Therefore.

Noe Valley Drama Escalates

The NLRB decides to take up the case of the Real Food Co. store closing on 24th St in Noe Valley.

"We found that there is sufficient evidence that the National Labor Relations Act was violated," said Olivia Garcia, a deputy regional attorney for the National Labor Relations Board.

link

Cranberries



The small-red berry of Vaccinium marcocapron is harvested in the fall until the beginning of November, just in time to become a staple of the Thanksgiving dinner table. A wetland fruit which grows on low-growing trailing vines that can spread indefinitely (similar to strawberries), the cranberry is one of the few commercial fruits indigenous only to North America. It is produced principally in the states of Wisconsin and Massachusetts, although some production also takes place in other northern states and some locations in Canada. They are rich in Vitamin C and are believed to prevent bacteria growth associated with urinary tract infection. The fruit is rarely eaten fresh, usually either processed into sauce, dried and used in salads or baked goods, or pressed into juice. An analog of the more well-known "mimosa", the "poinsettia" is a Christmas morning cocktail comprised of cranberry juice, champagne, and an optional orange liqueur.

The Trees of San Francisco



Very cool idea for a book.

Learn.

Buy.

Fuyu Persimmons



Fuyu persimmons are not as popular in the United States as they are in Japan, although they are native to both places. Diospyros kaki are a nonastringent fruit rich in Vitamin C, are orange in color and resemble a flattened apple. An exceedingly firm texture indicates that they are not yet ripe and could have a particularly bitter taste. They are sweet when ripe and are best eaten raw, although I enjoy halving them, broiling them briefly with brown sugar to create a brulee topping, and then eating the pulp out with a spoon.

Let the Circular Firing Squad Commence

So John Kerry is leading the charge to thwart Howard Dean's campaign to become DNC chair, trying to install Iowa Gov. Vilsack instead. Why the loser is allowed such sway is beyond me. Resign your Senate seat, please, Kerry. Don't make me have to look at you again.

Pumpkins



The most widely-used of the edible gourds, pumpkins are indigenous to North America and have come to symbolize American life, taking a prominent place in our Halloween and Thanksgiving traditions. Closely related to watermelons and cucumbers, pumpkins share their species sub-groups within the Cucurbita genus with a variety of squashes and zuccinis. Although the most common pumpkins are orange, they can be a variety of different colors, including green, white, red, blue and yellow. They are rich in Vitamin A and the seeds are a good source of phosphorus. The meat of the Jack-o-lantern and Autumn Gold varieties is roasted and is great for soups and savory dishes while the Small Sugar pumpkin variety is the best choice for pies and other sweet items.

Here's a great site from the University of Illinois.

Howard Dean, Redux

Once again, Howard Dean and I are of one mind.

Former presidential candidate Howard Dean wants the media to stuff its new conventional wisdom that "values" or "morals" drove the result of this month's election.

...

"How can you get to the conclusion morality was the most important issue in this campaign?" Dean asked. "It's beyond me, but that was what the media was riding. They're entitled to their opinion. It doesn't happen to be the opinion of thoughtful people who are looking."

Link

More Marriage

As we all know, 11 states passed anti-marriage ballot initiatives last week. Of those, 9 went to Bush (including the swing state of Ohio) and 2 to Kerry. Early in the year, 2 additional states, Missouri and Louisiana, passed similar laws via referendum, and each of them went to Bush last week.

Here's a fun exercise, comparing the percentages of the vote the anti-marriage initiatives received in each of those 13 states. Now all of them won by large majorities, but there are differences in scale. At the same time, let's see if the strength of the win of the anti-marriage initiative correlates with the strength of Bush's performance there as well.

(state, vote share for initiative, vote share for Bush, difference)

OR 57 48 +9
MI 59 48 +11
OH 62 51 +11
UT 66 71 -5
MT 67 59 +8
MO 72 54 +18
ND 73 63 +10
AR 75 54 +21
KY 75 60 +15
OK 76 66 +10
GA 76 58 +18
LA 79 57 +22
MS 86 60 +26

The first thing that jumps out at you is Utah. Fewer people in Utah voted for the ban on gay marriages than voted for George Bush. And the 66% approval rate for the ban, while despicable and disheartening, is midway between the share of the vote that the ban received in a blue state like Oregon and a red state like Kentucky.

