My weekend in a red state fighting neocons & bacteria.

Sorry fellow West Virginia DUer's - nothing against you. I was there last weekend for my sister's small, outside wedding and I had vowed to myself that I would keep my mouth shut unless provoked. Anyway, all who attended were to say the least, very courteous with the exception of my nephew, who has always been one of those "shoot the liberals first, ask questions later" type of red stater. My sister made her own pasta gravy for the entree' and some people wanted to put it on the table way too early. Some others' made comments about bacteria, myself included, so my nephew took it upon himself to start ranting about liberals worrying too much about bacteria and not worrying enough about terrorist attacks. I promptly told him to take the gravy outside and said "If you really think your president is keeping you safe, eat some of this in 3 hours and see how safe he'll keep you then!"

Now, I refrigerate my food right away and I don't know whether bacteria could grow in 3 hours, but the point was taken and that's all I wanted. My nephew promptly shut up.

If he provokes people like that, he can't be alot of fun to be around, period. He sounds young, so maybe he'll grow out of it. In fact, you can tell him that you're praying that he'll grow out of it!

I WISH it was just because of him being young, but he's a very, very immature 36 yrs old.

Then again, I wouldn't expect him to know.

"Huh? False choice? What's that?"

A concern for bacteria, and your nephew goes on about liberals and terrorists. Whoa, that boy seems a bit unhinged.

I finally shut them up with - you don't agree with science, because 99% of all scientist agree there is Global Warming and only one report quoted by Rush Limbaugh says otherwise.

They also called Germany - where I live - a socialist country, I said if that means they take care of their people then yes, I do live in a socialist country and prefer that to a fascist one.

You get 'em flygal. I love it when the points to a neocon are so well spoken and factual, that they have no choice but to zip it.

it would seem that your post is more a criticism of your nephew than of West Virginia in general. :)

As for WV being a red state, the state may have gone to Bush in the last 2 presidential elections, but our governor and 4 out of 5 of our Congressional representatives are Democrats. On the state level, 21 out of 34 of our state senators (62%), and 62 out of 100 members of our House of Delegates are also Dems. Local offices are heavily Democratic as well.

WV is traditionally a very blue state that lost its mind, like most of the rest of the country, after 9-11. I believe the derangement is only temporary, and clearly not total. We do have our share of idiots, of course, like everywhere else.