Intelligence is a value, remember the positive thinking movement. Imagine a person walking around thinking he's a dumbass. He's not likely going to amount to anything, because as the old saying goes... You've got to BELIEVE in yourself!!!

I admire the intellect, and believe you should be proud of that. Perhaps the truest mark of what traits I admire in others is my favorite characters on television... Alan Shore of Boston Legal, House of House MD, and Horatio Cane of CSI Miami. Moralistic intellectuals of integrity working hard to see through what is right.

What annoys me is not smugness, but hypocrazy. People who preach family values yet solicit gay sex in the bathroom. Amoung other things, red necks who claim to have family values while doing their sister. We're all familiar with the various types of lowlives in our society. But one thing that absolute annoys me is lowlives who claim to have "values" when they don't. Family values was a sham from the very beginning.

What's interesting, is that personal responcibility is a big issue, and one simply has to note teenage pregnancy as an issue in this campaign. When conservatives criticize teenage pregancy it's good, but when liberals do, they are smug. Right... Teenage pregnancy is bad, it was 20 years ago, it still is today, but somehow Sarah Palin is exonerated for bad parenting... Right... Where's the personal responcibility, the accountibility.

Personal responcibility IS a family value, and I'll go up against the poor ethics of rap music just as much as I'll criticize homophobic red necks in the blue hills of the mountains who like to do their sister. There's a lot of people out there with bad values. As Horatio Cane said aptly, the world is FULL of dissapointment.

This article neglects one thing, the demographic is changing, there's a lot more college students now, and we like smart people. College students are what brought an end to Hilary Clinton's campaign, because she just couldn't get a lock on their vote. Although she did manage to do well amoung people who are to afraid of the idea of a *cough* black president. And I personally have a few of these people in my family (fortunately, not my immediate family), so I can attest to the fact that there are real people out there who think like that. And it's a damn shame. If you want proof of this, note the unusual voting patterns of West Virginia and Kentucky... some counties Obama only got 5% of the vote, and in some of these places, you'd swear they came right out of the 18th century. CNN did a tour of a small rural town in Kentucky, and it was a wierd scary place, it looked like a pre-industrial age town straight out of the civil war. And guess what, some of those people are still living in the mindset of the civil war. (Remember George Wallace, gee, I wonder who's getting the George Wallace votes these days) There's still a fair number of people out there who oppose the civil rights movement, although as nation, we've evolved beyond that era, so they don't get air time anymore... Well, with the possible exception of Michael Savage.

What you'll find is that with me, I'm a liberal, with staunch conservative values. I believe in personal responcibility, family values, ethics, morals, going to school, self improvement, and I think that we should flaunt those things as we are PROUD of them. Should someone diminish the importance of their Harvard/Ivy League education or the fact that they were damn good in Law school. By the way, Legislators write laws, and Presidents sign them, so I'd think that someone finishing near the top of class in Law school would make an excellent candidate to say, I dunno... Sign bills in LAW... To wit.

I know, as I'm going to school, each class I get a damn good grade in makes me proud. It's important to have values, morality and integrity. At work, I work hard to uphold my self-image.

Some call it smugness, others call it confidence. And as someone once told me, people can be very intimidated by confidence. Ever watch Barack Obama, the perfect poise, as if he's spent years projecting his body language, with perfect speech deliveries, on point, delivered with sincerity every time. The perfect smile, the infallable values of a hard working former middle class man who arose through hard work and dedication. Obama is the epitome of conservative values... hard work, personal responcibility, integrity, values, etc. He knows how to deliver a speech, why, because he practiced. Delivery is important, the ability to stand with poise is important. And you bet, that speaking ability will come in handy, whenever the need to meet with a foreign leader is important, because we will need a damn good negoitator. Oh, did I mention I'm a fan of the Donald as well... You should see the things he had to say about George Bush and negoitation. Donald Trump is a smart guy, I admire that in people.

The problem with Republicans, is that unfortunately for them, the last one isn't the brightest of the bunch, and McCain's no Einstein either. It's just that the Republican party tends to attract trigger happy hawks who want to invade countries more than it attracts people who are proponents of SOUND policies with carefully thoughtout implications. For that, you have the democrats.

