My understanding is that middle-class blacks, fleeing the corruption and incompetence of a third-world city government in Detroit, have been moving to southern Oakland County, and that is what has changed those numbers. They are not net-gain numbers statewide. Now, maybe we'll lose the MI-9th or one of those districts as a result, but someday soon after 2010 Michigan will lose another seat, which will probably be a currently Democratic one. There are only so many ways to gerrymander a state like Michigan to produce two such worthies as John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick.

Following the 2000 U.S.Census. it was the Republican majority state legislature that redistricted the congressional districts you are referring to here. Lynn Rivers. an up and coming Democratic Congresswoman's district was reconfigured to put her in the same district as Democrat, long-term Dingle in the primary. So the Democrats had to make a Hobson's choice between two fine congresspersons, and Lynn - an equally fine environmentalist - lost. David Bonnior, admired progressive congressman, was gerrymandered right out of the demographics. Conyer's distric was gerrymandered into a tortured configuration intended to take his territory into hostile or indifferent territory. Four elections later, Conyers - and rightfully so - still owns that seat.

About Carolyn: You do know, E-man, her territory includes Grosse Pointe. She weathered this primary against a couple of rivals unsuccessfully trying to conflate her record with her son Kwame. Do you know of anything in her or Conyer's congressional record that is either "corrupt" or "incompetent" or evenly, remotely "third world"?

I am a native fifth-generation resident of Detroit. What are your creds - better yet - documentation for your assertions here?

Where's her per diem??? The per diem she claimed for staying in her own home is fully taxable for federal tax purposes. Unless it's buried in the wages section, which it shouldn't be since that's only W-2 income, I don't see it anywhere.

In today's fivethirtyeight.com there is an item saying that the per diem revue is not declared, which could be a "potential problem".

The brief item was in Taegan Goddard's "Political Wire" in the left column of the fivethirtyeight.com home page.

Is ahe so blindly ambitious that she doesn't see she is left to carry sewer water for John, who is - ahem - above slinging mud?

So full of herself as a vice-presidential candidate that she doesn't know she is being cynically manipulated?

So contact-high on power she doesn't realize that come November 5th, she'll be thrown under the bus as an unprincipled, dirty fighter, whilst John - ahem - returns, spotless, to the Senate?

Evidently not.

I just wonder what old William F. would be saying about this campaign if he were still around.

I can't venture what Daddy Bill would say, but I am absolutely sure he would love every single word he uttered.

Snopes is a far more credible source for checking the truth about Obama's citizenship.

Check it out.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp

Youtube Sheesh.

Webster's brief on-line definition of "schadenfreude": enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others

While living in Berlin, the term was translated to me as glee at others' misfortune, which is closer to my feeling about these charletans.

OT: catamitebastard, Best. Username. Ever. Lots going on under the surface. Right?

I jumped ahead here, so if this correction was made earlier, sorry.

And, you should write that you went East on Jefferson in Detroit toward Grosse Pointe, not, "north." You seem to be an okay guy, writing about an important issue, but you seem to be one of those people who belive it never could happen to you. It could happen to you. Good luck.

Um, Tim, the Detroit River turns northward where Jefferson crosses into Grosse Pointe. It's a common misorientation though. As a native Detroiter growing up on the Lower East Side, I thought of the river being east of all my world, including the Pointes and well beyond into Macomb County north of Detroit's norther city limits until I was into my late twenties and had moved back to my beloved city.

OT, but of interest. Detroit was founded in 1701 as a fort by Cadillac on a strategically-dtermined defense site where enemy British ships coming down rivier would be vulnerable to attack, having to slow down as they tacked to take a hard right from the southbound to westbound river. None the less, all of us living where the river lies south, or in Windsor where it is north, refer to Gross Pointe as upriver and Wyandotte as down river. A more sensible orientation for all concerned.

I always thought of the river as south, when gorwing up on the Lower East Side. Sheese.

Sel-inflicted? I never voted for Kwame, but the econimic decline had nothing to do with him. In fact in his second term, there has been considerable recovery and reinvestment in downtown Detroit.

You have no idea of what you are talking about: the consequences of the economic downturn and disinvestment much earlier in the rust belt cities, the loss of industry nation wide as well as in the auto industry as a consequence of globalization, etc.

Kwame is a narcissistic womanizer who perjured himself in a fit of self-inflicted hubris.

On the other hand, non-reader, you are an ill-informed troll - bearing a strong scent of racism to this thread - who knows nothing about the economic history or trials my city.