Red State Guide Blog

Sweet Home....

2005-01-26T11:35:00.000-08:00

Alabama, the internet capitol of the world rises again ! More evidence that the judiciary needs to go Red.

The Red Sea

2005-01-15T11:17:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post:
Want to know why George Bush won? Set sail into the crimson heart of America

Read about it here:

Readers 'state' our Word of the Year

2005-01-14T01:05:00.000-08:00

"Red state/blue state" is the Word of the Year.

Read about it here:

Judge in Georgia Orders Anti-Evolution Stickers Removed From Textbooks

2005-01-13T22:10:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

The Making of a Red-State Liberal

2005-01-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post: The most widely carried liberal on radio is a "prairie-dwelling, red-meat-eating, gun-toting former conservative" who broadcasts from the unlikely locale of North Dakota.

Read about it here:

Dave Barry: Here's my plan to end the red-blue rift

2005-01-07T15:01:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

Red, Blue State Divide Based On False Assumptions?

2005-01-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

GOP Corporate Donors Cash In on Smut

2004-12-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

Rolling Stone: 'the red in 'red state' stands for fighting mad'

2004-12-16T02:40:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

Conflicted America-The Ironies Abound

2004-12-14T13:13:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

'Beverly Hillbillies' Singer Dies at 93

2004-12-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

'Beverly Hillbillies' Singer Dies at 93
LOS ANGELES - Jerry Scoggins, who sang "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" that introduced the comical Clampett clan on "The Beverly Hillbillies," has died. He was 93.

Scoggins, the lead singer of the Cass County Boys, died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Westlake Village.

In 1962, the country and western singer was working as a stockbroker and singing on weekends when he was asked to record a theme song for the pilot of the television series starring Buddy Ebsen (news).

Bluegrass stars Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played guitar and banjo on "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" while Scoggins sang the lyrics.

The song and series were instant hits, and the ballad made the national hit parade in 1963.

The series, which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1971, was ranked as TV's No. 1 program in its first two seasons and drew up to 60 million viewers at its peak.

Scoggins was retired when he read in 1993 that 20th Century Fox was planning a movie version of the series. He called the studio and was put through to music supervisor Steve Smith, who told him, "Criminy I didn't know you were still around."

The studio had wanted Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson to sing the theme for the movie, but director Penelope Spheeris held out for Scoggins.

"I wanted to keep as much familiarity in the movie as I could find, and that was a key part: people's familiarity with his voice," she told the Los Angeles Times in 1993.

Scoggins estimated that by the movie he had sung "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" more than 1,000 times since first recording it.

Scoggins was born in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and began singing and playing guitar on Dallas radio in the early 1930s. In 1936 he formed the Cass County Kids with John "Bert" Dodson and Fred Martin.

Gene Autry (news) changed the group's name to the Cass County Boys when he hired them in 1946 for his Melody Ranch radio program. They worked with Autry for 12 years on radio and television, and performed in 17 of his movies.

The group also recorded and performed on TV with Bing Crosby (news) in the early 1950s.

The Cass County Boys were inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame in 1996. They also received a Golden Boot Award from the Motion Picture and Television Fund

Xmas Shopping: Red

2004-12-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

The Red Businesses, as reported by the Center for Responsive Politics:

WalMart, $467K, 97% to republicans;
K-Mart, $524K, 86% to republicans;
Home Depot, $298K, 89% to republicans;
Target, $226K, 70% to republicans;
Circuit City Stores, $261K, 95% to republicans;
3M Co., $281K, 87% to republicans;
Hallmark Cards, $319K, 92% to republicans;
Amway, $391K, 100% republican;
Kohler Co. (plumbing fixtures), $283K, 100% republicans;
B.F. Goodrich (tires), $215K, 97% to republicans;
Proctor & Gamble, $243K, 79% to republicans;
Coors, $174K, 92% to republicans; (also Budweiser - sd)
Brown-Forman Corp. (Southern Comfort, Jack Daniels, Bushmills, Korbel wines - as well as Lennox China, Dansk, Gorham Silver), $644, 80% to republicans;
Pilgrim's Pride Corp. (chicken), $366K, 100% republican;
Outback Steakhouse, $641K, 95% republican;
Tricon Global Restaurants (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), $133K, 87% republican;
Brinker International (Maggiano's, Brinker Cafe, Chili's, On the
Border, Macaroni Grill, Crazymel's, Corner Baker, EatZis), $242K, 83% republican;
Waffle House, $279K, 100% republican;
McDonald's Corp., $197K, 86% republican;
Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, Bahama Breeze), $121K, 89% republican;
Mariott International, $323K, 81% to republicans;
Holiday Inns, $38K, 71% to republicans

