By Hanlon, on January 27th, 2012 at 08:07 PM
A UK study shows that children with low IQs grow up with conservative beliefs.
“As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias,” LifeScience wrote.
Lead researcher Gordon Hodson, of Brock University in Ontario, concluded that people with low IQs are attracted to the hierarchy and structure in socially conservative institutions.
Now, obviously, this comes CRAMMED with caveats. There are lots of brilliant minds who are conservative, even if we might disagree with them, and there are certainly some downright morons who are liberal.
The part that’s more interesting to me, truthfully, is the correlation between low IQs and deference to authority (implied in the attraction toward hierarchy). Conservatives are frequently authoritarian, more than happy to get down on their knees in front of the police, the military, politicians, Church officials, and powerful CEOs. The idea is generally that if someone is in a position of power, they’re somehow better* than everyone else.
*unless that person is the nebulous ‘government’ that is supposedly the cause of all of our woes. Or a Democrat.
By Hanlon, on January 27th, 2012 at 03:16 PM
You know how everyone’s always going on about how tax cuts for the top means they’ll create jobs?
Just out of curiosity, how is Mitt Romney’s $250mil or so, most of it sitting in offshore bank accounts, create jobs? Seems to me that when Mitt gets tax cuts, he takes the extra money and just sits on it. Weird.
By Hanlon, on January 24th, 2012 at 04:51 PM
For a while now, I’ve been saying that Obama’s head-to-head matchups with Republicans are more theoretical than anything, and once again I’m proven right. The American people, once they get the chance to actually see and hear his Republican opponents, turn against the opposition and back toward Obama.
Just in time for his State of The Union address, the latest ABC News/Washington Post Poll shows that President Obama has garnered a 53 percent favorability rating–much higher than Republican opponents and his highest since April 2010. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, the two Republican frontrunners at the moment, clock in with 31 and 29 percent favorability ratings respectively.
What’s changed in the last few months? Why, a hefty dose of debates. It happened to every single Republican “frontrunner”. Once they hit the spotlight and the American people get a long enough look at them, suddenly all of these previous Republican starlets crash into the dirt. I mentioned this before, and reader Rechan pointed out to me that I forgot about Fred Thompson, a guy who was supposed to lazily traipse his way into office and collapsed inwardly before the race even really began.
Anti-Obama sentiment is a product of the fact that things haven’t suddenly become flowers and rainbows, not a reaction to his actual policies and actions. To be sure, he’s fucked up a lot of things, but that’s not why he was becoming unpopular. Contrast him side-by-side with any of his Republican opponents and we’re looking at a Reagan-in-84 victory.
By Hanlon, on January 24th, 2012 at 04:41 PM
I’ll watch, most likely, but to be honest I’m tiring of hearing things like this. The State of the Union address might have meant something in the pre-digital age, but at this point it’s an annual campaign speech.
By Hanlon, on January 24th, 2012 at 02:23 PM
I’m not surprised Santorum took the hard line on this, but what bothers me is that it’s considered a big deal. It’s a lose-lose line of questioning intended to make the interviewee look bad, and as cool as I am with making Leaky Ricky look bad, this is a disingenuous way of doing it.
Asked by CNN’s Piers Morgan what he would do if his own daughter approached him, begging for an abortion after having been raped, Santorum explained that he would counsel her to “accept this horribly created” baby, because it was still a gift from God, even if given in a “broken” way.
“Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice, I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or she doesn’t, it will always be her child, and she will always know that,” Santorum said.
Okay, take a moment to analyze the way this question works. It’s the exact same tactic that was used against Dukakis in the 1988 presidential debate when he was asked whether he’d support the death penalty in the case of someone who murdered a member of his own family. You take a controversial issue and ask the person whether or not they’d change their stance if it were suddenly relevant to their personal life.
As I said, it’s lose-lose. If they change their stance, then their position is seen as waffling; they didn’t truly have any conviction to begin with. If they don’t, then their stance is radical and callous even toward their own family. It’s not even a legitimate question because there’s no good way out of it. It’s barely any more fair than “will you agree to stop beating your wife, yes or no?”
We know Rickles is a nut. We don’t need to pin him in with loaded questions.
By Hanlon, on January 23rd, 2012 at 08:56 PM
 To go with our little SC Republican poll, there’s this. Now, in fairness, they don’t want slavery removed from the books entirely, but rather that everything vis a vis the Founding Fathers completely whitewashed to make them all seem like virtuous, and ironically progressive, paragons of justice and equality. Now that’s bad enough on its own, but I have to admit that their method of explaining why is even worse.
Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.”
“The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at.”
So they’re admitting that the unpleasant parts are true, but that they don’t want them taught because it… survey says… conflicts with a particular worldview that this group wants promoted.
This is the textbook definition of indoctrination, folks. When a group wants children to be taught from a perspective of promoting a particular message rather than simply laying the facts out, that’s indoctrination. It’s ramming an ideology into the heads of children against their will. Mind-rape, let’s say. They don’t want children to know all of the facts, just the ones that support what the Teabaggers see as the “truth”.
And that’s really the crux of the whole Tea Party movement. They know what “truth” is and want all information spread to be bent around supporting said “truth”. Teach creationism in schools, omit parts of history, do whatever it takes to prop up their bullshit notion of “truth”. They don’t want to let kids learn for themselves, no. That’d be dangerous.
By Hanlon, on January 23rd, 2012 at 04:31 PM
I’m at a loss here. The fact that the answer to this question isn’t 100% just blows my mind.
Q23 Do you think that interracial marriage should be
legal or illegal?
Legal……………………………………………………… 66%
Illegal …………………………………………………….. 20%
Not sure …………………………………………………. 14%
This is just a poll among Republicans, and the fact that only 2 out of 3 believes interracial marriage should be legal is surreal. But that’s what we’re up against here.
EDIT: Fixed a typo.
By Hanlon, on January 23rd, 2012 at 04:26 PM
By Hanlon, on January 23rd, 2012 at 03:17 PM
I just have no words. No fucking words.
Aden, a veteran of the war in Iraq, said in a statement, “To kill a child’s pet is just unconscionable. As a former combat soldier, I’ve seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. Whoever did this is definitely part of the worst of humanity.”
Aden made clear that he did not believe Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) or anyone involved with his campaign were involved in the incident, and Beau Walker, Womack’s campaign manager, strongly condemned it.
I give it a day before some right-wing group claims liberals did this just to foment anger against conservatives. Because, clearly, the tree-hugging tofu-eating peaceniks would kill a cat just to make a point.
I’m at a loss. As a person who’s always had animals in the house, it hurts me deeply. And, frankly, it’s textbook terrorism. Violence enacted to instill fear aiming toward political goals. This is terrorism.
By Hanlon, on January 22nd, 2012 at 10:01 PM
Depending on whether or not you count almost 1000 dead people “voting” as fraud.
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