And ... Duh?

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US drivers who own a car made overseas are more likely to be satisfied with their purchase than domestic car owners, a poll showed on Tuesday.

Seventy-seven percent of poll respondents who own a foreign car said they were happy with it versus 69 percent of American car owners.

Owners of US-made cars were also less likely than those who own imported vehicles to think the manufacturer of their car will still be in business in three to five years.

Almost nine in 10 -- 87 percent -- of foreign car owners who responded to the poll by Harris Interactive said they thought the company that makes the vehicle they drive will still be in business in three to five years, while among owners of US cars, only 70 percent thought so, the poll showed.

Harris Interactive surveyed 2,401 US adults between April 13-21 for the poll and made the results public on the eve of a bankruptcy court hearing for Chrysler, one of the big three American car dealers together with General Motors and Ford.

I always love reports like the one you are about to read. Who pays these people to stumble upon the obvious in their studies? Outside of Hollywood overpaying for bad movie scripts, these studies have to be the biggest waste to time and money we have to offer.

Roughly 25 percent of us text-message while driving? Duh? That's just about the correct amount of self-centered dingbats we have in America.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!) – A quarter of American cell phone users admit to texting while driving, despite bans in seven U.S. states and several serious accidents recently, according to a report on cell phone use released on Wednesday.

The report also found that some of the worst driving-while-texting, or DWT, offenders live in states where the practice is already banned or where legislation is pending.

Drivers in Tennessee were the most prolific texters, with 42 percent of those questioned admitting to the habit. A ban on using a cell phone to text while driving goes into effect in Tennessee in July.

Yet 83 percent of the 5,000 people surveyed across the United States said they thought DWT should be illegal. The survey was carried out on behalf of mobile voice technology company Vlingo.

Text messaging has been blamed for a number of recent high profile accidents, including a train crash in the Los Angeles area last September in which 25 people were killed, and a Boston trolley crash this month in which almost 50 people were injured.

In both cases, the drivers were found to have been sending and receiving text messages seconds before the crashes.

"Texting is such an integral component of our daily lives, and the cautionary tales about DWT danger have not stemmed the tide," said Dave Grannan, CEO of Vlingo.

Wow! I'm sooooo relieved that "The Donald" has proclaimed that Carrie Prejean could keep her crown as Miss California (even though his holier-than-thou priss-pot posed for naughty pictures as a waif).

On the top of that, Mr. Trump -- who would be one the first people I'd slap in the face (for charity, course) -- defended her answer on gay marriage during the recent Miss U.S.A. pageant that he bankrolls each year.

Yes, my fellow citizens, the world is now safe for Democracy.

I knew there was a reason I was losing sleep lately, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Now, I know.

One can't help but cringe that our former president went around holding hands and sucking up to the leaders of this bass-akward "kingdom." Read for yourself:

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia may ban marriage for girls below 18, a government minister said after a case of an eight-year old girl marrying a man more than 40 years her senior drew international criticism and embarrassed the kingdom.

"Among the options that are available and excluding the issue of puberty, is to ban marriage for (people) under 18," Justice Minister Mohammed al-Eissa told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

He was responding to a question about his ministry's plan to deal with the marriage of young girls.

"A girl below 18 is often not fit to take the family responsibility especially if she quickly gives birth (after marriage)," he said.

Saudi Arabia is a patriarchal society that applies an ascetic form of Sunni Islam which bans unrelated men and women from mixing and gives fathers the right to wed their sons and daughters to whomever they deem fit.

Many Saudi clerics, including the kingdom's chief cleric Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, endorse the practice of marrying underage girls, arguing that in doing so they avoid spinsterhood or the temptation of engaging in relationships outside the wedlock.

A 50-year old man in the small Saudi town of Onaiza agreed this week to divorce his eight year-old bride.

Financial considerations could prompt some Saudi families to wed their underage daughters to much older men.