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 Sunday, November 7, 2004
Social Justice Before Your Very Eyes. Mark Schmitt is bored of all the Jesusland business and wants to ask the right question about religion, namely "why it is that the current flourishing of religious faith has, for the first time ever, virtually no element of social... [Matthew Yglesias]
Social justice has never been on the plates of the conservative politicians I have ever known. Most beleived that if you lived right, God would reward you with success. if you lived wrong, you failed. So those failures were the result of God's punishment and did not need to be helped. 12:21:33 PM 
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The Real Problem. As these fancy maps show, while the 2004 election loss was deeply saddening, the Democratic Party is hardly the hopelessly competitive entity many liberals seem to fear. The real problem facing the country -- liberal and conservative alike -- is... [Matthew Yglesias]
I firmly believe something similar may happen, because Bush does not even have the mandate that Hoover did. And I do not beleive this administration is as interested in being good stewards of the political process as they do in winning at all costs. 12:19:51 PM
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Sunday Funnies. These are reportedly from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]
Some very good laughs in here. 12:10:14 PM
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Electoral ebb and flow. 
Today's New York Times features a stunning full-page infographic that illustrates the ebb and flow of the electoral college from 1940 to 2000. Edward Tufte would give it an A+, I think, for its use of many of his favorite devices -- notably small multiples, a sequence of similarly-constructed frames. Along with a map in which states are sized according to their numbers of electoral votes, each frame includes a chart where:
Really great graphics showing just how unusual the last 2 elections ahve been. Bush's claim to a mandate are shown to be false, compared to Nixon's or Reagan's. Bush is actually has the smallest. Just another lie. 11:54:39 AM
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"The Day the Enlightenment Went Out" [Daypop Top 40]
Particularly after reading some conservative writers, it does seem more and more likely that the experiment of the Enlightenment in the US is on a downhill trend. Bigotry, intolerance and fundamentalism seem stronger than ever. But the battle against ignorance is a constant one and one that we will always fight. A mother's womb is always more comfortable and safe than the real world but the real world is actually all that matters. Too many people want to return to the safety of the womb instead of displaying the courage a democracy requires. I hope we can do something to lessen this in the coming years but i expect that it will not be a battle that is completed while I am still alive. I expect to look back to the 80s and 90s with a real nostalgia, of a time when we really could believe that everything was all right. I expect that the next 20 years will be full of things that are not right, that will have to be fixed. At the moment, I do not see that happening. Hope we start soon. 11:42:08 AM
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Why Americans Hate Democratsâo[per thou]A Dialogue - The unteachable ignorance of the red states. By Jane Smiley [Daypop Top 40]
"Christian Conservatives Must Not Compromise" [Daypop Top 40]
Read these 2 articles and you get direct confirmation of the contempt EACH side holds for the other. One is stupid and the other immoral. One is populated by rubes and the other is going to Hell. I do not expect ANY sort of National Discourse to actually solve our problems because the leaders of each party are committed to continuing the divisions. Both parties are afraid of the coming changes in the economic paradigms. They will eventually be replaced by new mandates by people who actually do understand and welcome what is happeneing. If not here, then elsewhere. The country that does this first and fastest will be the leader of the 21st Century. I expect that we will remain a relic of the 20th Century, longing for the days when we were on top, just as Britain still longs for its empire. That is, if we do not destroy ourselves first. 11:31:23 AM
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Those Wisconsin Madrassas. A vote to teach Creationism in the Wisconsin schools [The Gadflyer | All Feeds]
The continuing degradation of science by ignorant people, with the benign approval of this administration is a horrible consequence of the past week. And the scientists who protest these sorts of things are accused of politicizing science. The inability of these people to grasp reality and their need to bend scientific research to their ideology will be one of the things that will weaken America the most. 11:01:01 AM
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Yet another election map! [Pharyngula]
Fascinating work. The numbers not only disclose just how close most of the country is but the numbers also have another revealing secret. In almost 10% of the counties in the US, 90% or more of the voters voted Democrat. The number of counties in which all the voters voted Republican was 0.1% (5 out of 4533). When population size is included, the difference between a Democrat win and a Republican is smaller than a gnat's eyelash. This is the supposedly mandate. 12:08:05 AM
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