Death Math

1. It makes me sad that the casualty count in Iraq and the likelihood of a Democrat winning the White House are correlated and proportional, and that every day that an American soldier doesn’t die in Iraq makes a McCain victory more likely, which means more deaths for a longer period of time and pro-life Supreme Court Justices. I am trying to do the “people-math” in my head to figure out if an increase in violence in Iraq results in X number of deaths of US troops between now and November, resulting in a Democratic victory and hopefully a pullout within a year, meaning that Y fewer troops were killed than would be if John “Let’s be in Iraq for 100 years” McCain is elected. What is an acceptable value for X?

2. Ralph Nader, who once was a decent guy I’m told (he spoke at my high school in 1995 and I thought he was a purposed but tone-deaf douchebag who thought there was nothing more to life at all than social action. No culture. Nothing else) is running for President again, reminding me of the fact that his narcissism cost Gore the election which meant war in Iraq, which has meant approximately 86,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and 4,000 Coalition troop deaths. It’s hard to get a figure for how many lives were saved by Nader’s success in making the cars we drive safer. My guess is that he’s about even for life.

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