FEATURED QUESTION: Our Economy

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HERE in the Washington Post you can read the highlights of the deficit-reduction proposals. They include the following:

-Overhaul individual income taxes and corporate taxes. For individuals and families, eliminate a host of popular tax credits and deductions, including the child tax credit and the mortgage interest deduction.Significantly reduce income tax rates, with the top rate dropping to 23 percent from 35 percent.

-Reduce the corporate income tax rate to 26 percent from 35 percent, and stop taxing the overseas profits of U.S.-based multinational corporations.

-Increase the gas tax by 15 cents a gallon to fund transportation programs.

Read this link to see the entire list.

On the list is a hot-button issue for every American I know. Maybe more than one hot button.

No matter how we look at this problem, the solution is going to be painful:

Voters who last week sent Washington a message to wrestle the spiraling debt under control have gotten a message back from the leaders of a White House budget commission: It'll hurt.

A proposal released Wednesday by the bipartisan leaders of President Barack Obama's deficit commission suggested cuts to Social Security benefits, deep reductions in federal spending and higher taxes for millions of Americans to stem a flood of red ink that they said threatens the nation's very future.

Interest groups on the right and the left squealed, predictably, about the plan, which would cut total deficits by as much as $4 trillion over the next decade - much of it from programs long considered all but sacred.

Besides Social Security, Medicare spending would be curtailed. Tax breaks for many health care plans, too. And the Pentagon's budget as well in a plan that attaches $3 in spending cuts to every $1 in tax increases.

For all the pain, the deficit still would approach $400 billion in 2015 under the proposal...

Surely, we all realize that something must be done about our deficit! If nothing is done, our entire economy could well collapse.

FEATURED QUESTION (in two parts): (1) How can the deficit be substantially and effectively reduced? (2) What will be the consequences for us as individuals and families if various methods of deficit reduction are put into place?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Society

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By now, you've probably heard that Barack Hussein Obama has not been invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding on July 31. The above link offers BHO's explanation, believable or not.
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Oprah Winfrey, on the other hand, is rumored to have been invited, along with some 500 guests. The wedding will be held at a home previously owned by John Jacob Astor, who perished when the Titanic sank. Interesting bit of trivia there, huh?

Now, on to the FEATURED QUESTION, this time one of insignificance and one ripe for humor and satire. Hey, it's summertime! A little frivolity, if you will.


FEATURED QUESTION: Why did the Clintons, although Hillary Clinton is this administration's secretary of state, exclude Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States, from the guest list for Chelsea's wedding?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Politics

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Mustang of Social Sense stated as follows in this comments thread at Chuck Thinks Right:

"I fear we will need a suppository the size of California to fix the problems Øbama created. Also, he isn’t done yet."

Discussion question below the fold.

FEATURED QUESTION: Considering Section 7 of the United States Constitution, whereby a two-thirds majority of both Houses of Congress is required to override a Presidential veto and assuming that Republicans win many seats in the November 2010 Election, how successful can a Republican majority in the House of Representatives be in curbing the progressive agenda in force since January 2009?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Society

(This FEATURED QUESTION stuck here for few days. Please scroll down for other postings. I've been posting frequently, so there is a lot to explore!)

Back when I was a little girl, my mother worked outside the home until I was eight years old. I recall my grandmother later commenting somewhat as follows: "I always hated it that your mother had to work. A mother needs to stay home with her child." This, from a woman widowed at age twenty-seven, yet didn't work outside the home until she reached age forty-five! Instead of getting a job when her children were living at home with her, my grandmother moved back in with her parents.

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Frankly, I found my grandmother's statement unenlightened and old-fashioned. After all, at the time she made the comment, I was attending college and preparing for a career as a teacher.

A lot of years have now passed since those words my grandmother uttered, and many mothers now work outside the home, often out of financial necessity: paying the mortgage, keeping the house in good repair, laying aside money for their children's college fund, paying real-estate and personal-property taxes, etc. Nonetheless, many people, usually citing various problems with today's youth, now criticize this trend of working mothers.

Some go even further and specifically cite women's suffrage as damaging to family, society, and politics (hat tip to Karen of Eastern Right, citing Hilary Jane Margaret White of Orwell's Picnic):

...[O]ne of the triumphs of feminism is to teach women that they should not get married to an individual man. Marriage, so the legend goes, is slavery, particularly after the kids come. Feminism reveals its Marxist origins when it says that women should instead marry the State. Men leave, we are told, and leave us holding the child-rearing bag alone. Much better to be married to the state. The state will never abandon you.

