I Believe Anyone Trashing a Region,

be it South, North, East, or West only give energy to the very people you despise the most.

All people around the world are the same, only their circumstances or cultures are different.

When you highlight or magnify circumstances over our common humanity, you empower the opposition with the energy of divisive resentment, envy, jealousy and hatred.

The worst case scenario would be another "Civil War", "War Between the States", "War for Southern Independence" etc. etc. depending on where you're from.

The best case scenario from region trashing is enabling a corporate worshiping Republican Party to rise from the ashes, just when we have them on the ropes.

We must sustain the momentum of unification, because this is what gave the Democratic Party a slight win in 2006, this is what gave the Democratic Party a bigger win in 2008 and this is what allowed a union in Poland to change the world.

When the forces of self serving corruption whose sole intent is the lust for power having nothing else to rely on, they always have the possibility of dividing the people and conquering them. I believe the ultimate question is.

Do you want to make their job or easier or harder? In this regard I believe the Internet will change the world but only if we use it wisely.

Peace to everyone.

Southerners should be embarrassed about their representatives who say "screw the big three, they're yankee companies anyway."

But you can't blame me (I live in NC) because we have republican senators. Idaho and Utah senators voted no and they are not from the south.

But nobody's going after MT

LET THEM GO!1!1!!!!

Bob Bennett, R-UT
Richard Burr, R-NC
Saxby Chambliss, R-GA
Tom Coburn, R-OK
Norm Coleman, R-MN
Bob Corker, R-TN
John Ensign, R-NV
Chuck Grassley, R-IA
Judd Gregg, R-NH
Orrin Hatch, R-UT
Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX
Johnny Isakson, R-GA
John Kyl, R-AZ
Mel Martinez, R-FL
John McCain, R-AZ
Mitch McConnell, R-KY
Lisa Murkowski, R-AK
John Thune, R-SD

was from the United States, every Senator that opposed it was from the United States.

sorry charlie... but read the Constitution

And the vote was ideological and probably applauded by many of their constituents.

They may be called a United States Senator, but they represent THEIR STATE.

they pass laws for the United States, not the individual states and as such their ultimate fiduciary responsibility is to the Constitution of the United States.

Anyone that promotes dividing them along regional lines only fights against Abraham Lincoln's admonition.

I believe, if you seriously want to weaken their provincial power, you would embrace the people of their region as being part yours.

sorry

That is what they are there to do

My Senator does not represent Tennessee just as Corker does not represent me...not do I get to vote in Tennessee either

of people I know. You are painting with a very big brush.

Your state senator or legislature exclusively represents your state's interest.

If the United States Senators forget they're national representatives as well, you end up with Civil War.

possible for the plants to locate in the South and the lies of the republicans like Shelby and Corker.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4645254&mesg_id=4645254

constitutients.

Stop doing that, stop being what you purport to hate - stop being a closed minded bigot.

You boycotting Las Vegas, too?

Labor Unions were killed in 1993 with the passage of NAFTA and subsequent "Free Trade" Treaties.
The UAW are doomed, as are few remaining Labor Unions with the possible exception of "Service Unions" (janitors and cafeteria workers).

If you are looking for the people who stabbed Working Americans in the Back, look to 1993.

"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

Or was until recently, I think they may have closed it.

God, Guns and Gays are just soooo yesterday.

Regional hate hasn't been dusted off for a bit!

It's not the people of the south that are the problems, it's the senators! What needs to be done is for democrats to get busy in those states to find good democrats to run against these guys when they come up for re-election again. The only way to change things is to get rid of those people who are voting against the country in congress.

The Democratic candidate that ran against Lyndsey Graham had no chance. To me he sounded like Republican Lite.

Get us some REAL democratic candidates that we can actually get behind and support.

There were Republican candidates running unopposed in South Carolina. This shouldn't be happening.

to elect more Democrats AND the people in the south (and some other states too) need to wake up and start voting in their own self-interest. These folks have been sold a bill of goods (i.e., God, guns, and gays) and it's time more of them woke up and smelled the coffee.

