"Torture. . . inconsistent with American principles"

Updates Below (Tuesday, November 2)

When those first Abu Ghraib pictures were released, I was horrified. As an American citizen, I am strongly against torture. Nothing I have read convinces me that torture is a successful device in war (even short-term "success" has negative long-term consequences), and everything that is moral convinces me that it is wrong. As the war in Iraq wore on, we learned that leaders in the Bush administration discussed torture and justified its use. Now military personnel are telling their stories. The Washington Post published today an editorial by Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym used for security reasons), a senior interrogator in Iraq and former Air Force Special Operations pilot. Alexander led a team of interrogators in Iraq; his Washington Post article is titled "I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq," and his book is titled How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators who Used Brains, not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.

Alexander describes how his team's interrogation methods convinced one of the associates of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to give up the location of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. (Zarqawi's followers blew up the golden-domed Shiite mosque in Samarra, an act that "unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed" and bloody reprisals in 2006.) That intelligence led to Zarqawi's death. The interrogation methods Alexander's team used? Not torture, but rapport and smarts:

I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Not only did the interrogation methods lead to the death of a man responsible for horrible terrorist attacks, but those methods also led to a greater understanding of the men who were taking arms and money from Zarqawi:

Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.

Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.

The Anbar Awakening is cited over and over again by pundits on the right and the center-left as crucial in the resultant diminishing violence in Iraq. Now, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, it behooves us to listen to men such as Matthew Alexander. We cannot defeat terrorism with military power alone; we have to understand the roots of terror, the people who become terrorists, the causes that inspire them to turn to murder. Alexander writes:

I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Alexander reminds us, as have so many other writers, that the detainee abuse inflamed many foreigners who flocked to Iraq and escalated the violence there. Abu Ghraib became a recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda.

As a new administration takes office in January, Americans should stand with brave military officers such as Matthew Alexander "to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them."

Update:Since writing this post, I've read other bloggers' responses to Matthew Alexander's op-ed. Here are links to a couple of those:

• Scott Horton, at Harper's Magazine: "How Many Americans Died Because of Bush's Torture Program?"--posted December 2, 2008.
• Steve Benen, at Washington Monthly: "Torture Doesn't Work Redux," posted December 1, 2008.

Climate Change

The Bush administration is spending these last days in office pushing through hundreds of rulings. One of those rulings has to do with limiting greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. According to the Washington Post: "A 2007 Supreme Court decision required the Environmental Protection Agency to issue such a ruling, but the White House made it clear in its e-mail [sent last week to city mayors] that it does not think that is a good idea."

This is just one more indication of the bankruptcy of the Bush Administration, an administration that gave us: an unnecessary war; the suspension of habeas corpus against not only foreign enemy combatants but American citizens; a grossly politicized Department of Justice; the poor (and almost criminal) response to the Katrina disaster (a study indicates that kids who stayed in trailers provided by FEMA are extremely sick); an astronomical debt; an economic crisis of enormous proportions--to name just a few.

The Bush administration's poor record on climate changes seems particularly egregious in light of recent results of climate studies. Kevin Drum has links to some very gloomy prognostications here on his blog at Mother Jones: "Climate Change in the Himalayas."

Juliet Eilperin, "White House Prods Allies to Oppose Limits on Greenhouse Gases," The Washington Post, Wednesday, November 26, 2008. (h/t Matthew Yglesias)

Mary Carmichael," Katrina Kids: Sickest Ever," Newsweek, online November 22, 2008; published in magazine issue dated Dec. 1, 2008.

R. Jeffrey Smith, "A Last Push to Deregulate: White House to Ease Many Rules," Washington Post, October 31, 2008, Page A01.

"Who Takes Loaded Weapons to a Toys 'R' Us?"

Adding to the murderous frenzy of the holiday season is the story of the two men who killed each other in a Toys 'R' Us in Palm Desert, California. Evidently, a brawl erupted between the women accompanying the men, and the men pulled guns from their pockets, started shooting, and killed each other. A press release from Toys 'R' Us claimed that the dispute was not related to the shopping season called "Black Friday," but rather was the result of a personal dispute. However, we all know how frenzied the day after Thanksgiving is, with tempers flaring at the smallest provocation. What struck me most, however, was a statement from Palm Desert Councilman Jim Ferguson:

"I think the obvious question everyone has is who takes loaded weapons into a Toys "R" Us?" he said. "I doubt it was the casual holiday shopper."

Where has this man been? Gun purchases increased dramatically after the presidential election because right-wing wackos (and some otherwise sane people) think Barack Obama is going to take away their guns and declare martial law. You bet there are "casual holiday shoppers" toting guns. Here in Georgia (as of July 1, 2008) people who are licensed to carry concealed weapons (these are ordinary folks, not law enforcement) can leave their guns in their vehicles at work, can carry guns in their purses or under their jackets on public transportation and in train stations. They can carry guns in restaurants as long as they don't consume alcohol while there. They can carry guns in public parks and recreation areas where guns are not prohibited by federal law.

When Governor Sonny Perdue signed Georgia's new gun law, Ed Stone, the president of GeorgiaCarry.org, had this to say:

By signing this legislation, Gov. Perdue has expanded the rights of law-abiding Georgians who lawfully arm themselves to protect themselves and their loved ones

So I guess, according to Ed Stone, that's just what those two guys were doing in Toys 'R' Us, protecting their loved one. Oh, yeah, casual holiday shoppers are totin', and they're gunning for the last Guitar Hero on the shelf.

Gillian Flacus, "Witnesses: Fatal Shooting Followed Toy Store Brawl," Associated Press, Nov. 29, 2008.

James Salzer, "Perdue Signs Law Allowing Guns in Restaurants," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 14, 2008.

