Today’s worthy read from TheStreet:

In seven states, imports are the top five vehicles. All seven went for Obama in 2008: California, New York, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island.

And note also that, with the exception of Florida, those are all quite deep blue states, not swing states.

In a sense this is really not all that surprising, any more than the other observations that red state preferences swing heavily towards trucks and SUVs, or that the ultimate automotive expression of progressivism, the Toyota Prius, is big on the left coast.

And I am emphatically not saying that the blue states’ buying preferences make them any less patriotic than their red state counterparts.  There are far stronger examples to support that contention anyway.

But what I would like to note is the message the UAW ought to be taking away from this: your customers vote Republican. Obviously this is a massive generalization; the UAW does have some stake in Toyota, Nissan and other foreign automakers with operations in the US.  But their influence with them is nowhere near what it is with Detroit’s Big Three, where, on a plant tour, one could easily be excused for wondering if the company’s name is “Ford Motor Company” or “UAW Inc.”.

But the point remains that people you, dear unions, support politically do not, as a rule, support you back with their buying habits.  This partially explains why, for example, the Chevy Volt has thus far been a colossal flop.

Just something to keep in mind the next time the call goes out to make complete jackasses of yourselves in some state capital.

As scipio62 blogged yesterday, the left-wing website AlterNet posted a pseudonymous article that trashed businessman and RedState favorite Herman Cain with several vile racial slurs on the way to leveling the tired charge of being an “Uncle Tom” that the left routinely slaps on any African-American who decides to favor the conservative point of view with respect to American politics.

Now there may be a temptation — for this blogger anyway — to leave open the possibility that the article, penned under the name “Chauncey DeVega”, is some kind of aberration that would meet swift condemnation or at the very least a quiet distancing with the suggestion that “Mr. DeVega” take his screeds somewhere else.

No such luck.  Overnight, AlterNet came to “DeVega”’s defense:

We understand that some are offended by DeVega’s choice of words. We note, however, that most of the consternation generated by DeVega’s post has come from right-wing supporters of Cain who have focused on the language of his post and not the substance of his claim that Cain lends cover to reactionary right-wing forces.

Of course, neither AlterNet nor any of its left-blogosphere brethren would hesitate to be all over any language slip-ups of Cain or anyone else on our side of the aisle.  (Lest we forget: “macaca”.)

But worse than that is the doubling down on the implication is that Cain is merely here to “provide cover” for “right-wing forces”.  The very possibility that Cain himself might be a “right-wing force”?  Absurd!  Unthinkable!  He can’t possibly be espousing these views for his own ends!  And why do they say that?  Because he’s… he’s…

Do go on, Mr. “DeVega”.  Please continue, editors of AlterNet.  What is it about Herman Cain that leads you to the automatic assumption that he is not his own man, expressing his own views, and with his own aspirations to apply them in occupation of the highest executive office in the nation?

Let’s let Mr. “DeVega” speak for himself on the matter, as the editors of AlterNet invited him to do:

In my original post I referred to Herman Cain and other black conservatives as “race minstrels” and “mascots” for the White conservative imagination. I stand by this observation.

There’s a lot more to it than that, but this gives you the gist.  No apologies.  No regrets.  They truly believe that if your skin is beyond a certain shade then they are entitled to your political loyalty, and if you deny them that you are effectively betraying yourself.

Welcome to the “post-racial” era.

A sixteen-, maybe seventeen-year-old me was cruising around Plymouth, Michigan one Saturday afternoon.  I have no idea why, or if I even had a reason other than experiencing the joy of having my own car to drive at such an age and just seeing where the roads my parents would drive past but never turn off on actually went.

All I remember about that day was what came on the car’s radio.  It was a message from the president of the United States… to me.

Probably it went down in history as just another weekly radio address, but to be it was profound.

President Reagan spoke of a dark aspect of our nation’s history, that of racism. And his message to my generation — to me — was simply: see it out of existence.  Banish it from the thought patterns of this nation.  Live the colorblind society that Martin Luther King dreamed of.

It was all I could do not to literally verbalize a “yes, sir!” at the radio, so meaningful was his call to me.  It was the first time I felt actually addressed as an independent person with a say, or at least future say, in the course of this nation.

Looking back, nearly twenty-five years later, I’m a bit heartbroken to see that in many ways we as a nation seem more obsessed with race than ever. An entire industry exists to combat this mystical advantage that having a paler shade of skin supposedly grants people.

And as hard as I try to hold up my end of the bargain it all seems so hopeless at times. One of my greatest fears is that someday we will get pushed too hard and that there will be a backlash against affirmative action and everything that derives from it, of a kind that will end very poorly.

But I still cling to hope, that somehow — I honestly don’t have any idea how — we can find a way to back down from this national obsession without things swinging back the other way again.  In my life it is only halftime, if that, and there remains much time to see President Reagan’s orders through.

We can still win this one, for the Gipper.

This entry probably isn’t going to contain anything profound here.  Just an explanation of where I’ve been and why I dropped off the map here at RedState.

Honestly, after the election I was flat burned out.  I kinda knew I would be and just resolved to shut politics as much out of my life as possible from November 3rd until January 1st. A little distraction in the form of a slice of insanity known as National Novel Writing Month kept temptation away for a while, then came Christmas and all the anxieties that come with that.

I was all set to start 2011 fresh and then… my job moved on me. Or rather, is in the process of moving. Either move from Texas where I’ve spent more than a third of my life, to Alabama, or spend the whole year teaching people in Alabama how to do my job while I wait for the axe to fall.  Not a fun choice.

Either way, the Internet will be there for me when the dust settles, so I’ll be back.  It’s just taking longer than I planned.

See you all soon enough. Don’t go raising taxes without me!  Or with me!

While taking the lazy route (i.e. Google) to looking up the election results on Fox News, I came across a blog on the LA Times website that just encapsulated everything that’s gone wrong in the rest of the “mainstream media”.

“Fox News Strangely Subdued” at the GOP triumph, reads the headline. Tell me, Mr. LA Times blogger, has it occurred to you that maybe — just maybe — they’re acting the way a news organization is supposed to act? That, whatever their personal leanings might be, they’re able to set those aside and actually report news in a straight, even-handed tone that actually lets the viewer (in the words of its much-maligned slogan) decide?

I admit I didn’t watch any other networks for reference, although I would have checked out ABC News had they not folded under pressure and cancelled Andrew Breitbart (and then implausibly denied ever planning to have him on in the first place). Nevertheless, from what I heard second-hand, the coverage was, well, not quite so even-handed. Admittedly, I heard a lot more about the train wreck that was MSNBC than I did about the broadcast networks, but since until recently they were branding themselves “the place for politics” I don’t know that it’s totally unfair to cast them as representative of the non-Fox News major media.

But this diary isn’t really about them anyway. This was about the LA Times expecting Fox News to be breaking out the confetti while reporting last night’s election results, because, one presumes, that’s what they would do (and in many cases did, in 2008).

All of which I think says as much as anything about the bad rap Fox News routinely gets. Just like some will continue to believe Sarah Palin was responsible for things Tina Fey said, Fox News will, to some, never be anything other than what its enemies want it to be, actual evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

It was on the chilly side this morning in the Dallas area. I know this because I had to stand outside in it — in shirt sleeves — for almost ten minutes, waiting in line to vote. I’ve voted at the same location for five Election Days now, and never before have I seen the line extend outside the building.

There were, as I learned eventually, extenuating circumstances. Some “technical difficulties” in accessing the voter database delayed the opening of the polling location for about 10-15 minutes. I arrived just as they had resolved that and started the process of unwinding the backup. It look me just over half an hour from when I entered the line to when I pressed “cast ballot” on the voting machine to complete my civic duty for the day.

But I noted that even as I left, the line was still almost to the door.

Where I live is, as I’ve noted in a few comments, not a particularly contentious voting district. The House representative is as safe as they get, even as I wonder just how many terms the man should rightly serve. The only race that was even remotely contended was the governor’s race, and by all indications Rick Perry should hold off his challenger by a comfortable margin.

All in all there was little reason for this district, of all districts, to be slammed with turnout. Yet here I was, shivering a bit (not that I’m really complaining after the summer we had) and waiting in a line the likes of which I’d never seen even in Presidential election years. As I waited, I heard other people chatting in line and confirming my observation — 2004 was close to this, but 2008, not remotely so.

It’s a sample size of one polling location, and not even really a representative one for several reasons. But still. Out the door. In an off-year election.

I have no remaining doubt: Today is going to be a day for the history books.

In a move that, based on a five-minute sample of opinion, even many loyal liberals are looking sideways at, Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio announced that he was considering seeking the impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts over the Supreme Courts decision to partially uphold the First Amendment by striking down portions of the McCain-Finegold Campaign Finance Reform Act.

As I implied above, few are taking this terribly seriously, given the dearth of precedent for the impeachment of Supreme Court justices, not to mention the floodgates that would surely open should DeFazio somehow succeed. In all likelihood this is simply some red (blue?) meat DeFazio is tossing out there to try and motivate his base.

My takeaway from this is that, even with a six-point lead at this late stage, DeFazio must be feeling awfully insecure to be trying for grandstand plays like this one. Certainly, as that RCP link shows, this is by far the closest race DeFazio has faced in recent elections.

Which, by the way: Art Robinson. If DeFazio thinks he can still lose, who are we to argue?

I’ll admit it up front: I don’t have the same level of paranoia about Google many others on this site have.  Don’t get me wrong, my stance toward them is a guarded one, but I’m not yet convinced they’re actively and wholly geared towards pushing a left-wing agenda, mounting circumstantial evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

That said, here’s another piece of that circumstantial evidence.  What I link to is the front page of the”domestic trends” section of Google Finance.  Note the second chart under “Interesting Examples”, and how it highlights the effect of last year’s “Cash for Clunkers” program.  Then also note that the chart cuts off at July 2009, the very peak of CfC.

What they don’t show unless you go look up the current Auto Buyers Index chart, is what happened right after that:

Not that this wasn’t entirely unpredictable. Not only did auto sales fall off a cliff after the program ended, but this year’s sales have lagged significantly behind those of years prior to the big stimulus effort. This of course makes perfect sense: all “Cash for Clunkers” did was cause people to make purchases they would have made sooner or later regardless, opt for “sooner” at the cost of “later”.

Now maybe it’s just me, but I would think a more recent chart considerably more interesting than the upside of the buying surge alone, if only for the fact that it’s more information rather than less. But hey, I’m not Google, and if they want to help convince me that, as our president put it, they “don’t stand with me”, they have a right to do so.

But it’s certainly not going to get me to let my guard down with them.

Local disasters have a way of being very hit and miss in terms of gaining a national spotlight.  Katrina and the BP disaster, of course, were major stories even on the world stage.  Last spring’s floods in Nashville, on the other hand, went largely unnoticed by much of the media.

In the column of those gone largely unnoticed is the flooding in the Rush Creek area of Arlington, Texas from the remnants of Hurricane Hermine last month. In a move that raised a few eyebrows, FEMA denied Gov. Rick Perry’s request to have Tarrant and twelve other Texas counties declared disaster areas eligible for federal relief. The denial is currently under appeal.

Even without knowing all the facts behind FEMA’s decision, it’s hard to avoid drawing some inferences here. As those who attended the Red State Gathering last month are aware, Perry and President Obama have had a little bit of a feud going over education spending and the federal mandates that come attached to it. While under normal circumstances it would be rash to suggest that a president would intervene in such a petty manner as to deny a legitimate request for disaster relief, with this particular president, such behavior doesn’t come off as wildly out of character.

Perry is one of many speculated to be considering a run for the White House in 2012, but such a plan, if it exists, would surely take a fatal blow if Democrat Bill White were to pull off the upset in the gubernatorial election next month. Could it be that this denial of funds constitutes an attempt to put the screws to Perry and perhaps goad him into saying something rash at an inopportune moment that might cost him the election and any higher aspirations? Again, I say, with this president, it’s hard to rule out anything.

At any rate, with twenty days to go, Perry needs to take care. It may be his election to lose but it’s not won yet. And if any of the above speculation has any basis in fact, then all I can say is that it’s a damn shame that homeowners should have to suffer over a president’s petty grudge.

Jeff Matthews is not Jim Cramer, but the two do share some characteristics: both have great heads for economics, yet both lean liberal in their politics.  Actually I don’t have an explicit statement from Matthews on his politics, but I’ve drawn some inferences over the years, such as one blog posting he made where he posted a graphic a few years ago of the downtrend in the size of the northern polar ice cap and declared it the saddest thing he’d ever seen.

I say that to establish the context that Matthews is certainly no rabid right-winger, which by rights should give significant weight in the media to what he has to say today about Obamacare and proposed monetary policy. Now granted, Matthews’ remarks about Obamacare are really just a setup to the point he is really interested in making, that “quantitative easing” isn’t going to stimulate hiring the way Ben Bernanke seems to think it will.  But even in doing so he reveals some amazing facts about Obamacare that even most of us probably didn’t know.

To highlight, Matthews quotes a Bloomberg article from last Friday:

IBM said it would analyze health-care spending, at no cost to the government, to hunt out fraud, Sam Palmisano, the company’s CEO, said at a conference in New York on Sept. 14. The White House wouldn’t sign on to the plan.

“We offered to do it for free to prove a point, and they turned us down,” Palmisano said. “Our recommendations weren’t aligned with the priorities of the administration. Their priority was not to reduce fraud and improve productivity. It was to increase coverage.”

Wow.  Consider the point made, Mr. Palmisano.  A pity nobody in the press outside of Bloomberg seems to have even the remotest interest.

Please read Matthews’ blog entry in full, it’s well worthwhile.

P.S. The Bloomberg article, too.