Taking the plunge...

• The NYSE dropped below 10,000 for the first time since 2004. We're down almost 600 points, and it's not even noon. Good times. Here the WSJ highlights that this is quickly becoming a global crisis, with the EU seeing a wave of bailouts and the state taking control of private institutions similar to the past month here.
  
• TheHill has news that Obama has launched a website highlighting McCain's involvement with the S&L crisis of 20 years ago. For those of you who don't know, Johnny Mac was censured by the Senate for taking bribes from shady developer Charles Keating in exchange for getting federal regulators to back off. McCain and the other four senators - all democrats, incidently - were known as "The Keating 5." Here's the website and a 13 minute video...
• Obama is winning the ground game, according to the Post:

  In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states -- 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.

  In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1, and in North Carolina it is 6 to 1. Even in states with nonpartisan registration, the trend is clear -- of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds.

• We're not spending as much as we used to according to the Times. Gonna be a rough winter.
• And in a preview of what's to come, Great Britain is experiencing a bit of a butterfly effect when it comes to the banning of short-selling, which is illustrative of just how much of this crisis is actually on paper as opposed to commodities based. Make no mistake: This is the end product of a 35 year Friedmanite counter-revolution, and we could end up looking very much like Chile sooner than later. Read Naomi Klein's excellent book Shock Doctrine for an in-depth (and prescient - she wrote this thing 18 months ago) look at our economic situation.
• Let's hope that everyone reading this has enough money to take care of their elderly relatives should McCain win, as he's going to be gutting Medicare and Medicaid. Do they really not care about winning Florida? Christ, I could write this campaign ad.
  

Sorry for not bringing the funny, but this shit is depressing.

EDIT: Ok, here's some happy - Obama is winning Georgia right now according to the number-smiths over at 538. Excellent.