The Iron Law of Birtherism
As tax cut-receiving Tea Baggers and town hall hecklers continue their tirades over health care reform, their kin in the Obama birth certificate denial crowd perpetuate their mass delusion. But lost in the fury is what might be deemed the Iron Law of Birtherism. That is, the birther movement is strongest in precisely those states where Republicans poll best and health care is worst. And as it turns out, there is a Birther Corollary: education, working conditions and myriad other indicators of social failure are generally most dismal in the most red of states.
In the staggering DailyKos/Research 2000 poll released 10 days ago, a stunning 58% of Republicans did not believe (28%) or were unsure (30%) that President Barack Obama was in fact born in the United States. (Nationally, only 11% of Americans denied Obama's natural citizenship, with another 12% in doubt.) This is a uniquely Southern pathology, a region home to 69% of all birthers and the only part of the country to increase its Republican presidential vote in 2008. And to be sure, the old times there are not forgotten. As Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent concluded, "as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn't know where Obama was born."
That the birther movement would take hold in the states of the old Confederacy should come as little surprise. While Americans rejected George W. Bush's Republican Party on Election Day in November, in counties across much of the South voters actually increased their support for the GOP candidate John McCain over Bush four years earlier. The interactive New York Times map above tells the tale of November's losers still fighting their failed 2008 campaign by other means:
That helps explains why when it comes to the delusion over Obama's citizenship, as Steve Benen observed, one of these things is not like the other:
"Outside the South, this madness is gaining very little traction, and remains a fringe conspiracy theory. Within the South, it's practically mainstream."
But that brand of racial flat-earthism is not all that's practically mainstream in the South.
Consider, for example, abysmal health care.
A 2007 Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004; 8 voted for McCain in 2008. (In a sad irony, despite Oklahoma being ranked the worst of the worst, its congressional delegation led by James Inhofe, Tom Coburn and John Sullivan has been waging an all-out war to prevent the health care reforms their constituents of all Americans need most.)
The extremes in health care performance are startling. For example, 30% of adults and 20% of children in Texas lacked health insurance, compared to 11% in Minnesota and 5% in Vermont, respectively. Premature death rates from preventable conditions were almost double (141.7 per 100,000 people) in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi compared to the top performing states (74.1 per 100,000). Adults over 50 receiving preventative care topped 50% in Minnesota compared to only 33% in Idaho. Childhood immunizations reached 94% in Massachusetts, compared to just 75% in the bottom five states. As the report details, federal and state policies, such as insurance requirements and Medicaid incentives, clearly impact health care outcomes.
(In May, the Washington Post rightly noted it would be blue state residents funding health care reform for their red state brethren in an article titled, "A Red State Booster Shot." The grandstanding of Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal et al notwithstanding, the same one-way flow of taxpayer dollars from Washington to red states, of course, is a permanent feature of federal spending in general. And yet a 2008 survey predictably showed 68% of Republicans believe the U.S. has the best health system in the world, compared to only three in 10 Democrats.)
Then there's working conditions. A December 2005 study by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts showed that Americans' working conditions generally follow the 2004 electoral map. The report's Work Environment Index (WEI) rated the quality of Americans' working lives by a weighting of three factors: job opportunities, job quality, and job fairness. The top five states were Delaware, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Vermont and Iowa, the bottom five were South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas Texas and Louisiana. Unsurprisingly, all five of the cellar-dwellers are so-called "Right-to-Work" states featuring outright hostility towards union organizing. (Click the following links for maps of WEI by state and right-to-work states.)
(It is worth noting that since the Work Environment Index was published, the new federal minimum wage was boosted to $7.25 an hour, well above the $5.15 level previously in place in most Southern states at the time. It is also worth noting that since the recession began in December 2007, decidedly blue states like Michigan, Rhode Island, Oregon and California have been among those hit hardest by unemployment.)
When it comes to education, faithfully Republican red states do a little (but not much) better. In 2007, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a study titled "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness." The report looked at seven different performance categories, including return on education investment, workforce readiness, teacher skills, and academic achievement of low-income and minority students. Again, the top five states (Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey) backed Democrat Obama in 2008. Only two of the bottom 15 states similarly supported John Kerry; five voted for Obama four years later.
