ADVICE TO JOURNALISTS: “Reporters, if you want to be an advocate, do both yourself and journalism a favor. Leave. Go to Madison Avenue. The pay’s better.”

HMM: Rev. Jackson seeks ban on Wall St. campaign money. “The Rev. Jesse Jackson called on Congress Saturday to ban campaign contributions from major financial institutions for members of financial oversight committees.” (Via Newsalert, which comments: “No word yet on whether Jesse Jackson feels guilty about taking money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Also no word yet on whether Jesse Jackson is giving back Enron money.” Hey, he can’t be corrupted by their cash. It’s too late for that!)

STEPHEN GREEN is in fanboy heaven.

IS THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES manufacturing white racists to advance its preferred election narrative?

SOME ECONOMIC FIGURES FROM DRUDGE: “DOW UP 40 POINTS IN PAST MONTH… UP 18% PAST 5 YEARS… UP 44% PAST 10 YEARS…”

INSPIRED BY JOE BIDEN, TigerHawk looks at more new forms of patriotism:

More fundamentally, are you basically a load? Do you sit around in a beanbag chair eating chips all afternoon, or burn up your days watching Oprah? Stop wasting your time on stupid stuff! Improve the country, or at least improve yourself. Read a book, clean up your front yard, wash your car, pull your money out of mortage-backed securities, whatever. All of those things, except maybe the last, are patriotic!

Read the whole thing.

SARAH’S SURPRISE: Palin to meet world leaders at U.N. next week.

OBAMA ON MILITARY POLICY:

HOW COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES are preparing for a pandemic. Well, I’m glad that they are. But I’m currently reading John Ringo’s latest, which is about an outbreak of bird flu in a “year without a summer” — and now I see the above, and am waiting for the NASA press conference on solar cooling on Tuesday, and, well, I don’t want things to get any more realistic. I mean, even Fallen Angels doesn’t have a pandemic and an ice age.

As I recall, though, Ringo had the same feeling a little while ago. All full of carrots and apples, he is . . . .

I DON’T REMEMBER EVER SEEING SO MUCH criticism of Howard Kurtz in previous election cycles, except, you know, from Mickey Kaus.

HAS THE FED BEEN bailing out foreign banks, too?

LOOKING AT THE FINANCIAL BAILOUT, with Tom Maguire and Kevin Drum. And here’s a WSJ story.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “OK, we’ll say it if no one else will: Thank heaven for Gramm-Leach-Bliley. If you’ve been listening to the fulminations from Congress and the campaign trail, you know that we’re talking about the 1999 law that dismantled the Depression-era barriers between commercial and investment banking. Democrats largely supported it at the time, and one of their own, Bill Clinton, signed it. Now they frame it as a Republican bill that helped send the nation on the path to perdition.” But according to IBD it made this week’s rescues possible: “By taking down an outmoded firewall, the law is helping the financial industry cope with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis. Far from being the cause, this instance of deregulation, or whatever you call it, is part of the cure.”

UPDATE: Tyler Cowen is on this, too:

Did the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act cause the housing bubble?

No. That is one common myth among the progressive left. Because it involves financial deregulation and the unpopular Phil Gramm, the Act is vilified and assumed to be part of a broader chain of evil events. Here are some of the articles which promulgate the myth that the Act caused or helped cause the housing bubble. One version of the claim originates with Robert Kuttner, but if you read his article (and the others) you’ll see there’s not much to the charge. Kuttner doesn’t do more than paint the Act as part of the general trend of allowing financial conflicts of interest.

Most of all, the Act enabled financial diversification and thus it paved the way for a number of mergers. Citigroup became what it is today, for instance, because of the Act. Add Shearson and Primerica to the list. So far in the crisis times the diversification has done considerably more good than harm. Most importantly, GLB made it possible for JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns and for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch. It’s why Wachovia can consider a bid for Morgan Stanley. Wince all you want, but the reality is that we all owe a big thanks to Phil Gramm and others for pushing this legislation. Brad DeLong recognizes this and hail to him. Megan McArdle also exonerates the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Read the whole thing. Plus, from the comments: “The majority of left-wing blogs are absolutely loving the financial crisis. It’s the rapture of the marxists.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A different take from Ed Cone, who cites this article by Alan Sloan.

ADVICE ON staying safe in your garage.

CAR LUST: The thrills of a Yugo.

MAHMOUD’S NUCLEAR ADVENTURES: Some Ahmadinejad cartoons.

KILLER DRONES that can see through walls?

FROM FRANK J.: A Modest Proposal for Training Future Presidents.

FILM CRITICS AND HOLLYWOOD: giving terrorists a pass, as usual.

HOW BAD WERE THINGS LAST WEEK? This bad.

THE COLOSSAL SQUID: A photo gallery.

REX MURPHY: The Incredible Shrinking Obama. If he’s getting this kind of coverage in Canada, it’s probably a bad sign. Meanwhile, reader C.J. Burch emails: “Panic is an emotional state. Can’t be measured by stats. Maybe there is no reason at all for Obama and the media to panic, still looks like they have. Doesn’t it?”

Yeah, it does.

OUCH: “The McCain camp calls out — by name — another reporter (this one from TIME) and goes to far as to quote her snide response when provided with information which contradicts her storyline.”

THABO MBEKI agrees to resign. I don’t know much about the particular circumstances that led to this, but it’s hard to see him as much of a loss. On the other hand, it’s far from clear that his successor will be an improvement.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple computer news, including how to get HDTV on Apple TV.