Thomas Alexander Fuentes, long time Director of Communications for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, and also Chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, died in May 2012. People had actually expected him to die the previous fall, but […]
Democrats
Washington D.C.: The Center of the Universe: And Who to blame?
Joel Kotkin on Newgeography.com writes about the nearly recession-proof nature of Washington, D. C. and its metro area. It is a city of government and the mandarin classes, and they never go out of style. But it seems to me that […]
Three Californias? Integrating a Couple of Recent Proposals
It has often been proposed to split California into two states. In the past, these proposals generally agreed on dividing Northern California from Southern California; the cultural differential between the two was strong in the Kennedy years. The reader may […]
Observations on California’s Political Geography
A recent series of political maps from PPIC, Public Policy Institute of California, provides some fascinating information. One of the maps inflates or shrinks the various regions according to population; it makes clear why the Democratic Party dominates the state, […]
Some Vice-Presidential Speculation, Already
Obama’s recent attempt to force Catholic institutions to act contrary to their beliefs if they serve the public at large has tempted me to cross party lines and vote Republican for President this fall. So I might as well speculate […]
Who is the Santa Claus Party?
After the 2004 election, in which the states that went for Bush formed a relatively neat geographical unity and in all the states that went for Kerry maps and T-shirts were circulating labeling the Republican states as ‘Jesusland,’ I thought, […]
‘Donorcracy’ and ‘Patrimonialism’
Newgeography.com, one of my favorite sites, has deviated from its usual agenda to post this post on what I have called the “donorcracy.” The pursuit of money is more important to every person pursuing electoral office than the pursuit of […]
Occupy and the Teachers Unions
The goals of the Occupy movement are mystifying enough as it is without their apparently accepting the teachers’ unions in their ranks. While admittedly teachers are not among the 1%, they are certainly not among the “least of these,” and […]
Learning from Francis Fukuyama
I have finished Francis Fukuyama’s magnum opus, The Origins of Political Order, and as you might expect I like the way he cuts across traditional categories. Of course I have read his notorious The End of History and the Last Man, […]
Democrats Are 1955 Republicans
Reinforcing my earlier comment on Barack Obama’s allergy to antithesis, here is Michael Lind claiming that Obama is, for practical purposes, an Eisenhower Republican. As for the so-called social issues, Allan Carlson, in The American Way, pointed out that the […]