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A side note: Over the course of building this website, I’ve managed to collect quite a few (over 100) photographs I have taken over the years and have put on the home page banner. If you need some visual renewal, just refresh the home page (press F5) and they will randomly appear. You can also view the month’s featured photo at “View From The End of Town.” Hope you enjoy them.
June 2023:
Updte! The most embarrassing states in America.
Steeped in conservative anger, a need for control of an individual’s private lives and stiff with indignity over the way people live them, here’s the top embarrassing states. All of it manifests itself from racism, evangelical obsession with control and judgement of others, an unhealthy obsession with weaponry, denigration of women and devaluation of education and critical thinking (the last being already a trigger word). It all is summed up in their legislatures and elected leaders.
Idaho: Not content to fight a women’s right to an abortion, they make it illegal to leave the state to get one. (Where are the gates at the border?). An embarrassing public education system and a history steeped in white supremacy. Not much has changed since the ’70s.
Florida: The governor is a thought control freak (don’t say “gay”, indeed), and is willing to punish corporations for thinking as well. A crackpot legislature to boot. Weather’s nice, but it’s not exactly idyllic; Florida is the steady supply of whack jobs, criminals, and others who make for a daily comedy sketch on many shows. What’s is weirder is are there actually folks there that think this way?
Tennessee: Tossing out two black lawmakers (but not a white woman lawmaker) for protesting kids getting shot is not the best optics in a former slave state. But then again, the majority white-male legislature either doesn’t get it, doesn’t want to get it, or doesn’t care if they do or don’t, as long as they can push them uppity black people around. Horrible crime rate (3rd in the nation).
Alabama: Where do I start? Child labor (in practice with the Hyundai plant) and in law; underage marriage, ideological punishment by elected leaders, horrible health statistics. People can be friendly, but Neil Young was on to something with his song in the ’70s.
West Virginia: “Almost Heaven” with chopped off mountain tops and a Senator that has been bought by them. A state that seems to waffle to remake itself and stay the same at the same time; the status quo being last in the nation in everything.
Texas: too much to fit here, but just start with Gov. Abbott and work your way down (or up, since he’s bottom of the barrel to start).
Runners up are Nebraska and North Carolina.