While investors on Wall Street and Joe Six-Packs on Main Street continue to fret about the current state of the international economy, my focus has turned to the Cornell Athletic Department and its lack of both sound financial judgment in determining hockey ticket prices and of mathematical fairness in choosing line numbers.

If this crisis on Cornell’s campus somehow became a core issue with voters in swing states, and I moderated a debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I think it would play out like this:

Alva: Good evening from Bailey Hall on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York; I'm Mitchell Alva. Welcome to this fourth presidential debate, sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

After an exhausting and masturbatory twenty month long election cycle, thank god the end is finally in sight. Obama and McCain are approaching the last mile of this marathon, and despite a flurry of new attacks and policy proposals, Obama has cleared the hurdles placed before him.

Last week, presidential candidate John McCain choked on a big fat Viagra pill. From the comfort of my own home, I watched in horror as the dear old geezer coughed and stuttered, his cheeks flushed and his doe eyes brimming with confusion and panic.

They say the greatest sign of insanity is when you repeat an action over and over, expecting different outcomes. Once again, (this time during the second presidential debate), McCain was asked to account for his tacit approval of health insurance companies who cover Viagra for men but not birth control for women.

He’s made the mistake before. But maybe he figured that blabbering like an idiot … again … when asked the question would make the big bad journalists go away for good.

MAVERICK. MAVERICK.

“Don’t try to understand ’em, just rope, pull and brand ’em.”

So goes the theme song to the classic early television show Rawhide, about a seemingly endless cattle drive through the Old West, which included a young Clint Eastwood as drover Rowdy Yates.

A maverick, of course, is a term originally applied to an unbranded cattle, or a person unbought, unbossed and unbeholden to anyone but his or herself. The term dates to Sam Maverick, a 19th century Texas rancher, and his decision to buck tradition and leave his cattle unbranded.

We are less than three weeks away from Elec­tion Day. In the longest presidential campaign in Amer­ican history, 15 primary candidates became two presidential hopefuls: Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. At this point in time, a typical campaign analyst would presume both platforms would have been well articulated, challenged, and disseminated in the presidential debates. But this is not a typical campaign, and that does not seem to be the case. In the midst of bemused moderators and citizens it is important to ask, what have we learned from Obama and McCain in the debates?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama has surged to a seven-point lead over John McCain one month before the presidential election, lifted by voters who think the Democrat is better suited to lead the nation through its sudden financial crisis, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that underscores the mounting concerns of some McCain backers.

Likely voters now back Obama 48-41 percent over McCain, a dramatic shift from an AP-GfK survey that gave the Republican a slight edge nearly three weeks ago, before Wall Street collapsed and sent ripples across worldwide markets. On top of that, unrelated surveys show Obama beating McCain in several battlegrounds, including Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa — four states critical in the state-by-state fight for the presidency.

Prior to the Educate the Vote panel at Bailey Hall last Friday, members of the KyotoNOW! were on the Bailey Plaza campaigning for “Green Jobs Now” and calling for young voters to pledge to make energy policies a top priority in the upcoming election.

The purpose of Green Jobs Now is to get voters to discuss the potential to revitalize our economy with clean, safe and just green jobs that lift people out of poverty.

“We are trying to make clean energy and green jobs a part of the debate and a part of what people think about when they search for [their] candidate’s policies,” Kimberly Schroder ’09, tabling chair for the Power Vote campaign said, standing next to a poster, which read in bold green letters “GREEN JOBS … helping the environment and our economy.”