Tommy Lee's Texas

Ronald Reagan did it. Arnold Schwarzenegger did it. Even "Gopher" from The Love Boat did it. If these movie and television celebrities can run for public office, why not Tommy Lee Jones?

In Mother Jones, Josh Harkinson asks Tommy Lee Jones: Texas Senator?

In politics, as in life, scarcity is the mother of invention. Texas Democrats face a paucity of money, candidates, and votes heading into the 2012 race for US Senate. Which has inspired liberal Houston radio host Geoff Berg to hatch a brilliant idea: Draft actor Tommy Lee Jones for the job.

This map shows just how many of Jones' movies could help him relate to Texas' voters:

HT to Evan

Gerrymandering: The Movie

Gerrymandering: The Movie

"Right now, across the country, our two major political parties are gearing up for a once-a-decade war whose winner will control Congress for the next ten years, and possibly more. There will be battles in every state, and each will be kept carefully hidden from the prying eyes of average voters who only become more disenchanted with their government with each meaningless election.

Democrats and Republicans collude to keep these skirmishes private so that they can maintain total control over the ultimate political weapon: the ability to directly determine the outcome of elections. Why bother stuffing ballots when they can just draw districts? For the first time, Gerrymandering exposes the most effective form of manipulating elections short of outright fraud. After the 2010 Census is finished, will you know where your district went?"

Wisconsin Shattered

Political events continue to shake Wisconsin.

Cartoon by John Kovalic

HT to Hunter

State Maps of the World Unite!

Some recent examples of state maps in as part of a political statement or slogan:

In both Ohio and Wisconsin, members of public employee unions are up in arms over their governor's proposals to cut or limit their ability to collectively bargain. Ohio is used as part of the international symbol for "NO" or "DON'T" while Wisconsin shows that Michigan is not the only state that can be shaped like a hand.

Arizona as one big fingerprint.

Arizona SB 1070 the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration measure in decades. It has received national and international attention and has spurred considerable controversy.

Surveyor Marks

The cover of The Stranger, Seattle's alternative weekly newspaper, for the story Crosshairs and Consequences:

Arizona: Scorpions in Aspic

The State of Arizona has been in the news a bit lately, what with all the talk about how their new anti-illegal immigrant laws might lead to racial profiling by the the Arizonastaatspolizei.

"Show me your papers!"

But as always, where there's politics, there are also maps!



Princess Sparkle Pony has been blogging about his life growing up in Arizona, including map memorabilia.

Mapping Tim Pawlenty

Is Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty running for president? Ever since he announced he would not seek a third term as governor, he has been spending a lot of time on the road, including states like New Hampshire and Iowa... To feed the speculation, Minnesota Public Radio News is mapping all of Pawlenty's scheduled engagements:



#565

Sarah Palin in 2012?

Sarah "Caribou Barbie" Palin has been in the news quite a bit lately. Her address to the Tea Party Convention, followed by media flaps about the "R" word and writing notes on her hand have made her the topic of the week. And of course the number one question: Will she? Can she run for president in 2012?

FiveThirtyEight.com takes A First Look at Palin's Primary Math.

If Sarah Palin runs for the Republican nomination in 2012 -- and I've been on record for some time as predicting that she will -- what are likely to be her best and worst states? And how do these strengths and weaknesses square with the Republican primary calendar? And what about the other likely candidates?

Fascinating analysis... but one of the most garishly ugly electoral maps I have ever seen.

UPDATE 2/14: The Electoral Map has an esthetically pleasing map of the most Pro-Palin states.

Previous Palin Carto-fun:
On the cover of The Week
Putin Rears His Head

HT to Kelso's Corner for the Sarah Palin US map mask illustration.

The Heart of America

Public Option Please advocates for a publicly-funded health insurance program to come out of the current health care reform debate in the United States. The winner of their recent promotional art contest has been announced:



According to the Washington Post:

Amy Martin of Los Angeles, created her striking image of red and blue blood vessels coursing through a map of the United States when she was home sick with the flu, and a few weeks later, organizers said, lost her job and health insurance. “A healthy United States is dependent on healthy American citizens — which is why I presented America as a vulnerable living system.” She’ll spend her $1,000 winnings on insurance premiums, they said.

Via Kelso's Corner

The World According to Ronald Reagan

A little Cold War humor:



Via Kelso’s Corner

#485

ACORN Conspiracy

In Salon.com today, the comic strip This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, has a little fun mocking Fox News personality, Glenn Beck. In the process, he created a new logo for A.C.O.R.N., the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.





I love the tentacles squeezing the globe of the Earth.

Dr. Evil would give ONE MILLION DOLLARS for a logo so cool.

