Who said time traveling was difficult, have been 2008 to 2004 and back here to 2006 .. it's easy just takes so
much damn time .. more summary of some red and blue state data, from your one and thanks to James Woolcott ..
.. all quotes from yours .. highlighting mine ..
the good people of the red states walk in Jesus's sandals while the rest of us are following Satan into the licking flames. Twenty-plus years of conservative propaganda have convinced millions of Republicans and their pet Beltway pundits that they inherited the legacy of frontier values and dwell in baptismal light, unlike modern Democrats, who crawled out from under rocks and prefer the ambiguous dark, where there's no right or wrong, only "personal choices."
Conservative pundits and politicians regularly jeer that these Jurassic Parks of geriatric do-gooders and brainwashed college students don't represent the "real" America—the God-fearing, flag-waving, decent-living, high-octane, steeped-in-common-sense, everyday-low-prices heartland. Yet ...
It's the Republican red states that are lowering the country's moral standards and dragging us through muck and malaise, the red states that are pustulating with horny hypocrites, rampant crime, polygamy, crystal-meth labs, federal handouts ..
"Red States cling to double standards like a drunk holds on to the last beer he can afford," writes Justin Cord Hayes in the semi-humorous survival guide Blue State/Red State.
Hypocrisy is the hallmark of the red-state bull-roarer.
Dennis Rader, .. Wichita, Kansas .. the "BTK" killer ... vicious proof that punitive control and outlaw behavior feed raw meat to each other. Societies that tightly fasten the lid produce pressure-cooker violence
Bureau of Justice Statistics,
of the 10 states with the highest number of total inmates per 100,000 residents in 2003, 9 were red.
Of the 10 states with the most female inmates per 100,000 residents that same year, all were red. (Conversely, of the 10 states with the lowest incarceration rates of female prisoners, 9 were blue.)
.. they have a near monopoly on capital punishment. Since 1976, the highest number of executions have been carried out in red states, with Texas—no surprise—ranking No. 1
.. you would think that all of this imprisonment and death might result in safer, more peaceful Red States ..
"You would be wrong. Red States tend to be the most violent places to live.… Red States dominate the rankings of violent crimes despite their emphasis on judgment and incarceration."
red states .. all of the top 15 states in rates of death by firearms (2003).
Methamphetamine addiction is a national scourge, but ... chewing the heart out of the red Middle West, where Missouri .. highest number of lab incidents (meth labs or production facilities raided by authorities), with Indiana, Tennessee, Iowa, and Kentucky also among the top six states afflicted with .. bootleg chemistry.
.. 10 states with the lowest meth-lab incidents? Eight of them are blue.
Then there's the violence or despair directed selfward.
Of the 15 states with the highest adjusted rates of suicide (2003), 14 are red.
Animals aren't safe, either. .. "canned hunts" .. most common in Texas, according to the Humane Society.
.. "victimless crime" .. picture is no prettier. Take gambling .. gaming, as it is euphemistically known— .. trouble in River City runs the length and width of the red states.
2005 .. Ernst & Young, of the 11 top-grossing gaming markets (excluding Native American gaming revenues—see below), 8 are in red states.
Five of the six states that offer riverboat gambling are red, and they should be red with shame, because you know what goes on ..
Some red states are so economically parlous that casinos are the only thing between them and Desolation Row.
Mississippi made its own deal with the Devil, until Nature upped the ante. "Until Katrina, [Mississippi] casinos were restricted to floating seafront barges to appease opponents of gambling in one of the Bible Belt's most God-fearing states,"
After Katrina, .. buckle and lunged at the cash cow .. casino-building orgy .. around the city of Biloxi, where black Americans and Vietnamese fishermen are being displaced by redevelopment .. around 20 new casinos a decade from now ..
.. growth spurt in Native American casinos, scattered across 20 red states and 8 blue states, gave us the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal—la grande bouffe of greed .. Abramoff .. Native American contacts .. "monkeys" and "mofos"—" we need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!" he ejaculated ..
Christian Coalition .. Reed .. Falwell .. Robertson .. Reed .. 'Ralph Reed symbolizes the rise of the Christian right to political power,' .. Frederick Clarkson .. Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy."
.. red states may be more churchgoing than the blue states, but ..
10 states in the union with the highest divorce rates in 2004 (among the 45 states for which figures are available) were all red!
