What Caught My Eye Today

Stock Market - Okay, you know that crack I made yesterday about the backward auction? Dude, that was a joke. I wasn't serious. Wall Street capped one of its worst weeks ever with a wild session that saw the Dow Jones industrials gyrate within a 1,000 point range before closing with a relatively mild loss and the Nasdaq composite index actually ending with a modest advance. The Dow lost 128 points, giving the blue chips an eight-day loss of just under 2,400, or 22.1%. The average had its worst week on record in both point and percentage terms. The Standard & Poor's 500 index, the indicator most watched by market professionals, posted its worst weekly run since 1933. The latest loss also means the Dow is down 40.3% since reaching a record high close of 14,164.53 a year ago, on Oct. 9, 2007. The S&P 500, which reached its high of 1,565.15 the same day, is down 42.5%. Investors suffered a paper loss for the day of about $100 billion, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index. For the week, investors lost $2.4 trillion, and over the past year, the losses have piled up to $8.4 trillion. Let me break it down for you, on the off chance that these numbers are too mind boggling to comprehend--this was a bad week, I mean really bad week, for Wall Street and anyone on 'Any Street' who has the misfortune having a 401(k) invested in mutual funds, which pretty much covers most of the population.

2008 Presidential Race - Things are starting to get a bit out of hand in the McCain campaign. The anger is getting raw at Republican rallies and John McCain is acting to tamp it down. McCain was booed by his own supporters when, in an abrupt switch from raising questions about Barack Obama's character, he described the Democrat as a "decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States." A sense of grievance spilling into rage has gripped some GOP events this week as McCain supporters see his presidential campaign lag against Obama. Some in the audience are making it personal, against the Democrat. Shouts of "traitor," "terrorist," "treason," "liar," and even "off with his head" have rung from the crowd at McCain and Sarah Palin rallies. With support like this McCain might not be able to hear any criticisms leveled at him by Obama supporters. Still some GOP fanatics need to chill out a bit. The Secret Service confirmed that it had investigated an episode reported in The Washington Post in which someone in Sarah Palin's crowd in Clearwater, Fla., shouted "kill him," on Monday, meaning Obama. Dude, that's not cool, even if it was said in the heat of the moment. Presidential candidates are accustomed to raucous rallies this close to Election Day and welcome the enthusiasm. But they are also traditionally monitors of sorts from the stage. Part of their job is to leaven proceedings if tempers run ragged and to rein in an out-of-bounds comment from the crowd. Maybe McCain didn't get that memo. It's obvious that Palin didn't, or if she did, she ignored it.

Gay Marriage - And then there were 3. A sharply divided Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that gay couples have the right to get married, saying legislators did not go far enough when they approved same-sex civil unions that were identical to marriages in virtually every respect except the name. The 4-3 ruling will make Connecticut the third state, behind Massachusetts and California, to allow same-sex marriages, decisions that in all cases were made by the highest state court. The decision marks the first time that a court rejected civil unions as an alternative to granting gay couples the right to marry. The vast majority of states do not allow gay marriage. Voters in 27 states have taken the extra step of approving constitutional amendments to reinforce that prohibition. Civil unions and a similar arrangement, known as domestic partnerships, are offered to same-sex couples in Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Oregon, Hawaii, Maine, Washington and the District of Columbia. I'm sure this is purely coincidental (wink-wink), but have you noticed how the states that allow civil unions or gay marriages tend to be 'blue states' and those that don't tend to be 'red states'. Fascinating, don't you find?

Russia - There's no doubt what Vladimir Putin's favorite birthday present is this year — a rare Ussuri tiger cub. All I got for my birthday was a card and some new underwear. State television showed the Russian prime minister tenderly petting the 2-month-old female cub at his residence outside Moscow. Putin said a good home will be found for the tiger, presumably in a zoo or wildlife preserve. As president and now prime minister, Putin is known for his tough talk and macho image. But children and animals seem to bring out a softer side. Of course. And nothing shouts cut and cuddly more than a tiger. Dude, we get that you think you're a stud. Fewer than 400 Ussuri tigers are believed to survive in the wild, most of them in Russia and some in China. They are the largest tiger species, weighing up to 600 pounds.