Katherine12:59PMMay 15th 2008

Here it is, if anyone says anything negative about Obama it's Racism! Lies! McCarthyism! Hatred!

If you don't vote for Obama you are RACIST!

I'm very sick of it. I have a million very serious reasons why I would not ever vote for that national security risk of a BS artist.

I'll give you one: Because the MSM brain-washed people into thinking Obama was perfect and off limits when it comes to criticism.

Paul Halbach1:00PMMay 15th 2008

Reading many of these comments is disappointing to this older white guy. It is easy to see why we finish so low in tests involving academic achievement, compared to others in the industrial world. Many people see no difference in voting for a person just because she is white and the fact that blacks vote for a black man.

African-American voters are getting their first chance to vote for someone who looks like them, and women are in a similar position. The same cannot be said for voters who choose a candidate because of the "novelty" that white success in politics brings. The ability to think about this critically is obviously not there.

The Hillary Clinton voters are often called "hard working." The fact that these people are relatively uneducated forces them to be hard working. They are just not smart enough to think deeply or work at mentally challenging jobs. Collecting trash during the day and voting for Hillary at night is hard work. It is also a startlingly similar pair of acts.

Deanna Kuhn1:05PMMay 15th 2008

I'm quite proud of Buchanan (though his sister is still a hateful "nutcase") He and other Repub are looking at the Clinton's in a new light...the90's weren't so bad.

I'm quite dismayed at the 'onesided bias" by the MSNBC crew. I can't watch their misogyny anymore.

They are as mezmerized by Obama as the Religious Right was for their fast talking (no acting) false promised... but Obama is more nebulous...he wants to work with the Repubs for Change ...ISN'T THAT WHAT GW BUSH promised..

Obama's big$/media backers are his puppeteers.. manuvering the caucus' by bringing busloads on underage hiphoppers to afternoon caucus' where the working poor couldn't get off to work...

Obama will be another Kerry against McCain unable to give any viable policies.. I will vote repub for the first time in my life..

linda in cincinnati1:07PMMay 15th 2008

Reality? Buchanan is on the mark.

Katherine1:10PMMay 15th 2008

Paul, you a classist idiot.

Your post is one of the stupidest and YES, most elitist posts I've read in a while.

This is ANOTHER reason why I will not vote for Obama.

He doesn't unite anyone, he wants to divide and conquer, no wonder, since he's gone to a separatist church for 20 years.

John1:16PMMay 15th 2008

Katherine the Republican posuer...tried pretending she was a Hillary fan when in reality she is a Republican and quite racist.
Im a Mohawk Indian and I can speak from experience and from history that racism against whites is a myth invented so they can pretend to be victims of something they created.

LaBlondieLoca1:17PMMay 15th 2008

Chris Matthews gets tickles up his legs for Obama...what else would you expect from him ???

Can not for the life of me figure out why any one would want this anti-American, left wing liar for President of the USA.

WILMA1:17PMMay 15th 2008

CHRIS M...YOU ARE NOT A GOOD JOURNALIST BECAUSE YOU CAN ONLY TAKE YOUR PERSONAL VIEW TO THE AIR WAVES AND YOU OUT SHOUT EVERYONE ....GET ANOTHER JOB!

linda in cincinnati1:22PMMay 15th 2008

THE POLITICS OF MENTAL RETARDATION: A TAIL OF THE BELL CURVE

Political movements have victims, and the cause of diversity is no exception. Whites, Asians and males are all casualties of the diversicrat, but his most deplorable incivility makes victims of the hapless. If anyone should deny the politicization of mental retardation, let him confront the data presented herein.

The life of a diversicrat is disagreeable. He is surrounded by irritants. Of them, he finds none more unsettling than race, particularly racial differences. He confronts them daily, on the athletic field, in the classroom, in the workplace and on the street. Most prickly are IQ differences. Intelligence, after all, is the hallmark of our species. The diversicrat twists and strains to explain IQ gaps away, abandoning parsimony for convolution. But he does not stop with explication. He is an ideological crusader. And like most crusades, this one has victims. Sadly, they include the ill-starred and hapless mentally retarded. Their wretched malady is secondary to the fact that they are asymmetrically black.

