I'm trying to think of a response that does not involve gratuitous use of the word microcosm.

Oh, sure. Shoot the messenger.

I'll take the Panthers and 12.

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What others say about boorite!

I think it's a metaphor for the Saints. It just goes to show they are more creative in their chokiness than the Eagles and Vikes.

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"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

Boorite probably has a point about Iowa being a good indicator for Dean in the south. I believe even Kerry would have a lot of problems carrying the south, much less Dean.

Look at the recent Democrat presidents (all two of them). You need to not just appear to be southern to take the south and be a Democrat, you need to in fact be southern. I hope Dean learned his lesson about foolin' them small time folk, and if he is nominated saves his precicous campaign money rather than blitzing the south. He's pretty transparent at this point and should just resolve to losing all but maybe two states in the south.

Hard to say what a pairing with the twangy Edwards might do, but I'm not sure how many people go out and vote for the vice presidential candidate.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Oops I mean wangs, dongs.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

More thoughts on the southern vote.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Damn Southerners ought to get their own country.

Wait, they already tried that.

What is it about the South that lends itself to stupefying bible-thumping conservatism? Is it something in the water? Heat stroke? Inbreeding?

Makes one feel like knocking on doors down there. "Join us! The nineteenth century is OVER! Come out into the light!"

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I have a dream... that someday soon I will do something special enough to have President George W. Bush visit my home. And for his visit, I will have baskets of pretzels EVERYWHERE.

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and attended LSU for my Bachelor's and two Master's. I was in town over Christmas and visited Huey P. Long's grave. Long was as much a leftist as any US politician who ever held high office. Sadly, it's a legacy that is probably unknown even to most of the students who attend the public university he built.

Anyway, it's not all Trans Ams up on blocks in the South.

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What others say about boorite!

That seemed to be Dean's undertone of how he would campaign in the south. "We got to trick them dummies and give them what they want!" I think the South only acts politically like a different country when it is treated like one. fuzzyman, I'm ashamed of you generalizing like that. It's not very progressive to have prejudices about entire groups of people.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

quote:

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Damn Southerners ought to get their own country.

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While everyone was busying rubbing Dean's nose in it, the Coalition has given the go-ahead to Sharia law in Iraq. So much for the last justification for the invasion - and my whole argument, I guess.

Huh?

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

He said WHILE EVERYONE WAS BUSY RUBBING DEAN'S NOSE IN IT, THE COALITION HAS GIVEN THE GO-AHEAD TO SHARIA LAW IN IRAQ.

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Vote Jeb Bush 2008

Yeah. I noticed. Didn't need it in all caps.

What the fuck is Sharia law?

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

Bad ass fuck you up if you don't do what Allah say law.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Ahhh.
That's fucked.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

Here's a hoot: http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/21/students.website.ap/index.html

I can't decide if the URL should be whiners.org or witch-hunt-2004.net

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Since when is it the job of a teacher to present an opinion? I thought the idea was to teach fact?

Damn, I guess I don't know the meaning of education.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

By the time you're in college you should be able to manage someone having an opinion that is different from yours without having an aneurism.

And what facts do you want them to teach? The ones about how the Civil War was about freeing slaves and brotherly love or that it was about how the North had it's economic boot on the necks of the south and was bleeding it dry? Even facts have political context that is subject to opinion.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

How about how the civil war was over a dispute between the states considering themselves "confederate" and the national government over weather or not the states rights were being trampled on?

There is a political bent in history, but there doesn't need to be an added one in classes. Yes, once you're in college, you should have your own ideals sorted out, but when you're in college, you're not paying your teacher to use his classroom as a political stage. I've yet to hear about a conservative teacher preaching his politics, but I'm sure it happens quite a bit too. I *have* heard about liberal teachers pushing their agenda on students, however. It's not just the little republican white boys that are complaining, either. I have a left-leaning friend (not really liberal, but more left leaning as I am more right-leaning), who says a couple of his instructors are actually advising the class vote for a particular canidate! There is a difference between saying "well, the south was wrong!" and "you should vote for so-and-so". Why do the students have to be strongly-opinioned just to be in school? They just got out of highschool, most of them just out of their homes. They're free and open, ready for new ideas and opinions, then all their teachers tell them that they should be ashamed of being white, rich, and male. Or they start telling them that they are just crap because they got help from the government to go to school, and that they aren't real americans. Fuck that! A teacher teaches knowledge, spicing it a little with opinion, but these aren't people just saying "well, I think this war was not neccesary". These are college professors, people students look up to, and look to for knowledge, posing opinion as fact. THAT is the problem. Saying opinion is fact.

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

Seems overly touchy to me compared to say, wanting to kill women for dating more than one man. And folks try to tell me that liberals complain about stuff. Sure I've heard teachers from both sides talk politics in the classroom. I've also heard a few tell off-color jokes. Big freaking deal. I think the GOP-kiddies are just using this for a witch-hunt. They want their own McCarthy era - gonna go get all dem li'brals fired.

So how 'bout that budding democracy in Iraq? There's a good topic for discussion in class.

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"Jelly-belly gigglin, dancin and a-wigglin, honey that's the way I am!" Janice the Muppet

Heh, I wouldn't even try to make that look good.

At this point, what can we do? Bush put the people who care about others in a bad position, lose/lose. We withdraw, they're fucked. We stay, we and they are fucked. Fuck :\

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

There's gotta be somerhing we agree on, Spanks. Leather, PVC or Vinyl?

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Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants.

I'm not saying everyone down there is like that -- far from it. But, there is a "Bible Belt" and the question is... why?

You could ask the opposite question (Why does the Northeast attract tweedy liberals?) but since I'm from the Northeast, I think that questioning the abnormalities of the South is far more informative.

Up here, you would never have people protesting to keep a Ten Commandments monument in the state courthouse -- at least not in large numbers. We'd never elect someone who would do that (not that we elect our judges) because as a population we generally get it -- the separation of Church and State, that is.

So why is the South different?

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...Trot and Cap'n Bill were free from anxiety and care. Button-Bright never worried about anything. The Scarecrow, not being able to sleep, looked out of the window and tried to count the stars.

Because most Southerners were Christians before, during, and after the civil war, and they somehow had reconciled owning slaves with their Christian beliefs.

Like most losing sides, they believe their loss was a fluke and never really abandoned their rationale.

That's my theory, anyway.

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The giant three-phallused phallus of Uzbekistan will one day squirt the cosmic jizz of revenge all over Canada.

Think systems, folks. Think holistically. And think "modes of production." Don't worry: A little historical materialism won't turn you into a Marxist.

First off, a principle: Religious fundamentalism tends to go with societies that are impoverished (both materially and culturally) and brutalized. If you don't agree with this premise, then none of the rest of this will make sense.

OK: The South has traditionally been America's plantation. The Civil War didn't do much to change this. Indeed, it smashed the place up very badly and opened it up to further exploitation by the North. (See "carpetbagger.")

The Northeast, on the other hand, has traditionally been the nexus of trade, finance, industry, education, and culture generally. To some degree, this status is a result of geography and the history of settlement patterns.

So you have a rural, agrarian, and relatively poor culture vs. an urban, industrial, relatively rich one. (That's why the South couldn't have won, I think, unless they had smashed through and taken Washington very quickly. Even then....)

Some of this has changed with the advent of the "New South," but it is difficult to overcome several centuries of history in a couple of decades.

What we have here is a system. It's not enough to say the South is this and the North is that. I said that the South has been the North's plantation. (These days, it's an international "South," which encompasses Latin America and Asia, but the principle is similar.) So to put it bluntly, when a Northerner complains that the South is not like the North, I say: Then grow your own damn cotton, grow your own damn soybeans, pay your own workers shit wages, and dump your toxic waste in your own damn yard. Because growing up in Louisiana, I saw companies from New York and New Jersey come down and use us like that.

That place is pretty fucked, which is why I left.

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What others say about boorite!