Today I was *really* back to normal, so much so that I probably won't tell you anymore :)  Got my hair cut, registered my car at the DMV, took a different car to the dealer, had some clothes altered, ...  a normal day.  Oh, and I got some work done, too :)

I understand the market took it in the shorts again today (pun intended).  This is normal stuff, corrections, good stuff.  I'm sad to see my IRA portfolio decline, but happy to see the correction working itself out.  Time for normal valuations again.

The European and Japanese markets are responding in kind.  So be it.  I find it hard to think of this as a "crisis".  A crisis is when a hurricane hits a populated city, flooding thousands of homes.  This is more like, well, a market at work.

Powerline suggests this might make you feel better; the graph at right, which shows US GDP per person.  This would allow you to say the economy is working well, even if Wall Street isn't... 

To nobody's surprise, the New Yorker endorses Obama for President.  They've been working hard for this ever since he defeated Clinton for the nomination, and of course have been heavily anti-Republican and anti-Bush for years.  Still, the tone of this issue is different, they're trying to convince their small handful of uncommitted readers, and are just slightly less strident as a result.  Expect the normal attacks to resume next week :) 

This reminds me of the great comment by Bill Whittle, in the wake of 9/11, that the most important election of our lifetime was in 2000, but we didn't know it at the time.  Everyone thinks this election is so important, but I don't know; we're going to have change either way, and at the end of the day the President doesn't have as much power to change things as you might think.  Especially an inexperienced President like Obama is going to flounder for a while, figuring out what can be done.

The polls have Obama ahead comfortably at the moment, but Gerard Vanderleun points out flipping the weighting flips the polls.  Remember, all the polls had Kerry leading comfortably, too.  And he lost decisively.  The MSM are so far in the tank, their objectivity in everything, including polling, has to be suspect. 

Paris is getting a new skyscraper (the first since 1977), the aptly named Le Project Triangle!  Very cool looking, too.  Will it fit into Paris?  No.  But then, neither did the crystal pyramid at the Louvre, and it has become a Parisian icon :) 

Plug-in hybrids: they're here....  [ via Instapundit ] 

So eBay bought BillMeLater.  I can't figure this one out, can you?  I mean, they already own PayPal.  Is there anything BillMeLater can do that PayPal cannot?  It can't be just to get their users, or to take them out of the market...