jorgelito

Wow, that's it right there. Best quote ever. Sums it up nicely.

Really, broad brush labeling is non-constructive: there are obviously brite and stoopid peepel on bof sides.

Elphaba

flstf has hit it. jorgelito, isn't "sides" spelt "cides?"

_God_

The level of discourse above does not indicate an intelligence greater than Bush's.

Do you think that once OBL is captured, the threat of terrorism is over?
Do you think that al Qaeda has no significant presence in Iraq?

/threadjack

Coincidentally, I had been thinking of how voters will align at the next election.

Specifically:

1. Will illegal aliens vote Republican or Democrat? (What's to prevent them from voting if they can't be asked for ID?

2. Will drug addicts vote Republican or Democrat?

3. Will the unemployed vote Republican or Democrat? (Today's paper reported that unemployment is down to 4.4%. As Dick Cheney said, since the stock market is up, unemployment is down, and gas prices are down, what else does the administration have to do to get any credit for a job well done with the economy?)

4. Will people who have never worked for a living, including third-generation welfare recipients, vote Republican or Democrat?

5. Will single parents on government assistance vote Republican or Democrat?

6. Will people who are taxed to support those who do not work vote Republican or Democrat?

7. Will members of the US military vote Republican or Democrat?

Biased questions? Certainly some will think so. Revealing questions? Likewise.

host

There are several charts on pages in the recent State IQ study at the link above the quote box.

If you curiousity is not aroused by the spectacle of a president who repackaged himself from a Connecticut born, silver spoon yankee, a holder of undergraduate and graduate degrees from Yale and Harvard, prepared for university at a presitigious <a href="http://www.andover.edu/about_andover/notable_alums.htm">New England boarding school</a>, into a caricature of a bible belt BA christian, a "southern man", most supporters see as approachable enough to "have a beer with...even though he is not "one of them", doesn't drink beer, and is the most secretive and unapproachable POTUS in modern history.....

.......and is still defended, by those who voted for him, and the troops who serve under him.......and taken at his word, notwithstanding his six year history of distortion and scare tactics, passed off as a "dialogue" between the POTUS and the people, and the spectacle of local support for congressmen and senators, representing the states experiencing the most economic distress, voting for bankruptcy "reform" that hobbles the sick and the many families experiencing home foreclosures and the disappearance of jobs paying decent wages and benefits, then this thread and these study excerpts probably won't interest you.

For the rest of us, there is a need for an explanation for why, Connecticut, for example, a state with the highest national per capita income, and the birthplace of George W. Bush has voted against their "native son" and against a POTUS who lowered and has vowed to keep their taxes lower, and why nearly all of the states with the highest measured average IQ and income, elected representatives to congress that voted against the bankruptcy "reform" bill, and against the tax cutting POTUS, Mr. Bush. Or why, the majority of voters, conversely, in all of the states with lowest income and lowest average IQ.....states with much higher than average, per household foreclosure and bankruptcy voted the opposite way.

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1

Willravel

Well, then let me say this:

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

That makes me much, much smarter than Bush could ever hope to be.

djtestudo

Not sure what that has to do with the President.

Sounds to me like you are either mocking those who voted for Bush, or the Democrats who couldn't find a competent candidate.

__________________
"Final thought: I just rented Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Frankly, it was the worst sports movie I've ever seen."
--Peter Schmuck, The (Baltimore) Sun

Willravel

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." - President George W. Bush
http://politicalhumor.about.com/libr...a/foolbush.mov
Not "or". "And". I see that the massively corrupt smut machine that is the Republican Party is responsible, and the weak, little Democratic Part was unabnle to present someone who was actually able to make a stand on serious issues and show people why voting Democrat can help. Gore and Kerry were weak speakers and they let themselves be the pawns of their parties and didn't stand up for themselves. Gore could have easily taken a strong stand on the environment during his 2000 campaign. He sure as hell has post 2000. He didn't, and that's part of why he was never sworn in (that, and the massive cheating done in Florida).

ratbastid

No. I don't see what that has to do with what I said, though.

