Been around the world and found
that only stupid people are breeding
the cretins cloning and feeding
and i don’t even own a tv.
- "Flagpole Sitta"
The current health care reform "debate", such as it is, has certainly shone a halogen light on America’s dirty little not-so-secret that we are a society dominated by illiterate, hate-filled, loudmouthed cretins. How else do you explain this statistic?
Public Policy Polling also asked those surveyed whether they consider Hawaii to be part of the U.S. Five percent said no, and 3 percent said they were not sure.
Call me a pro-education elitist, but if 8% of a polled sample don’t know that Hawaii is a state and has been one for the past fifty years, then yes, Houston, we are going to have a big problem trying to discuss something considerably more complex than the dinner menu at Arby’s. I understand that for these sorts, thinking hurts their delicate gray matter, but it’s not half as painful as having to watch loons in tricorn hats struggling to make a connection between Nazis and single payer health care.
I certainly appreciate the dilemma. Critical thought and logic skills aren’t common traits amongst the teabaggerati, so really, how can they be expected to see through the blatant fearmongering and projection that the Becks, Palins, Limbaughs and other loudmouthed liars are feeding them?
[Rep. Broun] also spoke of a “socialistic elite” – Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.
“They’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” he said. “We’ve seen that historically.”
(Somewhere in a musty dungeon near Chesapeake Bay, Dick Cheney just wet himself with delight.)
Honestly, I fear for this country’s sanity. All this madness because we finally got around to electing a black man President.
On the outside, opponents of the legislation outnumbered supporters by about a 10-1 ratio. “Obama energized the youth just like Hitler did,” said Barbara Kelly, a substance abuse counselor from Hagerstown. “He’s given the country away to the elitist Obama supporters. They don’t have to answer to anyone!”
For the uninitiated, this is wingnut code. What our substance abuse counselor (egads!) really means is, "No uppity, Harvard-educated Negro or any other black person is going to tell me what to do, even if it winds up improving my life quality of life." Sadly, this is the crux of the matter. All this town hall hullabaloo isn’t about government intervention, or socialism, or "death panels," or pushing your grandmother and her moth-eaten cardigan into a mass grave filled with geriatrics. Obama’s skin color is what is generating all the hysteria and vitriol behind the teabaggers, the birthers and the anti-immigration crazies. The health care reform debate is nothing more than today’s white sheet and hood writ large.
Just ask Georgia Representative David Scott.
Related posts:
Spotlight
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About Firedoglake
Advanced search
Kwatz!
Inconceivable !
Oh, holy crap, I just saw this. In keeping with tonight’s theme…Kenneth Gladney really IS the new Joe the Plumber.
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Would they be happier if an orange man was president? Paging John Boehner.
LOL … EDP !
Watertiger !
All the Republicans have grabbed the last bus to Crazytown. Except for Michelle Malkin, who grabbed the first bus years ago and has been sitting around waiting for the rest to catch up with her.
Gee, I hope Gladney recovers quickly so he can fulfill his new duties as America’s goodwill ambassador to Drama Queens Anonymous.
Petrocelli!
Malkin DRIVES the crazy bus.
Unfortunately for everyone else on the road, she drives it drunk.
ROFL !!!
Face it Dick, he just isn’t into you.
Cheney Unleashed: Feels Bush Went “Soft On Him”
And with her eyes closed.
i’m going to avoid reading into that headline.
Call me a pro-education elitist, but if 8% of a polled sample don’t know that Hawaii is a state and has been one for the past fifty years,
My expectations have lowered over the years. Nowadays, it would give me great joy to know that 92 percent of Americans could find the United States on a map of the United States.
Yes, I wrote that right.
I’m not surprised. I don’t think Cheney gets anyone horny.
LOL! And Sarah Palin thinks Africa is a country.
I dunno, I’ll bet Dick puts a twinkle in Glenn Beck’s eye. No wait, he’s just crying again. Never mind.
He shoulda told Dubya to think of baseball !
Couldn’t name the countries in NAFTA is probably my favorite.
You have obviously met some of my freshmen students.
