Today this guy I know ruminated about why white bloggers employ so many goddarn exclamation points. I didn't really read it because I have ADD and assume everyone else does too so when I do actually bother employing punctuation at all it is usually for the purpose of impressing upon everyone the total urgency of whatever it was I just wrote and what better way to achieve that than an exclamation point!? (Or four!!!!!!) But hey wait, I actually know where I picked up this silly habit — another white blogger! Back from before they called them blogs, tho. There was this ZOMG-tacular writer Andy Serwer who wrote a daily stock market column on the Fortune website called "Street Life." It made no sense!!!! Except to me. (The synthetic constant proportion portfolio insurance of online commentary!) So you can blame that guy for everything, including the credit crisis! Anyway it's in Andy's honor (he still writes a blog, but it's no longer crazy because he is on teevee now) that I wrote the evening's Panic Roundup in the Steez De Serwer. (Shall I call it "Manic Panic"?)Okay, so, today's Times byline orgy re-enactment of that coupla days a coupla weeks ago where suddenly every banker was like "OHSHTWRSCRWD" achieved two important things: 1. Reminded "Main Street" (Aside: irk you as much as it does yours true that the pols keep calling it "Main Street" when the whole reason this started is because there's NO SUCH THING anymore in this country?? Because everyone had to have his own house, recall?? Anyhoo) that, you know, every business in this freakin country operates on debt, not because they're spoiled delusional children like every last CEO on the Street except John Thain (which reminds me, Johnny Boy is staying on with the new Bank of AMerillca! See, you KNEW he wasn't in it for the nine figure pay package, aw…) but because DUH, because that's like the basis of all civilization or something!! And 2. Reminded Wall Street Just How Crazy it is with a creepy/inspiring (which? both?) anecdote about Black Thursday over at Goldisachs. Lloyd was freaking out, Goldman stock in freefall, etc. etc.…and then one o'clock rolls around and someone they identify as a "prankster" starts playing the "Star-Spangled Banner" over the loudspeaker. All the bankers are like, what?! Some even put their hands over their hearts. And at THAT VERY MOMENT, the stock stopped falling. Turned up a little even! Guess what had happened? That's right, a short-selling ban had just been announced!! Capitalism itself had been suspended! Think that means there's something Goldman guys find inspiring about this country… other than its free market?? Yeah probably not, but I thought about shedding a tear! Okay so moving on, the big story is…well shucks, got a few hours? No of course not! We're all about to hit me baby one more time with another public appearance by everyone's fave fakenbaked ratings black gold governess!!! (Broad is like Merrill with the CDOs after even AIG stopped insuring them, we know she's bad for us, but we just can't stop.) So I'll make it quick: everyone, except maybe Buffett and John not to be confused with Hank Paulson, is screwed: every other hedge fund is screwed, Veronica Peterson of Columbia, Maryland, who is trying to pay a $4,450-a-month mortgage on fifty grand a year — hey, why not have a go at that, quant jocks? — is screweder, the market that is being artificially propped up by the continued short sale ban managed to fall 350 points today anyway, not that anyone is paying attention to the market because the entire private sector is too busy wondering where the heck they're supposed to find a line of credit when the entire financial system won't trust anyone but the guv-mint with its money anymore. Yikes! Oh, though if Veronica Peterson's story shook your faith in private enterprise, here's a doozy from the public sector: there's a special provision in the new bailout bill offering (SORELY-needed) tax relief to the makers of wooden arrows used in bow-n-arrow sets for children. Think you could poke someone's life out with one of them things? Anyway, if I were really Serwer this is where I would actually round up a few MORE asides and tangents here and call them "Loose Change," but in the Web 2.0 era that gets to be your job! Although if Dismal Science wants offer himself for the position of Serwer's old standby source "Deep Blue" (sug. nickname change: "Deep Shit") he knows who to G-chat!

On John McCain's last fundraiser jaunt through Hollywood, he attracted a motley crew of the men and women who make up the industry's smallest club: Republicans. Hollywood titans like Wilford Brimley, Craig T. Nelson, and Jon Cryer (who was just gathering information!) all turned out to support the candidate who thinks "celebrity" is a dirty word and has the endorsement roster to prove it. So what glittering surprises did McCain have up his sleeve for last night's McCain/Palin fundraiser across the street from CAA? Let's take a look!