It's All in the Execution at Texas Prison Museum

2004-11-28T23:40:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

Network TV, Ensconced in A Blue Period

2004-11-28T21:55:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

NRA Varmint Hunter Sets Sights on the Retail Market

2004-11-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

Read about it here:

The Red/Blue Baby Gap

2004-11-27T15:04:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how such different times and diverse candidates on the Democratic ledge could SOLIDIFY rather than change the whole Red/Blue paradigm? Steve Sailer at the American Conservative has a not altogether implausible theory here:

Take a look at his Power Graphic:

Power Quote:
"The 2000 Presidential election, held during peace and prosperity, became instantly famous for illuminating a land culturally divided into a sprawling but thinly populated "red" expanse of Republicans broken up by small but densely peopled "blue" archipelagos of Democrats.

Four years of staggering events ensued, during which President Bush discarded his old "humble" foreign policy for a new one of nearly Alexandrine ambitions. Yet, the geographic and demographic profiles of Bush voters in 2004 turned out almost identical to 2000, with the country as a whole simply nudged three points to the right."

Somethin' in the water? Earlier bedtime? Dole promoting Viagra? That's our opinion. We welcome yours!

Washington Post on Alabama

2004-11-27T14:13:00.001-08:00

Read about it here:

Today's Red State Phrase

2004-11-24T20:03:00.000-08:00

Worship Humble Majority

This Date In Red State History

2004-11-24T20:01:00.001-08:00

November 24, 1871:
National Rifle Association organized.

Bronze horse bucks thief in river

2004-11-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

http://timesenterprise.com/content/1/4231/Bronze+horse+bucks+thief+in+river.htm

Bronze horse bucks thief in river

Author: Teresa Williams
Publication Date: 2004-11-24

THOMASVILLE — The Shallowbrook Farms bronze horse did not ride off into the sunset. Someone rode the fake critter away and into the Ochlockonee River.

Thomas County Sheriff’s Department Investigator Bob Brettel received information early Tuesday morning from a citizen who said James Barden had taken the horse.

Brettel found Barden at his home where Barden “basically admitted” to taking it.

Barden took investigators to where he hid the statue, under the bridge on Ga. 202, chest-deep in the middle of the river.

Donnie Baggett, fleet maintenance manager of the county equipment shop, was asked to help rescue the horse.

“Bob Brettel called about 8:30 this morning and said they were going out to retrieve it,” said Baggett.

A rope was tied around one of the horse’s legs and a truck pulled the statue from the river.

“We took him out of the water and took him back to the owner,” said Baggett.

Apparently, Barden had no intention of melting the $4,000 bronze horse down for profit.

According to Brettel, Barden, 28, 205 Lakeshore Drive, said he took it on a dare.

“He didn’t want anybody to find it,” said Brettel. “I think when he realized what he’d done, he acted out of fear, thinking ‘What am I going to do with it? I’ve got to get rid of it,’ and took it down there and hid it.”

But that was when more problems surfaced for Barden.

Once he got to the river and tried to dump the horse, Barden realized the statue would not sink.

The hollow horse had to fill with water first.

Barden said he rode the horse into the middle of the Ochlockonee River before it started sinking.

Although Barden insisted he acted alone, Brettel said he doubted one person could have successfully stolen the horse.

Barden, who is in jail, is charged with felony theft.

He was being arraigned Tuesday afternoon.

Identified robber drives victim to hospital

2004-11-24T19:59:00.000-08:00

commercialappeal.com - Memphis, TN

URL: http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_3351283,00.html

"Identified robber drives victim to hospital

Remorse doesn't last; deputies begin search

By Chris Conley
Contact
November 24, 2004

A robber pulled off his mask after he stopped beating his victim and apologized when his cover was blown.

He then drove his victim to the hospital, police said Tuesday.

Advertisement
The victim, Hollis Studdard, said he was struck from behind with a tree branch while inside his Eads-area garage in the 10000 block of Raleigh-LaGrange Monday afternoon.

