I was on a big deadline at work yesterday, and should be studying for my midterms today, but I've collected a few items to share.

First, you just have to see what Eric Alterman had to say yesterday:

I am going to go on record here saying forget the polls, which were wrong last time and will be wrong again this time. If Bush somehow wins, it will require an even bigger steal than four years ago. Nobody who voted for Gore is voting for Bush. The Democrats have registered millions of new voters who don't show up in the polls. Idiots who share Ralph Nader's belief that there is not a "dime's worth of difference" between the two candidates are far fewer than last time around. And lots more people have cell phones and can't be reached by pollsters.

I'm not saying Bush can't win; I'm just saying I don't think he can win honestly."

And then Alterman's trusty correspondent, the inimitable Charles Pierce, wrote in on John McCain:

"And, let us recall that the Avignon Presidency thought nothing of smearing John McCain's wife and child when it needed a win in South Carolina four years ago. I mention that because it appears that McCain himself has forgotten it.

Outside of Dukakis in the tank, there never has been a more pathetic political image than McCain, apparently shot full of whatever it is they use to bring down a moose when it gets into the suburbs, dragged out to stand there with C-Plus Augustus for that transparently phony man-of-the-people stunt on Air Force One yesterday. My god, John, how do you face your wife after that? How do you face your child?"

Good point --
Where was Lynne 'Mother of the Year' Cheney when Alan Keyes called her daughter a "selfish hedonist"? Salon has a very thoughtful column on the homophobic hue and cry from the Republicans:

"If Mary Cheney is distraught this morning, it's likely her mother is the cause. And it's perplexing to millions of gay Americans today why the press has not grasped how horrible she acted toward Mary Wednesday night.

Maybe it's understandable. Most of you out there have never been a homo.

Let me share a personal story to illustrate how this works for a gay person. I came out to my parents when I was in my 30s -- they were shocked, then understanding, but also a little queasy about it. The queasiness was much less about them accepting me as it was their friends accepting them.

That's the part that stings. No matter how old you get. Once you're happily out of the closet a few years, you don't bat an eye at someone hearing you're gay. Even on national television. Even if your father's the vice president. (Especially if your father's the vice president -- don't you think she's used to it by now?)

What rips your heart out is when someone close to you denies your sexuality in public. Or shudders at the mention of it, so you can see how desperately they want to.

It may sound like a subtle implication to a straight person -- clearly it does; even the most liberal straight pundits appear oblivious to it -- but a gay person hears it scream out loud and clear. You people still feel there's something to be ashamed of here.

One of the happiest days of my life came when one of the old ladies at my mom's Catholic bridge club mentioned what a nice young husband I'd make. My mother, in her 60s by then, laughed it off. "I don't think that's going to happen," she said. "He's gay."

I was stunned when I heard the story. It had taken her years to get to that point. And it meant everything to me.

She didn't care what the bridge ladies thought. She cared more about me.

I doubt very much that Mary Cheney gives a rat's ass if some church lady in Idaho knows she's gay. But her mother cringing at the church lady knowing -- that's gotta hurt like hell."

(I would just like to add that if Mary Cheney votes Republican this year, she deserves these parents.) Raise your hand if you didn't already know that Mary Cheney is a lesbian. I gotta hand it to the Republicans and their media accomplices. Making such a big deal out of Kerry's non-outing of an out lesbian Republican daughter has distracted nicely from one of Bush's biggest screw-ups in all three debates -- his snide denial of saying he wasn't worried about bin Laden ("Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those ex-ag-ger-a-tions") (yeah, you had to hear it) - apparently forgetting that he was on tape (one network showed the clip immediately) saying precisely this: "Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban."

Josh Marshall noted that that whole answer is interesting, because it shows how Bush views terrorism - as state-sponsored, and not individually-organized, a philosophical difference from Kerry that became even more clear in the NYT Magazine profile on Kerry last week.

One more thing about the last debate --
A lot of folks have already commented on the potential blowback of Bush's repeated suggestions that people who are having trouble finding work or insurance just aren't educated enough, so I'll leave that alone. But I haven't seen anything about another whopper: when Schieffer asked how the flu vaccine shortage could catch us so offguard, Bush snapped, "Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country." That "company out of England"? The European facilities of US-based Chiron.

As for Zarqawi --
Well, they've only been calling him Public Enemy Number 1 for a couple of months, now, so I can see how they'd only just now get around to freezing his assets...

I can think of a few pockets to check --
The administration cannot account for billions of dollars - that's BILLIONS of dollars - spent in Iraq.

"We found one case where a payment ($2.6 million) was authorized by the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) senior adviser to the Ministry of Oil," the report said. "We were unable to obtain an underlying contract" or even "evidence of services being rendered."

Have the October surprises begun? --
Josh Marshall wonders if Karl Rove has begun some of his infamous last-ditch dirty tricks - this one involving distribution of a flier crudely attacking Bush, so that it can be attributed to Democrats. It's crude, but so is openly shredding Democratic voter registrations, and apparently it all works. Tapped has more. (By the way, the Village Voice is keeping track of election frauds in the making.)

A malaria vaccine in 5 years? --
Sign me up to join a vaccination team. A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds, and that's insane.