There Is Win. There Is Awesome.

And there is this story.

Anyway: A wonderful lady picked him up at a bar, and she went to his hotel room, and she slipped him a mickey. When he woke up, his entire ridiculous jewel-encrusted ultra-tacky wardrobe was stolen — “$120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings,” according to the Pioneer Press. Ha, it costs $120,000 to look like that? Who knew!

It was the night of Sarah Palin’s big dumb speech at the RNC. This guy, Gabriel Schwartz — “a single attorney and a fixture in Colorado Republican politics,” according to the Pioneer Press — was staying in Minneapolis at the fancy Hotel Ivy. He reportedly took this girl back to his $319-per-night room and she told him to get undressed while she made the drinks. This is a wonderful scene from some James M. Cain book, but rather than wearing a salesman’s suit, the mark is dressed like some castout from the Village People or the Stray Cats or god knows what.

“Victim reported suspect made victim drinks, told him to get undressed, which is the last thing he remembers,” a police narrative said. “Upon waking, victim discovered money, jewelry gone; total loss over $120K.”

A police report notes the crime occurred between 4:22 and 5:46 a.m., and Palmer said investigators believe Schwartz had been drugged, although he declined to discuss details.

Aside from the watch, ring, necklace, earrings and belt, Schwartz also reported a $1,000 purse or wallet, a $1,500 cell phone, $500 in cash and a couple of rings worth $50 had been taken.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We salute you, wonderful girl thief of Minneapolis. You are America’s Real Hero. Everything about you is a delicious testament to the American Dream … the American Dream of duping a vulgarian lawyer.

The only thing that would make this better is an anonymous donation of $120,000 to Obama's campaign. Oh my my my my my. There is karma in the universe after all.

If McSame Has Lost These Guys...

...then he's screwed. Observe.



Fork, meet John Sidney McSame The Third. John Sidney McSame The Third, meet done.

When Traversing Roads On Your Steam Velocipede...

While supplies last. (h/t AmericaBlog)

Documenting The Atrocities

Another liveblog of the markets today.

9:35 AM -- Five minutes in. AIG is already at less than two dollars, Dow down 125.

9:45 AM -- Some fighting back. AIG hovering around $2.50, Dow down 70.

9:50 AM -- Goldman Sachs missed its earning target by about 70%. Stock down 10%. AIG still hovering around $2.50, Dow off 60 points.

10:20 AM -- AIG and Dow still hovering, but WaMu is actually up about 10 cents.

10:30 AM -- AIG struggling up to $3. Dow treading water. Rumors of a Fed rate cut are limiting the damage.

10:45 AM -- AIG still at $3, Dow still slightly down, just treading water until the Fed decides on a rate cut now later today. Anything less than a half point cut will cause the market to drop like a stone.

11:00 AM -- News breaking that the Fed is meeting to discuss AIG, a Fed bailout is now "back on the table." AIG stock is climbing to $4 a share and threatening to break into positive territory.

11:05 AM -- Dow back above 11,000 mark. Investors are "confident the Fed will take significant action today."

11:20 AM -- Moral Hazard clause in action. Many talking heads are saying if AIG doesn't get a substantial taxpayer bailout that it's over, and that the Fed has no choice. More treading water, Dow slightly under 11k.

11:30 AM -- Dow back down 50, AIG back down 2 bucks to under $2.50, back to where we were at 10.

11:35 AM -- Market is depressed back to the 10 AM level doldrums because the private sector solution to AIG's money problems is now "definitely dead". It's a Fed bailout or bust now.

12:00 PM -- Dow up 20, AIG back close to $3. Still treading water until a rate cut/bailout decision is made. McSame says "taxpayers should not be on the hook" for AIG. For the first time in years I agree with the guy. Go figure.

12:35 PM -- Dow and AIG are still treading water. Nobody wants to make a move right now until the rate cut/bailout situation is resolved.

1:15 PM -- Dow's up 70 or so, AIG above $3, but still down a third for the day. Obama's planning to give a big speech on the economy today in Golden, CO.

1:25 PM -- WaMu is up 10% on news of a possible deal with JP Morgan Chase.

