Please see the previous post that I wrote titled "Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD & 43% of people connect Saddam to 9/11!" which has many comments and credible documentation to verify these claims:
Please consider this to be a brief second part to that post!
Here are some very interesting letters that Jack Cafferty of CNN read on Monday, Sept. 11 about "the question this hour" of "why do almost half of Americans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11?" despite that "our intelligence community has concluded he had nothing to do with it:"
THE SITUATION ROOM
Taliban Making Comeback in Afghanistan; President Bush Prepares to Address Nation
Aired September 11, 2006 - 19:00 ET
BLITZER: Let's go back to New York and Jack Cafferty -- Jack.
CAFFERTY: Wolf, the question this hour is why do almost half of Americans think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11? Our intelligence community has concluded he had nothing to do with it, but almost 50 percent of us still believe he did.
M. writes from Arizona -- "What counts is that 50 percent of educated, well-read Americans are ruled by facts. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The other 50 percent, their school system failed them."
Jeffrey in California: "For some reason, people listen to idiots like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney. As long as those morons continue to speak, there will always be a following. Those same people believe that Iraq is a success story and there is no civil war."
James in Montreal -- "I see two reasons. The first being the media, present company included, was too busy playing cheerleader during the buildup to the war. Therefore, you swallowed everything the White House was offering up with no questions asked. The second reason, which should come as no surprise to anyone is that John Q. Public is as dumb as wood."
Chuck in Missouri writes -- "If you look at the educational demographics in this poll, the higher education level the people have, the lower the percentages of those who believe that Saddam was involved. Perhaps that's why this administration had done so little to promote higher education."
Ray writes -- "An instructor once asked my class, how many reindeer do you have to throw off a roof before a true believer will admit that reindeer can't fly? His answer was, it doesn't matter how many you throw off the roof. There are a lot of true believers out there, and I suspect many of them are the good people of faith this administration uses to win elections, for whom believing in something you cannot prove only comes naturally."
And finally, Linda writes -- "Because we are, as I have always suspected, a nation of idiots, more interested in 'American Idol' and JonBenet Ramsey than our country being destroyed. Where is the outrage over what they have done to us? We are still too politically correct to start profiling the potential terrorists, and instead placidly give up our toothpaste and hair gel when flying."
If you didn't see your e-mail here, you can go to CNN.com/caffertyfile and read a few more of them online -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Jack, thank you. See you tomorrow.
Please forward these letters on because Democrats have got to be able to connect the truth with these uninformed people over the loud noise of people "like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney" who "believe that Iraq is a success story and there is no civil war" in order to win enough of these voters to have the best possible chances of winning back at least one branch of Congress in November!
Mitch Dworkin
http://www.securinga...
Listen to Gen. Wes Clark fight for Dems on Sean Hannity's radio program:
An excellent example for all of us to follow and what we all need to be doing to help fight against extreme right wing Neocon smear propaganda which will help our local candidates to win their races!
http://securingameri...
Gen. Wes Clark's endorsement of Jim Webb against George Allen
'Tucker' for August 15
Read the transcript to the Tuesday show
Updated: 10:22 a.m. CT Aug 16, 2006
Guests: Kip Hawley, Michael Gross, Lynn Cutler, Mike Papantonio, Curtis Sliwa, Laura Schwartz, Robert Thompson
SCARBOROUGH: Still to come, how many more Supreme Court justices can you name? And can you quickly identify all three stooges? If you had trouble answering either of those questions, you‘re going to want to stick around for our next segment, which begins in just 60 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCARBOROUGH: That‘s boy wizard, Harry Potter, who according to a new Zogby poll is better known to Americans than British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bet you didn‘t know that was the name of the prime minister. To find out more of the mind numbing details revealed in this pop culture poll, let‘s bring in the man responsible for designing the questions, Robert Thompson, he‘s the director for the center of the study of popular television, at Syracuse University where he joins us tonight. Thank you so much for being with us tonight, professor.
ROBERT THOMPSON, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: My pleasure.
SCARBOROUGH: Mind numbing details, very disturbing information. Tell me what you expected to find when you designed these questions?
THOMPSON: Well you know we‘ve seen polls like this now for a long time. Not long ago, we found that many, many, many more people could name all the members of the Simpson‘s family than could name the Bill of Rights, for example. And we pretty much found the same thing. Anybody who watches Jay Leno knows when he does that Jay walking, he finds people who don‘t even know what planet they‘re on.
