This is the limit. The absolute limit.

Josh Marshall, in a recent post, castigates John McCain for taking economic advice on the sub-prime mortgage crisis from former senator Phil Gramm. Why? Because Gramm was a lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS. (Gramm no longer lobbies, but continues to serve as a bank vice president.)

The UBS connection is of concern because that firm is a huge part of the sub-prime mortgage crisis:

Forbes says that UBS is among the banks worst hit by the global credit crisis, particularly in their direct exposure to the US subprime market. According to Forbes, UBS has some $37 billion in write-downs on assets tied to bad US mortgages. In other words, the bank's very life appears to be on the line in how the US government chooses to handle the matter.

(Emphasis added.) Needless to say, I agree with Marshall -- up to this point. What I don't agree with is his hypocrisy, his special pleading on behalf of the Savior From Illinois.

I've used this quote before, but let's trot it out again, since it compresses a whole huge chunk of stinkiness into one small stink-ball:

Seven of the Obama campaign’s top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages. These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.

These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given): Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street.

UBS is or was Obi's second largest contributor, after Goldman Sachs. We must quickly note that Hillary has also taken lots of money from Goldman Sachs, and from others on this list -- though I've yet to see any evidence of a substantial contribution to her from UBS, the company which (for good reason) has aroused Marshall's particular ire.

Since strained rationalization is my favorite form of humor, I would love to see Marshall defend Obama while attacking McCain on the UBS connection. Could the former King of Bloggers possibly be more hypocritical?

By the way: As I've noted many times, Obama's chief economic adviser is a Milton Friedmanite and free-trade fundamentalist named Austan Goolsbee. In terms of basic economic weltanschauung, the difference between Gramm and Goolsbee is...what, exactly?