Josh Marshall

Gallup:

The political landscape could be improving for Barack Obama in the waning days of the campaign. Gallup Poll Daily tracking from Oct. 28-30 shows him with an eight percentage point lead over John McCain among traditional likely voters -- 51% to 43% -- his largest margin to date using this historical Gallup Poll voter model.

Since Tuesday, McCain's support among traditional likely voters has dropped by four points (from 47% to 43%), Obama's has risen by two points (from 49% to 51%), and the percentage of undecided voters has increased from 4% to 6%.

Thursday night's interviews are the first conducted entirely after Obama's widely viewed 30-minute prime-time campaign ad, which ran on several television networks Wednesday evening. Obama held a substantial lead over McCain in last night's polling, however no greater than what Gallup found on Wednesday.

Obama's current 11-point lead over McCain among all registered voters -- 52% to 41% -- is up from an eight-point lead in yesterday's report, and ties his highest advantage on this basis, last recorded 10 days ago.

(click image to enlarge)

Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West

NYTimes Poll/CBS News Poll

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.

All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said that Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up 9 percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said that the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favored Senator Barack Obama.

In a possible indication that the choice of Ms. Palin has hurt Mr. McCain’s image, voters said that they had much more confidence in Mr. Obama to pick qualified people to serve in his administration than they did in Mr. McCain.
..
The survey suggested that the historic candidacy of Mr. Obama, who would be the first African-American president if elected, has changed some perceptions of race in America. Nearly two-thirds of those polled said that white and black people have an equal chance of getting ahead in today’s society, up from the half who said that they thought so in July. And while 14 percent still said that most people they know would not vote for a black presidential candidate, a question pollsters often ask to try to gauge bias, the number has dropped considerably since the campaign began.
..
With just days until Americans choose a new president, the survey found respondents deeply uneasy about the state of their country. Eight-five percent of them said that the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, near the record high recorded earlier this month. A majority said that the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. And President Bush’s approval rating remains at 22 percent, tied for the lowest presidential approval rating on record (which was President Harry S. Truman’s rating, recorded by the Gallup poll in 1952).
..
Dixie Cromwell, a 36-year-old cosmetologist from Shelby, N.C., who is a Republican, said in a follow-up interview that she had already voted for Mr. Obama.

“I come from a family of Republicans and I generally vote Republican, but this year I voted Democrat,” she said. “I just don’t feel we can go through any more of the same old thing that we’ve been going through with the Republican party.”

Francis Bacon

Photo: Christie's Images Ltd
NYTimes:

ARTIST: Francis Bacon
TITLE: “Study for Self-Portrait” (1964)
AUCTION HOUSE: Christie’s
ESTIMATED PRICE: $40 million

This full-length portrait is one of the highlights of Christie's Nov. 12 sale. Christie's is hoping to capitalize on the record prices paid for Bacon's works recently. A 1976 Bacon triptych went for $86.3 million in May. Still, there is no getting around the fact that ''the market has changed,'' said Brett Gorvy, co-head of Christie's postwar and contemporary art department.

Photo: Alina Novopashina/European Pressphoto Agency
NYTimes:

A visitor looked at the artwork 'Bowl with Eggs' by Jeff Koons at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Eleven huge sculptures of Koon's cycle 'Celebration' can be seen during Berlin's exhibition series 'Cult of the Artist' at Neue Nationalgalerie from Oct. 31 to Feb. 8.

Kuwait

Photo: Yasser al-Zayyat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Traders at the Kuwait stock exchange, where shares have fallen 19 percent this year and trading was halted on a troubled bank.

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

Gary Kamiya

Excerpt from Salon:

The right wing is running as far away as it can get from Bush, but it still shares his beliefs. That's why it cannot and will not muster any real arguments against his policies.

This explains both McCain's impotent campaign and the failure of the right-wing brain trust to understand the disaster that has befallen the GOP. With very few exceptions -- most notably David Brooks, who on Sunday called for the GOP to reinvent itself as a "progressive conservative" party in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton and Teddy Roosevelt -- the right-wing intelligentsia is still reciting its worn-out ideological mantras, claiming that an Obama victory would mean the death of "freedom," the triumph of socialistic "big government" and abject surrender to our enemies.

For example, in a Weekly Standard column titled "McCain versus the juggernaut," neoconservative pundit William Kristol warned that an "Obama-Biden administration -- working with a Democratic Congress -- would mean a more debilitating nanny state at home and a weaker nation facing our enemies abroad." It takes a deep obliviousness to reality for an ardent Bush supporter to be sounding the alarm about the "nanny state" at the same time that his beloved president and party are solicitously spoon-feeding their wailing Wall Street brat out of a $700 billion jar of Gerber's. As for Kristol's claim that Obama would be "weaker" in facing our enemies abroad, if the great "strength" shown by Bush is the alternative, "weakness" looks good. Bush's "strength" led him to wage an unnecessary and disastrous war that has empowered Islamist terrorists and made America much less safe. That's why al-Qaida supports McCain: A continuation of Bush's policies is its best recruiting tool.