Indeed, women who divorce are often encouraged by social workers to either take up welfare as a replacement marriage, or send their ex-men taken through the various government-sponsored wringers like Ontario's Family Responsibility Office. Institutions like the FRO are designed for a two-fold purpose. They enslave the woman to the state, make sure she depends on the FRO and the welfare office for all the defence and support we once expected a husband to provide, and to punish, impoverish and disempower men.

And when did such structures start being put into place? About the same time women got the vote and started taking over the driver's seat in politics. Socialism is woman's politics. Indeed, we call it the nanny state because it tends to infantilise entire societies. But really, the new state that the woman's vote has created should more properly be called the Daddy State...

Read the rest of Hilary Jane Margaret White's essay HERE.

Do outside-the-home employment for mothers and the feminist movement in general ultimately wreak damage upon the fabric of a society? If so, what do you see as the solution to this problem?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Conservative Principles

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Conservatives often complain about The Nanny State, defined as follows by PoliticsDictionary.com:

a system of government which provides everything for the citizens and tells the citizens how they should behave

Perhaps nothing so much as fear of losing employment can muzzle an employee. I know that, in both the public and private sectors, I myself have been in the position of keeping quiet about my political activism and political views out of fear of losing a job and the benefits attached thereto.

Furthermore, government jobs are, in essence, financed on the backs of taxpayers. After all, the government has no money other that that extracted via taxes from the pockets of the taxpayers.

Before weighing in with your response to this FEATURED QUESTION, consider the following:

The federal government employs over 2,700,000 workers and hires hundreds of thousands each year to replace civil service workers that transfer to other federal government jobs, retire, or leave for other reasons. Average annual salary for full-time federal government jobs now exceeds $79,197. The U.S. Government is the largest employer in the United States, hiring about 2.0 percent of the nation's work force and the workforce is expanding significantly under the Obama administration. Federal government jobs can be found in every state and large metropolitan area, including overseas in over 200 countries. The average annual federal workers compensation in 2008, including pay plus benefits, was $119,982 compared to just $59,909 for the private sector according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Please know that the question below is not targeting any of my readers or fellow bloggers. I do understand that we do what we must so as to support ourselves and our families.

FEATURED QUESTION, in two parts: (1) Do conservatives violate their own principles by seeking employment in a government job or certain government jobs? (2) What happens to a nation's economy and politics when "the best jobs" are government jobs funded by the taxpayers?

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FEATURED QUESTION: U.S. Constitution

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The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 as one of the Reconstruction Amendments, is the Constitutional basis of "anchor babies," particularly Section 1, which reads as follows:

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Recently, in light of this from an Arizona lawmaker, Texas Fred commented as follows about the amendment:

The original intent of the 14th Amendment was to offer protection to the recently freed slaves and their children. It was NOT written with the express intent of giving citizenship to the offspring of illegal aliens.

In his essay, Texas Fred cites the following about the original intent of the 14th Amendment (Senator Jacob Howard, 1866):

“Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.”

According to the source cited for the above quotation from Senator Howard:

The United States did not limit immigration in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. Thus there were, by definition, no illegal immigrants and the issue of citizenship for children of those here in violation of the law was nonexistent. Granting of automatic citizenship to children of illegal alien mothers is a recent and totally inadvertent and unforeseen result of the amendment and the Reconstructionist period in which it was ratified.

Furthermore,

Current estimates indicate there may be between 300,000 and 700,000 anchor babies born each year in the U.S., thus causing illegal alien mothers to add more to the U.S. population each year than immigration from all sources in an average year before 1965. (See consequences.)

Also,

Births to illegal alien mothers are adding more to the U.S. population each year than did immigration from all sources in an average year prior to 1965.

Read more at The 14th Amendment.

See "The 1965 Immigration Act: Anatomy of a Disaster." The 1965 Immigration Act accomplished the following:

...[U]nder the 1965 immigration Act, [anchor babies] act as an anchor that pulls the illegal alien mother and eventually a host of other relatives into permanent U.S. residency.

Video on the topic:




FEATURED QUESTION: Should immigration reform include the repeal of the 1965 Immigration Act, or is it too late for any such step?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Election Strategy

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My blogging friend The Beak has written a good essay about Obama and the BP oil spill. Check out The Beak's posting. Sample paragraph:

Obama is a failure as a leader and as a President. He was elected as a symbol of a post racial America. However, endlessly droning on about hope and change, reading a teleprompter and a knock off Pepsi Logo does not create a President. His approval numbers are dropping like a rock and the economy is going into another tailspin.

