America: Are You F**king Brain Dead?!

Before the ink on the "No WMD" NIE report had a chance to dry, neo-conservatives hit the talk show circuit and the broadcast Lords of Loud radio right went into overdrive to spin the information into a full scale intel overdrive...

"Who are you going to believe...the NIE intelligence or the President's?"

Neoconworld sent out the hit squad of Podhorertz and Bolton to attack the reports and the firm of Limbaugh, Levin, and Hannity echoed the message: "Sham!"

-Sixteen intel agencies are in collusion to embarrass and undermine the President.
-The report was not fact, but agenda, driven.

Alan Dershowtiz called it "Stupid Intelligence," which would seem to be the present condition of the American voter.

In a Rasmussen Poll,
only 18% of voters are buying the report's conclusion with 66% believing Iran is still building WMD. You say that they must have only polled Fox News viewers? Think again while I splash cold water on the idea that a Democratic administration is a Jan 20, 2009 slam dunk.

Only 29% of liberal voters believe the report.

Hey, poll-ees! Were you on some sort of narcotic bender right before the poll? Do the words "Iraq" and "4,000 dead American soldiers" bring anything to mind? The slow down in troop deaths getting to you? Six years in a bloody quagmire not enough? Or is it that you're pushing the "only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history" envelope?

With these numbers, I don't blame the President for continuing to spin the report like a drunken dreidel (my wife didn't think I could connect this story with the never-ending Chanukah holiday). Why not? What hasn't worked for the country, seems to have worked just swell for this president and his policy failure beneficiaries.

Maybe it's that the entire idea of rapprochement through diplomacy isn't dangerous enough for a country born out of bullets, blood and John Wayne movies.

America: Open up your cerebellum! You're being sold another silo of bull-shit and you can't even smell the difference between intelligence and fear and hate-charged fabrications created to boonswaggle Americans into voting against their own best interests...AGAIN!

You re-elected Bush/Cheney after tax cuts that gave you a few extra dollars while the top .5% of "earners" (to use the term loooooosely) were averaging over $50,000 in their tax cut stockings. You already allowed these bastards to send the "they'll follow us here" message to ramp up one war. Now you want to give them a pass as they grease the pads for one more before they step into oil-soaked retirement.

Activist judges, gay marriage and Christmas-warring - oh my - sweeping the country if you dare bring in a Democratic presidency. Global warming, dollar weakening due to thunderous debt, record-breaking incompetence in government, erosion of civil liberties and protections, and you still believe these guys?!

What the hell is wrong with you?!

It isn't that we shouldn't be concerned by whackjobs around the world. What is troubling is that we choose to believe a bunch of right wing whackjobs right here in America. It leaves one thinking that we may be just blind, deaf and dumb enough to elect the new warmonger next time. And if we are to believe the Rasmussen numbers, my guess is that it's just who we'll find ourselves with sometime a little more than thirteen months from now.

Intel wrong. Neocon whackjobs who have gotten it wrong from day one, right.

Amazin'.

Award-winning TV writer, Steve Young, is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (www.greatfailure.com) and his "All The News That's Fit To Spoof" appears in L.A. Daily News opeds every Sunday(www.dailynews.com/columnists).

Comments

[LizM]

I'll reserve judgement on your title question until I know whether or not Joe Biden captures the Democratic nomination.

If he does not, then I will say now that your question must be answered with a resounding and endlessly disappointing 'YES!'.

And, then...get ready, if that is even possible, for at LEAST four more years of you know what.

[Doofus]

Brain dead?

Let's see. Back in 2000, after 8 years of great
prosperity, relative peace & a federal budget surplus
(for the first time in a dozen years), because
our ever popular (at least among half of us)
President lied about a dalliance with an intern,
the other half turned out the Demos, elected
a nincompoop Repo who was fortunate/ambitious
enough to grab the nomination. Then, asleep
at the switch, he took US into a war which
persists to this very day, and just about
tripled the national debt in the process,
*and* got re-elected also.

So, 'Brain Dead?' Yes, you could say that.

[BadChristian]

I said it in 2000, "cooler heads" were ready for organ harvest.
Now we're a nation of mall zombies who determine truth from "American Idol."

