Political Muscle

[tanky]

Saw this cartoon on the cover of the new Economist (highbrow money mag) and liked it! I?m not making any political comments about Texas or California, I just like the HUGE Texan muscle dude running into the surf carrying a jet sky over his head like it weighs nothing! Mad but kinda hot!

http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e3...uecovUS400.jpg

[wolfotehmoon]

We're fucked... We get some damn good eyecandy, but we're fucked. x3

[musqlure]

Nice cartoon, but the implied message is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

[viamanmax]

Originally Posted by musqlure

Nice cartoon, but the implied message is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

I enjoy that your location is set to California, USA.

[Brave_Wolfie]

Originally Posted by viamanmax

I enjoy that your location is set to California, USA.

I laughed.

[Yachirobi]

Someone should use that for a story. Huge Texan dude goes out just like in the picture with the hot/goofy outfit, running while he's carrying the seadoo over his head like it's nothing. The flabby Californian ex-surfer looks on wishing he were the same...and then...

Well, I don't know what happens next but it ends with a newly big, buff Cali surfer fucking that Texan's brains out... Or vice versa. Everyone ends up happy either way.

[tanky]

Originally Posted by Yachirobi

Someone should use that for a story. Huge Texan dude goes out just like in the picture with the hot/goofy outfit, running while he's carrying the seadoo over his head like it's nothing. The flabby Californian ex-surfer looks on wishing he were the same...and then...

Well, I don't know what happens next but it ends with a newly big, buff Cali surfer fucking that Texan's brains out... Or vice versa. Everyone ends up happy either way.

Liking it!

[musqlure]

Originally Posted by viamanmax

I enjoy that your location is set to California, USA.

I also enjoy that my location is set to California, USA.

[condemned88]

Originally Posted by musqlure

I also enjoy that my location is set to California, USA.

Oh snapzzz. California love!!! Representin'!

[Mdlftr]

The point of the cartoon is that Texas, with its technology base (the jet ski) is going great guns now, while California, with its tremendous budget deficit, is hurting.

I think that's it. I agree with Muslque that that is b.s., 'cause I think California's problems are more short term. Texas is perenially boom 'n bust, whereas California is more stable over time. California will come back, and Texas will tank...again...for a while.


Mdlftr

[tanky]

Thanks for that, very interesting. As a Brit I wasn't too sure of the point of the cartoon.....I just loved the huge muscle Texan with his massive body, sexy hat and boots and of course the 'red, white and blue' shorts!!

[musqlure]

Well, tanky, conservative rags like The Economist tend to like places like Texas. The state has no income tax and so relies on regressive things like the sales tax. The Economist probably likes the Texan "business climate" and is willing to look past the state's abysmal levels of child poverty, lack of health insurance, etc.

[condemned88]

Not being a "Native" Californian but growing up here. I have to call California my home state and love it to death. Sure it's not perfect, but where else could San Diego be located. Besides, it is pretty badass being able to Snowboard and go Surfing in one day. Hehehehe.

[z129]

Originally Posted by drew

Now the Economist is conservative? If you watch Fox News you'd think it was written by the hand of Marx himself!

Whoa there. Have you been smoking crack? Saying Fox News is Marxist is kind of like saying Hitler promoted tolerance.

Maybe the cartoon is pointing out how Texas has pretty much everything California has but without all the attitude? Texas is proud of being Texas and Texans proud of being Texans to a nearly scary point of zealousness. But California is pretty well, full of itself, and if Californians (in general not personally) spent anywhere near as much effort trying to fix their problems and innovate as they spend telling the rest of the country how 'x' is better in California,and the rest of the country should do 'x' like we do in California, and we don't have 'x' in California, etc then they'd probably be excelling at everything they do.

