George Bush looks bored. The Supreme Court looks extremely cranky. The Clintons look like they’re listening but don’t look all that happy about the whole situation. Dick Cheney looks like Darth Vader. Al Gore looks like an alien…

(thanks to Joe)

Palin Whitehouse simulator (very amusing): link

• Electoral Vote – summarises the likely electoral college based on up to date polling in each state (remember that the US system is mostly a winner-takes-all state-based one) – this is far more useful than the national polls.  Also has a good summary every day of the major events likely to influence the outcome.
• FiveThirtyEight.com – a ridiculously comprehensive summary of polling and other information, with a bit more humour and detailed posts from on the campaign trail.
•  Poll Bludger – featuring a regular US election countdown thread, with (sometimes) interesting discussion of the election from an Australian perspective.

A vast majority of the nation, 73 percent of the country, disapproves of the job President George W. Bush is doing. No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating, not even President Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate.

In other words, despite:

the immense scope of crimes and abuses, which included campaign fraud, political espionage and sabotage, illegal break-ins, improper tax audits, illegal wiretapping on a massive scale, and a secret slush fund laundered in Mexico to pay those who conducted these operations

which was known by the end of the Nixon administration, not to mention a much more damaging war in Vietnam, the average American still thinks Bush II is doing a worse job than Nixon. Really, it makes McCain’s performance so far look pretty good…

If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, that’s fine. I’ll accept that.  I just don’t happen to think that I did.

Once again, it’s worth noting that this man would control approximately 10,000 nuclear weapons. The real story of what happened to the dinosaurs is shown below for illustrative purposes:

The idea emerged in the 2000 presidential election campaign – supporters of third-party candidate Ralph Nader and supporters of Al Gore would strategically swap votes to maximise their effectiveness.  A Nader voter in a state that was likely to be a close contest between Gore and Bush would agree to vote for Gore in exchange for a Democrat voter in a state likely to be a clear win for Bush agreeing to vote for Nader.  In that way, neither candidate loses or gains any votes, but they are more effectively utilised and the damage that a progressive candidate like Nader does to a moderate candidate like Gore is reduced – with the obvious goal of countering a common opponent (Bush).

It’s interesting to consider how a similar scheme might operate in Australia in an attempt to enfranchise supporters of parties and candidates with broad, but thinly spread, support.  Our system naturally lends itself to niche candidates with appeal in a specific geographic region gaining the most benefit, whereas candidates who appeal to people across the country are significantly disadvantaged.  For instance, the National Party typically has a number of lower house MPs and Senators because their support is concentrated in certain regions (the country) and states (Queensland).  In contrast the Greens are rarely in contention in lower-house seats because their support is spread fairly evenly across most urban electorates in the country.  The consequence is that although more people vote Green than National, they receive less representation in parliament.

This situation is partly by design – MPs are meant to represent their local constituents, and Senators are meant to represent the interests of their state.  Still, it would be an interesting experiment to (for example) attempt to get a Greens senate candidate over the line in a particular state rather than (say) a third Liberal senator by arranging a vote swap between Labor and Greens voters.

Never before in the history of opinion polls have such diabolical numbers for a political party been so spruced up as those in today’s Australian. According to Mr Shanahan, “John Howard and the Coalition have got a polling breather.”

You can see some actual analysis of the latest Newspoll and AC Nielsen polls here and here respectively.

Having the leader of the opposition approve appointments is not perfect – it maintains the two-party duopoly that dominates the Australian political landscape and effectively guarantees that someone from within the establishment will always be appointed – but it is certainly a lot better than having not-so-subtle ideology driving appointments. Most importantly, with each major party unable to appoint an obvious political hack, there is far more chance that someone will be appointed on merit, of all things.

It is also perhaps the best resolution to the ‘culture wars’ – implicit recognition that it is not for the federal government, or any government, to determine what content is or is not the ‘right’ version of history or contemporary culture. As such, creating an ideology-neutral (rather than “balanced”, per se) intellectual environment is essential.

This approach needs to be considered for use far more widely. Judicial appointments, in particular, are an area which might well benefit significantly from a move towards a non-partisan appointment process. As pointed out here, the ALP has also proposed a bipartisan approach to determine the composition of future federal industrial relations bodies.