Just watched Megyn Kelly being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN, and she’s a very impressive woman, physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
I’ve long had respect for her because she’s one of the few “conservatives” to have opposed the Iraq war before it began, but I also have to admire the courage she’s showing in writing about Trump in her new book. You would think after the attack Trump unleashed on her when he was just a candidate for the Republican nomination, she’d be terrified of him. At the time she claims Trump unleashed his army of twitter followers on her, but pretty soon, he’ll have the full power of the Presidency, an institution that has become increasingly powerful in recent years.
On the other hand, standing up to Trump will make Megyn a hero to the millions of Americans who are devastated by him wining the Presidency and could send her book sales through the roof.
Nobody understands Trump voters better than Michael Moore. As I’ve noted before, his speech explaining Trump’s appeal was the best political speech of this entire political season. Nothing else even came close:
Devastated by the victory of Donald Trump, Michael Moore has been despondent since Nov 9th, and has been roaming the streets of New York city aimlessly. He saw a bunch of people protesting Trump and decided to join them. Like all socially insightful people, Moore is probably at risk for psychosis, and the thought of a Trump’s Presidency was slipping him into almost suicidal depression.
And then Oprah, speaking on Entertainment Tonight, gave him a moment of hope:
Moore has wanted Oprah to run for President for over a decade, because she was one of the only major U.S. media to jump off the pro-Iraq war bandwagon months before the war began, and courageously showed an incredibly subversive anti-war montage Moore had created, just 48 hours before the invasion:
Less well known is that Oprah and her spiritual guru Marianne Williamson even had the wisdom to oppose the war in Afghanistan, which was also a disaster for America. Very few Americans had the self-awareness to look critically at American foreign policy at this time:
Moore’s love for Oprah is also an example of Rushton’s genetic similarity theory. Both Moore and Oprah struggle with their weight, so by advancing Oprah, Moore’s obesity genes are behaving selfishly, as Richard Dawkins might say.
Similarly the skinny Jared Kushner getting the overweight Chris Christie (who put Jared’s father in jail) fired from Trump’s inner circle is an example of the dark side of selfish genes.
I used to think Megyn Kelly had an IQ equivalent of around 133 (white norms), because I thought she claimed to have scored at the 95 percentile on the LSAT, but upon listening carefully to her interview with Howard Stern, she actually claims to have scored scored at “only” the 85th percentile and on the SAT, not the LSAT (see 8:45 mark in below video)
That’s still a very good score, though not quite good enough to qualify as Extremely Bright. About one in seven SAT takers scored as high or higher than Megyn, but since only one third of U.S. teens took the SAT, and virtually 100% of the top talent did (and whatever shortfall, was negated by bright foreign test takers, Ron Hoeflin argued), the rarity of Megyn’s score triples when compared to all Americans of her cohort (not just the college bound third).
Thus being in the top 15% of SAT takers might have been crudely equivalent to being in the top 5% of her entire U.S. cohort, and thus equivalent to IQ 125 (U.S. norms; 124 U.S. white norms). I suspect Megyn’s IQ is typical of U.S. media elites, though Megyn is more successful than most because in addition to being smarter than 95% of her generation, she’s better looking than perhaps 99%. That’s a powerful combination.
Meanwhile Howard Stern is perhaps the biggest ass-kisser in the history of media. Although he prides himself in being a media bad boy and rebel, he’s actually a boot-licker in the extreme, and a vulgar and crude one to boot. He can’t stop gushing about how smart and good looking Megyn is, and how hot Stern’s wife thinks Megyn is. He also gushes over the good looks of male stars too, and it’s embarrassing, and while this comes across as the authentic hero worship, it’s also a calculated attempt to get powerful celebrities to befriend him. I suspect Stern’s Theory of Mind IQ is a lot higher than his overall IQ though his use of it is shameless.
Although I do have some grudging respect for his black co-host Robin Quivers. While she obviously has some talent and the two of them have genuine chemistry, let’s be honest: she’s also largely a token he uses to avoid looking racist and sexist when he rips on blacks and women. And she shrewdly sucks up to him to keep the money rolling in, but deep down you can tell she doesn’t respect him and is forcing herself to laugh at his jokes.
One of the funniest moments in media history was when former daytime talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael invited Robin on her show, and went Robin appeared on TV, the Sally’s show placed the caption “I hate my race” under Robin’s image. What evidence did they have that Robin hates her race? The mere fact that she works for Howard. LOL. When Stern heard about this he went ballistic:
Incredibly sad news. PBS journalist Gwen Ifill has passed away this week. I wasn’t lucky enough to watch her show, but I admired and respected her from her other public appearances.
My favorite memory of her was during the 2004 Vice Presidential debate when Democratic VP nominee John Edwards went on the attack against then Vice President Dick Cheney, and debate moderator Ifill turned to Cheney and said “your response?”
“I have a response,” said Cheney “but it’s going to take more than 30 seconds.”
“Well, that’s all you got,” replied Ifill, to laughter from the audience.
The WTF look on Cheney’s face, when he realized this was one journalist he couldn’t bully, was priceless.
Since the 1970s, the black-white IQ gap has dramatically shrunk on scholastic tests:
For example, on a scale where white 12th graders average 100, the reading scores of black 12th graders would have increased from IQ 80 in the 1970s to IQ 90 in recent years.
Meanwhile the math scores of black 12th graders have increased from IQ 82 in the 1970s to IQ 86 in recent years.
Assuming about a 0.67 correlation between reading and math skill from the 1970s to today, this suggests the composite scholastic black IQ has increased from IQ 79 in the 1970s to IQ 87 in recent years. A gain of 8 points!
But on official adult IQ tests like the WAIS, the black-white IQ gap has been stable since the 1970s, and probably since the pre-Wechsler IQ tests of WWI.
When the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Revised) (WAIS-R) was normed in 1978, whites outscored blacks by 14.6 points (U.S. norms). By the time the WAIS-IV was normed in 2006, the gap was 15.7 points.
What this suggests is that in past decades, scholastic tests underestimated the intelligence of blacks while official IQ tests have not. This is also consistent with the Minnesota transracial adoption study done in the 1970s, where blacks kids adopted into upper middle class white homes scored 10 IQ points higher than the black average on scholastic tests, but not at all above the black average on the WAIS-R.
Of course, this was not an apples to apples comparison of the gap on achievement tests and official IQ tests, since the scholastic data is from 12th graders while the WAIS data is from adults of all ages
I was very pleased to see Trump and Obama strike a conciliatory tone this afternoon, with Trump calling Obama a good man, and saying he looks forward to seeking his council many, many times in the future.
Trump WORSHIPS Oprah so we know, deep down he’s a good person, and he will not want to undermine Oprah’s legacy, by destroying all the accomplishments of the man she was so instrumental in electing, but more importantly, Trump wants to unite the country, and what better way to do that, than by showing the first black President some respect.
Sadly, a lot of people were disgusted by thought of an Ivy League black man arrogantly strutting around the white house for 8 years, so perhaps Trump felt compelled to put Obama in his place by questioning his citizenship and admission to Ivy League schools, but now that Obama has been humbled, and Trump’s huge ego has been fed, he can admire Obama for his historic accomplishments.
However one of Obama’s goals was putting distance between America and the policy’s of Israel’s Likud party.
Not that Obama’s anti-Semitic. He loves the Jewish people, and so many of them love him and worked to elect him, but at the same time, Obama wanted to send a message to the World, especially the anti-Israel segment of the Arab world, that the U.S. is not Netanyahu’s puppet.
However Netanyahu hated Obama for this, and wants to convince Americans that Israel and the U.S. are two sides of the same coin, so he’s wasted no time in reaching out to Trump, calling him a friend, and Trump is being pressured to side completely with Israel against the Palestinians.
Meanwhile Trump’s beautiful and articulate daughter Ivanka is caught in the middle. On the one hand, her husband Jared Kushner is Jewish and like ambitious men of any race, he probably wants a powerful position in the Trump cabinet, and her children are half-Jewish so siding with Israel is in their ethnic genetic interests.
On the other hand, she loves her dad more than life itself, and doesn’t want him to be seen as a puppet the way George W. Bush was.
But, although Trump can be ignorant about some topics, he strikes me as far too shrewd to not understand Jewish politics, especially after spending decades in New York real-estate. He is loved by both pro-Israel extremists and anti-Semitic white nationalists and has pandered to both on more than one occasion.
I normally don’t like to make too many posts in one day, but I felt this comment by black national merit finalist ruhkukah captured this historic moment so well it deserved to be highlighted:
I saw Trump’s victory coming. I mean, I wasn’t 100% sure, but it made sense to me. I figured there was no way the polls would be completely accurate, given that a lot of whites wouldn’t admit to voting for Trump. And given increasing racial tension/resentment/partisanship, Trump’s election makes sense. Because ultimately this isn’t about Trump, but about the issues he brought into focus (political correctness, white working class resentment, the national/global elite).
I just checked my Facebook feed. Pretty everyone on both sides of my family is despondent, except for my one crazy uncle who went for Trump. Most of the minority people I’m friends with on Facebook (a lot of Asian and South American immigrants) are despondent, too. One white liberal friend of mine says they might be leaving for Canada or going to therapy.
