in LOS can improvise and if they fail, no one outside SE Asia will really notice, an even more declining USA will have severe consequences all around the world. We will all have to pay for it. I guess the elite in the USA still doesn't feel enough pain to face the reality. Just compare this with Greece and Italy. In both countries the traditionally terrible and corrupt politicians who ran their countries into the ground have been fired and replaced by technocrats - but both countries had almost to declare bankruptcy until this could happen.

Not all of us fought is the Spanish-American War.

So the difference is, that they entered the building from the roof and killed Bin Laden. This fact is of course changing everything.