| A new poll from Vanity Fair and 60 Minutes finds that — in spite of a complete lack of evidence — 24 percent of Americans still believe Pres. Obama was foreign-born. And yet, among these hard-core birthers, nearly a quarter of the citizenry, there is no consensus about where overseas Obama was born — 6 percent said Kenya, 2 percent said Indonesia and 16 percent couldn’t specify, just somewhere other than America. You’d think they would have settled on one place or another by now. |
|
By comparison an Angus Reid Global Monitor poll from March 2010 that around 15 percent of Americans were found to be truthers, the media’s analog to birthers. In the poll, 15 percent said the collapse of the World Trade Center was the result of a controlled demolition, with 11 percent not sure; 15 percent said Flight 93 was shot down over Pennsylvania (22 percent not sure); 13 percent said no plane crashed at the Pentagon (11 percent not sure); and 6 percent said no jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers, meaning the images in the news videos were fake (7 percent weren’t sure).
Even as wiggy as the truthers’ assertions are — the Bush administration was demonstrably way too incompetent to have pulled off such a feat and then could have never kept their coup secret for nine years and counting — their precepts rely on science that is sufficiently complicated to allow bamboozlers to create gray areas in the minds of people who are easily confused or certifiably paranoid.
With the birth certificate, on the other hand, the facts are so black and white — via Think Progress, here, here and here — that the stubborn resistance to them can only be willful ignorance.
After all, birthers need to believe Obama is foreign-born in order to reinforce their rationale that he is ineligible to serve and therefore illegitimate, a usurper and unworthy of respect. (And, oh yeah, he’s black.)
Plus, unlike trutherism, birther theorists are supported by the right wing media — on Fox News and among the hatemongers in the fever swamps of AM radio. There was no corollary media establishment, other than a few blogs and YouTube videos, pushing the line that Bush was behind 9/11.
Of course, context is important. Remember that about 20 percent of Americans still supported Richard Nixon on the day he resigned in order to avoid impeachment, and around the same number still approved of George W. Bush, the Worst President Ever, when he flew back to Texas for the last time, in January 2009.
It would be interesting if there were a way to find out how many of these 24 percenters are racists. I bet it would be about 23.999% of them.
Yes Nikolai. And the other .001% are too clueless to say one way or the other.
Nikolai, that would only be 5.75976% of the people…
As wiggy as the truthers’ assertions are — the Bush administration was demonstrably competent at some things while not at others. However, there is no evidence what happened, because there has not yet been any investigation.
I know what I saw on 09/11. What I saw does not reconcile with the media and government’s cover story. Neither does what I saw on 09/11 reconcile with science. Apparently a few thousand architects and engineers (who know a lot more than I do) agree with me.
Nobody got to do a real investigation into 9/11. And anyone who does so will be called a nut. The verdict is already in. I am a truther. Let’s forget about controlled deomolishion and ask ourselves this. The second plane hit the tower at 9:03 am. The “plane” that hit the Pentagon did so at around 9:46. Does it take an investigation as to why our DEFENSE building had over 40 minutes to close down D.C and shoot anything out of the sky that approached? I would assume they had SAMS on the Pentagon roof. I guess they were too busy watching TV to even think about protecting the White House or Capitol, or the Pentagon itself.
Now if anyone here thinks for a minute that is possible I have two towers for sale in NY.
I watched 911 unfold from the 11th floor of 423 west 55th St in NYC. We had an unobstructed view.
I clearly remember a series of very large orange explosions shooting out from various levels of the building. I remember it so vividly just as I can still hear clearly a salesperson at the company who saw the same thing say “Oh my God,its like a movie”.
These explosions are NEVER shown in the official footage.
Go ahead and call me a kook but I saw what I saw.