Kardashianization of the nation
Millennials - not unlike a group who preferred socialism to capitalism in a recent YouGov poll - had a little trouble identifying current and past governmental leaders in a survey at George Mason University. Nearly all of the surveyed college students, whose majors ranged from nursing to accounting to anthropology to government and international politics, failed the test.
Not one student could identify Ronald Reagan, a recent, two-term, popular president of the United States. One woman majoring in politics could identify neither Reagan nor the current vice president of the U.S., Joe Biden. No one will be surprised that almost every one of those surveyed could identify pop culture icon Kim Kardashian.
In another survey, by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, one in 10 respondents believed TV personality Judge Judy is a Supreme Court justice, and nearly 40 percent of college graduates did not know Congress has the power to declare war.
"There is a crisis in American civic education," the American Council of Trustees and Alumni's January report stated. "Survey after survey shows that recent college graduates are alarmingly ignorant of America's history and heritage."
Too many know the truth
If a lie is told often enough, the saying goes, it eventually becomes the truth.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has been putting the aforementioned maxim to work, recently said Republican candidate Sen. Marco Rubio was "just twisting himself into pretzels to say things that have no common sense or merit" when he stated in a recent debate that "Bill Clinton didn't kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance."
Defending her husband, she remembered how "there was an effort to kill him," but the missiles that were launched struck what was thought to be a training camp - but apparently wasn't.
Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Patterson, who carried the "nuclear football" codes for the Bill Clinton administration, and Michael Scheuer, former CIA chief of the team responsible for hunting bin Laden, said that wasn't quite the whole story.
"[W]e could have prevented the bombing of the USS Cole, we could have prevented 9/11 and we could have prevented the bombings of the embassies in Africa if President Clinton had taken one of these opportunities. We had eight chances at least to either nab bin Laden or to kill him," Patterson said.
Scheuer, meanwhile, confirmed that SpecOps had two opportunities when bin Laden was literally in their sights, but Clinton pulled the plug on both operations.
Even Bill Clinton admitted later he turned down at least one opportunity "because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America."
Like Jane, like Bernie
With the grandiose spending plans Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has proposed should he be elected, even the left-wing media has been questioning him about their scope. And while the candidate himself should realize the $30 trillion plans will further balloon an already expanding national debt, he could have looked to his wife for a little experience.
When Jane Sanders assumed the presidency of Burlington College in 2004, she immediately wanted to build a new campus. In time, the school secured $10 million in bonds and loans to buy a plot of land from the Roman Catholic Diocese, and the plan was it would be paid off with increased enrollment and fundraising. Unfortunately, enrollment rose little, and the fundraising didn't measure up.
When she resigned in 2011, the school had to sell much of the land it had acquired, at one time was $11.4 million in debt and had $300,000 in unpaid bills - many for more than 90 days.
Politico, reporting on the event, said the school's accreditation was threatened and students wondered whether their degrees would be worth anything.
Perhaps Mrs. Sanders has been whispering in her husband's ear a little too often.
Apparently, she's pro-choice
The literary magazine Paper Darts is out with the painful exclusive "20 Tips for Your First Abortion" by one Madeleine Roe, according to NewsBusters. Identified by the magazine as a waitress and revealed in the article to have had an abortion herself, the writer encourages women considering their options to "avoid any website that uses the word 'life'" and all images, consider your appointment to be like "a very deep teeth cleaning," "stay busy" and "drink heavily" before the appointment, refrain from learning details about the baby, and, when it's all over, "make inappropriate jokes about how you were 'killin' it' today" and laugh with your friends.
If that weren't enough, she reveals the abortion will cost about $600, which she urges women to compare to "the cost of raising a child," and also to the "Beyoncé concert ticket you almost bought."