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	<title>Comments on: A Political What-If&#8230;</title>
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	<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/</link>
	<description>Raising a Healthy Family Without Religion.</description>
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		<title>By: David</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-633570</link>
		<dc:creator>David</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:42:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-633570</guid>
		<description>Hey Maria (January 5, 2009)!!

Everybody has their own definition of &quot;American&quot;. There was a video montage wherein one a photo of one American morphed into the photo of another American; showing how diverse we are. Agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Scientologists, etc. -- and American.

My definition is &quot;one who fully supports the U.S. Constitution&quot;. I support the ACLU and the NRA, and other organizations that defend our rights.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hey Maria (January 5, 2009)!!</p>
<p>Everybody has their own definition of &#8220;American&#8221;. There was a video montage wherein one a photo of one American morphed into the photo of another American; showing how diverse we are. Agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Scientologists, etc. &#8212; and American.</p>
<p>My definition is &#8220;one who fully supports the U.S. Constitution&#8221;. I support the ACLU and the NRA, and other organizations that defend our rights.</p>
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		<title>By: tammy</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-607878</link>
		<dc:creator>tammy</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:04:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-607878</guid>
		<description>Couldn&#039;t be happier to have found your blog!</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Couldn&#8217;t be happier to have found your blog!</p>
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		<title>By: Maria</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-490341</link>
		<dc:creator>Maria</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:44:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-490341</guid>
		<description>I get this is a joke, and were I in a better mood it would be hilarious; however, I am not and so understand that this colors my remark.

Please, please, stop dividing us. We may be different types of people, with different beliefs, but we&#039;re American. We may feel that we are wrong or right or whichever, but we&#039;re all basically trying to keep our families safe, and live correctly and be good people.

What&#039;s so wrong with just being American?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I get this is a joke, and were I in a better mood it would be hilarious; however, I am not and so understand that this colors my remark.</p>
<p>Please, please, stop dividing us. We may be different types of people, with different beliefs, but we&#8217;re American. We may feel that we are wrong or right or whichever, but we&#8217;re all basically trying to keep our families safe, and live correctly and be good people.</p>
<p>What&#8217;s so wrong with just being American?</p>
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		<title>By: Noell</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-486974</link>
		<dc:creator>Noell</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:45:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-486974</guid>
		<description>Hey, CM--I basically agree with everything you said (except for your claims about me). I&#039;m sorry you took the the piece so seriously. It&#039;s just a joke. 

Try to enjoy your day. =)</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hey, CM&#8211;I basically agree with everything you said (except for your claims about me). I&#8217;m sorry you took the the piece so seriously. It&#8217;s just a joke. </p>
<p>Try to enjoy your day. =)</p>
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		<title>By: cm</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-486947</link>
		<dc:creator>cm</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:13:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-486947</guid>
		<description>I am very, very tired of people assuming that all people in the &quot;slave states&quot; are illiterate, bible-thumping idiots. An enormous amount of us voted and worked hard for the Obama campaign (contributed money also). My family never owned slaves, as the majority of the families here did not, and thousands of us  have many friends of different colors and backgrounds. We are no more prejudiced than our northern neighbors. I have lived in the north and traveled in several states, even California, and it is the same everywhere; people speak of being non-prejudiced, but their lives and actions are opposite of those words. Michigan is so segregated that it reminds me of the pre-&#039;60s in the south. So, get off your pedestal and stop feeling superior to an area in America you do not really know. Unless you have lived somewhere for several years (at least 6 of the southern states for about 2 years each would be my recommendation), your post sounds much to me like a divisive attempt to feel superior. I would ask myself, if I were you, why is there this need in your life? What is missing in your life? Focus on standing for something without condemning an entire region about which you know little. There is good and bad everywhere, dear.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I am very, very tired of people assuming that all people in the &#8220;slave states&#8221; are illiterate, bible-thumping idiots. An enormous amount of us voted and worked hard for the Obama campaign (contributed money also). My family never owned slaves, as the majority of the families here did not, and thousands of us  have many friends of different colors and backgrounds. We are no more prejudiced than our northern neighbors. I have lived in the north and traveled in several states, even California, and it is the same everywhere; people speak of being non-prejudiced, but their lives and actions are opposite of those words. Michigan is so segregated that it reminds me of the pre-&#8217;60s in the south. So, get off your pedestal and stop feeling superior to an area in America you do not really know. Unless you have lived somewhere for several years (at least 6 of the southern states for about 2 years each would be my recommendation), your post sounds much to me like a divisive attempt to feel superior. I would ask myself, if I were you, why is there this need in your life? What is missing in your life? Focus on standing for something without condemning an entire region about which you know little. There is good and bad everywhere, dear.</p>
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		<title>By: fw</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-484555</link>
		<dc:creator>fw</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:51:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-484555</guid>
		<description>If the statistics in this post are correct, then this is a telling indictment....

