Polls Show Many Americans are Simply Dumber Than Bush

Blind Ignorance

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information.

Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox "News" and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media is affected to some degree.

Despite the media's failure, about half the population has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq has not made them safer and that the Bush administration's assault on civil liberties is not a necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, thus, lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the population.

Consider the New York Times/CBS poll. Sixty-four percent of the respondents have concerns about losing civil liberties as a result of anti-terrorism measures put in place by President Bush. Yet, 53
percent approve of spying without obtaining court warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."

Why does any American think that spying without a warrant has any more effect in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Bush is disobeying, requires the executive to obtain from a secret panel of federal judges a warrant for spying on Americans. The purpose of the law is to prevent a president from spying for partisan political reasons. The law permits the president to spy first (for 72 hours) and then come to the court for permission. As the court meets in secret, spying without a warrant is no more effective in reducing the threat of terrorism than spying with a warrant.

Instead of explaining this basic truth, the media has played along with the Bush administration and formulated the question as a trade-off between civil liberties and protection from terrorists. This formulation is false and nonsensical. Why does the media enable the Bush administration to escape accountability for illegal behavior by putting false and misleading choices before the people?

The LA Times/Bloomberg poll has equally striking anomalies.



Keith’s Barbeque Central

"Well, Doctor, what have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy??"

"A Republic, if you can keep it."

http://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

The only hope is to get our message out in clear, simple, coherent language to make democracy and a republican government to be something desired and required.

Who are we to question polls?

light on what is already fairly obvious.

i.e. ''what's the matter with kansas''.

but see i think that as many voting repuke as there are is a distinct problem in itself -- regardless of bush.
bu that's just me.

If only there were some way to teach the populace critical thinking instantly, without any effort on their parts. Logic McNuggets?

H.L.Menkin, 1920:

"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their hearts desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

http://antiwar.com/quotes.php

Keith’s Barbeque Central

One of the Diebold myths. Every time "polls" are cited, I play "spot the lie"

be better off? this article sums it up.


WASHINGTON - Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees, or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10928755/

and this book tells the in depth problem with our media



Beinhart understands the repercussion of an obsequious media that not only supports the Bushevik spin, but also abdicates its journalistic responsibilities by focusing on entertaining and titillating celebrity and bizarre news trivia. "This is a practical issue," Beinhart concludes, "not merely a moral one. If you drive around in the fog, you must go very slowly. Americans like to go fast. When you speed in the fog, eventually you crash into something."

Fog facts are "important things that nobody seems able to focus on anymore than they can focus on a single droplet in the mist."

The Iraq War and the stolen election of 2000 strike BuzzFlash as two such fog facts, as does the Downing Street Memo -- which the media dismissed by intoning that everyone knew by now that the White house lied about the Iraq War. Tell that to the people who still believe Bush speaks the word of God and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 and really had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/05/10/pre05142.html

One of my friends teaches 5th grade in Maryland. She says teachers have no time at all to teach anything that doesn't involve the tests. Kids do not learn the times tables or any other basics any more, because there simply isn't time for it.

This is happening in what was once a superb and nationally ranked school system, Montgomery County, MD. My friend says kids are learning less and less, and will graduate with pitiful gaps in their education because of the relentless "No Child" testing. Music, art, science and social studies are disappearing.

Another friend teaches 5th grade in NJ and sees the same thing.

What a perfect way to create a nation of morons, qualified only to work at Wal-Mart and vote for Rethug manipulators.

:shrug:

Americans need desperately to comprehend that if Bush attacks Iran and Syria, as he intends, terrorism will explode, and American civil liberties will disappear into a thirty year war that will bankrupt the United States.

This guy must be from the Michael Moore wing of the Republican party!
:kick:

The other half, the just half, the moral half, the American half, OUR HALF, is continually ignored and mocked by the right wing media.

next time try posting the name of the article & the author (as posting rules state) so the search function can do its job.



Keith’s Barbeque Central