Steven Taylor writes:

[I]t is a mystery to me as well as to how any voter could be undecided at this juncture.

I think there are essentially two classes of undecided voters: the uninformed undecideds, who (more likely than not) will probably stay away from the polls in the end, unless some element of the political zeitgeist manages to work its way into the cerebellum; and the informed undecideds (probably a smaller category), who are essentially ambivalent between the choices on offer in this presidential election, but who will probably vote nonetheless.

Ironically, even though I know with almost absolute certainty my vote isn’t going to be pivotal in this election, I’m still vacillating between three options:

• Voting for Bush, because (a) I don’t want to spend the next four years hearing Democrats whine about Bush not winning the popular vote again and (b) despite his screw-ups, he’s the only serious candidate dedicated to sticking it out in Iraq.
• Voting for Kerry, because (a) Bush deserves to be punished for his screw-ups, (b) gridlock might lead to more fiscal discipline and none of Kerry’s promises being enacted into law, and (c) my current colleagues probably expect me to vote for him, and I need all the help I can get when it comes to landing the tenure-track job here.
• Voting for Badnarik, because even though he’s a complete and total lunatic and completely wrong on Iraq, it would send a (marginal) directional message to both parties that they can’t take libertarian votes for granted.

There’s more on this theme from the lovely and talented Jane Galt.

Update: Additional thoughts (on Badnarik, at least) abound from Will Baude and Will Wilkinson, both quasi-inspired by Matt Yglesias, while Carina of An Inclination to Criticize supports the “honking bozo” Badnarik.

I previously posted on this theme ten months ago, and that post has much to recommend it… even if I did not quite predict John Kerry’s descent into Deanesque moonbattery at the time.

No doubt to the infinite shock of all attentive observers, the president of Belarus has won a referendum removing the country’s two-term limit for presidential service, which essentially is a precursor for him to be elected dictator-for-life; in a separate ballot for the national legislature, no opposition candidates won election to the body. Unsurprisingly, observers from the OSCE found numerous irregularities in the vote.

In not-entirely-unrelated news, today’s Clarion-Ledger carries a column on preparations for the November 2nd ballot here in Mississippi, and I’ve spent most of the past weekend working putting together an exit poll—somehow I managed to cram 46* legible questions on both sides of a sheet of letter paper.

Now, the heavy lifting begins after the final end of the Ayers lawsuit. Personally, I was never very clear on what the plaintiffs actually wanted (I suspect they would have been content with a segregated, “separate but truly equal” system), but in the end it ended up as more of a desegregation case than an equal financing case.

I tend to think that this state needs to focus its limited resources on K-12 education and community colleges, providing scholarships for the truly needy to attend four-year institutions while making the middle and upper class pay something close to “retail” for university educations, and shutting down or privatizing the non-doctoral institutions (Alcorn State, Delta State, Mississippi Valley State, and Mississippi University for Women). Unfortunately I think Ayers is a hindrance, not a help, toward those goals.

Former Malaysian dictator prime minister Mahathir Mohamad endorses Kerry, while syphilocon Pat Buchanan and Russian dictator president Vladimir Putin endorse Bush.

Update: Xrlq points out that Arafat may be backing Kerry, although I haven’t seen this reported in mainstream media, so I’m somewhat skeptical (☣: LGF). And, Iran endorses Bush. My head is starting to hurt.

The New York Times endorses John Kerry Anybody But Bush. I think Michele’s reaction pretty much mirrors my own:

Even our nation’s vaunted media can’t come up with enough cogent reasons to vote for Kerry other than he’s not George Bush.

In general, the calculus of strategic voting dictates that people should vote so as to minimize the chances of their least preferred (but “electable”) candidate taking office. From that perspective, at least, the Times’ position makes sense.

Meanwhile, The Belgravia Dispatch advances an alternative perspective (þ: Andrew Sullivan).

Do you vote for Kerry in the hopes of getting divided government and fiscal responsibility, or do you vote for Bush and help keep Kerry in Congress, where—if all 99 of Kerry’s Senate colleagues did as little as he did—genuine limited government would be far more likely?

Mike Rappaport writes:

Critics of the Patriot Act are forced to acknowledge that it was passed by wide margins in the Congress, including by Democrats. Their explanation is that it was passed in the wake of 9–11, which undermined Congress’s judgement. The antiterrorism legislation passed during the Clinton Administration is also explained as having been passed as a response to Oklahoma City. In both cases, the claim appears to be that Congress enacts improper legislation when overreacting to a visible public event or problem.