Right there in the Mountain West region with Utah is Montana. The smallest gap between anti-marriage approval and George Bush approval other than Utah. And the share of the vote won by the anti-marriage referendum, 67%, is also one of the more moderate numbers.

All red states are not created equal. The deep south is where the anti-marriage coalition is strongest. If Democrats want to remain the party of civil rights, the south is a lost cause. More fertile ground can be found in the Mountain West.

Miscarriage of Justice

Is this what we've come to? If it looks like certain jurors are holding prosecutors back from getting the verdict they want, you just toss them one by one until you get the result you were looking for? And this is to say nothing of "reasonable doubt".

So the jury wasn't hung after all, and Scott doesn't get off.

Blogging is hard

How do people who are actually employed have the time to blog? No time to do much while actually at work, and I've been getting home pretty late all week. I guess this has been a particularly busy week for me, and I'm not really of the sort to just post links to news items that I found somewhere else. So the dearth of posts since Monday does not bode well for the future of this page.

In any case, here's my take on the hot items of the day.

1. Vote fraud conspiracy theories - Liberals are embarassing themselves.
2. DNC chair - Obviously, it should be Howard Dean, but what I've read about Simon Rosenberg sounds good.
3. Alberto Gonzales - There would be no more appropriate choice to head DOJ for this administration than the guy who rationalized away the Geneva Conventions.
4. Yassir Arafat - The ball is in Israel's court now. They have long claimed that he was the principal roadblock to a peace agreement. Put up or shut up.

Making my Case

Kevin Drum is in accord.
Freedom to Marry is happy with my work too. (They give me a happy red heart. It'll disappear off the front page at some point, and I can't find a permalink, unfortunately.)

This "email of the day" blog entry gives an analysis of voting statistics and concludes that it's "fiction" that anti-gay initiatives gave Bush a special edge November 2nd.

A liberal Marriage blogger approves.
Another one.
Here's a random moderate.

Pete Wilson at KGO-810 in the Bay Area also approvingly read my numbers on the air today.

And a whole bunch of conservatives agree
ClassicalValues is happy.
PowerLine is too.
Another random conservative blogger is too.
Ditto.
Another.
Jawol.

This guy sees the data, but is unconvinced.
SmartChristian sees the evidence and proves he/she isn't very.

The Good News, Mrs. Lincoln, is that You Can Start Dating Again

In news that is, in fact, not from The Onion:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rising global temperatures will melt areas of the Arctic this century, making them more accessible for oil and natural gas drilling, a report prepared by the United States and seven other nations said on Monday.

link

Purple Cauliflower



Broccoli and cauliflower are both varieties of the species Brassica oleracera, distinguished by their different flower morphology. The Violet Queen is also a variety of this species, with the texture of cauliflower, a somewhat milder flavor, and a brilliant purple color. Not to be confused with broccoflower, which also has a violet hue, it is the product of a natural processes, not genetic engineering or specialized breeding. The purplish color is due to an unusually high level of anthocyanins, more than 200 times the level found in white cauliflower, thus, like red wine, is an excellent source of anti-oxidants.

It's been reported that the color fades with cooking, but I've steamed this vegetable without losing any of its purple brilliance. It tastes great with bechamel sauce and used as a stuffing for crepes.

Venting

Letter sent to the SF Chronicle/SJ Mercury News:

To the Editor - The conventional wisdom is that those who defended equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, including our own mayor Gavin Newsom, helped reelect George W. Bush. This makes me angry, because scapegoating of gays was the last thing I would have expected from the leaders on the left, such as Sen. Feinstein.

