Yesterday's News Sentinel had the most amazing letter to the editor that I have read in a while. In a love letter to Bush entitled "Many thanks given to Bush administration [1]," the writer enumerates all the reasons he's thankful, including gems such as:

• "Thank you for the freedom to choose not to have health insurance. All 47 million without health insurance do have access to health care."

• "Thank you for creating the business environment that has led to unprecedented prosperity for seven years. It is disappointing that your administration has not opposed the Democrat-driven spending spree."

• "Does anyone remember The New York Times, commissioned unofficial recount that showed the Florida margin for Bush to be much larger than the official count?"

It's difficult to imagine a more uninformed citizen, even if said citizen were to be fed a steady 7/24/365 diet of Fox Limbaugh News only. Take that last one about the Florida election, for example:

NYT [2]

A statistical analysis conducted for The Times determined that if all counties had followed state law in reviewing the absentee ballots, Mr. Gore would have picked up as many as 290 additional votes, enough to tip the election in Mr. Gore's favor in some of the situations studied in the statewide ballot review.

[..]

If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin. For example, using the most permissive "dimpled chad" standard, nearly 25,000 additional votes would have been reaped, yielding 644 net new votes for Mr. Gore and giving him a 107-vote victory margin.

But yeah, if you just read the Fox News crawl that the limited recount requested by Gore wouldn't have helped him, then sure, you might get a different impression.

As for the seven years of prosperity, we're not sure what planet this guy has been living on but here in Tennessee we just recorded the highest unemployment rate in over 20 years (and that's based on books cooked by the Bush administration), and foreclosures are up nearly 30% in Tennessee and 55% nationwide. As for the "Democrat-driven spending spree," remind me again who turned a $250 billion surplus into a trillion dollar deficit? The stuff about health insurance is just way over the top, even by the craziest wingnut standards.

I can't figure out if the letter was a parody, or if the KNS just published it to be all edgy and stuff. Either way, it was certainly entertaining. The problem is, this same kind of bullshit propaganda regarding the 2008 election is polluting the brains of otherwise rational people and clouding their thinking. Not sure how any candidate is supposed to overcome that.