You Want Fries with That?

Here's a guy whose cholesterol would probably blow mine away...

A 54-year-old man says his obsessive-compulsive disorder drove him to eat 23,000 Big Macs in 36 years. Fifty-four-year-old Don Gorske says he hit the milestone last month, continuing a pleasurable obsession that began May 17, 1972 when he got his first car.

Gorske has kept every burger receipt in a box. He says he was always fascinated with numbers, and watching McDonald's track its number of customers motivated him to track his own consumption.

The only day he skipped a Big Mac was the day his mother died, to respect her request.

The guy's been eating Big Macs for longer than I've been alive. I'm just glad he didn't switch to the Mc D.L.T. in the 1980's. That was awfully tempting, what with this commercial...

The Media is Angry... And I Don't Care

Howard Kurtz says the MSM is angry. Sigh...

The media are getting mad.

Whether it's the latest back-and-forth over attack ads, the silly lipstick flap or the continuing debate over Sarah and sexism, you can just feel the tension level rising several notches.

Maybe it's a sense that this is crunch time, that the election is on the line, that the press is being manipulated (not that there's anything new about that).

News outlets are increasingly challenging false or questionable claims by the McCain campaign, whether it's the ad accusing Obama of supporting sex-ed for kindergartners (the Illinois legislation clearly describes "age-appropriate" programs) or Palin's repeated boast that she stopped the Bridge to Nowhere (after she had supported it, and after Congress had effectively killed the specific earmark).

Oh, yes, the media is angry, because the voters are being misled. Good thing the media is here to save us.

I'm not going to waste time debunking the stupid claims regarding the sex ed bill and the Bridge to Nowhere in the last paragraph, since Geraghty has already done so here and here. Strategically, I'm not sure why McCain thought the former worthy of an ad, although the media's group defense response of "Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!" makes me wonder if the ad is more effective than I think. Likewise, I'm not sure why Obama thought attacking Palin on the bridge made sense, when he and his running mate both voted for it.

But back to the point -- I have a better theory on why the media is angry. Actually, let's have Julie Ponzi explain a bit...

In my experience, the leader of the U.S. media is the New York Times. Other newspapers and TV news organizations read the Times and follow suit. Indeed, TV reporters sometimes learn their agenda for the day by reading the Times. That model worked for quite some time, but it is breaking down. It is now becoming obvious that the "Mainstream media" (MSM) is no such thing. Moreover, thanks to the internet (and talk radio before that, but the internet, by providing more access to independent reporting has helped talk radio make news, rather than simply comment on it), it is getting harder and harder for a reporter to know what’s going on by following only the major newspapers and magazines.

In short, the gate-keeper role of the Times (and in politics The Washington Post) in particular, and of the old media establishment, is dying. Note Kurtz’s comment, "The lipstick imbroglio is evidence that the Drudge/Fox/New York Post axis can drive just about any story into mainstream land." (Mickey Kaus had a very intelligent discussion of this change about a week ago).

But there is one more, and, as far as I can tell, little discussed, element to the story: and that is the human dynamic. Put yourself in the shoes of a reporter for the New York Times or The Washington Post. He or she has worked hard for many years to reach the top of a particular hill. And just when he gets there, he finds that the hill is a much less important one than it was before.

Moreover, he suddenly finds that rogues and upstarts of whom he has never heard, and who have not put the years in, in the blogosphere, are getting more attention, and are more important than he. Combine that with the sad state of the news business, and there’s a real prolem. Each week, he hears of old friends and colleagues losing their jobs because the newspapers and perhaps networks too, can’t afford to pay them. If you’re 45 or so, and have just made it, and perhaps have a couple of kids who want to go to college, it’s going to cause grey hairs and ulcers.

Allow me to expand on this idea a bit. The media's frustration stems in large part from the loss of power -- they used to tell us what was important, and now they don't control the reins anymore.

Fundamentally, this is a good thing. Rather than a few voices determining what constitutes a story and tightly controlling access to information, we now have an opportunity for the marketplace to determine what constitutes a story that's newsworthy. Some may believe that this has created a situation where we see news networks competing in a race to the bottom of the sewer, but I think this misses the point.

Competition tends to make any industry better, and this is true of the news as well. Back in the day when your news came from the New York Times, Walter Cronkite and a few other evening news anchors, there was very little competition. When there's not as much competition, people don't work as hard to provide the best product possible.

Some people think the news as a product has declined in quality because of the additional competition, where some news sources have become far more likely to provide opinion as part of the news. I think they miss the fundamental point -- opinion has always been part of the news that has been reported, but now it's far more overt. And the disclosure of that opinion allows the consumer to determine the credibility of the news source.

In a way, this is why the traditional media is suffering today -- everyone knows there's bias, but they act like they're objective news sources reporting things in a straightforward manner. There's always bias that manifests itself, either consciously or unconsciously (see an interesting post from Megan McArdle on this point). I surf the web for the majority of my news, and there are news sources I trust to varying degrees. But I usually know their point of view and can make a judgment about their credibility up-front. And bias does not mean that a particular site is wrong when it reports a story -- it just means that I know before I read the story the chances that an agenda are present.

Kurtz's column is a good example of why I lack trust in a number of supposedly reputable news sources. Note the frustration about the press being "manipulated" and "false claims" being spread by the McCain campaign. The press is terribly frustrated that they have to spend time debunking stories about Obama being a closet sexist... but I don't recall such frustration when the Washington Post ran story after story after story on George Allen's macaca moment in 2006. I know the press wants to focus on "important" issues, which is why the Politico asked McCain about how many houses he owns -- that's a crucially important thing for voters to know. Similarly, I'm expecting the Post to blast Obama for his slimy, misleading and silly ad about McCain's lack of computer skills. Note that I haven't even referenced the incredible number of ridiculous stories about Gov. Palin.

At the end of the day, I don't know if any of these issues matter or not. But it would be presumptuous of me to decide that they don't -- the consumers are (believe it or not) smart enough to make that decision. If someone claims something that is blatantly false to be true, their credibility will take a hit, just like the media takes a hit when they report falsehoods.