Update on the Thanksgiving Turkey

This year we bought a turkey to cook for Thanksgiving. Our sixteen-year-old daughter wanted a traditional meal, and my husband, who is vegetarian, agreed to cook the turkey. I had had an opportunity earlier to get on a list for an organic, free-range turkey from a local farm, but I passed up that opportunity because I thought we would opt for a less traditional feast--which just goes to show you that young people can love tradition as much as an old fart. So my husband bought a small "pre-thawed" turkey at a large chain grocery store. In fact, my husband did most of the cooking; he loves to cook. I did my small share in making the sweet potato pie and lettuce salad. So this was our menu:

• Lentil and Squash Soup
• Baked turkey with chunks of turnips added to the turkey dish/drippings the last 45 minutes of baking
• Cornmeal dressing (with tofu in the mix--Tom's concoction!)
• Red Lettuce Salad: the lettuce, radishes (including wonderful watermelon radishes), green shallots--from Riverview Farms; the carrots, cranraisins and sunflower seeds not.
• Warm, home-baked, sesame-seed topped yeast bread
• Red wine (A to Z Oregon Pinot Noir, 2007 ("Aristocratic Wines at Democratic Prices"), iced water, choice of soda
• Pecan and Brown-Sugar topped Sweet Potato Pie (in a homemade oil pastry--I no longer use shortening)

Tom's tofu-cornbread dressing was a little dry, and Tom thought the spices were "out of balance," but it tasted pretty good with some of those turkey drippings dribbled over it. The lentil and squash soup was scrumptious, the bread and sweet potato pie even more so. But the turkey--well, it lacked flavor. Eating some turkey leftovers this afternoon, I tried to describe just how that white meat tasted: sort of like wet, shredded paper, I said. Our daughter was even more disappointed. Next year, she said, the lentil and squash soup should be the main dish.

And so, I'm with Matthew Yglesias (here and here) on the Thanksgiving Turkey.

Black Friday

I know I must be un-American in this choice: I have never participated in the mass mania of shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. I'm not much of a shopper, anyway. Two hours into my doing any kind of shopping, even looking for items I need, my enthusiasm flags. One personally anxious year, I even had a panic attack in a Bath and Body Works shop. And this was at a small mall in East Texas. But there were just too many people muddling around in the narrow aisles between towers of body lotions and lip gloss. The lights were too bright, the colors almost neon, and the smiles of the clerks uncannily cheerful.

I don't understand the desire to have something so much that a person will camp out in a parking lot of a big box store. And I certainly don't understand the fury of shoppers so anxious for that special that they actually kill a store clerk. A Black Friday Stampede at a Wal-Mart in Long Island resulted in the death of a 34-year-old Walmart worker. Good God! No Guitar Hero World Tour is worth a man's life.

Happy Thanksgiving

The college-aged son is here for the holidays before returning to his university campus for the last two weeks of the fall semester. The high-school daughter is happy to have her older brother home; they've been sitting in the diningroom this morning, drawing. I told my son he should give up aerospace engineering, take a couple of art classes and do art instead. I wasn't really serious, but the art is important, I think. My daughter, who wants to follow in her mother's footsteps and be an English teacher (though she's wanting to teach high-school students instead of college students), evidently spends her spare time in classes doodling in her notebooks. I've got my favorite drawing of hers here on my desk.

My husband is glad for the son to be home because he has someone who can go exercise with him. He is preparing for the Houston marathon in January; this will be the third time he's participated.

Anyway, much to be thankful for today as we prepare a traditional Thanksgiving feast. Most of the vegetables are from Riverview Farms in Ranger, Georgia. We're part of a Community Supported Agriculture group, and what was delivered in our box yesterday determined much of today's meal. I'm thankful that such farms are sprouting up all around and in Atlanta, bringing us locally grown food.

The cats in our house are thankful, too, or they would be if they could express thanks.

Killing Fields

A few days ago I clicked on a link to a YouTube video of Sarah Palin giving an interview at a turkey farm. She had gone to the farm in her role as governor of Alaska to "pardon" a turkey. After the pardoning, she remained to answer some questions from the accompanying reporters, her words coming out in that syncopated way we've come to know so well, describing the brutal pace of the campaign trail and segueing at the end to a statement of how thankful the governor was and how she enjoyed participating in a turkey pardoning.

Nothing unusual there, except that in the background a man is slaughtering turkeys. Viewers can't see the slitting of the turkey's throat, but they can see the man pushing the turkey in a metal cone to drain the blood, which is caught by a large trough below. The turkey struggles a bit during this exercise. Meanwhile, the governor keeps talking, with the blood flowing in the background.

One version of this video by KTUU NBC Anchorage, Alaska, has now been viewed over a million times. Of course, the video is fascinating because the typical political patter of the governor, who is holding a styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand, is so incongruous with the scene behind her: the struggling turkeys that haven't been pardoned from appearing on Americans' dining tables this week, the blood draining from their necks, and the nonchalant blood-spattered farm hand. People are grossed out by the scene and laugh at the governor's obliviousness to how she appears in this setting.

I, too, had a chuckle over this video, and then I began thinking. I grew up in the country where people slaughtered their meat. I plucked the feathers of many dead chickens in my childhood and adulthood, helping to prepare the birds for the family freezer. (Though the smell of the singed feathers and death and blood always turned me off chicken for at least a couple of weeks after the slaughtering.) My father has raised cattle all his life; that cattle went to local butchers to be slaughtered; the fine grass-fed meat graced our table every day. I have watched family members slaughter pigs. As a child, I watched family members skin rabbits and squirrels. Now, for health reasons, my husband is vegetarian, and I no longer eat red meat (except when I visit my parents). But I know the process of getting meat from the farm to the table. Nothing in the background of that video of Governor Palin's interview on the turkey farm is new to me.

But I can tell from many responses to this video, that the slaughter distresses many viewers. Most people are totally removed from that meat-production process. The chicken one picks up from the freezer at Publix or Kroger is so devoid of the life it once lived that it may as well be a muffin to most shoppers; they think so little of that life and of the bloody process that brought the pale, scentless, boneless breast to its plastic and styrofoam enclosure.

