If you look at today's "likely voter" tracking polls, you've got McCain +2 in Battleground and -1 in Rasmussen -- both gains over yesterday. Gallup reports generally that its "registered voter" polls lean left by 4 points compared to its less frequently produced "likely voter" poll, and its RV poll has Obama up three today, meaning at LV McCain would be up 1. This of course stands in contrast to a raft of RV polls from the middle of last week showing Obama in +3 to +5 territory. Given that all four daily tracks today summarized at realclearpolitics.com showed one point gains for McCain, it seems fair to say, in light of the points above, that the race is essentially tied.

As for Indiana, Obama himself has spent quite a bit of money there since earlier this year, trying to poach this territory. On the other hand, he and Biden both are spending great bits of time and money trying to defend Pennsylvania. Indiana will almost certainly stay red regardless of whether McCain is forced to spend some change there.

True conservatism would call for no government bailout in this case. The reasons are threefold:

1. It is effectively a forced redistribution of wealth from one group of people (whoever ends up paying the tax to fund the inevitable borrowing via treasury notes) to the shareholders of these corporations. Under what principled basis can such a distribution be accomplished?

2. The argument is being made that banks will collapse and we will have another depression if lenders fold and shareholders lose their investment. Maybe. On the other hand, all of this borrowing and spending, coupled with war, could usher in a new era of stagflation and prolonged malaise. Is the risk trade-off worth it? See point #1 above.

3. It is true that government is part of the problem, because it deregulated banks and allowed various transactions to run amok. However, it is also true that shareholders freely invested in the companies which performed such run-amokery, and were not forced to do so. You pay your money and take your chances.

Two final points. First, let's call this what it is: an election eve buy off -- both by Bush (to help McCain) and Congress (to help themselves). No incumbent wants his/her constituents walking into the voting booth angry. Second, all the bailouts in the world are not going to close the gap between available affordable housing and the people who need such assistance. Conservatives and liberals both need to ask themselves: if we are not going to go back to the 19th century and ask the poor/working poor to live in shanties, then what is the alternative? Public housing? More Section 8 rent vouchers? Sub-prime lending? That too will be pushed off well past November.

Rather than argue endlessly about Sarah Palin's small town -- did it zig when it should have zagged; should its flowers have been placed on the right side or left side of Main Street -- or, worse yet, the private life of her minor children, I would like to step back and ask a more historically minded question. Has any candidate for P or VP ever been the subject of such mindless, pointless, outcome determinative-less inquiries?

I can sort of understand the trooper thing, because it involves an ongoing inquiry, and reporters are addicted to unfolding legal dramas (in part because they are lazy, do not like doing real reporting, and find that such dramas largely write themselves). But the rest of it seems downright silly. I know, I know, she is new to the stage and the public is clamoring for disclosures. I learned everything I think I need to know about Palin the morning she was announced -- on wikipedia. Everything since then, in terms of biography, has struck me as overhyped blather.

A few notes on Indiana and race.

First, Indiana was a center of the Klan back in the 1920's, although its publications focused much more on anti-Catholic and anti-immigration agitation than anti-black prejudice, which was largely taken for granted. The state, like much of the nation, remained a bastion of white supremancy until well into the 1940's, when America's last reported lynching occurred in Marion, Indiana. Indiana was never a segregated state, and its public school busing programs c. 1970 went much more smoothly than supposed liberal strongholds elsewhere (e.g., Boston). By the 1970's, the nation's fictional leading racist, Archie Bunker, was well at home in New York City of all places, and would not have fit in any better in Indiana than other states in the country. The idea that Indiana is any more or less racist than its neighbors is simply not borne out by evidence. The fact that it typically votes Republican in national elections is sometimes pointed to as latent proof that the state is bigoted. However, a better explanation is that its neighboring states (in particular, MI, ILL, OHIO) all have major urban areas with large black and Democratic voting populations, whereas Indiana does not. Apples to apples, Indiana is pretty similar to the rest of the industrial midwest.

As I said in a previous post, Obama was on 60 Minutes Sunday night and laid out two conditions for his support on the $500 billion loan bailout. 1. No bailout for the shareholders. 2. No bailout for the CEO's.

Now, I understand Obama may not have majored in econ, but someone needs to explain to him that shareholders own corporations, and that government assistance to such corporations in turn benefit shareholders. In the context of the current debate in Congress, this seems more important to me that what percentage of our oil comes from Alaska.