BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Ron Davies
Date: 15 Dec 05 - 08:54 PM

Well, somebody in a similar thread earlier did point out how the blue states have most of the fresh water and fresh fruit and vegetables while the red states have most of the evangelists, mosquitoes, and tornadoes. Thought that was interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Dec 05 - 09:03 PM

Ahhhh, the original question was why folks keep votin' for Repubs...

Simple, money!!!

The candiate with the ost money wins 9 out of 10 elections...

And why do the Repubs have so much money???"

Simple, Part B, thuggery!!! Yeah, the Repubs have a very sopshisticated sytem of collecting "protection money"... They have "pioneers" and "rangers" who go out with clubs and "bundle" masses of cash, musch like the mob used to do when it wouldf hit the mom-'n'pop shops for "protection money"... Throw in the massive tax cuts to the super rich and its not wonder thay have unlimited access to cash... And as much as they want... Hey, a hundred million isd chump cahnge to the pharmacudical industry... They spikll that much every day...They are drowning in cash...

So the Repubs have seized power and now they are seizing the bootie that goes along with it...

Hey, the Dems did it when they had their cahn ce so I'm not defending the Dems here...

Just a screwed up democracy, IMO...

Now back to the red states... Yeah, I've lived most of my life in red states so I understand a little about folks who live in them... It don't take to much to get 'um riled up... Most are stil;l p.o'd about the Civil War so all a Repub has to do is say "Do you want Washington, D.C. in yer pocket" and irregardless of the validity of that statement, there's 13 states you can purdy much count on every four years....

And the beat goes on...

But, fir me, I'm lovin' the butt whup the Dems are gfettin'... Maybe they will eventually get tired of it and stand up and fight f9or what is right... But prolly not...

Either way, the US on a collision course with itself...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: dianavan
Date: 14 Dec 05 - 08:47 PM

"Taxes: it's what pays for a high quality of life."

I'll have to agree with that statement since I live in a city with very high taxes and a very high quality of life.

Trouble is, Republicans want a high quality of life at the expense of other citizens. In other words, they like to hang on to their hard earned cash. They don't like to support 'freeloaders'.

Do you think they will ever understand that we are all in this together? If part of the population is suffering, the quality of life for everyone is effected. What good are your riches if you are surrounded by poverty and ignorance?

Miser is the root word of miserable.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Arne
Date: 14 Dec 05 - 05:58 PM

Mississippi ain't red, it's mud brown. The Minnesota might be blue, but it too is probably mud brown.

I remember seeing an aerial photo of the Minnesnoter/Mississippi confluence a while back, and there was quite a difference between the light, muddy Mississippi (even just south of Minneapolis) and the much darker and bluer Minnesnoter. You could see the swirling as the two quite different flows mixed, Albeit the Minnesnoter isn't as clear blue as a glacial lake or some pristine Pacific coral sand beach....

Cheers,

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Ebbie
Date: 14 Dec 05 - 05:01 PM

New York is a white state? I did not know that.

"...40% black population which lives for the moment, eats whatever is easy and greasy, and smiles indulgently on its 13-year-olds fighting, smoking crack, and having babies. And anybody who doesn't approve this 'lifestyle' is 'racist'." Guest

(non-racist (oh, right) Guest, I remember when I was a young'un in Virginia when our neighbor was 18 years old and she had 5 kids (no multiples), her husband worked sporadically and they seemed to eat "whatever is easy and greasy", not to mention cheap. Incidentally, they were not only not black, they were positively Scandinavian white.

But it's sure more fun to point to a certain group that, due to its skin, is visible. Makes it much easier for those who don't know how and don't want to look beneath the surface.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Dec 05 - 04:33 PM

The selfrighteous sanctimonious 'blue states' are also some of the whitest. Try taking your infant mortality down to zero when you have a 40% black population which lives for the moment, eats whatever is easy and greasy, and smiles indulgently on its 13-year-olds fighting, smoking crack, and having babies. And anybody who doesn't approve this 'lifestyle' is 'racist'. We now return to our regularly scheduled pontifications from lily-white northern suburbs.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Dec 05 - 08:36 AM

It had to turn nasty because too many people here can't tolerate one message or another, so put their sights on the messenger and pull the trigger.

Too bad, it's an interesting question to ask "why doesn't the media cover these things?" You may also have noticed that the media never covers Catholic opposition to the death penalty, yet gives tons of coverage to Catholic opposition to abortion.