Leaving gays out to dry would not only be immoral, but it wouldn't get you very far. The electoral returns from Tuesday's elections show that George W. Bush improved his vote share from his performance in 2000 in nearly every state in the nation. Bush's improvement was no better in the eleven states in which an anti-gay-marriage initiative on the ballot than in the states that did not. In fact, there is a minor, statistically insignificant negative correlation, suggesting that his performance in those eleven states was worse than elsewhere.

That gay marriage won the White House for Bush is a myth, and it is important for Democrats that we do not perpetuate this myth, because we end up empowering the bigots within our own ranks and marginalizing those who seek to fight for equal rights.

Letter sent to Sen. Diane Feinstein:

I am urging Senator Feinstein not to seek reelection to the United States Senate in 2006. I am disgusted by her remarks this past week, scapegoating gays and those who support equal marriage rights for the defeat of Sen. Kerry in the election last week. If Sen. Feinstein has any proof, rather than just a biased feeling stoked by the media, that gay marriage returned George W. Bush to the White House, I would like to see it. If she can produce evidence that the presence of the gay marriage initiatives in eleven states increased conservative republican turnout and George W. Bush's percentage of the vote in those states beyond that which he gained in the other states, I would like to examine it.

It is a myth that the gay marriage issue influenced the outcome of the presidential election. Perpetuating this myth empowers the bigots within the Democratic ranks and marginalizes those who seek to promote equal rights

It is truly in moments of crisis that you learn who your friends are. I feel I cannot trust her if she seeks a second term.

Perhaps I was a bit shrill, but it sure felt good.

(In case you missed it last week, Feinstein crapped out a steaming pile. You too can send her a charming message just like mine here.)

What Happened in California?

California's currently reporting almost a million fewer votes cast in this election than there were in 2000.

2004: 10,315,604
2000: 11,141,740

This despite an increase in voter registrations from 15.7 to 16.6 million.

Are there still a bunch of uncounted votes here in California? Or did we totally blow the GOTV effort?

UPDATE - I guess we're still counting...

Somebody Listens

It appears that I'm Andrew Sullivan's "Email of the Day"

UPDATE - It also appears that the NY Times takes note of the dollar's decline, but they're in full Bush-apologist mode:

The election drove the dollar all over - down when it looked like President Bush would lose, up briefly when Senator Kerry conceded defeat.

Huh? It took a nosedive when Kerry conceded...

UPDATE II - Paul Freedman arrives at the same conclusions that I do over at Slate.

UPDATE III - And now Glenn Reynolds picks up my post on Andrew Sullivan, saying

This is the kind of analysis we ought to be getting from Big Media.

Yes, I find it ironic that I've made a splash on the conservative blogosphere.

The Anti-Marriage Ballot Initiative Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there was a man named George W. Bush who happened to be President of the United States. George wasn't a very good President, but wanted to run for reelection. In order to win reelection, he would have to somehow beat the evil Democrats. He had his bestest friend in the whole world, Karl Rove, help him so he could win.

Karl thought he could help his friend George win reelection by making sure that lots more right-wing religious people than usual came to vote on Election Day. He thought that he could get a whole bunch of states to put initiatives on the state ballots to ban marriage for gay people. Religious people don't like gay people, especially gay people who want to get married. And they also don't like evil Democrats. If he could get lots of religious people to come to vote against marriage, they would also probably decide to vote for George at the same time.

And so Election Day came and, in eleven states, lots more right-wing religious people than usual came to the polls just so they could vote against marriage. And, just like Karl planned, while they were there they also voted for George for President. So many more right-wing religious people showed up that George won. And the evil Democrats blamed the gays for wanting to get married and causing so many more religious people than usual to come to the polls to vote for George. And so George and Karl lived happily ever after.

THE END.

So that's how the fairy tale goes. And like most fairy tales, there's not a lick of truth to it.

Eleven states had anti-marriage initiatives on the ballot on Tuesday. All eleven, of course, passed. The theory goes, of course, that the presence of these initiatives on the ballot in key states like Ohio and Michigan motivated religious conservatives to come to the polls in record numbers to vote against marriage and cast a vote for Bush at no extra charge.