The Wikipedia entries of U.S. senators, after having false information or gibberish edited into them by users, typically remained uncorrected for a full 24 hours, according to a study. An assertion that Senator John McCain was born "in Florida in the then American-controlled Panama Canal Zone" was viewed by 93,000 people before it was removed. The study seems to contradict Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's claim that volunteer editors swiftly fix important pages. [The Wikipedia Review]

Though John McCain came out of the Republican National Convention with a lead over Barack Obama, the general consensus is that political momentum has swung back Obama's way — and for further proof, look no further than important swing voter Diddy. Last seen praising Sarah Palin's RNC speech ("You did your thing. You gave a speech that pretty much shut me the fuck up") Diddy has changed his tune even faster than a ridiculous nickname past its expiration date. Now, after having watched Palin biff question after question with Katie Couric, Diddy is frightened — so frightened, he's hiding under the covers, threatening never to come out if McCain and Palin get elected. Finally, a celebrity endorsement the Republicans can actually use! [Diddy Blog]

This is Amy Lumet, the California socialite daughter of filmmaker Sidney Lumet (and granddaughter of chanteuse Lena Horne!) As you might have noted, she is voluptuous! Three years ago she told the Village Voice she wanted to be in Playboy; she apparently used to model. We bring her up today because of some highly unsubstantiated internet rumors that she had an affair with John McCain during the Gulf War while she was married to cancer-stricken conservative pundit P.J. O'Rourke and O'Rourke was on assignment in the Middle East, where John McCain's wife was coincidentally consuming some of the aircraft carriers worth of Percocet she took to cope with the pain of her loveless marriage. We might wait for more evidence as to the veracity of such a rumor if the mere existence of Amy Lumet were not so fascinating in itself.For instance, did you know…

Admit it. You've been wondering what John McCain eats for breakfast. The answer? Coffee, cereal, and fruit. (No, not babies.) Barack Obama gobbles down four to six eggs, potatoes, and wheat toast, and occasionally adds fruit, bacon, and oatmeal to the menu. (How does he stay so thin?) We certainly didn't see this one coming, but Tom Brokaw says he's a granola and yogurt kind-of-guy. Maureen Dowd? "I don't eat breakfast. Just coffee." A few other breakfast choices of media and political types after the jump.

Yes, dear reader, we have seen the circulating Craigslist ad requesting a Sarah Palin look-alike for "an adult film to be shot in the next 10 days." Assuming it's remotely legit, we sit here rueing our enduring exclusion from such opportunities ("$2000-3000... No anal required") and wondering what imaginative variety of flute the lucky new star might be playing in the week or two to come. But that's hardly the most exciting Palin-related development around town today; in fact, a tipster sends word of the kind of serendipity that make this town one sprawling miracle of chance. Or a deepening, shrieking vacuum of souls — you tell us after the jump:

When video of a swimsuit-clad Sarah Palin at the 1984 Miss Alaska contest hit the web last week, the YouTube uploader promised more goodies to come, including Palin's talent competition entry. Now, finally, it is here: Sarah Palin (née Heath), "accomplished flautist," tooting "The Homecoming" by Nathan Hardy on one doozy of a flute (which she then had fired). Can Palin whip out a piccolo at tomorrow's vice presidential debate to steal some of Joe Biden's foreign policy thunder? Tina Fey, you'd better start practicing. [HuffPo]

Congress has passed a bill compelling registered sex offenders to submit "email addresses, instant message addresses and other identifying Internet information" to law enforcement. The legislation is sponsored by John McCain, who is not uncoincidentally running for president. The bill, which has passed both houses of Congress and is expected to be signed into law by Bush, aims to protect children from sexual advances on social network sites. Facebook, MySpace, and others are meant to cross-check their user databases with the federal list, and, in the parlance of these types of laws, "delete online predators." But these bills are so broken from the start: what's to keep a past sex offender from just using multiple online identities? Oh, and then there's that whole sticky issue of protecting freedom of speech for those who've served their criminal sentences. Courts in Utah — yes, that Utah — have just ruled on that, providing bad news for those who supported the McCain bill.After a challenge to a similar state law in Utah last week, a federal judge restored a sex offender's right to anonymous speech online. Though the judge stated that this decision should not apply unilaterally to all registered sex offenders, her ruling is the first to question the conventional wisdom: that curbing online speech can curb sex crimes. Free speech advocates and social network analysts have long been claiming that this approach won't work. First, there's the problem of the expansive definition of "sex crime" — from violent assault to public nudity. On that basis, Flickr has at least one employee who, after bending over bare-assed for his colleagues, could be banned from the Internet. Add to that that state and Federal lawmakers still can't seem to grasp the qualitative difference between a sixteen year old flashing her boycrush and a fifty year old posing as the same sixteen year old. Toss with a little bit of election-year mania about being tough on crime, and you get a botched bill that may only drive sex offenders further from the public eye — the opposite of the safer, happier Internet McCain hoped to create. (Photo by soggydan)

