Half of McCain voters believe Obama is or was Muslim, with 31.7% saying “He used to be Muslim and still has too many connections to Islam.”

(Source)

Not surprising that the strip of deeper red is in the white rural south, but a number of demographic areas really stood out sharply:

* The direct correlation between college degree and depth of blue and indirect correlation with depth of red, to the point where the citzens of the deepest blue counties were 2.5 times more likely to have college degrees than the deepest red.

* Similar correlations on population density, with reverse trends on income under $30,000 and Southern Baptist proportion.

* Perhaps starkest of all is an old favorite of mine, population growth: only the deepest red were, on average, stagnant from a growth perspective.

The depth of color on the chart is only change vs 2004–it was already understood that population density correlates to democrats along with wealth and education–but what this data means is, when the vast and overwhelming majority of American counties trended toward a Black man and away from Bush’s failed policies, there is a silent and increasingly irrelevant minority of poor, white, rural, Southern, Christian, undereducated voters in isolated stagnant counties who strongly resist such change.

This could mean that rather than asking “what’s the matter with Kansas?” future democrats may well be able to ask, “so what?”

This is not a good idea. These are, as always, important times. The Republicans wish to ignore Bush’s legacy–posturing instead to be the next Reagan–on virtually all fronts. Except when it comes to his proudest achievement: further entrenching the folks who got him elected in the first place with their 5-4 vote. The Republican hopefuls all scream for more strict constructionist appointments on that point.

In case you needed any further reminder that there is actually a difference between the corporate-gluttons on either side of the aisle, consider that this week the Court, in all likelihood, is going to approve of insitutionalized racism in the voting process just in time for the presidential election possibly involving our first black candidate.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” Terence T. Evans, the dissenting Court of Appeals judge in the Indiana case, slyly wrote. “The Indiana voter photo ID law is a not-too-thinly-veiled attempt to discourage election-day turnout by certain folks believed to skew Democratic.” He’s not the only one to notice: the three federal judges who approved the Indiana law were appointed by a Republican President; the lone dissenter was appointed by a Democrat. It was also Republican-dominated legislatures that produced the Indiana and Georgia laws, both of which were signed by Republican governors.

UPDATE: It’s even worse than feared. All signs point to the law being in place for the election. But Scalia–who isn’t always the best at corraling a majority–is sternly pushing a procedural idea that the Bush administration advocated when it joined in the case. The gist is that because the plaintiffs have not shown any actual harm–and cannot show any actual harm until they’ve actually been prevented from voting come election day–that there is no tangible dispute yet and the Court should not decide anything in the abstract. The use of facial challenges to the consitutionality of statutes–a bellwether of the Warren Court whose legacy has been the target of conservatives these last 35 years–may themselves be further cut back as a result. Which is exactly what they want.

Other fun facts from the OWH article:

• Benson’s racial makeup in 2006-07 is about 46 percent black, about 41 percent white, about 10 percent Latino and less than 2 percent each Asian American and American Indian.
• Throughout the process….the students wanted to make sure they weren’t raising controversy for the sake of raising controversy. They checked out books from the W. Dale Clark Library and consulted Web sites to research the history of the word.

Damn those students for researching, analyzing and reporting topics that are of interest to it’s racially diverse student body. Better to stick to more age-appropriate activities like…..Military Science.

full disclosure: I was once a member of a high school newspaper staff, so my allegiance may lie/lay?? with the students.

Regardless of one’s familiarity with hip-hop, the 2Pac-Biggie saga made it unequivocally clear that hip-hop existed on two planes: on the one hand, it was a cultural and commercial powerhouse that had captivated an enormous audience that ranged across the color spectrum; on the other hand, it was a combustible force bound to the underworld and the impoverished streets from which it had been spawned. In hip-hop, the NBA had a new cultural location, image, and marketing direction to carry it, as a gradually declining Jordan, who had made the NBA into a major international entity, headed toward retirement. Whether Commissioner Stern and the league brass desired such changes is uncertain, but it is extremely unlikely. For them the challenge of managing the infusion of hip-hop, which inaugurated the arrival of pro basketball’s new class of young stars, was akin to playing with fire: handle it right and it would power the NBA into the new millennium; manage it wrong and it would burn down the house that Stern, Magic, Bird, and Jordan had built.

In the mid-1960s, 1200 White people attend Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska. Nearby, Negro Lutherans worship at Hope Lutheran Church. Reverend Bill Youngdahl, Augustana’s pastor, proposes that ten couples visit ten Negro families from Hope. It’s a controversial idea; within weeks, Youngdahl resigns. The camera observes: Augustana parishioners discuss the idea, the social ministry committee meets with Hope leaders, and Hope youth talk about race and religion. Ernie Chambers, a Negro barber, predicts Youngdahl’s failure, and Chambers’ implacable questions help lead Ray Christensen, an Augustana social ministry member, to a conversion.

I never knew one of my favorite Nebraskans, Ernie Chambers (earlier on BMK), was previously a barber, though I’m not surprised to hear he has long been considerd “articulate”:

The film includes a meeting between Youngdahl and an articulate black barber named Ernie Chambers who tells the minister that his Jesus is “contaminated”. At one point another Omaha Lutheran minister, the Rev. Walter E. Rowoldt, of Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, states that “This one lady said to me, pastor, she said, I want them to have everything I have, I want God to bless them as much as he blesses me, but, she says, pastor, I just can’t be in the same room with them, it just bothers me.”

According to a copy of Caffera’s ruling, the case had its origins in 2003, when Henderson’s wife left him for a Hispanic man. Henderson is white.

Although it isn’t illegal to be a member of a KKK group, having a trooper belong to a white supremacist group could create questions in the minds of the public, as well as create dissention among other troopers, Tuma said.

According to the investigation, Henderson’s dealings with the group were done during off-duty hours and on his private computer.

“The department discharged (Henderson) because of his beliefs and because he sought out others who shared his beliefs,” the arbitrator said.

Caffera said Henderson’s firing flies in the face of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have concluded public employees are entitled to express political beliefs and associate with others who share their beliefs.

Bruning argued that the First Amendment does not apply in this case.

“The First Amendment allows you to join disgusting groups, but it does not allow him to be employed as a state trooper,” Bruning said. “We don’t give guns and badges in Nebraska to anyone tied to the KKK.”

All this comes to mind as I see a slew of Chile-related items flying around the interweb. Roberto Bolaño gets a nice write-up in the SF Chronicle. Gwenda points us to some recovered recordings of a Neruda reading. All good.

Not so good (and not so new):

Throughout the twentieth century Santiago encouraged “colonization” of the Araucania region by offering free land to European immigrants with the result that the Mapuche territory shrunk, from 10 million hectares in 1883, to under 500,000 today. Indeed, most of the original Mapuche State is now owned by logging companies of which one, the Matte group, possesses twice as much land as all the Mapuche communities combined.

I asked Senator Navarro if promotion of the logging industry in his region was compatible with respect for the Mapuches’ rights. “The indigenous people’s right to their lands is established by Chilean law,” Navarro told me. “Yet land conflicts between private interests and indigenous communities are invariably resolved in favor of the corporations with the complicity of the state.”

Protests continue, but I am not exactly inundated with reports in the local news. I see that flickr highlighed some of the photos from the protests in Chile — outstanding photojournalism, blog style. (Search flickr for “chile protesta” for more.)

(from p.’s photos)

The wheel of humanity keeps on turning, but hopefully things will get better more than they get worse. Some of these pictures are so vivid, I don’t think they’ll be leaving me anytime soon. And for now, everytime I use el baño…I think I’ll be asking myself, ¿Tengo comfort?