Here’s a petition asking MSNBC to fire Uncle Pat:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ask-msnbc-to-fire-pat-buchanan

God don’t fire him!  Relics are hard to find.  We need to hear this bullshit from time to time to remind us that it still exists.

I saw the segment.  Rachel held it together but she in no way backed down.

Part of me is still holding out hope that Pat Buchanan is just a performance art piece or some schmo who was dared about 50 years ago to act like an ass on TV until no station would air him and he really takes dares seriously. No? Damn.

Perhaps it’s a good thing to let the public watch a representative crazy old racist fuck getting older and older. Then again, I was expecting racism to gradually be dying away; it’s the cases where it isn’t the crazy old fucks who are racist that shock. The parents at the swimming club can’t be all that old, even though their ideas are hella antiquated.

Pat Buchanan should live on MSNBC for ever.  There’s nothing better for liberalism than to see the opposition portrayed with complete candor, by a crazed old racist.

I think the same thing about Fred Phelps, though he at least really forces his way into people’s lives when they wish he would go the fuck away.  But give him a show on Fox News, and watch people jump ship from the GOP.

You know, while it’s important that we make sure people know that this country wasn’t “basically built by white folks,” it actually wouldn’t matter if it were.

I don’t recall this being a “to the victor goes the spoils” situation; I don’t think the Founders built this country so that they could rule over it.

Secondly, while grade inflation may or may not be a real problem at Princeton now, it certainly wasn’t an issue in 1977, when Sotomayor graduated.

Thirdly, Sure, she was an affirmative-action baby. Most sane people would look at her early school career and her post-school career and say, “Hmmm - evidently, your grades in your first few years of school don’t necessarily mean you’re not smart enough to be a long-standing, well-reputed appeals-court judge.” Only in PatWorld do your fifth-grade marks mean more than your 17-year career on the bench.

Fourth, the question that was screaming to be asked: “Pat, the country may have been 90% white when you were growing up 50-60 years ago, but it isn’t anymore. Yet the Supreme Court still is. Does this not suggest a problem to you?”

Remember all of those “white folks” who built the railroads?  And the “white folks” who built Washington DC?  How about the “white folks” who still harvest most of our produce?

Yep, this country sure was “built by white folks,” if by “built” you mean “made slaves and immigrants do the actual work while taking all of the credit.”

Well, God Bless Buchanan’s little pea-pickin’ heart…

Or better, may God damn his empty soul to Hell…

Seriously, the economic engine of American progress was slavery. Enslaved black people fed the nation as agricultural workers, and they did other building work. And for free! If the early white Americans didn’t have slaves doing all that work for free, their prosperity would have been much more limited.

Now, if you point this out to a racist, they’ll find it to be a great justification for bringing slavery back. Why, what a boon for business during this recession! Free workers who don’t get health coverage!

“You should make this “Modest Proposal” to them, in all seriousness.”

...don’t think they haven’t already thought of it…

I can’t believe how angry he is.  I have nothing coherent to say about his racist drivel.  Holy shit.

What I think is most telling is the fact that Pat insists that Sarah Palin has real accomplishments to her name that she has built a career off of, while Sotomayor is an empty suit who’s getting ahead just because she’s a Latina.

I don’t know how you get there, but once you are there, it seems pretty obvious you aren’t coming back.

I don’t know if it’s worth dragging him out time and again. I don’t like to pollute my beautiful mind listening to his garbage.

While I think Maddow did a good job of holding her ground, and that there is some usefulness in giving people like Buchanan rope to hang themselves and/or enough exposure to make them known as the crazies they are, I think enough is enough. His racist views are not news to us surely, he has made a career of them and I don’t see the need to continue giving him a platform to express them. He’s on the bloody payroll! I realise that there is the danger of the ‘liberal media’ being criticised for only interviewing and including other lefties, but seriously if Pat Buchanan wants to continue to spew such hatred he can do it on his own time and money.

I don’t think the Founders built this country so that they could rule over it.

Sure they did, but you know what?  Who cares?

Seriously, the economic engine of American progress was slavery. Enslaved black people fed the nation as agricultural workers, and they did other building work. And for free! If the early white Americans didn’t have slaves doing all that work for free, their prosperity would have been much more limited.

I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but I’m wondering if there are empirical studies proving this.  Slavery was ruled out in the North early on because it wasn’t profitable, and the South, with the exception of large plantation owners, was very poor up until the 20th century.  It doesn’t seem like slavery was all that profitable in the long run, which just makes the South’s commitment to it that much more ironic.

Well us white folks did work awfully hard at stealing natural resources, genocide, enslaving thousands, exploiting others labor (including children) to make this country what it is.

-anonlololol

Um, jimbo, since when does Affirmative Action apply to being honored as valedictorian and as Summa Cum Laude?

And have you ever actually been around bright people?  “She “struggled” her freshman year and then went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude.”  I’m guessing that her definition of “struggled” might be a little different, especially if she went on to get Summa Cum Laude.  We’re probably talking getting a B instead of an A, not getting F’s…

...and you know what?  None of this matters in the least, because this whole “she’s really stupid!” thing is just a trollish thread derailment played out in real life, just like the “OMG she’s a racist!” thing.

Sessions got dropped for a judgeship for being a well documented (and proud of it) racist, so he’s taking it out on the popular Democratic President’s first SCOTUS pick.  She already has more judicial experience than the last several Republican picks, and the fact she hasn’t stood up, walked over to Lindsey Graham and given him a slap on his face (making him cry like a little girl) proves she has the right temperament. 

You assholes treat her like she’s the maid come to clean your hotel room.  No wonder the rest of us are disgusted.  And you’re all so oblivious you can’t see it. 

You and assholes like Buchanan, Sessions, Limbaugh, and the rest of the we-yousta-be-Democratic-racists-but-now-we’re-Republican-racists coalition deserve each other. and since the rest of America has finally gotten fed up with your shit, you have a long time to cling to it and smear it around before you’re given another chance…

Wow. Not even a good troll. The SAT and LSAT people base their whole schtick on the notion that scores predict performance in college or law school. That’s why colleges and law schools use them to rank students. If the tests give crappy scores to people who turn out to be valedictorians or at the top of their class in law school, then QED.

Buchanan does know that, as an Irish Catholic, he would have probably be sent away if he tried to participate in the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, right?

Funny how he defends white males while, by late XVIII century standards, Buchanan himself would have been considered not white enough. We can add self delusion to the negative features listed in the posts above.

Oh and, jumpinjim, it’d be better if you came back AFTER passing Logic 101. Maybe then your contributions would make some sense.

Shorter jumpinjim:  She’s female and Latina, so she must be stupid. 

Have a nice wilderness, dude.

Built by white folks?  You mean, like most of the capitol buildings?  Yeah, right.

Of course, most of the country was built FOR white folks, on the backs and lives of immigrants and slaves and native americans laying rails and high steel.

It’s easy to make such pronouncements when you realize that so many people who were not white or white enough at the time were excluded and even prevented and prohibited from owning property - see also Coretta Scott’s father.

I think what people are trying to say, jumpinjim - at least, what I’m trying to say - is: Sotomayor got great grades in high school. She eventually got great grades at Princeton. She did extremely well in law school. She had a standout career as a lawyer. She’s had a standout career as a judge. She didn’t have great SAT or LSAT scores.

One of these things is not like the other.

Like I said above, that’s why she says she’s an affirmative-action baby, and I can’t think of a better advertisement for affirmative action: “Hmm. Maybe there’s a reason besides stupidity that the Latina with the great grades didn’t get such great test scores. Let’s take a chance on her - maybe she’ll turn out OK.”

I have little doubt her “cultural bias” accusation of the SAT and LSAT is a self-serving rationalization for having done poorly relative to other Princeton and Yale students.

Studies have shown the racial bias of the tests.  EDT has worked for a couple decades now trying to fix that.

Having attended a premier university, and having volunteer with the development office, I can tell you exactly how important SAT/LSAT scores are.

Not very.

You are expected to have good grades, and SATs help weed out high schools—some schools inflate their grades.  Minimum SAT scores matter, as do grades, just to show that you can handle the work.

But Stanford/Harvard/Yale/Princeton can more than fill their classes with perfect SATs and straight A students.  It’s not primary.

What is important are your essays and your teacher recommendations.  They want recommendations that say you are one of the best students the teacher has ever had.  They want essays that show intelligence and personality.  They want extracurriculars that show scholarly interests/work ethic/volunteerism.  Your teacher recs and essays are what gets you in.  The SAT and your grades just open the door.

That said…the woman has more judicial experience than any SCOTUS judge in the past 100 years.  Talking about her SAT scores in relation to her capabilities is STUPID.  We have thousands of actual cases that demonstrate her abilities.

The fact that she graduated summa cume laude and has been a successful judge and will be a member of SCOTUS just shows that the racial biases of the 70s SATs were bad.  It shows that affirmative action was necessary to break down barriers, b/c there is no reason that this woman should have been denied admittance to either college or law school.  Especially not for a standardized, multichoice, fill in the blank, questionnaire that at most was 10% of her application.

Why can’t you look at her work as a judge—you know, actually doing the work that would be required of the new position?  What possible benefit does it do to look at SAT scores <i>when we know she graduated Summa Cum Laude?  Her scores were not a good predictor of her success.  In fact, SAT scores are so bad at predicting success that more and more schools are DROPPING THEM ENTIRELY.

Sour grapes quote versus actual performance.  Typical conservative whining that their opinions of people who are not like them but still kick their fucking asses at life are waaaayyy more truthier than actual verifiable facts!

Sorry Dumb Asstino, but whining by also-rans is not solid evidence when compared to her stellar career and vast experience on the federal bench.

Note to Jumpinjim:

My math SATs were mediocre, and I barely managed a high enough math GRE to get into graduate school.  Does this mean that I should send my undergraduate diploma back to Smith since I’m “clearly not Ivy League [Seven Sisters] material”?  I’m genuinely curious since by your lights I should have given up when I proved unable to handle freshman German and gone to Penn State or Pitt like the rest of my high school class.

While well-liked, she was not considered the brightest in her year, according to many classmates. ...

And while most of her classmates said they are confident that Sotomayor would serve as an excellent justice if confirmed, over half of those interviewed said that, 30 years ago, news of her selection would have surprised them.

“If you had come up with a list of people in our class that would be named to the Supreme Court, she would not have been on it,” said one former classmate.

So, wait.  A woman of color studying law in the late seventies would not have been predicted by her peers as a SCOTUS pick?  Really?! I think we can put this baby to bed, folks.  If the totally open-minded and forward-thinking graduate students of the late seventies Ivies didn’t see star-power in a latina lawyer, then nothing she has done before, during, or since law school matters.

[quoting Orange on 07/17 at 02:51 PM]  Seriously, the economic engine of American progress was slavery. Enslaved black people fed the nation as agricultural workers, and they did other building work. And for free! If the early white Americans didn’t have slaves doing all that work for free, their prosperity would have been much more limited.[/unquote]

I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but I’m wondering if there are empirical studies proving this.  Slavery was ruled out in the North early on because it wasn’t profitable, and the South, with the exception of large plantation owners, was very poor up until the 20th century.  It doesn’t seem like slavery was all that profitable in the long run, which just makes the South’s commitment to it that much more ironic.
keshmeshi on 07/17 at 04:37 PM

As I understand it it isn’t “a study,” it’s the solid consensus of any serious economic history of the USA.

A fairly recent book by Kevin Phillips (forget the title right now) gives some sense of scale—in the context of proposals that slavery be abolished with compensation to the slaveholders. At prevailing market prices, buying out all the slaveholders and freeing the slaves would have cost half the estimated value of all business enterprises in the entire nation!

The Southern plantation economy generated the vast majority of our export revenues in the first half of the 19th century; it provided a major source of investment funds in the nation as a whole.

This was changing; as the North industrialized and western farmers started producing on a continental scale. But probably that change was precisely why the South seceded when it did; before that there was no question that the Southern economic contribution dominated and hence the South dominated politically as well.

The idea that slavery is “irrational” (as opposed to immoral) in all circumstances was promoted by Adam Smith. But he was wrong in the context of the sorts of plantation economies that dominated the US in our early history and for that matter were the foundation of the first British Empire and the other European colonial empires before. “Free” labor is indeed more rational and profitable—when the labor force is reliably tied to a capitalist economy; that is when workers have no access to the means of production save taking capitalist jobs. Developed capitalist societies accomplish this by pre-empting all alternative places their workforces can go.

But the immensely profitable New World plantations—eventually cotton, before that tobacco, and most of all sugar in the tropics—worked by introducing ecologically exotic crops into “virgin” soil, and typically over-exploiting that soil. They had to keep moving onto new frontiers and in the 18th and 19th centuries this meant their prospective workers would be adjacent to territory their profit-seeking <strike>exploiters</strike> employers did not fully control. Free workers could just quit and head west and live on subsistence there, probably mingling with Native Americans and other escaped workers. Thus slavery, binding the workers to the work by sheer force, despite its costs was more profitable than the alternative—either no workforce or one paid the vast majority of the revenue from the product.

Slavery would have eventually become less profitable, and was probably well on its way to that end, but it hadn’t got there yet.

And in fact, in physical terms, it was the slaves who built the South. I think Orange overstates a bit—they didn’t generally feed the white population; rather the slave plantations were generally fed by free farmers. (Before the Revolution, one of the major roles of the Continental British North American colonies was to feed the British West Indies). But the slaves did “feed” the profits of the Atlantic economy’s owners.

Smith wished it was otherwise, for both humane and for ideological reasons. But he was wrong on this point.

Anyone who can argue with a straight face that someone who graduated their high school and college at the top of their class is stupid based on that person’s scores on a test that, at the time, had many well-known biases against minorities (and women), is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly disingenuous.

Nice attempt to derail, Dumb Asstino. 

The reality is that she has had a stellar career and extensive judicial experience and record.  Nothing that any wanker or law professor says can change the fact that she is the most qualified nominee in 100 years.

Talk away if you like to hear yourself talk.  Otherwise, nobody is really listening to the bullshit circus when there is solid grounded reality available.

jumpinignorantpigfucker:

You know, you could make your data mining a bit less transparent and at least try to look like one of those pseudo-intellectual jerkoffs who think “The Bell Curve” is real science. I mean, we’d still see right through it to the ignorant pigfucker underneath, but you’d provide more laughs.

jumpinjim:

Considering the number of Dr. Feelgoods kicking around the entertainment industry like the one who killed Anna Nicole Smith and the ones who kept Britney Spears in a state of delirium for the better part of two years, I highly suspect that going to a black college had absolutely nothing to do with MJ’s doctor’s incompetence.

But hey, not like I’d expect an ignorant pigfucker to understand the point made in this comic: http://xkcd.com/385/

I defy you to find where I said Sotomayor is stupid.

You didn’t have to say it explicitly; it has clearly been implied in everything you’ve said about her in this post.

That’s the funny thing about the “where does it say that” argument—in order for that to be a useful argument, you have to argue that the only way to analyze a text is through quote-mining. That may hold up in church, but in the real world it’s complete and utter bullshit. After all, sometimes it’s what you *aren’t* saying that is the key to what you really mean.

But hey, go play grep games. We can hear your dog whistles, you know.

jim:

I’ll stick with “ignorant pigfucker”. Sheep-fucking is funny, not disgusting.

(Okay, well, sheep-fucking is pretty disgusting. But it’s still just a bit too funny to be tarred with the likes of you.)

And I defy you to show where he says that n***er doctors suck. He merely volunteered, apropos of nothing, that Michael Jackson’s went to an historically black med school which he guesses must have had shitty test scores, because, you know, it’s historically black. But he never actually says n***er doctors suck, therefore: toootally not racist.

jim:

If you’re going to be an ignorant pigfucker, I’m going to call you an ignorant pigfucker.

(See, you missed the first (and arguably more important) part of “ignorant pigfucker” there. You’re a pigfucker because you’re a stark raving asshole who thinks he can squish out of what he said by hyperparsing your dog whistles. You’re ignorant because of the racist, classist idiocy you’re spouting. Please make sure in the future to use the whole phrase.)

Look y’all, I’m normally all for troll-feeding, but this is getting ridiculous.  You’d be playing the same game with this guy no matter who Obama nominated (unless it was Jeff Sessions).  Jim is the Supreme Court nominee equivalent of the birfers- NO evidence will ever shake his conviction that only arch-conservative white men are qualified to serve.  None.  It’s not worth your time to try to make the case.

Loomer:

This is true. But can’t I just practice my clusterbombing skills?

Truly, we are all wise latinas now.  Sotomayor’s LSAT score is an important…

Oh wait this was about how Pat Buchanan is a racist.

Hah ha old racist is making R’s look bad.

You spell it out. You’ve had plenty of practice. I’m a-scared I’ll spell it wrong and look like a pig-ignorant hick.

Well at least you admit to it.

“I am familiar with Princeton. I know that students with SAT’s in the 1100’s are admitted and succeed there. That means nothing. Those folks will walk away from that campus and have slightly above average accomplishments verses someone with a 1550 SAT with great social skills. Who would you bet on succeeding?”

That’s the thing, Jim.  Hasn’t she already succeeded? 

We can check, you know.  She has a TON of judicial decisions that we could sift and analyze in order to judge to see if she is a successful judge.  It’s not like she’s fresh outta college and we have no idea if she’s gonna make good on her promise or simply drop out of society and go join a commune.  She has been successfully doing the work that best prepares on for a Supreme Court appointment for years.

So why compare her to these supposedly oppressed white males whose spot she “stole?”  Even if I grant you that Affirmative Action denies the “right” person a job at a university (which I don’t grant by the way, but for the sake of the argument I’ll concede for the moment.)  That imaginary aggrieved individual *didn’t* get the degree she got and *didn’t* get the judicial experience that she has.  And so he can’t be picked over her for the job. 

Whether or not it was “bad” to be an Affirmative Action pick way back in college, why would you want to deny your country the best, most qualified pick today?

Hey, easy there- no need for the profanity! I give- you win the n***er-spelling war hands down. But never mind that- I want to hear more about how shitty black doctors are. Go. Make your case.

She did poorly on the SAT and LSAT because she didn’t answer the standardized questions as quickly and as accurately as her Princeton classmates. Horror of horrors: her intellect was less than Ivy League average. ... She “struggled” her freshman year and then went on to graduate Summa Cum Laude.

Most people would look at those facts and decide that SATs were not necessarily an accurate predictor of performance and that the facts were that she objectively better than almost all of her Princeton classmates.

She’s a workhouse, a slogger. She makes for having less than average Ivy League intellect with an unrelenting work ethic.

It’s always kind of funny when people try to say that when you got somewhere by dint of hard work that you didn’t “really” accomplish it. Which is the exact opposite of what accomplishment is. And it’s the exact opposite of what we mean when we talk about things like qualifications and intellect.

The proof is in the pudding here: she was more qualified than almost all of her Princeton classmates because she outperformed all of them. If she was so much less of a student than the people she was admitted with, then why couldn’t they do better than she did?

I believe her intellect is below average campared to the average Ivy Leaguer.

The proof is in the pudding. Her Ivy League classmates were less capable academically than she was, on a consistent basis and continuing onwards through her career.

I am familiar with Princeton. I know that students with SAT’s in the 1100’s are admitted and succeed there. That means nothing.

The child of immigrants who didn’t speak English as his first language who did “pretty well” on his SATs and gets admitted to an Ivy League school will become a successful physician. The “naturally smart” person who, with the benefit of SAT classes, preparation, and wide experience with standardized tests who scores a 1500 and goes to an Ivy League school will end up in middle management or as an “analyst” somewhere.

Who’s the “smart” one in that equation? Who’s “qualified” and who’s the “affirmative action admit”?

And another thing: the purpose of the SATs is to predict what your grades will be in college. The natural reaction when the college grades of someone with average SAT scores for that college are higher than someone whose SAT scores were well-above average is to assume that SAT is an imperfect measure of what it claims to measure. That’s the natural reaction. Another possible reaction is to claim that it’s somehow “cheating” to perform better academically than someone with higher SAT scores.

The SATs measure an eminently teachable set of skills. To assume they’re a measure of “natural intelligence” or the like is to go down the wrong path. They’re a comparative measure of how well people who’ve had the same opportunity to learn a similar set of skills are at putting those skills to paper. It might work for comparing my SAT scores to my brother’s (same background, same opportunities, similar preparation), but not so good for comparing my parents’ scores to mine (different first languages, different academic opportunities, vastly different preparations).

*Sigh*  Either Jimbo here is trolling for the lulz, or he’s one seriously fucked up individual.  In either case, there’s not getting through.

Instead, I offer easy chicken enchiladas, for about 4:

1.  Cook up about 2 lbs of chicken, any type.  Cool and shred.  Set aside.
2.  Preheat oven to 350.
3.  Chop 1/4 onion, more or less to taste.  Mince 1 clove garlic.  Trim stems from 2 serrano chiles.  Add to blender, along with 2 cans tomatillos and 2 tsp cumin.  Blend on highest setting until it’s all liquid.
4.  Assemble enchiladas from soft shell tacos, cooked chicken, and cheese.  Roll and place in 9x13 pan.
5.  Pour sauce over the enchiladas.  Top with cheese.  Bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.

Having these with friends on Sunday, and I can’t wait!

I still got nothing for the actual conversation that was happening until Jimbo showed up.  Can’t believe that Pat Buchanan still has a job after his statements.

Apart from being historically black, what’s wrong with Meharry?

Gee, Jim, thanks for lumping in depression with all those other derailments.  ‘Cause, y’know, mental illness is a personal moral failing.  Guess I oughta just drop my meds and man up next time I start getting suicidal.

Jackass on multiple levels, there, Jim-job.

So what? Yale and Harvard graduated two of the leading fuckups of the century, Bush and Gonzalez.

If that college could graduate such an incompetent, they have graduated others.

Jesus, that’s a stupid statement.  *Every* college graduates people who turn out to be incompetent.  There’s no such thing as a perfect college that graduates winners every single time no matter what.  Going to a good college isn’t going to change the fact that some people are just unrepentant douchebags who’ll pump pop stars full of drugs if they get paid enough.

The purpose of SAT’s is to predict what your grades COULD be in college if you don’t become a pot head, alcholic, depressed or have a poor work ethic.

I’m pretty sure that this statement is nowhere in the college board’s explanations of the SATs. One can try to find excuses for why Sotomayor wasn’t “qualified” to go to Princeton, but for all of your gesticulating, the end result of her admission was that it turned out she was more qualified than her peers, since she outperformed them in every way.

Jim here reminds me of the WASPs’ reaction to the Jewish students of the early and mid 20th century who were outperforming the private-school wealthy kids that the Ivy League schools catered to at the time, as excerpted from Malcolm Gladwell’s “How David Beats Goliath”:

Why did the Ivy League schools of the nineteen-twenties limit the admission of Jewish immigrants? Because they were the establishment and the Jews were the insurgents, scrambling and pressing and playing by immigrant rules that must have seemed to the Wasp élite of the time to be socially horrifying. “Their accomplishment is well over a hundred per cent of their ability on account of their tremendous energy and ambition,” the dean of Columbia College said of the insurgents from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the Lower East Side. He wasn’t being complimentary.

One wonders if jumpinjim is willing to publicly criticize the Jewish students at those same universities for being unqualified.

Given that the evidence indicates that Sotomayor’s classmates were less able to handle the workload at Princeton than her classmates, what exactly are you arguing?

Jumpinjim is a toady for people who believe themselves to be elite and are threatened by people who are willing to accomplish more than they are willing and able to do. It’s sad to see someone excusing his lack of accomplishments in life by saying stuff like, “Well, I could be more accomplished than someone like Sotomayor if I wanted to since I’m smarter that ‘they’ are. People like her are simply exceeding their ability.”

Jesus, that’s a stupid statement.  *Every* college graduates people who turn out to be incompetent. 

EXHIBIT A

It took me entirely too long to realize “MJ” was “Michael Jackson”.

I have no idea whatsoever what my doctors’ MCAT scores were.  I found out where they went to school and what specialist degrees they have and what hospitals they were affiliated with and whether they were covered by my insurance. When I picked them.

But, to be honest, right now I can’t tell you where any of them went.  Because I have 5-20 years of experience with them.  Positive experiences, where they used their educations to heal me or deliver my children.

MCATs helped them get into school, but how they practice medicine is how I picked them and why I keep them.

Sotomayor doing not as well on a 70s SAT as her classmates who did not do as well in school is proof that the SAT was flawed.  ETS has admitted that and has worked to eliminate the bias. 

How about W?  He’s a legacy admit.  His grades would not have gotten him in had his father not been George Bush and his grandfather Prescott Bush.  That’s white affirmative action, and it worked for him all the way to the presidency.  But that’s okay, right?  And nothing should be done to even the playing field and allow equal opportunity to intelligent people who weren’t born to the ‘right’ families.

Do you put your SAT scores on you resume?  Have you ever seen anyone put their SAT scores on their resume?

And that’s all you got?  SAT/LSAT scores, an out-of-context reading of “wise Latina”, and anonymous classmates and lawyers whining about nonspecifics?  Seriously?

This is “racism”?

Four out of six of her cases that went to the SCOTUS were overturned.

if you did your reading, you would realize that they were overturned AND THE PREVIOUS PRECIDENTS WERE OVERTURNED at the same time by “activist judges” appointed by W.  District court judges are supposed to rule on precidents, not guess what a particular supreme court will pull out of its ass this time.

Four out of six of her cases that went to the SCOTUS were overturned.

How is this an argument? The SCOTUS takes only a small fraction of the cases that are appealed to it, which means that she had hundreds of decisions that were appealed to the SCOTUS where the justices said, “everything seems to be fine. Appeal denied.” Seriously, are you that stupid, or do you think we’re that stupid?

Wrong. The purpose of SAT’s is to predict what your grades COULD be in college if you don’t become a pot head, alcholic, depressed or have a poor work ethic.

So, which excuse did you use?

this braying about SAT scores reminds me of a time at MIT when a bunch of Indignant Males were whining incandescently about how the recent influx of women to campus was dumbing things down because the mean SAT Math score was LOWER and blah blah whine bitch moan blah blah.

Then an admissions officer stood up and presented two bits of evidence:

1) mean grades for women in each major were higher
2) the differences in the mean math SAT scores WERE NOT STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT

cue fuming, foaming, and oh so wonderful STFU from the poor poor pitiful male whiners who didn’t want to compete crowd.

“One wonders if jumpinjim is willing to publicly criticize the Jewish students at those same universities for being unqualified.”

I’m sure it goes without saying that a guy as unbound by the strangling ties of Liberalism as JumpinJoke wouldn’t allow Political Correctness to keep him from calling <strike>a spade a spade</strike> a Jew a whole host of unflattering things.

Why he probably has a treasured copy of The Protocols signed by his hero Pat “White people built America — for white people” Buchanan, carefully placed on the tiny bookshelf in his trailer right next to his treasured copy of The Turner Diaries, a KJV Bible which has never been opened except for an occasional arousing peek at Revelation, and a Polish Joke book from the 70’s he found and rescued while working his job at the garbage dump…

What nearly everyone else said. And note that Jimbo keeps referring to Sotomayor as “Sonia.” Sexist asshole. Do you refer to Judge Alito as “Sam”? Probably not, because you seem to think that possession of a vagina entitles a superior penis-owning being to disrespectful familiarity with the vagina-owner.

Honestly, Jimbo ought to have been banned a long time ago, “open comments policy” be damned. He doesn’t argue in good faith, he’s repeatedly failed the stick rule, he’s virulent in his bigotry, and, FFS, a feminist blog is not the place for someone to talk about how the genitalia of lambs is “just like human pussy.”

I’d love to know where Jumpinjim went to college.  His knowledge of the actual Ivy League/Seven Sisters culture and intellectual level seems to be gleaned primarily from tertiary sources.

And oh yeah, Jimbo - you said that Sotomayor’s SAT scores were mediocre, therefore she was less intelligent than the average Ivy Leaguer, therefore she didn’t belong.  Yet you simply suggested that I, an actual Seven Sisters grad with shitty SAT and GRE math scores, simply not major in math.  What’s the difference?  Could it be that you assume I’m white?  Or simply that the whole SATs = intellectual ability argument is a straw man argument designed to “show” that Sonia Sotomayor is a mediocrity?

*rolls eyes*  It’s people like you who give this country a bad name.

I’m a white girl who went to an Ivy League school with a 1440 SAT, and I’m a business analyst, not a judge being considered for a position on SCOTUS.

I can *still* clean the clock of any standardized test I encounter. And I make $75K. Which, while pretty good and all, is not what a federal judge makes, nor do I have the kind of power a federal judge has.

It’s pretty clear from Sotomayor’s performance that she got in the door on affirmative action (the tests *are* biased; they were in the 80’s when I took them and they were much more so in the 70’s) and got everywhere else based on talent and intelligence. (And the SATs, GRE’s, MCATs, etc, do *not* weed out people who are “not very smart but hard workers”; hard workers can prep for the tests and do pretty damn well.)

