And a big one it is, indeed:

Two firms that received $343.3 million to handle advertising for Barack Obama’s White House run last year have profited from his top priority as president by taking on his push for health-care overhaul.

One is AKPD Message and Media, the Chicago-based firm headed by David Axelrod until he left last Dec. 31 to serve as a senior adviser to the president. Axelrod was Obama’s top campaign strategist and is now helping sell the health-care plan. The other firm is Washington-based GMMB Campaign Group, where partner Jim Margolis was also an Obama strategist.

This year, AKPD and GMMB received $12 million in advertising business from Healthy Economy Now, a coalition that includes the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, that is seeking to build support for a health-care overhaul, said the coalition’s spokesman, Jeremy Van Ess…

…Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until he sold his interest after Obama’s victory, government records show. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million, which it’s due to pay in installments beginning Dec. 31. Axelrod’s son, Michael, still works there. He didn’t return a phone call. The firm’s Web site continues to feature David Axelrod’s work on the Obama campaign.

Connections to lobbyists; big payouts coming while holding federal office; nepotism – and all for the evil, wicked, nasty pharmaceutical industry (or, at least, that is how its characterized in lefty talking points). This is the change we wanted? Anyone else besides me smell a rat here? We already know that Obama won’t prevent the trial lawyers from profiting off his health care plan…now we know his people are in the hip pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. It there a special interest – other than, ya know?, the people – which isn’t feeding at the public trough while Obama talks “reform” of the system?

Hugh Hewitt makes the inescapable point:

If it was Karl Rove in a similar set of circumstances, the blogs and some in MSM would already be demanding a special prosecutor. There are lots of questions for Mr. Axelrod, the first one being whether the Bloomberg story is accurate. if the answer is “yes,” the second will be: “Have you lawyered up?”

The left is cooking up a “crazed, gun-toting, right-winger” meme to try and frighten us in to silence, and likely justify gun control at a later date – so, pay heed:

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms. – Aristotle

The story:

The nation’s largest organization for seniors is losing members thanks to its support of a health care agenda that includes rationing health care.

Although the group has not technically endorsed the House and Senate bills specifically, it has put enough of its imprimatur on them that President Barack Obama wrongly said AARP endorsed the bills in a recent town hall forum.

In materials provided to CBS News on Monday, AARP said 60,000 citizens have left its membership rolls in protest over its general support for the government-run health care plan.

In the end, AARP is just another group advocating Big Government – including big government experiments, just as long as the money flows and AARP can latch on to some of it. Its high time that seniors dumped this group.

In this case, the FDIC (ie, look in the mirror) backed bubble – from Megan McArdle:

We’ve seen fewer bank failures than we had during the S&L crisis. But as this piece from the Wall Street Journal notes, the failures are worse. Three of the five banks that failed on Friday had to tap the FDIC fund to cover more than 50% of their assets.

This highlights the depth of the market crisis. But it also raises questions about what was going on at the Fed. How did it let things get this bad?

Regulators also have been blamed for not taking quick enough action and for allowing zombie banks to limp along. Inspectors general at the Treasury Department and FDIC, which serve as watchdogs, have issued more than a dozen reports that conclude regulators dithered while banks they oversaw plowed ahead with rapid and unsteady growth.

“When you get these failing banks, they are much more like a fresh-caught fish than a fine wine. They don’t get better with age and the losses keep piling up.” said Bert Ely, a longtime banking-industry consultant.

Integrity Bank, of Alpharetta, Ga., was permitted to keep luring deposits paying unusually high interest rates for more than two years after examiners noted deficiencies in its loan underwriting, according to the FDIC’s inspector general. Integrity failed last year, costing the FDIC $295 million.

It’s easy to lay blame in hindsight. But a bank doesn’t just suddenly and for no apparent reason lose half its assets. Clearly, these banks have been trading while insolvent for quite some time, hoping against hope that everything would somehow turn around. Meanwhile, they poured more of their investor and depositor’s assets into pursuing a Hail Mary pass…

The FDIC, by the way, seems to be out of money – used up the last of it with last Friday’s bank failures. The FDIC mantra is “no one has ever lost a penny on an FDIC-insured deposit” – which is true, but never since the FDIC came in to being have this many banks – and this many large banks – failed in such a short time.

