Ralph Berg said:
I can name a thousand places the average European has no knowledge of. Ask the average European the same questions you posed and I bet most don't have the answers. What does this prove?
You seem to feel you are superior to the "ugly American". Is that why you reside here? Better to feel superior here than inferior elsewhere?
Or are you here to take advantage of the "stupid American"?
I would guess you are not from the US or Europe. Is this why you do not use your full name on the forum as the rest of us do and hide behind a moniker?
I noticed you failed to respond to my question about employment. As long as you keep hiding behind the "curtain", your opinion has no value to me. In order for me to respect an opinion, I have to know where it originates.
Ralph
First, I use the handle "Mik" on EVERY board I post on. There's a story behind it. Since I EARNED it I like it better than my given name. Maybe sometime I'll tell the story again, maybe not, but when you have a can of food do you eat the label or the contents? If I signed everything "Uncle Benjamin Hadd" and AGREED with you you'd not complain, even though U Ben Hadd, but a simple Mik gets your hackles up. As Alice said, "curiouser and curiouser".
I was BORN here in the US. That doesn’t mean I have to LIKE how far out of touch we are with the reality of the rest of the world. I don’t have to LIKE how we pay lip service to the value of an education, but teach jack in the public schools. I don’t have to LIKE how we loudly proclaim how “free” we are, but keep passing more and more laws restricting our own precious civil liberties. I don’t have to LIKE how people BOTH parties so often lie through their grinning teeth telling us what they think we want to hear, promise us the moon, then take money off some lobbyist. We have the best government money can buy, and it’s OUR OWN FAULT because we (as a people) are too “busy with more important things”(read: LAZY not stupid) to think about what it really means. To me THAT is what is at stake.
My job could be called low man on the totem pole with an energy company. But I have PERSONAL contact with about 200 people a DAY, EVERY day. I talk with them, and I listen to what they say (and HOW they say it). Do you?
As for the questions above. I DO know the answers (without looking them up) and I think you might find a reasonably educated European probably WOULD know the answers to most of them. Do I speak three languages? No, and more is the pity since my daughter in law is from the Dominican Republic and speaks limited English. We are both learning, but slowly.
Roasting Governor Palin for possibly being mis-informed on the history of a cultural clash in a tiny province in a small Eastern European country when it is damned unlikely that 99.9% of the rest of our populace knows (or cares) AT ALL is cynical at best. (They taught YOU all about it in high school, right?) SHOULD she have looked deeper beyond the report she was given before forming an opinion? We HOPE she will, but stop and think about the pressures the woman is under and the number of people wanting “just a little bit” of her time EVERY DAY. EXPECTING her to know everything about it back to 1922 without being briefed on it is a bit much, especially since I would imagine MOST of the stuff she got from the state department probably says pretty much what she did. Before you accuse me of being an apologist, if it was Obama you’d probably overlook it. BUT call me cynical, IMO much of our foreign policy blunders come from state department people slanting reports so that the pollies come to a conclusion based on what the state department people, our “allies”, (or our business interests) WANT (as opposed to what is the best or most moral choice) as it does from having “unqualifed bumpkins” in office.
The libs just don’t know what to do with her.