It's been going on more than long enough and got old a very long time ago.

:nuke:

and I demand a Constitutional Amendment!

You're joking, right?

Try again when you have something intelligent to add to the discussion.

as you can get. If trashing union busters and Repukes is "bigotry" I'm a pretty proud bigot. Maybe you're in the wrong party.

That is, after all, what you are doing when you bash an entire region. You are shitting on people like my mom and dad, loyal Democrats in Alabama who have caught no end of hell for it from friends and family and fellow church members over the years and yet still vote a straight Democratic ticket every time the polls are open.

You can say what you like about Richard Shelby--you couldn't possibly loathe him more than I do--but when you pile on everyone who lives in a very large region, you are engaging in bigotry, which has no place among decent people.

As for whether I am in the right party, I was very likely a yellow dog Democrat back when the biggest concern in your life was whether you would ever get the hang of potty training.

I have written unfalterringly about Senator Shelby and know Alabama all too well.

It's not "bigotry" to criticize an entire region when most of it reviles the values I support and treats my comrades, brothers, sisters and friends like dirt.

I'm not the one talking about "shitting" but potty training was too long ago to remember and so are many of the Democratic campaigns I have worked in. Your point is besides the point.

AS Joe Hill said, "don't mourn, organize."

Ugly even. I prefer to let people exercise their right to free speech, and show the world how truly stupid they are. I'd rather not censor anyone to that harsh degree.

What if someone genuinely believes that only whites are favored by God and that other races are the spawn of Satan, would calling them to task on their racism be wrong? Suppose they believe that it is their moral obligation to "preserve society" and "protect the children" by stripping established civil and human rights away from certain groups? Or that their Holy Scripture calls them to wage war against any and all who oppose their theocracy?

Would pointing out the science that contradicts a religious doctrine that the earth is flat and only 6000 years old count as "trashing" that person's religion? What if their religion is founded on provable falsehoods, like, say, the claims that the Native Americans are the descendants of Jews, once spoke "Reformed Hebrew" and once had metallurgy and vast civic centers made of quarried stone?

There are many Talibangelicals who say that opposition to in-your-face evangelism is "trashing" their religion; is it? What about not letting them promote their theology from the Legislature floor and Capitol Building rotundas? If they are disallowed the use of public schools to brainwash children, is their religion being trashed? They claim it is.

Please, clarify your meaning.

reading the responsive posts because they didn't make any sense!

:yoiks:

toothless by a rule change to prevent filibuster. We the people can no longer afford the antics of these obstructionist assholes, times are changing rapidly and we're in serious trouble.

Perhaps when these peckerwoods are rendered less entertaining, the south will stop electing them.

At least there's hope for the south. Idaho and Utah are a different matter.

but I don't believe any place on the planet is immune to that dynamic.

It's like a stew some parts just take longer to cook.

Passing laws to prohibit "obstructionist assholes" has a way of coming back and hurting the side that believed the rule needed to be changed.

How many times in the last few years has the clarion call of FILIBUSTER echoed through DU? It's not the rule, it's the people using it; you know that!

;)

Any suspension has to be temporary, say six years.

Six years of being rendered toothless and irrelevant will do most of those grandstanding assholes in.

Too bad we can't just elect grown-ups, eh?

While we have a bunch of crybaby obstructionists in there who are willing to cripple the whole country to make some sort of juvenile point, we need to render them incapable of doing so.

The GOP abused the filibuster in the last Congress. They need to be deprived of it in this one, at the very least.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4638857&mesg_id=4638857

My intention was only to infuse some levity into the discussion today. We all have ties to all regions whether it be by relation or by friendship or by business association. We are one country.

There has been a lot of union bashing here today. We are supposed to be supportive of labor and the worker. That was why we favored the auto bailout loan.

