Nailed all 12, but the unemployment rate question is wonky... the answer they're looking for is the reported rate, not actual.

10 out of 12, not bad, though I wonder if I'd do as well on Canadian, it is pretty boring at times, and the media we learn much of it from is so bloody biased.

You correctly answered 9 out of the 12 possible questions, which means you did better on the quiz than 82% of the general public.

As usual, too many beers and I failed to study for the test.

I scored 11/12 at Raphael's blog earlier today.We get so much info about the U.S., it's hard to NOT know a lot about them.

Now Canada, all I know about Canada is that the rest of the world hates us,at least according to the cover of McLean's magazine.

Oh well. Merry Christmas everyone.

12 of 12.

But then, I'm an unapologetic, informed, independent American, determined to fight this Obamanation's affirmative action administration.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, all.

10/12

Missed the Chairman of the Fed and the Dow.

There are some seriously scary numbers there.

All 12; which one did you miss Kate?

Merry Christmas all.

Got 12 out of 12. Good guess on the Senate Banking Committee. Not bad for a Canuck sod-buster ex-grunt from the former Socialist Republic of Saskatchewan (now a free province), even if I say so myself.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays to all. The true spirit of Christmas is there if you want to find it.

9 out of 12, after a day at work, then shoveling snow then wrapping Christmas gifts.

Too bad they didn't ask which country one was from. Be an interesting statistic.

10 of 12 and I always thought of myself as a dumb ass. Ninety % of the people I work with wouldn't understand the questions. Ha!
Merry Christmas Kate (wouldn't be 10 of 12 if not for you) and everyone out there all the best in 2010.

Wow! 12 out of 12. Thought I might have missed a couple.....

The Baucus question got me. Otherwise not bad for a former Rhodesian/South African now Canadian...no thanks to the Canadian lamestream media.

11 out of 12; I guess that puts me in good company.
The last question tripped me up. I sent this test to every one in my mailing list, something I've never done before, and challenged them to not cheat. Boots, you are right with the 90% estimate. I'm going to print out the test and give it to my employees on Monday. There is far too much ignorance in the world, might as well start the ejamakashun in the office.

Merry Christmas Kate.

Hit em all. Haven't been drinkin this eve either so that helped.
I thought for sure I'd have at least one of the last few wrong.
Some were purdy tuff.

And Merry Christmas y'all.

11/12 even though I got the Glen Beck one right, for some reason it marked me wrong?! Maybe clicked the wrong box somehow...

11, Baucus

10/12.

missed the "Dow" and the "troops".

12!!! Hah!!! Bite me losers!!!

(Merry Christmas again guys. Even the trolls. Yeah, I'm just that tipsy).

Hey!!! 12 out of 12 tipsy!!!

11 out of 12 [93%] and question #11
What is crap and trade about if not about (I can't recall their exact wording but...) "finance and the environment"? It's not banking or unemployment, and I can't recall the other option. (Although I know the other option wasn't the real answer of "to screw the U.S. economy even more while making Obama's donors rich and to destroy the coal industry like Obama stated during the election campaign.")

hummph....only 11 out of 12...but then I was looking for the "when did you stop beating your wife" question. Merry Xmas all.

11/12 even though I got the Glen Beck one right, for some reason it marked me wrong?!

Oh. Maybe it misread my [correct] #11, too, then. Although maybe I got one of the others wrong and it misread my #11 as wrong, but gave me an undeserved correct on another?

BTW, 12/12s out there, what percentage of the population is in the top?

10/12 only because I didn't lie on my age.

I too got 12 right. Seems like SDA readers make up a disproportionate number of the 2% that scored perfectly. Smart bunch.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Thanks for making me feel inadequate Bull.
I guess that proves I'm Canadian.
lol

I won the Nobel Peace Prize.

10/12 - the committee ones were the ones that tripped me up.

12. Second guessed Feinstein and landed on Baucus. Lucky-ish. I admit.

11/12.Baccus bit my bum

11/12.Baucus bit my bum. merry christmas to u all

All 12, but I'll confess uncertainty on two...

...the mouse ALWAYS pays attention to the elephant.

12/12. Not bad for a socialist from the tundra -- as many of my American sparring partners refer to moi.

11/12, missed the troops. Good quiz.

11/12, I'm going to give myself a B+, although I'm not even close to being tipsy enough still... holy crap - I got Afghanistan so way wrong...
I'd like to know how some of us Canadians are doing compared to those southerners ... :) aja, pass the sherry.

12 for 12

8 out of 12 , I,m Canadian , did not look up the answers ,

My wrong answers were Dow Jones avge , supreme court judge , fed reserve chair etc.

12 out of 12. It's official. I have to get a life.

11/12 Feinstein instead of Bauccus(sp)

11 out of 12. Missed the one about # of US military in Afghanistan.

Merry Christmas to all here, and a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

got all 12 but guessed on two.

11, Screwed up Baucus - which is better than being screwed by Baucus...

Merry Christmas all!

They’re pretty dismal scores overall. (I don’t mean SDAers). Men and Republicans did better than women and Democrats. BO needs to get a fairness doctrine in place.

Merry Christmas to one and all!

12 for 12 Mele Kalikimaka youall.

11 of 12. Missed the Baccus one, Knew with certainty all the rest.

11
Troops wrong

12 out of 12 but ironically I had to take an educated guess at Afghan troop levels.

It's disturbing how many people clustered around 4. Max Baucus and the troop levels are the only ones a breathing human being from the US might have trouble with.

You get all this info from 10 minutes of reading the news.

12 out of 12 but ironically I had to take an educated guess at Afghan troop levels.

It's disturbing how many people clustered around 4. Max Baucus and the troop levels are the only ones a breathing human being from the US might have trouble with.

You get all this info from 10 minutes of reading the news.

10. Missed Max Baucus (he wasn't even my second pick) and the number of troops in Afstan (I was high).

11/12 here also.. Which doesn't make sense since I haven't owned a TV since 78 and I don't listen to the radio... Good guesser eh?

11 correct. The Afghanistan troops question got me too. "Seventy thousand" sounded a bit low and I changed my answer to the next higher option.

I knew many of the answers unconsciously; probably the osmosis of having CNN playing in the background on odd evenings.

Darn anyway. I wanted to beat Black Mamba's 12/12 score so she'd quit gloating (ha ha).

It was the Dow Jones Industrial Average I guessed at wildly, got lucky (never said I could count).

Gloating is my Christmas present to me.

8/11. Forgot about the whole "unemployed" vs. unemployed, undershot afghanistan(i knew as soon as I clicked it that it was probably wrong by too few), and haven't been following the US supreme court/senate finance committee.

gloat gloat gloat ! ;)
With all the negativity regarding Afghanistan in the news you'd think that half of Philadelphia was there.

14 for 14 - got my age and sex correct too.

10/12
not bad for living in the hinterlands.
I wonder how Peter Pansbridge did.

12/12. Thank you, Drudge.

11/12, but then I subscribe to Newsmax

10/12 - health care spending got me (I guessed more or less the same as European) and troops (was on a high side). Not great among SDA readers, but probably not too bad for a European immigrant to this great country...

!0, missed Baucus and troop numbers. Seems like Baucus gotus more than any other. I think it's not too bad for an aging farmer from the hills.(:>)

11/12 - troop numbers got me

I guess us Dumb Canucks are better informed than most Americans, if I read the above correctly.

Let's try 10, I did have a couple of rusty nails.

Ditto all the way, Yukon Gold. The unemployment rate question nearly got me, but then I thought, "This is PEW -- go official".

10 of 12 Oh well

11 / 12 here. Got the military personnel in Afghanistan wrong. I honestly thought US troop presence there was north of six figures, and selected 150K.

Gord Tulk @2:23 - how can you be sure?