2:00 PM -- Former AIG CEO Hank Greenburg is leading a group of investors who may be making a play to buy out AIG in a proxy fight. Could this be the white knight? Does it even matter if the white knight arrives when there's an army of problems waiting? AIG still floating around $3.

2:15 PM -- NO RATE CUT. Dow is dropping, AIG down to $2.50, no word on an AIG bailout yet.

3:25 PM -- Dow up substantially, up 150. AIG above $4 now, once again threatening to go into positive territory.

3:35 PM -- Reality rears its ugly head. AIG down 30% again at $3.25, Dow up 70.

3:40 PM -- Bloomberg is reporting the Fed is now officially considering making a deal to save AIG later today, reversing its stance. Happy markets, yay capitalism.

3:45 PM -- Word is Lehman's core business has just been bought by Barclays, and that's got the market juiced in the final 15 along with the possible Fed bailout.

4:00 PM -- Final score, Dow up 141, AIG down to $3.75. Street is licking its chops waiting on the details of the "bridge loan to nowhere". The Street has now "factored in" AIG getting $70-$90 billion dollars before the market opens tomorrow from the Fed.

We'll see how that goes.

Global No-Confidence Vote: Deal Or No Deal Part 2

September 15, 2008...Black Monday...was just the beginning, folks. The Dow may have lost 500 points, but the S&P lost 4.71%, an even worse day on the broader markets. And once again, I cannot stress enough that Lehman Bros. was not the real problem.

It was just one more domino in the chain, one more player in the great game of Deal Or No Deal. Lehman Bros. got No Deal...and the global markets are in freefall as a result.

But today could be worse. Today's Deal or No Deal contestant is the largest insurance company in the world, American International Group or AIG. It's time to play the game.

And AIG is in serious, serious trouble.

American International Group Inc. fell 38 percent in early New York trading after the insurer's credit ratings were cut, threatening efforts to raise funds to keep the company afloat and roiling global financial markets.

S&P lowered AIG's long-term counterparty rating three grades to A- because of ``reduced flexibility in meeting additional collateral needs and concerns over increasing residential mortgage-related losses,'' the rating company said yesterday. Moody's cut AIG's senior unsecured debt two grades to A2. Fitch Ratings lowered its assessment to A from AA-.

The downgrade of AIG is the latest tremor to shake the global financial industry, less than a day after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and Merrill Lynch & Co. sold itself to Bank of America Corp. for about $50 billion. Stock markets from Tokyo to London tumbled as investors weighed the impact of a potential collapse of the largest U.S. insurer by assets.

``There's a systemic risk if AIG isn't saved,'' Benoit de Broissia, an equity analyst at Richelieu Finance in Paris, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. Richelieu has about $6.2 billion under management.

I've been talking about systemic risk in the Global No-Confidence Vote series for months now. Systemic risk is just that: a risk that threatens the entire system. Fannie and Freddie going under was the ultimate systemic risk. The Fed had no choice but to save it. But AIG poses a large systemic risk as well. What do I mean by systemic?

Take a look at the aftermath of Hurricane Ike as an example. Millions of Americans got a harsh lesson in systemic risk this weekend, including myself. Recovery efforts are needed from Houston to Detroit, power outages, gas shortages, food and water interruptions, critical supply problems. Here in the Cincy area there are still hundreds of thousands without power, even with power crews being called in from other states.

Now imagine a hurricane so bad that the entire lower 48 was hit with 75 MPH+ winds that caused damage, power outages, and supply interruptions across the entire country at the same time. All states would need their power crews. All power companies would be facing angry customers. Getting supplies into areas would be nearly impossible because they would be needed everywhere. All Governors would be scrambling for Federal emergency assistance. FEMA would be overloaded.

Supplies of food, water, and gas would dwindle to nothing. There would be no easy way to get supplies back in. Tens of millions of Americans would have to fend for themselves. The system would break down. The threat would be systemic. We would degenerate into riots, martial law, and chaos after only a few weeks. It would take months to get the system back up again...if it was even able to come back up at all.

That is the level of risk an AIG collapse would pose to the entire global financial system. How bad would it be?

This bad.

When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on Monday, it became the latest but surely not the last victim of the subprime mortgage collapse. Lehman owned more than $600 billion in assets. Financial institutions around the world have already reported more than half a trillion dollars of mortgage-related losses and that figure will most likely double or triple before the crisis exhausts itself.

