There.  Now you know my credentials as a statistician.  However(comma) I could produce a number of annecdotal examples of my abilities to provoke thought. (ok, sometimes it is really shitty thought  but still ...)

I don't know why those maps look like they do.(allowing for a small measure of inaccuracy)  I suspect that like many things, there is no single and simple explanation.  I do think that there could possibly, somewhere, maybe (did I say possibly?) be someone who sees that graphic and does a bit of introspection as a result.  I hope it isn't out of the realm of reason that multiple individuals could have that reaction.

I will form or have formed opinions as to why that graphic is that way.  I will modify those opinions if facts which are not available to me now become so and, such facts indicate a modification is needed.  No one, including me, is automatically exonerated as part of the causality by any opinion I have formed so far.

Besides, 63.84% of statistics are made up on the spot.

 CAFKIA

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It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
  - William G. McAdoo

Hm. If the GOP is so progressive on racial and equality issues, how come there's not one single elected black Republican in the U.S. Congress - even though there are record numbers of blacks serving in Congress as a whole this year? Speaking of Congress, how come there are twice as many Democratic women as Republican, and three times more Democratic Hispanics as Republican?

Why did the GOP's candidate for Vice President openly and vociferously oppose the Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday? Is there some reason the U.S. Congress, which right now is controlled entirely by Republicans, won't fully fund the national Martin Luther King Memorial being planned for the Mall in Washington?

How come the U.S. Senator who withdrew from the Democratic Party in 1948 - over desegregation - to start his own party, shortly thereafter converted to Republicanism in a blood-red state where he was re-elected for the next 40 years? How come a bunch of Republicans tried just this year to delay or defeat the re-certification of the Civil Rights Act? How come a bunch of them tried to play down the 10-hour lines to vote in 2004 in black districts - even though the Civil Rights Act says proof of discrimination is not required? Why are seven of the nine states requiring preclearance from DOJ before the voting procedures are changed in the Republican-dominated South? Why is the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Virginia under fire for using a racist slur against a detractor?

So you're saying there's no racism any more in red states? Interesting. I suspect a few hundred thousand Katrina evacuees, and the family of James Byrd, might disagree.

Mr. Dog:
Please don't pretend you are not fimiliar with the 'Southern Strategy.' Let's stop talking falsely.

Thanks,
J4

Never underestimate man's ability to create or destroy.

"I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."

 -- Howard Dean