Just a Moment of Analysis

The effect of the Mosque chatter from New York City on November elections? Nationally....it's a mild topic that has some minor effect. However....most every New York state resident has an opinion, and it's not in approval of the mosque being built. I'm thinking that daily....this is draining 3,000 votes from New York state Democrats. And we've still got sixty-odd days to go. This might have been the wrong time and wrong situation to chat over topics like this....right before an election.

Best Country in the World?

Newsweek tried to be dynamic and creative this week. They had an article establishing their idea of the best country in the world. They established five magic ingreidents to make this possible, and then collected the statistics. The five items? Health, economic dynamism (the openness of a country's economy and the breadth of its corporate sector), education, political environment, and quality of life.

The winner? Finland. Where was the US? Number eleven.

I tried to imagine how exactly we got some of our low scores.....we weren't that great in health or education.

Then it hit me....the universal health plan hadn't kicked in yet.....so we couldn't get the twenty bonus points there to match up with Finland.

As for education? Well....by the time you add in the failed urban school environment throughout the entire US....it drags down all of the regular heartland schools in America to be rather low as well. If we'd merely picked out Texas or Utah...we'd likely have surged ahead. But you can't leave those poor kids from Washington DC, LA, or St Louis out of the national numbers.

Was it a fair scale? This is Newsweek, and frankly, if they can generate any chat or discussion over their articles, it's a major victory.

As for the Finns? They probably are wondering what the big discussion is over.