Obituary for the USA - Sad, Very Sad!

There is an e-mail floating around the inter-net dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election.

Some unreported facts or stats about the 2008 election supposedly written by
Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2008 Presidential election:

-Number of States won by: Democrats: 20; Republicans: 30
-Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000; Republicans: 2,427,000

This chain e-mail is a HOAX!

The "statistics" are grossly incorrect, and Prof. Olson says he didn’t write it.
Full Question:
Is this true?

Full Answer:
First, Joseph Olson is a professor at Hamline (not Hemline) University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn. None of what appears in this e-mail was written by him. He has been denying authorship of this old hoax since earlier versions first cropped up after the 2000 election. Most recently he posted a disclaimer about the 2008 version on his university profile page:

Olson: "There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS. I’ve been trying to kill it since December 2000."
 
More important, the "unreported stats" listed in this e-mail are all wrong:

■President-elect Barack Obama actually carried 28 states (and the District of Columbia), not 20 as claimed in the message. Sen. John McCain carried only 22 states, not 30.

■The total area of states won by Obama is actually 1,483,702 square miles, significantly more than the 580,000 stated by the e-mail. McCain’s states have an area of 2,310,315 square miles, not the 2,427,000 claimed.

■The population of counties carried by Obama is just under 183 million, not the 127 million claimed. McCain carried counties with a total population of just under 119 million, far fewer than claimed in this message.

■The murder rate for counties carried by Obama was 6.56 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than half the rate claimed in the message. The rate for counties carried by McCain was 3.60 per 100,000, much higher than claimed in the message.

The only sad thing here is that some people believe this crap.  What's even sadder is that some people pass it on!

You know, forget college.  Some people need to go back to high school.  - Just Thinking...


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