State of the Union registers at 8th grade reading level

[Sasquatch]

President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address again rated at an 8th grade comprehension level, on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test — the third lowest score of any State of the Union address since 1934.

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html

Was this for the speaker's benefit or for the base of the democrat(ic) parties' benefit? 

Maybe the teleprompter needs a software update? 

[Flummoxed Lummox]

President Obama's 2012 State of the Union address again rated at an 8th grade comprehension level, on the Flesch-Kincaid readability test — the third lowest score of any State of the Union address since 1934.

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html

Was this for the speaker's benefit or for the base of the democrat(ic) parties' benefit? 

Maybe the teleprompter needs a software update? 

No, it was clearly for the benefit of the Republican base. They consistently score lower on intelligence and general knowledge tests than Democrats. That is a fact.

[Sasquatch]

Your "opinion" does NOT constitute "fact".  

Obama giving a state of the union campaign speech at the 8th grade level was either for Obama's lemmings or to keep Joe Biden awake. Deal with that "fact", and don't forget to vote for Obama!!!  

[Dementia_Madness]

http://amerpundit.com/2011/12/01/pew-results-republicans-generally-more-knowledgeable-on-current-events-than-democrats/

   Republicans generally outperformed Democrats on the current quiz. On 13 out of the 19 questions, Republicans score significantly higher than Democrats and there are no questions on which Democrats did better than Republicans. In past knowledge quizzes, partisan differences have been more muted, though Republicans often have scored somewhat higher than Democrats.

    Questions on current politics and on geography show particularly wide differences. For example, Republicans are 19 points more likely than Democrats to know that the Republican Party has a majority in just the House of Representatives, and 14 points more likely to know that John Boehner is the speaker of the House. On international questions, Republicans are much more likely to be able to identify Israel on a map (67% vs. 51%), and more likely to know that Greece is the European country experiencing debt problems (71% vs. 54%). Additionally, more Republicans than Democrats could locate Brazil on a map (84% vs. 73%).

http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/07/what-the-public-knows-in-words-and-pictures/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html?pagewanted=all

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2011/03/republicans-are-more-scientifically.html

Republicans are more scientifically literate than Democrats or independents are

It is often insinuated by major media sources that Republicans are less scientifically literate than Democrats are, primarily because of the former's skepticism over evolution and opposition to taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research. Jason Malloy dispelled this notion several years ago, but I wanted to present the GSS data on the topic in a more concrete and packaged form.

The following table shows differences in responses to the science module of items deployed by the GSS during 2004 and 2006* by partisan identification. Some of the questions are inverted for viewer ease so that in all cases, the higher the percentage, the more knowledgeable the group is. The gold-silver-bronze color scheme doesn't work too well on a white background, so green indicates the highest level of relative knowledge, black the middling amount, and red the lowest quantity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_%28United_States%29

Education. Self-identified Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to have 4-year college degrees.

Once again it seems our liberal friend cannot tell his facts from opinions.

[Sasquatch]

Ohhhhh, snap! 

[Flummoxed Lummox]

Once again it seems our liberal friend cannot tell his facts from opinions.

Oh yes I can. Once again you are DEAD WRONG. Here is just one scientific study that supports my contention. Liberals (which overwhelmingly are Democrats) consistently outscore conservatives (which usually vote Republican) on IQ tests.

Analyses of large representative samples, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, confirm this prediction.  In both countries, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be liberals than less intelligent children.  For example, among the American sample, those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4, whereas those who identify themselves as “very conservative” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201003/why-liberals-are-more-intelligent-conservatives

[Flummoxed Lummox]

Don't forget, it was DM who recently referred to those who have low intelligence as having a "short IQ." 

That's a fact, not an opinion, just like scientific studies have consistently shown that liberals have higher IQ scores than conservatives.

Your average tea bagger conservative:

[Sasquatch]

No, it was clearly for the benefit of the Republican base.

Oops! 