But whatever. I agree that when bashing becomes a dead-serious endeavor, then there is reason to voice concern about it.

it was just my general observation.

Live long and prosper.:)

It sucked earlier, and it sucks more now that it's under construction.

Such attacks are trashy, and only demonstrate the pettiness of those who so engage.

I am a Southerner so when I speak of the South I speak with a lifetime of understanding and knowledge of the region. I will die a Southerner even though I have lived in Arizona for the past 20 months thanks to the failure of Katrina and because of my concern and love of my home region I have spent the last 3 years working on getting help in the forgotten part of the Katrina Debacle, Mississippi. That is why I do a radio show and broadcast into Mississippi because these people need their stories told. There are many problems in the South and many good things and people, but the problems that stand in the South can be resolved as long as they are honestly and caringly discussed. Southerners are very proud and like anyone, they want to be respected.

Please don't think all Southerners are thin skinned fools. The fact is that many in the South don't know the facts due to slanted right media in the area as I found out when I left to serve in the military and got exposed to the other side. That is why it is hard for someone like me to get their radio show broadcast on a terrestial station in a place like Mississippi but it is thanks to people like Brice Phillips and his station WQRZ-FM and it is well recieved because people there are just like anyone else, give them the other side and they will think.

We are making progress, but we also must be willing to listen to the problems and deal with them in a mature and understanding yet helping way.

one of the best advantages, I enjoyed about being in the Marine Corps was seeing a good chunk of the world, and as a result the Earth seems much smaller to me today.

Coming back to the insularity of home seemed somewhat like time travel, but I understood it.

Of course I was also fortunate in that Jimmy Carter was President and I never had to deal with war.

It's classic and I agree wholeheartedly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4636658&mesg_id=4637567

as Republican Senators trying to bust or weaken unions on behalf of corporations as a means to ensure their own personal power.

Foreign auto plants came to the South because the South was for a large part of the 20th century, dirt poor with little industry and thus the people were more desperate for jobs.

I do believe that trend is changing but that history of poverty is a direct result of having been a less developed rural section of the U.S., and the devastation of the Civil War.

I don't believe the South as a region is trying to wage any war real or economic, it's just trying to survive, the same as every other region of the U.S.

I also believe the U.S. is equalizing as a whole, blending more in to one, than it was in the 19th and 20th centuries.

my region routinely pays hundreds of billions in taxes for projects/pork in the south and west. When I see the Southern Congressional delegation oppose bailouts because they would benefit less, I wonder if air force tankers really should be built in Mobile rather than Flint, Buffalo, Gary, New Haven or Pawtucket.

I don't blame you for feeling resentful.

But I also believe the best chance of our nation succeeding as a whole, economic or otherwise is to remain united against the forces of division, there should be no daylight between us.

transformative progressive Democrat leading the way. I strongly believe that Obama is such a leader.

We can't hate our way out of the dilemma. The South is changing. What we are seeing is the last gasp of the Old Guard. Once Obama takes office and we get the country going again, the South will get rid of their old, bad ways and "get with the program."

I say this as a 3rd generation Texan who left the South because I felt "out of touch" with my own people and have enjoyed living in the Northeast for 40 years...

I believe that trashing a region merely illustrates a person's provincialism-- a provincialism most likely born of momentary frustration, and the lack of a clearly defined "enemy".

For the most part, when we target a region, a demographic, a faith, or even an income amount, I think we are more often than not simply lashing out at the "whole" because it's much more identifiable to us (and convenient for us) than to research the actual litany of those indeed responsible for the frustrations.

At this point in time, I think it's much more important to tear down the existing walls that we allow to separate us, rather than to erect new ones. But human nature is a tough thing to overcome sometimes...

and the fact that we do have clearly defined differences? Some of them might be irrencociliable?

No, that couldn't be it?

as there is a lot of history.

and that is coming from a slew of primate research

the Chimpanzees or those peace loving Bonobos.

