It's not just John McCain -- Sarah Palin is a socialist too! Hendrik Hertzberg notes (emphasis added):

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist--Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine--that "we're set up, unlike other states in the union, where it's collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

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Using raw numbers compiled by George Mason University Professor Michael McDonald, I generated some stats on early voting trends nationwide.

According to McDonald's numbers, a bit over 12.3 million voters have already cast these ballots. About 5 million of these votes were cast in six states that report early voting turnout by party. (The states are Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, and North Carolina.)

I added up the totals for each these states and here's what the turnout is looking like so far for early voting (in percentage terms):

• Democrats: 47.8% of early voters
• Republicans: 34.6% of early voters
• Other/No party: 17.6% of early voters

It's hard to know what to compare these numbers to, so I decided to look at the November, 2004 voter registration statistics for each state (in a couple of cases, I had to look at county-level data). Here's what I found:

• Democrats: 41.2% of 2004 registered voters
• Republicans: 35.1% of 2004 registered voters
• Other/No party: 23.7% of 2004 registered voters

Remember, these numbers are only for the six states I flagged above. And as much as I'd like to offer a thorough analaysis, I'm not enough of an expert on these numbers to get into too much detail. Nonetheless, it is clear that Democrats are overperforming their 2004 registration numbers -- and they're doing so by quite a lot.

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Sam Wang's polling meta-analysis, which aims to show the current state of the race, and Nate Silver's 538 projection, which aims to predict the final outcome of the race using current data, are now both offering up the same electoral vote numbers: Obama 351, McCain 187.

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Early morning viewers of FOX & Frienders were greeted with a (false) story about some radio interview Barack Obama gave in 2001. If you had been watching, here's what you would have seen on your screen:

McCain-land pimped the Drudge-FOX story (which they probably fed to Drudge in the first place). Washington Post took a look at McCain-land's claims, and here's what they came up with:

In other words, Obama says pretty much the opposite of what the McCain camp says he said. Contrary to the spin put on his remarks by McCain economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, he does not express "regret" that the Supreme Court has not been more "radical." Nor does he describe the Court's refusal to take up economic redistribution questions as a "tragedy."

Another day, another lie.

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Fred Barnes joins the GOP meltdown crowd and flips out on Nicole Wallace for not taking responsibility for buying Palin's expensive threads. Far be it from me to defend Wallace here, but it's not like she actually sat there and physically dressed Palin, is it? (If so, that's kind of creepy.)

The point is that Palin could have decided not to wear the $150K wardrobe. The fact that she did was her decision and her decision alone.

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Arizona Capitol Times cites two public polls showing McCain leading 48-44 and 44-42 respectively, and a GOP internal poll showing McCain leading by just 3. All are within the margin of error, meaning Arizona is in play -- incredibly. Wouldn't it be great if McCain lost?

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Screen captured at 7:12PM Pacific time Monday evening:

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Bill Burton calls FOX out for its agenda-driven political programming, enraging FOX anchor Megyn Kelly. Note how calm Burton manages to remain throughout the interview. He showed no anger whatsoever...which seemed to provoke Kelly into an even deeper fury.

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From Sarah Palin's statement on the felony conviction of Ted Stevens:

I'm confident that Senator Stevens, from this point on, will do the right thing for the state of Alaska.

What makes her "confident" that he "will do the right thing"? Weird.

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Joe Lieberman vows that John McCain will live to at least 85 years of age, presumably to deflect concerns about a Palin Presidency.

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Stevens' conviction will be a problem for Republicans generally, and for John McCain and Sarah Palin specifically.

In July, Palin sat next to Stevens at a press conference, talking about how much she respected him and how his voice needed to be hard across America. And during her gubernatorial campaign, she ran a television ad proudly touting his endorsement.

Here's video:

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Here's the final few minutes of Barack Obama's closing argument speech in Canton, Ohio. He was outstanding:

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