Which is the worst state in the United States of America

Indiana because there's no good reason for Indiana to be as bad as it is.

rehoboth beach is pretty awesome

rehoboth, dewey, the whole delaware shore is underrated. it's a nice place. plus one of the nicest people i know lives in delaware, and she brings up the state average all by herself.

i voted texas because even though you can make a long list of awesome texas things, the combination of oil money and the bush family is a brutal combo that i can't think of another state matching.

Kansas is essentially 400 lateral miles of dirt.

actually wyoming is a close second because they're massively overrepresented in congress and they used that clout to give us dick cheney. assholes.

Wyoming is beautiful and awesome (wingnuts aside).

It took a bajillion posts to see one mention of fuckin KANSAS.

Kansas.. Easy Fail.

Kansas has very little culture of note but it has cryptic desert landscapes and anonymizing winds. I think it's a good place to wipe away your sense of connectedness, which it seems to me is an essential part of the American dream. (Maybe that's a reason to vote for it?)

I voted Indiana because it has everything that's horrible about Michigan: closed-minded West Michiganders, ravaged industrial wastelands, and latent Juggalos everywhere; without any of Michigan's remarkable natural beauty. Except for a few isolated places in the south of the state, the landscape is corny (and it's not even flat enough to be interesting à la west Texas and Oklahoma). The silly time zone intransigence when I lived there was frustrating. THEY TRIED TO LEGISLATE THAT PI = 3 THIS IS UNFORGIVABLY STUPID.

what's the matter with Kansas?

it gave us Barry Sanders and the Embarrassment. Oklahoma has to take this in a walk.

I think this came up before, but it is plainly New Jersey - an entire state that is a suburb to a city in another state.

once you live in new jersey you realize it's actually really awesome and pbbbbbt to the haters tbh

Indiana is FANTASTIC, as close to American-ness as any state I've been to (and I've been to most of those "middle America" states. Good place for escaping for a week / weekend. Huge parts of it are stuck in the fifties / sixties. I could never bring myself to vote for it. I can understand voting for it because of wasted potential. You might say the same for Ohio.

I hate being down on America, I think most stereotypes are unfair. Iowa can't help not being a traveler's paradise. With that in mind, I have to vote Nevada. I hope no one is offended, I had a great time there, it's just that when you have casinos in the frigging toilets you're kind of asking for it.

?

Please tell me what parts of Indiana you've been to, u s steel. Because your descriptions are not representative of most parts of Indiana. Bloomington is one of the few areas I would spend any time defending. Most of the rest of the state is a slowly degrading horror and should be turned into a parking lot for the surrounding states.

once you live in new jersey you realize it's actually really awesome and pbbbbbt to the haters tbh

JERSEY'S WHERE AMERICA'S AT!

My car broke down in a snow storm on the Indiana toll road in the middle of the night while driving two foreign exchange students to Maryland. We were out for a while, but didn't see any cops, so we decided to try hitchhiking. We were picked up by a guy who was happy to drop us off at a hotel for the night, but who explained very calmly and patiently that we were going to roast in the fires of damnation for not believing that Jesus Christ was the son of god. Granted, you could get this anywhere.

The town we stayed in, Chesterton, seemed very nice in the small town 1950s style that us steel describes, but going along with that was a well-founded suspicion that we were being looked at funny because some of us had brown skin.

Again, that could happen in many, many places in America though.

once you live in new jersey you realize it's actually really awesome and pbbbbbt to the haters tbh

RILLY, stop judging NJ because you fucking took the train through Newark, y'all. The true, real, correct answer is Delaware. New Jersey's New Jersey.

Uh....my family lives there and has lived there for, like, decades. I think asking someone where they have "been to" when their family lives there is kind of inappropriate. Not to be rude or hurt your feelings or anything.

but going along with that was a well-founded suspicion that we were being looked at funny because some of us had brown skin.

Well, this is an offense that would've gotten the cops called on you if your car had broken down in front of my high school. There are many parts of Indiana that I would be terrified of if I weren't white (but which still manage to horrify me nonetheless).

Most of the quaintness to be found in Indiana is of the tourist trap, Epcot-esque variety: very knowing and well-maintained. Which is not to say that genuine quaintness can't be found. It's just pretty effing rare in my experience.

The forests and hills and general nature scene in southern Indiana is gorgeous and awesome and worth exploring, if you can manage to evade the hillfolk.

Um, my family lived in places that weren't "tourist trap". What places are these? Not everything about America is about enticing tourists. Rural life is nice to some people, no? It's not about abusing "authentic" looking communities to cater to tourists. I mean, let's just bomb Kansas already.

I don't use the word "quaint" either. I am neither an outsider nor a tourist.