I just found your blog and like your perspective on things very much.  I&#039;ll be back to read more.  Peace.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If the statistics in this post are correct, then this is a telling indictment&#8230;.</p>
<p>I just found your blog and like your perspective on things very much.  I&#8217;ll be back to read more.  Peace.</p>
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		<title>By: CSchall</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-467763</link>
		<dc:creator>CSchall</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:52:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-467763</guid>
		<description>Now why would you automatically imagine a southern accent when reading the letter posted in response to the one by the red states?  Everyone in the south is not a republican or even a democrat.  You would be quite surprised.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Now why would you automatically imagine a southern accent when reading the letter posted in response to the one by the red states?  Everyone in the south is not a republican or even a democrat.  You would be quite surprised.</p>
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		<title>By: AgnosticMom</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-466768</link>
		<dc:creator>AgnosticMom</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-466768</guid>
		<description>Ed, you crack me up!  

Fun responses to this post.  I&#039;m dying to post again on a number of topics.  Maybe this weekend??????</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ed, you crack me up!  </p>
<p>Fun responses to this post.  I&#8217;m dying to post again on a number of topics.  Maybe this weekend??????</p>
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		<title>By: Ed Darrell</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-466674</link>
		<dc:creator>Ed Darrell</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:40:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-466674</guid>
		<description>I&#039;m willing the let the Red States stay on three conditions: 

1.  They admit that they chose red as their color out of their respect for the way Stalin and Mao wielded power;

2.  They stop complaining that Obama hasn&#039;t shown his birth certificate, since it&#039;s been on the web since June; and

3.  They get out of the path to the flagpole and salute when we raise the red, white and blue.  It&#039;s also time they learned how to show respect for Old Glory, flying it from a flagpole, instead of tearing it apart flying it improperly from their automobile radio antenna.

Much more seriously, nice to have you back posting.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m willing the let the Red States stay on three conditions: </p>
<p>1.  They admit that they chose red as their color out of their respect for the way Stalin and Mao wielded power;</p>
<p>2.  They stop complaining that Obama hasn&#8217;t shown his birth certificate, since it&#8217;s been on the web since June; and</p>
<p>3.  They get out of the path to the flagpole and salute when we raise the red, white and blue.  It&#8217;s also time they learned how to show respect for Old Glory, flying it from a flagpole, instead of tearing it apart flying it improperly from their automobile radio antenna.</p>
<p>Much more seriously, nice to have you back posting.</p>
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		<title>By: mikespeir</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-463924</link>
		<dc:creator>mikespeir</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Dec 2008 12:34:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-463924</guid>
		<description>Oh, your new blue country would just dissolve into divisions of its own in time; say, yellow and green.  Then you&#039;d have to start the process over again.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Oh, your new blue country would just dissolve into divisions of its own in time; say, yellow and green.  Then you&#8217;d have to start the process over again.</p>
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		<title>By: HIRH</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-463263</link>
		<dc:creator>HIRH</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:16:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-463263</guid>
		<description>I especially like how the Red State come back is poorly written. It takes more than a sentence to form a paragraph. Especially a run-on sentence! I imagined reading it in a &quot;south-eeern&quot; accent. :-)</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I especially like how the Red State come back is poorly written. It takes more than a sentence to form a paragraph. Especially a run-on sentence! I imagined reading it in a &#8220;south-eeern&#8221; accent. <img src='http://www.agnosticmom.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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	<item>
		<title>By: HIRH</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-463262</link>
		<dc:creator>HIRH</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:14:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-463262</guid>
		<description>This is too funny.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This is too funny.</p>
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		<title>By: America</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-463065</link>
		<dc:creator>America</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:34:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-463065</guid>
		<description>Haha. New Post please?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Haha. New Post please?</p>
]]></content:encoded>
	</item>
	<item>
		<title>By: T</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-463019</link>
		<dc:creator>T</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:41:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-463019</guid>
		<description>Kentucky joined the Confederacy in 1964.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Kentucky joined the Confederacy in 1964.</p>
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		<title>By: Jason</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-461450</link>
		<dc:creator>Jason</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:19:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-461450</guid>
		<description>I&#039;m willing to let them drown themselves after blowing up their own damns--as soon as they let people with brains emigrate from said towns.