There's currently an organization called "al Qaeda In Iraq". It's unclear what connection they have to al Qaeda outside of Iraq.

Prior to the US invasion, there was no significant al Qaeda presence in Iraq--in fact, Saddam Hussein considered al Qaeda an enemy, and was fighting to keep them OUT of Iraq. Now that the shit has hit the fan there, al Qaeda In Iraq is just one of many terrorist organizations we've engendered and emboldened with our presence.

Now that that's settled: /threadjack.

dksuddeth

I would think that this goes along with your life philosophy of people being generally stupid.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Seaver

I know I'm just an undergrad... but does no one know how to site sources? Under his works cited section at the end they simply lead to the home sites of various bureaus. They do not lead you to WHERE the information is found so that it is defendable.

Host you can post as many of these as you want, but until I see the data It's bunk as far as I'm concerned.

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

Charlatan

I see no benefit to this discussion.

Given the bell curve mentioned above and the fact that the election was split about 50/50 it is probably safe to say there are just as many low IQ people voting on either side.

In the end who gives a rat's ass.

Stupid is as stupid does or even smart people can vote for bad policy.


(and don't suppose I am taking a side on this... neither side is exempt from bad policy)

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

host

Not to worry...the link you objected to was just for the convenience of anyone
who wanted to view the entire "work" without loading a .pdf file....

Here's the link if you want to pay to view the study:
....and here it is...in a .pdf file, if you want to view it without charge, on author Michael A. McDaniel's own, Virginia Commonwealth University page:

http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/...state%20IQ.pdf

Here is the link to a list of linked sources of Michael A. McDaniel's published papers:
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~mamcdani/...blications.htm


Seaver, there is not, as you are aware, much research on this topic. I appreciate that you are interested enough to ask about the link. Since available research is so limited, I don't yet have an opinion on whether McDaniel is the "best and the brightest" in his field. I'm still attempting to reverse an impression that the subject of comparative US states IQ has been "debunked".

To answer you, Charalatan....I explained what motivates me to post about this subject. I just don't understand how Bush could persuade so many people to vote for him....how he kept up any pretense of who he pretended to be....
a southern, "man of the people", after he took office, and even whether he is competent, or deliberately portrayed as incompetent....now.....this far into his presidency. Also....what is up with droves of comparatively poor, white, lower income, less educated, primarily southerners, with high bankruptcy and home foreclosure rates, lacking health benefits more often on average, than higher income northerners....voting for republican congressional representatives, and for Bush. Is it simply because of religious and racial worldview, with a healthy dose of anti democractic party propaganda....or is it because of ???????

More to pounder.....
The determination of average adult IQ in a given country seems a much more daunting task than determining a reliable IQ average of folks of voting age in a given US state.....yet it is being seriously attempted by academic researchers:

Willravel

Everyone is stupid. It's something to work on.

roachboy

i am confused.
i am not persuaded that this direction in analysis says anything that is useful.
i do not have a particular problem with the study and its methods, but i am not sure that its design is terribly informative or explanatory.

maybe this is a function of my affection for the kinds of analysis i have been indulging concerning contemporary american conservatism since the late 1980s. this is the possibility that has me confused, truth be known.

from the outset i have been more interested in the structure of conservative discourse and have been thinking alot about how it functions, what it does and why it appeals to folk.

the discursive framework is pretty tight, and thinking about it strips alot of the interest out of reading most conservative responses to issues simply because you can pretty much derive them before anyone says anything.

those which are initially a surprise can be generally explained by looking at adjustments made by the media apparatus.

i dont think the appeal of conservative discourse is a function of people being stupid. i think it is something else--maybe a response to globalizing capitalism in a way--shifting to the frames of the nation and of the will is a way to enable folk to imagine that the categories that enable them to locate themselves socially still function, even though they are being eroded by the reorganization of capitalism.

maybe to some extent you could map one way of thinking about this onto the other, and conclude that folk who are in the most exposed class position are the most likely to avail themselves of a discourse that enables them to deny what is obviously the case--that the organization of the economic model they rely on to eat (say) is changing and that they are or will soon become the second great canary in the mineshaft insofar as consequences are concerned.