But there is a bigger potential failure lurking: the American International Group, the insurance giant. It poses a much larger threat to the financial system than Lehman Brothers ever did because it plays an integral role in several key markets: credit derivatives, mortgages, corporate loans and hedge funds.

Late Monday, A.I.G. was downgraded by the major credit rating agencies (which inexplicably still retain an enormous amount of power in the marketplace despite having gutted their credibility with unreliable ratings for mortgage-backed securities during the housing boom). This credit downgrade could require A.I.G. to post billions of dollars of additional collateral for its mortgage derivative contracts.

Fat chance. That's collateral A.I.G. does not have. There is therefore a substantial possibility that A.I.G. will be unable to meet its obligations and be forced into liquidation. A side effect: Its collapse would be as close to an extinction-level event as the financial markets have seen since the Great Depression.

A.I.G. does business with virtually every financial institution in the world. Most important, it is a central player in the unregulated, Brobdingnagian credit default swap market that is reported to be at least $60 trillion in size.

Nobody knows this market's real size, or who owes what to whom, because there is no central clearinghouse or regulator for it. Credit default swaps are a type of credit insurance contract in which one party pays another party to protect it from the risk of default on a particular debt instrument. If that debt instrument (a bond, a bank loan, a mortgage) defaults, the insurer compensates the insured for his loss. The insurer (which could be a bank, an investment bank or a hedge fund) is required to post collateral to support its payment obligation, but in the insane credit environment that preceded the credit crisis, this collateral deposit was generally too small.

As a result, the credit default market is best described as an insurance market where many of the individual trades are undercapitalized. But even worse, many of the insurers are grossly undercapitalized. In one case in the New York courts, the Swiss banking giant UBS is suing a hedge fund that said it would insure nearly $1.5 billion in bonds but was unable to do so. No wonder -- the hedge fund had only $200 million in assets.

If A.I.G. collapsed, its hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-related assets would be added to those being sold by other financial institutions. This would just depress values further. The counterparties around the world to A.I.G.'s credit default swaps may be unable to collect on their trades. As a large hedge-fund investor, A.I.G. would suddenly become a large redeemer from hedge funds, forcing fund managers to sell positions and probably driving down prices in the world's financial markets. More failures, particularly of hedge funds, could follow.

Regulators knew that if Lehman went down, the world wouldn't end. But Wall Street isn't remotely prepared for the inestimable damage the financial system would suffer if A.I.G. collapsed.

AIG's collapse could very well be a systemic risk problem...a problem that risks the end of the current global financial system. If there's No Deal, there could be far worse consequences than a 500 point Dow loss.

The real problem is that there are dozens of companies that could be the systemic risk that blows a hole in the entire global financial system. If AIG does survive, there will be another company that's in trouble...and another...and another.

There will eventually be a No Deal large enough to take out the system sooner or later. Either the Fed will draw a line, or they won't have the money to save them. That possibility is looking to be sooner...MUCH sooner.

Even if it's not AIG, there will be more contestants on Deal or No Deal, Wall Street Edition. Many, many more.

Which one will break the global derivative market and with it plunge America and the world into a financial nightmare?

Be prepared.

Cross-posted at the Frog Pond.

StupidiNews!

• Still a good 500,000 people without power in the Greater Cincinnati area, including me. No power, no gas pumps, no gas for generators, no power.
• Sarah Palin is pinning Troopergate on Obama, despite the fact the investigation was started well before she became McSame's running mate.
• McClatchy reminds you it was Republicans AND Democrats who are responsible for yesterday's Wall Street Massacre.
• The scariest words in the English language: "Opening arguments today in the OJ Simpson trial began Monday..."
• And a Microsoft Xbox 360 tester has been fired after talking about the console's high failure rate. (Mine went out a couple weeks ago.)

CSI: Wall Street

Somebody just got straight murdered. Dow ended up down 504 points to under 11,000, its biggest one day loss since 9/11. AIG down 60%. Its days are numbered and this weekend we'll be playing Deal or No Deal once again...AIG might not make it through tomorrow morning.

