Originally posted by Villagerif the Civil War had been successful, the South may or may not have contributed to WWII, or might have weighed in on the side of the Axis, and the North's contribution would have been much more limited, if they decided to enter at all .... daily rations of sauerkraut for you, mi amigo .... (i like sauerkraut but not every day) ...
All this supreme court business has got me thinking. Why don't you chaps just devolve into separate nations, east and west, north and south, however you want to do it. You can have the atheistic baby-killers in one half and the inbreeding Crusaders in the other. Everyone will be happy (maybe you could even have a war over it, just to make the whole thing f ...[text shortened]... tion? It'll keep you from invading any more third world countries for a while, if nothing else.
Blue states intend to secede.
We intend to form our own country. In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, California and all the Northeast.
We believe this split will be beneficial to everyone, likeminded folks in each new country, and especially to the people of the new country of the United States of American Sanity. And we are taking the Constitution with us since you apparently no longer have any use for it as to individual rights with your gleeful formation of the Homeland Gestapo.
To sum up briefly:
You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches and will have schools that do not deny scientific fact in favor of bizarre religious beliefs.
We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay. We'll take Martha Stewart, you take Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schafly.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get WalMart.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.
We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get
Alabama and South Carolina.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make the red states pay
their fair share (good luck).
YOu get most of the guests on the Jerry Springer Show, we get most of the winners on Jeopardy.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian
Coalition's, we get more traditional families. You get a bunch of single
moms and deadbeat dads who dont pay child support altho they apparently pray a lot.
Please be aware that the United States of American Sanity will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need
people to fight, ask your jingoistic flag-waving evangelicals. They must have some kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. BUt, should you red states (or some other foreign crazies) attack us, we will kick your butts again like we did in the 1860s.
We do wish you success in Iraq, we would hate to think the Bush Quagmire will result in nothing more than a civil war in a country where you have destroyed the infrastructure and radicalized huge portions of the arab islamic world into a virulent anti-Americanism.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the
former fifty states's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines
(you can serve French wines at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90
percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all
living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools,
plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88
percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92
percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90
percent of the hurricanes, 91 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually
100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University,
plus the overwhemingly majority of members of the KKK, Aryan Nation, White Aryan Resistance, Posse Commitatus, Neo-Nazis and all the other ultra-rightwing nutcase bigots and domestic terrorists.
BTW, the Untied States of American Sanity will fund a program to relocate all NASCAR and Pro Wrestling fans to red states.
We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you. By the way, you will have to vacate the blue District of Columbia and move your seat of government to some other place, and might we suggest somewhere in Tornado Alley or Utah.
We get virtually all the great art museums, and artists in most mediums, and historical musuems. You get a lot of civil war battlefields and may continue your deluded romantic notions of the glory of your ancestors killing and dying to preserve an economic and political system based on the enslavement of human beings. And since we are taking the Constitution with us, why dont you go back to a Confederacy as a national government, that worked really well didnt it? You can even re-instate all the Jim Crow segregationist laws and start to put gay folks in concentration camps.... the USAS will accept refugees from bigoted states and will trade you ten of our creationists for each secular humanist trapped in your areas.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was
actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless
we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that
evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 (this last one still UNBELIEVABLY IGNORANT) and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we Blues.
By the way, we're taking most of the good American-grown pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico. Some of us may miss Jack Daniels sour mash, but we will get by.
Sincerely,
Author Unknown lest the Homeland Gestapo comes looking for us.
Originally posted by zeeblebotThanks for making my point:
on federal expenditures, blue states vs. red states:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/commentary/show/75.html
The income difference is illusory because it does not result in a higher standard of living, but the tax burden on that illusory income is real.
By forcing taxpayers who live in high-cost, high-salary areas up into higher tax brackets, the progressive income tax code not only redistributes income from the prosperous to the poor, but from middle-income blue to middle-income red. Part of this redistribution is caused by the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), once conceived by Democrats to catch rich tax avoiders, now rapidly eating away at the upper-middle class in blue states. Is this the progressivity that Democrats have been championing for years?
Now President Bush is talking “fundamental reform” and elimination of the AMT. Advocates of the flat tax and national sales tax are emboldened. How would these radically different tax systems affect the red-blue balance?
The red states would be singing the blues. A flat tax wouldn’t quite bring a dollar-for-dollar ratio to New York, New Jersey or Connecticut, but all of the blue “donor states” would be getting a much better deal from Uncle Sam.
Will Democrats obey their instinct to fight President Bush, or will they see a flatter, less progressive tax structure as a way to make the red states pay their fair share? Perhaps red-state enthusiasm will wane when the writing is on the wall, but right now it appears they’ll follow President Bush wherever he leads them.
Originally posted by zeeblebotWell if you want to play "what if " with history , I could argue that if the south had won the Civil War there may not have been a WWII .
if the Civil War had been successful, the South may or may not have contributed to WWII, or might have weighed in on the side of the Axis, and the North's contribution would have been much more limited, if they decided to enter at all .... daily rations of sauerkraut for you, mi amigo .... (i like sauerkraut but not every day) ...
If the south gets a stalemate or wins , and there is no strong federal nationalism or strong union to help out Europe in WWI . So that war does not end with Germany having to sign a highly unfavorable surrender to the west . Instead the war stays a localized euro war and slowly grinds down till everyone's had enough and a more even-handed armacist is signed . Germany has no post WWI spirit of defeat and feeling of being downtrodden by the west which was of course the breeding ground for Hilter's message of facism , hate , and aggresive nationalism . Therefore , he's just another crack-pot paper hanger , and no one cares about the venom he spews because postwar life is pretty much normal and people don't want / need to change a good status-quo . No WWII .
But - all that's just as worthless as your post because it didn't happen that way .
Originally posted by Moldy Crow
Well if you want to play "what if " with history , I could argue that if the south had won the Civil War there may not have been a WWII .
If the south gets a stalemate or wins , and there is no strong federal nationalism or strong union to help out Europe in WWI . So that war does not end with Germany having to sign a highly unfavorable surrender to ...[text shortened]... WWII .
But - all that's just as worthless as your post because it didn't happen that way .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II
...
A part of that resentment was that many Germans felt that they had never been truly defeated in battle since the country had never been conquered; many felt that the German government had agreed to an armistice on the understanding that Wilson's Fourteen Points would be used as a guideline for the peace treaty. However, the Treaty of Versailles and the subsequent peace treaties disregarded the Fourteen Points in many instances.
...
A major part of the blame for the war lies with British and French politicians. Both these nations repeatedly followed a policy which not only gave Hitler what he wanted and therefore made him more likely to push for more, but also gave the Germans time to rearm. Hitler himself said that when he reoccupied the Rhineland, "that the Army had a standing order to retreat" if the French showed any resistance. When he invaded Poland, he doubted that France and Britain would intervene any more decisively than they did for Czechoslovakia, Austria, or to enforce the disarmament provisions of the treaty. The policy of appeasement was followed because large portions of the British and French public had decided that the Treaty of Versailles had unfairly punished Germany and that its demands were unreasonable even if Hitler maintained an unpleasantly nationalist government.