This eventually ties back in to why the Democrats struggle in Presidential campaigns. For all the ridiculous claims about the Palin VP vet, it's amazing how the media essentially ignored Kerry's Winter Soldier testimony in 2004, or how they tried to ignore Edwards relationship with Rielle Hunter, or how they have essentially put on blinders on the Obama-Ayers relationship. Unlike in the past, these stories now get out, whether the New York Times reports them or not. Ultimately, the consumers/voters determine whether they're important.

And that's how it should be.

Irrelevant Unsolved Mystery of the Day

Bringing you the questions that don't matter, except they get stuck in your head and make you wonder...

The fall season of TV has started, but I have several more months to wait for the next season of Lost. But I'm wondering -- if Lost ended by having Gilligan (yes, I know Bob Denver is dead, but this is Lost), the Professor and Mary Ann rescue the survivors of Flight 815, would I be disappointed? Or intrigued?

Believe It or Not...

Wojr clues me in to news that should have everyone walking on air...

"We've written a screenplay, and we've hired a director, and we're in the midst of putting this together for the future," “Greatest American Hero” creator Stephen J. Cannell confirmed to a crowd gathered for Sunday’s 25th anniversary panel on the superhero series.

Stephen Herek (“Life Or Something Like It,” “Man of the House”) was reported in July to be the director attached to a big-screen version of series.

I still consider it a travesty that the show was cancelled. But hopefully this starts a new trend, and TV series that never should have been cancelled get movie treatment. In that case, I eagerly await a Misfits of Science movie.

The Palin Derangement Continues

Instapundit has a series of links to the latest in stupid Palin-bashing. I'm merely going to highlight my favorite examples.

First, here's Wendy Doniger, a professor of religion at the University of Chicago...

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman. The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!) she speaks for the women of America, and will capture their hearts and their votes, has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.

And as for religion, I'd love to know precisely how the Good Lord conveyed to her so clearly his intention to destroy the environment (global warming, she thinks, is not the work of human hands, so it must be the work of You Know Who), the lives of untold thousands of soldiers and innocent bystanders (He is apparently rooting for this, too, she says), and, incidentally, a lot of polar bears and wolves, not to mention all the people who will be shot with the guns that she thinks other people ought to have. An even wider and more sinister will to impose her religious views on other people surfaced in her determination to legislate against abortion even in cases of rape and in her attempts to ban books, including books on evolution, and to fire the librarian who stood against her.

She's only a woman, folks, if she believes in what I believe! Otherwise, she's really a man, baby! Next up, we have Juan Cole, who compares Palin to Osama bin Laden...

On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick.

...She calls abortion an "atrocity" and pledges to reshape the judiciary to fight it. Ironically, Palin's views on the matter are to the right of those in the Muslim country of Tunisia, which allows abortion in the first trimester for a wide range of reasons. Classical Muslim jurisprudents differed among one another on the issue of abortion, but many permitted it before the "quickening" of the fetus, i.e. until the end of the fourth month. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalists, however, generally oppose abortion.

Remember, if you're pro-life, you're nothing more than an Islamic fundamentalist with lipstick! Next, we have Gary Kamiya, who likens Palin to a dominatrix...

Right now, Palin has Democrats quaking in their boots -- and with good reason. But all hope isn't lost. For even if this election turns out to be a referendum on the national libido, Palin may scare off more voters than she attracts.

Because to anyone who isn't a true believer, Palin comes across not as a fantasy pinup, but as a dominatrix. And the S/M demographic isn't going to put the Republicans over the top in the swing states.

For the die-hard Republicans who lusted over Palin at the convention, her whip-wielding persona was a turn-on. You could practically feel the crowd getting a collective woody as Palin bent Obama and the Democrats over, shoved a leather gag in their mouths and flogged them as un-American wimps, appeasers and losers. "Drill, baby, drill!" the chant ecstatically repeated by the GOP faithful during Rudy Giuliani's speech, acquired a distinctly Freudian subtext after Palin spoke. The more Palin drilled the Democrats, the more hotly the base yearned to drill her. (We will leave it to shrinks to determine whether the GOP hardcore has the hots for Palin because she's reaming the Democrats, or because authority-worshippers tend to have secret fantasies of being reamed themselves.)

Um... okay. Leaving aside the fact that the same mag printed the article about her being a fundamentalist (never let it be said that Salon doesn't accept all points of view), I'm left wondering whether Kumiya has some issues he needs to see a therapist about. I'd also note Cintra Wilson's column at Salon, which is too stupidly funny to be adequately excerpted. Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan thinks Palin's failure to grant an interview until next week to the press corps is like living in Putin's Russia. This analogy makes a lot of sense, if you're high on desperation.

My new favorite -- in concluding a list of supposed Palin sins, this Boston Globe columnist says Palin has "a Talibanlike tolerance for beliefs unlike her own." Yeah, that's credible -- I hear Palin spent months blowing up giant statues of Buddha all over Alaska.

Jonah Goldberg's right that Gov. Palin needs to expand her talking points -- but the liberals and the media are too damn angry to make this point intelligently.

Keep it up, guys. Please -- at this rate, Obama may start defending Palin to fix his slide in the polls.

Remember

7 years. 365 weeks. 2557 days.

Think about all of the things you've done in that time, and all the important events in your life. Engagements. Weddings. Children being born. Graduations. Promotions. Vacations. Moments with friends and family.

Now think about the fact that 3,000 people lost the opportunity to be a part of such things on a day that dawned bright and sunny 7 years ago. Think about the grief their families and friends experienced.

I remember walking home from work that day, because I didn't want to stay in my downtown D.C. office and because traffic made driving impossible. The memory of watching the towers fall is seared into my brain. So is the fact that the actions of the folks who fought back on Flight 93 might have saved the lives of thousands of people in DC, including me.

I'm grateful for what those people did. I'm grateful for the people who defend our country today and prevent such things from happening again. I'm grateful that I'm still here to celebrate the events above, and hope dearly that those who lost loved ones that day have found some measure of peace in the years since then.

I have a daughter now, and some day I expect that she'll ask me about that day. I don't know what I will say, but I do know that I won't forget it. And none of us should allow ourselves to do so.

Every so often, I re-read something I wrote less than a week later in response to an email question expressed by a friend. I'm including it here (with minor edits to remove references to people's names and a references to a couple stories that I can't find a link to), because I still think it's relevant. I apologize for the language, although it's not that harsh considering other things on this blog...

Let's start with this quote from the last e-mail: "i see this attack on us and it makes me think, jesus christ, what have we done to deserve this? what have i done?"

