Publishing Note: This article was originally published on September 25, 2012 on a different website and is published here to point out that little has changed. The informed/ignorant ratio remains intact all these years later.

It is like we are two nations—One is informed, the other ignorant

Your country, our country—the great United States of America—is in deep trouble. We are teetering on the brink of economic collapse while almost thirty Middle Eastern countries are literally on fire—fueled by a deep hatred for America. Yet because there are far too many ignorant Americans among us, almost half of us act like everything is fine. Well, there is nothing fine about the current state of affairs in America. If you don’t know how serious things are, you owe it to all of us to read this article.

An ignorant vote cancels out an informed vote. So please do your country a great service: If you are too lazy or too disinterested to become informed, please do not vote in this election.

But if you really do care about the future of our country, watch this video before you continue. It was made by John Zogby, a highly respected non-partisan pollster, just after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. Pay close attention and replay it if you think you missed something important.

Let’s review what we just saw and heard.

Remember, this was a typical sampling of the much larger Zogby study.

• They all said that Republicans controlled Congress and they were all wrong. The Democrats controlled Congress.
• Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the Democratically controlled House of Representatives. She was second in line to become president. They did not know who she was.
• Barney Frank was a powerful Congressman who with other Democrats blocked Republican efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two agencies some believe were responsible for the housing market collapse, which led to our financial crisis. They did not know who he was.
• Harry Reid was and still is the Majority Leader of the Democratically controlled Senate. He too helped to block reform at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They did not know who he was.
• They did know who Sarah Palin was. But because of politically biased media coverage and efforts by her Democrat opponents to belittle her, they knew only meaningless, superficial things about her. You can be sure they did not know anything important like the fact that she was the most highly rated governor in America at the time. (At one point Alaskans gave her a 90 percent approval rating.) Later in the interview, they all thought she said she could see Russia from her house, which she never said. She actually said you can see Russia from land in Alaska, which is true.
• When asked which candidate claimed to have campaigned in 57 states, they all named someone except Barack Obama, the one who actually said it. In fact, he said he had already campaigned in 57 states and still had one to go. (You do know that we have only 50 states, right?)
• When asked which candidate won their first election by getting all their opponents kicked off the ballot, once again, they named Palin or McCain but not Obama, the one who actually did it.
• When asked which candidate said their own policies would bankrupt the coal industry and send energy prices sky high, they either claimed to not know or named someone other than Obama, who was the one who said it.

Do you see the problem? We have become an ignorant nation—exactly what our founders worried most about. They predicted that if America failed, it would do so by committing suicide. They had given all the power to the people—to us—and they knew that slick politicians would steal it from us unless we were well informed. Only ignorant people can be manipulated.

Consider these words from our 3rd and 35th presidents

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
John F. Kennedy

But there is another problem

Even if you want to be informed, you will need to know exactly where to get accurate, honest information. You see, much of our media—where we get our information—is corrupt. They do not give us all the facts. With few exceptions, most of them are liberal Democrats even though 80 percent of Americans are not. It was not always this way. Years ago, it didn’t matter if a news reporter was a Democrat or Republican. They had an ethical code and most of them lived by it. So even if the news was not good for their candidate, they reported it accurately. As a result, our ancestors were actually better informed than we are now. But today, about half of Americans are either uninformed or misinformed. That is why the people in the video were unable to correctly answer even the most basic questions.

In 2008 we really did not know who we were electing

By all fair standards, Barack Obama was the most unqualified presidential candidate ever. We knew less about him than any presidential candidate in history. The truth is, we still don’t know much about him. That is because he and his political machine have worked very hard to keep important information from us, and our corrupt media don’t ask them for it. For example, Barack Obama still refuses to release his school records from high school, Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard. Yet, again, the media never asks him about it, even though they pushed hard to get the same records from candidates in the past. (See Obama School Records)

But this time it is different. Now President Obama has a record for us to consider

Now that he has been our president for almost four years we can look at his record and decide whether it is good or bad. But, because we cannot trust the media to inform us honestly, many of you don’t know his real record. In fact, you have been told so many conflicting things that you probably don’t know what to believe anymore. So let’s look at the facts—the real facts—the truth.

He is absolutely responsible for his own record

No matter what he or the media tell you, after almost four years, President Obama is responsible  for his record as president. Regardless of what he inherited—much of which was his and his fellow Democrat’s fault—he is responsible for his own record as president. That is how we do it in America. It is his economy and his foreign policy. So let’s take a look.