And so I wondered:

What if above every freezer in every supermarket, videos played scenes of animals being slaughtered? Or--even worse--of animals being kept in the very tight and miserable quarters of factory farms before being led to a slaughter totally devoid of the kind of respect afforded those chickens and cows on my family's farms. When I was a child, I remember my father's killing and skinning a squirrel and then placing the squirrel on the kitchen counter before preparing it for a meal. The denuded body of the squirrel was still jerking, and I stood there, mesmerized by the sight of this dead thing continuing to show the movement of life. I vaguely remember laughing in my childish horror and fascination at the scene. When my father saw me, he made me leave the room. I realized then that not only was my father wanting to protect me from the ugliness of death; he was also protecting the squirrel, which deserved dignity in that death. This was a lesson that has remained with me all my life: meat is sacred. Just as life is sacred. And unlike Governor Palin, who told the reporters she was fine with where she was standing for the interview, my father would have asked those reporters to move to another location. He would have been cognizant of the life draining away behind him, and he would have respected that life by allowing it dignity in death. He would not have wanted the farm hand distracted from his sacred duty by turning away from it to the glare of the cameras. I know that not every person who grew up on a farm has this kind of respect for the animals he or she has killed or has led to slaughter--but my father did, and that's the lesson I learned, an important lesson for the world, I think.

More importantly, what if those millions of video viewers gave equal attention to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people in the world? What if behind every television appearance of a politician the background revealed the consequences of that politician's decisions? Sarah Palin pardoned only one turkey; the rest of those turkeys were not pardoned, and this video so clearly communicates to us the consequences of that decision. What if behind every CIA operative who participated, rolled video footage of the enemy combatant being tortured? What if behind every politician who has cheered on the war in Iraq, rolled video footage of children dying in the streets, of mothers wailing at funerals, of blasted bodies, bloody entrails? What if behind every politician who has sneered at the need for universal health care, rolled footage of the long lines of suffering people in emergency rooms and the death side scenes of people who couldn't afford adequate care? What if, behind every president and leader who sought war with another nation, rolled footage of their soldiers falling in battle, close-ups where viewers can see the light going out of those young eyes, can hear the death rattle in the throats? Would we care then? Would we demand different and better leadership?

There are many killing fields in this world. What if we paid more attention to those?

When I am Old[er]

There is a scene in the film Winged Migration that immediately captured my imagination the first time I saw it. Eurasian cranes settle into the waving grasses of a windswept field. Near this field is a stone house. A donkey peers from a fence around the house; a woman opens a gate. There are close-ups of the cranes searching for food, such as frogs, in the windswept grasses dotted with meadow flowers. A heavy old woman dressed in a blue patterned dress with a dark blue scarf on her head walks slowly toward the cranes, a metal bucket in her hand. I imagine that the woman comes out every year with this bucket full of grain, trying to get close to these beautiful wild birds that migrate so far, 2500 miles, we are told. The donkey brays in the background. In one close-up of the cranes' pecking in the tall grasses, one can hear chickens clucking in the background, a perfect blend of the domestic and the wild.

I imagine I am that old woman. I want to be that old woman, with the wrinkles around my eyes caused by squinting in that open landscape of grass and sky. When I think of growing old, of dying, I imagine my last years in a place such as this, in Aubrac, France. A low fire will be flaming in a fireplace inside the stone house. I will arise every morning to throw grain to the chickens and to take the excess grain across the fields to stare at the sky, waiting for the return of the cranes.

Other places I've seen on film arouse similar feelings in me:

• the scene of the Dashwood cottage in Andrew Davies' recent adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. The cottage is set on a cliff by the coast in Devon, England. A lot of the country scenes there are of rain and dark skies and pounding waves against a desolate coast.
• Scenes from PBS's mystery mini-series Oliver's Travels, set in the far Orkneys of Scotland. The scenery is enhanced, of course, by the accompanying handsome, craggy visage of British actor Alan Bates.

Most of us probably have an image in our heads of where we would like to be in old age. I don't want to be in a retirement village or a bright home in Florida. I want to be somewhere desolate but beautiful where I can contemplate mortality and re-live memories among domestic duties and sky-gazing, "all passion spent."

As Michel de Montaigne wrote: "I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening."

New Life for Political Signs

Turn them into folk art. This simple celebration sign took about thirty minutes.

Update, Monday, November 17, 2008: There's a bit of a political sign war in our neighborhood. I just read an e-mail on my neighborhood listserve from a disgruntled neighbor who wants us all to remove political signs from our yards. She quotes from the city code which evidently prohibits political signs in yards a week past an election. Self-righteously, the neighbor says that she removed her signs immediately after the election in order to "maintain a prettier neighborhood." Now she demands that everyone else remove their signs. Then another neighbor posted that the Georgia state legislature passed a law that pre-empts the city's code:

"no municipal, county, or consolidated government may restrict by regulation or other means the length of time a political campaign sign maybe displayed or the number of signs which may be displayed on private property for which permission has been granted."

O.C.G.A. Section 16-7-58(a)(2)

Could I get around the city code by calling my sign "folk art"? What prompts a person to take her neighbors to task so?

Ancient Philosophers, Modern Life

I am reading Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy, in which the author takes the ideas of well-known philosophers and applies those ideas to modern life. The book is easy to read, probably too easy for those who might want their texts a bit more dense, but good reading for those few moments between tutoring sessions where I work. I bought the book because there is a chapter on Seneca and his philosophy of stoicism. Each chapter contains some biographical information about the philosopher and a clear discussion of some of the elements of that person's ideas. Seneca's chapter is titled "The Consolation of Philosophy"; Socrates's chapter is titled "Consolation for Unpopularity"; Epicurus's chapter is "Consolation for Not Having Enough Money." The next chapter is "Consolation for Inadequacy" and is based on the ideas of Montaigne. The book is meant to be therapeutic, I think, to illustrate how these philosophies can help us become happier or at least deal more adequately with the vicissitudes of life.

After reading this book, I plan to read Seneca's letters and essays; some of his letters I have already read.

A few of Seneca's aphorisms:

• What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.
• That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure.
• All outdoors may be bedlam, provided that there is no disturbance within.
• Reckon on everything, expect everything.
• Fortune gives us nothing which we can really own.
• We are mistaken if we believe any part of the world is exempt and safe....Nature has not created anything in such a way that is immobile.

Lee Atwater: Master of Mass Manipulation

Last night I watched Frontline's "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story," about the political operative who ran George Herbert Walker Bush's 1988 campaign and who had a profound influence on the campaign tactics of the Republican Party. The documentary was very interesting, providing insight into how dirty tactics work in campaigns. Atwater was a master of "framing" an opponent, creating a narrative that places the opponent in the worst possible light from which it is hard to escape. As the narrator--and some of the interviewees say in the film--Atwater destroyed Michael Dukakis. Scenes with Dukakis in his home, setting his table, retrieving milk from a refrigerator, are particularly poignant.