The answer is this: we have done NOTHING to deserve THIS. You have done NOTHING to deserve THIS.

Hey, I know it's popular to sit around and engage in self-analysis in our society. I also know it's another fun game to assign responsibility for an act to someone other than the perpetrator. Combine the two in this case and you get something along these lines:

These people attacked us because of something we did, and we need to change those actions and what we do.

Bullshit.

These guys attacked us because they are sick motherf---ers. They attacked us beause they have no respect for human life. They attacked us because their diseased worldview takes the scripture of an honorable religion and transforms it into a perverse directive for hatred and mass murder in the name of a Greater Power. We've had monsters like them before in the world. Most recently, we saw these monsters in the form of Pol Pot in Cambodia. In the form of Josef Stalin in the USSR. In the form of Adolf Hitler in Germany. We called these people, their followers and the movements what they were: EVIL.

Hey, maybe evil doesn't exist in our cultural vocabulary anymore. In our culture, we can damn near humanize anyone; try watching The Sopranos if you don't believe me (and before we start, I love the show). Tony Soprano's a bad guy who cheats on his wife, kills people and makes his living breaking the law... but he cares for his kids... but he's only trying to make a living... but he was raised in this culture... but he's relatively a good guy... but he loves his wife... but he cares about his friends when he's not killing them... but he would beat anyone who tried to order a veggie calzone (with my full support, I might add)... but... but... AND WITH ALL THOSE BUTS, YOU FORGET THE FUNDAMENTAL FACT THAT HE'S A BAD GUY. Every person has redeeming values; Hitler made the German trains run on time and created the Volkswagon. That doesn't make him human. It doesn't make him a good person.

All right, so they're evil. But we made them that way, right? Maybe our foreign policy didn't warrant the wholesale destruction of buildings and the mass murder of innocents, but what did we expect? Our foreign policy fostered their hatred, right?

All those malnourished Iraqi children wouldn't hate the United States if it weren't for our sanctions. All those Sudanese wouldn't hate us if we hadn't bombed their aspirin factory. And all those Palestinians, celebrating in Nablus, they hate us because we arm and fund their oppressor, Isreal.

Reality check: Isreal doesn't terrorize innocent Palestinians. It's the other way around. When's the last time a Jewish settler walked into a Palestinian Sbarro and blew himself up? When's the last time you saw little Isreali kids running around with guns, trying to take out anyone who's Palestinian? When's the last time you saw a crowd of Isrealis jump two Palestinian soldiers and beat them to death while broadcasting the event via cellphone to the wife of one of the soldiers? Those are all things Palestinians do to Isreal, all in the name of Allah, as if the Koran sanctions the mass murder of innocents.

These things don't happen, or rarely happen, the other way around. Why? Well, human life has a different value to the Isrealis. It has a different value to Americans. We come from a different culture, one that doesn't inculcate intolerance and hatred, not anymore. Do we have intolerance and hatred in this country? Yes, I experienced some just the other day when some drunken jackass asked me what it was like to kill thousands of people. The difference? Here, if someone drives a car into a mosque or shoots an innocent human being because he looks like he may be Arabic, society demands that we arrest and punish that person. When that jackass tries to verbally accost me, his friends drag him away, call him an idiot and apologize to me. In the West Bank, in Gaza, in other places in the Arab world, they celebrate suicide bombers and those who kill others who are different from them.

How do we react when we hear of people threatening Muslims in this country? President Bush heads to a mosque, stands side-by-side with Muslims, and condemns these acts. The newspapers run story after story on each such attack, and people try to help those in trouble. In the West Bank, in the "Palestinian homeland," Palestinians dance in the streets when they hear about the World Trade Center... and Arafat's henchmen threaten news reporters who broadcast the celebration. Arafat condemned the attack on the WTC and gave blood -- but did he ever walk out into that street in Nablus and tell those morons off? The next time some jackass strolls into an Isreali supermarket and blows up, will Arafat's so-called government track down his co-conspirators?

No, because they teach intolerance in the state-sponsered textbooks for their children; they breed their hatred and the idea that it's okay to kill Isrealis or Americans because they're different. Our country didn't create Osama bin Laden and the twisted system of beliefs that others taught him; that's like saying we created Adolf Hitler because we supported efforts to dig out the bankrupt Weimar Republic.

Hell, it sounds like Battered Wife Syndrome; we married the guy, so we must be responsible when he turns around and beats us, right? We bankrolled bin Laden and the mujaheddin in Afghanistan because we believed that they were fighting for freedom against the oppression of Communism. That didn't mean we gave them license to build an oppressive theocracy that destroys Buddhist statues and makes Hindus wear ID armbands. We fought with the USSR against Hitler and the Nazis in World War II; does that mean we built Stalin into the monster that he was, or that we wanted Communism to enslave Eastern Europe?

And don't tell me that we don't respect their culture, because killing women and babies with airplanes and bombs is not representative of a healthy culture, it's representative of a disease. Islam doesn't teach its adherents to throw down their lives and kill others in the name of God, any more than Christianity does. We don't want to kill every Muslim because of these bastards; that's like saying we want to eradicate the Germans from the face of the Earth just because most Nazis were Germans. There are plenty of decent human beings in Arab countries who don't think human life has the relative value of a spitball. As for those that do, why don't they try respecting our culture and our values? You know, values like not teaching children to hate others because of their religion. Or values like not killing innocent people by slamming jetliners into buildings.

And this gets me to my last long-winded point. You want us to re-examine our past and present political actions, and why we don't prevent slaughter in Bosnia or Rwanda. Well, we do prevent slaughters in Isreal -- if we didn't fund Isreal, how long would it take for its enemies to try to kill every last Isreali? If we did try to help those in Bosnia (and we did try there, albeit rather haphazardly) and Rwanda, or Somalia or Cambodia or Indonesia or God knows where else, someone would hate us for interfering, for imposing our will on them, for being out of place. Hey, I'm not an idiot; I know we protected Isreal for more reasons than just the fact that they're a fellow democracy. I know we built a coalition to take back Kuwait to protect our economic interests.

BUT NO ONE ELSE DID THIS, AND NO ONE ELSE TRIES TO HELP EVERYONE AS MUCH AS WE DO.

