PAJAMA-BAITING IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Mickey Kaus thinks it’s Axelrod, and that it’s deliberate.

Meanwhile, Jake Tapper on Facebook: “Who cares what some anonymous coward at the WH thinks about bloggers?” Bloggers, of course!

UPDATE: Reader Paul Harper writes on Rangel and Pajama-baiting:

Interesting timing re: take off the pajamas. Kaus is often right on this stuff and Obama badly needs an excuse to stand still a while longer in Afghanistan. But the real function is to erect another kind of Dem to distract the media from the scandal that could really cost the WH and the Dems in 2010 and 2012: a close connection to Charles Rangel.

Unfortunately, the optics of race are part of this undercurrent; but the reality is that Rangel is simply practicing the kind of pocket-lining that Dems and Republicans of all political stripes have been practicing for ages. Rangel, however, is about (maybe) to be caught.

Obama looks good, saintly, when preaching for everyone to be just like him calm and composed as he stands transfixed in the headlights of history. Me? I’m all for jumping out of the way or for figuring out someway to knock out the driver quick.

Obama needs real opposition in Congress in 2010 and Axelrod understands how vulnerable Dems are on the Chicago politics of cash issue.

Are they that smart? Anyway, InstaPundit, at least, remains undistracted — see the next post.