Read the entire essay HERE.

Over at the Beak's essay, I also call your attention to a comment from the blogger named The Pagan Temple:

The oil spill would easily be solved, with aircraft carriers and Destroyers fitted to suction the oil already spilled. Nuclear submarines could guide the efforts from below, possibly even be fitted to transfer some of the oil from the source to a carrier above. Aircraft carriers are larger than barges and could hold a lot more oil at a time.

The Army Corps of Engineers working in tandem with BP could have already plugged the leak.

Obama knows all this. This could have amounted to a two or three year minor pollution problem at worse, though the pollution would have been considerable for maybe a half year. This did not have to be one third as big a deal as it has turned into.

Believe me, once the last couple of weeks of October role [sic] around, Obama will have taken complete control of the crisis, and by the time the November elections role [sic] around, he and his Democratic allies will have "saved" the Gulf.

If the above manipulative strategy is employed, will that manipulation work well enough to minimize damage to the Democratic Party in the November 2010 election?

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FEATURED QUESTION: The Media

The recent earthquake in Haiti has wrought havoc and tragedy. Furthermore, the heart-wrenching and graphic images coming out of the impoverished nation are unusual in several respects; specifically, many of the images we have seen disregard the privacy and dignity of the victims, as noted by this article in the Washington Post:

The usual conventions of suggesting rather than displaying trauma seem to have been punctured, at least for now. Bodies caked in dust and plaster, faces covered in blood, the dead stacked in the streets without sheets to hide them -- these are all violations of the unwritten code that death can only be seen, in the established etiquette of the mainstream media, by analogy or metaphor or discreet substitute.

On Friday, The Post ran a picture of a young girl, seen from behind, her torso crushed by the weight of fallen concrete. The New York Times ran a picture of a dead man on a makeshift stretcher, covered in the white dust that makes so many of the bodies -- living or dead -- look sculptural. The BBC's Web site featured a warning about the graphic nature of its image gallery, which included a young girl looking up imploringly at the camera while a man, half buried in rubble and his face turned away, bled profusely down his back. Old ladies are seen disheveled and almost naked; the bandages on children don't hide the gore.

The article offers some theories as to why these graphic images are being shown. You can read the entire article HERE.

FEATURED QUESTION, in two parts: (1) What is your view as to the reason(s) the media are showing such graphic photos of the devastation in Haiti? (2) Is showing such images appropriate?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Constitutional Rights

In the summer of 2009, in the midst a crime wave in the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast Washington, the District of Columbia Police Department twice set up checkpoints with roadblocks specific to that neighborhood. At the roadblocks, drivers were asked if they had "a legitimate reason" to enter the neighborhood. On Friday, July 10, 2009, reversing a ruling by a lower court, a federal court of appeals ruled that those roadblocks unconstitutional on the basis of the Fourth Amendment.

Please read the following excerpt from an article in the Washington Post:

In a strongly worded opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit condemned the roadblocks, which police used last summer in the city's Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast Washington. The checkpoints, which have not been used in about a year, were a response to a spate of shootings, including a triple homicide.

"It cannot be gainsaid that citizens have a right to drive upon the public streets of the District of Columbia or any other city absent a constitutionally sound reason for limiting their access," Chief Judge David B. Sentelle wrote for a three-judge panel. "It is apparent that appellants' constitutional rights are violated."

[...]

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, an attorney for the Partnership for Civil Justice, which sued the District on behalf of four residents, hailed the ruling as a victory for law-abiding drivers who were questioned at checkpoints. In an effort to quell a series of shootings, drivers were forced to stop at roadblocks and were asked whether they had a "legitimate" reason to be there. Some were denied passage.

"We have always asserted that this program was blatantly unconstitutional, and the mayor and the attorney general should not be running roughshod over the basic fundamental rights of the citizens of the District," Verheyden-Hilliard said.

In defense of using the roadblocks, D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles stated as follows:

"It was effective....People were coming in, using cars to shoot the place up and then escaping in their vehicles."

Read the entire article.



What is your view of the use of such roadblocks and of the appropriateness of the court's ruling?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Education

The cost of a college education at both public and private institutions has risen at least 35% over the past five years. Furthermore, according to this editorial in the Tacoma News Tribune, this year's college class of 2009 is graduating with more debt than any previous class while at the same time facing a tough job market.

