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.

Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama's aunt Zeituni Onyango  —  James Bone in Boston, Rob Crilly in Kogelo and Ben Macintyre  —  Barack Obama has lived one version of the American Dream that has taken him to the steps of the White House.  But a few miles from where the Democratic …

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.

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

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Battle for Florida: Blacks turn out in droves, but few young people have voted  —  Blacks turn out in droves, but few young people have voted  —  Less than a week from a potentially landmark presidential election, black voters in Florida are turning out in huge numbers to vote early, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Can One Party Rule?  —  OUR OLD-FASHIONED inclination would be to wait for the election before discussing its results.  But since Republican presidential nominee John McCain has introduced the specter of Democratic control as an argument in his favor, it seems reasonable to examine the case.

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 …

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.

Afghanistan Tests Waters for Overture to Taliban  —  KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government and its allies in the region have begun approaching the Taliban and other insurgent groups with new intensity to test the possibilities for eventual peace talks, Western diplomats and Afghan officials here say.

American Stories, American Solutions  —  Tonight, the campaign aired a special 30 minute program in which Barack addressed the nation about his plan for the country and the issues that are at stake in this election.  In case you missed any part of it, or if you want to watch it again or share …

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) …

Ted Stevens Receives a Hero's Welcome in Alaska  —  ANCHORAGE — Two days after he was convicted on seven felony counts in Washington, Senator Ted Stevens returned to Alaska on Wednesday night to begin a six-day campaign sprint, telling several hundred supporters at a rally here that he would be vindicated …