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3D Election Results Map by County
FlopEJoe writes "There are many web-based electoral maps available on the regular news sites (Electorial-vote, CNN) but this image 3d county results seemed more profound to me. Wish I had more to say about it but I don't want to cloud the discussion. I think it speaks for itself and the spin-masters should enjoy it."
Coastal city dwellers are vote liberal. No shock there. Those cities have lots of people. No shock there. The rest of the country is largely conservative. Again, no shock there.
Hawaii, that is one of the members of our coal^H^H^Hstates. :) /Poland
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Because the peaks are due to population, this must correlate somewhat to the skyscraper distribution graph also.
What software was used?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
In France there was a very racist party (Front National) and the people who would vote for them were on average less educated than people who voted for other parties. The FN leader, Le Pen, said it had to do with the propaganda we have in schools against the FN. Which of course wasn't believed by anyone but the people without an education.
Cool! I can see my house from here...
It's kinda funny to see my county all alone and blue on the sea of red (Travis Co,TX).
Ceci n'est pas un post.
A better looking map is at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
Why make it 3D? It would be much more readable if they just adjusted the shade of blue/red according to how much of the vote Kerry/Bush got.
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Quoting ESRI's site "Better decisions through modeling and mapping our world" Profound on all levels
Yep... let's just trash the Electoral College. We should only let the political opinion of the people who live at the spikes steer the country. Not like people outside of those spikes might have different POVs than those in the spikes, since we all know that rural and urban environments have exactly the same needs.
It appears as though the GOP "red" has enveloped the country and surrounded the largest population centers of the US. How ironic, the color, geography, some might say, like a metastasizing cancer, or a map from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Im just playing devil's advocate, I'm a registered Republican.
What does this mean?
Is the height of the stacks tied to population or numbers of voters or to the margin of victory in that county, percentage or absolute?
This isn't particularly self-explanatory. A key would be nice.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
While most of the blue areas are located in large metro areas, this is not always the case. That blue streak that runs east-west across Alabama is an area known as the "Black Belt" and is one of the poorest most underdeveloped parts of the state.
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..Makes me proud to be an American Now we don't have to ask France and Germany for permission to defend ourselves
Don't know if this is true or not (it looks pretty, so I'm inclined to say yeah, its true), but this map is pretty interesting.
-Vic
And you'll probably continue to see that happen, too, with a Democratic party platform of 'you're a fucktard if you don't agree with us'. Great way to try to bring the opposition to your side, too. 'You're a fucking idiot. Vote for us!' If I hadn't voted for Badnarik I would have voted for Bush partly out of spite.
::GASP!:: don't agree with you! OMFG!
Believe it or not, there *are* some people in the country that *are* intelligent, that
There were a lot of people who voted for all the wrong reasons. But there are also a large number of people who thought about the decision at hand before making it. Insulting them only distances them further from you.
Yes, IHBT, and IHL, but it bothers me when people do this shit (which isn't to say the Right doesn't do it also... another reason I voted for Badnarik). HAND.
In other words, a county shows all red even if it is 51% Bush / 49% Kerry. Just so we remember that there is a lot of red in the blue counties, and vice-versa.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There should be a huge blue spike in New York City, it went 85% for Kerry and has a larger population than chigago which had a large spike.
Here is the same data in slimmer html table form, if the 175k png doesn't appeal to you.
Check the author's sources. They prove it's a hoax that started in 2000.
That pages uses www.chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm as a source. It'll redirect you to attenuation.net/files/iq.htm. From there, you can find www.sq.4mg.com/IQschools.htm which has estimates for state IQ based on ACT/SAT tests. You'll notice that the IQs are much more evenly distributed. If you follow his link to http://www.sq.4mg.com/IQ-States.htm, you'll see links at the bottom to the unverified hoax IQ scores used in your chart. Someone simply updated the 2000 Gore/Bush chart for 2004.
In a democracy, the vote of the people counts.
In the Electoral College, the vote of the majority (people living in cities) is diluted to give people living in the suburbs, and Southern Slave Owners, an increased vote. Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College. If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe a vote, and if you read History, you'll find that slave owners wanted their slaves to count as three-fifths of a person for voting purposes, but had no intention of giving them the right to vote.
The point of a Democracy is that the majority of the people get to determine things. If you do anything to dilute the power of the majority (Electoral College, Aparthied, for example), then you're not living in a Democracy.
You can argue all you want about increasing the power of rural voters, but that still doesn't mean it's right -- or that it's a democracy.
Senators weren't directly elected by the people until the 1920's. Things can, do, and should change.
No, slave owners wanted slaves to count as a full person for voting, while non-slave owners wanted them to not count at all. That's why there was the three-fifths compromise. Part of the compromise also didn't allow the Union to outlaw slavery for a few decades.
Recycled from 2000.
Take this map of the United States at Night and superimpose it over a map of "Red/Blue" Counties
Notice anything?
In past elections, different networks have used red and blue to represent different parties. It wasn't until 2000 that everyone seemed to settle on this color scheme.
Sorry, but I've got one more:
:-\
Purple Mountain Majesties
America isn't really "Red" or "Blue." It's Purple.
Well, aside from Utah, anyway
Even on the site that the image is linked from, it doesn't say what the heights represent.
I saw another poster suggest population, but that doesn't make sense because so much is flat.
I submit that it is based upon the sway of the vote. The higher the plateau, the farther away from 50% split the vote was, and the color indicates the higher sway of votes. It also explains the higher blue plateaus in the coastal/liberal areas.
FWIW, I don't appear on that map; I voted for Badnarik
If only we could just slice up those huge blue spikes and seed them into the vast red plains
*sigh*
Wages are earned, not given. They are earned by doing work for the value of the wage. Things really get messed up if someone outside sets the value of the wage without regard to the value of the work. Forcing companies to overpay workers at some government-set wage that has nothing to do with the work also demeans real work and turns the whole affair into a welfare program: a forced handout.
Every time the government arbitrarily sets the mininum wage to be higher, thousands of people end up losing their jobs, as it forces companies to try to get by without low-end jobs. When I point it out to people who favor the "minimum wage", the typical response is that these jobs are worthless: a poor person is better off getting nothing, as compared to getting $17,000 a year.
As long as you are arbitrarily setting wages without regard to value, why not set the minimum wage to $1,000 an hour? It will make everyone a millionaire. Why stop at a low value?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
How to understand the presidential election results.
If you haven't read any books about U.S. politics, then you probably don't know much about the activities of the U.S. government.
You cannot rely for information on TV or newspapers, or any advertising-supported media. Advertising-supported media exists to make money, not to inform. Advertisers are understandably careful not to alienate anyone. It is not possible to develop an accurate opinion of government activities only by listening to the carefully crafted phrases from media employees who would lose their jobs if they seemed to indicate a preference for one candidate over another.
It's a fact that Bush supporters often have a poor understanding of his actions rather than what he wants people to believe. One example of support for this is the following article: Bush Supporters Misread Many of His Foreign Policy Positions.
The U.S. government is corrupted by extreme conflict of interest. Please don't moderate this down just because you disagree. I can support my position with links to 3 movies and 35 books: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
For a quicker overview, see this article: 100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration.
The county-by-county results showing not only who won, but the number, are extremely interesting. So is the USA Today result map. They show what might be expected. Those who live in rural counties vote for Bush. In the past century, the more intelligent, educated, and ambitious people have migrated away from the farms to places with more opportunities. The less educated have stayed behind. Those who live in rural counties are less likely to read, and therefore are not well-informed.
