The Worst State in the Union? Not So Fast, Ms Lohan!
Alternet, a site that is deeply enamored of publishing screeds stating x number of reasons for all kinds of misbehaviors, is carrying an article written by a woman named Tara Lohan (a wonderful handle, I think, partly because she shares the sirname of my favorite member of the American sensationalist media, a young lady with a wonderful face but with a nature by which she seems unable to keep out of all kinds of trouble. This author Lohan said that Virginia could be "the worst state in the Union, " and she gave five reasons why.
No. 1 is the recent passage of a law upping the already generous number of guns that a certain neighbor and good friend of mine down the road can now buy per month (he is directly responsible for my having a .22 rifle and a 16-gauge shotgun that have long resided in semi-secret places where their barrels are probably furnishing much appreciated homes for the mud daubers).
A second reason is another law that allows adoption agencies to say no to aspiring gay couples for no other reason than their sexual preference.
The third reason is the aborted effort that Virginia's attorney-general, a rabidly right wing cockroach of a man named Cuccinelli, made to force a professor at the University of Virginia who is an authority on climate change, to turn over all his papers, especially the names and addresses of a bunch of other climate change investigators, no doubt so that Cuccinelli can intimidate them all to a fare-the-well..
Fourth is the building near Virginia's vaunted, reconstructed colonial city, Williamsburg, of a huge coal-burning power plant.
And fifth is yet another recently passed law requiring women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasound invasions of their most private regions.
After reading that, for a while I was badly crestfallen, as I asked myself whether I had been so smart after all, by having intentionally relocated myself and my wife and son to here in Virginia so many years ago, when we could've stayed in the place of my birth and where the great majority of people invariably vote the same way that I do, and where, should the Great Progrom reach there in spite of all, I would at least have lots of company while being pushed into the Republican cattle cars .
But then I got to thinking, "Wait a minute there, Ms Lohan! Not so fast! What about Arizona? What about Florida? What about Wisconsin? What about Oklahoma? What about Mississippi? And above all, what about TEXAS?" In fact, as it stands now, you could throw a dart blindfolded at a map of the U.S., and your chances would be better than 50-50 that you would hit some state where conservative politicians are pushing through a number of policies that don't pass the muster of ordinary human decency, and it's not by accident that those states are usually called "red," the color of freshly spilt blood.
I should somehow inform Ms Lohan that while I agree that all those reasons that she gave very much hold water, nevertheless her title is badly misleading because of the size of the brush she used in her painting -- it was way too broad, implying that she was including all the citizens of that state. Instead she should have said that "Virginia could have the worst government in the U.S.," though that, too, would be open to question.
For instance I wouldn't trade Virginia's governor, a guy named Mc'Donnell, for Wisconsin's union- and teacher-busting head executive, or for that Texas oaf, or for that Arizona finger-shaker, among others. Mc'Donnell at least distinguished himself some months ago by getting into a bitter dust-up with America's No. 1 disease, the Lbaugh guy, and for that he did a great but badly under-appreciated service to the nation.
Virginia just happened to join other states in treating itself to some bad political behavior four years ago. Having distinguished itself by having been, despite being an ex-slave state and the leader of the southern states, the first in the nation nevertheless to elect a Rainbow governor, Doug Wilder. But in 2008, having voted for another first as well, a Rainbow U.S. president, a large number of the voters must've thought that that was enough decency for a while, and so they decided to lean way over in the other direction, which led to the missteps enumerated so well in that article written not by that endlessly funny Hollywood delinquent but instead by that other somewhat furious though with good reason young Ms Lohan. (She must be young, like "L," else her name wouldn't be "Tara.") Such is the nature of democracy that a vote cast by the misguided counts for just as much as the vote of the enlightened, and sometimes those things can't be helped and so must be endured for some number of a few years, just like a drought in Texas.
