Hypothesis: The GOP thinks cities and urban centers are expendable

[Ian David]

Let's look at some facts and policies:

1) Homeland Security money is being allocated evenly among the 50 states without regard for population size, population density, or risk of terrorist attack.

2) The GOP just nixed extra money to secure subways and urban transport.

3) By closing Otis Air Force Base, the GOP leaves New England with only two fighter planes to protect the entire region. Even our Republican (mis)Governor Romney calls it "impractical" and "potentially dangerous." Two Fighter planes aren't enough to "protect marriage," let alone defend New England against terrorism!

4) Forget "Red State" and "Blue State" for a moment, and think instead in terms of "Urban" and "Rural." See the article below, "The Urban Archipelago," for a detailed discussion.

My hypothesis: Bush is willing-- maybe even eager-- to accept terrorist casualties in Democratic voting districts.

Just as Bush used the grief and horror of the 9-11 attack on New York to win the vote in Georgia (but lost New York), he's willing-- maybe even planning-- to use another attack on an urban center that wouldn't have voted for him anyway to win more votes in Freeperville.

If I wanted to be even more cynical and Apocalyptic, I could speculate that the Bush might even be looking forward to a reduction in population among the "Blue" urban voting districts.

References:

Pork security
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN88071505.htm

US Senate defeats more mass transit security funds
http://today.reuters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx?type=basicIndustries&storyID=nN14445412


Security priorities anger state
http://www.connpost.com/news/ci_2862039


Base closing authority questioned
Relocation of Otis could be ruled illegal
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 15, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/07/15/base_closing_authority_questioned/


THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO
by The Editors of The Stranger
It's the Cities, Stupid.

<snip>

Look at our famously blue West Coast. But for the cities--Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego--the West Coast would be a deep, dark red. The same is true for other nominally blue states. Illinois is almost entirely red--Chicago turns the state blue. Michigan is almost entirely red--Detroit, Lansing, Kalamazoo turn it blue. And on and on. What tips these states into the blue column? Their urban areas do, their big, populous counties.

It's time for the Democrats to face reality: They are the party of urban America. If the cities elected our president, if urban voters determined the outcome, John F. Kerry would have won by a landslide. Urban voters are the Democratic base.

THE URBAN ARCHIPELAGO

It's time to state something that we've felt for a long time but have been too polite to say out loud: Liberals, progressives, and Democrats do not live in a country that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico. We live on a chain of islands. We are citizens of the Urban Archipelago, the United Cities of America. We live on islands of sanity, liberalism, and compassion--New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and on and on. And we live on islands in red states too--a fact obscured by that state-by-state map. Denver and Boulder are our islands in Colorado; Austin is our island in Texas; Las Vegas is our island in Nevada; Miami and Fort Lauderdale are our islands in Florida. Citizens of the Urban Archipelago reject heartland "values" like xenophobia, sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as the more intolerant strains of Christianity that have taken root in this country. And we are the real Americans. They--rural, red-state voters, the denizens of the exurbs--are not real Americans. They are rubes, fools, and hate-mongers. Red Virginia prohibits any contract between same-sex couples. Compassionate? Texas allows the death penalty to be applied to teenaged criminals and has historically executed the mentally retarded. (When the Supreme Court ruled executions of the mentally retarded unconstitutional in 2002, Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry, responded by claiming that the state had no mentally retarded inmates on death row--a claim the state was able to make because it does not test inmates for mental retardation.) Dumb? The Sierra Club has reported that Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee squander over half of their federal transportation money on building new roads rather than public transit.

<snip>

For Democrats, it's the cities, stupid--not the rural areas, not the prickly, hateful "heartland," but the sane, sensible cities--including the cities trapped in the heartland. Pandering to rural voters is a waste of time. Again, look at the second map. Look at the urban blue spots in red states like Iowa, Colorado, and New Mexico--there's almost as much blue in those states as there is in Washington, Oregon, and California. And the challenge for the Democrats is not just to organize in the blue areas but to grow them. And to do that, Democrats need to pursue policies that encourage urban growth (mass transit, affordable housing, city services), and Democrats need to openly and aggressively champion urban values. By focusing on the cities the Dems can create a tribal identity to combat the white, Christian, rural, and suburban identity that the Republicans have cornered. And it's sitting right there, on every electoral map, staring them in the face: The cities.