The same disturbing pattern applies to a wide array of measures of social dysfunction and pathology. In 2007, 7 of the top 10 states with the highest murder rates were squarely in Red America; conversely, 7 of the 10 states with the lowest murder rates were in the Obama column. (Interestingly, six of those states have no death penalty statute.) The 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2002 went for Bush two years later. (More recent data suggests an improvement in the Bible Belt.) In January 2009, a new report from the CDC showed teen birth rates increased for the first time in 15 years. Topping the list was Mississippi; again, 8 of the other 9 states in the top 10 went Republican in 2008. By almost any measure of societal breakdown that so-called Republican "values voters" decry, it is Red State America where moral failure is greatest.
Perhaps greatest among those moral failures is the simple unwillingness to accept the empirical truth. Like it or not, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and was legitimately elected President of the United States. This objective fact is not merely a case of Colbert's Law, in which "reality has a well-known liberal bias." The paranoia and not so thinly veiled racism of partisans from the underachieving red states, aided and abetted by their feckless Republican representatives, is the Iron Law of Birtherism.
Note: None of the above is to equate correlation with causation, or to ignore the central roles of economic development, demography and history in impacting the social indicators described here. While a state with an overall political preference may exhibit high rates of a given social dysfunction, that does not mean the supporters of that political viewpoint endorse or engage in the behavior in question. That said, when it comes to living standards, culture, politics and public policy matter.
(An earlier version of this piece appeared at Perrspectives.)
well, I guess there is a good bit of truth to the Southern stereotypes I've fought against all my life.
Well at least NC is still mostly blue...
isn't this the same map that reflected the consolidation of the GOP voters in the last election...regional party indeed.
In all seriousness...I smell civil war in the air, and these shitkickin redneck mouth breathers are gonna start it.
a survey that after all the verbiage simply confirms what we already knew.
1) Southern Conservatives are mostly racist.
2) Like uneducated infants, Southern conservatives are sucking off the teat of government, not knowing, understanding or caring where the fresh milk comes from.
3) The south has poorer healthcare than the rest of the nation, and thinks the system isn't broken. Of course not, they have the highest cost, the worst service and someone else is subsidizing their way. It's capitalist nirvana.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
> and these shitkickin redneck mouth breathers are gonna start it.
Funny thing about the differences between left and right, when Bush was in trying to destroy the planet no one would of thought about the liberals (who are still quite far to the right measured by the rest of the world) shooting Bush.
Where as with the right vs Obama, I'm happily surprised he's gotten this far without a serious attempt on his life.
I think that speaks more about each sides approach that most other things.
liberals as the "rabid left" or the "violent leftist" and all those wonderful projection-driven names they love to throw our way.
... ain't that a bitch?
for this rampant ignorance.
and guess what? how we view the South is how the rest of the world views the US.
death by stupid.
An interesting point "At least we're not them" etc ....... all depends on where you are standing.
Being in "the rest of the world" I can say that view is true from most of the people I know.
Though to think what it's like inside the asylum, wow !!
Where is the Genral he's good with the stats of how the US actually stacks up with the world on health, education, etc.
As a recent transplant to Georgia, I can also testify these people have the worst diets. They eat fat-encrusted shit with gravy on it, with a side of gravy.
that in the South, gravy is also considered a beverage.
It's the whole new diet isn't it ?
and I do miss it, but I don't recommend anyone eat it every day.
Any idea how friggin hard it is to find somethin as simple as sweetened iced tea down here?
Ya ask for it at a restaurant, and they look at ya like ya just come up from hell with your head on fire, and hand ya a sugar packet!
Ya can't dissolve sugar in cold tea!
GAH!
Yankees!
but made the best sweetened iced tea in the world. She must have had a friend from below the Mason-Dixon who taught her.
She made da's without sugar, but it lasted longer (no one else drank it) and when we tried to sweeten it, well you're right. Sugar doesn't dissolve. Ask for simple syrup next time.
me-oww!
water when brewing the tea.
I got looked with disbelief by the mum of a friend of mine was telling me all these "secret" approaches they had in the south to do sweet tea.
I know how to make sweet tea...I'm saying that most of the people workin in the restaurants here, aren't from here, and they have no concept of sweet tea!
No concept of biscuits and gravy either!
not to get off track but since you brought it up. i believe the top ten obesity states are mostly the "south".
people can live their lives as they seem fit but what they don't understand OBESITY cost everyone. i recent report came out saying $147 Billion dollars was spent on obesity related conditions. obesity is one of the conditions that could reduced which would reduce cost.......wow what a concept.