• Our National Debt – How much money we have borrowed and now owe to others
  • When Obama took office it was was $10.626 trillion.
  • It is now (September 24, 2012) $16.053 trillion.
  • Our debt has grown by $5.427 trillion in less than four years under Obama. He has added more debt than any president in our history. In fact, he has added more debt than all presidents from George Washington to George H.W. Bush combined.
  • Candidate Obama called President George W. Bush unpatriotic for adding $4 trillion in eight years. But he, Obama, added $4 trillion in two and a half years—less than 1/3 of the time!
  • The National Debt now exceeds 100 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, the total value of goods and services. This means that if we used everything we produced in our entire nation in a year to pay off our debt, it would not be enough.
  • The federal budget sent to Congress by Mr. Obama, projects the National Debt will continue to rise as far as the eye can see. The budget shows the Debt hitting $17.5 trillion in 2013 and $25.9 trillion in 2022.
  • As our share of the National Debt, every man, woman, and child now owes about $51,000.
  • For the first time in our history, we are leaving our children and grandchildren a burden of debt that will make their lives far more difficult than ours are.
  • This debt problem is deadly serious and if it is not dealt with, it could cause a worldwide financial collapse like the world has never seen. And not only have the Obama policies not slowed the increasing debt problem, the budget he submitted would increase our debt dramatically in the coming years.
• Unemployment – After 42 months, it remains over 8 percent
  • It is the longest period of unemployment over 8 percent since the Great Depression.
  • According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just over 58 percent of the adult population does not have any kind of job at all (full or part time), the lowest figure in 30 years.
  • Obama predicted that his huge Stimulus Bill, which cost the taxpayers almost $1 trillion, would keep unemployment under 8 percent and that it would be about 6 percent by now. It has not been below 8 percent since he took office.
  • Not only has it not gotten better, last month’s job report showed that for every new job created, four people dropped out of the job market because after searching long and hard, they could not find work and they simply gave up.
  • Only 64 percent of adult men have a job of any kind, the lowest figure ever.
  • If we add the workers who can find only part-time work, or the discouraged dropouts who are no longer counted in the statistics, the real national jobless rate is about 15 percent.
  • Millions of Americans who have been out of work for a long time have been forced to use up their savings and are concerned that they won’t be able to cover basic living expenses in retirement.

• Poverty – Under President Obama it is at record levels.
  • 15 percent of our population—more than 46 million Americans are now living in poverty.
  • The poverty rate for children remains more than 20 percent for the third year in a row. More than one-third of black children and Hispanic children live in poverty.
  • The Department of Agriculture reported that Food Stamp usage is at an all-time high. 47 million Americans—about 1 in 5 adults—now depend on Food Stamps to feed themselves and their families. Under Obama policies, 15 million Americans have been added to the Food Stamp program. That is an alarming 49 percent increase since he took office.
• The Middle-Class – It is disappearing.
  • While President Obama continues to tell us he is for the middle-class, since he took office the average American annual household income has dropped by $4,000.

• Foreign Affairs – National Security
  • By any fair measure ” … this president will leave his successor a country that is considerably less secure than it was when he took the oath of office.” Since we do not have room here to adequately review President Obama’s record on foreign affairs and national security, I have included the above link to an extensive Washington Post article, which you can read to learn more. You can tell by the link text that his record is not good.
• Women’s Issues
  • Income Inequality – It is hurting women. While President Obama tells women they should vote for him, under his policies income inequality—as measured by the Gini index—has reached a new record high.
  • Women in the workplace – While he tells women he is on their side, that he respects them, we get a completely different picture from women who work in the Obama White House. (See The Obama War On Women)
• A Divisive President
  • In 2008 candidate Obama told us that he would unite the country. However, those who knew his record were skeptical because he had the most Liberal voting record in the Senate. In fact, he voted 97% of the time with Democrats only.
  • As president, while he said he wanted to work with Republicans he has used every opportunity to criticize them and dishonestly accuse them of being uncooperative. Now, he creates false class warfare issues, which further divides our country. For example, “The Republican War On Women.” “The rich against the poor,” and others that in reality do not exist. The result? Instead of uniting us, he has divided us.

The list is long yet it would take another page or two to adequately review the horrendous state of our economy, overall. I didn’t even mention the price of gas at the pump, which is around $4.00 per gallon. It was $1.83 when President Obama took office, so it has more than doubled. Food, clothing, housing—virtually everything we buy is far more expensive. As a result, the quality of our lives has been measurably diminished and millions of our fellow Americans continue to suffer.

If you are still reading, you deserve to be congratulated—even praised. It means you care about our country and that is what this is all about. But I have left at least one important question unanswered:

Where can we get accurate information about the candidates and the issues?

Well, if you do not have the time to search out and verify every important piece of information—as I did for this article—I suggest you do the next best thing, which is to get your news from the most highly rated news channel on cable television. According to studies done by various independent research organizations, that would be Fox News Channel. Of course if you believe what the left-wing propaganda puts out, your blood pressure may spike at the mere mention of Fox. But if you are really sincere about wanting to be well informed, I suggest you rethink what you have heard and tune in to Fox for at least one entire week.

Here’s why

There are good reasons that Fox gets a much larger share of the cable viewing audience than the others. Their news reporting really is fair and balanced. Notice I said “news reporting.” That’s important because we have to distinguish between news reporting and commentary. For example, one of Fox’s popular programs is Hannity, which is conservative commentary. The host, Sean Hannity, is a registered Conservative and he let’s his audience know that. He does not pretend to be a news reporter or journalist. But for honest, straight news you can’t do any better than Brett Baer. Brett is on from 6 to 7 every weekday evening. I recommend him highly.

On the other hand, the same independent research organizations have found news outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN to be, well, rather biased to the left. Of all of them, MSNBC is the most biased—so much so that it is hard to tell at times whether they are a news network or a commercial for the Obama campaign. Enough said.