In the final minutes of trading, major indexes broke through their July lows, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging a whopping 504.48, or 4.4 percent, to close at 10917.51. The S&P 500 falling 4.7 percent to close at 1192.96. The Nasdaq shed 3.6 percent.

The market is worried about a possible failure of AIG — as early as tomorrow morning — said Matt Cheslock, a senior specialist at Cohen Specialists, and traders just don't want to stick their necks out amid that kind of uncertainty.

"When the Fed came out and said they [AIG] have got to go to alternative sources, that means no one would want to bail out AIG without any backup," Cheslock said. "If AIG fails tomorrow morning, it's the same thing written all over this market," he said. "I don't think anyone is going to want to take any positions overnight."

Keep in mind AIG is the biggest insurance company in the world. If they go under, it might take the entire system with it.

It's only a question of when AIG fails and how much damage it causes.

[UPDATE] Washington Mutual is under $2 a share and falling in after hours trading as its credit rating is officially lowered to junk bond status by S&P. It might not survive tomorrow either.

[UPDATE 2] Hewlitt-Packard announced late today that it is cutting nearly 25,000 jobs and taking a $1.7 billion charge. The toxin is spreading.

Le Sigh, Le Moan Part 5

Today's "Obama should have picked Hillary" concern troll is HuffPo's Andy Ostroy, who says Obama should actually dump Biden now and take the Hillster.

Conventional wisdom says replacing Biden with Clinton can't be done. That it's too late. That it'll make Obama appear indecisive, impulsive and lacking good judgement. Many Democrats believe this would cause irreparable harm to the campaign, ringing Obama's death knell. But this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, it'd be a freakin' coup for Obama, and would instantly melt Palin's undeserving outsize political ice cap.

To be sure, a Biden-Clinton switch would cause quite a stir in the media. They'd accuse him of all sorts of things, from being politically expedient and flip-flopping to being irrational and ill-equipped to be president. The talking heads on CNN, Fox and MSNBC would be locked in a non-stop frenzied orgy of derisive rhetoric. But we also know that it would make about 18-million Hillary voters ecstatic at the same time. So, honestly, who really cares what Joe Scarborough, Keith Olbermann, Wolf Blitzer or Brit Hume thinks? These pundits don't constitute an appreciable voting block. What they think and feel would be utterly dwarfed by the euphoria from Clinton's faithful supporters. It's a pretty safe bet that an Obama/Clinton ticket would capture virtually all of these loyal Clintonistas. It's also a safe bet that many of those highly coveted 18-49-year-old women who polls show migrated to McPalin this past week would drop the spunky little hockey mom in a heartbeat for Hillary. Lastly, it's an even safer bet that Obama's current voters would stick with him as well. So, where's the downside? Show me a Democrat, today, who'd dump Obama for McCain if Biden was replaced with Clinton? They don't exist.

Oh really. I would not vote for Barack Obama if he did that. I would not. I'm betting a lot of people would just give up on any hope of anything getting done.

You're a prick. Stop talking.

Everything's Fine Here, How Are You?

How the hell is this guy even close in the polls?

Remember: The GOP did this to America. The next 50 days should be nothing but a string of reminders that John McSame has the same economic policies that wrecked our economy. And he wants MORE of them: more tax cuts for the rich, less government oversight, more transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 1%.

The GOP screwed the economy. That is your message, Barry. You win.

The Lessons

The guys at the Big Picture have the lessons Wall Street learned from Bear Stearns that got us to Black Monday today.

The lesson from the Bear Stearns' bailout -- $29 Billion in Federal Reserve bad paper guarantees -- are quite stark:

• Go Big: Don't just risk your company, risk the entire world of Finance. Modest incompetence is insufficient -- if you merely destroy your own company, you won't get rescued. You have to threaten to bring down the entire global financial system. The fear and disruption caused by a Bear collapse is why it was saved. (AIG has the right idea on this)

• If you cant Go Big, Go First: Had Lehman collapsed before Bear, then the same fear and loathing of the impact to the system might have worked to their advantage. But having been through this once before, the sting is somewhat lessened -- especially for a smaller, lets interconnected firm like LEH. (First mover advantage!)

• Threaten your counter-parties: Bear Stearns had about 9 trillion in its derivatives book, of which 40% was held by JPMorgan (JPM). Some people have argued that the Bear bailout was actually a preventative rescue of JPMorgan. Its a good strategy if your goal is a bailout -- risk bringing down someone much bigger than yourself.