And look at Denmark; Copenhagen when a third of people cycle to work .......... they have low obesity and exceptionally levels of diabetes (compared with the rest of the west, opposed to what should be normal).
Who would of thought ........
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297...
obesity is a growing epidemic. like i mentioned the top states are mostly the "south". people can live their lives but the cost of OBESITY is shared by everyone. it's a "social" system within a capitalistic system. $147 Billion dollars was the cost of OBESITY in 2008. after considering the moral issues why should people that have self-responsibility absorb that cost? i'm not speaking of those who have a condition/disease. that can't be helped. my point is some of these people are co-dependent....to me hypocrites.
It's always miffed me when I'm getting on a plane and I get charged for extra baggage weight and in front of me in line is a 300 lbs american (or any nationality really) who doesn't get charged for being nearly twice my weight ....
Maybe because you don't deserve a special privilege based on your size?
A friend of mine and I figured out the marginal fuel cost for an extra pound of weight on a long-haul flight on a modern jetliner (we used the 777-300ER) a few months back. It works out to somewhat less than $0.05/lb/hr, plus about twice that for climb-out. The money that could reasonably be recovered by charging larger passengers more would be extinguished by the paperwork cost and public hullaballoo.
The reason to charge extra for excess baggage isn't because it costs the airline a huge amount extra to ship that extra bag. It's to keep the amount of luggage people haul along in line with what the airplane can actually carry without locking out those who have a legit need to carry more.
For those interested in how we calculated it, it's simple. We took the cruise lift to drag ratio (L/D) of the target aircraft and the specific fuel consumption of the engines (in lbs of fuel/lb of thrust/hr). Dividing the specific fuel consumption by the L/D gives you the marginal fuel cost of each pound of payload in lbs fuel/hr. Multiply that by the cost of fuel in $/lb (there are about 7 lb of jet fuel per gallon), and you have the marginal cost in $/lb/hr.
By the way, it should be noted that all those "obese" citizens in the South are probably black - and most likely liberal voters who support Obama's health care program.
Plus, you are being judgmental by assuming that a person is fat because they just eat too much and don't exercise. How about some "self-responsibility" for thin people who abuse their bodies too? It's just too convenient to blame everything on fat people though, I guess.
A very small segment of the population is morbidly obese, and we act like they are destroying the country. Meanwhile, young girls can drop dead from anorexia, and we don't give a shit. Nobody has dropped dead from obesity, even though any health problem a fat person gets is blamed on their weight and cooked up in the media.
trying yoga. There's room for improvement in my eating habits, but you'd be surprised just how healthy my last physical from a couple months ago turned out.
At the end of the day, I'm still going to be plus-sized, even with all the positive measures I'm taking. What I'm left with are my genetics, and I shouldn't have to pay more or less for a plane ticket than someone whose genes and habits have resulted in their being smaller.
I've never seen change without a fire
There are a lot more people in the US with type-2 diabetes than anorexia nervosa and bulimia.
Denmark is a small country with a homogeneous population too. You can't possibly compare that country to us - apples and oranges.
... it gets hot as f*ck down there, coupled with the humidity... and honestly, the last thing I would want to eat is some deep fried concoction.
In most warm places I have visited, the summer/hot month diet tends to revolve around fresh vegetables, fruits, light dishes, etc. On account that heavy/fatty foods just put you straight into a food coma on a hot midsummer's day. So I never understood why the South developed such a diet, which seems more geared towards the high caloric/fat needs of someone living near the poles, not the tropics.
hot humid eat high caloric/carbo fatty foods("cheaper") sit and watch nonsense on the idiot box with the air conditioner on acrtic stun. consequently, over weight.....obesity. this demographic can become an easy target to be/become a HATER.
And it's you, constituent. There are so many false and hurtful stereotypes in your post - you do realize that, right?
this is the strategy. get people to VOTE/rally against their best interest. once they have them for the birther cause they have them for everything in the opposing view. this often attracts the demographic that's overly reactive and usually knows little concerning the issues. this Culture Club stands for anti-government and often racists.WHAT's interesting the low wage earner in this demographic relies on subsidy........not that they don't qualify but they will lie about collecting government subsidy...in an effort of denial. this demographic often are foolish and are unable to have a two-way conversation. just like the media they watch is a one-way debate. the health care reform issue is an economic necessity. trust me when i say if a "public option" passed they will be in line for the benefit(s). these people are easily opposed to people not like them. narrow minded,heavily judgmental and self centered the opposite of what is talked about in their church.
