’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land

No reporters were stirring, most had been canned.

The economy cratered, the market turned bear,

The mavens of bailouts had sold their last shares.

Republicans nestled all snug in their beds

While visions of Sarah danced in their heads.

Bundled in silk for a long winter nap,

They knew that Obama would now take the rap.

When on the TV there arose such a clatter:

A run on the banks? No, Oprah is fatter.

Away to the tube, the nation did dash:

Jen’s posing naked; Brit has a rash.

Once back in bed, a nightmare ensued:

It’s 2003 and we’re coming unglued.

When what to our wondering eyes should appear?

It’s The Prez and The Vice and they’re spreading more fear.

More vapid than legal, their coursers they came,

They whistled and shouted and called them by name:

Now, Condi! Now, Bremer! Now, Wolfy and Rove!

On Rummy! On Tommy! To Iraq’s weapons trove!

To the top of the White House, to the top of the Mall,

Now dash away, dash away, once and for all.

Now the hope of the nation rhymes with Osama,

He’s cool and he’s skinny and doesn’t like drama.

Global warming is real, unlike WMD.

His verbs and his nouns all seem to agree.

He sprang to the lead while his foe was flip-flopping,

Barack touted change, while Palin went shopping.

But I heard her exclaim after conceding defeat,

“Merry Christmas, y’all, and keep those receipts.”

Overcompensating. No, auto workers don’t make more than $150,000 a year when combining pay and benefits, but the figure of $73 an hour was trumpeted by opponents of a Big Three bailout. David Leonhardt of the New York Times did the math in a recent column and found that if you include salary, overtime and vacation pay, United Auto Workers compensation comes to $40 an hour. Add benefits and insurance, and it’s $55 an hour. To get to $73 an hour, auto companies toted up the cost of benefits to retirees and added that to current workers’ pay.

Factcheck.org notes that labor costs account for 10 percent of the price of the average car produced by the Big Three, but that many of those cars are still cheaper than those at Honda and Toyota. It isn’t the price of the cars that has turned off consumers; it’s the quality. And who is responsible for that? That would be the auto executives, who would make a fraction of what they make now if they worked for their competitors.