A post on Sunday-- largely unread-- shows the correlation between premature death from things like cancer and diabetes with a tendency to not just eat badly, but to elect Republicans. Simplest way to understand that: corrupt Republican legislatures and governors pass laws to enable their billionaire buddies to pollute the air and water for their own profit and your kids get sick and die... so keep listening to Hate Talk Radio and Fox. Anyway, the states with the worst cancer outcomes are pretty predictable... and, politically, all blood red:
• Kentucky• Mississippi• West Virginia• Louisiana• Oklahoma• Arkansas• Tennessee• Alabama• Indiana• South Carolina• Texas• North Dakota
There were strikingly similar, albeit unsurprising, results when states were ranked according to obesity and unhealthy habits. Again, they are listed from worst to slightly less worse. This time Mississippi takes it's rightful place on the top of the shitpile:
• Mississippi• Louisiana• West Virginia• Tennessee• South Carolina• Arkansas• Kentucky• Alabama• Oklahoma• North Dakota• Texas• Indiana
Wow! It's all the same states! God must really, really, really hate these people. I'd move today. Can you name the 5 states with the greatest percentage of residents who are physically inactive? (In order of worst it less worse-- Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana.) How about the 5 states with the greatest percentage of adults eating less than 1 serving of fruits and vegetables per day? (Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina.) I wish I had a list of states where Fox News had the greatest percentage of viewers or where Limbaugh has the greatest listenership. (I did find one source that says Fox's biggest influence is in Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina.) Anyway, I found a list in an article by Philip Bump in last week's Washington Post that ranks states by their residents' intelligence. And would't you know it... none of the dozen states with more intelligent people are on the lists of states where people, for example, eat themselves to death. Conversely, all of those pathetic red states that keep electing Republicans to kill their children are pretty down low on the smart-people rankings. These are the states with the bad health rankings from our lists above, rated by intelligence:
• Mississippi- 48th smartest• Alabama- 47th• South Carolina- 45th• West Virginia- 44th• Louisiana- 43rd• Texas- 39th• Arkansas- 36th• Tennessee- 33rd• Indiana- 32nd• Kentucky- 31st• Oklahoma- 30th• North Dakota- 14th
Bump's conclusion, by the way, was that Iowa is a pretty smart state, despite Trump carrying on last week that they must all be brain damaged because Dr. Ben outpolled him there, and that "Iowa's interest in voting for someone besides the New York real estate magnate is a decision being made by a pretty smart state." Every state on the list of the dumb-- and unhealthy-- states above, though, voted for Romney, and in many cases, by the biggest margins, so they're not only filled with stupid people who are likely to die prematurely because of bad habits, but they are also states filled with losers. Why do normal people stay in places like Mississippi and Alabama?