Top Items:
New York Times:
Growing Doubts on Palin Take a Toll, Poll Finds — A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Discussion:
Tikun Olam, Buck Naked Politics, The Heretik, Truthdig, The Caucus, The Moderate Voice, Say Anything and The Daily Dish
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CBS News:
Poll: Obama Maintains Comfortable Lead — CBS/NY Times Survey Finds Double-Digit Advantage For Democrat As Voters Express Fear About Both Candidates Becoming President — (CBS) With less than one week until Election Day, Barack Obama maintains a clear lead over John McCain in the presidential race …
gqrr.com:
Stan Greenberg's Letter To Bill McInturff, Lead Pollster, McCain-Palin 2008 — To: Bill McInturff, lead pollster, McCain-Palin 2008 — Partner, Public Opinion Strategies — From: Stan Greenberg, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and Democracy Corps — RE: STATE OF THE RACE AND BALLOT POSITION
Discussion:
skippy the bush kangaroo, The Strata-Sphere, MyDD, Daily Kos, The Swamp, The Daily Dish and Political Insider
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Joe Klein / Swampland:
And Lower... Here we have the McCain campaign's execrable Michael Goldfarb slinging around accusations of anti-semitism—a favorite pastime, as we've seen this year, among Jewish neoconservatives. I've never met Rashid Khalidi, but he is (a) Palestinian and therefore (b) a semite, so the charge of anti-semitism is fatuous.
Discussion:
Balloon Juice, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Daily Dish, JTA Election Central, Wonkette and Mondoweiss
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Atrios / Eschaton:
In Which Michael Goldfarb Has A Bad Day — Though Sanchez shouldn't have internalized the premise of Khalidi being anti-Semitic. Just because the McCain campaign says something doesn't make it so.
iowahawk:
As a Conservative, I Must Say I Do Quite Like the Cut of this Obama Fellow's Jib — By T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII — Columnist, The National Topsider — Membership Chairman, The Newport Club — When my late father T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI founded the iconoclastic conservative …
Mark Murray / MSNBC:
JOE? WHERE DID YOU GO? — From NBC/NJ's Adam Aigner-Treworgy — DEFIANCE, Ohio — “Where is Joe? Is Joe here with us today?” — That's the question John McCain asked roughly 6,000 people at Defiance Junior High School here this morning, But the correct answer was no — Joe the Plumber was nowhere to be found.
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Ben Smith / The Politico:
Cover this! Inside the nastiest '08 rumors — Thank you for your e-mails! — When John McCain and Barack Obama started running for president in 2007, they were two of the most universally liked and respected politicians in America — men who even members of the opposite party saw as decent …
Scott / Kay Hagan for North Carolina:
Kay Hagan Files Suit — 103008 KRH Lawsuit - Upload a Document to Scribd — GREENSBORO, NC- Kay Hagan filed a lawsuit against Elizabeth Dole and the Elizabeth Dole Committee, Inc., after Dole declined to remove her new television ad, described by North Carolina newspapers as “indecent,” …
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Carl Prine / PittsburghLIVE.com:
Majority of Allegheny prostitutes are on the Democratic side — TRIBUNE-REVIEW — John McCain and Barack Obama, if you're wooing a population of registered voters who are young, female and drawn to men in suits, then Allegheny County has 675 ladies ready to pull your lever.
Reuters:
Qaeda wants Republicans, Bush “humiliated”: Web video — DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda leader has called for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be “humiliated,” without endorsing any party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to a video posted on the Internet.
Jonathan Karl / ABCNEWS:
Exclusive: Petraeus Wants to Go to Syria; Bush Administration Says No — Petraeus Proposed Visiting Syria But Was Rejected By Bush Administration — Apparently Gen. David Petraeus does not agree with the Bush administration that the road to Damascus is a dead end.
Mere Rhetoric:
PICS AND VIDEO FROM THE LA TIMES “FREE THE TAPE” PROTEST (UPDATED: 2ND VIDEO, 25 PIC GALLERY ADDED) — This is why we're losing. We don't know how to throw a protest. A potentially explosive national issue with questions about judgment that are at the center of a Presidential election.
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
MCCAIN'S DISGRACE — The McCain campaign has been throwing around so much mud and smears in recent weeks that it's easy to miss just how ugly and shameful their character assassination of Rashid Khalidi is. This is an entirely respectable, highly respected scholar.
Discussion:
Mondoweiss
Fox News:
Bill Clinton: Obama Got Lots of Help on Economic Crisis Response — Bill Clinton says at a rally that Barack Obama called a round of advisers during the height of the economic crisis and said, “tell me what ... to do.” — FOXNews.com — Barack Obama cultivated the image of a cool …
R. Jeffrey Smith / Washington Post:
A Last Push To Deregulate — The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January. — The new rules would be among …
Discussion:
Kevin Drum
Martin Kramer / Sandbox:
Khalidi of the PLO — Was Rashid Khalidi a PLO “spokesman” or director of its press agency in Beirut back in 1982? I'll leave it to others to determine whether or not it matters (or matters enough) to the Khalidi-Obama connection. But I get riled up when people testify …
Discussion:
Haaretz, The Daily Dish, JTA Election Central, Washington Post and Little Green Footballs
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Barnett R. Rubin / Informed Comment:
My Friend, the “Neo-Nazi”
My Friend, the “Neo-Nazi”
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, rubber hose, Majikthise, ATTACKERMAN, Wonk Room, The Caucus, Mondoweiss and American Footprints
The Huffington Post:
Court Docs: GOP Donor Secretly Funneled $75K To Coleman Family — The CEO of a major marine technology company is alleging that he was pressured by a friend and associate of Norm Coleman to secretly funnel tens of thousands of dollars to the Senator's family.
Jason Horowitz / New York Observer:
Erica Jong Tells Italians Obama Loss ‘Will Spark the Second American Civil War. Blood Will Run in the Streets’ — It seems that the final days of the presidential campaign have made Erica Jong and her friends more than a little anxious. — A few days ago, Jong, the author and self-described feminist …
Justin Rood / ABCNEWS:
McCain-Palin Campaign Snubs Penn State Prez — Unwelcome at Palin Campus Event Because He's a “Big Democrat” — A McCain-Palin campaign official snubbed the president of Penn State University who inquired about attending a campus speech Tuesday by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin …
Mark Silva / The Swamp:
Rahm Emanuel: Obama's chief of staff? — Is Rep. Rahm Emanuel being courted to run the White House for Barack Obama? Or is that story just part of a big (not to mention premature) D.C. guessing game? — Aides and advisors to Obama and Emanuel — fellow Democratic members of Congress from Ilinois …
Discussion:
Ben Smith's Blogs
NEWS.com.au:
Japanese man petitions to marry comic book wife — Wedding bells ... a man wants to marry a comic book character, just like Superman and Lois Lane in 1996 / Reuters — A JAPANESE man has enlisted hundreds of people in a campaign to allow marriages between humans and cartoon characters …
Agence France Presse:
US election: If Iraqis could vote it would be for McCain … For five years Ali and Mohammed have lived alongside US soldiers in their Baghdad neighbourhood near Rasheed Street, a prominent commercial artery running through the heart of the Iraqi capital. — During that time American culture …
Marc Ambinder:
Obama Recruiting Volunteers For Arizona; “Real Chance” — An Arizonan forwarded this e-mail to Barack Obama's supporters in Arizona:
Jonathan Martin / Jonathan Martin's Blogs:
The association that dare not speak its name — McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb isn't “lying,” as this YouTube claims — But his hands are tied by the candidate. — Jeremiah Wright remains off-limits.
Marc Ambinder:
Counterevidence Watch: Obama + 3 In The Fox Poll — http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/ 103008_poll.pdf — A Democratic reader writes: … Small variations in weighting can have proportionately large effects on the perception of a poll, t'is true. — But I'm no expert on this question …
Andy McCarthy / The Corner:
Thank you, Stanley Kurtz — I'd like to be on record about this before Tuesday. We don't know what is going to happen. The polls, if they mean anything, appear to be tightening, and I am still hopeful that Americans will grasp the degree to which our liberty and security would be imperiled by an Obama presidency.
Discussion:
Comments from Left Field
New York Times:
Colorado Agrees to Restore Voters to Rolls — DENVER — Tens of thousands of Coloradans who had been removed from the state's voter rolls will be allowed to vote in next week's election and given extra protections so their ballots are counted, under an agreement reached late Wednesday in federal court here.
Dan Elliott / Associated Press:
Air Force: Nuke missile silo fire went undetected — DENVER (AP) — A fire caused $1 million worth of damage at an unmanned underground nuclear launch site last spring, but the Air Force didn't find out about it until five days later, an Air Force official said Thursday.
Discussion:
TalkLeft
Pierre Thomas / ABCNEWS:
Exclusive: U.S. Expects Bin Laden Message Near Election — Analysts: OBL Could Speak Out in an Effort to Prove His Relevance — Multiple senior government officials tell ABC News the intelligence community is anticipating a message from Osama bin Laden before or just after the presidential election.