I'm thinking of places like West Baden and Brown County. Places that very heavily cater to tourists and which are surrounded by poverty and rampant bigotry. Any small-ish towns I'm aware of that isn't a tourist trap have been slowly falling apart in recent years and are mostly just depressing. Rural life is fine if that's for you, but I'd argue that hardcore, livin' in the country rural life is pretty much the same no matter where you are, so I'm not harshin' on those people's buzzes.

Ugh. 'isn't' = 'aren't'. See what a Hoosier education gets you?

My parents visited Parke County, Indiana recently for a covered bridge festival and had a really good time. They took pictures of a place called Turkey Run State Park, which looked pretty damn cool.

Of course they are "depressing". "Depressing" and economically strapped but still quite pleasant, i.e. quiet, not congested and less polluted. Nature is not about mountains and stuff, there are other amenities like BIRDS, trees and flowers, but then again if you like birds and plants you must be some miserable retiree. I like being able to go some place without a lot of tourists and traffic and just get some R & R.

I like Ohio, but once you get off the interstates it's pure American Gothic.

u madd dogg

Is there anything good about North Dakota?

It isn't South Dakota?

also THEY TRIED TO LEGISLATE THAT PI = 3 <--- mind blown

p sure thats an urban legend

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/805/did-a-state-legislature-once-pass-a-law-saying-pi-equals-3

Fargo (the movie)? The source of Klosterman's shtick?

a really long time ago--i'm sure every state in the USA has done dumb shit like that--i mean it went to the "Committee on Temperance." LOL

haha yeah; I heard a talk on it in undergrad, by a wacky Hoosier mathematician, who explained that though the bill was couched in "Biblical" terms, the reality was that by legislating a value of Pi, the state could (evidently) charge a tax on anyone using this "official" value; and in particular that would let them charge farmers building silos (since you need to compute their circumferences).

but then again if you like birds and plants you must be some miserable retiree.

Yes, because this is exactly what I was saying.

I won't argue the fact that there are nice places in Indiana for a day's outing. Just try living there sometime, is all I'm sayin'.

Which he has apparently. You guys should take a daytrip together and hug it out.

We should. I ain't mad atcha, steel!

South Dakota - anyone cool from there has run screaming to the Twin Cities, they kill Planned Parenthood OB-Gyns, they let reservations become cesspits of despair. Carry on listing!

No, I never have tried "living there" and I don't know anyone who has! But I don't want to monopolize this thread with an argument about one state which no one I know has so much set foot in, let alone lived. Because that is exactly what I said upthread, that no one I am closely related to has EVER lived there for decades.

Fortunately for you, some of my "quaint" relatives died, so I don't have "proof". So remain convinced I know nothing of it, never knew any honest to god small town people there EVER.

OMG fuck all of you for voting for Delaware! I don't even like it but at least I spent most of my life there so I have a good reason not to like it. All you I-95 drivers and long-distance haters can stick it right in your ear.

us steel, wtf are you on about? You said: Uh....my family lives there and has lived there for, like, decades., but also No, I never have tried "living there" and I don't know anyone who has!??? fwiw, I lived in central Indiana - rural, suburban, and city areas - for 30 years. It's one of the most polluted states due to not caring about industrial or agricultural run off. It's reliant on the most heavily polluting soft coal power plants in the country. The mayor of Indianapolis is thinking about building a "chinatown", so "those people will have somewhere to go" (according to my mom, who still lives there). The "grand dragon" of the KKK lived in Martinsville when I was growing up. For all the pastoral loveliness you find there, it is underpinned by a high level of not-nice. The best thing I ever did for my children was moving away and never looking back. It is rotten at the core.

Jenny delivering a http://nodeli.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/delawarepunchpq7.jpg

Jaq OTM (aside from some of the particulars about pollution, which I don't know enough about to comment on). I lived in various parts of Indiana for 20+ years, so I kinda feel like I know what I'm talking about, just a little. And yes: getting out was the best thing I could've possibly done for myself.

I am thinking about votin' North Dakota, but I don't really know anything about it

I would like to hear a Dakotan sell the appeal of their state

I've driven across ND a couple of times now and have found absolutely nothing to like about it.

wind farmin

at least the DE Parkway isn't phenomenally ugly, like that infamous 10-15 mile stretch of the NJ Turnpike from Elizabeth to the GWB that everyone and their brother is convinced is the "real" New Jersey.

I"M FROM NEW JERSEY

O RLY WHAT EXIT

F U

i wub u

XD

I voted for Florida because I believe it is the Devil's Chamber.

flying a kite on a delaware beach, wondering how anyone can vote for this fine state

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/IMG_2105.jpg