Red State/Slave State. In the post-election free-for-all it was pointed out that a map of the pre-Civil War slave states is similar to the slave states. There are all sorts of problems with this analysis.

First, at least half of the red states were either free states or territories "open to slavery". For the most part, these territories were not actually open to settlers until after the Civil War so they hardly count.

Second, the Electoral College gives a poor indication of actual voting patterns. The USAToday breakdown by county tells a different story. Snopes covered this subject and has a different map shaded by the percentage that counties voted Bush or Kerry.

Tech Central Station went a step further. They have the county map and a map showing population. This makes it very obvious that Kerry's support was directly proportionate to population density. The author gives a few possible explanations. One interesting correlation is that people's willingness to help a stranger goes down as population density goes up.

Not discussed is the demographic breakdown of cities. Kerry's support came from minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, from union members, teachers, trial lawyers, college students, people with advances degrees, and high school dropouts. With the the exception of the dropouts, the rest of these people are mainly found in cities.

Those Wacky Folks at Al Jazeera. The footage of a marine was shown repeatedly but the footage of Margaret Hassan pleading for her life was not shown.

Aljazeera on Tuesday decided not to broadcast the video as it could not be sure that the woman was Hassan. An Aljazeera official said the channel would also not air it out of respect for the feelings of its audience.

I'm just speculating here but I wonder if the footage of the marine had a translation of what he was saying. His words made it clear that he thought he was about to be attacked. In fact, he had been injured by a booby-trapped corpse the previous day so he had good reason to be wary.

One thing I know for certain, Al Jazeera did not bother to tell its viewers that the man who was killed was part of a group that thought nothing of kidnapping and executing the Iraqi head of an international aid organization.