Right now, with Fannie and Co. proving that not only can governments be corrupt and make bad choices, but so can major economic institutions. You see, that's why we have regulations, to create a stable economic environment so that major economic institutions don't make bad... (no, scratch that) inept choices.

You see regulations use the principle of "an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure". Without laws, there is nothing but chaos, as people lack the personal responcibility to avoid the temptation to make risky choices that have a chance of a reward. We should have a system based on responcibility.

Personally, I think people admire bad traits in other people anyways, but intelligence is not one of them. I mean, serial killers actually have fans... Mmm. Then again, I am not a fan of serial killers, or rapists, or even speeders. Personally, I'm going to get a bumper sticker that says "To speeders, either pass me or relax and enjoy the ride, cause I'm not breaking the law for you". Moral confidence is never a bad thing. I invented sarcastic self-righteousness. A kind of unique fusion of two characters, House and Horatio Cane.

Note, I do not endorse serial killers, rap music, criminals, politicians soliciting gay sex in bathrooms, priests fondling little boys, red necks screwing their sister or any other amoral behavior. Welcome to the real moral values. It's called behaving like a dignified human being.

The problem with Republicans, is that they win, and because of their lack of values, they run things badly. However if you look at history... FDR, Kennedy, Clinton, Carter (with unique exception)... FDR, having won a world war and brought an end to the depression, leaving this country as a superpower. Kennedy, dedicating this country to a major project of landing a man on the moon... A major feet. Carter, prevailed over the worst stretch of economic period in American history, caused by the Arab oil embargo, not by any Democratic policy mind you. And then we have Clinton, who actually balanced the ****** budget. Who, mind you, actually used those fiscal conservative idelogy that republicans preach so much.  I'd have to say, fiscal conservatism is not a bad idea, but it requires actually DOING something. Haha. Of the republicans I admire Eisenhower, who adopted a massive plan to upgrade the road system with interstate highways, an improvement that really improved the economy.

Reagan's big mistake is that he considered that government is the problem. I'll correct that for Reagan... Irresponcible government is the problem. Responcibility ought to be first and foremost on the mind of every president. The attitude that government is the problem has given rise to derelects running the country, because blaming the government is just an excuse to run things badly. As in "government is the problem", so I don't have to do anything and um, just fiddle while New Orleans burns.

I don't think anyone can argue against this, George W. Bush is the stupidest president ever elected. I mean, just read any of the Bushisms books, he said the most amazingly retarded things that make 5th graders look good. And we vote for idiots because we can't stomach a little smugness. Suck it up and vote for someone smart for a change. It does a nation good.

No one objects to confidence.

What we object to is one side actively insulting the other side's intelligence with evidence of intelligence being purely dependent on holding the "correct" political opinion.

My favorite example is global warming. I'm a skeptic of human produced CO2 related global warming. The number of times on-line and off-line I've had my intelligence or educational background questioned simply because I'm a skeptic is innumerable.  

And the people who make claims of my low intelligence/education are people whose sole source of research is having seen "An Inconvenient Truth".  As if watching a movie makes them experts.

But as the original article indicates, the left can't really help themselves. It's part of their ideology and as a result, they manage to steal defeat out of the jaws of victory because they put off so many people.

The treatment of Palin these past few weeks has made me, someone who has sworn not to vote for McCain quite tempted simply to keep "those people" being "in power". 

Here's probably a good summation:

If you think someone else is dumb or inferior to you simply because they hold a different political philosophy from you, then you should probably re-evaluate.

It's interesting how so many missed the point of the article, proved the point of the article and became some defensive, all at the same time. Sure this article can describe people from both parties, no one is denying or disputing that. What those who got offended failed to understand is that, while both parties share in this "insult the other party" game, Republicans are not known for doing that as part of the Party Modo, yet Democrats make it their most powerful weapon. Just as an example, how many insults and dispicable stories came about about Biden when Obama nominated him for VP? Compare that to Palin when McCain nominated her. How about when Obama flip flops? He was very strong opiniated about the surge not work, now all of a sudden he agrees it did. Where is the uproar from the Democrats who agreed with him and backed him when he said the surge did not work? How come you guys are not screaming about his betrayal? Not to mention how he switched from no drilling to "maybe we should". But you guys don't point that out about your candidate.

