At 1:18 PM -0800 10/31/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
And unlike Bush, he can actually read.
C'mon Bill, that's not fair.
You keep thinking that, Mr. Pox. That's just the way he likes it...
Cheers,
RAH
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/politics/campaign/24points.html?pagewanted=printposition=
The New York Times
October 24, 2004
POLITICAL POINTS
Secret Weapon for Bush?
By JOHN TIERNEY
To Bush-bashers, it may be the most infuriating revelation yet from the
military records of the two presidential candidates: the young George W.
Bush probably had a higher I.Q. than did the young John Kerry.
That, at least, is the conclusion of Steve Sailer, a conservative
columnist at the Web magazine Vdare.com and a veteran student of
presidential I.Q.'s. During the last presidential campaign Mr. Sailer
estimated from Mr. Bush's SAT score (1206) that his I.Q. was in the
mid-120's, about 10 points lower than Al Gore's.
Mr. Kerry's SAT score is not known, but now Mr. Sailer has done a
comparison of the intelligence tests in the candidates' military records.
They are not formal I.Q. tests, but Mr. Sailer says they are similar enough
to make reasonable extrapolations.
Mr. Bush's score on the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test at age 22 again
suggests that his I.Q was the mid-120's, putting Mr. Bush in about the 95th
percentile of the population, according to Mr. Sailer. Mr. Kerry's I.Q. was
about 120, in the 91st percentile, according to Mr. Sailer's extrapolation
of his score at age 22 on the Navy Officer Qualification Test.
Linda Gottfredson, an I.Q. expert at the University of Delaware, called it
a creditable analysis said she was not surprised at the results or that so
many people had assumed that Mr. Kerry was smarter. People will often be
misled into thinking someone is brighter if he says something complicated
they can't understand, Professor Gottfredson said.
Many Americans still believe a report that began circulating on the
Internet three years ago, and was quoted in Doonesbury, that Mr. Bush's
I.Q. was 91, the lowest of any modern American president. But that report
from the non-existent Lovenstein Institute turned out to be a hoax.
You might expect Kerry campaign officials, who have worried that their
candidate's intellectual image turns off voters, to quickly rush out a
commercial trumpeting these new results, but for some reason they seem to
be resisting the temptation.
Upon hearing of their candidate's score, Michael Meehan, a spokesman for
the senator, said merely: The true test is not where you start out in
life, but what you do with those God-given talents. John Kerry's 40 years
of public service puts him in the top percentile on that measure.
--
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R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
