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Citizen complaint of the day: Somebody's not just whistling Dixie on the waterfront
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LOL
Yeah, give 'em another 150 years and they might get around to it.
Not fit for battle
High poverty rates and low education levels mean there ain't nothing going to rise any time soon.
Well
He knows his geography. That saying a lot in a geography illiterate country!
Pretty decent artwork
Not sure I could draw the states that well from memory. If I could, though, I wouldn't label South Carolina as "Georgia SC".
The artist has also taken the time to draw the Gulf of Mexico as full of BP oil (realistic!)
^ this ^
and what the hell is that squiggly line extending west from mid-Georgia supposed to be? I-20? Also, it looks like Virginia might have been excluded based on the thickness of the line (the new Mason-Dixon?).
Lastly:
"I am Kilrane,
of the 20th Maine,
and I march to hell and back again,
for Colonel Joshua Chamberlain,
we're all goin' down to Dixieland."
I assumed that they had
I assumed that they had already drawn the stars and bars over Georgia before deciding to label the states.
You have to admit, that's a pretty good free-hand map
Unfortunately for the South, it has a few things to address before it can really rise, like having the worst schools, highest rates of obesity, lowest life expectancy, lowest overall health and lowest minimum wage. Thank goodness for those anti-voter fraud laws, at least.
A bit snooby there?
spoken like a true northeast bigot and snob...
Just accurate, alas...
... and most of the states pictured (save Virgina, Texas, and Florida) are receiving >$1 in federal benefits for every $ they pay in.
Unlike Massaschusetts, which like most of the northeast, gets about 70¢ back for each dollar in federal taxes paid.
Yes
things were great in Antebellum. Slavery, Scarlett Rhett Butler....
The only thing rising out of the South is their dental bills.
Reality is bigoted?
Reality is bigoted?
Down home Southerner v Harvard Prof.
I believe part of being a bigot is to act and believe that the level of a person's education somehow decides the quality of that person. I know many poorly educated folks who have hearts of gold, are great and loving parents and would give someone in need the shirts off their backs if asked for. I also know well educated people who have a wall filled with degrees who are obnoxious, condescending jerks who are as cold as ice and couldn't care less about anyone but themselves. I'd prefer to be in the company of a down to earth Southerner over a few Harvard professors that I've known, anytime.
Which
Has jack shit to do with anything being said.
So tired of your pseudocountry jive
You know what?
I grew up in a low income family and spent the first 20 years of my life living in trailer parks.
While I fully agree that uneducated people - such as my grandfather - can be amazing people, I'm getting mighty tired of your pseudo country crap that you post here.
The reality is that any given impoverished area, including low income areas of large Northern cities, including trailer parks in the West and South, will be full of wonderful but uneducated people for the most part. HOWEVER, many of those people will continue to have very limited options in life despite honest, hard work because they lack education, skills, and ultimately good health to pull themselves out of that poverty. I just attended my 30th high school reunion and it is clear that those of my trailer dwelling buddies who took advantage of their high school education and went on to college or training in a trade have done well, and those who didn't finish high school or barely finished and worked unskilled jobs have had a very difficult time holding it all together - regardless of how wonderful a person they are.
Ever read Nickled and Dimed? Barbara Ehrenreich works alongside many wonderful people who work very hard, but can't escape their circumstances. The South has serious problems because the policies that are enacted by those they elect serve only to perpetuate those serious problems. Nothing will rise out of that save the drain on other taxpayers.
So, please, put down the cowboy hat, step away from the truck, and dive back into that triple decker you stumbled out of. You like to lecture us about this stuff, but, as a bonefide Reformed Redneck and proud owner of a Ph.D. that means that I will never have to stuff newspaper in dry rotted holes in the walls or return bottles to buy food for dinner again, I can tell that you are all hat and no cattle.
Get used t it
I don't really care what you're tired of. Time to open that little mind and get used hearing other views
Excuse me?
I'm not tired of hearing "other views". I'm tired of hearing unvalidated faith-based tripe dressed up in lace and bows and misrepresented as validated and verifyable reality.
I'll entertain nearly any view, but I generally don't let stupidity stick around for long.
Don't believe you..
And I don't believe you are who/what you claim to be. Your stories change like the weather.
I don't give a shit
And like a good child of the Palouse, I can certainly smell it a mile away. I can even tell the difference between bullshit and hogshit and horseshit.
