"African-Americans consistently have expressed far less faith in "most people" than the white majority does. Racism, discrimination and a high rate of poverty destroy trust.

Nearly 8 in 10 African-Americans, in the 2012 survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago with principal funding from the National Science Foundation, felt that "you can't be too careful." That figure has held remarkably steady across the 25 GSS surveys since 1972.

The decline in the nation's overall trust quotient was driven by changing attitudes among whites. It's possible that people today are indeed less deserving of trust than Americans in the past, perhaps because of a decline in moral values."

“Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”

Somehow it never gets applause when blacks say it:

James Carville to President Obama: Try crack pipe

I guess we'll just never understand people or politics,...

A new documentary finds exactly what and who I said was happening during the primary:

The not-so-secret hero of “Caucus” is former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who plugs his way across Iowa in his Dodge pickup and an endless wardrobe of endearingly dreadful sweater vests, talking to anyone and everyone who will listen. He’s almost a Frank Capra character, a plainspoken man of principle who believes in old-fashioned politics and refuses to tell lies just to get elected. “Caucus” is in many ways the story of Santorum’s triumph, short-lived as it turned out to be: Despite polling in the low single digits in the fall of 2011, Santorum outlasts Bachmann, Gingrich, Cain and Perry and winds up in a dead heat with Mitt Romney, candidate of the GOP establishment.

Let’s be clear: I wouldn’t vote for Rick Santorum for dog-keeper if the other candidate were a dog. He’s a committed Christian conservative – actually, a Catholic conservative, a subtle but important distinction – who is forcefully opposed to abortion rights and marriage equality, and rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. I do not lament the fact that he didn’t get elected to national office (and never will). But amid all the overheated anti-Obama rhetoric and wild, unfulfillable promises of the Iowa campaign, Santorum comes off as the only candidate who isn’t telling people exactly what they want to hear, and who isn’t fueling hatred for its own sake.

So, once again, the Republican Party - in it's so-called wisdom - wasted the best candidate it had going,...

 

“Coeliacs make up only one in 100 of the population, while one in five of us is buying gluten-free products. Surveys of US consumers show that, of these, only five per cent are buying to combat coeliac disease, with the vast majority citing their reasons as 'digestive health', 'nutritional value' and 'to help me lose weight'. People have been eating bread since biblical times without reporting adverse effects.”

"The disastrous launch of the ObamaCare website is the only lifeline left for the GOP to grab at the moment," says Nina Easton at Fortune. With the party's poll numbers in the toilet after the government shutdown, "it may not be enough."

• 74 percent of Americans believe Congress is contributing to problems in Washington rather than solving them.

• Only 22 percent think the nation is headed in the right direction. Two-thirds believe that the nation is in a "state of decline."

• Just two of every 10 Americans think the economy will get better in the next year.

• Only three of 10 Americans are optimistic about the future of the U.S. political system.

• A majority of Americans don't identify with either party.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of folks like Camille Paglia, positive this is the truth, that NewAge ended a long time ago:

  I wrote a long piece for Arion at Boston University a couple of years ago called “Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision in the American 1960s” trying to give reasons—trying to sketch this combination of things with poetry, religion, spirituality that would produce the New Age movement. And then trying to diagnose why the whole thing collapsed,...

Meanwhile, my impression of the current landscape - as a "spiritual" minefield - is confirmed even as it's denied:

  The Theos survey discovered that 40% of the sample (and a small majority of women) had at some time engaged in a "New Age" activity - for example, a Tarot card reading or a Reiki healing session. These activities seem to be equally popular with those who describe themselves as religious and those who do not,…

Which is how and why atheists are doomed to end up alone - as "compassionate" NewAgers  love to point out:

We're not part of their cult,...

 

It's been call it "the most spiritual place on Earth," and the mandatory travel destination for NewAgers looking for gurus since The Beatles, how's it going? 

 Thirty million people are slaves, half in India: survey 

 But even though "everything's connected," there's no connection,...

 

The Houston Chronicle criticizes Ted Cruz

Is the tea party part of the GOP? Most Republicans say no.

 

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You'd have to be a fool not to see political realignment occurring. 

 Probably for the better - definitely in the long run,...

 

I don't know if whites actually think this, want to think this, or are badly mistaken and/or seeing things, but hurting "the least among us" is certainly high on the list of results these attitudes manifest:  

Despite large and persistent gaps between blacks and whites on virtually every indicator of economic well-being, about half of all whites say the average black person is about as well off financially or doing better than the average white person, according to a survey released last week by the Pew Research Center. The survey found that 53% of whites say that, on average, blacks are “about as well off” financially as whites (43%) or say blacks are doing better (10%).

Other than putting a "delusional thinking" tag on this and shaking my head, all I got is a message for those who think blacks are either doing as well, or better than whites:

Contact your doctor, the problem's serious,...