Nature-nurture issues do not concern us here. We ask how, not why. We accept racial IQ incongruities as facts, noting only that efforts to erase them have failed. The average IQ of East Asians (Chinese, Japanese and Koreans) is about 1/3 standard deviation (SD) or about 5 IQ points higher than that of Europeans. Ashkenazic Jews score higher still. Their mean IQ is about 15 IQ points above that of non-Hispanic whites. In the US, the African American with a mean score of 85 is at the bottom of the cognitive deck. He thus finds himself disproportionately represented among the ranks of the retarded. All this is anathema to the diversicrat.

The black-white IQ gap has been studied and analyzed for more than 80 years. It has outlived sweeping attitude changes, from extreme anti-black discrimination to bias against whites, Asians and males. The billion-dollar Head Start budget has not dented it. Though IQ scores have been rising worldwide for decades (the Flynn effect) the cognitive distance between blacks and whites has remained remarkably constant. In fact, the 1 SD black-white IQ gap is as close to a fundamental sociological constant as we come.

When the IQ of non-Hispanic whites is normalized to a mean of 100 and SD of 15, the African American mean falls at about 85 with an SD of about 13.5. The black IQ distribution both lags behind and is narrower than the white. The small difference in width manifests itself significantly at the bell curve extremes, reducing both the numbers of retarded and exceptional blacks.

Figure 1 shows IQ distribution curves for African Americans and non-Hispanic whites. The areas under the curves are normalized to unity, so that the narrower black distribution appears taller. Two standard deviations from each side of the white mean mark IQ boundaries for retardation and giftedness. Outside these borders, in the shaded regions, are the cognitive extremes. There, the areas under the curves represent the fractions of each group who meet IQ criteria for retardation or giftedness. (Most striking is the tiny black representation in the gifted region.) The ratio of areas shows blacks to be 6.1 times more likely than whites to fall below the boundary for retardation, and 53 times less likely to be gifted. So profound are the group differences that they are apparent to the man in the street, who observes a profusion of African Americans at the bottom of the economic and educational ladders, and a scarcity at the top.



Bell Curve Extremes
At the left tail of the IQ distribution we find the mentally deficient. They mostly are unable to cope with the challenges of life. As children, they require specialized educational services. When the bell curve is politicized these poor souls suffer. We will see how the diversicrat, unable to tolerate racial differences in retardation rates, has worked a miracle cure.

The diversicrat's goal of eliminating racial disparities extends to both tails of the bell curve. On the right he has inflicted less damage. After all, it is more difficult to harm the gifted than the backward. Nevertheless, racial imbalance in programs for gifted and talented students catch his eye. He pressures local school districts to diversify them. Florida's response is typical. When not enough "disadvantaged minorities" show up in programs for exceptional students, Florida kicks in with Plan B (no kidding -- that is what they call it). Plan B makes use of additional criteria such as "leadership potential," "performance evaluation" and "statements of need." It is hard to get worked up about gifted and near gifted children. We know in the long run they will turn out well. We focus instead on the left tail of the bell curve where the real damage occurs.


Lourdes Comes to Washington
The diversicrat has a powerful ally in the US Government. Through its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) the Department of Education demands that mentally retarded children be represented in proportion to the racial makeup of the school. OCR regards racial imbalance as discrimination, and thus illegal. Eliminating disparities of race among the ranks of the mentally retarded is among the OCR's highest priorities. The curves of Figure 1 demonstrate just how difficult OCR's task is.

The education and psychology communities have responded to OCR pressure by reclassifying mentally retarded children -- bureaucracy's version of a cure. Efforts of the Department of Education have reduced the number of mentally retarded children in public schools from approximately 2.2 percent to less than 1.3 percent. The process took less than two decades. Millions of children of all races have been reclassified. They no longer receive appropriate educational services specifically earmarked for the retarded. Jane Burnette in ERIC Digest #E566 describes the curative secret. "Reducing overrepresentation is a matter of creating a successful school environment for all students and accurately distinguishing disabilities from cultural differences." Figure 2 shows graphically how a dose of Government medicine rendered almost half the country's retarded children whole again.


