That is what concerns me the most as well marco. It's not hatred marco. You may want to go back and reread some posts, People like hank get the point, but you indirectly got the main point being that no one in America seems to want to stand up and find out some truths about this present administrative regime and the direction they're taking the nation. I'm the least of your worries.
And no, I'm not into democrats more than republicans. i don't see a helluva lot of a difference between the two to be quite honest with you. Except maybe the democrats come across as being kind of wimpy. But then again, I don't see a helluva lot of differences between the Conservatives or the Liberals up here. Your politcians are much like ours in being nothing more than a bunch of dishonest empty suits. I doubt very much that democrats would do much better at fixing some of the present challenges.
The only I guy I see worth his salt in any political arena, be it yours, ours, internationally or otherwise, is this guy they call Ron Paul. The last half decent politician I ever saw was Trudeau here in the late 60's. Before him would probably be JFK, but i was quite young at the time, but remember my mum crying about him being shot. I never saw her cry about anything else all the time I've known her come to think of it.
do you have statistics to back this up?
Yep. The obesity rates have been brought up in the dating section of the forums many many times and usually by people that just want to point out their disgust with 'fat' people. Hopefully we're not going to go anywhere near that topic with this info. Some of the posters are very well versed on the obesity subject., so I'll only include a little bit of data for that. I'm tired of reading obesity threads, but here's a bit of data nonetheless. So let's try to stay more with the focus on the topic of education since it's more in theme with the OP which has to do with a University, a place of learning and exchanging ideas and ideals, inviting a foreign diplomat to speak.
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American obesity rates lead the world with 64% of adults being overweight and almost a quarter being obese
Obesity Statistics-U.S. Obesity Trends
http://naaso.org/statistics/obesity_trends.asp
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
Obesity Epidemic: US Temporal Trends
Although well known to most obesity researchers and epidemiologists, the public generally is not aware of the full magnitude of the obesity epidemic. Below is a classic report by the CDC of the emergence of the obesity epidemic in the United States from the early 1985 to 2004.
It is also worth noting that the data presented in these maps rely on self-reported weight and height from the BRFSS. Because people tend to underreport their weight and overreport their height in telephone surveys, these figures are underestimates of the obesity prevalence in the US*. When measured height and weight data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey are used, the prevalence of obesity in U.S. adults is about one-third greater than the prevalence reported in these surveys.
http://www.epidemiologic.org/2006/10/obesity-epidemic-us-temporal-trends.html
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National Medical Spending Attributable To Overweight And Obesity: How Much, And Who’s Paying?
Further evidence that overweight and obesity are contributing to the nation’s health care bill at a growing rate.
More than half of Americans are either overweight or obese. Moreover, the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased by 12 percent and 70 percent, respectively, over the past decade.
This trend is alarming, given the association between obesity and many chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, several types of cancer (endometrial, postmenopausal breast, kidney, and colon), musculoskeletal disorders, sleep apnea, and gallbladder disease
...an accounting of the lifetime net costs (costs minus benefits) of overweight and obesity imposed on government is likely to show that these costs are much larger than the lifetime costs imposed by smokers.
...The NHIS relies on self-reported height and weight, and overweight and obese people tend to underreport their weight.20 As a result, overweight and obesity prevalence and corresponding expenditures may be underreported.
Unless programs aimed at reducing the rise in obesity rates are successfully implemented, overweight- and obesity-attributable spending will continue to increase and government will continue to finance a sizable portion of the total. Moreover, given that such spending now rivals spending attributable to smoking, it may be increasingly difficult to justify the disparity between the many interventions that have been implemented to reduce smoking rates and the paucity of interventions aimed at reducing obesity rates.
Funding and support for this study were provided by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w3.219v1/DC1
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Obesity Still a Major Problem
Obesity and overweight are a result of an imbalance between food consumed and physical activity. National data have shown an increase in the calorie consumption of adults and no change in physical activity patterns. But obesity is a complex issue related to lifestyle, environment, and genes. Many underlying factors have been linked to the increase in obesity, such as increasing portion sizes; eating out more often; increased consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks; increasing television, computer, electronic gaming time; changing labor markets; and fear of crime, which prevents outdoor exercise. Obese adults are at increased risk of type II diabetes, hypertension, stroke, certain cancers, and other conditions. Overweight adolescents often become obese adults.
