Chewbacca passes exam, should we all?

I was reading an interesting tid-bit the other day.

Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca in four of the Star Wars movies) has become an American citizen. He loves a Texan, so good for him.

Yahoo news story

What really caught my eye though was this line:

Candidates also must pass history, English and civics exams.

Sounds good to me, maybe not necessarily the history, but the English and civics certainly. But this is the exam to be a citizen. Surely it would be more appropriate to put this sort of testing in to be a voter? American born and immigrants alike, some sort of qualification to be determining the future and direction of the country would be a wise idea.

I know the electoral college was designed to get around the unwashed masses casting their uneducated votes, but the electoral college is a joke. They don't cast votes proportional to the state vote, and they don't educate them selves and disregard the uneducated votes, so why bother? The electoral college doesn't do the thing it was instituted to do, and it doesn't remove itself from the process either in effect or actuality.

I submit that in the interests of the future stability of the country, there should be some basic understanding requirement for voters. They need to know what they are voting on and how the voting process works. They need to show they are capable of educating themselves on the specific issues too. Whether they then make random choices or choices I may disagree with is their right, but why should my government be influenced by someone who doesn't understand what they are doing, or what is relevant?

As I watched the Schivo case unfold recently I was struck by something. Not so much the right to life, vs. the right to die debate, but the degree to which out news providers were caught up in the argument.

There was a lot of discussion about whether the congress made the right choice by forcing a judicial review. There was a lot of talk about whether the judges had made the right choice by not ordering the tube put back in. There was a lot of talk about whether Terry had the right to die peacfully. There was a lot of talk about whether not reinstating her feeding tube was murder.

As Michael Jackson goes on trial and the latest information comes out daily, the media who report it seem to have a clear idea on the verdict.

And everyone has an opinion. Not just the commentators, but the anchors and the journalists. The poeople we rely on to provide the facts to us so we can make informed decisions and form educated opinions have been focusing on the verdicts handed down in these major cases, rather than the process.

How many reports looked at the processes involved . . .



Hmmm - a thought started on the 14th of April and somehow never finished. Posting anyway.

A day in the life

06:00 - Wake up. Wake everyone else up.
07:00 - Deliver Crysta to work.
08:00 - Deliver Cameron to school.
09:00 - Check mail and run errands.
10:30 - Story hour at the library.
11:15 - Pick up Crysta for lunch.
12:00 - Deliver Maia to school.
13:00 - E-bay and laundry while Ella naps.
15:00 - Pick up Maia and Cameron from school
16:30 - Pick up Crysta from work.
17:30 - Go out to dinner.
19:00 - Go out to rehearsal.

Luckily I don't have to do everything everyday. But I'm feeling pouty and whiney. I never have 30 consecutive minutes to myself - even if there is a lot of time in the day.

Getting out of this motel room and into a house; getting the second car back - I might just turn christian and praise god.

The end justifies the means . . ?

We are victorious!
We have started the domino effect of democracy in the middle east. Women no longer have to wear a veil and every person has the right to vote in Iraq and Afghanistan. A ruthless dictator has been over thrown and the people of Iraq, nay, the world are better off for it!
Our mission is accomplished, just as we set out to do!
But wait.
On March 6 2003, President George W. Bush said "Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country, to our people, and to all free people.... I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons."
Later that month the war began.
During the 2004 election poll after poll was taken, after the dust had settled 41% of voters said that National Security was the single biggest factor in determining their vote (Rasmussen Reports, 11/8/2004).
The United Nations inspectors had been giving preliminary reports that indicated there were no WMD to be found in Iraq, but they were unable to complete their investigation after war broke out. President Bush appointed his own investigator, and he did complete his report, saying that the UN inspectors were correct - there were no weapons of mass destruction.
So tell me again, why did we enter Iraq? Was it to over throw a tyrant and install democracy, as the claim goes now? Was it to gain more control of the oil? Was it an election stunt to garner a second term of office and finally pull George W. out of his father's shadow?
What ever it was, it certainly seems it was not to eliminate the Weapons of Mass destruction and the terror threat that presented to the United States, as the claim went before the war. We have been duped and lied to.
But does the end justify the means?