LIGHTNING ROUND: WE'RE ALL PLUMBERS NOW (EXCEPT JOE).

• Maybe I'm wrong on this, but before Joe Wurzelbacher became a household name, wasn't there an implicit assumption that he was one of these quadrennially-revered "undecided" voters? Well, watch him being interviewed this morning or read the transcript of an earlier this conversation with him and ask yourself whether this guy would ever vote for a Democrat. Meanwhile, Joe is likely eligible for a tax cut under Obama, and the United Association of Plumbing and Pipe fitters endorsed Obama in January. Then again, that might not matter since Joe isn't even a licensed plumber in the first place.
  
• The Washington Post reports that Cindy McCain successfully lobbied Verizon Wireless to install free cell towers on the family's Sedona ranch property, an allegation Verizon's chief communications officer describes as a courtesy to satisfy the Secret Service.
• To accommodate Barack Obama's half-hour spot on October 29, Major League Baseball has offered to delay the start of Game 6 (if one is necessary) of the World Series.
• Sarah Palin, who some top McCain aides privately call "a total disaster," remarked during an interview in New Hampshire that McCain's tax cut proposal won't damage revenues. "We shouldn’t worry about government having enough money, the government has plenty of money," Palin opined. Speaking of Palin, Jay Cost has the definitive analysis of the "Palin Effect."
• The Corner now has some real competition in the Obama conspiracy theory market. This 7500 word tract by an anonymous blogger ("I get far too many emails every day (and far too many threats), and I'd rather make it as difficult as possible for malicious correspondents to contact me.") claims that Obama's lead in the polls is an illusion, and ... well, you'll just have to read it for yourself. Seems an apropos time to dig up Hofstadter: "The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent -- in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world. It is nothing if not scholarly in technique. ... The entire right-wing movement of our time is a parade of experts, study groups, monographs, footnotes, and bibliographies."
• I'm sure there are some masochists out there who desire even more presidential debates. Well fear not! The third-party candidates will be sparring on Sunday in New York, although it isn't quite clear at this point who will actually be attending.
• Steve Clemmons, who has never hidden his admiration for Sen. Chuck Hegel, encourages the Nebraska Senator to help Obama "find his inner Nixon." I hope that means normalizing relations with international pariahs rather than the expanded carpet bombing of Southeast Asia.
• And finally, meet Obama's biggest fan. No, the title isn't hyperbolic. Look at the picture -- he literally is the biggest.

--Mori Dinauer