Thanks for priming the pump!

"Americans are really confident in...nobody"

The poll is here. For a good time, look at the questions they didn't talk about in the article.

I have reasonable confidence in many institutions. When you go through your daily life, you do it believing that the people who build our structures and run our systems do it safely and reliably. How many people give it a second thought when they take an elevator up a skyscraper?

I also keep reminding myself that all polls represent people who don't hang up on polltakers.

"Study: Smart Kids Grow Up Liberal Atheists"

This one's just asinine. First of all, IQ aside, how smart and world-wise is your typical adolescent in the first place? But liberals will go to great lengths trying to prove how much smarter they are, while reality continues to slap them down for doing the same stupid things over and over again.

"Row after Pope's remarks on atheism and Nazis"

Cut a little close to the bone, did he? It is certainly true that not all atheists are totalitarian, by a long shot. But it is also historically true that most totalitarian collectivist societies are hostile to religion. Personally, I believe this is simply because totalitarianism is intolerant of any other authority in the lives of their citizens, not some heavy philosophical reason (First Law of the Left).

Last one's just a weather report.

Going back to that poll at the beginning, I could think of a few questions that would have raised some eyebrows. Like, "how much time do you spend thinking about politics?" Fact is, most Americans don't like thinking about politics any more than they want to spend time thinking about exactly how the water gets to their tap. They pay people to make sure things work. It is immensely significant that voter turnout of eligible voters tends to float around 50 percent even in presidential elections, and much less for off-year elections. Again, remember that the people who have lives often hang up on pollsters.

Me, I work at my computer and have a lot of time between to think about things. Someone with a 9-5 doing real live hard work? Not so much.

But when politics starts to become a liability instead of a service, people will begin to take notice. Kind of like when your faucets start spouting mud. With the election of 2008, the Left finally got enough power to shove their failed socialist ideas right into a lot of faces that normally pay no attention. This is backfiring on them. Big time.