This article, appearing on the front page of the May 23, 2009 edition of the Washington Post, discusses the option of earning an undergraduate degree in three years. Excerpt from "Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money":

In an era when college students commonly take longer than four years to get a bachelor's degree, some U.S. schools are looking anew at an old idea: slicing a year off their undergraduate programs to save families time and money.

Advocates of a three-year undergraduate degree say it would work well for ambitious students who know what they want to study. Such a program could provide the course requirements for a major and some general courses that have long been the hallmark of American education.

The four-year bachelor's degree has been the model in the United States since the first universities began operating before the American Revolution. Four-year degrees were designed in large part to provide a broad-based education that teaches young people to analyze and think critically, considered vital preparation to participate in the civic life of American democracy.

The three-year degree is the common model at the University of Cambridge and Oxford University in England, and some U.S. schools have begun experimenting with the idea. To cram four years of study into three, some will require summer work, others will shave course lengths and some might cut the number of credit hours required.

"It will not be easy to produce a low-cost, high-quality three-year curriculum for a college degree, but now is the time to try," Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a former education secretary and a past president of the University of Tennessee, told a group of educators this year. "Today's economic crisis and tight budgets are the best time to innovate and change."

But critics said they fear that an undergraduate's academic and social experience would be compromised by shortening it to three years. College would tilt more toward job training and away from the broad-based education many U.S. schools have offered.

[...]

As if three years isn't enough of a departure, Purdue University's College of Technology in Indiana just announced a two-year bachelor's degree starting this summer....

Read the entire article.

This article from MSN Money discusses the worth of college degrees for certain subject areas and provides information as to the cost of earning a degree. Brief excerpt:

...The College Board tells us that four years' worth of tuition, fees, books and supplies at a public university currently cost about $20,000, while the private version will set you back $80,000. Add in room, board, transportation and other costs, and the total tab spirals to about $50,000 for public schools and $110,000 for private....

Read the entire article.



Should American institutions of higher learning lower the credit-hours requirements for undergraduate degrees so that students can finish earlier?

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FEATURED QUESTION: The First Amendment and the Internet

Technology brings both blessings and curses. According to this recent article in the Washington Post, a particular web site, which will go unnamed in this posting, is quite active in verbally attacking students in Maryland's Montgomery County high schools:

Before the digital age, there was simply nasty writing on the restroom wall. Now, in the say-it-all era of the Internet, the darker side of teenage expression has found a new place to fester.

It is a hive of anonymous slander where girls are listed by name as promiscuous and teachers are accused of being fat and in some instances of having sex with students. There are racial rants. Barbs about being gay....

At least one potentially violent incident has also been associated with the web site:

[In early May], a teenager posted a rambling threat to kill students and staff members at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, which led to the arrest of a 17-year-old who had recently moved to Tennessee.

In conflict are freedom of expression and curtailing what can be posted on the site:

[T]ension between free expression and mean-spirited assault appears to have hit a new high, especially in Montgomery County schools, which account for a majority of the Web site's postings. The site, which went up in November, is run by a 23-year-old administrator in Maryland and has already expanded into Virginia, the District and other states.

Parents have complained, and police have tried to rein in the site, which has been through several short-term shutdowns, but the material posted is not illegal, they say.

Unlike the world of graffiti in restroom stalls, the site's digital insults and accusations are more lasting, profuse and widely read, with the site claiming more than 3 million page views a day since the Whitman incident. Some students shrug off the crude remarks. But to others -- and their parents -- they can be alarming, humiliating or painful.

"This site takes all the mean-spirited and negative elements of Facebook and other sites that have a lot of positive aspects and puts them in one place," said Kathy Cowan of the National Association of School Psychologists, who has watched the site with concern. "It's like the sludge of Internet activity. There is nothing redeeming."

Alfredo Castillo, the site's administrator, said that he sees it as an important outlet for teenagers and that he and a fellow creator had asked, "Would it make sense, and is it right, is it wrong, morally?" They concluded that there was a need because "there is no avenue for people to express their feelings, their emotions and their secrets . . . anonymously."

As for teenagers hurt by malicious lies, he said: "We understand that a lot of it might be false. . . . We have to allow people who know these individuals to judge what is right [and] what is not."

[...]