Survey Shows Fewer Republicans Will Watch State of the Union
A study conducted by the Pew Research Center shows more Democrats will watch the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

http://poway.patch.com/articles/survey-shows-fewer-republicans-will-watch-state-of-the-union

I think it is fairly obvious why the speech was written at the 8th grade level!

[Jeremy Roenick]

Who was it that said doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result is the definition of insanity?  Einstein?  

If that is indeed the case, Obama's speech was well written to target both sides of the aisle who continually go to the polls and hold their nose to vote.  Maybe Romney should hire Obama's speech writer.

[Dementia_Madness]

Here is just one scientific study that supports my contention.

http://ironshrink.com/2010/04/are-liberals-more-intelligent-than-conservatives-another-broken-study-says-it-is-so/

Are Liberals More Intelligent than Conservatives? Another Broken Study Says It Is So

 

So how, exactly, did Kanazawa discover that “very liberal” people are smarter than the rest of us? And what prompted the study in the first place?

Satoshi Kanazawa’s discovery is a secondary point in his most recent paper, Why Liberals and Atheists Are More Intelligent, published in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Social Psychology Quarterly.

Kanazawa’s main point was that intelligent people are more likely to solve “evolutionarily novel” problems. He defined these as problems that fall outside the typical daily experience of our ancestors, such as how to respond to fire caused by lightning, or what to do when a flood separates a person from his clan. According to what he calls the Savanna Principle, “The human brain has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment.”

It’s an intriguing theory requiring evidence in contemporary humans. That’s where Kanazawa turned to politics, religion, and sex. He suggested that people who endorse liberal ideology, are atheists, or are sexually monogamous are more intelligent than their counterparts because these behaviors contradict the instincts handed down by our ancestors.

Kanazawa compared intelligence, measured during adolescence, with political orientation, measured during young adulthood, to see if the first variable affected the second. Nothing wrong with that.

However, there are serious problems with the way he interpreted the data at both ends. First, the intelligence data, which was extrapolated from a simple vocabulary test, factored out participants unlikely to offer the desired response. Second, the political orientation data was gathered at a time when participants were most likely to offer a response that supports Kanazawa’s desired outcome

   

Kanazawa repeatedly refers to IQ in his paper. There’s a problem: he never measured IQ. The PPVT, at best, provides a quick and dirty estimate of verbal intelligence. It is not a test, or even an indicator, of general intelligence, despite his assertions to the contrary.

Here’s how the PPVT works. The examiner says a word, then shows the examinee four drawings. The task is to identify the drawing that goes with the word. Examinees do not need to speak during the test, they can simply point to the drawing they believe to be correct. The test takes about 20 minutes to administer and score. It is rather perfunctory, as verbal tests go.

According to the publisher of the PPVT, the current version boasts a .91 correlation with the Verbal Intelligence Quotient (VIQ) of the WISC-III. Translation: a kid’s score on the quick and dirty PPVT will probably be close to the score that child would obtain on one portion of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC).

What is the WISC, you ask? It is a gold-standard intelligence test for children up to the age of 16. It consists of 15 subtests that combine to provide scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, processing speed, and working memory. These scores can be combined to generate a single IQ score, provided there isn’t too much spread between them.

The WISC and the PPVT serve different purposes. They are not comparable (see figure 2). The PPVT, in its entirety, is roughly proportionate to one of the 15 WISC subtests.

   

KEEP FISHING I AM SURE YOU WILL FIND SOME OTHER "scientific" argument to support your assumption....this one however is refutable and obviously so.

READ MORE HERE  http://ironshrink.com/2010/04/are-liberals-more-intelligent-than-conservatives-another-broken-study-says-it-is-so/

Kanazawa’s liberalism data is at least as muddled and biased as his intelligence data for two reasons.

First, the “more intelligent” kids – because of the way they were selectively funneled into this category via the aforementioned methodological mess – are more likely than their classmates to end up in college. Anyone who has paid attention during the last 50 years can attest to the fact that most colleges and universities overwhelmingly encourage liberal thought while discouraging conservatism. Kanazawa himself has acknowledged that academia is dominated by liberals. The data back him up.

In an in-depth study of the political orientation of college professors, Gross & Simmons (2007) reported that 62.2 percent of professors identified as liberal, while only 19.7 identified as conservative. That means that Kanazawa’s “more intelligent” people were more likely than their counterparts to be immersed in liberal ideology at the time of Wave III data collection.

Second, the timing of Wave III data collection corresponds nicely with Kanazawa’s desired outcome. Recall that Wave III data was collected when subjects were between the ages of 18 and 28. According to the Pew Research Center (2003), young adults in the present population who choose a party affiliation (most do not choose an affiliation) are about evenly divided between Republican and Democrat. With increasing age, affiliation shifts toward the conservative side, most dramatically among men.

There is only one reasonable explanation for this: people lose IQ points as they move toward conservatism and gain points if they become more liberal. That has been well documented in The International Journal of Shrinks Who Say Conservatives Are Doody-Heads.

 

[Flummoxed Lummox]

KEEP FISHING I AM SURE YOU WILL FIND SOME OTHER "scientific" argument to support your assumption....this one however is refutable and obviously so.

Short IQ,

Wow. You found one partisan hack on a blog who disagreed with a scientific study. Man, that is real "scientific proof" the study was flawed. You couldn't even find a scientist, just a blogger who disagrees. "Shawn," the author of your link, is a licensed psychologist, not a scientist.

Anybody want to bet "Shawn" is a conservative? 

Dear Buddha you are a piece of work.

Meanwhile, the scientific community (that would be real scientists who do actual studies and research) backs the study I linked.

A blogger as proof to negate science. 

[Dementia_Madness]

way to avoid the points actually pointed out that refutes the "science" you posted....
You didn't even read the article did you...  he is actually a libertarian, and a Psychologist, note that this is a blog response to the post you posted which is also from a blog  

So you post from an atheist liberal blogger post and I respond with a libertarian blog post against your blog whose tag-line says it all

Liberals think they’re more intelligent than conservatives because they are

 That's science.... or at least liberal science, formulate an opinion and then fabricate evidence to prove it.

according to your expert atheists and liberals are smarter, and black women are UGLY!

http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/satoshi-kanazawa-fired-psychology-today/

Satoshi Kanazawa, the psychologist who caused a great deal of controversy with his article on why African American women are unattractive has been fired from Psychology Today, where the article first surfaced. Huliq reports:

yeah FL when you pick who to listen to you really pick quality people.

http://hardsci.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/so-we-all-agree-satoshi-kanazawa-is-a-bad-scientist-what-next/

So we all agree Satoshi Kanazawa is a bad scientist; what next?

Still want call his crap science?  lets see what about that "science" that got him fired?

http://bigthink.com/ideas/38593

Kanazawa's Report of Black Female "Unattractiveness" Debunked By Independent Analysis

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/05/23/the-data-are-in-regarding-satoshi-kanazawa/

As it turns out, Kanazawa is a repeat offender, with years of roundly criticized and heartily debunked pseudoscience-based shock-jockery under his belt. Despite this, he is still posting on the blog of a reputable mainstream publication, still teaching at a respected university and still serving on the editorial board of one of his discipline’s peer-reviewed research journals. Though, possibly not for long: this particular post’s racist hypothesis offended many, unleashing serious righteous outrage across the internet: social media users raced to blog, tweet and even petition demanding that Psychology Today remove Kanazawa as a contributor to their Web site and magazine. Psychology Today removed the post late Sunday night, and Monday morning the largest student organization in London (representing 120,000 students) unanimously called for Kanazawa’s dismissal.

Over the past week, a handful of Kanazawa’s fellow bloggers at Psychology Today have posted insightful and at times scientifically-grounded critiques of his research question and methodology.

Still willing to hang your hat on this line of argument, or are you going to go out and find a new biased scientific study on which to base your self-righteous self-serving ideology upon? Really sucks to have someone as stupid as me jerk a knot in your tail so thoroughly and exquisitely doesn't it? I wonder IF I am such an idiot, what would that make you look like about now? Have a nice day, genius.