Damn straight! When you get called to the plate you’d better bring a bat…
Presumes facts not in evidence.
our national ignorance is a pet peeve of mine. The numbers are grimmer than most people imagine – 20 million adults are illiterate in any language. Another 50 million are able to function only at the fourth grade level of reading comprehension or lower. High school dropout rates are going up, and the proportion of Americans with college degrees, which stagnated for well over a generation, has actually started to fall. Given that these figures have been trending better for women, they conceal the mass stupidification of (younger) men…. which of course has historically been any civilization’s downfall: ignorant, violent and frustrated young men. National fail, and 8 years of rule-by-thug only made it worse. This is your brain. This is your brain on Republicanism.
Reading a little further: or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice.
Guess I’m in Evil Dr. Puma’s camp on this one.
AquaKitteh!
Sigh…there are just not enough short buses for all Teh Stoopidz.
Missing a word in yer penultimate sentence:
(/editor hat)
FWDiva
Cool! I have a camp!
Let’s not drag Barbara Bush into this …
At least we can rest assured Dick will never go soft.
For my money the weirdest White House spousal dynamic was St. Ronnie referring to Nancy as “Mommy.”
I checked it out…as nausating as you suggest. The man is seriously paranoid, among other things.
Beats running a field school.
For me the weirdest was Dubya referring to Laura as “Condi”.
fixee.
No, I read about some of Pat Lang’s a few months ago. Maybe they’re in your class now, but sadly, I think that’s probably not the case.
in the post?
“I’ll start my own amusement park, with blackjack, and hookers!”
–Bender, Futurama
Strangely, I’m not feeling in the least assured.
Remember when Dubya said “-the trouble with the French is that they have no word for menage a trois?”
Give it time, it’ll grow on you.
And he knew how to say “freedom fries”….that was our Pres.
neverminding
By a five-to-four margin.
Suz !
E, it still makes me weep. My lawyer friend says that’s when we learned the Supremes are *ores. How sad.
Maybe we should have kept him quarantined in the White House. Since Bush left office ignorance appears to have become pandemic.
If it gets any worse, the rest of the world is going to quarantine us to keep it from spreading.
What is crazy for us is normal for them.
But we have memories of pretzels and Nucluyar and kissing the Chancellor and jokes about a TX Village loses its idiot and pet goats and brush. All that fun. And patting the Olympian’s ass…
Ignorance was pandemic before Bush ever took office. That’s how there could be a Supreme Court vote to start with.
Don’t worry, those who have been exposed can’t catch the disease again. That pandemic is the reason he was in the White House in the first place.
I remember in 1999 there was a study showing that a majority of people could name three of the five Stooges, but almost no one could name a single justice of the Supreme Court. I thought that there was no way we could possibly get any more stupid as a country.
Now having been exposed to Dubya, Miss Moose, Orly Taitz, Joe the Plumber and all the rest I realize that I was the stupid one.
I like to think we make the rest of the world feel better about themselves. At the very least we must inspire kids around the globe to do their homework.
Rep. Paul Broun is a family physician who has served patients for thirty-seven years.
I guess the Georgia Medical Board has low standards. Here they are:
You mean you may not believe that Clarence Thomas was the very best candidate.
they may have a point with a quarantine… as long as the illiterate are allowed to homeschool their kids, we’re a clear and present danger ;-P
That’s amazing. There were five Stooges?
I may not even believe that Clarence Thomas is qualified to be a legal assistant.
Maybe they will just put us in a big cage and charge admission.
I think it was Bill Maher (so you can take it with a grain of salt) who recently quoted a statistic which said that a majority of Americans cannot name a SINGLE branch of government. I’d like to think it was only hyperbole but I suspect it was accurate.
I may not believe that Clarence Thomas is qualified to sweep out the law offices.
Whatchusaid, aquacat.
Thanks I needed that..LOL, so Im going to bed. At least Im not crying now. Bingo ;)) So, don’t insult legal assistants….let’s just say he’s not. He thinks there is only one side to an arguement. Good night now
Night, Rev.
G’nite, RevBev.
He can’t be a complete idiot. He learned from Anita Hill not to put any of his opinions in writing.
