Dear Red States:

We've decided we're leaving.

We Blue Staters are going to form our own country. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation.

In case you aren't aware, we are more than just New York, Massachusetts, and California. We are also Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, all of the Northeast, and an ever-growing number of states whose residents have recently gotten smarter (and gone blue).

Here's a quick overview of the split:

• We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
  You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
  
  
• We get Bill Gates.
  You get Ken Lay.
  
  
• We get the Statue of Liberty.
  You get Dollywood.
  
  
• We get Intel and Microsoft.
  You get WorldCom.
  
  
• We get Harvard.
  You get Ole' Miss.
  
  
• We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs.
  You get Alabama.
  
  
• We pay (and now will get to keep) two-thirds of the tax revenue.
  You get to make the red states pay their fair share.
  
  
• Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families.
  You get a bunch of single moms.
  
  
• We get planned families.
  You get the the states with the highest percentages of teen pregnancies.
  
  
• We get the statesmen.
  You get George Bush and Dick Cheney.
  
  
• We get world leaders like Madelyn Albright, national leaders like Christine Whitman, scientists - including Sally Ride, most of the best women novelists, musicians, and artists.
  You get beauty queens like Miss South Carolina and Sarah Palin.
  
  
• We get the entrepreneurs who are building tomorrow's Green technology.
  You get the leftovers once "Drill, Baby, Drill" has drained your resources.
  
  
• We get West Side Story, Citizen Kane, Rocky.
  You get Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance.
  
  
• We get the highest percentages of people who actually read their books and newspapers.
  You get a wanna-be who claims to read all of them, any of them and a bunch of people who thump their book.
  

Please be aware that our nation will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. You could also ask the ChickenHawks who dominate the GOP. Those are the ones who advocate war, but never get around to participating in the glory.

We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's Quality wines (you can serve French wines - or more likely, Bud and moonshine at state dinners) 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high-tech industry, most of the U.S.low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods / sequoias / condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, and USC (that's University of South Carolina, not the world-renowned University of Southern California).

In addition, your populace will be home to intellectual giants --

• 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale.
  
  
• 62 percent believe life is sacred (unless we're discussing the death penalty, wars of aggression, or gun laws).
  
  
• 44 percent say that evolution is "only a theory" - the same 44% who don't understand enough science to know what a theory really is.
  
  
• 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11.
  and
• 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we elitists.

Lucky you. Considering how much you embrace diversity, equality, and civil rights, you get the most of states with the highest percentages of non-white residents. You'll get to dust off those Jim Crow laws and poll taxes. We hope you saved all that Confederate currency.

Because we understand Matthew 22:39, we still love you.

-- Blue States

PS: we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Labels: blue state, red state

Family values run stronger among folks in the Red States than in the liberal leftie leaners of those Blue States. Everyone knows that. In liberal-land one doesn't see billboards that remind us that "The family that prays together, stays together." Apparently more prayer leads to greater family values, and as we all know, liberals don't pray. Right?

Divorce rates are a measure of family values.

However, according to the Barna Group (consultants to evangelical Christian groups):

• 19 percent of Northeasterners (lefties, all) have divorced
• 27 percent of Southerners and Midwesterners (mostly family-oriented conservatives) have untied their knots at least once.
• 27 percent of self-described born-again Christians have been divorced
• 24 percent of other Christians - those less faithful than the born-agains - have renounced their vows.
  

Divorce rates, by denomination

• 34% non-denominational evangelical Christian congregations
• 29% Baptists
• 25% Mainline Protestants
• 24% Mormons
• 21% Catholics and Lutherans
  

Sanity check: 21% of atheists and agnostics have succumbed to the temptations and pleasures of divorce court.

Red State Values, Blue State Values

1. According to 2004 presidential voting election results, there are:
   
   • red states: 32
   • blue states:19 (includes District of Columbia)
   Drawing on data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, we can develop a red-state/blue-state morality chart for 2004. It reveals some interesting facts.

2. Divorce.

   The national average divorce rate(divorces per 1000 population) was 3.6.
   
   • 73.3% of blue states were below that average (26.7% were above)
     3/4 of blue states had divorce rates BELOW the national average.
     
     
   • 20.0% of red states were below that average (80.0% were above)
     4/5 of red states had divorce rates ABOVE the national average.
     
   note: 2 blue states and 3 red states did not report for that year
   http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/divorce90_04.pdf

3. Teenage (ages 15-19) pregnancies

   The states with the worst teen pregnancy rates were red states
   
   • 9 of the 10 worst states were red states
   • 20 of 32 red states had teen pregnancy rates significantly higher than US average (includes the 9 mentioned above)
   • 1 of the 19 blue states had teen pregnancy rate significantly higher than US average (actually not a state - it was the District of Columbia)
     
   
   The states with the best teen pregnancy rates were blue states
   
   • 9 of 10 best states were blue states
   • 18 of 19 blue states had teen pregnancy rates significantly lower than the US average (includes the 9 mentioned above)
   • 10 of 32 red had teen pregnancy rates significantly lower than the US average
   
   Some states had 'average' teen pregnancy rates
   
   • 0 blue states had rates not significantly different from US average
   • 2 red states had rates not significantly different from US average
   
   All of the above pregnancy statistics are clearly shown at the CDC website

4. It gets worse.

   The highest rates of divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, single parent homes, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation are in the Bible Belt. As a region, the Bible Belt has the poorest health care systems and the lowest rates of high school graduation. If you don't believe it, look it up for yourself.

Read an article discussing much of the above. While it has many citations and web links - the ones I checked proved to be reliable - that article was NOT my source for any of the above content.

Labels: bible belt, blue state, conservative, divorce, liberal, morality, ppregnancy, red state