STOCKS SOAR on rescue plan news. Let’s hope it’s more than a short-term bump.

IT’S A CAR, IT’S A PLANE, and it’s a hybrid!

LARRY KUDLOW: The decision by SEC Chairman Chris Cox to ban short selling is a terrible idea.

WHY SO LITTLE IKE COVERAGE? Reader Russell Burgos thinks it might be because Galveston officials have restricted media access. That wouldn’t explain people ignoring Houston, etc., though, would it?

UPDATE: Burgos’ link is out of date and the media restrictions were rescinded after a day.

A HIGH-MILEAGE FIRST LOOK at the new Jetta TDI sedan. “With a starting price tag for the sedan of just $21,990 (minus a $1,300 tax credit) for a well-equipped model and $23,590 for the wagon, this car is a great deal for those who are looking for excellent fuel mileage and a fun to drive car.”

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, the Justice Department would become a partisan political institution. And they were right!

BETTER ALL THE TIME: A roundup of good news you probably missed from The Speculist. I love this feature.

IN THE MAIL: Robert Baer’s The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.

THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES A NEW AD ON THE FINANCIAL CRISIS:

Meanwhile, Time attacks McCain’s Fannie Mae ad as racist — because it doesn’t go far enough:

This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.

Let me stipulate: Obama’s Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn’t even mention a far more significant tie–that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama’s vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies on a fleeting and tenuous reference in a Washington Post Style section story to suggest that Obama’s principal economic adviser is former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines. Why? One reason might be that Johnson is white; Raines is black.

Or maybe there are just too many dubious Obama associations to fit into a single commercial? Anyway, here’s the ad — make up your own mind. And maybe the McCain people can oblige the folks at Time by rolling out a Jim Johnson ad next? It’s a target-rich environment . . . .

Meanwhile, if Obama is President, will Time regard every criticism of his administration as racist?

UPDATE: Bob Krumm emails: “How do you know that the Obama-Raines ad hits its target? Because Time magazine has declared that it is racist.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive! Here’s the Jim Johnson ad:

So does that undercut the racism charges? Will Time apologize? Are these rhetorical questions?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Two, two, two papers in one!

ANOTHER SWITCH: “As Barack Obama and John McCain battle for the Hispanic vote, a leading Latino backer of Hillary Clinton is crossing party lines to support the Republican presidential nominee.”

SO HOW’S THAT no money from lobbyists thing working out?

AND NOW FOR SOME REALLY IMPORTANT NEWS: It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrh!

INSTA-POLL: Reader Chris Woods emails: “Is Yahoo Mail the new Watergate Hotel? So now we have a story of some apparently low-level political operatives conducting a clandestine break-in designed to embarrass a political opponent during an election cycle. Is Barack Obama therefore about to become the new Nixon (I mean without the foreign policy competence)?” Well, what do you think?

UPDATE: Reader Walter Boxx emails: “I can’t vote in your Palin email account poll because you left off the only sensible answer. It is a serious issue (not Watergate though) but it will be treated like a juvenile prank by the press. In a day or two it will be off the news.” Yeah, if Obama’s mail had been hacked it would be treated as an outrage and a sign of the growing thuggishness of political discourse, with demands for heads to roll — and, notwithstanding his representations otherwise, I don’t think Nick Denton would have run it, because he would have feared the consequences. But this is different, because Sarah Palin is a Republican.

SO I WAS ON PAJAMAS TV LAST NIGHT talking about independents and the campaign. Here’s the question: Just they need to reach out to swing voters and moderates, are the Obama and McCain campaigns going negative in a way that’s likely to turn off the non-base voters? And are people in general suffering from “election fatigue”? (I am, but I’m a special case . . . .)

And yeah, the exposure on my camera was a bit off. I’m setting it manually next time; I think the background confused it.

JEFF EMANUEL: “If Senator Obama really has the solution to our ruinous financial situation, why is he withholding it from Congress while they are in their final session of the year?” It’s like John Kerry’s “secret plan to end the war” in 2004 — we never did get to hear that, even after the election was over.

