If one is going to attempt to use facts to further what appears to be a racist, intolerant agenda, at least try to get them right.Here are some facts, which - unlike Mr. Mauk's assertions - are really true: According to the census, both Lake County and Marion County are each more than 70 percent white. And those cities he listed as having an "ethnic majority ... African-American"? Mr. Mauk got one of three correct (Gary); Indianapolis is about one-quarter black and East Chicago is about one-third black.
One has to wonder if Mr. Mauk was complaining about Marion County in 1992, 1996 or 2000, when it voted Republican. Probably not.
And why does Mr. Mauk only want to reference Marion and Lake counties? Vermillion County voted 56 percent in favor of Obama; it's also 98 percent white. Monroe County voted for Obama at nearly the same rate as Lake County (66 percent and 67 percent, respectively); it's 90 percent white. And what about suspicious little Starke County, with its 0.2 percent black population? Or pesky Perry County, at 2 percent black? They both went for Obama.
I'm curious as to how Mr. Mauk would explain Republican Gov. Mitch Daniel's (inexplicable) landslide? The same people who voted overwhelmingly for Daniels also voted for president; how does Mr. Mauk explain how Daniels won 58 percent of the vote while John McCain captured only 49 percent? About 44,000 more people voted for president than did for governor, but Mr. Daniels managed to get 217,000 more votes than Mr. McCain.
Indiana has an 88 percent white population; blacks make up less than 9 percent. George W. Bush won Indiana by 20 points in 2004; the last two Democratic candidates Indiana had supported before Obama were Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. No amount of creative math or selective comparison by Mr. Mauk will change the fact that Hoosiers of all races, both sexes and various party affiliations rejected Mr. McCain and Sarah Palin.
As Stephen Colbert once said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
And regarding Mr. Mauk's assertion that "it is very clear to see that a vast majority of our nation is colored Red," I have to ask: When was acreage granted the right to vote?