As McArdle puts it, the banks were “hoping against hope” for some miracle turn around to hide the bad loans on the books – as it is, the entirety of the global financial system is currently hoping against hope. Hoping that something, anything, will turn up and allow them to survive – with bankruptcies rising, loan impairments shooting through the roof and no area of the global economy healthy enough to absorb the blow and lead the way out, we’re facing a complete financial collapse akin to – but probably far worse – than that which followed upon the collapse of Creditanstalt in 1931.

Interesting:

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

Thirty-five percent of Americans say they are moderate.

I sure know we’re heavily outnumbering liberals here in Nevada – Harry won’t even hold a real town hall. He’s cooked up some bogus get together where you have to pay $50 to listen to him drone on about whatever it is he thinks is happening. Its a sad day for liberalism when the Senate Majority Leader daren’t show his face in his home State.

More importantly, the pendulum swings – or, more accurately, the people realize they’ve been had by Obama. He did, after all, run as a post-partisan healer. Remember? No, seriously – it was all over his campaign message and echoed from sea to shining sea by the MSM that Obama was a different kind of politician.

Stop that. Stop laughing. No, I’m not making that up. Its just as well known as the fierce, moral urgency the left had to end the war. The war in Iraq. Yeah, that war – the one they were protesting against until….well…until January 20th, now that you think about it….

Anyways…unless by some chance Obamunism works (stop laughing, drat you all!), we’re heading for some fun times for GOPers and conservatives.

…because it’s okay from the left.

Wise Latina. The catch phrase of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings has since taken on a life of its own, generating sales of T-shirts, note cards, dog jerseys and even thongs.

Sotomayor uttered her now famous words on several occasions — and her critics on many more. And while the newest Supreme Court Justice sought to explain the phrase, her supporters have embraced it.

“At 55, I better have some wisdom,” said Joyce Saenz Harris, a retired food writer in Dallas who recently bought a “Wise Latina” T-shirt.

“It just kind of struck me as funny,” said Saenz Harris, whose family originated from Mexico. “I have known a lot of wise Latinas in my life: my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. I thought, ‘Hey this is something I identify with, something I can aspire to.'”

Look how far we’ve come… Sotomayor’s racist comment that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” has now been boiled down to something that is apparently marketable. Perhaps I should start selling shirts that say “typical white person.”

Geesh:

Apparently, libtalkers aren’t the only ones asserting that conservatives want Obama dead. After a week of reckless rhetoric from the left side of the dial, along comes Howard Dean to show them how it’s really done!…

…STEPHANIE MILLER: I saw you (Howard Dean) on Keith Olbermann last night. You really do believe we’re going to have a public option.

HOWARD DEAN: At the end of the day, I think we will. First of all, the president is a very smart guy and he knows very well this can’t work without a public option. Secondly, you know he’s run into a rough patch in the Senate, mostly because of Democrats, honestly.

The Republicans, they have no interest in this Bill. They’re using the 1994 playbook. Let’s kill the bill and kill the president…… or, kill the president’s term. Although there are sort of angry people out there I get very nervous about this stuff. I don’t like it at all…

Its getting to be almost a wish on the left. Howard, knock it off – there’s no conservative bogey-man gonna come git ya, or the President. We’re just having fun knocking you about and we’re going to crush you in 2010 and 2012. But we don’t want you harmed, nor Obama – this is the best recruitment tool we’ve ever had!

A great man, a great American, a great conservative – didn’t always agree with him, but he was a man to be listened to, no matter what. America’s intellect dropped by a noticeable amount when Novak left us.

Have at it, boys and girls – lots to talk about in these ever changing times.

Never give in to the doomsayers:

I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can’t be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort. – Calvin Coolidge