"The 15% Solution" makes a LOT more sense.
Remember, in a time of war, criticizing the Commander-in-Chief sends the wrong message to our allies, our enemies, the troops in harm's way and the American people...
...unless the President is a Democrat. Then, accusing him of wanting to drown your babies, smother your grandmas and (let's face it) rape your white daughters -- well, that's just people expressing their First Amendment rights!
Now, suggesting that General Petraeus might have been politically compromised, on the other hand... that deserves Congressional censure!
This is our country now.
... so against their own self-interest isn't easy.
I'm curious as to the media distribution in these same regions. Turn on the radio to Jesus, country music and/or wing-nut radio only, or is there some, er, variety.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
Guns & Bibles FM ........
KMMO, your 'guns, god, and grits' station. And now, here's Myron Floren and Lawrence Welk with, "God Bless America."
As I heard a US comedian once say while performing in Canada, listing all the faults, he ended on that one :
"Now if only people in the US would say, God Bless The World, it might be a better place to be and we would actually be apart of the world"
... "on the shore of Lake Michigan."
I saw Ozzy and Motorhead there. No bubbles.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
So if this doesn't prove, once and for all, the Right Wing-Nut terrorists complete ignorance and lack of any education nothing does.
...I hear every nonsense GOP Talking Point repeated almost daily as "established fact". And challenging a person that has their mind SO made up down here, you are quite literally taking your own life in your hands.
* There are two types of Republicans: millionaires and suckers.
"Mugsy's Rap Sheet": Recording history for those who seek to rewrite it.
..permanent republican minority.
It's not that there's a civil war coming--for the Birthers, the last civil war never ended. As isolated as Japanese holdouts in the Philippine jungle, they burned their crosses and waved their rebel flags for a hundred years as the nation passed them by. Then they were drawn out of the woodwork by a Republican party which found them to be useful dupes who would trudge into the polls and vote against their own economic interests in exchange for well-paid entertainers like Limbaugh stroking their fearful, racist, misogynist, xenophobic little egos. The problem is that after decades of being pandered to by the wealthy and coddled by a corporate-friendly media, they developed delusions of grandeur. If they sit down and shut up, the wealthy can keep funneling cash to sideshow freaks like Malkin, Coulter, O'Reilly, Dobbs and Beck and the majority of Americans will probably keep giving in to their tantrums. But the crazier they look, the harder it gets for the moneyed interests to see them as a reliable source of gullible voters and to pander to them without unacceptable repercussions from reality-based Americans. Laughably-attended "tea parties," rants at town meetings and panicked hate-radio call-ins seem less like the resurgence of civil war than the last desperate gasp of an ignorant rabble led to believe that they had power, howling with impotent rage as they realize that they're about to slide into permanent irrelevance.
Indeed, which is why they need to get laughed at to their by the nation, opposed to just the rest of the world seeing them as representative of all americans.
Time to do some house cleaning.
let the south cecede, and the social conservatives can all go there.
"last civil war never ended"
You NAILED IT!
Spot on.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
... a festering wound.
Now it's gangrenous and threatening the health of the rest of the country.
...it's fairly troubling that nationwide, 23% of all Americans have doubts about where the President was born.
What about the % that have never left the country, read a book, speak a 2nd language etc ....... it all adds up.
You don't have to speak a second language or leave this country to be intelligent and well-informed.
... and even bigger percentage of our population have doubts regarding evolution.
That being said, I can safely say that most countries suffer similar percentages of supreme dumbasses festering their general populations. As much as we can make fun of our idiots, rightfully so, there are plenty of morons out there that can compete with the best of our locally grown knuckle draggers.
we need to get every tv wingnut to go on record with these birthers, these people that have no health care that are worried about losing health care, and town hall plants, and take them down with their own words. but I have seen some shyness to warm up to the crazies by some smarter tv crazies. this is the final straw for many, too far to go to side with, it's what we all need, to see just who is a partisan and how far they will go to show how partisan. flush them out.