Every friend I have from Cali is honestly an ass when it comes to California. It's as if there is no bad side to it, no poverty, no blacks (not that I think that is an issue, but one I seem to hear from the Cali crowd so much), no religious nuts, etc. They say this even though California alone has more of all those things that most of the rest of the country put together. Then at the same time you get to here about whatever material possession they or their family has just bought and what designer, singer, actor, whatever they met at whatever elite party they happened to at.

Not everyone is like that (and yeah Gabe you're excluded from the list (although you're def full of yourself when you get homesick )), but there are enough bad eggs out there to propagate some really negative feelings toward California so I don't think being offended i called for, rather observation that maybe there's a reason this cartoon is striking a chord.

Oh yeah, and having just been in LA a few weeks ago, I thought it was pretty nice and the people generally friendly. But why the hell is all your grass dead? Even the "grass" coming into LAX has been concreted over and painted green!

Gotta love those sweeping generalizations...

[gogr2]

Drew, I am a bit homesick at the moment... so prepare for some of bad Gabe. (And by homesick I mean Cali AND Deutschland)

Originally Posted by drew

But California is pretty well, full of itself...

Of course we are full of ourselves! Its part of our charm. Though, talk to anyone from anywhere and they have their local things which is better/cool/more awesome than anywhere else. Being Californian, we are just much more vocal and obnoxious about it. Like I said before, part of our charm.

Originally Posted by drew

It's as if there is no bad side to it, no poverty, no blacks (not that I think that is an issue, but one I seem to hear from the Cali crowd so much), no religious nuts, etc. They say this even though California alone has more of all those things that most of the rest of the country put together.

Of course Cali has issues and what seems like a higher occurrence than other states, but also remember that California has the largest population of any state. Our problems are always going to be on what seems a big scale but relationally not that bad. Also remember what I call the "Bliss Index": The more the general populace is happy, the less bad the rest of life seems. Weather does not vary much and is usually pleasant, this plays HUGE on they psyche of people. We have "Storm Watch" when a few inches of rain start coming down... its like we're all made of cotton candy. The black populace is pretty much self-segregated into various parts of the state (Watts/Compton, Oakland, Long Beach, etc) that people tend to never go/ignore so blacks sort of disappear and get "Blissed" away. The blacks you do encounter on a daily basis seem to be "white-washed" and just stop counting as really being black. As for poverty, when you have the obnoxious wealth being flashed all around you and crazy rules against loitering throughout most the state, they also get "blissed" away. The homeless issue has always been crazy in Cali, but can you blame them? They flock from all over the country to here because of the weather. Just bum it on the beach and it still doesn't get colder than 45 at night in the winter. As for religious crazies... we got them all (an HQ for Scientology, the studios for TBN, etc...). As Californians, we just don't care about your religion or the fact that you do it in a crazy nutjob fashion. We have all the Hollywood movie nutjobs. They just got us used to seeing nutjobs.

Originally Posted by drew

Oh yeah, and having just been in LA a few weeks ago, I thought it was pretty nice and the people generally friendly. But why the hell is all your grass dead? Even the "grass" coming into LAX has been concreted over and painted green!

The whole of Southern California is a desert with a few verdant areas surrounding the various rivers. We pump our water in from the Colorado River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The area has been in drought for a few years and when drought starts, they begin to ration water and raise the water fees. So would you rather have to pay a few hundred dollars on water for every square foot of grass or just Xerascape once and forget about it?

On the flipside of things, California is very water and ecosystem aware. We had some of the worst pollution in the nation and have been on track to fix that over the past two decades. Some parts of the country would get snow days, we used to get "Smog Days" (when the air quality index was so bad that they recommended not going outside). The rest of the country doesn't seem to recycle. It drives me nuts when I am away from Cali and try to find a damn recycle bin to toss my plastic bottle away. I grew up with three trash cans... recycle, green waste, and everything else. I remember our "everything else" bin was usually the smallest. Out here in Colorado my friends living off base have to pay extra for Recycle collection. WTF?

Okay, done with my rant... time to get to work.