There are people on UHub who know me in real life and know where I come from. Can't say so much for your troll ass and your phoney baloney "I'm a REAL American" nonsense.
You would do far better to move to this "real America" that you make up in your head and just stop trying to pretend that you have any credibility in this arena given your urban roots. Buying a pickup truck and listening to country music doesn't make you a good person or someone in tune with any "real America". It makes you a guy who drives a pickup and listens to country music. And if you do move, it will make you that oddball city slicker Yankee weirdo who thinks that driving a pickup and listening to country music makes you fit in.
Kind of upset that some one
Kind of upset that some one called you out on all the tall stories you post here? You should be. Lack of credibility and believability is no way to go through life.
You should try hard work instead of make believe
I know who I am and where I came from and how I got off my dead ass and made my way in the world by finding and following opportunity and not being shy of working shit jobs when I have had to. I've also had nearly 50 years to do it. There are people who post here who have known me since I left the trailer park behind and have been along on this ride - I don't need your validation.
If you don't like it in MA, you should just move and make your fortune where it suits you - except that takes work, it means taking risks, and then there is the potential that the reality of living in another place isn't as you dream it.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!!!
Most massholes are unlikely to know what that is.
I traveled along the upper Washington edge of it and liked the long vistas between Spokane and Ellensburg.
It is said to be blessed with fertile loess carried by the wind over the eons.
The main take away I got from the whole region was the degree of engaged feminine leadership.
My crackpot theory is that the women of westward migration in the expansion era were more robust, resourceful and ambitious than contemporaries who stayed put in settled places.
The Seattle founding legend suggests that the Denny Party were sort of half assed and hopeless until the women showed up.
It even inspired a crappy Teevee show. http://youtu.be/mRNpa_vTjRM.
Don't forget the Missoula Flood
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/megaflood/
And the coolness of Coulees.
Mass has a few glacial lake beds. They are where pockets of quality farm soil sleep.
"Lake Hitchcock" ran from northern Connecticut to southern NH/VT along the Connecticut River Valley and there was another in Concord.
The Merrimack Valley had some degree of glacial lake formation as evinced by the size of he Kame Terraces along the Andover side. It's like a micro coulee.
Do you look down on those who
Do you look down on those who pursue careers in the trades as well? I mean those aren't "higher education."
What's the opposite of
What's the opposite of secession? Expulsion? Can we do that with the South? (Flame away; I'm from WV and my dad's side of the family is from Louisiana and Mississippi. I know whereof I speak.)
Note: That's a pretty decent grasp of geography... almost certainly drawn by somebody not educated in the Deep South, perhaps for trolling purposes.
Heh, it's funny because they
Heh, it's funny because they're not us and they're dumb because of where they happen to live!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How'd this guy even learn to write being from THE SOUTH???
In all fairness
The South is doing remarkably well financially compared to NE, just saying!
http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/lpa/industry/gsp/gsp_index.html
Uh
Try Real GDP per capita. Comparing Vermont to Florida on straight GDP is just silly.
Per capita, New England is tops and the Southeast is at about 70% of New England's real GDP.
By state, Alaska, North Dakota, and Wyoming are all tops (oil/gas). Considering CT and MA come up next and only a few percent behind those three is actually quite impressive since our GDP isn't really due to natural products.
Map of GDP per capita in 2010 (North Dakota made a huge jump between 2010 and 2013).
Try including cost of living.
Try including cost of living...... 550K which will get you a studio in the Ink Blot, would by a mansion (or McMansion) in most of the South.
Try properly equivalent comparisons
There are alot of expensive mansions in high end areas of Florida, too. Look at the cost of housing in Miami.
Which has about as much to do with the price of housing for the average person in an area as a $550K luxury condo in Boston does.
Sorry, but calling the South dumb is not an empty taunt
Worst schools, low high-school graduation rates, Rick Perry. Some cliches are true.
Ah, so makes it easier to
Ah, so makes it easier to stereotype against a large group of various people based on where they were born/live, got it.
In partial agreement
I'm all for Dixie Expulsion. Stop taking my taxes to support your attempts at national theocracy.
Good point
Because everyone from the south talks like Boss Hogg or Roscoe P. Coltrane.
Personally, I don't think someone from Boston should be casting aspersions on accents that make you sound like a fucking moron, but maybe that's just me.
Nobody mentioned accents but
Nobody mentioned accents but you. I talk like somebody raised in the backwoods of Appalachia, because I was raised in the backwoods of Appalachia.
