I haven't referred to the Corner at National Review online since I've gone back to doing some intermittent postings. I did it a lot before and read it about everyday. It's sort of fun because it's a combination of completely random, trivial (and not always politics related) posts that don't seem to come from anywhere in particluar and right-wing arguments so silly (usually; occasionally a good point is thrown in there) it makes me feel smarter for not agreeing with them. Anyway, I followed a link to it today and read a few other nearby entries on the page, and I thought of another interesting thing about it, sort of related to the former of the two traits given above. They often use it as a dialogue, so someone will raise a point and will go back and forth with another about it for several posts. Sometimes it will be an argument, sometimes they're just reinforcing their opinions. And sometimes one person goes off on several posts on one ridiculous subject that no one else seems to acknowledge, at least through an entry on the blog (although they are often encourage by "an e-mail from a reader"). The problem with this is that they do a lot of posts and there's no way of tracking a particular thread so if you come in at some point it might take some effort to go back and find what was previously written (using Find for a key word is sometimes useful but I usually don't care enough to bother). Anyway that happened to me today in an especially peculiar example when I scrolled up a few posts from the link I followed:

GORE'S CAR [Jonathan H. Adler]
Yes, Al Gore's Lincoln was a rental. And yes, it's possible that he really wanted to rent an econobox. But I doubt it. (Though if someone has evidence to the contrary, I'll certainly post it.)
Posted at 08:23 PM

Then again, maybe this is it's own point and I'm so far removed from these people that I just don't get it. But I decided not look for any other posts in order to maintain my appreciation of the sublime ridiculousness of those words in that order devoid of any context. I am willing to speculate though, and I'll hypothesize that there's not a substantive point in there, or maybe my lack of imagination is unable to come up with a possible reason that this could have any significance in the real world (even less than the debate of John Kerry's alleged ownership of an SUV). But I'm leaning towards the former. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that the insignificance of threads is directly related to sublime ridiculousness of statements to which they lead.

To go off on a tangent here, that was a long ways to go just to reprint that one line, wasn't it? Having seen so many serious posts on important subjects since my last post on Tuesday, I settled on this idea for some reason (and although I take the racism of a widely read/seen columnist/pundit seriously, it seems pointless to worry about a single nutjob columnist when there are so many nutjobs -- probably not quite as bad as this columnist, granted -- running the world). I suppose the blog may be losing any sort of gravitas it once had, not necessarily a bad thing:)

Guess who said this:

When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we're up against absolutely insane savages.

And this:

"No. We've been under attack by savage, fanatical Muslims for 20 years. It wasn't al-Qa'ida that took our hostages in Iran, it wasn't al-Qa'ida that bombed the West Berlin discotheque, which led to Ronald Reagan bombing Libya." I say that Libya is a socialist rather than a Muslim state. "You can make that argument," says ______ - obviously thinking there's no point in doing so - "but I just keep seeing Muslims killing people."

Here's a hint: it's a widely read right-wing pundit, and someone who has been given a very large soapbox by the liberal media despite her racist views. One more clue:

And where does she get her energy from? The painfully thin ______ toys with her salad, eating barely a quarter of it. Perhaps the vehemence of her passions keeps her going.

Not that there's anything wrong with being thin, but maybe you have a better idea of who it is. If not follow the link (or follow it anyway for more enlightened discourse).

I am embarrassed for our country.

Kos posts some "expert" (scare quotes his, though I condone them here) analysis that reches some encouraging conclusions. Basically, Bush would get trounced if the election was held today and something big needs to happen for Bush to pull this one out. you never know though...

If you're more comfortable basing your judgement of the state of the race on statistics, things still look good for Kerry based on this analysis:

Counting the last three polls the current probability of a Kerry win is 98.6 percent. 270 electoral votes (EV) are needed to win. The median (50th percentile) outcome is Kerry 307 EV, Bush 231 EV. The 95 percent confidence band for Kerry is 275-333 EV.

