Not really knowing what an Obama fan is, but wanting to be liked by the teacher, all the kids raised their hands except for Little Johnny.

The teacher asked Little Johnny why he has decided to be different… again.

Little Johnny said, “Because I’m not an Obama fan.”

The teacher asked, “Why aren’t you an Obama fan?”

Johnny said, “Because I’m a Republican.”

The teacher asked him why he’s a Republican.

Little Johnny answered, “Well, my Mom’s a Republican and my Dad’s a Republican, so I’m a Republican.”

Annoyed by this answer, the teacher asked, “If your Mom was a moron
and your Dad was an idiot, what would that make you?”

With a big smile, Little Johnny replied, “That would make me an Obama fan.”

athensboy on May 13, 2009 at 7:22 AM

I’ll allow that Obama seems to be a lot smarter than his supporters.

I like intellectualism. I don’t like what liberals regard as intellectualism.

SheofTwoMinds on May 13, 2009 at 12:01 AM

+100

I’ve begun to discover that many of the most brilliant historical thinkers were actually self-taught, leading me to the belief that intellectual curiosity has more value than an actual degree. Not to say that a college education is worthless, of course (I went to college, too), I just think that the idea that anyone WITHOUT an ivy-league education is a fool (or that no one with an ivy-league education could possibly be a fool) is a destructive concept that will, in the end, encourage intellectual conformity.

Animator Girl on May 13, 2009 at 3:53 PM

Not commenting on their political views, but what do the following all have in common?

John Jacob Astor
Ronald Baron (founder of Baron Capital)
Irving Berlin
Carl Bernstein
Ray Bradbury
Richard Branson (founder of Virgin Music)
Sergey Brin (founder of Google)
Warren Buffett
Ben Nighthorse Campbell
Andrew Carnegie
John Catsimatidis (billionaire oilman and real estate magnate)
Winston Churchill
Grover Cleveland
Jimmy Dean (the founder of Jimmy Dean Foods)
Michael Dell (Dell Computers)
Felix Dennis (Publisher of Maxim)
Richard DeVos (co-founder of Amway)
Barry Diller
Walt Disney
Benjamin Franklin
R. Buckminster Fuller
Bill Gates
John Glenn
William Randolph Hearst

They are all college drop outs or never attended college.

I’ve begun to discover that many of the most brilliant historical thinkers were actually self-taught, leading me to the belief that intellectual curiosity has more value than an actual degree. Not to say that a college education is worthless, of course (I went to college, too), I just think that the idea that anyone WITHOUT an ivy-league education is a fool (or that no one with an ivy-league education could possibly be a fool) is a destructive concept that will, in the end, encourage intellectual conformity.

He does speak Indonesian from his childhood years there. Dunno his proficiency level or if that counts.

These two are never mutually inherited.
In fact, I can personally say that most of my 7 years of college did nothing but try & rip the common sense from my breast at every turn.

Hence the ascendancy of multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, and a whole of of other historical -isms that have adulterated genuine intelligence with profound consequences.

Funny how the libs are pro-science when some of the biggest anti-vax quacks are libs, a good portion are totally against genetic engineering of medicine and food, anti-chemistry, are utterly anti-nuke, and pretty much against any science performed by companies actually making a profit.

Dave_d on May 12, 2009 at 11:54 PM

Excellent point, Dave_d.

Speaking of intellectuals, how did Barry manage to graduate – nay, be accepted into – an Ivy League school without being at least minimally proficient in a foreign language? Did they drop that requirement after I graduated?

disa on May 13, 2009 at 12:01 AM

Prolly not a requirement for affirmative action selectees

Let’s not delude ourselves into believing that what is developed as theory in ivory towers does not impact the real world. Acolytes of these ivory tower sages go out into the real world and attempt to institute the grand visions of great minds without questioning the consequences of these theories largely divorced from history and a real understanding of the human costs. These theories have an impact in real life and the rejection of the advice of these geniuses is not undeserved. But, this does not mean a complete rejection of intellectualism. It simply requires an equally robust sense of cynicism if we hope to avoid the mistakes of the past.

The current issue of global warming, and the policies that are being enacted, is a prime example. As a result of scientific research within an infant field, politicians are advocating policies that could potentially result in the deaths of millions of people around the world and immense suffering that will result from economic turmoil. They do this in spite of the fact that the theory of anthropomorphic climate change is fundamentally flawed.

All good scientific theories must be falsifiable, meaning they must be able to be tested and proven incorrect. Global warming theory (climate change theory) does not meet this standard, because, regardless of the data that results, the theory remains. It’s junk science of the highest order and it is a perfect example of the perils that result when science is treated as a religion and scientists as the priests. Replacing one god with another by a different name does not demonstrate enlightenment. It demonstrates the diversity of ignorance.

