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I don't get why San Francisco is on your list. Alcatraz and the Winchester Mystery House are cool places to visit, though.
Hippie counter-culture????? How exactly is THAT a plus? Is that when it started to be acceptable in San Francisco to defecate in the streets?
The sexual revolution...thank you, S. F. Everybody should want meaningless hookups with total strangers and thousand of illegitimate kids born to be supported by the tax payer.
I wouldn't brag about LA either, if what it's got going for it is the crap on TV and in the theaters.
Oh now they have outside urinals.......this is becoming the City by the Waste Side! What a beautiful city it was before Pelosi, Boxer and Feinstein took California. I would say hippies were not know for being clean people and certainly had no money most of the time, they think living off the land is living off of others.
One summer I got to hang with the flower power group, the thought of traveling in VW buses in Northern California foothills sounded so independent. I lasted less than 2 weeks and never wanted to smell patchouli oil again and longed for clean smelling people. I was very surprised on how these people lived, worked (not) and were making babies.......most of the traveling consisted of finding open fields to "feel the love" basically going no where.
First world cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Newark, Camden, Cleveland, Gary, etc., etc., as opposed to third world hell holes like Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte, Dallas, Nashville, etc. Is this guy serious or did he just forget to add the little sarcasm face?
We can cherrypick individual cities all day (if I had the time), and argue over the definition of "cities," but I'll issue the same challenge I offered another poster - come on down, spend a day driving with me, and then tell us all what a paradise the South is. My beef is with the South as a region; isolating individual cities and comparing them head to head is a diversion from the main point and doesn't come close to telling the story of the whole South - the poverty, the terrible education levels, the crumbling or non-existent infrastructure, the infant mortality rates, the poor health, the low life expectancies, the obesity rates... I could go on and on, but the point is, the South is and always has been the poorer kid brother of the rest of the country, dragging down the average test scores, health grades, cultural climate, and economy of the country like an anchor tied to its neck.
From what i read in this section i get the impression the country is having a major dysfunction between its people and its government.
I say all the states should abandon the idea of a "United" States as the concept has run its course and is no longer working, every state should go it alone.
I like this idea, except Nevada, Oregon, Washington and California might have a hard time taking care of all their illegals. Sure could help with "illegal immigration."
I too am in Kentucky. What part of the state are you located in?
Southern Bluegrass, south of Lexington and on the western edge of the Appalachians. Which admittedly colors my view; the economy, the political corruption, the heroin and meth addictions (and associated property crimes), the education systems... pretty bad down here.
We also have a place in Oldham County, in one of the wealthier suburbs on the Louisville border, and it's definitely better there, but the state as a whole? Pretty bleak, unfortunately. I just mostly feel sorry for the kids who are born into this and never really learn that life could be different.
Louisville's really a fun city in a lot of ways, though, I'll certainly give it that. And I like Lex a lot more than many people seem to. But only because I can basically afford to be a tourist in those places; I don't have to scrabble out a living or try to find a good education for kids. We just live there, run our businesses, collect money from customers in mostly other states, and bide our time until we sell some of our properties and move on. We're not really invested in the place; we're basically carpetbaggers, if you want to be candid about it. Damn, I'm going to miss the barbecue though.
That's not "the South." Those are cities that are in the South. Next time you're flying over, go ahead and land and rent a car for a couple of hours. Drive 100 miles in any direction, and then come back and tell us what a paradise it is.
You must have missed OP specifically mentioned several cities in what he (incorrectly) considered the north. Not podunkville in the north vs podunkville in the south.
We can cherrypick individual cities all day (if I had the time), and argue over the definition of "cities," but I'll issue the same challenge I offered another poster - come on down, spend a day driving with me, and then tell us all what a paradise the South is. My beef is with the South as a region; isolating individual cities and comparing them head to head is a diversion from the main point and doesn't come close to telling the story of the whole South - the poverty, the terrible education levels, the crumbling or non-existent infrastructure, the infant mortality rates, the poor health, the low life expectancies, the obesity rates... I could go on and on, but the point is, the South is and always has been the poorer kid brother of the rest of the country, dragging down the average test scores, health grades, cultural climate, and economy of the country like an anchor tied to its neck.
You make it sound like the South is one big third world hell hole. In fact most of the South is a pretty good place to live. It has pockets of poverty just as the North does. In the South they're in rural areas, in the North they're in cities. But check out the suburbs of a big city like Atlanta compared to the suburbs of NYC or Boston. There's no difference (except maybe for the accents). And even the poorer sections of Appalachia are by no means equivalent to third world countries. I own a few acres in Webster Co., West Virginia, one of the poorest counties in the state, and it's a decent place to live. Most of the people there are healthy and happy. And I've traveled through out eastern Ky. too. Harlan, Hazard, etc. And as poor as that area is I wouldn't compare to a third world country. A lot of the poverty is due to the decline of the coal industry.
... and because the education systems down here are so abysmally poor (in some cases, on a par with 3rd world nations), that businesses can pay people pennies to do the work and they're grateful to get that much.
The three states with the lowest graduation rates are blue OR, NV and NM. WA and NY aren't much better.
For the record, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia all have higher high school graduation rates than Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, Washington and New York. Several of them are higher than California too.
Blue states pay more on average, because nobody can afford to live there without higher wages since real estate and taxes are so high. Adjusted for cost-of-living, people living in 'hellholes' like Mississippi have more disposable income than those living in California.
oh yay. more posts dividing our already divided nation
Liberals and democrats always look to create and promote the differences between people, so they can Balkanize us into disparate groups.
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I was very surprised on how these people lived, worked (not) and were making babies.......most of the traveling consisted of finding open fields to "feel the love" basically going no where. 
