2004 Elections: Democratic Party Contenders

Craven--

Good Lord! You're going to let someone tell you how to register? You're not the little hard ass I had imagined. :wink:

Already love your grandma (Republican ) A good woman.

Wish I could pour some beer on you. Its a big deal in my family, as well.

Ah, I'm too lazy, she'll do it all for me. I'm ignorant as to that aspect of politics. I see no big advantage to a party if I register.

I'd rather register without political affiliation though. In Nations with confusing and ill defined parties I missed American bi-polar politics.

Now in this polarized political climate I hate partisanship and do not wish to ever have an official political affiliation.

But if Gradma fills out the paperwork I will set my principles on this matter aside.

Paperwork sucks!

I am very much afraid that P. Diddie is unaware that President Harry S. Truman never took any SAT's or indeed, ever finished law school. According to the Pulotizer Prize winning Biography of Truman by David McCullough, which I would urge P. Diddie to read,--quote "After nearly two years of work in law school, he (Truman) dropped out."

I am very much afraid that I must restate what, to me, are very obvious facts:

l. The GOP won seats in November 2002 which they were not supposed to win according to win according to historical precedence.

2. The Democrats did not pick up seats in the House and Senate in Nov. 2002 which they should have won.

Those are facts- not sentiment, or opinion, or emotion- FACTS.

In 1994, the Democrats lost control of the House and Senate. They did not win either House or Senate back in 1996. They did not win either House or Senate back in 1998.

The President at the time was President William Jefferson Clinton, alleged by some to be the most BRILLIANT AND COMPETENT President we have had in the twentieth century.

It is, of course, a fact that the Democrats lost the House and the Senate in 1994, 1996 and 1998.

It is not an opinion, a sentiment or an emotion. It is a fact.

Would you please rank all Presidents from Washington by their SAT scores so that we might more effectively debate their relative intelligence?

Wait a minute...the father of our country probably never took an SAT. Why, I'll bet an SAT didn't even exist then.

How will we ever settle this?

Perhaps we, like the Framers, could quarrel over the number of angels capable of square-dancing on the head of a pin?

Or is there something more jejune we could debate?

The statement that President Clinton was a brilliant man and not incompetent in his job as president is an opinion. Evidence can be brought up to show that he was indeed brilliant and competent.

However, there are some who will deny his brilliance and competence.

The statement that George W. Bush is incompetent and undereducated was made by Mr. Blatham.

Evidence can be brought up to attempt to show that George W. Bush is incompetent and not properly educated.

However, there are some that will assert that he is not undereducated and is not incompetent.

It is my OPINION that it is counter-intuitive that a president who is highly competent and extremely well educated should be rejected by the populace which voted his party out of office in the House and Senate in 1994, 1996 and 1998.

It is my OPINION that it is counter-intuitive that a president who is allegedly under educated and incompetent should have the populace resoundingly vote in members of his party in an off year election when past history should have led to Republican losses.

Not emotion, feelings, sentiment- FACTS.

The Democrats lost under Clinton

and. so far, have won more offices under Bush.

Most are indeed facts (I made bold the iffy ones).

But it's not proof of anyone's intelligence.

Mr. De Kere:

You have convinced me that I should cancel my subscription to Newsweek magazine.

They are so bold as to state- without qualification, mind you, that:
and I quote:

BY HISTORICAL STANDARDS, THE GOP SHOULD HAVE LOST SOME 22 HOUSE SEATS AND TWO SENATE SEATS- THE POST WORLDWAR II

AVERAGE

LOSS BY A PRESIDENT'S PARTY IN THE FIRST MIDTERM AFTER HIS ELECTION.

I agree. But do you contest that it is an opinion?

Remember that definitions overlap.

What would you accept as proof of someone's intelligence, Mr. DeKere?

If I said that Karl Marx was unitelligent based on my dislike of his philosophy, I would most certainly be in error since even those opposed to his philosophy would grant that he was intelligent.

There is such a thing as intelligence, of course.

And it can be and has been measured.

Intelligence Tests are valid despite the efforts of some to denigrate them.

I will not say and cannot hold that a high score on an intelligence test will result in actions that are intelligent or deemed to be intelligent.

IN OUR SYSTEM, THAT WILL BE DECIDED BY THE VOTERS.

However( and I can give documentation for this, if asked), It would appear that George W. Bush's SAT score was around 1200.