BCT !
Seek medical attention for erections lasting longer than four hours…
I can name all three branches! Citibank, Aetna, and Goldman, Sachs, right?
That presumes that he is actually literate. I have yet to see any evidence of that.
Night folks…thanks for the ol’leave ‘em laughing trick. See ya tomorrow.
That’s why he adheres to a strict policy of only using Scalia’s opinions.
Good night.
I’m going to try to organize an evening panel discussion of health care reform with an economist colleague, a former health insurance executive, and a colleague from finance who has worked on health care IPOs.
Scalia has opinions? Who knew? I thought he called Cheney to find out what he thinks.
You gotta wonder how often that has happened?
Lo, the plot sickens!
That line referenced in the Anita Hill testimony, “There appears to be an unfamiliar pubic hair in my drink,” is from William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist,” so it would seem that he at least reads trashy fiction.
A lot of people I’ve met aren’t aware that New Mexico is actually a state and not, as a grade school teacher in DC told me, the “new part of Mexico.”
Audio books, my dear rodent.
Maybe his mommy read it to him in college.
Hey, Petro How are things?
We get that a lot here. “Do I need a visa to visit New Mexico?”
“Are you a U.S. citizen?”
“Yes.”
“Then you don’t need a visa, we have full reciprocity with all 49 of the other US States.”
I’ve been looking for actual stats on high school graduation. The figures are really lousy, but this site says the national average of 4 year gradates is 68.6%, and there are lots of states in the 50-67% range, including California and Mississippi. In Tennessee, we say thank heaven for Mississippi, and now we can say thank heaven for California.
Goes along with the folks complaining about the illegal immigrants from Puerto Rico.
My parents debated whether to let me read The Exorcist after I brought it home when I was in 7th grade. They decided to let me read it (knowing I would anyway) and I turned out completely normal… whoops, I meant abnormal. I don’t think the book had anything to do with it, though.
oh be nice. ;-P Just because he worships at the altar of Scalia’s feet, invoking the great man’s every word or whim as revealed truth. I’m sure he’s literate, but Scalia’s opinions maybe the only thing he reads.
49% for New Mexico according to the latest reports.
But discount that heavily, because they apparently still are not tracking transfers accurately. Kids who leave the conventional public school system for parochial school or charter schools don’t seem to be counted. Sigh.
Actually, there were six – Larry, Moe, Shemp, Curly (replaced Shemp), Joe (replaced Shemp after Shemp replaced Curly) and Curly Joe (replaced Joe).
So even the survey was wrong.
So, Iggy wasn’t technically a Stooge?
And they all breezed through their confirmations, so what the hell was the beef with Sotomayor?
Iggy may have been a stooge, but he wasn’t a Stooge.
Thanks. I feel very strongly about this as well. de Tocqueville commented when he visited America that the farmer’s were just as well-read as the scholars. How have we lost that? How can we get it back?
I don’t even think healthcare is a priority compared to education reform. We are just not competitive in math and science especially against the elite in Asian countries where discipline is quite martial and streamlined (my girlfriend is Korean and went to high school and private institutes sometimes for 15 hour days!).
Also, I think distraction does more than make us stupid, it steals our energy to engage each other. We must encourage the kids starting in school right now to drop the TV, Twitter, Facebook, and yes sometimes even blogs.
Well, it was Iggy and the Stooges, after all.
If it rains any more, I’m gonna build an Ark.
Besides that, everything is great !
She is competent.
Wikipedia begs to differ.
Iggy Pop was the lead singer of The Stooges-
Time for me to toddle off. More early morning walks in the mountains. Take care all.
or a coke delivery guy.
Ned Flanders (pulling Ark on trailer behind car): “I gathered two of every animal but only boys so there won’t be any hanky-panky. (glances in rear-view mirror, sticks head out window and yells) Now cut that OUT!”
Snert. Off topic, but true–I had two college friends from the Chicago area, neither of whom knew the other, both of whose parents had evicted Iggy Pop from a rental unit. I’m not sure what the cosmic significance is, but I fear that one day I will find out.
