Relevant: Conservatives love Texas.
(H/T Ed Kilgore.)
the majority of Texas is actually sane(-ish) and sound
If you ignore the bit about electing Rick Perry governor.
2: Following up on George W. Bush.
Keep this in mind: the majority of Texas Austin is actually sane(-ish) and sound, it's just that the shoutiest parts are rest of Texas is batshit nuts. Bat shitnuts.
FTFY
1: That is pretty fascinating stuff. I'd love to see the further crosstabs.
Black voters dislike 10 of the 14 Southern states.
Some of our best friends are Black!
Hispanic: 50% favorable, 9% unfavorable
African-American: 42%-8%
White: 41%-12%
the majority of Texas is actually sane(-ish) and sound
Like others above, I find this difficult to accept. Texas seems to be slightly saner than South Carolina, sure, and maybe a bit sounder than Louisiana, but that's a very low bar indeed. Having said that, as a former resident of Oklahoma, I wonder if you mean that the majority of Texans with whom you have face-to-face interactions aren't foaming-at-the-mouth, reactionary fuckwits. Is that it? Is it that most people you deal with don't wear their totally insane and unsound policy preferences on their sleeves?
2: To be fair, in 2006 that was only 40% of Texans. 12% voted for the novelty country singer!
4: Keep in mind, I'm not in Austin.
I wonder if you mean that the majority of Texans with whom you have face-to-face interactions aren't foaming-at-the-mouth, reactionary fuckwits.
This, plus things like Evangelicals are about 25% of the population (iirc), and Catholics are a plurality. Yet Evangelicals are a lot shoutier and spend a lot of energy fucking up public policy decisions.
(Not that Catholics haven't been making the headlines lately in their own way.)
Aren't most of those Catholics hispanicslatinosMexicans? Most of the crazy is concentrated in white people.
Mexican Catholics are generally much more conservative regarding social issues than white American Catholics are.
Relatedly, yesterday I had my taxes prepared. The man who does them is a very friendly and very sound guy. He's a pillar of the community, an avid cyclist, and loves his family. He's also wonderfully well-read and seemingly very bright.
90% of the time I spent with him was either just fine (spent filling out forms) or better than that (spent talking about the Civil War). But the other 10% of the time he explained to me that we'll (the United States) never get on our feet again until we have a president who doesn't see business as the enemy, until we get rid of the unions, and until we find a way to set aside our differences and commit to the greater good.
Now, it's that last one that got to me. So I explained to him that while we share many of the same problems, we approach them from entirely different perspectives, that so much of what he says sounds like a Fox News soundbite to me, that, for example, it's especially hard to understand how anyone could see this president as anti-business. He just laughed his "silly liberal, NPR is run by Saul Alinsky" laugh, and we moved on to the part where the evil federal government is going to send* me back some of the money it stole from me.
Anyway, it's hard to know what to make of an experience like that. Sure, he's a good guy by most measures of good. But his policy preferences, which are shaped by bad people, are insane and unsound. Which is to say, even in California, it's hard to reconcile the apparent fact that many people aren't too awful one-on-one but have such terrible politics. I'm sure David Brooks could explain the phenomenon to me.
* Direct deposit, ftw.
it's hard to know what to make of an experience like that
What I make of it is that many people belong to a political party the same way that they are sports fans. It doesn't matter how good of a team [Duke, the Yankees, the Cowboys, etc.] puts together or how likeable the players are: they still suck.
a president who doesn't see business as the enemy
I love this line of attack, particularly coming (as it does in every speech) from Mitt "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" Romney. I'm tempted to start loudly proclaiming that I will never vote Republican until the Republican Party ends its war on White Christians.
What I make of it is that many people belong to a political party the same way that they are sports fans.
That's a helpful way for me to think about this.
they still suck
Which they? The people supporting the political party? Or the political party itself? In other words, do all Republicans, because they support Duke, suck? I'm cool with that, by the way; I just want to know what's what.
In other words, do all Republicans, because they support Duke, suck?
I'm afraid, looking at this from the safety of a different (though not necessarily better) system, they do.
Imagine yourself an honest and honourable conservative, in the Burkian sense, ten years ago. You bought into the bs about compassionate conservatism, you awaited its coming with hope in your heart; you may have been a fool, but you didn't necessarily suck.
But ten years have passed. You have watched the ideological leadership of your party pass from McCain to Rove to Rupert Murdoch and its organisational leadership pass to a bunch of people who make Ahmadinejad look like a model of moderation and reliability. You haven't liked it; you may even have tried to push back (but not too hard). But if you're still on the team, you suck.