After being hit several times he wrested the branch away and struck his attacker over the head.

Studdard told police he then recognized his attacker as a former employee at A&H Iron Works.

"I know it's you, Michael," he told the robber, who then pulled off his ski mask and apologized, according to police reports.

"I didn't mean for this to happen," the robber said. "You were supposed to get knocked out and I was going to take your wallet and truck."

Studdard refused to give up the keys to his pickup.

And at that point the suspect told Studdard, "You're bleeding. I'm going to drive you to the hospital."

After taking Studdard to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis and parking in the hospital garage, the suspect gave Studdard the pickup keys and walked away, according to the reports.

The remorseful thief changed course later and placed threatening calls to Studdard's home.

Shelby and Fayette County deputies were searching for the suspect Tuesday evening."

-- Chris Conley: 529-2595

Copyright 2004, commercialappeal.com - Memphis, TN. All Rights Reserved.

Blue Stater Gets Accused of Red State Behavoir....

2004-11-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

From a reader:

Yesterday my mini-van (with the Kerry sticker) broke down in the rain
at the end of a day of errands. AAA came to start my car and I drove
to the dealer, where Enterprise Rental Car met me. I had to transfer a
ton of stuff including two car seats and toilet paper and two unhappy
children to the awaiting 2005 Suburban she had brought to transfer us
all to pick up a rental car.

When we finally got to Enterprise, she had decided to rent me the
Suburban for $10.00/day, which is a huge discount. Instead of trying
to transfer all of my crap, and two kids AGAIN, into a Dodge Neon in
the pitch black, I took the deal and ran.

This morning, when I stopped at my local coffee house for my double
tall latte (Cafe Javasti in the Maple Leaf neighborhood), I parked out
front and climbed out. "What's with the big rig?" they asked. I told
them it was a rental and they sighed with relief, "It looks like a Red
State car."

God forbid.

Kris

Today's Red State Phrase

2004-11-23T19:24:00.000-08:00

Fixin' to Good Lord Willin' Shotgun

Want another phrase? Click here:

This Date in Red State History

2004-11-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

November 23, 1863:

Battle of Chattanooga begins.

Today's NYT Poll from the Red Side

2004-11-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

Power Quote:

Pat Gilbert, a Republican from Battle Creek, Mich., said, "The two sides will be as far apart as can be forever.''

"I'm sure there are different pockets of voters who voted for Kerry, but I think they believe more in society in general - if you're not hurting anybody it's all right to do it," Ms. Gilbert said, adding: "I don't think they have a firm belief system that they base decisions off of. It's whatever today's climate is. In the long term, you'll have a society of chaos."

On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide

2004-11-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

The New York Times

November 14, 2004
FRANK RICH

On 'Moral Values,' It's Blue in a Landslide

"FAREWELL to Swift boats and "Shove it!," to Osama's tape and Saddam's missing weapons, to "security moms" and outsourced dads. They've all been sent to history's dustbin faster than Ralph Nader memorabilia was dumped on eBay. In their stead stands a single ambiguous phrase coined by an anonymous exit pollster: "Moral values." By near universal agreement the morning after, these two words tell the entire story of the election: it's the culture, stupid.

"It really is Michael Moore versus Mel Gibson," said Newt Gingrich. To Jon Stewart, Nov. 2 was the red states' revenge on "Will & Grace." William Safire, speaking on "Meet the Press," called the Janet Jackson fracas "the social-political event of the past year." Karl Rove was of the same mind: "I think it's people who are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on the television sets, what they see in the movies ..."

And let's not even get started on the two most dreaded words in American comedy, regardless of your party affiliation: Whoopi Goldberg.

There's only one problem with the storyline proclaiming that the country swung to the right on cultural issues in 2004. Like so many other narratives that immediately calcify into our 24/7 media's conventional wisdom, it is fiction. Everything about the election results - and about American culture itself - confirms an inescapable reality: John Kerry's defeat notwithstanding, it's blue America, not red, that is inexorably winning the culture war, and by a landslide. Kerry voters who have been flagellating themselves since Election Day with a vengeance worthy of "The Passion of the Christ" should wake up and smell the Chardonnay.

