How nice of you to say, I guess.
- decent folk
Bless his heart, he means well.
Nice to meet you. I’m a Rat Bastard, myself, from a long line of Rat Bastards.
And I’m voting for that Jew Bastard for Governor, too. 
Feh…Illinois had an even more bizarre moment in history. Back during the civil war conflict, southern Illinois wanted to split from the rest of the state and join the confederates. They still consider themselves to be cut from a different cloth than we northern Illinois folk. And in fact, they are. They are generally rural, agricultural, speak with southern accents, and generally live a different life from those of us in the Chicago area. A northern IL person feels like they’ve gone out-of-state when they go down south.
Not buried in it, living in the lot that was portioned off of the previous yard of the house! Sheesh, stereotypes! Don’t you know that around here we burn people or leave them hanging?
Only if he ran into a Cackalackian macaca.
Dang, Captor, can you go a DAY without bitching about Texas? Sheesh. (I may be misremembering, but I’d swear I see your name behind Texas-bashing nearly every time it happens.
But I’m willing to compromise. All non-batshit Texans may move to Austin, which we will then airlift to somewhere between northern California and southern Oregon, this being the only land I can think of that is A) deranged enough and B) liberal enough to hold us.
I’m living proof that this could work. Spending my life from kindergarten thru graduating college in Humboldt County, Austin is the one and only place I would ever allow myself to habitate within the Texas state line.
I have a better one than that. Winston County, Alabama actually seceded from the Confederate Staes of America, and formed the Free State of Winston in 1861. A historically very poor part of the state, there was almost no vested interest in keeping the institution of slavery. The Looney’s Tavern Resolutions is a classic of Independent politics:
Yeah, but…
dude…
…you live in GEORGIA. 
i kid! i kid!
Utterly fascinating. I never knew of this until now. And here I thought West Virginia was cool for saying no to the Confederacy. This is way cooler. That is simply the sanest political discourse I’ve ever seen in all my born days. Makes you want to sit down with them good old boys around a keg of corn squeezins and talk about good times.
According to this map of the purpleness of states http://www.boingboing.net/images/Purple-USA.jpg in the 2004 election, Texas is a shade of purple very slightly redder than that of both Georgia and… South Carolina. By slight degrees of shading, it looks like the bluest of the Southern red states are Florida, Virginia, and Arkansas. The reddest state in the South by far is Oklahoma.
One always hears of the South as “red states” but the only ones with a discernably reddish cast are Alabama and Oklahoma. The rest are as purple as the Gr… (…wait, am I allowed to say that name here?)
That’s pretty fucking awesome.
Mind recommending any further reading?
Wow. Never knew that! How did it turn out for them? Did they manage to stay unmolested by both sides during the war?
No, they were subjected to the Confederate draft like everybody else, which didn’t improve their disposition. Many highland regions in the South were disaffected from the Confederacy, and the protests from Winson County were more symbolic than serious–something like the Key West Conch Republic (all right, maybe a little more serious than that).
Oh, I don’t deny that Texas has a bunch of loonies in it – probably heavily because we have wacky population density. Several big metro areas surrounded by thousands of square miles of very rural areas. Rural areas tend to shade red everywhere in the nation.
Austin is this big blue spot in the middle of a sea of red.
As Freddy the Pig says, they were subjected to the Confederate draft, which really got them mad. As a result, many Winstonites went guerrilla, and the county became a haven for people discontented with the whole Civil War issue. Quite a few citizens of the county joined the Union army when it finally reached the Tennessee River. Looney, the owner of the aforementioned Looney’s Tavern, earned quite a reputation as a guerrilla fighter, and became known as “the Ol’ Black Fox.”
Just as an aside, I suppose it’s pretty generous to actually say that Winston County literally seceded from the Confederacy. They certainly passed the Resolutions to do it, but they never got to set up their own government, etc. They came under immediate pressure from CSA and state authorities to buckle under, though for the next four years, they never did. In this way, Winston County was very much like a lot of Southern territories that did not support the Confederacy (a reality far removed from the popular conception of all Southerners being born and bred Rebels,) but I believe Winston County may have been the only territory that went so far as to take steps to secede. If there were any others, I’d love to hear about them.
Oh, and Winston County? Spectacularly beautiful place. It’s the home of the Sipsey Wilderness Area, the first Wilderness Area designated east of the Mississippi River.
Well, if they really hit it off, it might prove a beneficially mind-broadening experience for Senator Allen. Imagine that cracker slacking with a South Cacalacky macaca, smoking wacky tobacky.
Just like Charlottesville.
SC would be difficult. it’s kind of in the middle of things…whats say we just give the assholes Florida and have done with it? They can have Disinland which is is inspid anyway. And when we want to we can just saw off the state and send it on down the ocean.