Today's Uplifting Facebook Meme: Screw Haiti!

You've seen all of the various memes spread like wildfire through facebook stati? You know, like, all the ladies' bra colors and which historical figure you're most like? Interesting, harmless, momentarily distracting. Have you seen this really lovely one?:

America: the only country where we have homeless without shelter, children going to bed without eating, elderly going without needed meds, and mentally ill without treatment - yet we have a benefit for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations. 99% of people won't have the guts to copy and repost this!!

Wow. America's in bad shape, huh? We're the only country out of the world's 190-or-s0 countries with homeless people, hungry children, unmedicated elderly, and untreated mental illness! Gee...

Now, you see, statements like these are exactly why Americans are so often loathed by our fellow world citizens. I'm not saying we don't have problems here---and I'm not a big fan of letting them grow progressively worse while we spend all our time and money trying to meddle (and help) everyone else in the world---but our problems are relatively paltry. Don't sit in front of your computer facebooking thinking that you're worse off than the Haitians. While we all start drawing up our grocery lists so we can stuff our faces during the Superbowl, there are people all around the world who would give their left foot to have 1% of what we do.

Why Don't You Grow Up?

When I got out of work today some folks were stumping for Republican Senatorial candidate Scott Brown, who's running against Democrat Martha Coakley for the seat that belonged to the late Ted Kennedy.

Most of them simply carried "Scott Brown for Senate" signs, but one guy had a handmade sign that read, "OBAMA YOU CAN'T SAVE MARTHA".

Hey mister...at this point in history a Senate seat is a serious thing. Whatever your positions are, there are a lot of major issues on the burner. How about candidates just campaigning on their policies instead of mocking their opponents? How about those candidates' supporters acting a little less juvenile? Didn't you make fun of enough kids when you were in elementary school? Didn't get it out of your system yet? Why don't you just grow up already?