Psych

This just in: Americans are too happy.
Or at least so says the balding, strangely gnomish Oliver James at ,of course, the Guardian.

Studies of Americans show them to be living in a rose-tinted bubble of positive illusions. They are unrealistically optimistic about how much their friends like them or about the future. When asked to rate how sensitive they are to others, 90% of Americans believe they are in the top 10% of sensitivity - by definition impossible - and it is similar for their falsely bloated self-esteem or view of their own capacities.

Americans who have accurate perceptions of themselves are deemed by researchers to suffer from "depressive realism". That is a dangerously barmy formulation, personally and nationally.

But interestingly enough he actually complains about the British government owning too much of something...

...the Ministry of Defence (or should that be "Offence"?) owns 1% of the British landmass. Just as Purnell must reject the spending of £20bn on new Trident missiles and of nearly £30bn a year on an MoD which has been far too busy attacking other nations under Blatcher, so he must call for the sale of all but the most vital defence land - why does that ministry need to own so much of Salisbury plain?

You see owning Salisbury Plain, bad; owning all the coal mines, good.

If you like comedy you can read more of his material, here we have an article saying people who doubt Global Warming are repressing, and here's one putting the President through analysis.