1966

Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones
Santa Monica, California

Apple

From the website:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Brentwood, California

Photo: Mike Meadows/Associated Press
NYTimes:
A house, top left, was threatened by flames from a one hundred-acre wildfire in the Sepulveda Pass area of Los Angeles near Brentwood. The authorities said the wildfire in west Los Angeles was near the Getty Museum and closed the nearby San Diego Freeway for four hours while 400 firefighters worked to bring it under control after seven hours.

Ellen Degeneres

"I don’t know if you saw this, but vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said she’s in favor of a federal ban on gay marriage. Basically, she wants to change the constitution. So if you’re wondering — I’m sure you are — how I feel about this, I don’t like it. I don’t like it. I don’t agree. … And I don’t know what people are scared of. Maybe they think that their children will be influenced, and I got to say — I was raised by two heterosexuals and they did not influence me."

Madelyn and Stanley Dunham

Barack Obama's grandfather and grandmother. He calls her "Toot."

Rachel Maddow

Photo: Ben Stechschulte/Redux, for The New York Times
At her home in Massachusetts.

Illustration by André Carrilho

John Heilemann/New York Magazine:

With the prospect of defeat for John McCain growing more likely every day, the GOP destined to see its numbers reduced in both the House and Senate, and the Republican brand debased to the point of bankruptcy, the conservative intelligentsia is factionalized and feuding, criminating and recriminating, in a way that few of its members can recall in their political lifetimes. Populists attack Establishmentarians. Neocons assail theocons. And virtually everyone has something harsh to say about the party’s standard-bearer. Election Day may still be two weeks away, but already the idea-merchants of the right have formed a circular firing squad.
...
David Frum points out that it took the Democrats twelve years after the epochal 1980 election to make a substantial break with the party’s past. “And I think there were probably more people in the Democratic Party in 1980 who were willing to rethink the New Deal than there are Republicans in 2008 who are ready to rethink our party’s first principles,” he says. “So I think it’s going to be a very long, very difficult conversation.” Few people understand better than (Christopher) Buckley just what that might mean. “My dad kicked off conservatism in 1955, Goldwater ran in 1964, and then Reagan was elected sixteen years after that,” he notes. “So the Republicans could be looking pretty good around, oh, 2032!”

You might think that Buckley is kidding here, but you would be wrong. Conservatism, he thinks, is facing nothing less than an existential crisis. The events of recent days may have given him less of a stake in the outcome than before, but still he offers a friendly word of advice for those who care to listen. “The smart ones in the movement should get together right after the election at the Greenbrier or the Homestead, you know, where they typically have these kinds of get-togethers, and have a long dark night of the soul,” he says. “And I’ll tell you what the conference should be called: Conservatism—What the Fuck?”

Powell's Endorsement

Mark Halperin, TIME Magazine:

In one of the most important symbolic moments of the general election, former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced today that he is endorsing Barack Obama for president. Making his decision public on NBC News' "Meet the Press," the long-time fixture in Republican administrations effectively reinforced the sense of momentum Obama has been building, declaring the Senator from Illinois as a "transformational figure." "I think that Senator Obama brings a fresh set of eyes, a fresh set of ideas to the table," said Powell. "I think we need a generational change, and I think Senator Obama has captured the feelings of the young people of America, and is reaching out in a more diverse, inclusive way across our society."

The decision is not only symbolic but, in terms of timing, one of great tactical importance. Powell is a brand unto himself in American politics, and clearly transcends the media's tendency to hype endorsements more than their actual importance to voters. However, the indisputable benefit that Powell brings Obama is that the former Secretary of State and general is sure to block out any chance McCain has of winning the next two or three days of news coverage, as the media swoons over the implications of the choice. It is simple political math: McCain has 15 days to close a substantial gap, and he will now lose at least one fifth of his total remaining time.

Powell's decision brings other clear benefits as well. He is so trusted for his judgment on national security (even in the wake of his role in the current Iraq War) that his confidence in Obama to become commander-in-chief will resonate with many elites and voters. The Democrats' ability to play the Powell card for the next two weeks makes it much harder, even if there is an unexpected international crisis, for Republicans to suggest Obama simply isn't qualified to protect the country. Powell reinforced Obama's qualifications on "Meet the Press": "Senator Obama has demonstrated the kind of calm, patient, intellectual, steady approach to problem-solving that I think we need in this country."

100,000

Photo: Damon Winter
NYTimes: Obama addresses a crowd of 100,000 in St Louis, Missouri.

