What's more important, depressing economic and earnings data or easing of the strained money markets? Investors sent the Dow spinning today as they weighed the two, finally settling for positivity and powering the industrial average 401.35 points higher to a close at 8,979.26. The S&P also posted more than a four percent gain, and the Nasdaq swelled 5.49 percent. Citigroup sparked early worries by announcing a $4.4 billion write-down in the securities and banking division; oil dropped to below $70 a barrel for the first time since June 2007, alarming OPEC; and Southwest Airlines announced its first quarterly net loss in 17 years. A bright spot was the improvement in interbank lending rates.

This won’t exactly be popular with the FBI, but the terrorist organization Al Qaeda is awash in funds. Anti-terrorism efforts to expunge Al Qaeda from the worldwide banking system mean it is sheltered from the rest of the world’s economic troubles. Al Qaeda’s principle source of funding is $800 million derived from the opium and cannabis trade. Its money-handling methods may be simple—they include moving cash by hand—but then isn’t it complexity that got Western banks into trouble in the first place?

It's a rainy Thursday evening in October and you're just sitting down to dinner when the phone rings. "Hello?" you say, and a disembodied voice replies: "Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington." It's enough to ruin your appetite! Less than three weeks before Americans head to the polls to pick a new president, the McCain campaign is rolling out the robo-calls. The latest, unearthed by Ben Smith of Politico, is going to voters in the battleground states of Wisconsin, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, and Maine. Expect even harsher phone attacks as we approach November 4.

With 19 days until Election Day, Obama is putting John McCain on the defensive by moving into traditionally Republican states. The AP reports that Obama is now buying ads in West Virginia, where he struggled with white voters in the primary and which George Bush won in 2004. He’s also considering pouring money into red states like Kentucky, North Dakota, and Georgia, the latter two of which he originally campaigned in but withdrew from after John McCain’s short-lived September surge. Even if Obama fails to win these states, the strategy hopes to draw McCain away from swing states where Obama has a better chance as McCain tries to shore up his base.

McCain was fired up at last night's debate, but will his anger help him with swing voters? Over at The Atlantic, James Fallows notes that, at debates, "it's a losing strategy to 'rally the base,'" and that candidates should instead "rally the center." "Everything about Barack Obama's approach to this debate, and all debates, was consistent with this reality," Fallows writes, while "McCain did just about the opposite." McCain lost "by emphasizing tactics over issues, by emphasizing partisan division over conciliation, by body-language contempt for his opponent, and by a demeanor that reinforced the short-tempered and dyspeptic impression from the previous debates."

All that complaining about bias in the "mainstream media" has paid off: A new Rasmussen poll finds 55 percent of voters say the media's coverage of the presidential campaign is more biased than in previous years. Six percent say the media is less biased, while 36 percent see no change. Twice as many Republicans as Democrats say the coverage is more biased; 52 percent of Democrats see no change compared to 16 percent of Republicans. Last month, 69 percent of voters said reporters were trying to help the candidate they want to win, and 50 percent said that candidate was Obama. (Eleven percent said reporters favored McCain.) Republicans see an overwhelming pro-Obama bias at CNN and MSNBC, while 58 percent of Democrats see a pro-McCain tilt at Fox.

What's the quickest way to make yourself sick these days? If licking a doorknob fails, try criticizing Vladimir Putin. Russia's leading human rights lawyer and dissident, Karinna Moskalenko, recently began suffering a series of weird symptoms—headaches, giddiness, and nausea. When her husband investigated, he discovered large quantities of mercury stashed beneath her car seat. Moskalenko was supposed to attend the trial of three men accused of murdering Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was an outspoken critic of Putin. Police in Strasbourg are investigating the matter and refuse to say whether a crime has been committed, but given Putin's penchant for poisoning his critics, it certainly begs the questioning.

The New York Times has a new interview with Angelina Jolie. It is, as usual, slyly unrevealing, but there is some news. Jolie says she makes action movies as therapy; this summer’s hit Wanted came about as a reaction to her mother’s death in January 2007. On Clint Eastwood, director of The Changeling: “There are big, emotional, heavy things in that movie where it was, maximum, two takes.” (Jolie carried around her mother’s picture for inspiration.) On having more kids: “I mean, I know we seem crazy, just bringing them in one after the other, but we do plan. We make sure one is absorbed completely into the family before we add another.”

Beside his duties as Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez is also a landscape painter. Few were aware of the president's talents until recently, when a painting attributed to Chavez, "Luna de Yare" (Yare's Moon), was auctioned off by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela for the sum of $255,000. The work was said to have been painted by Chavez during the time he spent in the Yare prison after his failed coup d'etat in 1992. However, since the sale there has been ample speculation in Venezuela’s art community that the piece is a fake! No definitive word yet, but artists and curators are studying the style of Chavez originals (including his landscapes of Swiss chalets) to determine whether “Luna de Yare” is indeed the authentic Hugo.

For someone who’s supposed to save us from the Wall Street mess, Henry Paulson is awfully connected to its architects. The folks over at ProPublica have crafted a nifty tool that sketches the Treasury Secretary’s various relations. Through his tenures at the New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs, and the U.S. Treasury, Paulson’s been in bed with pretty much everyone—the heads of Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns. He has, however, shown some discrimination: Just about the only guy without a direct link to Paulson is Dick Fuld.

