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Six days out from the midterm elections, the punditocracy predicts massive losses for Democrats in the House. California, however, remains the exception – Republican candidates Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seem to face certain defeat. What explains California’s exceptionalism? We’ll ask HAROLD MEYERSON — he writes columns for the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the L.A. Times — and JOHN NICHOLS — he’s Washington Correspondent for The Nation and writes “The Beat” blog at TheNation.com.
Also: TOM HAYDEN on the new WikiLeaks: the largest classified military leak in history –400,000 pages that document the brutal war and occupation in Iraq. Tom of course is a leading voice for ending the wars in Iraq and Aftghanistan, after 40 years of activism, politics, and writing.
Sarah Palin is coming to California this weekend, but the state’s top Republican candidates, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, don’t want to bee sen with her.
Also: How to Win Elections: 
KPFK kicks off a special twelve-hour Lennon 70th birthday celebration Saturday Oct. 9 at noon, and I’ll be hosting the first hour. We’ll be listening to my interview with Yoko last week, plus the new “Stripped Down” versions of the great songs on “Double Fantasy”— remixed to bring up Lennon’s voice and remove some of the rest – starting with “Starting Over” and “I’m Losing You.” We’ll also be featuring my long-ago interviews with Abbie Hoffman and Pete Seeger about Lennon.
Plus; highlights from the great documentary “The US vs. John Lennon,” featuring the bed-in for peace, Beatle record-burnings, and Geraldo Rivera, Tariq Ali and Gore Vidal on Lennon.
On what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday, a list of my top five Lennon solo records–and they included audio and video links to Lennon’s performances of each: Audio and video 
How do you explain the value of a rock musician to the Immigration Service? Bob Dylan tried, in his letter opposing the Nixon Administration’s move to deport John Lennon. “John and Yoko,” Dylan wrote, “inspire and transcend and stimulate,” and thereby “help put an end to this mild dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as artist art by the overpowering mass media.”
The day before what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday, TERRY GROSS replayed the interview she did with me in 2000 on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” We talked about the Nixon administration’s attempt to deport Lennon in 1972 — and what the FBI files show about that effort.
John Updike, John Cage, Boby Dylan and Tony Curtis were among those who wrote letters to the Immigration Service in 1972 arguing that John Lennon should not be deported:
