For those of you who want to explore the blogosphere a little more, here are a few sites. Especially one that has this little tidbit:

The fault lies not in our weapons, but in our inspectors.
"Over a week ago, the White House announced its opposition to provisions for inspection and verification as part of a new anti-proliferation treaty that would ban the production of nuclear weapon material. Some have called the administration's decision "disturbing," "astonishing," "frightening," and "stupid" for essentially endorsing the containment and derailment of nuclear weapons programs across the globe while simultaneously neutering any real attempt to do so by preventing inspectors from checking to see if the treaty's signatories are actually complying. What reasonable objection, they ask, could a sane and competent White House have to inforcement of a treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons?"

The comments are especially tasty.

Other blogs I have found:
Professor Pollkatz's Pool of Polls. Poll Cats, Polecats. Get it? Nudge, nudge. He has some fine graphic representations of aggregations of polls. It tracks mostly Bush approval and disapproval ratings. There are no maps of election projections, but he has one that shows Bush approval ratings state by state. A data chart shows Kerry winning with 377 electoral votes if the elections were today. It is based on only two polls, though. He has some links to the following:

Federal Review. A collection of polls and with its own vote projections. The blogger seems to be conservative (or at least anti-liberal), but he gives equal voice to both sides. He is projecting Kerry winning with 301 electoral votes to Bush's 237 if the vote were today.

Election Projection. Another conservative blog showing Kerry would win with 296 electoral votes to Bush's 242 if the vote were today.

Race 2004. This is an interesting site that shows how the race would come out with Nader in the race and how it would come out if he were out. He points out that the two projections will get closer over time because Nader will have either qualified for the ballot or failed to qualify in each state. A responsible poll aggregator, he projects no winner and gives Kerry 247 electoral votes and Bush 196. When push comes to shove, however, he says that if the elections were held today with Nader on the ballot in the states where he has yet to qualify, Kerry would win with 318 electoral votes to Bush's 207. With Nader not on the ballot in the state where he has yet to qualify, Kerry wins with 307 electoral votes to Bush's 231. He points out that the fact that Kerry does better with Nader in the race goes against conventional logic.

Electoral-Vote.com. Currently shows Kerry the winner with 307 electoral votes, Bush with 231.

I would not be too excited that all these site are showing Kerry the winner, he has just come off of his convention/pep rally with a major campaign trip. The increase in electoral votes is likely the 'bounce' that pundits were predicting would happen after his convention. Bush will likely get a 'bounce' after his convention/pep rally at the end of August. Also, some of the more respectable polling outlets such as the LA Times, Washington Post, CNN, etc. are showing the most states up for grabs. Dave Leip's Election Atlas also does not project a winner. Most state-by-state polls have too much of a margin of error and there are conflicting polls in many states. A minor change of a few points is statistically insignificant in a poll with a margin of error of 3 points.

It is interesting that Kerry's bounce did not show up in the national polls (those that did not break things down by state), but it did show up in the electoral college polls. This is probably an indication that the divisions in the country are strongly based in demographic and geographic factors.

I have mentioned Dave Leip's Election Atlas before. Not only does it have election projections aggregated among various readers, it has aggregated polls, an electoral vote calculator and a mock election. The mock election is worthless, showing the libertarian winning, but the other features are very well done. In addition to the 2004 features, it has historical elections data down to county level for every election since the beginning of the Republic.

In projecting the 2004 election, Leip's data show different things in different features. The 2004 Presidential Predictions show Bush winning the same states he won in 2000 except for New Hampshire. This gives Bush 274 electoral votes to Kerry's 264. This aggregate prediction has not changed since I began watching it early this year. This is likely because people have visited the site, made their predictions, then left and never updated them. Therefore, we are left with stale predictions made at the beginning of the year when Kerry was more of an unknown.

The State Polls Aggregate page is more interesting. He updates it weekly with the newest polls from across the internet. Some are less reliable than others. (For a look at reliability of various polls, take a look at Professor Pollkatz's analysis or Robert Chung's poll bias analysis.) The aggregate of the polls show Kerry with 243 electoral votes and Bush with 200. 95 votes are still up for grabs, including not just Florida and Ohio, but some of the historically more liberal midwest states of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota as well as the more conservative Nevada, Missouri, Arkansas and West Virginia. Click on the states to find polling data going back to the beginning of the year for each state.

Finally, I recommend playing around with the vote calculator and come up with your own scenario for how the election might come out. When you come up with something you like, post it to the prediction page of the site.

Is it possible that the end of Iraq as we know it is upon us? Will the country be divided into three parts? It is well known that the Kurds have wanted their own country for some time and even ran Iraqi Kurdistan as a state independent from Saddam Hussein since the first Gulf War. Now, the second Gulf War is threatening to divide the country further, with calls for provinces in the south to be independent of the central government.

According to Al Jazeera, a deputy governor of Basra is about to announce the separation of some Iraqi southern governorates from the central government in Baghdad. The breakaway province would include would include Basra, Misan and Dhi Qar governorates. These governorates include the cities of Basra, Al Amarah and An Nasiriyah. It is unclear how much support this proposal will have among the Shiites of southern Iraq, but many seem to be upset with the continuing violence in the holy city of Najaf and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's explicit approval of it.

This article in the New York Times about removing senior official from the Endangered Species Office is an example of the Bush administration's approach to environmental issues. That is, to supress science and facts in order to allow political pressures to dominate the creation of environmental policy. We have seen it in their approach to weakening the Clean Air Act, revoking the Roadless Rule in National Forests, and now what looks like the first move in weakening the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act is a favorite shibboleth of the anti-environmental right and business interests. They have long wanted it weakened to the point of being irrelevant. This action could be the first step in the attack.

Pop Quiz: Whose quote is this and whom is it about?

"The danger here is that once a president loses credibility with the Congress, as this president has through months of lies and deceit and manipulations and deceptions, stonewalling, it raises into doubt everything he does and everything he says, and maybe everything he doesn't do and doesn't say. I just hope and pray the decision that was made was made on the basis of sound judgment, and made for the right reasons, and not made because it was necessary to save the president's job."

Hint, it wasn't a former Governor of Vermont referring to President George Bush's decision to release information regarding imminent terrorist attacks that is years old, some of it collected before September 11, 2001.