Sitting in Bob's Java Hut, 27th & Lyndale in south Minneapolis, I look out the window and see a tall, slim blonde wearing a very short skirt approaching on the sidewalk. I might be old, but I'm not dead, so I put my head down till I gauge she's close but not yet past, then casually lift my eyes and gaze out the window like a philosopher contemplating The Deep. My estimate is good and it's immediately apparent that she's a he in drag. Still, nice legs.
Just in case you're reading this in Hayfield and want to know what you're missing.
If you prefer the Dems, and have people in your life who don't, like me you have probably heard a lot of
But what about _____________?
and the blank is filled with the name of some big city in a blue state that has allegedly gone to hell on account of "Democratic misrule," "wokeism," "liberal pieties," etc., etc. Yes, no place on earth is paradise, and when several hundred thousand people are living in close proximity to one another there is sometimes trouble. Seems odd, though, that this should reflect poorly on the policies pursued by their elected Democratic officials while the agenda of Republicans in, say, Mississippi, is not subjected to similar "analysis." Since there currently are no drag queens on the sidewalk, I just googled "homicide rate by state," which is where I found the above map. The darker the hue, the higher the rate. The data is from the CDC for 2020—they always publish in the fall the full report for the previous year, so 2020 is the most recent report available. Chicago is a common whipping boy so I thought it was interesting that there's less homicide mortality per 100,000 population in Illinois than in neighboring Missouri or nearby Arkansas. California and New York are in the same range as Wyoming and Kansas. The site is here. For the record, the states with the five highest homicide rates are:
Mississippi
Louisiana
Alabama
Missouri
Arkansas
Next I tried "infant mortality rate by state." The CDC data is here. The map resembles the one for homicide. Here are the five states with the highest rates of infant mortality (infant deaths per 1000 live births):
Mississippi
Louisiana
West Virginia
Arkansas
Alabama
And the five lowest:
New Jersey
New York
Massachusetts
California
Vermont
Next I tried "covid death rates by state." Results here. The five highest:
Mississippi
Arizona
Oklahoma
Alabama
Tennessee
And the five lowest:
Maine
Washington
Utah
Vermont
Hawaii
You can keep playing this game. The five states with the highest per capita incomes are New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California. Mississippi is last. It's last in everything, and its closest competition in the per capita income category is provided by a lot of the usual suspects: West Virginia, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Alabama round out the lowest five.
Well, I'm sure their problems will dissipate once they've banned enough books from the school library!
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