1) I WILL BE RETAKING New England’s airwaves tonight to discuss political advertising on Jim Braude’s “News Night” at 7:00 p.m. on New England Cable News. I mention this only for New England-area readers who might need a break from Shep or “Seinfeld.” If I perform acceptably, I’ll provide a link later tonight.

2) THE LEFT’S MOST CLUELESS BLOGGER, Oliver Willis, suspects a conspiracy of sorts is keeping Bill “Nolan Ryan” Richardson’s name out of the national eye. Willis muses, “I'm wondering if it's just the beltway-MSM's incestuous cycle why we haven't heard much talk about Bill Richardson running for president.”

Here’s a clue, O.W. – Richardson is not a national figure. We don’t hear much about Richardson for the same reason that we don’t hear much about Vilsack or whatever that Iowa governor’s name is – they’re just not famous. When obscure people make designs on the presidency, the media understandably yawns.

3) WE’RE STILL NUMBER 1!! - America’s Jews were the victims of 68.5% of 2005’s religiously motivated hate-crimes. Even though there are a lot less of us than there are Muslims, we incurred almost 7x more hate-crimes than America’s Muslim population in 2005. I am expecting CAIR to send every Jew in America a sympathy card in the very near future. (HT: Charles)

4) DESPERATE DEMOCRATS – If your internal numbers were painting a rosy picture, would you pull a stunt like Harold Ford did crashing Bob Corker’s presser? Or would you trot out Marty McFly as Claire McCaskill did? Both of these gambits suggest an air of desperation now surrounds campaigns that not too long ago were convinced they would be swept to victory by a Democratic tsunami. When Ned Lamont gives a Sister Soldjah speech in a Daily Kos diary, then I’ll know we’ve got them on the run.

5) FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, the Daily Kos and its erstwhile leader have yet to throw in the towel on the Lamont race. Quite the contrary, Markos is quite upbeat about things in spite of the mounting evidence that the Lamont campaign has become this political season’s equivalent of the 2006 Cleveland Browns.

A month ago, American Research Group polled the race and saw Lieberman winning by two. In a poll just released today, A.R.G. now sees Lieberman boasting a 12 point lead. You know what that means to the Nutroots though – great news! Markos tells us why:

The Lamont people are confident that their ground game is worth 5 points. (They actually have one.) Observers suspect Lieberman's crappy ballot position may cost him 1-2 points, which is why you'll see Lieberman's advertising focused on that in the next two weeks. Let's say Lieberman is successful and limits his losses to 1 point.

Suddenly, we only need to make up six points to make this a neck-and-neck race.

Schlesinger is surging, which this ARG poll started picking up. And he'll get more than 8 points. He should get 15 or so. (Especially with his ballot spot at the top, next to popular incumbent Republican governor Jodi Rell.)

See? It’s all good for Lamont. Is there any way this man can be stopped? (I would like to hear Markos explain why Lamont underperformed the polls on primary day in spite of his vaunted ground game but why let reality intrude on such a delightful fantasy?)

6) QUOTE OF THE DAY – Jay Cost ran 2004’s extraordinary “Horserace Blog” and is back at it writing for Real Clear Politics this election cycle documenting the many ways that pollsters get it wrong. Jay’s entire post is well worth your time as it analytically documents something that Hugh and I have been saying ad nauseam around here – many of the polls we’ve seen are all but worthless.

Anyway, here’s Jay’s quote of note: “Media polls are designed to maximize news value, not truth value. I see a lot of that. Media polls always seem to offer lots of heat and very little light.”

As Jay points out, this doesn’t mean that November 7 will be a day of glorious victory for the GOP. But it does mean that the polls we’ve been seeing are not reason in themselves to lock yourself in your basement.

7) AT THE BOSTON GLOBE, they’ve been partying like it’s 1994, unearthing all sorts of putatively nefarious contacts between Mitt Romney and the Mormon Church as Romney readies his run for the White House. The Globe’s first story on the matter began with the unsupported conclusory statement, “Romney's political team has quietly consulted with leaders of the Mormon Church to map out plans for a nationwide network of Mormon supporters to help Romney capture the presidency in 2008.”

Lowell Brown at the Article 6 Blog has all the details on the sorry state of the reporting in this would-be exposé. Click over and just keep scrolling, but make sure you give special attention to this post.

I’ll just add that the Boston Globe has a long and sordid history of making note of Mitt Romney’s religion, something I noted in this Weekly Standard article. Some old habits die hard.

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