Verified! 8% Of Californians Are Whack-Jobs!

I was meandering through the latests Public Policy Institute of California survey, Californians and Their Government, when I came across this little heartstopper:

Changing topics, thinking about the world for a moment -- what country in the world, if any, rpresents the greatest danger to the United States?

The bottom answers round out with Russia, none, "I'm a moron" and other, but here are the other results of the question, which was asked of 2,000 supposedly cognitive Californians between March 13 and 20:

1. 20% Iran
2. 19% North Korea
3. 15% Iraq
4. 11% China
5. 8% Unitited States
6. 2% Al Qaeda/terrorist groups

I did not inadvertently transpose those last two results; four times more Californians feel they have more to fear from America than they do from Al Qaeda. Mystifying.

Could that be the percentage of the population that thinks Bush masterminded 9/11 with help from the Israelis, who found 19 Mosad agents willing to die to have America fight Iraq ... as opposed to, say, the much nearer Syrians or the nastier Palestinians, and that no one involved in the conspiracy has sold their story to The National Enquirer? I know those souls are out there ... but 8%?

Maybe they're the anti-Patriot Act folks who have convinced themselves that they've lost freedom because of the Act, even though their lives are unchanged, unless they've been phoning terrorists in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border zone, the area code of which slips my mind at the moment. I know those souls are out there ... but 8%?

Maybe they are the folks who actually knew that today is the 12th anniversary of Timothy McVeigh's bombing and the 14th anniversary of Janet Reno's deadly decision-making regarding the Branch Dividians, and they circled the date in red on their calendars as soon as the stripped the celophane off them. I did not know that myself until I heard Dennis Miller mention it, but I know those souls are out there ... but 8%?

Maybe they are the suffering elite in the advanced stages of Bush Hatred Syndrome, when the brain cells attack each other out of sheer maliciousness and the lack of any other logical target. I know those souls are out there, too ... but 8%?

Obviously, there's a crazy quilt of loons that are lost in their own sad, false realities who would, if they could carry out the mental gymnastics required to assemble with the others, make up nearly 10 percent of our state's population.

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda has actually killed more than 3,000 Americans on our shores, caused billions of dollars in economic damage, and are actively engaged in killing American troops and innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, to name just two of their theaters of operation. They have sworn that we are the enemy and that they will not give up their fight until they kill us or convert us.

Our protectors have broken up plots in which Al Qaeda operatives would have blown up bombs at LAX and flown an airplane into the Gas Building in downtown LA. They've tracked some of the 9/11 killers to San Diego and stopped a Lodi man from carrying out the trianing he received in Al Qaeda camps.

And 98% of Californians don't put Al Qaeda and terrorists on the top of the list of the largest threats to the United States. Listen, my Golden State brethren, you are far more likley to die at the hands of Al Qaeda than you are at the hands of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Li'l Kim Il-Jong or the ghost of Saddam Hussein.

Art: Winds of Change (edited)