G’nite.
That’s reason to vote against a candidate for the Supreme Court.
But who is on first?
That was priceless !
ROFLMAO!
Buenos noches, Maestro Ricardo.
the studies I’ve seen are proxy and longitudinal only for select cities or states. I don’t recollect ever seeing a consistent methodology applied to track national graduation rates as a time series. Different states use different methodologies. Sometimes different school districts use different methodologies. This is the problem with American educational stats: nobody cares enough to track ‘em. Illiteracy is tracked by several reputable NGOs and most agree on a figure between 20 and 28 million adults, but officially the US reports a literacy rate of 99% to the UN, because under rules it set for itself, it deems it’s literacy rate to be 99% and has done so since the ’70s. Universal literacy by fraud and arrogance.
G’nite Sir !
What’re you askin’ me for, I’m asking you!
Now what’s the guy’s name on first base?
Hard to believe since he looks like he always lived in the lap of luxury.
Reckon I’ll mosey ‘long lil’ doggies. Nighters to all.
You forgot to mention the dozen or so off-duty police officers./
Seriously, do you think the “llisterners” will actually come to hear what you say?
Somewhere earlier today someone (Howie Klein, maybe? re the town hall he went to yesterday?) mentioned that the biggest howls of rage came whenever anyone claimed any sort of “expertise” or “knowledge.”
Actually, I’m reading Charlie Pierce’s new book, Idiot America, and the rage against “experts” and expertise is one of the chief subjects.
Oh, and BCT, re: New Mexico – I’ve heard tales of telephone operators (when there were such people) asking for the country code to place a call to New Mexico.
When I moved to Oklahoma, it bemused me to hear the weather people referring to storms/temps/etc. moving up from “Old Mexico.” I hear it occasionally here in Texas, but less. Guess the bright side of that is that they at least did know New Mexico is an actual state. (Of course, both OK and TX are pretty close to NM. Bet only 1/2% of their populations think it’s furrin.)
Good night to Dr. Dick and ratfood!
No, What’s on second, Who’s on first !
G’nite ratfood !
I remember reading a couple of years ago that the Oakland, Ca. schools had at least 40% of the students absent every day. Really sad.
who!
I teach at a university, I intend to hold the event on campus. I’ll certainly discuss the matter with the campus chief of police.
If we can’t discuss this on a university campus, we can’t discuss it anywhere.
The Old Mexico/New Mexico aberration is really amusing, because Nuevo Mejico got the name when Mexico was Nuevo Espana.
The name Nuevo Mejico came from a town outside Madrid.
I’m not asking you who’s on 2nd.
What’s the name of the guy on second base.
Well, I think I’m going to bop off and read for a while before sleeping. Peace out, y’all!
I don’t know !
Third Base!
Hello pups!
who?
Keep it cool, EDP.
Who is the guy on first base.
G’nite EDP
Someone got to second base?
No, he’s in Right Field.
I have such mixed feelings about literacy/illiteracy stats.
Periodically we in San Antonio get scare headlines about our terrible rate of illiteracy – defined as having 6th-grade education or less, not from any sort of testing of actual reading skill.
I fear there should be distinctions based on when a person went to school. Both of my parents-in-law, 2nd generation Mexican-Americans born in the 1920’s, 1st-language Spanish, dropped out of school in the sixth grade.
Both of them were avid readers. My mother-in-law loved books, and had as many as she could afford, worked hard to get her kids to love reading. She wasn’t reading Proust, but she was 100% literate. FIL, not so much books; he’s needs to be do things with his hands; but subscribed to newspapers his whole life and read them front-to-back every single day. Perfectly literate.
OTOH, someone dropping out in sixth grade today might well be unable to read. From what I recall, failure to learn (or be taught) to read is a major cause of the frustration that leads kids to drop out.
It’s a scandal. And periodically Texas has a scandal over undercounting the drop-outs to make it look less bad.
I was born and raised there but for a couple of years in DC. Drove me crazy to be asked where I learned to speak such good English.
That’s what I’m asking you. Whats the guys name on 1st base?
