Seriously? Seriously. Fuck, okay: the country sits on the precipice of the Greatest Depression and Barack Obama is slated to share his elliptical regimen for a Men's Health cover story. Yes, the presidential candidate Barack Obama; yes, the magazine edited by the guy who can't spell Barack Obama but that totally doesn't matter because his diet book is becoming a multimillion dollar lifestyle brand, dudes! Um, congrats Obama Campaign! You have officially (through no fault of your own) reached a nadir, no "ha."STOP TALKING ABOUT HOW YOUNG AND VIGOROUS YOU ARE. For one thing, the American public does not be able to read above a second grade level to notice that John McCain is fucking old. For another thing, a lot of them do not know how to read above a second grade level so you are going to have to work extra hard to explain this financial crisis to them. McCain just backed out of your Friday debate; good, no one wants to watch that shit on Friday in times like this anyway. Use this time. Remember all that crap you said about Ronald Reagan being a "transformative" candidate the way he shifted the national debate so irretrievably to the right? You got shit for that, but you were right. Never again would a federal government possess the ideological capital to tax the wealthy or regulate their engines of wealth creation to a societally optimal degree. UNTIL NOW. But no one's making sense right now. No one is capturing this quite clearly. No one is capable of synthesizing this particular historical watershed in way that can build the political capital necessary to reshape American ideology the way you can. And we have to reshape our ideology, in order to get Americans on both sides of the aisle to get on the same page about the gravity of national problems more complex than, like, the Obesity Epidemic. So please, DO IT. Write a speech. Make it good. I know you are tired; I know you are worn out. But so was John McCain when his plane got shot down and he broke those three limbs and he had to swim eleven miles so the North Vietnamese could commence refusing to set his fractures and shit! Don't forget that! Get a good night sleep, and focus! And think about skipping the workout. People always say working out "gives" them energy but actually scientifically that is less true than saying that cutting capital gains taxes and repealing short-selling regulations "helps" the working class.

John McCain has asked that this Friday's first presidential debate be postponed. He says it needs to be put off in order for him to "focus on the financial crisis," and he needs that time to fix this mess in his position as a Senator without any authority over any of it. Wtf. According to MSNBC, he's returning to Washington right now to personally solve this bailout thing. So—"country first," right? No time for debating, because Senator McCain—who is not on the Joint Economic Committee btw!—is asking Obama to join him in Washington. Jesus Christ. We're thinking this will very quickly come off as a "political stunt," and also make McCain look like a moron next time he trots out the "I lie about Obama because he wouldn't debate me 100 times from now until the election" line. But whatever, maybe it'll play well? For a day or two, anyway. But! What does Obama do? He calls it a cheap political ploy, hopefully, says he wants to debate right away. It is a sign, probably, that McCain's debate prep wasn't going well. It's a naked attempt to look on top of the news cycle and to insert himself into the economic debate, but canceling a debate won't instill confidence in anyone, will it? It seems desperate and reactive, especially in the face of bad polling for McCain. He's painting it as a post-partisan 9/11 thing, of course, and maybe that'll fly. Once again, we reiterate: there is nothing McCain can do about this. This is the stupidest and emptiest of political gestures. On the plus side, your Friday won't be wasted watching the debate! Update: Stuff we heard on the tv: The University of Mississippi (they're hosting the debate) say the debate is still going on as planned. Obama's camp is probably going to announce that they're going ahead with the debate soon.

♦ John McCain canceled his appearance on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman tonight; Keith Olbermann will fill in instead. [HuffPo]
♦ The best (and worst) fall TV show ads. [THR]
♦ The end of the Sun is drawing near; the last paper may be published on Monday. [Gawker]
♦ NBC's Nightly News gained viewers in 2007-08; ABC and CBS both experienced declines. [TV Decoder]
♦ Did Harper's Bazaar photoshop its October cover featuring Kirsten Dunst? [WWD]
♦ Oprah Winfrey will lend her voice to the upcoming Disney flick The Princess and the Frog. [THR]
♦ Ad spending declined by 1.6% in the first half of 2008. [AdAge]
♦ Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho is coming to Broadway. [Variety]
♦ Meet the oldest working reporter in the country. [E&P]

Barack Obama is ahead by nine points, according to a new poll by ABC News and the Washington Post: "The tanking economy is fueling a surge for Barack Obama, who has jumped to his biggest lead of the race yet over John McCain." [NYDN]

Andrew Sullivan, wow. Just wow. The gay British conservative who over the course of a decade went from proud publisher of racist pseudo-science just for a larf to virulent Obama supporter has spent a month obsessing over everything Sarah Palin has ever said and done and even maybe done. So. He's written some stuff on the bizarre circumstances of the birth of Trig Palin. He defends it (reasonably in our estimation) by arguing that Palin's pro-life position and the politicization of her familial circumstances (special needs kids, son in Iraq, family on stage at convention) makes inquiry into her pregnancy relevant. Sullivan sent this crazy email to the McCain campaign, asking for comment:

Whenever the media say anything about John McCain that isn't "he is the coolest hero ever and sooo dreamy" his campaign accuses every journalist in the country of being "in the tank" for Barack Obama. And whenever the press goes a day or two without talking exclusively about John McCain, the McCain campaign accuses the media of ignoring him. Kind of a biased-if-you-do, biased-if-you-don't situation. But we'll give the McCain campaign credit: they're consistent. In their attacks on the media, anyway. The enemy seems to shift a bit. Like, this week, apparently the media is ignoring John McCain in favor of... the rapidly growing financial crisis and the government's unprecedented plan to end it. Seriously, the McCain campaign is totally upset that no one will write about his "commission of technicians" but they all find time to talk about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson! McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin—the guy who said McCain invented the BlackBerry and yet somehow retained his position as McCain's least bad economic advisor—sent a snippy email to like a thousand financial reporters yelling at them for not covering John McCain's secret plan to end the war on banks. "I cannot believe the absence of recognition of the policy substance," Holtz-Eakin wrote, followed by a list of all of McCain's fantastic vague ideas that he can't implement until January. Financial reporters who received the email were like, ok? What? Old man, there are more important things to talk about right now, like the end of capitalism!

After giving short shrift to Barack Obama on two major broadcast TV shows Tuesday, Bill Clinton could hardly mention the Democratic presidential candidate's name enough on the basic cable Daily Show Wednesday. Perhaps comedian Chris Rock's well-aimed barbs in Clinton's wake on Late Show With David Letterman got through to the ex-president. But when host Jon Stewart brought up the Letterman incident, Clinton said Rock and other critics miss the point.

This is University of Tennessee student David Kernell, the Democratic state senator's son who reportedly accessed Sarah Palin's email account by guessing the answers to her "security questions." This is what qualifies as hacking in 2008, and the family lawyer is saying "this is a difficult time" instead of denying anything, so Kernell will go to prison forever as soon as the Grand Jury indicts him, which has not yet happened. Ha ha, Democratic politicians have immoral families, unlike small-town Republicans like vice presidential nominee Palin. (Photo via Wired)

When John McCain goes to war, he goes to war to win. When he got shot down in Nam it was because he went back to make goddamn sure that civilian power plant got bombed. Even after the war, he was pretty sure that a few thousand more bombs would've defeated those commies. So when he went to war against the New York Times and every single major network, we were confident he wouldn't rest until 30 Rock was reduced to rubble and CNN renounced their anti-American ways. But no, he's cutting and running. Before, it was was reported that not a single reporter was going to be allowed to cover Sarah Palin's crazy UN meetings. Now, though? Oh look, CNN gets to send in one producer for a pool report. That's not change we can believe in! What's next, cooperating with the hated New York Times? Funny you should ask! John McCain's war on the Times was going very very well, for him. His campaign was trashing the New York Times and accusing Politico reporters of being "in the tank" and all that, but then some Politico people kept writing about how McCain's campaign kept lying about everything in the world. Then they wrote a story about how McCain actually pretty much lurves everyone at the hated New York Times. Like all of them!

As in his appearance on the View, Bill Clinton offered the most tepid support possible for Barack Obama's presidential ticket on David Letterman's Late Show last night. After repeatedly invoking his vanquished wife Hillary, Clinton said the typical American voter will recall John McCain's heroic torture in a Vietnamese prison camp before deciding to "go the other way" and vote for... whoever that other candidate for president might be. In an inspired feat of booking, Letterman had comedian Chris Rock lined up to follow Clinton and, uh, remind him who won the primary. Video after the jump.

Hah. So. John McCain's campaign got pissed off at the New York Times for reporting a kinda tenuous connection between McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and Fannie Mae. So strategist Steve Schmidt (pictured), who is increasingly insane and unhinged and so un-Rove-like in his Rovian tactics, held a conference call to attack the Times. "Whatever the New York Times once was, it is today, not by any standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain Campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor Palin, and excuses Senator Obama," Schmidt sputtered. So, hah, if Politico's Ben Smith's writeup of the call is any indication, this media-attacking will backfire! "But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact," Smith writes, "that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy" Oh no! They certainly wouldn't want anyone to think they play fast and loose with facts! The lies:

The Chief of Staff for John McCain's Senate office is a guy named Mark Buse. Mark Buse is gay. Like every congressional chief of staff is gay, but still. Bombshell! Buse first began working for McCain back in 1984, and, except for a brief mysterious stint in the private sector (lobbying McCain, natch), has worked for him ever since. Activists Mike Rogers and Michelangelo Signorile handled the outing, as they so often do to Republicans and people who work for Republicans, all of whom are secret gays (except for the ones, like Buse, who are not really secret gays so much as "gays no one has ever heard of"). Attahced is a video clip of Mark Buse just being unbelievably gay. It's sort of news and it's sort of not! It's sort of news because McCain has capitulated entirely to the far-right anti-gay fringes of his miserable party and selected an idiot right-winger as his running mate and let his party run on an anti-gay adoption platform and all that, and quite frankly McCain probably says the word "fag" a lot, or maybe something more Navy-ish and old-fashioned like "fairy." But, you know, the guy just wants his taxes low and all the countries in the world bombed forever, and he doesn't give a shit if he can get married or adopt kids, so whatever. Let him be gay and evil! Of course in that case it shouldn't matter to him if people know he's gay or not, except in that it could damage John McCain's campaign, but will it? Who cares besides gays who already won't vote for John McCain! All the crazy Christians can decide they love a woman who's teenaged daughter had some unsafe sex with a dude who she's not married to so surely they can forgive hiring a gay. John McCain will probably fire him now, once he is president, and he's done firing everyone else.

