How many of you think I was born in the United States? I am going to guess that at least seven percent of you are going to be wrong. I think we should consider banning polling. How many times do we need it to be confirmed that half the country can’t find its own ass with a mirror and a rectal thermometer? Quick! What’s the capital of Vermont? Nobody knows.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Montpelier!
America’s smallest state capital. At one point the LA school district had three high schools each bigger than Vermont’s capital…
The capitol of Vermont is the V.
When you feed a nation of 300 million people bad TV and a diet of processed sugar for 6 decades, what you get is the America we have today.
Naw, we have a 300 year run on stupid and still don’t have the market covered.
Life is hard and busy. Some people just don’t want to put in the work.
C’mon polling is everything! Without polling the media wouldn’t know what to cover, politicians wouldn’t know how to lead, and the people wouldn’t know what to think. We can’t live without polling!
I was born on Guam and my birth certificate looks like a scrap of paper with a REALLY BAD photocopy of a foreign-looking counterfeit photocopy a la 1970 of a hardly even readable standardized form that was typed originally but looks all crooked and stuff. But it does have the official raised stamp of the Guam recorder on it and it does mention that I was born at the Naval Hospital, so that helps. I guess I must be a citizen, considering both of my parents are and that I was born in a military hospital on an American Territorial island. The pretty “Birth Cerificate” from the hospital that has my baby-feet prints, doctor’s signature and stuff that is not official and (legally) means absolutely nothing (except mom might want to frame it) has long since been lost.
I’ve never had a problem using my crappy, smeary-looking, not-even-normal-sized-paper-scrap “Certificate of Live Birth” though. School districts have admitted me with it, the DMVs in multiple states have issued Driver’s Licenses with it, the State Department issued me a passport with it. NO QUESTIONS ASKED.
I don’t know how I’d please Donald Trump or any of those lunatics even if I had already been elected to the Presidency.
As an aside, The Capitol of Vermont is Montpelier but many might think it’s Burlington. BTW, Vermont is looking to be the first state to offer true single-payer healthcare in the country with no employer involvement. Their Legislature just passed it and the governor is very excited to sign it. Seriously considering moving there (or maybe Mexico.) Those Vermonters seem really cool.
Trump was born in Queens, NY – how outside the USA can you get? have to take the 7 train to get there! (can’t remember which sports figure it was insulted the 7 train).
John Rocker of the Atlanta Braves.
Any insults out there for Nassau Co. (my birthplace)?
I’m from another planet. At least that’s what madame boran tells me.
You realize that this is the same kind of evidence you can use to say democracy doesn’t work and we should just implement a benevolent dictatorship, right?
Instead of shooting the messenger perhaps we should seriously consider why people are so uninformed and what we can do about it.
On the other hand, I would be behind a law that states that any polling questions presented on the national news be paired with the results of a question that asks “How much do you care whether the answer you just gave me is right or not?” I would bet that what you would find is that a good-sized chunk of people don’t give a rat’s ass about things like this and just answer whatever pops into their head as they’re trying to move on to what’s important to them – like what they’re having for dinner tonight or whether they’re going to be able to make their car payment this month or whatever.
Honestly the folks who value knowledge for its own sake are a small minority. The folks who value knowing what’s going on in the world to be good citizens is even smaller. The vast majority of folks just want someone else to take care of things so they don’t have to think about them.
That’s also why I wish that we could have the option to have both “spoiled ballots” and “I don’t give a fuck” options on our election ballots and then make voting mandatory. We could get a true measure of how many people are protesting their choices and how many people just don’t give a damn who the leaders are at any given election. I think it would shock most political junkies to find out that a huge number of people just don’t give a damn who’s in charge. And in that number you’d find a huge number of people who think that Obama was born in Kenya and simultaneously don’t give a rat’s ass.