Deep Thought

How Blue America Subsidizes Red America. A very neat Aaron Carroll chart shows that, on average, conservative states feature more "dependency" on federal programs than do liberal ones. You can slice this kind of data in a variety of ways, but you always end up with the same aggregate pattern. It happens to be the case that the richest parts of the United States (think the San Francisco Bay area or Connecticut) favor Democrats and also that conservative areas of the country are overrepresented in the Senate. Transfers, on average, flow away from high-income and underrepresented areas and toward low-income…

The 'Ground Zero Mosque' Case Study. Today, media provide up-to-date news essentially while events are occurring.  But although many people watch, listen or read breaking news, very few have the knowledge or take the time to assess how events are framed.  That means that sensationalized coverage of breaking events can have a disproportionate impact on how audiences understand key stories in the news.

Peter King’s subversive fantasy | Wajahat Ali | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk. Congressman Peter King, who has rationalised his past defence of IRA terrorism without a hint of self-awareness or irony, is now the self-appointed protector of America from future terrorist attacks by holding a congressional hearing on the “Extent of Radicalisation in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response.” King presiding over this hearing would be like asking Mel Gibson to chair an impartial session on Jewish American loyalties. King has in the past claimed there are “too many mosques” in America and that 85% of American…