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Obama's Rural America.. bitter and hateful

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
CattleArmy said:
In this area rural towns are just fading away. The overall unemployment rate might be lower but in many rural areas jobs and businesses are leaving and nothing is coming in to replace them.

It is exactly the opposite here. We have become minorities in our own communities. The yankees have driven our land values on our farms to over $18K an acre. The little towns are busting at the seams and the streets and highways cannot handle the traffic. It is constantly grid locked. Wait through each red light up to 5 or 6 cycles just to ge thru.

We are nearing retirement. Most of us are leaving our communities and moving a hundred miles away just to escape the insanity.

They have no ethics. They want to come meet you and pet your dog. They are dog lovers they claim. All they truly are amounts to dog haters. You had already gotten attached to your pup and he had promise to be a good watch dog. Now he wags his tail every time someone comes up and he needs a bullet in his head and you need to start over. No one taught the stupid fools the simple ethic that you don't pat someone else's dog that you were taught when you were 5 years old. Every blame one of these yankees do it. They haven't figure it out on their own based on logic and they were never taught any ethics their whole lives. The list goes on and on. And they just keep coming and ruining your whole way of life. They condem mexicans. The mexicans understand country ethics and they respect you. The yankees don't. All they want to do is tell you how twisted your values are and that you shouldn't own guns or hunt animals etc etc.

We miss our little communites and our happy lives. We are all moving farther out.
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
backhoeboogie said:
You had already gotten attached to your pup and he had promise to be a good watch dog. Now he wags his tail every time someone comes up and he needs a bullet in his head and you need to start over. No one taught the stupid fools the simple ethic that you don't pat someone else's dog that you were taught when you were 5 years old.

If you Texans did not have such cute little French Poodles as your watch dogs and put pretty little bows in their hair people would not be petting them all the time. :wink:

Here in Kansas we have manly dogs and no one dares petting them.

:lol: :lol:
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
backhoeboogie said:
You had already gotten attached to your pup and he had promise to be a good watch dog. Now he wags his tail every time someone comes up and he needs a bullet in his head and you need to start over. No one taught the stupid fools the simple ethic that you don't pat someone else's dog that you were taught when you were 5 years old.

If you Texans did not have such cute little French Poodles as your watch dogs and put pretty little bows in their hair people would not be petting them all the time. :wink:

Here in Kansas we have manly dogs and no one dares petting them.

:lol: :lol:

Aplus, This one is a timid border collie cross. He would rather hang out under the shade tree but they want to walk over and pet him. Why?

The dog thing is just he tip of the ice berg. I have a whole laundry list. These folks just have no knowledge of ethics. And they keep coming and coming. I think we'd be better off in ghost towns. All we want to do is retire on the land we love and have worked most of our lives.
 

cutterone

Well-known member
We have low unemployment rates here but that dosen't mean squat. First of all that does not take into account those who have gone past the 26 wk period and since the Mexicans came here in droves they have taken up most employment, reducing wages, and a lot of employment is part time.
We have two types of employment - high paying factory or high tec and low paying & part time. I've checked into some to suppliment my income and can't seem to find anything except $8 part time job openings. With the cost of fuel 20 hrs @ $8 means a net of about $30/ week income. Even the construction guys can't get the handyman, repair type jobs since the latinos have taken over that market with cheap rates. Local residents can't compete with substidised immigrants that pack 2-3 families in HUD housing and willing to work for minimum wage. Since their influx even the factories that paid big wages are now getting rid of mid aged employees and replacing them with lower payed employees. We are around 60% latinos here now and a hog processing plant near here is almost 100% latinos.
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
aplusmnt said:
CattleArmy said:
In this area rural towns are just fading away. The overall unemployment rate might be lower but in many rural areas jobs and businesses are leaving and nothing is coming in to replace them.

Rural towns have been fading away for a long time. Possibly dating back all the way to the Industrial Revolution.

:???: :???: BULLPUCKEY- The Industrial Revolution was in the 1700's-early 1800's...Our part of the country wasn't even settled until the start of the 1900's- with only a few cowboys and Indians prior to that...So unless your counting teepees that don't fly...

The Great Depression and dry years of the 30's put many rural towns/communities under...Then CRP/vertical integration and corporate consolidation of farming/ranching did more to kill little towns in this part of the country than anything else...But that started here in the 80's.....

Basically since then and the growing manufacturing jobs the moving from rural areas to the cities for jobs has been a common happening. Sure it did not happen everywhere at same time or even at all. But as manufacturing jobs have grown in past so have larger cities at the cost to rural towns and areas. Just because it only started happening their in 1980's does not mean that it did not happen in other parts of the country and other rural towns back in the early 1900's.

Some part of the country have even seen reverse affect like Backhoe mentioned, we have a few towns around here that are like that also. Nice communities, low crime etc... and people move to them, but we have some other rural towns that people are leaving for various reasons.
 

backhoeboogie

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
Some part of the country have even seen reverse affect like Backhoe mentioned, we have a few towns around here that are like that also. Nice communities, low crime etc... and people move to them, but we have some other rural towns that people are leaving for various reasons.

Diablo Canyon hired some peers. A few others went to Fermi. They were offering significant salary increase. The folks that jumped on it are actually realizing less. It is the cost of living there.

