Play up the polls and send out post cards.

The 1936 presidential election proved a decisive battle, not only in shaping the nation’s political future but for the future of opinion polling. The Literary Digest, the venerable magazine founded in 1890, had correctly predicted the outcomes of the 1916, 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932 elections by conducting polls. These polls were a lucrative venture for the magazine: readers liked them; newspapers played them up; and each “ballot” included a subscription blank. The 1936 postal card poll claimed to have asked one forth of the nation’s voters which candidate they intended to vote for. In Literary Digest's October 31 issue, based on more than 2,000,000 returned post cards, it issued its prediction: Republican presidential candidate Alfred Landon would win 57 percent of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes.

Back to the Bail Out. It looks to be making things worse, so the trick isn't doing the treat thing. Some people are changing their minds about it and others will have their minds changed as a result of losses. The game doesn't change.

They like to believe in change. We're looking at chilly numbers later today. The number go up or down. The polls can and do mislead and always have. Same old thing soldiers.

The post cards might get you more subscribers. We have people in the legal community up to their elbows in forged acorns trying to grow fraud trees.

That 1936 Literary Digest poll was also conducted by telephone, which at the time meant that much of the bottom half of the country was excluded. Little wonder that the Literary Digest went out of business shortly afterwards.

And Pershing is right. This election is so completely in unchartered waters that the only thing that's going to matter is which side can get its own voters to show up at the polls. Gallup and Rasmussen get but one vote apiece, just like you and me.

Fortunately for Obama, his people always expected this election to come down to turnout, and have been working on building strong local roots for over a year. McCain, not so much.

It looks like the Republicans are getting ready to stage ugly confrontations at local polling places across America (though the effectiveness of that tactic might be diluted by early voting.) If this "works" for them, however, they may find it a sour victory: if their "win" is seen as the result of denying America its real choice, the country may have a hard time accepting it. This could take the form of anything from a total rout in 2010 - with the result that McCain becomes a virtual hostage to Congress for the last two years of his term - to demands that both McCain and Palin step down, making Nancy Pelosi our first female president.

McCain should not buy a foreclosed house. He has an heiress and she's set with more house than I have apple trees here. McCain should call Jimmy and the habitat for humanity people and get them to stop building more houses. With all these empty houses, they can find houses for people who need houses. They can do this without hammering more nails. I'm sick of my house and I'm looking to move. If I can find an heiress, somebody can have this damn old house. If I can find a beer heiress, unlike McCain I might spend the rest of my life plastered. For now I'm looking at a nice waitress and she's turning the tables. People have to eat and the dopes keep trying to ruin that for the regular old Joes. Have a cup of coffee. It's chilly here this morning.