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Of this we can be sure, because the media repeatedly told us so:

The McCain-Palin campaign today announced that New Hampshire State Representative Doreen Howard, a Democratic legislator from Newmarket, has endorsed John McCain for president. Representative Howard previously supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy.

“As a lifelong Democrat who enthusiastically backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, I am now supporting John McCain.”

I have repeatedly written contemptuously of the general intelligence level of the media, so much so that I occasionally get emails from professional journalists that boil down to little more than whines consisting of “we is too smart, we gots journalist degrees from real gud skools!” The thing that’s so tremendously amusing about this is that they are not only refusing to stop their muddle-headed, counterproductive, pro-Obama activism that has caused so many normal Americans to reject their BS, they’re actually redoubling their efforts to spin, sneer, smear, and surreptitiously cover up their blatant mistakes as they make them.

Few have ever been under any illusion that John McCain was a particularly brilliant individual. He graduated towards the bottom of his Naval Academy class, 894th out of 899, but then, one has to be quite intelligent to get into the Naval Academy in the first place, even as a legacy with heavy hitters behind you. And once one is in, one has to have the intellectual firepower to survive there; the heavy hitters don’t do a plebe any good once he’s at Annapolis.

This isn’t a theoretical statement either. I have a friend who didn’t make it there despite having more heavy hitters behind him than John McCain. And that friend has more than enough brainpower to burn; like most things, success usually requires as much determination as capacity.

Ivy League institutions, on the other hand, have been practicing aggressive affirmative action for decades. If Yale and Harvard degrees aren’t enough to protect George Bush, with his 1206 SAT, from accusations of stupidity, Columbia and Harvard degrees can’t be sufficient to protect Obama from the same, especially in light of the suspicious way in which his test scores are mysteriously unavailable to the public. In short, the logical conclusion is that while Obama doesn’t actually have a two-digit IQ, he’s far less intelligent than most people who have made it to his level, and far less bright than most people assume on the basis of his sheepskins.

While an accomplished speaker from texts, Obama isn’t articulate, in fact, he’s actually worse than George w. Bush, who has impressive elocution issues. It’s becomingly increasingly obvious that Obama is thin-skinned and petty; his response to the poorly-targeted attacks on Palin and McCain has not been to stop and rethink his failed strategy, but rather to amp up the volume. His campaign is committing weekly self-disembowelments, the most recent being an attempt to completely turn off all the elderly voters – the most reliable voters in the electorate – by accusing John McCain of not knowing how to email. Setting aside the total tactical pointlessness of an attack that is at best meaningless to anyone who isn’t a 15-year old girl, it also reveals a total failure to do even the most elementary research considering that McCain has a pretty good excuse for not using email – he can’t type due to the torture he received in Vietnam.

It is remotely possible that Obama isn’t an affirmative action beneficiary. We don’t know – we can’t know – until he proves otherwise by releasing his test scores to the media. However, there is an increasing and near-conclusive body of evidence that indicates Obama not only isn’t experienced enough to be president, he probably isn’t even smart enough to be president.

Which, of course, is precisely why I’m hoping the American electorate is dumb enough to choose the magical negritude of Tweedledummer. Since Americans collectively have negligible interest in anything that might help them avoid their societal plunge off the cliff, I’m primarily looking to see them maximize my entertainment experience.

UPDATE – Ace of Spades discovers a Forbes article that shows the “doesn’t know how to use a computer” ad called “Still” is even dumber than it appeared at second glance: “In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop.”

Attacking the opponent’s strength works for Bill Belicheat because he’s a football genius. It’s clearly not going to work for an affirmative action presidential candidate too dumb to even realize he’s doing it.

