A letter from the Blue States to the Red States

[DoW]

I am also a firm believer in checks and balances.  I hope that once we start to turn in the right direction that the legislature is controlled by a different party than the executive.  for the next couple of years, I do think we needed the way it is set up now.  the best analogy I heard was that he has the keys to the car, now we will see where he drives.

well, i'm glad HE's driving, instead of some drunk ass clown named Bush with his buddies, cheney and rumsfeld in the back seat passing a bowl.

people were living some good years under the Bush economy too.  it is defiitely time for him to go and there is a sharp decline right now but there some some decent economic times too.
my definition of that si the spending of the middle class.

you mean buying homes at inflated prices with bad credit? sure people were spending a lot, and increasing their debt load, but under false pretenses, and it all came crashing down. anyone can throw a raging party, but are you going to be responsible enough to clean up the mess?

I knew my comment would lead into the inflated homes discussion.
I guess it is somewhat related.  I mean.  everyone was out buying LCD TVs and all sorts of electronics and these big luxury cars or SUVs.  but  alot of this was probably done through credit.

[Hicks]

What did Bush tell the American people to do after 9/11?

[DoW]

What did Bush tell the American people to do after 9/11?

spend and he even gave them the first stimulus payment to do it.
it still comes down to people going outside of their means.  it comes down to some people are not responsible and that is why the government needs to regulate.
maybe you disagree but I would like it better being in a society where we didn;t need the government to regulate.  think about it.  administrations and policies turn over too often.  I know regulation is necessary and should have been done.  but remember that we do end up with some bad administrations over the course of our lives from both parties and those are the ones that will be regulating.

[sls.stormyrider]

I think there's plenty of blame to give to both parties. The GOP for stripping regulation, and Barney Frank and co for pushing measures that allowed sub-prime mortgages. But, Bush had control of congress for 6 years, the deficit got larger, jobs went down, so any claim the GOP has on fiscal responsibilty is out the window.

Of course, we need to blame financial institutions for being greedy and giving loans that made no sense and acting like the good times will never end (they always do), and the American consumer for being over levaraged (in general).

As far as the last 2 days being the market's response to Obama - I think that's a stretch. It has been argued that the market knew he was going to win and the up-tic 11/3 and 4 was in response to that. The signals for worsened unemployment and GM hitting the shitter came out and the market went down a couple days. Today it went up - the same day the official unemployment reports came out (bad news), but also after BO's press conference (? good news or confidence in the man). Bottom line, to attribute the market going up or down to any one thing, especially today, is oversimplifying things.

as bvaz said, this will take a few years to get out of (but hopefully there will be signals within a year). As someone else said, we are pretty deep in the ditch right now.

Finally, I'm glad I'm not planning on retiring for over 10- 15 years.

[sunrisevt]

...As far as the last 2 days being the market's response to Obama - I think that's a stretch...

QFT. Huge stretch.

[Poster Nutbag]

...As far as the last 2 days being the market's response to Obama - I think that's a stretch...

QFT. Huge stretch.

It seems a bit unlogical....

[nab]

On the humorous side again, the rebuttal:

Dear Blue States,

Imagine our relief that you've decided to secede and form some sort of bathing-optional commune headquartered in California. The money we'll save in aspirin, now that we won't have headaches from listening to your interminable whining, will be worth it to us alone.

We'll finally be rid of you lazy, moping, latte-sucking Streisand fans now that you're actually going to follow through--for once--on your promise to finally get off your butts and leave, as so many of you claimed you would every election cycle and then chickened out of actually doing. (Yeah, we're looking at you, Alec Baldwin.)

But not so fast. You don't get to take all the Blue States with you--just the Blue parts.

You see, your Blue States aren't actually "blue." Mostly, they're states full of Red counties with pockets of Blue urban blight in them, who vote Democratic in such numbers that if the same results came out of a Third World country which, come to think of it, many of the "Blue" counties pretty much are--we'd think it was fraud and send election observers from the UN. Even California is pretty much a Red State: Bush won 35 out of 58 counties, while Kerry won LA and San Francisco. You want 'em? We won't fight you for them, that's for sure, but you're going to have to found New California without 35 of your most beautiful counties and your second-largest city. Sorry about that.

