New Rules - Coming on the heels of the post about Sacramento earlier this week, I hope that this post will inspire, engage and enrage readers to comment.

"You know, the rest of America feels about California the way the rest of the world feels about America. They hate us because we do what we want." That's just a part of the monologue delivered last week on the HBO show, Real Time with Bill Maher by the comedian. The full text about the Golden State appears below:

You know, the rest of America has been having quite a laugh at California’s expense lately. But let’s remember this: California has a lot of people. And the reason it does is lots of other people in other states saying, “Fuck this, I’m outta here!”

And then those people come here to California, and people ask them, “Don’t you miss the winters?” No, strangely enough, I don’t. Much the same way I don’t miss slamming a car door on my hands.

Make fun of California, but if it weren’t for California, East Coast rappers would have to shoot musicians from Branson. If it weren’t for California, there’s be almost no TV, and you’d have to come home at night and actually talk to your family.

You know, the rest of America feels about California the way the rest of the world feels about America. They hate us because we do what we want. They think we’re too blessed and too free, and it makes them nuts in the dreary hovels of Kabul and Tikrit and Lubbock, Texas.

They pray to their threadbare gods that we’ll get what we deserve. But it won’t happen. Because you never know what we’re going to do here next. We elected Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown. We’re home to Disney and Hustler, the Partridge Family and the Manson Family. We can drink a Mudslide and a Sex on the Beach during an actual mudslide while having sex on the beach!

Our farms feed the world, and Calista Flockhart lives here.

We invented surfing and cyber-porn and LSD and the boob job. And if we didn’t, we would have. We have oranges, free oranges, everywhere. What grows on the trees in Scranton, fucker?!

We have a real hockey team named after a hockey team in a movie! Our Indian casinos could kick your Indian casinos’ ass. We give our illegal aliens driver’s licenses. And we have a guy running for governor who digs group sex.

Would anywhere else in America trade places with L.A. or San Francisco in a piss-soaked New York minute? You bet they would. Because I don’t recall anyone ever writing a song called “I Wish They All Could Be Rhode Island Girls”!