XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.trump   
   From: noemailisfine@hyy.com   
      
   "'Out of Nowhere' Canadians Are Now Poorer Than Alabamians. The Reactions   
   Have Been Pretty Funny"   
      
      
      
   "Our northern neighbors are shell-shocked: they are even poorer than   
   Alabamians. This follows a tough week for Canada, which has struggled at   
   the Winter Olympics and has faced constant pressure from Donald Trump. In   
   fact, it's the headline used on social media that's become the main   
   source of mockery—"Out of nowhere, Canada became poorer than Alabama. How   
   is that possible?”   
      
   In December, Tommy Battle’s dream came true. The five-term Mayor of   
   Huntsville is Alabama to the bone, born in Birmingham and a graduate of   
   the state university in Tuscaloosa, but for the past 18 years he’s tried   
   to distance his city from the state’s unsavoury stereotypes.   
      
   Huntsville, in the north, is the home of the Saturn rocket program that   
   took on the Soviet Union’s Sputnik. It houses the second-largest biotech   
   research hub in the United States. And it has attracted high-end   
   manufacturing investments such as Blue Origin’s rocket engine plant.   
      
   But Alabama tropes are hard to shake: The state is backward and full of   
   bible thumpers and bigots – allegedly. When local companies try to hire   
   from afar, Mayor Battle says recruits often hear the same responses when   
   telling their spouses: “‘Huntsville?’ With one question mark. Then they   
   say, ‘Alabama???’ With three question marks.”   
      
   Translation: You’ve got to be kidding me.   
      
   But in December, Huntsville had the last laugh. Eli Lilly and Co. was   
   looking to build a US$6-billion manufacturing plant that would create   
   3,000 construction jobs and employ 450 engineers, scientists, lab   
   technicians and operations staff. After narrowing down the field of 300   
   bidders, the pharmaceutical giant named Huntsville a winner, one of four   
   new facilities in the U.S. It’s the state’s largest-ever private   
   industrial investment, and it personifies the tagline the Mayor has   
   preached: “Huntsville: a smart place.”   
      
   For eons, Canadians have viewed Alabama as a small state that, save for a   
   few pockets, is dirt poor. All anybody seems to know about Alabama is   
   that Montgomery and Birmingham were the centre of the civil rights   
   movement. In 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a   
   Birmingham Jail,” he called Birmingham “probably the most thoroughly   
   segregated city in the United States.”   
      
   So, it was a shock when Canadian economist Trevor Tombe and the   
   International Monetary Fund ran the numbers in 2023 and 2024 and   
   concluded that Canada had, in fact, become poorer than Alabama."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)