<snip>

These, of course, are broad strokes. We all know that not everyone who lives in the suburbs is a raving neo-Christian idiot. The raving neo-Christian idiots are winning, however, so we need to take the fight to them. In this case, the fight is largely spiritual; it consists of embracing the reality that urban life and urban values are the only sustainable response to the modern age of holy war, environmental degradation, and global conflict. More important, it consists of rejecting the impulse to apologize for living in a society that prizes values like liberalism, pluralism, education, and facts. It's time for the Democratic Party to stop pandering to bovine, non-urban America. You don't apologize for being right--especially when you're at war.

More:
http://www.urbanarchipelago.com/

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Could be. I don't see him crying is a blue city gets hit. Again.

[bmcatt]

2. Probably be privately thanking them...

"Gee... That's another <however many> blue voters that Diebold, etc., don't have to fake votes for."

[Ian David]

5. Let them kill us in the cities so they can vote for him in the country

It would be typical Bush, wouldn't it?

Flash-forward to Bush's speech on October 15, 2008...

"Today, we pay tribute to the one million Democratic voters of Los Angeles who died last week in a cowardly act of Nuclear terrorism. We ask that you honor their memory, and protect the future and safety of our farms, hilltops, bayous and Christian communities by voting for Dick Cheney and Rick Santorum on November Second.

"The terrorists think they can strike at will in the urban, largely Democratic, cities of America. I say to them, 'bring... it... on!'"

"America stands ready to fight this Crusade against terror until the last American Person of Color lies dead and bleeding.

"We will fight them in the cities so we don't have to fight them here-- in America's Heartland-- where the good, Christian, Americans live in peace and without un-patriotic protests and dissent.

"Already, we have over Five Hundred Thousand suspected Islamic terrorists in custody. By the end of the year, we expect to have over 1.6 Million suspected Islamic terrorists in custody.

"The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Judge Roy Moore, tells me that several thousand suspected Islamic Terrorists have already been tried, found guilty, and executed in the past five days alone.

"May Jesus Christ Bless America. Amen."

[MisterP]

12. Quayle's message already was: "the farms are America, and the cities not"

though I disagree that we give up altogether on the suburbs and rural areas: there are plenty of non-lobotomized people. All we really have to do is show that the regressives haven't had an iota of truth, honesty, humanity, or value in them since their invention in 8,000 b.c.e.

[meganmonkey]

7. Hey bmcatt

Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[lvx35]

3. The reason liberals live in cities: We can stand each other

Liberals live in cities because we can stand each other, we want to be close, we group together. Republicans live in the country because they repel people, including each other. That's my theory!

Anyway, regarding the terrorist attacks, I just posted something to that effect but the thread got deleted...Anyway, I think its ridiculous that wyoming has the same protection from terrorists as California, right on the Mexico border or the port states.

[tk2kewl]

4. it is still a red state blue state thing...

the urban centers are what make most blue states blue

[Ian David]

9. Exactly. Eliminate the cities, and the blue states turn red n/t

[AndyTiedye]

6. I Have No Doubt of This

Everything this regime has done has increased the risk of terrorist
attacks, and that is mostly a risk faced by cities -- blue cities.
There is every indication that they are doing this on purpose.

They want cities to get hit.

A lot of people get killed, which cranks up the fear level.
Most of the casualties are Democrats.
Terrorist attacks in the cities cause jobs and people to move out to the suburbs.
Many of the businesses that WERE in the WTC are in suburban New Jersey now.
Fewer jobs for city folk, more out in the 'burbs.

[jbane]

8. You need to get out of the house more!

The demons in your head are starting to take over.

[Ian David]

10. I'm not saying I'm certain of this

I'm open to arguments either way.

I'm not going to fight for this conspiracy theory kicking and screaming until I tell everyone who disagrees with me to go to hell.

I'm just putting it out there for discussion as a possibility.

IMHO, I think certain elements of this are pretty darn likely.

Meme: "The GOP wants people who don't vote for them to be killed by terrorists" is a bit of a stretch.

More likely is that they see the terrorist threat as either un-likely or un-stoppable and are just looking at pork barrel politics as usual. Sending money to their base.

[wli]

14. well, just superimpose red/blue on a BRAC closure map

[bobbieinok]

11. Rove and KHughes in Newsweek after 9-11--they wanted another

concert for the victims b/c the one that had been broadcast on so many channels was 'too New York City', they wanted one that more reflected 'heartland (understood = American) values'

this brief boxed discussion just blew me away....NYC was hit, but the concert for/about it was 'too NYC'?????????

[MisterP]

13. like the Iowa Repubs there to dance on the graves of a few thousand

no-good libruls who'll be the fust to fall and die in the millions when we strappin' Randroid fahmuhs cut off those weeklins at the Convention of Corpses who said that they're here to show New Yorkers what life and living are REALLY about.