This is going viral. Quincy Jones, Don't try to stop us, a Prophecy for November 4. We will vote and we will elect Obama.

Quincy Jones III's QD3.com, URB magazine's Raymond Roker and Zeitghost Media are launching a viral video campaign to help Barack Obama. The viral video campaign is designed to create a critical mass on Youtube.

Spread it around.

Political junkies, as well as voters who want a better understanding of John McCain, will enjoy Robert Draper's "The Making (and Remaking) of McCain". As described by Oliver Burkeman:

The huge cover story from this coming Sunday's New York Times magazine is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of the last several months of infighting within John McCain's campaign as his senior advisors tried, increasingly desperately, to settle on and stick to one compelling narrative.

The campaign derailed after McCain agreed to sit in the caboose of the Straight Talk Express.

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John McCain will campaign in Colorado Friday.

This just in: Hillary will be in Aurora (just east/southeast of Denver) to campaign for Sen. Barack Obama on Friday. Details to be announced.

Chuck Todd of NBC News interviewed Sen. John McCain and Sarah Palin today.

"There was a tenseness," Todd told MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "I couldn't see chemistry between John McCain and Sarah Palin. I felt as if we grabbed two people and said 'here, sit next to each other, we are going to conduct an interview.' They are not comfortable with each other yet."

Uber-evangelist James Dobson interviewed Sarah Palin Monday in Colorado Springs. He aired the interview on his radio show today, you can listen here. The Denver Post reports:

Dobson asked whether Palin was discouraged by polls showing the GOP ticket behind.

"To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder," Palin said. "And it also strengthens my faith, because I'm going to know, at the end of the day, putting this in God's hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4. So I'm not discouraged at all."

Palin called herself a "prayer warrior."[More...]

Time/CNN just released a new poll:

Senator Barack Obama has held or increased his lead in four key states won by President George W. Bush in 2004 — Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia—while losing ground to Senator John McCain in West Virginia.

Obama gained the most ground in North Carolina, where he now leads McCain among likely voters by 51% to 47%, up four percentage points from earlier this month when a similar poll showed the two tied at 49%. [More...]

Following up on last night's Sarah Palin clothing expenditure post, The Atlantic today reveals that Sarah Palin's personal shopper is Jeff Larson.

Larson is the Karl Rove protégé who’s a principal in the robocalling firm of FLS Connect (the “FLS” stands for Tony Feather, Jeff Larson, and Tom Syndhorst, all veteran Republican political operatives). Larson’s firm is the same one that launched the scurrilous robocalls against John McCain in 2000, and that McCain has now hired to make robocalls connecting Barack Obama to Bill Ayers. He’s also well known in Minnesota for leasing his basement apartment at a steeply discounted rate to embattled Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Evidently, Larson also has quite the eye for women’s fashion.

Here's the actual schedule showing the payments the RNC made for Sarah Palin and her family during September. The form that's required to be filed is a Schedule F. The forms for all candidates and parties are available at the FEC website. [More...]

Update: (TL)No verdict today after four hours of deliberations.

Ted Stevens' fate is now in the hands of the jury.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan instructed the jury for about 70 minutes on Wednesday, then dismissed the four alternate jurors.

The government's best evidence (apart from a recorded conversation in which Stevens mentions "a little jail time" as the worst outcome of the government's investigation) may have come from Senator Stevens' mouth during his cross-examination. [more ...]

Websites that support al-Qaeda view John McCain as the better presidential candidate, according to a story in the Washington Post.

Al-Qaeda is watching the U.S. stock market's downward slide with something akin to jubilation, with its leaders hailing the financial crisis as a vindication of its strategy of crippling America's economy through endless, costly foreign wars against Islamist insurgents. And at least some of its supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend.

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush.

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You might expect a convention of mortgage bankers to be a dull affair. Not this year.

[Karl] Rove, the Republican strategist and former adviser to President Bush, was accosted onstage during a convention panel here on Tuesday morning by a protester who tried to handcuff and arrest him “for treason.” Mr. Rove tried to elbow her away before she was taken offstage.

The protester unfortunately lacked any actual arrest authority.

To be fair, it seems that mortgage bankers could party with the best of them in years past. [more ...]

10 is the magic number today. DKos/R2000 has Obama by 10, 51-41. NBC/WSJ has Obama up 10, 52-42. Gallup has Obama up 10, 52-42. Now Zogby has decided that the best way to get some coverage is to say Obama plus 10, 52-42.

WaPo has Obama up 9, 53-44. Ipsos McClatchey has Obama up 8, 50-42. Ras has Obama up 6, 51-45. Hotline has Obama up 5, 47-42. IBD/TIPP has Obama up 6, 47-41. McCain hopes Battleground has it right and it is a 2 point race. Seems unlikely.

13 days to go, and it appears to be over in the Presidential race.

By Big Tent Democrat,speaking for me only

Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq after he "gradually came to the conclusion that the Bush administration had lied about the basis for war and had betrayed the trust of the American people." Watada stipulated that he did not deploy with his unit as ordered. The judge at Watada's courts martial decided that Watada did not understand the legal significance of that stipulation and told the jury to disregard it. The prosecution had already rested its case. The judge granted the prosecution's request for a mistrial.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ruled today that Watada cannot be tried on those charges again. The government rested without proving its case, and Watada did not request or provoke the mistrial. Under those circumstances, the protection against double jeopardy bars a second prosecution. [More...]