02.09.09
Posted in Maps, Politics at 4:11 pm by ducky
I have added the 2004 presidential election results to my politics/demographics map. Loading that data also let me provide a map of the difference between the 2004 and 2008 election:
2008 v. 2004 presidential election results
The map is red in counties that voted more Republican in 2008 and blue for counties that voted more Democratic. I think it is interesting that Arizona — McCain’s home state — pops out very clearly, while Illinois does not.
Anthony Robinson did a heroic job pulling out all the 2004 data, but there were a lot of problems with the data. I presume he had to work with preliminary data, while I could get final data. I scraped information from AZ, CA, GA, IN, LA, MO, NC, NY, TX, and VA, so I have high confidence in those states. I want to look a little more closely at Illinois — I need to be in Windows to get at that data, ugh. Alaska is a pain because it is done by house district and not by county, so I will get that in a little later.
A friend of mine had seen a similar map in the New York Times, and was surprised that Louisiana was so red. He thought that it was odd that, given the snafus after Katrina, it would have been strongly anti-Republican. I thought perhaps the data was just incorrect, but no — I verified the Louisiana data. My best guess is that the white people outside New Orleans saw a lot of images about people behaving badly in New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath. Those people were predominantly black, and I can believe that the white people nearby associated bad behaviour with “black people” instead of with “desperate poor people” or “strung-out drug addicts without a fix” or even “criminals”. They might be more inclined to vote against Obama for being black.
I actually find Oklahoma odder: Oklahoma has a relatively high percentage of Native Americans. In many places, they voted very strongly for Obama. Not in Oklahoma, they didn’t.
I also added information on governors’ and senators’ party affiliations because it was really easy to do so.
Update1: Looking at the red zones, I notice that there are very hard edges on the redness at the northern boundaries of Arkansas and Tennesee. Perhaps it isn’t really that Obama did particularly poorly there, but that Kerry did particularly well, perhaps by association with Arkansan Bill Clinton and Tenneseean Al Gore? It would be interesting to compare Obama’s margins with Jimmy Carter’s, but I don’t think it will be easy to get the 1976 election results by county.
Update2: I did find better data — all the way back to 1960! I blogged about it.
Update3: I found someone in Oklahoma. He said that Oklahoma has a low educational level, and that while many people claimed Native heritage, many of the people were only a minority Native, and were culturally white.
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02.08.09
Posted in Maps, Politics at 5:23 pm by ducky
I made a new map of where the stimulus spending was forecast to go. I pulled the data from the White House Web site a few days ago, so note that it is for the proposed stimulus bill, not the bill as it passed. Also, it shows per capita amounts, using 2006 population figures from Wikipedia, so there will be a minor error due to the years being different.
I didn’t make a lot of noise about this one because I hope to do another, better one when the numbers are more stable.
Jobs created or saved per capita
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01.22.09
Posted in Politics at 12:06 pm by ducky
From time to time since the election, I have burst into tears. Oftentimes it hits me without warning.
Today, I burst into tears twice. The first was at seeing a picture of Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and their wives in a group hug with Obama’s inauguration on the TV in the background. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were the two who gave the “black power” salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympic Games. That picture really gave me a sense that we have closed a chapter in our national history. The story of racism in the United States has not ended, but a chapter has closed. Slammed shut.
The second time, I could only eke out a “Honey!” Jim asked what, but I couldn’t answer because I was convulsed with sobs. Jim rushed to me, concerned. All I could manage was, “He signed it!” and point at the article saying that Obama had signed an anti-torture executive order. Thank you, Mr. President. I have been waiting for this for a long time.
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01.20.09
Posted in Gay rights, Politics at 4:56 pm by ducky
Watching the inauguration today, I couldn’t help but be reminded of gay pride parades.
There are very few mass events where everybody is really happy. Most large gatherings are sporting events, and there is almost always an undercurrent of hostility somewhere. If nothing else, the losing team’s fans are unhappy — usually. (I went to the 1994 Men’s World Cup match between the US and Brazil. Everybody knew that the Brazilians were way better than the USA, so in this case, the losers didn’t care that they were losing. Furthermore, it was the Brazilians! Their spirit of joy and fun was infectious.)
Maybe rock concerts are also places of fun sometimes, but I never had much fun at rock concerts. The band was always too far away to see and yet too loud.
The C-SPAN feed of the inauguration didn’t have any commentary, but instead just broadcast the ambient noise of the crowd. For two miles, almost all you could hear was people screaming their heads off as the motorcade (and microphone) moved down the route.
Ten years ago, when I marched in the SF Pride Parade with PFLAG, I experienced two miles of people cheering their hearts out. The straight public was not as accepting of gay and lesbian people back then, and thus (I guess) it meant a lot to see straight people standing up for gay rights. So they cheered.
