I really love Mark Steyn

It's news that's a few days old, but Mark Steyn, in the context of the Dems trumpeting almost-victory in the face of manifest defeat, manages to put a fresh and funny spin on this story:

A few days ago, the Democratic National Committee put out a press release attacking Bush for being physically fit. It seems his physical fitness comes at the expense of the nation's lardbutt youth. Or as the DNC put it:

'While President Bush has made physical fitness a personal priority, his cuts to education funding have forced schools to roll back physical education classes and his administration's efforts to undermine Title IX sports programs have threatened thousands of women's college sports programs.'

Wow. I noticed my gal had put on a few pounds but I had no idea it was Bush's fault. That sonofabitch chicken hawk. Just for the record, 'his cuts to education funding' are cuts only in the sense that Hackett's performance in the Ohio election was a tremendous victory: that's to say, Bush's 'cuts to education funding' are in fact an increase of roughly 50 percent in federal education funding. Some of us wish he had cut education funding. By any rational measure, a good third of public school expenditures are completely wasted. But instead it's skyrocketed. And the idea that Bush is heartlessly pursuing an elite leisure activity denied to millions of American schoolchildren takes a bit of swallowing given that his preferred fitness activity is running. 'Running' requires two things: you and ground. Short of buying every schoolkid some John Kerry thousand-dollar electric-yellow buttock-hugging lycra singlet, it's hard to see what there is about 'running' that requires increasing federal funding.

To be able to combine intelligent, often prescient political insights with laugh-out-loud humor, well, there's a gift.