"It becomes more of a mainstay and more of an institution than - pardon the pun - the new kid on the block." [AP]

Congratulations to the John McCain campaign, which has now officially been told off on all three big cable news networks! Attached is a video of MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell taking some hard swings at McCain's sacrificial spokesman, Tucker Bounds, about campaign lying Monday. Also attached: Video of Fox News's Megyn Kelly doing the same thing on right-leaning Fox News Channel. Wow. Remember when CNN did this to Bounds, so McCain cancelled a Larry King interview in a snit? Guess that won't work anymore. Bounds has become a human piñata like Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan before him, as the media hold him responsible for the crimes of his boss, who they can't get at. It's awesome to see, but still all too rare — on all the networks. Click through to watch a compilation video of Bounds getting creamed.

Did you know that any taxi driver in any city on earth is able to sum up the mood of his entire nation on cue with a single pithy yet heartfelt quote? It's lucky, since every foreign correspondent in the world (especially Thomas Friedman) bases his or her understanding of a country on what a taxi driver says. It's the classic easy quote. But now that old misguided trope may be dying! It's being overtaken by something even worse: the Twitter "hypergrapevine." Just what journalism needs, more lazy quote-whoring from a voluble unrepresentative minority! Twitter CEO (nice business card, ha) Jack Dorsey says the teeny-typing service is a boon for reporters:

Pope-hating straight talker Bill Maher is seriously considering putting some money in failing Washington Mutual now that they're offering free blow jobs with every account. Click to watch the sadly plausible series of fake ads that get worse and worse until we're all broke and can't afford a blow job anyhow.

Some people believe that Nostradamus predicted the Wall Street crash of 1929. But a modern age requires modern prophets. On a Google Finance message board last July, one lone nut predicted a market crash. "The negative news that will move the market downward should occur September 15," he wrote. That would be today. This oracle may be raving, but he did predict the future correctly. "This organization below," he went on, "runs the show..." The Group's Name: Legatus Its Mission: " To study, live and spread the Faith in our business, professional and personal lives." What is it?: Legatus—Latin for "ambassador" (and the term for a general in the Roman army)—is a worldwide networking group "designed exclusively for top-ranking Catholic business leaders." Its main stated duty is to bring such leaders together for closed monthly networking meetings. The group calls itself "the conduit connecting two powerful realities, the challenge of top-tier business leadership and a religious tradition second to none." History: The group was founded in 1987 by Tom Monaghan, the devout Catholic who founded Domino's Pizza. It now boasts "thousands" of members throughout America and in Europe. It's somewhat reminiscent of Opus Dei, the shadowy Catholic group that starred in The Da Vinci Code. The Google Nostradamus went by the name of reinhardt (though his account has now been banned). He ID'd himself as the author of this conspiracy site as well. Here are some salient portions of his very extensive posts on the connection between Legatus and our current financial blowup:

Gadzooks: at Bloomberg LP, the financial news company owned by NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg, six dozen women—"about one in seven of the roughly 500 female employees who became pregnant in the last six years"—are now suing the company for being treated unfairly. That's up from an initial plaintiff count of three. It's almost as if there's some sort of unfolding pattern here:

Is the book industry dead (again), as it is often noted? Hope not! The latest death-of-print story, published in this week's New York, is about the retarded voodoo economics the industry is crippling itself with:

Good news for Katie Couric: the ongoing psychodrama at MSNBC has caused people to forget entirely that she was widely considered a unhappy failure as the anchor of the CBS evening news. Remember how she hated the job, and the criticism, and was going to quit after the elections and take over for Larry King or something? That was a long time ago, and the spectacle of Chris Matthews versus Keith Olbermann versus Joe Scarborough versus NBC News brass versus viewers has basically taken all the negative attention off of poor Katie. As a result, now it is time for people to decide they like her again! First up, Times media person David Carr. David Carr got in trouble for being all sexist about Katie last time he wrote about her, and in this piece he once again reminds everyone that she is "perky" (almost!) and "America's Sweetheart" (almost!). But he also says: "Ms. Couric is a highly skilled interviewer, and people tend to tell her stuff." Of course CBS is still in third place and the fact that MSNBC has sucked all the coverage away from Katie is good, sort of, but also means that no one is talking about Katie and CBS. So she can do all the surprisingly good work in the world, but it won't attract the attention of a Chris Matthews meltdown on a third-place cable network. In other words, we figure she's enjoying herself as anchor for the first time since she started, mostly because she's still going to quit soon, so why not have fun. (Of course she still needs to make sure she's getting that payday before she hands the reigns back to Bob Scheiffer.) [Photo: HuffPo]

