Are Americans The Coolest People In The World?

Photo: gcardinal (CC)

Photo: gcardinal (CC)

Well according to a new poll, the answer is “yes!” Reuters reports:

They may be witnessing their global superpower influence decline in the face of challenges from other emerging players on the world stage, but Americans have been voted the world’s “coolest nationality” in an international poll.

Social networking site Badoo.com asked 30,000 people across 15 countries to name the coolest nationality and also found that the Spanish were considered the coolest Europeans, Brazilians the coolest Latin Americans and Belgians the globe’s least cool nationality.

“We hear a lot in the media about anti-Americanism,” says Lloyd Price, Badoo’s Director of Marketing. “But we sometimes forget how many people across the world consider Americans seriously cool.”

Of course, not all Americans are cool far from it. Some like Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp and Quentin Tarantino are way cooler than others.

Americans, however, are the dudes who invented cool and who still…

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African American Unemployment At 27 Year High

chart-black-unemploymentAnnalyn Censky reports on this depressing statistic for CNN Money:

The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.

Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.

“This month’s numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities have a much more challenging time getting jobs,” said Bill Rodgers, chief economist with the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

Black unemployment has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.

Economists blame a variety of factors. The black workforce is younger than the white workforce, lower numbers of blacks get a college degree and many live in areas of the country that were harder hit by the recession — all…

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The Trouble With Too Much Democracy

US_Government_Accountability_Office_sealIs America’s bigger problem the economic decline or it’s political decay? Andrew Potter writes in Axis of Logic:

The most telling moment of the recent standoff over talks to raise the American government’s debt ceiling came on July 22, when President Barack Obama called a press conference to announce that House Speaker John Boehner had backed out of the negotiations. “I’ve been left at the altar twice now,” Obama pouted. In case the image of the President as a jilted lover was not clear to everyone watching, he added that he had spent the previous day waiting for Boehner to return his phone calls.

The whole affair has left a lot of Americans in a state of bipartisan disgust, with citizens from all points on the political compass cursing out their elected representatives. Yet it doesn’t seem to have occurred to many people that there is something structurally flawed with a system…

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One In Seven Americans Lives On Food Stamps

viewerSad statistic of the day from IANS via Yahoo News:

Believe it or not, one in seven Americans - 15 percent of the country - now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive, according to latest government figures. Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people, the US Department of Agriculture, which administers what's officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme reported Thursday. The continued high unemployment and the weak US economy have contributed to the explosive growth of the food stamp programme with no end in sight to the monthly increases, CNN said noting that 27 million people were dependent on food stamps in October 2007... Read more »

8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

ProtestBruce E. Levine writes on Alternet:

The ruling elite has created social institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance.

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it.

A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to…

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U.S. Approves Free Birth Control For Women

Photo: Ceridwen (CC) It’s a good time to be a woman. Via Reuters: U.S. health insurance companies must offer women free birth control and other preventive health care services under Obama administration rules released on Monday, a historic decisi... Read more »

Entire South Dakota Town For Sale For $800,000

5830652118_fbb3eba6f2For under a million dollars, you can purchase Scenic, South Dakota, a small town with weather-worn charm that includes a jail, post office, dance hall, and several saloons that have stood since the days of the Wild West. Most of the remaining residents are relatives of a woman named Twila Merril. What you’ll do with your very own U.S. town is your business. Via CNN:

Scenic, South Dakota, might not have much — a dance hall, a jail and a handful of out-buildings. But it’s a town. And most of it could be yours for $799,000. “They’ve decided to sell and move on,” said Dave Olsen, a realtor who is hoping to sell the property. It’s 46 acres in total — 12 acres in town and 34 acres around it — located about 50 miles east of Rapid City, South Dakota.

The sale includes the “kit and kaboodle,” said Olsen — a…

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Heat Wave Due To “Exceptionally Strong” Air Mass

Photos: Alex E. Proimos

Photos: Alex E. Proimos

Today has been the coolest day all week in the Northeast of the US.  The Midwest, Northeast and Southern parts of the country have been experiencing consecutive days of high temperatures and humidity which have contributed to many deaths throughout the country. What is the cause of this cantankerous heat and is it an indication of future affects of global warming? The National Geographic reports:

A stubborn high-pressure system is the culprit behind the dangerously high heat wave that’s been baking much of the U.S., experts say.

The high-pressure system—a large area of dense air—is being held in place by upper-level winds known as the jet stream. Within the system, dense air sinks and becomes warmer, and since warm air can hold more moisture than cooler air, there’s also very high humidity. (Learn more about Earth’s atmosphere.)

Stationary high-pressure systems aren’t unusual during the summer, according to Eli Jacks, a meteorologist…

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Jesus Appears On Walmart Receipt In South Carolina

OriginalThis is basically the essence of United States encapsulated in a single news story. CBS 21 reports:

An engaged couple in Anderson County says a shadowy image that turned up on a receipt from Walmart looks like the face of Jesus.

Jacob Simmons and his fiancee, Gentry Lee Sutherland, said they bought some pictures from Walmart on June 12. The following Wednesday, the couple had just come home from a church service when Simmons spotted the receipt on the floor of Sutherland’s apartment. He says the receipt had changed. “I was leaving the kitchen and I just looked on the floor, and it was like it was looking at me,” Simmons said.

A dark gray mark on the receipt seems to show two eyes, a nose and a mouth in a thickly bearded face. “Then the more you look at it, the more it looked like Jesus, and it was just shocking, breathtaking,” Simmons…

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The Use Of U.S. Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010

Presented by the Federation of American Scientists, the Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2010 chronologically lists the cases in which the United States has used its armed forces overseas in military conflict over the course ... Read more »

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