this would line up contemporary american conservatism with a long tradition of radical nationalist ideologies that speak to the sense of being-exposed of the petit bourgeois in part by enabling them to cope via denial, by retreating into a fantasy of a pure nation that has somehow or another been betrayed or is under some Threat from a curiously amorphous Enemy.

if this study speaks to anything for me at least, it is an index of the extent to which one of the features of contemporary america that really freaks me out (and i use this term with some rigor): that the system of social reproduction has not been able to catch up to changes in the labor market at all, and that it continues to produce and reproduce an outmoded labor pool. this would be a direct reflection of the rigid class structure of american public education--a subject about which the right has nothing coherent to say, really--all they have ever proposed is a system that would privatize class stratification in order to erase the problem as political. the same dysfunction would continue--in fact they would become worse--but the question itself would be shifted away from politics. if i am right, however, and the system of social reproduction is radically out of phase with contemporary reality and cannot be adjusted with any speed to a shifting reality, i would say that the we are maybe in one of the more benign periods of the gradual implosion of the united states.
this last bit actually connects to the methodology of the study in that sat/act scores are more a measure of class position than intelligence.
whence the underlying suspicion about the study: does it naturalize class disparities? does it conflate the effects of a radically stratified educational system with "natural abilities"?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

filtherton

I don't know, isn't bush the one who favors some sort of amnesty for teh illegals?

I don't know, how do you think rush limbaugh will vote?

Good question. I guess they should start taking credit for an improving economy if they start acknowledging that they were responsible for it going down the tubes as well. Only a fool would give them credit for the good times without blaming them for the bad times.

Depends on if you're talking about rich people who have never worked for a living or poor people who have never worked for a living.

Well, since apparently being a single parent is frowned upon by the republican party, not to mention the idea that even poor children need to eat, i'd guess they'd probably vote democrat.

That's a good question too. We all pay taxes and the polls seem to indicated that republicans are going to take a hit this election, so i guess there's your answer.

It probably depends on how much they believe that we're doing the right thing in iraq. I imagine a large portion of the military doesn't really care much for the republican party's broad support for donny rumsfeld.

I think that they reveal more about you than any sort of objective reality.

Willravel

Yes?
What?
What?!
WHAT?
WHAT DO YOU WANT!!?!?
OH GOD, WHAT?!!!
*in the corner in the fetal position*

Seaver

I think we hit on a powerful point with your McDaniel link Host, on Page 4 he states:

Sorry, but there are very few blacks or hispanics in the majority of states touted to prove the superior intelligence of blue states. While California has it's share, there are very few blacks or hispanics in Connetticut.

States like Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and my homestate of Texas are forced to face problems which Northern states would never imagine. I doubt there are people in New Hampshire who do not speak a word of English, and are effectively illitterate, and are forced onto a High School and then handed standardized tests. I doubt Mass. has to spend upwards of an 8th of their budget on English as a Second Language.

So can we end this and say that both sides that toute this line are baseless?

__________________
"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

host

The ideas and research that I'm posting on this thread, may not be that far apart from what I think that you were getting at in your last post, rb.

We perceive that our political system, economic system, and our US society is out of whack, i.e., behaving irrationally, compared to our individual POV:

This seems to be an obvious symptom, but to what degree am I handicapped by it, as well?:
Indeed....<a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=110290">a new thread</a> that I started on this forum. less than 24 hours ago, has links to two new Bush administration disinformation stories anout WMD, fully two years after the preceding quotebox of the PIPA survey......they've been doing this, over and over....for five full years since 9/11, and variants of it....since the late 90's to install Bush as POTUS, in the first place. All along, the "faithful" have fallen away....but support ("belief"), seems suspended for about a year, within five percentage points of the current level.

It seems ominous that support for Bush and congressional republicans remains so high....more than half the US military KIA in Iraq have been since the PIPA survey was published in Oct., 2004...