What is interesting is that this is the same explanation often given for the passage of environmental legislation. CERCLA is passed after Love Canal, the Clean Water Act is enacted after the Cuyahoga River bursts into flames, etc.

Interestingly, although the same phenomonon is at work, liberals and conservatives tend to view these cases differently. Liberals think that the environmental emergency teaches the public about the problem, but believe the terrorist act undermines their judgment. And visa versa as to conservatives.

Of course, I think both classes of legislation are instances of “Do Something” prevailing over good judgment.

Jason Kuznicki comments on a strange exchange between Pete Coors and Tim Russert:

Russert: "You see no inconsistency between sponsoring male nude revues and fetish balls and opposing gay adoption and gay marriage?"

Coors: “I don’t.”

Russert: “None whatsoever?”

Coors: “No.”

Russert: “And you’re comfortable sponsoring those kinds of events? That’s part of traditional family values?”

Coors: “Look, this is a very—you know, people are going to have a lot of different ideas about what this is all about. But it is about recognizing that everybody—everyone in this country—should be valued for what they are, and I believe that’s the way we recognize it at our company.”

Kuznicki writes:

When Coors Brewing, an organization with a long and very poor record on gay issues, suddenly sponsors a raunch fetish party, they are valuing us for who we are. But when we ourselves demand to be treated as ordinary people--That's an attack on the traditional family.

In a sense, it’s the hidden curse of diversity. For years, we insisted on the essential difference between gay and straight. We demanded that gays must be accepted as different.

Then some people apparently got the message: Gays are acceptable only if they are these strange, hypersexualized, fundamentally sub-human creatures. We can dance nude on stage or wet ourselves in public—but when we try to get married or raise a family, man, that’s sick.

The attitude of Pete Coors towards gays reminds me of Homer Simpson: “I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my homosexuals flaming.”

The total number of car shootings on Sam Cooper Blvd. between Hollywood and Tillman has risen to twelve, including one van which was hit by a bullet last night.

UPDATE: Make that thirteen. This WMC story has the best details of any I've seen so far:

It's been happening between Tillman and Hollywood as drivers head West and the damage is consistently on the passenger side. Police are investigating 12 cases in which drivers had damage to their vehicles. The 13th report came from a women who says she saw a flash and heard a loud boom.

Apparently comparing George W. Bush to the developmentally-disabled is a popular sport on the caring, sensitive left:

“He wasn’t the angry Bush of the second debate or the retarded Bush from the first,” [Daily Show host Jon] Stewart said.

Then again, maybe Stewart falls under the South Park exception.

Amber Taylor is underwhelmed by Jim Lindgen’s performance thus far at The Volokh Conspiracy, although unflattering comparisons to such paragons of Volokhness Clayton Cramer, Cathy Seipp, and Cori Dauber have not (as of yet) been made.

For what it’s worth, I think Jim is a good blogger and (at least from my correspondence with him in the past) a smart guy, but I don’t think he fits in particularly well at the Conspiracy; then again, I never really thought Jacob Levy fit in well there either.

Maria Farrell isn’t too happy with her introductory statistics course. There are a couple of points in the comments to her post that I think are key:

• “Statistics is a practice, not a toolkit.”—Bill Tozier.
• “I wonder if the obscurity is partly a result of a lack of the why of statistics.”—Randolph Fritz.

I was in my chair’s office today talking about how my methods class was going, and the second point was one we both hit upon.

Next year, I’d like to move more in the direction of applied data analysis. This year I’ve been doing baby steps in that direction—every student has a CD with R Commander, and I show how to use R Commander to do every statistical procedure we go over by hand… for the moment, I’ve been using the Chile data set included in the car package as my “guinea pig” data.

I also think that students do better when the professor is engaged and enthusiastic about the material; this, of course, applies to any class from intro on up, but I think it’s particularly important when the class is one that students approach with some degree of resistance.

Heidi Bond points out a few cool uses of statistical theory to show probable electoral college outcomes, including this site by Andrea Moro, an econ prof at Minnesota; I actually had more-or-less the same idea a month ago, but was too lazy to do anything with it.

I would have figured Stephen Bainbridge was too smart to agree with a question with a premise this ignorant of history:

More to the point, will judges be returned to their historical role as neutral interpreters of the Constitution and precedent, or will the imperial judiciary be revitalized and extended for decades?

