Top Items:
Gallup:
Gallup Daily: Obama's Lead Over McCain Expands to 11 — 52% share of the vote is Obama's highest to date — PRINCETON, NJ — The latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking report shows Barack Obama with a 52% to 41% lead over John McCain. — These results, based on Oct. 5-7 polling …
Discussion:
The New Republic, The Swamp, FiveThirtyEight.com, Firedoglake, Open Left, The Reaction, MyDD, Oliver Willis and Comments from Left Field
Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
SCRAPPING THE AYERS ATTACK ALREADY?.... The political world was told to expect some ugly, guilt-by-association attacks last night. We'd hear about Bill Ayers. And Tony Rezko. And maybe even Jeremiah Wright. The phrase “unrepentant terrorist” would be bandied about. — And then, nothing.
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, TIME.com, Top of the Ticket, Balloon Juice, TPM Election Central and Newshoggers.com
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Victor Davis Hanson / The Corner:
2005 — “He [Obama] said they have not spoken by phone or exchanged e-mail messages since Mr. Obama began serving in the United States Senate in January 2005” (New York Times, 10/3) — Why in the world was Barack Obama still communicating on the phone or via email with Bill Ayers up until 2005 …
Brad DeLong / Grasping Reality with Both Hands:
John McCain's New Mortgage Plan Is Worse than I Had Imagined Possibly, Even Given What I Know About John McCain — Douglas Holtz-Eakin says, this morning: … What does this mean? It means that John McCain wants to give $100 billion of taxpayers' money to America's worst-behaving mortgage financiers.
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Jeff Jacoby / Boston Globe:
Obama's 180 on genocide — JOHN MCCAIN'S opening words last night were: “Senator Obama, it's good to be with you at a town hall meeting!” Indeed it was. We now know why Barack Obama declined McCain's invitation earlier this year to appear together in a series of 10 town hall meetings around the country.
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Fred Barnes / Weekly Standard:
Paging Rick Warren — Why did a town hall debate in Nashville revolve around what interests an East Coast newsman? — A presidential debate at its best gives voters a glimpse of a candidate's personality, quick-wittedness, likeability, sense of humor, judgment, basic honesty, knowledge, even character.
Nitya / Political Radar:
Palin Fields Questions on Plane — ABC News' Imtiyaz Delawala Reports: For the first time in a month on the campaign trail, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin took questions from her full traveling press corps, covering topics ranging from her continued connection of Sen. Barack …
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Mark Halperin / TIME.com:
McCain Release on Ayers — ARLINGTON, VA — Today, John M. Murtagh made the following statement on Barack Obama's relationship with William Ayers: — “When I was 9 years-old the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama's friend William Ayers, firebombed my house.
Discussion:
The New Republic
Eric Zorn / Change of Subject:What is (and isn't)'terrorism'? — It's common these days …
Discussion:
NewsBusters.org
Salon:
Nobody's dummy — What a powerful letter — which I am pleased to share with Salon readers. Yes, let us not forget the tragic series of dubious political judgments that led the U.S. to lurch into Southeast Asia after the French had prudently packed up and left.
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Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times:
Palin's Kind of Patriotism — Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can't just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw.
The Huffington Post:
David Brooks: Sarah Palin “Represents A Fatal Cancer To The Republican Party” — In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at New York's Le Cirque restaurant to unveil that magazine's redesign, Brooks decried Palin's anti-intellectualism and compared her to President Bush in that regard:
Tom Shales / Washington Post:
A Showdown That Was More of a Letdown — Considering how adamantly John McCain advocated a “town hall” arrangement for this year's presidential debates, viewers might justifiably have expected him to thrive in the debate held last night in Nashville, since it followed that format.
Discussion:
The Corner
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CNN:Transcript of second McCain, Obama debate
Discussion:
The Swamp, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Althouse, Washington Monthly, Guardian, democracyarsenal.org, Washington Post, PERRspectives Blog, Preemptive Karma, TalkLeft, About.com US Liberal Politics, NewsBusters.org, UN Dispatch, Emptywheel, The Huffington Post, Climate Progress, Don Surber, www.redstate.com, Wake up America, Comments from Left Field, culturekitchen and New York Times
The Jed Report:
McCain Loses It: Calls Americans ‘My Fellow Prisoners’ — Update (12:26pm): I've posted an extended version of the clip in the vodpod so you can see the context. McCain was talking about his domestic policies, and clearly meant to say “Americans” or “countrymen” or somesuch.
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Matthew Weaver / NO QUARTER:
Obama is Hiding a Radical Past! — Edited and updated at 8:50 p.m. ET. — Did you know that Barack Obama was affiliated with a leading national socialist party? Barack Obama didn't include in his 2008 resume that he entered politics in the mid-1990s endorsed by Chicago's leading socialists.
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Time Edit / Swampland:
They Liked Him, They Really Liked Him — From TIME's Amy Sullivan: — As he did for the first presidential debate, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg gathered a group of undecided voters in a swing state (this time Colorado) to watch the town hall, polling them before and after to gauge …
Discussion:
Newshoggers.com, The Swamp, The Daily Dish, American Street, Jonathan Martin's Blogs, The New Republic and Firedoglake
Wall Street Journal:
Housing Pain Gauge: Nearly 1 in 6 Owners ‘Under Water’ — More Defaults and Foreclosures Are Likely as Borrowers With Greater Debt Than Value in Their Homes Are Put in a Tight Spot — The relentless slide in home prices has left nearly one in six U.S. homeowners owing more on a mortgage …
Lisa Rein / Washington Post:
Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists — The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:
Edited SNL subprime video also happens to excise Barney Frank's involvement — Not every comedy sketch on “Saturday Night Live” has to do with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. — It just seems that way recently, as The Ticket has reported here and here and here. — But there's an unusual twist this week over another SNL skit.
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Andy McCarthy / The Corner:
You Guys Are Nuts — We have a disaster here — which is what you should expect when you delegate a non-conservative to make the conservative (nay, the American) case. We can parse it eight ways to Sunday, but I think the commentary is missing the big picture.
Discussion:
Eunomia, Newshoggers.com, CBS News, The Opinionator, Balloon Juice, Campaign Silo and No More Mister Nice Blog
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Knoxville News-Sentinel:
UTK student David Kernell indicted in Palin e-mail hacking case — David C. Kernell, 20, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Knoxville, Tennessee., for intentionally accessing without authorization the e-mail account of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. — More details as they develop online and in Thursday's News Sentinel.
New York Times:
Central Banks Coordinate Cut in Rates — Central banks around the world cut short-term interest rates by up to half a percent on Wednesday after investors across Asia and Europe unleashed waves of sell orders onto already depressed stock exchanges. — The Federal Reserve …
Discussion:
Washington Post, Firedoglake, Matthew Yglesias, DownWithTyranny!, Economix, Conglomerate, Outside The Beltway, New York Magazine and Spin Cycle
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Jim Tankersley / The Swamp:
McCain's ‘suspension’: not quite — Turns out John McCain never did quite “suspend” his campaign during negotiations over the federal bailout plan, at least on television. — Tucked into a new report today on the campaign air wars from the Wisconsin Advertising Project is this factoid:
Discussion:
TPM Election Central
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