Yet time and again people like Brad, ParaTed and others have not held back at pointing out how disappointed they are that McCain is the Republican nominee. They are willing to admit they don't like the guy and would rather vote for Obama, 3rd party nominee or not vote at all. Every time one of our own screws up we throw him under the bus just as esily as we throw a Democrat under one. Many times has Bush been put down right on these forums by Republicans and Conservatives for things such as stemcell and immigration. But when ever a representative of the Democrat party does something stupid, like the guy who said "Maybe god really is on our side" when Gustav was on it's way to New Orleans or Obama's "former" pastor when he said "God Damn America", you guys quickly scream "they don't speak for all Democrats".

As for my humble yet elite opinion: Methinks the dragon with fire protests too much.

Dr Guy,

tsk tsk. Where did I say this was 100 % ironclad fact? I believe it to be true, but I am not debasing or ridiculing anyone else for not believing it. My opinion is that he knowingly lied, whereas Brad's opinion (I'm assuming, please correct me if I'm mistaken) is that he had faulty intelligence that he ran with. Which, if you made an intel mistake of that magnitude you would think that heads at the CIA would have rolled, but instead he gave Tenet a medal.... hhhmm.... anywho, I also agree with Brad's earlier statement that this is a long drawn out situation best left for another time. If you do want to press this point, however, I'd be more than happy to oblige!

Draginol-

And I agree with this 100%. Well said! I've gotten into many debates in which my only aim is  discussion, but as soon as I state an opinion on a topic the other side (quite often conservative, though not always) comes back with a personal attack "typical LIEberal, all you do is lie and hate freedom!!" kinda thing. It doesn't matter to me, but it is disapointing to see the walls go up and possibility for open-minded debate die the moment I say something the other side doesn't agree with.

Actually, torture was definied by the AG at the time as anything causing pain equivalent to organ failure or death. Which meant everything else was fair game. This included locking people inside a metal box small enough that they were forced into the fetal position (no room to do anything else, turn over etc) for indefinite periods of time. At random intervals, say after 15 hours, they would be pulled out of the box, allowed to stand up for another random interval (might be a few minutes, might be an hour) then thrown back in the box for another random amount of time, lather rinse repeat. This is just one technique that when mixed with a bunch of others (enforced stress positions while undergoing sensory deprivation, isolation with constant blasting music and strobelights and of course everyone's favorite, waterboarding) actually succeeded in turning lots of folks into basket cases and scarring them for life. Many of these folks never even had a trial, but were simply handed over to the U.S by militias abroad who said "this guy's a terrorist".

And then of course there's rendition. Sending someone to another country where you KNOW they will be unequivocally tortured the old fashioned way (electricity, pliars meet fingernails, random beatings) as happened to one of my countrymen when he was simply passing through the States on a connecting flight. Turned out he was completely innocent, oh well, tough luck for him that he spent a year in jail in Syria!

Veiridia stated "and then we have Clinton, who actually balanced the ****** budget.  Who, mind you, actually used those fiscal conservative ideology that republicans preach so much."  Veiridia, did Clinton single handally do this?  Who controlled congress? Does a man by the first name Newt, ring a bell? Which party was he a part of?  Yeah, exactly!!!!!  If my memory serves me correctly it was HIS party that DEMAND that the budget will be balanced!  The President alone CAN NOT balance the budget.

Then you stated that some how Sarah Palin is a bad parent because her daughter is pregnant. Her daughter is a human, right?  Her daughter has a mind, right? YES AND YES!!  Her daughter can do things that maybe her mom disapproves.  I think most people posting here can say that they rebellied against their parents at one time or another.  Does that mean that their parents are bad? 

I love it when that one group of people say 'how can she be VP and take care of 5 children' again this group is the group that claims to be the party of the Minority and those who have been short changed by society. 