Spengler points out that there’s absolutely no point in defending Georgia and Ukraine, so there’s no reason to interfere with Russia playing games in its backyard:

The fact is that there won’t be any Georgians or Ukrainians in the not-too-distant future. By coincidence, Washington’s two favorite beacons of liberty happen to be the two countries with the world’s fastest rate of population decline. By mid-century they will have barely half as many inhabitants as they do today, and half of those who remain will be elderly. Hardly [any] men of military age and women of child-bearing age will remain. Their economies will implode long before the mid-century mark, as soaring retirement costs crush state budgets, and young people emigrate to escape the burden of supporting the elderly.

If they don’t care enough about their nations to propagate, then why in the names of Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson should Americans die for them? As usual, Spengler is three steps ahead of the curve.

It is unbelievable how right-wing bloggers have spent the last 24 hours chucking spears at Senator Obama when he was doing nothing more than calling a spade a spade the other day while attacking those Republican blackguards attempting to carjack his message of change. They clearly did not correctly understand the senator because he is so unexpectedly articulate. And clean.

If the blogosphere would have waited just one cotton-pickin’ moment to think about it, they would have realized two things. First, when Obama referred to “lipstick on a pig”, he was only referring to John McCain’s attempt to remake himself. Second, the only reference to Sarah Palin intended by the senator, who lives in the Gangster Disciples capital of Chicago, was the bit about the fish.

Because, you know, she’s from Alaska, where fishing is a major industry.

Doesn’t this guy have a whole horde of advisors? And none of them warned him that the lipstick and pitbull line probably wasn’t the best one from which to riff?

“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,” Obama said during a town-hall style event here Tuesday night.

And we all know how men of Muslim faith, like Obama, feel about pigs. As for his daily gaffe approach to campaigning, it’s become abundantly clear that despite the media’s praise for his ability as a speaker, this guy doesn’t speak well at all. His gift consists of his voice and his ability to read speeches, not dynamic communication skills. You’ll also note that we haven’t seen his SAT scores either… chances are high that he was an affirmative action Ivy Leaguer. Speaking of piggies, this is why the Democrats aren’t going to able to make the “It’s the Economy Stupid” argument this time around as one might have expected given the collapse of the housing finance system:

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

1. Dodd, Christopher D-CT $133,900

2. Kerry, John D-MA $111,000

3. Obama, Barack D-IL $105,849

4. Clinton, Hillary D-NY $75,550

Unsurprisingly, Camille Paglia is one of the few pro-choice individuals honest enough to admit to the ethically problematic nature of her left-wing ideology:

[T]he pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand….

I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

This was my position before I became a Christian. I always believed abortion was murder, but then, murder is the way of the world. This is why the feminist position has to hide behind a whole host of specious reasons that aren’t capable of standing up to even the most cursory examination – there is, for example, no such thing as a right to one’s body or the government would not collect DNA evidence – and why Democrats consistently lose on this issue. Nearly every left-liberal blog I’ve read since Palin was nominated has blathered on about how her pro-life stance politically dooms her, despite the fact that she has 80 percent approval ratings in Alaska. Since her pro-life position is presumably well known to Alaskans, we can safely conclude that, as usual, these left-liberals have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

It is their guilty knowledge of their immorality when judged by traditional and historical standards that lies behind the drive of the Enlightenment 2.0 crowd to attempt creating a new and better moral system. I expect them to have no more success in this regard than their intellectual predecessors, the National Socialists and the Soviet Communists, had in attempting to create new and better humanities.

John Scalzi offers six reasons there are no serious critics of electronic games:

You actually have to be able to play the video games. Useful and valid criticism requires some academic knowledge of the field you want to criticize. But once you’ve got that, the input portion of criticism is generally pretty easy: With film, you (primarily) watch with your eyes. With music, you (primarily) listen with your ears. You’re done. Video games, however, require an additional skill, and that is to be able to play the game. Therein lies a problem: The hermeneutics of video games require a whole lot of button-mashing. How many critics are both able to get through a boss level and tell you what it means as a social construct? In the future, probably a lot. At the moment: Not so many.

