It's all a matter of perception. Turn off CNN, get rid of USA Today, Fox News and other mass media, and we're not in too bad a shape.

Crime is down. The FBI just released its annual statistics report, and violent crime is down 5%, property crime is down 7%, continuing a trend that has been going for more than a decade. The reason crime seems so bad now is that we find out about the guy holed up in the building in Miami nationally, not just locally, and we hear about it well before anyone has a chance to get the facts straight. As usual, they broadcast the headline at the top of the hour, on the hour for hours, and then run the corrections on the bump as they go to commercial when no one is looking.

Weather? We're no worse off now than we were in the 1940's to the 1960's, when they had many, many hurricanes, every year, but there was no CNN to broadcast up to the minute reports every 10-15 minutes. There also wasn't so much coastal development as there is now. Saturation reporting makes EVERYTHING look like it's going to hell.

Jobs are available. Even in the Southern tier of NY, where unemployment is a constant problem, it's down under 5%, and has been there for a couple years now. It all depends on where you are.

George W. Bush is but one out of the thousands of officials, elected and appointed, that make things work in this country. Just as he cannot honestly take credit for everything when things go right, WE cannot blame him for everything and be honest about it. Your local politicians have a far greater effect on your daily life than anything coming out of Washington DC. They don't set state taxes, services, etc, your local government does. Your local government also has more of an effect than Washington DC on the local economy and local job creation. again, it's all in perception and the way Mass Media wants you to see it.

As far as animal abuse goes, there are more stories than ever, but there is more COVERAGE than ever, and checking facts seems to be a lost art with the media as well (see the story about using dogs as shark bait). The sun, a tabloid, runs the story and CNN picks up on it and reruns it as though the sun was teh Wall Street Journal.

Helping other countries? We aren't just "One of the more prosperous countries" as Cataholic put it, we are THE MOST prosperous country in the world. One of the best ways to fight the war on terror is to assist the people who get brainwashed into becoming terrorists, and show them that we are NOT the evil country that we are made out to be by some. It's far easier to prevent them from becoming terrorists in the first place than to fight them on the battlefield.

The US a spoiled country? Damned right we're spoiled. We have people getting help from relief agencies going on TV and complaining that they got an MRE instead of a hot meal. Doesn't that just make me feel special. In the field I live on 'em, but they aren't good enough for someone that the media has been portraying as starving? Guess they weren't really starving after all. We have enough resources in this country that we can afford $3.00/gallon gas rather than let the oil companies drill where the resources are and use our own oil rather than import it.

It's not that bad. You just got in a hole, and things will look better when you get up out of the other side of it