The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

If anyone is laughing all the way to the bank this election year, it must be the undisputed king of the red cultural elite, Rupert Murdoch. Fox News is a rising profit center within his News Corporation, and each red-state dollar that it makes can be plowed back into the rest of Fox's very blue entertainment portfolio. The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" and the Vivid Girls' "How to Have a XXX Sex Life," which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and, needless to say, Mr. O'Reilly. There are "real fun parts and exciting parts," said Ms. Cosby to Ms. Jameson on Fox News's "Big Story Weekend," an encounter broadcast on Saturday at 9 p.m., assuring its maximum exposure to unsupervised kids.

Almost unnoticed in the final weeks of the campaign was the record government indecency fine levied against another prime-time Fox television product, "Married by America." The $1.2 million bill, a mere bagatelle to Murdoch stockholders, was more than twice the punishment inflicted on Viacom for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction." According to the F.C.C. complaint, one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which "partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers' bodies," and two female strippers "playfully spank" a man on all fours in his underwear. "Married by America" is gone now, but Fox remains the go-to network for Paris Hilton ("The Simple Life") and wife-swapping ("Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy").

None of this has prompted an uprising from the red-state Fox News loyalists supposedly so preoccupied with "moral values." They all gladly contribute fungible dollars to Fox culture by boosting their fair-and-balanced channel's rise in the ratings. Some of these red staters may want to make love like porn stars besides. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) An ABC News poll two weeks before the election found that more Republicans than Democrats enjoy sex "a great deal." The Democrats' new hero, Illinois Senator-elect Barack Obama, was assured victory once his original, ostentatiously pious Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race rather than defend his taste for "avant-garde" sex clubs.

The 22 percent of voters who told pollsters that "moral values" were their top election issue - 79 percent of whom voted for Bush-Cheney - corresponds almost exactly to the number of voters (23 percent) who describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. They are entitled to their culture, too, and their own entertainment industry. And their own show-biz scandals. The Los Angeles Times reported this summer that Paul Crouch, the evangelist who founded the largest Christian network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, vehemently denied a former employee's accusation that the two had had a homosexual encounter - though not before paying the employee a $425,000 settlement. Not so incidentally, Trinity joined Gary Bauer and Fox News as prime movers in "Redeem the Vote," the Christian-rock alternative to MTV's "Rock the Vote."

But the distance between this hard-core red culture and the majority blue culture is perhaps best captured by Tom Coburn, the newly elected Republican senator from Oklahoma, lately famous for discovering "rampant" lesbianism in that state's schools. As a congressman in 1997, Mr. Coburn attacked NBC for encouraging "irresponsible sexual behavior" and taking "network TV to an all-time low with full frontal nudity, violence and profanity being shown in our homes." The broadcast that prompted his outrage on behalf of "parents and decent-minded individuals everywhere" was the network's prime-time showing of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List."

It's in the G.O.P.'s interest to pander to this far-right constituency - votes are votes - but you can be certain that a party joined at the hip to much of corporate America, Mr. Murdoch included, will take no action to curtail the blue culture these voters deplore. As Marshall Wittman, an independent-minded former associate of both Ralph Reed and John McCain, wrote before the election, "The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment." That amendment has never had a prayer of rounding up the two-thirds majority needed for passage and still doesn't.

Mr. Wittman echoes Thomas Frank, the author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?," by common consent the year's most prescient political book. "Values," Mr. Frank writes, "always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won." Under this perennial "trick," as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry "to clean up its act" - until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons - from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) - are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.

But it's not only the G.O.P.'s fealty to its financial backers that is predictive of how little cultural bang the "values" voters will get for their Bush-Cheney votes. At 78 percent, the nonvalues voters have far more votes than they do, and both parties will cater to that overwhelming majority's blue tastes first and last. Their mandate is clear: The same poll that clocked "moral values" partisans at 22 percent of the electorate found that nearly three times as many Americans approve of some form of legal status for gay couples, whether civil unions (35 percent) or marriage (27 percent). Do the math and you'll find that the poll also shows that for all the G.O.P.'s efforts to court Jews, the total number of Jewish Republican voters in 2004, while up from 2000, was still some 200,000 less than the number of gay Republican voters.

