"Black Tuesday"

We have all heard by now that the only reason our markets didn't fall yesterday. But today's expected to be an extremely bumpy ride, and today's futures are in the gutter prior to the opening.

Most financial advisers on FOX NEWS between 2a-7a (to which I listened during my early morning drive to come emcee the Blogs4Life conference today) are saying basically - ignore today's results. The smart play for today and perhaps the next several is to "hold." Ride it out. Tax cuts and rebates are coming - and the stimulus will stimulate!

Fox News at 9:18pm: CALLS FOR McCAIN
(83% reporting)

McCain 33%
Huckabee 30%

Early evening results... Romney cruises to third win, second in a row, in Nevada. Huck is poised to score a come from behind win tonight in South Carolina, with McCain expected to be a close second.

"Who's your daddy...?"

I've been around the Romney family a little bit in this election cycle. Even in my limited meet-ups with them you could tell that they genuinely love each other and that they love family...

But it sure is fun to see it in action:

"When is 600ft way too close?"

"An Iraqi soldier stands guard of blindfolded insurgents."

"We look at it every month. We make recommendations. I think that if we continue along the path we're on now, we'll be able to do that by the end of 2008," Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the No. 2 commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said when asked when Iraqi forces could take the lead in all provinces.

He said that a joint operation under way led by Iraqi troops and supported by U.S. troops against al Qaeda militants in the northern city of Mosul was a model for the future.

...b-day girl...

I thoroughly disagree with almost every policy position Barack Obama holds. (Though his assessment of Reagan was quite sound two days ago.)

But in the "decent human being department" he's got the last President that emerged from the Democratic camp beat by about 7, or 8, maybe 10,000 miles.

Meanwhile, Obama took a break from campaigning Thursday night to celebrate his wife’s birthday by taking her out to dinner. Advisers declined to say where they would eat, except to say it would just be the two of them.

...funny man...

When you consider the parallel actions of the past 24-48 hours of Billy Jeff, Barry O, you begin to see just how much Obama's "likability" factor is beginning to take it's toll.

The Clinton camp looks haggard, angry, mad, "sore losery", Barry O is makin' funnies:

Obama began by recalling a moment in Tuesday night's debate when he and his rivals were asked to name their biggest weakness. Obama answered first, saying he has a messy desk and needs help managing paperwork - something his opponents have since used to suggest he's not up to managing the country. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said his biggest weakness is that he has a powerful response to seeing pain in others, and Clinton said she gets impatient to bring change to America.

"Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?'" Obama said to laughter from a packed house at Rancho High School. "If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible.'"

"Folks, they don't tell you what they mean!" he said. Obama chuckled at his own joke before riffing on another Clinton answer in the debate, when she said that she is happy that the bankruptcy bill she voted for in 2001 never became law.

"She says, 'I voted for it but I was glad to see that it didn't pass.' What does that mean?" he asked, again drawing laughter from the crowd and himself. "No seriously, what does that mean? If you didn't want to see it passed, then you can vote against it! People don't say what they mean.

Generally speaking, if you can get people laughing, particularly in the dog-eat-dog of the most packed 38 day primary schedule of the meat grinder that is election 2008, you're going to do pretty well...

BONUS: You've GOT to LOVE this pic...

Well Cowell doesn't have much to say about it... but the NYPost and Politico sure do.

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

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...EconoMitts 101...

Will Mitt break through and secure his first win of the campaign season? It seems highly likely. More importantly for team Mitt it seems extremely desperate to do so. Having had his campaign pull the majority of his media presence out of South Carolina and Florida, Mitt is banking on doing all he can to eek out a win over McCain who up until this morning had been leading in all the polls.

Many have labeled TownHall as "Romney central," and for legitimate reasons. The totality of this web site has not maintained (particularly in the blog area) the most objective view of Romney's significant challenges. But he does have strengths. Not the least of which is to attempt to pro-actively problem solve in advance.

The problem with that approach to his campaign is that it hasn't worked, at least not the way he envisioned it coming about. Hoping to be going into Michigan undefeated, he has instead been forced to deal with tepid showings amongst decent turnout in states that drained him of his uber-cash.