SCARBOROUGH: And of course in your case, you set up, like, for instance, a question that asks if people could name more members of the seven dwarfs than of the Supreme Court. Let‘s look at that and of course we have a couple on each side. 74 percent could name Sleepy and Dopey, only 25 percent could name Thomas and Scalia. Disturbing stuff, huh?
THOMPSON: 73 percent of those surveyed nationally could name all Three Stooges, 42 percent could name the three branches of government. But here‘s how I think we have to interpret it. The general way we read these polls all the time, we throw up our arms and think how will the republic survive, we‘re a nation of idiots, but I don‘t think that‘s really what‘s to be learned here. First of all, the good news is we know a lot about popular culture and that‘s not a bad thing. You know that‘s part of the glue that keeps us together. Part of what being an American is, is knowing your TV shows and your songs and all of that kind of stuff, and we‘ve got that down really, really well. The other stuff, not so much. And maybe then it begs the question, why is that pop culture institutions, whether it‘s Hollywood, whether it‘s television, whether it‘s the comic books, popular music, is so good at communicating stuff to us that we retain, whereas the schools, the government, the news media seem to not be able to get any of this stuff through our head.
SCARBOROUGH: Well they don‘t seem to be able to and let‘s look at the next poll question and the answers, we have two shots of course on the left, Taylor Hicks, just won “American Idol,†on the right Samuel Alito. 23 percent can name Taylor Hicks, 11 percent can name Samuel Alito. I guess I should take some pleasure by the fact that less than a quarter of the people can name Taylor Hicks. But here you have Samuel Alito, a man that gets 11 percent. He‘s going to have more of an impact over the next 25, 30 years on the direction of America‘s culture and America‘s law.
THOMPSON: Than Taylor Hicks is.
SCARBOROUGH: Well Taylor Hicks‘ 15 minutes is over, but Alito, more than, really, just about anybody in government right now. So shouldn‘t Americans, more than 11 percent of Americans know who Samuel Alito is?
THOMPSON: Well of course they should and the question is then, why don‘t they. And it‘s not as though Samuel Alito‘s name wasn‘t uttered about five million times, I mean you couldn‘t walk by a radio or a TV show. It‘s just that this information is not effectively being communicated. I don‘t know how old you are, but do you remember schoolhouse rock back in the 70‘s?
SCARBOROUGH: Conjunction junction, what‘s your function.
THOMPSON: There you go.
SCARBOROUGH: I‘m just a bill. Yes, I‘m only a bill. See it taught me. That‘s a great point. And it‘s just like captain planet taught my kids to be these left wing environmental freaks, TV can have a positive impact, right?
THOMPSON: I mean, there are more people walking around right now who know how a bill becomes a law thanks to that little cartoon, probably than those walking around who know it the other way. And Sesame Street, it decided back in the late 60‘s, you can sell kids sugared cereal and soft drinks with Madison Avenue commercial techniques. Let us take the same quick cutting and talking animals and sell them how to read, how to count, basic manners and socialization and they were very, very successful with that. I think political leaders, I think educators need to realize that we are beyond the age of the stump speech, that there are more effective ways to communicate and in this culture war, between the popular and the civic, the popular is just so much better at it than the civic.
SCARBOROUGH: Speaking of the popular and the civic, let‘s go international for a second and show people out there, the next question that you framed. Can you name the guy on the left, and the guy on the right? Harry Potter on the left 57 percent, Tony Blair 50 percent, actually that‘s pretty good. It seems to me I was talking to a former member of the Bush administration who was talking about how we need to get our message out across the world, especially the Arab world that hates us right now. Could not the answer to that question be what you‘re talking about and that is doing what—exporting what the United States exports best and that‘s our popular culture and spin it in a positive way?
THOMPSON: Well I mean then the question becomes, who gets to be in charge of that. And that gets to be a very, very difficult issue because of course we have been very successful at exporting our popular culture, in many cases, more than our automobiles or ideas or anything else. I think this particular poll most begs the question of how we can learn to—I think it all boils down to education. It‘s not like the story of the American experiment is boring. I mean, presidential elections, you know, battles, wars, this is exciting stuff, yet it seems to go in one ear and out the other. Whereas I think I could probably sing you my baloney has a first name it‘s O-S-C-A-R, for the rest of my life. Even though I‘ve never heard it since I was five.
SCARBOROUGH: I tell you what, I look forward to you doing that the next time we have you on the show. Thank you so much, professor. Greatly appreciate it. Still ahead, numerous studies have shown that Americans are getting fatter by the minute, but is obesity really a bigger problem than famine? The shocking results of that new study when we come back.