Tag: politics

  • Drone Wars

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    This is a small interactive piece by the Washington Post that looks at the drone wars being waged by the United States specifically in Pakistan and then Yemen/Somalia. Clicking on a specific date in the timeline brings that date into focus with articles about the attacks in question. What would have perhaps been interesting is…

  • My Electoral College Prediction

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    So my airport card still is not working on my laptop. And I am heading back east into the cold embrace of Sandy so who knows if I’ll have access to the internet while on holiday. But because of those two things, this is my official forecast for the election on 6 November. Granted, a…

  • Playing in the Swing States

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    The 2012 elections are now less than two weeks away and so let the sporting analogies begin. We’re in the home stretch now. Homeruns, field goals, and running out the clock. Et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. But over at the New York Times we have an interactive piece that looks at what they call…

  • Show Me Some Swing

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Problems with my access to the tubes of the internets prevented me from posting this piece last week. But it’s still good and still relevant, especially in the wake of last night’s presidential debate. The New York Times and the FiveThirtyEight forecast came together to create this interactive flow chart, if you will, of the…

  • Absentee Ballots

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    This graphic comes from a set by the New York Times that looks at absentee and mail-in ballots, which are particularly popular in western states. The representation of the absentee ballot from Minnesota in 2008 is then examined to see which areas were the reasons for discounted ballots. Follow the directions to the best of…

  • The Drop in the Unemployment Rate and How to Spin It

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    On Friday we received the monthly jobs report. And the furore that arose with it. Principally the anger stemmed from right-leaning commentators who believed that the non-partisan Bureau of Labor Statistics, a government agency tasked with collecting data on employment among other metrics, “cooked the books”/ “massaged the figures”/ flat-out lied to show a significant drop…

  • I Gesture Unto Thee…

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    We are in the home stretch of the presidential campaign and the first of the four debates (three presidential, one vice-presidential) is tonight in Denver, Colorado. Unfortunately debates tend to be less about ideas and more about talking points, gotchas, and zingers. Regardless of the debates’ utility, candidates do not always convey everything they express…

  • The Hispanic Vote

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    People make a great deal about the Hispanic vote and how it will affect the election. In every election I can recall. Granted, that’s only  a few presidential elections and a couple more Congressional mid-terms. But the problem is that Hispanics do not vote. In scientific-ish terms, the Hispanic vote is wasted potential energy—they could…

  • Better, Safer Driving

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Hannah Fairfield at the New York Times created a great infographic a few years ago that looked at the history of the price of gasoline and how many miles, on average, an American drove in a car per year. The piece told some rather interesting stories starting in the 1950s with the explosion of the…

  • The Growth of the Non-payers of Federal Income Tax

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    Today will be an unusual day in that it shall have two posts. This first post is following up on yesterday’s about the 47% of Americans who do not pay federal income tax. The Earned Income Tax Credit was created to incentivise people to work. A tax on your income, after all, does the opposite.…