Midday open thread

• Headline from CQ:

  Fact-Checking the Ayers Allegations: So Wrong, It’s “Pants on Fire” Wrong

  What about the educational foundation? What "radicals" are associated with it?

  Let’s look at a few, starting with the funder. Annenberg was a lifelong Republican and former ambassador to the United Kingdom under President Richard Nixon. His widow, Leonore, has endorsed McCain. Kurtz might just as plausibly have accused Obama and the foundation of “translating Annenberg’s conservatism into practice.”

  Among the other board members who served with Obama were: Stanley Ikenberry, former president of the University of Illinois; Arnold Weber, former president of Northwestern University and assistant secretary of labor in the Nixon administration; Scott Smith, then publisher of the Chicago Tribune; venture capitalist Edward Bottum; John McCarter, president of the Field Museum; Patricia Albjerg Graham, former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Journalism, and a host of other mainstream folks.

  “The whole idea of it being radical when it was this tie of blue-chip, white-collar, CEOs and civic leaders is just ridiculous,” said the foundation’s former development director, Marianne Philbin.

  (The Chicago Tribune, by the way, is a conservative newspaper. It has never endorsed a Democrat for president in its entire history.)

  The conclusion?

  This attack is false, but it’s more than that – it’s malicious. It unfairly tars not just Obama, but all the other prominent, well-respected Chicagoans who also volunteered their time to the foundation. They came from all walks of life and all political backgrounds, and there’s ample evidence their mission was nothing more than improving ailing public schools in Chicago. Yet in the heat of a political campaign they have been accused of financing radicalism. That’s Pants on Fire wrong.

• After a bit of a drought, I've got a small trickle of hate mail this morning. It's of particularly low quality, so the site must've been mentioned by one of the dumber Rush Limbaugh knuckle-dragging clones on radio.

  Re: YOU ARE SUCH A HATER

  HOW COME YOU ARE SUCH A HATER?
  YOU FAG

  This poor sap will never have the self-awareness to realize that he is the walking definition of "irony".

• Schumer and Specter get into it. Specter thinks that Republican mismanagement of the economy should be off limits in political ads. He's frackin' crazy.
• Crazy Ol' Hitchens:

  Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience.

  But don't worry, Hitchens is still crazy, as he makes a point of nothing that he doesn't think Obama will "surrender" to the Islamofascists. Phew.

• Holy shit is this funny. I didn't get what Atrios was getting at until I got to the very end of the Slate letter.
• Newspaper endorsements:

  McCain 11
  Obama 28
  

  In 2004, Kerry beat out Bush 220 to 205. And of Obama's 28 endorsements, five came from papers that endorsed Bush in 2004. McCain has won no Kerry endorses.

  And for the record, I've long maintained that newspaper endorsements don't mean squat for high-visibility races like the presidential. Newspaper editorials are pretty much meaningless these days.

• Glenn Greenwald: First Kristol urges the McCain campaign to get aggressive and go on the attack in his column:

  I asked at the end of our conversation whether Palin, fresh off her own debate, had any advice for McCain… . “Have fun. Be yourself, and have fun. And Senator McCain can do the same.” She paused, and I was about to thank her for the interview, but she had one more thing to say. “Only maybe I’d add just a couple more words, and that would be: ‘Take the gloves off.’ ”

  And maybe I’d add, Hockey Mom knows best.

  Then he does the same on Fox News:

  I disagree with all of the advice that McCain is getting… . You have to talk endlessly about the economy. These attacks on Obama on Bill Ayers and possibly Reverend Wright don’t matter. I don’t agree with that. … McCain has got to tie the economic crisis to Obama’s character and judgment and say:  ”who do you want in charge for four difficult years, who is up to the job — is this inexperienced, liberal Democrat who has hung out with some pretty unsavory characters, is he the guy who you want him to run the country?” I think that’s got to be the core of McCain’s message tonight.

  But now that the McCain/Palin attacks are backfiring, Kristol admits the attacks don't work without admitting his own culpability in pushing that strategy.

  Kristol went on Fox News this morning and attacked the McCain campaign for running what he called a “stupid campaign” and “a pathetic campaign” because the attacks ”haven’t worked” and they’re “doing things that don’t work and they keep doing them” — without ever bothering to mention that he, Kristol, just last week, was one of the loudest and most vocal advocates for relying on these character attacks against Obama.