Driving across the country, I’ve noticed something else.
Red states, excepting some swing states that went red such as Colorado, Ohio and Iowa, are choked with billboards lining the Interstates. Despite some wonerful scenery, there is a lot of litter on a stick along red state freeways. Go to the blue states, and the roads are usually far less cluttered.
Maybe you need to get off of the interstates then.
You won’t get a feel for any state by hugging the main roads like a scared child hugs his mommy.
silenus, you say that as if the “rest of the state” mattered.
Regardless, if you compare the interstates in NY, to the interstates in The South (where I’ve also lived, briefly, and travelled through several times), there IS a lot more clutter in The South.
Just drive I-87, I-88, I-81 or even the NYS Thruway and you’ll find beautiful scenery and very few billboards littering the roadside. It’s much more pleasant to drive in NY, than through The South, IMHO. Although the cheap cigarettes are one positive aspect. 
It will be a chilly day in hell before I move to a red state. Not because they’re red, mind you, it just happens to be a coincidence. Move to the South? Not this broad. Live in the bible belt/bread basket? Er, no.
Yet, I’m a Republican. Hmmm, I guess I like to have my (and your) cake and eat it, too.
Oz is a red state?
No doubt. 
Sam
I agree with gobear’s response, both halves of it.
And as a New Yorker (currently in self imposed exile) I’d like to point something else out.
In my estimation, the chances of an attack are raised, substantially, by Bush’s foreign policy. So the military folk from the red states are protecing us, in part, from a problem which is made worse by the red states.
Well, it was until Glinda took over. That damn Wizard put a ban on the Munchkins marrying the Winkies, and kept Ozma in a cell without trial for years.
But then again, I’m just hiding, so I could be totally behind on current events.
(And I really live in Ohio…it just sounded boring in my location)
Ava
Well, that’s the point. You GOP urban elite have fooled the working classes in the Red states that you share their values, when really the ownership class you represent uses those values as a smokescree for exploitation. You distract the workers friomasking questions about slashed health care and decreased economic mobility with gay marriage. “No, don’t ask why your CEO closed your factory and shipped your jobs to China, look at the scary gay people. Don’t pay any attention ot the man behind the curtain who is slashing health care benefits, look at the secular humanist who wants to teach evolution to your kids.”
There’s a great quote from Malcolm X about the elites using race as a distraction to keep the workers from banding together against exploitation, but I can’t find it, so I’ll give you this.
Oz is a red state! :eek:
When you say things like ‘decreased economic mobility’ and ‘slashing health care benefits’, you make feel all tingly in my special no-no naughty place.
I dunno about the hinterland down there, but have you used… I don’t know… paper lately?
“Yes! Yes! … Just say it! Say it!”
“Oh, baby. Let me privilege lesbian positionality by destabilizing your bodily metanarrative.”
paper? How quaint. 
Only Quadling Country.
Munchkinland is, however, a blue state.
Gillikin Country is purple and Winkie Country is yellow.
And of course, the Federal District is green.
So obviously Oz is a multi-party nation.
He didn’t say we were 100% self-sufficient, he said we were “pretty” self-sufficient, which we as a state, are. We even produce a bulk of paper products as well as our huge agribusiness.
Sam
Took the words out of my mouth… exactly what I was going to say…
Come check out Crane’s Beach, right here in John Kerry’s home state. Oh, and scroll down to “Nearby Places to Visit” links in the left-hand column for more great stuff in my neck of the woods – all within a few minutes’ drive of each other. And all of this is less than an hour’s train ride away from Boston.