The eight "Midwest" states, as listed by TS, control 107 electoral votes.

The eight inter/mountain/whatever West states (NM, AZ, NV, UT, CO, WY, ID, and MN) control 44 electoral votes.

No surprise that the Midwest is and will remain the more decisive region.

And, yes, it is significant that a candidate has to win at least half of the Midwestern states in order to win the presidency. That's pretty much the definition of a swing region: win more than half, you win it all; win less than half, you lose it all; win exactly half the Midwest, you could go either way.

(Historical footnote: if you're wondering why Ohio -- or Michigan, for that matter -- is considered "midwest," recall that when these territories became states in the early 1800s, they formed the far west of the United States as it then existed.)

Is anyone thinking about what a sustainable "post-growth" economy will look like?

I can't be sure (since I don't understand the economy at all -- e.g., just for starters, what makes a dollar a dollar?) but I'm pretty sure that endlessly rising stats for "housing starts" will not be part of that sustainable future.

(And if the future economy is not sustainable, then by definition it will be a future that sooner or later will not include humans.)

Long run, we should only need enough new housing to replace the relatively few (one hopes) houses that are lost to natural disasters.

Long run, existing houses should be upgraded to sustainable ecological specs, and all new houses should be built to be easy to fix, and to last. Forever.

Ideally, we could say the same thing about cars, computers, and all the other stuff we buy only to discard after it becomes "worn out." Obsolescence and sustainable don't fit together.

So if this sustainable future ever comes, what will the economy be? Is anyone thinking about how an economy might work without growing (by endlessly using resources and discarding "old" products) forever and ever?

The greatest irony in the public discussion of these issues (to the extent that there has been any) is that, as soon as anyone points out the crimes of the Bush administration, the Bush partisan immediately begin accusing the accusers of "moral relativism."

That is exactly what Condi Rice did at a press conference a couple of weeks ago, when someone questioned her about the recent congressional report tying Abu Ghraib etc to administration policies. Instead of responding, she said something to the effect of 'Iran and Saddam tortured people; if you accuse the US of torturing people, you are guilty of moral relativism.' (Paraphrase from memory.)

There was a time when "moral relativism" meant applying different moral standards to people depending on whether you sympathized with them or not. There can be no more crass example of moral relativism in this sense than the kind of defense of the administration's torture policies that Glen adroitly dissects here.

But for Bush supporters today, "moral relativism" means "not taking as a starting point that the US (and Bush as its Decider) can by definition do no wrong." Good luck arguing against people who insist on that premise as a precondition for talks.

Here's the exchange that I referred to in an earlier comment, from an interview between Condoleeza Rice and Michele Kelemen of NPR on Dec. 9, 2008 (at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2008/12/113016.htm):

QUESTION: A lot of this Guantanamo, this – all these issues, you start hearing from people, bad actors in the world, people like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, he brings up these issues at the United Nations General Assembly floor. And I wonder if you think some of this made it more difficult for you as the Secretary of State to talk about human rights.

SECRETARY RICE: No, of course not. Robert Mugabe – to mention Robert Mugabe in the same sentence with the President of the United States is an outrage. And Robert Mugabe is simply trying to cover the fact that he’s taken a country which was once one of the jewels of Africa, made it into a center of starvation and now of rampant disease that threatens its neighbors. And no, we shouldn’t fall prey to any kind of moral relativism here. We ought to call it as we see it.

Joan, I'm sure you've seen this by now:

"Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds"

"Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today."

This take on the story is by Rob Stein, Washington Post, Monday, December 29, 2008.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/28/AR2008122801588.html

But similar stories are all over the news outlets today -- if anyone's reading...