A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on July 1st, 2008 in Campaign News

Barack Obama is now saying that he wants to expand President Bush’s horrific “faith-based initiative” program. In case that sentence isn’t clear enough for you, I’m against the very idea of the government supporting faith-based anything.

From the New York Times:

[Obama] thus embraced the heart of a program, established early in the Bush administration, that critics say blurs the constitutional separation of church and state. Mr. Obama made clear, however, that he would work to ensure that charitable groups receiving government funds be carefully monitored to prevent them from using the money to proselytize and to prevent any religion-based discrimination against potential recipients or employees.

The emphasis is mine. The reason is that Mr. Obama is a Constitutional lawyer. He should review Lemon v. Kurtzman. To requote:

The entanglement in the Rhode Island program arises because of the religious activity and purpose of the church-affiliated schools, especially with respect to children of impressionable age in the primary grades, and the dangers that a teacher under religious control and discipline poses to the separation of religious from purely secular aspects of elementary education in such schools. These factors require continuing state surveillance to ensure that the statutory restrictions are obeyed and the First Amendment otherwise respected. Furthermore, under the Act, the government must inspect school records to determine what part of the expenditures is attributable to secular education, as opposed to religious activity, in the event a nonpublic school’s expenditures per pupil exceed the comparable figures for public schools.

In plain talk, it means this: Giving government money to a church for non-church activities invites abuse on both sides of the relationship. What’s more, it puts the church at an incredible disadvantage in carrying out these activities because it has to maintain a one-off distance with itself. If the government gives money to a church school to buy chalk; then that chalk can’t be used in a classroom with any religious symbology or where any religious discussions take place.

The principle is the same with a half-way house. If the halfway house is on fire; the church can’t call for the fire department from its office (okay, that would probably be exempt). But food from the soup kitchen could not be given to the halfway house because the church would have to prove that the transfer of commodity did not entangle the funds of the church and the halfway house.

It also goes against the very reason for having a church. My church - like many - has a number of aging members who would benefit greatly from an elder daycare facility. There are also a few - like myself - who could benefit from a daycare arrangement. We’ve batted the idea around of combining the two. If we do it as a function of the church and on an informal basis, it’s no problem. As a matter of fact, I’m sure the members of our church would dig pretty deeply into their pockets to support such an informal program.

But if we want to enlarge it, formalize it, and offer it to the community, then we would have to hire professional staff. It’s just too easy to go to the government for a handout. In the longterm, such a relationship would make the survival of our church dependent on governmental largess, and not the generocity and needs of the community. What’s more, it would short-circuit any discussion with other churches in the community - the Lutherans, the Reformed Church, and the Catholics surely have similar demographics - and turn it from a community program to a government program run by the Episcopal Church.

If such a professionalization is needed, it is simple enough for our church, or all the churches of the community, to form a new non-profit and run this dual-care program. That program, independent of the church governance, would be able to qualify for governmental assistance anyway. Everything would be the same except it would be independent - so if the Church got tired of it or needed the space, the effort could continue without the blessing of the Church.

Or, if we put a real face on it, Catholic Charities can already qualify for government programs if it does not enforce Catholic dogma on its employees or the recipients of its aid. Under the faith-based initiative rubric, this is not necessarily true. This is not to point a finger at a group to say it would happen under them, but what good is gained to the community from forcing people to swear false allegiance to the Catholic Church? Even if any such benefits could be identified, would they be the legitimate business of the government to pursue?

No. Our entire government is founded on the denial of that premise. Barak Obama should know better.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, “faith-based initiative”

Posted by XT on June 30th, 2008 in Progressive Faith

The New York Times has an article by Diana Kraft and Laurie Goodstein that discusses a “wider split” between conservatives and the rest of the Episcopal Church. I wonder how long it will be before everyone finally acknowledges that the real purpose of this group is not to “widen a rift” but to split off entirely?

[The conservative schismatics] depicted their efforts as the culmination of an anti-colonial struggle against the communion’s seat of power in Britain, from which missionaries first carried Anglican Christianity to the developing world. The conservatives say many of the descendants of those Anglican missionaries in Britain and North America are following a “false gospel” that allows a malleable interpretation of Scripture.

They insisted that they were not breaking away from the Anglican Communion or creating a schism. But their plans, if carried out, could create severe upheaval in the communion, the world’s third largest grouping of churches, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches.

Oh yeah - an “anti-colonial struggle”. What happened to “the truth will set you free”?

Posted by XT on June 27th, 2008 in Uncategorized

Hat tip:

JK ROWLING’S COMMENCEMENT SPEECH AT HARVARD

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of
Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all,
graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have
to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British
philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling
experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something
on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in
modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of
fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at
all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime
stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory
capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to
them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my
life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is
what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Posted by XT on June 24th, 2008 in US News

I’m a day or two late on this, but I couldn’t figure out what I should say. I should have known that the Maestro would have already said it:

There was an illustration on the panel that showed a triptych. On the left panel, there were these names of artistic pursuits. There were poets, painter, composer. And one of them was jester. I was only interested in the jester. What he said about each of these, he said these individuals on the left hand side can transcend the panels of the triptych by creative growth.