No, actually, Costello
No, actually, Costello mentioned them and then apparently edited his post.
My bad then. Of all the
My bad then. Of all the complaints I have, that isn't one. There's a saying I heard when I was young that always stuck with me. I don't know who to attribute it to: "Up north, when they hear you talking slow, they think you're dumb. Down south, if they hear you talking fast, they assume you're lying."
"Up north, when they hear you
I like that.
I knew we'd find common
I knew we'd find common ground eventually.
I did
Because I went with my gut instead of my brain. I'll pray for forgiveness later.
I wonder if you would go as far
as saying the same about particular minority neighborhoods, minus Perry. But you could always substitute Perry with a Rev. __________!
You really shouldn't judge people! Particularly when the majority of our country's high skilled manufacturing happens to be in the south.
They're not dumb by virtue of
They're not dumb by virtue of where they live. But the majority are overwhelmingly willfully ignorant. It's a region that systematically rejects the fundamental principles of science, including the existence of objective truth.
They're not dumb, but they're handicapped by a terrible education system and the rejection of all attempts to improve it. So many people are born into endemic, systemic poverty that would be unrecognizable here in the North.
They're not dumb, but they live under an entirely different system of values than we do in New England. The role of the government, the relationship between the individual, the community, and the state, the importance of religion (and the prevalence of fundamentalist religion), and many more fundamental building blocks of a world view are entirely different in the South. In the end, we share little with them but a language, and that is no basis upon which to share a country.
Sure, I guess they aren't
Sure, I guess they aren't real Americans, like us noble northerners. I hear they might have different skull shapes that show a propensity towards violence as well!
Again, we're talking about my
Again, we're talking about my grandparents here. I didn't notice anything phrenologically odd about them, but I won't rule it out.
Well I'm sorry you hate the
Well I'm sorry you hate the culture and tradition of your grandparents so much that you feel the need to dismiss an entire huge part of the country based on analytics.
Sounds a lot like a coworker of mine who claims to be very worldly but never wants to ever travel to any "non blue state" because of generalizations and stereotypes of how people vote, going so far to say he will never buy a product designed from someone he has never met in a "red state" because he doesn't want to "support an economy of ignorance and racism" and would pay more for the same thing if found sold by someone he doesn't know in a region he blindly agrees with.
Okay, I don't have a lot to
Okay, I don't have a lot to say in response to this comment, but I'll take the opportunity to make two points.
1. I realize that my distaste for the south is a fundamentally irrational position to take. I don't care, it's my position. Since I don't really have a dog in the pro-bike/anti-bike rage being slung around in the debate about two stories down on the front page, I figured I'd toss a rhetorical grenade here. Slow day at work.
2. Your username always makes me chuckle. Now that Amazon released The Wire on streaming, I'm finally going back and re-watching them all. I'm on season 4 at the moment, but I think Hamsterdam in season 3 led to the most calls of 'got that WMD.'
Right Chere,Right Chere
I hear that WMD is the bomb
Bigotry
Your distaste and dislike for Southerners can pretty much be called exactly what it is - bigotry.
big yellow bird!
big yellow bird!
This is not about bigotry or parochialism, but science
I don't have any personal enmity toward the South. Thank you for Delta blues, all those greats of early American R&B, rock 'n roll and country music, and Athens indie rock. Thanks for Hunter S. Thompson, Truman Capote, Justified and True Detective. Thank you for proper BBQ, savory cornbread, border food, Cajun and Creole cuisine, the bowl of red, soul food, country ham, fried chicken, country gravy, crawfish, grits, bourbon and sour-mash whiskeys, and the Sazerac,
But the poorest-in-the-nation level of education across the South, as gauged by measures like school quality and graduation rates, is objective fact. Sorry about the facts.
you are what you are..
One definition of bigotry is to categorize an entire group of people; most of whom you've never met and disparage them. What you say about the South qualifies you as a bigot. Sorry about the facts. But it is what it is...and you are what you are.
You keep using that word
Bigotry is about stubborn intolerance toward a person or group of people because of what they are or espouse.
Throwing the term bigot at someone because they're relating some objective statistics about lowest-in-the-country levels of education in the South that you don't want to hear? I'm not sure what to call that, but you're not making a great case for the intelligence of Southerners.
There you go again
And there you go again. Do you even read your own posts?
read this
http://www.fuckthesouth.com
Unravelled?
