Schadenfreude fun in the tradition of American TV’s ‘Jaywalking’

Kellie Pickler, the platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?” Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”

These people vote.

Sign of the times

The meltdown in the US subprime real-estate market has led to a global loss of 7.7 trillion dollars in stock-market value since October, a report by Bank of America showed Thursday.

Obama’s double-digit lead

49% of Likely Democratic Primary Voters while Clinton attracts 37% (see recent daily numbers).... he now leads 46% to 41% among women. Clinton retains a lead among the narrower subset of white women, but her lead in that vital demographic is down to just three percentage points.

A Canadian on her once calmly courageous people

When the sea of societal ills is so shallow that “phone calls I don’t like” is scraped from the bottom and added to the legislative agenda, when the public tolerance for disagreeable things has dropped so low that “I have to hold my breath” is a complaint worthy of the commiseration of 100,000 radio listeners, we have a problem.

The foundations built by those pioneering forefathers, upon which our unparalleled wealth and security were built, are cracking under the weight of regulation, litigation and personal entitlement. ...emotive, reactionary, self-obsessed... The nannies are staging a coup. They’ve moved out of the nursery to seize control of the family business.

From T19.