Evening, all-
I am the State with the lowest graduation rates, the most official corruption, the worst infrastructure, awash in drugs, guns, fraud, and dirty money, always near the top in all violent crime stats, with one of the worst distribution- of-wealth curves in the US. I am a living testament to the idea that all forms of pathology should be given a place to thrive, so that all the pathlogicals will go there and leave everyone else in peace.
I am Florida. Hear me roar.
No, What’s the name of the guy on second base.
I blame them durn Snowbirds !
RonD !
I just have one word to say.
Critical Thinking.
OK, here’s how I remember it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M
The next guy hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I Don’t Know, he’s on third…and I Don’t Give A Darn!
Oh, Laurence O’Donnell is really pointing out the stupidity of the young woman who complained that she didn’t want her country becoming Russia.
“How could she live through 9/11 and not be roused to interest in politics?”
Even better, do you want to repeal Medicare and Social Security?
A direct question – which she calls “putting words in my mouth.”
Watch yourself. One more f***up like November-December 2000 and we’re going to give Florida back to Cuba. I wonder if les Quebecois would take Iowa…
The guys name on third base is Lucky.
Hey Petro!!!
Actually, I really don’t. It really is us.
Huh? Russia is a Kleptocracy, and the US is rapidly becoming one.
Tell Arkansas Blue Dog Democrat Health care point man Mike Ross you will boycott his campaign contributor and constituent from Arkansas, Tyson chicken until he gets conservatives in both parties to enact HR 676.
http://www.change.org/actions/…..on_chicken
And Today’s is pitching to Tomorrow.
LOL!
Kitty Harris’ creed?
Excellent!
Got a couple a days on this team!
Gee. When I commented, I had no idea this was the weekly self-referential diary night. So I guess I’ll just have to join the fun.
But have you actually listened to the physicians in Congress who oppose healthcare reform? Not uneducated, not hillbillies (mostly) but, God what ignoramuses.
Gee I believed Mississippi earned that honor.
Probably actor Morgan Freeman’s high IQ makes up for the millions of Mississippi Republi KLAN members with low IQ.
I met a student at USF recently, a young Saudi, who told me wanted to come here and see FL after watching 2000 election coverage in his little village on the Yemeni border.
Physicians in Congress generally tend not have practiced very much medicine in the last 10 or 12 years or so. Their personal perspectives are pretty irrelevant to the current situation.
See, I’m an ignoramus. Who’s on third?
don’t Coultergeist and Party Chairman Limp Bark both live in FL? I shouldn’t bash FL. CA’s schools are now just as bad and our state’s broke, to boot. And we have the OC.
I Don’t Know.
Ah, go ahead and bash Florida. Beat the rush… and when’s the other shoe gonna drop on Mel Martinez?
3rd base.
That’s right!
So I pick up the ball and throw it to who?
Naturally !
Yes, you throw the ball to who.
I just noticed on Countdown. Keith was running the heavily downloaded clip from Youtube showing militia kooks training and gearing up for whatever it is they are planning.
I noticed how reminiscent the clips were to the endlessly looped clips of Al Qaeda training in the desert…the one where they are using the monkey bars.
Same cause, different zealots.
-G
You know, someone’s gonna look at this thread and be convinced we’re all insane.
Yeah.
And????
in the interests of equal treatment, shouldn’t someone be calling in one of those drones to pay a visit on the militia guys?
LOL !!!
It did scare away the Trolls …
That is interesting – because the US did participate in the international Literacy and Life Skills Survey.
http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/all/results.asp
Literacy is best thought of on a continuum anyway – not as you have it or you don’t.
Hey, we need the fun! I’m actually Laughing Out Loud reading these posts.
I don’t know if I missed someone else pointing it out but I think large parts of Idiocracy(movie with Luke Wilson + Maya Rudolph) lampoons our lagging intellectual rigor as a country just about perfectly. Oh by the way hello!!!
Oh, that is interesting! I didn’t know about that survey.
When I cite the “6th grade” definition, I can’t really tell you where it comes from. It seems that each time we have a new wave of concern about our drop-outs and low education harming our development prospects, this definition is pulled out to explain whatever number of “functionally illiterate” is in our local population. But beyond that, I don’t know.
