Big media has done a terrific job last decade of "Dumbing Down" the public. That is what sells. hard to find decent programming that can really be called entertainment. Even news has been turned into infotainment. News people are not reporting the NEWS, they are giving us their TAKE of the news from the corp board room. Soon we should have sitcoms about .................................. Everything about people acting bad or wanting to be a instant star. Where will it end? As for me, i am glad to be close to retirement, i paid my dues in a great country and enjoyeed every minute of it all. I see fewer and fewer people feeling that way today. you can see it in their dress, tattoos, foul mouths in public etc. They say things change....how true, how very true.
I will add that the Dems had felt the pain of their flock one more time with a surge of their own in the pre-election period last year. This surge being of anti-war, anti-president, "we're losing", "vote for us and we will bring our boys home" rhetoric which the sheep heartily bit into hook, line and sinker. They did this knowing full well that once comfortably seated in their new offices surrounded by hand-picked drapery colored in shades reminiscent of a city by a bay, that they would not have the cajones nor the will to do any such thing. They will keep the rhetoric up for the benefit of the move-on crowd and feign a victory as they "reluctantly" fork over the money to a man that they secretly adore for doing what he believes to be necessary rather than what is popular, after all, populism and political appeasement are their own fuel sources and they'd like to keep them to themselves, thank you very much. Besides, it's a lot easier to whore some tax dollars into a bridge to nowhere or another crop subsidy, and they can easily divert attention by using the annual pre-summer gasoline price bump to say a few bad things about big oil.
Another reason, besides demographics, why these comparisons are apples and oranges is because these boutique countries do not need to spend 50% of their budget on defense, not even close! What a luxury that is.
Recent Poll of U.S. Muslims The headline that 1 in 4 young U.S. Muslims justify suicide attacks in certain situations has gotten a lot of press these past few days. There is some equally eye-opening data from this recent poll which I have not seen discussed. "Only 5 percent of U.S. Muslims expressed favorable views of the terrorist group al-Qaida, though about a fourth did not express an opinion." "Only 5 percent" is how it's described in the press. So how many is that? Recent estimates of the number of Muslims in the US range from 1.6 million to as high as 12 million. We can us a low-ball guess of 4 million and conclude that according to this poll there are 200,000 muslims living in the U.S. who have favorable views of al-Qaida. That's not all, that is only the number of Muslims who spoke out and expressed those views. What about the 25% (1 million) who did not express an opinion? Surely at least some of those, if not many, share those views as well. Also interesting- "Only 40 percent said that they believe Arab men carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." I guess now we know who many of the inside job simpletons are. The U.S. had better get to fighting TWO simultaneous types of war on terror if it hopes to survive- the military one, and another for hearts and minds. We've got the first one going, it's time to engage in the second. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18797530/ http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_numb.htm
Sad Story Sometimes a toddler in the USA is less safe than a soldier in Iraq. CALUMET CITY, Ill. - A man beat his girlfriendâs 4-year-old son to death after she left the boy in his care while she was deployed to Iraq, police said. A judge denied bond on Saturday for Donell Parker, 23, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Cameron Smith. Parker was charged Friday, a day after the boy was found dead in his bed in a suburb south of Chicago. Judge Frank Castiglione said at Saturdayâs bail hearing that Parker showed a âwanton disrespect for human life.â Prosecutors told the court the boy suffered multiple rib fractures, damaged internal organs and swelling around his brain. Parker told police he beat the boy, but would not say why, said Calumet City police Chief Patrick OâMeara. Parkerâs lawyer, Marcos Reyes, said his client denied all the charges. Cameron was punched in the head, stomach and chest, and whipped with a belt from Tuesday to Wednesday evening, OâMeara said. An autopsy found he died of blunt-force trauma to the abdomen and head, OâMeara said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18884363/