underthemountainbunker:

A graphic explanation of what’s wrong with America

thepoliticalnotebook:

Nobel Peace Prize winners.  From left to right: President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia (AP Photo); Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee (AP); Yemeni Tawakul Karman who head the organisation Women Journalists Without Chains (AP). 

They were awarded the prize for “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Johnson-Sirleaf is Liberia’s first elected female president and has acted as a reformer in her time in office. Gbowee organized a group of Christian and Muslim women to stand up to Liberian warlords. Karman is a Yemeni journalist who is both a women’s rights activist and a leading protest organiser in Yemen’s Arab Spring uprisings.

Read the AP Story.

“That’s not America! That’s not even Mexico!”-Homer Simpson

dceiver:

… former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer (R). If you’ve been following his presidential campaign — and the media, having shut Roemer out of the debates, has made this hard! — you’ll know that…

motherjones:

Here are two Republican presidential candidates battling over who is more pro-immigration. The ’80s!

It’s important to note that both Presidents did horrible things in Latin America, but what’s also of note here is how radically disconnected the rhetoric is to today’s debates

motherjones:

Chart o’ the Day: Somewhere along the way (okay, 1997), Justice Clarence Thomas stopped filling out his disclosure forms properly. With the Supreme Court set to consider President Obama’s health care reform in the near future—a law Thomas’ wife was paid to lobby against—the liberal watchdog group Common Cause is calling for a formal inquiry.

Nice. But Kansas City is in Missouri. At least the one with the federal reserve bank. That’s something you don’t want to get wrong, especially in Missouri or Kansas given the 160 year history of the two hating each other.

thepoliticalnotebook:

Kansas. Across from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, artist John Salvest has used 117 shipping containers to create a 65’ high structure reading “IOU”. On the other side, not shown here, it says “USA”. The installation piece has generated a lot of discussion, resonating with many people and angering others. The bank is not commenting. (Photo Credit: Orlin Wagner/AP)

[via MSNBC]

ryking:

Global Warming Is Killing Chocolate

By 2030, there will be a massive decline in optimal cacao-growing regions in West Africa.

The fossil fuel pollution that is heating up the planet also threatens the production of coffee, beer, and wine.

(Source: diadoumenos)

wespeakfortheearth:

Russell Simmons: I will bring hundreds of thousands to ‘Occupy Wall Street’

Hip hop magnate Russell Simmons said Thursday on MSNBC that he planned on joining the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” in lower Manhattan.

Simmons, who has an estimated net-worth of $340 million, noted that all his employees paid more taxes than he did.

“Last time I got involved in a protest I brought a hundred thousand people there, for the Rockefeller Drug Laws,” he said. “And if I get involved really heavily in this one, we find the agenda and have a common ground… we can bring hundreds of thousands of people… small seeds are planted, but it could grow into something very big.”

randomactsofchaos:

Michele Bachmann says the wave of democratic uprisings in the Middle East is because of Barack Obama. Well, all right, if you say so - but Bachmann didn’t mean it as a compliment. No, in Michele Bachmann’s mind, this is a very bad thing:

At a campaign stop Thursday in North Carolina, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann blamed Pres. Barack Obama for the outbreak of the Arab Spring, the wave of democracy uprisings across the Middle East.

[…]

Bachman linked the Arab Spring, which has resulted in pro-democracy uprisings in countries like Egypt, Syria and Libya, to the President’s earlier stance that negotiations between Israel and Palestine should begin at the 1967 boundaries.

“And when he called upon Israel to retreat to it’s indefensible 1967 boarders, don’t you think that message wasn’t lost to Israel’s 26 hostile neighbors,” Bachmann said. “You want to know why we have a Arab Spring. Barack Obama has laid the table for Arab Spring by demonstrating weakness from the United States of America.”

So, for Bachmann, citizens in the Middle East rising up against dictatorships to demand democracy is a bad thing. Why exactly? I’m not sure. It appears that democracy and jihad are indistinguishable to Bachmann; given her constant supposition that forcing her own religious beliefs on the rest of America constitutes freedom and democracy, however, I suppose it is understandable that she can’t quite grasp the difference.

randomactsofchaos:

Drew Sheneman/The Star Ledger (9/27/2011)