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.

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.

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 …

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.

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

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.

Khalidi and the PLO  —  Starting in 1988, intermittently at first and then routinely from the launch of the Oslo talks in 1993, U.S. presidents have waived bans on contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization.  —  President Bush continued to do so even as he isolated its leader Yasser Arafat …

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.

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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) …

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.

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 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!

A week after his last money plea, Obama asks everyone for another $5  —  It seems like only a week ago that The Ticket was whining about Barack Obama whining that after raising $605 million through September to buy the presidency, he was asking all of us one last time for just $10 more for some reason.

The True Meaning of ‘Historic Vote’  —  Shifting America's animating idea from creation to protection.  —  The most basic explanation for why Barack Obama may win next Tuesday is that voters want economic deliverance.  The standard fix for this in politics everywhere is to crowbar the old party out and patch in the other one.

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.

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.