Nationally, Bush won over 2.5 million square miles of U.S. counties (and an extra three and a half million votes, but we won't rub that in.) Kerry won less than 600,000 square miles--meaning that in most states he was popular downtown and pretty much nowhere else. In other words, your guy won the places that people like him would get shot if he walked through them at night. Our guy won every place else.

So, the bottom lines is that you don't get the Blue States. Those states have lots of towns and counties that would rather blow their dams and flood themselves out of existence rather than go with you. No, instead, you get the Blue Cities.

But we really feel we owe you full disclosure on this exchange. This might come as an unpleasant surprise, but you don't actually get the lower divorce and single-motherhood rates and all that other good stuff you think you're going to snag. Those are the conditions that are actually found out in the Red counties, pardner, not in the Blue cities, and you can't have them.

Instead you get the urban single moms, not the soccer moms; the drug addicts, not the doctors; the waiters, not the chefs. You get the fine service you've come to expect from the brutal and corrupt inner-city police departments. You get the abysmal literacy rates and schools that are more dangerous than most prisons. All in all, you get to take with you a public sector in most cities so unmanageable they make Mogadishu seem like a tidily run little municipality by comparison. You get the labor union shakedown artists, "teachers" who can't pass tests in their own subject, and city government leaders for whom graft, racial spoils systems, and outright theft are a way of life. They're all very enthusiastic Blue voters, as you know, and we're sure they'll stampede their way to New California to start draining your wallets, wrecking your schools, and in general making a mess of your lives. (And don't come complaining back to us when socialist central planning does for New California what it did for garden spots like East Berlin and Pyongyang. We're putting a strict visa system into place once you all go.)

We, on the other hand, get those Red city suburbs and rural districts. You know, the ones with the good schools, the high property values, the quiet streets and the sheriffs and cops who don't need to walk around armored up like they're about to storm the Sunni Triangle.

And don't even think about keeping the National Parks, the wide open spaces, all those water resources, and all the rest of America's natural splendor, since those are all pretty much located in Red counties. Hell, we even get most of Oregon and Washington ...ain't it ironic? You get the urban liberals in Portland and Seattle and their friends in important social organizations (like, say, drug-running street gangs) and we get the rest of the Northwest. Ok by us; we'd be fools not to take you up on it.

So here's how it works. All of you Blue whiners, please feel free to look at a map of the electoral results county by county in each state, and take the people with you who've made it clear they'd like to go.

That means you get places like downtown Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and we get to keep the rest of beautiful Pennsylvania, thank you. You get to administer bloated public services to the violent, drug-addled, gunslinging populations of delightful inner-city sinkholes of poverty and corruption such as Miami, St. Louis, and the ever-popular District of Columbia--which has been governed by liberals (and the occasional crackhead) for so long and so incompetently that any semblance of order has broken down (beyond the carefully guarded borders of your Georgetown bistros, natch) to the point where even the mayor once asked the President to have the city patrolled by National Guardsmen. Lucky you, it's all yours--enjoy it in good health, and don't forget to wear your Kevlar...Blue "voters" up there in Northeast DC tend to be jumpy on the ol' trigger finger.

In fact, all around our great nation, you get to keep all the Blue voters who've made urban war zones like downtown Detroit--a Blue bastion, of course--the proud showplaces they are today. We get the rest of Blue states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Illinois and...well, frankly, just about every state in the Union with the exception of Hawaii and New England--and even there, we'll just hang on to a couple of chunks of New Hampshire and Connecticut. (You're especially more than welcome to Rhode Island, which will immediately set up some sort of money-laundering scheme and bilk the rest of you once it has been incorporated into whatever sort of muddle-headed utopia you're trying to create. The former mayor of Providence should be out of Federal prison in time to join your Politburo and help you get things set up--for a small consulting fee, of course.) We'll miss the Hawaiian beaches, but since long stretches of coastline from New Jersey down to Florida and yes, even in Southern California (including San Diego, thanks) are actually in Red counties, we'll be fine.

Sure, we get the rednecks and holy rollers. But since you're apparently willing to trade them for the gangs and psychopaths terrorizing your Blue cities, what can we say? You want the Crips and the Bloods in low riders raking your streets with automatic gunfire, and you're offering us Bubba heading off to church in his pickup? Hey, a deal's a deal. Done.