See, we're not perfect. We're flawed. We often act out of self-interest as a country, whether that interest be money, power, the President's need to get a hummer (yes, I can't leave Hillary's husband alone... like she does), whatever. We make mistakes. We trust and support the wrong people sometimes. Other times, we don't support or help the right people enough.

BUT WE TRY, DAMMIT.

Name one country, one culture, one civilization, that rebuilt its enemies and saved them from starvation following a war. The answer is the United States of America, through the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Japan and Western Europe, friend and foe alike (we even offered it to the Commies, who turned us down).

Name the nation that provides the bulk of humanitarian aid in the world, the vast majority of it, even to countries who are its sworn enemies and wish it harm. The answer is the United States of America, whether through dollars or through its people.

I've been abroad, I've traveled in Europe and Asia, I've studied other cultures, and I can say this unequivocally: there's more freedom and opportunity in a ten-mile stretch of the worst slums in the United States then there are in most entire countries around the globe.

Do we fuck up sometimes? Yes.

Do we impose our will on others? Damn straight.

Do we do things in our own self-interest? Wow, what a human quality.

But we succeed, and we prosper, and we grow, and we benefit mankind. We disagree on a lot of things (this e-mail's proof positive of that), but we use that disagreement to strengthen ourselves, to make ourselves stronger. We grant people the freedom to be religious or not, informed or ignorant, to be silent or opinionated, to be tolerant or intolerant, to be any damn thing they want to be.

We open our doors (less quickly than before, but still) to millions of people from other places every year, so that they can achieve their dreams in a place that cultivates dreamers.

We sometimes treat people badly or unfairly, but no one else works as hard to remedy those instances.

We promote our culture, but it spreads for a simple reason: WE ARE GOOD.

That's probably jingoistic, but that doesn't make it less true. Our culture threatens others because they understand the attractiveness of freedom, and know it threatens their interests. That is why they denigrate us, why they hate us and ultimately why they attack us. It's not rational until you realize that evil attacks good simply because good exists.

That's why the fanatics in the Middle East label us the Great Satan. We threaten them because we promote freedom and tolerance and love. They promote oppression and bigotry and hate. Their own culture doesn't want them, but they try to appear strong by forcing their values on others. And when when they run across something they can't bully or force into submission, they grow angry, they grow threatened and they lash out, and you see the result. Quite simply, these assholes are EVIL.

And Evil always attacks Good. Good doesn't deserve the attack or cause it; Evil must tear down Good simply because it exists.

But Good always wins. And so will we.

We may kill some who are innocent in the process. The difference? We will go in afterwards and try to help the survivors rebuild their own society, rather trying to eradicate every last one of them. And we'll screw up some, and someone will call us on it, and we'll try to correct it.

And in the end, the world will be a better place because of us.

7 years ago today. Don't forget.

Emmitt, What Do You Think?

A classic KSK post with what Emmitt Smith might say about Tom Brady's injury...

Trajectory.

That’s the first word that came to my mind when I saw that Tom Brady had been incarcerated.

Just such a terrible trajectory for the NFL. For the whole whirl!

I feel bad for the Patriots, because Brady’s abstinence will definitively have revibrations for the rest of the year. While Brady tries to cohabitate his knee, his team is left to pick up the peaches from these terrible circumcisions.

But Bill Belichick is a true elevator in this league. He isn’t just going to let this team fall by the bayside. He won’t let them get impressed. He will challenge them to raise to the vacation.

It gets better. And it's not quite as distasteful as the Bernard Pollard t-shirt post. By the way, I'd say something about the Brady injury, but the man with the worst faux hawk ever seen has decided to keep his mouth shut.

Who Says Something This Stupid?

This story prompts a simple question -- are the Democrats trying to lose?

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

...Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."

Maybe they'll try to put lipstick on this pig of a quote.

The Head Cheerleader Writes a Check Her QB Boyfriend Probably Can't Cash

Jessica Simpson is talking smack at my beloved Iggles, since her playoff-choking boytoy is probably too afraid to do it...

The singer seems to think the curse is over when she issued a warning to the Eagles Tuesday morning on Good Morning America.

Simpson yelled out "Go Cowboys!" during her performance Tuesday and then adding her warning to Philadelphia Eagles fans, "That's next week! We're gonna kick your butts, too!"

I'm reminded of this line from Bill Simmons' NFL preview regarding Romo...

Only one things worries me: Tony Romo spent a lot of time with Jessica Simpson these past eight months. Remember how dumb she was on "Newlyweds"? I mean, she was historically dumb. I have written before about how unfunny people can learn to become relatively funny just by constantly hanging out with one funny person. Well, when you spend every waking moment with someone who's historically dumb, do you stop using all of your brain as much? How much of your cerebrum would you need? Twenty percent? Couldn't you shut the rest down? What if that happened to Romo this spring and summer? I am keeping my eye on this.

I wonder when Jessica's next tour stops anywhere near Philly. Meanwhile, I'm suddenly feeling much more confident about next Monday's game.

Okay, Let's Talk About Issues

With regard to the issues and bipartisan reform, the boys at Powerline take a look at Obama's record here and here. As the junior Senator from Illinois might note, you really can't put lipstick on a pig and call it "bipartisan."

A Pig in a Poke

You know, I don't think Barack Obama meant to call Sarah Palin a pig.

But it's far from certain that he didn't mean to get in a snide shot...

By the time he arrived for an evening stop in the southwestern tip of Virginia, Mr. Obama’s sales pitch contained nearly as many references to Senator McCain as to himself, suggesting how the McCain campaign has been driving the recent dialogue of the presidential race.

“John McCain says he’s about change, too — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics,” Mr. Obama told his supporters here. “That’s just calling the same thing something different.”

With a laugh, he added: “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

Andrew Sullivan, who may well have misplaced his mind during the last month blogging about whether McCain's cross-in-the-dirt tale was true and whether Trig Palin is really Sarah's son, says this...

We are being asked to believe that he called Sarah Palin a pig. If the people making that accusation have half a brain they know it's not true. This is not a question of interpretation. It is a fact. So we now find out again that John McCain is prepared to tell an absolute lie - in public, verifiable, uncontestable.

He does not have the minimal public integrity to be president of the United States.

Game this all you want; distort it all you want; bamboozle the morons at cable news all you want; win however many news cycles you want.

