Bad news for you McCain supporters (including those of you who took me rather forcefully to task for having the temerity, in earlier posts, to suggest that Sarah Palin is grossly and perhaps even grotesquely under-qualified to be President of the United States): The Iowa Electronic Market, which is a real-money futures market allowing individuals to trade in "future contracts" based upon the occurrence or non-occurrence of real-world events, has McCain futures for sale at a deep discount compared to Obama futures. It'll cost you $0.59 to get a contract paying you $1 in the event of an Obama victory, but only $0.41 for a $1` payoff if McCain wins. The IEM's track record at getting its predictions of future events correct (discussed in James Surowiecki's book on "The Wisdom of Crowds") is very good, incidentally.