Cheat Sheet

Hundreds of American prisoners remained hostage in North Vietnam ’s camps after John McCain and 590 other prisoners were released in 1973, says the Pulitzer-prize winner Sydney Schanberg. And McCain, he alleges, has played the central role in Congress in keeping their abandonment secret: they were most likely executed and few if any are alive. His long and detailed investigative article has been strangely shunned by the mainstream press. It can be found in its entirety on the Nation Institute website (nationinstitute.org).

Whopper of a report from Alaska: Sarah Palin overstepped the powers of her office when she leaned on various state officials to fire her ex-brother-in-law. The report also notes that Palin allowed Todd Palin, the so-called First Dude, to lobby for the firing of trooper Michael Wooten. From the report: “Such impermissible and repeated contacts create conflicts of interests for subordinate employees who must choose to either please a superior or run the risk of facing that superior’s displeasure and the possible consequences of that displeasure.” Palin likely doesn’t face any penalties, but the October publicity is something she would have liked to avoid.

The gold rush towards California is back, but this time people are putting it on their fingers. A study released earlier this week by the University of California found that 3,800 same-sex couples are rushing to marry in the state each month before November 8, when the public votes on a referendum that could revoke the right. In the last three months, more same-sex couples have married in California than have in Massachusetts over the last four years. "For certain, some portion of these 11,000 are not Californian residents," said researcher Gary Gates. The counties with the biggest increases in weddings "tend to correlate with tourist places in the state."

Too busy nailing Sarah Palin’s goofy answers, the media are letting Joe Biden get away with serial blunders, says Jonah Goldberg. Can it be that the “master Senator” knows less than much-reviled Dick Cheney about what Article 1 of the Constitution says? Or that the restaurant where Joe says he bonds with common folk has been closed for two decades? Or that he (ahem) lied sayingMcCain voted with Obama for a tax hike? And media watchdog The Daily Howler, skewers what someone it chooses to call the “Gotham dough boy” (NYT Frank Rich) for “ginormous misstatements” about McCain’s while writing “nonsensical” attacks on Palin?

It was the perfect Internet find this week: Sad Guys on Trading Floors. The Tumblr site aggregates the now-iconic photos of stock brokers looking glum—and, boy, they did they have material. Popular poses include the trader with hands over forehead, followed by the trader with hands over mouth. These men and women are to the financial pages what Brad and Angelina are to Us Weekly. The Wall Street Journal, however, lacks the funny captions.

Amid the non-stop gloom this week, here’s some salt for the United States’ financial wounds: According to the World Economic Forum, our northern neighbor’s banks are the soundest in the world. Canada’s banks scored a 6.8 on a scale of one-to-seven, while the U.S. scored a mere 4.0. America ranked 40 overall, behind Estonia and Namibia. The U.S. remained, however, king of the WEF’s competiveness rankings, which means that, while Canada’s house may be in better order, we can still burn it down.

Hard to imagine how the Brits took an interest in Judge Judy, who spends her days yelling at Americans about overdue rent, but The Guardian profiled America’s Favorite Scold earlier this week. Fay Weldon characterizes showbiz’s third-highest paid talker as “both stern father and anxious mother to an audience I suspect she sees as dumb and getting dumber, and in dire need of reform.” She then proceeds to endorse Judy as John McCain’s running mate on the basis of her birth-control plan—“having every woman implanted at birth with a contraceptive chip, to be taken out only on request.” We’ll stick with Palin.

First came beer. Then came technology. Google’s new application Mail Goggles, which aims to prevent the unfortunate intersection of the two, became a bit of a sensation this week. Mail Goggles causes a window to appears: “It’s that time of day. Gmail aims to help you in many ways. Are you sure you want to send this? Answer some simple math problems to verify.” If you can answer the five math problems before the allotted time counts down, you’re sober enough to rant. Users can change the allotted time and the hours during which the warning pops up.

After dipping below 8,000 for the first time in five years, the Dow see-sawed to a 8,451.19 close, a 128 point drop, to end one of its most turbulent weeks in history. Today's gyrations began with an early drop of more than 600 points following a panicked plunge in the international markets. Particularly hard hit today were Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. As The Wall Street Journal points out, "The stock market has so far avoided a one day plunge of 10 percent, the traditional definition of a crash. But even in the two instances when such a single-day drop did happen, in 1929 and 1987, the full week bloodletting was not as bad" as this week has been. Not very reassuring, is it?

And so the race card is played, and not, we imagine, for the last time. Rensselaer County elections officials on both sides of the aisle are throwing up their hands in horror, calling the slip a simple typo, though the Albany Times-Union notes that "s" and "b" are "not exactly keyboard neighbors." One voter who was one of 300 to receive the poorly spelled ballot told the newspaper: ''It's a little suspicious and at least grossly incompetent. If I crossed out the name and wrote in the right spelling, my ballot would be invalid." No word yet on what the real Osama thinks of being on the ballot.

Get ready for a free Dr. Pepper: Billboard is reporting that after a decade of rumors, delays, firings, rewrites, and Axl being Axl, Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy is set to drop November 23. This spring, the soda maker offered a free can of Dr. Pepper to every American if the album appeared this year, a pledge the company appears ready to honor. It will be Guns N' Roses' first new studio album since 1991—1993's The Spaghetti Incident was strictly covers. Two album tracks will be available before the release: “Shackler's Revenge” will appear in Rock Band 2, and “If the World” plays over the end credits of the new thriller Body of Lies.