If there's any truth to this theory, then, in the eleven states in which anti-marriage initiatives were on the ballot, Bush should have done significantly better in 2004 than he did in 200o. And sure enough, in those eleven states, he improved his vote share over how he did in 2000.

Arkansas +3.0%
Georgia +3.3%
Kentucky +3.1%
Michigan +1.8%
Mississippi +2.2%
Montana +0.7%
North Dakota +2.2%
Ohio +1.0%
Oklahoma +5.3%
Oregon +0.8%
Utah +4.2%

But in the national popular vote, Bush improved on his vote share by 3.2% (47.9% in 2000 to 51.1% in 2004). So, in the eleven states in which anti-marriage initiatives were on the ballot, only in three (GA, OK and UT) did he outperform his overall national vote share improvement. Indeed, the presence of the anti-marriage initiative correlates with a below-average vote share gain by Bush.

Perhaps comparing each state to the national average is unfair, and a more accurate comparison would be to compare each state in which an anti-marriage initiative took place with a neighboring, politically-similar state in which there was no anti-marriage initiative on the ballot. For example, Arkansas can be compared with Missouri, Georgia with Florida, etc.

Missouri +2.9 (AR +3.0)
Florida +3.4 (GA +3.3)
Tennessee +5.7 (KY +3.1)
Wisconsin +1.5 (MI +1.8)
Alabama +6.0 (MS +2.2)
Idaho +1.2 (MT +0.7)
South Dakota -0.4 (ND +2.2)
Pennsylvania +2.0 (OH +1.0)
Texas +1.8 (OK +5.3)
Washington +1.2 (OR +0.8)
Wyoming +1.2 (UT +4.2)

In Georgia, one of three states in which Bush improved his share of the popular vote at a rate greater than he did nationally, his improvement was not out of line with Florida. And out of all eleven comparisons above, there are only five examples where Bush improved more in a state with an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot than he did in a neighboring state which did not. In two of those examples (AR-MO and MI-WI), the difference is neglible. Of the three remaining examples, the ND-SD comparison may be skewed due to the hotly contested Senate battle in South Dakota. A comparison with Nebraska (+3.0) shows that the vote for Bush in North Dakota may not have been affected significantly by the presence of the anti-marriage initiative after all.

Conversely, the KY-TN comparison might have been affected by an artificially strong performance by Gore in Tennessee in 2000. A comparison with West Virginia (+4.1) confirms that Bush's improvement in Kentucky is indeed below that which he realized in neighboring states.

That leaves two states, Oklahoma and Utah, in which the presence of an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot correlated with an improvement in Bush's vote share in that state which is greater both relative to the nation and relative to the neighboring and politically similar state selected. And just because a correlation exists, does not mean there is any causation.

It is certainly possible that the fact that the Bush administration raised the issue to the level to which did led to increased turnout among religious conservatives nationwide, which then resulted in Bush's overall improved vote share over his 2000 performance. However, one would also expect that this vote share improvement would have been particularly high in states in which the marriage issue was particularly relevant. On the contrary, there is no evidence that suggests that the strategy of putting the anti-marriage initiatives on the ballot in several states did anything to improve Bush's performance in those states.

Currency Exchange Markets

The world weighs in on how the events of Tuesday/Wednesday portend for the health of the U. S. economy.

US Dollar vs. Euro


US Dollar vs. Canadian Dollar


US Dollar vs. Swiss Franc

Arianna Nails It

This timid, spineless, walking-on-eggshells strategy — with no central theme or moral vision — played right into the hands of the Bush-Cheney team's portrayal of Kerry as an unprincipled, equivocating flip-flopper who, in a time of war and national unease, stood for nothing other than his desire to become president.

