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It's Official: President Obama's SOTU Speeches Are The 'Dumbest' In US History
Are you smarter than a 9th grader? Then you will be quite at home with President Obama's latest State of The Union speech. While the Flesch-Kincaid readability test shows SOTU 'smartness' has been plunging Woodrow Wilson, the collapse has accelerated post-Clinton with President Obama's average SOTO speech tailored to the intellect of a 14-year-old - the lowest on record.
Vocativ also calculated the average SOTU grade for every president dating back to Woodrow Wilson, when it first became the norm to deliver such speeches before a joint session of Congress. Before Wilson, it was typically presented as a written report. Over the last century, the State of the Union’s sophistication has trended steadily downwards.
Perhaps even more sad is the spin that a former speechwriter puts on this downtrend...
“It’s tempting to read this as a dumbing down of the bully pulpit,” Shesol said.
“But it’s actually a sign of democratization. In the early Republic, presidents could assume that they were speaking to audiences made up mostly of men like themselves: educated, civic-minded landowners. These, of course, were the only Americans with the right to vote. But over time, the franchise expanded and presidential appeals had to reach a broader audience.” That, and the advent of mass communication.
Now, when President Obama addresses the country, he is addressing everyone.
* * *
Yep - that's it.
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... as his people.
exercise in simple language:
Sometimes a group of folks feels that it should separate from another group of folks.
That first group wants to make its own decisions.
Follow its own path.
Why do it?
Why separate?
Those are good questions.
Let's answer them.
In our opinion, a few facts are obvious.
Fact 1. Folks are folks. They're born that way.
Fact 2. When folks get made, they come with a built-in right to live. To be free. To chase happiness.
Fact 3. Folks create systems of control in order to make sure their basic rights are protected.
Fact 4. A system of control is fair when the folks under its control agree to the way the system is working.
Fact 5. When folks feel like the system isn't protecting their basic rights, those folks are entitled to change or end the system. Then they can construct another system of control if they want to, so that the new system does a better job of protecting their safety and happiness.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
I suppose the new purpose of government is to create "folks" that are so stupid they can't realize anything, let alone construct.
Many can't even properly construct a simple sentence and you want them to construct a new form of government?
That's why the idea of a Constitutional Convention is somewhat terrifying to me. Think of the average moron you run into on the street, and then imagine that moron having a hand in altering the Constitution.
Who cares what the president said last night? On the contrary, this post is one of the stupidest articles ever published on ZH.
Wondering who are the morons responsible for allowing the posting of such piece of garbage that only helps to cement idiocy.
Dude! It gives us something to rant about, and expel our frustration. So, chill!
People as uninformed and as gullible as Americans have no future. Americans are a dead people that history is about to run over. - Paul Craig Roberts
Barry's SOTU - it's what the populace craves!
It's got electorades!
Barry's SOTU - it's what the populace craves!
imagine if they had a similar analysis of ZH posters
... and the result would be similar, in the early days there was no voting system on comments and posts were quite eloquent and well put, hence harder to read and digest. Nowadays, as the audience expanded and ZH became more mainstream, you'd find less effort being put into same, hence overall quality dropped. There is nothing unnatural about that, if you crave for quality, you look for things less sought after and places less crowded. And finally:
So yes, democratization and inclusion of more and more people into discussion leads to dumbing down of the narrative.
Word.
....The same ones who allow infants to type in all bold-face text.....
Fuck it all
Idiocracy FTMFW!
This is the prezzy's facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/President-Dwayne-Elizondo-Mountain-Dew-He...
Don't use "prezzy"; it sounds gay as fuck. (the gossipy "just look what HE said" tone does not help, either.). Try to butch it up a little.
"That's why the idea of a Constitutional Convention is somewhat terrifying to me."
Me too.
The Constitution is fine as is, the problem is that it's not followed.
How does changing it get them to follow it? Be wary of anybody calling for a Constitutional Convention.
You prefer a handful of billionaires writing a constitution?
You prefer offering false choices?
Think of the average person you meet, and realize that half of them are stupider than that. I'm paraphrasing George Carlin, and I know that you know that and the ramifications of giving Americans authority to alter the Constitution by some kind of democratic process (knowing that most of them know less than nothing) is scary.
Mc, we don't have an answer, do we?
The fucking herd will continue to stampede in whichever direction it decides, and we won't have any choice at all until they've killed each other off.
My 2 cents.
That wouldn't worry me in the slightest, if every single member of the press was executed first.
There'd be changes, but at least they'd be made by people making their own decisions.
I can live with that.
you are suggesting that a new system of control would necessarily be constructed by people who read/write
War is Nobel Peace prize winning.
Ignorance is democratization.
ok, now I've heard everything.
Actually, how many sheeple do you know who actually watch the SOTU? I am guessing it rounds to zero.
Dumbing down of the text is perhaps more related to trends in intelligence of "journalists" in the media, who make up 96% of the live audience.
Or read cursive.
What's really scared me, was when a (normal, public-school-educated) kid who'd visited recently . . . . did not know how to read an 'analog' clock -- you know, a clock with an hour and minute hand that circles around. Had NO idea what time it was when looking at the clock -- because they hadn't bothered to teach this child . . . How to Read a Freaking Clock With Hands. Because .. the clocks are .. old? Or something?? what? I just didn't get it. And we ended up teaching the kid how to read the clock.
And ... cursive? They - literally -- have just flat-out GIVEN UP BOTHERING to teach it. Bahh ... too much trouble. Think of all the effort we used to have to go through (they said to themselves) ... "let's just blow it off .. 'cause .. uhh .. things are on a need to know basis, and .. they don't need to know?
waIt. If someone doesn't know how to read or write cursive --- how could that someone ever "sign" their name on legal documents? I'd say 'checks', but .. given, consumers don't use checks anymore. A big 'X'?
Good god. Our schools are "teaching" kids to be dumber and dumber, to be less and less capable.
Easier (for them) to mold.
Because he's "talking" to Tea Party Wingnuts whose average IQs are under 100, and whose "adult" social skills are at exactly at the 13.6 age level.
he's Da Man!
His speeches are dumb because his supporters are dumb. Duh.
Someone down voted that?
The TV didn't really become mainstream until the 1950's
common core for everyone
Awww fuk don't even get me started on that full-tard common core math shit. And I pay taxes so my kids have to suffer that shit? FuckityFuck
If we had a President, he wouldn't look like Obama.
Didn't think it was physically possible to be dumber than George W Bush.
As the article alludes, he is merely pandering to his kind of voter.
The down arrows are from butthurt people who still can't bring themselves to admit they voted for an idiot.
I've admitted it before: I voted for GWB the first time. He turned out to be an idiot, and I didn't vote for him again. I jumped ship pretty much the first time I heard him say "nucular."
An idiot? Maybe. But I would honestly rather have an idiot than this narcissistic fuck we have now. Sure, GWB just followed in Daddy's footsteps and signed every piece of criminal legislation that the MIC and the banks sent his way BUT... BUT... at least he was too stupid to realise what was going on. I feel like Obama gets a kick out of burning the American people and lying to their faces on a regular basis. Satan reincarnated.
I suppose that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that because GWB was an idiot, we essentially ended up with Darth Cheney as President for two terms. He may not be as narcissistic as Obama, but he's every bit as evil, if not more.
And the inordinate amount of power he wielded is still evident even to this day because the national security state was basically handed over to him. When it comes to the police state bullshit in this country and all the meddling around the world, Obama is for all intents and purposes using the tools that were created by Dick Cheney. That's GWB's legacy.
I think I would rather have a Dick (shotgun) Cheney running things, than the Iranian Valerie Jarrett. At least Cheney thought people owning guns was OK. Not so sure Ms. Jarrett.
That's how we pronounce 'nuclear' in the South, you insensitive clod!
@mac. Strange isn't it? It's not exactly a secret that GW Bush is dumber than lead paint in a crackhouse, and this article clearly concludes that the SOTU addresses are being dumbed down for the current generation of broad socioeconomic means - ie he is pandering to his audience. Not quite sure what the down votes are all about, but it is amusing that they identify with the dumb by doing so :)
Took me until late 2002 to figure GW Bush out when the Iraq invasion was in jaw boning mode at the UN. Exchanged a LOT of hard words with neo-cons on the net since then. As for Obama, go back to the archives and you will find that I supported Obama (Because he wasn't Bush) up until I read an article in the NewStatesman about his corporate sponsors a couple of months before the elections. A lot of heavy hitters in banking were backing him and he turned out exactly to be the whore he is today. For that, I got a lot of comments about being a 'racist', simply for pointing out some facts about his sponsors. I think that's when I started posting about the falseness of the blue team-red team dichotomies.
I am so glad you're back posting a lot these days mate!
Good comment.
It is far easier to look at the list of advisers to the candidate to get a handle on what to expect from the new clod. The creeps that were advising BO/and the airplane wrecker in 2008, and then BO/ and the vulture fund maggot in 2012 told you all that you needed to know that they were nearly the same on everything other than some aspects of social policy. They could not be distinguished from one another in foreign policy.
"I jumped ship pretty much the first time I heard him say "nucular.""
James Earl Carter went to Annapolis to become proficient on submarines and he even pronounced it "nucular". It is as I see on applications for employment in my shop that candidates claim that they are "machinests". (I are one but cain't spell it.)
YHC_FTSE... I guess our next President will be Forest Gump, after that Geraldo?
Simple Jack
+1 LOL. Never go full retard.
Obama sure gives him a run for the money. He is a bumbling idiot when the teleprompter stops working.
Breathalyzers, inhaLATORS, 57 states ......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxxxGUeZtno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws
Well, the good news is that 14-year-olds have gotten much dumber, so the speech would now go clean over their heads.
How many people actually watched the douche bag?
Not many, lowest SOTU viewership in 15 years.
Well judging by the looks of his constituentcy lately that speech would still go over their heads.
I turned off this nincompoop in absolute disgust after about 10-12 minutes into it. Oh my Gawd how far we have fallen. Milestones
You have more guts than me! I didn't even have the stomache to turn it on.
His audience is dumber and probably didn't understand a word of it
You assume that they watched it.
warren Harding 15 wow
That's what I thought, too. But I guess you just have to read the speech, not write it.
With the rise of "on the go" perpetual connectivity, everyone wants their information / entertainment as conveniently packaged / predigested as possible, hence the popularity of the likes of Twitter.
Unless there is a very significant change in direction (and attention span), expect future SOTU presentations to be at best no better, and most likley considerably worse. The "bottom will be approaching" as the syllable count per word decreases, but looking on the bright side, at least "Dear Leader" is not yet using TXT abbreviations (that delight's yet to come).
Highlights of last 3 president's speeches:
Obama: folks
Bush: nuqular
Clinton: y'all
GHWB: prudent
Ronnie Raygun: well....well...well...
lol
How the fuck does your first post get 10/1 greens and then I add a couple more and get 1/1 reds?
What evs.
They must be drunker than me
He is just playing to his base...and they are fucking stupid.
still falling for the left-right, Republican-Democratic dichotomy?
SEEMS LIKE 99% OF THE WHOLE DAMN ELECTORATE IS IGNORANT, READILY MANIPULATED AND EASILY BRIBED
(which may be why 1% of the population is getting richer and richer)
The Tea Party started out screaming about banks and Wall Street - now they're owned by the Koch Brothers... Obama was elected on 'Hope and Change' but continued Bush's policies on Executive Power, Spying, War and Pandering to Wall Street (not to mention pushing MORE job destruction with 'Free Trade')
Any group that dares question the current state of affairs is bought out, belittled as 'nuts' or crushed.
Obama sucks Kock and plays with Halliburton balls while shopping at Walmart. Next time I'm voting for Eli Warden.
You could always write in a distinguished dead guy.
Ronald Reagan? George Washington? Albert Einstein? The Judge Roy Bean?
Nobody has bought me out because they can't.
I sold out last week.
I'll bite my tongue as long as the checks keep coming in for me to buy silver with.
I can be bought out for a can of bacon grease
Me too
I fail to see where I dragged out the left right paradigm?
I voted libertarian last election and have a Poli Sci degree.
<snort> A degree. In. Political. Science. The tone of your sentence suggests you believe this is a positive thing?
So is it the speaker or the audience? Why bother gaining human capital when your welfare checks materialize out of thin air?
Now when the President speaks he is addressing Honey Boo-Boo.
& he needs a teleprompter to even do that!
That's because it's the operating intellect of his voters and supporters.
Maybe that is why Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg appeared to sleeping during the address:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ruth-bader-ginsburg-appears-fall-asl...!
Yep, these aren't the stats you were looking for, move along.
We dumbed down some folks.
Pols, crats, funcs, and banksters are never stupid, or incompetent, no matter their IQ.
They are thieves, parasites, that are smart enough to have infected our society enough so as to enable them to live off of our blood, sweat and toil.
"Never attribute to intelligence, or incompetence, that which is better explained by psychopathy."
The banksters need to repay us.
In other words, you would shoot a burglar in your home dead, no matter hiis IQ, or competence.
Ready to hang em high. Someone needs to start it.
Obama needs to speak black/gangster/nigger to ensure EVERYONE understands him.
'dis country be good and tripping. We smoke dem muzzies and IS fools. I be the prez with de most fame and bling. Free shit and hoes for y'all! Gawd bless Murika.
Enough said.
You mean a Ho with plenty of pot, and a Gov. Motors car in every garage! FDR would be proud!
Does it look something like this?
http://www.mikecornelison.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/cmon-baby-gimme...
At least he didn't walk into Congress wearing a cheese hat...
WOW!!! Obama exceeded his level of intelligence.
...and it wasn't that hard to do.
Yep, fire the Dept. of Education. Or is this the result of Common Core?
Common Core -- where 2 + 2 equals 5 --- because NUMBERS!
"plunging Woodrow Wilson"
That sounds sexual in nature. Are these articles written on smart phones with voice recognition and the occasional "word drop"?
And don't forget boys and girls, Obama is the pinnacle of progressive achievement!
And progressives cheer for that shit.
Grimaldus
No idiocracy here, move along.
The readability test measures: (wait for it) ... "readability".
To extrapolate higher readability = "dumber" is specious. This headline says a lot more about about the ZH clickbaiters than it does about presidential speechwriters.
(p.s. if anyone is smart enough to click through to the source article, he will notice that Obama's last 4 speeches have all scored higher than the previous, and the 2015 speech scored an even 10.0. So much for "downward trend").
The obvious extrapolation is lower readability = "dumber'. And the first word in the figure's caption is 'average', not high score, so the 10 doesn't count.
Yes, Obama is smart. Yes, he is deliberately talking down to us because he thinks (or his speech writers think) the average person listening can only handle that level of discussion.
Don't defend the indefensible.
higher readability = lower grade level. That is what the picture in this article is illustrating.
Since you do not even understand the basics, it's obviously pointless to discuss its implications with you.
Tyler Durden is a bigger dumb-ass than Barrack Obama.
You do not believe me?
This article, written by Mr. Tyler Dumb-Ass, has a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 7.9, which is much lower than Obama's 9.0 score on the State of the Union speech.
Tyler must be really dumb, right?
---------------------------------
It is aggravating to see people assume things when they do not even know what the measuring stick means. I have no love for Obama, and anyone who tells me he is the scum of the earth, will only receive agreement from me. However, if we accept Flesch-Kincaid as a measure of "smartness", Tyler Durden is clearly well below Obama on the "smart" curve. 13% dumber to be exact.
Readability formulas were first developed in the 1920s in the United States. Regardless of what you might think, readability formulas cannot measure how comprehensible a text is, and they cannot measure whether a text is suitable for particular readers' needs. From the earliest efforts to today, readability tests have been designed as mathematical equations which correlate measurable elements of writing - such as the number of personal pronouns in the text, the average number of syllables in words or number of words in sentences in the text.
Here is the algorithm to determine the Flesch-Kincaid grade level.
A "lower grade level" might just mean that you are organizing your thought train in a better fashion, using more periods than commas, and eliminating unnecessarily bombastic words and flamboyant phrases that muddle the clarity of your discourse.
A mathematical formula simply cannot calculate intangibles such as relevance, trustworthiness, clarity, interest, accuracy, style, and at least half a dozen other elements.
Here is something else to keep in mind: reading ease is something that one should strive for! It does not necessarily mean that you are "dumbing down" anything. A person pretending to be erudite or deliberately trying to misrepresent things, might try to present issues and circumstances in an appropriately complicated fashion, but in the real world, things should not be made any more complicated than they have to be.
--------------------------------
The Flesch-Kincaid level of this post is 8.8, which puts me ahead of Tyler Durden and behind whoever wrote the speech that the clueless teleprompter in chief read in front of the cameras today.
The new, revised headline reads: It's official: Gallistic is smarter than Tyler Durden and dumber than Barrack Obama's speechwriter.
What would you expect... 14 is probably when most of his fans quit school, if they made it that far.
OK it was the dumbest speech but who wrote it? Obviously O is a complete stooge but that does not make him stupid. Say "this" you monkey or die.
Know your audience.
Obama is quite smart. The Democratic base has the intellect of the average 14 year old. The question is: Does the average 14 year old have the capacity to see the trouble this country is in? Perthaps there is slowly emerging realization that Obama was a generational mistake.
Obama is above average, at best.
Obama is dumb scombag liar but those who believe in him are dumbest.
Give Preezy credit, he knows it's the dumbfucks that voted for him. The free shit army, . . .
“And basically — y’know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever — but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.” - Jonathan Gruber
His base got their cheque in the mail and their EBT card loaded - why would they watch the speech with hockey on tv. You think they give a shit past their next beer and puff.
So what they just said was, "the speeches used to be for white men, but we had to dumb them down for the chicks and blacks?"
And here we have Debbie. She lost her job back in 2008 and so did her husband who was a construction worker. Because of my policies, she and her husband are now gainfully employed. But it is still tough for her because she has student loans and has to save for retirement. She would like to get a new car and take a vacation and I think we can help her out.
WTF?
... I thought the next one he was going to say was this: This is Bobby. He lost his $750,000 job on Wall Street. He now works at the local bank as a loan officer and makes $60,000 a year. He misses the drugs, booze, prostitutes, and strip joints and I think the taxpayers should help him out. It's the right thing to do people. For God's sake, he had to give back his Tesla cause he couldn't afford the payments and now has to suffer the indignity of driving a Lexus.
"The woman whose story of economic recovery was showcased by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address is a former Democratic campaign staffer and has been used by Obama for political events in the past.
Rebekah Erler has been presented by the White House as a woman who was discovered by the president after she wrote to him last March about her economic hardships. She was showcased in the speech as proof that middle class Americans are coming forward to say that Obama’s policies are working.
Unmentioned in the White House bio of Erler is that she is a former Democratic campaign operative, working as a field organizer for Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.).
This also wasn’t the first time the White House used the former Democratic campaign staffer as a political prop. Obama spent a “day in the life” of Erler in June so that he could have “an opportunity to communicate directly with the people he’s working for every day.”
Reuters revealed Erler’s Democratic affiliations following that June event, and the Minnesota Republican Party attacked Obama for being “so out of touch with reality that he thinks a former Democrat campaign staffer speaks for every Minnesotan.”
Just fucking amazing, now he not only thinks everyones stupid he thinks everyone has a seven month attention span.
Oh, GREAT catch, that was her. Thanks!
I mistakenly called her Debbie because I was so pissed and thereafter turned it off. I could not believe what I was hearing. The woman and her husband are employed, doing fine and Obama tells us that she would like a new car and a vacation and we taxpayers should help.
I thought he was going to have Janet print up some money in hand it to her right on the spot.
nmewn,
Thanks for rooting out Reuters.
I have seen things like this in the past that have taken some real political news fanatics to connect the old propaganda to the newer version.
This one is richer than the usual and it is especially flabbergasting in that there are some damned good search engines that will connect so quickly with the past utterances of these sob sisters.
I got a kick out of your post, in that someone in Reuters bothered to use their certainly paid-up Lexis/Nexis that is bought by any huge newspaper/etc. entity.
The notion of the clots in Ubama's press manipulators that they would go undetected in peddling this bullshit is even more evidence that they write for slow ninth-graders. Did they not use Lexis/nexis to see how fast their new heroine would be caught on database search?
Could it be that even the most commited lefties in the dying mass media are getting annoyed at being taken for such saps?
I still pay a full subscription to my local newspaper and do pay up for "old style" news vendors to reward the few that actually do real investigative reporting. The few that are left had better realize that their only chance is to do what they are supposed to do. They must jettison their jackass allegiance to their leftist politics and actually report the story as they find it. Otherwise their last few paying subscribers outside of the leftist and neocon "rightist" sounding boards will finally abandon "journalism" to the fate that it so justly deserves.
If you have a reporter that actually bores in for the unvarnished "truth" on important issues, you owe them some encouragement and to tell them that clean reporting is the only reason that you continue to pay for their work.
It is nearly impossible to get good reporting without decent money to make it into "print". A great deal of internet comment relies upon the old journalism to get publicity.
I pay out a fair amount to internet reporters that I find to be worthwhile, but that sort of support cannot sustain them in their desire for a living wage above starvation, or just being a hobby for those that can support reporting on outside income. You all know that the latter is exceedingly rare.
In the early days of ZH when it was far better than now, I paid up for ZH even if it wasn't much. The quality of the commentary in the first two years was a venue that had to be supported by slobs like me that needed the information. My paying a little to have a venue for those that freely offered their damned near invaluable commentary was as cheap a bargain as one could get.
I urge those of you that know of a solid source of information that you would never see without the efforts of that writer shold loosen up some and reward those that you want to be your eyes and ears.
I am not a man of means but I do make sure that twenty or fifty goes to the personal account of the guy that brings the truth into the open. Unless your local rag is a cop loving Homeland Security propaganda purveyor or schoolboard taxing shill suckup, you might want to subscribe to the print edition long enough to figure out if there are any on the staff that are worth reading and knowing. A six week subscription at their giveaway introductory rate should be enough to decide the value of the thing above its hamster cage liner value.
It helps if you can pass along a tip to an honest reporter on the local goomint gangs if you know something.
Perhaps I still have a 1930's ideal of what a real newspaper ("His Girl Friday" as a spoof was great) can do for the dissemination of truth. I don't write them all off just yet even if they deserve it now.
2 years of free community college...hmm? Does this mean his public school system is so dumbed down that students need an additional 2yrs at a community college to catch up to the rest of the world?
It'll take more than that.
@PerkyPal - catch up with the rest of the world? I'd say 2 yrs at community colllege are just grades 13-14 and yes, that means the school system in America is broken like a porcelain doll - shards everywhere too small to glue together. Employers need to set up incoming employee systems that are basic spelling (or how to use the spell checker on software - as most of these kids use tweets) or basic phone skills (use of proper english not slang) and general how to interact with people (not iphones). Yeah, if 2 more yrs of school will tach them how to be people not robots i'd be foe it. Sadly, I don' think 2 years of state college will help.
else liberals couldn't understand him
i was going to think about this topic but,
instead, fell in love with an asian women.
I'm surprised. I didn't know the free shitters were smart enough to comprehend speech at the level of a 14 year old. Progress !
Bob Dylan - Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (Dumb & Dumber)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afp_kTaksMg
.
Guns and Butter
"Russia, Belarus, France, Greece - The World Rebels Against Wall Street Rule" with Webster Griffin Tarpley
Western Alliance Discipline; Geopolitical Terrorism; Deflation and Depression; $2 Quadrillion of Derivatives; Austerity Measures; the Sequester; Capital and Exchange Controls; Greek Election; Reverend Pinkney Prosecution.
.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/110541
"Narrator: The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes the genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources where focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections."
As funny & sadly true as that is, if you look at extremely poor countries with lame democratic governments, you'll find that the only real marketing is actually people running for office, and that's because business is dead, for it was killed by excessive passing of legislation to ensure the political class always have power over the working class, and we know the political class don't give a rats ass about the business owner class either... (They have proved that through & through)
Because Americans are beginning to see through the lies & system they've built up around us legally, they are losing hope, therefore the government welcomes immigrants with open arms, obviously because the immigrant class (Read New Tax Slaves) don't know jack sh!t about this country, and they still believe in the American dream, well that is at least until they start getting fined & ruined financially via the legal system, after all, ignorance is no excuse. (You should have know we were gonna screw you!)