The Web site...was shut down voluntarily just before Christmas because a topless photo of a minor was posted. It was shut down again in March after parents troubled by posted allegations questioned the legality of the site. Montgomery Police Detective John Reinikka investigated for illegal activity and found none.

Read the entire article HERE.


Should censorship of the Internet be applied to web sites such as the one described above? If so, by whom?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Education

From time to time, the issue of corporal punishment in schools, a disciplinary measure still legal in various school districts in twenty-one states, makes the news. This recent article in Newsweek relates the story of David Nixon, principal of John C. Calhoun Elementary School in South Carolina. Excerpt:

...Before Nixon took over "John C," student behavior had gotten so bad that one teacher described it as "chaos." She eventually quit in disgust, pulled her own child from the school, and moved to a different one 45 minutes away. ...When Nixon went to his first PTO meeting, only about a dozen parents showed up at a school with 226 students. He still has trouble reaching many families by phone because they can't afford to put down a deposit on a landline. And yet Nixon has managed to turn John C around. It recently earned three statewide Palmetto awards, one for academic performance and two for overall improvement—the school's first such honors in its 35-year history. Not everyone agrees with his methods, but most parents and teachers will tell you he couldn't have pulled off such a turnaround without his wooden paddle....

Please read the entire article, as well as the opposing view. The concluding portion from the latter:

...The use of physical violence against children in school may or may not create order and improve test scores, but it certainly teaches kids about humiliation and fear. And what fifth grader needs to learn about things like that?

Read the entire essay HERE.


What is your view on the use of corporal punishment in schools?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Health

Only if you have been living under a rock could you not know about the impact of the flu strain H1N1. The story of the "pandemic" has been the lead news story in many media outlets for several days now, although I note that in today's Washington Post (May 4, 2009), the flu stories have been relegated to page 4, with the first paragraph stating that "the new virus is not as lethal as initially feared."

All sorts of precautions have been taken. For example, to date some 400 schools throughout the United States have been closed for two weeks on the advice of the CDC. I have not found any information as to the financial impact such shuttering causes (What are substitute teachers doing for income when schools close?), although this Washington Post article discusses educational options for students unable to attend class while the schools are closed and cleaned — and, I might add, students on hiatus are likely turning into mall rats. At the same time, Mexico has announced an easing of imposed measures as the flu cases there seem to have tapered off. And on today's edition of the CBS Morning News, the lead story read "Flu Spreads. But Glimmer of Hope?"

This source reminds us of the actual definition of the scary word "pandemic":

A pandemic does not necessarily mean what you think it does, it is NOT black-plague carts being hauled through the streets piled high with dead bodies. Nor does it mean flesh eating zombies wandering the streets feeding on the living. All a pandemic means is that a new infectious disease is spreading throughout the world.

By definition, a "pandemic" is an epidemic that is geographically widespread. Fear-mongers are always careful to add the innuendo that millions of people could and probably will die, as in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed about 20 million people worldwide.

The same source goes on to state that fear mongering is afoot and that Tamiflu isn't necessarily a benign remedy. Read the entire essay HERE.



Is there truly a perilous pandemic of a dangerous strain of flu, or is fear mongering the greater danger?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Government

These days, a lot of conservatives are complaining that the Republican Party has morphed into a group of RINOS (Republicans In Name Only). As in the past, a lot of those on the right believe that the Republican Party has deserted conservative principles and are saying, "We need a third party!"
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Yes, parties other than the Democratic Party and Republican Party participate in our elections and have active members. We note, however, that those other parties garner a small percentage of votes, but sometimes a large enough percentage of the popular vote to result in the election of the party to which the third parties are often most opposed.

Read here the arguments in favor of and in opposition to two-party systems. Please do read these arguments before proceeding to the FEATURED QUESTION at the bottom of this post.

Read here about the 1800 Presidential Election, which led to the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.


Is today's two-party political system circumventing the practical application of separation of powers and checks and balances?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Technology

(This post stuck here for a time. Please scroll down for other postings)

Those reading this posting most likely make use of Twenty-first Century technology. Some of us clearly enjoy spending a lot of time with our electronic devices; others of us must do so because so many careers today require our making use of digital technology.

Recently, some studies have indicated that our reliance on the availably technology is actually changing our brains and possibly our society as well. From this article, written by neuroscientist Susan Greenfield:

...[T]he brain is not the unchanging organ that we might imagine. It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases, eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by what we do to it and by the experience of daily life. When I say "shaped", I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically; I'm talking literally. At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change in response to certain experiences and stimuli.

