Matt Yglesias has a fun post on red states and blues states, bringing up a statistic I don't think I've ever heard before -- that red states tend to give more to charity than blue states. Fair enough, though since "states" make for an extremely coarse topology on the set of all Americans, this tells us little, of course, about liberals and conservatives as people. It could be the case that a bunch of lavish Democrats are responsible for the vast bulk of charity in the red states; there are after all millions and millions of liberals residing in those states. Odds are this isn't the case, but you never know.

More fun with coarseness: As the LA Times reminds us today, Bush might try to end the tax deductions for state and local taxes. Republicans are sniggering about the fact that this will put the hurt on "blue states," since those states tend to pay the most in state and local taxes. The problem is that a lot of wealthy conservatives also live in those blue states, and they're all going to get hurt by this. Even though it's obviously a Gore/Kerry state, California was still Bush's biggest donor in 2000, and probably came close this year. Bad, bad news for Jeb's campaign coffers in '08.