Cheat Sheet

Unlike the McCain marionette show, the Obama campaign's wires don't show, so it's easy to underestimate just how valuable chief strategist David Axelrod has been to its success. The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle has the definitive take. Axelrod has advised several African-American candidates, and has come up with "something that approaches a unified theory of how to elect a black candidate—emphasizing biography, using third-party authentication [endorsements from individuals that whites respect, like the Kennedys, for example], attacking with an unconventional sideways approach, letting voters connect to the candidate by speaking to them directly in ads, and telling voters that supporting the black candidate puts them on the right side of history." The Obama campaign is the jewel in Axelrod's crown.

Roberto Saviano should be sitting on top of the world. His expose of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra, is a runaway bestseller in Italy, and has been made into a film that Italy has submitted to the Oscars. One problem: His success has provoked the Camorra to put a price on his head. Ian McEwan is the latest author to sign a petition in support of Saviano. Its 200,000 signatories include Martin Amis, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Auster, and Jose Saramago. “I personally make no distinction between the Camorra and certain extremist religious groups,” McEwan said, “which try to close down discussions with threats of violence.”

Drudge fomented outrage in the conservative blogosphere yesterday when he posted an item about an attack in Pittsburgh where an African American mugger supposedly carved a “B” into 20-year-old Ashley Todd’s cheek after he noticed a John McCain bumper sticker on her car. Many feared the sudden injection of racial fears into the race, but it turns out that they need not to worry: The entire thing was a hoax. The supposed victim, who volunteers for McCain’s campaign, admitted to police today that she made it up after taking a polygraph test. Pittsburgh police say they will press charges against her.

740 Park Avenue may be New York’s most posh address. The building has been home to Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Chryslers, and Jackie Kennedy before she was a Kennedy. Courtney Ross, widow of Time Warner mogul Steve Ross, put her 32-room apartment, the largest in the building, up for sale this week. “It’s going to be the most expensive apartment ever sold in New York,” said Edward Lee Cave, the sales agent, who also explained that he’s only showing it to ten “appropriate” buyers. A buyer must put half the cost down in cash, prove a net worth of at least three times the value of the apartment, and pass a social evaluation by the building’s board. Cave isn’t worried. “It’s not going to be ‘at least’ $60 million,” he said. “It will be over $60 million.”

First Kim Jong Il, now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—could the Axis of Evil be felled by rumored illnesses? After Ahmadinejad missed a series of speeches, The Guardian reports that rumors have begun to abound that he has a long-term illness. Doubts about the president’s health couldn’t come at a worse time, as Ahmadinejad’s administration is trying to deal with “near 30 percent inflation, rising unemployment, plummeting oil prices, a market traders' strike over a plan to impose VAT, and demands for the resignation of his interior minister.” Political opponents of Ahmadinejad could be spreading the rumors to endanger his chances in the upcoming election.

Because airport wasn't invasive enough already: The European Commission has proposed that by 2010, airports across Europe should contain body scanners that can see through clothing, showing everything from prospective weapons to breast implants and colostomy bags, according to the London Times. Members of European Parliament that oppose the scanners say they increase the temptation to leak personal information about celebrities to the public. Says one Tory spokesman, “This technology has the potential—and, I stress, the potential—to force air passengers to undergo what could be seen as undignifying treatment.”

Now here’s something you don’t read everyday: a joint editorial from John Kerry, Newt Gingrich, and Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s. They take to The Times to argue that our health care system needs a “data-driven information revolution” similar to the one that has beset baseball. “Remarkably, a doctor today can get more data on the starting third baseman on his fantasy baseball team than on the effectiveness of life-and-death medical procedures,” the authors write. By supplementing a doctor’s experience-based expertise with good, hard stats on what works and what doesn’t, we could enter a new era of “evidence-based health care.”

Over in The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan waves some rhetorical pompoms for the McCain campaign, but the show lacks spirit. While Noonan assures her readers that McCain isn't quite finished yet, she also concedes that an Obama presidency might not be such a bad thing, and, interestingly, acquits the Republican's favorite scapegoat, the media, of culpability. "You have to go over the head of the interpreters and gently seize the country by its lapels," Noonan writes. "Mr. McCain never got much over their heads. This is not because they're so tall. His campaign was not so much about meaning as it was, in the end, a series of moments"—Joe the Plumber, the trip to Washington, et al.

The Dow’s initial shedding of 300 points this morning isn’t as bad as it may sound—after overnight futures trading had to be halted, many feared a sharper sell-off. Automakers and electronic companies were particularly hard hit. Ford, General Motors, Apple, and Sony all reported steep losses.  “There’s a lot of panic out there today,” one strategist told the Associated Press. “People have been saying that we’re in a recession. This is the realization.”

Poll-watchers might not have noticed any movement on the national level yesterday, but the state polls were pure bad news for McCain. A series of polls showed Obama with big leads in nearly all the swing states—double-digit margins in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, as well as advantages in Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina. Nate Silver calls it McCain's worst polling day of the year, and docks nearly three points of McCain's chances of winning the election, which he now calculates at a measly 3.7 percent.

Fun report from The Independent: Iceland’s been hit hard by the financial collapse, and now Gordon Brown has used England’s anti-terror laws to freeze the assets of an Icelandic bank. Most nations would protest the terrorist label with angry mobs. But Icelanders, sweethearts that they are, have a more off-hand approach. They have sent Gordon Brown pictures of their families in matching sweaters with words like, “Darling Brown. We are not terrorists but terribly nice and friendly.” An Icelandic photographer has been documenting the anti-Brown forces. One man wielded a snowball as a weapon; another a gun made of Legos.

The Washington Post reports that AIG, in a little more than a month, has already spent three-quarters of its $123 billion rescue loan. That's like 500,000 Sarah Palin shopping sprees. And, the best news of all is that, despite the largest taxpayer bailout in history, AIG's new CEO warned that that the company may fail anyway. The company has been unable to sell off major assets in order to repay the government loans due to its damaged credibility and the difficulty of securing credit and financing. According to the Post, "Wall Street analysts said this is a vulnerable juncture for the insurance giant. It's now in a deep trough--from which it may either emerge leaner and meaner or never return."