When used this way (by politicians or “journalists”) this is the explanation given, possibly with a source. We haven’t had one of these waves for a little while, though.
Well, Marcy did leave a stocked Likker Cabinet over at her place …
Is that something just coming out?
Niiiice. Are you suggesting we sneak in and break the lock? Or did she leave it unlocked?
Bmaz has the Key but Freep & I keep a HatPin under the left cushion of the Sofa …
The thing about ALLS and AILS before it is that they used consistent methodology in different countries and measured adults on the kinds of literacy and numeracy tasks they face in everyday life and on the job.
Most of the literacy and essential skills work and research in Canada is based on IALS/ALLS methodology and results. I have issues with some of it, but still, its a common framework.
Sorry – meant IALS – international adult literacy survey.
Well, it’s tempting, Petro, but I’m at the age when, sadly, liquor keeps me awake. Or wakes me up in themiddle of the night, or both.
You boys have a good time, though. ;)
No, It actually came out in 2006. Little marketing (Faux had some influence over the distribution of the film) Mike Judge of King of the Hill fame produced it I believe and not to be too dry here as social commentary I really appreciate it all the more seeing these people showing their arse @ the town halls. Oh and if you do ever watch it check for U-P-G-R-A-Y-E-D-D the two D’s @ the end are for a double dose. Very funny when you see the movie.
You should never have said that, because I ALWAYS remember shit like that! :)
[Hat pin, Sofa, Left side]
LOL … just leave the Tequila alone.
-G
Petro!
Dude !
right.thats what they are all about…………a kellered guy has taken MY country………………so sad……
Most people can only name four of the five Stooges: Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Roberts. They forget the hilarious antics of Anthony Kennedy
Ask teh Stupids whether their birth certificates explicitly state that they are US citizens. Ask them for their citizen certificates. Then tell them to go back where they came from. Hehehe. And do it wearing a white coat, carrying a clipboard. ‘I’m from Washington, and I’m here to facilitate your deportation plans.’
I loved reading the ‘Stupids’ book series to my kids back in the 80’s. Particularly pertinent to today’s news is ‘The Stupids Die’. They think that they have died when the lights suddenly go out. Here’s a link — http://search.barnesandnoble.c…..038;src=ET
Watertiger, let’s be honest about this shall we? Pelosi and crew declined to impeach anyone in the Bush Administration. What would Obama and Democratic leadership and their elite supporters have to do before we saw impeachment of anyone in the Obama administration? Let’s just hope–and I emphasize ‘hope’ here for several obvious reasons–they, the Democratic leadership, are less loony than the Bushites, keeping our eye on the ball, that ball being the Bill of Rights and the adherence to actual enforcement of the laws in the United States.
So far, what’s the score? Not good. So, before you go knocking the ‘teabaggers’, let’s realize that some of the points they’re making are entirely valid, maybe not a large part of the things they’re talking about…but let’s please, please, please not attack them on points they are accurate about…namely that WE too, not just THEY, are seeing a lawlessness that is undermining the stability of the United States, both as a trustworthy power in the world but also as an economic engine, let alone a so-called “bastion of freedom”?! The American Empire is suffering and it is not the ‘teabaggers’ that are causing the problem. No, their movement is a symptom, not a cause per se. And it is sad when the symptoms are growing in strength. For the longer the symptoms grow, the more painful the cure.
The research is in and was published today in a credible British medical journal: high fat diets cause laziness and stupidity. With nearly 40% of Americans now classified as obese – we now know what’s causing the long-running stupidity problem in the US. An excess of fat intake causes reduced oxygen flow to muscles and brain. Certainly a followup study needs to look at the percentage of obese citizens who vote Republican. I think we already know – just look at the rad right shock jocks and political operatives: Rush, Beck, Rove, etc. They’re all pale, fat and balding – and the liberal meanies: Stewart, Colbert, Obermann, Mahar, etc – are lean and smart!
RE: “Welcome to the Age of Ignoramus.”
MY COMMENT: I prefer to use the term ‘ignoranus’!