California has always fostered a kind of insane optimism that strikes outsiders as absurd and delusional and actually kind of sick. My favorite symbol of this, when I lived there, was Rent A Wheel, where you could "rent to own" chrome rims for your tires, your job is your credit etc. etc., for an eminently reasonable $200 a month. This was not the sort of business model I could see thriving back East, but there was something weirdly charming about that, and the charm was contagious, and probably enabled some regrettable apparel purchases. Well, today the rest of the country officially caught the contagion; because the nation's financial institutions are suddenly too spooked to lend money to anyone but Hank Paulson, the state of California can't borrow money, and Governor Schwarzenegger is hitting up Hank Paulson to the tune of seven billion dollars. California, much like its citizenry, has one of the worst credit ratings in the nation. It's the double-edged sword of that sunny optimism, which badly needs to be redirected and channeled toward the national interest and perhaps other pursuits like surfing.There is little wonder House Speaker and California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi seemed so immediately convinced, as Wall Street skidded toward apocalypse two weeks ago, that Congress needed to pass a bailout plan like NOW. What is truly sad is that she failed to convince so many of her state's fellow Democrats, most notably the congresswoman from the neighboring district of East Bay, Barbara Lee, to vote for her bailout bill. Barbara Lee wanted the bill to include provisions protecting homeowners from foreclosure. Which makes sense. Just last year Lee's district had the highest price-to-rent ratio in the country: 51. Fifty-one. People were signing up for mortgages when they could have rented for less than a quarter of the price. They did this because they were stupid, but also because housing prices kept rising, and when the value of your house rose you could take out a home equity loan and use it to buy a new car (and in many cases, chrome rims.) Last year nearly a third of vehicle sales in California were purchased with home equity loans.house. An elementary school teacher who couldn't qualify for a bank loan to buy a $700 laptop could get a $450,000 mortgage because it had a house attached to it. No one ever anticipated that those houses would lose value quicker than the shiny new home equity-financed cars in their garages. In contrast, the lenders and the underwriters and the re-packagers and the insurers lobbied the SEC to allow them to amplify their exposure to the risk of that outcome exponentially by piling on debt of their own in a bid to maximize their profits, then proceeded to report said incredulity-straining profits in the assumption that they would continue rising and proceeded to pass those profits on to their employees, who in turn signed on for 100% mortgages on eight figure properties in Greenwich, where fear of the same sort of tidal wave of foreclosure has citizens proclaiming the financial crisis "Our Katrina." The whole thing was a show of such dramatic private sector incompetence it could not be achieved had the plutocracy not known exactly what the fuck it was doing, just as that great Californian Ronald Reagan knew exactly what the fuck he was doing when he railed against government waste only to ratchet up that waste to unprecedented levels by outsourcing most of the government to crony capitalists whose fiduciary responsibility by definition required they do all they could to maximize government waste. It was all an ingenious plan to de-fund the left and its socialist bureaucracy of bleeding-heart "programs," and it worked so well the Bush Administration ripped off the strategy to launch a trillion-dollar war that represents a vast minefield blocking any of Obama's plans to "level the playing field." Because while Obama's plans for the economy allegedly involve an average $800,000-a-household tax increase on the superrich, those plans were drawn up before the employees of Goldman Sachs spent their $21 billion in Christmas bonuses. The falloff in asset values has all the big pundits worrying we'll become the next Japan, but when you go to Japan and hear about the "Boom Years" of the eighties what strikes you is that most Japanese actually had some firsthand experience of said "Boom years." Did you? We allowed America to become the land of ten thousand centimillionaires; now that we have a crisis poised to disproportionately — from a Year On Year perspective, anyway; that's how these people think — hurt that untouchable class, it is not going to be easy to wring out a massive increase in nominal tax dollars from them. That is, of course, is what must be done. And it probably won't be positive for the Dow or the GDP or productivity levels or any of the arbitrary little numbers with which we're accustomed to measuring our economic well-being. It may well be a short term political windfall for the stubbornly fact-resistant class of politician who likes to say tax cuts on the wealthy always create jobs (when in fact no private sector of the economy besides health care has created jobs since 2000) or that Government "isn't the solution; more often than not it's the problem." What is the problem, of course, is people who think government is the problem who go into the government in what more often than not comes off like a twisted attempt to prove that. But the happy delusions of the state that brought us the Great Communicator are infectious, and the era clearly, desperately needs a Great Rebutter capable of optimistically guiding the country through what's going to be a rough time for all. The deep — and deeply unpatriotic — immorality of the "moral hazard" that has defined the past decade must be impressed upon every American voter. Every American voter needs to be able to visualize the 24-car garage of the billionaire hedge fund manager and wonder if some of the money might have not been better spent refurbishing the subway system or paying teachers more or helping an irresponsible homeowner renegotiate her mortgage or providing more comprehensive job training to some former welfare queen. All that stuff, after all, creates jobs too. But to impress these ideas upon voters requires a kind of moral authority that is undermined by pandering partisan rhetoric and the pages and pages of pork-tasting provisions of the bill Congress is about to pass. (It's also sort of undermined by gazillion dollar tax breaks of the sort extended to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for taking the job, but whatevs.) Warren Buffett could certainly muster it; more importantly, he could articulate recent history in a way the politicians he supports can't. More importantly, he can inspire and/or shame his partners in uberwealth into accepting and acknowledging a measure of social responsibility, and more powerfully, broadcasting that sense of responsibility to the public. Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson profited handsomely betting against the housing market; he now is giving much of that away to helping screwed homeowners. More people should know about him; more rich folks should emulate him.