The morning news is terrifying even before the ominous opening of U.S. markets today, and was also scary hours ago before overseas markets opened and U.S. stock futures fell sharply. The bankruptcy at Lehman Brothers, the takeover of Merrill Lynch and the plea by insurance giant AIG for $40 billion in federal aid made for scary front pages (pictured, click for larger image) and heated chatter on CNBC. And no one wasted any time telling everyone how bad things really are. The "American financial system was shaken to its core," the Wall Street Journal said, warning of a "crisis on Wall Street." Other media outlets were scarcely more comforting:

Times editor Bill Keller's hand was suspected in the May departure of Michael Oreskes from the Times-owned International Herald Tribune. "Fiercely ambitious" Oreskes once vied for editorship of the Times itself, the Post's Keith Kelly reported at the time, and may have been made to pay for a "long history of animosity" with Keller. Now another IHT hand, Serge Schemann is being nudged out the door after accusations of disloyalty to Keller, an email tipster claims. His supposed crime: A meeting with former IHT publisher Michael Golden, the rival and cousin to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, just hours after a "make or break" November IHT meeting in Manhattan, a meeting that presumably involved Sulzberger underling Keller.

Is it awful or wonderful that Slate launched its business website The Big Money the same day three large Wall Street institutions were in various stages of freefall? Characteristically, Slate takes the contrarian view: It's wonderful! Tons of news to cover! They'll "tap into people's... anxiety about the economy!" The joys of financial fearmongering aside, the implosion of financial services does tend to call into question how many more ads the site can sell to the likes of American Express. Also, two words: Portfolio magazine. Editor James Ledbetter (recently of CNNMoney.com) still isn't daunted:

This Weather Channel reporter was just following in the footsteps of his colleagues at CNN and every other news network when he stupidly stepped into the hurricane-force winds still remaining from Hurricane Ike this weekend. But unlike them he was nearly blown into oblivion. Luckily there was a residential fence to keep him from, you know, dying. All this for one of the most clichéd shots in TV news. Someone end the madness.

The Atlantic has said it didn't vet Jill Greenberg's politics before hiring her to shoot John McCain. Even if it had known about her controversial anti-George Bush photographs, it wouldn't have cared, as a matter of policy. The policy may soon change: Greenberg is gloating she left McCain's eyes bloodshot and skin gnarly for the Atlantic's October cover. Worse, from the magazine's perspective, is that she tricked the Republican presidential nominee into standing over an unflattering strobe light, then posted the worst shots and Photoshops to her personal site:

Sure, you knew Anderson Cooper was the adorable unicorn of TV news anchors, but did you know he is so incredibly magical he can roll his tongue into a "really complicated four-leaf clover?" He can! Tongue-rolling is a genetic trait, but one can't help wonder if Cooper has had some practice. He apparently shows his skills only to certain, uh, special friends, like fellow closeted media personality Barry Diller, who, no joke, compared tongue technique with Cooper at a special retreat in Idaho. Some Google people were there, and the next thing you know, the tonguing had resulted in a big genetic-testing soiree in New York! Here's what Ivanka Trump and Rupert Murdoch said about their DNA at the party:

Project Runway is helping Elle fare the media recession far better than fashion-mag-competitor Vogue. Elle's all-important September issue has 7 percent more ads than last year compared with a 7 percent decline at Vogue. And as shown in the Ad Age graphic at left, Vogue's ad-page lead slipped January through September. And there are other reasons Anna Wintour should be pissed at herself for passing on the chance to tie Vogue into Runway:

Does. Not. Look. Good. This is very ominous. I know most of us are probably not financial professionals, but tomorrow's stock market performance could be disastrous for the economy writ large. Glad I don't own anything of any consequence, like a house, or stock, or a company. Links of concern after the jump... Hang on. Expect to see shell-shocked bankers, and greedy-eyed hedge funders, in the streets of Manhattan. The Mother of All Mondays [WSJ] Wall Street Prepares for a Grim Monday [CNBC]

There are plenty of things to worry about in today's New York Times story on Sarah Palin's tenure in government. Patronage. Secrecy. Obstructionism. Palin says she's all about reform, but a lot of her methods come from a political playbook we already know and hate. One of the more anxious-making passages:

If you lived in Minnesota would you vote for Al Franken? Maybe. If you were a fish would you vote for Al Franken? Possibly. If you were a fish who lived in Minnesota, would you vote for Al Franken? It seems so. Video after the jump.

From the complaint department re: Alex Balk:

We all know Luke Russert is the house wunderkind at NBC news, presumably brought in to engage the youth audience during this historic election. As a youthful guy, Russert naturally blogs. And guess what. He's annoyingly free of self-awareness. A sample: