Is a staggering cost of living a BLUE State Thing?

[destinedtodave]

Originally Posted by rickers

landrover06 you need to grow a brain and a heart, your name calling tells a lot about your personality I am sure glad you don't live next door to me. I can't wait until one of your beloved Democrats is sitting in the white house so we can blame him or her for everything wrong in this country. Whatever happened to all the work Pelosi and her gang were going to do in the "first 40 hours" All they have done is political witch hunts. Go ahead and wallow in your sick partisan little world. You are every bit as bad as the people you hack.

Very good points Rickers, I had forgotten about the Pelosi thing.

[SteelCityRising]

Does anyone find it hypocritical that LandRover06 seems to be so anti-Bush, yet his screenname is promoting a fuel-inefficient car company that does nothing but help to line Dick Cheney's pockets? Perhaps a screenname such as Prius06 would garner you more credibility? With all due respect, Mr. LandRover06, I likewise disagree with President Bush in many areas, especially because I view the man to be homophobic. I won't disagree with you that he has lead this nation into financial ruin with a debtload that will take generations to pay off, as well as leading us into a war with a nation with no proven ties to 9/11 that we are now unable to pull out of since it has retrograded into civil war. However, he was still elected by the majority of this nation, and his title deserves to be given respect by his constituency.

Blaming the South solely for our nation's current maladies is nonsense. A lot of Southern cities are actually becoming "Northern" demographically due to a major Yankee influx, especially Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, and Nashville, all of which are becoming liberal havens within their respective "red" states. I believe as many Southern states continue to grow exponentially in terms of population, you'll see many traditional "red" strongholds turning into swing-states (which I firmly believe NC, VA, and TN will be soon), if not even shifting completely into "blue" states. I have a liberal aunt and uncle that moved a decade ago from Scranton to Acworth, GA, and they claim that their subdivision is a melting pot of people from all walks of life with all sorts of beliefs and political ideologies. I also have a liberal aunt and uncle that moved from Scranton to Shreveport, LA, also about a decade ago, and they're miserable down there, indicating that LA is probably going to be a "red" stronghold for quite some time to come.

By the way, we here in the North have our fair share of rednecks, uneducated people who shoot at mailboxes for fun, racists, homophobes, people with poor hygiene, etc., so perhaps Northerners should look into the mirror before they point fingers at the South? Just look at Hazleton, PA, a community near me that recently had a controversial illegal immigration ordinance shot down in Federal court because it was declared unconstitutional. While the ordinance may have been a good idea in theory, the rednecks from Hazleton, PA made no distinguishment between "illegal" and LEGAL Hispanics and went on witch-hunts to make their dark-skinned neighbors to feel unwelcomed. Apparently, morons don't view the Mason-Dixon line as being a boundary. There are also local chapters here in PA of the KKK and other racially-enveloped organizations, so I don't know why the South always gets the scapegoat for that one?

Don't get me wrong. I still would never be caught dead living in the South for its high humidity, love of an evil corporation like Wal-Mart, and ugly tract-housing sprawl that is considered "historic architecture," but to label ALL Southern residents as being backwater rednecks simply because they voted for an awful president is stepping on toes, my friend.

P.S. Just a question to toss out there though to everyone, how could 52% of this nation vote for President Bush in the 2004 election, yet now his approval rating is about 30%? Would that other 22% who voted for him and now disapproves of him like to explain to me what type of pot you were smoking on Election Day?

[unknown stuntman]

Originally Posted by ScrantonWilkesBarre

P.S. Just a question to toss out there though to everyone, how could 52% of this nation vote for President Bush in the 2004 election, yet now his approval rating is about 30%? Would that other 22% who voted for him and now disapproves of him like to explain to me what type of pot you were smoking on Election Day?

First, I didn't vote for either Bush or Kerry. Beyond that, I still don't see how regardless of how crumby of a president Bush is today, or was before Nov. 2004, how that should in any way be a vote of confidence for John Kerry. I have despised Bush as president of this country since 2002 and didn't vote for him in either election. But put a gun to my head and force me to choose between only the two mainstream drones, it would be Bush over Kerry then and now, ten times out of ten.

The "staggering cost of living" syndrome is consistently a "blue state thing" and I've had a first hand look at what a John Kerry and his furry friend, old Teddy have done to the bluest of blues, Taxachusetts for 25 years. Kerry's entire campaign was a mockery. Bush is a two-faced hypocrite, but Kerry is that and has the propensity to ramble about what ever sounds good to America for the next five minutes. What a mockery Kerry was even in contrast to Bush: from blaming Bush for lack of flu shots to chastising him for not speaking in front of that embarrassing excuse for civil rights advancement, the NAACP, led by Julian Bond: a degenerate who compares Bush to Hitler and claims, "their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side". And people call Bush an idiot!? What is Kerry smoking? I'll give Kerry one thing: he was apt at making me laugh harder than I did at many comedy shows I've attended. He reached new heights in enhancing the sterotype many have that the Democratic party is a nice party with nice ideas, providing nice solutions that sound attractive without offering anything substantive and insightful to speak of.

[mike0421]

No one has mentioned this yet, so I will. It's plainly obvious that the influx of Hispanic and Asian population (most of which settle around cities) have tilted the balance of voting in areas from red to blue. The moniker 'red states' implies those that voted for Republican presidential candidates. The GOP has traditionally been the 'white people's' party, over 90% of Bush's votes in the 2004 election were from white, non hispanic voters. I also haven't mentioned black residents, who vote 90% Democrat. So, when you look at a map by county:



You find the counties that are contained in cities are almost all blue (I think Phoenix and Indianapolis are the only exceptions, even Dallas County TX had only 50% of its residents vote for Bush in 2004). I know that my ex-state, New Jersey, which is considered to be one of the most heavily Democratic states, nonetheless had 9 out of its 21 counties vote for Bush. Of those 9, 7 were the 100 most affluent in the country. Where I live now, New Mexico, there are major splashes of "blue" and "red" around the state. You will find in almost every instance, the counties that went Democrat have a majority Hispanic population, even rural counties, such as Guadalupe and San Miguel, went for Kerry, and are both 75% Hispanic. El Paso County Texas went about 65% Kerry and is 80% Hispanic. In fact, most all Texas counties that are in the border land from El Paso to Brownsville are 'deep blue' 60-80% for Kerry, and very rural. Similarly, look at Central Alabama, parts of Mississippi and South Carolina, which are rural, but predominately black. The counties in these areas all went for the Democrat. However, the cost of housing in these places is lower than almost anywhere in the country.

White people tend to vote more Republican, be it wealthy or poor. Black, Hispanic and Asian vote primarily Democrat, whether they be wealthy or poor.
As the minority population in the country continues to increase, the Republican party will begin to lose every election. This has already occurred in California and New Jersey.

[JoeP]

This concept is so misguided. Very large cities are expensive because property is expensive. On this site of all places, I would think that would be a given. Large cities tend to have many different types of people and with that, are more liberal. Too indpendent things.

[anonymous]

The map above makes a great point. Since nearly every state has blue and red areas, you really don't have a red "state" or a blue "state". By that logic, since Bush won, you might say that the United States is a uniformly red country.

In South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and other deep south states, the "Blue Counties" are the poorest ones, with the lowest cost of living and worst educational systems. In New York and California it is the opposite.

[oakparkdude]

Whenever you have people living on top of each other and in close proximity you need to have a more interventionist government. When you live out in the sticks and your nearest neighbor is two miles away, its easy to be libertarian/Republican. When your nearest neighbor is ten feet above and below you, you need regulation of smoking, guns, noise, pollution, etc.