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by eactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for commiting thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occcured to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
George Orwell, 1984
If it's pitched at 9th-grade level, then it's pitched too high for the median US adult.
The median adult in the US underperforms the OECD median adult... who in turn does not possess literacy, numeracy or problem-solving skills sufficient to cope with the problems of everyday life (their words, not mine).
an IQ of 100 (in fact, arguably, an IQ of ~125... see below) does not equip an individual with the requisite literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills to properly evaluate competing policy bundles - that is also not even close to being debatable. I have been banging on about this for YEARS, based on the OECD's LISS/ALLS (now called "PIAAC" [1],[2],[4]) surveys of adult literacy, numeracy and problem solving.
The latest survey - from 2013 ([1],[3])- showed that the median adult (IQ100, presumably) in the OECD did not achieve levels of literacy, numeracy or problem solving that the survey designers deemed "the minimum necessary to cope with the demand of everyday life".
Bear in mind - that's the level of cognition required to administer one's own life... let alone furnish inputs into long-horizon policy decisions with significant uncertainty (and based on incomplete and/or deliberately misleading information).
The 95th percentile for the PIAAC does not achieve "Level IV" competency in any of the tested skills [3]: that is, less than 5% of individuals are capable of discriminating between competing narratives that include subtle rhetorical biases and that require specialised knowledge or the synthesis of disparately-sourced information. (This is where my claim that an IQ of 125 is not enough: the 95th IQ percentile is at 126/7).
And less than 1% (an IQ of ~137) of adults are in Level V [3] - genuinely competent at evaluating textual and numerical data, and capable of complex problem-solving.
And it's worse for the US (compared with the OECD) and worse still for USans aged 16-24 (who score statistically significantly lower than the overall US). Dumb, and getting dumber: that's what laugh-tracks, bleached teeth (and assholes), genital waxing and tattoos do for a society.
Also - not for nothin', but in US Presidential elections since 1904, the winning candidate has received, on average, the votes of slightly under 29% of the eligible population. In other words: more people abstained, than voted for the dude who 'won'. And it's much much much lower in Congressional elections, and worse still at State levels.
[1] OECD (2013), OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey Of Adults Skills(pp63-67 give an overview of what adults can do at each of the five assessed literacy levels; pp75-78 do the same for numeracy; pp 87-90 do likewise for problem-solving)
[2] OECD, "The OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)" , 2010 (boring methodological document)
[3] Rammstedt et al (2013) "PIAAC 2012: Overview of the Main Results" (p5 gives the mapping from raw test scores to the 5 assessment levels; p9 gives the median score/PIAAC level for each OECD country; p7-8 give examples of test criteria for the different levels).
[4] OECD (2012) PIAAC: Key Facts about the Survey of Adult Skills"
grubered
I think Obama did a wonderful job, he spoke exactly to the same people at his IQ level.
Barry goes around the country speaking to high schoolers and college students who have the education level of 8th graders. Who do you think he's trying to reach when he gives the SOTUS? Certainly not people who own a business that's for damn sure.
Man this is going to be the longest two years of my life.
He is addressing the Proletariat.
Excatamundo...
Keep your comments down to one/two syllable words. Okay, I used a 3....
Keep your comments down to one/two syllable words. Okay, I used a 3....
Paint WH snot green + big PA + prayer mats
Any Chance it was Written "BY" a Tenth-Grader?
Are there any stats on the GOPee rebuttal?
I suspect the better question is, what is the age of reasoning & self awareness in these times?
I don't think a 14 year old would see through all of the lies Obama was pushing....
Email bots from White House just as bad and use junk science. This one insulted my intelligence using numbers that "nobody" could predict, but funny NYT thought they were real or reported them as such.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.ca/2014/06/junk-science-appearing-everywhere-...
To be fair, Obama's speeches are still much more intelligent than some of the articles ZeroHedge is graced with from the likes of Charles and Simon.
I wonder if the SOTU will ever degenerate this far... "List of the top 50 reasons why America is the best ever and every other country on the planet is doomed to immediate destruction!"