11/12 - like a lot of others, I got the troop #'s wrong. I thought the US had more in theatre than 70k.

12/12. Shocked to see that. Wild guess on Baucus. Edumcated guess on troops...

Damn, only 10/12 right. But then it's been a night of having drinks with people and I haven't looked inside of a newspaper in years. I blame Kate for not having comprehensive enough news coverage on her blog;) Also, my guess of the US unemployment rate was around 15% which, from what I've seen on various blogs, is probably closer to the true average. Haven't kept up with who is chairman of the federal reserve board so messed up that question.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Wow, click on the "How you did, question by question" link and the demo breakdowns. The cap and trade question, which obviously we'd all get, was answered correctly by only 23% of respondents. Maybe everybody else selected "unemployment" since that's what it'll cause! :-)

11/12 Ohh..that Baucus.

Got 10 out of 12. Can't believe I got the one wrong about how many US troops in Afghanistan.

11-12,, Health care cost screwed me over,,lol,, Merry Christmas all

11/12. Missed Bernanke.

I blame the tryptophan. Ban it! Ban it at once!

12/12 for yours truly.
However I cheated. Didn't do it until this morning after last night's cheer had worn off.

Gotta wonder how the high scoring SDA input has skewed the results.

12/12. Agree that the unemployment number was wonky, but guessed they wanted the "official" figure.

10 out of 12. Merry Christmas all, and may next year be nowhere as ... interesting as last.

12 of 12, sorry to see that's top 2%.

12 of 12, sorry to see that's top 2%.

Posted by: gary gulrud
..............

Yeah, especially when you consider the respondents have computers, access this type of site, and are interested enough to attempt the questions.

What could we expect from the, probably millions or tens of millions, who don't qualify?

10 out of 12....

I got 11/12... I cannot believe I forgot it the newest SCJustice was that Hispanic lady... and it was also the second most known answer. lol.

11/12 missed Baucus

11/12 missed Baucus

11/12 missed Baucus

Got 10 out of 12. I wonder how the CBC viewers would do on this test.

Got 10 out of 12. I wonder how the CBC viewers would do on this test.

Well by SDA standards I didn't do well, but ended up in the high percentile.
10...and who the heck is Baucas?

Yes we need a life, and this reminds of a great christmas tradition in our home...American trivia of some sort.
Merry Christmas everyone!

Like a lot of you, I missed troop numbers.

11/12. Baucus. It was the only one I guessed at and he was my 2nd choice. They need an 11.5 for someone like me :)

Merry Christmas to SDA readers in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

sorry about the multiple posts........

Leda...relax....take your swan for a walk...

....and in the spirit of multi-culturalism....

Merry Christmas to SDA readers in the name of Adonai Yeshua ha Moshiach

Well, we are a smart bunch.

Apparently your agent is with 5% of the public 11 out of 12. Thoug you may agree the questions were rather simple.

12/12.

Mark
Ottawa

9/12

missed the reserve chair, unemployment rate and one other.

not bad.

Canadians are among the best educated people in the world.

11/12 missed Baucus.

My excuse is I was too excited as the Havoc Hellis are charging, waiting for their maiden voyage.

11 out of 12 on account of Baucus

12 out of 12

Funny how the bell curve for the results of the test is skewed towards stupid, yet SDAers score at the far right. Guess us redneck right-wing types pay more attention to what's going on in the world than the compassionate, progressive, head-in-the-sand lefties. Mind you, I always knew that. It takes a special kind of ignorance to be a socialist.

Here's Your Score: You correctly answered 12 of the 12 possible questions along with approximately 2% of the public. You did better than 98% of the general public.

Got all twelve, which really surprised me.

More important, Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and a happy holiday to the rest!

Missed Baucus and troop numbers.Got lucky on all the rest.
Need advilgelcaps and water, badly, which proves a hungover Canadian is as smart as a sober Canadian and just as delusional.

One brief moment of pride at getting twelve out of twelve, then came the realization I was doing this quiz on Christmas morning. Okay, I will "get a life" later today.

