"I'm pretty sure that Jesse Jackson his own self said that the black middle class owed it's status to the government." It's like fishing with dynamite. You guys can't help yourselves. It's to engrained for you to even notice apparently. Here's a hint: not all black people want handouts and they don't like it when you address them that way so they are suspicious of your views about them and they vote for the other guy because he can at least speak to and about them in a way that is not degrading. In short, they don't vote for your guy because he seems like a racist a lot of the time and the Republican party continually puts out candidates that propagate this same tired old stereotyping.

I think you are confusing state budgets and current conditions with economic capacities. The state budget is in a mess. Silicon Valley is doing just fine. Hollywood rolling along. Farmland is still there. Plenty of problems in California but it's not all doom and gloom.

Ask someone with a better sense of irony to let you in on it.

Two points. I said almost all other cities. There are places that don't have the large city problems Oakland faces. Places like Salt Lake City. But most larger American cities and cities around the world have good and bad parts to them. This seems like a simple and obvious point. Secondly, I have to assume many of you have never been to Oakland. There are large section so the city that are extremely expensive (2/3/4/5 million dollar neighborhoods) and have miniscule crime rates. To talk like Oakland is one big skid row is to prove you've never been there and have no idea what you are saying.

The veil is thin sometimes. Didn't take much to have light shine right through it. No racists around here you say?

That or you don't get the irony. Which was my original point.

Nuanced view of the world.

It's like I gave you the text to that post specifically to prove my point for a second time in as many tries. To easy right now.

The Constitution is littered with references to taxes. Taxes are how we pay for society to function. This is all covered in any intro to civics course. Google Constitution of the United States. You'll find it.

"Our" territory? Who is included in "our?" (Don't write about 1700's French activists either please)