Winning is everything to some people; it doesn't matter how one wins. The losers are quickly forgotten, and the winners often have enough apologists and sycophants to polish their images long after they're dead.

I know that politics is a nasty business and that one needs to be tough to win and to lead, but I also think that there's a line between what can be accepted and what should not be accepted in political discourse. As interesting and complicated a man as Lee Atwater comes across in this documentary, I think he crossed that line, as have the Republican operatives who have followed in his footsteps, such as Atwater's protege Karl Rove. Fascinating documentary......

A BIT Crazy and Off Base?

I thought of starting a wingnut watch on my blog, but after a few days of reading reactions to Obama's presidential win, I concluded I would have neither the time nor the stomach to keep up with the crazies. Just a local example: In an interview with the Associated Press this week, Georgia Republican Congressman Paul Broun warned the public against Barack Obama's establishing a dictatorship with a Gestapo-like civilian corps:

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist....[snip]...“We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential of going down that road.””

Ummm..... In other words, Broun is indeed comparing Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler. Broun represents Georgia's 10th Congressional District in northeast Georgia, which includes the cities of Augusta and Athens. Broun won a run-off election in 2007 by a slim margin over his opponent Senator Jim Whitehead. The two men were vying in a special election to fill the congressional seat vacated when U.S. Representative Charlie Norwood died. Broun carried 90% of the vote in the Athens area, where he was supported by Democrats as well as Republicans. An opinion article in The Wall Street Journal at the time suggested that folks were angered by Jim Whitehead's comment that the University of Georgia, a "liberal bastion," ought to be bombed.

This November, Broun won a full-term by a landslide--61 to 39 percent--over Bobby Saxon, his Democratic challenger. When he was announced the winner on Tuesday, November 4th, Broun "pledged....to set aside party labels and look for bipartisan ways to solve to (sic) the nation's problems." Obviously, his promise didn't even last a week.

Hat tip to Josh Marshall at TMP. For the full story, you can go to: "GA Congressman Calls Obama Marxist, Warns of Dictatorship," in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Monday, November 10, 2008.

Sarah Palin Watch 1: Secret Service Revelations

Our political attention spans are often too short. The onslaught of news from all kinds of sources, the tragedies and triumphs of international events, and our own hectic daily lives conspire to engender in us an unacknowledged amnesia. I've discovered this tendency in myself. And so, looking forward to the next presidential election, I'm going to keep watch on the political actors that appeared in this election as well as other presidential hopefuls and policy leaders who are being put forward by the political pundits. With that in mind, here is my first installment of my Sarah Palin Watch.

According to Tim Shipman, of the United Kingdom's Telegraph, Sarah Palin's "demogogic tone" in her attacks on Barack Obama at the McCain/Palin campaign rallies "provoked a spike in death threats against the future president.":

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

We need to remember the tone that Sarah Palin took in this national race, as it tells us something about the woman. McCain aides are now griping publicly that "Mrs. Palin took it upon herself to question Mr. Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr. McCain."

I'm not one to believe everything the McCain aides say; they're trying to save their reputations. However, I do think that Sarah Palin's very successful use of demagogic language reveals something about her, about her tendencies to bifurcate the world into "those against us" and "those for us." She excited the fringes of the Republican base in a very dangerous way.

For Further Reading about Palin and the Republican Party:

• Mark Lilla, "The Perils of Populist Chic: What the Rise of Sarah Palin and Populism Means for the Conservative Intellectual Tradition," The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2008.
• Ed Pilkington, "We Feel About Her the Way You Feel About the Queen," The Guardian, November 10, 2008. (www.guardian.co.uk)
• Steve Benen, "Coming to Grips with Republicans' Anti-intellectualism," Political Animal blog at The Washington Monthly, posted November 9, 2008.
• Rasmussen Reports, "60% of GOP Voters Say Palin Helped McCain," Friday, Nov. 7, 2008 (Hat tip: Think Progress):

  When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin [snip].....The key for the 44-year-old Palin will be whether she can broaden her base of support. An Election Day survey found that 81% of Democrats and, more importantly, 57% of unaffiliated voters had an unfavorable view of her.

• Kathleen Parker, "The Conservative Crackup: The Palin Factor," conservative columnist Kathleen Parker's contribution to a dialogue among conservatives (writers, editors, television pundits) on Slate, posted November 7, 2008:

  Palin covered her inadequacies with folksy charm and by drumming up a class war, turning her audiences not just against elites but against the party's own educated members. The movement created by that superelite, but never elitist, William F. Buckley Jr. was handed over to Joe Six-Pack. Know-nothingness was no longer a stigma, but a badge of honor.

From the Kitchen to the Oval Office

Yesterday's Washington Post has an article about Eugene Allen, an 89-year-old black man who served in the White House for over thirty years, from 1952-1986. He started out washing dishes and shining silverware at $2,400 a year and was promoted over the years to butler and, in 1980, to maitre d'. The reporter interviewed Allen and his wife, Helene, for their observations on the presidential inhabitants of the White House. The article also briefly describes the attitudes toward African-Americans in the White House, including a story of President John Kennedy's distress when Sammy Davis, Jr., who, invited with 800 other blacks to attend a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, showed up with his white wife, May Britt:

Louis Martin, a Democratic operative who helped plan the function, had placed the names of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and his wife, May Britt, on the guest list. The White House scratched it off and Martin would put it back on. According to Martin, Kennedy was aghast when he saw the black and white couple stroll into the White House. His face reddened and he instructed photographers that no pictures of the interracial couple would be taken.

This past week, Eugene Allen cast his vote for Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States.

For the full story, go to: Wil Haygood's "A Butler Well Served by this Election," Washington Post, Friday, November 7, 2008; Page A01. (Hat tip to Scientific's Blog at Talking Points Memo Cafe)

How far we've come in my lifetime: from blacks washing dishes in the kitchen of the White House to a black man in the Oval Office. But we still have quite a ways to go to achieve true equality in this country. The overt reactions of some white people to this election remind us of the racism that remains; our more subtly-expressed attitudes in conversation and everyday choices remind us that we fall short of social equality.