The jester makes jokes, he’s funny, he makes fun, he ridicules. But if his ridicules are based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second panel, which is the thinker—he called it the philosopher. The jester becomes the philosopher, and if he does these things with dazzling language that we marvel at, then he becomes a poet too. Then the jester can be a thinking jester who thinks poetically.

Some people make us smirk. Some make us laugh. Some, and the list is very, very short, alter our outlook because they change who we are. George Carlin was such a poet, philosopher, and jester.

Technorati Tags: George Carlin

Posted by XT on June 24th, 2008 in Campaign News

I’ve finally figured out what it is about John McCain’s “100 year” statement concerning Iraq. Here’s the video of the comment, in case you’re just lost about what I mean.

As McCain’s defenders rightly point out, he isn’t calling for a hundred years of war in Iraq. No, he only wants to stay in Iraq for a hundred years if American soldiers are not getting killed.

It would stand to reason that, if our soldiers were not getting killed; then they would not be under fire. Which means that Iraq would be pacified. Which means there would be no reason to keep our soldiers there. Which means it’s rather odd to keep them there for a full century.

The reason, it would seem to me, is that he is talking about acting as a de facto empire. There will be unrest in that region, so we should keep enough forces over there to snuff it out quickly - without loss of life (on our side). That’s not too very different than the reason British forces used to stay in the region. Or in India. Or in the Faukland Islands - but of course there was some loss of life to protect that sheep-infested rocky crag.

The moderator (at the WaPo site) is right to point out that the President doesn’t need individual permission to send our troops straight to Hell, should he (or she, eventually) decide to do so. But the President does need popular support and the consent of Congress (theoretically). There is a lot of hysteria over McCain’s comments that focuses on things he didn’t really say.

I wish someone would focus on what he did say. Keeping occupying forces in a pacified country for a hundred years doesn’t sound like the work of a democracy to me. By the way, that means that I’m not sold on the idea of keeping American bases in Germany, Korea, and Japan open, too. The benefit of having a base in Germany is that it is a staging area for getting stuff to Iraq. If we aren’t going to police the world - and I don’t think we should - then we don’t need bases in Iraq, and therefore, we don’t need bases in Germany, either.

Technorati Tags: John McCain, 100 year, Iraq

Posted by XT on June 24th, 2008 in General

So Don Imus is at it again - maybe. The man with the face tailor-made for radio is in trouble for wondering if a football player in the NFL is black. That, of course, is racist because we all know that only black men play in the NFL.

I really don’t care. I think it’s kind of stupid, to be honest. If someone doesn’t like Imus because they think he’s a racist; then they should tune out. If they think he’s great because he’s a racist; then they should tune in. Whatever. But what struck me was the end of the article:

So what is at work here, folks? Have Americans all lost the ability to detect sarcasm (the subject of this excellent science story)? Is Don Imus guilty of racism? Was this episode the calculated controversy-stirring of a veteran shock jock, meant to split the debate in two? Or is his on-air transformation complete, from a voice that was outrageously racially insensitive to one that is quite sensitive indeed?

There’s a link to this article talking about the ability - or lack of it - to detect sarcasm. My answer? Yes, Americans have, by and large, lost their ability to detect sarcasm. Instead, they have a finely honed ability to be offended at relatively inoffensive statements. Such as when I was attacked at Daily Kos for depicting Barack Obama as a stick figure - because, you know, a stick figure reminds “people” of the game “Hangman” and everyone knows that black men have been lynched and hung so therefore Barack Obama being depicted as a stick figure is wrong, bordering in racist. It’s a total load of crap.

Let Don Imus do whatever he wants. If you like it, listen. If not; don’t. But let’s try and look at the world with a bit of humor, okay? Not everything is the Most Serious Issue Facing the World Today.

Technorati Tags: Don Imus

Posted by XT on June 19th, 2008 in Progressive Faith

Reverend Mother is questioning the simplicity of simple living. Her question is worth pondering - what can communities of faith do to make it easier for members to consider all of creation in their actions?

The first thing I have to do is say that I think a lot of the sound and the fury over “think local” is really nothing more than a disguise for anti-corporatism. I’m not a big fan of powerful corporations ruling the world, but neither are they the bugaboo of the whole world. They are often the instrument of unlimited greed, but it is the greed that is the problem, not the corporation. Corporations can do as much good as they can do ill. It depends on the attitudes of those running the thing.

That, of course, is not what RM has in mind - and I don’t think she is among the anti-corporatists at any measure. But she is looking for both ways to be a good steward and ways in which good intentions get sidetracked.

One thought that comes immediately to mind is composting. If everyone in Jersey City threw their potato peelings in the back yard to rot; then the air quality would suffer. We’d also have tons of rodents and insects that are necessary to assist in breaking down the peelings. In fact, the history of our major cities tells us that this is exactly what people used to do. The sanitation was improved by having pigs and goats roam through neighborhoods. Cities began trash collection to deal with the health problems that came along with that method of disposal.