The brain, in other words, is malleable - not just in early childhood but right up to early adulthood, and, in certain instances, beyond. The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind.

Of course, there's nothing new about that: human brains have been changing, adapting and developing in response to outside stimuli for centuries.

...[T]he pace of change in the outside environment and in the development of new technologies has increased dramatically. This will affect our brains over the next 100 years in ways we might never have imagined.

Our brains are under the influence of an ever- expanding world of new technology: multichannel television, video games, MP3 players, the internet, wireless networks, Bluetooth links - the list goes on and on.

[...]

it's pretty clear that the screen-based, two dimensional world that so many teenagers - and a growing number of adults - choose to inhabit is producing changes in behaviour. Attention spans are shorter, personal communication skills are reduced and there's a marked reduction in the ability to think abstractly.

This games-driven generation interpret the world through screen-shaped eyes. It's almost as if something hasn't really happened until it's been posted on Facebook, Bebo or YouTube.

Add that to the huge amount of personal information now stored on the internet - births, marriages, telephone numbers, credit ratings, holiday pictures - and it's sometimes difficult to know where the boundaries of our individuality actually lie. Only one thing is certain: those boundaries are weakening....

Read the rest.

This article, positive in outlook, states the following:

Scientists are beginning to document the traces that the Internet leaves on sensitive young brains. People who play a lot of action video games, for instance, process visual information more quickly than people who don't, according to a seminal 2003 article in Nature. (The study was initiated by a pre-med student who stayed up all night playing Counter-Strike.)

Digital immersion affects the Net Generation in other ways, too. They don't necessarily read from left to right, or from beginning to end. They're more sensitive to visual icons than older people are, and they absorb more information when it's presented with visual images than when it's offered in straight text. This may help them be better scanners, a useful skill when you're confronted with masses of online information.

Many experts contend that if young people try to absorb multiple streams of information at the same time, they'll make mistakes, slow down, and think less deeply and creatively. My observation of hundreds of Net Geners leads me to a different conclusion: Net Geners are faster than I am at switching tasks and better at blocking out background noise. They can work effectively with music playing and news coming in from Facebook. They can keep up their social networks while they concentrate on work—they seem to need this to feel comfortable. I think they've learned to live in a world where they're bombarded with information, so that they can block out the TV or other distractions while they focus on the task at hand. This is a powerful advantage in a digital environment that's buzzing with multiple streams of information....

As expected and contrary to the excerpt immediately above, much information about the impact of technology on our brains and our lives warns of dangers to which we expose ourselves by spending so much time with digital devices. Specifically, while doing research for this FEATURED QUESTION, I found much about internet addiction and even The Center for Internet Addiction Recovery.


Since you started making use of digital-age available technology, have you experienced any brain, behavioral, or social changes — positive or negative?

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FEATURED QUESTION: The Media

When I watch the news, particularly the national news on any channel, I get the distinct impression that the anchors of these shows merely move from one story another as they follow a script and keep an eye on the clock. Are these anchors showing laudable impartiality, pretended impartiality, or hardened indifference?
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In my own observations, the pundits are little different. They have more of an apparent agenda — left, right, or center — than the news anchors, of course, and often present on-the-air editorials as they pick and choose evidence to prove their theses. Still, in spite of bursts of passion, I again get the impression that these talking heads are quite disinterested in the material they present as they move fluidly from one story to another.

In a recent comment here at Always On Watch, days before I polished this posting, my friend Z summed up some of what I've been pondering about the media:

I keep watching the cable venues and seeing REALLY important discussions that last between commercials, then big smiles "Thanks for coming on!" "You're welcome!" And it's like THEY FORGOT the severity of the problems they're discussing like SOCIALISM IN AMERICA? An American PRESIDENT bowing so exaggeratedly to a muslim KING? Mentioning ONE WORLD ORDER and MAN OF THE WORLD just a few too many times...? IMPORTANT issues..then "thanks, Bill!" "you're welcome, I was HAPPY to BE HERE!"

Do you feel a disconnect, of whatever sort, with the media? If so, does such a disconnect result from an underlying purpose or cause, or is it merely reflective of a sort of attention disorder?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Religion

The following video indicates just how seriously Moslems take teaching Islamic doctrine and culture to their children:



Now turn the page to learn where this little muslimah lives and makes her profession of faith.

