Alabama and California

My brother from California came to visit and wrote this post about the differences. The funny thing is that outside of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Auburn; Huntsville is about as Democratic as it gets in Alabama. He would need to drive out to the small towns, which is the majority of the state, to see the real Alabama. Huntsville is a freak of government as if in 1941 the Army hadn't decided to build a chemical munitions factory in Huntsville none of the NASA or Army work would exist. Huntsville would then be like any of the other larger, agriculture and manufacturing based cities scattered across the state. The city is skewed as there is a lot of military and former military working here and they tend to not be much like the people in San Francisco or Berkley (hard to imagine, I know). It is safe to say that guns, God and pick up trucks tend to be the rule. Of course one could argue that it is up to San Francisco to become more like the rest of the US, that it is the outlier and they are the ones missing out. Oh well. Illustration, here is one of my favorite stories about the USMC protests in Berkeley.