Education in Texas Supervised by Wingnuts

The presidential election is over, but the wingnuts are still out there smearing Barack Obama. Needing a news fix after weeks of sitting glued in front of the computer screen every evening reading all the latest commentary on the presidential race, I prowled quickly through most of my favorite links. A headline link in the Austin American-Statesman caught my eye: "Directing Education from the Fringe: Cynthia Dunbar's Seditious Attack on Obama Shames Texas."

Cynthia Dunbar is an elected member of the state board of education, representing "the northern half of Austin and Travis County, as well as Bastrop, Williamson, Fayette, Lee, Milam and part of Fort Bend counties, among others." Ms. Dunbar published a screed on the Christian Worldview Network in which she repeats the lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii and so can't be an American citizen. That particular wingnut idea has been proven to be wrong again and again: see FactCheck.org. Gee, a member of the Texas state board of education repeating such a discredited theory really gives one confidence in the state of education in Texas!

Dunbar also calls the Judicial Branch of the United States the "militant Leftist Judicial Branch." "Militant Leftist" compared to what: Nazi Germany? An Obama presidency, according to Dunbar, will be "the end of America as we know her." And she fully expects a conspiracy of Obama supporters to launch an attack on America in order to have martial law declared so that the powers of the presidency will be expanded.

When criticized for her comments, Dunbar showed no regret. This is a woman who helps supervise public education in Texas (her own children aren't even in public school--she home schools them). And where did Dunbar get her law degree? From Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law, that source of mediocre federal appointments (many in the Department of Justice) of the Bush administration. (More than 150 alumni of Regent University alumni were given federal government positions by the Bush administration. Remember Monica Goodling?). When is Cynthia Dunbar up for re-election? Too often we pay close attention to national elections but little attention to local elections. However, most national candidates begin their careers in those little local elections. Know your local candidates! They could be choosing your kids' textbooks some day. . . . or running for president.

Voter Turnout in Atlanta Not as Much as Expected

Though the percentage of voter turnout in Georgia was higher since the last election in 2004, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the turnout in Atlanta was a little disappointing:

Mark Henderson, spokesman for Fulton County’s election office, expressed surprise at Fulton’s total turnout early Wednesday, which appeared to be about 60 percent. “We had 77 percent of registered voters vote four years ago,” he said. (from "More Georgians Voted but not as Many as Projected," by Bill Torpy and Mary Lou Pickel, Wednesday, November 5, 2008)

Some have speculated that people didn't turn out to vote on Election Day because they feared the long lines that transpired in early voting. However, the lines on Election Day were very short since about 53% of the voters in Georgia voted early. Hmmmmm..... maybe early voting has some unintended consequences. However, I still think that changes are needed in the way we vote in national elections, particularly. If the long lines of early voting had occurred on Election Day, we would have massive problems.

Missing Boxes of Votes in Georgia

The sun shines on Georgia's Senate race this morning with Saxby Chambliss (R) holding a slim lead over Democratic challenger Jim Martin. Here's what Jim Galloway reported at 6:30 this morning in his Political Insider column at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Wednesday, November 5, 2008, 06:30 AM: Republican Saxby Chambliss continues to cling to a slim lead in the U.S. Senate race, a cushion of 138,511 votes. A handful of missing boxes in both Carroll and DeKalb counties may give us the answer of whether we have a Dec. 2 runoff. Democrat Jim Martin is at 46.2 percent.

Here are the latest numbers from AP, with 98 percent of precincts reporting:

Saxby Chambliss — 1,768,378 — 51%
Jim Martin — 1,629,867 — 46%
Allen Buckley — 120,840 — 3%

I was living in Georgia when Saxby Chambliss first won his Senate seat by challenging the Democratic encumbent Max Cleland in a nasty race in which Republican ads questioned the patriotism of Cleland, a Vietnam veteran who had lost his legs and one arm in the Vietnam War. I'm no conspiracist, but where are those missing ballots this year?

Has My Vote Been Counted?

Georgia went for John McCain. No surprise there except for what I just read online at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

With nearly 90 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, McCain had a huge lead: 56 percent to 44 percent for Obama and less than 1 percent for Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman. But those figures included fewer results from metro Atlanta and apparently none of the ballots cast in metro Atlanta during massive early and advance voting. [my emphasis] More than 600,000 ballots cast before Tuesday in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett were to be counted after the live Tuesday votes.

The rest of the article can be found at: "Georgia Voters Apparently Came Through for McCain," by Aaron Gould Sheinin, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, and updated Nov. 5) And, of course, the majority of those early voters were Obama supporters.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editors asked their readers to reply to the question: What Does This Moment Mean to You? Many of the comments would be unbelievable if we hadn't heard this kind of poison before: the claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a socialist, a dictator, a terrorist, an anti-Christ, etc. And other comments which are quite racist. The majority of Georgia's voters went for McCain, all right, but evidently some of those voters weren't moved by McCain's gracious concession speech.

Update: Jim Galloway, in his Political Insider column, describes how the Atlanta metro-area votes affect the final results of the Chambliss/Martin race. As those votes are counted, Saxby Chambliss's lead over Democratic challenger Jim Martin "has been nearly cut in half," at 187,513 ballots, with Chambliss's early lead of 55% down to 51.2%. So Jim Martin came much closer in the race than earlier reports suggested.

New Update, 2:30 a.m. : Chambliss's lead has slipped again as those votes continue to be counted:

2:20 a.m.: Republican Saxby Chambliss now clings to a 50.4 percent lead in the U.S. Senate race, a cushion of only 144,410 votes. A handful of missing boxes in both Carroll and DeKalb counties may give us the answer of whether we have a Dec. 2 runoff. Democrat Jim Martin is at 46.2 percent. (from Jim Galloway's column Political Insider, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Wednesday, Nov.5, 2:27 p.m.)

Barack Obama Wins!