New York City


At what point does religious instruction cross the line into brainwashing?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Politics

I've been overwhelmed recently with the Herculean task of seeking and obtaining private health-insurance coverage. I'll spare my readers the details of that quest, other than to say that I've been approved for coverage nearly a month ago but am waiting for the effective date of the policy to be entered into the company's system. Why entering the required data, all submitted weeks ago, is taking so long remains a mystery.
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As a result of having to spend long hours on hold and engaged in heated telephone conversations with the aforementioned health-insurance company, I've been unable to make blog rounds or to do more than keep a cursory eye on the news. That said, I notice that most broadcasts I've recently seen on television are those of BHO's speechifying. Just this morning, within two hours, he was twice on the screen presenting something or other.


Is it my imagination or is BHO on that television screen more than any previous American President? If the latter, why is he constantly in front of the broadcast media?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Politics & Society

On Thursday, March 19, the President of the United States appeared as a guest on The Jay Leno Show.

Video clip, including BHO's gaffe comparing his bowling with the Special Olympics:



(1) Does a sitting President's appearance on an entertainment show such as The Jay Leno Show demean the office of the President of the United States? (2) In your view, what was BHO trying to accomplish, overtly or covertly, by appearing in such a non-serious venue?

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FEATURED QUESTION: Education

As every informed citizen knows, the economic downturn is causing local governments to scrutinize and make cuts to their budgets for the public schools. All agree that class sizes should not be increased — or increased as little as possible.
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This essay by Jay Mathews, "Better Teachers, Not Tinier Classes, Should Be Goal," offers another perspective on the sacred cow of class size.

Excerpt:

...[W]hen the Center for Public Education examined 19 studies of class-size effects that met its research standards, it reached two interesting conclusions. First, most of the studies focused on kindergarten through third grade, and most of the beneficial effects of smaller classes seem to occur in those years, when students are learning to read. Spending money on class-size reduction for those kids makes sense, as several local school systems have shown.

Second, the studies showed little effect from class-size reduction unless the number of students was 20 or fewer, and little effect in middle or high schools....

Read the entire article here.

A related article about the apportioning of funds for education appeared in Newsweek, in a personal essay entitled "Autism and Education."

Excerpt:

My son and my daughter are happy, active, healthy children who enjoy school and are lucky to have a solid family life. But they are very different. My autistic son tests in the "severe" range in many subjects. At 8, he reads well but cannot answer basic questions about what he has read. He speaks at a 3-year-old level, adores "Blue's Clues" and is almost potty-trained.

My daughter, meanwhile, tests in the 95th percentile nationwide on standardized tests. At 12, she shows an amazing ability to process information, taking complex ideas apart and putting them back together to form new thoughts. She reads an entire novel most Sunday afternoons, solves the Sudoku puzzles in the paper and memorizes the entire script—not just her own lines—for the school plays she loves to be in.

At school, my son spends a portion of his day in a regular classroom. But primarily he learns in a group of two to six children led by an intervention specialist, often accompanied by an aide. Even when he's in the regular classroom, he is never without an adult by his side. His intervention specialist records everything he does in daily logs that are required to ensure funding....

My son's teachers do their absolute best for him. I know they love him. But beyond that, his government-mandated Individualized Education Plan legally ensures that he gets every opportunity to excel. In addition, his teachers spend countless hours each year filling out detailed quarterly reports and other government-required paperwork. If I decide that the school district should pay for something extra to improve my son's education, I can appeal to an independent board for mediation.

My daughter spends all but three hours of her school week in a regular classroom, where she often hides a book in her desk and reads while the teacher talks. She complains to me when the teacher reteaches things she learned last year, and she resents being drilled over and over on something she learned in 10 minutes. For three hours a week, she is pulled from her classroom for a "gifted" program with 15 other children, where she works either on a group project with other students or independently on her own blog or a computer-based foreign-language program.
I can only imagine how much my daughter would excel if she had a program specifically geared to her strengths, one that challenged her creativity on a daily basis. Or if she received even half the individual attention my son receives every week...

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...My daughter has the potential for much more. If she were given even a fraction of the customized education that my son receives, she could learn the skills needed to prevent the next worldwide flu pandemic, or invent a new form of nonpolluting transportation. Perhaps she could even discover a cure for autism.

Read the entire essay here.

Assuming the inevitability of reductions in costs to the local governments and the local taxpayers, how would you restructure those budgets during these difficult economic times?

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