Breaking news (must credit Defamer): Sarah Palin resembles Tina Fey! In fact, the Comparison That Wouldn't Die has proved so strong that even though a game Fey sated fan expectations by playing Palin in Saturday Night Live's season opener, she still can't escape interrogation about what she really thinks of the vice presidential candidate. At the Emmys last night, the multiple winner was quizzed by both Ryan Seacrest and backstage journalists about Palin, and Fey made a fervent plea for November to provide her with the change she needs:

Last year's Emmy Awards hit a 17-year ratings low. The prizes themselves mostly go to TV shows no one watches, so you'd think organizers would eagerly seek other ways to spice up the telecast. But the hot topic of the moment, celebrity magazine covergirl and Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, was off limits to speakers, according to red-carpet reports of a ban on political speech. The Wall Street crash wasn't brought up much either. That left celebrities confined to making veiled, mostly boring references to current events. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert made the best of the situation. Click the video icon to watch.

Despite complaints from all the musicians the McCain/Palin campaign are stealing music from, the assholes just keep stealing music. They ignored cease-and-desist orders from Van Halen's management and played "Right Now" at a rally in Maine last week, and they continue to blast Heart's "Barracuda" at stump stops. That much is true. Unfortunately, this open letter from Heart's Nancy and Ann Wilson is a joke column from The Stranger. Sigh. "Cease and Desist, you old fart," it reads. "God knows why we thought you would listen to us—two strong creative women. I guess we're all just 'trollop-faced cunts' to you. (Speaking of Cindy, who can blame her for hitting the pills? We'd need a Demerol epidural to live through five minutes of her conjugal duties [...] We'd rather rim Meatloaf. Seriously.)" Click through for a bigger pic of the furious missive.

Former Saturday Night Live writer Al Franken took some time away from his Minnesota Senate campaign to brainstorm last night's opening SNL skit with show overlord Lorne Michaels. The bit would have had whiny Wingers complaining that NBC is a bunch of lefty pinkos anyway-since it features McCain recording his approval for campaign ads that accuse Barack Obama of supporting "tax cuts for pedophiles," health care for Osama Bin Laden, and "fathering two black babies." But now that Franken has been outed as the original author of the piece, they're really going to poop their frightened pants. The Franken campaign is downplaying the candidate's involvement, but an SNL insider tells Politico that Franken's name was on the script alongside head writer Seth Meyers as late as Wednesday. See the sketch after the jump. Click to view

What's really on the mind of ice-cold snow huntress Sarah Palin? Well, heck, she didn't serve all that time on the PTA and running the lawless roads of Wasilla just to take some podunk job as the Vice President of these United States of America. And she'll be darned if she'll just sit around and wait for Old Man McCain to kick it. At a recent stump stop, she revealed her bold plans for a "Palin and McCain administration." Clip after the jump.

Poor Diddy stepping in dog poop while his bodyguard glares at the paparazzi photographers capturing the embarrassing moment ... Blake Lively and Chace Crawford filming a scene on the set of Gossip Girl ... Terri and Bindi Irwin getting out of an SUV in front of their hotel ... John and Cindy McCain on the set of Rachael Ray's show ... James Taylor carrying a shopping bag in Midtown ... Celine Dion signing autographs for fans outside her hotel ... Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa shooting a segment outside ... Katie Holmes on stage for the opening night of her play and then leaving dinner with Tom Cruise afterward ... and David Blaine and Donald Trump announcing Blaine's next stunt inside Trump Tower.

Google is the modern American voter's oracle, able to provide an answer to almost any question. Which is why the McCain and Obama teams pay to put their websites on its pages. Hitwise, a Web research firm, helped us dig up the search terms which the campaigns' have selected to show their ads against over the last 12 weeks.The terms reveal what the politicians' Web-savvy advertisers believe is on the public's mind — such deep issues as "sarah palin vogue," "raising mccain lyrics," "obama birth certificate," and "obama as a muslim." The entire list:McCain's paid search terms:

Following John McCain's tough appearance on The View last week, members of the McCain family are finally taking their gloves off. First, wife Cindy complained at a fundraiser that Whoopi & Co. had "picked our bones clean," and now potential First Daughter Meghan McCain has waded into the fray, spilling to Jay Leno the dirt she gathered on the View hostesses from her own, separate appearance. Surprised to find she liked Joy Behar, she instead targeted Barbara Walters, whose cruel, passive-aggressive rules about hugging left Meghan very confused. Not as confused as we were, though, when Meghan was asked what problem her mother had with The View, and she enigmatically answered, "I just think there's a lot of estrogen on that show." Meow? [The Tonight Show]