Two plus two: why did Ilhan Omar post an audio that disproved the claim she was trying to make?
In her interview with Tim Alberta for “The Democrats’ dilemma,” Omar disparaged the sainted Barack Obama by asserting that in critical respects he was as bad as Trump is. She then denied the accuracy of the quote on Twitter while posting the audio clip that proved the accuracy of Alberta’s quote. Is she stupid? If so, it would be one of her more attractive traits.
When Alberta pushed back, Omar deleted the tweet without expression of regret or apology. She just sought to avoid further self-embarrassment while availing herself of the Orwellian memory hole.
Recently, it’s been Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism and boldness vis a vis Nancy Pelosi that have been the special foci of commentary about her. The audio tweet has taken somewhat of a back seat, although it’s gotten attention, too. But I want to explore the audio issue a little bit more.
When something like this happens, I wonder “why?”. Why did Omar post the audio clip in the first place if it didn’t prove what she said it proved? I’m assuming that most people believe she posted it in error, and it’s certainly highly possible that’s the case—that is, that Omar posted it with careless disregard for truth, perhaps without even listening to the relevant part. Perhaps she actually thought it proved what she said it did. Perhaps her memory was as faulty as her attention to detail.
And then, when she was criticized, Omar merely removed the proof of her initial statements in what Johnson aptly calls “avoid[ing] further self-embarrassment while availing herself of the Orwellian memory hole.”
But I wonder if that’s quite the whole story. I will hypothesize another possibility for Omar’s actions—one that is far worse, although I don’t know whether what I’m about to propose is correct.
It may be that the “Orwellian” nature of what Omar did goes much deeper. She may simply have not cared whether the audio proved her point or not. It was offered as “proof,” she stated that it constituted proof, and perhaps she was expecting its truth to be taken for granted by those on her side without their checking it by listening in an objective fashion.
In fact, does objectivity even exist as a principle to be followed on the left? Isn’t truth what the Party says it is? And isn’t that the deeper Orwellian nature of the left?
I’ve noticed this quite a bit: the left’s lie can be quite flagrant, and yet the person making it is confident that he or she won’t be called on it by anyone who matters. The person isn’t addressing the skeptical; the person is addressing followers, admirers, and/or true believers on the left.
Omar may have been operating in this way. She may have gotten away with it most of the time in the past. She’s used to those who support her and would-be supporters not bothering to follow through and check her out. She’s used to people (Nancy Pelosi being the latest) making excuses for everything wrong that Omar may do or say.
She’s used to people forgetting. She’s used to not facing any consequences for bold lies. She’s used to being admired nevertheless, and to going from strength to strength.
This is “Orwellian” in the sense of “Two plus two equals five, if I say so. And if you ever believed otherwise, then forget it and move on.”
There is a left wing commenter at Althouse who is famous for posting links that conflict with her point,. Stupidity might be an explanation .
Ever tried to argue using actual data with a leftist against their beliefs?? Take AGW for example, you can show them all sorts of data that contradicts their position and instead of looking at the data they immediately assume what you are showing them is false because a “Bad” person is showing it to them. Penetrating their belief system with facts is impossible. So why should facts and truth matter to them at all?
In their mind, they are not lying; they are simply advancing the real “truth”. I think it all hearkens back to the previous post on progressivism/leftism as a religious belief system. And, as with the most fanatical religious cult members, everything they do is totally justified as for the worship of their god.
That was my first thought. She just figures that the mere act of posting an audio clip, any audio clip, will be enough to satisfy the majority of people and in their minds constitute proof that she was telling the truth. She knows these people, who are of the low-info “TL;DR mentality” will assume that if she went out of her way to post an audio clip, it would obviously prove that she didn’t say anything wrong. Why would a “good” person like her lie? How could a “smart” person like her make such a big mistake?
All they read and remember is a headline that says she refuted what was reported that she had said by releasing an audio tape. Of course, nothing in that headline will indicate the tape does nothing of the sort, all that needs to get across is that she released it as a rebuttal. She then counts on the low infos to come to their own lazy conclusions, which will no doubt exonerate her.
Ilhan Omar is from Somalia. Average IQ for this country is 68. An European with such score would be rendered an imbecile, totally ineducable. So if her behavior looks to you idiotic, it probably actually is.
Sergey:
I’ve already discussed the suspect nature of the meaning of those IQ tests in third-world countries. One of those posts is this one (follow the links in it, too, and also the comments).
What’s more, even if your data about IQ in Somalia is meaningful—and I do not think it is, in the main—it would have nothing to do with the intelligence of one particular person who happens to be of a particular ethnic group. Are you really attempting to postulate some syllogism such as “All Somalians are stupid, Ilhan Omar is a Somalian, therefore Ilhan Omar is stupid”? Obviously a false type of reasoning, because the first statement is false.
Nor does Omar have to be a towering giant of intellect a la Einstein to be smart enough to be a successful and aware politician. I believe she is both smart enough and aware enough.
I also believe it’s very very dangerous to underestimate the intelligence of those who are your opponents. Very.
An European with such score would be rendered an imbecile, totally ineducable.
Did it occur to you that Somalis are on a bell curve too? The woman has a baccalaureate degree; it’s a reasonable wager her psychometric scores are above the median in this country.
There actually is an infrastructure in this country to school people with low absorptive capacity. People with Down’s Syndrome (median IQ about 55) as often as not have workaday jobs. The Social Security Administration regards people with an IQ below 60 as categorically disabled. For those with higher scores, they require evidence of a 2d disability of some sort to classify you as disabled. People with IQs between 60 and 70 outnumber those with IQ’s below 60 by a factor of 2.5
The woman has a baccalaureate degree; it’s a reasonable wager her psychometric scores are above the median in this country.
I wish I was as confident as I would have been 50 years ago.
What’s curious about Omar’s district is that for 12 years it has been represented by people who bear little resemblance to the majority population therein. That would be unusual but not anomalous if the congressman were common-and-garden black or West Indian. The current representative is a Somali and her predecessor was a one-time votary of Louis Farrakhan.
I wish I was as confident as I would have been 50 years ago.
About 25% of each cohort garnered a baccalaureate degree in 1974. Now it’s about 45%.
Omar has experienced no censure for anything that she has said or done.
She doesn’t care what the infidels say about her. She’s a star in her own evil little universe.
Now she’s AOC’s sidekick – it’s like Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains at the end of Casablanca.
People who get away with stuff will continue said behaviour until forced not to. She is immunized from that among her colleagues via her various victim categories.
Of course, I understand that belonging to an ethnic group is not sufficient reason to infer individual characteristics, but this provides some Bayesian expectation in absence of specific information. This expectation is reinforced by what we actually know about this individual, and than the whole picture just begins to make sense. Knowing what have been happening in Somalia for 2 last decades, I can not avoid associate Somalia descent with abject idiocy.
If one shifts normal IQ curve to the left by the whopping 32 units, see what portion of this curve still fall in the normal range >85. It would be around 5%. So, only one in 20 Somalia born people is beyond mental retardation.
I have another theory. Obviously, she got a lot of pressure from Democrat leaders to issue a repudiation of her remarks about Obama. But, by releasing this tape, she proves her repudiation was a lie.
I think this was by design. It was her way of sticking two middle fingers to Pelosi, et al. “Sure, I’ll issue your stupid retraction, but I’ll simultaneously provide proof that, yes, this is what I really think.”
Omar is may be an awful, even dangerous, person, but I don’t believe she is stupid.
Sergey:
What you say relies entirely on that IQ report, which as I’ve said many times, is quite unreliable (and I gave links to a post that discusses some of the issues and also links to other posts with lengthy discussions). The measured IQ of third-world countries really has very little meaning.
Nor (as I said earlier) would it have any effect on the question of whether one particular person of Somali descent is smart.
Omar comes from a very educated family. Her father was a teacher trainer; her grandfather a University educated high level Civil servant; other relatives were civil servants and educators. I see nothing to indicate a low IQ.
I suspect Neo is onto something; certainly we see this tactic among many on the far left. As to her Jew hate, as a Somali Muslim I think we can safely assume she imbibed it with her mother’s milk and her leftist education did nothing to ameliorate it.
