Redistricting looms over 2010 election landscape.

Though two years in the future, the prospect of the next round redistricting is already rearing its ugly head for many actual and would-be members of Congress.

As they enter a key decision-making phase of the 2010 election cycle, the chance that they will encounter a very different map in 2012 could serve as both a deterrent and motivation to go for it.
For some, 2010 might be their last best hope to win a given district before it is shored up by redistricting, while others might want to wait for the post-redistricting election, when the grass could be greener thanks to a friendly reapportionment process.

And because so many conservative-leaning districts are now represented by Democrats, the difference could be drastic.

“They have to be thinking: Could it affect their chances moving forward two years from now?” said Jonathan Williamson, a professor at Lycoming College who has studied the effects of redistricting on potential candidates. “In states that are losing or gaining seats especially, that’ll make a huge difference.”

read more on The Hill

Kirri, this piece from the boy from Flint hit his site about a week ago.
Roger won……. but The General, GM, lost.

Wonder if E-VM will rise phoenix-like from the ashes of Motown?

Every Adam in Eden’ll be hot for some E-V Motors action.

It’s a natural choice!
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=248

Jun14:
http://news.yahoo.com/comics/nonsequitur;_ylt=A0WTUe2InDRKiMsA_xYDwLAF

Jun13:
http://news.yahoo.com/edcartoons/mikeluckovich;_ylt=AhgNFR08iKtXtr_yUaEFk6Td.sgF

Many of the world’s cities are shrinking, and some urban planners say that’s a great opportunity to redesign and re-green urban spaces. Forget smart growth. The new trend is “smart decline.”

While this topic has an interesting twist on the economic decline axis, and the solution is something positive and pragmatic, almost all of the blogs featuring the subject contain some heavyweight ideological rantings.

From the far left comes the argument that this is about bulldozing out disadvantaged minorities. From the right comes the argument that this is about moving lazy thieving drug addicted blacks into good upstanding white neighbourhoods.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5516536/US-cities-may-have-to-be-bulldozed-in-order-to-survive.html

…an interesting necessity, and worth doing in a lot of US towns that have grown last century but now cannot maintain either the population or services.

The international team also used a “molecular clock” method to compare the current virus to its relatives and estimate its age based on the mutations. This gives a rough idea of when the new virus is likely to have emerged.

“We found that the common ancestor of the (new H1N1) outbreak and the closest related swine viruses existed between 9.2 and 17.2 years ago, depending on the genomic segment, hence the ancestors of the epidemic have been circulating undetected for about a decade,” they wrote.

“Thus, this genomic structure may have been circulating in pigs for several years before emergence in humans,” they added.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre55a6uf-us-flu-source/

…but the rabid conspiracy theorists will still believe it was hatched in a US conglomerate’s piggery in Mexico in April. Yep, and the earth is therefore only 6,000 years old too!

You can’t have it both ways.

Either accept the science (even with it’s ‘rough’ estimate, but verifiable methodology) or have ‘faith’ in some nutter’s convenient non-truths.