how about a couple thousand words, 4 maps, and 2 dozen links to tell you something you already know?

It's not that conservatives are hypocrites.  Or that they are stupid (surprising to 3 of the 4 people who will read this, the jury is still out on that one).  It's only that conservatives are simple (look harder, third section).

No great mystery there, but let's explore deeper:

Don't you just love a statistical chain saw?  Simple slice and dice of America by party vote in 2008, county by county.

Keep looking at that map for second, and lets discuss the most divisive issues of our time:

Health care reform is facing constant attack from state legislatures and courts.

Wisconsin is nearing a shut-down over public workers right to collective bargaining.

In my state, people can be fired or evicted for appearing queer. (please support these people) (and not these douchebags,these assholes really [say it with me now] POKE MY BADGER) 

The the right of women to prosecute rape, (this article is a bit more cutting) avoid unwanted pregnancy, to information regarding sexual health, or even to bear the pain of miscarriage privately is under constant and violent threat.

It is preposterous to suggest that these are simple issues, but conservatives are seeking to apply simple principles to them.  If we can find these principles out, perhaps we can better understand and convince our conservative friends.

 If you're a white, middle-class, christian male in America, things are pretty good for you.  You orgasm twice as often as your wife or girlfriend,  you'll get laid at least once a week into your retirement years, you'll have enough wealth to be secure, your parents retirement is handled by social security and medicare, and your children are educated for free, and will likely get into college, which you can afford because you probably went to college.  You have two cars, so a breakdown isn't that bad, and you probably have some menial amount of health coverage so you don't worry too much about catastrophic health problem.  All you have to do is make it to work, get paid regularly, and spend your money responsibly.  The simple and easy American dream.

So what makes your life complex?  Prices, for one thing.  Not knowing, from day to day, how much food and fuel will cost are major concerns.  Why?  Look at the map again, especially, for example, some place like Texas, in deep republican territory.  Texas hasn't voted for a democratic President since the southern, agricultural Carter (and he only won by 130k out of 4m voters).  What do we see?  All red except for the blue border and three blue spots:  Houston, DFW, and Austin.

My dad is from Texas, I consider it my home turf a little bit.  This is the house his family grew up in, except that it isn't the house he grew up in.  He was about 16 when they moved there, when the price of grain was good enough for them to afford to upgrade from living out here.  It's not far, actually about 13 miles, but in a combine, there is no such thing as "not far" when considering time and fuel.  Dad would call me out, thought, because he's one of those people who is a stickler for facts.  He would remind me that you would never drive the combines to the house in town, because there's no place to park, duh!

He would be correct, but you do have to move the grain somewhere.   Big trucks and tractors all eat up fuel, not to mention the incredible amount of driving required to maintain miles of irrigation pipes (the other consequence of too much irrigation is too many anecdotes with too little entertainment value...I'm looking at you, dad.).  So farming families are dependent on inelastic commodities like grain and gas, not to mention that rural areas are less likely to have a national-chain grocer nearby.  National chain grocers can keep the price of food steady with larger markets to trade in, lowering prices and flattening price fluctuations.

It's also worth noting that my father is the oldest male of 7 siblings.  The only older sibling is my Aunt Judy, a double-doctorate dean at the University of Texas (I'm proud of her, so I brag). Rural families are larger, so food is, again, a very important part of the family budget, and fluctuations are exaggerated by the volume needed to feed a large family as opposed to just a married couple.   The pressure to provide wealth is intense, and that wealth is under far more threat that of a smaller, urban family who knows that a burger will always be a dollar.

Conservative Value #1: You should only get what you earn.  Poverty is the product of laziness or irresponsibility, and is no ones fault but your own.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the plight of the American farmer, we've heard it before.  What does that have to do with simplicity or conservatism?  Everything.  Another word for simplicity is homogeneity, that things are the same or similar.  Homogenized milk?  It has the same fat content and distribution to a nearly molecular level.  If we look at areas of the country with low population density but large family sizes, we see that there is little diversity. let me explain further:

I LOVE LUCKY CHARMS! Sure, it has more sugar per serving than a buttered piece of chocolate-bacon (OMG totally copyrighted, I'm gonna be rich) but it's part of a balanced breakfast, so buzz off and leave me my magical chunks of delicious.  I have a pet peeve.  The cereal isn't my pet peeve, but the math assignment I have to do mid-bowl is. I love lucky charms best when there is the perfect ratio of marshmallow to oat pieces.  I like 2 marshmallows in a full spoon of oats.  This is great for like... half a bowl.  Then I start doing the math, and I realize that if I want to finish the bowl on a good note, I need to adjust my strategy so I can spread the marshmallows out evenly over the last few bites.

