Flatly Unenlightened

Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics. Daniel Klein, WSJ:

Rather than focusing on whether respondents answered a question correctly, we instead looked at whether they answered incorrectly. A response was counted as incorrect only if it was flatly unenlightened.

There ya go.

And our President Barack Obama's off the charts. Off:

An Administration source tells us that the President is aware of market expectations, as well as the estimates of independent economists that help set those expectations. We certainly hope, for the sake of the integrity of the White House and American financial markets, that Mr. Obama wasn't dropping hints with nonpublic, market-moving information. It seems more likely that he simply made a prediction that proved to be off target; perhaps he was merely engaging in some old-fashioned spin.

Yet even this kind of talk damages his credibility when he's wrong, and it invites the question of why the White House is even getting into the business of making precise, short-term economic predictions.

Stuck on stupid.

(Is our president Barack Obama a lawbreaker?) Ask Martha Stewart how the accommodations were.