JIM TREACHER offers a free-speech / spamming hypothetical.

THAT SCOTT CROSSFIELD BOOK that I mentioned yesterday is available for free online from the Scott Crossfield foundation.

FOLLOWING UP ON YESTERDAY’S POST about megapixels and marketing, I ran across this review of the Panasonic LX-3, which says: “Panasonic has taken a brave stand with the LX3, deciding not to increase the new camera’s resolution above 10-megapixels, snubbing the race for ever-higher pixel counts, arguably at the expense of image quality. Panasonic has actually created a new, large, 1/1.63-inch, 10.1-megapixel sensor ‘super high sensitivity multi-aspect CCD’ for this camera.” Yes, as noted yesterday, boosting megapixels often leads to poorer image quality. With a better sensor and a Leica lens, I suspect that this camera will deliver better images than a lot of higher-megapixel cameras. I also like it that it’s got a wide-angle lens; most small cameras offer more telephoto than you need, while not going as wide as you often want in close quarters, where they’re more often used.

MICKEY KAUS hasn’t given up on the John Edwards story.

I DON’T GET THE SHOW, but a reader emails that “Mark Levin called for the resignations of Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Charles Rangel.” There’s certainly plenty of room for criticism.

DAN RIEHL:

Gee, if I didn’t know better, I’d almost think this was an orchestrated event. You know, okay, everyone be sure and write a headline with Sarah Palin and “John Birch,” or “Bircher” in it.

Problem is, it’s already been debunked. That was quick.

If people were examining Obama that closely, it would be a “smear” and a “distraction.” Even if it were true.

A READER TAKES ME TO TASK for not paying enough attention to the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in Texas, and she’s right. The Houston Chronicle has been doing a good job of covering that, and there’s a lot of coverage from John Little. And here’s the latest update from Dr. Melissa Clouthier. If you’ve got more stuff, please send it.

Why do hurricanes that hit Texas get so much less attention than hurricanes that hit New Orleans?

UPDATE: Another reader emails: ‘If you want to discuss lack of coverage, wasn’t the hurricane that hit New Orleans the same hurricane that nearly wiped the Mississippi gulf coast off the map?” Yes. Why did New Orleans get so much more attention? Is it because the media wanted to paint the Bush Administration as racially insensitive, or is New Orleans just the only place they could find on a map?

STUART TAYLOR: I no longer trust the major newspapers or television networks to provide consistently accurate and fair reporting and analysis of all the charges and countercharges. Me neither.

BROKEN PROMISE:

As the stock market plunged nearly 1,000 points in two days this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was preoccupied with protecting billions of dollars worth of earmarks contained in a separate, unpublished committee report that got a one-sentence reference in a giant $612 billion defense bill. Reid engineered the 61-to-32 vote to limit debate on the bill, thus barring consideration of an amendment offered by Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina Republican’s amendment would have deleted the reference to the committee report so that it would have to be considered separately. By leaving the language in the bill, the lawmakers were able to carry out one of their favorite maneuvers: Incorporating committee reports into omnibus bills so they can give billions of tax dollars to their cronies without recorded votes on specific spending measures. This is the same Harry Reid who with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of Republican corruption if voters would return the Democrats to the majority.

But Reid’s move was not just a slap at DeMint. Under pressure from a bipartisan coalition of fiscal watchdog groups, including Porkbusters, Club for Growth, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union and Taxpayers for Common Sense, President George W. Bush signed an executive order last January that directed federal agencies to ignore earmarks that only appear in committee reports. If DeMint’s proposal had passed, the earmarks in the defense bill’s committee report would have been merely suggestions – not legally binding spending instructions. No wonder Reid made sure the South Carolinian’s amendment never made it to the Senate floor.

Remember the change that the Democrats promised in 2006? It hasn’t materialized, has it?

THEY TELL ME THAT IF BARACK OBAMA IS ELECTED PRESIDENT Republicans will face People’s Tribunals for “war crimes.” We’ll see if they’re right . . . .