I would suggest also that she does not stand alone in what she says and does. Someone as hyped as she has been is bound to have a cadre of handlers. I suspect she has been designated as the point person in testing the waters to introduce anti-israel propaganda into an already accepting Progressive base. Such propaganda invariably has an antisemitic whiff to it as we have seen time and time again ie UK Labour party.
Her actions with the audio post may be merely part of the strategy to see she can get away with. Surely she and her handlers understand the Overton window. They are not trying to win the argument. Their goal is much more sinister. Another chapter in that long march.
neo gets to the heart of it when she observes that when a leftist (I would add any advocate for what at base is a totalitarian ideology) speaks, they are not addressing the skeptical, they are addressing their fellow travelers and those susceptible to embracing their lies.
I’ve come to believe this to be self-evidently true and if so, we are NOT dealing with principled disagreement. Instead, we are dealing with a mortal threat, one of deadly seriousness.
Sooner or later and perhaps too late, we are going to have to treat it as such. For while we harbor no deadly intent toward them, they most assuredly do toward us.
They mean to end us and our entire way of life. Nor are they far from doing so, perhaps just one or two elections away and at most in another generation or two.
There’s very little time left for America to get out of the boiling pot into which the Left has maneuvered us.
If one shifts normal IQ curve to the left by the whopping 32 units, see what portion of this curve still fall in the normal range >85. It would be around 5%. So, only one in 20 Somalia born people is beyond mental retardation.
You’re having some trouble with this. The actual share of a normally distributed population 17 points above median is 13% not 5%. Again, an IQ of 85 is not the conventional threshold for mental retardation, that’s an IQ of 70. And an IQ of 70 does not prevent you from earning a living. See Edward Banfield’s brief complaint about educational psychology, published 50 years ago. An IQ of 85, in the words of Linda Gottfriedson is “Near the lower bound of ready employability”. [emphasis mine]. She emphasized that people with scores in that range are suitable for conventional classroom instruction at appropriate paces. Someone with that score is also considered a satisfactory candidate for military recruitment.
It’s a reasonable wager that this women is intellectually under par for a member of the federal legislature. (Recall that Dan Quayle was regarded as under par, and he passed the Indiana bar exam on his first attempt). That doesn’t mean she’s under par generally (much less does it mean she’s a dope).
What Tlaib and Omar reveal in rather florid colors is something which makes plain the implications of the improvised now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t cultural relativism of the Anointed. ‘Diversity’ means you get more people who want dead Jews. And, we see the culture of the social sectors whose electoral vehicle is the Democratic Party cannot deal when challenged. (While the Republicans are so craven they toss fairly benign figures like Steve King under the bus).
Of course, I understand that belonging to an ethnic group is not sufficient reason to infer individual characteristics, but this provides some Bayesian expectation in absence of specific information.
No, you don’t understand that, or Neo wouldn’t have had to hit you with a fly-swatter. And you have sufficient specific information about Omar.
I think that that’s the most likely explanation.
In my years wasted arguing the right to keep and bear arms, it was more usual than not that the material in the link to which rights banners would refer, would contradict the substance of their claim.
They did not seem to be very good at close reading; or careful reasoning either. So that may weigh on the stupid side, but in a peculiar way which seems to leave some of their other facsimiles of human faculties more or less unimpaired.
As far as general rhetoric went, one of the main strategies in their little bag of polemical tricks was to start off by skewering what they believed to be the sacred cows of those whom they were attempting to throw off balance. So they might attack Thomas Jefferson as a racist misogynist, Jesus Christ as a complete myth … the usual stuff.
As one might guess, any conservative stupid enough to rise to the bait was immediately hooked, and his indignation taken as proof he was a complete loser.
The best approach was to stick narrowly to the topic and respond in a logic machine-like fashion, categorically denying their claims and pointing out how blunderingly dull anyone would have to be in order to believe such a thing.
This hits their two most cherished beliefs: the belief in their intellectual superiority, and their faith in the power of their emotion based strategy.
Next one must then never let up, even if they “quit” or decamp. The exchange must never be treated as if it were a “dialog” between morally equal fellows, where everyone got a chance to take and then deliver a shot. That’s how stupid Republicans, otherwise known as sensitive conservatives, usually get their asses handed to them.
You also have to be able to critique and even deconstruct their unstated assumptions in more or less real time. Which means, you, as a conservative, have to be just as knowledgeable about the position you are rebutting as your own; and have the verbal facility to make their defective position the issue.