This claim is absurd on its face, like the Palin nomination to begin with. Absurd. And you can now tell who on the right has even a scintilla of intellectual honesty. That's all this episode is about: another tail-spin in the death throes of the Republican party.

My only advice to Obama: stay calm; stay cool; focus on the issues; behave like the president you want to be. They are trying to get into your head. But you are so much smarter and more decent than they are. Patience. And steel.

This is pompous self-serving malarkey, and it's a sign of why Sullivan has gone from being a respected voice to a shill for Obama who's just slightly behind Obama Girl in his serious analysis of the Presidential race. Keep in mind that Sullivan spent last week trying to sell Sarah Palin as the modern-day Alan Eagleton, but no one bought that crap.

I'm sure Obama has spent his time focused on important issues. For example, Obama spent a few days on the campaign trail flogging McCain for not knowing how many houses he owns. Obama supporter and New York Governor David Patterson threw out the claim that references by Republicans to Obama's "community-organizing" are actually coded references to Obama's race. And let's remember that Obama's campaign is now calling in the cavalry of Democratic 527s to attack McCain and Palin -- because we all know that those attacks will be focused on issues.

As to whether Obama meant to call Palin a pig -- he tried to be too clever by half. You don't make the reference to lipstick on a pig, then make the reference to an old fish in a piece of paper, and not believe that some people (including people in that audience) might conceivably think that you're referring to your opponents -- a woman and a 72 year-old man. People say that Obama's not stupid enough to call Palin a pig. He should also not be stupid enough to make a statement that can be this easily misinterpreted, particularly when juxtaposed with the other one. Jim Geraghty makes a fantastic point...

For example, during the primary, he said, “You know, over the last several weeks since [Hillary] fell behind, she’s resorted to what’s called ‘kitchen sink’ strategies. . . . She’s got the kitchen sink flying, and the china flying, and the, you know, the buffet is coming at me.” It's simply coincidental that he's never accused a male opponent of throwing china at him.

When he said, after a particularly tough exchange with Hillary, told a crowd, “You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out.” It's an apt and completely non-sexist metaphor... if he had he been running against Wolverine from the X-Men.

When he said, "I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal." Sure, to the untrained ear, "periodically" and "feeling down" sure do sound like references to the menstrual cycle and PMS, and yes, he's never used that line to describe a male opponent. But I'm sure "moodiness" is close enough the "temper" issue that Democrats have thrown at McCain.

Instapundit has a great set of links and comments on what people around the blogosphere thought about it. Me? I think the great orator showed why he's best with a teleprompter. If W. had made a statement like this, he'd be getting flogged unmercifully. and if any conservative had the track record of comments Obama made above, he'd be getting ripped as a misogynist.

And as to calling out McCain's integrity -- this is politics. Obama was right to capitalize on McCain's gaffe about the houses. When your opponent says something stupid, putting him on the defensive is how you win elections. I'm sure we're all supposed to spend our time focused on the issues, but Obama's core appeal for months was merely promoting himself as Mr. Change, the Senator from Hope. You'd have a better chance of selling the idea that Joe Biden is introverted than convincing me that Obama's run an issues-based candidacy. Minimal public integrity -- these are politicians.

I think McCain should not discuss the pig comment anymore -- just enjoy watching Obama waste a day or more playing defense and trying to explain away the comment (thereby giving it more life). If they say anything, Palin should apply the snarky knife she used last week. I suggest the following: "Apparently, Senator Obama thinks people on our side put lipstick on pigs. Maybe he's confused about what Fred Thompson said about me knowing how to field-dress a moose. Perhaps one of us should explain what that means." Or try this one: "Most people I know simply eat pork and don't spend time dressing it up with cosmetics. Maybe the Senator's confused, since he's busy trying to find a way to dress up all the earmark pork barrel spending he's sought in his short time in Congress."

One last point about Sullivan. He ends with "[p]atience. And steel." What is this, a Dan Rather news broadcast?

Next Up, Please Call Ohio State the Butteyes

This is not on the same level as John Kerry's sports-related gaffes, but it's amusing to a guy who's married into a Penn State family, and a Penn State family that are ardent supporters of Barack the Messiah.



Maybe the Nittaly Lions will finally beat those dastardly Michigandy Wolverinos this year.

Palin Derangement Syndrome?

The Left has officially lost their minds over Sarah Palin.

As evidence, please see Josh Marshall:

On the stump, not a single word that comes out of her mouth -- or not a single word that the McCain folks put in her mouth -- is anything but a lie. I know that sounds like hyperbole. But just go down the list. None of them bear out.

Keep in mind, Marshall's part of the wacky-but-somewhat respectable Left. Every word? And note the condescending reference to words being "put in her mouth" by the McCain camp.

Need more proof? Charlie Martin's list of debunked Palin rumors is 71 items long in less than two weeks. And it's not just American lefties who are going crazy -- check out the CBC commentator who likened Palin to a porn actress.

Apparently, this sense of derangement has infected the Obama camp as well, according to Newsweek's Howard Fineman...

Democrats dare not issue [Sarah] Palin a pass—she's too dangerous a foe. Normally vice presidential candidates fade into the background. Nobody is expecting that with Palin; indeed, her newfound celebrity has made even Obama look dull.

The usual rule is that voters don't trust attacks from people they don't know, but Palin is turning the adage on its head. Democrats are determined to attack her credibility, even if it gives her more visibility. "We've got to go after her, and fast," a top Democratic strategist, who asked for anonymity when discussing strategy, told me.

Too dangerous a foe? I wonder how these people would cope with Putin if they can't handle Palin.

I don't get it. I know Bush inspires an immense level of hatred from the Left, but this feeding frenzy is ridiculous for a politician most of them had never seen prior to 10 days ago. I know the media's stunned that Obama could (gasp) lose the election, and they're throwing every bit of available dirt at Palin after vetting Barack with kid gloves for nearly two years.

As to the substance of the attacks, I don't understand how they're helping Obama. Just off the top of my head, here are the basic charges leveled against Palin:

1. She's too inexperienced to be VP. This would be great if the Democrats hadn't just nominated a man with arguably less relevant experience for President. I know Palin's only run a small town and now a state government, but exactly what has Obama run? The Annenberg Challenge... oops, no reference to Bill Ayers, so scratch that. The Harvard Law Review? Well, someone has to make sure the bagels are available in Gannet House every morning.