Veiridia, then you make a statement "I don't think anyone can argue against this, George W. Bush is the stupidest president ever elected.  I mean, just read any of the Bushims books, he said the most amazingly retarded things that make 5th graders look good."  You are committing a logical fallacy.  Trying to link someone's public speaking skills to their intelligence.  Just because someone isn't a great orator does not make them an idiot.  Bill Clinton probably was in the top 5 best orators that this country has ever had as a president.  He could literally speak his way out of anything, now does that make Bill a genius just because he has excellent public speaking skills?  Hitler was an excellent public speaker and was able to use the system to his advantage as well just because he was very chariasmatic does not mean he's intelligent.  Do you know who Theodore John Kaczynski is?  This guy is a genius (literally he has a genius IQ.  I wasn't being sacrastic there), you should look him up and see what he did and what he was doing before he became into the public's eye.    Find a video of him speaking and you'll see that he's not the best public speaker.

I would like to see you give several messages (yeah it is on the teleprompter and those words do move) to basically the whole world and let's see how you do.  I am not agruing here the GW Bush is a rocket sciencist or is a genius for that matter.  I am agruing the correlation that Veiridia is trying to say between public speaking skills and intelligence and how they go hand in hand. 

the people's party-

Interesting points you make. Unfortunately, you've made statements that tie together a large number of non-related topics, any one of which we can (and have done so in the past ad infinitum) debate further.

Iraq is a complext topic and many different facets of that situation can be debated. My point there was going back to 2003 when Bush made his speech to the UN (and Colin Powell did his song and dance to the security council) in which we were all told Iraq had a sophisticated, extensive WMD program and was going to drop nukes and advanced chemical and biological agents on us with remote controlled drone aircraft capable of reaching intercontinental distances. That's what sold the war. Not humanitarian intervention (otherwise you'd have invaded Sudan and Rwanda years ago) Not dealing with Iran's ambitions. We were told that a maniacal dictator was planning to wipe us all out and had the means to do it. This turned out to be false. I happen to believe that the president knew this to be the case but wanted the intel fixed to support his bid for war. Other's here believe that he didn't know, which would be a pretty big screw up on the part of all the intel groups. So why then did he reward the head of the CIA (George Tenet) instead of calling him onto the proverbial carpet?

Furthermore, I see you don't have a blog attached to your handle. If you'd be so kind as to post some articles I'm very interested to see you expound your views further!

Blame Clinton - he set up the system.

Yeah. I'd like to see those statements.

And I would like to see what "opinion" it was that you "expressed".

I think I remember the day.

I rarely use the F-word, so I can remember.

https://forums.joeuser.com/320338/page/2/#1831737

But you are telling a lie. It was not about an "opinion" of yours.

It was about an anti-Semitic lie you told.

You claimed that Israel's defence against Lebanon's attack "involved large scale airstrikes on civillian populations".

And that's an often-repeated lie. There were no "large scape airstrikes on civilian populations". In fact Israel had no interest in harming civilians (what for?) and specifically dropped leaflets telling people to move away from Hizbullah's positions.

You implied that it is perfectly OK for me to die for your belief that fighting back is wrong, that fighting terrorists is the same as shooting innocent civilians because of their faith or nationality, that killing human shields is as wrong as using human shields (despite the fact that using human shields is a war crime, but that never comes into play when Israel is involved).

I stand by what I said. I don't mind you holding any opinion you want. But if you tell an anti-Semitic lie, one of many that causes death and misery in the world because people like you don't care about the effects of their propagation of these lies, I will get angry.

Those rockets from Lebanon that were shot at civilian targets were shot at us BECAUSE people believe in the stupid lies you and others like you tell.

The F-word doesn't even begin to describe the disgust I feel for people like you.

So it occurs to me that perhaps the reason you keep noticing that people accuse of you of being a liar is because you are a liar?

I have disagreed with many here on JU, especially with right-wingers, on subjects like socialised healthcare, religion, Creationism, tax systems, all the pet peeves of American conservatives. But for some reason they argue with me but don't accuse me of being a liar.

Go figure.

So that is why I used the F-word. It had nothing to do with your "opinion".

Tell me that Israel overreacted (and tell me how Israel SHOULD have stopped the five-year rocket bombardment of the north instead). That's an opinion.

But tell me a blatant lie, as if taken straight from Hizbullah's propaganda television channel; or tell me that a civilian Jew is as valid a target as a non-Jewish terrorist (hence equating Jews with terrorists); or imply that I should be the guinea-pig for YOUR pacifism, and I will hold you in as little regard as, apparently, the others that keep telling you that you are a liar.