A Brief History of Mental Retardation
As old as man himself, mental retardation defied precise definition until the development of psychometric tools. An early (1910) scheme introduced by the American Association on Mental Deficiency (AAMD) identified levels of retardation by comparing the afflicted at maturity to children at various levels of development. Idiots functioned as 2 year olds, imbeciles between 2 and 7 years, and morons between 7 and 12 years. These terms are now obsolete and considered offensive.

Psychologists recognized fairly early that cognitive deficiency alone does not satisfactorily characterize mental retardation. People with comparably low cognitive capacity often differ in their ability to adapt to the challenges of daily life. A three-part definition of mental retardation evolved to address this issue. It includes childhood onset, cognitive deficiency, and inadequate adaptive behavior. Though this definition preceded the diversicrat, he was quick to use it to his advantage.

With the development of the IQ test by Alfred Binet in 1905, it became possible to quantify intellectual shortcomings. The test dramatically altered methods of diagnosis and classification, and soon became the principal tool for diagnosing mental retardation. By mid-century two of the three criteria for defining mental retardation, cognitive deficiency and age of onset, could be accurately determined, but the assessment of adaptive behavior relied largely on subjective evaluation. Today, the assessment of adaptive behavior still remains fuzzy enough for the diversicrat to work his miracles.

In 1959, AAMD set the IQ threshold for mental retardation at < 85. The civil rights movement of the next decade forced psychologists to rethink this boundary, because half the African American population fell below it. In 1973, responding to this concern, AAMD (by then AAMR) changed the threshold for retardation from IQ < 85 to IQ < 70. The boundary moved south by one standard deviation! The proportion of blacks below the threshold instantly dropped from about 50 percent to 12 percent. Subsequent refinements made it still more difficult to meet the criteria for retardation.

When Binet in 1905 produced the first IQ test, it promised to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of mental retardation. A half century later it came under attack for reasons Binet could not have imagined. Could any of the pioneer psychometricians have foreseen Larry P. v. Riles (1979), a California class-action suit that focused on IQ testing of young black children? The court held that IQ tests were not valid for African Americans. It banned California from using the tests for placing black students in classes for the "educable mentally retarded" or equivalent categories on the grounds that the tests were biased. After a series of appeals, the district court ruled that no special education related purposes exist for which IQ tests could be administered to black pupils. Though only a California ruling, the case began a political assault on standardized testing that has spread beyond the IQ test to college entrance exams, promotional exams and more.


A Case History of Government Intervention
In 1996, The Office for Civil Rights placed 16 school districts nationwide under review for potential discrimination. The districts were charged with violating the civil rights of minorities, especially African Americans, because blacks were found to be overrepresented in special education programs, especially those for the mentally retarded. Five of the 16 districts were in Maryland. Ironically, Maryland is a very liberal state very much in tune with the goals of the Civil Rights Office. Maryland is also almost 30 percent black. The offending districts included Baltimore, Howard, Harford, Montgomery and Prince Georges counties.

OCR detectives uncovered "discrimination" by looking at school records. The offending data appear in Table 1. The irritant is in the last column. Black children were classified as retarded at 1.5 to 2.2 times the rate of whites. OCR ordered the counties to find a "remedy."
County Enrollment Percent of
Total Enrollment Number
Retarded Percent
Classified Retarded B/W Ratio of
Percent
Classified Retarded
Baltimore: Black 23,121 23% 331 1.43% 2.21
White 71,667 72% 463 0.646%
Howard: Black 5,572 15% 41 0.736% 2.06
White 27,387 76% 98 0.358%
Harford: Black 4,139 12% 62 1.5% 1.89
White 29,805 84% 236 0.792%
Montgomery: Black 22,170 19% 117 0.528% 1.75
White 66,569 57% 201 0.302%
Prince Georges: Black 83,427 70% 374 0.448% 1.52
White 23,766 20% 69 0.290%
Table 1. Retardation rates in the five Maryland counties cited by the Office for Civil Rights. OCR requires retardation rates to be independent of race.

