Reply #31: Here in East TN and the county's official unemployment rate is 15%.

[fasttense]

If the county says it is 15% you can bet it is closer to 22%.

When we moved here, right after the dancing supremes appointed the bushes, the unemployment rate was about 3%. It continually increased, until it has reached such a high level that I couldn't find a year that equals or surpasses the current rate (the stats only go back to 1990).

Some other counties around here are doing much worse.

Everywhere you go, you see abandon buildings, boarded up stores, vacant malls, homeless people with signs asking for money. You know bad economic times usually hit the rural areas first then moves to the more urban areas.

And yet I'll betcha that most of these suffering people voted for the bushes at least twice. And they love their RepublCONS because they keep voting them in.