How did Americans get so utterly clueless about world events? (Hint: It was no accident.)

http://Titanic.mo

Ditto, but with exceptions. TV is a medium. People also use it to watch Nat Geo,
History, History International, channel documentaries, or satellite TV music
channels. Because TV was envisioned as an educational media aide originaly.
Yup. It was envisoned as a way to let rural kids stay home in a snowstorm,
and attend class remotely. (Back then they didn't fill in all the blanks like the
need for a satellite, the internet, and a digital camera on both ends to effect
all that) It's the infotainment, commercials, manure passing for legitimate news
that's so extremely compromised that makes it a circus that's degenerated it
so badly. People don't want to use it wisely. A wide screen Smart TV like the
ones the Samsung people put out is genuinely worth watching. I've compared
Samsung's 55" wide screen to the 60 and 70 inch Sharp Aquos Quatro. And
though you might not see all the color varieties on the Samsung you'd see on
the Sharp with the yellow pixels added...It's realy a lot easier on the eyes to
watch the Samsung Smart TV for anyone who likes to spend some time in
front of the TV for viewing their favorite content. If used- as it was intended-to
watch their favorite movies at home from a DVR or outboard archival hardrive
then there's no harm done. Watching your favorite movie that was filmed in the cinemascope vista, then letter boxed, on a 55' or 60' or 70' TV is realy something.

It isn't anywhere near what the Paramount, Eckel, RKO Keiths, Warner Bros,
or Strand theater screens of the 1930s,40s, 50s, 60s used to be.They were
Titanic. People were 50 feet tall on those screens. But those were the days
when the BIG SCREEN was collossal, and drive ins abounded. These days a
mall movie theater resembles a rectangular shoebox and a small screen. It's
easier to simply watch it at home. Heck, I'm a pacifist. And yet I still watch the
Military channel to record WW2 documentaries narrated by Laurence Olivier
et al. Those were the days when an actor like Leslie Howard, an English film
actor, was so important to his homeland, that it's enemies stalked him and
shot down his plane approaching Portugal. Making a difference in this world
invariably requires making enemies of those who are the enemies of
Democracy. They hate intellectuals caring to learn more than the average
man, because intellectuals are activists.., Activists are everywhere the blood
enemies of Fascism, bro.

yes and i get more educational material from failblog and youtube... personal favorite for learning random stuff is instructables

tv is biased everywhere... only few good tv stations out there...

That is what those nutjobs at Perry's rally in Houston want. They have seven stated goals and that include all aspects of our lives to be controlled by them. Can you imagine 20,000 folks lead like sheep to Houston so that their free will is subjugated by those morons.

they are put there on purpose...don't use the fluoride, it calcifies the pineal gland and detaches you from your feelings and mind.

what about restless leg syndrom?

Dude, it's amazing all the things that came true from that movie. Drones =robocop. Guns running crazy in or streets. And my personal favorite, the gas guzzling dodge challenger has been reborn.

Holy shit. Seen this vid before. I'm putting out a warning to all blackwater or any other mercs. You will be s shot on site.

Being Anti-Zionist has NOTHING to do with bigotry. It is obvious that you do not even know what Zionism is. I recommend that you visit the website of Jews united against Zionism for a bit of enlightenment - http://www.nkusa.org/aboutus/zionism/judaism_v_zionism.cfm

The BIGGEST lie they ever sold was that ratings and popularity are more important than facts and evidence. After the media believed that the rest was easy since nothing else was able to be proven so it didn't matter what was said.

I did find something interesting about a link between ADHD and Malathion that I never put together before with the shorter attention span in recent years. I was out of the country in the 80's when they did a lot of the spraying of Malathion for the West Nile Virus, but I did hear about it's widespread use.

Malathion is an insecticide of relatively low human toxicity, however recent studies have shown that children with higher levels of malathion in their urine seem to be at an increased risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

A May 2010 study found that in a representative sample of US children, those with higher levels of organophosphate pesticide metabolites in their urine were more likely to have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Each 10-fold increase in urinary concentration of organophosphate metabolites was associated with a 55% to 72% increase in the odds of ADHD. The study was the first investigation on children's neurodevelopment to be conducted in a group with no particular pesticide exposure

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/721892

"It is very well established that organophosphates disrupt brain neurochemical activity. Indeed, their efficacy as pesticides result from their toxic effect on the central nervous system of insects," Dr. Bouchard noted.

"In particular, organophosphates disrupt the activity of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter also implicated in ADHD. In addition, certain organophosphates affect growth factors, several neurotransmitter systems, and second messenger systems. These changes in brain activity could well result in ADHD-like symptoms," she said.