Guess us redneck right-wing types pay more attention to what's going on in the world than the compassionate, progressive, head-in-the-sand lefties.

Watching FOX news instead of CBC/CTV also helps.

I felt kind of dumb not knowing some of the answers and kind of guessed/used process of elimination on a couple names. 12 of 12. I am kind of shocked that people would get less than 8 of 12. I guess that explains recent elections.

12 out of 12, pretty good for a Texan. But I read a lot.

11/12 and I guessed at the Dow Jones or otherwise it'd be 10/12.

12 out of 14, but Baucus was a wild guess.

11 out of 12, bombed on Baacus. Us Canadians our eyes glass over on American health care issues.

11 out of 12

12/12 Baucus a guess. I tried inserting the Canadian equivalents and was lost, I'm not sure what that tells me?

12 out of 12 but then as a regular Fox Cable News viewer, its really easy.

11, flubbed the Baucus question.

10/12

Baucus, I know was one mistake. The goofy javascript on the site didn't jibe well with my browser, so I wasn't able to see which other mistake I made.

9/12. Yeah well I got a few wrong but hey one I miss read and apart from that I got the federal reserve and finance people stuff wrong, but as UK citizen its got to be pretty good, its not from listening to TV (not had one for years) or listening to radio. Wonder how I'd do on the same for say Europe or the far east somewhere.
Anyway
Happy Christmas and a healthy happy New Year to all SDA readers.

Looks like the average here is 11 out of 12. If you want an educated American public, make SDA a part of their day.

Looks like all the smart asses are doing the reporting. :-) Only got 9 myself.
Merry Christmas everyone!

10 out of 12. Better than 89%. Tripped up on Baucus(picked Fienstein) and troop level.

Last night, drunk, 11-12

This morning, hung over, 10-12

Methinks I need a drink!

12/12 Thanks to this site and Fox news!

10 out of 12, the fed reserve got me and the unemployment also. Thought they wanted the real numbers of unemployed.

Merry Christmas to all from redneck Alberta.

Cheers,
goodomens

11/12 Baucus.

Two things bother me. First, I know way too much about US politics. Second, I'm on my computer on Christmas morning.

Oh well, I had Christmas yesterday. You have to juggle, when kids aren't kids anymore.

I give myself a good solid B+ on this one.

I would love to see a similar poll about Canadian politics with 12 questions and see how well Canadians fare on a poll about their own country. BTW 10/12. Missed health care costs and Afstan troop numbers.

I didn't really think that much about these results as I did the test just before going to bed. Today on sober, but slightly hungover reflection, these results are scary.

The mean score (at the time that I took the test at about 03:00 PST) was 5.24. The distribution is quite skewed and, as the raw data is unavailable, SD is both non-computable and likely meaningless. 55% of the population have a score that is less than 5. The primary peak in the score distribution is centered on scores of 3 to 4 with a smaller secondary peak at 11 ?SDA scores.

Aside from reading SDA and WUWT daily I have no exposure to regular news whatever. In particular, I completely ignore TV and radio "news". My only exposure to conventional news sources is if I follow links from an SDA/WUWT posting. Obviously that is enough information to keep up with current events.

As human wetware storage capacity hasn't likely decreased, WTF are the majority of people filling their brains with? I'd be willing to bet that the majority of the people who scored low get most of their news from the MSM, especially TV sources. I had the misfortune to be exposed to some TV news at a friends place recently and it seemed that the primary hot topic was Tiger Woods. The only piece of information I have stored on Tiger Woods is that he is a golfer and I have absolutely no interest in his personal life. I also have concluded that young black athletes given large amounts of money tend to squander it, often in stupid ways. Those two bits of information sum up the whole non-story for me and why it rates more than a 10 second mention on the news is mystifying.