The only way they knew to deal with the collected garbage was to throw it in unused spaces - like rivers and low-lying areas. The problem with this is that it poisoned - or at least degraded - the water quality and when the waters rose in a flood, all the crap that had been thrown out was thrown back in. So they dug big pits and burned and/or buried it.

Of course, that caused a whole set of new problems that we were slow to realize. Now we still throw our trash in pits, but we have them lined with impermeable plastic and pump out the leachate (where it often is disposed by mixing in very small amounts with our drinking water - yum!).

Now we could throw stuff in a pit and have a means of capturing the methane that is emitted - then we might be able to use the degrading trash to fuel our energy demands. In fact, we do this in some places, but not many.

So what can we do? I think the first thing to do is to teach that there is no way out of this mess. We are here and we consume and our consumption has consequences. We can alleviate those consequences, we can minimize them - but we cannot make them not exist. And as sure as we breathe, the actions we take to deal with consequences will have further consequences. It isn’t about finding the final answer, it’s about continually finding better ways to do things.

Perhaps that is the best thing that we can do - promote the idea that there is no perfect idea. We will do the best we can, but those actions will cause problems that we must deal with in turn.

Technorati Tags: Reverend Mother

Posted by XT on June 19th, 2008 in This blog

Having grown up in a part of the country that sees a lot of violent thunderstorms and tornados, I’ve always pondered this:

If threatened by lightning, you are advised not to stand under a tree. You are also advised not to be in an open area. What do you do if you are in a large open area with a single tree?

If threatened by a tornado, you are advised to get out of your car and lie face-down in a ditch. However, tornados are often accompanied by rain and/or hail. If one lies face-down in a ditch while it is raining, one will drown. If one lays face down in baseball-sized hail, they will get the back of their head stoved in.

We are advised not to try and outrun a tornado in a car. We are advised not to hide from one under a overpass. We are also advised not to be in open territory when a tornado overtakes us. However, if you are driving in the country and the only shelter for five miles is an overpass - what do you do?

Here’s my advice - if there’s a tornado, get underground. If you can’t do that - use your brain and pray a lot. If there’s a lightning storm, get inside ASAP. If you can’t get inside, pray.

Posted by XT on June 18th, 2008 in Campaign News

During the last two Presidential elections, we heard a lot about “swing states”. Florida and Ohio were the two big ones, but Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania made it in the consideration, along with a few others. But I think the winner may actually be decided in the states along the Mississippi-Ohio River. Those states include Ohio (20), Indiana (11), Illinois (21), Kentucky (8), Michigan(10), Wisconsin (10), Iowa (7), Missouri (11), Tennessee (11), Arkansas(6), Louisianna (9), and Mississippi (6). That’s a total of 130 electoral votes - almost half of the total needed to win the election.

In 2004, George Bush took Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Lousianna, and Mississippi - 89 electoral votes. Kerry won the remainder (duh!) for 41 votes. By more than two-to-one, George Bush won the River states.

In 2000, the only thing that changed was the name of George Bush’s competitor - and Iowa. Because Illinois had one more electoral vote in 2002 than in 2004, Gore’s total in the River states was 50 electoral votes. Bush won 85 electoral votes.

In 1992 and again in 1996, Bill Clinton took every single river state except for Indiana and Mississippi. He beat GHW Bush and Bob Dole 116 to 19.

In 1988, the river states swung heavily for Poppy. He lost only in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa. The margin was 113 to 29. In 1980 and 1984, Ronald Reagan took every state but Minnesota.

In 1976, Ford managed to win only in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. He lost 45 to 100.

In 1972, Nixon took every single one. In 1968, Wallace took Mississipi (7), Louisianna (10), and Arkansas (6) for a total of 23 votes. Humphrey won only in Minnesota for 10 votes. Nixon took 118 electoral votes in the river states. Even without Wallace, Nixon would have won handily.

In 1964, Louisianna and Mississippi gave Barry Goldwater 17 electoral votes, the rest of the river states went to Johnson. In 1960, Mississippi gave 8 votes to Independent candidate Harry F. Byrd. Kennedy won in Louisianna (10), Arkansas (8), Missouri (13), Illinois (27), and Minnesota (11) for a total of 69 electoral votes. Nixon won in Ohio (25), Indiana (13), Kentucky (10), Tennessee (11), Wisconsin (12) and Iowa (10) for a total of 81 votes. Oops. Turns out this is an instance of the pattern not holding - but how often does Texas vote with New York?

In 1952 and 1956, Eisenhower won every state but Missouri, Arkansas, and Mississippi (Stevenson also won Kentucky in 1952, but lost it in ‘56). In ‘48, Truman took every river state except Indiana (Dewey), Mississippi (Thurmond), and Louisianna (Thurmond).

So it works every election but once since the end of World War 2. What does it say about 2008?

Posted by XT on June 18th, 2008 in Campaign News

Feel free to add a caption of your own.

“I am here today with my friend, Charlie Crist, Governor of Florida, and Harvey, a six-foot tall invisible rabbit.”