Naw?!?!?!

As you might have noticed, I'm not a real big fan of polls.  I take a few online, sent to me, and I question the questions.  They don't always allow me to express an accurate opinion.  That is, I am limited to what the pollsters want to ask, not what I want to answer.  The ways the questions are phrased, who is polled, margin of error, and more lead me to look askance at polls.

But I heard this one today and, as one much wiser than I once said, "If only 10% is true......"  This poll claimed that fully 1/3 of all millennials in the US think George W. Bush was responsible for more deaths than Josef Stalin!!!!!!  Huh?  Something is wrong somewhere.  Is it the teaching, lousy or slanted?  (Hey, my grandson's US History course, one semester, covers the colonial period through the Second World War!  Yes, all that in one semester.  Where is the time for consideration, for perspective, for relevance?  Of course, it's only silly stuff like the Revolutionary War, including those documents, what are they?, oh The Declaration of Independence and Constitution (and Bill of Rights).  And the Civil War?  As one AP teacher told her class, of the Civil War, on which she spent a whole two days, "A lot of people died; get over it.  Now let's get on to the Gilded Age." And other silly stuff.  Ah, but there's the state tests......  They are all-important.  More than ever, and this is saying something from me, people who shouldn't be allowed to make decisions about education are being allowed to make them.  I thought it was bad before......)  Or do students just not bother to pay attention and learn?  After all, Stalin isn't on a reality show or a character in a video game......

Stalin killed millions, tens of millions.  We'll never know for sure how many, but recent revisionists have tried to bring the number down, to maybe only 20 or 30 million.  Bush, as lousy a President as he was, as reckless as he was in invading Iraq and Afghanistan, is not even in the same universe as "Uncle Joe," as his buddy Franklin Roosevelt called him.

And, I forget the actual numbers, but each was over 20%, many millennials had "favorable" impressions of murderers such as Lenin, Mao, and Che.  How are we to fight evil when we can't even recognize it?

Also, I don't know if this is a product of the schools or not, but I read this today.  I don't remember the exact words, but these are accurate in intent.  So-and-so "is more reliable because he doesn't state any facts."  Huh?  So, if someone talks in very vague generalities or even just makes up stuff, that makes him/her "more reliable?"

I was reminded about something I've written about over the years, gridlock in government.  A lot of people think gridlock is a bad thing.  I disagree.  It's a good thing, a very good thing.  First, it might well afford valuable time to think or rethink an issue.  Second, it prevents government from doing more bad stuff.  (Of course, some folks think that gov't can do no wrong, that it is always working in our best interests, even if we don't think so.)  Just think how much better off America and Americans would be had gridlock been able to block Obamacare.  I know, I know...but that's not reality for most Americans.

Hmmm......  I've seen one, just one, Clinton yard sign.  The Trump signs number in the dozens.  Just the other day about half a dozen or more went up on the street across from us.  For that matter, down on the corner of the two main roads, I counted 38 campaign signs on Mon AM.  I wonder who, if anyone, will remove them three weeks from tomorrow.