Not so many European countries follow all the directives such as obligatory CE- marking on imported devices. It is widely known that manufacturers just put the CE-marking in the products without testing them for CE compliance in the certified laboratory. Certification is quite a big business though…

Finland is just stupid enough to follow all the EU directives and blindly obey them even if they were harmful for the economy.

Nobody can blame the politicians for much intelligence…

Sweet. And my income has increased about 5-fold under Tarja. All hail the Red Commander!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fGCsh_bnhuQ

I went to the link you posted, and I can see why Ted Nugent’s comments are inflammatory. He’s a jerk! But the fact that Sean Hannity, his supposed friend, won’t disavow him doesn’t indict Hannity in my book. If people disavowed each friend who said something distasteful or rude, many of us would be lonely.

Dave, you need to stop drinking the cool aid.

I do not watch or listen to any of them. Just when do I have time. I am out of the house around 7AM. I have a 15 minute car drive to the office. If I am not listening to music, then I have National Public Radio on, which is probably as liberal as you can get for radio, at least radio that anyone listens to. I get home around 6PM and I deal with the kids until about 8PM. If I am lucky, I get to watch the first 15 minutes of ABC’s World News Tonight. Again, not exactly neocon ground. Then maybe. Just maybe I can watch some TV with my wife. That takes me to 10PM. Then I try to work on my blog and do other computer stuff until about midnight. No TV is on. Then I go to bed. On Wednesday evenings I go out shooting from 7-10PM. So just when you you think I am getting my daily brainwashing?

Oddly, you seem to be really plugged into the news services.

“That you call these people “news messengers” underscores my point.”
– And what is that anyway. I just pointed in in two posts now, that I don’t watch any of the messengers.

“These pundits are taking you and your family for a ride”
– You know what I don’t get about all you oil company haters, is that if these companies are such great cash machines, then why don’t you own some stock? Where do you think all that profit goes?
– Well if the guys in charge now are taking me for a ride, then what about Obama. Since he wants to raise my taxes, that would make me oven worse off with him in charge……

“that there indeed is something going on with global warming”
– Is the planet getting warmer? At least is was.
– The issue is not whether or not the planet is getting warmer, but if so, what is the cause. Reducing carbon emissions makes sense IF carbon is to blame.
– The US should drill more. We have much more to drill. We should also be using much more coal and nuclear for that matter. So should the third world. Everyone should have access to cheap electricity.

“the fiasco now known as the most disasterous US presidential administration”
– Really, maybe your opinion. I however am better off than I was eight years ago. What are you basing this one?

As for Hannity, I pulled this up:

Hannity refused to disavow Ted Nugent’s slurs against Obama and Clinton http://mediamatters.org/items/200708270006?f=s_search

I think it’s really important to keep a level head and listen to both sides before resorting to hyperbole.

Those three are the three biggest names in right wing media (primarily AM radio). Beck pulls in 10 million clams annually just for his syndicated radio show, he also has an hour long program that runs on CNN Headline news, which is repeated three times a night. Don’t tell me he and the others don’t have massive influence on your thought processes, because each time I hear stuff like “Gore is trying to take over the world with his Global Warming Hoax,” it is just an echo of what these fat media cats are saying. Every time I hear that Obama is a terrorist involved in a Commie plot to give America to the Negroes, I hear the reverberations of these pudgy pundits (that you claim never to listen to).

That you call these people “news messengers” underscores my point. They are decidedly NOT news messengers, they are (politely) entertainers and messengers of Republican talking points and more commonly, mongers of hate and sources of lies and obfuscation.

That the right in the US has now admitted that there indeed is something going on with global warming but continue to deny that it is related to fossil fuels is just another one of their lapses in logic.

“The planet will be fine…” You reassure us (and likely your children). Meanwhile the Right, struggling to redefine itself after the fiasco now known as the most disasterous US presidential administration, wants to pretend that the US can slake its thirst for oil by drilling in Alaska (or wherever)… These pundits are taking you and your family for a ride and don’t care when they just stop the car and drop you and your kids on the side of the (delapidated) highway.

If you refer to the objective reality as “accepted group think”, then this is most definitely the case.

Talk about lack of creativity. Any conservative that says anything against the accepted group think is immediately tagged with being a Fox News/Drudge Report zombie. As written above Franklin was the one to attempt to discredit my comments by linking me to news sources that liberals can’t stand.

You too have added what I guess are media personalities distasteful to the left. Glenn Beck? Who the hell is that? I don’t watch Sean Hannity (I had to look him up because I thought he was on NBC) and I don’t have time to listen to Rush Limbaugh. It seems that too many people are all too concerned with the news messengers and too little concerned about actual news.

Maybe that’s why propaganda works so well in the western world. You just need to find the right personality and your all Good. How sad.

Gee, how did we get here from jet-skis!

Well, it is possible that the whopping 676 mopoautos registered during the first half of 2008 (as opposed to 99207 regular vehicles) all went to Tampere. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been there in a couple of years.

The stats: http://www.ake.fi/AKE/Tilastot/Ensirekister%C3%B6innit/Ensirekister%C3%B6innit+kuukausittain+ja+ajoneuvolajeittain/2008+ja+2007.htm

Before we descend any further into idiocy (as I will no doubt be beaten with experience), it would perhaps be good to note that these mopoautos are rather a symptom of the increasing affluence rather than the wretched poverty of Finns, as they cost as much as the cheapest real cars (around 10k); they can be driven by any 15 year old whereas you need to be 18 for a licence, so many a rugrat gets one for his/her confirmation present.

“By the way, Drudge does not report any news, it just links to some stories.”

Some stories indeed. If you rely on that as your only source of news, you will emerge with a world view as skewed as that of, um, some people.

“What do you read, Pravda?”

If you mean HS, quite regularly. If the original, I occasionally read the English edition online.

It doesn’t say very much about your creativity or thought process.

Additionally, your comment:”At least those who want to buy a car in the US can afford one, even the poo,” speaks volumes about the fantasy world in which you apparently reisde.

And it was not the Drudge report I was watching about the trucker threat it was Finnish news, which covered the threat in great details including the Government’s threat of big fines if any truckers disturbed the midsummer exodus from the capital. Only once the threats came out did the union speak out against it, partly because there was immediate support among the truckers and partly because they got their message across.

By the way, Drudge does not report any news, it just links to some stories. Are you saying the stories he links to are not true???? What do you read, Pravda? Worker’s World?

I suppose you can expect from someone who reads the Drudge Report regularly. In reality, though, one bozo got the smart idea of initiating an SMS campaign calling for blocking the midsummer traffic. His own union was against it, for chrissakes.

Yeah, and I think I’ve seen a few mopoautos too. In the 1970s.

This is all very simple. Ever heard of Volvo and Saab? In comparison, those few Porsches put together in Uusikaupunki are not a sufficient reason to eliminate the car tax.

We’ll see if the switchover to sporty hybdrids will have political consequences. I doubt it.

http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/