BTW, Jim, what were your SAT scores? Because if they were lower than mine, then I’m smarter than you, by your own argument, and you should STFU and listen to what I have to say, as I am obviously superior to you. (In fact if your verbal was lower than mine—my verbal was 780, my math was 660—then your ability to understand verbal communication and respond appropriately is inferior to mine, and therefore in the medium of a conversation about the qualifications of a SCOTUS candidate, I rule you, so STFU and listen to me.) If you don’t think you are inferior to me based on lower verbal SAT, then obviously you don’t actually agree with your own argument.

Four out of six of her cases that went to the SCOTUS were overturned.

And the Surpreme Court typically overturns 75% of the cases it hears. So she’s doing better than average. Try again.

Isn’t it funny how the same people who argued that it said nothing about Bush’s character that he was an alcoholic failure at life until the age of 40 are now arguing that we should judge Sonia Sotomayor’s entire career by a single test that she took when she was 17?

Frankly, I think jumpinjim is just jealous that Sotomayor was a superstar at Princeton while his son barely managed to graduate.  It’s the only explanation I can see for his insistence that everyone who goes to Princeton is dumb as a rock when his own son graduated from there.

By the way, jumpinjim, has your son gotten his callback from your local McDonald’s yet, or is it looking like they’re going to turn him down the way Burger King and KFC did?

If, as jumpinjim claims, the SATs are supposed to measure your absolute potential for what your grades could be, what about the fact that the SATs can be practiced for and trained for to improve your score? Obviously, people have an underlying “potential” for what their SAT scores would be if they don’t, “become a pot head, alcholic, depressed or have a poor work ethic.” Shouldn’t jumpinjim instead advocate a test to measure the potential of what your SAT scores could be and use that to predict what your college grades could be?

There is clear and obvious socioeconomic bias in many of these standardized tests.  I was lucky that I was enough of a high school debater to read through the bullshit in the “comprehension” questions of the SAT and, much more obviously, the MCAT.  There were clearly questions about the “meaning” of passages that were either designed apriori for wallet stratification, or unintentionally ignorant of the way that people who weren’t imbued with the white upper-middle and upper-class thinking might interpret things.

I “only” got a total of 1510 on the SAT (740 math, 770 verbal) - I might have done better had I been able to afford tutoring or take it more than twice to improve my score like many of my peer group did.

Pat Buchanan never lost the presidency to a brown person. So what’s his excuse?

I went to a gifted magnet school; the SATs were written for us.  They just were.  They weren’t written for the lower socioeconomic status kids who got in, but after a year or two of socialization, we were all at the same place there.

From the analogies to the choice of passages for reading comprehension to the choices of examples for the math section . . . that test was tailored for me.  I knew this.  It’s just the way things were.

If you look at it from jumpinjim’s perspective, the his problems become a bit more clear. In an earlier era, admission to prestigious schools wasn’t merely about being “naturally smart”—it was a class marker. It meant that you had gone to the right private school and had the right family that got you in which was where the investment banks and prestigious companies recruited from. It was like being royalty. And if you were a middle class or upper middle class person who managed to get your children into the right high schools and manage to get them into a place like Princeton, it mean you were royalty.

But then, to find out that you could get in and succeed and do better than all that royalty by simply working hard, and not only that but that those universities said that they wanted people who were the grind-it-out achievers and that the public school kid who was valedictorian and editor of the newspaper and played 3 varsity sports and the achiever from the Bronx for whom English was her second language might be considered more valuable to Princeton than someone who was “naturally” meant for Princeton just seems… vulgar. And vaguely unfair that “those people” have a place and would get more accolades and success then those who convinced themselves that they “belonged” there.

To jumpinjim and the other haters out there: we’ve been a meritocracy for a while! Learn to love it! The future belongs to the achievers and the hard workers! Embrace the new world!

And tell your bright but lazy children to get off their asses.

re: SATs / ACTs / LSATs / MCATs / etc.

What’s funny in all the racists whining about affirmative action is that they absolutely do not understand how the law allows race to be considered in, say, university admissions.

Under the law as it has been applied for many many years, race is not allowed to be the only, or even the deciding, element, in admissions. It is only a factor, that’s it - just one factor among many.

No applicant “owns” or has a right to a spot at any given school. Ever. No one “lost” a spot they never had in the first place.

Seriously. These racist dillweeds need to move on.

There is no school in the US, and there hasn’t been in my +40 years on this earth, that looks solely to an applicant’s standardized test scores as The Determinant for admission.

Once a student has slogged through his/her first year without getting kicked out for bad grades, the test scores considered for admission to that school are no longer important to the student’s future success - the student doesn’t get re-tested to be evaluated on whether s/he can return for second year.

And - and - if folks who didn’t get admitted to the school of their choice the first time around work really really really hard at the school they “settled” for and get great grades, there’s this nifty little thing called “transferring” - they can always apply to transfer to that dream school for their second year.

Duh, right?

I didn’t see any bias in the standardized tests I took. Of course I was a well educated, white, upper middle-class male so that just might have had something to do with it.

And I did well on them. Not as well as some of you guys. Wow. Like, make us go!

Four out of six of her cases that went to the SCOTUS were overturned.

By this metric, Justice Alito should not have been considered for SCOTUS - 100% of his cases that went to the Court were overturned.

Ever consider the possibility that the SAT might not be a perfect universal gauge of aptitude?

The class of 1987 had highest average SAT scores in the history of my college. They also had the lowest average GPA.

Just saying.

I’m sorry IdiotJim, are you showing us data that shows that the test skews against women as well as minorities?!  Wow, it’s almost as if you have to be twice as good to be perceived as half as good.  Where have I heard about this before?  *puzzles*

Or are you hoping that we’d be intimidated by brains by association?

Well, yeah. What’s the point of being a racist if you can’t take credit for other people’s brains, hard work, and talent by virtue of your white skin?

JumpinIgnorantPigfucker:

Are you still on the thing about Michael Jackson’s doctor? Because you never did get around to answering what I said about greedy, ethics-free Dr. Feelgoods being all over the place in the entertainment industry and race having pretty much nothing to do with it.

But hey, you’re also ignoring the bit about “test scores don’t predict grades”. Not that I’m terribly surprised. And that’s why you’re an ignorant pigfucker.

I didn’t have to take the SAT to get into college.  I scored about a 32 on the ACT, out of 36.  I probably could have done better, but in my usual early morning fog, I forgot to bring my calculator.

My grades in college?  Sucked.  I failed one course outright, performed poorly in my major areas of study, getting a C to B- average, and barely managed to squeak out a 3.3 GPA.  (I got an “A” for however many credit hours for my internship one semester, or I don’t want to know what my graduating GPA would have been.)

I also took the ACT when I was 12, as part of testing for a gifted and talented program.  I got a 27 then. 

So, what’s the supposed relevance of Sotomayor’s test scores?  What sort of relevance do they even have out of context—in her case, the context of high grades and academic honors?

Please tell me the fucking message I’m supposed to derive from this.

Why is genetics the only acceptable explanation for the difference in results?

“Why is genetics the only acceptable explanation for the difference in results?”

‘Cause it’s the explanation that most easily allows him to offhandedly dismiss the lives and careers of those brown people and women who dare to enter the Rightful Realm of the Pale Male.

Being a white male is the only thing left he has to hold over anyone else, and if he loses that advantage, he might just have to admit he’s at best no better than anyone else, and quite possibly might be worse than most.

So let us all shed a tear for JumpinJerk, the Last White Man in America…

...and then press the lever and flush him away with the rest of the racist bullshit this country has been poisoned by for too damn long…

The male-female and “group” trends are holding up across 37 years.

The claimed purpose of the SATs is to predict your grades in college. Women consistently get better grades in college than men.

jim, I assume the “jumpin” in “jumpinjim” reflects a certain amount of self-awareness on your part: you consistently jump around from topic to topic and can’t address an argument made to you; instead you do something akin to throwing spaghetti on the wall and hope that something sticks.

“By jim’s “logic,” the fact that people who can’t read English score poorly on tests written in English means that people who don’t speak English are inherently stupid.”

He might actually agree with this.  Which would just show how oblivious to logic and understanding he really is.

Everything JerkinJim has shown us so far is classic Right Wing Authoritarianism.  Get some help, dude, before you completely snap and shoot up a day care center, or bomb a federal building or something…

Wow.  Jumpinjim’s little misogynist screed just proved that he’s secretly Larry Summers!  How cool is that?  Too bad it fails to account for the fact that girls outscore boys in math in several other countries, most notably Iceland. 

He also didn’t answer my question about whether the difference between his response to Judge Sotomayor’s SATS and mine is based on his perception that I’m white.  Clearly he’s afraid to state flat-out that it’s okay for me to have a 520 in math and still go to Smith because he assumes I’m white.

JerkoffJim, “there are none so blind as those who will not see…”

Like Obama pal Bill Ayres did.

And I repeat:

jim, I assume the “jumpin” in “jumpinjim” reflects a certain amount of self-awareness on your part: you consistently jump around from topic to topic and can’t address an argument made to you; instead you do something akin to throwing spaghetti on the wall and hope that something sticks.

Asian females with a reputation for being shy and unassertive do better than confident, privileged white males.

Wait, what?  Asian females are shy and unassertive?  Because when people think of Margaret Cho, Sandra Tsing Loh, or Sandra Oh, the first phrases that come to mind are “shy” and “unassertive.”

You really need to get out more, because clearly the only Asian females you’ve ever seen have been in racist porn movies.  I don’t think I’ve ever met an Asian woman who could be described as “shy and unassertive” and that includes actual Asian women as well as Asian-American women.

By the way, the female brain IS physically different than the male brain. Everyone knows that. It’s just that many in academia believe “with all their hearts” that there can’t be any performance differences. Evolution had other ideas than the modern liberal’s of “equality” as to who gets what.

Thank you, Jim, for once again proving my point about conservatives.

As I’ve said before, boys and girls, as far as conservatives are concerned, there is no such thing as a woman or minority who is as qualified (much less more qualified) than every white man.  Jim genuinely thinks that he’s more qualified to be on the Supreme Court than Sonia Sotomayor, even though he has no legal training whatsoever and she has 17 years of experience as a federal judge, because he’s a white dude and she’s not.  By definition, he can do any job better than a woman or minority can, even with no training or education in that job, because he’s a white man.

This is why they cling so desperately to the idea that the only possible way that Sotomayor could graduate magna cum laude from Princeton is because it was handed to her by guilty white people.  Otherwise, they’d have to admit that white men are not always the smartest and most talented people walking the face of the earth, and that would crush their egos.

Jim had a whole story before about how the (female) valedictorian of his son’s class at Princeton made a mistake when explaining a physics term, so therefore the only reason she was valedictorian and not his son was because she was a woman.  In the natural order of things, his son is automatically smarter than any woman or minority because he’s white, so his son was cheated out of his due.

That’s really what it comes down to.  His son can’t expect to breeze into any job he wants by virtue of his skin color and gender anymore (though he probably will anyway).  He has to actually compete and prove he can do the job rather than it being handed to him on a silver platter.  And that makes Jim mad.

Ever been to Asia? Shy and unassertive is the general rule.

Again, logic fail.  Why are you assuming that women who are uncomfortable around foreign men are shy and unassertive in the rest of their lives?  How many Asian men—not other foreigners like yourself, but the Asian men who actually know and live with these women—told you that they’re all shy and unassertive?

Take your nose out of the mail-order bride catalog and at least attempt to look at the world as it actually exists, not as you imagine it does.

I’ll be happy to dredge it up if you want, but primarily the international test from which the data is taken is a knowledge test, not an aptitude test. And as we all know, woman get better grades than men.

Okay, I’ll bite.  Let’s assume for just a moment that you’re right and that all white men have more inherent intellectual aptitude than all women and minorities.

Who is going to be more successful in life and better at their job:  the person who has more natural intellectual aptitude but is too lazy to do anything with their brilliant mind, or the person with less natural aptitude who works hard to educate him/herself?  Who’s going to have a better career, that female Princeton valedictorian you think is stupid or your son who has more natural ability but can’t even get a callback from McDonald’s?

You don’t get points just for showing up anymore.  You actually have to do the work.  I know it makes you angry to know that you and now your son actually have to get up off your ass and produce instead of just pointing to your white penis and saying, “See?” but that’s the world today.

”group” or gender average does not indicate individual performance

That hasn’t been your argument.  Your argument has been that the SAT is predictive and that women and minorities on average score less, so therefore we have to completely disregard Sonia Sotomayor’s entire educational and work history and concentrate on the SAT score she got when she was 17 years old to determine her qualifications to be on the Supreme Court.

Did you demand to see Samuel Alito’s SAT scores?  How about John Roberts’?  No, you didn’t, because you looked at them and automatically assumed they were qualified because they’re white men.  You looked at Sonia Sotomayor and automatically assumed she’s not qualified because she’s a Puerto Rican woman, and you’re reaching back to her high school days to try and argue that her SAT score has anything at all to do with what she’s made of herself.

You hate Sonia Sotomayor because she proves that hard work and intelligence combined can get you far, so you have to pretend she must be dumb to reassure yourself that your failures in life aren’t your own fault because you’re totally smarter than she is.

What does the appearance of Icelandic women have to do with the demonstrable fact that they outscore Icelandic men on mathematics tests?

tb on 07/18 at 11:47 PM said: Why is genetics the only acceptable explanation for the difference in results?

It’s the simplest explanation that fits all the data.

I don’t know how you arrived at that conclusion, except that it suits your prejudice, but I’ll grant you it’s a simple explanation. That doesn’t make it the correct explanation.

You can fill a library with the writings of academics who think the difference stems from cultural reasons. Or you can say the female brain is physically different than the male brain and that it why the difference in performance.

Say it all you want, but if you don’t provide some evidence to support your conclusion you’re just choking your chicken.

  By the way, the female brain IS physically different than the male brain. Everyone knows that. It’s just that many in academia believe “with all their hearts” that there can’t be any performance differences. Evolution had other ideas than the modern liberal’s of “equality” as to who gets what.

More unsupported wanking. 

If you go to page 7 you will see “group” differences in performance. This is not my data; it’s the College Boards data.

That’s right, you already said that. Except I wasn’t disputing the data, I’m questioning your conclusions about it.

she is below average when compared to an Ivy League standard which is more than two sigma’s.

Evidence indicates otherwise, since she was a demonstrably better performer than more than 99% of her peers at Princeton.

The SAT is actually a knowledge test. It’s a decent means of measuring aptitude between people who have the same skillset and academic background, but if all it measured was an immutable “aptitude,” then there’d be no reason for me to score 280 points higher in the beginning of my junior year compared to the beginning of my sophomore year and then 70 point higher in the end of my junior year compared to the beginning of my junior year. If the SATs were not a skills test, then programs like Kaplan and Princeton review would be unable to produce the score improvement results they do.

Similarly, there’s no evidence that I am a lot smarter than my parents, even though I had higher SAT scores than they did.

You, of course, will ignore all of this and start babbling about something else, but I am providing arguments and anecdotes for the readers to use the next time they run into someone like you.

I think Jim believes that the SAT is infallible because it was handed down by Moses, like the Pledge of Allegience and John Wayne.

None of this supports your conclusions about race or gender.

Yes, douchenozzle, because history always moves *backward*...or something. You are absolutely laughable, you and your fake-but-still-shitty-at-life children.

Really…you invent kids for the sake of argument and the best you can do is an also-ran bitter son from Princeton and two self-absorbed Trixie daughters on a fake cock-hunt in Iceland? What are you SMOKING?

liberal idealogy that racial descrimination

Jesus Christ.

“Really…you invent kids for the sake of argument and the best you can do is an also-ran bitter son from Princeton and two self-absorbed Trixie daughters on a fake cock-hunt in Iceland? What are you SMOKING?”

Evidence of a massive imagination deficit, something I would guess is fairly common among hardcore RWAs like Jerk-‘N-Jimmy. 

It’s gotta be really difficult to come up with creative thoughts while squatting in front of your alter to Ann Coulter, with one hand on a gun and the other on your dick, all while listening to Ted Nugent…

jumpinjim, the fact that you think the SAT proves anything about intelligence is proof positive you know NOTHING about education and learning. it’s memorization, nothing more, the most base, superficial type of ‘learning’ possible. you must have graduated from the GW bush school of education theory. he’s ignorant of how the brain works, too. you know why i’m good at standardized tests? i know how to game them. big fucking deal. go take a psych class or a very basic education class before opening your ignorant, clueless, uneducated trap. your concept of human psychology is stuck in the 1950s at best.

I just couldn’t believe I was involved in a discussion about the intellectual superiority of white people with someone who can’t even spell above a 7th grade level.

Why do you assume my writing choices are motivated by fear?

And speaking of fear, you’re aware that racist parents like you tend to inspire their daughters to rebel by seeking out sex with minority men, aren’t you? It’s probably already happened.

TB, A few centuries ago Christians had a hard time accepting the Earth revolved around the Sun because of their ideology. Liberals will have a hard time accepting that races and gender have innate differences in intellect. Don’t worry, genetic research will make it obvious for most liberals to accept.

Uh, Jim?  Your side has been trying to prove that women and minorities are stupider than white men for several centuries now.  You’ve created mountains of “evidence” to try and prove it, all of which has fallen apart under further examination.  Every piece of “evidence” you’ve presented here has been refuted multiple times in multiple venues, and yet you keep presenting it over and over as though repeating yourself will magically make it true. 

When it comes to the scientific evidence that white men are smarter than women and minorities, I’ll take Stephen Jay Gould over anything you’ve said here since he was, you know, an actual scientist who had actually studied these things and not some random guy on the internet who’s convinced that the popular “science” of 150 years ago is still valid today.  Next thing I know, you’re going to be telling us that women can’t handle going to college because menstrual blood overheats their brains.

There are about a million takedowns of The Bell Curve online, like this one.  You might want to take a minute to read up so you understand why using old, discredited arguments and pretending they’re cutting-edge research makes you look like an idiot.

Oh, and Jim?  Your study that “proves” men are more intelligent than women because they have more gray matter doesn’t say that at all:

“These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior,” said Richard Haier, professor of psychology in the Department of Pediatrics and longtime human intelligence researcher, who led the study with colleagues at UCI and the University of New Mexico.

Do you think someone with Downs Syndrome ever scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT.

Actually, it turns out that once they started actually educating people with Down Syndrome instead of stashing them away in institutions, they discovered that there is a very wide range of cognitive problems and it’s not uncommon for people with Down Syndrome to have normal intelligence in spite of their other disabilities.  So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility for someone with Down Syndrome to get a 1600.  Which you would know if you actually, you know, researched this stuff instead of just regurgitating talking points you don’t actually understand.

I never said white people were intellectually superior

Right, you just said that whites score higher than blacks on that infallible indicator of human intellectual capacity, the SAT, and that it had to be due to genetic differences.

Oh, and you’d better look up the meaning of superior before you launch into the inevitable chickenshit quibbling over its meaning.

Cue chickenshit quibbling over my ironic use of “infallible” and/or whether he really said “had to be”.

5… 4… 3… 2…

Mnemosyne, you didn’t answer the question. Has anyone with documented Downs Syndrome ever scored perfect SAT scores?

Since we only stopped automatically institutionalizing people with Down Syndrome about 20 years ago, it’s a bit early to declare that the fact that no one has done it yet is absolute proof that it can’t be done, don’t you think?

Of course, you think the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had subpar SAT scores at the age of 17 is absolute proof that she can’t possibly be smart enough to be on the Supreme Court 40 years later, so I think we already have proof that your logic skills are not, shall we say, quite up to par, either.

Gould was a Marxist and so was heavily inclined to believe in “equality.” He also exposes the flaws of turn of the 20th century intelligence testing as a strawman argument to denigrate current testing results.

You mean the current testing results that keep changing every couple of years so you have to struggle for more and more byzantine “explanations” for why they don’t conform with your worldview?  I’d rather have an honest Marxist present me with actual facts I can look at than someone who keeps changing his “facts” every time one of them is shot down.

The SAT is notorious for overpredicting the college performance of white men and underpredicting the college performance of women and minorities.  When you can’t even reliably use the test to predict what it’s supposedly scientifically designed to predict, that’s a useless test ... unless, of course, you start claiming that it does things it was never designed to do, like test intelligence, so you can cling to your worldview and not actually have to deal with reality.

The articles I cited discussed the FACT that there is a physical difference beteween the brains of males and females. I did cite SAT data that I believe is irrefutable at proving males and females perform differently on the SAT for genetic reasons.

So, again, you claimed one thing and are now trying to pretend you claimed something else, but the thing that you now claim is totally true also just happens to be something that supports your claim that women are genetically stupider than men.

How many times are you going to change your story to try and claim that the facts say something that the rest of us can clearly see they do not?

Weak, very weak.

I’m truly, honestly amazed that you think that’s some kind of response to what I said.

Did you ever get into a playground fight with one of those weird kids who would try to pretend he’s   bionic/knows kung fu by making sound effects with his mouth? You win the fight easily, but come away disturbed, feeling that there’s something deeply wrong with the kid. That’s what this is starting to remind me of.

The College Board recentered the scores in 1995 so that scores your parents had should be increased some amount so that you are compariing apples to apples when you make your assessment about their scores.

You’re making incorrect assumptions. I took the SAT scores before 1995. My scores and my parents scores aren’t comparable because we attended different types of high schools, had different first languages, and had different levels of preparation. My scores were quite a bit higher, but that says nothing about my parents “innate intelligence” compared to mine, because the nature of the circumstances was such that it would be comparing apples to oranges.

I’m getting the feeling your parents never took the SAT.

Funny how this thread is all about your “feelings.” You can actually address real, live arguments, or you can pick at things based on your incorrect assumptions in order to buttress your pre-existing prejudices.

