One Reason Why We Have a Crappy Federal Government

Crappy voters. Seriously. Perri Nelson referred recently to an online civics quiz that’s simply an online form of the quiz given to a random sampling of Americans last Spring. Here’s the report card:

americas-report-card

Now, folks, having taken the quiz myself and having scored considerably better than the average, I’m prepared to say that the ONLY reasons for any citizens of these (dis)United States to fail this lil quiz are laziness, wilfull stupidity or both. Seriously. And the fact that,

Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once. This sub-sample of officeholders yields a startling result: elected officials score lower than the general public. Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected... 1[emphasis added]

…leads me to assert that holders of political office who can’t do better than that should be put out of our misery forever. But that can only be accomplished by voters who know which end of a boot to pour piss out of… and even then they’d probably have to buy a clue to know they’d wet themselves, given the performance on this lil survey, and given the economy nowadays, I doubt any of ’em would spend the money on a cluebat to hit themselves over the head with.

(Am I livid? Absolutely. NO ONE who fails such a simple exam ought to be let within a mile of a voting booth, let alone be allowed to “serve” as an elected [addendum: or even UNelected] official in ANY capacity.)

Look, people, it’s just a silly little multiple choice quiz that’s not even as detailed as a citizenship exam for someone from another country seeking citizenship in this country, and yet 71% of the survey participants couldn’t pass the thing even with an extremely lenient 60% passing grade!

*feh* If that’s all Americans know about their own country then we deserve to be tossed in the ash heap of history. “It was a noble experiment, but The People proved they didn’t deserve the liberties generations of their forefathers bled and died to give them. Tough. Next?”

Lazy-assed bums. Don’t tell me the education system failed them. The “education system” sucks dead bunnies through a straw, slowly, laboriously and poorly, but only lazy-assed bums would be satisfied to KNOW NOTHING about their country’s history and forms of civil government, or worse, be satisfied with the horse manure illiterate boobs who “teach” civics and history in our schools dump in the black holes that are their vacuous heads.

And historical literacy in more than just American history and government is critical for voters nowadays given the outright lies of Mass Media Podpeople and politicians on issues of importance. One of the most serious issues facing our society today is the attempt to wreck (even further) our economy and way of life via the lie of anthropogenic global warming/climate change. One of the central arguments of the warmists/changists is made by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph showing the latter 20th Century to be the warmest period in more than a thousand years. Heck, simple historical literacy is all it would take to have Mann and his ilk run out of town on a rail (after a good tarring and feathering)–no need for elaborate mathematical analyses proving Mann cooked the books (although that has been done). Why? Just ask Mann and his disciples why, if the latter part of the 20th Century was the hottest in 1,000 years, didn’t Greenland have as big a net export of dairy products then as it did during the Medieval Climate Optimum from 800-1300 AD, when temperatures were higher than at ANY time during the 20th Century? (Apparently, Mann just couldn’t be bothered to do his homework–or else his math skills are considerably worse than one might imagine. 20th Century-14th Century is 600 years, Mike, not 1,000.)

OK, maybe even if folks knew that Leif Erikson Erik the Red (that’s a persistent braine pharte of mine) didn’t scam folks into moving to a bitterly cold Greenland (because it really WAS warm and green–dairy exports, remember? From farms that are NOW under glacial ice… ) that wouldn’t have helped combat Mann’s lies. They’d have to be numerate enough to be able to do simple subtraction.

So, yes, either we begin telling the illiterate boobs that are our fellow voters that they ARE illiterate boobs (and then do everything in our power to convert them to minimal historical literacy) or we will fall as a nation.

Note well the quote in the header of this blog:

“In a democracy (”rule by mob”), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”-third world county’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom

That’s just one of the reasons that, historically, democracies fail (and one of the reasons the Founders designed our federal government to NOT be a democracy!). As this country regresses ever more steadily into democratic rule, we begin to see the results of democraticization (mob rule): illiterate, lazy-assed boobs decide how the country will go.

Down the toilet.


Trackposted to Nuke’s, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Pink Flamingo, Woman Honor Thyself, Democrat=Socialist, Adam’s Blog, Right Voices, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Windows 7 Beta

Well, I never did get around to installing the UNofficial Windows 7 beta (really offically late alpha) in a VM. Now, I need to reinstall VMWare Server, after a kernel update seems to have fried things (oh, the joys of “almost ready for Aunt Tilly” Ubuntu). Why? Well, because I need my WInXP, Win2K, Win98 and various other ‘nix-flavored “computers” running in VMs and because… I just downloaded the official Windows 7 Beta from Microsoft, and it’s only good through August (although I hear rumors there’s a way to kil the kill switch, I will NOT be attempting any such thing).

I did get a few of “page not loading” errors before I finally managed to get MS to cough up the download. Slow. Took 1.5 hours for the measly 3.15GB. *heh* And that’s another thing that kinda surprised me. I waited until tonight to download it. Microsoft announced that only 2.5 million downloads of the beta were being offered. Where was the demand?

Of course, I do NOT want to put it on a machine we’d need for daily use here at twc central, because Microsoft is waffling (so what else is new?) on its official release date for Windows 7 and because, well, it is beta software. Well, you can hardly blame ’em after the (well-earned) beating Microsoft has taken for Vista. (I’m still pulling out hair I can ill-afford to lose over Vista’s finicky networking. You try to get 64-bit Vista talking with 64-bit XP. The Microsoft Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder patch that does an OK job making 32-bit XP computers visible to Vista computers is… 32-bit, and–so far–does NOT do the job with 64-bit XP computers I’ve tried it with [naturally] as the only “nearly-MS-approved” method, since a 64-bit version of the patch seems to be AWOL. Thanks, Microsoft. Yeh, yeh, I’ve downloaded the source code from Microsoft to build it for “other operating systems”, but… .)

Well, maybe I ought to just slap another compy together and see if the system requirements listed (1Ghz processor, 1GB RAM, etc.) by Microsoft will really run Windows 7. (My bet is NOT. MS consistently understates basic requirements, enticing folks who shouldn’t attempt to load an OS to do so, but maybe the zebra can change his stripes. And yes, I mangled the old metaphor because it sometimes seems that shrink wrap betas, bait and switches and other increasingly prevalent MS tactics shopuld deserve some stripes, at times. *heh*)

Anywho, I have through August to test this out, so I may just put it on the back burner for a while and concentrate on more pressing tasks around here. Yeh, that’s probably a Good Idea, what with all those Resolutions staring me in the face every day. 🙂


Note: Downloading the Win7 Beta requires having either Silverlight installed on your Windows box or Moonlight, an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight for Unix systems on your ‘nix box. Using Moonlight was not a happy-making thing on my Ubuntu box, and since I prefer burning ISOs outside VMs anyway (“anyway” because I need to reinstall VMWare Server, you recall), I used a 32-bit WinXP system to download and burn the 64-bit Win7 beta. But. Methought to meself, “Self, better d/l the 32-bit as well,” so went through that super-frustrating experience on my Ubuntu box using Moonlight. Succeeded, but not w/o losing some more hair…

That said and done, here are some direct download links that may work. No promises, and do scan these downloads for malware as you would ANY download.

32-bit Windows 7 Beta direct link

64-bit Windows 7 Beta direct link

Note also that you must visit the Silverlight disenabled Microsoft site to obtain your product key. Oh, you also have to have a Microsoft Live ID. Use a throwaway email address for that, if you wish.

Oh, and (another tagalong) Why Windows 7? The version number Windows 7 calls itself by is Windows version 6.1 (Vista was 6.0). An explanation at the Windows Vista Blog gives some reasons, and if you believe all that jazz, I have some nice bottom land I’d like to sell you (only I’d rather not mention just what it’s on the bottom of).