Oil prices dropped quite dramatically overnight.  We won't be seeing the results very soon, but $133/bbl sounds better than $147, don't it!  Still, inflation is up significantly.

Washington Post/ABC poll has Obama ahead by 8 points.  The only weakness he shows is "international issues."  Maybe the perception will change when he goes overseas and is greeted (it's likely) by huge crowds.

Of course, the trouble McCain is having vis-a-vis Obama is nothing like the trouble he's facing from his own constituency.

Meanwhile, Martin Feldstein, one of the designers of the economic system we've had since Reagan, said yesterday that the economic situation stinks and will get worse.  Maybe a lot worse.  Maybe really, really bad.  Maybe like ...  Well then, maybe the Reagan economists will have learned from their mistakes -- at great cost to their country.

Speaking of stinks, Dick Polman of the Philly Inquirer thinks the New Yorker cover at least misfired.  " ...The cartoon could have been more effective," he writes, "if the intended target had been visually depicted. Perhaps a generic talk-radio loudmouth, in a thought bubble, could have conjured this apparent nightmare image of Obama in the White House. Or perhaps the entire image could have been conveyed on a television screen, with a Fox News crawl along the bottom; that, after all, would have addressed the kernel-of-reality element, since it was a Fox host who jokingly floated the notion of a 'terrorist fist jab.'"  Personally, I like the idea of that thought bubble attached to a certain talk-radio loudmouth, seen from behind, assorted pharmaceuticals spilling over the desk in front of him, speaking into a microphone ...