The cost of living (especailly housing) has sort of gone through the roof here. Best thing to do is sell out and move farther out. Price your land for three times what it is worth and those from the north east will think it is a bargain price. Then just buy three times as much land. Lots of folks are buying in the Idabel, Oklahoma proximity. Know one guy who sold 65 acres, and bought almost 400 acres near Fort Townley. No major traffic and a depressed enconomy. It was about a 6 to 1 swap and he had lots of money left over.
 

PrairieQueen

Well-known member
Good article:

April 15, 2008, 6:08 pm
Right Fight, Wrong Word

By Dan Schnur

Dan Schnur was the national communications director for John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000. (Full biography.)

Ever since Barack Obama’s comments about small-town Pennsylvania voters first surfaced in the public sphere late last week, the scions of the political community have talked of little else. Both the Clinton and McCain campaigns focused on the word “bitter” — allowing Senator Obama’s supporters to engage in a largely semantic discussion about whether economically disadvantaged Americans were “bitter” or “angry” or “frustrated.” But this is a meaningless series of distinctions even in this super-charged political environment. It’s safe to say that people without jobs are not particularly happy about that situation, regardless of the word in question.

The more important issue than Senator Obama’s choice of words, though, is the world view underneath them. By using a voter’s adverse economic circumstances to rationalize his cultural beliefs, Barack Obama has reintroduced what has been a defining question in American politics for more than a generation: Why do so many working-class voters cast their ballots on social and values-based issues like gun ownership, abortion and same-sex marriage rather than on economic policy prescriptions?

These voters — known as “the silent majority” in the 1970s, as “Reagan Democrats” in the ’80s, and as “values voters” during the last two election cycles — have long been one of the most sought-after prizes in national elections. But with the exception of the occasional Southerner on the ticket, Democratic presidential candidates and their advisers have been continually vexed by the unwillingness of blue-collar Americans to more reliably vote their economic interests.

In his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,” Thomas Frank articulates essentially the same case that Senator Obama has made in recent days. Mr. Frank complains that Republicans have deceived blue-collar Kansans — and their colleagues in other states — into voting against their own economic interests by distracting them into a conversation about traditional values and cultural concerns. Both Senator Obama and Mr. Frank seem to be saying that economic policy should be more important to voters than social and cultural questions.

For many people, that’s certainly true. But there are plenty of other voters who don’t necessarily base their votes solely on jobs and taxes, and many of them are quite financially successful. They have determined their political affiliations largely as a result of the same continuing battles over abortion, guns and same-sex marriage that have drawn so many working-class voters to Republican candidates over the years. The only difference is the side of the fight they’ve chosen. It’s hard to argue that a wealthy pro-choice Democrat is any less of a values voter than a pro-life construction worker who votes Republican.

Perhaps Mr. Frank’s book would benefit from a sequel. We could call it: “What’s the Matter With the Upper East Side?” or perhaps “What’s the Matter With Beverly Hills?” or “What’s the Matter With Martha’s Vineyard?” The answer is that there’s nothing wrong with these voters at all, nothing more than there is anything inappropriate about blue-collar Kansans or Pennsylvanians who have decided that economic issues are not the most important influencers on their vote.

The mistake that Senator Obama and Mr. Frank both make is that they assume that only the values of culturally conservative voters require justification. An environmentally conscious, pro-stem cell bond trader who votes Democratic is lauded for selflessness and open-mindedness. A gun-owning, church-going factory worker who supports Republican candidates, on the other hand, must be the victim of partisan deception. This double standard is at the heart of the Democratic challenge in national elections: rather than diminish these cultural beliefs as a byproduct of economic discomfort, a more experienced and open-minded candidate would recognize and respect the foundations on which these values are based.

So the more problematic language choice for Senator Obama was not the word “bitter,” it was his use of the word “cling,” which he seemed to use as a pejorative to describe why small-town voters prioritize their opinions on cultural matters like religion and gun ownership over economic issues. And when he lists religion and guns in the same sentence as his reference to racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, it becomes much more difficult for him to establish the emotional connection with working-class voters that he has forged with the more upscale and academically oriented portions of the Democratic primary electorate.

The current uproar is unlikely to prevent Senator Obama from winning his party’s nomination, although it certainly breathes new life into the Clinton campaign and probably extends the primary battle that much further into the summer. But like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. controversy that preceded it, Senator Obama’s tendency to erect cultural barriers between himself and this critical block of swing voters will become more of an obstacle in a general election campaign.

The only thing I would add/change/disagree with is that conservatives/Republicans do think they are voting in their best economic interest also.
 

kolanuraven

Well-known member
backhoeboogie said:
aplusmnt said:
Some part of the country have even seen reverse affect like Backhoe mentioned, we have a few towns around here that are like that also. Nice communities, low crime etc... and people move to them, but we have some other rural towns that people are leaving for various reasons.

Diablo Canyon hired some peers. A few others went to Fermi. They were offering significant salary increase. The folks that jumped on it are actually realizing less. It is the cost of living there.

The cost of living (especailly housing) has sort of gone through the roof here. Best thing to do is sell out and move farther out. Price your land for three times what it is worth and those from the north east will think it is a bargain price. Then just buy three times as much land. Lots of folks are buying in the Idabel, Oklahoma proximity. Know one guy who sold 65 acres, and bought almost 400 acres near Fort Townley. No major traffic and a depressed enconomy. It was about a 6 to 1 swap and he had lots of money left over.


Anyone want to buy a place in OK and move out and away .....I got one for sale....no kidding!
 

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