Pseudo intellectuals are not true intellectuals. It takes some common sense to be a true intellectual.

Dear lord, when are we going to stop letting them frame the debate? We’re not anti-science; they just say we are. We’re not racist; they just say we are. We’re pro-science and pro-equality. Why do we let them frame the debate this way?

JohnJ on May 13, 2009 at 1:13 AM

The Liberals are the PC police, thats why. We constantly find ourselver having to react to their bonehead assertions.

What those eggheads dont understand is that PC is not the same as Intellectual . What good is an Intellectual that is too stupid to pour pi$$ out of a boot with instructions on the heel, or too stupid to understand that 10 trillion is too much debt?

sneered at research on fruit flies and grizzly bears in a bid to make science sound like a self-indulgent pursuit that spends money but doesn’t produce anything useful.

This is crap. Criticizing the use of government funds for specific studies does not equal denigrating science itself. I’ve written grants for government funding of studies regarding the care of critically ill patients. It is reasonable to question the relative value of one study vs another, and its usefulness to the public and thus appropriateness for gov’t funding.

Was there nobody to edit this piece?

Dear lord, when are we going to stop letting them frame the debate? We’re not anti-science; they just say we are. We’re not racist; they just say we are. We’re pro-science and pro-equality. Why do we let them frame the debate this way?

JohnJ on May 13, 2009 at 1:13 AM

A REALLY good point!

But liberal POLITICAL thinking has so dominated our education system (or what’s left of it) that CRITICAL, reality-based thinking has gone out the window–we have become a nation of sheeple, who jump on the bandwagon of every self-proclaimed “intellectual” spouting hare-brained ideas that have failed repeatedly throughout history, because few people STUDY history any more except to rewrite it, and reality-based “common sense” which rejects such ideas isn’t very common any more.

People need to wake up to the fact that what passes for “science” in the mainstream media is neither objective nor scientific. Many scientific and technical journals have been taken over by editors pushing an agenda: evolution, embryonic stem-cells, cloning, global warming, string theory, so that articles on experimental studies which contradict the editors’ OPINION are systematically rejected by “peer reviewers” regardless of scientific merit, so that the PUBLISHED articles unanimously support the editors’ OPINION. In an age of “publish or perish”, the politically-correct “scientists” get published and receive funding, and those whose findings contradict politically-correct thought run out of money.

Science is NOT speculation, of some intellectual in an ivory tower dreaming up some grandiose new theory of the universe so divorced from reality that it can never be tested. But this is what passes for “science” in popular scientific journals designed for “laymen” with no training in real science.

REAL science is actually trial and error–doing repeated experiments, reading the results of other people’s experiments, and developing theories that fit the data, and being willing to change them or abandon them if they are later proven wrong. Theory should fit real-world data, but in today’s world of “science”, data are cherry-picked and fudged to fit pre-ordained politically-correct theories, and annoying contradictory data are rejected as “outliers”.

So here is what “intellectuals” have done to “science”:

“Science” says man evolved from a primordial soup by magic, even though well-established chemistry and biology tell us that a living cell could never assemble itself from non-living matter by chance alone.

“Science” says we should destroy human embryos for stem cells, even though embryonic stem cells have NEVER cured a single disease, while adult stem-cells have had dozens of clinical successes.

“Science” tells us that certain rocks off the coast of Hawaii MUST be millions of years old due to the fossils found in them, although historians who observed them form tell us they are less than 200 years old.

“Science” tells us that carbon dioxide in the air will cause catastrophic global warming, although the Vikings settled and named Greenland and raised sheep there during the llth and 12th centuries, when CO2 levels were lower, and the Earth has cooled over the last 11 years while CO2 levels have continued to rise.

“Science” tells us we should “grow renewable fuel” by converting corn to ethanol, despite the fact that almost as much energy is burned to raise corn as is obtained from ethanol, and the world is deprived of the food value of corn in order to prevent the burning of non-comestible gasoline.

Dear liberal “intellectuals” divorced from reality in your high-falutin’ ivory towers: We conservatives are pro-science! We want REAL science, based on testable FACTS, not opinions, that serves humanity with the TRUTH. We want REAL science to burst forth past the gatekeepers in the media and “science” journals and the United Nations, to be read by a general public with eyes and minds wide open! We are NOT stupid, and we KNOW that you have manipulated the public to your false and unscientific fantasies to enrich yourselves, and the gatekeepers FEAR the TRUTH, which can set us free!

The trick is…how to we communicate the truth to a majority of voters, most of whom have little training in science?

The powers that be don’t have it, don’t practice it, and revel in its absence.

Once intellectual honesty returns to the fold of so-called intellectuals, then come back and lecture us, mmmkay?

