Donna, the "ratings" may be slightly skewed, depending on how you count but...

When you come up 37th in "health care", it doesn't matter that you might be able to skew the numbers a little better (like how our infant mortality rate looks a bit worse than it really should be because we try to save more preemies - other countries count 'live births' differently).

Study after study is showing our inferiority in education.

At least with manufacturing, it isn't all bad - the value of our exports keep rising. Yes, jobs are going overseas but there ARE jobs staying here and they are more efficient these days than in days past.

Only in this country could the "Obamacare" program be called "socialized medicine" when all the money will be going to the insurance companies.

It's like some weird version of "1984" with it's own kind of "Newspeak".

Screaming about 'socialized medicine' ignores life-expectancy statistics. It doesn't necesarily mean that certain European models are 'the best' (since France and Switzerland have combine public/private models that seems to rank higher than ours).

I mean, come on, only now, 9 years later, is there FINALLY some stell going up at Ground Zero.

We've known that suckling on the oil teat is a national security nightmare for DECADES now - you would have thought that 1973 would have been a wake up call but it wasn't. 1980? Another blip.