21.7% Of Households In Top Local TV Markets Watched Obama Infomercial  —  The combined overall household rating for Senator Barack Obama's Wednesday night infomercial, in the top 56 local television markets where Nielsen maintains electronic TV meters, was 21.7.

McCain stood up by Joe the Plumber  —  McCain is in Ohio today - home of Joe the Plumber, John McCain's running mate for the last two weeks.  McCain just threw a shout out to Joe, who was supposed to be there today.  Well:  —  Oops - did someone get stood up?  When Sarah Palin was in Ohio yesterday, Joe was there.

McCain camp trying to scapegoat Palin  —  John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat.  It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.  —  And it has decided on Sarah Palin.  —  In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva.  She takes no advice from anyone.”

Obama and the Politics of Crowds  —  The masses greeting the candidate on the trail are a sign of great unease.  —  There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail.

Huffington Post Writer Stabs Lover 222 Times  —  It was inevitable that the Huffington Post would somehow end up sullied by recruiting such a massive army of unpaid contributors.  But few would have imagined something this awful: Valued HuffPo political blogger Carol Anne Burger shot herself Friday …

Checks on ‘Joe’ more extensive than first acknowledged  —  Tax, welfare info also sought on McCain ally  —  A state agency has revealed that its checks of computer systems for potential information on “Joe the Plumber” were more extensive than it first acknowledged.

It's time  —  America should take a chance and make Barack Obama the next leader of the free world  —  IT IS impossible to forecast how important any presidency will be.  Back in 2000 America stood tall as the undisputed superpower, at peace with a generally admiring world.

You're Still A Racist, Obama Advisor Says  —  Even if you vote for Obama, you're still probably a racist, according to Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, in his remarks at a recent panel discussion at my alma mater.  Ogletree, Obama's top advisor on race issues, explains that since Obama is …

Pennsylvania Hope for McCain  —  Republican must-win state poll from NBC/Mason Dixon:  —  Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9

Poll finds 23% of Texans think Obama is Muslim  —  WASHINGTON — A University of Texas poll to be released today shows Republican presidential candidate John McCain and GOP Sen. John Cornyn leading by comfortable margins in Texas, as expected.  But the statewide survey of 550 registered voters …

Gallup Daily: Obama Lead Among Likely Voters 5 to 7 Points  —  PRINCETON, NJ — Barack Obama holds a statistically significant lead over John McCain in both Gallup likely voter models, according to Oct. 27-29 Gallup Poll Daily tracking.  In the traditional model, which defines likely voters based …

A Joke And What It Reveals  —  Speaking in front of a huge audience at downtown Raleigh rally yesterday, Barack Obama threw off a humorous line about John McCain's accusation that the Obama tax plan is redistributionist: … Ha ha.  —  Only, in this passage Obama revealed precisely …

Sen. Bond Warns Palin Crowd That Obama Wants Judges Who Empathize With “The Gay”  —  From CBS News' Scott Conroy:  —  (CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO.) - Taking the stage as one of the pre-program speakers at a Sarah Palin rally here in Rush Limbaugh's hometown, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri …

FOX News Poll: Obama's Edge Over McCain Narrows  —  The race for the White House has tightened significantly — with Barack Obama now ahead of John McCain by three percentage points — according to a FOX News poll released Thursday.  —  FOXNews.com  —  As the candidates make their closing arguments …

Reality Check: The Cost Of Obama's Pledges  —  Web Exclusive: If Victorious, Barack Obama May Find Fewer Resources Than He Needs For His Campaign Promises  —  (CBS) This story was written by CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews.  —  Without question, the Barack Obama infomercial served …

GOP Mailer Uses Obama Supporter To Attack...Obama  —  The Republican Party of Wisconsin is sending out a somewhat peculiar attack-mailer targeting Barack Obama.  —  The literature accuses the Illinois Democrat of never having “led” like a president is required to do, citing a history of voting …

What They're Forgetting about The Forgotten Man [Amity Shlaes]  —  Bill Scher clearly doesn't like the argument that the government intervention made the Depression of the 1930s great in magnitude.  I am flattered that he treats the argument as new and attributes it to me alone, and my book, The Forgotten Man.

Double digit gap  —  A reliable source tells me that the CBS/New York Times poll due out later today will have Obama up 11 among likely voters, ticking down two points since their poll a week ago, but still a very, very wide margin in the waning days of the contest.

Banks to Continue Paying Dividends  —  Bailout Money Is for Lending, Critics Say  —  U.S. banks getting more than $163 billion from the Treasury Department for new lending are on pace to pay more than half of that sum to their shareholders, with government permission, over the next three years.

Feds probe Countrywide's ‘V.I.P.’ program  —  The wide-ranging criminal investigation into wrongdoing at Countrywide - once the nation's largest mortgage originator - now includes serious scrutiny of a loan program that provided special mortgage deals to the well-connected and powerful, including two U.S. senators.

THE LAST WORD—ALMOST  —  The Crystal Ball's Next-to-Last Projections for the 2008 Election  —  Director, U.Va. Center for Politics  —  These are our 2008 election projections as of Thursday, October 30.  We will make final adjustments and tweaks on Monday afternoon, November 3, and post them to the website.

OCTOBER SURPRISE: UFO ALIEN NOW ENDORSES McCAIN!  —  WASHINGTON, DC - In a shocking reversal with major implications for the U.S. presidential election, political kingmaker, the Alien has switched his endorsement from Barack Obama to John McCain amid furor.  Both political camps are buzzing …

Obama aunt may live in Boston  —  She has worked for BHA, city says  —  Barack Obama's story, spanning from his mother's roots in Kansas to his father's in Kenya and his childhood spent in Hawaii and Indonesia, has been well chronicled and a central part of his allure as a candidate who transcends national and racial lines.

The Barack Obama Lack-Of-Variety Show  —  For what it's worth, I don't think the night worked for him.  The last time anyone did this — Ross Perot — it was so weird a world unto itself (strange-looking guy with pie charts) that, beached between Cybill and Murphy Brown (or whatever it was back then) …

THE CASE IN 30 MINUTES.... The Obama campaign's 30-minute commercial could have gone in a couple of different directions last night, some better than others.  I was fairly confident he would rely on Ross Perot's pie charts — the hallmark of the last candidate to air a half-hour commercial …

How Obama can walk the post-partisan talk  —  Joe Biden was right.  If elected, Barack Obama's mettle will be tested.  Not by Al Qaeda or other enemies of the United States - that possibility is actually much less likely with a President Obama - but by the Democratic Congress.  —  This election is not over.

The Real McCain  —  Anne Applebaum and Joe Klein, like countless others, cannot support McCain because of his repulsive, vicious, negative, McCarthyite campaign and his unvetted spur-of-the-moment decision to pick Sarah Palin, an unhinged, know-nothing, delusional religious fanatic, as his veep.