My second favorite cereal is frosted flakes. There are no marshmallows in frosted flakes and thus, no math.  Frosted flakes are a more simple cereal than lucky charms because they are homogeneous, just those delightful coated flakes.  No math, no stress, just simple sugar bliss.  Frosted flakes are more simple that lucky charms.

Ok, so what we should find is that some parts of Texas are homogeneous like  frosted flakes, and some parts of Texas are mixed up like lucky charms, and that the frosted flakes parts are more conservative and the lucky charms parts are more liberal (as a crude aside, my lucky charm parts are VERY liberal ;) )

Lets compare these two maps:

I know they aren't entirely contemporary, but they are what I could find.  2000 was the most recent census with available data, and GW Bush ran in 2000 and 2004, so a map of that election would have been skewed by home-town hero favoritism.

I think the trends speak for themselves.  Racial diversity means democratic victories.  But, you could argue that racial diversity supports a black victory for Obama and not necessarily liberal one.  It's a fair argument, and supported by this map:

 

It's not a great image, but it shows the democratic primary results between Hillary Clinton and Obama in Texas, supporting that Texas democrats outside of the urban areas were less willing to vote for Obama. The trend is more noisy; notice that one of the border counties went slightly for Obama, and a number of the ones further south went for Clinton strongly.  I don't think the trend is as clear, but it doesn't answer the relevant question anyway.  Texas democrats may have preferred a white woman to black man, sure, but do democratic votes still center around the diverse areas when both candidates are the same gender and race?

Yes, they do.  This is 1996, the Bill Clinton/Bob Dole race.

This also explains some of the noise from the primary map a bit ago.  Counties that went for Mr. Clinton strongly in 1996 tended to go strongly for Mrs. Clinton in 2008.  Good ole' fashioned name recognition.

Ok, so racial diversity produces liberal votes.  We all knew that.  What does that have to do with simplicity?  In the same way that frosted flakes don't require me to consider how many marshmallows I should eat with my next spoonful, low density urban areas wouldn't require me to deal with people much different than me.  I can develop politics and moralities that never have to assimilate anyone very different than me.  Competition is is for the good of my family, who is my main community. 

Conservative Value #2: The more uniform the people, the more united the people.  Diversity is competition.

Let's look again at the issues that are dividing our country again, and see how the conservative position on them is consistent with simplicity. 

Health Care Reform: Health insurance is a way of preparing for the unforeseen.  If you don't have it, you're irresponsible.  If you can't afford it, you are lazy.  I should not be burdened with caring for the poor and lazy.  My fate is mine, and theirs is theirs. If a drug company can get the price they ask for, they should be allowed to charge that.

Abortion and reproductive rights/education: The simplest answer is the best answer, so life begins at conception (HB1 Article 15, Section A, subsection 4).  Unwanted pregnancy is the product of irresponsibility.  Women who don't want to have children are different, so they weaken America, so they shouldn't be given to tools to prevent pregnancy.


The right to collective bargaining: If any worker wants to earn more, they should work harder or get a new job.  Union wages and benefits raise the prices of products for no reason other than to allow people to be lazy and still get paid.

Gay rights: Gay people are different, so they weaken America.  Plus, they freak us out a bit.  Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

Notice how necessary it is to draw broad swathes of black and white to maintain simplicity.  Conservatives have a simpler binary platform of right/wrong, black/white, American/unamerican.   This is so strong that the only president who's citizenship we've ever questioned is the only one we call black.  He is different, so he must not be one of us.

Notice, also, that seeing shades of gray isn't always a benefit.  Binary communication is incredibly simple, all one or zero, always clear, concise, and easy to understand.  No wonder the democrats never agree on anything: we can't even talk without requiring letters, words, and grammar!

A little nugget of fun for ya...

enjoy!

Why the Cubs will never win the Nobel Peace Prize, and George Bush won't win a World Series.

I HATE OPINION POLLS!