I believe the key will be if and when humanity balances it self in a sustainable way with the Earth. If that happens I believe we stand a better than even chance of actually having peace on Earth.

If we don't reach balanced sustainability our reign will be as a microsecond compared to the dinosaur's longevity.

I think that what we have in common far outweigh our differences. And in that we have southern progressives and northern progressives, and in that we have southern bigots and northern bigots, and in that we all have differences, there is no dispute-- but were they irreconcilable, I think the history of the union would have been, and would currently be, much more violent than it was and is.

"No, that couldn't be it?"
It quite possibly could be-- I don't presume to have any great font of wisdom or knowledge, just opinions I'm careful to preface with "I believe" or "I think". I'd imagine those who do presume to have absolute knowledge and state with a de-facto absolutism could quite easily be the very same people attempting to undermine our unity.

Prior to every possibility being examined, I'm a firm believer in tearing down walls rather than erecting new one's, regardless of whether one may perceive that a difference or a wall is simply to great for them to overcome. I have yet to entreat the succor of trendy cynicism, and still maintain hope for, and faith in humanity. Yet, to each their own...


Edited: clarity

generations at least

The war of northern aggression never ended

I've been thinking about this for years now...and under the economic pressures that face the country we may face dissolution in this generation

I looked at your profile to find out what region (of apparent superiority) you live in but it doesn't provide a clue. Your profile does say that you are for "solidarity". But here, you talk about "clearly defined, irrencociliable (sic) differences".

Surely you're not for solidarity only when it suits your own personal purposes?

The South is full of anti-American repuke racists, just look at the auto "bailout" bill vote today.

the post upthread and see that six of the eighteen are from the south (seven if you stretch-in Kentucky, but that's not quite a southern state). That sorta blows the math for the south being solely to blame for this debacle.

Repuke obstructionist anti-worker sunsabitches seem to be everywhere these days.

Rather than bashing the south (a favorite DU pastime, I know, but this southerner finds it increasingly tiresome) why don't we spend our energy on bashing repukes. They divide and conquer us with bullshit all the time. We can quit falling for it any time now.

Apparently some people have such fragile egos that they must wallow in the perceived intellectual superiority of something they had no control over. It's kind of like racism. Sad, ain't it?

I mean, come on. You know how they are. And that trick of opening up their embassies in shopping malls, disguised as outdoor clothing stores. Classless.

:sarcasm:

The good news is that our president-elect embraces it, and he is the most important person right now.

for the greater good.

Peace to you.

Just like it feels wrong sometimes to walk away without punching someone out. Doesn't mean it's a bad option.

If you think the South needs to elect more Democrats, move to the South and help elect them.
We did, and our little precinct in rural Arkansas got two more votes for Obama in 2008.
(Actually more. We also gave several locals permission to vote for Obama.)

red states and help change the politics, also work as union organizers since so many red states are "right to work" states, or "fuck the unions" states where workers have been convinced that unionizing will hurt them, that they'll be fired, etc.

I believe you caught the essence of my post.:hi:

I live in the northern plains and grew up in the south. 2 different occasions I have had people here comment to me of the excellence of the work ethics of the people here and in the upper midwestern states. In the same conversation, they comment that it is a known fact that the people of the southern states don't have the same excellence in work ethics as the people here, and one of the people said something to the effect that "many companies will hire a person from the midwest over a person from the south because of their known work ethics" I was shocked....and couldn't believe their ignorance...I told them to go down south and southwest and farm and roof and pick produce in 100+ heat for hours at a time then come back and tell me about hard work....in the midwest defense, they do work hard on farms, but so do the southerners, we are all supposed to be united, but I guess education and broadening of the minds needs to occur first...sheesh....

:toast:

Broadening of the mind & education, indeed! That's exactly how I see these backward opinions about the South.

In my younger years, I had a friend from New York who said she liked the way I walked fast -- reminded her of New Yorkers. (I walk fast because I have long legs; do all New Yorkers have long legs, too? ;) )

The crux of this auto bailout is not regional. It's about how vile the Rethugs are in working for corporate interests by getting rid of unions.

asshole will not spark another war between the states.

As long as the Republican Party is up in the haystack with Dobson and Perkins and Robertson and Anne Coulter and Ralph Reed and all the other Far Right loonies and haters, we need to stay focused on why it is they want to take our republic away.

I saw we keep the republic and call them assholes.

The point, I was attempting to make in my O.P. was that by labeling entire regions as being this or that actually gives power to those people as in your post. Division is the preeminent M.O. of their rule, their greatest fear is a truly unified United States.

Yes, the back-of-the-hand, table-clearing bias is less useful nowadays than ever. Then-State Senator Julian Bond of Georgia talked about how the poverty of Afro-Americans in the agricultural South was no less prevalent than the mechanized factory poverty of the North at a certain point between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement.

Lesbians and gays are bashed in Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Wyoming. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the zip code.

Etc.

For a long time, a lot of very angry people have tuned into Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and other far-right talk hosts and the watered-down hate propaganda they spew seems to feed their listeners' anger. It's a form of throwing raw meat into the cage of starving lions.

I'd like to crack the code of why those lions are so hungry in the first place, and find a way to feed them more regularly so they would vote more temperately. I want the zoo keepers wearing blue uniforms.

because this is the source of their power, so they must eternally keep it fanned.

I believe those lions you speak have really never been fed, anger makes a poor meal and only leaves a belly empty after the adrenalin rush wears off. This is why those lions are always hungry, their meals are illusion, to this end I believe the Internet may serve to quench their hunger over the long haul.

Peace to you, Old Crusoe. :hi:

:hi:

:hi:

now I live in Oklahoma. For a long time, I viewed most people there with utter disdain, with the attitude of: "I'm from 'liberal' places, where 'we're' right." And you know what? It was a very aggravating way to live. I go out each election day, even the small 'pointless' ones, to vote for Democrats because they have a very difficult time in Oklahoma. I chose to go to school in Oklahoma because the University is great...and yes, it was a hard choice, leaving CA, where culture is everywhere and ideas are exchanged between Democrats and Republicans in a rather free way. I am sick to death at the choices that the idiot senators and congressmen from Oklahoma make, but I also get incredibly tired of hearing my own Democratic brethren treating the collective group of 'red-staters' as if every choice made by our senators is somehow our fault. Sometimes, no matter what Democrats try, it isn't enough. But I'll be damned if I'm not going to try again. Now I probably won't live in Oklahoma forever, but I am at the mercy of an academic market that may send me to Alabama when I graduate. And I am completely at peace with that (well, I'm not at peace with going to North Dakota, but only because of the cold).
If the message of P-E Obama's campaign was change, I will take that message to heart and work for change. But I have to tell you, the attitudes of some Democrats often makes me wonder, 'what would it matter?'

is exposure to the world.

The more exposed your society or state is, the easier adapting to variations in culture become, change seems faster, but sometimes with that adaption comes a subconscious disdain or embarrassment of your previous self or roots. If "all politics are primarily local," even those with a raised view of the world, can be susceptible to provincialism sneaking in like a thief in the night.

As for President Elect Obama, I believe he gets it just as I believe Howard Dean got it and thus change is coming. I also have faith in the people that make up the Democratic Party, they will lift them selves, it just may not come at the exact same time for everyone. Some will lift them selves and stay elevated and some will lift them selves and go back to help the others.

If the people from these states aren't responsible for the behavior of their representatives, then who is?

:shrug:

It may be an unpleasant realization- but the FACT is that Oklahoma's (and other states') representatives reflect the attitudes beliefs and values of the majority- often a sunstantial majority of people living there. It EARNS people a reputation- and in Oklahoma and the deep South's case, that reputation is one of irrational and self-destructive far right fundamentalism.

You can't expect reasonable folks in the rest of the country- and the rest of the world to have any respect for that sort of deal- and in fact, we don't.

That it reflects poorly on you- and may follow you in your career is just something you'll have to accept as a consequence of having lived and earned a degree in such a place.

Any teacher from evolution-rejecting Kansas can probably tell you how it feels....

The University of Oklahoma is one of the top state schools in the country, particularly for what I study.
:eyes:
Incidentally, the university is also led by a former Democratic senator.

but generally speaking, the University of Oklahoma is a third tier school.

With a decent foorball team.

Education is of course what you make of it- I've known plenty of professionals from places like Stanford and Berkeley that are far less clever than colleagues from say Cal State Irvine,

Happy to K & R.

:hi:

it's good to see you!:hi:

For all its warts, I do love DU. Just shows how volatile this place gets on certain topics.

I agree with you and many of the posters here that Obama gets this. Dividing ourselves into regions just works into the Republicans game. I don't think they have any great plan to do this yet, but I am sure ideas presented here this week on how to 'get back' at these Republicans by hitting their states gives them some ideas. Not that they won't think up silly stuff on their own... or already have.

They also trash those who do not believe anything.

We just are not supposed tobe here. That's our crime.

who come to DU in order to have a place where they can carry on like sociopaths.

Any target of their rage will do. Today it's Southerners, tomorrow, well, who knows? Any port in a storm.

of the people I live and work with. Many people here don't give a crap what the rest of the nation think or the world for that matter. They live in a bubble. They don't travel outside of the south if at all. Everyone I met here has been friendly and nice but if you try and discuss current events, or politics and present them with the facts, it goes in one ear and out the other.

Most are deeply religious may boss is the nicest guy but he's supper religious and conservative.


People here are good hearted deep down but they live in a cultural bubble.

I also believe it's sort of like a cultural bubble and many of them are afraid that someone will come along pop it, and their world, along with everything they've been raised to believe good and bad will disappear. They say, one of the biggest fears people face is that of the unknown and if your bubble pops, suddenly everything is alien to you.

That's why I believe we should do as those masters of bubbles do on stage, instead of striving to pop them thereby threatening the inhabitants, find a way to incorporate their bubble in to the mass of bubbles and then maybe at one point in the future we can create one large bubble to house everyone.

Go Titans!:)

Because three Rethug senators from the (apparently despised) South, who each has an auto plant in their state, are behind this push against the Big 3 auto bailout, all of those DUers who have resented the South are coming out of the woodwork to let out pent-up feelings about us known.

It's not a regional thing; it's the Rethug mindset of looking out for corporate interests that is the problem. And for those who say, "Well, you elected them," I'd say that, sadly, it's the senators who have the most money that get elected -- those who are financially backed by the corporations they protect.

I appreciate your making an effort to take a sensible approach to the divisiveness, but your message seemed to warn others about "empowering" southerners' "divisive resentment, envy, jealously, & hatred" (about the North, I suppose?); let's just all tolerate each other for the sake of unity.

I say that everyone is missing the point: the problem is with Rethug mindset, corporate greed, & getting rid of unions.

I respectfully thank you, Uncle Joe.

I totally agree, the true culprit is primarily a corporate supremacy issue.

However I see the political regional bias issue as a means to an end that has effect in some cases, the corporatists tread softly by using codewords to activate emotional responses that lay just below the surface, ie: liberal, elite etc.

When Al Gore ran in 2000, one argument used against him by the Republicans consistently was that he really wasn't from Tennessee, he was raised in a Washington D.C. hotel. He went to school there and lived there during the winter when his dad was in the Senate. The fact that he grew up spending his summers on the family farm in Carthage, TN. and owned a home there was irrelevant to them. Furthermore the corporate media's two year war by slander and libel against his integrity or credibility ie; *he claimed to have invented the Internet, (something of which he never did) only made the Republican corporatists job of questioning his home connection to his home state easier and to some people that mattered, in my opinion more than it should have.

