WatchNearly one in seven people believe that the world will come to an end in their lifetime and one in 10 think the Mayan Calendar signifies that it could happen sometime this year, a new poll found.
IPSOS Global Public Affairs conducted the poll on behalf of Reuters and surveyed 16,262 adults in 21 countries.
Across those countries, the United States and Turkey rank the highest, with 22% believing the world will come to an end.
France was the most optimistic country surveyed, with only 6% of people saying they believed the world will end.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/10-world-ending-2012-poll-article-1.1071291
I guess France has the fewest idiots.
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rootvg says
Total bullshit unless you're going to assert that every first world nation is dominated by mindfucked liberals. What you consider liberal socialism is the standard everywhere except in the USA.
In case you hadn't noticed, the United States of America is the most fucked up first world nation on earth BY FAR and this fact can be objectively proven. We are the laughing stock of the entire world and have been since a bunch of retarded Republicans decided to try to impeach the president for getting a blowjob.
- Horrible wealth disparity
- A per capita prison population so large it makes Cuba and China look like bastions of freedom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate
- Between double and ten times the health care costs of any other country.
- Huge homeless populations complete with shanty towns.
- A violent crime rate that exceeds every other first world nation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
- One of the highest HIV rates in the first world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate
- Low life expectancy, about equal to Cuba
- Easily the most dysfunctional government in the first world incapable of even passing a budget or confirming cabinet positions.
- We are the ONLY country where a large number of citizens deny evolution as a fact of biology. American evangelicals are seen as superstitious ignorant morons by nearly everyone outside our border.
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CaptainShuddup says
So basically you think that cogwheels in a Hammond tone-wheel console organ are just as important as knowing how our representative democracy works?
I'll make you a deal. I wont rebuild any Hammond tone-wheel console organs if morons don't vote. Sound fair?
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CaptainShuddup says
That's odd because the most educated people in the world vote more Democrat. Students at the nations most respected universities are overwhelmingly Democrat. Blue states are generally highly educated, high income while red states are generally low educated, low income.
This is another one of those beliefs that is exactly the opposite of the real world isn't it.
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22% of Americans are morons. Here's further proof:
Bush's Final Approval Rating: 22 Percent
"President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush's final approval rating at 22 percent."
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500160_162-4728399.html
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Man, I take one day off from patrick.net and this thread turns into a left vs. right Thunderdome match. I should have titled it "22% of patrick.net users are morons".
Seriously though, it is a false dichotomy to say that either we have to have be ruled by a lawless corporate aristocracy with unbridled greed or we have to all turn into Communists. There are other alternatives.
Take a look at the following chart from Professor G. William Domhoff, UC Santa Cruz.
There is no way in hell that the top 1% of Americans are producing 43% of the GDP. No matter how much you believe in individualism, self-reliance, and free markets, you cannot honestly say that 1% are responsible for 43% of wealth production. That's bullshit by any standards.
Perhaps the top 1% of producers could be responsible for 10% of the GDP, being 10 times as productive as the average person, but not 43%. I'd go further and stating that the top 1% producers are not even near the top 1% income recipients. In fact, the top 0.1% income recipients are probably the less productive members of society, producing nothing in the best case scenario and actually destroying wealth in most other scenarios.
The parasites at the top of the income bracket are more responsible for the lowering of the quality of life in America than the parasites at the bottom of the income bracket. The Mitt Romneys and Goldman Sachs executives cost us far more than the bums on welfare. The fat cat parasites with insatiable appetites eat more wealth than all the bums put together.
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rootvg says
It's pretty sad that you took a request for clarification as an attack. It also demonstrates a distinct lack of confidence in your position. Why are you getting so defensive when asked what you mean by "self-made"?
I've never claimed that you owe me anything, but guess what, honey. If you don't clarify and back up your accusations, we the audience don't owe you any acceptance or credibility. Only a fool writes something in public and then gets defensive as soon as someone posses a question about what he just wrote.
rootvg says
1. It's not common knowledge. Most people's perspective of Silicon Valley is that it is new money, not old money. You're thinking about Texas and the South.
2. Whether or not it was common knowledge does not make it true. Where are your statistics, your evidence? Are you seriously proposing that just because you heard a statement repeated many times, you should not verify or question it's accuracy? What are you, a Fox News listener?
3. Contrary to what you believe, the Bay Area isn't all of liberal America. I've never fucking been to San Francisco and I work in I.T. You know there is this whole other coast, called the East Coast, where so-called liberals thrive.
So get off your ego trip and back up your statements with reasoning and evidence -- which you have yet to do -- instead of getting all bitchy because someone asked what you meant.
As it stands, right now not only do we not have any reason to believe anything you said is true, but we don't have any reason to believe that you are even being sincere in your statements.
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rootvg says
Bullshit.
Take a gander at the forbes 500. Identify all the liberals and all the conservatives, and them come back and tell me which ones are "self made".
I'll accept "self made" as "was not born as a member of the 1% already". Turning a decent upper middle class upbringing into extreme wealth ala Bill Gates counts. Inheriting your parents wealth / business like the Koch Brothers does not.