Current technical literature still reports mental retardation rates at 2 to 3 percent of the general population The incidence of mental retardation in Maryland's offending counties is significantly lower than that. The districts had reduced the number of mentally retarded children even before they were cited. They failed, however, to selectively reduce retardation rates.

Irrespective of race, we note significant variation in the rate of retardation from county to county. With populations this big, uniform criteria should produce uniform retardation rates. Harford County, a semi-rural mostly white county, reports about 3 times the rate of retardation as the more cosmopolitan Montgomery County and the predominantly black Prince Georges County. A child in mostly white Baltimore County is about twice as likely to be retarded as his peer in the also mostly white Howard County. These discrepancies were less troublesome to the Department of Education than racial issues.


Ideal Rates of Retardation
Because the data reveal both racial and nonracial disparities, we decided to compare them with a district that closely followed AAMR guidelines. Knowing of no such district, we constructed a hypothetical one -- Reference County, USA.

Nationally, about 12 percent of African Americans and 2 percent of non-Hispanic whites have IQs < 70. Not all these people, however, are mentally retarded. Prince Georges County, for example, identified 0.448 percent of its black students and 0.290 percent of its white students as retarded, both numbers well below the number with IQ < 70. A simple calculation shows that only 4 percent of black children and 15 percent of the white children with IQ < 70 were found to have sufficient adaptive behavior deficits to warrant classifying them retarded. On the surface it appears that PG County discriminated against whites, since white children were found to have adaptive behavior deficits at almost four times the rate of blacks. That, however, is not the case.

Among blacks and whites with comparable cognitive deficits, blacks generally show a better ability to adapt to the rigors of everyday life. The difference is pronounced. Arthur Jensen observed in The g Factor that black pupils with IQ deficiencies often socially integrate well with their brighter peers. They seem quite normal when engaging in non-cerebral activities like play. In contrast, many cognitively impaired white children have difficulty integrating socially and often have physical abnormalities such as flat-footed gaits. Jensen attributes this racial divergence to different etiologies that are transparent to IQ tests.

Two types of mental retardation can be differentiated. Organic retardation is due to a genetic anomaly or brain damage brought about by disease or trauma. Familial retardation results from normal variations in intelligence. Among whites with IQ < 70, between 25 and 50 percent are diagnosed as organic. Since 2 percent of whites have IQ < 70, 0.5 to 1.0 percent of the entire white population is organically retarded. Jensen estimates that of the blacks with IQ < 70, only 12.5 percent are organically retarded. (We estimate the number closer to 16.7 percent.) Thus for blacks, we expect 16.7 percent of the 12 percent with IQs < 70 to have organic etiologies. That is, about 2.0 percent of the black population at large is organically retarded. Following Jensen, if we associate most of nonadaptive behavior with organic retardation, then Reference County should classify about 2.0 percent of black children and 0.5 to 1.0 percent of white children as mentally retarded. Blacks in Reference County will be retarded at 2 to 4 times the rate of whites. Table 2 compares the offending counties to Reference County.
County Percent
Classified Retarded B/W Ratio of
Percent
Classified Retarded
Baltimore: Black 1.43% 2.21
White 0.646%
Howard: Black 0.736% 2.06
White 0.358%
Harford: Black 1.5% 1.89
White 0.792%
Montgomery: Black 0.528% 1.75
White 0.302%
Prince Georges: Black 0.448% 1.52
White 0.290%
Reference County: Black 2.0% 2.0 to 4.0
White 0.5% to 1.0%
Table 2. Rates of mental retardation found in Maryland's five offending counties compared with the expected rates in Reference County.

From Table 2 we note that the ratio of black to white retarded children is in the expected range for two of the five cited counties, Baltimore and Howard. In two others, Harford and Montgomery, the ratio is only slightly out of bounds. In Prince Georges County the B/W ratio is lower, but still not egregiously so. We safely conclude that the five Maryland school districts did not discriminate against blacks, and that administrators and staff mostly did their jobs conscientiously.

Data in Table 2 also point to a general reluctance to classify any student as retarded, especially if he is black. Only two of the counties, Baltimore and Harford, fell within the expected range for white retardation, 0.5 to 1.0 percent. All of the counties fell below the 2 percent retardation rate expected for blacks. Both sets of numbers reflect the decades-long campaign of the Department of Education to "cure" mental retardation.


Do Rates of Mental Retardation Correlate with Political Philosophy?
Few of any political persuasion know very much about racial differences, but that does not deter them from staking out political positions on race. Liberals and conservatives alike seldom admit (at least publicly) that abilities correlate with race. Still, they tend to come down on different sides of racial issues. Mental retardation has become very much such an issue. We looked for correlations between political philosophy and the tendency to classify children "retarded."

In 1998, Marylanders were given a clear philosophical choice when they went to the polls to elect a governor. Glendening (the winner) was an archetypal liberal tax and spender. Sauerbrey (the loser) was a classic hard-right conservative, with a record in the State Legislature to back that up. Huge tax cuts were high on her agenda. She decried a social welfare system run amok, condemned a decline in morality, abhorred abortion in any form, criticized gun control measures and attacked environmental regulations that intruded on property owners' rights. The two candidates agreed on almost nothing. If ever there was a clear philosophical choice, it was in Maryland in 1998.

Because the 1998 election was drawn on such sharp ideological lines, we used election returns for the five counties to come up with a measure of political philosophy. Table 3 compares retardation rates in the five Maryland counties with the percent of the electorate in each county who voted for Sauerbrey. The rank order of retardation rate was identical to the rank order of political conservatism.
County Percent
Classified
Retarded Percent
Voting for
Sauerbrey
in 1998 Rate of
Retardation
Rank Political
Conservatism
Rank
Black White
Harford 1.5% 0.792% 71% 1 1
Baltimore 1.43% 0.646% 51% 2 2
Howard 0.736% 0.358% 47% 3 3
Montgomery 0.528% 0.302% 38% 4 4
Prince Georges 0.448% 0.290% 26% 5 5
Table 3. Rates of mental retardation as a function of political conservatism.

The correlation between retardation rate and percent support for Sauerbrey was extraordinary, with correlation coefficients of 0.88 and 0.90 for the black and white rates, respectively. Correlation coefficients this large are almost unheard of in social science. It is a pretty safe bet that right-leaning school districts will find more of their children retarded than their left-leaning counterparts, a fact that leftists have long suspected.

###


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kaflooey1:24PMMay 15th 2008

"The Hillary Clinton voters are often called "hard working." The fact that these people are relatively uneducated forces them to be hard working. They are just not smart enough to think deeply or work at mentally challenging jobs. Collecting trash during the day and voting for Hillary at night is hard work. It is also a startlingly similar pair of acts."
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And this is the post of a deep thinker?
Well, Paul, consider these statistics :
31% of all white Americans have college degrees
18% of all black Americans have college degrees
Look it up. This is not an opinion.
Kind of blows your credibility on that front, doesn't it?
I'm an educated, upper middle class, middle aged, white professional. And guess what? I'm not the only one who falls into this demographic who is supporting Hillary Clinton. And I don't think your narrow minded remark that people who don't have a college degree aren't smart enough to have mentally challenging jobs are on the mark at all. There are many, many bright and successful people who don't have a college degree among the ranks of Americans who still feel that there's no shame in working hard no matter what your job or education.

Maybe you are "too soon old, und too late schmart".

Katherine1:27PMMay 15th 2008

POSTED BY:
YouBeturSweet Bippy10:40AMMay 15th 2008

Won't make a bit of difference if he is at the top of the ticket.

Susan Estrich: Bad News for Obama? She is a Harvard Professor of Law and Political Science

Obama has a problem with one of the core groups in the Democratic base. If he has won this nomination, he has won it without them, despite them. The problem is he can’t win the White House that way.

You can talk until you’re blue in the face about the new voters Obama has brought to the process, about the enthusiasm among students and his appeal to independents, but at the end of the day, if you’re a Democrat, you don’t win the White House without winning the votes of white, working-class voters in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and New Jersey and, yes, West Virginia.

And you can call these people every name in the book, starting with racist, as some Obama supporters are prone to do, but questioning people’s motives generally is not a very effective approach to addressing their doubts or bringing them into the fold. Insults do not turn skeptics into supporters.

