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Our path to third world nation status continues:

The number of Americans living in poverty reached a record 49.1 million in 2010, according to a new broader measure of poverty released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday.

That figure contrasts with an official poverty measure released in September that said there were 46.2 million poor people in the United States.

The new measure is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty by including the government benefits poor people receive and the expenses they pay. The official benchmark focuses more narrowly on cash wages.

That's almost 1 in 5 Americans and there seems to be no end in site with this from Pew Research:

Older adults have made dramatic gains relative to younger adults in their economic well being during the past quarter century, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from two key U.S. Census sources.

Trends in household wealth reveal the pattern most vividly. In 2009, the median net worth (all assets minus all debts) of households headed by an adult ages 65 or older was 42% more than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984. By contrast, the net worth of a typical household headed by an adult under the age of 35 in 2009 was 68% less than that of their same-aged counterparts in 1984.

While watching CNN it was interesting when they covered the age of the girl who was gang raped then murdered. Reports say the F.B.I. has listed the girl as 25 years old, while the military is listing her as 20. As I posted earlier today, Reuters obtained the passport of this girl and it has her age at 14 years old. CNN also reported that the Mayor of Mahmudiyah has confirmed she was born in September of 1991, making her age 14 at the time of her death.

Now the question is - why all the discrepancies in her age? If any other investigation in our country had this kind of problem then it would most likely be thrown out. These soldiers have been charged and we do not yet know for certain if the victim was an adult or child. Something is very fishy here and it stinks of being a possibly larger cover-up, maybe in attempts to down play (however much you can) the atrocities of that March day in Iraq.