I believe the underlying emotional message the Republicans were appealing to was regional bias. My O.P. was an attempt to neutralize that propaganda tool from future use and the only way I see that happening, would be a deeper unification of the United States as a whole on an emotional level. In that regard, I believe regional bias and or slams should be treated with the same contempt as racial, or gender ones.

Peace to you,

P.S. I must leave now but I will be happy to respond to any post of yours when I log back in tomorrow.

P.S.*I also have a hypothesis as to why I believe the corporate media went after him in the way they did on such a sustained basis which I will be happy to post tomorrow if you wish.

I have to tell you, I didn't listen to the Senate debate about the bailout, but unless those southern Rethug senators used southern connotations ("We southerners...", etc.) or code words in their speeches, then I'm disappointed that some DUers are trying to start a regional feud & then seeing replies like, "f*ck 'em".

My husband is an Air Force brat who has lived in the North growing up. He's always reminded me that people are people, wherever you go. He's also mentioned that racial prejudice isn't exclusive in the South, according to the people he has met; in fact, integration (which was the best thing to happen for ultimately improving race relations) was started in the South, not the North). Again, people are people; if you act like an idiot, you're going to be treated like an idiot, black or white.

And in getting back to those who are promoting anti-South sentiment on DU, I love what you said: In that regard, I believe regional bias and or slams should be treated with the same contempt as racial, or gender ones.

I'm not going to stoop to their level by saying "f*ck you" or "go to hell" back to them, but they're surely testing my self-restraint. I think the language we choose says a lot about who we are, btw.

And, yes, I am interested in your thoughts about the media's contempt for Al Gore. I'll be looking for your hypothesis tomorrow. :)

Act of 1965 and said he was "signing away the South for 50 years" ?

With a lot of great responses.

I grew up in suburbs of Detroit, so I'm very familiar with the importance of the big 3 to the workers there. Since then, I've lived in LA, CA and now Georgia. Though I moved here for work, I also did so because I wanted to be where I could make a difference. Sure, it was great living in all liberal areas, as I have pretty much my entire life. This has been a real learning experience. It was also a deep joy to work on the Obama campaign here. People were absolutely transformed by him, by us, by his ideas. As I've been sourly reminded on here too often to count, we lost here. To outsiders, it may appear that it was worthless effort on our part -- but I don't feel that way at all. It's also much more complicated than people who aren't familiar with the politics here understand. WE have had massive election fraud here, and yet most DUers don't want to hear that. It's easier to condemn the area. What a shame.

I am truly enraged by Chambliss and his vote on the auto bail out. But guess what? I've organized a campaign of local liberals to write to him, to write LTTE, etc.

There are many "workers" in the south who would love to have a union to back them. To disregard the people for the actions of their representatives is simply foolish. Not everyone voted for Chambliss. What did you expect us to do that we didn't do? Many of us worked every single day for months on the Obama and Martin campaigns. We lost. To be bashed by fellow Dems on top of the loss is heart-breaking.

It's not a smart strategy, either, if we want to gain more power.

having lived all over the country and traveled extensively, it's my opinion that we never understand a region or its people until we've been a part of it, even in a small way. Sure, I hate it here sometimes. I understand the urge to blame the south. I say those things sometimes, too, out of frustration. And then I go back to work.

WE are all one -- that is, ironically, the source of power for a union...something to think about if you are bashing other Dems based on the region they live in. We are all one. That is the source of our power. It is also the source of all change- to see yourself in another. To have compassion and a sense of direction to lead into a better place by invitation instead of exclusion.

but I do think with regard to the auto industry bailout, we should question why some of these Republicans want to see Ford, GM and Chrysler go under. I'm not sure if your post was critical of people posting about the auto industry bailout or it was something else that brought it on. For me reading on here is hit or miss with catching conversations.