This is the 64th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge – feel free to discuss our magnificent servicemembers past and present and the sublime sacrifices Americans have made for the liberty of the world.

And if you want, you can discuss things of far less importance.

Not good news for Obama and his Democrats:

Forty five percent (45%) of U.S. voters say it is likely President-elect Obama or one of his top campaign aides was involved in the unfolding Blagojevich scandal in Illinois, including 23% who say it is Very Likely.

Just 11% say it is not at all likely, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken Thursday and Friday nights.

That 11% needs to be located and isolated – they’ve got to be, oh, robots or space aliens or people lacking the wit to not stick their fingers in electric sockets. Very strange that anyone could say that Illinois Senator Obama is not at all likely to be involved in a scandal involving Illinois Governor Blagojevich regarding finding a replacement for Illinois Senator Obama.

Anyways – the bloom is really getting off the rose here. Now, to be sure, as January 20th approaches we’ll be back on full messiah mode in the MSM coverage of Obama, but that will mostly amount to preaching to the choir. For those not dimwitted in their Obama enthusiasm, the concept that Obama really represents change is at a discount. For Obama to really get past this and set a new course he’s going to have to make a dramatic break with this own side on the matter of corruption, and thus far we’ve seen no indicator that Obama has the courage to step that far out of line.

It will be a pity if Obama fails this basic test – a pity, but entirely expected by all of us who warned against Obama. Still, one does hope and pray that some how, some way, Obama will awaken from the liberal stupor and realize that doing the right thing will work.

Good to have a baseline database on this as it will become ever more complex as time goes on – so, if you want to know where we stand with Democrat corruption, go here.

Will the last person in the Obama Administration not touched by scandal please turn out the lights on liberalism:

A federal grand jury is investigating how a company that advised Jefferson County, Alabama, on bond deals that threaten to cause the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, did similar work in New Mexico after making contributions to Governor Bill Richardson’s political action committees.

The grand jury in Albuquerque is looking into Beverly Hills, California-based CDR Financial Products Inc., which received almost $1.5 million in fees from the New Mexico Finance Authority in 2004 after donating $100,000 to Richardson’s efforts to register Hispanic and American Indian voters and pay for expenses at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation asked current and former officials from the state agency if any staff members in the governor’s office influenced CDR’s hiring, said the people, who declined to be identified because the proceedings are secret. Richardson, who is President-elect Barack Obama’s designate for Commerce Secretary, has a staff of at least 30 people.

“They’re looking at everything related to CDR,” William Sisneros, the finance agency’s chief executive officer, said of the FBI probe. “They’re just trying to evaluate all the relationships to see what CDR was doing for the money.”

Par for the course in Democratic politics, to be sure – but deadly for the incoming Obama Administration which got us all hopeful about change, and such…

And 69% (correctly) state she helped the McCain ticket:

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.

Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.

When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.

Three other sitting governors – Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota – all pull low single-digit support.

As readers know, I’m a Jindal fan – but Palin is my very, very close second choice for 2012…and Palin/Jindal, Jindal/Palin is pretty much “same/same” for me. We’ve got the best of the best for our future prospects, while the Democrats have Obama and absolutely nothing else. We might lose in 2012, but that will be the last time for a while that we lose. Unless the Democrats clone Obama and Obama is an entirely unexpected success (meaning that for the first time in human history, liberalism works).

We’re expecting snow in Las Vegas tonight and tomorrow morning…

From Joe Klein over at Time:

The war in Afghanistan — the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win — has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a specific target. Afghanistan was where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lived, harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan, and for the past seven years, Afghanistan has been a slow bleed against an array of mostly indigenous narco-jihadi-tribal guerrilla forces that we continue to call the “Taliban.” These ragtag bands are funded by opium profits and led by assorted religious extremists and druglords, many of whom have safe havens in Pakistan.

Subtext: Its the wrong war against the wrong enemy at the wrong time and the sooner we’re out of it, the better.

Get ready, President-elect Obama, for the MSM and the larger left to turn heavily against you vis a vis Afghanistan. Any basis of support you had for your hawkish stance on Afghanistan and Pakistan was mere campaign rhetoric – something designed to take national security off the table and/or denigrate McCain’s sponsorship of the victory in Iraq. The MSM and the left will now revert to their default position – the enemy is always better than we are, our troops are always incompetent when not criminal, we’re making things worse and our sins make it in our best interest to lose.

Now, Obama could just turn on a dime and endorse defeat in Afghanistan with a swift withdrawal of US forces and then start writing up the diplomatic notes deploring the rising violence in an Afghanistan swirling down into chaos. But will he do so? I’m not so sure – in fact, I don’t think he will, at least not initially. There is a huge downside to losing even an inherited war – especially when your military is flush with recent victory elsewhere and is willing and able to take on the task you have set it in Afghanistan. The only upside of cutting and running in Afghanistan is that it will please kook leftists, whom Obama need never please again as long as he lives.