Disgusting!
http://www.stinque.com/2009/08/11/soylent-tri...
HA!
The birther movement is about as logical as Glenn Beck's statement that a level playing field in society leads to slavery.
I am not making this up people. Here is the clip.
http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2490
that,like every other nation on earth, half the population of the US falls below the mean in intelligence. This assumes a normal distribution. Statistics do not, however, tell us anything about how intelligence might be correlated with geography. Until now.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Now everyone should know why everybody thinks the red states in the South are ignorant, uneducated, hillbillys.
I was led to believe the only ice tea worth drinking is from Long Island.
The South Shall Rise Again...
... and hunger for BRAINS!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOlznuyPOeM
well played... well played.
Somehow I think this anti-South sentiment is not helpful in the political debate. For one thing, the south is a complex place; for example, there's the rural south and there's the urban south. It's an oversimplification of dangerous proportions to assume that everyone in the south feels the same. Furthermore, the anti-south language is playing into the hands of conservative rhetoric that says the left is full of arrogant elitists. The fact that the south produces more of the birther rhetoric is not surprising, but the responsible reply we should make is to address the difficult problem of how do we get these folks away from Palin and Beck?
... it is their problem, not of the person pointing out their idiocy. Maybe if vast sections of the South want to get respect, they should do it the old fashion way: by earning it.
Generalizations, are generally wrong. But also, where there is smoke... there is usually fire.
Maybe part of the reason the right has managed to run circles around us in the media is because, at every turn, they ignore grey areas and just shout louder, while we're forever eager to acknowledge going too far, to qualify everything, to make sure nobody's feelings are hurt.
The fucking Republicans are demonizing us and several of them have already gone nuts and shot a bunch of people. And your advice is that we need to be more sensitive to their feelings?
As someone else has said: if the people with brains living in the South aren't going to clean up their own neighborhoods and are content to let the nuts run (and ruin) everything, then they get no sympathy from me, and I'm certainly not going to bend over backwards being considerate of their delicate sensibilities when they never miss an opportunity to call me an America-hating baby-murderer.
Haven't you learned by now that the harder we try to be bipartisan and even-handed and fair in our discourse, the harder the Republicans get mean and ruthless?
When are we going to get some people with balls in charge?
both sides of my family are originally from the South, but Southern conservatives and their counterparts in other parts of the country are showing themselves to be staggeringly stupid, guillible, and feeble-minded. And we are *all* going to be worse off because of the havok they are wreaking. And my saying that is not elitism, it's pure honesty.
I've never seen change without a fire
are not in big cities, not on the coasts, or any of the other liberal bastions that the right likes to demonize. They're in America, "real" America. That's how conservatives know they're losing.
I have floated this one here before. Have a US referendum. Let sane Northern states join up with Canada. We will put our amalgamated military on a defensive posture. The combined wealth of North and Canada will be an economic powerhouse. We can install IQ tests for any of the south who wish to immigrate to our socialist heaven. The new map will look so cool. A big hand of blue hanging over the mouth breathers like the sword of Damocles. A big hand of blue extending down the coastlines basically choking the living financial shit out of the freeps. Wont the Mexicans be surprised as they work their way north and hit the heavily guarded DMZ security zone with walls ,moats and electric fences.
No thanks, keep Canada out of this, the last thing Canada needs is any *more* negative influence from the south!
to vote in their current conservative administration. Right?
Well the NRA was in Canada helping out Harper yes, and the US dose influence Canada, and obviously over the last 8 years it's been a negative one. That Harper has always had a minority government and gets blocked all the time is the saving grace.
Lets not even get into the evil that the US exacts under NAFTA.
fuckups was only and American thing, LOL.
Basically only our shit stinks, yours smells like roses. Got it...
Not mine at all, I'm not Canadian.
Yes the US shit stinks very badly, as usual. Can't even smell the Canadian shit over it .....
we're almost at the part... where you try to preach about tolerance by letting us know how much you hate our guts.
LOL.
I don't hate americans, I pity them, and feel sorry for the masses around the world that their ignorance and greed has effected.
I'll leave the hating to the usual suspects we chat about here.
... that has never done anything wrong and has absolutely no problems whatsoever so that you can prance around your high horse to let us bask in the awesomeness of your condescension.