• Risk an important part of the economy: If your book of derivatives is limited to some obscure and irrelevant portion of the economy, you will not get saved. On the other hand, if Mortgages are important, credit cards and auto loans are too. Securitized widget inventory is not. To use a dirty word, Lehman's exposure is "contained."

• Balance Sheets Matter: Focus on the media, complain about short sellers, obsess about PR. These are the hallmarks of a failing strategy -- and a grand waste of time. Why? Its call insolvency. ALL THAT MATTERS IS THE FIRMS' BALANCE SHEET. Lehman's liabilities exceed its assets, and they are now toast. Merrill Lynch got a lot of the junk off of its books, and got a takeover at 70% premium to its closing price. And Credit Suisse, who dumped much of its bad paper many quarters ago, is in a better tactical position than most of its peers.

• Unintended Consequences lurk everywhere: When the Fed opened up the liquidity spigots via its alphabet soup of lending facilities, the fear was of the inflationary impacts. But the bigger issue should have been Complacency. The Dick Fulds of the world said after Bear, these new facilities "put the liquidity issue to rest." Lehman got complacent once liquidity was no longer an issue -- perhaps they acted to slowly to resolve their insolvency issue in time.

Unfortunately, Moral Hazard has created terrible lessons in 2008 -- via Bear Stearns (BSC), Lehman (LEH), Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE).

The GOP is one big moral hazard anyway. We need to jettison them. Remember how we got into this mess: the lack of oversight and regulation thanks to the GOP's Wild West financial system.

Almost Missed This One

Over the craziness and the power loss this weekend, Amanda at Shakesville has yet more proof Republicans are just assholes.

Hey Barry, you mad yet? You ready to hit back at these douchebags?

Bloodbath: The Lossification

Going to live blog this for posterity.

9:55 AM -- Dow off 300 points in 25 minutes. We'll see just how bad this is going to get.

10:35 AM -- Lehman shares are down to 0.20 and falling. It's over. The BoA/Merrill merger news conference is going on. AIG is down 5 bucks to $6 a share and falling.

11:00 AM -- Dow is only down 200 points. Some bargain hunting going on.

11:30 AM -- AIG now off more than $6, having lost over 50% of its value. AIG is the world's largest insurance company, or was. That's no longer the case. If AIG goes under, today's maelstrom will look like a picnic. Dow back down 275.

11:45 AM Dow off 288. Roubini is predicting no independent broker dealers will survive, and that the Dow will lose 20% to under 9,000 before the end of this mess.

12:10 PM -- Still down 275, but the big news is AIG is now off more than $7.50 to less than $5 a share, over 60% of its value is gone. AIG might not survive the day, let alone the week.

12:55 PM -- AIG is scrambling to save itself. It's only down by half now, but it looks like most financials are down 20%. WaMu, Wachovia, Goldman, all down big. Dow still floating around 225 down.

1:20 PM -- Losses are being pared because of rumors of a Fed emergency rate cut tomorrow.

1:55 PM -- Dow back down 325 and falling, because the rumors of a rate cut are killing the dollar.

2:45 PM -- Dow off 3.40, AIG under $5.50 again.

3:05 PM -- Dow off 370, AIG off $7.

3:08 PM(!) -- Dow off 400.

3:25 PM -- Dow briefly dips under 11,000 to 10,997, off 425 points.

3:35 PM -- Tripping the 11k mark and falling to 10,985 has triggered some bargain hunters, Dow shoots up 100, to being only off 340.

3:45 PM -- People realized that bargain hunting is dumb. Dow is down 400 again.

3:50 PM -- Dow under 11k again and falling towards the finish line.

4:00 PM -- Dow just about hit the 500 point loss mark as it completely fell apart in the last 20 minutes of trading.

4:10 PM -- Official numbers, Dow down -504.48 to close at 10,917.51. AIG down 7.38 to 4.76, a loss of 60%.

How To Look Like An Idiot

Write a Sunday column in the WaPo that basically says there's no economic crisis and we're all imagining economic distress the day before the markets come unglued.

Patient zero in this epidemic is the Democratic candidate for president. As it would be for any challenger, it's in his interest to portray the incumbent party's economic performance in the grimmest possible terms. Barack Obama has frequently used the Depression exaggeration, including during a campaign speech in June, when he said that the "percentage of homes in foreclosure and late mortgage payments is the highest since the Great Depression." At best, this statement is a good guess. To be really true, it would have to be heavily qualified with words such as "maybe" or "probably." According to economist David C. Wheelock of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, who has studied the history of mortgage markets for the Fed, "there are no consistent data on foreclosure or delinquency going all the way back to the Depression."

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) database, which allows rigorous apples-to-apples comparisons, only goes back to 1979. It shows that today's delinquency rate is only a little higher than the level seen in 1985. As to the foreclosure rate, it was setting records for the day -- the highest since the Great Depression, one supposes -- in 1999, at the peak of the Clinton-era prosperity that Obama celebrated in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention late last month. I don't recall hearing any Democratic politicians complaining back then.

Remember, this is all Barack Obama's fault, and has nothing to do with the Republicans.

Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends

Today is already shaping up to be a nightmare. Worst case scenarios abound right now on Wall Street: Lehman Bros. has filed for bankruptcy, Bank of America bought out Merrill Lynch for $50 billion, and insurance giant AIG is restructuring in a desperate attempt not to be the next Lehman Bros.-type casualty.

Euro markets are down 3-6% already, Asian markets are down in limited holiday trading off 4% and the Dow is set to open up with a 350-point drop on the opening bell. We will see the Dow hit trading curbs, most likely tripping the 500-point loss circuit breaker before lunch. This week is going to be a disaster, and it's just the beginning.

Trying to unravel Lehman's $700 million Gordian knot of securities and bad investments will take time, and it's time the sector doesn't have. Crisis of confidence doesn't begin to describe the underlying problem, which is that all the investment banks are tied up in securitized mortgage garbage. They will keep falling like dominoes, and the speed of the collapse will only increase now. Once one set of blocks is knocked out from under the pyramid scheme, the whole structure becomes unstable. It won't take much to take the whole thing down.

That "much" that it won't take? This weekend's triple meltdown. Now the boil has been lanced, and the pain is really going to begin.

Remember, the GOP says our economy is still strong, and everything is fine.

Do you still believe that?

Our next President has to deal with this crisis. It has exploded onto the front pages of every newspaper and the tickers of every cable news channel. This crisis of confidence is now getting ready to pull the whole thing down. Mike Allen at Politico takes a look at what all this means for Obama and McSame.

1. The candidates had hoped to put off their detailed prescriptions until they were in office, unrolling an economic agenda in conjunction with an address to the new Congress. Now, there's no way to duck it.

2. The new crisis crowds the candidates’ agendas in the stretch run, keeping them from talking about the issues that they had planned to focus on. But the candidates are creatively trying to meld the disaster into their existing messages.

3. Just like the markets, however, each candidate faces an enormous downside risk: Troubled times could make voters less likely to take a chance on Obama, with his shorter time in Washington. McCain could pay the price for the economic disruption on a Republican's watch, or if he looks like he doesn’t have the energy and creativity to reassure a worried nation.

4. They will also be more constrained when they get to Washington, with analysts estimating that the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is likely to cost the Treasury $100 billion to $300 billion.

As disastrous as this is, I believe it favors Obama. This takes Sarah Palin off the front pages and puts the spotlight straight back on the issues, where Obama has the advantage if he can attack McSame's economic policy. He's already going on the offensive, saying that the Republicans have dropped the ball on the economy one time too many and now Main Street is paying for Wall Street's mistakes.

But McSame can make major inroads here if he keeps up his scare tactics and plays the fear card. I expect some brutal ads from them saying Obama's not ready and only McSame The War Hero(tm) can save America.

We'll see. Sarah Palin was a game-changer. But the game just got changed again.

StupidiNews!

• There's no power in my place, Duke Energy says half a million in the Cincy area are without power thanks to the remnants of Ike. Gas and groceries are in short supply.
• Wall Street? Screwed.
• Karl Rove actually said John McSame went too far in his attack ads.
• Sarah Palin for the Supreme Court?
• Cell phones for teens: Must be cool, or else.