Happy Thanksgiving

With all that needs to be fixed in this country, it's important to remember how lucky we are compared to the rest of the world. Freedom of speech is at least squashed some what covertly. Most of us have food to eat and clean drinking water. We don't have a war being waged here at home. And of course the thing that we can all be thankful of is that we only have two more years of the Bush Administration.

Campaigning at the poling place

When I went to go vote today at about 4:30 there was quite a few people there, more than the last election. When we pulled into the parking lot however, there was a lady there handing out “right to life ballots.” When we walked in, an election official came in right after us. I over heard her tell the poll workers that there was a complaint about the women out there passing out those fliers, and while she was far enough away to be legal, the poll workers were told to keep an eye on her and that she could not tell people they were ballots. The woman handing out the fliers told the election official when she drove in (the woman must not have known she was an elections official) that she was with a non-partisan group. When the official was talking to the poll workers she told them that she did not consider the fliers she was handing out to be non-partisan (all the “suggestions” were for Republicans). Apparently someone went out to talk to her because by the time I was leaving the woman was leaving as well.

Cross-posted at Michigan Liberal.

By the way, so far we have gotten 3 different robo calls for DeVos today.

Believers are a bit more liberal than most seem to think

Here's some interesting stats that come from a new Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion survey:

31% of Americans believe that God is deeply involved in our daily lives and world events and that God is angry and can punish the unfaithful or ungodly.
Of those Americans:
23% believe abortion is always wrong
76% believe that the Government should protect the Environment better
57% believe that the Government should redistribute wealth more evenly
32% trust President Bush “a lot”

23% of Americans believe God is deeply involved in our daily lives and world events and is mainly positive and less-willing to punish
Of those Americans:
17% believe abortion is always wrong
81% believe that the Government should protect the Environment better
53% believe that the Government should redistribute wealth more evenly
23% trust President Bush “a lot”

16% of Americans believe God is not very active in the day-to-day world but is unhappy with the current state of the world
Of those Americans:
5% believe abortion is always wrong
89% believe that the Government should protect the Environment better
59% believe that the Government should redistribute wealth more evenly
12% trust President Bush “a lot”

24% of Americans believe God is not very active in the day-to-day world and is not angry and that God is a cosmic force that sets the laws of nature in motion
Of those Americans:
1.5% believe abortion is always wrong
87% believe that the Government should protect the Environment better
63% believe that the Government should redistribute wealth more evenly
9.3% trust President Bush “a lot”

Hmm these are some pretty interesting stats. It when you look at just these numbers it seems that even the people that the Republicans think they have a reading on are pretty liberal when it comes to abortion, the environment, and the distribution of wealth.

There are more issues that the survey looks at such as prayer in school and the justification of the Iraq war that not surprisingly the Republicans seem to fair a little better.

http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/what_we_believe/

Labor in China Vs. US Companies

Here are a few interesting tidbits I found out. China is trying to pass laws that allow unions to have more power and to improve working conditions in China. Sounds great doesn't it? But guess what? American companies are opposing it.

Also Wal-Mart, is unionized in China. Wal-Mart allows unions in China, but not the US. Hmmmmm.

Check out the links
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/business/worldbusiness/13sweat.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
(NY times requires a free registration)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23725-2004Nov30.html

Wal-Mart says go out and vote

I read a few interesting articles today, they aren't new but they are worth mentioning. It seems that Wal-Mart now is interested in if their employees vote. It has started a campaign to get it's 1.3 million employees to vote. I think this is a great thing, because according to the numbers, the demographics that work at Wal-Mart are largely Democrat voters. It sorta seems odd that a company that has donated about $710,000 so far this cycle to the Republicans and only about $290,000 to the Democrats. It seems that Wal-Mart is hedging it's bets a bit, but it looks clear by these numbers alone what side they are on.

Check out these two articles.
http://www.slate.com/id/2151043/
This one is about the 2004 election, but it is an interesting article about how Wal-Mart differs from even other discount stores.
http://www.slate.com/id/2104988/
Also check this out, a really good show from Frontline entitled Is Wal-Mart good for America? You can actaully watch the whole episode online.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/view/