http://lumpenlogocracy.blogspot.com...

I'm more interested in the charts than the blogger's comments. Things fell out more or less the way I suggested, although this data conflates voters with college and with post-graduate degrees.

Basically, no diploma, only high school, only a bit of college tend Democratic, college grads tend Republican. I wish the post-grads were stratified as I think they'd be strongly Democratic.

But that doesn't answer the question of whether conservatives or liberals are dumber: it's a mistake to identify Democrats with liberals and Republicans with conservatives (although each tends that way). Both parties are coalitions that contain a range of ideologies. For instance, a significant number of poor people tend to be economic liberals (i.e., more government programs to help them) but social conservatives (in matters of immigration, abortion, gay marriage, and so on), but they vote largely Democratic (except, apparently, in Kansas, which frustrates the heck out of Thomas Frank). It's matters like this that to me render moot a lot of the "left versus right" conflicts on talk radio and whatnot.

<It's matters like this that to me render moot a lot of the "left versus right" conflicts on talk radio and whatnot.>

Yes, it's a good time to wind up this discussion, but permit me my last word as well.

<I think we are talking about different things. In order for these clusters to identify people by race differences between groups had to be greater than within-group differences. Otherwise the study wouldn't have worked.>

Not at all. They simply had to aggregate the measurable differences. They would have been small as it beggars belief that geneticists would have missed obvious differences for all these years. The most obvious genetic differences are the chromosomal variations between the sexes...markers that are linked to race are microscopic in comparison. Maybe that's why they used cluster algorithms, to find these previously difficult to detect aggregates.

<Race is more complex and interesting than any of these things because it affects a myriad of traits, not just one. That it is more socially salient no one would doubt. >

I was using these traits as examples but nevertheless I think we are in some sort of agreement here; I agree that race is interesting, but I don't agree it's intrinsically any more important than other traits.

<But a characteristic can be near-irrelevant at the level of an average individual and still enormously important in the aggregate, or at the extreme tail of a normal probability distribution.>

I think we're in near agreement here also. If it's near irrelevant for the individual, then it's prima facie a minor difference. Emphasising minor differences as significant becomes an exercise in tautology.

<But if we can be taxonomically classified as the third chimpanzee it follows that small genetic differences can lead to enormous differences in genetic expression, correct?>

Agreed...another term for <genetic expression> is phenotype, ie: actual appearance. But the 2% or so difference between us and chimps is still a relatively large gulf compared to the variation within our species, which I think is only a fraction of that...I'm not entirely certain of this, maybe someone knows the figures.

Now it appears the Pentagon, and I guess the White House, are also against the amendment, or at least going about solving the problem in a different way.

So I guess it isn't such a black-and-white issue.

I disagree with this and hope it isn't true.

So I guess it isn't such a black-and-white issue. >

Many thanks to the president and the military-industrial complex for having my back on this.

<Deus Ex Alekhina: Does anyone remember when Ariana Huffington was a consevative spokesperson (and her Strange Bedfellows segments with Al Franken)?After "discovering" that her rich Republican Senator husband was gay, she became a liberal - what was that all about?>

Yes, I remember. I have to admit, I like her better now.

<And then, there is that strange marriage between James Carville & Mary Maitlin, truly an "opposite" marriage between left wing & right wing idealogues.>

Neither is really an ideologue, and both of them are closer to the center than they appear. Also, what they really care about is politics, not policy.

<<keypusher> Where do Ann's ads appear??? I see nothing, nothing.>

But in my adult life I've lived in something like nine different congressional districts (and not because I'm trying to stay one step ahead of the Justice Department, as is popularly believed), and in each, the "reelect me" letter from the incumbent congressdude or congressdudesse always highlights the bacon brought home for the district, the earmarks, the grants, the government contracts.

That's why the Republican congress under G.W. Bush passed a farm bill and a highway bill that mostly paid off its constituents, and why the Democratic congress under Obama passed a stilumus bill that largely paid off its constituents.

But I'm just repeating a point that H.L. Mencken made 70 years ago or so. I don't have the book at hand (it's at the office), but essentially he claimed that our form of representative government where our representatives had to live in their districts pretty much guaranteed that pork-barrel politics, and not the public interest, would reign supreme.

Carville's claim to fame is that he beat the most inept presidential campaign in modern history, and then married its manager.

Hence, they deserve each other. And hence, I change channels when I see either of them pop up on TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaNI...

A: Junior Seau