In 2003-04, 17.1% of children and adolescents 2-19 years of age (over 12 and a half million) were overweight, and 32.2% of adults (over 66 million) were obese. Almost 5% of adults were extremely obese
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/06facts/obesity03_04.htm
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The prevalence of overweight and obesity in the United States makes obesity a leading public health problem. The United States has the highest rates of obesity in the developed world. From 1980 to 2002, obesity has doubled in adults and overweight prevalence has tripled in children and adolescents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity
more references and cites are available there if you wish to peruse the subject further
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To establish an actual divorce rate requires tracking and analyzing significant samples of actual marriages through decades, which is not an easy task. Recent US scholarship based on such longterm tracking, reported for example in the New York Times on April 19, 2005...the percentage of all marriages that eventually end in divorce peaked in the United States at about 41% around 1980, and has been slowly declining ever since, standing by 2002 at around 31%. Some have attributed this decline to the popularity of co-habitation without marriage.
...States in the US handle billions of dollars in alimony and child support arrangements, which commonly result from divorces. (According to a 2003 US census report], 43.7% of custodial mothers and 56.2% of custodial fathers, are divorced or separated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce
See what happens when you question things marco. You get answers. And we find that the original numbers on divorce were overstated. Reminds me a bit of some overstatements regarding weapons of mass destruction. See what can happen when closer investigation is undertaken. The truth can be uncovered. And someone once said, the truth will set you free. Good work. Now, unfortunately we have to address the fact that nearly 60% of all Americans get their news from 53 minutes on TV per day on average.
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Literacy in Everyday Life: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy
Summary
This chapter examined how the literacy levels for the total adult population of the United States, as well as for adults from different demographic groups, changed between 1992 and 2003, and also how literacy levels varied among different demographic groups in 2003.
Total Population
There were no statistically significant changes in the average prose and document literacy of the adult population of the United States between 1992 and 2003.
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Number of Adults in Each Prose Literacy Level
Prose Literacy
Below Basic-30 million-14%:
no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills
Basic:63 million-29%
can perform simple and everyday literacy activities
Intermediate:95 million-44%
can perform moderately challenging literacy activities
Proficient: 28 million-13%
can perform complex and challenging literacy activities
http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/kf_demographics.asp
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adults with Below Basic or Basic health literacy were less likely than adults with higher health literacy to get information about health issues from written sources (newspapers, magazines, books, brochures, or the Internet) and more likely than adults with higher health literacy to get a lot of information about health issues from radio and television.
http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/webcasts/NAALhealth/webcast0829.html
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In the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) assessment, 1994-98:
The average composite literacy score of native-born adults in the U.S. was 284 (Level 3); the U.S. ranked 10th out of 17 high-income countries;
The average composite literacy score of foreign-born adults in the U.S. was 210 (Level 1); the U.S. ranked 16th out of 17 countries.
(Sum, 2002, p21, Table 12)
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In the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) assessment, 1994-98:
The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with primary or no education, ranked 14th out of 18 high-income countries;
The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with some high school, but no diploma or GED, ranked 19th out of 19 high-income countries;
The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or GED (but no college), ranked 18th (tie) out of 19 countries;
The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with 1-3 years of college, ranked 15th out of 19 countries;
http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/facts/facts_overview.html
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United States
There are various definitions of literacy. Governments may label individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate. But the most comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government proves that such adults are functionally illiterate--they cannot read well enough to hold a good job. Several studies have shown that millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school.
A five-year, $14 million study of U.S. adult literacy involving lengthy interviews of U.S. adults, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in September 1993 revealing the shocking details.
It involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in twelve states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole.
This study showed the percentages of U.S. adults who worked full-time, part-time, were unemployed, or who had given up looking for a job and were no longer in the work force, and it showed the average hourly wages for those who were employed.
These data were grouped by literacy level--how well the interviewees responded to material written in English--and indicated that 40 to 44 million of the 191 million U.S. adults (21 to 23 percent of them) in the least literate group earned a yearly average of $2105 and about 50 million adults (25 to 28 percent of them) in the next-least literate of the five literacy groups earned a yearly average of $5225 at a time when the U.S. Census Bureau considered the poverty level threshold for an individual to be $7363 per year.
The report of a follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed no statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy.
