Roughly 25% of Americans are Provable Idiots.

The good news is that this is much lower a percentage than nine months ago, when fully half of America were completely misinformed morons.

New statistics from Harris Polls demonstrate my biggest conflict with this country. On the one hand, there are way too many seriously ignorant people running around. For nearly 25% of Americans to believe that some (or any, for that matter) of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi (hint: none were) in spite of the fact that the catchphrase "16 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi" repeated endlessly just shows you how deeply dumb certain portions of the country are (I'll give you one guess where the biggest concentration of stupid people live, and here's a hint: the Republicans these numbnuts keep voting for refer to their states as "flyover country").

On the other hand, this poll also shows a reason to love this country: it make take a lot longer than I'd personally like, but even deeply misinformed people can change over time, eventually understanding the truth even if it is the complete opposite of what they previously believed. A year ago, roughly half of all Americans believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. Now only 22 percent (aka "Rush Limbaugh's audience") think that -- a drop of more than half in one year. So there is hope for this nation. Maybe.

I find it deeply troubling, however, that despite non-stop repetition of the fact that Iraq is now known to have not had WMD at all, about a quarter of all Americans still seem to think they did. Even their Dear Leader has explicitly said the opposite, so what alien masters are these dimwits getting their information from?

It's also alarming that 56% foolishly believe that life is better in Iraq today than it was before the war. I think this must be due to some people believing that multiple car bomb explosions, armed insurgents and trigger-happy US contractors were all a fact of daily life in Iraq under Saddam (hint: nope).

News for those who don't watch the news: wishing don't make it so.