Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

�

Click here for the Secret Decoder Ring to this issue!

Become a
Paid Mullings Subscriber!

(To join the FREE mailing list or to unsubscribe Click Here)

Cannon Fodder for Thought

Rich Galen

Monday November 15, 2004

Click here for an Easy Print Version

From The Young Republican National Meeting
Austin, Texas

I believe I have discovered a major difference between Red States and Blue. The discovery came, as so many do, having set out Saturday night in Austin to find a Starbucks.

I came across a sculpture located along Congress Street just a few blocks from the State Capitol where George W. Bush held sway having been elected Governor twice, before confounding Democrats in the US and Liberals around the world by being elected President of the United States. Twice.

The bronze statue, which can be seen on the Secret Decoder Ring page is a bronze, 150% life-sized rendition of a woman in more-or-less frontier garb, bare footed, and in an action pose.

The pose in which the woman has been captured, shows her holding a long taper preparing to � fire off a cannon!

There is no explanation as to whether the sculpture is of an individual, or a representation of Red State women everywhere, but I am certain there is no such statue on Beacon Hill.

If there is a sculpture of a woman in more-or-less frontier garb in Boston, I suspect she is in a pose showing her pleading for adoption of the Kyoto protocols, not preparing to shoot someone's butt off with a big gun.

I know this sounds like a typically Mullings-esque stretch, but the Red States were settled by fighters; Men and women who fought against bad weather, bad soil, bad travel conditions, bad diseases, and bad governments in their homelands.

True, they also fought the local indigenous population which hadn't exactly begged the pioneers to stop by for that first Thanksgiving, but native Americans are wreaking their revenge by getting the descendants of the Mayflower madams to spend big wampum in slot machines, on roulette wheels, and around poker tables at Indian casinos in Blue and Red States all across this great land of theirs.

Speaking of immigrants, it appears that George W. Bush got about 44% of the Hispanic vote which was far higher than the Kerry folks had led the national press corps to believe was likely, or even possible.

This, despite my frequent reminders that when Governor George W. Bush ran for re-election in Texas he got just about half of the Hispanic vote which we had been told was not likely, or even possible.

See a pattern emerging here?

More on the pattern front, some college professors from the University of Michigan have redrawn the county-by-county map to show the population differences in the counties won by Kerry and the counties won by the President.

Big bulges in the Northeast, as well as Chicago and Cleveland in the middle, then of course, grotesque results among the Pacific Coast metropolitan counties, and a very odd looking Southern Florida (if you know what I mean, and I think you do).

All this in an attempt to show that the few important counties went for Kerry while many teeny, tiny nobody-who's-anybody-lives-there counties went for Bush.

Here's another way of looking at the county-by-county population data:

Population of counties won by John Kerry: 103.6 million
Population of counties won by George W. Bush: 150.9 million

Drat. Don't you hate it when the facts get in the way of a really swell theory?

New subject: On the flight home from Austin, I sat next to a woman who felt the need to tell me she had been an agnostic since the sixth grade which, she said, "has been my cross to bear."

I suggested that, as an agnostic, she might want to choose a different metaphor; yet another example of why I am not often invited out.

A HUGE Secret Decoder Ring today: The USA Today county-by-county map rendered geographically, the University of Michigan map rendered by population, PLUS the photo of the sculpture in Austin, AND a photo of the Mullmeister in his new specs (with the very attractive national co-chair of the Young Republicans), IN ADDITION to a Catchy Caption involving Barry Manilow whom I know you love.

Current Issue | Secret Decoder Ring | Past Issues | Email Rich | Rich Who?