Not to worry, however--we&#039;ll make sure you all get a &quot;christian&quot; burial...</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;m willing to let them drown themselves after blowing up their own damns&#8211;as soon as they let people with brains emigrate from said towns.</p>
<p>Not to worry, however&#8211;we&#8217;ll make sure you all get a &#8220;christian&#8221; burial&#8230;</p>
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		<title>By: Mary Ann</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-457216</link>
		<dc:creator>Mary Ann</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:25:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-457216</guid>
		<description>OMGoodness. I am so glad to have found another Atheist Scrapper!!!!!! I feel so good today for having &quot;met you&quot; via your blog. Thought I was the sole non-believing scrapper out there.
Have a terrific turkey day today and drop me a line if you like.
Mary Ann
Annandale, VA</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>OMGoodness. I am so glad to have found another Atheist Scrapper!!!!!! I feel so good today for having &#8220;met you&#8221; via your blog. Thought I was the sole non-believing scrapper out there.<br />
Have a terrific turkey day today and drop me a line if you like.<br />
Mary Ann<br />
Annandale, VA</p>
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	<item>
		<title>By: Esme</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-447966</link>
		<dc:creator>Esme</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:15:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-447966</guid>
		<description>Dear Blue States:

Well, imagine our relief that youâ€™ve decided to secede and form some sort of bathing-optional commune headquartered in California. The money we&#039;ll save in aspirin, now that we wonâ€™t have headaches from listening to your interminable whining, will be worth it to us alone.

We&#039;ll finally be rid of you lazy, moping, latte-sucking Streisand fans now that you&#039;re actually going to follow through--for once--on your promise to finally get off your butts and leave, as so many of you claimed you would every election cycle and then chickened out of actually doing. (Yeah, weâ€™re looking at you, Alec Baldwin.)

But not so fast. You donâ€™t get to take all the Blue States with you--just the Blue parts.

We hate to break it to you, but your Blue States arenâ€™t actually &quot;blue.&quot; Mostly, theyâ€™re states full of Red counties with pockets of Blue urban blight in them, who vote Democratic in such numbers that if the same results came out of a Third World countryâ€”which, come to think of it, many of the &quot;Blue&quot; counties pretty much areâ€”weâ€™d think it was fraud and send some election observers from the UN.

Even California is pretty much a Red State: Bush won 35 out of 58 counties, while Kerry won LA and San Francisco. You want &#039;em? we certainly wonâ€™t fight you for them but you&#039;re going to have to found New California without 35 of your most beautiful counties and your second-largest city. Sorry about that.

Nationally, Bush won over 2.5 million square miles of U.S. counties (and an extra three and a half million votes, but we won&#039;t rub that in.) Kerry won less than 600,000 square miles--meaning that in most states he was popular downtown and pretty much nowhere else. In other words, your guy won the places that people like him would get shot if he walked through them at night. Our guy won every place else.

So, the bottom line is that you don&#039;t get the Blue States. Those states have lots of towns and counties that would rather blow their dams and flood themselves out of existence rather than go with you. No, instead, you get the Blue Cities.

But waitâ€¦we really feel we owe you full disclosure on this exchange. This might come as an unpleasant surprise, but you donâ€™t actually get the lower divorce and single-motherhood rates and all that other good stuff you think you&#039;re going to snag. Those are the conditions that are actually found out in the Red countiesâ€”not in the Blue cities, and you can&#039;t have them.

Instead you get the urban single moms, not the soccer moms; the drug addicts, not the doctors; the waiters, not the chefs. You get the fine service you&#039;ve come to expect from the brutal and corrupt inner-city police departments. You get the abysmal literacy rates and schools that are more dangerous than most prisons. All in all, you get to take with you a public sector in most cities so unmanageable they make Mogadishu seem like a tidily run little municipality by comparison.

You get the labor union shakedown artists, &quot;teachers&quot; who canâ€™t pass tests in their own subject, and city government leaders for whom graft, racial spoils systems, and outright theft are a way of life. Theyâ€™re all very enthusiastic Blue voters, as you know, and weâ€™re sure theyâ€™ll stampede their way to New California to start draining your wallets, wrecking your schools, and in general making a mess of your lives.

