Allen Gathman

Or would be, except that nobody cited me.*  Walt and I were looking at the county-by-county electoral map on November 6, and saw that curving blue line across the deep south.   I said, “What the hell is that?  It’s got to be some kind of geographic feature.”  We looked in Google Earth and didn’t see anything obvious, and then I got an idea and googled “Cotton Production 1860″.   Voila, the maps match perfectly.  I cropped the national electoral map to match the cotton map and put them both up on a page that very afternoon.

See this post on Wonkette, titled “Slaves vote heavily in Obama’s favor?“   Wonkette got it from Andrew Sullivan, who got it from Strange Maps, who got it from Pin the Tail, who apparently got it from me and posted it a week after my page went up.

*Update: Both Strange Maps and The Vigorous North have since graciously given me credit.  They also add considerable interesting content, and The Vigorous North traces the landforms and soil types responsible for this pattern back to the late Cretaceous shoreline.  Worth a look.

That was the moment we knew.  When Ohio was called for Obama, he had 195 electoral votes, and with the near-certainty that IA, CA, OR, and WA would follow, he had 275 votes and the presidency.

No election in my life has moved me as much as this one.

Now we’ve got what we wanted, and the real work starts — we’ve just handed Obama some of the worst national problems in recent history.  I can only wish him strength, good advice, and wisdom.

Saturday Sophie and I volunteered to canvass for Obama, and although she had to work Sunday, I went back and volunteered again.  This close to the election, all the effort is directed at getting out the vote, so we were visiting households already identified as favoring Obama or at least leaning that way.  Even so, it was kind of a revelation to us.  These were overwhelmingly white neighborhoods we were in.  Most of the people we saw were elderly – just the kind of Democrats who were supposed to be pissed off because Hilary didn’t get the nomination.  And yet we repeatedly heard things like “Oh, yes, I’m voting for Obama.  Yes, I know where the polling place is.  I never miss an election.”  Or as one old guy said, “Well, I guess I’ll vote for him.  I’m sure as hell not voting for a Republican!” 

Considering all the right-wing rants I read in the call-in column in the local paper, it restores my faith in my fellow man to find out that there really are Democrats in Southeast Missouri.   These people live in modest homes in middle-class neighborhoods; a lot of them are retired, and living on fixed incomes, and they clearly see that Obama is the candidate with their economic interests at heart.   I don’t think the Bradley effect is happening here; they weren’t trying to tell me what I wanted to hear, while secretly planning to vote for the white guy.  The few people we ran into who seemed like they opposed him on racial grounds were pretty openly hostile.  Ironically, those few were in the poorest neighborhoods, and had the most to lose from a continuation of trickle-down economics. 

Missouri overall leans slightly toward McCain, and this part of the state is strongly Republican.  However, if we can get about 40% of the vote in this region, the strongly Democratic populations of St. Louis and Kansas City can put Missouri in the Obama column.  The last time I actively worked for a presidential candidate was when Bill Clinton ran the first time, and I think there’s even more enthusiasm for Obama this year than there was for Clinton in 1992.  Even out in the boonies where we live, there are Obama supporters – Obama yard signs in Fruitland!  On highway Y!  At the livestock auction yard on highway C! 

The national polls and electoral maps look good.  Still, I’m anxious.  As one of Cabell’s friends blogged, “”I feel like it’s Christmas Eve, only with the suspense of wondering whether Santa is going to bring me a pony or set my house on fire.”

A contact of mine in Flickr posted this pic of a defaced Obama sign, I commented sympathetically, and one of the people in the comment thread wound up sending me this Flickr Mail message:

:: OBAMA

HE WENT TO CHURCH FOR 25 YEARS WITH PREACHER WRONG. HE SAID
HE WAS ONE OF HIS TOP ADDVISERS. WRONG 5PREACHED HATE
AGAINST WHITE MEN AND OBAMA ACCTED LIKE HE NEVER SAW
ANYTHING BULLSHIT. HE FINALLY THREW  WRONG UNDER THE BUS
WHEN HE SEEN HOW PEOPLE WERE TURNING ON HIM.  BILL AYERS
AND HIM ARE LIKE BROTHERS AND THE MAN IS A TERROIST. HE
SAID HE WILL MEET WITH ALL THE ROGUE COUNTRIES LIKE IRAN
WITH OUT PRE-CONDITIONS HELL THAT CRAZY. HE USE TO BE HEAD
OF SIGNING PEOPLE UP TO VOTE WHEN THEY DIDN’T HAVE
ADDRESSES. HE HAS FLIP FLOPED ON EVERTHIG HE HAS SAID IT IS
JUST WHAT CROWD HE IS PLAYING. HE WANTS TO RAISE TAXES WHEN
THE IN A RECEASION. HE IS THE MOST LIBERAL PERSON IN THE
SENATE.  HES FRIENDS WITH LUIS FARAKKAN. HE WILL NOT PUT
HIS HAND OVER HIS HEART WHEN THE PLEGE OF ALLEGANCE IS
SAID. HE  WILL NOT WEAR A AMERICAN FLAG PIN. WHAT DAM MORE
DO YOU WANT THE SON OF A BITCH SHOULD BE RUN OUT OF THE
COUNTRY. IF DON’T SEE IT YOU NEED A SHRINK. BUT IF HE DOES
WIN IT WOULDN’T SURPRISE ME IS SOMEONE DIDN’T TAKE THE
BLACK BASTARD OUT BEFORE HE GETS TO THE WHITE HOUSE. ONE
MORE HOLIDAY. THANKS     PS IRAN NUKE THE BASTARDS. HAVE A
NCE DAY