Illegitimacy rates? .. again .. shame .. National Center for Health Statistics, of states with the highest percentages of births in 2003 to unwed mothers, 9 of the top 10 were red.
Considering .. hard-core Christian right .. against abortion availability and birth control .. USA Today, Phillip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It .. progressives have fewer children, and that if demography is destiny: "[This] augurs a far more conservative future—one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default."
.. gluttony .. before haters label Luxury Liberals as emasculated fatties .. a look in the mirror, if they can find one wide enough .. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, supported by the C.D.C., in 2004 14 of the 15 states with the highest percentage of obesity were red.
Moreover, there is a correlation between corpulence and economic deprivation. Based on a three-year average of obesity rates, "the five states with the highest obesity rates—Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky—exhibit much higher rates of poverty than the national norm," the Associated Press reported in August. All five states are red states. .......
Thomas Frank's best-seller asked the question What's the Matter with Kansas? Why does a red state such as Kansas vote against its own economic interests? As Frank himself put it in an online interview, "Large parts of the state are in deep economic crisis—in many cases a crisis either brought on or worsened by the free-market policies of the Republican party—and yet the state's voters insist on re-electing the very people who are screwing them, running up colossal majorities for George Bush, lowering taxes [for corporations and the already affluent] and privatizing and deregulating, even when these things are manifestly unhealthy for the state." Part of his explanation for why Kansas voters keep laying their heads on the chopping block involves the Republican superiority at waging culture war and exploiting animus.
A shallower, more disturbing, .. more obnoxious hypothesis is that the red states are where the dumbing down of America has achieved rock-bottom success .. Morgan Quitno Press, an independent, private research-and-publishing company in Kansas, blue states accounted for 8 out of the top 10 "Smartest States" as measured by pedagogical criteria. (And one of the 2 red states that did make the top 10—Montana—is trending blue.)
As for the bottom 10 states, 8 of them were red. Blue states not only put a premium on education but are also willing to pay the premium.
Nine of the 10 states paying the highest average salary for schoolteachers in 2004–05 were blue ..
the 10 states with the worst-paid teachers were all red. This gap helps explain why our children isn't learning, to paraphrase President Bush.
.. Karl Rove .. Republicans learned how to exploit the intelligence gap, herding the dopey faithful to the polls, and depending on their docility between elections. "Karl Rove was there to recognize that there were substantial powers to be obtained by catering to stupid stubborn people, and George W. Bush would be the man to harvest such resources," Norman Mailer .. The Big Empty (a series of dialogues between Mailer and son John Buffalo). "George W. understood stupid people well. They were not dumb, their minds were not physically crippled in any way. They had chosen to be stupid because that offered its own kind of power. To win a great many small contests of will, they needed only to ignore all evidence. Bright people would break down trying to argue with them." It's like trying to reason with a box of rocks. ..
America may well devolve into the moronic dystopia of Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy—a mentally handicapped superpower buried under a mountain of garbage where the Fox News Channel is the sole source of information.
recalcitrant dunces .. Fortunately, there is room to maneuver .. the differences between red- and blue-state Americans being less fixed and primary, more flexible and subtly hued, than advertorialized.
Compared with the Vietnam-era turmoil, the American people are feeling quite cousinly. It's the political class that is polarized and is inciting polarization among the apathetic masses. "A polarized political class makes the citizenry appear polarized, but it is only that—an appearance," Fiorina argued.
The good news is that some of the most heavily made-up clown faces fronting this charade are melting into a pool of batter: .. Ralph Reed .. Tom "the Hammer" DeLay .. Virginia senator George Allen .. singled out a Democratic volunteer of Indian descent as "macaca" .. Conrad Burns, Republican senator from Montana .. a) berated exhausted firefighters for doing a "piss-poor job," (b) called his housepainter "a nice little Guatemalan man" .. hinted he might be an illegal alien .. (c) said at a fund-raiser with First Lady Laura Bush present and pretending to be awake that America faced a terrorist enemy whose members "drive taxicabs in the daytime and kill at night"
Katherine Harris, .. "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."
.. won't stop NASCAR, the comedy stylings of Larry the Cable Guy, and intelligent design from being forced down our throats, but it's a start.
the choice 2004 bit, for me, in reply ..
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