* North Carolina has extended its early voting hours.

*  Former Sec. of State Larry Eagleburger, who McCain often cites as an endorser of his presidency, is no Palin fan.

*  Elizabeth Dole's attack ads on Kaye Hagan  — and specifically, on Hagan's lack of faith (Hagan is a church elder and Sunday school teacher) — is still being soundly denounced nationwide.  But Hagan isn't taking it lying down.  She's filed a lawsuit.  Normally, you can't sue another candidate because they make false statements in a political ad, but Dole's ad comes awfully close to being defamatory and crossing that legal line.

* The Washington Post exposes the McCain campaign's latest desparate attempt to link Obama to extremism.  The problem is that McCain himself has "ties to" that same "extremist", who, not surprisingly, isn't all that extremist.

* The fact that McCain has to spend campaign money to launch robocalls to get support in his home state of Arizona is a sure sign that he's in deep doo-doo come Nov. 4.

* I can't believe the McCain campaign is still campaigning the "Joe the Plumber" card.  They think that Joe is the iconic typical American.  While that is true, is that going to sway anybody?  "Look, here's someone just like you, and he's voting for McCain."  The problem with this is two-fold: (1)  Every American can find an America "just like them" by looking in the mirror.  Joe's no more special than anybody else.  So why will HIS vote influence OTHERS' votes? (2)  Joe the Plumber is no longer just a typical American.  How many "typical" Americans have a press agent, and are working on a record contract, and are considering running for Senate, ALL by virtue of his 15 minutes of fame?

* McCain to appear on SNL this coming weekend.  Can't hurt at this point, I suppose….

*  Aside from an Obama win, one of the nice things to come from this election includes the collapse of influence on the national discussion from the religious right, the death of neo-conservatism, the death of the theory that "negative advertising works", and the dethroning of of Matt Drudge as an influence on the media (If I were more ambitious, I could do a post on each of these….)