What a great way to start the week. My blogger-buddy Jolly Roger over at Reconstitution was awarded an "Excellence in Blogging Award." One of the requirements for accepting this award is that you pass it forward, and JR has deemed my rambling missives here for that same honor. Thank you Jolly, and the feeling is mutual. I am pleased to humbly accept this award.
Les Enragés.orgThe Unruly Mob's take on politics is always insightful, often touching, ever-germane. One of J.R.'s picks as well.
folo An intelligent, biting, informative look at politics from the point of view of a "flowah on a Florida pond." A concentration, but not exclusively, on the politics of the South.
Adored by Hordes Marc Lord's brilliantly written, deconstruction and bold reiteration, of all things political. I♥ABH.
Slobber and Spittle Cujo's always beefy commentary on the misdeeds and injustices we find ourselves embroiled in on a daily basis.
Dependable Renegade Watertiger's sparkling wit dazzles the newsworthy photos of the day with captions that captivate while holding your sides from laughter.
Jon Swift Another Reconstitution entry and I cannot improve on JR's description:"The blogosphere’s Stephen Colbert. 'Conservative' politics that hit the spot."
Beggars Can Be Choosers Marc MacDonald's straightforward critical eye on politics.
Alternate Brain The American Patriot Institute blog-team committed to the very essence of patriotism--dissent and the questioning of authority.
All Hat No Cattle Author Lisa Casey's no-nonsense round-up of the news from the personality-descriptive moniker for the chimp-in-charge's perspective.
Sideshow Avedon Carol, an American in London's sharp round-up of the best of the left. Always relevant, sometime irreverent.
Freeway Blogger The infamous, or is it notorious message blogger that reaches millions with his messages that inspired a movement.
Broadcatching Tully's best-of video site, culls the funnies and the frowners with important links and the "Tullycast."
At the Paris talks on Climate Change, Jr's U.S. plan was deemed "disastrous," and "Neanderthal" by other world leaders. From the Australian Broadcasting Corp.:A new plan from US President George Bush which aims to cap greenhouse gases by 2025 has been dismissed as "disastrous" and "Neanderthal" by a group of ministers at a climate change meeting in Paris.Excellent example of that clever German engineering.
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In a statement called "Bush's Neanderthal speech," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said: "His speech showed not leadership but losership. We are glad that there are also other voices in the United States."
What are the I.Q. test results of modern day American Presidents you ask? Just so happens I have that information here, via the Lovenstein Institute:WASHINGTON --In a published report, the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pennsylvania has detailed findings of a four month study of the intelligence quotient of President George W. Bush. Since 1973, the Lovenstein Institute has published its research to the education community on each new president, which includes the famous "IQ" report among others.Not sure the above numbers are right, 'cause I think Jr. is actually retarded.
According to statements in the report, there have been twelve presidents over the past 60 years, from F. D. Roosevelt to G. W. Bush who were all rated based on scholarly achievements, writings that they alone produced without aid of staff, their ability to speak with clarity, and several other psychological factors which were then scored in the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking. The study determined the following IQs of each president as accurate to within five percentage points:
147 Franklin D. Roosevelt (D)
132 Harry Truman (D)
122 Dwight D. Eisenhower (R)
174 John F. Kennedy (D)
126 Lyndon B. Johnson (D)
155 Richard M. Nixon (R)
121 Gerald R. Ford (R)
176 James E. Carter (D)
105 Ronald W. Reagan (R)
98 George H. W. Bush (R)
182 William J. Clinton (D)
91 George W. Bush (R)
The six Republican presidents of the past 60 years had an average IQ of 115.5, with President Nixon having the highest IQ, at 155. President G. W. Bush was rated the lowest of all the Republicans with an IQ of 91.
The six Democrat presidents had IQs with an average of 156, with President Clinton having the highest IQ, at 182. President Lyndon B. Johnson was rated the lowest of all the Democrats with an IQ of 126.
No president other than Carter (D) has released his actual IQ, 176. Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President GW Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis.
The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis. "All the Presidents prior to George W. Bush had a least one book under their belt, and most had written several white papers during their education or early careers.
Not so with President Bush," Dr. Lovenstein said. "He has no published works or writings, so in many ways that made it more difficult to arrive at an assessment. We had to rely more heavily on transcripts of his unscripted public speaking."
The Lovenstein Institute of Scranton Pennsylvania think tank includes high caliber historians, psychiatrists, sociologists, scientists in human behavior, and psychologists. Among their ranks are Dr. Werner R. Lovenstein, world-renowned sociologist, and Professor Patricia F. Dilliams, a world-respected psychiatrist. This study was commissioned on February 13, 2001, and released on July 9, 2001, to subscribing member universities and organizations within the education community.
The war in Iraq has become "a major debacle" and the outcome "is in doubt" despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon's premier military educational institute.read the rest...
Today (Sunday April 13) is the day for all registered California Democrats to caucus for Clinton/Obama congressional-level delegates election. Show up at yur local caucus today at 2 PM (must be there before 3 PM) and pledge your presidential delegate. Locations are listed by district and candidate at The California Democratic Party website. You must be registered to vote in California--if not registered, show up, get registered and get active! I'll be there, will you?
Quote of the Day:"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back again into bondage." -Sir Alex Fraser Tyler, 1742-1813, Scottish jurist and historian[h/t to Sarah fer digging this one up]
Despite His Votes To Cut Veterans Funding, McCain Says We Owe Vets ‘A Debt We Can Never Repay’ Stories of the Bush Administration, its unique style of asserting presidential authority, and its quest to redefine the limits of presidential power.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was brutally taken from us forty years ago today. There are a number of tributes around the blogosphere but I'll give a bit of KOS Diarist, Audio Guy:I remember the hope, and I remember the loss. I remember the way dreams died at Kent State. And my heart has been broken for forty years, mourning for the country that I love, and the dreams that I grew up with.read the rest...
NYT reports the findings of the latest poll--81% think the country is going in the wrong direction. Way to go Dubya. Although the public mood has been darkening since the early days of the war in Iraq, it has taken a new turn for the worse in the last few months, as the economy has seemed to slip into recession. There is now nearly a national consensus that the country faces significant problems.What clued you in America? The wasteful, horrific war? The loss of our civil rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution? Oh, it took getting hit in the pocketbook, of course. I notice BushCo seems to be doing jus'fine.
The local grassroots movement, helmed by "Wayne Pickering," is proposing an ordinance initiative for the November 2008 San Francisco ballot in order to get the poop/pee/vomit plant's title changed. Why? To honor our current leader of the free world with an "appropriate and enduring legacy, for no other president in modern American history has accomplished so much in such a short time.
And the hits just keep on coming. Newly released memos by John Yu, Torture-boy Gonzo's reason-for-living, specifically green-light torture while telling the president that his is above the law. This stuff is so off-the-chart wicked, it sounds like fiction but unfortunately is the truth of our current policy. Read Phillipe Sand's Vanity Fair report. As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.