When Robert Novak writes after the election that "the anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, socially conservative agenda is ascendant, and the G.O.P. will not abandon it anytime soon," you have to wonder what drug he is on. The abandonment began at the convention. Sam Brownback, the Kansas senator who champions the religious right, was locked away in an off-camera rally across town from Madison Square Garden. Prime time was bestowed upon the three biggest stars in post-Bush Republican politics: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. All are supporters of gay rights and opponents of the same-sex marriage constitutional amendment. Only Mr. McCain calls himself pro-life, and he's never made abortion a cause. None of the three support the Bush administration position on stem-cell research. When the No. 1 "moral values" movie star, Mel Gibson, condemned the Schwarzenegger-endorsed California ballot initiative expanding and financing stem-cell research, the governor and voters crushed him like a girlie-man. The measure carried by 59 percent, which is consistent with national polling on the issue.

If the Republican party's next round of leaders are all cool with blue culture, why should Democrats run after the red? Received Washington wisdom has it that the only Democrat who will ever be able to win a national election must be a cross between Gomer Pyle and Billy Sunday - a Scripture-quoting Sun Belt exurbanite whose loyalty to Nascar does not extend to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who was fined last month for saying a four-letter word on television.

According to this argument, the values voters the Democrats must pander to are people like Cary and Tara Leslie, archetypal Ohio evangelical "Bush votes come to life" apotheosized by The Washington Post right after Election Day. The Leslies swear by "moral absolutes," support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and mostly watch Fox News. Mr. Leslie has also watched his income drop from $55,000 to $35,000 since 2001, forcing himself, his wife and his three young children into the ranks of what he calls the "working poor." Maybe by 2008 some Democrat will figure out how to persuade him that it might be a higher moral value to worry about the future of his own family than some gay family he hasn't even met."

Thoughts?

How Dems Can Win the South

2004-11-15T16:14:00.000-08:00

From Slate:

Democratic Values
How to start winning the red states.
By William Saletan
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, at 1:15 PM PT

John Edwards
Hey, Democrats!

"One silver lining in last night's debacle is that for another 24 hours or so, you might be open to rethinking what your party stands for. So, while I have your attention, here's an idea.

Go back to being the party of responsibility.

I'm not talking about scolding people. I'm talking about rewarding them. Be the party that rewards ordinary people who do what they're supposed to do—and protects them from those who don't.

If you think this kind of moral talk is anathema, you're the sort of person Karl Rove wants to be running the Democratic Party. Get out, or get a new attitude. Nearly 60 million people came out to vote for George W. Bush yesterday because they think that he represents their values and that you don't. Prove them wrong and you'll be the majority party again.

How? Start by changing the way you talk about pocketbook issues. Remember Bill Clinton's commitment to help people who "work hard and play by the rules"? Your positions on taxes and labor would be assets instead of liabilities if you explained them in moral terms. The minimum wage rewards work. Repealing the estate tax helps rich people get richer without risk or effort. Lax corporate oversight allows big businesses to evade taxes, deceive small investors, and raid pension funds.

Yes, Republicans will accuse you of waging a class war. I can see you cringing already. Get off your knees and fight. It is a war, but it isn't a class war. It's a culture war, and if you talk about it that way, you'll win it.

Some of you are dismayed by the emergence of a huge voting bloc of churchgoers. Stop viewing this as a threat, and start viewing it as an opportunity. Socially conservative blue-collar workers don't believe in the free market. They believe in the work ethic. Bush wins their votes by equating the free market with the work ethic. Show them where the free market betrays the work ethic, and they'll vote for the party of the work ethic—you—against the party of the free market.

What's your strongest issue among these voters? Outsourcing. Why? Because it's the issue on which you talk most naturally about right and wrong. It's also the issue on which you're most comfortable appealing to nationalism. That's another lesson you need to learn. People are voting Republican because they think you're weak. And, let's face it, you are weak. You say you'll defend this country, but then you go on about consulting other governments, cultivating goodwill, and playing well with others. You make a world full of terrorists sound like kindergarten.

Democrats in the Roosevelt-Truman years didn't have this problem. They called tyrants by their name, and they didn't sound like they were faking it. A party that believes in right and wrong at home must be assertive about right and wrong abroad. You need a serious antiterrorist agenda. Otherwise, when you object to a war like Iraq, you sound like the peace party."

Sound reasoning, but is it possible?

Welcome to the Red State Blog

2004-10-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

Seen my chaw?