The upside of staying in Afghanistan and allowing our superb military to win is that Obama will then become a victorious war President and that issue is taken away from the GOP at least as long as Obama is in office, and perhaps longer. Additionally, we’d be helping to, ya know?, liberate people and make a better world – that sort of thing which doesn’t appeal to the left, but does appeal to everyone with a bit of sense. As I stated on election night, in regard to our military actions overseas, Obama will have my tireless support and any criticism I make will be designed to help win the war faster. So, count me as an Obamaniac regarding Afghanistan – and I pray that he will tell the MSM and the left to go jump in a lake when the going gets tough, as it certainly will.

The longer this goes on, the worse it gets for Democrats in general and Obama in particular – and thus the Illinois Attorney General’s attempt to short-circuit the impeachment process by trying to get a judge to declare Blagojevich “disabled” and thus unable to exercise the office of Governor. This is absurd, but typical of Democrats who don’t know the difference between legislative, executive and judicial branches – Beldar takes a look at this:

Prof. Ann Althouse is having fun ridiculing Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s efforts both before the press and before the Illinois Supreme Court. Madigan is trying to persuade that court to effectively remove Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office based on an argument that he’s “disabled” due to the allegations that have been made against him in the pending federal indictment being prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. Earlier, Prof. Althouse wrote: “Given that ‘conviction on impeachment’ is one of the specified reasons for inability to serve, using this procedure as an alternative to the impeachment process looks like an abusive power grab.” Prof. Glenn Reynolds adds: “I agree with Ann Althouse. The way you get rid of a crooked governor is via impeachment. Why play games here? If the case is so obvious, that shouldn’t take long.”

I agree with both Prof. Althouse and Prof. Reynolds. Even though it would remove the reins of power from the hands of a crook, using the “disability” provision of the Illinois constitution in lieu of impeachment would be legally, politically, and intellectually illegitimate.

But picking up on Prof. Reynold’s point about impeachment, the question about whether Blagojevich is “obviously crooked” becomes “obvious to whom?” and “under what standard of obviousness?”

That Blagojevich is a banal, petty crook has been “obvious” to anyone who cared to see such things long before he was indicted and arrested. Under a practical, common-sense standard, that should have been obvious to the voters of Illinois who nevertheless elected him.(emphasis in original)

In the strange world of politics, we can’t assume that Madigan won’t be able to find a judge to rule in her favor, but believe she’ll be unsuccessful. Blagojevich is a crook and anyone paying attention since before he took office as Governor knows he’s a crook – but he’s also innocent until proven guilty and he’s as yet only been indicted, not convicted. Crook or no, he was both elected and re-elected – and thus he has a reason for desperately trying to cling on to power in the hopes that something will turn up to get him off the hook, at least as far as a long prison term is concerned. The fact that Blagojevich has acted as he has shows us that the most important thing in his life is himself, we can’t rely upon a basic decency and desire to spare others to motivate him to do the right thing – only if resigning works in what Blagojevich thinks is his best interest will he do it.

The rumor is that he’ll quit as early as Monday morning – and lets hope he does…but given the culture of corruption prevalent amongst Democrats, the fact that the people of Illinois have a high tolerance of corruption and the fact that Blagojevich has nothing to lose by fighting it out, we may see the Democrats forced to do something they never want to do – call one of their own to account for his misdeeds.

But they may be forced to it – Obama needs this thing to go away and go away quickly. Aside from the fact that each day distracts from things he’d rather be doing, there always the continual chance that something will come up tying him and/or senior aides to Blagojevich. We’ll soon see how this all plays out.

And, apparently, someone from Daily Kos got in there as well:

President George W. Bush flew to Iraq on Sunday, his fourth and final trip to highlight the recently completed security agreement between the United States and the country that has occupied the bulk of his presidency and will to a large extent define his legacy.

But his appearance at a news conference here was interrupted by an Iraqi journalist who shouted in Arabic — “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog” — and threw one of his shoes at the president, who ducked and narrowly avoided being struck.

As chaos ensued, he threw his other shoe, shouting, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” The second shoe also narrowly missed Bush as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki stuck out a hand in front of the president’s face to help shield him.

A scrum of security agents descended on the man, who was about 12 feet from the lectern, and wrestled him to the floor and then out of the ornate room where the news conference was taking place. The president was uninjured and brushed off the incident. “All I can report is it is a size 10,” he said jokingly before continuing his news conference and noting the apologies of Iraqi journalists in the front row.

Shortly before 10 p.m., Bush departed the Green Zone by helicopter to Camp Victory, where he was greeted with cheers and whoops from hundreds of troops inside the enormous rotunda of the Al Faw palace. Speaking at a lectern beneath an enormous American flag that nearly reached the domed ceiling, he praised this generation of soldiers and reflected on the sacrifice of those who had died.

He called the surge “one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military.”

“Thanks to you,” he told the soldiers, “the Iraq we’re standing in today is dramatically freer, dramatically safer and dramatically better than the Iraq we found eight years ago.”

On the flipside of that kook with the shoe, other Iraqi journalists offered their apologies to President Bush, who made light of the incident with a joke about the size of the shoe. And thus democracy to Iraq – and, in fact, perhaps better democracy than we have, as I doubt any of us would get away with tossing a shoe at the President, this one or the next. I mean, come on, which of us hasn’t wanted to chuck something at a President from time to time?

At any rate, God bless President Bush, our magnificent troops and the brave Iraqi people – including the screwball with the shoe. We’ve done well and the world is a better place for what we’ve done.