The Bell Curve

The good news is that the last American combat brigade has left Iraq. Some of us, including former soldiers, have worked for that safe exit for eight years now, and it's a relief to bring home, out of harm's way, our combat troops. Still at risk, of course, are 50,000 advisers and support troops, along with the forces fighting in an apparently pointless war in Afghanistan.

The bad news is that 20% of Americans are morons--I refer to the 20% who maintain that President Obama is a Muslim. I'm not sure what this does to our intelligence bell curve, but it can't be good.

About 60% of us are religious bigots. This figure includes women like Democratic County Supervisor Shirley Zane, who opposes the Muslim cultural center located in Manhattan near the Twin Towers site (which the cultural center predates). Of course she might think that Manhattan is in Kansas or near Occidental, so let me add that the Manhattan in question is found at one end of Long Island in the state of New York. That's a long way from Santa Rosa, but bigotry is elastic enough to stretch around the world, the Bill of Rights be damned.

Finally, THE PROGRESSIVE reports that the New York Times, which consistently referred to waterboarding as torture in the past, changed its ways during the Bush administration. From 2002-2008, the Times called waterboarding torture 1.4% of the time. The reason the Times editorial board gave for its grammatical shift was "We are moral idiots" (not really).

--Gary Goss