Those who don't read are fooled by Karl Rove's lies. Here are books about Karl Rove's methods:
Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The brains behind the remarkable political triumph of George W. Bush by Lou Dubose, Jan Reid, and Carl M. Cannon, 2003, PublicAffairs. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon
Part of the secret of Karl Rove's success is that U.S. voters don't want to believe there is widespread corruption in their government. Lies that are extreme and unrelenting enough are accepted.
President George W. Bush has a habit of giving disrespectful nicknames to those with whom he works. "Boy Genius" is one of Mr. Bush's nicknames for Karl Rove. Mr. Bush also calls Karl Rove, "Turd Blossom". The term refers to a flower that grows in the feces of a cow.
Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove made George W. Bush presidential by James Moore and Wayne Slater, 2003, John Wiley & Sons, New York, New York, USA. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon
One of the Amazon reviews quotes the book: "Karl Rove matters to all Americans, many who have never even heard his name. While the president chafes at the description of Rove as 'Bush's Brain,' he can hardly deny that every policy
I've figured it out. The vast red plains reference brought it home: we are living in Barsoom. John Kerry did bear a striking resemblance to Tars Tarkas. I guess Jimmy Carter will do in a pinch as we don't have John Carter.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This post is Complete Drivel.
We live in a Democratic Republic, not a Democracy.
Very few times in our History (4, to be exact) has the Electoral College not represented the popular vote of the people. In each of these cases, a strong argument can be made that the Electoral College selected the better Presidential candidate against the will of the people, which is exactly what was intended.
The EC was initially setup because political parties were not expected to be formed and candidates were not expected to campaign for votes. The function of the EC was modified slightly twice to its current basis for the 1804 election, to prevent ties in the EC and to allow for the operation of political parties.
Nowhere during this time was there consideration for participation of common people, women, or slaves in the voting process. Your statements about cities vs. suburbs and slaves are fiction.
No one can provide a single instance in the last 200 years where the current Electoral College system failed in the selection of a Presidential Candidate.
Change for the sake of change is ridiculous, and its no reason to change the U.S. Constitution.
Check this guy's history, he posts the same crap every single time.
Whether you agree with his bullshit is irrelevant, it's offtopic and a troll.
You've got it. The Michael Moore argument that small business is the cause of economic evil, and we must wipe it out in order to progress.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Everybody seems to be doing by-county maps. What I'd rather see at this point is a per-Congressional district display. You know, something that would divide the country in to areas of (roughly) equal population?
I also see Hawaii didn't make it onto the map, and from what little of Alaska I can see I suspect they didn't bother with borough lines there.
The only correlation I see is that the cities with the highest crime rates vote overwhelmingly democratic.
"There were a lot of people who voted for all the wrong reasons. But there are also a large number of people who thought about the decision at hand before making it. Insulting them only distances them further from you.
Yes, IHBT, and IHL, but it bothers me when people do this shit (which isn't to say the Right doesn't do it also... another reason I voted for Badnarik). HAND."
Speaking of iritating things.
"(Conservative columnist in the liberal-leaning Boston Globe gives advice
to Democrats: hatred doesn't win)
HATRED LOST.
For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was
demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics. For
four years they saw him likened to Hitler and Goebbels, heard his
supporters called brownshirts and racists, his administration dubbed "the
43d Reich." For four years they took it all in: "Bush" spelled with a
swastika instead of an `s,' the depictions of the president as a drooling
moron or a homicidal liar, the poisonous insults aimed at anyone who might
consider voting for him. And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote and
handed the haters a crushing repudiation.
Bush was reelected with the highest vote total in American history. He is
the first president since 1988 to win a majority of the popular vote. He
increased his 2000 tally by 8 million votes and saw his party not only
keep its majorities in the House and Senate but enlarge them. And he did
it all in the face of an orgy of hatred.
The smears and rancor were bottomless and venomous. Michael Moore accused
Bush of being in cahoots with Osama bin Laden. George Soros said the
president's policies reminded him of the Nazis. Cameron Diaz warned that
if Bush was reelected, rape would become legal. Randi Rhodes told her
radio audience that Bush, like Fredo in "The Godfather," should be taken
out and shot. Whoopi Goldberg headlined a New York fund-raiser in which
Bush was called a "thug" and a "killer." Howard Dean speculated publicly
about the "interesting theory" that Bush knew what was going to happen on
Sept. 11 but kept silent.
The novelist Nicholson Baker went so far as to publish a novel that
revolves around Bush's possible assassination.
John Kerry never sank to that level of slime, but he never repudiated it,
either. Instead of condemning the foul things said about Bush at that New
York fund-raiser, for example, Kerry told the audience that "every
performer tonight . . . conveyed to you the heart and soul of our
country."
If Kerry had urged his supporters to speak about Bush with the same
courtesy they would want Bush's supporters to speak about him, voters
would have been impressed. If he had made it clear that he is disgusted
when Bush is compared to Hitler or Mussolini and ashamed that such
comparisons could be made by people backing him, he would have won the
public's admiration. If he had insisted that Michael Moore leave the
Democratic convention instead of being given a place of honor next to
Jimmy Carter, he would have been rewarded with a surge in the polls.
Instead he said nothing -- and the voters noticed.
Bush-bashers reveled in their animosity -- many openly and proudly
embraced the word "hatred" -- but I wondered all along whether they
weren't driving away far more voters than they were attracting. "Their
unabashed loathing may energize and excite them, but they are doing their
candidate and their country no favors," I wrote in this space in July.
"For most Americans, hatred is a political turn-off." Now that the object
of their malevolence has won more votes than any previous president, will
they consider giving up the politics of hatred in favor of something
healthier and more constructive?
And now that the electorate has once again chosen to keep control of the
White House and both houses of Congress in Republican hands, will the
Democratic Party take a long hard look
What you said seems right. Here is support for number 1: Bush Supporters Misread Many of His Foreign Policy Positions
Who do tend to vote heavily democratic and are at the near bottom of the education ladder?
There are many ways to slice this and most do it where it favors their view. However the truth is that many people in those districts where Kerry or Bush got a majority had a very close number of people voting for the other guy. Even in 60/40 splits how can one declare which side the "smart" people voted for?
I see "IQ" questions about election results as yet another attempt by one side to discount the fact they lost because their message failed to appeal to the majority.
The key to winning an election is to realize why people don't like you and determine if you can change so that they do without violating the principles that make you whom you are. If you cannot then you must then learn how to work with the power you do derive to get your point across.
As Democrats proved the first 4 years it is not WHO controls thes the Congress (where real power is) who can determine what it votes on. (namely their stopping many judges and such). Unfortunately the Republicans understand this too meaning that unless a supermajority is achieved by either party nothing much other than increased spending will ever occur as we all know they can always agree to spend more.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The tall spikes are all blue. There is some red along the coastlines, but those spikes aren't very tall.
It appears that most of the red comes from places with low population density.
Again, do Conservatives move to places without lots of people or do places without lots of people breed Conservatives?
The next map I'd like to see would be education level and such. Also church attendance percentage.
The only important differences between the two major US political parties is which parts of the constitution they choose to ignore.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
And mayeb, just maybe if the founders put a democracy in place you might have a point. Were are a Federal Republic.
Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College.
Except that we are a Federal Republic
If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe a vote
Yes becuase of joe and 50 of his freinds decide to screw jane and 48 of her friends out of something, in a democracy they can. So instead they built a Represenative system with chekcs and balances.
The point of a Democracy is that the majority of the people get to determine things.
As Franklin said "Two Wolves and a Sheep voting on whats for Dinner"
If you do anything to dilute the power of the majority (Electoral College, Aparthied, for example), then you're not living in a Democracy.