Current probabilities by state (rounded to the nearest percentage point): AR 3, AZ 11, FL 87, IA 100, ME 90, MI 100, MN 100, MO 47, NV 53, NH 100, NM 100, OH 7, OR 100, PA 97, TN 69, WA 100, WV 64, WI 97.
The rank order is currently (boldface indicates states statistically in play at the 20-80% level):
D <- IA/MI/MN/NH/NM/OR/PA/WA/WI (95-100%) - ME - FL - TN - WV - NV - MO -AZ - AR/OH (0-5%) -> R

And since it's always fun to add graphs to the site, here's a particularly pretty one:

But is Ohio really 93% likely to go for Bush? Is Tennessee really 69% for Kerry? Neither sounds too likely (in addition to some of his other numbers). In light of this, my own preference is to combine the two and use a statistical probability analysis but rely on my own views rather than polls (although polls would contribute to my views of course) to determine the likelihood each individual going one way or the other. Unfortunately, although I'm quite good at coming up with biased opinions of voting trends, I wouldn't know how to go about figuring out the probablity of national results based on state probablities. Fortunately, this site helps out. It starts off with his own predictions:

His: Bush 248-Kerry 290, 81% prob. Kerry wins

I did make a quite a few changes, but it must have pretty much evened out in the end:

Mine: Bush 247-Kerry 291, 81% prob. Kerry wins

I also put in the poll guy's probabilities, rounding to the nearest 10%, unless a number need to be rounded to (and was not at) 0% or 100%, in which case it would be rounded to 10% or 90% to leave some chance of an upset, and I didn't round to 50%, but instead to 40% or 60% in order to show that there was a slight favorite in those states. Poll guy didn't analyze CO, LA, or VA, so I assume he's taking them as 0% (i.e. 100% Bush). I'm not sure if the two are using the same methods but the results on this page should be pretty close to his right? Yep:

Kerry 306-Bush 232, 98% prob. Kerry wins

I hope the polls are more accurate than my biases (based on that phrasing it sounds like they should be, doesn't it?), but either way, it looks good for Kerry.

I took a cheap shot at Bush calling him a cheerleader and linking to this photo from his Andover days.

To be fair, I should note that he played the very manly sport of Rugby at Yale. Here's a photo from the Yale yearbook, with original caption:

Hmm. Somehow this still doesn't help his masculine image.

More at This Modern World.

Um, I'll take that first one.

Iraq's caretaker government on Sunday reinstated the death penalty for murderers, drug traffickers and those endangering national security, government officials said...

"Yesterday we announced an amnesty. Today the death penalty. Choose one of them," spokesman Gurgis Sada told AFP. The law came into immediate effect.

A limited 30-day amnesty unveiled on Saturday by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for "minor criminals" had been delayed because the caretaker government wanted to unveil the death penalty at the same time, Sada said.

Of course, this is really a bit of rhetorical flourish since most won't be eligible for both. Here's some information on the amnesty:

A senior Iraqi official, appearing with Allawi, said the amnesty would last for 30 days. He said it would not apply to insurgents who have murdered, raped, looted or been involved in destroying government buildings.

"This law is directed toward individuals who have committed minor crimes and have not yet been apprehended or prosecuted ...," Allawi said.

So here's your Iraqi death penalty/amnesty scorecard (asuming the emphasized lists above are complete). Please study carefully before turning yourself in to Iraqi authorities:

1) Death Penalty/No Amnesty: Murderers

2) Death Penalty/Amnesty: Drug traffickers, those endangering national security

3) No Death Penalty/No Amnesty: Rapists, looters, those involved in destroying government buildings

4) No Death Penalty/Amnesty: All others

So only the second group really has a choice, right? Basically, if you're a drug trafficker or you're endangering national security you should go take them up on this now. Unless you've murdered too. (The article also mentions that foreigners can be sentence for crimes committed on Iraqi soil, which sounds kind of tricky when talking about endangering national security... although foreign "security" forces are excepted I'm sure).

I really don't have much of a point here, and I'm probably having a little too much fun with a serious issue. Perhaps I should emphasize that I am personally strongly opposed to the death penalty and I'm really not trying to minimize the issue. So here's an attempt to explain why this little scorecard (as a general idea, not as a specific argument) really is significant:

It seems the Iraqis, unless the spokesman came up with this clever little line on his own, have taken a page out of their great liberator's book. It actually sounds a lot like "you're with us or against us," making it sound like there are two possibilities when in fact there are many. Being opposed to the Iraq War doesn't mean you're against the U.S. and therefore with the terrorists. And not choosing amnesty doesn't mean you've chosen the death penalty. Although this is not as egregious in my view as equating opposition to US policy with support of terrorism (and the analogy is of course very limited), it is, as I said, something of a rhetorical flourish to suggest that those who end up being executed were extreme enough to make that choice on their own because they refused amnesty. This seems to go along with the deliberate choice to make the announcements at the same time, perhaps to give the reinstatement of the death penalty, which will be frowned upon by most outside of the US (and, it should not be forgotten, is a return to the law under Saddam) some appearance of legitimacy.