Funny thing about pity, it is that it involves belief in the inferiority of its target (and the implicit superiority of the observer). Thus pity implies a certain degree of contempt. I guess, indeed it was right about that time.... LOL.
Ladies, ladies -- you're *both* pretty!
... in most of the blue states, you can find plenty of hicks once you leave the major urban centers. In fact some of the rednecks I have met in supposedly liberal heavens like Cali or Washington could give a run for their money to the "best and brightest" the South has to offer in the redneck olympics.
I think that simplifying blue states vs. bible belt leaves the urban vs. rural divide out of the equation (which I think it is actually a bigger issue). I never understood the stronghold the GOP has on rural areas, when their policies are diametrically opposed to rural interests.
> when their policies are diametrically opposed to rural interests.
Goes back to the IQ test thing.
One thing I've noticed travelling around is the further you get away from ports and water, i.e. historical trading places where economy usually leads to education and culture ........ the massive lack of intellect you get. Basically most things between the coasts.
Them there don't like that there book learnin .....
Good point. I grew up in Maryland (a very liberal state overall) but on the rural Eastern Shore. Very conservative. Yet as people from the Balto.- DC area move down (retirement, etc.) things are slowly changing, due to what I see as the old farts realizing that them libruls can actually be just regular folks with a few different opinions, not rabid communists and/or elitists.
It's encouraging when I visit there now, seeing that where I was once the lone liberal standard-bearer there are more liberals bringing common sense and different views to the sitcks in the mud.
The more people are exposed to others unlike them, the more their minds may open up a bit.
... once you get towards Fairfield, CA (about an hour north of San Francisco, the place gets far more conservative, and when you get to Vacaville, the place is rife with W '04 stickers on SUV's ...
I live in rural Oregon. 17 miles north of the very liberal college town of Eugene and the lack of higher ed here is astounding. I don't have a good reason as to why this is, it just is. The worse thing is some people seem genuinely proud of their lack of learning. The other thing is rural areas in Oregon tend to be much more religious than the cities. I think it's the GOP's mixture of God and guns that explains at least some of the draw to that party. This is my opinion as to why.
That, or it's a specific flavor of religion. My mother raised me Catholic, and she's fairly devout - serves as an eucharistic minister at church, attends a regular bible study meeting (I think it's the EM's discussing the week's gospel).
But she was also a schoolteacher. My parents worked their arses off to see myself and my sisters go to good (private) schools, and Mom was just as demanding as any of my Jesuit instructors in high school, emphasizing the need for critical thinking.
I didn't say it was. I said it was part of it. The religion most practiced out here in the hinter lands is evangelical christianity, so maybe it is the flavor that is the reason.
It is also the case that states with a larger urban population tend to have better social safety nets and education systems. That is partly a function of the fact that they are wealthier since most commerce and industry (I.e., money) is concentrated in urban areas. This tends to mean that even in the less prosperous rural areas some of this is moderated in a way it is not in places like Alabama or Oklahoma.
I do not think that it is an accident that you see this kind of anti-government (which then also translates into anti-progressive) rage in areas where the social safety net is most tattered. (The addition of race issues simply amplifies this rage). These people do not trust the government for the very good reason that government in their communities is untrustworthy. These are areas (and I am a native of Oklahoma) where official corruption and abuse of power are rampant and where state and local government primarily or exclusively serves the elites, while the federal government only seems to care about minorities. If your only model for what government could do was the state government of Oklahoma or Texas, you would hate the government as well.
your theory. You can't trust something that isn't there.
The only reason that's true is because the people in those areas are IGNORANT.
They elect reps who run on "social issues" which have NOTHING to do with the economic well being of the consituents...then they climb in bed with the big money corps and shove it up their constituents assess.
THEN...when they break the social contract with their constituents by hiking up the Appalachian Trail of their mistress..on the state's dime...they cry on tv, talk about family values...and the moron constituents forgive them...AND make excuses for them
Now...tell me they aren't ignorant, insane...or both.
"Anyone that makes less than $150K in this country, has no business voting Republican."
There is indeed a fair amount of ignorance, more of that failure of government thing, but it is also the fact that they only get to vote for the candidates that the local elites support and finance (many of whom are part of those elites). This really is not that much different than anywhere else in the US, except that elites outside the South and parts of the West are slightly less reactionary. Until we have public financing, and ONLY public financing, of elections, we are all at the mercy of our economic elites. It is one reason why the Senate Democrats are so totally useless.
