Ah, the Chicago way:

More than 40% of President Obama’s top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Twenty of the 47 fundraisers that Obama’s campaign identified as collecting more than $500,000 have been named to government positions, the analysis found.

Overall, about 600 individuals and couples raised money from their friends, family members and business associates to help fund Obama’s presidential campaign. USA TODAY’s analysis found that 54 have been named to government positions, ranging from Cabinet and White House posts to advisory roles, such as serving on the economic recovery board charged with helping guide the country out of recession.

When the history gets written, I think this Administration will be found to be the most corrupt, ever. And even if we want to excuse Obama (who may, indeed, be clueless about this), the fact is that a bunch of horribly corrupt Chicago pols are at the levers of power…and the only thing they know is corruption.

My baby brother’s birthday, today. He was the “extra youngest” – a sort of “oops” nearly 7 years after I came along. Probably the only fully rational member of the family, in case you were wondering.

This is getting common enough for us to get very worried about it:

President Obama isn’t taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled.

Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad.

The 30-second ad, which has been airing on FOX News, CNN, MSNBC, and News Channel 8 to viewers in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia, urges the president to reauthorize the federally-funded D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that provides vouchers of up to $7,500 for D.C. students to attend private schools.

The ad features Chavous and a young boy–one of 216 students whose scholarships were rescinded by the Department of Education earlier this year when the agency announced no new students would be allowed into the program. The ad also includes an excerpt taken from one of Obama’s campaign statements.

“I saw [Holder] at an event,” said Chavous. “He did ask me in front of others to pull the ad. My response was, ‘No, and I tell you what, if the president does the right thing, not only will we pull it but we will celebrate him.’ ”

Alas! To do the right thing would anger powerful, well-heeled special interests. In this case, the teacher’s unions – Obama might very much want poor, DC kids to get a good education, but not at the cost of campaign donations. I mean, come on – there’s a limit to a liberal’s bleeding heart, ya know?

More worrisome than Obama’s devotion to corrupt, special interests is the fact that his people have repeatedly tried to get anti-Obama messages off the air. I don’t think its because they are afraid of dissent so much as they just don’t want to deal with it. Its much better, for the Obamaniacs, if they can just ram everything through without any pesky dissidents mucking up the works, you see?

If any of you liberals still wonder why we’re more and more often calling you fascists, here is your answer.

The never ending story:

Democrats Ask New Jersey Secretary of State to Ignore Mismatched Signatures on Absentee-Ballot Requests

This year, New Jersey’s registered voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. (Before 2005, voters needed to provide a reason for why they needed an absentee ballot.) The state received about 150,000 absentee-ballot applications this year.

On about 2,300 of those applications so far, the signature on the request form does not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state.

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

Once we are back in power, we should set up a Voter Protection Committee to investigate all accusations of voter fraud over the past 10 years. To be sure, we’ll have to deal with the kook accusations about Diebold, but it will be worth it to get at the real voter fraud endemic to the Democrat party. Once we get 100 or 200 Democrats in jail for voter fraud, perhaps the rest will decide that conducting elections honestly is a good idea.

The number of pages in Pelosi-care – from NRO’s The Corner:

A friend e-mails:

2009 Pelosi Health care bill – 1990 pages.

1994 Clinton Health care bill – 1342 pages.

So it’s 648 pages longer than even that bureaucratic monstrosity.

UPDATE:

E-mail:

A 2,000-page health care bill that costs a trillion dollars means that every page costs the American people a HALF-BILLION DOLLARS.

Pelosi-Care: 33% more crap than Hillary-Care!

UPDATE: And abortion is in the bill.

During the Bush years Democrats called 3.5% growth a recession.

Think about it.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: “…any short-term recovery we see during 2009 and 2010 is likely to be ephemeral“

Well, they both hate western civilization:

Around the globe, environmental protesters tried “a synchronized burst of more than 4,300 demonstrations, from the Himalayas to the Great Barrier Reef,” according to The New York Times.

The sweeping Oct. 24 protest was to bully developed nations like the United States into a climate change agreement when they meet in Copenhagen this December.

