A Fox News poll shows a 40%-40% tie between Bush and Kerry, with Nader drawing 3%, and 17% undecided, choosing “other,” or planning not to vote.

But what’s really interesting to me is the breakdown into Red States, Blue States, and Battlegrounds. The 15 states considered “battlegrounds” are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin; the other 35 states are broken down according to who won in 2000. Here’s the end result:

Overall: Bush 40%, Kerry 40%
Battlegrounds: Bush 43%, Kerry 37%
Red States: Bush 44%, Kerry 36%
Blue States: Kerry 46%, Bush 35%

Obviously, this sort of tally is far less reliable as an Electoral College predictor than state-by-state polling. But still, the pattern is interesting, and it confirms what I’ve surmised from other polls. Kerry is running very strong in “his” states: 11 points up, vs. Bush’s surprisingly weak 8-point margin in “his” states. (Bush is only winning the red states by 2 percentage points more than his lead in the battleground states!)

What gives? Well, Kerry’s wide blue-state margin clearly reflects the overwhelming animosity toward Bush among East and West Coast elites. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Bush’s relatively narrow margin in the red states seems to suggest that his base is softer, perhaps because some of his big-government and Big Brother-ish policies have turned off a reasonably sized chunk of red-state voters. (But not enough of a chunk that it matters, for the moment at least.)

Both candidates, though, are winning “their” regions by wide enough margins that it seems safe to assume the battleground states will, as everyone expects, decide the Electoral College result. And it’s Bush who is winning the battleground states — states where voters are being bombarded with ads and visits and speeches and such, which means they’re probably paying more attention to the campaign, and, I fear, realizing what a poor candidate Kerry is.

These numbers suggest that another electoral-college inversion is not out of the question — perhaps even a pure inversion this time, without the razor-close Electoral College and Florida recount mess of 2000. If Kerry wins by overwhelming margins throughout the blue states, while Bush wins the red states but by less impressive margins, and also wins a large majority of the battleground states (again, by relatively small margins), it’s not difficult to envision a rerun of 1888, when Cleveland won the popular vote by almost 1%, but Harrison won the electoral vote by a decently large margin, 233-168. (The equivalent today would be 313-225.)

And, under this scenario, it would once again be Bush who would capture the presidency without winning the popular vote. Imagine how much that would piss liberals off…

P.S. Of course, the fly in this ointment is Nader. Even if he has no impact in battleground states, he could be the X factor that steals a popular-vote victory away from Kerry, once liberals in places like New York get real and realize that Kerry doesn’t actually need their vote. The Fox poll shows Nader polling an unbelievably low 1% in blue states, compared to 3% overall and 6% in red states! Clearly the red-state Nader voters are thinking strategically: “Kerry’s plight here is hopeless, so might as well vote for Nader.” The blue-state voters may eventually decide to do the same thing for the opposite reason, and that would depress Kerry’s margin in those states.

Newington High Class of ‘99 grad Joe Serfass and the Eastern Connecticut State University Warriors, last year’s Division III national champions, are at it again: in the wake of Serfass’s complete-game four-hitter on Friday, ECSU clinched the New England Regional on Sunday — with Serfass earning the save this time.

The Warriors now advance to the Division III World Series — which begins Friday in Appleton, Wisconsin — for the third year in a row.

Fark has a wonderful Photoshop contest making fun of Bruins. Woohoo!

Alas, I don’t have much in the way of Photoshopping skills, nor the proper software, nor the time necessary to do a good job with it… but clearly, something along these lines is called for:

I’m not entering that in the contest, because it’s not sufficiently well done. But it’s a concept, and perhaps there’s some Photoshop-savvy Trojan out there who can turn it into a masterpiece?

UPDATE: I changed my mind, and decided to enter it in the contest after all. The concept needed to be seen. :)

Another Trojan has also entered the fray:

Hehe.

In the national semifinals of NCAA men’s tennis, the #2-seeded USC Trojans face the #3-seeded Baylor Bears today. The match should be starting right about now, in fact.

Inquiring minds want to know: Where do ChrisTheBear’s loyalties lie? :)

UPDATE: I think we can all agree, though, where our loyalties are in regard to Thursday’s women’s tennis Sweet 16 match between USC and UCLA.

I have thus far resisted discussing the “Washingtonienne” sexblog scandal because, hey, this is a family website. (Okay, okay, really it’s just because I was too lazy to post about it.)

But now the Washington Post has published an interview with Washingtonienne — a.k.a. Jessica Cutler, until recently a staff aide to Sen. Mike DeWine — which a) makes the story more “legitimate”; and b) saves me the work of explaining what happened.

What’s more, the Post story reveals that Washingtonienne is also a former Joe Lieberman intern! So that makes this a must-post story here on BrendanLoy.com!

So yeah, anyway, read the whole thing, and find out what the hell I’m talking about. :)

Wonkette, of course, has been all over this story — it’s right up her alley (or should I say gutter?). She was the one, in fact, who outed Washingtonienne and, albeit unintentionally, got her fired.

But there are no hard feelings, apparently. On Friday, Wonkette published the first Washingtonienne interview — then last night, she went out for drinks with the only D.C. blogger more infamous than herself, resulting in this picture:

That’s Wonkette on the left, Washingtonienne on the right. Because this is still technically a family website, I will refrain from publishing my uncensored thoughts on the photo. :)

Washingtonienne’s blog no longer exists at its original location, but it has been archived here. Parental discretion is very much advised.

P.S. Check out who owns the domain washingtonienne.com! Savvy bastards.

P.P.S. Stand up for your right to (ahem) kiss and tell! Save Washingtonienne! :)

P.P.P.S. On a (slightly) more serious note, Volokh has a good analysis of the First Amendment implications of Washingtonienne’s firing.

Well, it certainly appears that Kerry’s alleged “training wheels” comment is being treated as off-the-record by just about everyone except distinctly right-wing sources. Skeptical as I am about some of the more hysterical recent claims of blatant pro-Kerry bias, I can’t help but wonder whether Bush, if he made similar “off the record” comments, would be given such — um — liberal treatment…

Just saw Van Helsing. It was delightfully awful. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys truly bad movies. (Hi Dad.)

I give it one out of five shillelaghs. But I enjoyed it anyway. :)

P.S. I recommend it as a video rental, that is. It’s not worth $8 for anyone… unless you really, really like movie-theater popcorn.

UPDATE: Becky disagrees: “It’s beyond bad…yet it doesn’t approach the ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ category. I was bored watching this piece of crap.”

One thing that I forgot to mention before: Why must Hugh Jackman always play complex, violent heroes who can’t remember their past? During the climactic battle scene, I half-expected Dracula to suddenly cry out, “There are no answers that way, Wolverine!!”

Round-trip airfare from Phoenix Sky Harbor to Chicago Midway: $139.80

Cab fare from Midway Airport to Adler Planetarium: $20

Admission to Adler Planetarium’s 5:18 AM-6:25 AM viewing party: Free

Getting to see the first Transit of Venus since 1882: Priceless

Let’s just say I’m thinking about it. :)

For those who may be wondering why I would fly to Chicago to watch a celestial event… the transit is, alas, not visible from Phoenix. And Chicago is the cheapest option of all Southwest Airlines cities in the “visible zone.” (Yes, I checked them all.) And Southwest is the best airline to use for such an expedition, because if, say, the forecast calls for overcast skies, I can cancel a flight at the last minute and receive full credit in Southwest Airlines “Ticketless Travel Funds” — which are as good as cash, really, considering how often I fly Southwest.

Who is the real Trojan warrior?

Hehe. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

(Yes, yes, I know, Brad Pitt played a Greek in Troy, not a Trojan. But since I didn’t go to Michigan State, asking “Who is the real Spartan warrior?” doesn’t work.)

(Original haircut post here. Original Troy post here.)

V called today, and said she recently saw a t-shirt reading “Bush is Sauron — Save the Shire!” and thought of me. Heh. Naturally, I googled it, and found the site where you can order it (scroll waaaaay down). I may just buy one. :)

On an unrelated note (well, unrelated except for this very tenuous connection), I saw Shrek 2 today, and loved it. Puss in Boots was especially fantastic. Best line: “Officer, it’s not mine!” (You have to see it…)

UPDATE: Getting back to the political sloganeering thing… then there’s these. Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And then there’s this.

According to The Onion, the problems with electronic voting machines include “Recurring pop-up screen that reads, ‘People who voted for John Kerry also ordered these products from Amazon.com.’” Heh.

Regarding President Bush’s little spill today, Drudge reports: “President fell off bike today… Kerry told reporters in front of cameras, ‘Did the training wheels fall off?’… Reporters are debating whether to treat it is as on or off the record… Developing…”

…I just really, really needed a haircut.

Hey, it’s hot in Phoenix in the summer. And the Salon de Becky has very competitive rates. :) Also, Becky says I look like Brad Pitt now.

As you can see, I had a lot of hair:

Heh.

Oh, and I would like to offer the following picture specifically in Tim Stevens’s honor:

(Tim was making fun of me for posting too many pictures of the cats, so I figure I should needle him with cat pictures as much as possible. :)

BREAKING NEWS!!! The French don’t like President Bush!

Two days after scoring 23 points — including a halftime buzzer shot from half-court — but losing 72-66 in her WNBA debut, former UConn star Diana Taurasi returned to the Nutmeg State and led the Phoenix Mercury to a 65-58 win over the Connecticut Sun today. Way to go, Diana!