Fruit Pies and Pencil Lead: A Thanksgiving Meditation
Nov/26/2006 08:15 PM Filed in: Angels and
Pins
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(Adapted from a sermon
at Northaven Church, delivered this
morning...EF)
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. We had an incredibly restful one around here. We decided to stay here at home, just the three of us. We still did up the whole turkey/dressing/meal thing. It was wonderfully peaceful. Not that we don't love our families, and not that we didn't have chances to be with them. But a couple of months ago, Maria actually asked us if we could spend Thanksgiving by ourselves this year. This was deep in the middle of the campaign season when --between that, Maria's activities, and regular church stuff-- we were basically meeting each other coming and going. So, we took her small request as a barometer of sorts. After some original plans fell through, we thought, maybe we do just need the time by ourselves. As it turns out, we did. Hope you had a good weekend too.
And since it is still, technically, Thanksgiving Weekend, let me tell you a little story about family worries and fruit pie. For many of us, "family worry and fruit pie" about sums up our Thanksgiving experience.
(Read the rest. Click here)
Election Night 2006
Nov/22/2006 07:44 PM Filed in: Thoughts from
Purple Land
On the day
after early voting ended, I decided to do a little
analysis of the vote, based on a quick and dirty
formula I personally devised. You should know that I am
not the best "detail" person in the world. I don't do
trees very well. But I do forests exquisitely.
So, I took the 20-some early voting locations, and I assigned a specific percentage of the vote to each one of them...a percentage, based on my opinion of how the vote in that early voting location would break down, Republican vs. Democratic. It was a "SWAG." Obviously, for more traditionally Republican areas, the percentages favored the Republicans more. Vice versa for more traditionally Democratic parts of town. For those areas where it's not so clear, I made some additional assumptions. (I'm not going to tell you my exact formula. Would Colonel Sanders tell you the "Original Recipe?")
When I took the early vote count total for all these voting locations, ran it through my little quick-and-dirty formula, then figured the percentage of votes, I determined that the early vote, party-wise, was breaking out something like this: (Read the rest. Click here)
So, I took the 20-some early voting locations, and I assigned a specific percentage of the vote to each one of them...a percentage, based on my opinion of how the vote in that early voting location would break down, Republican vs. Democratic. It was a "SWAG." Obviously, for more traditionally Republican areas, the percentages favored the Republicans more. Vice versa for more traditionally Democratic parts of town. For those areas where it's not so clear, I made some additional assumptions. (I'm not going to tell you my exact formula. Would Colonel Sanders tell you the "Original Recipe?")
When I took the early vote count total for all these voting locations, ran it through my little quick-and-dirty formula, then figured the percentage of votes, I determined that the early vote, party-wise, was breaking out something like this: (Read the rest. Click here)
Why Democrats Won in Dallas County
Nov/22/2006 07:42 PM Filed in: Thoughts from
Purple Land
Many people
have already written about the Democrat's win in Dallas
County. Here is a very good essay by Ken
Molberg that covers much of the
same ground that I will here. I think Ken is quite
right in almost everything he says.
(UPDATE (12.16.06): The Lone Star Project has now released their own report on these elections in Dallas County. And they have analyzed the actual voting data to an extent that others, including me, have not. They reach many of the same conclusions that I do in this essay, only they've crunched actual numbers from the election. Here's a pdf of their report.)
First off, this: Anyone who says they know definitively why the Democrats won Dallas County, but does not give you multiple reasons for the electoral wins, doesn't know what they're talking about. The roots of this electoral victory are deep and the shifts in Dallas County are complex. In my opinion, many of the old ways of analyzing the vote --where voters come from, who they vote for, and what their politics are-- will not hold in the future. And if you want to understand what did happen November 7th, and what will happen in Dallas County in future elections, you must look to at least three major factors: (Read the rest. Click here)
(UPDATE (12.16.06): The Lone Star Project has now released their own report on these elections in Dallas County. And they have analyzed the actual voting data to an extent that others, including me, have not. They reach many of the same conclusions that I do in this essay, only they've crunched actual numbers from the election. Here's a pdf of their report.)
First off, this: Anyone who says they know definitively why the Democrats won Dallas County, but does not give you multiple reasons for the electoral wins, doesn't know what they're talking about. The roots of this electoral victory are deep and the shifts in Dallas County are complex. In my opinion, many of the old ways of analyzing the vote --where voters come from, who they vote for, and what their politics are-- will not hold in the future. And if you want to understand what did happen November 7th, and what will happen in Dallas County in future elections, you must look to at least three major factors: (Read the rest. Click here)
Free Speech and Our Elections
Nov/22/2006 04:38 PM Filed in: Thoughts from
Purple Land
The following
stories are ones I have waited to share for two years.
Each of them happened during the campaign of 2004, when
my wife originally ran for judge in Dallas County. I
did not share them until now, because in no way did I
want to affect (positively or negatively) her election
campaign this year. But I now feel somewhat freer to
share the following true stories.
Political signs get stolen. It happens. They get taken down. You have to put them back up. It happens a lot. You can't attribute every time a sign goes missing to some malicious intent. But sometimes you can. Each of these stories come from the 2004 campaign: (Read the rest. Click here)
Political signs get stolen. It happens. They get taken down. You have to put them back up. It happens a lot. You can't attribute every time a sign goes missing to some malicious intent. But sometimes you can. Each of these stories come from the 2004 campaign: (Read the rest. Click here)
Why We Should Elect Judges
Nov/22/2006 04:36 PM Filed in: Thoughts from
Purple Land
In the days
after the election, everyone from Republican partisans
to Steve Blow raised up a clarion call we've heard
before:
Why do we elect judges? Isn't there a better way?
Well, in short, there may be a better way to elect judges, but there is not a better way to get judges than through elections. As Churchill once said of democracy: It's not perfect, but it's better than all the other options.
The truth is, there really are only two good options:
1) Elections of some sort.
2) Appointments of some sort.
And while there are flaws to the first method, there are grave problems with the second. (Read the rest. Click here)
Why do we elect judges? Isn't there a better way?
Well, in short, there may be a better way to elect judges, but there is not a better way to get judges than through elections. As Churchill once said of democracy: It's not perfect, but it's better than all the other options.
The truth is, there really are only two good options:
1) Elections of some sort.
2) Appointments of some sort.
And while there are flaws to the first method, there are grave problems with the second. (Read the rest. Click here)