According to The Atlantic, Finland's schools break many of the rules we have in America. There's not excessive homework. They pay their teachers well. They encourage creativity and discourage competition among students. And their students do well.
This is not the views of Iran that the American Government wants you to see. They would prefer that you see a grotesque cartoon version of Iran that makes you scream for wide scale military violence. When the Soviet Union aimed thousands of long-range missiles tipped with nuclear bombs at us, we acted with restraint and some intelligence, like adults, but we apparently no longer have that capacity.
The Onion Network News is at it again, hitting several targets at once in this "news" report:
Did The Media Treat Bachmann Unfairly Because She's An Insane Woman?
At Common Dreams, Bill McKibben offers this staggering statistic:
The Chamber of Commerce spent more money on the 2010 elections than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined, and 94% of those dollars went to climate-change deniers. That helps explain why the House voted last year to say that global warming isn’t real.
Paul Krugman notes that "America the Beautiful" contains a third verse:
The lyrics were written in 1894 by the Massachusetts poet Katharine Lee Bates, an ardent feminist and lesbian who was deeply disillusioned by the greed and excess of the Gilded Age. Her original third verse was an expression of that anger:America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free!