Until recently, this last point seemed to be manifestly beyond the abilities of the run of the mill, indignantly sputtering, generic conservative.
Not stupid, but a person devoid of integrity — from a piece in the Forward “Ilhan Omar’s Jewish Constituents Say They Already Schooled Her On Anti-Semitism”:
DNW’s discussion of the argumentation process is perceptive. I’m one of those people who finds it natural and comfortable to engage in debates in a sort of Spock-like “let’s look at this logically” way (unless or until I lose my temper, in which case I say things I later regret). On more than one occasion I’ve been shocked by the wall of willful blindness and/or emotionalism I’ve encountered on the part of people whom I know to be quite intelligent in any measurable way. You expect unreason on the part of some people, of course, and it’s no surprise when you get it. But sometimes it can be very surprising.
I’m thinking of two people in particular, whose IQs are most likely higher than mine, unquestionably higher in the mathematics area. They are just the sort whom you would expect to be able and willing to argue rationally. But instead in some conversations I’ve hit this blank wall of…well, here’s an example that stuck with me, from 2016. This guy is actually pretty brilliant as far as raw intellectual ability is concerned.
Him: Republicans are operating on nothing but raw personal hatred of Hillary. They have no other reason for supporting Trump.
Me: That’s not really true. Republicans do dislike her personally, but it’s her views and her policies that they really object to.
Him: Republicans are operating on nothing but raw personal hatred of Hillary.
Me: No, think about it. Suppose Hillary suddenly turned into a conservative. In that case whether or not they liked her would be relatively unimportant.
Him: Hillary would never become a conservative. Republicans are operating on nothing but raw personal hatred of her.
This exchange came to an amusing end when a third (definitely non-brilliant) person responded to him: “Yeah! So true! My sister is a right-wing nut and she absolutely hates Hillary.”
The gap between his actual intellectual ability and the irrationality of his argument was really striking to me. It seems…irrational. But when I start remembering similar incidents with other certifiably smart people, I realize it’s not that unusual.
Art Deco — it was the media that portrayed Dan Quayle as “under par” with no evidence to back it up. (The “tomatoe” story is not as accurate as you have been let to believe.) My parents met Dan Quayle on a few occasions when he was young, fresh out of law school, and they were quite impressed with him.
Both my parents were highly intelligent, genius range IQ’s.
Omar is a devout Muslim — (she wears a hijab!). She is devoted to following the Koran. The Koran commands her to hate Jews, indeed, to kill them wherever she finds them. The only way you could be surprised by her views is if you discount — in fact, disregard — her religious belief. I’m saddened, but not surprised, that my co-religionists in Minnesota and on the left side of the aisle in the House of Representatives did just that.
Sergey, you’re pulling some HBD Dark Enlightenment cards here.
The Koran does not order the killing of Jews. As “people of the book” they are in a protected category. Hindus, for example, as polytheists are in much more danger.
Jewish communities have lasted for seven centuries in the Muslim world. There are still a few surviving even now in Iran, which tends to surprise people. They aren’t liked, but they are tolerated.
The injunction to conquer non-Moslem lands doesn’t suggest genocide to go with it. And in practice it didn’t — you were better of being conquered by Moslems than Mongols.
It’s not an accident that AOC, Ilhan, Tlaib and Pressley are … wait for it … female.
I studied statistics behind IQ studies and found it very impressive. All the criticism of IQ studies looks to me quite weak and unconvincing compared to huge data and strict methodology of the IQ studies. Except for this, the statistics of the IQ studies in the third-world countries gives almost perfect explanation why these countries are, indeed, third-world countries and always will be. The greatest scientist of the 20th century, who made DNA structure discovery, James Watson, the world leading specialist in human genetics, agrees with that.
I think both NEO and Undine are correct. Two plus two does equal five among her supporters, and Pelosi is on the wrong side and deserves to be shown how little support her position has among them.
What is behind her election and celebrity by a mainly Scandinavion electorate? What explains why Sweden seems so compelled to bring in large numbers of Muslims and tolerate and even celebrate their refusal to assimilate? It seems that there is a common thread here.