Apparently there was a big spike in the rates of ADHD after the spraying and that could have contributed to people becoming so clueless

The classic joke about NPR is that it stands for Nice, Polite Republicans.

While their coverage of news is broader and more encompassing, their position is rather precarious. Right-wingers already keep them walking on eggshells because their very existence pisses them off. So when it comes to reporting on something controversial, they are very careful to avoid airing an opinion which might be seen as even slightly offensive.

They're not establishment press like the rest, but they can't get real uppity, which limits their ability to tell the truth to a significant extent.

Same can be said about most news readers. They sit there and nod and it looks like they agree with them. I saw Tamron Hall in real action today. I was proud of her. Some nut tried to say that the President was trying to take credit for Libya and she actually disagreed. You go girl. More of that , please!

Interesting take and I respect your thoughts on NPR. Maybe they aren't the loudest kid on the block (See Fox news) but I don't necessarily agree that their ability to restrain themselves which shows they use their intellect is paramount to not getting the truth out there.

Where I do think they really screwed up was when their CEO fired Juan Williams. That was premature and really a dumb knee-jerk reaction that pandered to the far left listeners that probably found Juan intolerable because he was on Fox as a commentator. Very damaging to NPR and played into the hands of the Right who hate NPR for no good reason.

I like that, good comment.

History has a logical flow, but the way that it is presented in schools, students aren't able to connect the dots to see that logical flow.

And then of course there are major historical ommissions; all of it by design.

Do "Bread and Circuses" ring a bell ?

True. But it never pays to go too far with that out of overconfidence. It was
Goering who royaly screwed Schniklegruber's plans for world conquest. He
told Hitler, after the Dunkirk evacuation, and before the Battle of Brittain,
that the Luftwaffe would gain air supremecy over the Royal Air Force w/in
weeks, and the Vermacht would be marching triumphantly in the streets of
London as they did Paris. Goering kept underestimating the Brittish capacity
to crank out new Spitfires, new Huricanes, and train new pilots. Both Goering
and his " master race " intelligence service couldn't fathom the radar tower
network ringing around the perimeter of the Southeast part of the Island.
Though the Germans had aerial reconnasance photos detailing them, they
still had no clue that they were of any military importance, and left them alone.
Duh. They had no idea it was those radar towers that were able to determine
where the Hinkels and Stukas were while they were coming across the channel.
And in which direction they were heading as they passed over the coast. The
RAF was able to scramble and shoot down more bombers than the fighters they
lost. Even after a very embarassed Goering ordered their MEs into the air to
escort their bombers, the veteran English pilots were still able to survive the
traps the MEs set for them which killed many green English pilots. The MEs
had a variable pitch propeller enabling them to climb to greater altitudes than
the Spitfires and Hurricanes could manage. That was only one advantage.

They were also fuel injected vs their carburetor fueled adversaries' warplanes.
So 2 MEs would often bait the inexperienced Brittish pilots into climbing into
the Sun, then after the Spitfires would stall, loose control, then spiral, the
other ME would attack and finish him off. Yet, despite these wolf pack tactics,
they still didn't manage to wipe out the RAF. Goering's spy service allowed
the Brittish to keep their radar network operating making the Battle of Brittain
last the Summer of 1940. Even when Goering was supremely overconfident
that the Brits were decimated to their last 50 fighters, they had 500 left to
defend their homeland with. The result was that the Germans gave up.
They then attacked Russia, and encountered the same bitter resistence.
The Germans had the Russians on the ropes too, as they did with the English.
But they never achieved air superiority over the Russians either because they
could never recoup their losses over England. Hitler shot himself when the
Russians were 300 yards away. And Goering ? He took a cyanide capsule
to commit suicide before the Nuremburg War trials of 1948 could sentence
him to hang from a scaffold. Your Goering quote is very apt, quite telling too.
But here's the flip side: The Mills of the Gods grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.

Ahhhhhhh. That's the title of classic Star Trek episode # 54 which debuted
on Friday, March 15, 1968 on NBC. I was in high school at the time. Since my
love life wasn't underway then, I was at home after my paper route job and
dinner to watch it first run. Gene Roddenberry & Gene . Coon wrote the
screenplay. It was adapted from the ancient Roman colleseum called the Circus
Maximus because it used to feature all manor of blood sport from gladitorial
games, to feeding Christians to Lions. Genuine family entertainment for the
depraved. The keepers gave the spectators bread & wine to maintain their
bodies, while the games occupied their minds(or lack of them) to control the
population. The Roman Army conquered so many countries' peoples that lots
of people had slaves to do their work for them. When the Romans were no
longer generating anything of value, they began degenerating. Good lesson
for Americans to learn. Our industrial base has diminished to circa 1/2 of what
it was during the post war baby boom. And since, TV has proliferated to be
the infotainment substitute for people so careless, so mindless they would
not likely know the difference between infotainment and genuine news if it
jumped up and bit them in the ass. Now that people are so dumbed down
if you asked them what the word degenerate refers to, they'd likely respond:
Hmmm, degenerate.... Isn't that the gay lady commedian who does those
Revlon hair coloring commercials ? Oh, yeah we're worth it, all right. Lol.