Fashionistas of the New Great Depression may want to accessorize their potato sacks with a copy of Das Kapital. “Marx is in fashion again,” says a publisher in Germany, where The Guardian reports that Marx’s sales have recently risen 300 percent. Turns out that years after his supposed discrediting, some feel the old philosopher may have had a point. “Generally one has to admit that certain parts of Marx’s theory are really not so bad,” Germany’s finance minister told Der Spiegel—surely one of the most carefully hedged statements of all time.

In these trying times, who can afford to pay waiters? ZagatBuzz reports that restaurants “have increasingly been incorporating automated components into the dining experience.” Translation: Push a button instead of speaking your order. At Alain Ducasse’s Adour, diners peruse the wine list by using a touch screen on the bar. At Clo, a New York eatery, “patrons fill their glasses from automatic dispensers using prepaid credit cards.” Sounds impersonal, but then again, so does waiting ten minutes for a refill.

Last week, we brought you the juicy rumor (as reported on CNBC) that Dick Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, had been punched out in the company gym. New York magazine’s Steve Fishman reopened the case and reports that the story, however tantalizing, is false. “It’s a matter of fact that [Fuld] has not visited the club since the bankruptcy,” the club’s general manager tells Fishman. “We’re not even open on Sundays.” (The events were alleged to have happened on Sunday, Sept. 2). We’ll go with Fishman’s story and note, for the meantime, that Fuld has gotten off easy.

If Americans think their elections are ugly, they should mosey on over to Thailand. The Wall Street Journal reports on the resurgence of "lèse-majesté"—a 100-year-old law against insulting the king that can entail sentences of 15 years. The king himself has stated that the law is unneeded, but it has become a handy tool for politicians looking to silence their opponents. "It's the ultimate weapon in Thai society," said one of the accused. How is it misused? One BBC correspondent is under investigation for placing a picture of a Thai politician above a picture of the king on the BBC web page.

If the day’s seeming long, take a break and behold the spectacle of Ted Nugent—the rock n’ roll conservative who, in his free time, shoots stuff and rhymes things with his name (Teditorials, Tedquarters, etc.). “Hunting's the last pure, perfect activity on earth,” he tells Outside magazine. Ted killed 127 deer last year, but still finds the time to call the interviewer a “wench” and offer opinions on the election. “It's a target-rich environment,” he says. “On stage I told Hillary and Obama to suck on my machine gun. I think I actually told Hillary to straddle one and ride it off into the sunset, too.”

New theory about our economic turmoil: it was caused by pirates. You heard right. A British lecturer argues in a paper that modern corporations got their start on pirate ships during the "golden age of buccaneering": "Pirates elected their captain, voted on major decisions, and distributed their booty in roughly equal shares, and there is something in the idea that a pirate ship is the equivalent of a modern corporation." He continues, “These predatory voyages are the roots of modern venture capitalism, with these modern multi-national corporations out to get all they can get. That's the sort privateering that led to the Credit Crunch." The argument, Hayes admits, leads to troubling conclusions about modern capitalism. But there you go.

Chilling read from The Washington Times about the lengths Maryland is going to contain sex offenders on Halloween. The state is requiring that its 1,200 violent and child-sex offenders hang a sign with an orange pumpkin reading “No candy at this residence” on their doors. This is in addition to a law that already prohibits sex offenders from leaving their homes on the holiday. “Halloween provides a rare opportunity for you to demonstrate to your neighbors that you are making a sincere effort to change the direction of your life,” a letter accompanying the signs states. Or, if you’ve already made said effort, to remind them that you were, you know, a sex offender.

A note to the nouveau riche: "Art is the new gold." In a world of incomprehensible financial markets, Annie Deakin writes in a smart article in The Independent, art is "reassuringly tangible" and "the only safe bet for investors right now." Online art sales now give the uninitiated access to a market they may have previously feared because of the intimidation and judgment of gallery snobs. "Blogging, a wider market, competitive pricing and the stock market crash is fuelling the cyberspace art revolution," Deakin writes. "For infinity and beyond, art will be worth something—which is more than can be said about a Lehman share."

Election 2008 has a favorite everyman: "Joe the Plumber," whose name was mentioned 26 times in last night’s debate. Joe, it turns out, is a real person—Joe Wurzelbacher, from Holland, Ohio, whose 6-minute conversation with Barack Obama about taxes was fodder for McCain's attacks. "It's pretty surreal, man, my name being mentioned in a presidential campaign," Wurzelbacher said. You’re tellin’ us. After some confusion, it turns out that Joe the Plumber is registered to vote.

The cocktail is for lightweights, but this is serious business. Two Brits who were found in intimate circumstances on a beach in Dubai have been sentenced to three months in prison. Vince Acors and Michelle Palmer had met at a 60-pound all-you-can-drink champagne blowout. They insist they were merely “kissing and hugging” when spotted by witnesses and authorities. In fact, their sentence is a bit lenient by Dubai standards—the charges usually carry a term of six months to a year.