Yes, You Read That Right

I'm almost glad that this idiot wrote such an aggressively stupid hit piece in the WaPo today, because at least the blogosphere can be united in the mockery.

Shortly after joining the U.S. Senate and while enjoying a surge in income, Barack Obama bought a $1.65 million restored Georgian mansion in an upscale Chicago neighborhood. To finance the purchase, he secured a $1.32 million loan from Northern Trust in Illinois.

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.

Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

Three hundy a month! A man could lease a used Scion xB with that kind of scratch!

What exactly is the problem here? The reporter is assuming that all loans are created equal, that someone with decent credit can't get a better than "average" loan, that competitive rates don't exist, that consumer rates don't vary, and about 30 other things about this transaction to cast some kind of pall over it.

If Obama was getting preferential treatment, I hope he'd have the good sense to net more than three hundred bucks a month out of it. I want my thieves significantly more effective than that. That's not change I can believe in, my friendssssshhh!

Here's the best part:

Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, has no mortgages on properties he owns with his wife, Cindy, who is a multimillionaire.

Left unsaid is the whole thing about the McCains forgetting to pay property taxes on one of their seven homes. Not relevant because the deed is not precisely in John McCain's name. Only his wife's, who of course has nothing to do with him.

Unbelievable that this made any kind of paper, let alone the Washington Post.