2. She fired her Public Safety Commissioner, allegedly because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper. Forget the fact that there's no proof that Palin was involved in any of the communications with the Public Safety Commissioner regarding her brother-in-law, and that Palin has fully cooperated with the investigation, which is being run by an Obama supporter. No, let's remember that the brother-in-law is accused of, among other things, tasering his stepson and threatening Palin's father. I'm having trouble understanding how the left thinks this will drive voters away from Palin.

3. Her daughter is pregnant, yet she supports abstinence education. I'm not sure why this is a problem -- no one on the right actually believes that abstinence education will stop every teen pregnancy. And as Megan McArdle notes, the alternative birth control education is not successful on this front, either. Perhaps the left believed that the evangelical right would rip Palin as an unfit mother for having a daughter who got pregnant before marriage. Instead, the right rallied around Palin and her daughter, Bristol. I'm still not seeing how this was an issue.

4. Palin is a hypocrite for denying other women the right to terminate their pregnancies. Apparently the logic goes like this: since Sarah chose to bear her son Trip even after she learned he had Downs syndrome, she should recognize that other women should have that choice. Having to decipher this logic gives me a headache. The summary response -- if you believe, as Palin does, that a fetus is actually a child, then abortion constitutes the taking of an innocent life. Therefore, it's not a question of whether she chose to have the baby -- it's a question of whether she lived up to her beliefs. To her, the only choice was whether to keep the baby or give him for adoption. You may believe women should have the right to terminate a pregnancy, but she believes that would be ending a human life. I think I can see how this could be a political issue, but I'm not sure why Dems want to debate it with Sarah's son as part of the debate -- politically, that seems foolish.

5. Palin initially did not oppose the Bridge to Nowhere. Let's ignore the fact that she eventually opposed the boondoggle. Let's ignore the fact that Alaska Democratic Party removed a page crediting her with opposing the bridge, which they used when attacking Ted Stevens. How does it help Obama and Biden to attack her when they voted to fund the bridge, and even voted against an amendment to shift the funds to Katrina relief?

I'd continue, but it doesn't get better. Someone needs to explain to the Obamamaniacs and their cohorts in the media that their attacks on Sarah Palin are diminishing Obama, not her, while leaving John McCain untarnished.

For $4 Million, It's All Yours

Allen Iverson is trying to sell his mansion in Villanova, and just dropped the price by a million bucks. Sorry, A.I. -- my wife still doesn't want to move back to Philly. Too bad, because I like this part of the description:

The entertainment level has a 12-seat movie theater, billiard room, and a lounge with a custom wood carved bar accommodating 200+ wine bottles.

You know, the 12-seat movie theater probably comes without a popcorn machine. Add that, and I'll bet it would sell in a week.

You Might Be An Elitist If You Don't Like Kids

Tom Smith posits an interesting perspective about Piper Palin's effort to fix her little brother's hair during the RNC and the reaction of the NYT's reporters to it...

Check out the "noses wrinkled in disgust" in this Instapundit link. You can see the little Palin giving her baby brother a kitty lick to fix his hair. Is that cute enuff for ya? But apparently, NY Times reporters reacted with a collective ick, according to
another Times reporter, no less. Yes, they are from a different planet.

I'm not sure how this came about or what to do about it, but I believe it may be true. Some people like kids. I do, for example, especially my own. They are cute, for several years of their life span they think you are some sort of hero, and after the phase passes they can at least be disciplined into remaining silent about the fact. When small you can snuggle with them, and they make the perfect companions for watching TV with. It is true they can be noisy and smelly, and they are quite astonishingly expensive. Still, all and all, most kid lovers, such as myself, would be quite happy to see the NY Times, the Met, all decent NYC restaurants and the entire fashion industry fall into a wormhole rather than give up one of the good hours with one of our kids. We are cool with kids, and we don't care that much about all the big city stuff.

On the other side are people who don't like kids. Don't ask me why.

... I don't know. This is a gap so wide I can't even see across it. I can't even imagine what it would be like to think a little girl taking care of her baby brother is not cute. I honestly don't know who these people are.

I don't think this applies to most liberals (many of whom have children) and most of them would give up all the same stuff for time with their kids. And I'm certain that Obama, who's likely the preferred candidate of the people Smith is describing, is someone who loves kids, based on the interaction he has with his daughters.

But I know about the people Smith is referring to. I can see people who don't think Piper Palin's gesture was sanitary, or might mock it while being snarky, but I have difficulty thinking that any well-adjusted person wouldn't find it cute. I'm sad for them. There is no better feeling on this Earth than going home and hearing my little girl say, "Dada" (granted, it's one of only five or ten words in her vocabulary, and she uses it to refer to everything) and do her little waddle-sprint across the room to get picked up for a hug.

Paging Homer Simpson

Apparently, there's a place in Lincoln, Nebraska that serves a hot beef sundae. You know, I'm currently off red meat, but this is making me hungry.

Look at Fannie and Freddie's Pet Lawmakers

Take a look at the top recipients of donations from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the failing institutions taxpayers just purchased. Out of the top 25 politicos on the list, 16 are Democrats... and the top four are (in order) (a) Chris Dood, (b) John Kerry, (c) Barack Obama and (d) Hillary Clinton. (hat tip: Jonah Goldberg at The Corner)

That would be the (a) Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and formerly a candidate for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, (b) the 2004 Democratic nominee for President, (c) the 2008 Democratic nominee for President and (d) the former First Lady, current U.S. Senator from New York and the runner-up for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, John McCain and Sarah Palin have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal discussing the bailout...

Fixing Fannie and Freddie, and reforming our mortgage and financial markets, is critical to getting the housing market and the entire economy moving again. A great deal of the savings and wealth of American families is wrapped up in the value of their homes. A house has traditionally been the wealth-building course to retirement. The housing industry employs millions of Americans. One of us, John McCain, said over two years ago, "If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose."

Fannie and Freddie's lobbyists succeeded and Congress failed. Under our administration this will not happen again.

I'm starting to think a McCain Administration is actually possible.

Uh, Guys... Is This The Best You Can Do?

David Bernstein at Volokh looks at a Washington Post article that purports to find a scandal regarding Gov. Palin's per diem claims, and realizes there's nothing there...