This is our LAST DITCH ATTEMPT to stir anticipation for the VP debate set to air in about 18.3 minutes. It's Bill O'Reilly talking to Karl Rove about precisely how dumb Sarah Palin is or is not. O'Reilly assures everyone the vice presidential nominee reads the work of professional John McCain nemeses over at the Times. And Rove postulates that the reason she didn't bring up Plessy v. Ferguson when Katie Couric asked her about Supreme Court decisions is that she just got flustered and froze. Oh yes, that is totally why the landmark decision legalizing abortion was the first and only decision that came to her beautiful mind. How random a brain fart was that? Especially since Palin has shown so much concern for the stubborn legacy of slavery, like that time she mocked Obama for being a community organizer.Anyway, if she only had "confidence" like O'Reilly she would be fine. Because "confidence" is what the Sarah Palins of this world need more of.

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…

What took so long? Obama '08, the iPhone app, is free. Sort of: There's no charge, but the app will try to put you to work dialing friends in battleground states. CNET non-Democrat Declan McCullagh test-drove it: "The application ranked contacts in Colorado, Michigan, and New Mexico at the top; at the bottom was a friend whose cell phone has a Texas number, though she actually lives in California." The app's controversial feature is that it reports back to Obama Central on the total number of calls you've dialed.

♦ Rachael Ray's mammogram is scheduled for tomorrow. And you'll be able to watch it go down if you tune into her show. [NYDN]
♦ The New Yorker just issued its endorsement of Barack Obama. Bet you're really surprised. [NYer]
♦ CNBC hit an all-time record the day the Dow dropped 777 points. [MCN]
♦ ABC's lineup of new shows isn't off to a very good start this season. [THR]
♦ Why Microsoft's ads with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld was a flop and Apple's "I'm a PC" ad has been a success. [AdAge]
♦ Newark's Star-Ledger is hanging on, but barely. [AP]
♦ As the economy turns south, marketers are turning up the volume and going after their competitors. [WSJ]
♦ Donna Tartt is leaving Knopf for Little, Brown. [Galleycat]
♦ The new, ad-covered subway cars... revealed! [NYT]

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.

Page Six thinks it has figured out why Bill Clinton gave such a tepid endorsement of Barack Obama on The View and David Letterman last week. Not that anyone was really scratching their heads, befuddled, as to why the ex-president couldn't get past his wife's bitter loss of the Democratic primary to Obama. But Page Six gets specific: Obama supposedly refused to promise Hillary Clinton a Supreme Court nomination as she demanded, so Bill exacted revenge. Clinton on the high court is not exactly a new idea. And her people deny the new version of the rumor. The timing of the gossip is interesting, though. As the Obama ticket battles it out with Sarah Palin, star of Thursday primetime TV, for former Clinton supporters, painting Hillary as shrill and demanding makes Obama look a bit more sympathetic. And celebrity gossip sheets may be nearly as good a way to reach Hillary Democrats as The View.

PBS anchor Gwen Ifill has been a pundit for decades, but she shrewdly avoided controversy until the 2004 presidential campaign, when she moderated the vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards. Remember that? At first you maybe thought, "How nice, that America has found a black woman it deems sufficiently sedated to moderate a big debate!" But then she slipped. Edwards brought up Cheney's old company Halliburton's multibillion profiteering in the Iraq, and Dick Cheney told her he would need more than the allotted 30 seconds to respond, and Ifill told him, "That's all you've got" to audience laughter, and that exposed her deep boiling black rage. Well, somehow the Attention Deficit Democracy allowed this bitter partisan to come back to moderate another VP debate. And big surprise: it turns out she is completely in the tank for Obama.She's been writing a secret book about him! Well, not just him. It's called The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama and it's about "emerging young African American politicians forging a bold new path to political power." And by "secret" I mean "to no one who read the AP story about it weeks before the McCain campaign approved Ifill as a moderator", and by "bold" they of course mean "actually the total opposite of" because that phrase is code for "emerging young African American politicians who somehow manage not to scare white people." One can only imagine Ifill, as the embodiment of PBS's quiet, sober, studiously inoffensive approach to covering the news, finds this topic personally interesting, because as a black woman she actually has to be significantly more boring than boring Washington establishment white guy pundits like Tom Brokaw or the late Tim Russert to prove that she does not have a chip on her shoulder or a loose cannon or anything remotely suggestive of an overly keen belief that slavery was wrong, and politicians can't be boring all the time. But whatever: now she's been exposed. Writing a book about a politician is practically the same as being on that politician's payroll, just ask Jerome Corsi. Is the McCain campaign trying to turn the obvious "shoot the moderator" tactics it just pulled on Katie Couric into a full-blown strategy? If so, as Media Matters points out, it's got some holes, not least because recent years have seen debates moderated by the likes of Bob Schieffer, a close personal friend of George W. Bush whose brother was a business partner of Bush's before the Supreme Court voted him president. Also, Tom Brokaw loves John McCain. But at the end of the day, would either of those guys make Sarah Palin sound any readier to navigate the collapse of our banking system or any number of our fragile Middle Eastern frenemy states? Yeah: no.

