On one hand, I myself would like to cut off "red state welfare"

[brentspeak]

just because I'm so mad at those states for allowing Bush four more years to wreck this nation.

But the report about the kid from Georgia who killed himself because he was distraught over Bush's victory reminds me of the vast number of red state Democrats and anti-Bush Republicans who are likely suffering more right now than even the blue state Democrats. I don't want our brothers and sisters in those presently God-forsaken states to bear any brunt of our anger.

In a perfect world, the sane people in the red states would move to blue states, and the Bush-supporters in the blue states would make a mass exodus to Kansas, Alabama, and Indiana.

[fishface]

1. That'll never happen when it's their congress holding the

purse strings.

[Warren DeMontague]

2. R.E.M. is from Georgia.

I have no doubt that it's extremely difficult to be a Democrat in a red state right now. But all we're hearing now is how the democratic party has become the party of "coastal elites" and how it needs to change or abandon certain basic values--- reproductive choice, separation of church and state, support for gay rights-- personally, I find this unacceptable. Yet we're told we must do this because we "write off the heartland at our peril". I think, at the very least, if we're going to consider such a drastic makeover, there also have to be ways to get these GOP "values" voters, who supposedly make up a large block of this "heartland", to understand that they, too, write off the "coastal secular elites" at THEIR peril.

And, yes, what a Terrible shame about the kid from Georgia. Reminds me of the self-immolation protests during the Vietnam war.