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rootvg says
There's only one thing that matters to the future of this country right now. One! Not surprisingly, it's the exact same thing that led to the American revolution in 1775.
Generational wealth and an entrenched aristocracy is the ONLY thing that can turn the United States of America into a 3rd world hell hole. Debt can't do it. Welfare can't do it. Illegal aliens can't do it. Gays can't do it. Abortion can't do it. A liberal nanny state can't do it. They are all distractions to keep people sending all the nation's wealth into the hands of billionaires who don't need it.
A Southern blue collar worker will scream all day long about the government taxing him for social programs. At the same time, this very same Southern blue collar worker will gladly hand over the majority of his productivity to a greedy capitalist who spends the money every winter buying hookers in Thailand.
This is not a fucking exaggeration, this is reality! At the end of the day you either bend over for the government for the people and by the people or you bend over for a rich asshole who is going to leave you for dead when you can no longer make him any money.
There isn't any grey area. Pick one! Any whimper of protest that this isn't the way things really work is pure denial.
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rootvg says
You're right but what you see today is NOTHING compared to how things will be if Republicans take power and pass the Ryan budget. We're headed for a cliff and there's no return possible short of armed revolt.
rootvg says
Why would you jump to this extreme? Why would you attribute such views to me, A capitalist who exploits workers??? Who owns private property???
What is your problem with the United States of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s? It was almost impossible to become a billionaire and everyone enjoyed a high standard of living. We still had rich people, we still exploited workers, we still owned private property, but instead of a few people enjoying prosperity, EVERYONE had a high standard of living. Why do you hate the most prosperous period in our country so much?
There's nothing wrong with the free market system as long as there's a progressive tax schedule in place to prevent extreme concentrations of wealth. Republicans have decimated that system and seek to do further damage. That's the biggest danger there is. Everything else is mindless fluff by comparison.
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CaptainShuddup says
The Liberal Endocrine
You can tell it's liberal because the naughty parts are showing.
The Endocrine System
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I'm not surprised Americans scored the worst. We're a nation in serous decline and that is most evident in intellectual areas.
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CaptainShuddup says
Now we all know what "strong argument" means to a Republican.
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I don't know, if the Mayans were so good at prophecy, how did they miss the coming of the White Man, or forecast their own Collapse before that?
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rootvg says
And how exactly is that? Gives some examples and evidence, please.
Sounds a lot like "liberals aren't real Americans 'cause I say so".
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rootvg says
Last I looked the Forbes richest list, was about 60% Democrat.
I suspect they ALL (Elephant or Donkey) describe themselves as "self-made". Heck even Romney considers himself a rags to riches story. No Richie Rich is, but hey you are free to delude yourself in this country. I'm not buying it though, and neither will I let it slide by without countering.
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Ross Perot ran as independent. He was pro-choice right down to supporting federal funding so women would always have that choice available locally. So he'd be pretty unwelcome in GOP circles especially these days. Frankly I'm not sure where to pigeonhole Ross, he's an outlier IMO.
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rootvg says
Yeah Mittens had plenty of advantages over any of us. Best schools, contacts, but sure "the deals were his" and he didn't so far as we can see fuck any of them up while doing his vulture thing and putting people out of work. But maybe he didn't actually have a huge trust fund handed to him, what a huge disadvantage for him versus some schlub in the Bay Area who got to inherit a "historic" row house with single-pane windows. OK, even if true Mittens is rectifying that for HIS kids who will be covered to the tune of $100 million.
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Vicente says
The godless, greedy GOP leaders need the brainwashed Jesus freaks because the top 0.1% can't win a popular election by themselves.
On one hand, you can never have too many poor people as the more you have, the more disposable they become. On the other hand, the whole election thing with it's one person - one vote practice is very inconvenient for the ruling class.
The solution is for the GOP leaders to promote the Jesus freak agenda like outlawing abortion, removing Evolution from the classroom, etc. while hiding the fact that they spend all their time snorting cock off of a hooker's ass and then blackmailing her to get an abortion and stay silent about it.
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CBOEtrader says
I have it under good authority that some Mayan coder said that "we're not even going to be using this calendar in 5200, so we can save a few bytes by not handling dates past that". Had the Mayan civilization lasted, there would be hordes of Mayans performing year-5200 compliance testing.
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rootvg says
Uh, that was a hell of a small pile. Frank Trump, the Donald's Father, built his wealth on low-income housing projects (ie Government Contracts Subsidies).
Before Donald was in High School, Frank Trump made multi-million dollar deals. In 1962 he brought an apartment complex in Ohio for almost $5M, big money in those days.
The Donald took over his daddy's multi, multi, multi million dollar business just three years after leaving Wharton, in 1971.
When Frank Trump passed, he left $400M. I call that a "Big Pile".
rootvg says
You're kidding right? Romney's Daddy was the governor of Michigan, chairman of the Automobile Manufacturer's association, and the CEO of an auto company. His grandparents were big landowners in Mexico, having descended from a polygamist sect that moved there in the mid 1800s.