Palin got punked. A group of pranksters convinced Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin that she was speaking with French president Nicolas Sarkozy by telephone. They talked about hunting together and at one point the impostor president joked they should not invite Vice President Dick Cheney along. Palin laughingly assured him she was a good shot.

Barack Obama still leads heading into Election Day. The Democratic presidential nominee’s lead dropped from 10 percentage points to eight since last week, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. Both candidates are continuing to campaign hard right through to the end, and both wrote opinion pieces for the Journal to pitch a final argument to voters. Obama continued his theme of change, while Republican John McCain argued against protectionism and increased spending.

Have television portrayals of black presidents paved the way for the real deal? Dennis Haysbert apparently made the case months ago that his take on the president for TV’s “24″ had helped to prepare Americans for the idea of a black man in the Oval Office. Louis Bayard of Salon.com argues that it may not be just Haysbert, but that a progressive trend has been at play for some time.

TV News will do a techno-blitzkrieg on Election Day, with hologram correspondents, a huge interactive map projected onto the Rockefeller Plaza ice rink, and live results on Times Square via three huge screens. I wonder if we actually reach a point of diminishing returns with some of this over-the-top live coverage.

The U.S. Air Force may start recruiting a different sort of flier: falcons. That’s right. Ordinary birds, from pigeons to hawks, have been attacking aircraft during takeoff, landing, and taxiing at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. As operations in the area have increased, so too have attacks from this strange new enemy. Shooting at them hasn’t worked, so the military is considering falconry as one of many forms of bird control. Is this what World War IV looks like?