About a month ago, I wrote about the importance of remembering the motivation behind the firing of U.S. Attorneys, which has come to be known as the U.S. Attorney scandal.  At the time I found the relative quiet about the scandal in the run-up to the election a little disturbing.  Thankfully, a few things have changed since then.

At the top of the results, you'll see a paid ad for Obama:

Who Advises John McCain?
Over 177 Lobbyists Run His Campaign Watch Obama TV Ads and Donate Today
BarackObama.com

Those guys are smart.

John McCain's campaign may be facing an uphill battle, but he and his staff still have plenty of ideas according to notes from a campaign brainstorming session. The notes were leaked to major media outlets from a source close to John McCain who asked not to be identified for unidentified reasons:

OK, so I was a day or two early with my short-term bottom and violent rally call, but it's party time on Wall Street today with the markets almost up double digit percentages. (Uh, now more than double digits ...)

When I'm bored or anxious, I like to play with the interactive electoral college map over at RealClearPolitics.com. They set it up for you based on the latest aggregate polling data, but you can change the configuration at will. Obama has been ahead all along, but you had to turn several gray "toss-up" states to light blue "leaning Obama" in order to give him the win.

This post is not about a break-up or a political conversion. It is literally about how I lost my religion, more or less, and became an atheist. I thought about posting it yesterday but decided to spare the believers who care about me from witnessing me commit sacrilege on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we are supposed to beg for God's forgiveness in case he left us off the Book of Life this year. I don't think there is any evidence that atheists suffer from higher death rates than believers, so whatever the drawbacks to atheism, premature death does not appear to be one of them.

In these dark days of negative politics and collapsing markets, I just want to call out a feel-good art project to warm our chilly hearts. A few of us associated with DagBlog organized a nationwide Obama fundraiser over the summer with fundraising parties in multiple cities across the country and around the world. I worked on the NYC event which took place at a loft in Brooklyn.

Damn, I thought I was going out on a limb when I called for a violent (though short-lived) rally to the upside. But if the press and the pundits who speak their mind in the press are any indication, that's a very crowded limb.

I've been watching CNBC A LOT for the past few days, and it seems like nearly everyone is looking at this crash as a great buying opportunity, telling people not to panic, saying a bottom is at hand and a violent rally is on its way.

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been commenting or posting anything on TalkingPointsMemo for a while now. The reason is that I've decided to spend the last month of the election in Missouri volunteering full-time for the Obama campaign. It's a sacrifice I'm willing and happy to make. Missouri is on the point of tipping blue, and I want to see that it actually DOES go blue for Obama on election day. There's no reason that it can't.

I think we're about to get a much-needed reminder that stock markets don't always go down.

Could happen today, could happen tomorrow, and it may or may not happen after one last big selloff, but we're going to get a relief rally very soon. I don't expect it to last long, but I do expect it to be rather violent and dramatic. Maybe we get back close to 11,000 on the Dow.

6:15 PDT: Late start.  I'm not sure what Brokaw's question about who would be Treasury Secretary was in aid of.  On the "How is the bailout supposed to work?" question, Obama seems to be giving a competent explanation of the potential danger of the credit crisis.

6:18 PDT: Did John McCain just say that he's going to fix the economy by ending the culture of lobbying and cronyism in Washington?  Why should anyone believe that when he can't do it within his own campaign?  Also, earmarks!

Greetings, fellow travelers!  Thanks to the Dag guys for giving me the opportunity to do some guest blogging at dagblog.com.

For my first post here, I wanted to offer a quick thought.

The Republican presidential hopeful John McCain let his frustration with the US economy boil over today. When asked in an interview about the challenges his campaign faces, McCain responded, "Look, it's no secret that the economy favors my opponent." Asked to elaborate, he replied, "This country is in crisis. Now is not the time to point fingers. But everybody knows that the economy caused this crisis, and I think everybody knows why it's doing it."

So, the market is down 555 points, almost 5 percent. Yet so far this is no October Black Monday, like when the market dropped 13 percent on October 28th, 1929 or when it dropped 22% on October 19, 1987. (Note: Things are moving fast, market down another 100 points since I started writing).

This is, in many ways, even worse - just another Gray Monday, where we get the continued, orderly drip-drip-drip of a market with no confidence, and no idea of where we are headed.

I spent the debate blogging as a 16-year-old, and I have to disagree with the assessment of a Biden win. The experience was, to be honest, very weird. Writing as SarahPalinGrrrrl in previous posts did not require me to get into her head. She and I maintained a respectful distance from one another. But during the live blogging, there was no time for that. I had to be SarahPalinGrrrrl. OMG. As a result, I listened to the debate the way a 16-year-old might have, or at least how I imagine that a 16-year-old might have.

Politico: John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

We just launched, and we're still working out kinks in the blog. The RSS feed on the main page was down, but it's back, baby. So get your DagBlog posts hot off the blog at http://dagblog.com/rss.

So yesterday I wrote about how the Senate was making the bailout plan bigger but not better in order to get reluctant legislators aboard.

Oh man, you have no idea. It makes me want to cry.

According to the WSJ, A bill that was originally 3 pages is now more than 400 pages. Among the useless 'sweeteners' tacked onto the plan:

OMG!!!! RU excited for sarah palin's debate? I SOOOO AM!!!! GOOOOO SARAH!!! she's going to kick that biden dude's WRINKLY OLD ASS!!! LOL!!! he totally looks like draco malfoy's evil dad in harry potter.

So now the Senate is going to try its hand at passing a bailout plan.