Correlations of SAT scores with intelligence show that a person with an SAT score of 1200 or so would have a IQ of 120.

Examination of a bell curve would show that persons with a IQ of 120 would be in the top decile. That means the upper ten per cent of the population.

I would urge Mr. Blatham to acquiant himself with the FACTS.

President Bush's IQ places him in the upper decile of the population. His incompetence or lack of it will be decided by the voters on Nov. 2nd, 2004.

Whether "The Best of All" Graduate Business Schools then, or now, would be a pretty subjective judgement. I would not hesitate to say, however, that Harvard's Graduate Business Program is, and since its inception has been, one othe the very few "Top Rated" institutions of its nature . US News and World Report's '03-'04 Ranking has them in first place. Whatever its rank three and half decades ago, it was among the paragons to which all others were compared. Unles, of course, the criteria of judgement is party potential. They've never done well in that category.

Intelligence is subjective. I'd simply not set out to proove it.

Intelligence tests do have some validity, just as some of the knocks on them do.

I've already said that I don't consider Bush to be dumb. so what's the point? I even went on to say I don't care.

I care about his policies.

What will be decided in the election is not his intelligence, but the presidency (which he will win).

Like I said, you make the same mistake you decry. you attempt to proove a subjective value laden set of words like "smart" and "dumb".

Mr. De Kere:

I must utilize the writings of the late great Mortimer Adler who was most strict in his definitions on this matter.

quote:

There are judgements that we have rational grounds for adopting,judgements the probablity of which we can appraise in the light of all of the evidence available at the moment and in the light of all of the best thinking we can do--the best analysis and interpretation we can make of that evidence, at the moment.

At the moment, the future holds in store the possibility of additional or improved evidence and amplified or rectified reasoning. That fact may place such judgements in the realm of doubt. They have the aspect of Opinion because they may turn out to be false rather than true, BUT THEY ALSO HAVE THE ASPECT OF KNOWLEDGE, BECAUSE AT THE MOMENT, WE HAVE NO REASON TO DOUBT THEM, THEY ARE BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT, BUT NOT BEYOUND THAT SHADOW OF A DOUBT WHICH THEY CANNOT ESCAPE BECAUSE THEY HAVE A FUTURE."

Thank you, Mr. De Kere.

You're half right, there, PDiddie; Stephenson by all accounts, and in my own personal memory (my family knew his) was a boringly conventional monagamous family man. Harry, on the other hand, did not have a college education, apart from the fact the SATs hadn't come into existence in his formative years.

Thank you, Timber. Since P. Diddie said: "Will we ever settle this, I wish to submit a ranking which I feel will help. The cranky may label this ranking as mere opinion. I agree in part but it is not mere opinion since it is opinion which can be classified as, in Mortimer Adler's felicitous phrase- "Informed Opinion, given that this ranking comes from a large group of Professional historians who were recruited by C-Span.

source- http://www.americanpresidents.org/survey/historians/overall.aspp

C-Span survey of Presidential Historians

Rankings

lst- Abraham Lincoln

2nd- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

3rd-George Washington

4th Theodore Roosevelt

5th Harry S. Truman

6th Woodrow Wilson

7th Thomas Jefferson

8th John F. Kennedy

9th- Dwight D. Eisenhower

10th- Lyndon Baines Johnson

11th- Ronald Reagan

12th- JK Polk

13th- Andrew Jackson

14th James Monroe

15th- William McKinley

16th- John Adams

17th Grover Cleveland

18th- James Madison

19th- John Q. Adams

20th- George H. W. Bush

21st- William Clinton

22nd- Jimmy Carter

23rd- Gerald Ford

Those interested in the rest can go to the link.

Actually, I guess Harry did have a college education; he was fast-tracked through West Point in the buildup to the American entry into WWI ... I forgot about that. He however dropped out of a community college after only a year, and went into various businesses prior to being appointed to The Military Academy.

Timber- I can find no entry in McCullough's biography of Truman that he actually went to West Point.
Mc Cullough only indicates that Truman joined the National Guard and was made an officer in the Guard.

Did I miss something somewhere?

Its late and I'm too tired to look it up, but I'm pretty sure (could be wrong ... just pretty sure) he was in a "Special Class" which was established to churn out Lieutenants ... think I read that somewhere.