You have to read the article carefully to figure this out, but what the story ultimately reveals is that Palin (a) billed the state for most expenses allowed by law, including per diem when she stayed in her own home (her "duty station" was the state capitol of Juneau) in Wasilla; (b) didn't bill the state for other expenses, when she could have done so lawfully, such as per diems for her children; and (c) spent a lot less money on expenses than did her predecessor, especially on travel and by ridding herself of the state's personal chef.

(hat tip: Instapundit) Keep in mind, this was the lead headline at the online version of the Post. I wonder if the Post will plan a matching expose looking at Joe Biden's nightly trips home to Wilmington on Amtrak, the ones that the Obama campaign has touted. Did Joe bill the taxpayers? Did he ride first-class? Did he take the more expensive Acela or just the Metroliner or the local?

Update: Jonah Goldberg takes a few more swings at the Post's story, noting that Palin cut gubernatorial travel spending by close to 80%. Yeah, she's clearly not a fiscal conservative.

Homer and Mr. Sparkle Would Be Proud

Loyal reader ST sends me the link to this site. I don't know what it means, although perhaps Dr. Assy is identifying himself as someone who will banish dirt to the land of wind and ghosts.

Irrelevant Unsolved Mystery of the Day

Bringing you the questions that don't matter, except they get stuck in your head and make you wonder...

In the Crayola 64 box that I had when growing up, why was there a Burnt Siena and a Raw Siena, but no Siena?

I Don't Have the Votes to Take Your Guns, Even If I Wanted To, Which I Don't... No, Really

I can see the NRA doing issue ads with this already...

The Obama campaign talks a lot about new ideas and expanding the political map, but in the swing state of Pennsylvania, which the campaign has focused on almost exclusively since the Democratic convention, old-school issues still rise to the fore.

... A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

Wait a second, I'm relying on the beneficial nature of Democrats in Congress (the same bunch who elected Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as leaders) to protect my right to keep a gun? Sure, that seems reasonable!

Why They Don't Get It

Will Collier at Vodkapundit has a must-read analysis of the press corps coverage of Obama and Palin...

It’s hard to imagine two candidates more tailor-made for diametrically opposed constituencies than Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. Urban sophisticate Obama is, as Mark Steyn perfectly put it, “the new black best friend they’d been waiting for all these years” for upscale white liberals–a class that includes practically all of the national press corps who spent the last week in a frenzy over Palin. Conversely, Palin the Alaksan hunter looks like Ted Nugent crossed with Margaret Thatcher and your best friend’s mom, with a powerful dose of homespun country-girl sass thrown in to boot. You couldn’t come up with a more diametrically-opposed pair if you tried.

Obama’s eat-your-tofu pretentiousness plays perfectly to a press corps that thinks its job is to educate the rubes, while Palin’s pretentious-as-dirt manner and freezer full of moose steaks couldn’t be more perfectly calibrated to rub an urban New Class reporter any more of the wrong way. Her happy warrior persona also strikes a sharp contrast with Michelle Obama’s angry whining about having to pay back her student loans.

The differences are stark, and the over-the-top reactions from the media are telling. To take one example, Joe Klein and his ilk see a “community organizer” as a valiant leader of the proletariat, but most people outside of government, academia or the press hear “community organizer” and think, “somebody who pesters the government for other people’s money.” For folks who aren’t marinated in elite liberal concensus, the first time they heard that Obama spent several years as a “community organizer,” most thought, “Why didn’t he get a real job?” I’m sure that never occurred to Klein, which is, of course, why he’s having one of his patented sniveling fits over Palin’s speech.

I love that last point about the "real job." There's plenty to admire in the ideal of someone who seeks to go and work within a community to improve it. But there's also plenty of people who have the reaction Will describes, and I suspect that the press really does have trouble understanding it. It's the same reason they have trouble with the perception that Obama is viewed as an elitist -- how can he be an elitist with his background? Besides, he knows the same people we do, and we're not elitists!

This election has been educational and entertaining on so many fronts. I still expect Obama to win (more on that later), but the press' implosion over Governor Palin hasn't helped him at all.

A Blast from the Dishrag's Past

Loyal reader RB sends us the following bit to read...

Here are two quotes to consider:

Governor Palin’s lack of experience, especially in national security and foreign affairs, raises immediate questions about how prepared she is to potentially succeed to the presidency. That really is the only criterion for judging a candidate for vice president. She has had less than two years in Alaska’s Statehouse — elected as a long-shot insurgent admirably willing to take on her party leaders, decrying Republican involvement in Alaska’s Statehouse corruption scandals. Before that she served eight years as council member and mayor in small-town Wasilla, outside Anchorage.

Where is it written that governors and mayors ... are too local, too provincial? What a splendid system, we say to ourselves, that takes little-known men, tests them in high office and permits them to grow into statesmen. Why shouldn't a little-known woman have the same opportunity to grow?

The first was written by the New York Times in August 2008. The second was written by, you guessed it, the New York Times in 1984.

Well, it should be remembered that foreign policy wasn't an important issue in 1984. After all, how tough could things have been if all we were facing was a "Cold" War?

MSNBC Shuffles Its Seats

Olbermann and Mathews are out as the hosts of MSNBC's election coverage. Since I didn't watch their coverage, this wouldn't matter to me, except that the New York Times article about it contained some priceless bits of information...

The success of the Fox News Channel in the past decade along with the growth of political blogs have convinced many media companies that provocative commentary attracts viewers and lures Web browsers more than straight news delivered dispassionately.

“In a rapidly changing media environment, this is the great philosophical debate,” Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, said in a telephone interview Saturday. Fighting the ratings game, he added, “the bottom line is that we’re experiencing incredible success.”

But as the past two weeks have shown, that success has a downside. When the vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin lamented media bias during her speech, attendees of the Republican convention loudly chanted “NBC.”

In interviews, 10 current and former staff members said that long-simmering tensions between MSNBC and NBC reached a boiling point during the conventions. “MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict,” one senior staff member observed. “They’re living from fix to fix and swearing they’ll go into rehab the next week.”

...Mr. Olbermann, a 49-year-old former sportscaster, has become the face of the more aggressive MSNBC, and the lightning rod for much of the criticism. His program “Countdown,” now a liberal institution, was created by Mr. Olbermann in 2003 but it found its voice in his gnawing dissent regarding the Bush administration, often in the form of “special comment” segments.

