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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Pithy vacation items

 

I'm embedded for the next 10 days in a southern mountain town, with every intention of ignoring the news. That’s the purpose of a vacation. I can’t get with the kind of vacation that Al Pacino had in the film where he played a CBS workaholic who stood in the ocean screaming into his cellphone...OK, Pacino is always screaming, but you get my point. In these mountains I can barely get my cellphone to work, which is fine by me.

Still, I'll undoubtedly write from time to time. Mostly small items and allegedly pithy musings.

The usual verbosity will return next Friday, Sept. 4.

-------

Speaking of small items...

A respected survey firm, Public Policy Polling, has unearthed a statistic that gives us yet another dimension on the ignorance that pervades our nation. The pollsters have been probing the "birther" phenomenon, the refusal of so many Americans to believe that Barack Obama was born on American soil. They solved part of the mystery the other day. Get ready for this one:

Ten percent of Americans don't know that Hawaii is a state.

You read that right. According to PPP, six percent believe that Hawaii is not part of the United States, and four percent are unsure.

Well, that probably explains some of the birthers; these would be the people who acknowledge that Obama was born in Hawaii, but apparently think that Hawaii is some exotic foreign land.

Seriously, 10 percent of Americans don't know that Hawaii has been in the fold for the past 50 years? There are 230 million adults in this country, which means that roughly 23 million of them wouldn't be able to pass a basic civics test. Ponder that one for awhile.

 
Posted by Dick Polman @ 9:01 AM  Permalink | 184 comments
Comments   
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:31 AM, 08/25/2009
    The GOP has nothing but lies and name calling. The longer that this "birther" nonsense goes on, the more marginalized their party will become. This is just another attempt to discredit Obama as the Republicans did with Clinton. Republicans have nothing to offer America except more failed policies like Iraq and the bank bailouts.
    — chasing history
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 9:50 AM, 08/25/2009
    That says alot about the "public option" in education doesn't it?
    — jmc
  • Comment removed.
  • Comment removed.
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:55 AM, 08/25/2009
    You nailed it Tango, George Bush and the GOP found trillions of dollars for a war of choice but refuse to help Americans - IN AMERICA - and then claim some type of perverted morality. lolz......
    — chasing history
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:02 AM, 08/25/2009
    More interesting was that 59% of conservatives said the government should stay out of Medicare.
    — anonymous
  • Comment removed.
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:27 AM, 08/25/2009
    Xi said - "all wars are 'wars of choice'" *sigh* If only more cons would have said this in 2003. All we kept hearing from BushCo was how Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat and that something HAD to be done. NOW!!!!! Ah well. Funny how time changes rhetorical stances with partisan shills. I'm pretty confident both Cheney and Bush would call Iraq a war of necessity. Maybe you can take it up with them, Xi.
    — sully64
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:37 AM, 08/25/2009
    Increasing it seems that people are too dumb or lazy to deal with complicated political issues. Health care. Liberals seem wedded to the "single payer" approach, apparently unaware of better results with multi-payer approaches in France and Germany (the countries with the best systems). Conservatives seem unable to even get a grip on the issues, shouting slogans and vague talk about market-based systems that have never been tried or are even remotely plausible. Thinking about the system as a whole seems beyond people here. This does not bode well for the future in US healthcare.
    — liberal
  • Comment removed.
  • Comment removed.
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 11:41 AM, 08/25/2009
    Avoiding the issue again, Xi. Your position was that the "choice/necessity" paradigm was nothing more than "another throwaway sop from the left." The fact that BushCo sold the Iraq war as one of necessity puts a Mac-truck sized hole in your assertion ... unless you'd care to make the argument that Dick Cheney is a liberal in disguise.
    — sully64


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About Dick Polman

Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.

ARCHIVES

All commentaries posted before April 18, 2008, can be accessed at www.dickpolman.blogspot.com.

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