Report: Texans Are Astonishingly Bad at Making Friends, Caring About Stuff
Picture a long, steep staircase. Now, picture an extremely obese individual climbing up it. There's a lot of sweating and heavy breathing, no doubt, accompanied by a chorus of unseemly grunts and muttered curses. There's a not-too-distant risk of cardiac arrest.
In this scenario, put forward on Monday in the University of Texas' Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life's first-ever Texas Civic Health Index, the person is a metaphor for Texas. The rolls of fat are things like voter apathy and disengagement from government and civic life. The stairs are a well-functioning democracy.
For the time being, Texas continues to wheeze up the stairs. But the UT report poses the question of how high the state will be able to climb before collapsing in a flabby heap of apathy. The answer, hinted at by current measures of civic engagement, is not encouraging.
-snip-
Other factors are political. Democrats don't have a chance in statewide races, giving voters in both parties little incentive to show up at the polls. There tends to be relatively little media coverage and nonpartisan voter guides, contributing to Texans' general ignorance about politics. The report doesn't really offer an explanation for why Texans are so disengaged in other aspects of life.
More at http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/06/report_texans_are_astonishingl.php?ref=trending .
[font color=green]I don't give a ɟɥ¢ƙ whether you reply to this OP are not. Now get the hell off my lawn, eat chit & die you liberal commie pinkos.
in case it isn't obvious. [/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
meh
Doesn't that remind you of what you'll see in the comments section in some of the newspapers here in Texas? 
and I'm glad that you're my friend so that we can share in the laughter. 
In what perfect world do we have a "well-functioning democracy"? Those stairs should be re-visualized to represent the gerrymandered districts we have to put up with at the moment. That is, they would be at odd angles, out of place, too high, too low, and downright missing. Anyone would struggle to get up that set of stairs 
I'll have you know that our fat men can outclimb the fat men in every other state, or by god, shoot somebody!
Furthermore, well, gosh, that's about all I have.
Dang. Last day of school today and graduation with the seniors tomorrow - I'm just about gassed.
This may turn into the vent at TexasTowelie thread.
I'm glad that you are through with the school year and hope that you have a cool lazy summer. Time to catch up on your reading for the next football season, but FWIW they are picking Alabama by 6 next fall.
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