I think the anti-christ question is a bs question. Several people are going to say yes just to be obnoxious. I think the number that really think one or the other is the anti-christ is probably miniscule.

41 percent of people either think Obama was not born in the US or are unsure? That number is crazy high. Like so high its really hard to believe.

Yeah. Hard to believe he could have gotten elected with a number like that and you would think the percentage would have come down since the election.

Honestly, I might be tempted, if faced with the question "Is Bush the Anti-Christ?," to answer "yes." Just as a lark. And I bet many here would, too.

I think this might be the case with a percentage of the crazy answers on both sides. They don't really really believe it, but they think it's fun just to say it, anonymously, for a poll.

I think stupid is mainstream. I think not being able to see beyond your own nose is mainstream.

So-called "Truthers" fall into two camps. There are extremists who think the Bush League actually orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. There is no proof Bush was competent enough to do such a thing.

And there are those who think Bush had fair warning and did nothing. That's not an extremist view; it is an historical fact.

Bush might have have less than all of the details, but he got the memo on 8/6/2001 entitled "bin Laden determined to attack within the US", and he did nothing. He didn't even try to warn pilots and aviation officials to increase awareness.

It is a historical fact that Bush had some warning and did nothing, and it's a historical fact that he wanted to invade Iraq before he was President, but drawing the "9-11 truth conclusion" from either of those facts doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

At the risk of sounding overly partisan, I would also posit that there is a qualitative difference between the origins of the "extremist" reactions on the left towards bush and the reciprocal ones towards Obama.

To oversimplify, those who hate bush do so for what he DID, those who hate Obama (so far) do so for what he IS.

In it's obsession with moral equivalency, that's what the media fails to distinguish.

And yes, I agree w/Mateo that this is sloppy on Josh's part.

From the poll:

It's hard to call a third of the country a fringe.

No, it's not hard at all. 28% of the country continued to think George W. Bush was doing a good job, long after the other 2/3rds had reached a radically different conclusion.

The thing that bugs me about lumping too many people together as "truthers" is the people who suspect Bush knew enough to stop it but didn't have a lightly plausible case because there were warnings ignored. The evidence seems overwhelming the reason is the Bush administration just refused to follow up rather than already knowing, and the people who claim they knew have a big evidentiary hurdle still to get over, but it's not the same as the hard core truthers, who claim Bush did it. Claiming Bush chose to let it happen and claiming Bush did it seem like two very different things. The second group, even if they otherwise agree with me on political matters, are delusional.

http://www.markswatson.com/bushac.htm

Who here believes that Dick Cheney's moral character, or George W. Bush's competance would *rule out* allowing a terrorist attack to occur on US soil in order to provide a cassus belli?

It's disheartening to see TPM fall right into the equivalency trap set a few weeks ago by the Right. "We've got a birther problem? Okay, let's create a talking point that the media (and of course sympathetic pollsters) will pick up on. How about 'truthers'?"

So they pick a perfect case to use: there WAS ample and extremely specific advance warning about 9/11, as everyone knows. So just fudge it so that anyone paying attention to this fact is lumped with conspiracy theorists on the fringe.

I can believe the MSM falls into this bullshit--after all, they do it over and over and over. But TPM? Let's see, what does TPM stand for? Oh yeah, TALKING POINTS MEMO. You're supposed to be skeptical and smarter than that with a name like that, right?

Way to go, TPM and especially you Eric. Saps.

In most cases you guys would be right, but this question was phrased to avoid the "had fair warning and did nothing" issue with the use of the word "intentional". And sorry, if you think that the Bush administration intentionally allowed 9-11 to happen you're no better than the birthers.

This discussion of birthers vs truthers is missing the larger point, which is not that hyper-partisans on both sides think the people of the other side are about the worst scum on the face of the planet, but that the political leadership of the Republican party is trying to quietly embrace the birther movement, something that the Democrats never did with the truthers. That's the story.

This was a survey of 621 adults.

This poll is a piece of dung. Among other failings, it claims that 15% of Americans either voted for someone other than Obama or McCain, or can't remember who they voted for. Believe it? Or not.

The poll claims that 18% of Americans think either Obama or Bush is the anti-Christ -- that's a statistical misreading of its own results: 8% think Bush might be the anti-Christ while 10% think its Barack. THESE NUMBERS CANNOT BE SIMPLY ADDED TOGETHER -- there is no way of knowing whether these are the same people. For example, one way of looking at it might be that 8% of Americans are fixated on the idea of the "anti-Christ", figuring that "its the President", regardless of who is in office. Toss in another 2% under the Barack column to cover people who think the anti-Christ must be black, and you've got the full contingent of nuts. Sadly yes, 10% of the country is simply nuts.

