Traveling in Pittsburgh, PA today. Yesterday, we went into the city to perhaps take in a museum or other worthwhile cultural attraction, but to no avail. Being a 'transplant' to the West, I'd forgotten how seriously folks take Easter on the East Coast. Everything was closed!!!! Back home, that wouldn't be the case. If it makes money, it stays open, period. What do you want from heathens like us anyway?

Spent some time watching the news this morning and they announced that we reached the 4,000 American death in Iraq. Fortunately, one of the commentators had the good grace to mention that that figure is a mere fraction of the Iraqi deaths since the war started 5 years ago. The toll is wide ranging, some say as little (?) as over 100,000 while on the high side, as many as 800,000 to 900,000 may have died!

This all got me to wondering about how the perceptions of the American people have changed along with the death count. Back when I was regularly posting to this blog, it actually felt, at one point that I was living in an alien land. I didn't recognize my own fellow Americans due to the extreme rhetoric being thrown about concerning the reasons we were in Iraq. How we as Americans could have swallowed the line that Iraq was responsible for 9/11 is beyond me. I talked to, previously rational people, who changed into warmongering, anger ridden human beings, when anyone would even suggest that we shouldn't have invaded Iraq! We had to go to news sources like the BBC and the Canadian Broadcast stations to get any real news at the time, because the American news stations were putting out severely biased positions instead of 'news'.

Recently I watched an episode of 'Iconoclasts' featuring Rene Zellweger on Christine Amanpour. They discussed the issue that today's reporters don't report the unbiased news but rather they focus on what is popular with their audiance. It is a matter of the tail wagging the dog, in any case and Amanpour denounced the practice severely. She has always attempted to bring stories to light that were not being covered by other stations, although, in my opinion, she is as guilty of a biased slant as any other reporter. Still she has more integrity and I suppose it can't be easy to cover something like the conflicts in Bosnia or the Sudan and not develop a strong feeling over what is occuring in the region.

Well, it seems that the American people have finally had enough of the lies and deceit which got us into this war to begin with. They ar looking at their own troubles at home and realizing that making enemies abroad certainly won't help our economy. What a terrible price we've had to pay for what should have been obvious to begin with. This shell game with Afghanistan actually worked for the Bush Administration. It has had terrible reprocussions for the common man however. So, today, we are looking for a political saviour to get us out of this mess - get our troops out of Iraq, bring oil prices down, protect our environment and bring our economy back into a strong, safe position again.

No, for me, the jury is still out as to who will be the best candidate for President - whoever it is, it will take a lot longer than 4 years to accomplish even a fraction of what's needed to be done. Honestly, I'm not sure that any of the candidates is really right for the job. The only thing I'm sure of is whoever it is, they have to be better than the bunch we have in the Administration now.

For now, I'm content to see that my fellow Americans have come to their senses again. That independent streak of scepticism that founded this country hasn't died, its just been asleep in most of us. When you start messing with our pocketbooks we, as a nation, tend to stand up and take notice.