(And don&#039;t come complaining back to us when socialist central planning does for New California what it did for garden spots like East Berlin and Pyongyang. We&#039;re putting a strict visa system into place once you all go.)

We, on the other hand, get those Red city suburbs and rural districts. You know, the ones with the good schools, the high property values, the quiet streets and the sheriffs and cops who donâ€™t need to walk around armored up like theyâ€™re about to storm the Sunni Triangle.

Oh and donâ€™t concern yourself with our agricultural capacity after all, they don&#039;t call it &quot;the breadbasket&quot; for nothin&#039;. Weâ€™ll keep right on producing the vast majority of wheat, corn, oats, rye, potatoes, soybeans, beef, chicken and pork.

Weâ€™ve always preferred a nice, unpretentious, frosty mug of brew anyway and hey, maybe you can make a salad with those pineapples, stem cells, and lettuce.

And don&#039;t even think about keeping the National Parks, the wide open spaces, all those water resources, and all the rest of America&#039;s natural splendor, since those are all pretty much located in Red counties.

Hell, we even get most of Oregon and Washington ...ainâ€™t it ironic? You get the urban liberals in Portland and Seattle and their friends in important social organizations (like, say, drug-running street gangs) and we get the rest of the Northwest.

Ok by us; weâ€™d be fools not to take you up on it.

Hereâ€™s how it will work; all of you Blue whiners, please feel free to look at a map of the electoral results county by county in each state, and take the people with you whoâ€™ve made it clear theyâ€™d like to go.

That means you get places like downtown Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and we get to keep the rest of beautiful Pennsylvania, thanks.

You get to administer bloated public services to the violent, drug-addled, gunslinging populations of delightful inner-city sinkholes of poverty and corruption such as Miami, St. Louis,Atlanta and the ever-popular District of Columbia--which has been governed by liberals (and the occasional crackhead) for so long and so incompetently that any semblance of order has broken down (beyond the carefully guarded borders of your Georgetown bistros, natch) to the point where even the mayor once asked the President to have the city patrolled by National Guardsmen.

Lucky you, it&#039;s all yours--enjoy it in good health, and donâ€™t forget to wear your Kevlar...Blue &quot;voters&quot; up there in Northeast DC tend to be jumpy on the ol&#039; trigger finger.

In fact, all around our great nation, you get to keep all the Blue voters whoâ€™ve made urban war zones like downtown Detroit--a Blue bastion, of course--the proud showplaces they are today.

We get the rest of Blue states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Illinois and...well, frankly, just about every state in the Union with the exception of Hawaii and New England--and even there, weâ€™ll just hang on to a couple of chunks of New Hampshire and Connecticut.

Youâ€™re especially more than welcome to Rhode Island, which will immediately set up some sort of money-laundering scheme and bilk the rest of you once it has been incorporated into whatever sort of muddle-headed utopia youâ€™re trying to create.

The former mayor of Providence should be out of Federal prison in time to join your Politburo and help you get things set up--for a small consulting fee, of course

If you would please, take another look at the list of best beaches and notice what color states they are in. We&#039;ll miss the Hawaiian beaches, but since long stretches of coastline from New Jersey down to Florida and yes, even in Southern California (including San Diego, thanks) are actually in Red counties, we&#039;ll be fine.

Sure, we get the rednecks and holy rollers. But since you&#039;re apparently willing to trade them for the gangs and psychopaths terrorizing your Blue cities, what can we say? You want the Crips and the Bloods in low riders raking your streets with automatic gunfire, and you&#039;re offering us Bubba heading off to church in his pickup?

Hey, a deal&#039;s a deal. Done.

True, you also get Manhattan, but darn the luck, you have to take the rest of the city, including the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn too, as well as Long Island, which is enough to almost make us feel sorry for you all out there in New California. (Almost.)

For our part, weâ€™ll take most of the rest of gorgeous New York State, although you get the scam artists who infest the legislature in Albany.

And since for some unfathomable reason you actually want Elliot Spitzer, weâ€™ll buy his plane ticket as a gesture of goodwill.

So thatâ€™s the deal. You get the cities, with all the crime, crack mommies, and corruption you can stand.

