Does Sarah Palin Have A “Dull Normal” IQ?

IQ is thrown around quite a bit, but let's forget childish arguments and face the cold, hard facts.

People who spend time debating about politics are, by definition, dumber than the politicians themselves.

Has no one ever studied Roman history? Do they not know the party system was devised to give the illusion of choice and pit citizens against one another in pseudo-conflict, thus keeping the focus off the reality of their lives (serfdom)?

Who cares what the "three card monty" dealer's SAT's were. If he just took your 50 bucks YOU are the sucker, whitey!

I am a random guy who will undoubtedly be flamed, and I approve of this message.

Flame Typhon? First flame George Washington for saying pretty much the same thing.

Mother of god, what a long URL, better use tinyurl

My impression of Sarah Palin, after the 2 months' intensive study of her the whole country has just done, is that she isn't dumb, just ignorant. She doesn't know much about world affairs, geography, science, economics, etc., but not because she isn't capable of learning-- she just doesn't care about anything that doesn't further her career. Nobody's going to accuse her of being brilliant, or any kind of scholar, but she has a lot of raw cunning that you wouldn't find in a dull-witted person.

It's also true, though, that intelligence testing and IQ scores are so arbitrary that they are almost meaningless. I've scored really high on some of the standard tests, but more than anything else, that means that I'm good at taking those tests.

Regular reader here. Please stop using tiny url. It is a major security risk. If the URL is too long for your taste then use a hyperlink.

You are cutting your readership massively, most people cant even use tiny url at work and university and the rest dont trust it (for good reason).

First of all, I appreciate the commentary attached to this. I myself like McCain and Palin, and likewise hate the stupid attacks on Obama that similar makes stupid things up. People tend to assume people who don't see things their way are stupid (or ignorant) because if they weren't, they obviously would not take such a "wrong" position. (i.e. one that disagrees with the speaker's) There's a bit of arrogance inherent in such sentiments.

Now, on to Typhon's view of the party system. While there are obvious problems with it, the system fell about naturally, at least in the U.S. and Britain, when a single issue divided most people into two opposite camps, who then went to argue about everything else.

In the case of the U.S., the issue was the Constitution. The Federalists thought is was a great idea and should be ratified, and the Democratic Republicans (later on shortened to democrats) believed that all power should be retained by the states.

No conspiracy, just the way history turned out. As to how and why the Romans did it, it may be in that case as he described.

God you people need to stop bitching about tiny url get over it already!

"Please stop using tiny url. It is a major security risk. If the URL is too long for your taste then use a hyperlink."

I'd LOVE to use hyperlinks. Unfortunately, the site which is used to post things here keeps attaching the URL for THIS site to the front of every link I want to put up making them unusuable.

I've used TinyURL when the original URL is like a million characters long (they tend to be a pain for people to copy and paste).

Big Gary said:

"My impression of Sarah Palin, after the 2 months' intensive study of her the whole country has just done, is that she isn't dumb, just ignorant."

Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it, too.

As for IQ's, when I started high school, they put me in the Advanced Studies class. Then I encountered Algebra. Yikes. If you judged me strictly by my "ability" to do Algebra, you'd think that *I* had a "Dull Normal" IQ. By other standards, I would be called "gifted."

So, where does that put me?

Giftedly dull, CMG?

*runs away and hides from any banning power*

I do not vote Republican but this whole thing about "intelligence" is overworked. George Bush was never "stupid" (uncritical, lazy, self-satisfied, incurious--probably). In fact, I would bet Al Gore was dumber than Bush based on basic intelligence. Kerry, was probably smarter, but again he was pretty intellectually lazy and incurious as well. To Obama's credit he is probably naturally smart and intellectually curious, he has just had to hide the curiosity part so much to win the presidency that it may be permanently stunted.

The sad part is that so many Republicans have to play stupid to win. It was all part of the elite-uncritical coalition forged out of Nixonian-Rovian politics (appeal to the rich out of self-interest but also appeal to people who gain nothing by voting for you by complex fear and simple solutions).

Cranky, what you want to use is the {a href=link}link name{/a} command. This takes care of ridiculously overlong addresses, and seems to fix the MoH referral link as well. At least I never have a problem when using it, and my edit seems to work fine in the topic header.

I like IQ tests. I'd peg her at about 100. Average is not a compliment.