Inspired by This Post, I decided to go ahead and list 50 reasons why I'm Awesome:
1) I'm a Ninja
2) I'm a Ninja
3) I'm a Ninja
4) I'm a Ninja
5) I'm a Ninja
6) I'm a Ninja
7) I'm a Ninja
8) I'm a Ninja
9) I'm a Ninja
10 ) I'm a Ninja
11) I'm a Ninja
12) I'm a Ninja
13) I'm a Ninja
14) I'm a Ninja
15) I'm a Ninja
16) I'm a Ninja
17) I'm a Ninja
18) I'm a Ninja
19) I'm a Ninja
20) I'm a Ninja
21) I'm a Ninja
22) I'm a Ninja
23) I'm a Ninja
24) I'm a Ninja
25) I'm a Ninja
26) I'm a Ninja
27) I'm a Ninja
28) I'm a Ninja
29) I'm a Ninja
30) I'm a Ninja
31) I'm a Ninja
32) I'm a Ninja
33) I'm a Ninja
34) I'm a Ninja
35) I'm a Ninja
36) I'm a Ninja
37) I'm a Ninja
38) I'm a Ninja
39) I'm a Ninja
40) I'm a Ninja
41) I'm a Ninja
42) I'm a Ninja
43) I'm a Ninja
44) I'm a Ninja
45) I'm a Ninja
46) I'm a Ninja
47) I'm a Ninja
48) I'm a Ninja
49) I'm a Ninja
50) I'm a Ninja

And I hope that anyone reading this found this exercise as amusing as I do. More seriously, while I do actually think think rather highly of myself it seems like rather a lot of work and thoroughly egotistical to come up with 50 reasons to claim as reasons for seeing me as awesome. If you're curious, I think I could come up with 50 different ways that being a ninja would make a person awesome, but stating it simply as "I'm a Ninja" fifty times was, in my opinion, the best way to go for comic effect.

As always, feedback is welcome. If this actually was funny, please say so. If it wasn't funny, please let me know.

I had started ranting about America needing reform, but ran out of time and stopped in the middle...

I was saying that our Healthcare and Education situation are particularly problematic. Our healthcare costs are escalating at a terrifying pace, and there should be a fairly easy solution, but most American citizens seem to thoughtlessly dismiss the idea. There are, of course, other solutions. I have my reservations about President Obama's healthcare plan, but we need something and Obama's plan seems to be only option. It's probably a step in the right direction.

Education is a serious issue for a couple of reasons. The reason with the most immediate significance is economic. The USA has enjoyed a position of being wealthy and powerful internationally for some time, particularly since World War II, and our competativeness in the world marketplace (particularly since WWII) was based largely our highly educated workforce supporting high-tech industry.

We've lost our place here, though. In the last decade, the USA has fallen from 1st place to 10th place internationally in terms of total labor-force with post-graduate-level college education. Not to mention, of course, international test rankings for our high-school students being utterly abysmal. Now, it should be understood that because we put everyone through High School our students at that level are not necessarily going to be competitive with countries who kick the below-average students out of the school system after Middle School. But even with that in mind, our High School Students are not as competative internationally as they should be.

Another reason for education reform is the problem I mentioned in selecting our leadership. Universal compulsory education was established in this country so that our citizenry would tend to be well-informed and responsible voters. It has completely failed.

I think our entire enducation system needs help. Our elementary schools seem to be competative internationally, I might change a few things... but this probably isn't where we need to focus reform. Middle school is where our students start to fall behind. By the end of High School, our students are not prepared to be in the workforce, or to be going to college. A big part of the problem, in my opinion, is an excessive focus on memorization through repetition rather than in-depth explanation of underlying concepts. We don't teach our students to think and we need to. I think a study in philosophy is fundamental to any effective education, particularly logic. Being able to systematically determine if a statement is true (or not) is not only important to further learning but is thoroughly vital to responsible voting.

Without going into too much detail about things I would change (if it were up to me), I'm of the opinion that we need to have required courses in fundamental philosophy (especially Logic) in Middle School and and a two-track High School system. One that prepares students to immediately enter the workforce with a useful skill after graduation, and one that rigorously prepares the student to jump straight into college and succeed. We need to make college accessable to more people, and make it practical for more people to pursue a college education for longer so that we can have the highly-trained technical specialists who make us competative in the global economy.

... America (the United States of) is badly in need of immediate and drastic reform. I believe most of america's citizens are dissatisfied with our political leaders and believe there is rampant corruption in governement. There's some truth to this, and I will attribute a lot of our problems to incompetent leadership over time. Still, I recognize that politicians lying and being corrupt is nothing new and unlike many Americans I don't so much look at "the good old days" (and trying to return to them) as looking at the political system we have, trying to figure out how it works, what it does and why, what it should do, how it should work (or at least be improved), and so forth. The system we have has lots of problems, I think a lot of our current problems could be fixed if more people were more open-minded.

Anyway, our Healthcare system doesn't work. I don't believe it's salvagable in any meaningful way. It needs to be thrown out completely and replaced.

Our Wellfare system doesn't work. I don't believe it's salvagable in any meaningful way. It needs to be thrown out completely and replaced.

Our education system doesn't work. It may still be salvagable but needs drastic reform.

Our law enforcement system has problems. It seems to work, more or less. It has lots of room for improvement, though. Our police mostly do their jobs honestly which is a good start, but our jury-based court system has issues and our civil courts cause all kinds of interesting problems.

All of this essentially points to a problem with how we select our leadership - which fundamentally doesn't work well and has (I infer from the considerable amount of history I've read) since the very beginning promoted corruption and incompetence.

We've managed thus far with the system we have, and we can probably limp along for a while longer, but the fallout from systemic problems has been (and continues to) build up over time and the longer we avoid reform the worse all of it is going to get.

Healthcare and Education are particularly problematic. Healthcare costs have recently reached (laughably, if it weren't so dire) absurd levels, and are escalating at a frightening rate. There's an easy solution, it's kinda silly that so many americans reject it out of hand without solid evidence: Socialized healthcare (coverage for everybody through the government - basically duplicating the system currently used by England and Canada).