Jay Leno on Friday ribbed Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the poor state of the economy.

In his opening monologue on the "Tonight Show," the comedian began with a lot of politics first joking about the President's Middle East peace talks, then moving to the war in Afghanistan, and eventually a poke at airline security.

On the day the Labor Department announced an uptick in the unemployment rate, Leno had a number of jokes about how bad the economy is.

Finally, the monologue concluded with a nice tribute to a United States Marine Corps unit in the audience (video follows with commentary):

Elisabeth Hasselbeck finally called out some of "The View"co-hosts on the Sarah Palin bashing she finally proclaimed September 25 as "Hate Sarah Palin Day." Immediately the other co-hosts defensively swarmed over the comment denying there is any hate for Governor Palin. Joy Behar claimed "it’s not personal. It’s my country that I’m worried about."

Hasselbeck’s remark was sparked by a discussion over a new YouTube video displaying a Kenyan preacher praying to protect a woman, who resembles Gov. Palin, from witchcraft. Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck explained to the other two theologically challenged co-hosts that this is simply a prayer to protect this woman, possibly Sarah Palin, from evil.

Whoopi also defended playing and discussing the video stating "if Barack Obama had been in that church and somebody was praying over him to keep him free from witchcraft, we’d be having this discussion, okay?" However, the previous day, Whoopi sang a different tune responding to Elisabeth’s mention of Joe Biden’s many gaffes.

Influenced by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert's recent claims on MSNBC's Morning Joe that the McCain campaign deliberately included "phallic symbols" along with images of attractive young white women in an ad attacking Barack Obama to exploit racial resentment, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann latched onto this theory on Monday's Countdown show and observed that the ad featured "two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy," and contended that the ad included "three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama," opining that the ad is an example of "miscegenation," and that it suggests Obama is "going to wind up dating those women."

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, also an MSNBC political analyst, charged: "That's the oldest and deepest racist, you know, canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner." And, ignoring the GOP's history of portraying white Senator John Kerry as elitist during the 2004 campaign, Alter further charged that Republicans are "trying to portray [Obama] as being uppity," and hinted at the racially charged connotation of the word "uppity." (Transcript follows)

The July 31 edition of "The View" predictably picked up McCain’s now famous celebrity ad, and predictably, three of them were not pleased. Whoopi Goldberg specifically objected to the use of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and called such an action "beneath him." Joy Behar simply felt McCain was "jealous" and said he is no longer a good person.