16 dec 2008

The USA writes rules of ideal GOP-stupidity.

How stupid do you have to be to vote Republican after 8 years of Bush43?
The bailout has been killed by Republicans in the Senate because of a disagreement over worker wages. Are these Republicans taking a cue from the ideas of President Herbert Hoover, who put us in the Great Depression in the first place? Is Gods Own Party also the Hoover Party?

Some 37% of the Americans vote for the Republicans and the same real Americans don't know where the USA is on the map. According to a Gallup/Harris poll released Monday, the full 37 percent are incapable of identifying their home country on a map of the United States.
Of the 1,400 residents surveyed, the most common incorrect responses placed the more than 230-year-old territory in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans (19 percent), the space where Mexico would appear were it in fact included on the map (10 percent), and inside the word "America" written just above the northernmost states (6 percent).
This is the map of America with erroneous America located in red.

"On the whole, these figures should be construed as somewhat disappointing," Gallup spokesman Keith Ventner said. "Especially the two percent that believed the United States was located on the map's color-coded inset legend. I think we as a nation likely could have done without seeing that." Disappointing? That is the understatement of the year or the man is totally disillusioned by earlier polls about the intellect of real Americans.
When asked to reveal the identity of the giant America-shaped landmass found on the map, several of those polled were decidedly varied in their answers. So they know nothing and even that they don't know.
"That thing definitely looked familiar," said autoworker and father of three Ed McConnell. "And my gut told me there were probably a whole bunch of Americans there. So I had to go with 'Iraq.'" Imagine, that man has to raise three kids!
Other guesses as to the nature of the mystery country included "Hollywood," "Palestine," "The Shire," and "Club Med Punta Cana."
It is the same stupidity you find with Stuart Weiss, senior sociology professor at Boston College. He said although these findings may be surprising to some, they're by no means atypical. "The sentiment of many Americans is that there's little intrinsic value in studying a map of a place you're already at," noted Weiss. "It'd be like driving to Graceland and then asking for directions once you've arrived. Not much point." What this professor not understands is that the real Americans who are driving to Graceland don't know where they are at the moment of arrival if they don't ask a stranger or a Democrat. Well, it's not a very difficult study, sociology and if you are graduated at the wanted level, you don't need brains anymore, but Shirley Matheson, a part-time Arby's employee, residing in Dayton, Ohio, agreed with Weiss's assessment. "I live in the USA, so why would I need to know where America is? Or the United States for that matter? As long as there's still room on that map for all three of those countries, I'm sure everyone will keep getting along just fine."

Really officials think that this stupidity makes the USA more safe. The Department of Homeland Security sees the Gallup/Harris poll results as a blessing in disguise. According to Secretary Michael Chertoff, the nation would be better off if these numbers skewed even higher. "Personally, I believe if fewer people in this world could spot America on a map, we'd have a much better chance of avoiding national tragedies like 9/11," said Chertoff. "You can't attack a country you can't find." Yes, but that's counting for real Americans, bur strangers know better. The terrorists in Mumbai knew where they wanted to be and how to come around being there and do the job. Of course Michael Chertoff is also a Republican, so he doesn't know the problem and doesn't know that.
Of the respondents who actually were capable of pinpointing America on the map of America, their accuracy decreased considerably with each additional query about the country. Asked for the name of the capital of the USA, those polled placed Washington DC, fifth behind "Minneapolis-St.Paul," "Mount Rushmore," "America City," and "Whitewater."

Despite Americans' seemingly underdeveloped sense of their own geography, history and domestic policy, they did score high points on the issue of patriotism, calling America "the greatest country in the world" (47%), "the best state of all the Unites States" (31%), and "a place definitely to explore when I finally get my passport" (22%).
Is there a border, perhaps over the horizon to Gods Own Party's stupidity?
Cruel, cruel readers. Everyone is sending their favorite blogger links to this recent episode of The View, in which four women babble inanely about something or other. In this case, it's evolution. Do you like to see me suffer? This was horrible.

OK, Whoopi Goldberg is wishy-washy, rather than stupid: she argues for some vague kind of deistic intervention at the big bang, then evolution is the mechanism for creating life. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, though - allow me to paraphrase - 'really cool handbags and shoes have, like, designers, so really cool people must have a designer too, even greater than Gucci and Prada.'
Oh wait, that's not new. That's the same old argument the ID creationists have made all along. Here. The rest of you can suffer and despair of humanity now, too.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck Uses Handbags to Prove God's Existence (Seriously)