Okay, two quick things I had to post here - neither is anything personal, sorry I do have a funny story to post, but it will have to wait - the first thing is in response to an article I read after hearing a short conversation about it on NPR, the headline read: "White House paid commentator $240,000 to promote No Child Left Behind", here's a short clip:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation.

This is just amazing to me. Here in America, we have a crumbling education system, compared with other countries, such as the EU, our kids are quickly falling further and further behind. Much of this is in direct result from an ever bloated "defense" budget - every year - with every passing president - the US spends more and more on bombs and less and less on books. Now, this isn't the first time that our government has, rather than throwing money at the problem, thrown money at the symptoms, and it won't be last time - they had an opportunity to take $240,000, which granted isn't a lot in the scheme of education reform, and put it towards something that would have a direct effect on under-educated children - and instead; they bought themselves a mass-media spokesman to drill into his audiences' head that "there is no problem... everything is great".

This is the system we live with. And don't kid yourself, this isn't an isolated event - it's simply an isolated story - these kind of mass-media "spokesmen" are a dime a dozen - and will continue to be until people stand up and demand a form of "news" that isn't dangerously susceptible to government / big-business buyouts. A form of news that's by the people and for the people - a form of news that has the freedom to report the massive short comings of Bush's "No Child Left Behind" act... okay, I'm done preaching.

Secondly, is this funny cartoon I found on the internet - enjoy: