Republicans lead Democrats in generic ballot for midterms for first time since 2014

[Counselor706]

A poll from Quinnipiac University released Tuesday showed that a generic Republican on the ballot is favored to take back the House of Representatives in the midterm elections next year.

Forty-seven percent of the registered voters said they would rather see the Republican Party win control of the House, while only 44 percent of the registered voters said they would want the Democrats. There were also nine percent who did not give an opinion.

Source

 

[pecksniff]

Nobody gets to cast a generic ballot, and a year is several lifetimes in politics. In the midterms, we shall see what we shall see.

 

[The_Trouvere]

The crazy aunt in the attic everyone is afraid to talk about until she makes so much noise she cannot be ignored is the black problem in America. The tax revolt, which put Ronald Reagan into the White House, may be seen as a draft riot against the War on Poverty. Most whites do not want their taxes to be spent helping blacks.

Liberals have effectively suppressed public criticism of blacks. Millions of whites prefer to give their criticism in the safety and privacy of the polling booth.

 

[pecksniff]

The crazy aunt in the attic everyone is afraid to talk about until she makes so much noise she cannot be ignored is the black problem in America.

Usually, that's more a matter of the blacks having a white problem.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Usually, that's more a matter of the blacks having a white problem.

Blacks are not discriminated against any more. They are discriminated in favor of with affirmative action programs. Beginning with the War on Poverty, declared in 1964, trillions of dollars have been transferred from white tax payers to black welfare recipients.

American Negroes are better off economically in the United States than in any black run country in the world. How do whites benefit from their presence?

If there were virtually no Negroes in the United States the downtown areas of the United States would not be asphalt jungles of crime and moral depravity. They would be centers of civilization. They would be known for libraries, museums, art galleries, book stores, theaters, symphony concert halls, and atmospheric restaurants and taverns.

It would be possible to attend a symphony concert, a ballet, a play, or a movie that ended at 10:00 pm, walk two miles to get home, and be perfectly safe.

 

[pecksniff]

Please just don't bring up pseudoscientic racialism again in connection with this. AA culture certainly has socially dysfunctional aspects, but blacks are not mentally inferior by heredity.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Please just don't bring up pseudoscientic racialism again in connection with this. AA culture certainly has socially dysfunctional aspects, but blacks are not mentally inferior by heredity.

Then why has this been true since the beginning of IQ testing?

Why have Head Start and No Child Left Behind failed to reduce the race gap in academic performance?

Where in the world is there a black run country with a high standard of living, a low crime rate, and a well functioning government?

 

[The_Trouvere]

Blacks cannot plausibly blame their problems on whites when they are much better off in countries run by whites.

 

[pecksniff]

Then why has this been true since the beginning of IQ testing?

Psychologists don't even know what those tests measure. The existence of a general intelligence factor g is a question of ongoing controversy.

 

[pecksniff]

Blacks cannot plausibly blame their problems on whites when they are much better off in countries run by whites.

Any differences there result from historical factors -- most likely a matter of Guns, Germs and Steel.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Psychologists don't even know what those tests measure. The existence of a general intelligence factor g is a question of ongoing controversy.

It is only controversial in the public area. This is because it is dangerous to tell the truth. Those who study IQ's professionally, like my sister, know that what IQ tests measure is largely genetic, and that IQ tests are accurate predictors of academic and economic success.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Any differences there result from historical factors -- most likely a matter of Guns, Germs and Steel.

Have you read Guns, Germs, and Steel? I have. The author, Jared Diamond, makes the preposterous assertion that New Guinea tribesmen are as intelligent on the average as European whites. Needless to say, he provides no evidence of this at all.

Professor Diamond was right that agriculture and eventually civilization began in the Fertile Crescent, rather than somewhere else because the Fertile Crescent had the largest number of plants and animals that were useful to humans, and that were capable of being domesticated. He overlooks the fact that agriculture and civilization exert different evolutionary pressures than hunting and gathering.

A better explanation of the evolution of racial differences in average intelligence and behavior can be found in The 10,000 Year Explosion: how Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution," by Professors Henry Harpending and Gregory Cochran.

Agriculture requires more intelligence than hunting and gathering because agricultural people need to be able to plan ahead for at least a year. They need to be able to understand animal and plant breeding in able to develop more useful domestic crops and farm animals.

Civilization places even more evolutionary pressure on intelligence. Intelligent people are usually more prosperous than unintelligent people. Until very recently they usually had more children who survived and reproduced.

 

[pecksniff]

He overlooks the fact that agriculture and civilization exert different evolutionary pressures than hunting and gathering.

Evolution works on a much longer timescale than the entire history of human civilization.

 

[The_Trouvere]

Evolution works on a much longer timescale than the entire history of human civilization.

Among Caucasians agriculture began about 11,000 years ago. If we assume that an average generation is 25 years, that gives us 440 generations. Among Caucasians civilization began about 5,000 years ago. That gives us 200 generations. Any animal breeder knows that a lot can be done with that many generations.

A single beneficial mutation can spread quickly throughout a population. Most mammals, including humans lose the ability to digest milk sugar, or lactose, after they are weened. One mutation that happened about 6,000 years ago enabled one European to digest lactose all of his or her life. The ability to do that was a considerable barrier against starvation. Now about half of Europeans, maybe even more, have that mutation. It only happened once. They can drink milk all of their lives.

 

[pecksniff]

Civilization places even more evolutionary pressure on intelligence. Intelligent people are usually more prosperous than unintelligent people. Until very recently they usually had more children who survived and reproduced.

Don't be getting any Idiocracy worries (to the extent that threat exists, it is a cultural problem, not genetic). The measured average IQs of populations are going up. See the Flynn Effect.

I attribute this to worldwide improvements, since WWII, in health care, nutrition, sanitation and education. Certainly it is not attributable to any changes in gene pools -- there have not been any really massive population migrations, anywhere in the world, since WWII. Immigrants and refugees are not numerous enough to change their destination countries' gene pools significantly in that short a short time.