I’d add seventh and eighth reasons: the reason you’ll never see any great game reviewers or critics is because once one establishes enough of a reputation, some developer or publisher is going to want to get you on their team. Perhaps that hypothetical critic will prefer to criticize, but few guys who love games would turn down the opportunity to make them even if the money weren’t considerably better. And few gamers – or even game developers these days – have the encyclopedic knowledge of games that most film critics possess of movies.

We are amused to be informed that John Hawkins just can’t resist the Palin-bait:

As RWN’s regular readers already know, I have been a harsh critic of John McCain for a long time and back in May, I wrote a post called, “Why I Will No Longer Support John McCain For President.” That post was widely linked and was probably why I was blackballed from the Republican National Convention. However, I’ve been wavering on my “non-vote” in the 2008 election for a while. That’s not because I’ve warmed up to McCain; it’s because of my concerns about Barack Obama.

Of course, it goes without saying that Obama is incredibly liberal, too inexperienced to be President, has terrible judgment (See Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers), and isn’t particularly bright for a senator (See his 57 states gaffe, among others). However, the real problem with Obama isn’t just that he’s incompetent, it’s that he’s an incompetent who seems to think he’s a genius. Never has a man so unaccomplished been so overly proud of his non-achievements…. it may have been Barack’s inability to do the job that had me rethinking my non-vote for McCain, but it has been the Left’s treatment of Sarah Palin that put me over the top.

And, of course, it is the MOSTEST IMPORTANTEST ELECTION EVAR! I only wonder if having a book entitled None of the Above will be enough to prevent Mr. Farah from repeating his dramatic quadrennial return to the fold. For those who might wonder if it’s possible that I would follow suit… the short answer is no, that’s not going to happen. I’ve never voted for a Republican presidential candidate before and I’m not about to start now.

Ace of Spades nails why normal people, even those who aren’t conservative and don’t have much use for conservatives, hate liberals:

Ultimately the liberals’ sin is their smugness. Not even so much because most people recoil from the assumption of superiority, both intellectual and moral, by those who have accomplished nothing exceptional in life except for reliably voting and “thinking” liberal, as if casting a vote the “correct” way slaps 30 points on to your IQs and counts for 100 hours of community service and child mentoring. No, the main problem with that smugness, that belief that you’re sooo very fucking clever, is that you’re actually not particularly clever at all, and the great gap between your personal estimation of your intelligence and the actual real-world measure of it is wide enough to stumble into and take a painful fall.

This is insightful and points to an idiosyncracy of American society that I touched upon tangentially in The Irrational Atheist. John Edwards talked of Two Americas, but there are actually Two American Liberalisms. One is highly educated, wealthier, and more intelligent than the norm, the other is distinctly uneducated, poor, and less intelligent. The latter group is also significantly larger than the former, by a factor that ranges somewhere between 4x to 20x depending upon where you place the limits on either side.

Here’s the relevant passage: “While Democrats are heavily favored by highly educated individuals… the party’s support from society’s least-educated individuals is not only every bit as strong, but is more electorally important. Voters with postgraduate schooling were only 25 percent more likely to vote for the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2004 while those who did not complete high school were 90 percent more likely to identify themselves as Democrats. Since there are 75 percent more Americans who have never completed high school (16.4 percent of adults over twenty-five) than who possess an advanced degree (9.4 percent) this means that despite their reputation for being the party of the most highly educated, Democrats are nevertheless more than twice as likely to be someone who has dropped out of high school than to be an individual with a master’s degree.

There’s actually more Republicans with college degrees than Democrats; college grads voted for Bush 52-46 in 2004. Also, as a reader pointed out recently, it’s important to keep in mind that the most-educated group is only an approximation for the most-intelligent group. Since as been previously shown, those majoring in education are the very least intelligent of the college-educated – with an estimated average IQ of 91 – the large numbers of M.Ed.- and D. Ed.-holders who disproportionately lean Democrat further reduces the number of genuinely intelligent individuals in that most-educated 9.4 percent of the population. That factor probably isn’t enough to entirely make up for the 25-percent Democrat advantage, but does reduce it significantly.