If I lose, I go to gitmo, and the country continues it’s descent towards communist Russia.

If they lose, they go to Gitmo, I run the government, dismantle THE GOVERNMENT instead of private enterprise, and the country will begin to thrive again immediately.

Then yes, I have no use for intellectuals.

It’s all about nuance.

I’ve known intellectuals who really weren’t all that bright, and non-intellectuals who really were so bright that nobody would question their intelligence within 10 minutes of meeting them.

And while I truly enjoy the more intellectual of politicos, they have come to some of the funnier conclusions and pushed the most absurd arguments in order to solidify their desired outcome. The most brilliant of intellects are those like Bill Clinton, who have the flexibility to translate concepts into examples that resonate with people.

In short, whatever in the world does this have to do with the price of housing? :)

Obama is way smarter than Bush,Limbaugh or whatever other mouthbreather you send out to argue against him.

athensboy on May 13, 2009 at 7:22 AM

When we’ve got beauty pageant contestants who are smarter than the leader of the Democrat party, it’s no reason for you to be smug.

The trolls on this site are a perfect example of reason thrown out the window…look at athensboy….he states Obama as being the smartest President in history with absolutely no evidence to back it up, hell, they cant even display Obama’s grades for crying out loud…

javamartini on May 13, 2009 at 9:30 AM

Forgive them. All they know is what Jon Stewart tells them.

I don’t mind Obama being a thinker, its when he starts doing stuff I get concerned…more thinking less action would be good.
.

philly_nj on May 13, 2009 at 8:39 AM

There’s no evidence that Obama actually does any productive thinking. His ideas are based on group consensus, generally inspired by traditional liberal ideals and motivitated by an animal survival instinct: pack mentality. Thus, Obama’s “ideas” are really a reflexive desire to reward groups that aided his Presidential Campaigns: unions, ACORN, maybe even the Palestinians.

Example: Obama’s new “plan” to turn the economy around was the same as his plan to overhaul the economy during the campaign. Never mind that he admits his energy policy will drive big coal out of business, he now claims it’s a stimulus plan. There was no thinking involved – Axelrod just slapped a new label on the old package.

GITMO, “overseas contingency operations”, torture memos, stem cells, none of these decisions indicated any deep, considered thought for future consequences, or the existing evidence. They were all based on the liberal stereotypes and assumptions, assumptions that are generally wrong PRECISELY because they are unchallenged and thus unintelligent.

Well….from a pragmatic POV, as long as the GOP can be successfully branded as the party of torches and pitchforks, you wont get the youth vote, the academic vote, or the college-educated vote.
That means in turn, that academia, science, and youth culture BELONG to the other side by default.
Good luck with that strat.
It is working so well for you.

strangelet on May 13, 2009 at 8:52 AM

Perception is not reality, no matter the branding…chickens come home to roost eventually. You do make a good point though, we should not wait for the eventual collapse to change this perception. The problem is, how do you convince people that they are headed to ruin when facts reason and logic dont work?

The trolls on this site are a perfect example of reason thrown out the window…look at athensboy….he states Obama as being the smartest President in history with absolutely no evidence to back it up, hell, they cant even display Obama’s grades for crying out loud…

Oh, pardon….knowledge of ancient greek history…..that would be one of those horrible intellectual qualities, right?

strangelet on May 13, 2009 at 8:35 AM

No, that’s more the horrible quality of pretentiousness.

That means in turn, that academia, science, and youth culture BELONG to the other side by default.
Good luck with that strat.
It is working so well for you.

strangelet on May 13, 2009 at 8:52 AM

They’ve pretty much belonged to the other side by default for a while.

But let’s see: the collective comparative intellect of O-bots and conservatives. You really, really don’t want to go there.

Republicans and conservatives aren’t anti science, they are anti socialist policies and hoaxes that are masked in a ’scientific’ or ‘academic’ or ‘intellectual’ veneer. We are speaking truth to power, or to put it in terms libtards might understand, our ‘dissent is the highest form of intellectualism’.

eaglewingz08 on May 13, 2009 at 8:53 AM

Yeah, right, but what do people see?
I’m sure it feels wunnerful to give those snobby elitist scientists, academics and college kids a righteous smackdown….I’m sure Kylon and his posse felt great as they chopped up those snobby pythagorean intellectuals with scythes and burned their temple.
But there wasn’t a flash news media cycle in 500 BC in Croton.
So all the intellectual and elite bashing makes you guyz feel good, but it is not productive.
The electorate sees a bunch of envious pissed off whiners.
Is that who you are?

Intellectualism is how we got Tim Geithner, and the government running the auto industry.

How about effortism? Instead of a belief that conversations at parties in the Hamptons can solve problems, a belief that hard work can solve problems.