Oh nevermind you do get it, we are not a democracy we are a Democratic Republic. Now here is one to wrap your head around True Democracy is like True Communism, it cant exist. True Democracy would entail every person voting on everything that would happen. Can you imagine election day, every day for things like peanut subsidies? Without a slave population (like that of ancient Athens) the citizens do not have the time to vote on every issue..
You can argue all you want about increasing the power of rural voters, but that still doesn't mean it's right -- or that it's a democracy.
It also does not mean its wrong, and yes we are not a democracy...
Senators weren't directly elected by the people until the 1920's. Things can, do, and should change.
Yup and if you want to trash the EC have fun because at least 35-40 States stand to lose power if you do. Electing senators did not affect the states (we are a federal republic) balance of power, traching the EC does.
The more educated you are, the more likely you are to be a republican, unless you have a graduate degree, then you are overwhelmingly likely to be a democrat
I can't find a link right now, but I have seen this with percentages several times...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Because the peaks are due to population
I'd say they have more to do with African American population, since 88% of them voted democratic which is by far the largest margin in any racial grouping. 88% of African Americans also live in metropolitan areas according to the 2000 census.
The Republican party must find a way to reach out to these people or at least somehow counter the perception that Republicans are racists.
Please, do not confuse education with WISDOM.
The sweaty-armpitted llama leaps for a cluster of grapes.
Someone can get A's in highschool and never go to college.
Someone can finish a 2 year program with C's.
Which person has more education?
Someone can finish a 4 year program. Does that person have more education?
I'd be interested in the percentages of people finishing each level of education expressed on that same map.
Sure, there might be geniuses who never finished high school, but I'd start with rating the advanced education percentages.
You know, the first time I checked out the county-by-county maps, one thing stood out to me and I found it quite interesting. The whole time I've been seeing state-by-state maps New York has always been a "blue" state. So I figured that the majority of the state was pro-Kerry. But when you look at the county-by-county maps of New York, you see that while Kerry did get the majority of the New York votes, that geographically most of the state is actually pro-Bush.
If you look at the New York map, you see that most of the state is either pro-Bush, neutral, or weak-Kerry. The only really strong area of support for Kerry in New York State was New York City. It's a sad but true fact that one city can out-vote the rest of the state.
I think that's how Hillary Clinton was elected too. I don't know of anyone upstate who was in strong support of her (well, in the Finger Lakes region anyway. But I did see plenty of anti-Hillary signs at the time), but yet she won anyway. There weren't enough non-Hillary votes in the rest of the state to counteract the pro-Hillary votes in NYC.
It would be interesting if the electoral college could be split along districts. Like if say, the popular vote got the 2 senators votes for the state, and then each district had its representative vote the way that district voted. If that was the case, I'd think that Kerry would have had at most 10 votes in New York State for the electoral college. But considering the current system, he swept the whole state.
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
It's an urban legend. If you track down those sources, they point to the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations." But this state IQ data never appeared in that book (see http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/2004/05/ among others.)
Anybody who's gone near a statistics book knows it's ludicrous to think an entire state could have an average IQ that's one sigma away from nominal mean.
Free trade is not exploitation. This includes the trade of services (such as work) for money. The minimum wage does not do what you think it does at all, as the main thing it does is provide an incentive for the companies to fire those whose jobs have the least value.
"Companies will always pay as little as they can get away with"
Exactly! Yet, you fail to realize this. You think that they will put up with this higher cost. You ignore that they will try to "pay as little as they can" in reality by automating, outsourcing, or other ways of getting rid of the jobs.
If you want to look at how this works, look at the self-serve gas station. The gas stations used to employ lots of pump jockets. However, the minimum wage laws forced the companies to get rid of almost all of these jobs.
These jobs have become more costly not because the workers have earned the higher wages, but because bureacrats or mercurial legislators have meddled in the matter without regards to real values or consequences.
It is typical that the arguments for the "minimum wage" are based in bogus emotion-charge class warfare ideology.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Moderators should be required to pass a multiple-choice test that shows they understand the moderation system. Moderation is not meant to suppress someone else's opinion, but it is being used that way.
A "Troll" is someone who intentionally posts misleading information. The Troller does not believe what he is saying.
"Flamebait" is a comment posted with an intent to start a pointless argument.
The parent comment is, "It just shows what everyone has known... that ignorant hick-country rednecks vote for Shrub."
I don't agree with the comment, but it is not a Troll or Flamebait.
I intensely disagree with the opinion in the link provided in the parent comment. However, should it have been suppressed by modding as Flamebait? If you have been reading about international affairs, you know this is the opinion of literally hundreds of millions of people:
Four more years of garbage.
Four more years of bullshit, lies, mass deception.
Four more years where the world, hopefully, will tell the damn stupid yankees to go fuck themselves in their warped country.
Four more years of those same damn stupid yankees making fools of themselves by being the terminally stupid assholes they are.
Oussama Bin Laden! the world needs you more than ever. Get your marbles together, and with a bit of imagination, you can cut the whole oil supply to the United States of America, and either bring those stupid yankees down on their knees, or make them adopt a much less ruinous way of life that is more respectful of the planet.
Go, Oussama! Go sink those oil tankers plying the sea!
Go sever that thin lifeline that keeps those stupid yankees alive!
The planet will be eternally grateful once you bring those fuckers down.
What about when the minimum wage increase by the government denies the worker this choice by forcing the company to fire the worker (or not offer such a job in the future)? "Companies will always pay as little as they can get away with".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It doesn't matter whether someone agrees with you or not. What matters is their depth of understanding of the issue and their maturity level. Strangely enough, it seems that those two are somehow linked. People who understand the material are more mature about how they discuss it.
It is easier to have a civil conversation with someone who agrees with you. But that's just because you both have the same views and are merely reinforcing each other's opinions.
That's the "civil" vs "intelligent" bit I posted about.
IQ does not have to define who you support. WHY you support someone is the factor.
Although it would be interesting to see a chart of IQ levels vs liberal/conservative.
Minority groups tend to cluster in larger cities looking for work there... so this also may be a bias in the direction of Democrat affiliation there.
I won't say whether minority groups are less or more educated or intelligent... probably less educated though certainly not less intelligent.
Larger cities also tend to have the largest number of foreign born citizens or 2nd generation immigrant citizens who are more likely to be influenced by world opinion and more specifically European opinion.
These factors added together should tend to add to the Democrat affiliation preponderence in large cities.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I seem to recall that Hitler persecuted homosexuals as well.
The one with the highest murder rate and poorest education system (despite one of the highest funding rates)... Yup, Washington, DC.
It seems to me that there would not be that many people voting who didn't finish high school and there aren't many people with in the post graduate world to start with.
Yet Kerry got 48%+ of the vote.
I'm interested in finding out if the "HS Diploma, Some College, or a College Degree" was a single block. If so, that would make sense because there is a big difference between a high school diploma and a college degree.
How "domestic" do you want the issues? Why would there be a difference?
Why did you put the "black" in "black church" for Kerry, but not for Bush?
And lots of people are looking into that "why".
I guess that depends upon what you believe the "place" for those courts are.
The same can be said about the civil rights movement of the 60's. Lots of "Conservatives" opposed it.
And they were following their beliefs.
Which is what politics eventually comes down to (the same as religion). Which is why politics and religion are so often intertwined in the US and why so many people have such a hard time with a civil discussion of those.
For most people, their politics and religion are not based upon a rational examination of the material. They believe what they were taught to believe and when someone challenges that belief, they get motivated.
