Anti-maskers running through a Target making a scene

lizkat

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That’s Flori-duh.

The south: Floriduh, Alabackwards, Missisloppy, and Lousyanna.

Trying to figure out if we were better off without social media and if so, how to succeed at selling in the idea of ditching those platforms for mischief before we variously entertain or scare ourselves to death.

Alternatively, how to persuade enough voting-blue folks to move to the deep South out of love for some good food, good company and... a desire to flip southern politics into the purple zone at a faster pace.
 

Renzatic

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Let's beat the children! All COVID for!

WZT13b1_d.jpg
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Alternatively, how to persuade enough voting-blue folks to move to the deep South out of love for some good food, good company and... a desire to flip southern politics into the purple zone at a faster pace.

I think the problem in the south is where is the money and job opportunities? Young people tend to be blue and they tend to go where there's money and job opportunities. I'm not saying the south is one big unemployment line but as somebody who lives in the Silicon Valley I don't see any advertisements to attract young motivated people to move there, with the possible exception of Atlanta. Usually the only thing we hear about the south here isn't positive.

Its as if there is a conspiracy to keep the south as unappealing sounding to the left as possible. It's like mental gerrymandering.
 

Renzatic

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Its as if there is a conspiracy to keep the south as unappealing sounding to the left as possible. It's like mental gerrymandering.

It's about like any other place. If you live in the cities, you've got your mind and service jobs, like IT professionals, insurance sales, data analysis, nursing, and whatnot. If you live in the country, you either work on a farm, chicken slaughterhouse, or in one of the carpet factories.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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It's about like any other place. If you live in the cities, you've got your mind and service jobs, like IT professionals, insurance sales, data analysis, nursing, and whatnot. If you live in the country, you either work on a farm, chicken slaughterhouse, or in one of the carpet factories.

I know there are jobs but I don't hear anything like "the center of tech, finance, entertainment, etc." that usually cause mass migrations of lefties to an area.
 

lizkat

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I think the problem in the south is where is the money and job opportunities? Young people tend to be blue and they tend to go where there's money and job opportunities. I'm not saying the south is one big unemployment line but as somebody who lives in the Silicon Valley I don't see any advertisements to attract young motivated people to move there, with the possible exception of Atlanta. Usually the only thing we hear about the south here isn't positive.

Its as if there is a conspiracy to keep the south as unappealing sounding to the left as possible. It's like mental gerrymandering.

Yep, and actually there are tech hubs in the south, often focused around universities... it's just that the media and expanding companies tend not to focus on them often enough... plus new jobs are still as hard to come by these days in those areas as anywhere else. But we do need more pitches to develop better jobs in other than already built-up areas.

Younger workers may talk about how they don't want to be in the boondocks but really there's nothing young parents like better than to find affordable housing 20, 30 miles out from a medium sized city that's also less than 90 minutes from a larger city with more entertainment and cultural opportunities.

All our pols need to think much more outside the box than they do now, with all these godblasted tax-break incentives for behemoths to open up another HQ in some metropolis that already suffers from overcrowded public transit, unaffordable rents and overall jacked-up costs of living.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Yep, and actually there are tech hubs in the south, often focused around universities... it's just that the media and expanding companies tend not to focus on them often enough... plus new jobs are still as hard to come by these days in those areas as anywhere else. But we do need more pitches to develop better jobs in other than already built-up areas.

Younger workers may talk about how they don't want to be in the boondocks but really there's nothing young parents like better than to find affordable housing 20, 30 miles out from a medium sized city that's also less than 90 minutes from a larger city with more entertainment and cultural opportunities.

All our pols need to think much more outside the box than they do now, with all these godblasted tax-break incentives for behemoths to open up another HQ in some metropolis that already suffers from overcrowded public transit, unaffordable rents and overall jacked-up costs of living.

I was only half joking about a conspiracy. I do think there is a concerted effort by the old guard with their century's old ways of keeping power and wealth who don't want a big population of liberals running around with their new ideas breaking up their stranglehold. They may not be big city rich or powerful but they don't have to be because it's all relative. It's probably even fair to say they couldn't cut it in a big liberal city with a more educated population.
 

lizkat

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iLunar

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Yep, and actually there are tech hubs in the south, often focused around universities... it's just that the media and expanding companies tend not to focus on them often enough... plus new jobs are still as hard to come by these days in those areas as anywhere else. But we do need more pitches to develop better jobs in other than already built-up areas.

Younger workers may talk about how they don't want to be in the boondocks but really there's nothing young parents like better than to find affordable housing 20, 30 miles out from a medium sized city that's also less than 90 minutes from a larger city with more entertainment and cultural opportunities.

All our pols need to think much more outside the box than they do now, with all these godblasted tax-break incentives for behemoths to open up another HQ in some metropolis that already suffers from overcrowded public transit, unaffordable rents and overall jacked-up costs of living.

I read a really great article a few years ago about decentralizing federal government services from Washington DC to more southern and western states. It makes a lot of sense logistically, and it provides a huge investment into technology and infrastructure for the country.

It's where the public sector can have enormous influence. The resistance, strangely enough, is from local governments who don't want "other people" coming in. I've traveled a lot of this country (coming on 40 states!) and some of these rural bubbles are really fascinating. Their culture is largely built on being insular and not needing help from anyone. Obviously data doesn't support that notion, but it's a resistant culture to outside influences.
 

lizkat

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Obviously data doesn't support that notion, but it's a resistant culture to outside influences.

