Hot steaming links, straight off the griddle

• Campaign Spot: "Obi Wan: 'Believe me, there is someone in the Obama campaign who is deathly afraid of the 'McCain pulls even or goes ahead' poll.'"

• Orson Scott Card (Meridian Magazine): "Isn't [the financial meltdown] a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending? ...I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. 'Housing-gate,' no doubt. Or 'Fannie-gate.'"

• National Post of Canada: "Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof!"

• New York Post: "IF Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, our republic will survive, but our international strategy and some of our allies may not. His first year in office would conjure globe-spanning challenges as our enemies piled on to exploit his weakness... Add in Sen. Joe Biden - with his track record of calling every major foreign-policy crisis wrong for 35 years - as vice president and de facto secretary of State, and we'd face a formula for strategic disaster."