In addition to counting the number of days left, it gives a few hints as to why many of us are counting down the days.

I’m placing it on the sidebar right beneath the running national debt so as to quicklook the misery.

Here’s the explanation, and I’ll plug in the numbers for today.

• Days Left, 911
  The number of days left in Dubya’s presidency. 911, huh?
• Approval = 31%
  Dubya’s current approval rating as determined by Gallup (updated every couple of weeks)
• Deficit/Surplus = $319B
  The current U.S. budget deficit (updated annually)
• Forbes 400 = $1.13T
  The cumulative wealth of the richest 400 Americans, which interestingly dwarfs the deficit (updated annually)
• Soldiers = 2648
  The number of coalition deaths in the Iraq War (updated weekly)
• WMD = 0
  The number of “weapons of mass destruction” found, which is the ostensible reason we went to war in the first place (updated whenever we find them)

Links:

• An approval “trend” graph which shows the president’s Gallup approval rating over the course of his administration. (Updated every few weeks)
• A budget deficit “trend” graph (shown as a percentage of GDP) which charts our budget deficit history from JFK to Dubya. (Updated annually)
• A “winners” table which shows which segments of society won and lost after taxes from 2002 to 2003.
• A list of the names, ages, and hometowns of the men and women who have lost their lives in the Iraq conflict. (Updated weekly until the deaths stop)
• A “Get the Dashboard!” link which allows people to get their own dashboard.

My criticisms are these:

1. The statistics, graphs and lists aren’t updated often enough.
2. It’s not intuitively clear that you can click within the frame to return to the original state of the display.
3. I had to adjust the width and height to get rid of scrollbars.
4. It would be a better strategy all around to have the links go out to full webpages

I would like to see an expanded version of these kinds of statistics. Here are some of my suggestions for blog toymakers:

• How much money is being printed (trend report)
• Amount of tax revenue lost through corporate welfare (trend report)
• Environmental effects – Increase in children with asthma, extinctions, top 50 companies who destroy for profit, etc.
• Number of schools “left behind” (Does that phrase remind you of the Rapture, or is it just me?)
• Average college tuition (trend report)
• Average student loan debt (trend report)
• Average household credit card debt (trend report)
• Consumer price index, and price of a gallon of: milk, gasoline, housepaint, water (trend report)