After nearly four years the DOW finally went below 1o,ooo today. I believe it's currently at 9600.00 and falling.

Dow Jones Industrial Average, DJI, DJIA - CNNMoney.com

I take it the bailout plan won't take effect for a month or long, so I guess investors will have to suffer for awhile longer until things start to take off.

I suppose this is a good opportunity for the not so fortunate people to learn to invest. Heck, with prices becoming lower, it's now our chance to make that money. :D

I actually have the stock page open and am in amusement at it falling. Everybody is selling of stocks and buying bonds because those are stable.

As ugly as today was, and the last 2 weeks in general, the worst is probably over. Today was the day the ban on shorting the market expired. So, most of the fall was probably people betting against the market.
This is the 2 minute run down on short selling for those unaware. To sell a stock short, you borrow the shares from the market and place a sell order on the stock. For example, if XYZ is trading at $100, I may borrow 100 shares from the market and sell them at $99.50. This can lead to rapid declines since the next guy will sell his borrowed shares at $99.49 and so on. the good news is at some point I actually have to buy back those shares. This is called covering. So, if I cover at $95.50, I make $400. If I cover at $103.50, I lose $400.
The good news is of course everybody that sold short today is going to have to cover at some point, so you have instant buying pressure. The other good news is most traders are just heard followers so there was a lot of shorting today by people that don't understand markets don't just lose 15% of their value in very short amount of time without correcting. So, there's going to be a lot of shorts going under soon which will cause even more covering.
If I had to make an amazing prediction, it would be that the DOW closes above 9000 going into the weekend.

It's no where near done dropping. That bailout doesn't help the market one iota. Some of the jumps today were just computer generated bids when the stocks they have been stalking got to the bottom level of what they wanted before they started to buy but of course they probably resold just as fast because it was only going to go further down.

It's gloomy all over, isn't it?
But I'm not touching my stocks...yet.

I doubt it. I think the pressure's off the market for the time being. The DOW came damn close to hitting 9000 yesterday http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=^DJI#symbol=%5EDJI;range=1d
That's after falling below 8000. I doubt it will really move a lot until after the year. I mean its not like next quaters results are going to be shiny and everything will be well again - very far from it. But, lets hope the days of losing 5%-8% day after day are over. At some point even bad stocks start looking cheap.

My uncle has lost 20k in his retirement plan because of this, and I doubt it's going to stop there.

Bail Out Plan = Mistake IMO.

I have already lost more than $50,000, but I cannot afford to bail out now at the bottom. One can only take a chance and hope for the best.