Cheat Sheet

Republicans are currently suing in three states –Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – to get their hands on so-called “non-match” voter registration lists.Why? Because if the registration info doesn’t line up with Social Security drivers’ license databases, voter credentials can be challenged. The numbers are potentially balance-tipping: 289,603 non-matches in Ohio alone. Steve Rosenfeld’s piece is unabashedly pro-Obama, but the potential for a litigation theater on November 5th is real.

It’s come to this for the global art market. Tonight, Lucian Freud’s portrait of Francis Bacon goes up for auction at Christie’s. The house hopes it brings 7 million pounds, but if it falls short, it will portend bad tidings for the global art market –and mean “the global financial crisis is affecting even the super-rich.” Freud’s moment of truth follows slow sales at the Frieze Art Fair last week, and a disappointing Warhol auction at Sotheby’s. The Independent notes that it was earlier this year—aka happier times—when a Russian oligarch slapped down 17.2 million pounds for Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping.”

It wasn’t so long ago, Bloomberg notes in a smart article, that Russian oligarchs were bankrolling the government. Now, in the teeth of the credit crisis, the oligarchs are begging the government for help—and Vladimir Putin is using the bailouts as leverage to extend his power. Always an enemy of the billionaire class, Putin has insisted that funds extended to titans like Oleg Deripaska and Mikhail Fridman come with state veto power over their financial decisions. Says one Russian analyst: “In 2008, there is only one real oligarch: the state.''

Eighteen Chinese cities have taken steps to stimulate property markets, reports China Daily, from extending mortgage paybacks to reducing taxes. And the national government is contemplating it own regulatory changes. China’s bubble might even leave a bigger mess than ours: sales in Beijing during a peak buying time were down 72 percent versus last year. The property market is “the backbone of China’s state revenues” which is why “Some Chinese economists caution that a worsening slump would not only undermine the healthy growth of the economy, but also but the country’s financial system at risk.”And “there are fears that domestic financial institutions might be caught in the same dilemma as their U.S. counterparts.”

“You couldn’t be safer than in this baby," the Major told reporter Nick Meo, taking him aboard an armored 13-ton Cougar at the head of a National Guard night convoy from Kandahar to Helmand in Afghanistan. At the wheel was a New Yorker driving a Cougar for the first time. Another New Yorker manned the heavy machine gun on top. One of them would soon be dead.

The impossible-to-resist Stone Age/stoner pun will be gaining currency thanks to a breakthrough discovery on the Caribbean island of Carriacou. Researchers "have found equipment used to prepare hallucinogenic drugs for sniffing" including ceramic bowls as well as tubes for "inhaling drug fumes or powders." The Telegraph writes that while ancient substance abuse has "long been suspected", and that "archeologists have suggested that humans were extracting mind-expanding drugs as far back as 5,000 years, sufficient proof has not emerged until now. According to the story, it is believed that the street drug of choice back then wasn't ganja but "cohoba", a hallucinogen processed “from the beans of a mimosa species." There were no reports as to whether drug-sniffing German shepherds assisted in the investigation.

Prince William and Prince Harry began their eight-day, 1,000-mile motorcycle ride through Africa yesterday. It will be a kind of vision quest, a “life-changing experience,” but as The Daily Mail points out it will also be a party not unlike what the princes regularly enjoy back home. The paper has pictures of the bodacious blondes coming along for the ride, decked out in motorcycle gear that makes them look like love interests from a sci-fi picture. “It’s not just a bimble across the countryside, that’s for sure,” Harry said recently. The princes’ girlfriends had better hope not.

The Politico’s Ben Smith has a provocative report: Obama is winning some voters who have negative feelings about African-Americans. A poll taken in mid-September by Charles Franklin supports the finding. “The poll asked voters whether they agreed with the statement that ‘African-Americans often use race as an excuse to justify wrongdoing,’” Smith writes. “About a fifth of white voters said they ‘strongly agreed.’ Yet among those who agreed, 23 percent said they’d be supporting Obama.” These voters are swayed, not surprisingly, by the economy. Says one: “I wouldn’t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I’m voting for Obama.”

Need some pretty pictures to click through on a Sunday? GQ has compiled a wonderful portfolio of photographs (from Jeff Riedel) that show the 2008 campaign in all its glory. We see Obama Girl—remember her?—looking heroic; Bill Richardson on horseback; Meghan McCain in bed; John Lewis at the fateful Memphis hotel room; the literary bullfrog Jerome Corsi; and McCain’s mother, Roberta, her head popping out of a crowd like an ostrich. The final photo has Obama standing on the field in Denver gazing up at the sky like a character of out myth. Maybe those columns were there for a reason.

Forget measuring for those White House drapes. Washington insiders are already measuring the front runners for a Obama Cabinet of stars: Hillary Clinton (health) , Republican Chuck Hagel (defence) John Kerry (secretary of state) , Larry Summers (Treasury), 81-year-old Paul Volcker for the Fed and Colin Powell as roving envoy.

There’s a lot for Americans to learn at Russia's Star City, the outer space training facility shared by the two nations. Star City, profiled in the New York Times earlier this week, will become especially important in 2010 when American shuttles go off-line for five years and the Russian Soyuz spacecraft becomes the only ride available to the International Space Station. The piece has some great anecdotes about Star City's rough and tumble past: when food ran scarce but the vodka flowed all night; when tele-conferences were openly taped by the KGB; when heat came from an electric coil wrapped in asbestos. Now the Americans live in suburban style duplexes and have their own basement bar with a big screen TV.

A thought as W. hits theaters: President Bush may have been a disaster for American politics but he’s been a boon for popular culture. Phoebe Connelly at the American Prospect surveys the various Bush representations and notes that “we've moved beyond the one-dimensional screeds and the off-handed jokes in favor of certain elegiac fictionalization.” Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel, American Wife, and Oliver Stone’s W both cast the president as everyman. It is symptomatic, perhaps, of a certain disrespect for the president, but then “Sittenfeld and Stone have the space to fictionalize him precisely because Bush has become irrelevant to an extreme degree.”

Something to consider next time you’re churning the rumor mill: Gossip is the 21st century, human equivalent of picking fleas off your friends. According to an article in this month’s Scientific American Mind, gossip is a mechanism for social bonding, functioning much like grooming among other primate species. Gossip encourages egalitarian behavior by punishing group members who don’t pull their weight or play by the rules. "Many social critics have bemoaned this explosion of popular culture as if it reflects some kind of collective character flaw," writes Frank McAndrew. But, “in a highly mobile, industrial society celebrities may be the only ‘friends’ we have in common with our neighbors and co-workers."

Barack Obama’s campaign has made an art of sitting on their fundraising totals, then unveiling them with maximum impact. So drum roll, please: Obama announced this morning that he raised $150 million in September. The campaign claimed it added more than 600,000 new donors and that the average donation was $86. The haul beats Obama’s (and everyone else’s) previous record: $65 million in August. He has raised more than $600 million over the course of the campaign.

Sunday school would win a lot more converts if its teachers adopted The Brick Testament as its textbook. This charming website retells biblical stories—uncensored—using only Legos. The result is surprisingly detailed and compelling. Start with the section on “The Law” for refreshers on sins like incest, bestiality, transvestism, and camp defecation.

It’s not out in the States until November 14, but the first reviews for the new Bond movie are already in. The BBC calls Quantum of Solace “badder, better, but not bigger.” 007 fans with short attention spans will rejoice at the reduced running time—a full half-hour less than Casino Royale—which makes for a “leaner, tauter experience,” as Bond hunts down the killers of his beloved Vesper. And the Beeb raves about new Bond girls Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton, as well as Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the muscle-bound super-agent, whom “he has managed to reinvent.” Can’t wait until November 14? The film makes its premiere in the UK on Halloween.