Mr Toledano : America the gift shop

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…

One thing I find very odd in this election is that national security is supposed to be the number one concern of the Republican Party. This is where their strength is. Since 2001 the greatest threat to the US is supposedly the invading Muslim hordes. While I may disagree with that position, I would at least hope that if the GOP sincerely believed that they would set themselves up to deal with that issue. Sarah Palin has no understanding of the world. NO, again, NO foreign policy understanding at all. We all see the emperor has no clothes. However, I…

Ramadan in Murfreesboro, Tenn. – NYTimes.com. Id al-Fitr — the end of Ramadan’s monthlong fasting and sacrifice — has turned out to be an especially joyous holiday for the Islamic American community of Murfreesboro, Tenn. Hundreds of worshipers were finally able to occupy their new suburban mosque this month, prevailing in their constitutional right after a two-year assault of bigotry, persistent court challenges, arson and a bomb threat at the construction site.