I do believe you are becoming unraveled...
The point in the party ...
Where the tired host starts trying to vacuum the Doritos crumbs out of the carpet, looks up and sees two people in the corner engaged in an intense and increasingly loud argument.
Enough, please.
Mc Slim, you could quote your
Mc Slim, you could quote your same "objective statistics" about blacks in greater Boston vs. whites and you'd most certainly be racist. Claiming traits for individuals based on those for groups they are in is at best intellectually sloppy and in your particular case here elitist as well. Not cool.
"Bigot" does mean something specific:
We'd all be better off if everyone would resist the urge to generalize.
Learn how this works
He isn't claiming traits for individuals. He's claiming them for the populations for which they've been developed. If he said, "you are from Mississippi, therefore you are a moron with no education and all that is wrong with the South", then he'd be a bigot. However, he's saying "the education system in Mississippi is the worst in the nation. For the South to 'rise again' they should try fixing that first". Big difference. Try to keep up.
He's also not subscribing WHY they are bad at these things to the nature of their population. In other words, "you get a shitty education because you're from Mississippi and that's just the way it is. There's no way to change it because your brain is broken from being from Mississippi". These things are all entirely within their control because the reason they have a broken education system and a lot of other broken systems that he correctly ascribes to them is due to choices they've made in how they run their states as a whole. That's entirely voluntary. If someone jumps off a roof and misses the pool, you don't say "well, you can't call them a dumbass because you don't know them personally" or "to think they're stupid is bigotry". The populations of the Southern states have consistently, as wholes, done some really stupid things and elevated really stupid people who say really stupid things to power. They've, as a whole, consistently voted for the really stupid people who want to maintain the really stupid nature of the whole and even gone as far as to out-right turn away from information and data that would make them smarter to accept it and learn from it. It is willful ignorance, as a whole, and calling them out on it isn't bigotry.
These things are all entirely
How ridiculous. 2011 per capita income in Massachusetts: $62,859. Mississippi: $36,919.
And what an utterly common platform for prejudice.
Let me look that one up for you too:
Drive-by
You're going to have to explain how the way they run their school systems aren't within their control.
They have no money, it has
They have no money, it has nothing to do with "control".
It's *exactly* the same as blaming the urban poor in Northeast cities for their poor schools.
No it isn't
The state has the money and has refused to allocate it to the school systems numerous times under the guise from Republican lawmakers that the "funding formula is flawed" or "we gave them money but the grades didn't go up in response" and so on.
I'm not going to go into a long expose on Mississippi schools. You could find all the pertinent data on your own that shows it's not the fact that they don't have the money to spend on their school system it's that they willingly choose not to and come up with some bullshit reasons why. Part of it is their desire to use their failing public education system to expand for-profit charter schools which the politicians have been able to peddle to their electorate as a miracle cure of "free market competition" in education...and it gets them re-elected.
Here's one link to get you started.
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/09/18/mississippi-schools-funding
But the majority are
The majority? What are the specific figures?
Good thing that never happens anywhere else in the country.
http://bostonherald.com/solr/global%20warming
Funny, I don't see any schools from New England on this list:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/arti...
College of William and Mary (VA)
Georgia Institute of Technology
Pennsylvania State University—University Park
University of California—Berkeley
University of California—Davis
University of California—Los Angeles
University of California—San Diego
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
University of Virginia
Diverting attention to
Diverting attention to colleges is a red herring. Colleges don't matter if you don't get a basic education in primary or secondary school. My home state (WV) and Mississippi are always vying for the dubious honor of worst schools. Here's one recent list I saw. You'll get somewhat different results with different methodologies, but the basic shape will remain the same.
Educational Systems: The Worst 10 States
Mississippi
Louisiana
New Mexico
West Virginia
Alabama
Alaska
South Carolina
South Dakota
Michigan
Oklahoma
It all goes back to those fundamental disagreements about the role of the state. The South insists on low property and income taxes, leading to low funding for schools that tend to underperform.
As an example, my home county voted down a bill known as the 'school levy' when I was in school (yes, we allowed direct democracy on school funding), during the Contract With America days. It never passed again. Our school system cut all arts and languages programs and laid off about 40% of teachers. The schools stopped receiving basic maintenance. They had to put plywood archways over the entry doors for my high school so students wouldn't be hit by falling bricks.