My experience doing business in that part of the country is that a lot of the people respond with hostility to any suggestion that Muslims should assimilate. It is something that can’t be discussed, and any attempt to puts you into an unclean group whose opinions cannot be considered. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is a popular book among them.
I am absolutely convinced that Muslims are inherently incapable to assimilate into Western civilization in any meaningful sense. They simply do not belong in the Dar-al-Harb (Arabic for “House of War) in any other capacity except as conquerors or terrorists. The only workable solution is to completely ban them from ever set foot on European or American soil and be ready to prepare for total ethnic cleaning of them from the realm of the Western nations. Or be ready for something like Bosnia war here.
History has demonstrated with utmost clarity that the only solution to the clash of morally incompatible civilizations is complete defeat and annihilation (or collapse) of one of them. The only realists were Vladimir Jabotinsky who advocated for “Iron wall” solution of Jewish-Arab conflict and Rav. Meir Kahane with the same solution. Everything else is just utopian wishful thinking.
“Why did…?”
Because she doesn’t care. (And why should she?)
Because she knows it doesn’t matter. (And she’s right—at least regarding her target “audience” and what seems to be an extraordinary number of Americans. AKA, somewhere, Goebbels is smiling….)
Because she knows it’s extremely effective. (Somewhere, Goebbels is smiling….)
Because it’s part of “the plan”. (The “short game” AND the “long game”.)
Because it consistently keeps her at the top of the news cycle. (“There’s no such thing as ‘bad publicity’.”)
Here’s another “why”:
Why do people expect a person whose goal is subversion, chaos and destruction—sorry, “fundamental transformation”—of the existing social order, of the body politic, to behave rationally and responsibly? (That is, shouldn’t the precise opposite be expected?)
Art Deco: We are speaking here not about 17 point, but about 32 point shift – more than two standard deviation. And US military found that everybody below IQ 84 cannot be trained for any job in the Army in reasonable time and do a reliable work. This is about 10% of the whole USA population: even if such people can be educated by educational community standards, they are essentially unemployable in any job in private sector, Their employment is just a facade for another welfare program: it is less costly just to give them handout than suffer losses from their stupidity at a workplace.
She said her posted video proved her point. So it does, because she said so.
When she says something, it means just what she chooses it to mean.
You might think the question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.
The question is, says Humpty Omar, which is to be master. That is all.
The Dems, and Dem media, push being master, more than being true.
Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.
GRA: Dark Enlightenment is an ideology. What I discuss here is not ideology, but science. It so happened that I studied these sciences professionally for 40 years, namely population genetics, evolution theory, biometrics and statistics. Genetics is the most exact science in biology. IQ studies are the most exact part of all sociology and involves the most massive body of data in statistics ever. Minnesota Twin Family Study is a gold standard in human genetics, and it found a very close correlation for eventual outcomes for identical twins separated in childhood, as compared to control of non-identical ones. Nobody accepting the role of natural selection in formation of human races, as Darwin himself suggested, can avoid expecting different outcomes for races put on different adaptation trajectories and subject to different selection pressures.
“…the most exact…”
Not sure, though, that IQ studies can account for—what I will call—“perversity” in high-IQ individuals (or groups).
IOW, the prevalence (or at least, the occurrence) of “perversity” in intelligent people.
(In the form of bizarro logic, self-destructive and/or other deviant behavior, etc.)
That is, why do some (many? in which case, how many?) intelligent people show a distinct lack of common sense, or wisdom; i.e., “horse sense”? Or demonstrate flat-out strange behavior patterns… (That being said, today we have a much better understanding of certain conditions such as “Asperger’s” for example.)
To answer that question, I suppose one might claim there is no logical need for any connection. Or that, if “intelligence” includes thinking “outside the box”, then such creative “thinking” can go in many different directions, not all of them beneficial or admirable.
Or perhaps, to continue along these lines, how can one seriously conflate intelligence with emotional issues?
(Or could it be—though it seems counter-intuitive—that intelligence, like beauty, is in the “eyes of the beholder”? I.e., a matter of taste…? A social construct?)
To be sure, there are—as seems to be evident—many different types of intelligence. For example, if you were stuck in the jungle, would you prefer (presuming you had a choice) to have by your side a Bambuti or a Nobel Laureate in Economics?