[Overd0g]

The choice isn't made in a vacuum. As always, it is a choice between evils, and the Dems have had the worst evils in the recent past.

[Pdubya]

Do you think the spoon fed "national polls" are any different for the presidential election? It is a sham. Trust those that are being blacked out.

[jdbid1]

Steve: You summed it up better than anyone has to date. I hope you sent it to all the politicians. Never mind, they won't get it anyway. We are doomed.

[AcitizenNJ]

steve.....­. great question. sadly, it seems true.

but, in my opinion it's not brain dead so much as we have been mind fu*ked for so long we're just tried. now excuse me i need a nap.

[RabidRightRebel]

Call me a stupid liberal but I do not believe that the Iranians are developing nuclear technology only for civil purposes and have no desire to develop a nuclear weapon. Only if they are as stupid, as you say the American public is, would they believe that they do not need a nuclear weapon to protect themselves against an American attack. As North Korea so clearly demonstrates if you have nukes America will negotiate, no nukes means you must capitulate.

[fpie]

At this point it doesn't make any difference if Iran has a 150 megaton hydrogen war head on an ICBM. Anything the Bushies would choose to do about it could only make matters worse.
Not that I believe that the NIE is incorrect but if it is praise be to the intel people who pulled it off. It may be the last line of defense against the end of all we know.

[Ashraft]

I mean what can we do? The War with Iran agenda is being pushed by many more than just the neocons. After all, Neocon is more of a slur than a term of endearment these days. I was at a party the other day and one person said "I am a neocon", and honestly, the room froze. (Maybe because I live on a hippie campus, but oh well!)

[Robertx5]

A superficial answer would to be yes.
However I.Q. levels in the U.S.A. are roughly similar to other Western Countries, so that cannot be correct.- Unless we are all stupid.
Why does information received and hopefully analyzed by a citizen in the U.S. result in a different conclusion than that reached by individuals in many other Nations. - Is the information packaged differently?.
Looking in from the outside there seems to be a great desire by a huge number of U.S. citizens to continually believe and trust authority, however badly they have been betrayed by that same authority.
Perhaps the experts in U.S. Universities need to do studies to see if there is a different mindset at work.
On a seperate issue Iran has been trying to be accepted back fully into the International fold for years, but has been rebuffed due to resistance from the U.S. Many of Iran's actions, highlighted by the U.S. as reasons for them not to be trusted, are a direct response to what appears to many, to be unjustified pressure and intimidation from the same U.S.

[LeftRight]

Hey, I didn't think that they were building them BEFORE there was te NIE. Don't accuse me of believing anything that this guy has said, nor that I elected/re-elected him. I didn't support his original tax cuts, and certainly didn't reward him for causing this nation to go to $30,000 worth of debt for every man, woman, and child in this nation...

[zjr909]

I'm sorry, Mr. Young, that you apparently actually held out some hope for the American public. There is no hope. They only turned against the war in Iraq because it appeared we were losing (same thing in Vietnam way back when). All the polls that showed overwhelming opposition to the Iraqi war should have gone a step farther in order to determine why the public was so opposed. I wish someone had asked in a poll: Are you opposed to the war because of the suffering we've caused the Iraqi people? I suspect a whopping 75% would have said "NO" to that question. Until concern for what might happen to the people of other countries is our number one reason for opposing war, it's naive to put any trust in the public's opposition to any war.

[retarius]

I agree with Pakiman so I'll make a totally outlandish prediction that no-one in their right minds would ever believe...­.my prediction is that one day, sometime, somewhere a neo-con will make a serious slip of the tongue and actually make a truthful statement about something.­..I realize that this has never ever happened in the history of mankind, so if I were a Bayesian statistician I would consider it almost impossible, but then you read about quantum mechanics and you have to admit that some really wierd shit can and does happen, given enough time and enough statements­...it's sort of like the monkey banging away on a keyboard and typing out the bible word for word...

[sparkandy]

How different are the Dem candidates from the Repub ones we're being offered? Not very. They're all in bed with some special interest group or lobby; they're all owned by some shadowy background plutocrat, with the exception of Obama, who is outright owned by Oprah. Whoever we elect, we'll just get more of the same. It's depressing and scary. My only consolation is that when the ecomony collapses from being so top heavy, those of us on the bottom have a shorter fall.