PREDICTING THE VOTE

A reader has written to me as follows:

I've been playing with charting various demographics against the vote in the 2004 Presidential election. The first table from my spreadsheet shows what looks a very significant correlation between Bush/Kerry voting percentages for the 50 states and population density, with the "huddled masses" states strongly pro-Kerry and the low-population states strongly pro-Bush.





What's surprising is that there seems to be an even stronger correlation against the "Generosity index", a measure of what percentage of income people reported as giving to charity on their tax returns (See here for the data). One would think that people who say they are for the common person would be more charitable. In retrospect, the Leftists seem very ready to "give to the poor" as long as it's somebody else's money they are giving.

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

Brookes News Update

The return of Robert Shiller's Irrational Exuberance: The economic commentariat is jumping on the Shiller bandwagon in the hope of embarrassing the Bush economy. As usual, they just don't know what they are talking about
Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls smears labour market reform: The free market is a truly callous place, or so Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls seems to think. This economic whiz kid believes that labour market reform could drive wage rates down from $13 an hour to $7 an hour
Taxing the US dollar and taxing Democrats: The Democrats' opposition to tax cuts borders on the hysterical at time. Apart from their insincerity (the only kinds of tax increases they support are those their fabulously rich supporters can easily avoid) there is the utter bankruptcy of their so-called economic arguments
Why are so many journalists like Phillip Adams out and out bigoted liars?: Phillip Adams ranks as one of Australia's most vicious, and certainly most dishonest, leftwing columnists. This apologist for just about every communist regime that ever existed thinks Americans are being carted off to a Republican Gulag
The media can no longer be trusted to side with democracy and common decency: The depraved state of the media and their irrational hatred of America and their support for those who loath the West is becoming more obvious by the day
Interest rates and economic growth - more journalistic stupidity: Keynes never managed to grasp the nature of interest. He thought it was a purely monetary phenomenon that was determined by the supply and demand for money. This, however, is the same fallacious theory that the discredited mercantilists also used to explain the existence of interest and its rate
Not another Clinton Presidency: America cannot afford another Clinton Presidency - be it male or female. The Clintons' brand of politics was poison for the US and we cannot run the risk of moving backward at this critical juncture in our nation's history
Millennium Challenge and Morocco: In May 2005, Morocco's King Mohammed VI launched the 'National Initiative for Human Development' to promote decentralized development projects

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

ELSEWHERE

Surprise! American whites are on their best behaviour when blacks are present: "In a study involving 200 participants on 29 mock juries, panels of whites and blacks performed better than all-white groups by a number of measures. "Such diverse juries deliberated longer, raised more facts about the case, and conducted broader and more wide-ranging deliberations," said Sommers. "They also made fewer factual errors in discussing evidence and when errors did occur, those errors were more likely to be corrected during the discussion." Surprisingly, this difference was primarily due to significant changes in white behavior. Whites on diverse juries cited more case facts, made fewer mistakes in recalling facts and evidence, and pointed out missing evidence more frequently than did those on all-white juries. They were also more amenable to discussing racism when in diverse groups."



The BBC has a fascinating article about the history of the Union Jack. Such matters are of considerable interest to Australians as the Union Jack is quartered in the Australian national flag. It was long customary to refer to the Union "jack" but purists point out that a "jack" is a naval flag (even the USA has a "jack" flag -- 50 white stars on a dark blue background) so the term "Union Flag" has come into some use in recent years. For me however it will always be the "Union Jack" and I am pleased to see that the BBC has adopted that as its standard usage too. In my view, nothing could be more appropriate for a country so long dependant on its navy that it should use a naval flag for its national flag.

Anti-terror laws are an affront to justice, says British High Court: "The Government's anti-terror laws were dealt a devastating blow yesterday when the High Court said that they were an "affront to justice" and breached human rights laws. Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that the controversial control order system, which keeps terror suspects under a form of house arrest, were "conspicuously unfair". The anti-terror laws denied suspects under control orders the right to a fair hearing and were incompatible with human rights laws, the judge said. Although the Government had attempted to apply a "thin veneer of legality" to the measure, suspects' rights were determined by ministers with no effective oversight by judges, he added. The Government was forced to bring in control orders after the law lords ruled that holding foreign terror suspects indefinitely without trial was unlawful. Ministers immediately announced that they would appeal against yesterday's ruling. In the meantime, control orders will remain imposed on eight foreigners and four British citizens. The ruling came in a challenge by the first British citizen to have a control order imposed on him as a terror suspect by Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary. Civil liberties groups welcomed the verdict."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS . Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here and here). I also post several times a week on TONGUE-TIED. There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or here

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

Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

Comments? Email me here (Hotmail address). If there are no recent posts here blame Blogger.com and visit my mirror site here or here. My Home Pages are here or here or here.

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