Art Deco — it was the media that portrayed Dan Quayle as “under par” with no evidence to back it up.
The media’s treatment of Quayle was appalling, and some portion of it consisted of brazen lies over and above their usual failures of due diligence. (See Brit Hume on the off-stage table talk about Quayle he was hearing from reporters. He said the hostility astounded him). That doesn’t mean he isn’t under par for a national politician. He graduated near the bottom of his law school class. He opened a law practice with his wife, but after a couple of years he quit practicing and was given a job in the family business. He ran for Congress a couple of years after that.
What really irks you is to compare the treatment Quayle’s received from reporters with the treatment Joseph Biden’s received. Biden graduated from the bottom half of his law school class and was sanctioned for plagiarism during those years. He was a suburban associate for about four years, then ran for Congress. Quayle was raked over the coals for joining the National Guard rather than the regular military. Biden never had any military service at all. Mrs. Quayle and her sister were attacked for their religious affiliations (their subscription to the mail-order cassette service of Robert Thieme). The media reports the corrupt, comical, and lurid behavior of Hunter Biden, reports the public countenance given that behavior by his father and step-mother, and none of it injures the father at all. The media campaign against Quayle destroyed his career. Biden was once caught on video telling absolute cock-and-bull stories about his upbringing (and appropriating the biography of Neil Kinnock in the process); that wrecked his 1988 presidential campaign (which likely would have failed anyway), but it didn’t run him out of public office.
I’m beginning to think it should be an affirmative defense in assault cases that the object of the assault was a reporter.
History has demonstrated with utmost clarity that the only solution to the clash of morally incompatible civilizations is complete defeat and annihilation (or collapse) of one of them.
It hasn’t. I take it you amuse yourself by uttering nonsense with complete self-confidence.
Art Deco: We are speaking here not about 17 point, but about 32 point shift
Sir, you were the one who made reference to the 85 IQ threshold. The math is as follows: 85-68 = 17.
You said something insupportable. Just walk it back or forget about it. Blowing smoke in people’s faces is a nuisance and a bore to the rest of us and doesn’t make you look any smarter.
After a rocky several weeks having to deal with those rambunctious young’uns, Pelosi has decided in her wisdom NOT (gasp) to pursue the impeachment of Trump because “he just isn’t worth it”.
Heh, what a kidder!
Still, it’s nice to see Pelosi revert back to her take-charge, “decapitating”, alpha self.
(Though, if one is shocked and perturbed by her forthrightness on this issue, it can be said, in her defense, that she can always change her mind once she believes that Trump DOES become “worth it”…. Tomorrow? Next week? Next month?)
And even Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler—who’ve made Trump-Impeachment(TM) their own personal cottage industry—have fallen into line, saying they’re on board with Pelosi’s wise counsel, at least until they change THEIR minds (such as they are); though it seems that Maxine Walter and Rashida Tlaib will still be able to wail, scowl and chant hysterically…for the sake of “diversity”.)
And watch out: here’s further proof that after totally caving to the Democratic Party’s version of the Red Guards, Pelosi is finally showing how tough she can really be:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-revokes-pences-bonus-office-in-house-report
Ouch!!
All that being said, AOC is in no mood to comply with Pelosi’s hemming and hawing:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-refuses-to-rule-out-trump-impeachment-says-it-cannot-ever-be-off-the-table
Go AOC!!
Wonder what Pelosi will say… (odds are she’ll….fold, because, well—you know—AOC is young and doesn’t really know the ropes and may not actually mean what she says, and you really have to admire her passion, and she has a whole lot of potential. She’s gonna be a star!!….)
O/T (though maybe nothing is O/T): It’s way too early but I predict a Sanders-AOC ticket for 2020. It’s so extraordinarily well-balanced and guaranteed to appeal:
Youth AND age
Beauty AND beast
Callow AND experience
Two X-chromosomes AND one
Dark AND light
Flowing locks AND wispy
Crackers and crackers
Well, almost well balanced.
(Or maybe it will be AOC-Sanders…with Ilhan Omar as Secretary of State!…and one won’t even be able to move to Canada.)
I predict a Sanders-AOC ticket for 2020.
I think she’d be debarred by law from running, because she cannot succeed to the presidency at her age.
