…the international financier who kick-started several anti-Bush “527” groups, is now speaking on C-SPAN. He’s mentioned Bush’s steadfast belief that he can create his own reality, and his projection of a comforting sense of total certainty. Soros’s interpretation dovetails nicely with my own previous comparison of Bush’s zeitgeist with New Age motivational lingo.

Soros closes: “His campaign is shamefully exploiting the fears generated by 9/11… If we re-elect President Bush, the war on terror will never end. The terrorists are invisible, so they will never disappear. It is our civil liberties, however, which might disappear instead.…”

…has made 51 (count ’em!) short Net-videos, each starring a different ex-Bush supporter.

“Member of the Reality-Based Community.” (Hey, at least it’s not “All Your Base…”)

…those, including me, who wanted a Massachusetts/Texas World Series matchup were mistaken. Bush, Armstrong reminds us, used to co-own the Rangers, not the Houston Astros. Bush’s former Rangers partners now own the Cardinals.

Why, W. even threw out the first pitch at the Cards’ opening day this year in (no relation) Busch Stadium. Armstrong notes: “Cardinal officials piped in fake applause when Bush strode out to the mound.”

…accidentally sent to a parody Bush website, GOP election chicanery’s going on in our state too. (Note the county names.)

…claims “nearly 20% of foreign consumers say they’ll avoid select U.S. products due to America’s position on foreign affairs.”

…“The unmaking of the president” (Blumenthal presumes the president is already unmade).

Andrew Sullivan, who infamously once predicted that “blue state” residents would form “a fifth column” of pro-terrorist subversion, now calls Kerry “the lesser of two risks.”

…watches Fox News and rhetorically asks, “Are conservatives pre-rationalizing a Bush defeat?”

…”it’s not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d’etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.”

…another GOP Florida vote scandal might just be a-brewin’.

…the big bucks behind GOP “Astroturf” (i.e., fake-grassroots) actions.

…asks us to view the election not as a referendum on Bush but as a referendum on Bush’s ace political strategist Karl Rove, whom Gabler calls “America’s Mullah”:

“Rovism is not simply a function of Rove the political conniver sitting in the counsels of power and making decisions, though he does. No recent presidency has put policy in the service of politics as has Bush’s. Because tactics can change institutions, Rovism is much more. It is a philosophy and practice of governing that pervades the administration and even extends to the Republican-controlled Congress. As Robert Berdahl, chancellor of UC Berkeley, has said of Bush’s foreign policy, a subset of Rovism, it constitutes a fundamental change in ‘the fabric of constitutional government as we have known it in this country….’Rovism is government by jihadis in the grip of unshakable self-righteousness — ironically the force the administration says it is fighting. It imposes rather than proposes.

Rovism surreptitiously and profoundly changes our form of government, a government that has been, since its founding by children of the Enlightenment, open, accommodating, moderate and generally reasonable.

All administrations try to work the system to their advantage, and some, like Nixon’s, attempt to circumvent the system altogether. Rove and Bush neither use nor circumvent, which would require keeping the system intact. They instead are reconfiguring the system in extra-constitutional, theocratic terms.

The idea of the United States as an ironfisted theocracy is terrifying, and it should give everyone pause. This time, it’s not about policy. This time, for the first time, it’s about the nature of American government.”

Still no Oct. Surprise® of note. Precious little good news has emerged on Iraq, the economy, or much else. All the polls (national, battleground-states-only, registered voters, “likely” voters) seem to be oscillating rapidly within the infamous Margin-O-Error.

I’ve been logging on to assorted Electoral College poll sites several times a day, cheering when my guy takes a miniscule lead in Ohio, filling with dread when the other guy catches up in Hawaii. I’ve been reminding myself that these polls are all iffy at best, and based on biased assumptions at worst. That knowledge doesn’t stop me from frantically re-accessing the latest numbers.

I know that eight and a half days from now, this particular obsession will be over. (I might pick up another obsession, such as watching the court challenges.)

I need to find something else to do to remain sane. Perhaps I should take up knitting.

…the differences between the Bush-bashers and the Clinton-bashers. Clinton was a milquetoast moderate who was unfairly but systematically attacked by a neocon goon squad. Bush has allowed himself to become a puppet for those same goons, whose all-too-real extremism is vilified by the Bush-knocking progressives.