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.”

Call Him John the Careless  —  From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism.  Tuesday's probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign's closing days.

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

Hall adviser fired, linked to Ohio voting fraud probe  —  NEW PALTZ — Congressman John Hall (D-Dover Plains) fired one of his long-time campaign advisers Tuesday, after learning that she's embroiled in voter fraud investigations in Ohio.  —  Amy Little, 49, has been a registered Democrat …

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.

Police: Ex-lover killed woman in rage in Boynton Beach  —  BOYNTON BEACH — Carol Anne Burger killed her former lover by stabbing her 222 times with a Phillips-head screwdriver and then took pains to hide her crime, police said Wednesday.  —  Jessica Kalish, who shared a house …

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.

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.

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 …

Kissimmee, Kate!  — Bill Clinton Heralds's Obama's “Do” List; How Obama Called the Clintons to “Understand” the Financial Crisis  —  KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA — “Look at this crowd - it's not only big, it is highly diverse,” former President Bill Clinton told a crowd of 35,000 outside Orlando last night.

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.

Why I'm Voting For Obama  —  You know, all those sober-minded Beltway Obamacons have me thinking.  So far it's all been good race-baiting, lefty-smearing fun, but we've come to the point in the campaign where it is time to mull things over and make a serious decision.

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.

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 …

INTRODUCING: LI'L OBAMA!  —  The great Batton Lash does it again (with a little help from yours truly).  After the jump:  —  Previous Batton fun here, here, and here.  And check out his fine comicky goodness at exhibitapress.com!

Don't Let the Polls Affect Your Vote  —  They were wrong in 2000 and 2004.  —  There has been an explosion of polls this presidential election.  Through yesterday, there have been 728 national polls with head-to-head matchups of the candidates, 215 in October alone.

A Question for A.I.G.: Where Did the Cash Go?  —  The American International Group is rapidly running through $123 billion in emergency lending provided by the Federal Reserve, raising questions about how a company claiming to be solvent in September could have developed such a big hole by October.

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) …

Is Barack Obama really a socialist?  —  Not exactly, but his ‘socialist-lite’ policies should still be cause for concern. … Since telling Joe the Plumber of his wish to “spread the wealth around,” Barack Obama is being called a socialist.  Is he one?  —  No. At least not in the classic sense of the term.

GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT: THIRD QUARTER 2008 (ADVANCE)  —  Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of .3 percent in the third quarter of 2008, (that is, from the second quarter …

Obama Banks: Clues From The Early Vote  —  First, click through the data here and here.  —  Gallup and Pew data show that Democrats are leading in the early vote.  The equally reliable Annenberg National Election Survey's data shows that, across the country, Democrats are tied with Republicans in the early vote.

ObamaVision: An Appeal to the Masses  —  Barack Obama fired the final salvo in the great battle of images that is the 2008 presidential campaign last night with a half-hour, multimillion-dollar television infomercial that could be considered not the “feel-good” but rather the “feel-better” movie of the year.

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.

Aerosmith's Joe Perry walks this way with John McCain  —  Aerosmith has generally left the politics to bands like U2 and the Dixie Chicks, but axeman Joe Perry says national security and economic woes have prompted him to split from the rest of the entertainment world and throw his support behind John McCain.

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 …

Undecideds an unlikely ‘life raft’ for McCain  —  The pool of undecided voters remains as large as one in 10, but John McCain can hardly rely on them to overtake Barack Obama.  According to past election results, those voters who decided in the last week of a campaign are unlikely …

National Trackers: Narrowing?  Not Much  —  Here are the daily tracking results from today.  All changes are 1-2 percentage points on the margin, which is well within the usual range of sampling noise.  If we use the “expanded” likely voter model for Gallup (our usual practice) …