As Mr. Olbermann raised his voice, his ratings rose as well, and he now reaches more than one million viewers a night, a higher television rating than any other show in the troubled 12-year history of the network. As a result, his identity largely defines MSNBC. “They have banked the entirety of the network on Keith Olbermann,” one employee said.

In January, Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews, the host of “Hardball,” began co-anchoring primary night coverage, drawing an audience that enjoyed the pair’s “SportsCenter”-style show. While some critics argued that the assignment was akin to having the Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly anchor on election night — something that has never happened — MSNBC insisted that Mr. Olbermann knew the difference between news and commentary.

But in the past two weeks, that line has been blurred. On the final night of the Republican convention, after MSNBC televised the party’s video “tribute to the victims of 9/11,” including graphic footage of the World Trade Center attacks, Mr. Olbermann abruptly took off his journalistic hat.

“I’m sorry, it’s necessary to say this,” he began. After saying that the video had exploited the memories of the dead, he directly apologized to viewers who were offended. Then, sounding like a network executive, he said it was “probably not appropriate to be shown.”

...“Countdown” will still be shown before the three fall debates and a second edition will be shown sometime afterwards, following the program anchored by Mr. Gregory.

The change casts new doubt on what some staff members believe is an effective programming strategy: prime-time talk of a liberal sort. A like-minded talk show will now follow “Countdown” at 9 p.m.: “The Rachel Maddow Show,” hosted by the liberal radio host, begins Monday.

A few thoughts, in no particular order...

1. The success of Fox News likely has more to do with the fact that Fox is driven by (a) entertainment value and (b) the fact that conservatives don't have multiple other voices in the television media. NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN all skew liberal in varying degrees.

2. The fact that MSNBC's idea to try and match Fox by putting in place a "liberal" prime-time talk format shows that they're missing the point of what Fox developed. Fox found a market of people who weren't being served by the current dreck being produced by network and cable news. MSNBC seems less interested in competing for Fox's conservative viewers than in trying to steal eyeballs from CNN and the networks by making themselves even more outlandishly liberal. That will likely position them even more outside the mainstream, but at least they'll have a core group of fanatics.

3. I don't particularly care about whether Olbermann and Mathews hosted the election-night coverage, since I was about as likely to watch them as I am to wear a Dallas Cowboys jersey. But I think there's a problem here in that they tried to pretend that they could put aside their beliefs in pursuit of their journalistic duties. It's a common problem that I think the public recognizes and the press ignores. Viewpoint-based journalism has always been the rule (see Cronkite on Vietnam), but the press likes to pretend that they come at the issues with impartiality. That's a thing for folks to believe today, and it's less likely to be believed when Keith Olbermann is hosting election coverage. There's nothing really wrong with bias, but the fact that so many people seem invested in trying to put up a front that no bias exists is what annoys me.

4. As a programming decision, aren't you better off with Olbermann working as a commentator than a host on election night, if you're going to cuff the anchor from taking positions and saying stuff?

5. Dan Patrick carried the old Sportscenter, and Chris Mathews is no Dan Patrick.

Fannie and Freddie FlimFlam

Paul Gigot's column at the Wall Street Journal today relates some of the key reasons we're sitting on a federal bailout of these two mortgage behemoths...

In the wake of Freddie's implosion, Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida held one hearing on its accounting practices and scheduled more in early 2004.

He was soon told that not only could he hold no more hearings, but House Speaker Dennis Hastert was stripping his subcommittee of jurisdiction over Fan and Fred's accounting and giving it to Mike Oxley's Financial Services Committee. "It was because of all their lobbying work," explains Mr. Stearns today, in epic understatement. Mr. Oxley proceeded to let Barney Frank (D., Mass.), then in the minority, roll all over him and protect the companies from stronger regulatory oversight. Mr. Oxley, who has since retired, was the featured guest at no fewer than 19 Fannie-sponsored fund-raisers.

Or consider the experience of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, one of the GOP's bright young lights who decided in the 1990s that Fan and Fred needed more supervision. As he held town hall meetings in his district, he soon noticed a man in a well-tailored suit hanging out amid the John Deere caps and street clothes. Mr. Ryan was being stalked by a Fannie lobbyist monitoring his every word.

...When none of that deterred Mr. Ryan, Fannie played rougher. It called every mortgage holder in his district, claiming (falsely) that Mr. Ryan wanted to raise the cost of their mortgage and asking if Fannie could tell the congressman to stop on their behalf. He received some 6,000 telegrams. When Mr. Ryan finally left Financial Services for a seat on Ways and Means, which doesn't oversee Fannie, he received a personal note from Mr. Raines congratulating him. "He meant good riddance," says Mr. Ryan.

Fan and Fred also couldn't prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left, both in Congress and the intellectual class. This includes Mr. Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. Krugman and the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein in the press. Their claim is that the companies are essential for homeownership.

Yet as studies have shown, about half of the implicit taxpayer subsidy for Fan and Fred is pocketed by shareholders and management. According to the Federal Reserve, the half that goes to homeowners adds up to a mere seven basis points on mortgages. In return for this, Fannie was able to pay no fewer than 21 of its executives more than $1 million in 2002, and in 2003 Mr. Raines pocketed more than $20 million. Fannie's left-wing defenders are underwriters of crony capitalism, not affordable housing.

...The abiding lesson here is what happens when you combine private profit with government power. You create political monsters that are protected both by journalists on the left and pseudo-capitalists on Wall Street, by liberal Democrats and country-club Republicans. Even now, after all of their dishonesty and failure, Fannie and Freddie could emerge from this taxpayer rescue more powerful than ever. Campaigning to spare taxpayers from that result would represent genuine "change," not that either presidential candidate seems interested.

If the GOP wants to know why it lost its majority, the answer's in the above article. The bad news is that the Dems appear uninterested in solving the problem, and neither does the Bush Administration. As the Journal notes elsewhere, the Fannie-Freddie bailout would be better if we decided not to bail out the shareholders. Of course, if this was another business (coughEnroncough) with political advantages to showboating, Congressional hearings would have occurred months ago, but forget it here. And does anyone else think the auto companies calling for help has something to do with this?

With work like this, I'm wondering how Congress even garners the meager approval ratings it does receive.