Monday 2

* Kenyan anti-colonial behavior: On Oct. 5, a British high court ruled that three elderly Kenyans who were tortured and abused by colonial authorities in Kenya in the 1950s can proceed with their case against the British government.

* Early voting starts today in Wisconsin.

* Longitudinal study of 1,000 Wisconsin high school graduates from the class of 1957 proves that the popular kids really were just better.

* The data show that over the entire 345 years, 22 percent of all authors were female. (Even though few papers in the JSTOR archive originated in the first 100 years, the researchers still felt that examining the entire data set was worthwhile.) The data also show that women were slightly less likely than that to be first author: About 19 percent of first authors in the study were female. Women were more likely to appear as third, fourth, or fifth authors.

According to the data in just the most recent time period, it is clear that the proportion of female authors over all is rising. From 1990 to 2010, the percentage of female authors went up to 27 percent. In 2010 alone, the last year for which full figures are available, the proportion had inched up to 30 percent. “The results show us what a lot of people have been saying and many of my female colleagues have been feeling,” says Ms. Jacquet. “Things are getting better for women in academia.”

Women still are not publishing, though, in the same proportion as they are present in academe as professors. The same year that the share of female authors in the study reached 30 percent, women made up 42 percent of all full-time professors in academe and about 34 percent of all those at the most senior levels of associate and full professor, according to the American Association of University Professors.

* The Left must not only defeat austerity and preserve the social safety net; it must do so in such a way that assembles the forces necessary for more fundamental transformations in the future.

* Why your uncles believe crazy things: this guy.

Mainstream election experts say that Spakovsky has had an improbably large impact. Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine, and the author of a recent book, “The Voting Wars,” says, “Before 2000, there were some rumblings about Democratic voter fraud, but it really wasn’t part of the main discourse. But thanks to von Spakovsky and the flame-fanning of a few others, the myth that Democratic voter fraud is common, and that it helps Democrats win elections, has become part of the Republican orthodoxy.” In December, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote, “Election fraud is a real and persistent threat to our electoral system.” He accused Democrats of “standing up for potential fraud—presumably because ending it would disenfranchise at least two of its core constituencies: the deceased and double-voters.” Hasen believes that Democrats, for their part, have made exaggerated claims about the number of voters who may be disenfranchised by Republican election-security measures. But he regards the conservative alarmists as more successful. “Their job is really done,” Hasen says. “It’s common now to assert that there is a need for voter I.D.s, even without any evidence.”

* World’s Oldest Known Auschwitz Survivor Dies at 108.

* This year is the first year the presidential debates have ignored climate change since 1984. That’s right, friends, we’re doomed!

* And scientists are on the hunt for the Forest Moon of Endor. God, I hope they find it.

In Local News

If there’s a better proxy for actually knowing what’s going on in Durham politics than the Indy’s endorsements, I don’t want to know about it. Early voting starts tomorrow.

Early Voting

MyDD summarizes PPP on the early-vote advantage Obama has built, suggesting McCain may have already lost the election in key states. Consider Nevada:

71% of the state’s likely voters say they have already cast their ballots and with those folks Obama has a much broader 57-43 lead. McCain’s bringing the race to within four points is predicated on winning election day voters by a margin of 57-38.

Or Ohio:

[Obama’s] banked a huge lead with early voters, who made up about 30% of the sample. He’s up 65-34 with those folks. McCain’s tightening the race to two points is predicated on his winning election day voters 54-44.

In other news, my prediction for tomorrow is more optimistic and unrealistic than even Kos’s. I can live with that. Get your guess in before the polls close in Virginia and win an Apple MacBook Awesome No-Prize.

Voting Rights Watch

Voting Rights Watch: The Department of Justice decides not to honor Bush’s request that it interfere in Ohio’s election, while North Carolina extends early-voting hours statewide in light of historically unprecedented demand.

Breaking News!

Breaking news! Scientists have discovered it is possible for a Republican governor of Florida to be something other than a complete douchebag.

Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday extended early voting hours across Florida to 12 hours a day.

The executive order comes after record early voting turnout has contributed to long lines at polling sites.

Midday Politics Links

As warned, it’s a busy kind of week. Here’s what I’m reading about:

* Obama returns again to North Carolina tomorrow morning in Raleigh.

* The N&O looks at North Carolina’s answer to the butterfly ballot, the straight ticket vote that doesn’t vote straight ticket. This is a very foolish way to design a ballot, but it has a long history in North Carolina, and it’s fairly well-marked both on the ballot and in the polling place. I’m hopeful this won’t be determinative of the outcome here.

* Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.

* A PEW Research poll puts Obama up an improbable sixteen points nationally, up 19 among those who have already voted. The RNC has taken to the airwaves in a bid to retain Montana. In Ohio, 22% of the population has already voted, favoring Obama 56%-39%. McCain is only up three points in Arizona. In short, things are looking good.

* Another article looks back to Howard Dean as one of the forces (both before and after “The Scream”) who made Barack Obama’s candidacy (and, one hopes, landslide victory) possible.

* And another classic for the Palin files: forget “diva,” a top McCain adviser says Palin is a “whack job.” More at Washington Monthly, which makes the key point: “To blame Palin is to blame McCain. If the campaign is her fault, then the campaign is his fault.”

Slow News Day Anyway

Despite my busy schedule, it’s been a bit of a slow news day anyway.

* The ATF busted up a mostly aspirational skinhead plot to kill Barack Obama, which included a much more logistically likely subplot to attack a predominantly African-American high school in Tennessee.

* Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has been found guilty on all counts.

* Another day, another bogus Republican vote suppression list thrown out. Today it’s Georgia.

* Chuck Todd just told me on the TV that 1/2 the total 2004 turnout in North Carolina has already voted this year.

* The Field notes that Obama has cleared the 50% threshold in states totaling 286 electoral votes.

* And today’s moronic right-wing lie: deliberately misquoting an eight-year-old radio interview to give the impression that Comrade Obama supports court-ordered wealth redistribution. (He doesn’t. In fact, echoing the right’s own talking points, what he actually says in the interview is that sort of social change should not be pursued in the courts.) On this Ambinder makes an interesting point: Republicans have managed to take an election that was clearly a referendum on Bush and turned it into a referendum on the last thirty years of their failed politics. Quite an accomplishment.

Busy Week Ahead

Busy week ahead, so posting will be comparatively light except insofar as I allow the Internets to distract me from my work. We’ll see how I do.

A few links:

* The U.S. has apparently launched not-at-all-October-Surprise forays into Syria and Pakistan.

* Barack draws a record 100,000+ crowd in Denver. (See photo.)

* NBC numbers man Chuck Todd is having an increasingly difficult time keeping “objectivity” in the face of Obama’s overwhelming advantages; here he is on Meet the Press talking about the early voting explosion and the possibility of African-American voter participation in the neighborhood of 95-100%.

* More early voting buzz: the latest official numbers show Democrats taking a lead over Republicans in the votes already cast, 871,251 to 818,799. As early voting tends to favor Republicans due to the disproportionate absentee balloting of military voters and the elderly, this is good news.

* Jewish voters in Pennsylvania have been warned by the state GOP not to make the same mistake their German ancestors did in the 1930s and ’40s. There is so much wrong with this, I don’t even know where to begin.

* Who will replace Obama as the senator from Illinois? Jesse Jackson, Jr., wants the job, despite fears that he may be unelectable statewide.

* The Ann Arbor News endorses *nobody* for president. Well done, sirs.

* And the Internet has created its most bizarrely Dada meme yet: Robocop on a Unicorn.

Beating 1960

“We have a very good chance of beating the 64 percent turnout in the 1960 election,” McDonald said. “We really could be looking at a historic election in modern American history.”

The Early Vote

Gallup is tracking the percentage of registered voters who have voted early, and the results are pretty astounding:

Via TPM, which writes:

As of today, the percentage of registered voters is at 10% who say they’ve already voted. Bear in mind that not all registered voters vote — in fact a lot of them don’t. So the percentage of the 2008 electorate that has already cast a ballot is certainly higher than 10%.

North Carolina in the News!

North Carolina in the news!

* News & Observer reporter assaulted at McCain-Palin rally.

* Obama supporters’ tires slashed at Fayetteville rally.

* Mostly African-American early voters heckled and mocked by mostly white crowds.

* And craziest of all: Dead bear found dumped on Western Carolina University’s campus, draped by a pair of Obama campaign signs.

North Carolina’s id has been unleashed. Stay safe, fellow carpetbaggers!

Losing Colorado

CNN’s John King says the McCain camp has given up on Colorado alongside Iowa and New Mexico.

They are now finishing with a very risky strategy. Win Florida… Win Nevada, that is a state that is now critical to the McCain math even though it is only five electoral votes. And here is the biggest risk of all: they say yes, they have to win North Carolina, yes, they have to win Ohio, yes, they have to win Virginia— trailing or dead even in all those states right now—but they are betting, Wolf, on coming back and taking the state of Pennsylvania. It has become the critical state now in the McCain electoral scenario, and they are down 10, 12, even 14 points in some polls there…

I hate to give free advice to McCain, but this is lunatic. The RCP average for Pennsylvania is +11.7 Obama. Pollster.com has it at 15.2%. Nate Silver puts McCain’s numbers in PA at 2%.

How bad are McCain’s internals in Colorado, if he thinks he has a better chance in PA? He has no chance in PA.

FYI: if he does win PA, I will personally burn both Neil and Srinivas in effigy. Sujata too.

UPDATE: Nick at Cogitamus points at one thing that distinguishes Pennsylvania from other potential McCain last-chances: no early voting.

Presumably this has something to do with information based on Colorado’s early vote totals; the McCain campaign must believe that they can’t achieve a large enough Election Day victory to offset Obama’s advantage in early voting.

Of course, Pennsylvania—Pittsbugh and Philadelphia with Alabama in the middle, in Carville’s famous phrase—is also more ripe than Colorado for racially coded campaigning, as Shankar points out in the comments.

Are the Polls Narrowing?

Are the polls narrowing? It’s hard to say: MyDD makes a strong claim that they aren’t, despite eager media reports to the contrary and an RCP chart that certainly looks like it might be.

OpenLeft, for its part, looks at the electoral map and concludes that Obama has 264/270 more or less locked up whether the polls narrow or not, meaning that we should focus on CO, FL, MO, NV, NC, OH, and VA, a victory in any one of which will mean President Obama. (He’s currently ahead in all seven.)

Nate Silver, whose credibility as a statistician gets another well-deserved boost today after the Tampa Bay Rays make the World Series—he was “one of the only people expecting the Tampa Bay Devil Rays to win 90 games this year”—is still predicting an Obama landslide with high certainty, and notes that Obama seems to be dominating early voting. With early voting started, we’re in the home stretch now—every day that goes by with Obama in the lead is another ten thousand votes that get locked in for our side.

Can Obama Win North Carolina?

Can Obama win North Carolina? Yes, we can.

(photo via The Field)

Politics Monday

Politics Monday.

* A funny thing happened to Michele Bachmann: after her neo-McCarthyite rant on Hardball, her opponent raised almost $400K overnight, with her primary opponent re-entering the race as a write-in candidate in protest. Bachmann’s now desperately trying to backpeddle.

* Republican arrested for voter-fraud registration. ACORN still exonerated.

* West Virginia electronic voting machines don’t work, either: purely by accident, they keep switching votes to McCain.

* Indiana gave us Shankar D and it currently feeds my good friends Brent and Lisa. But will it give us President Obama?

* Memo to the McCain campaign: the hate isn’t working and your Hail Marys bombed. Try something else.

* Or, you know, don’t: John McCain doesn’t really seem to mind losing. A lot of “moderate” conservatives, too, seem okay with it, most of them rightly blaming Sarah Palin. I tell you this, I sure hope the far right manages to make her the nominee in 2012.

* It turns out McCain’s also made himself far less available to the press than even Palin, having not taken any questions since September.

* Early voting starts in Florida today, where the right-leaning RCP average puts the race at +3.2 Obama, who will spend the next three days there campaigning with Hillary Clinton.

* More early voting facts and figures at The Caucus and (especially) elections.gmu.edu. TPM reports that the numbers so far favor Obama.

* Encouraging signs: McCain has $47 million left to spend. Obama has much, much more.

* In the New York Times, Dr. Lawrence Altman has concerns about the candidates’ health, McCain’s in particular.

* Al Gore will host an election night webcast for the Obama campaign as part of its “Building the New Energy Economy” theme.

* And Obama is your marketer of the year. Seems about right.