While Barry Obama is getting his teeth whitened, while John Edwards is getting another $400 haircut and while Mrs Clingon is learning the focus group results of just how much cleavage her frumpy dress should reveal the number of functionally illiterate Americans continues to ramp up at a rate that makes the Guggenheim a candidate for the Flat Earth Society.  Marketing websites look at the growing market of functionally illiterate people as “an opportunity.”  If votes are nothing more than the something candidates throw money at to buy based on some algorythm, then fuctionally illiterate voters- and those who don’t bother to vote- are not victims of a right wing Republican conspiricy to “dumb down” America, rather they are disenfranchised “by default” as result of the political culture and the political class.  One wonders if the “rock the vote” market sector would rather vote for the best Green Day album of all time, or the color of the next M&Ms peanut candy instead of Mrs Clinton, Mitt Romney, Barry O, Johnny Pompadour or Admiral Fred D. Thomson.  Read ‘em and weep… if you can read.