We lift our lights beside the golden door.

As our population in the blue states increases, so does our political power.

and I found some of their choices odd, to say the least. As online commenters pointed out, some of the cities mentioned are very unpleasant, with high crime rates, bad air pollution, no public transit, all that bad stuff.

But here's the odd thing. Some of the cities suggested, including Burlington VT, Ithaca NY, and Corvallis OR are actually quite pleasant places if you can afford them.

Yet several right-wingers blasted the authors of the article, not for choosing cities with a poor quality of life but for choosing places "full of Socialist tax and spend types." They thought that the authors should have chosen more cities in the South with golf courses and lots of shopping malls.

And there, folks, is your Tea Party base.

my head in disbelief!!!


Wow

major university. That's usually a good sign that a town is good to live in. I've found that towns with a lot of churches per capita aren't usually all that great. I would steer clear of places with a lot of golf courses and malls, too. That's usually a sign of a large presence of Republicans.

yes, the University of Vermont, several other colleges and Middlebury down the road.

is the home of the Oregon State University. I lived there for two years, and I'd probably still be there if the university administration hadn't been so mindlessly bureaucratic and determined to nickel and dime the faculty. (We weren't even allowed to Xerox anything but our syllabus, midterm, and final. If we wanted to give the students handouts, we had to take the master copies to Kinkos and have the students buy packets. Administration also threatened to take the phones --which were only extensions of the main office phone, not separate lines--out of our offices. There's more, but I won't go into detail.)

Lovely town, close to the Pacific Coast, with the Coast Range always visible to the west and the Cascades often visible to the east, a funky ex-hippie atmosphere, completely navigable by bicycle with covered bicycle parking downtown and at many apartment complexes, good restaurants, a lively folk music scene, etc.)