And sure, you get many of the elite colleges too, with the professors who think that terrorists in Fallujah are freedom fighters and that the people who worked in the Twin Towers on 9/11 were no better than Nazisâ€”forgive us for not lamenting over this loss.

We get the suburbs, the countryside, and all the other beautiful places that remain unspoiled by liberal hypocrisy and addle-brained social experimentation.

And we&#039;d like a favor, too: please keep your sky-high tax and crime rates, since we&#039;re happy to have the corporations and jobs that continue to flee your Blue cities into our Red counties. It&#039;s much appreciated, since our unemployment rates, to say nothing of our crime, single-parenting, and illiteracy rates, are far lower than yours.

Oh, and one last thing. We get the U.S. military, too. Did we mention that part? (You may have forgotten that they&#039;re volunteers, and most are happy Red state voters.)

Not to worry, though, since weâ€™re sure that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists will be more than happy to reach an accommodation with a society that embraces radical feminism, gay marriage, gun control, hostility to organized religion of any kind, and Salman Rushdie. Good luck with that.

But one day when some misogynist Saudi freak--who no doubt will sneak into your country by strolling over the northern border after a few years sucking on the Canadian welfare system you all admire so much--blows up a couple kilos of plutonium on Sunset Boulevard, go send Sean Penn to ask the French for help. Weâ€™ll be busy that day.

