Liberal Forum

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

This kind of literacy is the backbone of reasoning ability, the source of the background knowledge you need to make good decisions in a complicated world. As the retired general Jim Mattis and Bing West once wrote, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”....

Last year The Atlantic published an essay by Rose Horowitch titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” One professor recalled the lively classroom discussions of books like “Crime and Punishment.” Now the students say they can’t handle that kind of reading load....

What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Donald Trump’s tariff policy. I’ve covered a lot of policies over the decades, some of which I supported and some of which I opposed. But I have never seen a policy as stupid as this one. It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor. It relies on no empirical evidence. It has almost no experts on its side — from left, right or center. It is jumble-headedness exemplified. Trump himself personifies stupidity’s essential feature — self-satisfaction, an inability to recognize the flaws in your thinking. And of course when the approach led to absolutely predictable mayhem, Trump, lacking any coherent plan, backtracked, flip-flopped, responding impulsively to the pressures of the moment as his team struggled to keep up.

 Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opin ... riffs.html

Dave, 

It's like this

Does anyone know why our literarcy level is so low in America?

 As I've pointed out before, Stupid is a plague...and now we are reaping the harvest of failing to cull our litters.

Is everyone clear on the point?

 
 

Stupids?

The commentator Batya Ungar-Sargon suggested on Fox Business that Wall Street was, in “utterly despicable” fashion, trying to force Trump to abandon “the American worker” — an analysis that the White House amplified on social media. On this theory, investors around the world acted, in concert, to deplete their own wealth by trillions of dollars in order to achieve a shared political objective. An alternative theory is that the tariffs reduced investors’ expectations of future corporate profits and prices moved accordingly. I’ll trust readers to judge which explanation has more plausibility.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... s-ponnuru/



Some idiot cited this witless bint last week....I wondered where she came from.

Who the **** watches FOXBusiness?
 

Fox News tried out several other defenses of the tariffs. It published an article theorizing that Trump’s tariffs are a “calculated” ploy to create global economic uncertainty that would cause investors worldwide to buy U.S. assets and consequently lower our interest rates. At least one Republican congressman swallowed this story, but interest rates have refused to cooperate — so much so that Trump cited the “queasy” bond market in suspending some of his tariffs. If interest rates decline as a result of the tariffs, though, it still might not be good news, since it could be a side effect of lower economic growth.

Ibid.

Try to imagine how confused you would be were you to rely on FOX  for your information. 

Now picture mainlining 10,400 minutes of its distilled version every year...they should pin "*"s on people that stupid...

Characters on a world stage defending theaters of reasonable doubt chromosomes aren't as specific as ancestors alive adapting to the moment here equally alive since conceived.

Ramesh - Have mercy!

On air, Fox Business anchor David Asman played on nostalgia. The tariffs, he said, are an attempt to bring back a world where a man could provide for his family while his wife stayed home, the way his father could in the 1950s. That’s still possible, though, if the family wants a 1950s standard of living.

ibid.

BLASPHEMER!

Tariffs cannot even be counted on to increase manufacturing jobs. Trump’s first-term tariffs appear to have reduced them both because they increased the cost of manufacturing inputs and because they led to retaliatory tariffs against us


Ibid.
 

This is a Call Out...

Some Republicans, perhaps aware that defending the substance of Trump’s trade policy exceeds their rhetorical gifts, have opted instead to base their argument on Trump the man. “You have to trust the president’s instincts on the economy,” says House Speaker Mike Johnson (Louisiana), because his leadership yielded “the greatest economy in the history of the world” during the pre-covid years of his first term.

ibid.


Mike.....WTF......

Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, opted to pretend that critics of the tariffs aren’t patriots. “America is not an economic zone,” he said on X. “It’s not a strip mall with an airport attached. It’s a nation. It’s a people. It’s our home. For too long, our leaders have been selling our country off for parts.”


ibid.


We really need to get back to shaming, and shunning, Stupid.

Blackvegetable » Yesterday, 7:50 pm » wrote: ↑

Yesterday, 7:50 pm

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”


 

I'm surprised it's that low, after all 50% of the US says they are liberals.  In my experience those two things go together.
 

ConsRule » 6 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

6 minutes ago

I'm surprised it's that low, after all 50% of the US says they are liberals.  In my experience those two things go together.

