Continuing some of her previous tactics, Sarah Palin is making a homestretch bash on the media (h/t Halperin):

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Much was made of it locally when former GE CEO Jack Welch used a recent NYT story to decry Rhode Island's business climate. His remarks came in an interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Do we need to do better? You betcha, as Sarah P. likes to say.

Welch, perhaps with some reason, remains an icon in the business community.

A rundown on the related stuff on Election night . . .

-- RI Democrats will be at the Providence Biltmore ballroom.

-- RI Republicans will be at Ruth's Chris in the GTECH building, free admission (and valet parking!), starting at 7 pm.

-- The Providence Black Repertory Company (on whose board I serve) is having an Election Watch/fundraiser, One Nation Under a Groove ($20, complimentary apps), from 5 pm-1 am.

As part of his look at the self-inflicted woes of the national GOP, David S. Bernstein shares his list of America's 25 scariest conservatives:

The fire-breathing reactionaries already wield extraordinary influence on the right — imagine what will happen once the relatively sane folks now running the White House and the Republican National Committee pack up and go home? Here, the Phoenix ranks the individuals who will hold the most sway over the right-wing message machine in 2009, and beyond.

Shaula Clark has the skinny on the Steel Yard's annual Iron Pour:

Fiery infernos, white-hot metal, spooky devil music, and a "pumpkin-flinging trebuchet" -- surely, this is what Halloween was created for. Furnaces and spectators are officially stoked for the Iron Guild's third Halloween iron pour at the Providence Steel Yard (a DIY-craftsmanship playground where the metalheads play).

Steve Laffey, the unannounced Republican gubernatorial candidate for 2010, recently took a cross-country tour with his family, landing in time to see C.C. Sabathia make his first outing for the Brewers. Laffey says visiting Mount Rushmore was the top highlight of the trip, and that he was tempted to set up a coffee shop in upper Montana.

Besides Obama and McCain, Rhode Islanders will have five additional choices for president next Tuesday. In this week's Phoenix, Steven Stycos offers a look at the third-party presidential candidates.

Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party (baldwin08.com)
Baldwin, a Baptist minister in Florida, is a graduate of conservative televangelist Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Bible Institute in Virginia.

WPRO broadcast a campaign commercial a short time ago that, pointing to the downside of longstanding Democratic dominance of the General Assembly, urged listeners to vote for Republican lawmakers. Governor Carcieri's campaign fund, according to a tagline, paid for the spot.

Yet not much can be expected to change in Rhode Island politics this Election Day, as I write in this week's Phoenix, mostly since the overall partisan balance is unlikely to change much.

While we Rhode Islanders are well-versed in the typical one degree of separation hereabout, Boston, our big city neighbor to the north, is also a very small town when you get down to it.

Case in point is how No. 9 Park, a lovely upscale restaurant in the shadow of the Massachusetts State House, is among the places where evidence was collected against state Senator Dianne Wilkerson, who was arrested this week on federal corruption charges.

Earlier this year, I reported on the demise of Luke's Record Exchange, a long-running music emporium in Pawtucket. As it turns out, the story has taken an unexpected turn.

When Luke T. Renchan announced in March that his landmark record shop, Luke’s Record Exchange in Pawtucket, was closing after 29 years in business, it was a sad and not very unsurprising story.

This question was the subject of a discussion yesterday (h/t Romenesko) between Andrew Sullivan, Tina Brown, and Nicholas Lemann on WBUR's On Point. I haven't yet had a chance to give it a listen, but the show consistently hits a high mark.

The news for the American newspaper industry just gets worse.

This week's Phoenix includes our endorsements. The most newsy bit may be the paper's support for Allan Fung in Cranston.

Here are a few excerpts.

Obama:

The past eight years have been disastrous for America: the failed (or — if you are an optimist — failing) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the parallel rise in regional influence of Iran; the unconstitutional domestic spying and other violations of civil liberties; the appointment of radical right-wingers to the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court; the growing gap between the rich and the affluent and the rest of nation; the reckless economic policies that have lead to the current economic meltdown; and an epidemic of Congressional corruption among the Republicans and their corporate lobbying cronies.

Considering how RI is so deep in the hole, Governor Carcieri's expression of support for eliminating the state income tax seemed grounded in philosophical abstraction. Nonetheless, it was enough to stir his opponents.

Rhode Islanders to protest Governor for advocating the ultimate tax shift from rich onto the backs of working families

In time for Halloween, my colleague David S. Bernstein has a good read about how the national Republican Party is in the process of marginalizing itself:

The Limbaugh “dittoheads” have stormed GOP headquarters and devoured dissenters. As political columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote this past week in the Washington Post, “the cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet, and William F.

Jack Reed and Patrick Kennedy will be among the candidates receiving endorsements in this week's Phoenix.

Yet despite -- or because of -- their obvious frontrunner status, these two incumbents seemingly can't make it to a debate with their opponents.

Kathy Gregg has the details:

U.S. Rep. James Langevin carved out time to tape a joint appearance with Mark Zaccaria, his Republican challenger in the Second Congressional District, on WJAR-Channel 10's Sunday morning Political Roundtable.