Judges as “neutral interpreters of the Constitution and precedent”? When, exactly, did the Supreme Court ever act like neutral interpreters of the Constitution? John Jay sat around on his buttocks all day while he was the first Chief Justice, but I don’t think this is the mythical “neutral interpretation” period.

Wow, this is pretty gutter politics, even by Southern—and particularly west Tennessee—standards. Apparently the accused candidate denies any involvement. (þ: A Millsaps student from the district via email.)

Update: The Special Olympics organization is not amused; more details from the AP and Bill Hobbs.

You know, if George Bush had said something this idiotic, he’d be the laughingstock of America. But the unfortunate phrasing of the day award goes to John Edwards on the stump:

People like Chris Reeve [of blessed memory – ed.] will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again.

There’s nowhere to even start with that one.

Disgusting—and if the RNC orchestrated this, some GOP officials should go to prison (þ: Dead Parrots).

Apropos of this earlier post, OxBlogger David Adesnik plugs away at this theme, while Russell Arben Fox is apparently “nobody”.

I forgot to mention yesterday that David Cobb was the latest maroon talking about a “backdoor draft”—though I have to say at least John Kerry et al. have been kind in handing a free movie title to the adult film industry.

The Book of Ratings rates the first edition D&D monsters. The beholder received the highest rating, an A+. The shrieker received the lowest rating, a D.

Unfortunately, they confined themselves to critters from the original Monster Manual. I'd like to see their ratings of monsters from the original Fiend Folio, such as the flumph.

Memphis may have its very own sniper. On Monday, a car was shot at on Sam Cooper Blvd. between Hollywood and Tillman. This is the third apparently random car shooting on that stretch of Sam Cooper since August. Luckily, this guy isn’t as good a shot as John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo were. So far no one has been injured in the shootings.

Sam Cooper is a very busy street, and one which I and my wife drive on several times a week, to get to the library or to Kroger. It’s a rough neighborhood (the word “slum” comes to mind for the stretch of Tillman between Sam Cooper and Walnut Grove), but never one I’ve felt scared driving in during the daytime.

Until now.

More on the shootings at ABC 24 and WMC TV 5.

Steve Verdon catches Kevin Drum sounding like Donald Wildmon.

Today’s WaPo has an interesting article on the use of instant-runoff voting in San Francisco (þ: PoliBlog). While IRV isn’t exactly perfect, I think it’s better by a mile than plurality voting in multicandidate elections, leaving aside the argument over whether we should have multicandidate elections—which is in essence a debate over whether or not the meaningful policy space is unidimensional.

James Joyner comments on this op-ed by Duke political scientist Peter Feaver in today’s WaPo. I think both are correct to lament the politicization of the military, although I think three decades of Democratic Party antipathy, in rhetoric and deeds, toward the U.S. armed forces as an institution are largely responsible for that politicization, rather than any pro-miltary efforts by the Republicans.

More to the point, I wonder if this partisanship is part of the reason why the needs of servicemen and servicewomen, and their dependents, are overlooked by policymakers. It is often observed that African-American voters benefit very little from their overwhelming affiliation with the Democrats—swing voters, generally middle-class folk with 2.5 kids and a dog, get far more attention from both parties—and I think a similar dynamic keeps miltary families lagging in pay and benefits and crowded in substandard on-base housing. If more of the Democratic-leaning rank and file voted, I suspect Democrats and Republicans would do more to take care of the people who defend this country and their families.

Much virtual ink has been spilled over the recent release of The Motorcycle Diaries, a motion picture biography of the young Che Guevara. (See Mark Kleiman for an exhaustive blogography.)

I have nothing substantive to add to the discussion, but I will take this opportunity to quote David Bowie in a blog-post title, and to relate an anecdote from my college days.

Back in college, I and several friends had ourselves listed in the Memphis phone directory with joke names. I was listed as “Opus, P.”; my friend Neil was listed as “Stranger, T. Phantom”; my friend Steve was listed as “Zeppelin, Led”; and my roommate Alex was listed as “Guevara, Che.” I suppose my joke name and Neil’s were too obscure to garner any recognition from the general public, but Steve did receive several late-night phone calls from drunk, outraged rednecks, and Alex did receive quite a bit of Spanish-language junk mail addressed to “Che Guevara.”

UPDATE: Reid at Moteworthy wonders whether Steve was the "Zeppelin, Led" he used to crank call back in high school. It's the right time frame (early 90s), but wrong city. Unless Reid was making long-distance crank calls to Memphis.