This just in...

The sun rose on the western horizon this morning...howler monkeys just flew out of my ass while signing arias from Don Giovanni...and the perpetually conservative Chicago Tribune, which has endorsed the Republican candidate in every presidential election of the past 150 years, is calling John McCain on his bullshit.

To play up her management skills, Sarah Palin regularly boasts of the six years she spent as mayor of Alaska's fastest-growing city. What the Republican vice presidential candidate doesn't mention is that spending during her tenure grew nearly three times faster than the population did.

The operating budgets crafted by Palin for the city of Wasilla rose 70 percent during her two terms as mayor from 1996 to 2002, according to city records. Over the same time, the town grew by about 25 percent.

John McCain's presidential campaign is packaging his running mate as a seasoned and frugal government administrator who reduced the property tax and several other local levies.

But city records demonstrate that Palin's years in Wasilla were far from a portrait of conservative fiscal management. She bankrolled a wave of spending—as well as those tax cuts—with revenues from a new sales tax pushed by her predecessor and from federal earmarks paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Of course, calling bullshit on anything about Sarah Palin is shooting fish in barrel. But for the Tribune to be doing the shooting, even such easy shooting, is quite remarkable. The paper has been traditionally so deferential to the GOP that had George Bush announced, four years ago, that he is Jesus Christ the Savior returned to redeem a fallen world, the most the Tribune would have said against it was that they were respectfully withholding judgment.

Here's my favorite bit of that article:

Palin had served on Wasilla's six-member City Council for four years before ousting Stein as mayor. At the time, she dismissed concerns about her experience in an interview with the Frontiersman, Wasilla's local newspaper. "It's not rocket science," Palin said in 1996. "It's $6 million and 53 employees."

Back then it was just $6 million and 53 employees. But now it's somehow critically important "experience." Hardly.

(Admittedly, the sun is moving in its usual east-west direction, and I haven't actually seen any of those monkeys. But I'll keep you posted.)