Was the 2004 Election Stolen?

This is kind of old news, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has written an article for Rolling Stone that raises serious questions about the integrity of the 2004 presidential election.

The blogosphere is, of course, all over it.

Farhad Manjoo’s rebuttal in Salon (reader comments)

Arguments against RFK Jr’s research

Technorati Tags: 2004 election, election, Rolling Stone, Robert Kennedy Jr.

New Orleans re-elects Ray ‘Chocolate City’ Nagin

From BBC News:

Mr Nagin won 52% of the vote in a second round run-off, beating fellow Democrat Mitch Landrieu.

…

More than half of the residents who fled Hurricane Katrina last year have not returned to the city, where many neighbourhoods are still uninhabitable.

Both mayoral contenders had campaigned to rebuild New Orleans.

The poll was dogged by race issues as many of the majority black community have yet to return to homes damaged by the hurricane.

A federal judge refused to postpone the first round, despite fears too many residents scattered by the disaster would be unable to vote.

Some civil rights leaders have called the election unfair because of the lack of out-of-state polling centres.

Rev Jesse Jackson has pledged to challenge the poll in court, regardless of the outcome.

In addition to his controversial handling of Hurricane Katrina evacuation procedures, Nagin has received a lot of media attention for his "Chocolate City" remarks in January. He later apologized for his remarks offering this as a more racially inclusive interpretation: "How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk and it becomes a delicious drink. That's the chocolate I'm talking about." (video).

Technorati Tags: New Orleans, Politics, Ray Nagin

Peak Oil Poster

I came across this informative and well-designed poster about Peak Oil a couple of weeks ago at http://www.oilposter.org. You can purchase the poster from that site, or if you are a teacher you can request a free poster.

I only wish that they’d juxtaposed a graph of world population with oil production, like this (from http://www.hubbertpeak.com):

Technorati Tags: Peak Oil