I did it. I went to GD-P and took a stand for Ohio. Please give it some KOEB love?

[Berry Cool]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4914827

I had to, after a bunch of threads I read today...including one started by Botany, in which he attempted to figure out yesterday's results here by asking some questions. One of the responders illustrated his or her reply with a little cartoon map of Ohio in which all the cities, major and minor, were marked with little icons like KKK hoods, Nazi swastikas and jackboots to indicate the mentality type of people living there.

I was going to alert on it as soon as I got home, but I guess I was beaten to it, because the message has since been removed.

I know a bunch of flaming assholes are now going to tell me that what I am seeing is the "true colors of the Obamabots." Screw them. This is not about which candidate you support or being a sore loser. It's about cruel stereotypes about people in other states. And Ohio's gotten the brunt of them lately, the same way Florida did in 2000.

In the KOEB, we may make jokes about wacky Florida, but we know that everybody in it is not Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush. Well, not everyone in Ohio is Rod Parsley or Ken Blackwell, either.

This was my way of saying: If you want to insult my state, fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Because your state surely has at least some people in it as bad as some of the ones my state has. And I'm sick of being held responsible for what they do, or for the outcome of every election that doesn't please everybody.

[RevCheesehead]

1. Honey, you get all the KOEB lovin' you can!

I suspect that you could probably use a hug, too. :hug::hug::hug:

[Berry Cool]

2. Thanks, sweetie. And like I said,

if I still had a spare quarterback to give you, I'd give you one.

But not Brady. He's OURS, dammit! :rofl:

[RavensChick]

3. You can have Steve McNair since he's all but done

in Baltimore anyway.

;-)

[RavensChick]

4. I had a feeling the flamers were gonna be crowing last night!

I'm shocked that Hil even stood a chance of winning Ohio! Oh, well. You cast your vote and that's all that matters.

[Berry Cool]

7. It's not that shocking.

It's impressive that Obama made it as close as he did. The Ohio Dem party is in the tank for Hillary and has been for a long time. I think it just remained to be seen how many voters would follow.

Strangely enough, I think her dirty tricks crap may have worked here, sad to say. Not because Ohioans are stupid, but because most of us are natural cynics. It's easy to inspire us, but it's also easy to make us feel duped and tricked by those who talk a good game. She did not spread that story about Obama talking out both sides of his mouth about NAFTA for nothing. She knew that if Ohioans so much as suspected Obama was telling us one thing and Canada another, it would piss us off and make us mistrust him.

And I think there IS a sizable contingent in Ohio whose attitude is: "She's the devil I know. I know all politicians just want to screw me anyway, but at least this politician who wants to screw me is someone I know, and I did better when her husband was president, so what the hey." They're not so much driven by fear of the unknown as they are by a combination of cynicism and '90s nostalgia.

Add that to the power of the state Dem machine pushing to get out the Clinton vote, and stir in a generous helping of Dittohead crossover voters who were probably never asked to change political affiliations so they could vote Dem instead of Republican, and you have a believable comfortable victory here for Hillary.

[SeattleGirl]

5. Oh my gosh! I read that, and didn't notice that you wrote it!

My bad!! :blush:

I'll go give it some KOEB lurve right now!

[WolverineDG]

6. Are you sure you want to recommend this thread?

Hell yes!

:hug:

dg

[Mabus]

8. Tell me about it

I lived in Kansas. I had to go through the "Kansans don't believe in science/evolution" only for that period to followed by the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" period. And through most of it, we had a Democratic governor. And a woman one to boot!

I also want to add that since I've moved to Maryland, I have wanted to scream. Most of the time I tell someone that I'm from Kansas I get a weird look like I just announced I was from Mars. A lot of people have the impression that we're all backward hicks who don't know our asses from a hole in the ground.

Yes, I've seen Phred Phelps and his wandering band of miscreants but we're not all like that. I would wager that 99.99999% of the people in Kansas wish he would die and take his family of misfits with him. Yes, I've seen the "Wizard of Oz" but guess what? Kansas can be just a lush and beautiful as other states. It isn't all black and white. And we don't all live on farms.

[Berry Cool]

9. Shocker, eh?

Yep.

I found out the origins of the Ohio map that offended me so. (It was still up on another thread, posted by the same person, although it had been removed from the one Bot started. I alerted on that one.)

It's from the Web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a well-known anti-hate organization that does an excellent job standing up against hate groups throughout the country. The Ohio map is part of a 50-state "Hate Map" they have developed to indicate where active hate groups exist throughout the country, and what types of groups they are (black separatist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi, KKK, skinhead, etc.).

If you look at the national map, you will discover that only four states--Hawaii, Rhode Island and both Dakotas--have NO active hate groups. Every other state has at least one.

Ohio has 31, which is pretty bad, but it is not as many as some other states have. Guess who has the most? That oh-so-liberal and sophisticated state, topping them all with 63 hate groups: California.

So, what we had here was a map that, within its original context, was a helpful map of the hate groups in a particular state. Yanked from that original context and placed on its own in a post as an attempt to "explain" the Ohio primary vote, however, it becomes a tool of that very hate which it attempts to combat, complete with the implication that all the major cities in Ohio are hotbeds of hate-group activity. Well, yes, they are, if you know where to go...and so are all the major cities in just about every other state.

Sheesh.

[Mabus]

10. Here's a little something to throw on SPLC's "accurate" measure of hate groups

You're right. Hate groups are all over the place. They're in big cities and small cities but they are pretty localized and don't have a lot of power or a lot of members. The Pitch, a KC pub did a story a few months ago about the KC Nazis (which are on the SPLC map). One of their reporters infiltrated the group. Here's an excerpt from his story:

So you must have them all thinking that there's all these racialists running around Olathe," I said. "They see fliers from all these different groups, and they probably assume that the different groups are putting out each flier. But really, it's just you."

***

He laughed. "Yeah, it really is just me." Fliers for white-supremacy groups have been appearing around Olathe for almost five years. They appear erratically, though Martin Luther King Jr. Day seems to bring them out reliably. They lecture on topics from the near-genocide of the Aryan woman to the communist agenda of Rosa Parks.

Based on the fliers, it's easy to assume that there's a secret society of organized racist groups on the Kansas side of the metro. The photocopies promote three hate groups, mostly the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan but sometimes the lesser-known National Socialist Movement.

***

As enthusiastic as Turk was about putting a Klavern together, he'd never managed to recruit the three other guys needed. It seemed that most Klan activity was taking place online among people who had never met.
http://www.pitch.com/2007-09-27/news/my-secret-life-in-the-klan/full

I used to donate to the SPLC so I'm familiar with them. I think they do good work but they aren't the end all-be all of hate crime information. I just checked their hate map and noticed that they don't include Phred and his idiot phamily on their list. That shows you just how flawed the map is.

Believe me there are hate groups in the Dakotas, just ask any Indian living on a rez. Heck, I can give you names of people to call that will tell you they have been victimized themselves or know someone else who has been victimized.