What this means for the future, I don’t know. As a black man, I don’t think my day-to-day life will change. I am actually somewhat excited about a Trump presidency. I hope he does reduce immigration and fix our trade deals.
Will this election open up further discussion of racial/gender/class taboos, particular those regarding IQ and genetics? Probably, and that’s only a good thing, because instead of people talking about such taboos in a furtive manner on blogs like this one, people can have an adult conversation, face-to-face, and acknowledge what most people already accept, on some level. Enough of this political correctness BS which creates more anger and resentment from all sides.
More extreme outcomes of this election may be reversal of Obama’s policies (as Pumpkin mentioned, and very possible), the actual building of a wall (which I think is somewhat unlikely), more policing in urban neighborhoods (possible), and increased conflict with other nations (likely, not actual wars though).
Domestically, could this lead to an up-rising of white nationalists/supremacists? Who knows. I don’t think most whites are that angry….yet. Although it has emboldened people like David Duke. I don’t foresee a return of Jim Crow or a race war, but do think race relations will change somewhat in a way most people are not predicting…
Well, after ending on that ominous note, I’m glad you’re taking off moderation Pumpkin!
I had also thought of ruhkukah’s point about whites not wanting to admit to pollsters they supported Trump, as this is a variant of the well known Bradley effect, named after African American mayor Tom Bradley, who lost the 1982 California governor’s race despite being ahead in the polls, because whites lied to pollsters about supporting him, out of fear of looking racist.
However no Bradley effect appeared to distort Barack Obama’s election results, so I kind of figured that was largely a thing of the past. I guess I was wrong, or perhaps the problem with the polls had more to do with identifying “likely voters” in such an unpredictable election than it had to do with a Bradley effect. It will be fascinating to see the analysis of why the polling went awry.
Speaking of poignant black reactions to Trump’s victory, CNN’s Van Jones had a great moment last night. This brought a tear to my eye:
Early Tuesday morning I checked Rasmussen Reports daily tracking poll and it had Clinton at 45% and Trump at 43%, and I thought, if even a poll as Trump friendly as Rasmussen had him losing to Clinton right before the election, it’s unlikely he will win. I knew that he would turnout the white working class more than most polls predicted, but with changing demographics, I didn’t think there’d be enough of them for him to win. I also figured they’d be negated by huge turnout in the Hispanic community.
But I guess the tie breaker was blacks, who probably turned out at much lower levels than they had for Obama.
Trump must be so incredibly happy. One Trump expert on TV was saying that a lot of Trump’s rhetoric against the elite stemmed from the fact that he was never truly accepted by other rich people, who looked down on him for being a philistine. Perhaps his constant boasting about his wealth and elite education was not just savvy marketing, but an attempt to prove himself worthy.
Well tonight Trump took his revenge by rising to a level of power, far above other elites. Mark Cuban and Michael Bloomberg must be pulling their hair out in jealousy.
On The O’reilly Factor, Geraldo Rivera suggested that Trump ran for President as revenge for Barack Obama “humiliating” him at the white house correspondence dinner.
Trump has made them all eat humble pie.
His ego is going to be worse than ever, since he’s proved all the pollsters, politicians and pundits wrong, without any political experience whatsoever.
I just hoping he doesn’t destroy the legacy of the first black President by killing what some consider his greatest accomplishments: The Iran nuclear deal (which some feel prevented WWIII) and Obamacare.
Meanwhile one can’t help but feel sorry for Hillary. All her life, she had largely one goal: become the First woman president. She tolerated the humiliation of her husband’s affairs and even lowered herself to taking orders from Obama for 4 years (the freshman senator who dethroned her) all in an effort to reach that life long prize, and just when she had it in her grasp, it was taken from her again.
Just goes to show that no matter how smart you are, the Presidency is not really something you can strategize your way to decades in the future. You just have to be the right person for the right time, and smart enough to recognize it, and not screw it up.
It also shows regression to the mean. For the Clintons to have reached the white house even once was an incredibly rare achievement, akin to winning a massive lottery, so to expect to be able to repeat that, is really pushing your luck.
I’ve decided to try to keep the blog as un-moderated as possible, but at the same time I’m going to start banning or moderating people who repeatedly make racist comments.
This is NOT a right-wing blog, this is a blog for people of all races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds to share our views about the fascinating topics of intelligence, anthropology, and evolutionary biology.
That’s not to deny that there might be large genetic differences between different races and ethnic groups in traits as valued as intelligence and character, however these differences must be discussed with scholarly evidence, and in a way that makes people of all races feel welcome and valued, and with an understanding that these are only AVERAGE differences, and that brilliant and wonderful people are found in every ethnic and racial demographic.
Pumpkin Person 