I think Bob Dylan said it best in 1962 without even knowing it:
I’ll take all the smog in Cal-i-for-ne-ay,
‘N’ every bit of dust in the Oklahoma plains,
‘N’ the dirt in the caves of the Rocky Mountain mines.
It’s all much cleaner than the New York kind.
Writing Archive
What is Ground Zero Dust Like?
Hyde Park on the Potomac?
The old quip about Obama’s home neighborhood of Hyde Park is that it is a community of blacks and whites, living together, united against the poor. The premise of the joke is of course that it’s a diverse community of high-income liberals.
While Hyde Park is certainly unique in the American landsccape, it turns out that [...]
Map of the Day: Obama All Alone in the Lone Star State?
There are two parts of Texas, according to Jack Burden. “The part where the flat-footed, bilious, frog-sticker-toting Baptist biscuit-eaters live.” And the “part where the crooked-legged, high-heeled, gun-wearing, callous-assed sons of the range live.”
Both parts are a long way form Hyde Park.
Burden’s descriptions of Texas reflect the contempt that many outsiders have always felt toward [...]
Parsing the Prop 8 Map
When a state like South Dakota outlaws abortion or a state like Vermont legalizes gay marriage, it’s because most voters in that state agree on that position. But when California makes a decision on a major cultural issue, it’s a proxy for the nation.
Twelve percent of Americans live in California, and the state has [...]
All Politics is Local… Until There’s a National Vote
Massachusetts became the sixth state today to approve a measure that would award all of its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote. So far, six blue states with 71 cumulative electoral votes have signed on.
Proponents of the measure argue that every single citizen’s vote should count, not just those [...]
Different Shades of Peach State Politics
Atlanta has reinvented itself in the last 50 years as the “city too busy to hate.” It has the nation’s busiest airport; it’s home to the headquarters of several global mega-brands, such as Coca-Cola; and it’s the hub of an emerging megapolis stretching to Charlotte.
But race still provides the backdrop to politics in the state [...]
Migration Nation
When the Minnesota North Stars packed their bags and moved to Texas to become the Dallas Stars, the sports world cried foul, but the franchise was really just doing what millions of Americans were doing: abandoning the Rust Belt for promise in the Sun Belt (they ended up winning a Cup five years later).
In 2011, [...]
Louisiana is the Most Suspicious of Obama of Any State
Obama certainly hasn’t received high marks on his handling of the BP oil spill from wide swaths of the American people. In Louisiana, he has probably gotten an “F.” But it appears that even if the oil spill had never happened, Louisiana would still be the most suspicious of Obama of all the 50 states.
“Suspicion” [...]
America’s Next Oil Boom State Will Be…
North Dakota.
The USGS recently upgraded its estimates of recoverable oil in the Bakken Formatoin in North Dakota (and northern Montana and Saskatchewan) to 4.3 billion barrels. To put that in perspective, the entire United States, including Alaska and the Gulf, produced 1.7 billion barrels in 2005.
Oil companies have reportedly known about the formation since the [...]
Forecasting the Oil Spill
The New York Times eviscerated Obama over the weekend, editorializing, “The president cannot plug the leak or magically clean up the fouled Gulf of Mexico. But he and his administration need to do a lot more to show they are on top of this mess, and not perpetually behind the curve.”
The president may not be [...]
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