Unsurprisingly, the education quality went downhill quickly. The county schools were taken over by the state as failing schools during the Bush years, and my old high school building (built with New Deal money) was finally condemned and razed this past year. Now, the students attend class in trailers. I hope some of them make it out, like I did.
As soon as the county schools came out from under state supervision, they fired all the administrators who were advocating for reform and revised the budget back down to failure levels to get property taxes under control.
Are there decent people in the South? Of course. My decent, educated, etc. father is from Yazoo City, Mississippi. Are there complete dummies in New England? Well, read UHub comments for a few days and tell me what you think. I just don't want to subsidize the South anymore. They hate us anyway. Cut them loose.
Diverting attention to
Funny, I don't see any schools from Massachusetts on the top 25 of this list:
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/national-rankings
You've got to get down to #56 before you hit good old Boston Latin.
There's one school from Maine at #14 but it's beaten out by six from Texas, Florida and Georgia.
Oh, well, good thing there are no states in New England that have unrealistic expectations about income or property tax rates. :rolleyes:
No way!
You mean people who can afford to send their kids to the best schools in their school system are doing so by way of a "charter system" that not every student can take advantage of? Gee.
Here, tell me which of these sets of numbers has the higher average:
0 1 1 1 2 20
13 14 14 15 16 16
Now, if that 20 is a 20/20 for some charter school in the southeast and the rest of the schools are failing to educate their kids at all, and if the 13-16 represent great grades from all of the schools in New England (but none of them able to rival a true 20/20), guess which one has the better school system. Hint, it's not the one only educating a few hundred of its best and brightest students at a time.
Here's the same result in map form: http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2014/state_report_cards.html?intc=EW-QC14-TOC
You'll notice the distinct lack of state systems in the Southeast that score above the national average.
I probably ought to get back
I probably ought to get back to work at some point here, but I don't think citing a list of top (or bottom) individual schools is that helpful. You have to look at the education an average kid in any population is going to get. So Latin is the best school in Boston? What percentage of Boston high-schoolers go to Latin?
Whether you want to break it down by municipality (not helpful in rural areas), county, or state, I think the average education quality speaks more to the value people put on education than the quality of the best magnet school around. I tend to go with states, because I'm from a rural county with a consolidated school system (ie all students from a geographical area about the size of Rhode Island go to one high school), but there might be a better unit to use in other areas.
Sadly true
But I'll say this. The vaccine deniers often do so out of a mistaken attempt to apply answers from science that are not accurate or even proven false by better science in all cases.
At least they're thinking, just wrong.
Arguing that man isn't effecting climate change because only God gets to say what happens to the Earth is...just...come on.
Are you implying that there
Are you implying that there are no climate change deniers north of the Mason-Dixon Line?
Of course not
First off, that would saddle me with having the burden of explaining Pennsyltucky's deviation since the Civil War.
Secondly, the idea that there are "no climate change deniers" in any particular state is laughable. Of course there are. There are stupid people everywhere. However, we're talking propensities. And the propensity is not only for fewer people in the Southeast to believe that climate change is manmade, but the propensity is also there for them to elect those people to Congress to make policies on this stuff.
http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=page/stanford-univ...
There are 4 states that fall below 70% acceptance that climate change is even partially manmade. Three of them are Arkansas, Georgia, and South Carolina. Mississippi and Alabama are 70% and 71% respectively. Woeful.
Move to Cuba
So true. Massachusetts should become part of Cuba. The politics and lack of individualism are identical.
Why would anyone want to move out of Massachusetts?
By many objective measures -- education, employment opportunity, economic growth, technology & innovation, access to capital, healthcare, child well-being -- it's one of the best places to live in the country. (Yeah, winters suck, but we deal.)
I'd say if you don't like the political climate here, you're the one who should move.
Why indeed
Taxes through the roof, growing gang violence, a regulation slapped on everything that moves and doesn't, business fleeing as fast as they can to Texas and other less oppressive states, the paradise for all who need to be dominated by government and who crave the security of a Nanny State are just a few reasons Massachusetts is losing population and the South and West are the destinations of choice. Maybe others can see something you cannot yet comprehend.
You want to flee crime
By going to Texas?
Okay ... http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html
Also, MA has a pretty middling tax burden. Look it up. It would be even lower on the fed side if we weren't paying big bucks for states that won't take care of their own people, roads, etc.
Leave Scoob aloooone!
Poor bastard still confuses the notion that the South suffers from the worst education levels in the US with the spurious idea that anyone thinks they're bad people.
Nobody is saying that. I have great relatives and friends whom I wish had had access to better education. I love them. But pretending that there aren't life-altering consequences to their substandard education is childish in the extreme. And pretending that the Southern states aren't more hobbled than the rest of the country by this is as rational as a two-year-old throwing a tantrum over not getting another juice box.
All I can say at this point is that there's little value in engaging someone who can't face a set of well-documented statistical conclusions. Adults really needn't and shouldn't argue with children.
The South is doing just fine
MC, where have you been getting your news? The South is doing just fine. They are benefitting from a tremendous economic surge. Jobs are in abundance and business' are flocking to Dixie. The cost of living; especially food and homes is beyond reasonable - it's affordable and you get a huge bang for your buck down there. They must be doing something right and I think we all know what that is. There is no Socialist tax burden and economy and business killing regulation. So before 'Yahl' condescend about Southerners needing our pity because their educational systems are supposedly so bad, look at the big picture. In 2014, they are doing a hell of a lot better that the North East.
Just the opposite...as usual
Here's a picture of the 2011 tax burdens by state:
Since then, most changes have only exaggerated the difference in a few states so it's a pretty accurate picture for 2013 as well.
Compare this picture to the GDP per capita one above. You'll notice a very similar pattern emerges. States that have higher tax burdens (and we're only talking a 2% difference compared to MA), have better economies. The reason your money "goes farther" in those places isn't because they're doing better. It's the exact opposite. The better you do, the more things can afford to cost because the consumer is doing better and can afford to pay it.
Don't burn your brain out, but here's a thought experiment: If everyone in imaginary state "Floribama" had only $25/day to spend on gas and food, what would be the average cost of a meal eaten by the families in Floribama? Not much and that means the gas station attendant and grocery store clerk aren't getting paid a lot either. If everyone in "Connectimont" has $50/day to spend on food and gas, they'd spend more than the people in Floribama even if they buy the same amounts. It also means you could take 2% more in taxes because they're spending far more than 2% more anyways. The clerk and attendant in Connectimont could make more money too because there's more money being spent there than in Floribama for the same services.
But you're right about regulation. Who would want water that doesn't have oil, coal cleanser, or fracking chemicals in it or the ability to live next to a fertilizer plant without having your house blown up? Not those good ol' Southerners. Oh...that is unless you're a female health facility that also provides abortions. Then, they can't regulate you enough until you go out of business. Yep. They're all about removing business-killing regulations...unless you run a business they don't like. The the "free hand of the market" becomes the "pimp hand of the government" and they shut you down.
You're still arguing with someone who
has repeatedly shown in this thread that he has the rhetorical depth of a spoiled child. Present Scoob with an unpleasant fact, and he puts his fingers in his ears, closes his eyes tightly, stamps his feet and screams, "Nooo!"
It's like pointing out the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed scientific research on anthropogenic climate change to a climate change denier. You can lead a horse's ass to water, but you can't make it think.
Consider this as well
If MA is such a toxic, suffocating "nanny state", then why are we hearing about parents in Georgia and Florida being arrested for letting their kids walk to the park?
MA gained population in the
MA gained population in the last census, where are you getting your 'facts', FOX 25/Herald?
They'd be a third world
They'd be a third world country without federal government funds and tax breaks.
Without the feds they'd be
Without the feds they'd be selling their own natural resources and using large tracts of federal land to great profit. Farmland, minerals, and oil count for a lot.
Ha!
Maybe out west. But we're talking about the South (technically, Southeast). The Feds barely own more there than they do up here: http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf
Under the delusion that I can't make the "discussion" any worse
Buford T. Justice: [to his son] There's no way, *no* way that you came from *my* loins. Soon as I get home, first thing I'm gonna do is punch yo mamma in da mouth!
I kind of liked it
..when I took a bus to and from the Englewood Florida area to deal with the death of my mother.
Yeah it has problems but they won't be solved with this mechanistic outlook.
It sort of looks like here until you pass Virginia and the changes aren't really noticeable until Palmetto and Pitch Pine lands in South Carolina.
The next biome transition is somewhere after Jacksonville when it begins to share qualities with the African Savannah and lots of palm things.
Orlando is gawdawful when viewed from a bus and the station there is very high security or was 2 years ago. They all but frisk you. But it's Disney and a major military command zone.
It improves measurably at Tampa. The older cities have lots of heart and are a much better cost deal than here.
The rest of the way along the Gulf Coast was fine.I was going to an elderly colony and wouldn't pick it as an option but mom liked it.
I have a bunch of friends from there through G Plus. Old Walter was here in the Navy and lives in Georgia with his spouse. I thought it was funny to see him make friends with the Thai and French women I met.
I love him like some uncle I never met http://youtu.be/DLkSBryYX5s
While I regularly hoist stuff from Paul Krugman there and other lefties, the various people in the conservative parts of the country and I don't beat on each other the way people do here.
We agree to lay it aside without saying so. If you have some worthy lore to share, a bridge is built and it's up to each to keep it working.
You get a sense that the everyday people in these places are really weary of politician horseshit and go along with their versions as a kind of reflexive default.
Each of us has astonishing tools to bloody find out, first hand how it goes in other places but you have to break out of the posture paralysis of right and left and related things and actually engage a bit over some neutral mutual enthusiasm.
And it is even more interesting as these bridges grow in whole other places where few of the assumptions we argue about here are recognizable. My southern Slav posse has allegiances to Russia but the blown up airline has them spooked. I have Thai friends on both sides of the Shinawatra quarrel.
This is such a manic, hyper anxious and pent up area. It's pretty killer when you are off the hook for caring about its problems
Common ground
Once took a road trip across the country. Stopped at Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga and visited the museum of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, which was one of the last big moments for the Confederacy before the war ended. The person at the counter noticed my Red Sox cap when I came in, and when I was leaving she asked if I was the one driving the car with Massachusetts plates because people had been suspiciously talking about it as they came in. I told her yep, that was my car, I've got family in the Carolinas and if it helps, she could tell the other folks that I hate the Yankees, too.
Chattanooga was a welcome
Chattanooga was a welcome surprise compared to most Southern cities. It is very walkable, lots of parks, bike friendly, full of museums and public art, and has a nice downtown core with a decent nightlife.
Big misunderstanding
Seems like a big misunderstanding to me. Contrary to much of the anti-science-South stereotypes put forth here, I believe it's actually an affirmation of the severity of global warming. Thanks to their abundance of styrofoam coolers, as the sea level rises, the South will rise!!!
The map is simply a guide for recommended locations for cooler placement.
Will rise?
Will? It already has. There are a small but vocal minority of people here in the northeast and in the midwest and west, who refuse to accept reality, but of course it's true. Texas alone can easily be it's own country. And the south has risen due in no small part to internal migration to the south from other regions of the country.
I was born and raised here in the northeast, but my eyes are wide open, and I'm not a snob.
Wowww
Substitute the word "south" or "southerner" for the word "black" or "minority" and you liberals would be screaming! Bigotry is bigotry, you can choose what you think is acceptable and what is not. It's all one in the same.
Sad day for the UHub comment section, this resembles a Howie Carr thread!
Not really
People are talking about populations and opportunity, not inherent properties of "those people".
I don't think many here would disagree that both the poverty and lack of opportunity and educational attainment in both the South and as experienced by many African Americans are responsible for many of the social ills and personal degradation experienced by people in both groups.
Two heads of the same monster.
Ooooo
People are taking about "populations". Like making assumptions about a GROUP of people. Yes you're right again, not bigotry!
Two heads indeed
But you're only allowed to pet one, while everyone is welcome to piss on the other.
Please tell me
How many federal agency health and environmental justice and policy discussions have you been involved with?
The concerns encompass rural poverty (of which whites make up the majority), agricultural worker poverty, reservation poverty, southern poverty, and urban poverty. There isn't differential concern, except where there is differential need.
Actually
The point you are attempting to make is that we should replace the word "black" for "southerner" not the other way around as you stated.
But if we did, then we'd be blaming black people for their poor education systems, etc. and that isn't true. Black people didn't vote to get shit on. They didn't elect people who don't have their interests in mind and care more about religion and ideology than real governance. They didn't vote for people to ruin their communities.
The South did and continues to do so, voting time and time again against their best interests, against science, against anything they are demagogued to hate by their political leaders.
So, it would easily be ignorant to prescribe the same words above against another group, however against a group who continue to do it to themselves, how is that bigotry to point out the factual results of their own actions?
Relating to the topic at hand
Relating to the topic at hand, vaguely, we certainly had historical supporters of the Confederacy. I'm a member of a private club that supported them back in the day.
There's also a reason the Union Club has its name...