Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Nigeria Letters Update This time, I’m back to talking about fake “business opportunites” from Nigeria (e.g., here, I said “The really distubing thing about these emails is that they indicate that at least one person smart enough to turn on a computer, and also able to read, fell for this”), not fake uranium sales from […]

Texas Update The Dallas Morning News (free account required) reports that the Texas Supreme Court has refused to order the Texas Senate Democrats to end their boycott. Score one victory for the separation of powers. It seems like this was pretty clear cut because, absent issues of constitutionality, the Judicial Branch has no business interfering […]

I’ve Been Busy… …Partly due to the day job and partly due to all the Red/Blue posts. As a result, I’m now catching up on all my blog reading. Here are the highlights: Sadly, No brings us the new Reservoir Dogs. The Daily Howler readily demonstrates that Fred Barnes is a giant, comical, tool. Rice […]

Re-Wrap I know I said I was done, but then I thought it would be interesting to have all four maps (the vote; income levels; housing appreciation; and lights from space) in a single four-paneled page. AB

Red and Blue Wrap Up First, Sincere thanks to James Galbraith and The University of Texas Inequality Project (be sure to check it out) for all the maps and analysis. Galbraith ran some more numbers, this time relating income levels to votes for Bush and Gore. The Theil Score is an index that give the […]

Another Red-Blue Juxtaposition Commenter Bear (no relation) points out that pictures from outer space also identify most of the Blue regions of the United States: areas that have light are overwhelmingly Blue (one could almost say that the enlightened regions of the country vote Blue). As with the income maps below, this only gives a […]

Bloggered Update Still no archives and I’ve been unable to publish for about the last 24 hours (I think that in the process of trying to fix the archives I messed more stuff up). Anyway, still no archives but posting seems to work now. AB

Climate Change You may recall that recently the White House altered a report on Global Warming, replacing a statement that temperatures have risen significantly in the last decades with a reference to a paper by two astronomers, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. The Soon and Baliunas paper argues that …These results offer strong evidence that […]

Bloggered I was just about to write a post complimenting Google on how much more reliable Blogger has been lately. But now my archives are gone. Hopefully they’ll be back soon. AB

Ask and Ye Shall Receive Earlier, I wrote about some new Red/Blue posts by Atrios and Nate Newman. Atrios linked to a map highlighting the areas with the most rapid increases in housing values and points out that the areas with the most rapid increases over the last few decades, meaning they are the places […]