A generation ago, Wm. Schneider of AEI offered that public opinion research indicated that the VP slot was good for an increment of 2% of the vote in the VP’s home state, and that’s all. Which is to say there wasn’t much point in ticket balancing above and beyond measures useful to capturing a bloc of electoral votes in a marginal state. He also offered that observable negative effects of VP selection were larger than positive effects. (IIRC, he used Thomas Eagleton and Geraldine Ferraro’s problems as examples; the distractions they provided broke the stride of the presidential candidate). The implications of this would be to make risk-averse selections with an eye to the contingent utility of a person in a future administration. (Another implication is to select politicians from Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, or Virginia).
A generation ago, Wm. Schneider of AEI offered that public opinion research indicated that the VP slot was good for an increment of 2% of the vote in the VP’s home state,
I was surprised that Hillary did not choose Booker for VP in 2016. That seemed the logical way to attract the Obama voters. Kaine is an idiot with a felon son. Maybe Booker is an idiot but so is Kaine. I think that might have been enough to get her over the top.
Thank God she didn’t do it but I still wonder why.,
Chester Drawers — Excuse me, not the Koran, the Hadith:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (the Boxthorn tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews. (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).Sahih Muslim, 41:6985, see also Sahih Muslim, 41:6981, Sahih Muslim, 41:6982, Sahih Muslim, 41:6983, Sahih Muslim, 41:6984, Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:56:791,(Sahih al-Bukhari, 4:52:177)
Kaine is an idiot with a felon son.
An idiot he may be. What’s salient is that he’s an idiot who has won statewide office repeatedly in Virginia. Virginia’s a state which can go either way in Presidential elections. I
If I’m not mistaken, Linwood Kaine was tagged with a misdemeanor offense. (He does appear to be a lousy piece of work).
(I think the smart money says idiot Kaine is less of an idiot than Slo Joe Biden, and that Linwood Kaine has a ways to go before he reaches the exalted heights of suckitude currently occupied by Hunter Biden).
Sergey … it seems you engage in almost exactly this ‘wilfull Blindness to keep believing something you want be true’ manner described here. “IQ says it I believe it that settles it’. IQ is a bit of a sketchy measure even in first world countries with consistent educational systems, much less in someplace like Somalia. Add problems like malnutrition and other environmental issues and any ‘proof of genetic intelligence heritability’ – even if that is what it is actually measuring – becomes doubtful indeed. It might be comforting to you to presume your ideological foes are merely imbeciles instead of people with an ‘idee fixe’ or ideological obsession. I know plenty of very smart people who are smart enough to convince themselves of very dumb things and facile enough to protect their ‘idea fort’ from invasion with some fairly ludicrous mental constructs.
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(I think the smart money says idiot Kaine is less of an idiot than Slo Joe Biden, and that Linwood Kaine has a ways to go before he reaches the exalted heights of suckitude currently occupied by Hunter Biden).
Tough decision.
Yes, Rain e’s son got a misdemeanor and probation. He is an ANTIFA member and we will hear more about him.
I’m not sure I go along with the correlation between winning statewide office in VA and IQ.
The thing that will result in VA returning to sanity might be the proposed relocation of some government agencies.
Maybe stupidity, certainly malice, but keep in mind that most people do NOT do even the trivial due diligence of clicking through to view a linked item, they just accept how it is characterized by someone they like. That’s a very large part of how Twitter-mobs form and operate.
Just a day or 2 ago, Scott Adams had to call someone out for using the absurd meme that Trump complimented white supremacists at Charlottesville. Few are interested in details and facts, they only pretend to be.
So, Ilhan linking to the interview makes sense, most of her followers will just assume the linked video is what she says it is.
We truly get the pols and govt we deserve. Collectively, we want an active government doing a lot of things, but we refuse to do what it would take to be even marginally informed voters. Then, we bitch about it. An objective observer would conclude that we view politics as entertainment and the point is to have something to complain about, while a few grifters see the game for what it is and take advantage.
She recognizes how the media “reports” the news for people they like. They can say A) she posted the audio, without saying B) that what was said on the audio actually confirmed what everyone heard.
If she was a Republican, they’d report part A, but also add a quote from an expert to demonstrate B.