... not to talk about camps out of reach of any legislation or 'pre-emptive' strikes. Err... Reichstagsbrand, anyone?
Sorry, the fixed link is here.
You are not able to determine whether you are mis-informed or not. As evidence, I'll submit your next statement:
But the survey did not ask those questions.
I've seen some people speculating lately that the strong split between city and country is cause, not effect. That is to say, the dominant parties have deliberately catered to the different needs of city and country, which due to different lifestyles have certain sharp differences. There are also differences due to different groupthink... and you are fooling yourself if you think only the "other guys" have groupthink and your side has all come to its decisions through rational processes.
I think this makes sense, more sense than many of the other theories, and certainly more sense than some of the more self-congratulatory posts about how stupid the other side is and how smart their side is. Sorry, but that just shows extreme ignorance of the "other side", and that you are willing to delude yourself and dehumanize your "enemy", not that you are on the naturally smarter side.
I strongly suspect that we will not see this distribution again in 2008, and certainly not in 2012. The Democrats have implicitly agreed to this split through emergent processes (i.e., no one necessarily decided on this grand strategy, it just emerged) and it clearly is not working for them. The obvious next move for them, as they re-form themselves, is to shake up the playing field. If they don't they will continue to lose.
There will be other boundaries to draw in 2008, but we can over-inflate concerns about that then.
In the Electoral College, the vote of the majority (people living in cities) is diluted to give people living in the suburbs, and Southern Slave Owners, an increased vote.
There were no suburbs when the electoral college was created, and when it was created one of the ideas behind it was to take away the voting power of slave owners The electoral college was simply a compromise between the states with a large population and the states with a small population to elect a president.
Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College.
That isn't why the EC was created.
If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe
No, they weren't. They were of the belief that you should be a land owning male to vote. Those were very different times though.
a vote, and if you read History, you'll find that slave owners wanted their slaves to count as three-fifths of a person for voting purposes, but had no intention of giving them the right to vote.
Indeed, the southern slave owners had no intentions of allowing their slaves to vote. Howevver, they wanted their slaves to have a full vote! Not three fifths of a vote! Three fifths of a vote was another compromise made between the north and the south. Most of the founding fathers were against slavery, but if they wanted to form a union with the southern states it was a necessary evil. They did not want the south to have the voting power to continue slavery forever, so the north was against the slaves being able to vote (since their masters would be the ones really voting for them) and that is how they came up with the three fifths compromise which everyone looks to today and calls 'racist' when it was in fact an example of the original desire of the founding fathers to limit the powers of the south and eventually destroy slavery.
For someone who writes things like 'if you read History' you sure have a distorted view of it.
The point of a Democracy is that the majority of the people get to determine things. If you do anything to dilute the power of the majority (Electoral College, Aparthied, for example), then you're not living in a Democracy.
We don't live in a true direct democracy where the people determine things. It's a good thing too since the majority of people are not always right. If the majority of people voted tommorow for Apartheid to be reinstated would that be right simply because it was come to in a democratic process?
The ugly truth is that American politics is degenerating into race politics. Bush won the election because his pandering to Hispanics bought just enough (45%) of the Hispanic vote to kick him over the top. How did Bush pander? He initiated an amnesty program for the illegal aliens, of whom most come from Mexico and China.
Next, the politicians will need to pander to the Islamic bigots. Things will become ugly. Just look at the Netherlands. Some Islamic punk just stabbed a renowned film director to death for daring to criticize Islam.
God damn the Hispanics, the Chinese, and the Islamic pigs.
So "geographically" is meaningless in this case.
Again, land does not vote. Only people vote.
So comparing the 2-dimensional areas is meaningless.
For the third time, land does not vote. So the population of NYC is out-voting the population of the rest of the state. In other words, "democracy".
Are you familiar with the term "gerrymandering"?
How about if we break it down further so that each person gets his/her "representative vote the way that" person voted? I can support that, but I cannot support a system that would be so open to gerrymandering abuses.
So I can get you to vote Democrat in 2008 simply by standing outside your cardboard box and ranting about how evil the Democrats are and how they're hurting the upstanding Republicans of this country?
Personally, I'd focus more on issues than whether someone said something I didn't like and therefore I had to vote against what he would vote for.
Once you can be manipulated, you will be manipulated. Part of maturity is when other people's opinions do not affect your behaviour.
That election breakdown is bogus. When the IQ of a _diverse_ population (for eg, a state) averages significantly far from 100, in this case from 85 to 115, alarm bells should ring.
A simple google search reveals that this stuff was first posted after Bush/Gore and is modified for Bush/Kerry : "The person responsible for the hoax appears to be a guy named Robert Calvert who posted the data to a Mensa newsgroup back in 2002. Presumably he did make the data up."
And this: http://www.sq.4mg.com/stateIQ-income.htm has more realistic IQ figures (and 2003 salaries), ranging between a more believable 94 and 104.
Because mod points are assigned randomly, people with an agenda will always end up with some. These people will disregard anything except their agenda.
/. because /. is mostly US-based.
Mod up that which I like.
Mod down that which I don't like.
In theory, with enough moderators, the abuses will be handled by the "good" moderators mod'ing stuff back up.
As for that link, it would be considered "flamebait" or "troll" on
On a mid-eastern site, it would not.
The problem with this is that it involves a meddling govermnet imposing its own idea of "fair" on people whether or not they agree. In reality, those best determined to decide if a trade is "fair" are those involved in the trade. They are free to go elsewhere if it is not "fair"
"...we don't allow (well, at least many) people to starve in the streets"
Yet, the minimum wage encourages this, by forcing companies to fire people. People's wages thus go from $17,000 a year to nothing because minimum wage increases are primarily a government disincentive for keeping people employed in low-value jobs. That might not be a problem for you, or for the rich legislators who make these decisions without any idea of what they are doing, but, you know, it might count as a loss to the fired worker. Ever consider that?
"True, but you fail to understand the effects on society which are caused by a low min wage"
I understand the effects fully. You get rid of these problems by getting government out of it entirely.
"We could eliminate all of the low wage subsisities which allow for a low 'market driven' wage"
Once there are subsidies, the wage is not at is actual (market-driven) value.
" for (well, at least most) Republicians"
Can't we discuss economic effects without resorting to comical and false ideological/partisan insults?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Have you been around our nation lately? I know in my state (NC), which is known for both agriculture AND tech stuff, I know at least 50 farmers. Probably 1 out of every 10 people you meet will be farmers.
Your state != the entire nation
Jay | http://oldos.org
And all the number show about the same
49/50 - effectively equal
52/47
54/46
52/46
44/55
Why is that last number so different from all the others? Why did Bush drop 8 points and Kerry gain 9 points amongst the most educated segment when the other segments are effectively equal? Normally you wouldn't see that big of a change, particularly when the change between high school grad and college grad was only 1 point.
That isn't the question. Since those people were uninformed about the international issues, why would they be correctly informed on the domestic issues?
Which is why going to a "black church" would be "outreach" while going to a "church" (notice the missing "black") would not.
They aren't "making law from teh bench". They are performing their Constitutional role. 3 branches.
1 to make the laws
1 to enforce the laws
1 to judge
They are judging.
So far, if a marriage is legal and recognized in one state, all other states recognize it. That has been previously established. The judges are not doing anything different.
All law is a "social agenda". Therefore, it is their place.
http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_E
Thank you for making it crystal clear why the Democrats lost not only the presidential election, but also seats in both houses of Congress. The extreme and insulting intolerance of the liberals in the Democratic party towards anyone of faith is precisely why we've been driven out of the party. This is supposed to be a land of religious freedom, but if you're religious, you're not made to feel welcome in the Democratic party. You fools! Your bigotry, hatred and discrimination against us has been your demise!