Sincerely,

The Red States

PS: You can keep the marijuana. You&#039;re going to need it, since selling it is one of the last stable industries left in Blue counties.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Dear Blue States:</p>
<p>Well, imagine our relief that youâ€™ve decided to secede and form some sort of bathing-optional commune headquartered in California. The money we&#8217;ll save in aspirin, now that we wonâ€™t have headaches from listening to your interminable whining, will be worth it to us alone.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll finally be rid of you lazy, moping, latte-sucking Streisand fans now that you&#8217;re actually going to follow through&#8211;for once&#8211;on your promise to finally get off your butts and leave, as so many of you claimed you would every election cycle and then chickened out of actually doing. (Yeah, weâ€™re looking at you, Alec Baldwin.)</p>
<p>But not so fast. You donâ€™t get to take all the Blue States with you&#8211;just the Blue parts.</p>
<p>We hate to break it to you, but your Blue States arenâ€™t actually &#8220;blue.&#8221; Mostly, theyâ€™re states full of Red counties with pockets of Blue urban blight in them, who vote Democratic in such numbers that if the same results came out of a Third World countryâ€”which, come to think of it, many of the &#8220;Blue&#8221; counties pretty much areâ€”weâ€™d think it was fraud and send some election observers from the UN.</p>
<p>Even California is pretty much a Red State: Bush won 35 out of 58 counties, while Kerry won LA and San Francisco. You want &#8216;em? we certainly wonâ€™t fight you for them but you&#8217;re going to have to found New California without 35 of your most beautiful counties and your second-largest city. Sorry about that.</p>
<p>Nationally, Bush won over 2.5 million square miles of U.S. counties (and an extra three and a half million votes, but we won&#8217;t rub that in.) Kerry won less than 600,000 square miles&#8211;meaning that in most states he was popular downtown and pretty much nowhere else. In other words, your guy won the places that people like him would get shot if he walked through them at night. Our guy won every place else.</p>
<p>So, the bottom line is that you don&#8217;t get the Blue States. Those states have lots of towns and counties that would rather blow their dams and flood themselves out of existence rather than go with you. No, instead, you get the Blue Cities.</p>
<p>But waitâ€¦we really feel we owe you full disclosure on this exchange. This might come as an unpleasant surprise, but you donâ€™t actually get the lower divorce and single-motherhood rates and all that other good stuff you think you&#8217;re going to snag. Those are the conditions that are actually found out in the Red countiesâ€”not in the Blue cities, and you can&#8217;t have them.</p>
<p>Instead you get the urban single moms, not the soccer moms; the drug addicts, not the doctors; the waiters, not the chefs. You get the fine service you&#8217;ve come to expect from the brutal and corrupt inner-city police departments. You get the abysmal literacy rates and schools that are more dangerous than most prisons. All in all, you get to take with you a public sector in most cities so unmanageable they make Mogadishu seem like a tidily run little municipality by comparison.</p>
<p>You get the labor union shakedown artists, &#8220;teachers&#8221; who canâ€™t pass tests in their own subject, and city government leaders for whom graft, racial spoils systems, and outright theft are a way of life. Theyâ€™re all very enthusiastic Blue voters, as you know, and weâ€™re sure theyâ€™ll stampede their way to New California to start draining your wallets, wrecking your schools, and in general making a mess of your lives.</p>
<p>(And don&#8217;t come complaining back to us when socialist central planning does for New California what it did for garden spots like East Berlin and Pyongyang. We&#8217;re putting a strict visa system into place once you all go.)</p>
<p>We, on the other hand, get those Red city suburbs and rural districts. You know, the ones with the good schools, the high property values, the quiet streets and the sheriffs and cops who donâ€™t need to walk around armored up like theyâ€™re about to storm the Sunni Triangle.</p>
<p>Oh and donâ€™t concern yourself with our agricultural capacity after all, they don&#8217;t call it &#8220;the breadbasket&#8221; for nothin&#8217;. Weâ€™ll keep right on producing the vast majority of wheat, corn, oats, rye, potatoes, soybeans, beef, chicken and pork.</p>
<p>Weâ€™ve always preferred a nice, unpretentious, frosty mug of brew anyway and hey, maybe you can make a salad with those pineapples, stem cells, and lettuce.</p>
<p>And don&#8217;t even think about keeping the National Parks, the wide open spaces, all those water resources, and all the rest of America&#8217;s natural splendor, since those are all pretty much located in Red counties.</p>
<p>Hell, we even get most of Oregon and Washington &#8230;ainâ€™t it ironic? You get the urban liberals in Portland and Seattle and their friends in important social organizations (like, say, drug-running street gangs) and we get the rest of the Northwest.</p>
<p>Ok by us; weâ€™d be fools not to take you up on it.</p>
<p>Hereâ€™s how it will work; all of you Blue whiners, please feel free to look at a map of the electoral results county by county in each state, and take the people with you whoâ€™ve made it clear theyâ€™d like to go.</p>
<p>That means you get places like downtown Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and we get to keep the rest of beautiful Pennsylvania, thanks.</p>
<p>You get to administer bloated public services to the violent, drug-addled, gunslinging populations of delightful inner-city sinkholes of poverty and corruption such as Miami, St. Louis,Atlanta and the ever-popular District of Columbia&#8211;which has been governed by liberals (and the occasional crackhead) for so long and so incompetently that any semblance of order has broken down (beyond the carefully guarded borders of your Georgetown bistros, natch) to the point where even the mayor once asked the President to have the city patrolled by National Guardsmen.</p>
<p>Lucky you, it&#8217;s all yours&#8211;enjoy it in good health, and donâ€™t forget to wear your Kevlar&#8230;Blue &#8220;voters&#8221; up there in Northeast DC tend to be jumpy on the ol&#8217; trigger finger.</p>
<p>In fact, all around our great nation, you get to keep all the Blue voters whoâ€™ve made urban war zones like downtown Detroit&#8211;a Blue bastion, of course&#8211;the proud showplaces they are today.</p>
<p>We get the rest of Blue states like Michigan and Wisconsin and Illinois and&#8230;well, frankly, just about every state in the Union with the exception of Hawaii and New England&#8211;and even there, weâ€™ll just hang on to a couple of chunks of New Hampshire and Connecticut.</p>
<p>Youâ€™re especially more than welcome to Rhode Island, which will immediately set up some sort of money-laundering scheme and bilk the rest of you once it has been incorporated into whatever sort of muddle-headed utopia youâ€™re trying to create.</p>
<p>The former mayor of Providence should be out of Federal prison in time to join your Politburo and help you get things set up&#8211;for a small consulting fee, of course</p>
<p>If you would please, take another look at the list of best beaches and notice what color states they are in. We&#8217;ll miss the Hawaiian beaches, but since long stretches of coastline from New Jersey down to Florida and yes, even in Southern California (including San Diego, thanks) are actually in Red counties, we&#8217;ll be fine.</p>
<p>Sure, we get the rednecks and holy rollers. But since you&#8217;re apparently willing to trade them for the gangs and psychopaths terrorizing your Blue cities, what can we say? You want the Crips and the Bloods in low riders raking your streets with automatic gunfire, and you&#8217;re offering us Bubba heading off to church in his pickup?</p>
<p>Hey, a deal&#8217;s a deal. Done.</p>
<p>True, you also get Manhattan, but darn the luck, you have to take the rest of the city, including the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn too, as well as Long Island, which is enough to almost make us feel sorry for you all out there in New California. (Almost.)</p>
<p>For our part, weâ€™ll take most of the rest of gorgeous New York State, although you get the scam artists who infest the legislature in Albany.</p>
<p>And since for some unfathomable reason you actually want Elliot Spitzer, weâ€™ll buy his plane ticket as a gesture of goodwill.</p>
<p>So thatâ€™s the deal. You get the cities, with all the crime, crack mommies, and corruption you can stand.</p>
<p>And sure, you get many of the elite colleges too, with the professors who think that terrorists in Fallujah are freedom fighters and that the people who worked in the Twin Towers on 9/11 were no better than Nazisâ€”forgive us for not lamenting over this loss.</p>
<p>We get the suburbs, the countryside, and all the other beautiful places that remain unspoiled by liberal hypocrisy and addle-brained social experimentation.</p>
<p>And we&#8217;d like a favor, too: please keep your sky-high tax and crime rates, since we&#8217;re happy to have the corporations and jobs that continue to flee your Blue cities into our Red counties. It&#8217;s much appreciated, since our unemployment rates, to say nothing of our crime, single-parenting, and illiteracy rates, are far lower than yours.</p>
<p>Oh, and one last thing. We get the U.S. military, too. Did we mention that part? (You may have forgotten that they&#8217;re volunteers, and most are happy Red state voters.)</p>
<p>Not to worry, though, since weâ€™re sure that Islamic fundamentalist terrorists will be more than happy to reach an accommodation with a society that embraces radical feminism, gay marriage, gun control, hostility to organized religion of any kind, and Salman Rushdie. Good luck with that.</p>
<p>But one day when some misogynist Saudi freak&#8211;who no doubt will sneak into your country by strolling over the northern border after a few years sucking on the Canadian welfare system you all admire so much&#8211;blows up a couple kilos of plutonium on Sunset Boulevard, go send Sean Penn to ask the French for help. Weâ€™ll be busy that day.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>The Red States</p>
<p>PS: You can keep the marijuana. You&#8217;re going to need it, since selling it is one of the last stable industries left in Blue counties.</p>
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		<title>By: Jill</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-444606</link>
		<dc:creator>Jill</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:45:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-444606</guid>
		<description>Ack, no, don&#039;t leave all the cool people who happen to live in red states behind!  Can we at least come visit often, if we&#039;re stuck here?

