You know things are bad when the presidential campaign is put on hold so that the senators running for the White House can “deal” with the “historic” crisis facing the US economy. One problem is that nobody really knows what the hell is going on, although Bill Clinton articulated the general drift of it quite well on Letterman the other night, a show that John McCain has just pulled out of appearing on tonight.

When average people read a headline about Wall Street and the federal reserve and Fannie and Freddie and the stock market and sub prime mortgages and bailouts and other economic bullshit, I’m not sure they understand even as much as I do, which isn’t a lot. All I know is that we’re in some hot water, economically, that suddenly nobody has any money, nobody’s buying anything, and people are frightened out of their wits. Not a pretty picture: I hope we actually have some economically sensible leadership in Washington after all, cause we’re going to need it.

UPDATE: It seems that Obama doesn’t agree with McCain and wishes to continue the campaign and the debate on Friday, saying, “It’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess.” Read: McCain gambled, and Obama didn’t bite. Ouch.