I agree. One of the Democratic strategists was talking about this the other night, and they're shooting themselves in the foot. They call the President dumb, yet he went to Yale. How does this make Joe Regular who went to community college feel? And they seem to spin their agenda with "If you don't agree, you must be stupid." That's not how you win over people, that's how you alienate them.
I grew up in a "red state" but currently live in a "blue state" and the amount of pure hate I hear from my friends towards people in the "red states" is just astounding. Sure, people in the "red state" always thought the people in the "blue states" were a bit weak and high on themselves, but it was never a feeling of hatred.
These are, of course, displaying different information.
The picture you've linked to is displaying county-by-county presidential preference percentages, which is totally fascinating.
The picture in the story displays county-by-county presidential victors by population, which is also totally fascinating.
Can these guys collaborate or something? I kindof want to see the nighttime lights superimposed on the purple map.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Or is it only offensive when it is against someone you like?
Look up "Ann Coulter".
Look up "Rush Limbaugh".
And what issues were those? I usually find that people such as yourself are more than slightly confused on the issues.
Thanks. Apparently, you are one of those who thinks that it is not really "Exploitation!" or "Oppression!" if you have to go out of your way to convince someone they are oppressed or exploited. They even have buzzwords for this: "raising class consciousness".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The rich are included in the working class. The vast majority of the rich got rich through working, and they get rich by working.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The only reason the rhetoric would be a factor would be if someone voted for Bush because s/he did not like the rhetoric from Kerry. Not "partly". But because of it.
In other words, a puppet.
"after the election". It's kind of hard to influence a vote before the election by saying something after the election.
Yes, you've already said that. But you have a little problem detailing which issues you agree with and which issues you disagree with from Kerry.
Emphasis added. Or there may have been none.
I'm willing to grant the existence of puppets. But you claim that Kerry lost because lots of puppets voted Republican.
"But the survey did not ask those questions."
He was just making a comment about something that has been shown to be true.
A Saudi friend of mine met a woman here in the U.S. who was very interested in him. She asked him where Saudi Arabia was, and found that she did not even know the location of his continent. This dampened any possibility of romance.
As much as I'd prefer to go to a direct election that cuts out the popular election, what happens if you get an election as close as Florida 2000 nation wide. A recall would require every precinct nation-wide were there was any doubt of the count to be recounted, because every vote everywhere would have to be verified who knows how many times.
Senators weren't directly elected by the people until the 1920's.
And that was probably a mistake. The original idea was to combine the advantages of being a small country (government is closer to and more accountable to the people) with the advantages of being a big country (you can't easily be conquered). The constitution set up a by a group of SOVEREIGN states that would continue to do most of the governing and which had very few constitutional limits on their powers. While the central FEDERAL government would jointly handle defense, foreign affairs and any interstate governance that came up. The central government itself was set up half as a democratic government of the people (The House of Representatives with proportional representation) and half as a federation of sovereign states treated equally (The senate where every state gets two senators) - with the Presidency a little of both: an elector for each senators and representative allocated as the state government decides.
The direct election of senators screws all that up... State governments no longer have representation at the federal government and their "sovereignty" is now a joke - an empty platitude - the federal government is seen as the one with unlimited governmental power and the states as limited. The federal government is seen as the source and the states as the recipients of power. The states are quickly becoming little more than administrative subdivisions by which the federal government exerts it's authority. And it's not like the direct election of senators is really any more "democratic" since Montana has the same two senators that California has - something that made sense when California and Montana were perceived as two equal states despite their unequal populations.
Here is another nice graphical display of the results, county by county. Takes a little wind out of the sails of those who claim the country is so divided. There is a lot of purple on this map!
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
two 3d maps similar to the linked visualization. But instead of population, I'd like to see local tv companies (not channels), and a weighted figure of cable penetration and number of cable channels.
I think access to information plays a large role. And in the urban south, there's a kind of network effect which reinforces some of Rush's BS and allows it to survive in the cities. And a similar kind of thing happens in the democratic cities, where things like women making 76 cents on the dollar take hold.
The mechanics of how the super-rich held sway over the political process have not changed, except that distribution is far more efficent. People construct "truth" the same. And barring some sort of Teddy Rossevelt I think this election will come to be seen as the beginning of the end for the American century. Unbelievable. All for two guys kissing.
I would guess that she would not have (that is, she would consider herself informed) simply because she did no understand how much she did not know and it probably wasn't important to her.
It is easy to consider yourself "informed" when you don't know much. Which is why it is difficult to evaluate whether you yourself are "informed" or not.
How is it helpful that the minimum wage encourages (and result in) McDonald's cutting back on employees?
"Welllll, the only way a union can be truly effective is if everybody joins"
Is that a version of "you are with us, or you are against us"? Tough. Pressure groups like the NRA, Sierra Club, ACLU, etc are quite effective, and no-one is forced to join them. Making the union membership voluntary keeps the union accountable to its members.
"If only a handful of workers are in the union, how do they go on strike?"
I guess there is no reason to go on strike, then, if hardly anyone wants to do it?
"Collective bargaining only helps if everyone is bargaining"
But it certainly does not "help" the person who is forced into it even when they do not want to be involved.
"Don't get me wrong. I believe the unions are corrupt by an large, and serve mostly to benefit themselves. But they have their uses"
I agree, but only when they are legitimate organizations (no-one forced to join).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Come to think of it, the John Birch Society can only be truly effective if everyone is forced to join, right? So let's force everyone to join it. Then it will be REALLY effective, right?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It's a Purple Country not red or blue.
It is not arguable that there are many things wrong with the direction the country has been going. Do you disagree with any of the 100 reasons in this article? 100 Facts and 1 Opinion -- The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration.
You gave a very angry response, but you did not answer the question: Did you read the books about the Bush Administration? Did you read even one? If you didn't, then you cannot be informed.
If you don't like the theory presented, and it is not proven, for sure, then advance a theory of your own.
The problem is that there are two cultures, exactly as you demonstrate in your comment. ALL the politicians belong to the urban culture. The people who live in the rural areas live in the rural culture. People from the rural culture do not detect when people of the urban culture are lying. Karl Rove has found a method of manipulation that is not detected by people from the rural culture. He and George Bush are chronic liars, and people from the rural culture think they are Christians!
Your problem, however, is not with my comment. Your problem is with the urban culture. There is a cultural breakdown happening in the United States, and, if you will investigate, the people who are discriminating against you are probably not getting along with other people, either. Their complaints against you are just an excuse.
I will grant that it is a pretty good editorial. Factual? Much of the wording is so loaded it is hard to tell. However, this is what I expect. "The Nation" magazine is an opinion journal, and is not noted for being level-headed and factual. It is, however, known for making forceful ideological arguments. This is hardly an ideological observation on my part.
The same situation is true of "The Limbaugh Letter" or "National Review" on the Right. These are ideological arguments aimed at those who have the ideology of the writer. They won't convert anyone.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
WRT the "representative system", the electors were never intended to do the critical decision making of who should become president. They were the best physical mechanism we had for getting the states to pick the president.If you look at our system from the liberal perspective, we have one wolf and two sheep voting on what's for dinner. And the wolf wins anyway. Diminishing the power of the executive branch is the only way to stop the wolf from eating the sheep, and that is what "checks and balances" are for, and that is totally unrelated to the electoral college.
I am not advocating the abolition of the electoral college. It is a system. It's our system and it's worked pretty well for us, but you have not explained why it is inherently safer, fairer, or better that a popular vote, and I have not explained the opposite.Yeah. Obviously not going to happen.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The less educated have stayed behind. Those who live in rural counties are less likely to read, and therefore are not well-informed.