Blackvegetable » Yesterday, 7:50 pm » wrote: ↑

Yesterday, 7:50 pm

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

 

Yep!!

When UNION DHIMOCRAPS run the SCHOOL SYSTEMS in roughly 75-80% of the States, this is what you get!!

Dhimocraps MUST keep people STUPID and EASILY MANIPULATED in order to control the narrative AND LIVES of people. It's what you ASSHOLE IMBECILES DO!!!

NOW, you are the "party of the rich and elitists" and CONTROL is all you have left to do.

GO **** YOURSELVES!! YOU LOST and AMERICA IS GOING TO WIN in spite of what you **** DO!!

Nod

*Beekeeper » Today, 6:45 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 6:45 am

Yep!!

When UNION DHIMOCRAPS run the SCHOOL SYSTEMS in roughly 75-80% of the States, this is what you get!!

Dhimocraps MUST keep people STUPID and EASILY MANIPULATED in order to control the narrative AND LIVES of people. It's what you ASSHOLE IMBECILES DO!!!

NOW, you are the "party of the rich and elitists" and CONTROL is all you have left to do.

GO **** YOURSELVES!! YOU LOST and AMERICA IS GOING TO WIN in spite of what you **** DO!!

Nod

So who voted for the rapist felon?

Blackvegetable » Today, 6:16 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 6:16 am

Fox News tried out several other defenses of the tariffs. It published an article theorizing that Trump’s tariffs are a “calculated” ploy to create global economic uncertainty that would cause investors worldwide to buy U.S. assets and consequently lower our interest rates. At least one Republican congressman swallowed this story, but interest rates have refused to cooperate — so much so that Trump cited the “queasy” bond market in suspending some of his tariffs. If interest rates decline as a result of the tariffs, though, it still might not be good news, since it could be a side effect of lower economic growth.

Ibid.

Try to imagine how confused you would be were you to rely on FOX  for your information. 

Now picture mainlining 10,400 minutes of its distilled version every year...they should pin "*"s on people that stupid...

yet you post an opinion from WaPo...telling...

Blackvegetable » 12 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

12 minutes ago

So who voted for the rapist felon?

brown, focus...democrats and their unions have run the educational system into the ground...


 

ROG62 » 13 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

13 minutes ago

brown, focus...democrats and their unions have run the educational system into the ground...

JuCo, please....lane.

ROG62 » 17 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

17 minutes ago

yet you post an opinion from WaPo...telling...

Do you have any idea whom I'm quoting?

So **** g'ddammned stupid 
 

Blackvegetable » Today, 5:47 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 5:47 am

Stupids?

You're talking to yourself again.

Blackvegetable » Yesterday, 7:50 pm » wrote: ↑

Yesterday, 7:50 pm

Andreas Schleicher, the head of education and skills at the O.E.C.D., told The Financial Times, “Thirty percent of Americans read at a level that you would expect from a 10-year-old child.” He continued, “It is actually hard to imagine — that every third person you meet on the street has difficulties reading even simple things.”

This kind of literacy is the backbone of reasoning ability, the source of the background knowledge you need to make good decisions in a complicated world. As the retired general Jim Mattis and Bing West once wrote, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”....

Last year The Atlantic published an essay by Rose Horowitch titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” One professor recalled the lively classroom discussions of books like “Crime and Punishment.” Now the students say they can’t handle that kind of reading load....

What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Donald Trump’s tariff policy. I’ve covered a lot of policies over the decades, some of which I supported and some of which I opposed. But I have never seen a policy as stupid as this one. It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor. It relies on no empirical evidence. It has almost no experts on its side — from left, right or center. It is jumble-headedness exemplified. Trump himself personifies stupidity’s essential feature — self-satisfaction, an inability to recognize the flaws in your thinking. And of course when the approach led to absolutely predictable mayhem, Trump, lacking any coherent plan, backtracked, flip-flopped, responding impulsively to the pressures of the moment as his team struggled to keep up.

 Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opin ... riffs.html

Dave, 

It's like this

 As I've pointed out before, Stupid is a plague...and now we are reaping the harvest of failing to cull our litters.

Is everyone clear on the point?

Those are your people, Buckwheat.....but don't worry, you can shrug it off as cultural diversity.

RebelGator » 6 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

6 minutes ago

Those are your people, Buckwheat.....but don't worry, you can shrug it off as cultural diversity.

What's your favorite book, Rebel