If the results on a simple test of what should be common knowledge are representative of the US population, then the election of BO makes much more sense. The only hope I see for the US to remain a democracy is some form of testing of voters before they are allowed to vote. This might be a test of this nature on current affairs, or better yet an IQ test. It appears that the MSM is actively trying to ensure that people are concerned with trivialities to prevent consideration of the real national issues.

loki, unfortunately you are right about "It appears that the MSM is actively trying to ensure that people are concerned with trivialities to prevent consideration of the real national issues".

It takes a catastrophes on the scale of the 1939 invasion of Poland, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbour and 9/11, in order for people to focus on real issues.

the comments on SDA

the best

Merry Christmas all you articulate and thoughtful
dead gophers!

12 outta 12...but I did get a lucky guess on Bernanke I gotta admit.

Pretty scary that so many scored so low. Had a liberal relative just take the test too...6 outta 12. Do we really need to analyze these results much more to know that it it the uninformed idiots that are electing these commies??

Merry Xmas

12 out of 12. Merry Christmas everyone.

12 for 12.

That probably means I'm a flake at work and read the news all day.

12 of 12 . I'm American so that's understandable . Ya'll did very well , much better than I would have done on a similar Canadian test . I did pass the Canadian citizen test without any studying , though .
I wish you guys could trade places with a corresponding number of my fellow Americans . Not that most of you would want to under our current leadership .
Merry Christmas SDA !
I'm a regular visitor , just not a commenter .

11/12. Like many, I missed Baucus. Now, if the question had been about the House chairman, I know it's the retarded gasbag Barney Frank. But the Senate Finance committee doesn't get too much air time.

12/12, not bad for a Newf. The number of troops in
Afghanistan nearly got me.

11 out of 12.

11 out of 12... off on the troop count. And I also lost count on the number of calories taken in today.

12/12. Hooray!

Now, back to the eggnog. Merry Christmas, everyone!

9/12...the only news I get is SDA and a few blogs I read, nothing at home, if I watch it it's British left wing garbage, so I don't watch it.

The scary part is that only 23% of adults know that cap and trade has to do with "energy and environment". (Well, it doesn't really, but "Lining the pockets of Mubage" wasn't one of the answers.)

I did pass the Canadian citizen test without any studying, though.

11, muffed my age answer

11/12... seems the Fed chairman needs to get a bit of a higher profile here in Canada!

12 of 12
What is sobering is that put me in the top 2% and at least 8 of the questions were so straightforwardly simple that the whole quiz took about a minute to complete. What is up with Americans? with females as a gender only averaging 4.9 correct and males barely nosing out that pathetic score? And I say that as a Canadian non-graduate who is fond of Americans but has not actually visited there since 1986. Gawd help us. No wonder they can be so swayed by vacuous emotional rhetoric when the merest mental retention of even simple facts seems the equivalent of scaling Mt. Everest sans oxygen.
Merry Christmas to all and A Happy, prosperous, fruitful, mentally alert New Year!

Dwayne at December 25, 2009 11:38 PM:

"11/12... seems the Fed chairman needs to get a bit of a higher profile here in Canada!"

Higher than who, Max Baucus? Wasn't Ben Time's Man of the Year?

Oh wait, you're pulling our legs ...

BTW 12/12 and Max of the Senate Finance Committee was a complete close-the-eyes-and-throw-the-dart-response.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. I don't post much but I love reading everyone's comments.

12/12

10-12 got the troops right!

only 9/12, but I've been on chemotherapy for 48 hours, plus I went through a meltdown with my imbecilic in laws who ignored a simple request to leave their terminally stupid dog at home while my immune system was so badly compromised. I knew they were liberals, but I thought even liberals had more sense than that.

75% for me. My downfall was Baucus and all of the stats. 'Never was very interested in all that number stuff ...

12 fer 12. (I guessed at the Dow.)
I work at home listening to Rush/Beck/Hannity all day. Pity me.

awkward davies @Dec 25th 7:45 (who is a genius, just like me) - I know it's a dead thread, but any friend of Stephen Maturin's is a friend of mine.