Yeah talk about fairy tales... the idea that southern states don't depend on either northern ones or the federal government. A central myth of southern political culture to this day. Stepping on their own future in a lot of ways. I thought that would change more after Clinton was elected in '92 but that era coincided with the rise of the religious right and the culture wars really kicked into high gear.

Well, I grew up during the Disney Renaissance, so I know all about their movies from that era. Every one of them from Aladdin seemed like a huge deal.

Think the only ones I saw were an early 50s re-release of the 1937 Snow White, and mid-50s release of Cinderella. So I'm a Disney dunce!
 

iLunar

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Yeah talk about fairy tales... the idea that southern states don't depend on either northern ones or the federal government. A central myth of southern political culture to this day. Stepping on their own future in a lot of ways. I thought that would change more after Clinton was elected in '92 but that era coincided with the rise of the religious right and the culture wars really kicked into high gear.



Think the only ones I saw were an early 50s re-release of the 1937 Snow White, and mid-50s release of Cinderella. So I'm a Disney dunce!

That makes total sense that the right-wing started going after the religious right when their "bootstrap" strategy started being decimated by the Clintons in the 90s. It's very similar to the rise to the Tea Party in the Obama era.

There are some really beautiful places in the south and in red areas of the west. We have a beautiful country abundant with natural resources to feed, house and care for every person in this country. It's a continuous tragedy that the powers that be spin lies that we don't.
 

lizkat

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That makes total sense that the right-wing started going after the religious right when their "bootstrap" strategy started being decimated by the Clintons in the 90s. It's very similar to the rise to the Tea Party in the Obama era.

There are some really beautiful places in the south and in red areas of the west. We have a beautiful country abundant with natural resources to feed, house and care for every person in this country. It's a continuous tragedy that the powers that be spin lies that we don't.

It's true that the urban north generally has little appreciation of what agricultural and manufacturing areas contribute to the US economy, same as the south doesn't tip a hat to what financial services, entertainment and artistic / cultural endeavors have on offer from the coastal and interior urban areas. Throw in the culture wars and suspicion of how to exact and to allocate tax revenues, and we're never going to make of the USA what it could be for everyone.

The pols on both sides --urban / rural, right / left-- do manage to benefit from the clash somehow... with lobbyists from every sector of the economy throwing money at their re-election campaigns in exchange for "access".

That access these days isn't just lunch at steakhouses or drinks after work to kick proposals around, but actually amounts to K street lobbyists drafting agency rules and legislation, and usually with direct knowledge of how to make it happen: they have worked for the federal government themselves, or worked in the industries for which they seek deregulation.

When Trump came in it was a mad scramble to load up all the regulatory agencies with guys from the industries being regulated. There's always some of that but no one has ever seen anything before like what a GOP-run Senate allowed in the way of confirmation of cabinet chiefs under Trump.

Then when some of those didn't work out for conflicts of interest or other ethics-related issues (e.g. Scott Pruitt to take an egregious example), Trump went with plan B: replace exiting staffers with "acting" chiefs or deputies. The only requirement was personal loyalty to him. Trump never made any bones about it, came right out and said it gave him more "flexibility" since Senate confirmation was not required.

Where in there is any real mention of the ordinary people of the USA?

It's no wonder we're in a season of discontent that erupted in populism on both left and right in 2016. That's not going away when Trump does.
 

iLunar

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I was just reading a NYT opinion piece about populism:


IMO, only a major Trump loss will steer elections back to the people. If the Dems win, they will really have to deliver on crisis management (which they did in 2008-2010) AND make some systemic changes to aid people, not corporations. Obama tried, but every attempt was thwarted by Republicans in the Senate.
 

lizkat

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I was just reading a NYT opinion piece about populism:
IMO, only a major Trump loss will steer elections back to the people. If the Dems win, they will really have to deliver on crisis management (which they did in 2008-2010) AND make some systemic changes to aid people, not corporations. Obama tried, but every attempt was thwarted by Republicans in the Senate.

Yep, it's going to be a challenge to keep this economy off the floor no matter who wins, and Trump having run up that unfunded tax cut is not going to look any prettier no matter how the Rs try to say the real problem was Democrats' pressure to spend spend spend in the FIRST stimulus package...

And from all I can see lately in political sections of online newspapers, the Rs are already trying to shift back to their usual stance when Democrats control at least the House and the Oval Office, i.e. "fiscal prudence" is again the Republican watchword. We may be surprised that this particular bunch of Rs can still spell anything past "unfunded tax cut" but they've apparently written their fallback buzz phrase on the other side of that same piece of posterboard.

No wonder then that the RNC (and Mitch) seem to have concluded it's time to let The Don look to his own fate, while they permit Senate incumbents and a couple challengers to put daylight between their own campaigns and Trump's re-election quest. He wants a bigger stimulus package (and he wants it right now) and the Rs want folks to realize hey it's not Republicans who favor all this running up of debt.

So... looks like some arguments are occurring between the Trump campaign and RNC over where to dump any remaining dark money. And so it also looks like their long ugly honeymoon might finally be over.

To get back to the thread topic on the matter of masks, it's interesting that Trump sometimes features MAGA-masked folks in the backdrop on his camera-ready rally setups. But the press reports that among the rest of the rallygoers, masks are still not so much a thing, even in states where covid-19 is currently spiking again. And back in September, the lieutenant governor of Ohio was actually booed at a Trump rally when he tried to remind the crowd about masking up and thought he could make the pitch stick by promoting Trump campaign merchandise, namely... yeah, MAGA masks. The rally crowd: "yeah, no f'g way."

 
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