Oh, wait, maybe there&#039;s an out.  Kentucky wasn&#039;t a slave state - we were neutral in the civil war.  Does that count?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ack, no, don&#8217;t leave all the cool people who happen to live in red states behind!  Can we at least come visit often, if we&#8217;re stuck here?</p>
<p>Oh, wait, maybe there&#8217;s an out.  Kentucky wasn&#8217;t a slave state &#8211; we were neutral in the civil war.  Does that count?</p>
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		<title>By: L</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-444446</link>
		<dc:creator>L</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:28:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-444446</guid>
		<description>Stopping by via &lt;a href=&quot;http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Meming of Life&lt;/a&gt;.  Will definitely be adding you to my RSS feed.  Pleased to meet you!</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Stopping by via <a href="http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/blog/" rel="nofollow">The Meming of Life</a>.  Will definitely be adding you to my RSS feed.  Pleased to meet you!</p>
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		<title>By: John D.</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-443379</link>
		<dc:creator>John D.</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:32:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-443379</guid>
		<description>I am almost convinced that the Red States would be perfectly content with that decision... win-win situation?  :)</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I am almost convinced that the Red States would be perfectly content with that decision&#8230; win-win situation?  <img src='http://www.agnosticmom.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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		<title>By: Paul</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-443146</link>
		<dc:creator>Paul</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:33:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-443146</guid>
		<description>Yeah...but...the red states all just said, &quot;your giving us Dollywood? Sounds good to us!&quot;</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yeah&#8230;but&#8230;the red states all just said, &#8220;your giving us Dollywood? Sounds good to us!&#8221;</p>
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		<title>By: serapio</title>
		<link>http://www.agnosticmom.com/2008/11/02/a-political-what-if/comment-page-1/#comment-436612</link>
		<dc:creator>serapio</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:29:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.agnosticmom.com/?p=257#comment-436612</guid>
		<description>I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/80714812.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the original was a craigslist post&lt;/a&gt;.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I think <a href="http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/80714812.html" rel="nofollow">the original was a craigslist post</a>.</p>
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