Now, my initial response is two words: Snopes.com.  But this guy is pretty clearly immune to rational argument. Actually, I’m a bit disappointed that he missed the late-breaking news that Obama is actually the illegitimate son of Malcolm X.

What is it with the all-caps crowd, anyway?  I used to say it was the equivalent of shouting all the time, but I think it’s more like shouting all the time and spraying spittle in the process.

I don’t guess the Secret Service would consider this guy’s message an actual death threat against Obama, but I do hope that security is tight.  How do Republicans who actually have two neurons to rub together feel about the supporters they’re courting?  Bill Buckley must be spinning in his grave.

Let’s see — it’s a weird and twisted journey that gets me to the point of this.  I was doing my patriotic duty by watching the debate and reading Wonkette’s liveblogging of it, and Wonkette pointed out that, in the process of pandering to the middle class, both candidates managed to say “Hey, Joe”.  This led to this video clip. And then, of course, I spent way too much time looking at related clips, winding up with this one.  The thing about Red House is that hearing it always makes me so sad that Hendrix died so young.  Imagine the blues he’d be playing now.  It’s a tragic loss to all of us.

On the plus side,  a contact of mine on Flickr just posted this:

The day before his 81st birthday, playing in Rotterdam.  Thank you, God, but why the hell couldn’t we have Jimi that long?

Having bought a nice new camera a month ago, I’ve been taking lots of pics.  This morning I thought I’d try to do some HDR* photography.  Basically, you take several shots with different exposures, then use software (such as the free version of Photomatix, which I just downloaded) to combine them.  You can get some interesting effects.

Like this view of our house, looking rather surreal.

Or this more natural-looking one of the Hope farm, seen from our yard:

In any case you get more detail in a wider range of dark and light areas than you would in a single exposure.   Of course, the full software gives you a lot more control (actually the first pic was done with the trial version of that, and therefore has a Photomatix watermark on it).   But for $99, I’ll wait a bit and mess around with the freeware.

*Link takes you to Wikipedia.  Beware: you can wind up wasting a lot of time.

Let’s take a look at the competing proposals for dealing with the financial meltdown:

Democrats (and some moderate Republicans, and apparently the administration):

• Buy out failing companies with up to 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money
• Give taxpayers equity in those companies (i.e. partially nationalize them)
• Put caps on executive salaries at those companies and prohibit golden parachutes
• Change bankruptcy laws so judges can extend homeowners’ mortgage terms

Meanwhile, the Republican hard core wants to:

• Cut the capital gains tax (who makes up the resulting revenue shortfall? Guess.*)
• Ensure fat cats who buy failing companies against loss (Guess who pays for that.)
• No help for homeowners, no regulations on executives

So let’s see.  Either we spend taxpayer money to acquire financial interest in the companies, and eventually (if things turn around) get money back to help finance our government, or we use taxpayer money to make the rich richer.

Why would the Republicans prefer the latter scheme?  If they were honest, it’s just self-interest, but how can they justify it?  They can’t pretend this is free-market capitalism, in which the Invisible Hand can do no wrong; it’s government intervention either way, and the difference is who winds up owning the capital.  In essence, they’re saying you can’t trust the officials elected by jerks like me with money, you can only trust the same greed-addled plutocrats who got us into this mess in the first place.

Honestly, how can that party pretend to be anything but a shill for the rich? Why would anyone making under about $600,000 a year vote for them?

*Remember, if we cut the capital gains tax, we’re going to fund the government somehow. Either we raise your taxes, or we just run a deficit and transfer the cost to the taxpayer as a decline in the value of the dollar.

I’ll just paste the text of the letter I wrote to the local paper:

***********

For many years I’ve enjoyed going to the East Perry Community Fair in Altenburg.   The authentic rural atmosphere is a nice contrast with the larger, more commercialized SEMO district fair.   This year, though, I was disappointed to hear the announcer at the mule jump make a very mean-spirited joke:  A local farmer sees someone dipping water out of a cow pond with his hand and drinking it.  In German, he warns the man that the pond water isn’t safe to drink.  The man explains that he’s a Muslim, and speaks only Arabic and English, so if the farmer doesn’t speak Arabic, he should speak English to him.  The farmer tells him in English “Use both hands, you’ll get more.”   

It’s not a particularly funny joke, and especially not to any of my Muslim friends, as the point seems to be “Ha ha, we hate Muslims.” 

I have always encouraged newcomers to the area to attend the Altenburg Fair, for a taste of real Southeast Missouri life.  After this year’s fair, though, I think I’ll have to warn them that they’re likely to encounter some real Southeast Missouri intolerance as well.

*******************

Once again, it’s my favorite local event of the year — the East Perry Community Fair, better known as the Altenburg Fair.   I hate the SEMO regional fair, which has a zillion rides and carnies and country music groups and generally awfulness.  But the Altenburg Fair has two rides, a miniature golf course, and booths from places like the local hardware store, where they give away yardsticks.  Most important, they have the Mule Jump.

In this event, the owner leads his or her mule into the U-shaped enclosure.  The mule must come to a stop, and then jump over the barrier.  Each round they raise it an inch or two.  The mule above, Bucky, won the smallest size category, and is shown clearing the bar at 54 inches.  It was above his ears when he was standing in front of it.

This kid, Preston, kept losing control of his mule Sarah.  They didn’t win, but he’ll be back next year.  You can tell.

Afterward we got a beer or two.  Robin had a brat and a ribbon-fried potato, I had a fried fish, and Sophie had a pulled pork sandwich.  Sadly, we didn’t get around to the Pickle on a Stick booth.   We did have a look at the prize produce, though.

Good times, as always.

The Freakonomics blog at the New York Times has a really interesting post today, which I’m going to steal from rather shamelessly here, but with a different slant in analysis.  It reproduces this graph from the Washington Post:

This compares Obama and McCain’s tax plans.  It’s interesting to see this redrawn so that the bars are proportional to the fraction of taxpayers in each bracket — note that the wealthy (over $600,000 annual income), who benefit most from McCain’s cuts and lose most from Obama’s, represent less than 1 percent of the population.

It’s even better to look at this graph, showing the proportion of total tax dollars paid:

Note here that you can see where the money comes from for Obama’s plan; it’s close to revenue-neutral, as the rich pay a large proportion of total tax, and their tax hike pays for cuts for most everyone else.  Since we all help to build the society that makes it possible for the rich to be rich, that’s fair enough, and they can best afford to spare it.

McCain, on the other hand, gives the biggest cuts to those wealthy families, and winds up with a big drop in net tax income for the country.  This will necessitate cuts in government programs, including ones that would benefit the lower and middle classes further.

The depressing thing is to look at any of these graphs and realize that about 80% of families would be better off under Obama’s plan.   If people vote their own interests — if they even vote the interests of the majority — then Obama should lead overwhelmingly in the polls.  In fact, it’s more or less a tie.

The book What’s the Matter with Kansas, by Thomas Frank, examined this phenomenon — that the middle class and much of the rural white lower class now vote Republican rather reliably, despite the obvious pro-corporate and pro-upper class policy bias of that party.  Why?  The Republicans have made a concerted effort ever since Reagan to ally themselves with social conservative views, although they’ve done little to enact policies that would further them.  McCain used to honestly reject such pandering, but once he had a serious chance at getting nominated, he started cuddling up to the religious right, even to the extent of choosing Sarah Palin as VP candidate.

I don’t think it’s all “values,” though, that causes people to vote for the Republicans against their own interests.  I saw a study some time ago where people were asked what level of income they expected to achieve in their lifetime.  50% of the sample expected to be in the top 1% of earners before they checked out.  This is the Republican party’s popular appeal in a nutshell.  I’m going to win the lottery, I’m going to be a star NFL quarterback, I’m going to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company.  And therefore, I don’t want the government raising taxes on the super-rich, because I intend to be one someday!   The fact that 49% of that sample is doomed to be disappointed just doesn’t sink in.  If you can’t admit you’re middle class, policies that favor the middle class won’t appeal to you.

*Sigh.*

***************

Update:  Turns out that a lot of political scientists say that Frank’s thesis doesn’t hold up when you look at the data — the evidence indicates that the more money people have, the more likely they are to vote Republican.  Doesn’t seem to be the case around here, but I have to say I haven’t collected data systematically.