Texas: not as Wingnutty as you might think

Yes, I’ve seen this:

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And yes, this disgusted me.

But this doesn’t tell the whole story about Texas.

First of all, remember that Texas is a huge state with many diverse regions; East Texas is very different from West Texas which is very different from South Texas. And, of course, Austin, Texas is very different from the rest of the state. In all, Texas has 32 Congressional Districts.

So, let’s look at some facts from the 2008 election. Yes, Senator McCain won the state 55-44, with racking up 4.5 million votes to only 3.5 million votes for President Obama.

But remember, those 3.5 million people live somewhere in Texas.

Here is the county by county election map (via CNN)

As you can see, there are blue areas. Some facts:

1. President Obama won 11 of Texas’ 32 Congressional Districts. (data source) That is far from a shut-out.

2. Of the 6 major cities in Texas (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso and Austin), President Obama won 5 of them (Senator McCain carried Fort Worth 55-44).
Senator Obama won Dallas County 57-42, Harris County (Houston) 50-49, Bexar County (San Antonio) 52-47, Travis County (Austin) 64-35 and El Paso 66-33!

So, Governor Perry can run his mouth as much as he wants to. That doesn’t mean that he’ll have every Texan with him!

16 April 2009

Workout notes: 2 mile walk last night with the group; once I got going I felt great. This morning: yoga with Ms. Vickie then an easy 2 mile run outside (too pretty not to).

When I got to yoga and took my sweatpants off, I found that I had my shorts on inside-out (liner was outside).

Social:

This article from the Economist demonstrates that the strain of growing up in poverty can affect mental performance. In short, there are many factors behind mental performance and not all of them are genetic.

The Legal Satyricon: this is a thoughtful essay on the photo shopped images that are used to sell “beauty” to women. In short, the images you see in, say, underwear ads are often photo-shopped.

I have a couple of thoughts:

1. Many women look plenty good as they are, at least if you go by what I’ve seen at masters swimming meets, running events, etc.

2. Unrealistic images are sold to men as well. After all, I spent much of my adolescence being miserable because girls didn’t react to me the way that they reacted to James Bond. Fortunately I grew up enough to see that Bond was FANTASY and that, yes, there ARE women who like the Inspector Clouseau’s of the world.

3. The same goes with male body image. I really thought that there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t buffed like the professional athletes I saw on TV. I then realized that
a. only a rare few have the bodies to become a pro athlete and
b. Some of what I was seeing was the result of chemicals.

So, the upshot is that, while unrealistic images are used to entice people to buy this or that, part of the growing up process is learning to accept one’s limitations and learning to separate fact from fiction.

Politics

Science Avenger destroys the James Dobson crowd. He makes two key points in this article:

1. Yes, the right wing is losing the culture wars, big time!
2. One of the reasons that they are losing is that the current instant-information culture allows the rest of us to immediately fact-check their claims and therefore expose them for being the deluded liars that they are.

Thereisnospoon from Daily Kos writes that the right wing will now wake up to reality: their well publicized temper tantrum did them no good whatsoever. The point is that they got beat and beat badly at the ballot box and all of the “I’m going to hold my breath until I turn blue” nonsense isn’t going to change that.

Red State Update makes a similar point (see 1:40 into it)

Nate Silver: estimates that the number attending “tea parties” nationwide to be about 250,000 (or what, the size of 2-3 Obama rallies? )

Texas governor claims sovereignty from “oppressive” U.S. government – Daily Kos TV (beta)

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Fox hosts support Texas sovereignty, say state wants to secede – Daily Kos TV (beta)

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Angry Chicago tea bagger calls Obama a fascist – Daily Kos TV (beta)

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