PRINT THE LEGEND

Posted at MoJo Blog last night:

MSNBC is running (and rerunning and rerunning) a comment on the ticker on the bottom of its screen that says something to the effect of: the working class will be disappointed to learn that Nancy Pelosi's outfit cost more than an average American family's first home.

I'd like to see some proof of that. The comment is attributed to Andrew Noyes writing on Chris Matthew's group blog, Hardblogger. Yet, a search of all the posts on Hardblogger tonight turn up nothing.

Update: Just saw it again. It's probably run a dozen times by now....

Actually, it's from Mike Barnicle at Hardblogger, and if you're wondering where he got his numbers, the answer, by his own admission, is that he pulled them out of his ass.

Math has never been my strong suit. And I have difficulty balancing my check book. But you don't have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out that A. Nancy Pelosi's outfit cost more than the average American paid for their first home and B. there is a pretty high degree of difficulty involved in balancing the federal budget yet the leader of the free world just told us, "We can do so without raising taxes." And half the people in the hall - Bush's half -stood and cheered.
Huh?

I'm sure the quite wealthy phony-populist Barnicle is pleased with himself for that equal-opportunity outrage on behalf of the little guy.

But why was MSNBC running the Pelosi -- and only the Pelosi part -- on the ticker? It was just a quip -- why run it when many idiots might think it's a fact?