Hawaii IS in Africa

Pinko Magazine offers an exclusive peak at Rejected Town Hall Rally Posters, including this one, sure to have been popular among birthers:

GeograFAIL

Via The Electoral Map via FamousDC

Red and Blue Stem Cell Divide

In Salon today: Stem cell division By Peter Dizikes. "The growing blue state-red state gap over this research shows that science has serious economic and political muscle in America today."

Illustration includes red and blue cells, divided, on a map of the United States.

Texas Divided

More silly speculation about Texas... On Monday, I posted maps speculating on Texas Secession. One of the common myths about Texas history is that the terms under which the Republic of Texas joined the United States was that they had the right to secede... well their defeat in the Civil War actually settled that... but one of the terms that WAS agreed to at the time was that Texas has the right to subdivide into (up to) five states!

FiveThirtyEight speculates on how Texas might be divided, and the subsequent impact on the division of power between Red and Blue:



The end result of this exercise is that Republicans could net as many as six more seats in the Senate, and Democrats two. What are they waiting for?

Of course, it would never happen. Texans are too attached to their state's shape to ever consider such an astute political maneuver. There is an entire industry built upon selling kitschy souvenirs in the shape of Texas. It is not to be messed with.

Texas Secession?

Last week, during all the hoopla surrounding Tax Day and Tea Parties, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, suggested that Texas just might have to secede if they are not happy about taxes.

Picking up on that note, FiveThirtyEight.com has created a little map to illustrate this possibility, and suggest that only Republicans would be sorry to see them go...



In fact, it would seem that Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has already jumped the gun on that notion. The Huffington Post noticed that the State Department had listed Texas as a foreign country. After it came to their attention, the error was corrected, but not before HP got a screen capture of the list.

This is of course not the first time that an independent Texas has been mentioned here at Cartophilia. (See Roswell, Texas.)

On a related note, the bloboganda blog, tries to explain the name dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, by describing a scenario wherein a portion of Mexico declares independence and calls itself "The Republic of Texas". Would Americans stand for that?



Of course the solution to that scenario could simply be resolved. The United States could sell the State of Texas to the Republic of Texas, and pay off some of the National Debt...

UPDATE 4/21: Black Maps: For the love of God, let Texas have her way!

UPDATE 4/23: The Electoral Map on Texas Secession: would scenarios be like North Korea or Slovakia?

Aaron Burr for President Leads to a Balanced Italy

Oh, the fun we have finding things while looking for something else...

Recently, Mrs. Cartophiliac returned from a trip to Phoenix to visit an old friend. She posted several photos from her trip on Flickr, including several from this art installation, "Monument to the Unelected".



But wait! says the history geek cartophile, shouldn't this sign...

look like this?

I decided to assume the artist was being ironic or something like that...

So, who is this artist? I wondered. A bit of Googling revealed Nina Katchadourian as the culprit. Wait, I know that name... Of course! Last year I highlighted her piece of map art, Coastal Merger

A visit to her website reveals many other examples of her carto-art, including this piece from a series entitled, Geographic Pathologies

But this reminds me of yet another map...

Chromatic Diplomacy, a variant of the classic boardgame, Diplomacy. Chromatic is five-player variant but on a symmetrical map in an attempt to make it geographically balanced.



Serendipity.

2008: The Year in Political Geography

Patrick Ottenhoff's political geography blog, The Electoral Map, was my favorite site this past year for electoral maps, county voting projections, and interesting commentary.

Here, he has pulled together a mappish Year in Review for 2008:

2008: The Year in Political Geography

View more presentations from PatrickOttenhoff.

Mapping the 111th Congress

FiveThirtyEight.com offers a nice cartogram of the new congress:



Not suprisingly, most states have some red and some blue. There are nine "all blue" states, and five "all red" states. However, while Oklahoma did allow one congressional district to go blue, the Oklahoma Republican Party was proud to point out, in their e-Christmas card last month, that they were the only state where every county went red for McCain:




HT to Patrick at The Electoral Map

Stomp the Gerrymander?

Slate magazine has an article about how mathematics can create reasonably shaped districts and put an end to Gerrymandering. The article includes a slide show of some of the worst offenders. The most ridiculous of them all is the 4th Illinois Congressional District, in Cook County. Actually, if I read the map correctly, the district has to sneak outside of the county, just to connect its norther and southern arms...



Whatever it takes to create a safe district...

Proponents of redistricting reform contend that competitive, geographicaly compact, districts would better serve their constituents. The author points out that it is "tough to find many defenders of the status quo, in which a supermajority of House seats are noncompetitive." That may be true. Unfortunately, the primary defenders of this system can be found in Congress and most of the fifty state-houses...

Via The Map Room