fuck the south

[Asherdan]

And I personally enjoy all three.

Diametrically opposed High Five!

[AlohaDawg]

Yet you hate hush puppies.

What is up with that?

[Edited to recant this post until Ash tries the new recipe]

[Asherdan]

Well, mom used to drag my ass to the Buster Brown store...

Wait, you mean the food?  We all have our blind spots I suppose.

[Limmo]

hush puppies rule and rule all.  that is all.

[AlohaDawg]

hush puppies rule and rule all.  that is all.

Assuming you mean the tasty morsels and not the soft, quiet shoes, what do you think of the recipe I posted yonder?

[Limmo]

Someday, when the stove is delivered to my house, I will utilize said recipe and get back to you.  Right now, we're living on whatever we can cook in the toaster oven and takeout from CPK and Chipotle.  


Laura and I are set to become absolute cooking maniacs once the stove and oven are in.  We had a galley kitchen that only allowed one person at a time to use it.  Oh, and electric burners.  Yeesh.  I'm ready to get all Iron Chef up in this bitch.

[JorgeFabregas]

Your state doesn't pay taxes, dumbass, your people do and they pay Federal income taxes at the exact same rate as those in the south do. You are basically complaining because you live in an overpopulated area. Cry me a river.

While I agree that the rant is unneededly abrasive, it does raise an interesting point about tax flow. The fact that a state is "overpopulated" should, in theory, entitle it to benefits and pork relative to its overpopulation. The way it is now the populated urban areas are basically helping to fund the infrastructure of rural areas. Which is fine. Urban and rural areas are necessarily dependent on each other. It just suggests that perhaps the rural areas shouldn't be as suspicious of the federal government as they are.

[sailor]

grits are pointless.

as pointless as voting on nov. 3 in ohio.

[AlohaDawg]

Your state doesn't pay taxes, dumbass, your people do and they pay Federal income taxes at the exact same rate as those in the south do. You are basically complaining because you live in an overpopulated area. Cry me a river.

While I agree that the rant is unneededly abrasive, it does raise an interesting point about tax flow. The fact that a state is "overpopulated" should, in theory, entitle it to benefits and pork relative to its overpopulation. The way it is now the populated urban areas are basically helping to fund the infrastructure of rural areas. Which is fine. Urban and rural areas are necessarily dependent on each other. It just suggests that perhaps the rural areas shouldn't be as suspicious of the federal government as they are.

I think there is too much Federal taxation in general and too much money spent across the board on programs that should be the responsibility of the States to maintain in terms of supporting their people. The expense of maintaining programs for large populations becomes the problem. Most of the Federal programs I'm familiar with are based on population; the most CDC money by far goes to California and the NE. And most of the money is tied directly to salaries for State/County/City employees. This is a huge problem and one I face even here in Hawaii, where I've been fighting for the State to take more responsibility for salaries and providing support services to TB control. The Federal involvement at most should be support and technical assistance; providing some structure and evaluating the expenditure of Federal funds. I think too much taxpayer money goes to pay State employees and deep down, I don't think it's the right approach because ultimately, the government can't and won't supervise these employees and accountability varies very widely across the country.

[arkabee]

The way it is now the populated urban areas are basically helping to fund the infrastructure of rural areas. Which is fine. Urban and rural areas are necessarily dependent on each other. It just suggests that perhaps the rural areas shouldn't be as suspicious of the federal government as they are.

and vice versa,
since rural areas appear to be hella convenient to build gigantor highways through, are awfully convenient to put radioactive waste in, make excellent places to grow extremely large gardens, have a lot of space to build facories in,  etc, etc, etc.

there appears, to me, to be a popular reaction lately (which could just be apparent yet not accurate, such is pop-media), as the rant above would suggest, of "liberal big cities" being pissed off at "conservative small towns".

urban versus rural, red versus blue, etc, etc.

i find it rather appalling that the _supposed_ accepting attitudes of urbanity go out the window whenever the rurality disagrees, when one of the prevailing attitudes i've seen of "urbans" towards "rurals" is that "urbans" think "rurals" are so damned closed-minded.

of course, the things being pointed out in various media outlets to cause such indignation for me, are perhaps being pointed out soley to cause such  indignation because emotional reaction = ratings.

or something.