Rainbows, the non-braindead ones, can tell you infinitely more about that anyone else in the U.S., because their droughts of that kind have lasted for centuries.
No. 1 is the recent passage of a law upping the already generous number of guns that a certain neighbor and good friend of mine down the road can now buy per month (he is directly responsible for my having a .22 rifle and a 16-gauge shotgun that have long resided in semi-secret places where their barrels are probably furnishing much appreciated homes for the mud daubers).
A second reason is another law that allows adoption agencies to say no to aspiring gay couples for no other reason than their sexual preference.
The third reason is the aborted effort that Virginia's attorney-general, a rabidly right wing cockroach of a man named Cuccinelli, made to force a professor at the University of Virginia who is an authority on climate change, to turn over all his papers, especially the names and addresses of a bunch of other climate change investigators, no doubt so that Cuccinelli can intimidate them all to a fare-the-well..
Fourth is the building near Virginia's vaunted, reconstructed colonial city, Williamsburg, of a huge coal-burning power plant.
And fifth is yet another recently passed law requiring women seeking abortions to undergo ultrasound invasions of their most private regions.
After reading that, for a while I was badly crestfallen, as I asked myself whether I had been so smart after all, by having intentionally relocated myself and my wife and son to here in Virginia so many years ago, when we could've stayed in the place of my birth and where the great majority of people invariably vote the same way that I do, and where, should the Great Progrom reach there in spite of all, I would at least have lots of company while being pushed into the Republican cattle cars .
But then I got to thinking, "Wait a minute there, Ms Lohan! Not so fast! What about Arizona? What about Florida? What about Wisconsin? What about Oklahoma? What about Mississippi? And above all, what about TEXAS?" In fact, as it stands now, you could throw a dart blindfolded at a map of the U.S., and your chances would be better than 50-50 that you would hit some state where conservative politicians are pushing through a number of policies that don't pass the muster of ordinary human decency, and it's not by accident that those states are usually called "red," the color of freshly spilt blood.
I should somehow inform Ms Lohan that while I agree that all those reasons that she gave very much hold water, nevertheless her title is badly misleading because of the size of the brush she used in her painting -- it was way too broad, implying that she was including all the citizens of that state. Instead she should have said that "Virginia could have the worst government in the U.S.," though that, too, would be open to question.
For instance I wouldn't trade Virginia's governor, a guy named Mc'Donnell, for Wisconsin's union- and teacher-busting head executive, or for that Texas oaf, or for that Arizona finger-shaker, among others. Mc'Donnell at least distinguished himself some months ago by getting into a bitter dust-up with America's No. 1 disease, the Lbaugh guy, and for that he did a great but badly under-appreciated service to the nation.
Virginia just happened to join other states in treating itself to some bad political behavior four years ago. Having distinguished itself by having been, despite being an ex-slave state and the leader of the southern states, the first in the nation nevertheless to elect a Rainbow governor, Doug Wilder. But in 2008, having voted for another first as well, a Rainbow U.S. president, a large number of the voters must've thought that that was enough decency for a while, and so they decided to lean way over in the other direction, which led to the missteps enumerated so well in that article written not by that endlessly funny Hollywood delinquent but instead by that other somewhat furious though with good reason young Ms Lohan. (She must be young, like "L," else her name wouldn't be "Tara.") Such is the nature of democracy that a vote cast by the misguided counts for just as much as the vote of the enlightened, and sometimes those things can't be helped and so must be endured for some number of a few years, just like a drought in Texas.
Rainbows, the non-braindead ones, can tell you infinitely more about that anyone else in the U.S., because their droughts of that kind have lasted for centuries.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:36 AM
1 Comments:
Don't forget the fact that Florida elected a man who STOLE FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT and who has reversed our previous (Republican) governor's attempts at ensuring the Governor's mansion had a zero carbon footprint.
We all have them. And now Florida has Trayvon Martin and the horror surrounding his death. Virginia's not so bad. :-)
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