Well, I know one thing: If the blow from the jets made those buildings fall over, even WTC7, I will never, ever work in a curtain-wall high-rise again! Because those buildings are subjected to much more stress during high winds. Since the 9-11 report shows us that these buildings are constructed by stacking floors on top of each other, and not, as I always thought, with a central box-section of steel columns ties together with triangulating girders, from which each floor is cantilevered. That is, like a pine tree, with a central trunk, you can do whatever you want to the branches, but you have to cut the trunck at the bottom to make it fall down.

Now that I know the truth, I'll never go into one of those buildings again! They lied to us!

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the photo that brought me to this page, on the main TPM site:

The sign reads: "GOD AND OBAMA, Neither have a Birth Certificate"

I DEMAND THAT GOD RELEASE HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE IN LONG FORM! The bible says NOTHING about the birth of God. We have no proof that he even exists if we don't have this critical piece of information.

On the other end...This sign could be construed as rather flattering to Obama saying that God is good company.

Haven't we started blurring the line on "truther"? That used to be the people who claim the buildings were rigged with explosives and that no plane actually hit the pentagon and all sorts of other crazy shit.

Just thinking Bush ignored warnings on purpose really needs it's own name ... or those who used to be called "truthers" need a new one.

I would like to know whether those slamming the truthers have ever stopped to look beyond their tinfoil hats at the evidence? I'm sorry to say, but they have valid questions that have yet to be explained, largely because of the petulantly dismissive attitudes I see displayed here.

Why are we so afraid of asking questions about that day?

We probably wouldn't have truthers if the 9/11 commission and the media had half-way done their jobs. Lots of legitimate unanswered questions still out there.

Say, I have one question, seriously--maybe someone out there can answer it for me. Why was the Director of the Situation Room with GW down in Florida instead of back in Washinton DC in the Situation Room when 9/11 happened? Is this usually done, them traveling around with the President?

I think a lot of Americans may not think Bush was in on 9/11, but they just know something was wrong about the whole thing.

Because there was.

But what I think was wrong is different than what you might think. At the time, and for years afterwards and somewhat still to this day, we've been told over and over that GW Bush was a true hero in the aftermath of 9/11. And out of patriotism and out of a sense of national pride, as well as driven by the fear of what might be next, an overwhelming majority of Americans bought that foolishness. Although many of us bought it out of some psychological need, we bought it nonetheless. Yet all reality based people cannot in their hearts accept this conclusion. This leads to a profound cognitive dissonance that probably for some leads them down the entire path of "trutherism". Common people are more and more agreeing that Bush caused 9/11, not overtly, but out of his incompetence. He was focused on tax cuts for rich people and on star wars (which lets face it, is welfare for the military industries. It makes no military and no strategic sense.)

Bush blew it BAD. He blew it BAD in the 8 months prior to 9/11, and he blew it BAD for the 7 years afterwards. Yet so many of us praised him for so long that it's hard to admit we were so wrong. It's easier to conclude that we were fooled. We don't want to believe Bush was an idiot, because then we were fooled by an idiot. Preferable that we were fooled by a brilliant evil man.

I personally believe that the Bush 43 Administration did what it could to create an favorable atmosphere for a large scale terrorist attack, but didn't have a hand in planning it. I was of the opinion that this was as far Right as people got -- I'm surprised to hear the view that this is a fringe view; about a seventh of people believe it, and about a seventh of people follow the news. It's probably the same seventh. Since I don't think going to war in the Middle East was the main intention, and I still don't feel like I understand the President's role in the administration, I might have answered 'no' to the poll question.

There are plenty of folk to the Left of me, who think the Bush Administration colluded with or even organized the attackers. But, I understand the range of opinion as being from LIHOP ('let it happen on purpose') to MIHOP ('made it happen on purpose.') I'm really shocked that 86 % of poll respondents express doubt about this.

In Iceland intelligent and rational people will not rule out the possibility that elves inhabit stones, trees and houses.
When questioned by reporters from the United States they will hesitate to affirm a belief either way. I think that conspiracies are to the American as elves are to the Icelander a concept clearly outside of rational thought but also so inate to the folklife of the country as to be positively painful to deny. The events of 9-11 attacks created all sorts of folkloric superstitions and rumours that have faded with time just as the strange ephemera that flooded America after JFK's assassination have faded. No matter how much we know it to be crazy there is something intrinsically American in believing that We never landed on the moon and that The mob hired anti-Castro Cubans to give Bill Clinton a blow job so that the Queen of England could place her Kenyan Satrap Barack Obama at the seat of power. That said most Americans don't know and cannot explain the causes of the real Boston Tea Party
nor can they even now find Iraq on an unlabeled map.