You must add self-absorption and egocentricity to their list. They must not look at how others handle such difficulies. When offered an approach which works somewhere else, they must refuse to believe that anybody could be smarter about anything than they are. And in the face of proof of its effectiveness, attack the solution to their problem as an infringement on their right to maintain their own customs and traditional values.
They're feebs stewing in their own feebishness, and stoking the fire to keep the stewpot simmering.
Again, in their admittedly limited experience, when a politician offers you his hand, you want to check your wallet. They have seen all kinds of promises to make things better and yet everything always remains the same. They are somewhat insular and admittedly ill educated and ill informed (the schools deliberately suck and the media are totally controlled by the elites), but they have absolutely no reason to trust or believe anyone making these promises.
You're talking about the South. That they believe this stupid crap tells you everything. I know that not everyone in the South is ignorant and uneducated, but you've got to admit that the majority of these types of people reside below the Mason-Dixie Line.
Hmmm, no. I met plenty in Chicago when I lived there. The problem is that the South has long been economically decimated, with a greater than usual concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite. The local elites want to keep the populace ignorant and dependent and work hard to ensure that it is so.
I'm sure many people do believe this birther crap, but when I see quotes like "as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn't know where Obama was born," the article looses a lot of credibility. Many people in the US don't know who their own congress-person is, and pay little attention to politics. I'm not surprised 75% of any group don't know where Obama was born and most, if asked, would answer "I dunno, Chicago?"
The poll asked whether they believed that Obama was born in the US, not if they knew where he was born. It is, in fact a well designed poll and the results indicate exactly the kind of ignorance and reliance on disinformation that this post indicates.
Almost 150 years since THE civil war. The south, of course, lost. But only in a military sense. Ideologically, the South is still in rebellion, against Federalism and the intellectual tradition it represents. What a GD shame. these idiots need to be reminded that they lost, why they lost, and why they will keep losing.
go fuck yourself
I was born in Texas and have lived in Southern Oklahoma all my life and all I can say is that I apologize for the massive amounts of idiocy that come from this region when it comes to Obama-hate.
I truly apologize for what its worth.
The man is a born American so get off his back you birther nutjobs.
As John Stewart said a couple of months or so ago (Don't quote me here): "You guys still have ~40 months to go. You have to pace yourselves."
it's mostly NONsense. the financial elites love it. let people fight amongst themselves and vote/rally against their best interest(s). this is how they recruit some of these people....give them a simplistic view/opinion they believe in. after the sink their teeth into that opinion they oppose everything liberals/dems/president obama says/does. it's maddening i tell you maddening.
My personal memory of this situation is from 1963: I was a first-year 7th grade math teacher in a small junior high school way down in East Texas near where the state meets the Gulf. It was November. The principal came on the PA system and announced that the President had been killed in Dallas. I was stunned twice: once at the announcement and then at the jubilant reaction of most of my 3rd period class. I was raised in the general area but I had no idea that so many parents would impart such an attitude to their kids.
looking at that map makes me realize how easy it would be to roll over the south in a giant act of cleansing.
military bases and stuck them below Mason-Dixon.
Do you think it was because of the high heatin' bills, or is there an ulterior motive?
That border fence should be on the Mason-Dixon line.
:p
no doubt in my mind that the South lost once and they think they're going to try again.
Rest assured if the fighting breaks out, Tush Lumpboil will be the first one headed out to diddle little boys somewhere, his mission being accomplished
The amount of downright cornpone ignorance demonstrated in some conservative blogs is breath-taking. First of all, anybody who tries to shout down other people at these meetings is there for one reason: to make sure nobody learns anything. They walk in the door thinking that they know everything there is to know about the health care reform bills in Congress, but all they spew out are the patently false rumors that have been spoon-fed to them by political operatives, and organizations that are in the pocket of the insurance industry. These meetings represent a chance for ordinary citizens to ask questions and HEAR answers. If they don’t agree with an answer, they can always ask a follow-up. Disrupting a meeting fails to achieve anything. It’s just a juvenile hissy-fit that makes it impossible for any reasonable person to get any facts at all. If these lunatics don’t think any real facts are being discussed at these meetings, then why are they attending?
The behavior of some citizens at these town hall meetings, which were a great idea, has been shameful at best and unAmerican at worst. The delusional and totally scurrilous notion that the President of the United States is trying to “take over” the country is the kind of paranoid rant you’d expect to hear at a Klan meeting. This country is in a serious crisis on several different fronts. Instead of screaming like a jackass, try asking an intelligent question or making a rational suggestion. Those that are whining about “socialism” don’t even know what socialism is, and they don’t know that the current reforms do NOT take over health care. You can keep your existing insurance and your doctor if you want to, or you can go with the national plan. There’s nothing nefarious about this. It is simply a way to make health care providers more competitive and keep millions of people from going bankrupt every year because they can’t afford decent medical coverage.
Right now, the insurance industry can deny you coverage if you have a previous condition OR what it determines to be a lot of medical problems. It can raise your rates at any time, and it can arbitrarily deny coverage if it thinks you’re too old or sick to benefit from treatment. As it stands right now, all insurance companies have “death panels” in that they can deny coverage to you if you’re too old, or if your condition is, in their opinion, untreatable. Under the reform plans, only the health care providers would play a role in those processes, not corporate actuaries. The reform bills do NOT sanction or form so-called “death panels”. They set up “end of life” counseling, which will benefit every single family with an elderly relative. There would be no government subsidized abortions and no government controls over doctors. Nobody would tell you which insurance you have to go with. It would be your choice. Period. End of story.
The lies that have been spread by public relations firms commissioned by the insurance industry have taken root in the minds of these screamers. If any one of them actually sat down, shut up and listened for one minute, they might understand that the government would not be taking over their medical care. It would be managing a national plan. Those who claim that the government can’t run anything well should pick up a newspaper some time. They might learn that the VA and MediCare, which are administrated by the government, have excellent reputations. Ironically, some of the people screaming loudest at these meetings are on MediCare and don’t even know it’s run by the government. They yell angrily, “I don’t want the government messin’ with my MediCare!” Forehead slap goes here.
Everybody is entitled to confront lawmakers with hard questions about the reforms that are being considered. But they have no right to take over these meetings and make it impossible for other, more reasonable citizens, to ask their questions in a civil manner and hear answers.
beautiful rant, spot on
.,
I don't think it's just a North-South thing - it's more of an urban-rural thing. I also think it is a generational thing as well. I live in the 4th largest city in PA. There is some racism here, but nothing like I find in rural PA. Every February I attend an event in rural PA that supports providing feed for deer in rural PA. I attend mostly because my brother and his friends attend, and it's a great "boy's weekend" full of drinking and camping. It's a great way to blow off some steam and get drunk and use language that is not proper in polite society. Anywhoo, I find that a lot (not ALL, but a lot) of the attendees tell racist jokes and support the views of the Becks, Limbaughs and Hannity's of this world. But, I also find that most of those people are over 50 years old. The younger people tend to not find this point of view acceptable. They may not object or call out anyone who makes a racist statement or who supported the Bush Administration, but they obviously don't support it. In the first few years I went, when the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag was said, a lot of people were cheering Bush, now, they cheer for our troops.
I don't know, I thought we turned a corner when Obama was elected. Now, all of these idiots are crawling out of the woodwork and opposing programs that would benefit them the most.
Willful ignorance, anybody?
I suppose there is some consolation in knowing that, if one wants to avoid the most ignorant, least educated people, the vast majority are located in the southern states and therefore, fairly easy to bypass.
http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm
Every state with red in it ranks 30th or worse in education.
Somewhat off-topic but the best example of the effects of republican rule on education comes from my home state of Minnesota. Currently, Minnesota is ranked 13th in the nation in education! THIRTEENTH!!!!!
Minnesota had a stranglehold on the number 1 spot for almost a decade. Then came the Pawlenty, Coleman era.
Those f*ckers are lucky they don't head up into Minnesota's lumberjack territory. I've seen a mob of flannel wearing, axe-handle wielding lumberjacks. They don't take kindly to political double-talk and bullshit.
Come to think of it, maybe I should invite Mr. (no longer senator) Coleman to Roseau for fall festival.
Watching that twit try to talk his way out of town with his ass intact would be more fun than a drunken street dance!
Can we just get this crap over with and expel the old confederacy from the union? They do nothing but drag the rest of us down in the international league tables and cost us a ton of money and grief in the process.
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