“Even the most conservative people know we’re in trouble,” said Debbie Sachs, a teacher from St. Louis. “People are scared and he” — she pointed toward the stage where Mr. Obama was about to speak — “is cool.”

Chicago Tribune

Photo: Joe Raedle / October 17, 2008

The newspaper endorses a Democrat for the first time in its 161-year history:

However this election turns out, it will dramatically advance America's slow progress toward equality and inclusion. It took Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary courage in the Civil War to get us here. It took an epic battle to secure women the right to vote. It took the perseverance of the civil rights movement. Now we have an election in which we will choose the first African-American president . . . or the first female vice president.

In recent weeks it has been easy to lose sight of this history in the making. Americans are focused on the greatest threat to the world economic system in 80 years. They feel a personal vulnerability the likes of which they haven't experienced since Sept. 11, 2001. It's a different kind of vulnerability. Unlike Sept. 11, the economic threat hasn't forged a common bond in this nation. It has fed anger, fear and mistrust.

On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.

The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-chicago-tribune-endorsement,0,1371034.story

New England Journal of Medicine

Excerpts:

The choice facing health care professionals, like all Americans, is basic: Who deserves to be trusted with the stewardship of America's health care system? The McCain proposal violates the bedrock principle that major health policy reforms should first do no harm. It would risk the viability of employer-sponsored insurance and the welfare of chronically ill Americans in pell-mell pursuit of a radical vision of consumer-driven health care. Senator McCain's plan does not demonstrate the kind of judgment needed in a potential commander in chief of our health care system.

John McCain emerges not as a maverick or centrist but as a radical social conservative firmly in the grip of the ideology that animates the domestic policies of President George W. Bush. The central purpose of President Bush's health policy, and John McCain's, is to reduce the role of insurance and make Americans pay a larger part of their health care bills out of pocket. Their embrace of market forces, fierce antagonism toward government, and determination to force individuals to have more "skin in the game" are overriding — all other goals are subsidiary. Indeed, the Republican commitment to market-oriented reforms is so strong that, to attain their vision, Bush and McCain seem willing to take huge risks with the efficiency, equity, and stability of our health care system.

Online

Milk

Photo: Left: Phil Bray; Right: Focus Features

Left, Harvey Milk in 1978; right, Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant's “Milk.”

Debate

Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty

CBS: "Fifty-three percent of the uncommitted voters surveyed identified Democratic nominee Barack Obama as the winner of [last night's] debate."

Hofstra University

Hempstead, New York
Obama arrives at the site of the final presidential debate.

CBS/NYTimes Poll

"Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain."

Andrew Sullivan

Obama-McCain: 53 - 39?

That's what I hear the NYT/CBS poll will record tomorrow. A national fourteen point lead. They've already reported an 89 percent "wrong track" number.

Los Angeles

Hampered by intense winds and blowing smoke, an L.A. City firefighter douses flames in the hills above Sylmar.

Los Angeles

Mark J. Terrill / AP

The Dodgers' Nomar Garciaparra, with a .417 career batting average against James Moyer, Philadelphia's Game 3 pitcher, will get a start tonight at either first or third base.

Paris

Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
NYTimes:
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, left, welcomed Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain to an economic summit at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Sunday.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Sibu VIII,” from “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder,” 2003, by Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko

“The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End” continues through March 22 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. “The Poetics of Cloth: African Textiles/Recent Art” continues through Dec. 6 at the Grey Art Gallery, 100 Washington Square East, Greenwich Village; (212) 998-6780, nyu.edu/greyart.

Paris

International meltdown
NYTimes:

“There was no specific story about today; right now we are in a freefall of fear and people are using any opportunity to sell,” said Richard Sparks, senior equities analyst at Schaeffer’s Investment Research. He said the falls were driven by pessimism that the series of actions unveiled by governments around the world were still not enough to end the financial crisis.

Investors “still think that this is not out of the woods yet,” he said. “Even with government help, you may have banks that may not make it.”

Set Designer: Ken Adam

Courtesy of Ken Adam
(A sketch of the War Room from "Dr. Strangelove.")

The story of the War Room's construction, featuring several thousand light bulbs and a furor when Kubrick suddenly decided to change the layout, is one of the design coups recounted in "Ken Adam Designs the Movies," a new book published by Thames & Hudson on the work of the celebrated film production designer. It was Adam who dreamed up the missile launching pad hidden inside a volcano in "You Only Live Twice," the faux Fort Knox in "Goldfinger" and the candlelit 18th-century drawing rooms of Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon."

Photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Andrew Sullivan:

10.33 pm. This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain. Even on Russia, he sounded a little out of it. I've watched a lot of debates and participated in many. I love debate and was trained as a boy in the British system to be a debater. I debated dozens of times at Oxofrd. All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out.It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate. It reminds me of the 1992 Clinton-Perot-Bush debate. I don't really see how the McCain campaign survives this.