Katherine1:28PMMay 15th 2008

John:

The white hating poseur, pretending racism against whites doesn't exist does not make it true. I cannot even debate the stupidity of that.

Racism against whites does not exist? What are you talking about? There have been hate crimes against white people. Freakin' white hater.

ArchAngel71:29PMMay 15th 2008

What please me most about the WV results is that their sentiment is now confined to WV. There was a time when A Black Man (well any person of color for that matter) + President of the United States would not have garnered a second thought. Pat and his ilk are being forced to consider a social change that most of the rest of the country has dealt with in a far more gracefull fashion. Now granted there are those who thought they would be dead and gone before they ever saw a "Negro" in the White House. The real issue is of course with what "they" believe about people of color. They believe what they are told because they don't know any and with very few minorities in the whole state, old ideas die hard.

You see, ALL of us are told that if we work hard, we might grow up to be President some day. It is ingrained in cultural core and that job is open to EVERY American, male, female, red, white , blue, green, or purple. That Barack, or Hillary CAN become President is what makes this country great, and shows the true evolution and growth of our nation. This day had to come. The old, who are most resistent to change, will see the end of the world. When Barack is sworn in, they will look up to hopefully see Jesus coming through the clouds before eminent disaster befalls us because there is a Black man in the White House. And the next day, life will go on. You will still have to go to work, pay your bills and feed your families as Barack now tries to wade through the mess W left. God bless whoever gets that job next.

ssamturner1:29PMMay 15th 2008

when 90%of the black votes for Obama who racial.

the smart vote1:30PMMay 15th 2008

Pauline1:18PMMay 15th 2008

In March, Jay Rockefeller endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy for president, calling the Illinois senator the best candidate on national security issues.

"Barack Obama is the most qualified person - Democrat or Republican - to lead our country in the face of enormous challenges: the very real threat of terrorism, economic uncertainty, and instability at home and abroad," said Rockefeller, D-W.Va. and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee."

HANK-THE-FRANK1:35PMMay 15th 2008

Buchanan isn't the only one who gets agitated the more Obama wins, don't forget KATHEINE, IMAY, BON BON, TJ...to name a few of the Clit-Click. Maybe they better join AA, AGITATED ANONOMOUS, and take the pledge to get sober. Obama has the race sewed up!

Lee Mathews1:39PMMay 15th 2008

Figuring how high Clinton's "negatives" are -- many vpters say they'd never vote for her under any circumstances --that would virtually guarantee a Republican victory in the fall.
That's why it's a good thing for Democrats Barack Obama has managed to challenge the perception of Sen. Clinton's "inevitability."

The Clinton campaign cites Sen. Clinton's "experience." In fact, she's a one-term-plus-a-year senator whose lack-luster legislative record is far from what would be called impressive. Other than that, the "experience" in question must surely refer to her presence as a witness and enabler during her husband's presidential terms.

Suffice it to say there are dozens of issues that Americans may have dismissed as "water under the bridge" as the Clinton era came to a close, but which would quickly ensnare Sen. Clinton and her party in a presidential race that would soon look like a struggle to escape the La Brea tar pits.

skip1:44PMMay 15th 2008

this is the chance for, blacks to get even with whites, if you vote obama, you are setting yourself up for a downfall, it will not work, give me a break,5th group-spec ops, the blacks were cowards in vietnam, they didn't want to fight for this country, john you must be black, or misinformed!

bert1:44PMMay 15th 2008

sillyme,
you are free to choose who you like, I have been a demacrat for 30 yrs(I'm embarrassed to say that now, considering how they have treated Hillary andnot including all states),but I am first and foremost an american, I need to beleive in my choice and I don't beleive in obama at all, I and many like are not sheep, nor do we feel the need to follow the dnc off a cliff, like I said, you have every right to vote the way you want (lets hope you decide and not someone else decide for you),but the rest of us have the same right

Beth1:46PMMay 15th 2008

I think Pat is right on and I can no longer watch Chris Matthews, he's the one that needs help. I am a racist because I voted for HIllary. The obama stragedy censoring issue disussion as racism is the beginning and the end of democratic discoarse. Beth