Oh, MAN, I had to watch this like three times to believe it: Fox News sent a reporter to Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton today for a story on how Pennsylvania is a "battleground" state. It is not, of course, but you can prove anything on cable news with enough - which is to say, "scant" - anecdotal evidence. So the reporter went to a diner and asked for a show of hands as to who favored which candidate for president. "See, it's split!" he proclaimed when it was all done. What, your primary visual cortex? Click for the full awe-inspiringly-shameless-even-for-Fox clip.

Vice Presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill broke her ankle last night, TVNewser learned. She says she tripped, at home, by herself, down the stairs. Suspicious! Especially because CBS keeps slowly leaking more clips of Sarah Palin babbling nonsense while Katie just stares coldly (but warmly! it's weird) (see attached). Meanwhile, the AP says John McCain has a 1 in 4 chance of dying before the end of his second term (or, to put it another way, "McCain has a health expectancy of 8.4 years). They asked some actuaries. This went out on the wires to everyone, it will probably upset the GOP. Now you are informed about the newest in useless minutia.

Democratic strategist Peter Feld, who recently warned Gawker readers not to underestimate Sarah Palin's visceral appeal, checks in occasionally to rain on your parade. Today he warns against declaring the McCain capaign dead in the water.

So the bailout plan was cock-blocked by the very same House Republicans who John McCain had promised to bring on board in last week's trumped-up "campaign suspension." A cool trillion of investor dollars was wiped out in under half a day. Elsewhere, the now-mortified conservative base has been frantically bailing on Palin. Swing voters — though not some instinctively despondent Obama diehards — declared Obama the debate winner. And Barack Obama hit the magic 50 mark in the two leading tracking polls, Rasmussen and Gallup. So, time for doubters to stop whining about Obama's supposedly cold, passive strategy that's keeping him from "sealing the deal." Right? Maybe. It's certainly looking much better. Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics explains this nicely with charts and statistics, but basically, Obama's support has risen slightly through the two-week financial crisis, after holding steady for months, while McCain's numbers have been bouncing around like bedbugs since June and are now at low ebb. However, his support's gone mostly to undecided, not to Obama. With Barack at just around 50, there is still — barely — room for McCain to bounce back. But wait - wasn't Obama behind? And now he's up by 8? Yes — in some polls, though the RCP average has him up now by 5 points, 48%-43%. But to read these polls better than the press usually does, ignore the margin. The key is to watch the separate Obama and McCain numbers individually. First, Obama. Since locking up the nomination, his numbers have held to a narrow trading range — rarely below 45% or above 48%. He's occasionally flirted with 50%, but until this weekend, never in two trusted polls for several days running. McCain's trading range has generally been a little lower, but more importantly, twice as wide. His volatility is a result of his shaky base — Republicans who don't like him, whether because he's not conservative enough or they think he's too erratic, too old, or whatever. When he rallies them, he's guaranteed about 46%. At his peak, McCain scored 48% after picking Sarah Palin (which then briefly put him ahead of Obama, who was drawing 46% or 47%). But numerous times, he has dipped into the low 40s or even below — down to 36% in several polls last June. My own instinct is that the verdict on McCain's past week is mixed, and that after a debate performance some saw as winning, politically tuned-out swing voters don't yet see him in the same harsh light as, say, Letterman fans. If so, McCain can get himself back to 46% with little trouble and stay alive, as long as Obama is under 50% and there are still enough undecided voters to make up the gap. A solid debate performance, perhaps, or some new stunt like pretending to "rescue" the bailout with provisions that "protect the taxpayers" the House GOP can support (on Thursday night, ideally, to distract from his veeptard's debate performance) — would let McCain bring back his wavering supporters more easily than some Obama supporters realize. Some may reasonably think McCain has already permanently branded himself as a desperate, washed-up gambler holding his campaign together with flypaper and selfishly disrupting delicate negotiations at the exact moment when Americans are begging for a rational grown-up who'll take charge. If that's so, look for Obama's numbers to tip above 50 and stay there — which will mean that McCain has run out of road. Until that happens, I'd keep the irrational exuberance in check. For the time being, I would mentally spot McCain 46% in any poll. Assume that the remaining undecideds could break two to one in his favor (yes, racism's a factor), do the math, and see if that still leaves Obama ahead. Right now, it looks like that's the case.

