10/29 Roundup: Video Wars, Rainy Philly, Charles Barkley for Governor

Leader: Video Wars

- Tonight is the night of Obama's half-hour long advertisement, which will air on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, and a few cable networks. The ad will air just before the continuation of game five of the World Series, which was suspended on Monday due to rain. Fox insists that the start time was not delayed for Obama, he just replaced the (usually boring) pre-game show.  The jury is still out on whether it's a good political move or a little over the top. Tonight we'll see.

- McCain supporters are fighting fire with fire. Newspaper subscribers in key swing states will find anti-Obama DVDs delivered with their papers this week. Over a million copies of a 95-minute video produced by Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, will be packaged in with the Cincinnati Enquirer, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, The Palm Beach Post and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Economy

- In the second biggest single-day point gain ever, the Dow went up 11% yesterday.  Not surprisingly, nobody's fears are assuaged. The NYT's David Leonhardt investigates whether we've hit bottom and are on our way up again, as Warren Buffett, among others, suggests.

Election '08

- The national race appears to be tightening a little, as Simon anticipated. In key battleground states, however, Obama is maintaining a commanding lead.

- John McCain is calling for Senator and convicted felon Ted Stevens to step down. Sarah Palin, notably, has not asked her countryman to do so.

- Julia Ioffe, writing for TNR, writes about the trauma endured by journalists who've been on the campaign trail for nearly two whole years. Expect something like PESD: Post-Electoral Stress Disorder.

- Rain in Pennsylvania has been surprisingly troublesome this week. It delayed the Phillies and Rays, and it caused McCain to cancel a rally. Obama, however, along with 9,000 of his supporters, stood up to mother nature and had their rally anyway. Take that, rain.

- A fake flier distributed in mostly-black communities in Virginia tells voters that Democrats cast their ballots on November 5th.  The perpetrators of this pernicious untruth have not yet been found.

International

- Tom Friedman writes in the Times that dropping oil prices gives us new leverage with Tehran, but this leverage must be used intelligently.

- Russia and China have agreed to build an oil pipeline that will run off an existing trans-Siberian pipeline and feed growing Chinese demand for oil.

One More Thing

- Rob Shapiro was on NPR's Marketplace last night, talking about sharks and porpoises in the presidential transition process. Are you a shark or a porpoise?

- Sign of the apocalypse: Charles Barkley  is planning to run for governor of Alabama in 2014.

- Last, have you heard about the new Disney movie about Sarah Palin?