We start with the dunk contest, which has been massively political in the last years because the winner is selected American Idol style, or maybe I'm just bitter that I can't do this. I'm also mad that the G-spot doesn't exist anymore because one twin doesn't know how to have a good time.

My point is that opinion and knowledge polls are spurious and a weak metric for defining anything besides popularity. I hate them. Opinion polls poke my badger.

The first premise I need you to take for granted is that people perform their best when they have something to gain. For professional sports teams, that's revenue; for politicians, it's votes (and sometimes revenue); for me, it's sex, cookies, and back-rubs. In a word, we all work for popularity.

It seems to follow that both politicians and sports teams are incentivized to win. It would also follow that talent leads to victories which in turn leads to popularity. So it should be that the best president would be the most popular one.

But... no, not perfectly. In essence, this poll shows that it isn't about the actual quality of the gentlemen in question, but in fact a question about the loyalties of the poll subjects. The question here is not "Who is the best President?" but "Which president has the most fans?".

I want to examine this data through an interesting lens: Lets compare the political popularity of Presidents Bush and Obama with the popularity of some sports teams. I'll be borrowing heavily from the book Scorecasting, which has been an incredible read and I recommend it.

The Cubs are wildly popular in Chicago, their ticket prices have averaged almost 50 bucks, even in the recession, and their attendance is so good, even at those ticket prices, that Tribune sold 95% of the Cubs, along with Wrigley Field and a share of TV rights for $900 million, in 2009, when the recession meant that 900 million dollars was real money.

The most hated man in Chicago is Steve Bartman. He is the Curse manifested, a human billy-goat that denied the Cubs their first chance at the World Series in 58 year, as surely as if he had stolen the ball straight from a players hands.

The Cubs have a (now 66-year-long) drought in the World Series, but they are wildly popular in Chicago. It seems to violate the logic we espoused above, that success begets popularity which begets paychecks. It seems to follow, but it doesn't happen, and the curse is the explanation.

From Scorecasting, after looking at team stats and comparing them to other teams: "To traffic in the obvious, the reason the cubs haven't won is that they haven't put particularly skilled teams on the field." Now, see the psychological phenomenon called "the self-serving bias." Cubs fans identify so closely with their team that will consistently blame outside factors for their teams loss, instead of seeing those flaws clearly.

Would it help my argument to clarify that the catch Steve Bartman caught wasn't actually a game-winner? The the Cubs were ahead by 3 points in the eighth inning. There were four outs to go. The series (not even the World Series, but the NL championship series) wasn't even tied, it was 3-2 for the Cubs. What Steve Bartman did was steal the 5th to last out of the game that would have been the Cubs second to last chance to move on to the World Series.

What happened the billy-goat-man stealing the championship right from under the noses of the deserving and talented Cubs? The retelling of the story raises the stakes, to make villianizing Mr. Bartman that much easier. The more villianous he is, the less it looks like the truth: the Cubs blew a lead in the last inning, and then lost a second home game to give the Marlins the pennant. Couldn't have been my Cubs, man, it was that damn curse and that idiot Bartman.

But this story has been told. Why is it relevant to the Presidential popularity contest?

This poll shows how much republicans loved G.W. Bush throughout his two terms. Notice the obvious spikes around 9/11 and early 2003 (the beginning of the Iraq war). Then notice that the biggest gains he made were not with republicans, but with democrats and independents (mostly because 99% is tough to build on). The trend is clear. Every move that Bush made up or down with Democrats and independents is reflected, but less so, in the republican line. Except for that one drop, ending in early October 2008. What happened in there? Oh yeah... also... THIS had been going on for months.

Basically, the entire election centered on making G dub look like a douchebag, and he was getting shat on by all sides. What's important here is that his approval ratings actually showed it (10 percent loss among republicans from september 2008 to October 2008) The fans quit forgiving him because they quit identifying with him, because they had someone new to identify with, and man was she SASSY!

Identify... that's an important word. Identity Politics is the buzzword for anyone who wants to discredit Obama's talent, implying that he won because he was black (valid), all the black people voted for him (also valid), and that all the black people voted for him because he was black (invalid). The question is, do democrats stand behind Obama as much as Cubs fans, as much as republicans did with Bush?

I don't think so. It looks like to me that Obama takes the biggest hits within his own party, or at least he's taking even hits on both sides. It's not as clear, but it seems to be true. Then again, Obama has only had two years in office, compared to the 8 I looked with Bush, and Obama hasn't started any wars or had to console America through any terrorist attacks, so the trends are harder to compare.

If Bush dropped ten percentage points among Republicans because of a global recession and an entire election cycle made to cast his as an idiot, Obama dropped 8 percentage points (from July to August 2009) among democrats because apparently he hadn't fixed it yet.

The reason I can't conclusively say that democrats are blindly for or viciously demanding of Obama is because the milestones simply don't match up with Bushes. Bush was infinitely more polarizing as president, except when everyone was with him (see 9/11).

So Obama is more like the the White Sox than the Cubs. The Sox only get attendance and approval like the Cubs do when they're within a season of winning the World Series. Obama has to work for his approval, and pays when it just looks like he won't get his work done. Some people will always root for him, always think he'll come out on top, but most of us need him to prove it. (and some of use refuse to believe a word he says no matter what)

Mostly I think this comes down to the personality of the parties. Democrats are more inclusive, complex, and pragmatic than conservatives, so we identify with each other less, critique each other harder, and consider our differences valid without policing. We are harder on our politicians because we are more afraid of authoritarianism than subversion, less faithful that success is ours to be defended from others instead of won together.

That's what this presidential popularity poll boils down to: how simply can we distill our politics? Picking a single man to represent us best, trying to find his most memorable or popular qualities and relate them to ourselves.

Pick Reagan if you're a tea-partier or a wistful baby-boomer. Pick Obama if you're young, optimistic, or black. Bill Clinton if you're a liberal who hasn't been sold on this new guy yet. Abraham Lincoln if you want to hearken back to history, George Washington if emancipation wasn't that important to you.

Using an opinion poll to establish who the greatest president is resembles deciding the MLB Champion by the same means: it only identifies who the most popular candidates are, and that's a dangerous notion. The Cubs attendance records may not be affected much by success, but their beer prices strongly correlate to ticket sales, according to Scorecasting.

Imagine how popular Obama would be if he took a prime-time TV slot and said these words: "America, I know things aren't great right now, but I'm doing my best for you." Then, any collegiate fight song came on with the Red, White, and Blue girls dancing behind him. "America, go to your front door and open it. You'll find there your favorite beverage and a scoop of ice cream. Now enjoy this Uncle Sam mascot chasing the Dancing Chicken. He's a quick one, that chicken!" Now that would get some approval ratings, and when it didn't fix the economy, we could blame the poor for not having worked hard enough to earn HD tv's to watch it on.

So the question is this: do we want a president who appeases us with cheap beer, knowing we'll keep voting and sucking up the losses, not blaming him but the circumstances?

-with thanks to Tom, for showing me the original article.

Took a long time to come...

This will be my year.

I fell off the wagon, but I'm back on and things are going splendidly. lots of good stuff in the works that I don't really want to put on the permanent record yet.

but to get myself started, today's topic is:

How to interact with someone who isn't drinking without being a douche.

1. don't try to sympathize. You drink, they don't. It's an easy formula. Relax. If you find yourself trying to coerce them into drinking, wonder to yourself if you need alcohol to have fun, and how that makes you feel about yourself.

2. if buying a round, include a N/A drink for them. Don't be an ass and exclude them from celebrating. I prefer sugar free red bull, but anything without alcohol will show forethought and caring.

3. LEAVE IT ALONE! accepting that your friend doesn't drink as a matter of course is the least awkward way to deal. Ever been asked why you're still single? Ever been asked repeatedly by the same person, all night long? These people are badger pokers. NEVER POKE A BADGER.
WHY THIS IS UNCOOL:
section a. Just like Aunt Marla asking you when you're going to get married, it is impossible to ask someone why they don't drink without being insulting. In the same way that you aren't married because you're ugly, mean, or aren't allowed to express your romantic desires in your state, someone who decides not to drink, but is around drinkers, has a reason that is neither up for debate nor pleasant enough for social conversation.
section b. asking someone why they are single, just like asking someone why they don't drink, will only pressure someone to doubt themselves. If Aunt Marla points to Cousin Ton(e)y and asks "why don't you give him just one dance?", you say "Because (s)he's my COUSIN!" at the same time that you're thinking "but not by blood...". In the same way, if you ask you're sober friend to have "just one drink" they will say "I don't drink!" but they will think "Just one might be ok...". AND BOOM! Incest-DUI.