Who would Homer Simpson vote for? It's a question pundits across America (or at least a couple of them) have spent part of 2008 attempting to answer, particularly after the failed grassroots effort to mobilize his third-party presidential candidacy for November. (It came down to his support of nuclear energy, or Marge not wanting to exploit Maggie... rumors abound). But in an excerpt we found from The Simpsons episode slated for Nov. 2, the all-important Simpson endorsement is finally revealed — better late than never for one candidate, if not quite beneficial to Homer himself. We suppose that in addition to Ohio's little-known secession from the US, the lesson here is that voting is a contact sport, and not an especially fair one. But like so many things in the world, it could have been worse; when the chips are down, those Diebold voting machines have nothing on an armed Sarah Palin. [YouTube]

• Barack Obama gave Leonard Nimoy the Vulcan hand sign at a campaign event. In case we needed confirmation of his complete dorkhood. [P6]

Are there millions of people out there who actually happen to be fans of Ashton Kutcher and/or Demi Moore? Apparently! At least that would explain why Barack Obama's latest campaign video features the duo with a cardboard cutout of the candidate. The queasy footage after the jump.

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.

Have you heard? Comedienne Tina Fey has played lady candidate Sarah Palin on the tee-vee! Twice! So completely has Fey-as-Palin penetrated the pop culture landscape that Barack Obama found himself on Entertainment Tonight, grilled by Mary Hart not on the economic collapse but on the one issue most important to voters: what does he think of Fey's Palin impression? Obama notes the resemblance is "remarkable" and even heaps praise on Saturday Night Live player Fred Armisen's Obama performance — at which point vice presidential candidate Joe Biden pipes up to remind America that he, too, was impersonated on SNL once!

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.

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

Here's John McCain saying that now's the time to "leave partisanship at the door" and fix this Wall Street mess, instead of acting like Barack Obama, who "infused partisanship into the process" of voting on the bailout plan personally redesigned by the Republican presidential nominee, in a day, alone. Before you ask which candidate injected himself into the process, and which one returned to Washington only at the behest of the president, remind yourself that "now is not time to affix the blame." I guess this means McCain's campaign is unsuspended. Click the video icon to watch this jaw-dropping bit of political posturing.

Over the weekend Arkansas governor and minister and former fat person Mike Huckabee's new variety show premiered on Fox News. "We may have the first election in history where it's the winner who demands the recount!" he joked. No kidding. Huckabee went on to excoriate Wall Street and the bailout package congressional Republicans just sabotaged in a strikingly hard-to-dispute monologue that not only only foreshadowed the Nay that just sunk our stock market but also, one suspects, what will emerge as a new populist tone to the network's news coverage. Here's a partial transcript.

With all due respect, Cecily von Ziegesar, I must dispute your contention that Barack Obama is Blair Waldorf. He is so totally not Blair. I realize that I could not be writing this post at all had you not blazed the trail by authoring the transcendent works of literature on which the meta-popular Gossip Girl television series is based, whereas I have watched said derivative television show exactly once. But perhaps in that relative ignorance I can claim a kind of wisdom you are too enmeshed, too beholden, too blinded by detail and deep-seated loyalties to your own creations, to possess. In that way you would be not unlike ex-Hillary Clinton aide Howard Wolfson, who last month described awakening "Rip Van Winkle"-like after his boss finally conceded to her charismatic young rival "to a world transformed by political currents we had stood against." Wake up and smell the green tea mimosas, Cecily! Like the country, Gossip Girl is bigger than you now.And when you glibly state, pollster-like, that "the truth is, Barack is just not blond enough or vague enough to be a Serena" as if that is just the accepted truth, like "America is not ready for a black president" or "socialism is for Europeans", you are failing to detect the paradigm shift underway that had the "smart money" backing the Serena as Obama metaphor all the way back in Season One: