Watching Vice-Presidential debate… Gwen Ifill… train wreck. Sarah Palin… train wreck… Joe Biden… ok, but could be better… 21:08 : Palin says folks just need to get together and never get taken advantage of again… train wreck. 21:12: I just didn’t get that tax exchange (“Barack voted to raise taxes 94 times…”) 21:17: Redistribution of wealth… “millions of small businesses.” Government is the problem… Barack will raise taxes (and he’s BLACK!) I’ll take a break… Palin’s incoherence… hurts… hurts…

And so, as we enter this Jewish New Year, (5769) which commenced last evening (when it was also Mrs. TD’s and my 17th wedding anniversary), and as of now (around 13 30 on 30 September 2008), I see the stock markets have rallied a bit to recover around 300 points of the nearly 800 point drop in the Dow yesterday, though inter-bank interest rates have risen somewhat alarmingly… it’s time to take a bit of “stock” (perhaps a poor choice of words!) BTW… via Bruce the Veep, here is a Gallup poll showing most Americans favor a different bailout plan–...

Call it a political self-fulfilling prophesy, or economic reality, or call it macaroni, but today, after the bailout bill failed in the House the major financial markets expressed their concern by promptly collapsing: down 777 points in the Dow, down nearly 9% in the S&P 500, a mainstay of most retirement portfolios (including my own), and over 9% in the NASDAQ index. The problems that led directly to this financial market meltdown were caused by years of shortsightedness by a group of cartoon villains ideologues known as the Republican Party. Today, that party’s House GOP Caucus had little or no...

Somehow, “legend” isn’t enough of a superlative for Newman, who succumbed to cancer at age 83. Perhaps it can best be summarized as that he proved that a great man… can also be a good man.

C/o Bruce the Veep, at least this CNN quick-poll of undecideds shows that although there is a disagreement on whether McCain won the debate on Iraq related points, Obama won the overall debate solidly. Not exactly a “game-changer” when all the other fundamentals show serious “O-mentum” right now.

We’re having a rare moment with the t.v. on here in Casa TD to watch “The Almost Diss to Ole Miss!” First point (21:28 EDT): Lehrer has, as promised, has pretty much dispensed with the “foreign policy” thing and gone all bailout all the time. McCain has seized on [the irrelevance of… oh wait, that’s me] $18 billion in earmarks… why hasn’t Obama pointed out that in a federal budget of nearly $3 trillion (or $3,000 billion)… these earmarks– not all of which “are waste”… are less than one per cent of federal spending? I mean… BIG FREAKING DEAL. THE....

And the games continue… McCain’s campaign has cryptically declined to commit to attending tonight’s debate in Oxford, MS while House Republicans decided to be the sticking point with respect to Bush’s last parting shot in his ongoing effort to destroy this country financial bailout package and said House Republicans refuse to go along with the agreement between the Administration and the (forever caving) Democratic caucus… it seems McCain, who refused to endorse the agreement, even as he “off-the-record” insists he generally agrees with it, insists he must remain in Washington as “Mr. Consensus Builder,” quite a dubious proposition seeing as...

Candidates Obama and McCain will meet at the White House today for hand-to-hand combat to the death to discuss the ongoing economic crisis. All I can say is that this, the-greatest-campaign-ever, just keeps getting better, and better. Update: As of Thursday 25 Sept. evening, no deal. But since his “brilliant bipartisan negotiating skills” appeared only to have queered an already done deal, does this qualify as a good enough excuse for McCain not to be in Oxford, MS tomorrow evening? Don’t know, but that’s sure not how you bet…

Another GTMO prosecutor quit, this one over the “war crimes” prosecution of Afghan national Mohammed Jawad (for throwing a grenade in combat… that’s a “war crime”?) The reason: the prosecutor acknowledged that the prosecution deliberately withheld potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense. Another day… another abuse of justice… for those who might have forgotten that GTMO was there… it’s still there…

An amazing day of political posturing by Team McCain, which, ahead of collapsing poll numbers (both broad-based and in key swing states) and Friday night’s first debate in Oxford, MS, to be hosted by the-not-brazenly-biased-like-Bob-George-W.-Bush’s-Best-Friend-Forever-Shieffer-and-the-other-MSM-whores Jim Lehrer, attempted to cast himself as the savior of the nation by McCain’s magnanimously insisting that he would “suspend his campaign” to return to Washington to concentrate on the Wall Street fat-cat-bailout… Al Giordano (who else) explains it all for you… Team Obama, demonstrating the earlier mastery by which the O Team ultimately outlasted a diehard Hillary Clinton campaign hellbent on destroying its own...