Has to do with the way the media moguls want us to be propagandized, nothing more. It suits the corporate world just fine to manipulate things like this, to their political advantage. They will support whatever is the most draconian, extreme positions not because it sells papers, but because it keeps us in the dark about what is really happening.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 06:55 PM

Funny, I thought "I can't say I noticed they had spend a great deal of their tax dollars on highway maintenance" was also a joke. Why did it have to turn nasty?

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 03:39 PM

It was a joke? No way. I guess I didn't get it because it wasn't funny.

Have a nice day schmuck.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 03:07 PM

By the way, GUEST, the above was a JOKE. A joke is something people with a sense of humor laugh at, which is not something you would understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 03:06 PM

I don't think so. I've driven through the south quite a bit, and I can't say I noticed they had spend a great deal of their tax dollars on highway maintenance!

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 03:05 PM

Nah! The reason southern states like Mississippi and Alabama score so low on education and healthcare is because they have to spend all their money on highway maintenance.

They have to fix all the ruts that people from Minnesota, Vermont and New Hampshire wear into the roads when theey decide they're tired of freezing their asses off and need to go to Florida for a few weeks.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 02:52 PM

You are missing the point of the thread if you are focused on the two words "smartest" and "healthiest" guys. The point of my original post was that quality of life is directly related to the amount of taxes paid, and the priority list of what the tax money gets spent on.

For instance, Mississippi invested a whole lot of money developing it's Gulf Coast (which was wiped out in a single storm). They would have been better off investing in education partnerships with sustainable businesses, rather than making pacts with the devil to build an off-shore casino empire.

Here is the link to the sponsors of the annual report:

United Health Foundation

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 02:49 PM

Here's a satellite photo of the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. As you can see, the Minnesota, to the south, is a slightly lighter color than the Mississippi, but I wouldn't call it blue.

Say, how did the custom begin of calling Republican states red and Democratic states blue? That's the opposite of Britain, where red has long been associated with the Labor Party and blue with Conservatives.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: artbrooks
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 02:38 PM

I would be interested in seeing the "healthiest state" rankings, but that data is not in the link.

New Mexico is #48 in the "smartest state" list, yet we are hardly a red state. The governor and most of the state legislature are Democratic and the Congressional delegation is mixed. The state did (barely) go for Bush in 2004. "Smart" has less to do with intelligence in this case than it has to do with the fact that we have a very high percentage of immigrant children whose first language isn't English, a need to educate them in both basic subjects and the language, and a low per-capita income and a small tax base outside the major population areas.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 01:58 PM

Frankly, I don't think I ever saw a blue river.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 01:31 PM

Mississippi ain't red, it's mud brown. The Minnesota might be blue, but it too is probably mud brown.

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 01:29 PM

The smartest state thing measures K-12, not post-secondary education levels, and is the name given to the survey by it's authors, not me.

Also, the level of funding spend on education, both K-12 and post-sec. Post-secondary education is not limited to bachelors degrees, and in fact, most Americans still don't hold one or pursue one,

Another measure of "educated" includes the amount of money dedicated to libraries, something that allows less- and under-educated people to educate themselves on their own timetable. Libraries are truly the cornerstone of an educated populace.

My point is, you get the quality of life you pay for through your taxes. We in the blue states figured that out long ago, but the folks in the red states, well...

Subject: RE: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 12:57 PM

I don't think the blue states are necessarily smarter but I do think they are better educated. And education does equate to different perceptions.

My father, born in 1901, had only 8 grades of formal education (although education at that time taught much more rigorous maths and other methods of cogitation) and he had a lifelong distrust of people who flaunted their college education, or even of "experts", per se.

(It took me some years before I realized that the expert, far from displaying arrogance and snobbery, was able to accomplish the things he had studied more quickly, more cheaply and with fewer false starts than the one who was reinventing the wheel, so to speak.)

'Red' states in our current experience have somewhat the same attitude toward the 'blue' as my father did toward college graduates. IMO

Subject: BS: Blue Minnesota vs Red Mississippi
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Dec 05 - 11:48 AM

News is out today that blue states Minnesota, Vermont, and New Hampshire have been ranked #1, 2 & 3 in a "healthiest state" rankings, while five Southern states continued to score as the nation's least healthy. Mississippi ranked at the bottom, followed by Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and South Carolina. Those states continue to see high rates of obesity, smoking, poverty, and persons lacking health insurance, according to the report.

The story is much the same when you measure "smartest state" rankings.

It doesn't exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out the so-called "liberal" or "blue" states have a much better standard of living than the so-called "conservative" or "red" states.

It also doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the reason for our current Red State Republic is that the Republican dominated states are too stupid and sick to vote in their own best interest.

Taxes: it's what pays for a high quality of life. So why do the anti-tax Republicrats keep getting re-elected?