These studies prove that a minimum of 46 and a maximum of 51 percent of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn significantly below the threshold poverty level for an individual. The only reason we do not see that number of families in poverty is that most low-income families have more than one employed adult and almost all low-income families receive financial assistance from the government, family, friends, or charitable organizations.
Many U.S. citizens believe that the U.S. literacy rate is much higher than these reports would indicate.
The World Fact Book prepared by the CIA claims that the U.S. literacy rate is 99 percent, but defines literacy as being able to read and write when a person is 15 years old or older. A person who can only read a few hundred--or even a couple of thousand--simple words learned in the first four grades in school, is only marginally literate.
Jonathan Kozol, in his book Illiterate America, states that there may not be any intentional deception, but explains that the census bureau reported literacy rates of 99 percent based on personal interviews of a relatively small portion of the population and on written responses to census bureau mailings.
If the interviewees or written responders had completed fifth grade they were considered literate.
In the 1970 census, for example, five percent had less than a fifth grade education. The census bureau considered eighty percent of those with less than a fifth grade education as being literate and reported a 99 percent literacy rate. In the 1980 and 1990 censuses, most of the census bureau calculations of literacy were based upon grade completion. They used written questionnaires and a small number of home visits and telephone interviews. If a respondent stated that they had completed less than five grades, they were asked if they could read and write, and their unsubstantiated answer was recorded as a fact. Kozol explains that this method of determining literacy is quite certain to underestimate illiteracy for the following reasons:
Illiterates would not respond to written forms and their family members--also likely to be illiterate--would not either.
Illiterates are less likely to have telephones than the general public, because of unemployment or low paying jobs.
Illiterates may distrust anyone knocking on their door or calling on the telephone and seeking information because they are often hounded by bill collectors, salesmen, and others because of their financial condition and because they may have been cheated as a result of their illiteracy. Therefore they cannot be expected to give accurate answers to questions asked by census bureau workers they do not know, especially if the answers are embarrassing.
Grade level completion does not equal grade level competence.
Those who have no permanent home address, no telephone, no post office box, and no regular job--a condition shared by more than six million adults, most of whom are illiterate--cannot be found by the census bureau in time to be included in the count.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy
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Grading the Public
What Americans Know: 1989-2007
Released: April 15, 2007
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=319
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Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations
Views of Press Values and Performance: 1985-2007
Released: August 9, 2007
Summary of Findings
The American public continues to fault news organizations for a number of perceived failures, with solid majorities criticizing them for political bias, inaccuracy and failing to acknowledge mistakes. But some of the harshest indictments of the press now come from the growing segment that relies on the internet as its main source for national and international news.
The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance.
As many as 38% of those who rely mostly on the internet for news say they have an unfavorable opinion of cable news networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, compared with 25% of the public overall, and just 17% of television news viewers.
Generally, the press receives its most positive ratings for its performance from people who rely on television as their main source of news, with those who rely on newspapers – and especially the internet – expressing more critical opinions.
Dislike of both major cable news networks runs notably high among Americans who count newspapers and the internet as their main sources of national and international news
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=348
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THE DISILLUSIONARIES - 4 PUBLIC AWARENESS QUESTIONS
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WmBgrboeoy8
Mainstream Media is Selling Another War
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hwxzt4iPkNE
Project for Excellence in Journalism
Missing in Action: News Coverage of Private Contract Forces in Iraq
Limited, Intermittent Reporting Leaves a Major Story of the War Largely Uncovered
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/520/missing-in-action-news-coverage-of-private-contract-forces-in-iraq
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Back On Topic:
Bush is Ignorant and Extremely Dangerous
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSZXWDfxNnY
U.S. Allies and Neighbors: Bush is Worlds Most Dangerous Man
A new poll claims UK Canada Mexico, and Israel puts George W Bush at the top of the list of Most dangerous people in the world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NLy_y0zYRo&mode=related&search=
Former CIA officer: US to attack Iran within 6 months
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqA2vo-7UG0&mode=related&search=
IRG - Iran can recruit 12 Million fighters in 48 Hours
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYQqHjnPu0&mode=related&search=
What if America does attack Iran?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLN6OPcL5v0&mode=related&search=
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The story of Two nations heading toward their ultimate destruction.
"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homocidal maniac."
~George Orwell~
Bravo sly, but don't you know anything of your own?! Once I admired you immensely, but lately I have serious doubts.
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actually that is not funny, that is really quite sad. 
