A cool 23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim.

The key goal of most intelligent people in America is to use an Obama victory to get a few years break from being so violently aware that we are, in many ways, a nation of gullible idiots.

The basic facts won’t change by more than a few percentage points, but having a frontal lobe at the mic for presidential press conferences will at least give us some breathing room to repress the reality that many of our neighbors think Iraq did 9/11, gave Bush a first and second term, think Obama is a terrorist, hold Palin in high regard and find Two and Half Men to be blisteringly funny.

Hitchens: “This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus.”

The false reverence of head in the sand stupidity and contempt for knowledge has been the most dangerous trend in the last decade. Most of those who preach it don’t believe it (the son of a President and Yale graduate against the elite? only in America, folks). But they fan its flames and we may all pay a price heavier than the ones already levied.

A couple Obama entries from the Davenetics archives:

Wednesday July 14, 2004
Meet Barack Obama

Senate Candidate Barack Obama of Illinois will deliver one of the keynote addresses at the Democratic Convention. It’s probably worth keeping a close eye on this guy. Many Dem operatives think he is candidate whose star will rise all the way to the Oval Office.

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Tuesday July 27, 2004
From the Fleet Center in Boston
Obamamania

Most people in this arena hadn’t heard of Barack Obama a few months ago. He is an up and comer from Illinois. Top Kerry strategist Bob Shrum recently told me that he and others think Obama is on his way towards becoming the first black president.

He got the keynote address. They passed out placards with his name to people all over the floor (a status symbol to say the least). He had the buzz of a politician in the heat of a fevered battle.

But could he pull it off? Could he make a massive splash on the national scene and make good on what Eminem might call his “one shot?”

Let’s put it this way. I almost expected the guy to complete his speech by saying “And I accept your nomination…” He rocked the house. His was not a speech about his state or this election alone. This was a speech, like Clinton’s and many of the other top players, that was about America.

Obama opened with his own biography and explained how unlikely it was that a guy with his background and family history would be giving the keynote at the Democratic Convention.

It’s a story you’re likely to hear again and again in the coming years. And each time, it will seem a whole lot less unlikely.

Looking for a new way to control high blood pressure?

Just take a whiff of this.

A new survey indicates that half of all doctors in the U.S. routinely prescribe placebos.

That’s just one of the many reasons why, about half the time, I pay my medical bills using counterfeit money.