Playing McCain

“I do too have the nerve to say it to his face…”

Is the Obama campaign playing John Sydney McCain III for a chump? It seems so. After threatening to “take the gloves off” for the 2^nd debate and then not daring to mention his only campaign issue—Bill Ayers—JSM3 is back at it again. Now he’s dropped the glove metaphor and replaced it with the shoe-- “I’m going to kick his you know what.” Yes the big bad Maverick actually said, “you know what” instead of ass.

Obama, knowing full well that every time the Maverick mentions Ayers the Republicans lose a point in the polls, dared him to say it too his face. Maverick bit:

In an interview on a St. Louis radio station, McCain said Obama's comments that "I didn't have the guts" to talk about William Ayers in the last presidential debate have "probably ensured" that the former 1960s radical will come up in Wednesday's debate.

No wonder Hillary likes to play poker with this Maverick. He ain’t exactly Bret or Bart, is he?

Jack Stripling’s, “In defense of Ayers” is posted this morning on Inside Higher Ed

William Ayers has been trashed by conservative pundits and labeled “an unrepentant domestic terrorist” by Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, but the University of Illinois at Chicago professor has garnered the support of a growing number of peers who admire his scholarship and see the attacks on him as an affront to academic freedom.

Wall Street Reds

Things that make me rub my eyes. Two headlines for the same article—the first appearing atop a commentary in the Sun-Times, the second above Andrew Leonard’s original piece at Salon.com.

Socialism’s stock rises sharply on Wall Street

Wall Street: Three cheers for socialism

Leonard writes in Salon:

In the first 10 minutes of trading on Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose over 420 points. What could possibly explain this? Have investors been driven to unthinkable heights of delirium by Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize for economics?

The Sun-Times version cuts out the line about Krugman for some reason.