39% approval rating?

From Digby:

What is wrong with this country? Bush's approval rate is at 39%. True, it's the lowest ever for the Post/ABC survey but think about it. How could more than 1/3 of the people think this president, whose performance in office makes it clear that Yale was already cursed with serious grade inflation when they gave him a C+, be so clueless? Look at it this way. We just got a wonderful puppy who loves everyone; he's trusting, affectionate, and was easily housetrained. But what if I was so negligent that I let a known dog hater from the next block attack him so violently that two of his legs had to be amputated? What if I forced him through obedience training to sit, to beg, to rollover, and then as a reward, I gave all the well-fed dogs on the block delicious yummy treats while putting my puppy on a starvation diet? What if, then, on the hottest days of the year, I arranged for my dog to participate in a totally pointlesss cockfight with no end, a fight which left him bleeding, exhausted, and humiliated? What if I grabbed other dogs off the street and tortured them right in front of my dog, so they associated their pain with my dog's loving face? What if I then nearly drowned my dog in a clogged sewer, leaving him there for half a week while I joked about how I once partied hard down there, when it was an elegant cabana?

I think it's a combination of factors, the most important of which is the deliberate dumbing down of the country's population.

A local radio station which I think is typical of most is owned by Clear Channel. (http://www.clearchannelsucks.net/)
Just recently it started broadcasting Fox news, and last night was the first time I heard their switch to Fox sports for the entire early morning. If there's a more blatant instrument to keep people intellectually deaf, dumb and blind than Fox I'll be astounded. They use every propaganda trick in the book to distort reality and sway you, the viewer or listener, to deny your very existence, replacing you with a cookie cutter, fascist, cartoon-like proto human.

Lying the country into war? Little Boots is blameless. 9/11? Little Boots is our savior. Savage slaughter of innocents, Katrina, rape, torture, shredded constitution, depleted uranium poisoning, looted treasury? Only left wing hysterics.

So a third of the country says hey, Bush is doin' a bangup job and how bout them White Sox?

In the late 1700s the population of the colonies was about 1/3 Tory, 1/3 couldn't-give-a-shit and 1/3 revolutionary. We all know who prevailed. And who hung.