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.