Thanks to Andrew Tobias for pointing me to www.tradesports.com, an Irish betting exchange that allows you to buy "futures" on damned near anything, including the outcome of the upcoming presidential election. Futures are priced between $0.00 and $1.00, with the price reflecting the probability of an event taking place. For example, the "Lord of the Rings wins Best Picture" future is trading around $0.84, which seems about right. On the other hand, the "George W. Bush wins the election" future is trading at $0.65, which seems somewhat overpriced; I'm pretty sure that it will look like a much closer race sometime over the next few months, so this might be a good future to short (and a rather depressing future to contemplate).

Of course, the really ingenious thing would be to hedge, by assigning an estimated dollar amount to your emotional or financial pain at the prospect of Bush being elected, and then buying an equivalent amount of Bush futures, thereby obtaining some monetary compensation for a Republican victory. I'd do this myself, but then again, isn't that what tax breaks are for?