Letters to the Editor
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@ rnostbakken
Wow, you are the fourth Obama supporter I have come across who wants to disenfranchise people. One wanted to restrict voting to those with college degrees. Another wanted to make sure that no one over 50 was allowed to vote (and that they were all retired immediately), and you want to give voters an IQ test. Now, why on earth would we think some Obama voters are elitist?
The one that most astonished me wanted to kill all white women over 60. Whew! Just missed it. That's some serious disenfranchisement.
Now I am told in another thread that if the superdelegates should go for Hillary and nominate her that Obama supporters will riot. I really forward to seeing a bunch of Ivy League elites in the street stealing televisions and burning tires.
You guys aren't much for allowing the process to work itself out, are you?
Except for Doloresflower, who is throwing a party and didn't even invite me.
I'm hurt.
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The Problem with Appalachian Voters
The problem is mindset. They sit up there in nearly-forgotten communities and b*tch and moan about their jobs or lack thereof and then vote on guns and abortion. I understand that, I really do. The problem is that there aren't 3 or 4 parties out there to choose from, just 2. That means that whether you know it or like it you are voting on a platform of issues because these candidates are the only ones that have a chance to move up through the ranks of their respective parties.
That means in realistic terms that when you vote Republican, you vote for a platform that doesn't really care about the fact that you've lost your good-wage job and another is not on the horizon. Anyone who sits around complaining about what has happened to their way of life (be it steel or coal or farming) and doesn't clue into how that process occurs is short-sighted and a little ignorant. That is probably why I have little hope for this consituency in the fall.
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Carry me back to Ole West Virginny
As someone who left the Mountain State and environs over 20 years ago (officially, I lived across the Ohio River, and then south where I went to grad school, but spent purt near every weekend of my life visiting the homeland) I find that people just don't get it when it comes to the disposition of the upper Mon and Allegheny valleys, as well as the part that stretches down to the southern Blue Ridge.
First off, yes indeed. There are a lot of racists and homophobes. This is true throughout the lower Mason-Dixon line states. 'Nigger' is often a word used in Appalachia more than I've ever heard it in the South. Fact.
But the thing that is truly different is that the working class KNOW that the MAN has the boot on their neck, and is keeping them down. Gotta remember that the union movement was in part started in the coal fields-- anyone remember John J. Lewis? And its history is well-documented by locals like author Harry Caudill, of "Night Comes to the Cumberland" fame.
Since moving out West, to basically a hillbilly's idea of heaven (streams with clean water, big mountains, roaming room) though, I've been profoundly (negatively) impressed how the locals here are not near the folks that the ones in Appalachia are. They are dysfunctional individualists, fawning toward defective power, and have little capacity to do anything to advance their cause.
Not true with the folks in Appalachia.
If I had to give Obama any advice, it would be also don't give up on Appalachia. The sense of collective destiny is still strong there, and the sense that people can band together to do something about their shared fate also exists. Yep, they share some of the negatives with the real idiots to the South, and to the West-- but they're miles ahead, culturally. Just because they talk funny and like to pick up snakes doesn't mean that they don't share core values with most Democrats.
One thing that I think urban progressives have that is discomfiting to them is a bias against people that settle their disagreements at times with their fists. This is a 'Process' thing that seems to grip most of the middle class in this country-- that it doesn't matter what the end result is, as long as the process seems fair.
Folks in Appalachia don't necessarily cotton to that-- they are 'Product' oriented. You'd get that way too if you had to sit for 14 hours in an emergency room with your kid that just broke their leg. And you'd be a little pissed, regardless how nice the secretary was.
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Oops-- That's John L. Lewis..
Looks like I really have been away from home too long...
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@phylmom
WV wasn't a "slave state" because...WV WASN'T A STATE!!!!!!!!!
but no, people there aren't ignorant or anything.
Happily, I moved from WV two decades ago. It saddens me to no end when I visit my family to hear them denigrate the things I love about living in a city (you'd let your kids go to school with all them n*****s?) and revel in their own isolation (we don't have a problem with the s***s so I don't know why we need signs in Spanish). Racism is not readily apparent simply because there are so few people of color there (4%).
Don't kid yourself. and read a history book occasionally.
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Voters Stop Allowing The Media To Control You
Folks/Readers Of Salon
You are angry because you are once again being manipulated by the Media. All of these damned statistics would'nt mean a damed thing if the McCain Supporting, onesided Media had'nt started all of this crap. Stop watching this crap from these opinionated bastards.
West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, Michigan, people all over can agree to disagree without being disagreeable. It's the Damned Media Pundits that are causing all of this damed confusion. Folks take a look at your Children. Black, White, Hispanic, Jew, Chinese, Vientamese, they all get along. It's the damed Government and the Media that causes all of this damed confusion. All of you Christians seem to have forgotten that your God created all of us.
Now you spend your time being fooled or persuaded by Godless, Atheistic bastards hiding behind a microphone or a camera. Did you see Barbara Walter's story about her affair with a Blackman? What about the rest of you. When your self esteem was in the pits was'nt it that Blackman or woman that gave you hope.
Bush/Chaney/McCain/Clintons have seriously fucked the country up. Now this multi-racial man; ask the Damed Media what percent is white and what percent is black, they got all the statistics; Barak Obama wants to create a venue where We, The People actually have a chance to Change some of the conditions in this Country and the world and yet, you allow yourselves to continually be persuaded by some of the slimy cockroaches that represent the Media.
Hell vote for Barak Obama, get involved in the Government process, even you uneducated working class white folk, and let's cleanup this mess in our Great Nation and the World.
The Clintons are not good for the country at this time. Their ideas reflect the same old tired Bush/Chaney/McCain vision that got the country into this current Mess.