The 350.org protesters, who want to drop CO2 in the atmosphere to that level, were especially critical of the U.S. “You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.”

Oops, that wasn’t the eco-nuts, that’s a direct quote from Osama bin Laden in 2002. While al Qaeda and eco-nuts use different tactics, they share a similar enemy.

Civilization.

Birds of a feather?

Well, not exactly – but when your ideology is anti-human, you’re bound to find areas of agreement with the other anti-humans out there. The problem stems from believing a pack of lies. Osama believes a pack of lies. Environmentalists believe a pack of lies. Some times, the packs of lies overlap. This should get environmentalists to think, but it probably won’t…in fact, if we did get Osama’s head up on a pike, the left would resurrect his legend as that of a working class fighter for minorities and the environment (hey, if they can turn a cop killer like Mumia in to a commencement speaker, then nothing is beyond them…or beneath them).

Better, though, for people to seek Truth – its easily available. All you have to do is ask for it. Knock on the door, as it were.

…then you liberals would be going ballistic. But since its one of your own – from the New Editor:

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (D) has personally furnished $22.6 million of the total of $24.1 million existing in his re-election campaign’s coffers — more than 90% of the total — according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

Gov. Corzine has outspent his two competitors in the state’s gubernatorial race, Republican Chris Christie and independent Chris Daggett, by more than 2 to 1 combined.

This 2009 general election spending is in addition to the $100 million the former Goldman Sachs co-CEO spent in his two previous campaigns for US senator and NJ governor, in 2000 and 2005, respectively.

Is this what you liberals want? Is keeping a man committed to abortion rights and profligate spending in office so important that you’ll sell yourself to a corporate shill as long as he toes your ideological line?

Unless you liberals start demanding a vote for Christie, you’ll be shown up as a bunch of power-grubbing scoundrels…

For the rest of us, its less of a shock:

Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly tumbled in September, their first drop in six months, underscoring the hazards to an economic recovery even as businesses appeared to be stepping up investment.

New single-family home sales fell 3.6 percent to a 402,000 unit annual pace from a downwardly revised 417,000 units in August, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected sales to rise to a 440,000 unit pace.

Unexpectedly? Unexpected by whom? For crying out loud, the only thing keeping any home sales going at all is the $8,000.00 tax credit and there’s only so many first time home buyers out there, ya know? With rising unemployment and increasing foreclosures, what on earth makes anyone think we can have a housing recovery?

Oh, yeah – I forgot: Obama fixed the economy and all’s well.

In a pig’s eye.

We’re broke. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs. We’re losing jobs. Our wages are falling. There’s no way that we, the people, are going to spend our way out of this mess…and that is what Big Government and Big Corporation are counting on…and we’ve had this massive run up in stocks because a bunch of suckers bought the notion that, some how, an increasingly impoverished people can be made to go on a spending spree when they’re broke and in debt. Obama flashing the cash at special interest, big corporations and a few people just won’t do the trick – especially since its borrowed cash which we, poor as we’re becoming, will have to pay back.

Monumentally stupid.

A disturbing news story:

President Barack Obama is considering sending large numbers of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan next year but fewer than his war commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, prefers, U.S. officials said.

Such a narrowed military mission would escalate American forces to accomplish the commander’s broadest goals, protecting Afghan cities and key infrastructure. But the option’s scaled-down troop numbers likely would cut back on McChrystal’s ambitious objectives, amounting to what one official described as “McChrystal Light.”

Under the pared-down option, McChrystal would be given fewer forces than the 40,000 additional troops he has asked for atop the current U.S. force of 68,000, officials told The Associated Press.

Senior White House officials stressed, however, that the president has not settled on any new troop numbers and continues to debate other strategic approaches to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war.

I’d like to say “keep debating”, Barry, and you might eventually get it right…but anyone who studies history knows that councils of war work out to be gatherings of cowards. Everyone gets their two cents in and the decision maker is left with what is best described as the sum of all fears. No decision has been made (which, in and of itself, is a terrible dereliction), but this was my worry all along – not enough troops to win, but enough to keep the bloodshed going at a faster pace.

Please, please, please let this story not pan out…