BREVITAS

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

It ain't over 'til it's over. . . The 2000 Gallup tracking poll for Oct 2-4 had Gore ahead by eleven points. A warning for Democrats as well as another reminder of why Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss. He lost those votes.

At one of his rallies a woman said to McCain, "I've heard that Sen. Obama is an Arab." McCain cut the woman off, saying, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen," McCain says. . . Change the word Arab to Jew or black and you'll get the import.

Dean Reynolds, CBS News - The Obama aides who deal with the national reporters on the campaign plane are often overwhelmed, overworked and un-informed about where, when, why or how the candidate is moving about. Baggage calls are preposterously early with the explanation that it's all for security reasons. If so, I would love to have someone from Obama's campaign explain why the entire press corps, the Secret Service, and the local police idled for two hours in a Miami hotel parking lot recently because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. It was not an isolated case. The national headquarters in Chicago airily dismisses complaints from journalists wondering why a schedule cannot be printed up or at least e-mailed in time to make coverage plans. Nor is there much sympathy for those of us who report for a newscast that airs in the early evening . . . I suspect there is a feeling within the Obama campaign that the broadcast networks are less influential in the age of the internet and thus needn't be [accommodated] as in the days of yore. Even if it's true, they are only hurting themselves by dissing audiences that run in the tens of millions every night.

Governing - It took some chutzpah for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to suggest changing term limits law so that he could serve another term as mayor. New Yorkers, though, don't seem to mind chutzpah, as Quinnipiac finds. By a margin of 54 - 42 percent, New York City voters favor extending the eight-year term limit to 12 years so they can elect Mayor Michael Bloomberg to a third term, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released. This compares to a July 16 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University poll in which New Yorkers opposed 56 - 38 percent extending term limits for four more years of Mayor Bloomberg.

WATCHING THE COUNT

Brad Blog - We told you about the bogus challenges --- 6,000 of them --- made by the Montana GOP against voters in six Democratic-leaning counties in the state, based solely on the fact that the voters had filed change of address forms with the U.S. Postal Service within the last 18 months. The GOP claimed, with a straight face, they were fighting "voter fraud", even though there was indications of no such fraud, and the result was little more than chaos at the election offices, just 30 days out from a major election. One of the GOP's challenged voters turned out to be an Army Reservist who would be unable to verify his authenticity --- and thus would lose his right to vote under the challenge --- since he was in New Jersey, about to ship out for his second tour of duty in Iraq. . . On Monday, the state Democratic Party fought back, and announced a lawsuit against the Republicans, to stop the challenges on the basis that they were brought by the GOP only to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. . . Faced with a party actually willing to push back by taking them to court, the Montana GOP "waved the white flag of surrender" and backed off their phony challenges.

Wired - A month of primary recounts in the election battleground of Palm Beach County, Florida, has twice flipped the winner in a local judicial race and revealed grave problems in the county's election infrastructure, including thousands of misplaced ballots and vote tabulation machines that are literally unable to produce the same results twice. Experts say the brew of administrative bungling and mysterious technological failures raises new and troubling questions about the county that played a crucial role in the 2000 presidential election debacle, and is one of a handful of counties considered pivotal in the upcoming presidential election. Voting advocates are fearful that problems here -- and perhaps in other election hot spots -- could trigger a replay of the disputed 2000 election.. . . At issue is an Aug. 26 primary election in which officials discovered, during a recount of a close judicial race, that more than 3,400 ballots had mysteriously disappeared after they were initially counted on election day. The recount a week later, minus the missing ballots, flipped the results of the race to a different winner.

John Gideon, Voters United - I'm 61 years old. I've been doing this work full-time for nearly the last five years. I long for the days, before I learned so much, when I was ignorant about dirty tricks, phony voter fraud accusations, voter list purges, voter suppression, poorly designed and inaccurate voting machines, absentee paper ballots that have the voters' political parties on the mail-in envelopes, long lines at the polls, and every other attempt to keep voters from voting and votes from being counted accurately, if at all. . . It was nice thinking our democracy actually worked the way our founding fathers envisioned it would. It was nice thinking that, no matter for whom I voted, the majority voice was heard. Now, it just feels dirty and somewhat depressing.I know way too much. It was nice being ignorant. . .

HEALTH & SCIENCE

NY Times - The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company. Pfizer's tactics included delaying the publication of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for some other disorders, "spinning" negative data to place it in a more positive light, and bundling negative findings with positive studies to neutralize the results, according to written reports by the experts, who analyzed the documents at the request of the plaintiffs' lawyers.