On PBS, David Brooks says that Barack Obama's win does not give him a "mandate." Good Lord! By what margin does a Democrat need to win to have a "mandate"? George Bush claimed he had received a mandate from the people in 2004 when he received 286 electoral votes, fewer than the 338 electoral votes Barack Obama has won here in 2008. All the conservative pundits echoed Bush's claim, and the media chimed in on the chorus. Bill Bennett in The National Review in 2004:

Having restored decency to the White House, President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and law. His supporters want that, and have given him a mandate in their popular and electoral votes to see to it. (In The Great Relearning," National Review Online, Nov. 3, 2004)

No, David Brooks, I think Barack Obama has indeed received a mandate by the people.

And I can't believe that I first heard the announcement that Barack Obama is the next president of the United States on.....The Comedy Channel! Jim Lehrer and his guests were taking a brief break on PBS, and I clicked to Jon Stewart's and Steven Colbert's Indecision '08, expecting to return right away to PBS. And then Jon Stewart announced that Barack Obama had just been proclaimed the winner of the presidential election.

Well, I guess the news is just as wonderful announced by a comedian as by a pundit.

Watching the Election Returns

I'm watching the election returns on PBS, with Jim Lehrer hosting. Perhaps this choice of news channel reflects some stodginess on my part, but I just don't like the hype of most of the other news channels. I'm not interested in the fancy graphics; I just want the story and some interesting chit-chat in the meantime.

Since we've lived here in the metro-Atlanta area for just a little over a year, we don't have close friends nearby with whom to share this experience. And I wasn't really up to gathering with strangers. I called my son in Austin, Texas, a few minutes ago; he participated in a couple of the Democratic caucuses earlier. He's busy studying on campus now, but when the final announcement is made, I'll be sure to call him up. I hope, of course, that we will be celebrating the historic event of the nation's first black president. If the country goes for McCain, I'll have to save the champagne for some future event--or put it on a shelf as a memento to dashed hopes.

I tutor on a campus where the student population (as well as faculty and staff) is majority African-American. I've talked to enough of my colleagues to know that some of their votes in the past have not always been what many think would be the expected "African-American" vote; people vote for many reasons, and in the South, particularly, votes are often tied to what they think is the "character" vote or "values" vote. Now, I would disagree with those who think voting for a Democratic candidate is not a "values" vote, but that's an argument for another post. What has struck me so much this time is the enthusiasm that people have for this election. One student came into our lab today with two American flags stuck in her hair and a Barack Obama pin and "I'm a Georgia Voter" sticker on her blouse. Another student was almost giddy with excitement. The young woman sitting next to her kept describing to me how enthusiastic her friend was about this election, about how her friend has been telling everyone to vote. A young man who has been in the past so proud of the rap CD he created with his own home recording system was proudly sporting a "I'm a Georgia Voter" on his jacket today. His smile was contagious.

My daughter and I walked downtown to enjoy the unusually balmy sunshine this afternoon, and we passed a man on a sidewalk also sporting the ubiquitous "I'm a Georgia Voter" sticker. He was a handsome man, a little on the heavy side, wearing a brown driving cap and leaning a little on a cane. We stopped to talk to him.

"Was the line long at the polls?" I asked, remembering having seen a long line downtown last week of people voting early.

"Oh, no," he said with a smile. "I was a little worried before I left the house, thinking I would have to stand in line and wondering if I would need my cane." He motioned to his cane. "But I didn't really need it; I voted right away."

There were long lines in some places, but it seems that the early voting did indeed diminish the wait tremendously in some precincts. I suspected that our precinct would not have a long line on Election Day, but I voted early because I was just too anxious to wait and also because I actually wanted to participate in what became a more community experience in the long lines here in Dekalb County. That may sound silly, especially in light of all of those pundits complaining that early voting takes away from the community experience. I didn't feel short-changed, however, as I stood for an hour-and-a-half in line; seeing all those other people just as anxious as I to vote was inspiring.

Stealing Votes

I've stayed away from stories about voter fraud because I'm leery of conspiracy theories. The GOP has been screaming about ACORN, even though the problems there are with voter registration, not voter fraud. And ACORN turned in many of the bad voter registration forms. As others have pointed out, will Mickey Mouse show up at the polls? But putting all caution aside, I just read Greg Palast's article, "How McCain Could Win," on Truthout's website, and my anxiety level just went up about four or five more notches. Here are a few details to make you sweat:

• Swing state Colorado. Before this election, two Republican secretaries of state purged 19.4 percent of the entire voter roll....[snip]
• Swing state New Mexico. One in nine voters in this year's Democratic caucus found their names missing from the state-provided voter registries. And not just any voters. County by county, the number of voters disappeared was in direct proportion to the nonwhite population....[snip]
• Swing state Indiana.[snip]....566,000 registered voters in that state don't have the ID required to vote. Most are racial minorities, the very elderly and first-time voters; that is, Obama voters. Twenty-three other states have new, vote-snatching ID requirements.
• Swing state Florida.[snip]...the state's Republican apparatchiks are attempting to block the votes of 85,000 new registrants, forcing them to pass through a new "verification" process. Funny thing: verification applies only to those who signed up in voter drives (mostly black), but not to voters registering at motor vehicle offices (mostly white).
  (See Palast's entire article at Truthout.org: "How McCain Could Win," Greg Palast, Nov. 3, 2008.)

Read more of the article for many such gems as the following, and you'll want to go to bed with a bottle of whiskey and a request for a wake-up call November 5th:

In the last election, 1,389,231 ballots were zeroed-out, "spoiled," because the machines lost them, couldn't read them, mangled them or simply didn't register them. But it's not random, not by a long shot. In New Mexico in 2004, I found that 89 percent of blank and spoiled ballots were cast in minority precincts - a sum of uncounted ballots way over the Republican "victory" margin in that state.

Add to these stories the individual anecdotes of folks waiting in long, long lines in metro-Atlanta, and you, too, will begin to wonder why voting is so difficult in this country, why voting isn't streamlined, with extended hours in all states and a national roll of eligible voters. One of my co-workers described to me how she stood in line three hours Thursday morning to vote. Near her in line was a woman with her daughter, a new voter. The daughter's enthusiasm began to flag; she had never voted before, and she had not anticipated having to stand in line so long for the privilege. The mother and my friend continued to encourage the young woman--who finally made it to the front of the line only to be told that she was not registered to vote in that county. Oh, yeah, there will be lots of those tomorrow. Get ready.

Rachel Maddow's commentary on the long lines at the polls:

Robo Calls

A couple of days ago I received my first robo call of the election, a strange woman's voice telling me I should vote for Amendment 2 on the Georgia ballot: “Shall the Constitution of Georgia be amended so as to authorize community redevelopment and authorize counties, municipalities, and local boards of education to use tax funds for redevelopment purposes and programs?"

Then, yesterday I received my second robo call, and the recorded voice was that of Barack Obama's. Obama was requesting that we vote for Jim Martin, the Democrat running for the Senate against Saxby Chambliss. Obama described the reasons Martin should be elected. There was no dirty mud-slinging, no claims that Saxby Chambliss was un-American or irreligious or a socialist. Just a steady and reasoned call for my vote.

Imagine.

The Black McCains

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article and accompanying video about the McCain families in Carroll County, Mississippi: the descendants of John McCain's ancestors who still remain in the area where those ancestors owned a cotton plantation (Teoc), and the descendants of the slaves who worked that plantation and took their owners' surname. The McCains have a biannual reunion where family members of both groups of descendants meet.

Charles McCain, grandson of a slave at Teoc, the white McCain plantation, was active in the Civil Rights Movement:

Charles McCain was a central figure in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When civil-rights workers swarmed Mississippi in 1964, the black McCains housed white activists and received bomb threats and harassing calls.

"Daddy didn't want us to roll over and play dead or live as if you are not a person," says Lillie McCain. Her sister Mary McCain Fluker, 53, says their father "would always tell us you are just as good as anybody. 'You are no better than anybody,' he'd tell us, 'but you're just as good as anybody.'"

Civil-rights organizers held secret meetings at the family's church just off the Teoc plantation. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state agency formed to thwart the civil-rights movement, kept tabs on Mr. McCain, according to commission records. "Daddy was one of the leaders, one of the people out front," says 60-year-old Charles McCain Jr., a retired brick mason and teacher who still lives on the family land.

As Senator John McCain himself has said, slavery was "a dark and tragic chapter in American history." This article is about one plantation-owning family whose descendants turned to military service and fought for freedom abroad and the slaves whose descendants fought for their freedom here at home. (However, four of Charles McCain's children also served in the military: the black McCains did double duty--fighting for freedom abroad and for Civil Rights at home.)

Hat tip to Scott Horton, blogging for Harper's Magazine.

See also, "The Complicated history of John McCain and MLK Day," at Jake Tapper's Political Punch blog at ABC News online.

Crabby Republican Rubs Elbows with "Poor Old People"

Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz provided this YouTube clip of Fred Barnes complaining of early voting. Fred decries the crowded lines of "poor old people" that cluttered the polling place he went to for absentee voting in downtown Arlington, Virginia. He had a reason to vote absentee, he says in his condescending way, because he was going to be in New York on Election Day, but these "poor old people" hadn't a good reason. He can read their minds, evidently. Also, a lot of stuff happens in the last days of the election, and Barnes doesn't want these "poor old people" to miss the stuff that might change their minds at the last minute. (You know, the last little bit of dirt that someone digs up to throw at one or the other candidate.) His mind, of course, is too fine--or fossilized--to change.

Listening to Fred Barnes reminded me of years ago when Tom liked to watch the McLaughlin Group when that half-hour program aired on Friday evenings on the local PBS channel. Fred Barnes, John McLaughlin, Eleanor Cliff, Pat Buchanan, Tony Blankley, and others would spend the half hour on little news bites, yelling at one another. Although the show was sometimes entertaining, I couldn't stand the raised voices and the typical partisan responses. In retrospect, that show seems tame compared to the vitriol of talk radio and the political hackery of many television pundits today.

Update: I do realize that more voting machines are rolled out for Election Day and that the fewer voting machines created problems for the unprecedented turnout in early voting. For instance, Clayton County, Georgia, had 50 voting machines available for early voting, while 500 will be available on Election Day. However, even though approximately 35% of voters in Georgia participated in early voting, lines are expected to be long on Election Day, too, with some election officials worried that they won't have enough machines for the turnout: "Fulton, Clayton May Extend Voting Hours on Tuesday," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, by Megan Metteucci, November 1, 2008.

Atlanta: Long Voting Lines and Race

Here we've been watching local news of the long lines at several early- and advanced-voting polling places in the metro-Atlanta area, but I haven't seen a lot of attention to these long lines on national news. Well, I don't watch Fox News and I only very occasionally watch cable news, so I might be missing something. However, I have read and seen people describe three-hour waits in other states as "long" waits. Try standing in a voting line for ten hours. That's what's happening here in some places. The Raw Story has an article on the issue: "For Atlanta Voters, 10 Hour Lines Await."

Watching those news items on local television, I noticed that the longest lines seemed to be majority African-American citizens. Are voting machines equitably distributed in metro-Atlanta? I wondered. I really don't know, but the long lines make me suspicious. Hilzoy, at The Washington Monthly, links to an article by Christopher Edley, Jr., on this issue of equitable distribution of voting machines and polls. Here's a long quote from that article:

What's crucial is that state and local officials nationwide salvage the situation by implementing second-best strategies: For starters, redistribute machines on the basis of voter registration, instead of assuming that minorities won't show up. Stockpile paper ballots, under lock and key, and offer a paper ballot voting option if wait times reach 45 minutes. Train platoons of reserve poll workers and stand by to shuttle them where they are needed. Commit right now to holding the polls open late if necessary. Advertise what you're prepared to do. For heaven's sake, a lot of people bled for this opportunity.

In 2001, former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford led a commission, of which I was a member, to dissect the previous year's voting fiasco in Florida. Many of our recommendations found their way into the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Disappointingly, Congress failed to create an explicit and easily enforceable prohibition against grossly disproportionate resource allocations between polling places in the same state or even the same county -- the level of government at which, preposterously, we typically finance and administer elections. This localism means that the infrastructure of democracy vies for resources with potholes, parks, sheriffs and firefighting. It also means that locally powerful communities get better service on something that -- above all else -- is supposed to be scrupulously equal in this country.

Even without a new statute, there are enough plausible legal theories on this to boggle the mind. Voting is a fundamental right, but as I saw on the Carter-Ford commission and again as a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Election Day resource disparities have enormously different racial and class impacts that are based on the dynamics of power and poverty. In election cycle after cycle, registrars act surprised when problems crop up disproportionately in poor neighborhoods. If there isn't enough money to run decent elections everywhere, Americans should share the pain equally. (Christopher Edley, Jr., "A Voting Rights Disaster," The Washington Post, posted Tuesday, October 28, 2008.)

A search for information on demographics in Georgia provided me with the information that the African-American population has increased quite a bit in Georgia in the last twenty years. And the get-out-the-vote push in this election has also encouraged many African-Americans to vote when they might not have done so consistently in the past. Here is some information I found on www.gadata.org:

Migration patterns have significantly changed the racial composition of Georgia. Throughout most of the state’s history, racial distinctions were limited to black and white. The numbers from Census 2000 changed this. The African American/Black percentage of Georgia’s population rose from 27 percent to 28.7 percent. This is the highest level in fifty years. Hispanics, who can be of any race, grew from only 108,000 in 1990 to 435,000 in 2000. They now number over 5 percent of the state’s population and are found in significant numbers throughout the state. In Hall and Whitfield counties, one person in five is Hispanic. In Gwinnett County the number is close to one in nine. The Asian population also doubled in the decade to 176,000. Although only 2 percent of the state population, it is highly concentrated in the Atlanta region. In Gwinnett over 7 percent of the population is now Asian. In DeKalb and Fulton counties the percentage is more than twice the state average.

The increase in both the African American/Black population and the growth of other minority groups has greatly reduced the non-Hispanic white percentage of the state’s population. In 1990 over 70 percent of Georgia’s population could be classified as non-Hispanic white. Census 2000 found that this percentage had decreased to just over 62 percent. The total minority percentage of the population is now higher than at any time since the 1920s. This was the start of the large migration of blacks from the South to the industrial cities of the North that followed World War I. Over the next fifty years the African American/Black percentage of Georgia’s population would decline from 42 percent to an historical low of 26 percent in 1970.

Although the growth of Georgia’s new minorities, Hispanics and Asians, was the most reported result of Census 2000, the strong growth of the African American/Black population should not be understated. Between 1990 and 2000 Georgia’s African American/Black population grew from 1,746,000 to 2,349,000. This was an increase of almost 35 percent. Much of this increase is the result of migration patterns. Only New York and Texas now have larger African American/Black populations. Georgia’s African American/Black population surpassed both California and Florida in the last decade. The percentage increase was the largest of any state with a significant 1990 population of this minority group. The numerical increase of 603,000 was the largest of any state in the nation. At current growth rates, Georgia will pass both Texas and New York in the next few years to have the largest African American/Black population of any state. [my emphasis]

The change in demographics has been especially profound in the Atlanta region. The 10 county area of the Atlanta Regional Commission had a minority population of less than 23 percent in 1970. By 1990 this number had increased to almost one-third of the region’s population. Census 2000 found that non-Hispanic whites had declined to just over 55 percent of the total. Even in the full twenty county Metropolitan Statistical Area the minority percentage now exceeds 40 percent.

Of the 14 largest counties in the state (populations of 100,000 or more), the non-Hispanic white percentage of the population is under 50 percent in Bibb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, Muscogee and Richmond. Total minority populations exceed 40 percent in Chatham County and 30 percent in Clarke, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Houston counties. Hall County’s minority population is now 29 percent. Only in Cherokee and Henry is the minority percentage of the population less than 20 percent. ("Georgia Population Trends 1990 to 2000")

These demographics should suggest to Georgia Republicans that they need to reach out to minorities rather than rallying their white supporters by "energizing" them with news that a large African-American turn-out threatens their power: "Heavy Black Turnout Threatens Georgia Senator," The New York Times, by Carl Hulse, October 29, 2008.

These are the words of Saxby Chambliss, whose Senate seat is being challenged by Democrat Jim Martin:

“There has always been a rush to the polls by African-Americans early,” he said at the square in Covington, a quick stop on a bus tour as the campaign entered its final week. He predicted the crowds of early voters would motivate Republicans to turn out. “It has also got our side energized, they see what is happening,” he said.

Words and Stories That Made Me Laugh Today

Reading online this morning (The New Republic, Salon, Slate, The New Yorker, The New York Times), I came across several interesting and very different stories. Here are two that made me laugh:

• Gail Collins' op-ed column, "Our Election Whopper," in The New York Times: Collins has a few words--some serious but mostly all in good humor--about the end of the presidential campaign. I laughed at this paragraph, though:

  Obama’s target audience is the 10 percent of voters who told this week’s New York Times/CBS News poll that they did not feel as if they had received enough information to make an informed decision on the presidential race. I believe we have met them before. They are the men and women who get up at a town hall meeting after the candidate had just made a 20-minute opening speech about his/her plans for health care reform, and say: “What I want to know is, what are you going to do about medical costs?” My theory is that whenever they hear someone start to discuss the issues, they cover their ears and make humming noises, the way my husband does when I say it is time to take a look at our 401(k)s. [my emphasis]

  I laughed because I have noticed these people over and over in the election, people who still, at the end of this very long campaign, say that they don't "know enough about Obama" or that "Obama has not told us just what he wants to do if he is elected president." Where have these people been? I wonder. Collins' image is just right, and I can see those folks sitting in town halls like a bunch of kindergartners with their hands over their ears, humming.

  And I can relate to what Collins says she's going to do after being so immersed in the minutiae of this presidential campaign: read the Russian classics. I think I'll read more poetry. I'm not sure my attention span is quite up to Russian literature yet after months of intensive online news browsing.

• The wire story that I read on Salon about translation issues in Wales:

  Officials had e-mailed a translator to supply the Welsh translation for a traffic sign. Road signs in Wales are printed in English and in Welsh. However, the translator was not in the office, and the English officials received one of those instant reply e-mails stating that the translator was not available. The officials, not being able to read Welsh, thought the e-mail was the Welsh version of their English road directions:

  In English, the road sign was just fine, warning drivers that the route ahead is not suitable for heavy trucks.
  
  But the translation in Welsh didn't work so well. "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated," it said.