So, the upshot is that there is a relatively small number of intelligent people and a much larger number of unintelligent people holding the same political views. This latter group has a very strong tendency to believe they are themselves intelligent because they share those views, when the truth is that they merely happen to be rooting for the same team. I don’t think even the average member of the more numerous group would assume that because a child with surplus chromosomes living in St. Paul supports the Vikings, he is as intelligent as a member of Mensa who also happens to be a lifelong Purple devotee. And yet, most Democrats seriously believe they are more intelligent than Republicans solely because they support the same political team as their intellectual superiors of the same stripe, even though it’s obvious that they are, as a matter of empirically established fact, markedly LESS intelligent than the supporters of the other side.

That’s the reality. Now, for the implications that Ace mentions. Think about how many people react poorly to my arrogant flaunting of my intelligence. Even some of those who are in ideological accord with me and find my reasoning to be remarkably astute loathe it. Those who tend to disagree with me hate it so much that they often find it outrageously provocative that I mention my Mensa membership in my WND bio, which I always find highly amusing since that ever-so-lofty threshhold is more than an SD below my tested IQ. It’s a gauntlet of contempt hurled in the face of the reader, so it’s no surprise that many should find it off-putting even though I reliably back it up.

Consider, then, the probable reaction of the normal individual to a similar attitude copped by someone with sub-standard intelligence, and then think about how unconvincing he would find any arguments presented by such an irritatingly clueless idiot. This is why the smugness and conceit of both Democratic politicians and grass-roots Democrats alike is so off-putting, not only to Republicans but also to independents and third-party people like me; it’s like being lectured about mathematics by someone who has never heard of algebra or geometry, but is inordinately proud of his ability to multiply two numbers and assumes that you’re still getting by with addition.

By way of example, I give you John Scalzi – a High Democrat of the First American Liberalism – attempting to lecture the hysterical Low Democrats of the Second American Liberalism about the basic realities of American politics at the most public level. While his analysis isn’t quite correct – Obama can’t and won’t argue on the real issues since he and McCain are practically identical on everything from nationalizing housing to immigration and adventures abroad – he’s entirely right to tell them to grow up and realize that Obama was never going to be wafted into the White House on the strength of his pure heart, his magical negritude and the adoration of the masses.

For another example, consider how the more scorn the Democrats pour on Sarah Palin, the more independents move towards McCain. If McCain can maintain a strong advantage among independents, the election is over.

The execrable Dooche takes the first rule and destroys it like Dirk Diggler hitting an underage hymen:

Any time I engage with one of my conservative friends or family members, or sometimes the conservative commenters on this website, it usually devolves into them screaming about WELFARE! and TAXES! and THE GOVERNMENT IS TAKING MY MONEY AND GIVING IT TO PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK! And what they don’t understand is that this is not the issue at all. What I and many of my more liberal friends want is to HELP people, not give them a free ride, but also not to ignore those who would benefit from us tossing them a life jacket.

No, what Dooche and many of her more liberal friends want to do is HELP PEOPLE TO MONEY STOLEN FROM OTHER PEOPLE. There is nothing to discuss here, the facts are settled. Liberals don’t give money to those in need, they clamor for the government to take money from other people and give it to those in need. It is a proven empirical fact that conservatives in general and religious conservatives in particular give more money to those in need and spend more of their time helping those in need. There’s nothing keeping Dooche from helping out anyone who needs it, but of course, she won’t, because as a good liberal, she thinks that screeching about what she thinks other people should be forced to do is tantamount to actually helping them. It isn’t.

Thank you so very much, Rachel Lucas, for bringing my attention to this horrifying intellectual vaccuum… you’d think I would have learned my lesson the first time I made the mistake of reading one of Dooche’s extraordinarily clueless posts.