[Adapted from my standard rant against Liberal Democrats in Britain.]
Von Wafer, will you hire this guy again next year?
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that not *all* Republicans support David Duke.
No, I mean that it doesn't matter to Republicans that, for example, Obama's health care plan is essentially the Heritage Foundation's baby first enacted by the likely Republican presidential nominee when he was governor. Since it's now the (nominal) Democratic plan, it sucks.
4/9: Even in Austin, there are neighborhoods I avoid. Some, I can't; a lot of my friends live in the gentrifying area near F&D. Last week, a gentleman who was out on his lawn told me, as I was walking down the sidewalk, "git, before I call the PO-lice. Damn foreigners!"
20: Liberal accountants are pretty rare.
OT: Delong has a question.
And it doesn't matter that Obama withdrew troops from Iraq according to the deadlines negotiated, agreed to, and signed by Bush and al-Maliki. Because it was carried out by Obama, it's treasonous and incompetent.
20: I don't think so, but I'm happy to be persuaded that I'm wrong. As it happens, he prepares the taxes for half the people in my department, and I had a long talk with one of my close colleagues about this yesterday afternoon. He (the colleague) contended that having conversations with this guy is the way things used to be in small towns: genial political disagreements with neighbors would be set aside when it came time to raise a barn or whatever. That might once have been true (I'm not really sure, honestly, though I doubt it), but I can't escape the sense that a) it's not anymore. And I'm not going to turn back the clock to a more congenial age by listening to my tax preparer regurgitate warmed-over Rush Limbaughism; and b) I should be giving my business to somebody who supports UNC rather than Duke.
26
I don't think so, but I'm happy to be persuaded that I'm wrong. ...
Your taxes are so complicated that you can't buy TurboTax (or whatever) and do them yourself?
28: I have enough weird income (royalties, consulting, speaking engagements), weird deductions (some odd charitable giving, very complicated business expenses, and lingering fallout from a job search), and weird personality quirks (fear of forms -- no, seriously -- among many other things) that I don't trust TurboTax. I've considered the possibility that I should get over it, but I'm not ready to commit to that kind of personal growth just yet.
Is it a barn-raising if you're paying him?
Don't be silly, clew. Because of an overweening regulatory apparatus, we can't just raise a barn whenever we want. Fucking permits, man.
Keep this in mind: the majority of Texas is actually sane(-ish) and sound,....
OK WE'LL LET YOU LIVE. YOU CUT IT DAMN CLOSE.
Fucking permits
Say it brother, there was a time when needing these would have put a real crimp in my style.
MN gets enormous "not sure" points and is disliked by blacks. I blame Garrison Keillor and Michele Bachman, and keith Ellison for not being more visible. And the Minneapolis PD.
MN [...] is disliked by blacks.
Too damn cold.
23: Thanks for sharing that. I'm sorry you have to deal with that and it's something that wouldn't be on the radar of people who aren't themselves targeted, I suspect. (I suppose there are bigots even in Texas who can spot a Finn a mile away!)
"Mexican Catholics are generally much more conservative regarding social issues than white American Catholics are."
The data on this is actually all over the map.
In Mexico itself, you have everything from legal gay marriage in Mexico City (which their Supreme Court has ruled needs to be honored by all the states) to some cities that outlaw mini skirts.
Here's some recent polling data of Mexican-Americans on social issues:
http://latinodecisions.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/latino-conservatives-gop-hopes-misplaced/
Also, Texas is awesome, even (especially?) parts soaked in crazy evil like West Texas.
If I were to expect regular Muslims to loudly and actively and openly denounce their bat-shit brethren, I'd expect the sane Texans to do the same with their bat-shit brethren.
But since both groups are cowards in the face of bat-shit crazies with guns I let both groups off the hook.
On the other hand, many of the bat-shit crazy Texans are the ones denouncing sane Muslims for not denouncing bat-shit Muslims.
So, umm, I'm disappointed with a lot of people these days.
To 23: Man, that stinks. Somehow puts me in mind of this recent Racialicious post about being mistaken for a valet (again).
39: That makes me feel better about never asking anyone for help in a store unless I can see a corresponding uniform or name tag.
Ever since I worked in a bookstore, people come up to me in bookstores and ask me questions. It is clearly antisemitism.
(Also now I read "mistaken for a valet" and pictured someone putting on someone else's cufflinks. Thanks, Downton Abbey!)