{"id":562,"date":"2005-02-11T16:49:58","date_gmt":"2005-02-11T23:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/wp2\/uncategorized\/the-state-of-the-union\/"},"modified":"2005-02-11T16:49:58","modified_gmt":"2005-02-11T23:49:58","slug":"the-state-of-the-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/theirs\/the-state-of-the-union\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of the Union"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Letters at 3AM\" href=\"http:\/\/www.austinchronicle.com\/issues\/dispatch\/2005-01-21\/cols_ventura.html\">The Austin Chronicle: Columns: Letters at 3AM<\/a><br \/>\nNo. 1? BY MICHAEL VENTURA<\/p>\n<p> ? The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).<\/p>\n<p>? Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005)<\/p>\n<p>? &#8220;Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined&#8221; (The European Dream, p.28).<\/p>\n<p>? &#8220;Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable&#8221; (The European Dream, p.32).<\/p>\n<p>? Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).<\/p>\n<p>? Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn&#8217;t show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004) [mjh: &#8220;Mandate,&#8221; my ass.]<\/p>\n<p>[via <a title=\"The Daily Aneurysm at jabartlett.com\" href=\"http:\/\/jabartlett.blogspot.com\/\">The Daily Aneurysm at jabartlett.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Austin Chronicle: Columns: Letters at 3AM No. 1? BY MICHAEL VENTURA ? The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004). ? Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the Earth. Seventeen percent believe the Earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/theirs\/the-state-of-the-union\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The State of the Union<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theirs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}