The Republicans spent a hundred million dollars selling this image of Kerry to the public. But the public would not have bought it if the Kerry campaign had run a bold, visionary race that at every moment and every corner contradicted the caricature.

link

Rock Bottom

We suffered a Devastating Loss on Tuesday. No two ways about it. It was an across-the board sweep. I don't want to hear any arguments about provisional ballots in Ohio, Diebold shenanigans in Florida, or voter intimidation across the nation. I don't want to hear silver linings like Bush getting reelection by the narrowest margin in history, the victory of Ken Salazar in Colorado, or that, except for Texas-brand redistricting, we would have gained seats in the House.

So some people can sit and fret and wonder about all the what-ifs, focus on how close we came to winning this thing, and mock the breadth of Bush' "mandate". And they can protest Republican thug tactics, all the fraud we believe took place and consider W's inauguration illegitmate all they want. And they can shout about counting all the provisional ballots or demanding recounts until the cows come home. But none of this is going to change the fact that, on January 20, 2005, our president is still going to be George W. Bush.

In a way, Gore's narrow defeat in 2000 was disastrous for the Democrats. Not only did it result in us being shut out of power, but it trapped most Democrats into thinking that our basic approach was OK and we just had to follow the same general formula, hold onto the same coalition of special-interest groups, turn out the vote and we'd emerge victorious this time around. Well we didn't, and if we get trapped into thinking it was a narrow defeat, we will make this tragic mistake all over again.

In sports, in life and in politics, you need to hit the absolute rock bottom before you are finally able to reexamine yourself and confront the intrinsic problems that prevent you from accomplishing all that you would like. A string of partial-successes just serves to delude you into thinking that nothing is fundamentally wrong. And so you neither accomplish your goal or learn from your mistakes.

And so I do not wish to reflect on what could have been, that which was within our grasp. No. It was never within our grasp. If we think it was, or is, then we will surely fail again next time. So whether it is true or not, we cannot believe that we came close. We suffered a Devastating Loss. Tuesday was a miserable failure for the Democratic Party and we were completely and utterly humiliated. Hopefully, we will believe that we have hit rock bottom, and begin to confront our problems anew.

Post-mortem

In comparing 2000 and 2004 vote totals, Bush improved (got a higher % of the vote) in 47 out of the 50 states, plus DC. The only states where Bush dropped from his 2000 share of the vote were Vermont (-1.8%), South Dakota and Montana (each less than a 0.4% drop). Nationally, Bush gained about 3.1% over his 2000 vote share.

The state that made the sharpest plunge towards RED territory was Hawai'i, where Bush improved more than 7.8% from 2000. Others where Bush improved more than 5% from 2000 were Rhode Island, New Jersey, Connecticutt, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and New York.

Kerry beat Gore's vote share in 27 states, mostly due to the reduced influence of Ralph Nader in 2004 as compared to 2000, including improvements of greater than 6% in Vermont, Alaska, and Montana. His worst showings were losses of greater than 2% in Tennessee, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Louisiana, New York, and Alabama. Kerry beat the combined 2000 vote share of Gore and Nader in only 5 states - Vermont, South Dakota, North Carolina, Montana, and Idaho.

Looks like it's over.

Barring a major miracle or a secret trove of absentee votes in Ohio, we've been had. Nevada and New Hampshire will likely go to Kerry, New Mexico and maybe Iowa to Bush, but the rest will stay the same as 2000. Bush goes to another narrow victory, although this time with a bit more legitimacy as it looks like he'll take the popular vote as well.

Meanwhile, it's a disaster across the board for the Democrats. They will likely lose all 5 open seats in the South - Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Louisiana. Louisiana is particularly painful, as we won't even make it to the runoff. To add insult to injury, looks like we'll lose the tight races for the open seat in Oklahoma, fail to oust incumbents in Kentucky, Alaska and Pennsylvania, and lose Daschle's seat in South Dakota. Lone bright spots would be the landslide win for Obama in Illinois and the tight victory in Colorado.

As for the House, I won't even go there. A total nightmare.

The Democratic party is completely ineffectual. It will continue to lose as long as it nominates candidates who are unwilling to stand up for its own core values. Time to clean house and start over.