SAT scores aren’t destiny. They’re not even a measure of your potential, given that you can simply train to take it (as I said, if you can train up to your maximum potential SAT score, why not design a test that measures what that score could be that you don’t have to practice and train to get?)

If SATs predict what your college grades will be, and your grades far exceed what your scores would predict, then obviously the test is an not the best measure of that particular metric. The people who succeed at college are the ones who have conditioned and trained themselves to handle that kind of material… not the people whom you believe are annointed by dint of a test they took when they were 16. Insofar as Princeton took a gamble on Sotomayor, they obviously made the right decision, as she turned out to be a more impressive student than almost all the other people they admitted, including those who had SAT scores equal to hers.

“We better learn to get along or we’re doomed.”

Wingnut definition of “getting along”: Do what we say, <strike>and no one gets hurt</strike> and don’t ask questions.

RE “getting along” with the Islamic world, you don’t want to get along with them; you want to exterminate them.  You know it, we know it, and they know it.

The America that didn’t torture people before denying them their right to a proper trial, that didn’t launch “preemptive” war, that followed our treaty agreements, might have had some sort of standing to criticize other nations and other religions.  But you wingnuts and your glorious leaders wrecked our moral standing, along with our economy and our infrastructure.

Jerkin’ JimmyBob, maybe you should get yourself a good teaspoon and start digging a bunker so you can hide from the world you created, while the rest of us clean up the mess you left behind…

MikeEss:

It’s not just JumpinJiminyJehoshithead who’s an ignorant pigfucker. But we all knew that. Ignorant pigfuckers stick together.

I would love to figure out how the leap of logic that says “liberals don’t like conservatism therefore OMG FUNDAMENTALIST ISLAM!!!!!1!!!” works though. Is it really just as simple as a Big Lie, or is there some kind of twisted logic to it?

I hate the common paraphrase of Occam’s Razor (“all things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the best”)

Call that Occam’s Lobotomy.

We better learn to get along or we’re doomed.

Yeah, “we better”. You can kick off the healing process by stopping being such a fuckin’ asshole.

I think that abrupt change of subject to Islamo-fascism was just to grease his exit. Somewhere in his lizard brain he was starting to sense that he was getting destroyed- it’s like a reflex with people like that. It’s not even conscious.

As hinted upthread, the Irish Catholics weren’t “white folks” until fairly recently.

Uncle Bigot Pat (and Matthews and Russert) grew up in the shadow of Al Smith’s run, and were at a formative age when people debated JFK’s loyalty, as an Irish Catholic to America. Thing is, it ain’t 1959 any more.

In DumbassJim’s world:

Boys outperform girls on trained monkey tests = boys are superior

now that girls outperform boys on many measures of academic perfromance = war on boys

I don’t take bets from bigots, Jim.  Sorry.  You’ll have to do what I do to make money:  go to work and earn it.

“Exactly who are the members of the NEA?”

Gee, I don’t know, Jimbo.  A super secret, ultra-leftist, crypto-communist organization like that is damn nearly imprenetrable. 

“Could there be a worse result if schools were taught by the hooded Klan in charge?”

In a word: Yes.  And you’re a dumbshit if you honestly believe otherwise…

“What the fuck are the liberals running the schools doing to cause this gross disparity?”

News Flash, JimmyBob:  It ain’t the “liberals” running the schools that are the problem.  It’s the “conservatives” who believe that making sure no rich man is left behind by cutting his taxes to the bone that are to blame. 

The Republicans don’t want to spend a single penny on education because there are only two kinds of jobs in Republican America, neither of which requires widespread education: Service jobs that must be performed on site (maids, gardeners, limo drivers, restaurant employees, etc.), and jobs that have been or soon will be outsourced outside the US.

You people believe in keeping people <strike>barefoot and pregnant</strike> uneducated and compliant…

“Is it malicious incompetence or criminal malpractice?”

A better question is whether the Right Wing Authoritarianism that results in treating schools like a plague on society and a drain on our economy (an utter reversal of genuine Conservative belief of just a few decades ago) is the result of a genetic defect or merely a side-effect of extremely malicious cultural programming combined with an ignorant and compliant Base…?

This isn’t the middle of the last century we’re talking about.

It must be due to that famous black shiftlessness that they have not recovered instantly from 300+ years of slavery and homicidally-vicious racism.

What the fuck are the liberals running the schools doing to cause this gross disparity?

Idiot, you just got done “proving” that it was genetic.

I know what’s going on with the shocking 250 SAT score difference between Asians and Blacks that our schools, permeated by white liberals, create.

Idiot, you just got done “proving” that it was genetic.

OK, I didn’t read the last half of the comments, so someone may have pointed this out, but here it is again, anyway.

1) The way to determine if a test is accurate (i.e., good at measuring what you’re trying to measure, call it X) is to compare it to other methods of measuring X. If your test is noticeably different than all other measures of X, *then your test is not accurate*.

2) There are many, many ways to look at the data presented in the College Board publication. The term ‘confounding factor’ may be familiar - basically, if X and Y are unrelated, but both are caused by Z, and you only measure X and Y, it looks like there’s a causative relation between the two even though there’s not (yeah yeah - http://xkcd.com/552/ - you get the point).

Examples of other ways to look at it:
Consider the breakdown by type of school. Independent schools do better than ‘religiously affiliated’ schools which do better than public schools. More boys than girls at independent schools, and the difference is made up in public schools. So if say, quality of education, rather than gender, influenced SAT scores (shocking idea, I know), that could also produce these gender gaps.

Also interesting: girls have been outperforming boys on the written part of the test, added recently. Which, given they under-perform on the ‘critical reading’ section, suggests that maybe one’s literary skills are not accurately measured by multiple choice questions.

On the racial front, racial and socio-economic status tend to correlate, and the data show that having parents in the highest income bracket buys you over 200 points, on average, on your SAT. Maybe because it also buys you prep courses and test materials, and a quiet place to study, and a healthy diet, and an ‘independent’ school education.

In short, causative analysis of SAT scores is silly and pointless, because there are waaay too many confounding factors to conclusively determine actual causes. Comparative analysis shows, and has shown, that the SAT is basically useless as a measure of what colleges care about (financial success, donation rates, grades in school, etc.), and it’s widely considered a pretty lousy indicator of how well one will perform in a given situation (see 1 above).

*Fwiw, I got perfect SATs - I test well, and always have. And I don’t think the tests measure shit - a large part of my scores came from being in the right schools, schools that gave SAT prep questions since 4th fucking grade.

Sorry, I realize the previous post may have been too vague for jumpinjim:
Historically oppressed minorities (blacks, hispanics) tend to be poorer
White and asian groups tend to be more affluent - why that is is a whole ‘nother discussion, but the point as far as SATs go is that pretty much your entire 250 point score is explainable by socioeconomic status.

Nothing in the booklet allows comparison of race or gender with controls for even socio-economic status, school, and years taking courses in a given subject area (all factors that influence scores, according to the booklet). Meaning that data = useless for the analysis you’re trying to perform.

jj, even if Black and Asian kids go to the same schools, they don’t have the same parents, don’t have the same expectations of them by teachers and other authority figures, don’t have the same cultural history.  And I’m not convinced they *do* go to the same schools.

So what were your SAT scores?  I’ll bite, I was 760 Math, 710 Verbal, as a sophomore, with a hangover and no studying beforehand, in 1975.  But I’m white and grew up in a socially advantaged environment.