According to your logic, I would be considered legally retarded for moving from an urban area (Arlington, Tx - pop 500K) to a rural area (Palmer, Tx - pop 2K) than the people who already lived in Palmer.
I wonder why I am less intelligent for moving to an area where I get three times the land and twice the house for half the money? I pay less in property taxes, I have an actual affect on the way my town is run. I save money on gas as I am getting better gas mileage even though I drive a little further. I also have less stress as a result of the beautiful environment and laid-back lifestyle of rural living, making me a more productive citizen and worker, making my company more money and stimulating the economy.
The myth that us rednecks is just too dumb to know bettah is just that... a myth. Just like the myth that all college professors are liberal commie tree-huggers. And the myth that all African-Americans are Democrat. And the myth that all Christians are Republicans.
Must I go on?
... elipses...
I did not say anything about people who migrate in the opposite direction.
I did not intend to say that rural people are not intelligent. My most important point is that only a very small percentage read non-fiction books.
It is a theory. If you have a better theory for why the distribution of votes is so obviously skewed, please mention it.
Okay, I'm still working on the theory. Maybe this is a better way to express it:
The problem seems to be that there are two cultures. ALL the politicians belong to the urban culture. The people who live in the rural areas live in the rural culture. People from the rural culture do not detect when people of the urban culture are lying. Karl Rove has found a method of manipulation that is not detected by people from the rural culture. He and George Bush are chronic liars, and people from the rural culture think they are Christians! This method of manipulation depends on rural people not being informed, which depends on them not reading non-fiction books about politics.
Urban concentration of liberals is due to co-dependance on others who think the same way. It gets to the point where no moderate or conservative ideas or thinkers are allowed to exist within that concentration. Your ideas are no longer your own, then, as you have become part of a veritable hive of leftist - near-socialist - yes people for the Democratic Party. Since you are no longer able to concieve any other point of view than that of the hive, then all other opinions must be wrong, right?
What was the quote in '72? Nixon was pulling ahead significanlty, and someone said that it must be false because "no one I know voted for him".
And just so you know: Yes, people in rural areas do read non-fiction. Unfortunately, none of the books you listed fall into that category. I wouldn't be the only one to take a Cotton Gin repair manual over that tripe any day of the week...
... elipses...
I heard about a study a couple of years ago (kudos to the person who finds a link for it).
Basically they looked at the rate of growth of government under various party control combinations for the congress and presidency.
The fastest growth occured under Republican full control, the next fastest was Democrat full control, a distant 3rd was Republican president, Democratic congress, and the slowest rate of government growth was a Democratic president with a Republican congress. And the rankings were invarient under subtraction of defence related growth.
Niether party is for small government, gridlock is for small government. If you want small government, I suggest you vote democrat in '06.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
How many members of Congress does it take to stop a bill from becoming law?
Diminishing the power of the executive branch is the only way to stop the wolf from eating the sheep, and that is what "checks and balances"
We agree there but I have not seen a president in my lifetime do that, and John Kerry would not have any more than Bush..
I am not advocating the abolition of the electoral college. It is a system. It's our system and it's worked pretty well for us, but you have not explained why it is inherently safer, fairer, or better that a popular vote, and I have not explained the opposite.
I will take a stab at it:
1) Because we are a federal Republic the president does not, and was never intended to represent the people. He was intended to represent the states. Given this how can the states have fair representation without the EC?
It has also been shown that minorities are descriminated against far less in a large city then main street rural USA. So one could argue that they didn't 'go' to the city looking for work but were 'leaving' small town USA to get away from it. Zeelan.
No... the hatrid is justified... this president hasn't lifted a finger to unite this country and has done nothing but fan the flames. Has it ever dawned on you, that democrats are pictured as the doves? The people that are pussies... whinny? Now they are very very angry... and all you can do is piss on them how their 'angry' voice only pushes people away. Well if the far right had any interest in cooling things down they would have 'worked' with democrats instead of pissing on them for years now. An angry dove is far far more dangerious then an angry chikenhawk.
If you took a look at the map for a bit longer, you may notice that your fix is not required to make the map correct. Based on the height of Cook County in Illinois compared to the height of the others, you would realize that the map is plotting the height of the advantage in the county, not just the population colored by winner. That's why Cook County (advantage of 805,857 votes from 1,984,508 total) is higher than Los Angeles County (advantage of 715,577 votes from 2,657,113 total.) -Jayde
What's a sig?
While looking at a NY county map, I was wondering why there is a dark blue county (Tompkins) in the middle of the state. A quick search answered my question -- Tompkins County is the home of Cornell Univeristy. I then looked at some other states, and noticed the same thing: in Michigan both Washtenaw (Univeristy of Michigan) and Ingham (Michigan State) counties are blue. In Indiana, Monroe County (Indiana University) is one of a few blue spots. Champaign County in Illinois is relatively blue compared to surrounding counties. Dane County in Wisconsin (Univeristy of Wisconsin) is bluer than its neighbors. It still worked in Colorado (Boulder), but not in Oklahoma or Texas.
My only problem with Microsoft is the severity of bugs in their software.
The way things are now the people in rural areas have more of a voice on a natinoal scale then people in urban areas. I'm not talking about the presidential election, I'm talking about the way congressional distorics are divided.
It is very common for people in a state to vote 60% democratic and have only 50% reprasentation in congrass. Or an even more extream example... 40% of the population votes democratic and 85% of their reprasentatives are republican.
Is this good? No... it just makes the people in more urban areas underreprasented. As this effect gets more and more extream, read texas, there will in the end be a very nasty backlash.
As in... this doesn't work... rural areas now have 2 to 3 times the voice of more urban areas. This is inharintly unfair. So we are going to hold general elections and strip the rural areas of 'any' voice at all.
Zeelan.
How many members of Congress does it take to stop a bill from becoming law?
Oh. I thought you were talking about the people's variously proportioned ability to select the president. Yes, I see that our bicameral system prevents legislation that is harmful to one and only one popular minority: people who live in states with small populations.
We agree there but I have not seen a president in my lifetime do that, and John Kerry would not have any more than Bush.
I only said that in reference to your defense of the electoral college system as an improvement to direct democracy, where the wolves vote to eat the sheep. Diminished executive power protects the sheep, not the electoral college. I did think the two candidates had different opinions on the role of the executive, but that is totally irrelevant to anything we're discussing.
1) Because we are a federal Republic the president does not, and was never intended to represent the people. He was intended to represent the states. Given this how can the states have fair representation without the EC?
I believe my point is unscathed. "Because we are a federal republic" does not explain why we should be fairer to states or to people. It explains why we are, but not why we should be. I certainly don't know.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
It's interesting that the more accurate, less "hoaxy" chart still comes out the same way. I also find it interesting that District of Columbia is one of the lowest on the IQ chart -- must be all those politicians bringing the average down :)
Interesting. A Slashdot editor just subtracted 2 points from the moderation of the parent comment. It's easy to see it was an editor because editor moderation does not change the moderation statistics at the bottom.
I suggest that everyone take some time to understand how much America is becoming despised in the rest of the world. To the Slashdot editor: What I have said is mild and very well documented compared to what is being said outside the United States.
The Daily Mirror is one of the United Kingdom's largest newspapers. Here is their front page on the day after the election (PDF file): Daily Mirror Headline: How could 59,054,087 people be so dumb?.
Excerpts:
This once-great country... [is now] a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.
The self-righteous, gun-totin', military lovin', sister marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport ownin' red-necks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land "free and strong".
Today is a sad day for the world, but it's even sadder for the millions of intelligent Americans embarrassed by a gung-ho leader and backed by a banal electorate,...
Full text:
UK Daily Mirror Editorial:
GOD HELP AMERICA
THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world.
This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation.
This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes from their own sidewalks and looking outward towards the rest of humanity.
And for a few hours early yesterday, when the exit polls predicted a John Kerry victory, it seemed they had.
But then the horrible, inevitable truth hit home. They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas.
A self-serving, dim-witted, draft-dodging, gung-ho little rich boy, whose idea of courage is to yell: "I feel good," as he unleashes an awesome fury which slaughters 100,000 innocents for no other reason than greed and vanity.
A dangerous chameleon, his charming exterior provides cover for a power-crazed clique of Doctor Strangeloves whose goal is to increase America's grip on the world's economies and natural resources.
And in foolishly backing him, Americans have given the go-ahead for more unilateral pre-emptive strikes, more world instability and most probably another 9/11.
Why else do you think bin Laden was so happy to scare them to the polls, then made no attempt to scupper the outcome?
There's only one headline in town today, folks: "It Was Osama Wot Won It."
And soon he'll expect pay-back. Well, he can't allow Bush to have his folks whoopin' and a-hollerin' without his own getting a share of the fun, can he?
Heck, guys, I hope you're feeling proud today.
To the tens of millions who voted for John Kerry, my
Sounds like you're trying to rationalize your way out of the data. Had the education data leaned more your way, you most likely would have embraced it.
This is just my opinion, mind you.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
And they seem to spin their agenda with "If you don't agree, you must be stupid." That's not how you win over people, that's how you alienate them.
Agreed, and you would think if the people running the Democratic campaign had half of an IQ point, they would notice that part of the reason why there is so much animosity towards America now is because of the attitude of Bush, Rumsfeld, etc. that alienated Europeans.
The Democrats ran a campaign where they drew attention to the lack of a multilateral approach taken by the Bush administration. Yet, they completely ignored the underlying reasons for this lack of multilateralism and repeated the same mistakes, in a slightly different way.
The Democrats need to take a serious look at why they did as poorly as they did in this election... and the last one, for that matter.
Modern conservatives hold the belief of independence from the state
That's a nice thought and theory on why people vote that way, but if you look at how much is paid per capita in taxes vs. how much is received in federal expenditures, the people in the red states are predominantly on the receiving end of the taxes paid by the people in the blue states:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxingspending.html
I'd really like to see a map overlay, but it looks to me like they vote like vampires...because they certainly aren't opposed to welfare.
They also seem way too interested in controlling what happens inside other peoples' bedrooms and bodies.
I have this vision of a world of trained software agents, busily buzzing about your business, casting votes on your behalf along the lines you've trained them to...
Then I look closer and see every one of them sports a spiffy "Microsoft" logo, and I wake up screaming...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Well, Nixon crippled the Presidency for quite some time...
Oh, wait. You meant on purpose...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Why can't the rest of the world realize that the majority of U.S. citizens simply don't fucking care what they think?
:| See how much I care :|
We. Don't. Care.
Don't care, don't care, don't care.
This is us not caring.
Look
We don't care and we won't care.
If we cared what the rest of the world thought, we would have elected a guy that would kiss the worlds ass. We decided instead to elect the guy that will KICK THE WORLDS ASS!
In the immortal words of Howard Dean: YEEEEAAAAHH!
... elipses...
I suspect that, fundamentally, this sentiment is shared by the Bush administration, and a large percentage of people who voted for Bush.
I've studied anger for perhaps 30 years, and I have come to the conclusion that it is a kind of mental illness.
This just proves to me that there are still a ton of stupid liberals in this country (there have to be at least some of you who can go two minutes without utilizing a catch phrase). Bush was the first president in history to be hounded by special interest groups EVEN BEFORE he took the oath. When 9/11 happened, the first thing the Dems sought to do was to figure out a way to demean Bush so that he wouldn't be able to own the issue. And he's just supposed to tolerate this bullshit?
What has Bush done? Well, if you claim he's been pissing on Democrats, it seems to get the job done. He helped to increase congressional power during his midterm election, and did it again with his re-election. As a matter of fact, pissing on Democrats as a way to gain power has worked for every Republican since Reagan. Try to keep up.
So go ahead, be angry, you see yourselves as doves, when the rest of us see you as the asses you really are. And watch out for the yellow rain, lest you lose the rest of the Senate seats that the Yellow Dogs hold precariously. You're only 6 from being given a canoe and a map of Shit Creek for you to start traversing.
This is completely untrue. Under a popular vote system, a state's influence in the election depends on how many voters it has. In the Electoral College, a state gets a vote for each member of Congress (which is a bad idea in itself, but I won't go into that now) -- and the Congressional apportionment is affected by the number of slaves! Obviously, the EC had a built-in bias towards slave states.
Yes, it was. James Madison even admitted it.
Please... Everybody leaves main street rural USA to find work.
I'd also posit to say that minorities are just as discriminted against in large cities as anywhere else... but the descriminators are held to a higher standard of behavior in large cities for fear of recrimination and loss of substantial opportunity, whereas in small towns in rural areas there is less to lose and therefore less ability to enforce social mores.
In summary, one could not argue your statement... it is unsupportable.
Minorities took up residence in large cities during a time when racism and descrimination were broadly held institutions... back in the 20's and 30's and even earlier for various reasons that I won't go into because they are well known and were then world wide accepted practices. Since then they have created communities with great tradition and both good and bad circumstance. Those communities grew insularly and welcomed new members from the outside and became focal points of minority culture and heritage within the United States... black Americans, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Indian, Persian etc. Hispanics from Mexico are newcomers at least outside of Callifornia and the Southwest.. they all have established strongholds within each major city...
I don't remember seeing too many Puerto Ricans in small town America... or Chinese... black Americans are unique in their history here, especially in the Southern States, but they aren't moving around too much.. Atlanta born black Americans tend to stay in Atlanta, same for other major cities in the south and same for most major cities in the north and west, ie: Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, etc.. their families moved there several generations ago and only in the last two generations has there been much movement away from these new 'family homes' as education and economic prosperity have begun to look like favorable and potential opportunities for those with the will to succeed.
You show your ignorance of social demographics and ethnic trends... are you simply repeating something you heard or is it something you assume to be true because it fits your 'defend the poor victims' world view?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I am from Alabama and I am just outside of DC right now.
I will admit that people up here are very rude (they have no manners), but they are much less racist towards blacks and minorities.
I am guessing that you are a white guy. A white guy gets treated pretty well in the south. If you were a foreigner, then you might see things a bit differently.
I would gladly trade the bigotry of the south for the rude behavior of the north.
PS: I heard far, far more trailer jokes in the south then I hear up here. People don't talk about trailers very much at all up here.
Well if the far right had any interest in cooling things down they would have 'worked' with democrats instead of pissing on them for years now. An angry dove is far far more dangerious then an angry chikenhawk.
Just as those angry Democrats reached out to Republicans angry about gay marraige and partial birth abortion?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
They havent' succeeded at too much in the way of moral leglislation, except pushing abstinence only teaching programs and funding religious groups under the "faith based initiatives". However GW wants a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BASED ON MORAL ISSUES, you noticed that? Stem cells, ring a bell? You don't think these things point to a mindset of leglislating morality? Head, meet sand.
Please don't consider this flamebait.
I just don't understand. If you don't have morals, what do you have? Murder is illegal because it is morally wrong. Robbing a person is illegal because it is morally wrong. Without morals, there is no such thing as right and wrong.
As I've noted, where I come from Morality is a measure of how you treat people. Not how you live your own life, unless you are hurting other people; how you live your life is your own choice. I can see why you are confused; one of my points is that this use of the word "morals" is not morality at all. It's traditionalism and bigotry pretending to be morality. Generally religion is what blurs the line, but it's not the only reason.
Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.
They have ignored the Genova Convention...
Too much FF7, eh?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The values you sight are indeed valuable and they do "count" for many christians. I'd love to have a national health care program that was affordable. I'd love to see an end to poverty. Those would be great things. I don't know why the republican leadership does not see those as values. However, I will let you in on a little secreat. Some values are more important than others.
Like free ITMS songs are valuable, but not as valuable a national health care system.
Ok, get the idea? Now, lets continue.
National Health care is valuable, but not as valuable as an end to abortion.
Now, not everyone beleives that abortion is murder, but you should be able to grasp why Bush won on values. The values that he cares about are more valuable to Americans that the values that Kerry was promoting. I really hate the War in Iraq and many other bush polocies, but he represents the only hope of ending the sensless slaughter of the innocent.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"The constituency does not make the entire party, but it certainly does influence the party platform, and that is almost as bad in this case."
And yet when the biases around here are pointed out. We get to listen to things like "We are all different people saying different things.".
Maybe I should apply your argument to this place? See how well that holds up?
I think what you meant to say (sans caps) is "GW wants a constitutional amendment based on religious interpretation." That to me seems like a more apt description of the position in question. There are moral arguments on both sides of the stem cell and gay marriage debates, but those have been lost in the debate.
Stem cell was a code word for abortion in this presidential race. And Americans have moved on from denying rights based on gender and skin color to denying rights based on sexual orientation.
Such is the way of national progress.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Personally, I think that method B would be better and here's why. Method A results in rural counties having a larger volume per citizen on the map than urban counties. This causes rural counties to 'look' much larger (and therefore influential) than they actually are.
to avoid confusion i will explain in more detail.
1) Assume that the 'size' of a county should be proportional to it's population. When talking about votes in an election, this makes the most sense.
2) assume that we want (in a 3 dimensional image) volume to represent apparent 'size' (and therefore 'population'). If we wanted population to be expressed by anything else (area or color) we'd use a different type of map.
method A, where height = population. Volume = area * height = area * population volume is very UNproportional to population.
method B, where height = population density. Volume = area * desnsity = area * population/area = population.
so B gives us the propotionaltiy that we want. but I don't think they used that method in this map. Which is a shame. The main reason for a map like this is to get a better feel for the distribution of votes as the standard 2d map makes the election look like a landslide when it was actually quite close. But actually rural (i.e. mostly red) couties are still highly overrepresented in this map.
The U.S. government has killed at least 3,000,000 people since the end of the 2nd World War. (There are credible estimates of 6,000,000.) None of those people were threatening the United States. There are very serious problems in the United States. However, most people don't want to educate themselves about the problems. They want the government to lie to them.
If you truly love your country, you will not just enjoy the advantages, you will be there for your country when there are problems.
The view of many people in the U.S. is becoming dangerously different then the view of the rest of the world. George W. Bush is easily recognized for what he is in the rest of the world. Here people want to believe the lies.
Here's an example from The Daily Star, in Bangladesh: Ohio has failed the world.
Here's a quote from the article: "How can America be so ignorant? How can half of the most prominent nation on earth vote for an outright liar like George W Bush?"
If you don't know George W. Bush is a chronic liar, you just don't understand U.S. politics, and you don't understand people.
Hasn't Bush on several occassions called the US the world's greatest democracy though?
"Yes becuase of joe and 50 of his freinds decide to screw jane and 48 of her friends out of something, in a democracy they can. So instead they built a Represenative system with chekcs and balances."
Maybe I've misunderstood your system, but the electoral college didn't stop 56 million Bush voters to "screw over" 53 million Kerry voters this time, did it?
In a true democracy, a majority would never be able to vote away basic rights for a minority.
I was about to make this map (a cartogram in shades of purple, but fortunately someone saved me the work.
Looking at the various Election Results maps got me thinking about the whole Red vs. Blue thing.
Notice that there are no likely terrorism targets in any of the Red states? Sure lots of things to fly a plane into, but where's the symbolism? There's no WTC, Empire State Building, Pentagon, Statue of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridge, Sears Tower, etc... So, of course the red state residents are willing to re-elect Bush, where's the risk for them? What's the likelihood that they'll be the target of the backlash from his disasterous foreign policy?
Terrorists will surely pick on NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco before they target a city like Dayton or Des Moines.
If EVERY states split their electoral votes, it would be Bush by a landslide. (reference: See dozens of maps broken down by county/boroughs).
Be thankful of the electoral college for protecting the Democratic minority.
The DNC truly have their work cut out for 2008 if more states joined Nebraska and Maine in their electoral splitting effort.
Can someone explain why the US has the colour scheme the wrong way round? Surely the left (i.e. socialists) should be red?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They are earned by doing work for the value of the wage.
:
WRONG, the work done is worth MORE than the wage. Always. If it was not, there would be no incentive for the employer to hire that particular person (he would get zero profit).
Things really get messed up if someone outside sets the value of the wage without regard to the value of the work.
Not necessarily without regard. The cost of labour has to be lower than it's value, leaving a profit magin for the employer.
Forcing companies to overpay workers at some government-set wage that has nothing to do with the work also demeans real work and turns the whole affair into a welfare program: a forced handout. Every time the government arbitrarily sets the mininum wage to be higher, thousands of people end up losing their jobs, as it forces companies to try to get by without low-end jobs.
The particular workforce as a whole may well profit from the minimum wage. Remember what you have learned about the monopoly power. Since the government has the power to influence the price, it can increase the total income of workers.
When I point it out to people who favor the "minimum wage", the typical response is that these jobs are worthless: a poor person is better off getting nothing, as compared to getting $17,000 a year.
I have no idea how you arrived at $17,000. My current data calculates as follows: a minimum wage, $5.15 an hour earned in a 40-hour workweek, returns an annual minimum salary of $10,700 (52*40*5.15), which anyway places a single parent of two below the poverty level.
Reverse calculating your proposal returns an $8.17 an hour wage. ($17,000 / 52 / 40 = $8.17) That's a lot, and it means that you assume that the job market gives people better welfare than the present minimum wage. If that were true, the minimum wage would be
1) socially unnecessary
2) below the market equilibrium and therefore
3) economically ineffective.
As long as you are arbitrarily setting wages without regard to value, why not set the minimum wage to $1,000 an hour? It will make everyone a millionaire. Why stop at a low value?
Because the minimum wage is supposed to be just high enough to allow for a decent living: food, shelter, necessities. Duh!
If we set the minimum wage at such a high level, as you proposed, companies would have to rise the product prices to keep up with their increased labour cost (e.g. huge inflation), which would necessitate wage hikes for other jobs of greater value. There will always be a wage differential.
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The point of a law is that it protects its citizens from harm. Laws many times are derived from our morallity; murder and robery. But what about speeding. I would sincerely doubt that Americans are morally against speeding. Why do we have laws against it? Because it stops people from getting hurt physically and monetarily(through increased insurance premiums).
I think our government should be creating laws that helps our productivty and other means to keep our economy movinng forward.
If drugs hurt worker productivity - illegal. Increase in funding of school leads to better productivity and economic growth- legal and deserves funding. Let everything else that does not stimulate our economy be forced into the non-profit or for-profit segment of our economy.