Service to America Award Video

Priorities

President Obama routinely spends five hours to play a round of golf. But he's only going to spend three hours in Louisiana when he goes down there tomorrow to get a look at the oil spill. The one that he's been in charge of from day one.

Way to show concern, big guy. Guess which party is going to carry Louisiana in the 2012 election?

Obama's National Security Advisor Tells Anti-Semitic Joke

If anyone in the Bush administration had told this joke, he would have been forced to resign. I'm just sayin'...

American are watching less TV?

A new report from The Yankee Group says that television viewing declined by an hour per day in 2009.

On the other hand, the latest Three Screen Report from Nielsen says that TV viewing increased in 2009, and that Americans are watching more TV than ever.

The Yankee Group report says that "Consumers spend a total of 3 hours and 17 minutes watching TV, DVDs, videos and pre-recorded programs." But the Nielsen report says the average American watches almost 35 hours of TV per week, nearly 5 hours per day.

That's a huge discrepancy. How can two surveys get such hugely different results? I suspect the answer is in the methodology. Unfortunately, the Yankee Group doesn't provide a lot of information about their methodology on their website. They do indicate that they rely primarily on web-based tools for gathering their data. I would guess that might skew the data a bit.

The Yankee Group also bills themselves as "the global connectivity experts," which suggests they may have a vested interest in promoting "New Media" while downplaying the strength of traditional media outlets.

Carl Howe, the author of the "more internet, less TV" study, said "As consumers have become worried about the economy, they've reduced the amount of time they spend on media..." This statement, in itself, seems to suggest a problem with their survey. Surely, as unemployment increases, more people must have more time to spend on media. As consumers reduce spending in a recession, wouldn't they spend more time with free media and less time on paid entertainment?

Maybe they would even spend more time with both free and paid entertainment. There's a reason why the Great Depression ushered in the Golden Age of Radio, and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

I'll admit to being biased, but I think the Nielsen data has more authority than the Yankee Group data.

Diversity and the Supreme Court

“It is essential President Obama consider gender and ethnic diversity on the high court in an increasingly diverse America,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement Friday.

For once, I agree with Rep. Lee: Obama should carefully choose his nominee to ensure that the makeup of the Supreme Court reflects the diversity of our great country. And this diversity should not be limited to ethnicity and gender. Let's make sure the court is truly diverse.

Justice Stevens, who is retiring, is actually the poster child for diversity in the current court. Sure, he's a white male. He's also the only Protestant on the court, and the only member of the court who did not graduate from an Ivy League law school.

Let's look at the current make-up of the court, compared to the make-up of the USA:

SEX: This is the one of two areas where the court is far from matching the diversity of the country. Seven of the current nine justices are men, or 80%. The population of the US is 50.7% female.

RELIGION: Justice Stevens is the sole Protestant on the court. That means the current bench is 11% Protestant, while Protestants make up over 51% of the US Population. Two members, Breyer and Ginsburg, are Jewish. That makes the court 22% Jewish while Jews are less than 2% of the population. More surprising: the remaining six members of the court are all Roman Catholic. Catholics are 66.7% of the court, but only 23.9% of the US Population.

RACE/ETHNICITY: This is probably the area that most people think of when they hear the word "diversity," but the court already fairly reflects the population. According to the Census Bureau's 2008 population estimates, 66% of the US population is non-Hispanic whites, 15% is Hispanic, and 13% is black. The current court is 78% non-Hispanic whites, 11% Hispanic, and 11% Black. That's about as close as you can get with a nine-member court. One less non-Hispanic white would lower their percentage to 66.7%, which is actually a better match; but one more black or Hispanic would be a much higher percentage on the court than in the population.

So to maintain a court that reflects the diversity of the country, Obama's nominee should be a non-Ivy League educated, Protestant, white, female!

Obama orders assasination of American citizen

If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what will:

 The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday. 

Source: New York Times

 So our government has now ordered the execution of an American citizen without a trial. Does the Constitution mean nothing to these people?

WSJ: What's Not Happening to American Muslims

Dorothy Rabinowitz, in the Wall Street Journal, has some things to say about America's habit of looking for racists everywhere. But I like this part, where a Muslim cab driver tells her about his neighbors, and what they told him shortly after 9/11:

What was not painful, he added, was the memory of certain people in his neighborhood—a mixed but mostly white area of Queens, with many Italian-Americans, some Jews, and he thought some Irish. After the attacks, some of the men had come to him.

"My wife doesn't go out without a head cover," he explained. The men had come to tell him that if anyone bothered her, or his family, he must come to them.

"I must tell them and must not be afraid. Do you know," he said, in a voice suddenly sharp, "what would have happened if Americans had done this kind of attack in my country? Every American—every Christian, every non-Muslim—would have been slaughtered, blood would have run in the streets. I know the kind of country this is. Thanks be to God I can give this to my children."