Jim A. Johnson — the Simon Cowell of Obama's veep search committee — resigned from his campaign staff position yesterday after news surfaced of his involvement in that whole sub-prime mortgage nonsense that wreaked so much havoc upon the U.S. economy lo these past several fiscal quarters…

…the Obama campaign found itself on the defensive after the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that the former Fannie Mae chief had received millions of dollars in home loans — some of which may have been below average market rates — from Countrywide Financial, a partner of Fannie Mae and a leading purveyor of subprime mortgages…

"Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept," Obama said. "I remain grateful to Jim for his service and his efforts in this process."

Although Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy will continue their search for a quality vice-presidential candidate, the loss of Johnson from their team will greatly affect their methods.

For instance, it's very likely that they'll shift away from their method of bundling together Jim Webb, Kathleen Sebelius, Wesley Clark and a number of other sub-quality possible choices and skimming off the top layer of their best qualities to create one prime vice-presidential candidate.

(That joke might not have been very funny, but you should see how hard I worked to make it happen. While you're trying to make sense of it, you might be interested in listening to this.)