Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot - over.: Updated Congressional resignations, retirements

Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot - over.

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Political Books

Religious Books -- Not Fundamentalist!

The Fundamentalist Xtians should not be allowed to hijack the language of Christianity. They are at least as much heretics to Christianity as the Arians and Gnostics of early Christian days.

Biblical inerrancy is not possible.

The books both above and below show the limitations of language and the impossibility of Biblical Inerrancy.

How can language be misused? Using General Semantics, this book was Written to explain Nazi propaganda and still used as a textbook

Books - Popular Math, Post Enlightenment & Science

This book explains why the above books on Christian Fundamentalism are politically important in America today.

Modern Society measures risk & predicts possible futures. The book below is a higly readable history of insurance, statistics and modern financial instruments.

Compare this to religion, in which it is presumed that the perfect society was known in the past and all that is necessary to do is to return to that perfect society.

Fascinating, highly readable and fun book on modern mathematics and its limitations. If you are interested in ideas, this is your book!

This is a collection of Hofstader's Scientific American articles. Again, a very fascinationg and highly readable book, requiring no mathematical background. (Buy it used - it is one of the books that will keep disappearing.)

Older, very fascinating book on mathematical ideas. Did you know there are three kinds of infinity?

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Updated Congressional resignations, retirements

I last posted a list of the Congressional resignations and retirements on January 25, 2008 and there are another three Congresspersons who have bailed out since then. So I am updating the list again.

Each list is sorted first by party, then alphabetically by last name.

House

1	Allen, Tom	D	ME-01	Run for Senate	D+12
2	Carson, Julia	D	IN-07	Died	D+16
3	McNulty, Michael R	D	NY-21	Retire	D+13
4	Udall, Tom	D	NM-03	Run for Senate	D+9
5	Udal, Mark	D	CO-02	Run for Senate	D+17
6 ##	Baker, Richard	R	LA-06	Become lobbiest	R+19
7	Cubin, Barbara	R	WY-At lg	Retire	R+40
8	Davis, Jo Ann	R	VA-01	Died	R+21
9	Davis, Tom	R	VA-11		R+9
10	Dolittle, John	R	CA-04	Retire	R+24
11	Everett, Terry	R	AL-02	Retire	R+34
12	Ferguson, Mike	R	NJ-07	Retire	R+6
13	Gilmore, Paul	R	OH-05	Died	R+22
14	Hastert, Dennis	R	IL-14	Resigned	R+11
15	Hobson, Dave	R	OH-07	Retire	R+14
16	Hunter, Duncan	R	CA-52	Retire	R+23
17	Hulshof, Kenny	R	MO-09	Run for Gov.	R+18
18	LaHood, Ray	R	IL-18	Retire	R+16
19	Lewis, Ron	R	KY-02	Retire	R+31
20	McCrery, Jim	R	LA-04	Retire	R+19
21	Pickering, Chip	R	MS-03	Retire	R+31
22	Pryce, Deborah	R	OH-15	Retire	D+0 *
23	Ramstad, Jim	R	MN-03	Retire	R+3 *
24	Regula, Ralph	R	OH-16	Retire	R+8
25###	Reynolds, Tom	R	NY-26	Retire	R+12
26	Renzi, Rick	R	AZ-01	Retire	R+8
27	Saxton, Jim	R	NJ-03	Retire	R+2 *
28 #	Shadegg, John	R	CO-03	Retire	R+17
29	Tancredo, Tom	R	CO-06	Retire	R+21
30	Walsh, Jim	R	NY-25	Retire	R+2 *
31	Weldon, Dave	R	FL-15	Retire	R+14
32	Weller, Jerry	R	IL-11	Retire	R+7
33	Wilson, Heather	R	NM-01	Run for Senate	R+3

Senate

1	Allard, Wayne	R	CO	Retiring	R+5 *
2	Craig, Larry	R	ID	Retiring	R+38
3	Domenici, Pete	R	NM	Retiring	R+1 *
4	Hagel, Chuck	R	NB	Retiring	R+33
5	Lott, Trent	R	MS	Resigning	R+19
6	Warner, John	R	VA	Retiring	R+9

"Retiring" means serving to end of term. Will not run for reelection.
"Resigning" means announced resignation and intends to leave before end of term.
"Resigned" means has already officially left office during this term.
"At Lg" means the only congress person in the state.

The final column reflects the Presidential vote in 2004. D+13 means Kerry received 13% more of the vote than Bush did. Districts or states in which the difference was 5% or less are indicated by an asterisk (*) because they will be likely change, particularly if the winning presidential candidate has "coattails". Deborah Pryce's Ohio 15th district was effectively tie in the 2004 Presidential race, so it is shown as D+0. The score there is only an indicator and reflects political conditions three years ago, so while Virginia is listed a R+9, in 2006 Virginia elected Democrat Jim Webb as Senator so it is probably a tossup state.

In the House, 25 (12.4%) of the 202 Republicans have resigned, died, or announced they are not running for reelection. Of those 25, only Heather Wilson of New Mexico is running for higher office (the Senate in her case) and Kenny Hulshuf is running for Governor. The other 23 Congress people are leaving politics.

Of the 233 Democrats, 5 (2.1%) have announced that they are not running for reelection, and three are running for Senate seats. Tom Udall is running for the same New Mexico Senate seat that Heather Wilson is, so one of them is gone from Congress after November.

Clearly Republican turnover is much higher than that of the Democrats, which suggests that the Republicans expect to remain in the minority after the 2008 election.

Bush and Gen Petreaus have greatly lowered American casualties in Iraq so that Iraq has moved out of the news. It will thus have less influence on the November 2008 election than expected unless something changes sharply. The Recession that is currently building will clearly have an effect, with voters being more likely to vote against incumbents and particularly Republicans. Because the Primaries have been moved to such early dates, the latest information on the coming Recession will not permit many intra-party challenges of incumbents. That's unfortunate, because there are a lot of Blue Dog Democrats who need to be challenged and removed from office.

If you are curious about the changes, my two previous lists of retirements and resignations are found at

Addendum February 12, 2008
# Adding John Shadegg as another retiree, announced yesterday.
This is 26 of the current 202 Congressional Republicans who are leaving or have left office this year. That is 12.9% of the current incumbents.

## Adding Richard Baker, announced about three weeks ago. This makes 27 Republicans leaving the House, which is 13.3 % of the Republican incumbents.

NPR today said there were 29 Republicans leaving, so I am looking for two others.

Addendum March 20, 2008
### Adding Tom Reynolds to the list of those who have announced that they are retiring from the House and will not run for reelection.

Labels: 2008 Election, Congress, Retirements