In recent years, the cheers for PFLAG have been polite, but not overwhelming like before. That’s a good thing — that means that public acceptance is greater, so PFLAG isn’t as needed. The cheers for PFLAG were a reflection of how bad things were elsewhere, and how PFLAG represented a beacon of hope. It is a very good sign that the cheers for PFLAG are tamer now.
Similarly, the cheers for Obama reflected how bad things were. It would not have been so moving for African-Americans if African-Americans had not faced such brutal ill-treatment in the US. It would not have been so moving for me, a white person, if I had thought that G. W. Bush had done a competent job.
I hope that at the inauguration of the next non-white president, the crowds are much smaller and tamer.
Postscript: Apparently there were exactly zero arrests at the inauguration. I once asked a cop at the SF Pride Parade what it was like to work the parade. His answer: “Four hundred thousand people, no arrests, no injuries, what’s not to like?” (I had just gotten off of my shift as a Safety Monitor, and had first-hand knowledge that “no injuries” was a sligh exaggeration, but the injuries were all very mild — e.g. people skinning their knees, not e.g. getting beaten, hit by cars, falling 30 feet, etc.)
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Posted in Politics at 1:59 pm by ducky
Do not take my silence on Caroline Kennedy as an endorsement. I’ve just been busy.
I am almost as offended that Caroline Kennedy is being considered for New York senator as I was when McCain picked Palin. I say “almost” because Senators do not have authority to fire nuclear missles. Selecting Caroline Kennedy is merely a bad idea, not scary.
I am dismayed with my own party that they are not raising a bigger stink about her. Somehow the magic of the Kennedy name seems to be enough to quiet lots of people. Huh?
Now, I am willing to believe that being part of a political family can be useful. You do learn things at the dinner table. (My father was a professor of Physics; I was in college before I realized that not everybody drew free-body diagrams on napkins over dinner.) So Caroline Kennedy might have learned something from her father.
Except that she stopped having dinner with her father when she was six.
Maybe her mother helped instill political savvy into Caroline. I wasn’t there, I don’t know, but I never heard much about Jackie Kennedy Onassis being much into politics.
I think Sarah Palin would be much more credible as a senator. Palin’s limitations — her lack of sophistication in both foreign and national-level — made her IMHO a poor choice to represent the U.S. to the world. However, she’s held office, she understand politics, is a proven campaigner, and is strongly Alaskan. She is certainly a legitimate choice to represent Alaska to the nation. (I wouldn’t vote for her, but that’s because I don’t like her politics, not because I think she’s unqualified.)
Kennedy, sorry. I don’t see how she qualifies.
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12.09.08
Posted in Canadian life, Politics at 11:35 pm by ducky
I am baffled by a concern that seems endemic in Canada: that the US is going to steal Canadian water. The way they talk about it, it’s almost like they think there are already secret contingency plans drawn up that one more dry season in California will trigger.
This seems totally preposterous to me:
- I have never heard anyone in the US talk about routing Canadian water to the US. I remember about ten or twenty years ago, hearing people talk about a canal to Oregon, to the Columbia river, but it wasn’t something that people were taking seriously. It was sort of like how in the late seventies there were people talking about building space colonies. There were a few people thinking about the theoretical possibility, but there wasn’t any real thought that they were practical.
- Which states might run out of water? Let’s suggest California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. States in the South. Where is Canada? Way way north. Where is the closest water to California? Oregon. Don’t need to go any farther. Where is the closest water to Texas? The Mississippi. Don’t need to go any farther. What is the easiest water to get to from Arizona and New Mexico? Probably the Mississippi again. Maybe you’d object that the Mississippi water isn’t very nice by the time it gets to Louisiana. Maybe it is, but if they are out of water, they can’t be that choosy. The next place they could look would be Lake Michigan; you don’t have to go over any mountains and you don’t have to cross any international borders.
- Why should the Canadians worry about water when they could worry about oil instead? The US has a history of belligerency related to oil; I don’t know of any US belligerency related to water.
- One Canadian, in response to that question, said “Yeah, but we already sell the oil.” Yeah, but Canada could sell the water, too. And Canada has a lot more water than it has oil.
So I find it a very odd concern. I am not suggesting that Canadians should think of the US as an entirely and always consistently benevolent country. I’m sure there are things Canadians should be nervous about. But water? That is so far down on the list of things that I would worry about that I find it very odd.
To be fair, I also have heard a man from Michigan be concerned about California stealing Michigan’s water. (He went on an extended rant about how people shouldn’t live in places that required importing large quantities of natural resources. I wonder how he would enjoy winter in Michigan without large imports of fossil fuels.) Maybe they got this idea from the Canadians.
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Posted in Politics at 4:26 pm by ducky
An ad that the McCain team put together featuring Rev. Wright has surfaced, with some questioning why McCain didn’t run the ad. Deep in the dusty corners of my mind, a bored little clot of neurons is sure she knows why McCain didn’t run the Wright ad.
In my scenario, at some point early in the campaign, Obama talks to McCain about running a honorable campaign. “John”, says Obama, “let’s rise above the pettiness. Let’s agree right now, before we get really started, that our private lives should stay private. Let’s agree that our families are off-limits, and our religions are off-limits.”
In my imagination, McCain can’t believe his ears! Obama is pretty much offering him a get-out-of-jail free card! Obama is volunteering to not talk about McCain’s serial infidelity, Cindy’s drug addiction, or about how McCain’s religious intensity is um low. What a cool deal! In my head, McCain is having a hard time containing his glee as he agrees to the deal.
Later, when the Wright tapes surface, and Michelle makes a few missteps, McCain realizes that he’s been had. He got suckered, big time. In my story, he fell for it: hook, line, and sinker. McCain’s a little peeved at himself for being such a fool, but it’s emotionally easier to put the blame on Obama than to place the blame on himself. Thus McCain decides that this proves that Obama is nothing but a smooth-talking snake. (This explains why McCain sure acted like he couldn’t stand Obama.)
He can’t actually say that Obama is a smooth-talking snake, without telling the story of how McCain had gotten suckered, and that doesn’t look good on McCain. So instead he alludes to it with the “celebrity ad”: don’t trust this guy, he’s just a pretty face. But because the populace didn’t know the back story, they don’t recognize that the ad is a story of Obama’s treachery. So the ad fizzles.
And Wright is radioactive, but in my story, McCain can’t talk about Wright without going back on his word. (And if he goes back on his word, then he has to admit to himself that he’s no better than that treacherous snake Obama, so he can’t do that.) So instead, McCain uses Ayers as a proxy for Wright. They talk about Ayers over and over again hoping that somebody will make the link between Ayers and Wright. Unfortunately, when the McCain camp says, “Ayers, Ayers, Ayers, Ayers”, the populace hears, “Ayers, Ayers, Ayers, Ayers” instead of “Wright, Wright, Wright, Wright”.
Meanwhile, because I am an Obama supporter, I can paint Obama as completely innocent in this matter. In my story, I can have Obama approaching McCain with complete sincerity and noble intent, and the story still hangs together.
Now, I have no hotline to Obama’s or McCain’s brain. This is just a story that I made up to help me make sense of the world. But I like the story.
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12.08.08
Posted in Politics at 2:30 am by ducky
From James Fallow’s blog posting about Shinseki:
the first Asian-American in a military-related cabinet position
I love how we are starting to have to pile on the adjectives. It’s no longer enough to say, “the first Asian-American in a cabinet position”. (That would be Norm Mineta.)
I look forward to the day when I see something like:
the first left-handed Asian-American woman from a university in the Minnesota named to be the National Security Advisor under a Republican president
And what will be really cool is the day when they don’t even bother with any adjectives.
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12.06.08
Posted in Politics at 10:33 am by ducky
Mitch Kapor suggests that some of Obama’s pledged massive public infrastructure project be digital. While I would hesitate a little bit — I would want to make sure that it wouldn’t cannibalize projects to repair the decaying US physical infrastructure — I think it’s a really intriguing idea.
For some projects, a lot of good could be done by setting up a structure to make it easy for volunteers to contribute to. For an example near and dear to my heart, the government already provides a bunch of mapping data. However, that mapping data is incomplete and erroneous. Fixing an erroneous data point requires very local knowledge, but not much effort.
Suppose there were an iPhone app that would alert when you came close to a questionable point, and ask you to check it out. For example, if there was a street that had no name entered in the database, if you were close to/on that street, it could ping you and ask you what the name of the street was. If earlier, it had had trouble finding the location of “234 West Wilpole St, Hoopston, IL” and you live in Wilpole, the app could ping you and ask you where it is.
This will only work if you have a lot of people signed up, and the app works well. You would need some sort of public awareness campaign (which takes resources), some money to develop the application, and some money to do “customer support”.
I care a lot about map data, so naturally I think of that. However, there is probably lots of other data that it would be useful to collect.
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12.01.08
Posted in Politics, Random thoughts at 2:58 pm by ducky
Wow. Obama announced his six national security advisers today, and white men were in the minority. Eric Holder and Susan Rice are not white; Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and Susan Rice are not men.
A few days ago, I read that Condoleeza Rice phoned Barak Obama twice during the Mumbai terrorist attacks and was profoundly moved by the mental image. It’s not that there haven’t been black people in positions of power before. I’m sure that Rice phoned General Powell more than once. (While I dislike almost everything about G. W. Bush, I do have to give him props for not being afraid to appoint people of colour to high positions.)
What struck me was that it was a very powerful black person in one administration phoning a very important black person in the next administration. This demonstrates that it is not tokenism, nor a fluke of one administration. It says that having people of colour in positions of high responsibility is not odd or unusual. And that’s the way it should be.
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