Tom Toles for September 16, 2011

Parry with an A for America and a Y for omg WHY.

Smart people don’t want to be the Pres……….

Wee git duh gubmint wee deezirb sigh

yha rub that in the wound

“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” — H. L. Mencken, Notes on Journalism, The Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1926.

Rick Perry “Made In America”

It’s a sign of cultural failure that so many celebrate not being well informed and failing to develop and use the intellectual gifts that we have. Too many are happy to take advantage of the advances made possible by thoughtful people, but then push stereotypes that those folks are just eggheads. Who needs education when you can just go with your gut? See Calvin and Hobbes today for a humorous example of this attitude in action.

No, Shrub was at least able to tout an improvement in Texas Education while he was Guv. ( Accomplished with smoke and mirrors as it turned out, but still… ) In fact that was the big platform in Dubya’s 2000 campaign, “I want to be the Edcuation President.”

Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you: he really is an idiot.

Where, pray tell, is there quality research showing folks that vote for Democrats are less intelligent?

Craig Linder said, about 1 hour ago

@Harleyquinn Where, pray tell, is there quality research showing folks that vote for Democrats are less intelligent?

in kc area in core area oflow ed levels [per census ] high demo vote but in area of high ed level votes gop until they die then they vote demo

No need for Perry to brag about how dumb he is, it’s painfully obvious.

“www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8”

We asked for scientific proof that Obama voters were less intelligent, and instead what we get from HARLEKINNS is yet another propaganda piece from former right wing radio hosts John Ziegler who hired Zogby International do some “push polling”. Rather than watch that piece of swill here’s some information regarding this so-called “scientific poll”.

Here’s the interview with the jerk who commissioned the polling and the video interviews.

Sigh.

“http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4d5_1314810075&comments=1”

You know you’re not a credible source when the title of your report reads, “Democrat Voters Less Educated Have Lower IQ’s than Independents and Republicans COMBINED! LOL!”

Any other blogs you want to send us to?

Rather than swallowing your source whole, I went to the source he uses and links, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1478/ When you look at his source, you find that PEW gave a short knowledge test about politics, and found that people who were older were better informed; people who were male were better informed; people who were richer were better informed and Republicans were better informed by 1 out of 10 questions. That does not make younger, poorer, Democrats or women dumber in general. In fact, someone who takes from this poll and concludes, “Democrat voters…dumb as f#!k” demonstrates an absence of reasoning facility, which can aptly be described with his own words.

The “Live Leak” site is clearly biased. They left off the number of the most intelligent sub-group, post-graduates, who went for Obama 58% to 40%. Here’s a link that shows all the data, instead of cherry-picking to make Dems look bad.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1

Your link also ignored the over $200,000 per year demographic, who also went for Obama.

I’ve posted links.

Using YouTube as a research tool might be part of the reason you are so misinformed.

That’s not what that link says. I’m very glad you posted it, though.

It clearly says that viewers of Stewart and Colbert are the most highly informed group!. It’s as I’ve said before, they aren’t funny if you don’t already know what’s going on. BTW, Fox News watchers rank next to last. It is odd that Pew even considers the Comedy Central shows in the article. They are not, and are not intended to be sources of news. Stewart, in particular, is more of a news critic who points out folly in the media, and he will attack right, left, or center if he sees an issue.

Everyone — smart, dumb, whatever, and however you think about these things — deserves consideration, and deserves to have the chance to make his or her own decisions about what is best in life. But I don’t want to go to a physician who doesn’t understand biology, and I don’t care to listen to the scientific opinions of those who have no understanding of basic science. Democracy should be fundamental in politics, but not in areas of skill and knowledge. Part of wisdom is knowing both what you know and what you don’t know.

You’re right, I should know better. How do so many end up that way? I’m starting to think a lot of people, especially men, grew up with Reagan as a political hero. They picked the right and are loyal to that side no matter how ridiculous they get. Then there’s the Koch-and-friends astro-turf cultivation to keep it going.

No idiot left behind

It’s certainly true that to run as a Republican these days you need to deny biology, chemistry, physics, atmospheric science, and economics. As Stephen Colbert says, reality has a distinct left-wing bias.

fennec, thanks for the reference. In my experience, some smart people are aware of their limitations and others are not. But I don’t like it when smart people look down on people who aren’t smart — I should say smart in the same way, because I believe that there are lots of ways to be smart. Some of the anger of some in the teaparty derives, I suspect, from a justified feeling that they aren’t taken seriously. A recent New Yorker article about Clarence Thomas noted that all of the current SP Justices come from either Harvard or Yale. That’s kind of a small pool. Thomas goes out of his way to get clerks from all kinds of schools. I don’t much like Thomas’ legal interpretations, but he’s right about the concentration of influence and power. Bush, of course, is just as much part of that system as anyone.

This country has been pretty stridently anti-intellectual from the inception. Even Benjamin Franklin played up to it with Poor Richard’s Almanac.The only time it was “cool” to study in this country was from the time sputnik launched to the moon landing.After that it was back to “Dumb and Dumber”

There is a major argument taking place among psychologists as to whether intelligence is one thing or multiple, but frankly I think the “g-factor” people are fighting a losing battle. Recent research has shown different parts of the brain activating relative to different cognitive tasks, for example. Also, let’s face it, we can all think of people who are brilliant at one thing but incompetent at others.The cultural element may have a lot to do with how you teach kids to approach data; either with an open mind and commitment to proof, or with a reflexive reaction relative to preconceived beliefs.

Oh, I think they know just what they want, though I also think they are very short sighted. In the short term, they are going to have wealth and power, but wealth and power aren’t going to mean much in the longer term, when things really start to fall apart.

And yet we are forced to live under governments elected by people who have no idea of governance. How did THAT happen?

It’s one of the flaws in democracy. And if one wants a functional democracy, the only remedy I know for it is education that includes an understanding and culture of active, thoughtful citizenship. We don’t do a very good job of this in the States.