Because the Off - of headline typo was all mine.

er, that was supposed to be "lobby"

You make a good point.

American Academy of Family Physicians.

I think I created three different bogus lobbying groups in my original post.

I am chastened.

sorry Michelle!

I stand before you, head down, humiliated at my own orthographic consistency.

My outrage blinded me, or my wrath fried my copyediting synapses, or something.

Oh, and, if you think the pushback that I get any time I rant on whatever the hell I feel like ranting about is going to have any effect on my ranting frequency, all I can say is, you have come to the wrong blog.

If the ad was six months to a year old, I wouldn't be so embarrassed. But FOUR YEARS! My only excuse: It predates the blog. Because I am ashamed to say, I didn't check because I assumed that I would ALREADY have heard of this outrage.

To make matters worse, I didn't even read the entire Wikipedia entry that I linked to.

Not my finest moment.

But still: What the hell were they thinking? SIXTEEN TONS?

formatting error cut out the mccartney quote.

it's fixed.

the support for a permit application is not a joke, but everything else is. but what is so, so, sad about our current political climate is that I wasn't even sure it was still a joke after i finished making it all up.

my apologies, ari. fixed.

Yes, rank-and-file Democrats and anti-Bush activists called George Bush lots of names. I recall nothing similar to the outrageous bully at this summer's town hall events, however, and that it is not the point, anyway.

I am referring to the behavior of elected representatives and GOP party leaders. I can't say many good things about the pusillanimous behavior of elected Democrats during the Bush years, but I will contend that they did not come anywhere near embracing the utter falsehoods that current Republican _politicians" are happy to push. When a sitting Senator of the United States makes an oblique reference to Nazi Germany when referring to President Obama, that calls for some pushback.

that's what i meant -- wording error.

Contrary to Aaron Bonn's assertion, Roosevelt ran a budget deficit _every year_ after he was elected. It is true that he campaigned as something of a deficit hawk in 1932, and partly in response Hoover drastically raised taxes with the Revenue Act of 1932, now widely regarded as a disaster in the middle of a huge economic contraction.

But this idea that Roosevelt balanced the budget every year until World War II is utterly wrong.

I goofed, and confused one LIBOR-related credit spread metric with another. Embarrassing.

As for fact-checking -- the blogosphere takes care of its on that regard, I'm afraid.

Hello, this is Andrew Leonard's daughter. We read the hobbit six years ago.

sorry for the confusion folks.

i'm loving the responses here.

i would just note that I too have made exactly the same arguments about saturday night special etc. but there's also no question that sweet home alabama was embraced by some serious assholes in the region I grew up in...

Ouch. Thanks for the correction.

and the explanations are much appreciated

millions billions shmillions. who's counting? it's BAD.

i've corrected it. more coffee is clearly necessary.

When the GOVERNOR of NEW YORK, who had in, my opinion, been doing a great job tackling Wall Street excess, is forced to resign because of criminal acts that he himself made a big deal of cracking down as attorney general, that is a BIG DISGRACE.

I make no claim about whether he was a better or worse person that Blodget, but Spitzer really, really blew it. Such stupidity and arrogance from a person with so much power, is, in my mind, a real tragedy. As I wrote at the time in the piece I linked to in my post.

I was out of town over the weekend and for time-management purposes decided to only monitor the comments posted this week, so I missed that on

i apologize. trying to work too quickly

but i think it got the gist right.

i think bernie sanders is great, and his point about the bailout right on, which is why i pointed it out.

but if you don't think it's funny that jim demint and bernie sanders, who could not possibly be further apart on the political spectrum, agree on this issue, well, sorry.

don't know what happened to it, but it's back now.

I am touched by the concern about my health, so just for the record:

Even though I was hospitalized for pneumonia in February, I trained like a madman ever since, and just two weeks ago completed the infamous California "death ride" bicycle endurance event in the high Sierras. www.deathride.com.

i'm feeling much better now.

ouch. corrected.

it is quoted in the CIBC study, and the Kingsley post attributes to CERA... Daniel Yergin's oil analysis outfit.

DocGonzo -- I'm sorry, but not only did you not read my post very carefully, but you haven't been paying attention to Salon's coverage. Because I've written about Gramm's sins twice in Salon in the last two weeks, and this particular post references those issues AND links to one of those two posts. Sheesh.

It worked when I first posted the story. The Senate is very bad at keeping consistent links up.

It's fixed. And as one reader has already noted, Greenberger's testimony can be found here:

http://commerce.senate.gov/public/_files/IMGJune3Testimony0.pdf

Management regrets the error.

They are not easy to find, because so they are so DARN small!

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/10/09/population_and_diet/

What do I consider a long bike ride?

The Grizzly Peak Century, two weeks from yesterday, is 112 miles this year. I consider that a long bike ride.

p.s. this is a great thread. maybe i'll go out and do some weeding tomorrow.