This country can still give you whiplash. Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signed a same-sex marriage bill into law today, and the New Jersey Senate passed a same-sex marriage bill that their governor has promised to veto. Meanwhile, a Fox News pundit says women in the military should expect to be raped, Arizona wants to ban the use of profanity by public teachers, even in their own homes, and business leaders had to step in to prevent Virginia from passing another ridiculous law banning Sharia.
I don’t think we can even pretend to be playing for the same team anymore.
But I thought there were no such thing as “blue states” and “red states” and that we were all the United States of America! (Insert swelling patriotic score here)
There are “blue state” legislatures and “red state” legislatures, but there are no such things as “blue states” and “red states”. What the legislators are doing is not necessarily what the folks in that state want them to do. That’s why there are millions of dollars of campaign ads to thoroughly confuse voters about who is doing what.
Remember, the Republican theme in 2010 was that the Obama health care reform act was about ending Medicare? Or “Take the government’s hands off my Medicare.”?
The culture (the team meme even) surrounding politics and elections is America is sick and the institutional systems for conducting campaigns and counting votes is broken and has been for well over a decade or two.
Well I’m sure that somewhere, right now, there is an intrepid reporter scouring the innertoobz looking for some “liberal blogger” somewhere who thinks there should be orgy requirements for all soldiers in the military, classes taught to all public school elementary students on how to regularly use George Carlin’s 7 Dirty Words and thinks that the Christian religion should be banned.
Because after all, they are duty bound to show everyone that “see, both sides have extremes”……right???
It is the journalist creed of the new millennium.
these things are extreme?
Well Frank, we know they’re not extreme fer dem evil libruhls…….just saying.
But that’s our little secret. 🙂
Well the ice cream boys are giving it their best shot to entice some sanity back into the room.
I’m very proud of my state today. Why, with luck we can even make the list of the top ten or so places in America (DC, New York, Hollywood, San Francisco, Taxachusetts, Hawaii, Chicago, etc.) that patriotic wingnuts claim aren’t really part of the USA.
Taxachusetts? Really???
Question: Would you rather be in an average tax bill of 3000 or 1500?
Question: Would you rather live if the average income is 35K or 63K?
Now combine the two: Would you prefer to live in the 63K average income with 3000 in average tax bill or in the 35K average income with the 1500 tax bill?
As a percentage of income, Massachusetts was 37th … as in 36 states pay a larger amount of their income in taxes, in 2011.
Of course if you prefer to live in Mississippi … oh wait. Mississippi has a higher tax burden than MA. Oh well.
Just to elaborate: in the late 1970s Massachusetts has the highest state and local tax burden of any state in the nation. Since then, Massachusetts has reduced its state and local tax burden on residents by more than any other state.
Mass. Budget & Policy Center brings the knowledge: http://www.massbudget.org/reports.php?category=TAX
I love it. Thank you MassAppeal.
I’m peripherally involved in recruiting for UMass Worcester and that link is exactly the kind of thing needed to recruit from the Deep South.
If schools were really doing their jobs, teachers would just be chained to their desks, never allowed to have a life, and all test scores would reveal that we are a nation of would-be members of MENSA.
Fuck…I’m not worried, I’m not in Arizona.
Based on what my teacher friends tell me, by that definition our schools are the best in the world.
Well, the no profanity thing would be a sure deal-breaker for me. Seems like I remember a time when teachers were honored, but then I’m old…
I too remember when teachers were honored and respected. These days to do so is an act of rebellion.
In 1956, my fourth grade teacher told us a joke to help us remember the name of the largest port in the Netherlands.
The world did not end. To my knowledge no parents called and there was not a public outcry. And this in Anderson SC.
And fourth graders, being fourth graders, snickered.
” I don’t think we can even pretend to be playing for the same team anymore.”
It is Faux News and their followers vs. The Rest Of Us, on a daily basis, for the championship of the western world and the adulation of countless millions. Can anyone tell me who is ahead? I lost track of the score somewhere around Sarah Palin.
“I don’t think we can even pretend to be playing for the same team anymore.”
We are not even playing the same game anymore.