I did not know that about star trek . I was thinking of the bread and circuses of the Ancient Roman Colosseum ... Tv and consumer mentality , replacing that .

The dreamworld fantasy of all hetero males come to life on the silver screen.
A gorgeous shapley young blond vixen making the willing female sex slave.
A one night stand no less. No commitments, no messy emotional attachments
to traumatize later on. Yup. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream/
Merily, merily, merily, merily. Life is but a dream. And to a guy who's an illegal
alien from another planet there without his space passport. Only in the good
old days when the good old boys controlled the TV networks could they have
resurrected the ancient attitude that a woman's place is between the sheets.
What ! Women are a breed apart from males ? And it will do no good to try and understand them ??? Well they just have to learn to submit to take care of that.
Small wonder why Atilla the Hun was knocking down the walls of Rome in record
time. When the news of Drusilla got out, all the huns wanted her to couchy
coo with them so they could make hot monkey....Well look at the time, I
had no idea it was getting so late...Nice hourglass figure, great hips. I bet
Captain Kirk relished redeeming his air miles with that hot babe.

Glad I drew your attention to it. Gene Roddenberry & Gene Coon were
thinking of a way to parody the American civilization by likening it to the
corruption of the Roman Empire. The striking similarity was not lost on
others either. In Autumn or Winter 1976, in Time or Newsweek I read
an article comparing the close parallels between the Roman Empire
with it's bread & circus culture on the decline, to the American TV
culture on the decline. Do you recall the 1974 movie Network ? : " I want
you all to go to your windows and shout this out as loud as you can: I'm as
mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it any more !!! ? " When my Dish network
satellite TV receiver tells me, via an error message, after a rainstorm when
there's been atmospheric disturbances, disrupting the signal and recording
of a DVR timer I'd set, it says " data corrupted " We take that to mean a lot
of essential content is missing. That's what we here in America are faced with.
A lot of what has always made the USA the USA is now missing. It's due to what
has been corrupted to diminish and deprive us of our country's traditional way
of life -our Constitutional Liberty which is the American Heritage that belongs to
ALL Americans, especialy the ones not born yet. . So, yes, Artemis 6, bread
and circuses is the star attraction in the modern corrupted age. As John Wayne
used to say: " Welcome to America there, pilgrim " (that's a parody too. A pilgrim
is a believer who makes a journey and treks to a religious shrine. You must
admit the USA is the Mecca of the Western world, no ? They never claimed
any cobble stones of Gold paved the streets in Canada's or Mexico's cities. )

Glad you caught my gist ....

+^d

If we could just let people vote on line or at least get a receipt that they voted. If the ATM can know our balances in our accounts, we should be able to know that our votes were counted. I guess it may have to do with privacy....

I'm not motivated to say this out of prejudice toward nor prejudice against
any country. They all have their problems. Still it's an abysmaly tragic joke
to call American Corporate TV infotainment " news " It's a lot closer to manure.
It's easier for the Russians to publish the truth about the USA than it would be
for any TV source inside the USA for obvious reasons. No doubt the reverse
is also true, and for the same reasons. Only a fool would ever buy the hype
that because we live in the USA somehow, as if by magic (or blind nationaism)
we can obtain the truth by dedicated professionals who're so conscionable
they wouldn't lie to us because we can witnesses their acting abilities. As if.

I call BS on that statement about easier for Russians to state the truth. We have many non-corporate independent sources here on the internet and in the US that Russia doesn't have since its so repressed (rank 144 in press freedom). You can listen to NPR, Young Turks, Current (with stories connected), etc, etc. We have info in the US that tells the truth and doesn't have to worry about some random person coming and beating the shit out of them or simply get shot. Just don't fall for intentionally false information from conspiracy sites (That is one of my big concerns as it does distract people from real issues)

That's correct. I had it in mind to write it might be than it is. I didn't proofread
what I said. Yet even that caution would not have been correctly stating the
significant difference Americans enjoy in Press Freedom over the Russians.
I realy meant it's easier sometimes for a country to be objective about others
than itself. Thanks for pointing that out.