Gallup:
The nine percentage point lead in Oct. 4-6 tracking matches Obama's highest to date for the campaign, and the highest for either candidate. Obama led McCain by 49% to 40% near the tail end of his international trip in late July. Obama has now held a statistically significant lead since Sept. 24-26 polling and has not trailed McCain since Sept. 13-15, roughly coinciding with the intensification of the financial crisis.

Bullock's Oriole

Photo: Rosamond Purcell
A nest of a Bullock's oriole that is made up almost entirely of plastic. Many birds use any available items to build their homes, but some synthetic fibers can be harmful to chicks.

Gail Collins

This entire election season has been a long-running saga about the rise of women in American politics. On Thursday, it all went sour. The people boosting Palin’s triumph were not celebrating because she demonstrated that she is qualified to be president if something ever happened to John McCain. They were cheering her success in covering up her lack of knowledge about the things she would have to deal with if she wound up running the country.

New York Times Editorial

Dick Cheney, Role Model

Excerpts:
In all the talk about the vice-presidential debate, there was an issue that did not get much attention but kept nagging at us: Sarah Palin’s description of the role and the responsibilities of the office for which she is running, vice president of the United States.

In Thursday night’s debate, Ms. Palin was asked about the vice president’s role in government. She said she agreed with Dick Cheney that “we have a lot of flexibility in there” under the Constitution. And she declared that she was “thankful that the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president also, if that vice president so chose to exert it.”

It is hard to tell from Ms. Palin’s remarks whether she understands how profoundly Dick Cheney has reshaped the vice presidency — as part of a larger drive to free the executive branch from all checks and balances. Nor did she seem to understand how much damage that has done to American democracy.

....

Mr. Cheney has long taken the bizarre view that the lesson of Watergate was that Congress was too powerful and the president not powerful enough. He dedicated himself to expanding President Bush’s authority and arrogating to himself executive, legislative and legal powers that are nowhere in the Constitution.

....

In an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, the Alaska governor was asked what she thought was the best and worst about the Cheney vice presidency. Ms. Palin tried to dodge: laughing and joking about the hunting accident in which Mr. Cheney accidentally shot a friend. The only thing she had to add was that Mr. Cheney showed support for the troops in Iraq.

There was not a word about Mr. Cheney’s role in starting the war with Iraq, in misleading Americans about weapons of mass destruction, in leading the charge to create illegal prison camps where detainees are tortured, in illegally wiretapping Americans, in creating an energy policy that favored the oil industry that made him very rich before the administration began.

Ms. Couric asked Joseph Biden ... the same question in a separate interview. He had it exactly right when he told her that Mr. Cheney’s theory of the “unitary executive” held that “Congress and the people have no power in a time of war.” And he had it right in the debate when he called Mr. Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had in American history.”

The Constitution does not state or imply any flexibility in the office of vice president. It gives the vice president no legislative responsibilities other than casting a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when needed and no executive powers at all. The vice president’s constitutional role is to be ready to serve if the president dies or becomes incapacitated.

Any president deserves a vice president who will be a sound adviser and trustworthy supporter. But the American people also deserve and need a vice president who understands and respects the balance of power — and the limits of his or her own power. That is fundamental to our democracy.

Photo: Darren Hauck/Getty
Joe Klein:

Part of Obama's steadiness is born of necessity: An angry, or flashy, black man isn't going to be elected President. But I've also gotten the sense, in the times I've interviewed and chatted with him, that calm is Obama's natural default position. He is friendly, informal, accessible...and a mystery, hard to get to know. He doesn't give away much, doesn't — unlike Bill Clinton — have that desperate need to make you like him. His brilliant, at times excessive, oratory is an outlier — the only over-the-top, Technicolor quality he has.

There has been no grand cathartic moment for him in this campaign, but rather a steady accretion of trust, a growing public sense that he knows what he's talking about and isn't going to get crazy on us. His demeanor has rendered foolish all the rumors about his alleged radicalism. This guy is the furthest thing imaginable from an extremist; McCain, by his own admission, is the bomb-thrower in this race.

Andrew Sullivan:

"McCain is interviewed by the Washington Blade. Well: he supplied written answers to written questions. Nonetheless: good for him. His Senate chief of staff is openly gay and long has been. McCain never made the gay thing important in my own dealings with him. I personally gave him a copy of Virtually Normal a decade ago, and we've had civil conversations about HIV and gay issues. He's not an indecent man in private. But his campaign has been indecent, he does oppose every single measure to grant gays even the slightest degree of civil equality and supports the persecution of gay men and women serving their country honorably. He picked a running-mate more anti-gay than any candidate in the recent history of the GOP. I'm sorry but I'm not going to fall for another W. Once is enough. "

Francis Bacon

"In Memory of George Dyer," 1971
Retrospective at the Tate Britain