True, you also get Manhattan, but darn the luck, you have to take the rest of the city, including the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn too, as well as Long Island, which is enough to almost make us feel sorry for you all out there in New California. (Almost.) For our part, we'll take most of the rest of gorgeous New York State, although you get the scam artists who infest the legislature in Albany. And since for some unfathomable reason you actually want Elliot Spitzer, we'll buy his plane ticket as a gesture of goodwill.

So that's the deal. You get the cities, with all the crime, crack mommies, and corruption you can stand. And sure, you get many of the elite colleges too, with the professors who think that terrorists in Fallujah are freedom fighters and that the people who worked in the Twin Towers on 9/11 were no better than Nazis.

We get the suburbs, the countryside, and all the other beautiful places that remain unspoiled by liberal hypocrisy and addle-brained social experimentation.

And we'd like a favor, too: please keep your sky-high tax and crime rates, since we're happy to have the corporations and jobs that continue to flee your Blue cities into our Red counties. Much appreciated, since our unemployment rates, to say nothing of our crime, single-parenting, and illiteracy rates, are far lower than yours.

Oh, and one last thing. We get the U.S. military, too. Did we mention that part? (You may have forgotten that they're volunteers, and most are happy Red state voters.) Not to worry, though, since we're sure that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists will be more than happy to reach an accommodation with a society that embraces radical feminism, gay marriage, gun control, hostility to organized religion of any kind, and Salman Rushdie. Good luck with that. But one day when some misogynist Saudi freak--who no doubt will sneak into your country by strolling over over the northern border after a few years sucking on the Canadian welfare system you all admire so much--blows up a couple kilos of plutonium on Sunset Boulevard, go send Sean Penn to ask the French for help. We'll be busy that day.

PS: You can keep the marijuana. You're going to need it, since selling it is one of the last stable industries left in Blue counties.

[kellerb]

On the humorous side again, the rebuttal:

Dear Blue States,

<snip> <TLDR>
PS: You can keep the marijuana. You're going to need it, since selling it is one of the last stable industries left in Blue counties.

Dear Red States,
as a citizen of newly-blue Indiana, please go ahead and keep all of our red counties. They wouldn't want to come with us anyway.  BUT, they will be keeping the schwag weed too, so watch out.

[sls.stormyrider]

On the humorous side again, the rebuttal:

Dear Blue States,


And don't even think about keeping the National Parks, the wide open spaces, all those water resources, and all the rest of America's natural splendor, since those are all pretty much located in Red counties. Hell, we even get most of Oregon and Washington ...ain't it ironic? You get the urban liberals in Portland and Seattle and their friends in important social organizations (like, say, drug-running street gangs) and we get the rest of the Northwest. Ok by us; we'd be fools not to take you up on it.

they'll damn the Colorado below the Grand Canyon (they tried to do that already), log Yosemite, and strip mine Yellowstone

[gah]

Nationally, Bush won over 2.5 million square miles of U.S. counties (and an extra three and a half million votes, but we won't rub that in.) Kerry won less than 600,000 square miles--meaning that in most states he was popular downtown and pretty much nowhere else. In other words, your guy won the places that people like him would get shot if he walked through them at night. Our guy won every place else.

So, the bottom lines is that you don't get the Blue States. Those states have lots of towns and counties that would rather blow their dams and flood themselves out of existence rather than go with you. No, instead, you get the Blue Cities.

Dear Red States,

Unfortunately, only actual people get a vote in our elections. When we decide to allow square footage determine our presidential elections, we'll give Sarah Palin a call, since she runs the largest state, but 47th least populated. Thanks,

Big Blue

also, as a side note:

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote by 537,179 votes. But George W. Bush won the state-by-state electoral balloting that determines the presidency, 271 to 266. The outcome wasn't clear until a 36-day recount awarded Florida, then worth 25 electoral votes, to Bush by just a 537-vote margin. Also, and more importantly, Obama just won by 7,969,820 votes, 203 electoral votes, and 6.5% points. But we won't rub that in either.

I'll say it again: Evolve.