Twitter cofounder Biz Stone posted a chart showing the frequency of political keywords during Friday night's McCain/Obama debate. "Iraq" hit the highest rate of tweeting at a given moment during the event, followed by "tax" and then "Korean" after John McCain deemed North Korea "a huge gulag" that stunts its citizens' growth by three inches. But the trick to reading a chart like this is to look not at the height of the lines, but the surface area under them — that's how you measure the total number of tweets for that keyword. Iraq and taxes look to be the biggest. But Stone's chart shows Iran and Russia, not Koreans, are what everyone's tweeting about.

David Letterman continued to hammer John McCain last night, taking obvious glee in the fact that he has finally found an adversary worthy of supplanting former bête noires like Les Moonves and the entirety of NBC Broadcasting. If you'll remember, McCain incurred Letterman's wrath by canceling a Late Show appearance under the guise of heading immediately to Washington D.C. — something Letterman debunked by cutting to a live feed of McCain's interview with Katie Couric just down the street. Last night, after taking shots at McCain in his monologue ("He loves bailouts — he bailed out on me"), Letterman welcomed guest Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who promptly swore her allegiance to the Late Show host, then demonstrated it with another live feed cut to a lonely Katie Couric. Clip above. [CBS]

Drudge just linked to this video with the headline "Obama Kids Sing for Dear Leader." See how many seconds it takes you to throw up lunch! Produced by something called Sing For Change, it depicts a group of 5-12-year-olds singing a song about their favorite presidential candidate. "Light, hope, courage and love shine through these non-voting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing," reads the website. After the jump, their North Korean counterparts — they are several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts, you know — sing for their leader, and I rant briefly about What It Means.

John McCain would really appreciate if you started calling the Wall Street "bailout" a "rescue" from now on. Looks like someone's been chatting with Frank Luntz! [Politico]

John McCain's chances of winning the election have hit an all-time low, at least according to InTrade's electoral vote predictor. [Clusterstock]

So Tom Brokaw is still chugging over at Meet the Press. The NBC Sunday morning institution has been hosted by the former nightly news anchor since the untimely and unexpected death of Tim Russert earlier this year. The network is probably going to permanently hand off the show to smart analyst Chuck Todd and serviceable anchor David Gregory, but Brokaw will remain at NBC News, by necessity, for a long time. Because he is now their resident grown-up. Which is why he's so irritating. As we all know, NBC news, because of MSNBC, has been taken over by lunatics. Left-wing fanatics like Keith Olbermann and, uh, Rachel Maddow, and just-plain-crazy people like Chris Matthews. The Olbermann-Matthews ticket briefly covered the conventions as if they were real newsanchors and not circus sideshows! This outraged everyone, because they are intemperate and say what they think too much (especially Matthews, who says literally every thought he has, out loud). And no one was more outraged than Brokaw, who politely pulled rank and made his bosses give the serious news back to the serious people. He had to! John McCain and the Republicans were in open revolt against NBC (and the rest of the media, as always, but "NBC" was what they chanted when they called for media blood). And Brokaw is friends with John McCain! Well, not "friends." It's complicated!

The Daily News has had a sudden change of heart about Sarah Palin. On Sunday, the paper's Thomas DeFrank and David Saltonstall quoted three Republicans critical of Palin's embarrassing answers for CBS anchor Katie Couric and others on the campaign trail. The story's headline said there were increasing calls for Palin to "step down from GOP ticket." Then, on Monday, came an article by "Daily News Political Editors" — no writers' names were attached. It was titled "Eight reasons why John McCain won't drop Sarah Palin from ticket." And it called Palin a "fundraising dynamo" and "crowd magnet" who had "unconditional love" from social conservatives. We hear the story was considered an embarrassment by News journalists, but was ordered from on high. UPDATE: See below.

Did you miss John McCain and Sarah Palin's chat with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News last night? A clip of the fiesty encounter follows after the jump. But more Palin awkwardness may be on the way! According to Politico, there's a clip of Couric asking Palin about the Supreme Court: "After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases. There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence."