Merry Christmas, Everybody

I hope everyone's getting to enjoy a great Christmas (or your holiday of choice) and New Year's with their loved ones.

My checked luggage is still in D.C., but I spent all night going by rental car from Houston to Dallas, listening to crazy Mexican Christmas carols on the radio to stay awake.

Barreling up I-45, I began to detect a theme: the Sam Houston Tollway, Sam Houston University, Sam Houston National Forest, a sixty foot, gleaming white statue of Sam Houston. Also, just a note to Dallas County: it's crazily confusing if street signs dramatically change colors, typefaces and positioning six times in twelve blocks, as they seem to do in the vicinity of Addison.

In any case, here's this year's amusing Christmas photo:



Backstory here.

Drive safely, I'll blog Friday.

Patrick Fitzgerald is from the future. Go with him if you want to live.

I remain awestruck by the delusional hubris of Rod Blagojevich.


The "powerful forces" and "political lynch mob" arrayed against him might better be described as "the voting public". His defense attorney, Edward Genson, can't even look reporters in the eye when he calls this a "witch hunt", because he knows Rod Blagojevich is, in fact, a witch.

Governor Blagojevich is out there. He can't be bargained with. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until the general fund is empty.

The Man Who Does Everything Right

Last week, the Blagojevich situation looked set to paralyze state government entirely:

One result of the long-running deadlock in Springfield is that Illinois has lost billions of dollars in federal funds, money we could have used for roads and bridges.

On top of that, state government is facing a $4 billion to $5 billion shortfall. Some Medicaid providers, including hundreds of doctors, haven't been paid for care they gave to patients six months ago.

A plan to borrow $1.4 billion to speed up those payment checks has hit a huge snag. As part of every big borrowing, Attorney General Lisa Madigan has to sign a formal document. Part of it states that there is no litigation or controversy that threatens the governor's ability to serve in office.

Which, obviously, nobody would sign. Facing state prisons running out of food and nursing homes kicking their patients out, state officials and bond attorneys have reached an agreement to simply revise the language, which apparently now states that the governor's situation is, in fact, incredibly dire and that any whacky and surreal thing at all could happen.

Meanwhile, caught red-handed, on tape, trying to sell a United States Senate seat and extorting firings from the most prominent media outlet in his state, Governor Blagojevich (who had a 4% approval rating before the scandal), has now taken a formal position: "You ain't got nothin' on me, coppers!"

Chicago defense attorney Ed Genson proclaimed that the governor is not guilty, will not resign, and instead will fight the charges against him.

"He's not stepping aside," Genson told reporters outside his Chicago office building. "He hasn't done anything wrong. We're going to fight this case....I think the case is not what it seems and I think that when it comes to pass, you'll see it's not what it seems and you'll find that he's not guilty."

What he's got here is golden, and I don't blame him for not giving it up for nothing. However, "not guilty" != "innocent". If he fights the charges and wins, he's still done something wrong, and he's still unfit to pick up drycleaning. This is just the tiny portion of his total wrongdoing that the Feds happened to catch on tape.

Blagojevich has not spoken to the press yet. He left Genson's offices just before his attorney did, saying that he was looking forward to talking to the general public.

"I can't wait to talk to you guys and to have a chance to be able to say the things I'm looking forward to saying," Blagojevich said. "But there's a time and place for all of that and I'll, uh, we'll soon let you know when it's gonna be."

As long as he's wearing an orange jumpsuit, I'm fine with that, but I expect he's thinking more along the lines of "whoever pays me the most for the rights". According to a memo distributed to Blagojevich's neighbors by his wife, we can only assume that what he's looking forward to saying is "!@#$ you, media mother@#!@ers, and $#%! the people."

The state's first lady avoided any specific mention of her husband's arrest and the resulting crisis engulfing state government. Rather, she had a three paragraph typewritten note delivered to homes along their Ravenswood Manor block, blaming the media for the inconvenience.

The note begins: 'Dear Neighbor, My husband and I would like to apologize to you and your family for the media barrage that has descended on our neighborhood.''

She goes on to write that she hopes the media attention will subside, "not only for the sake of our children, but also for you and your family.''

I am in absolute awe.

This is the media's fault. It's not like her husband has created a crisis that crippled state government, tainted the President-Elect's administration before it even began, and humiliated the state of Illinois in front of the nation, right?

Corruptevich: The Legend Continues


Rod Blagojevich has now spent longer making it clear he has no intention of resigning than Eliot Spitzer spent deciding if he should. A few thoughts:

1. The media has barely scratched the surface of what's gone on.

Up to this point, national media coverage has revolved almost exclusively around what's contained in the federal complaint. Obviously, this is driven by the fact that it indirectly involves Barack Obama, but it does not accurately reflect how Rod Blagojevich ultimately ended up in handcuffs or what's really wrong in Illinois. The press is finally starting to dig a little deeper, but there may never be an accurate portrayal of how Blagojevich has systematically turned state government into a criminal enterprise. It's a rare man who thinks nothing of his daughter receiving a $1,500 check for her 7th birthday from a former campaign staffer, just days after giving the staffer's wife a well-paid state job (though she had, herself, failed the state's qualifying exams). Millions of Illinoisans have suffered from the crumbling of state government, and billions of public dollars, both state and federal, have been diverted and squandered in the (apparently incompetent) efforts of Rod Blagojevich to enrich himself and his associates.

Numerous top Blagojevich associates have already been indicted over the years, including Tony Rezko, slumlord and scammer of minority-business programs, and Chris Kelly, the "roofing contractor" whose sister was made head of the Bureau of Real Estate Professions five days after getting her real estate license and who Blagojevich's own father-in-law warned the world was selling state appointments for $50,000. Like Al Capone, they got him on tax evasion.

Dominic Longo, head of the hilariously-named "Coalition for Better Government" (a motley crew of Chicago Democrats with mafioso-nicknames and questionable pasts), ultimately turned on Blagojevich, accusing Blagojevich of ruining Longo's reputation, despite Longo himself being a convicted felon and vote fraudster. The cast of bizarre characters is endless, from a tire-slashing union activist to a cigar-smoking lycanthrope.

Once you get past the idea that the Blagojevich administration is a political organization, his suicidal decisions and insane policies start making a lot of sense: every policy is a confidence game, every photo op is a shakedown, and every newly-created office has an angle. Shortly after his election, a federal judge had to intervene to stop him from giving an effective monopoly over telecom service in Illinois to Mayor Daley's own brother.

In March, it was revealed that Blagojevich had allowed a million dollars to be sent to "the wrong place", an "error" that left the landmark Pilgrim Baptist Church without promised fire-reconstruction aid but which subsequently uncovered a festering pool of shady activity involving FBI informants, a "school" that had "mistakenly" received the money but which was also facing nine civil suits and owing substantial back taxes, a questionable gubernatorial pardon of one of the teachers, and, naturally, Tony Rezko.

Then there's Central Management Services, the state agency tasked with controlling costs. Their mission, as it turned out, was only taken ironically: the agency was so thoroughly corrupt that CMS employees were apparently getting fired because their crooked schemes were foiling the crooked schemes of other CMS employees. A 140-page independent audit revealed that of the six hundred million dollars in savings Blagojevich attributed to CMS, fewer than one hundred million could actually be identified, leading CMS to try and fail to accuse the Auditor-General of corruption, and Blagojevich to claim that they just had "different ways of doing business".

Despite the CMS mission, contractors, including IPAM, a subsidiary of Mesirow Financial, were found to be billing the state for things like parties to celebrate winning CMS contracts. IPAM lost their contract, but a year later, Mesirow was allowed to manage a billion dollars of bonds for the Tollway Authority, itself a hive of scum and villainy, part of a Department of Transportation seeded with unqualified Blagojevich lackeys dubbed "local agency liaisons" and used as a means for Blagojevich to give a six-figure job to his drunk-driving childhood friend Daniel Stefanski, a guy so dirty that the Teamsters, of all people, claimed Stefanski's presence had corrupted their organization.

We now know that even dying, poverty-stricken children were not beyond the grasp of Blagojevich's extortion racket, and the odds are that Republic Windows and Doors did not happen without someone, somewhere, writing a substantial check to purchase Rod's "divine intervention". How about the FamilyCare debacle, in which Blagojevich's attorneys admitted that they "can't identify participants or contact them, monitor premium payments or refund them, and don't even know how much they've collected in premium payments or where the money is"?

Legislators and auditors who got in the way of Rod Blagojevich found themselves blacklisted, as Blagojevich personally tormented his enemies by eliminating funding for anti-gang programs, floodwalls, pandemic flu preparedness, and other spending intended to protect the very lives of Illinois citizens. As part of his insane war to force the legislature to approve his budget, he even took the police power itself hostage, threatening to lay off 90% of the Illinois State Police if he didn't get his way.

Comptroller Dan Hynes even refused to sign some of Blagojevich's checks, opting to have vendors sue the state before he'd help Blagojevich squander more of the state's scarce resources on epic misadventure at a time when the state was sending as little as six bucks and change as "payments" against multi-million dollar debts owed to healthcare providers.

In a just world, forensic accountants would make their careers hunting down everyone involved in creating this disaster, and it would become a literal textbook case for corruption among criminal justice students. We shouldn't be demanding Rod Blagojevich's resignation, we should be demanding seppuku, or perhaps that he be locked up in Arkham Asylum.

2. It is entirely possible that Rod Blagojevich is completely out of his mind.

I'm hardly the first person to suggest this, but Blagojevich has exhibited frightening paranoia since early in his administration. One of his first public embarrassments was the discovery that his office was diverting Department of Corrections prison psychologists to the Orwellian business of monitoring and analyzing media coverage of his leadership. This is a man who is so obsessed with appearances that a bodyguard was tasked with carrying his hairbrush (codenamed "the football", both for it's colossal size and as a reference to the nuclear launch codes carried with the President).

This is a man who, when Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn declined to accept a security detail, simply added Quinn's security detail to his own, then purged experienced bodyguards in favor of his handpicked, inexperienced cronies. The end result was a massive detail that posed a danger to themselves and others, creating a spectacle at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, drinking on the job, chasing skirt, losing their guns, and ramming Volkswagens while doing 90 mph on the shoulder. Blagojevich brought them with him, wherever he went, even closing roads in places as far away as California (apparently without permission of the host states) so that he could speed his motorcade along and make sure everyone "knew who he is".

This is a man who opted to live in Chicago instead of the state capital, because he "didn't want his daughter to change schools". Instead, he billed taxpayers for his staff to take thousands of flights back and forth to Springfield.

The governor's budget director flies on state aircraft nearly once every 2 1/2 days as he tries to find ways to control costs.

This is a man who was repeatedly dinged for ethical concerns over his habit of putting his name in large print all over state publications and websites, at times much larger than the word "Illinois", and who spent half a million dollars on new tollbooth signs for no apparent reason other than to be able to see his own name in lights.

When Eliot Spitzer first came under scrutiny in the incident with Bruno, there were widespread rumors that he had abandoned telephone communications to avoid leaving a trail. Instead, communications were conducted by messengers. By comparison, Blagojevich, fully aware of the scope of the investigation into his administration, didn't just use phones, he even had his wife on the line. Something is certainly wrong with this picture, but whether it's simply a matter of epic vanity, arrogance, and stupidity or a legitimate mental imbalance is unclear. Blagojevich father-in-law Mell says that he's now only concerned about the welfare of his daughter and granddaughter, and he should be: they're in the hands of what may be a narcissistic sociopath.

3. For Blagojevich, this is but another scam.

You might think this is the worst week of Rod Blagojevich's life, but he appears to have accepted his inevitable indictment long ago. The FBI's complaint documents him casually discussing his "legal situation" and plotting to give himself the Senate seat both to escape impeachment from the Governor's office and to give himself access to financial and political resources currently beyond his reach that would be needed to fight the Feds.

Dragged away from his home in handcuffs, Rod Blagojevich simply posted bail and went back to work, presumably to resume criminal activity. Insane or not, his current thinking is almost certainly that he now has an unprecedented opportunity to extort money and favors from all the people he could otherwise rat out to the Feds, something he is highly motivated to do, given that he may very well be facing the prospect of dying in prison. He thought he could get Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to fund his future, so his reality is pretty distorted.

4. Barack Obama thinks that we're all stupid.

It may very well be that nothing untoward happened between the Obama and Blagojevich camps. However, Obama's attempt to make this go away by pretending that they had no idea what was going on, that they hadn't discussed it with Blagojevich, and that we're all crazy to ask makes him look like he's lying in our faces. Indeed, he is, and Philadelphia's Democratic governor Ed Rendell agrees.

Of course they had contact about this, and if the Obama administration is all about transparency and honesty, they should provide complete answers to Politico's Seven Blago Questions for Obama. Instead, they're allowing Blagojevich questions to be censored on their new "Open for Questions" site.

Frankly, if Rahm Emanuel did indeed sell Blagojevich out, he should step right up so we can give him his medal, but instead, they're badly mishandling this. Emanuel claims he's receiving daily death threats, and that's just sad. There's no reason to believe to believe Emanuel has done anything wrong. However, if Emanuel is surprised and outraged that refusing to talk to the media is causing them to intrude further into his life rather than to back off, he must be incredibly naive about what MSM journalists actually do for a living.

5. The Blagojevich arrest should not be allowed to be the end of this.

The culture of corruption that bred the Blagojevich administration does not exist in isolation on the 16th floor of the Thompson Center. It rippled in from Chicago, and has rippled out to pollute nearly every facet of state government. Resolving this requires an extensive and sustained outrage from the electorate, and whipping it up requires getting the public to understand not just that what's happening is wrong, but that it's doing harm in the lives of Illinoisans and to taxpayers nationwide. It is not acceptable, it never was, and the perpetrators should be hounded relentlessly.

My God, It's Full of Stars

Yesterday, Rod Blagojevich defiantly brushed off the news that his phones were tapped:

A defiant Gov. Rod Blagojevich says anyone who wants to tape his conversations should feel free to do it openly because doing it "sneakily" smells like Watergate, the scandal that brought down former President Richard Nixon.

"This is America, you know, and I'd appreciate if you want to tape my conversations, give me a heads-up and let me know," Blagojevich said.

It did smell like Watergate, if you imagine that Blagojevich is, in fact, playing the role of his political hero, Richard Nixon. The reason federal investigators didn't give Blagojevich a "heads-up" is for much the same reason that cops sometimes get no-knock warrants.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on Tuesday on charges he brazenly conspired to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama to the highest bidder in what a federal prosecutor called a "corruption crime spree."

Blagojevich also was charged with illegally threatening to withhold state assistance to Tribune Co., the owner of the Chicago Tribune, in the sale of Wrigley Field, according to a federal criminal complaint. In return for state assistance, Blagojevich allegedly wanted members of the paper's editorial board who had been critical of him fired.

"We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it," Fitzgerald said Tuesday, calling the corruption charges against Blagojevich "a truly new low."

Federal investigators bugged the governor's campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone and Chicago FBI chief Robert Grant said even seasoned investigators were "stunned" by what they heard on the tapes.

Stunned?

There's no excuse for being "stunned". I got over that five years ago when the brazen criminality of Rod Blagojevich became so painfully obvious simply from reading the paper. Since this blog started, I've written about four hundred posts on Blago's corruption and incompetence, pretty much shouting into the darkness, even while partisan Democrats still tried to assert that Blagojevich was merely a "victim" of the "right-wing smear machine".

You didn't need a degree in political science to put this one together, you just had to have a healthy skepticism of politicians from the most corrupt political machine in America, and a willingness to admit that they're visibly destroying the state. I called this exact scheme with Obama's Senate seat six months ago. Somehow, despite it all being right there in the papers, he managed to get reelected, and the public consensus that his corruption exceeds the typical background noise for Chicago Democrats has really only started to come together in the last year or so.

Fitzgerald took a dramatic step to stop Blagojevich today rather than continuing to gather evidence. My guess is he wanted to stop him before he could poison the Senate with his appointment. Longtime readers know that seeing Blagojevich go to prison has essentially been this blog's primary purpose, so let me put it in writing, to avoid any confusion: this arrest makes me very happy. The only reason it took me this long to post about it is because I've been working nights this week, and didn't find out until I woke up two hours ago to several voicemails, emails, and instant messages wondering why I haven't posted about this yet.

This is my Christmas morning.

Blagojevich considered appointing himself [to the United States Senate]. The affidavit said that as late as Nov. 3, he told his deputy governor that if "they're not going to offer me anything of value I might as well take it."

"I'm going to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and therefore I can drive a hard bargain," Blagojevich allegedly said later that day, according to the affidavit, which also quoted him as saying in a remark punctuated by profanity that the seat was "a valuable thing - you just don't give it away for nothing."

The affidavit said Blagojevich also discussed getting a substantial salary for himself at a nonprofit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions.

It said Blagojevich also talked about getting his wife placed on corporate boards where she might get $150,000 a year in director's fees.

He also allegedly discussed getting campaign funds for himself or possibly a post in the president's cabinet or an ambassadorship once he left the governor's office. He noted becoming a U.S. senator might remake his image for a possible presidential run in 2016, according to the affidavit. And he allegedly said a Senate seat would also provide him with corporate contacts if he needed a job and present an opportunity for his wife to work as a lobbyist.

"I want to make money," the affidavit quotes him as saying in one conversation.

The affidavit said Blagojevich expressed frustration at being "stuck" as governor and that he would have access to greater resources if he were indicted while in the U.S. Senate than while sitting as governor.

Not only was Rod Blagojevich, the most loathed Democrat in America, the only Democratic governor who managed to prove less popular than Kathleen Blanco in the middle of Hurricane Katrina, still trying to weasel his way into the Presidency of the United States, but he was hoping to have a more powerful office from which to weasel his way out of the criminal charges he so richly deserves. Ironically, the fact that he deserves them is why his hopes of running for President were dashed in the first place.

They've also arrested Blagojevich's chief of staff, John Harris, who apparently was involved in a separate conspiracy involving the Service Employees International Union and, in some undefined and apparently non-implicatory way, Barack Obama.

Under the plan, Blagojevich would appoint a new senator who would be helpful to the president-elect and in turn get a job as head of Change to Win, a group formed by the union. The union would get an unspecified favor from Obama later.

Nothing in the court papers suggested Obama had any part in the discussion. In fact, Blagojevich allegedly said in the same conversation that Obama most likely would not appoint him as secretary of health and human services or to an ambassadorship because of the negative publicity that has surrounded the governor for three years.

One day later, according to the affidavit, Blagojevich allegedly told an associate he knew Obama wanted a specific Senate candidate but "they're not going to give me anything except appreciation." He finished the remark with an expletive.

Illinoisans aren't even going to give him that.

Update: A reader emails:

Q: What did one Illinois prison inmate say to the other?

A: "The food was better when you were Governor."

Heh.

Update: The complaint.

What a relief that the Feds didn't let him finish his term before taking action. He didn't deserve to go out with his dignity intact. Today was a good day.

Update: Ironically, today is United Nations International Anti-Corruption Day. Tomorrow is Rod Blagojevich's birthday.

An instant message from my father: "It's Rod Blagojevich's birthday tomorrow, but he had his surprise party today."

It's My Birthday

Accordingly, I may not be around.

Here comes the Change, everybody!

The latest episode of South Park nails the amusing euphoria of Obama supporters, and the apocalyptic woe of some McCain supporters. (Some of us already went through the stages of grief long ago.)

Meanwhile, everything is proceeding according to plan:

1) Democrats misinterpreting their mandate:

"This is a tectonic-plate election, one of those once-in-a-generation times where people not only define change, but define a new relationship with government," said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the lead campaign strategist for Senate Democrats. He added that voters want a government that is "more activist, more involved" in the economy and their lives.

How many times have you heard this in the last two decades? This year, voters thought "change" meant a dramatic end to business as usual in Washington. Liberals think it means America has given the least popular Congress in history a blank check to implement the long-rejected progressive agenda. Schumer may as well be playing with matches in a fireworks factory.

2) Obama supporters already feeling let down:

"I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker.

The large gathering of around 375 people prompted police to call in extra officers and set up temporary barricades....Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail.

"Still that's not right. I'm disappointed. I'm glad for the president, but I'm disappointed in this system," said Diane Jefferson.

Eerie, isn't it? Like looking into the future.

"Every generation," says Brian J. Noggle, "must live through its own 1970s."

Update: Iowahawk:

Although I have not always been the most outspoken advocate of President-Elect Barack Obama, today I would like to congratulate him and add my voice to the millions of fellow citizens who are celebrating his historic and frightening election victory.... It reminds us of how far we've come, and it's something everyone in our nation should celebrate in whatever little time we now have left.

Read the whole thing.

A Brief Summary of the Election

--- We're safe from a Senate Democratic supermajority. Upside: Nancy Pelosi's worst high crackpottery may be largely neutralized. Downside: Nancy Pelosi's worst high crackpottery may go largely unnoticed.

--- Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina? Thanks, Bob Barr! Of course, McCain had this coming. Somewhere between the amnesty and the bailout, enough conservatives realized that even if they had dinner on the table before he got home, McCain was never going to stop beating them. If only McCain had had a stronger showing, Barr could've cost him even more states.

--- On schedule, it's a manufactured international crisis! Wait, is it this one?

--- Newark, New Jersey's Democratic Mayor, Cory Booker, on MSNBC last night:

"I want to luxuriate in the racial deliciousness of our country!"

Bonus points when he's asked about the "problems" facing Newark, and is overcome with visible terror for a good thirty seconds. Apparently, there weren't supposed to be any questions about Newark.

--- Young voters remain incredibly unreliable and disinterested. The "historic" turnout? 1% higher than in 2004..

--- After surprising opposition from leaders like former Governor Jim Edgar, the Illinois Constitutional Convention referendum failed by a large margin. Northern Illinois University political science major Alex Hari explains:

"Every state has their own constitution. Voters in this election decided if they wanted changes to be made to the state constitution."

Thank you, John Madden. Thoughts on the challenges faced by the "yes" movement from "yes" movement leader Bruno Behrend.

--- If Philadelphia Republicans managed to dodge the Black Panthers "guarding" their polling places, they probably could've followed this gentleman's advice and voted "a couple times". CNN reporter's startled response: "I think that's against the law, but it's OK."

--- There's no denying the importance of Obama's historic moment last night and I have no intention of diminishing it, but while I'm no fashion guru, even I think that Michelle Obama has purchased the dress of the apocalypse.

--- "We're also smelling just a little bit of weed in the air. Haven't been to many political events where you smell that."

--- Rock the Vote, the New York Times, and the respective New York State and New York City Boards of Elections have joined forces to point fingers at each other in the bungling of tens of thousands of voter registrations. On their Blog, Rock the Vote promises to find the real killers.

--- Al Franken appears to have failed in his bid for the Senate, which is good news, because physicists have long suspected that Franken's presence in the Senate Chamber would rip the fabric of spacetime. Predictably, his campaign ended with him saying embarrassing things that remind everyone why he deserved to lose.

--- Actually, about Obama's speech last night:

Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

...and in the living room of William Ayers.

Hah!

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I'm still waiting for this guy to tell me where we're going.

I promise you - we as a people will get there.

No, seriously. Where are we going?

Perspective

For the last six months, I've been engaged nearly around-the-clock in several efforts to stem the Democratic advance in this election. In order to do that, I've missed a lot of opportunities to participate in the blogosphere, which has been depressing. I originally imagined I'd have the willpower to continue blogging at a normal pace, but being surrounded by this election cycle all day, every day, pretty much beat that out of me.

However, from the Democrats' embarrassing mistake in opposing offshore drilling to the comical spectacle that they billed as their convention, I missed out on opportunities to say some things that probably needed to be said. Still, I think what I've been working on will prove significant, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, to the extent that I might have my work vindicated. Even if we don't get what we wanted, we've done damage in places it needed to be done.

As for the Presidential race, I'll say the same things here that I've told others:

Barack Obama isn't going to win by the dramatic 10 and 12 percent margins some polls are suggesting, it's going to be more like 5. Still, we're losing this election. John McCain made huge mistakes, let down his base, and Obama had money, a willingness to shift to the right in his rhetoric, and an anti-incumbent, anti-Bush current running in his favor. McCain's powerful strategic choice in Sarah Palin turned out to be an epic tactical error, and his handling of the bailout was a disastrous miscue that all but ended the race for him.

The bailout package was, indeed, "bipartisan", but only in the sense that both parties were working together against us. It left me disgusted enough that I'm opposing anyone who voted for it, for any office, forever. With the Early Voting collapse of the "Write in Fred Thompson" suicide pact I'd made with friends, that leaves me forced to join them in voting for Bob Barr.

However, if John McCain has failed conservatives, Obama is already preparing to fail America:

Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair".

Maybe I'm being needlessly harsh, but it seems as if "hope" is a fallback for people who have trouble with economics. Consider this poor woman, who thinks that, somehow, under Obama, she "won't have to worry about putting gas in her car, won't have to worry about paying her mortgage".

What?

Democrats accuse Republicans of using "the politics of fear", while warning from the other side of their mouth that if they aren't elected to office, our children will never have a future and might even be killed in a natural disaster caused by carbon emissions. Feminist Erica Jong warns that "blood will run in the streets", and, in a dramatic overestimation of the commitment and small arms proficiency of Obama supporters, that an Obama loss will spark a "second American civil war".

We're told, live on major news networks, most dramatically by apparent rabies sufferer Keith Olbermann, that we're the ones somehow suppressing dissenting viewpoints, even as Barack Obama bans disapproving newspapers from his plane and blacklists stations that ask his running mate pressing questions, even as a left-liberal radio host wishes death on Joe the Plumber for defying "Him" and liberal Democrats try to reimpose the so-called "fairness doctrine" on conservative commentary.

Truly, as Mark Steyn has noted, satire is dead.

Still, no matter what you hear on your favorite cable news network, this is not the most important or contentious election in American history and the nation is certainly not "more divided than ever". It's another Presidential election between two perfectly fallible human beings who are ignorant of many things, and we do have these elections like clockwork. We will do it again in four years, and the media will doubtlessly describe that, too, as the most important election in our history, as if our very lives hinge on the outcome.

A certain percentage of voters believe that the sheer power of their faith in Obama will somehow grant him the power and the wisdom to solve all their problems, a fallacy that would quickly be dispelled by a good civics course. In truth, real reform and good governance requires constant vigilance from an informed electorate that realizes the Presidency is only one piece of the puzzle, not faith in "change" or "experience" or any other buzzword a campaign pays to place on television. If government is full of hypocrites or sell-outs, it's primarily because we don't pay enough attention to stop electing them.

Jeffrey Kuhner, writing for the Washington Times, fears the end of days for individual liberty and free markets.

New Deal-Great Society liberalism has put America on the path to creeping socialism. The Democrats are now on the verge of completing it. A socialist America will be a poorer, weaker America. More importantly, it will spell the end of American exceptionalism - the experiment of a free people in constitutional self-government.

Once that happens, there will be no turning back. There will be a conservative movement after an Obama victory. However, it will be one fighting a desperate, rear-guard action. Like the conservatives in Canada or Western Europe, the question will no longer be how to stop the statist juggernaut but how to manage it.

I don't believe that's likely to happen. There are going to be very practical limits to Barack Obama's political capital, because his party wants "change" that differs dramatically from what voters are hoping for, and Obama is going to be largely helpless to find a happy compromise. There's certainly no mandate for socialism. 84% of Americans prioritize economic growth over an "equitable" distribution of wealth. In a world where global temperatures are declining and economic realities are trumping "green" fashion sense, the already-tiny impetus for a wildly expensive anti-carbon bureaucracy is dying. 70% believe the media is actively in the bag for Obama. The bailout package was opposed by a hearty majority of voters, as is an offshore drilling ban. Half of all Americans believe that this Congress, a Democrat-controlled Congress, is no better than a random sample from the phone book, and three quarters believe they don't understand the bills they're passing.

To predict that the Democrats will massively overplay their hand in this environment is to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the next Pope will be a practicing Roman Catholic. They will inevitably confuse this for the mandate that they also wrongly thought they had received in 2006, and have already begun grumbling about their intention to rush to restore the offshore drilling ban.

Old alliances are breaking down, and when this trend starts to wear down, we'll have the best opportunity in years to get the conservative movement and the Republican Party back on track. To do that, we must produce new conservative leaders to sit on what is now a painfully shallow bench, we must make sure that the resources of the conservative movement are in the hands of real conservatives, and we must reach out to the latent libertarian conservative majority that makes up America's middle class in an unprecedented way. We should get started as soon as the polls close tomorrow.

He's Honored To Get What We All Want To See

He's kind of like Jesus, but not in a sacriligious way.

"All of those things happened because we had to push and prod and fight through the system to get it done for people, and if I get bloodied up in the process, and there are some times when people are just not generally approving, I feel honored to get my ass kicked for the people," Blagojevich said.

Well, in that case... Monday Night Rehabilitation!

Really, isn't that what he's implying here? That voters are just too stupid to understand how precious his genius is?

For the current election, Blagojevich has come out against a referendum calling for a new state constitutional convention.

Of course he has.

He said it might limit his power to get around the state General Assembly to get things done.

In fact, it's almost guaranteed to do exactly that. The more Blagojevich promotes that fact, the more likely it is to pass.

Incredibly, the Constitutional Convention referendum process is already being bungled by Blagojevich's co-incompetents:

An Illinois appellate court affirmed the trial court's remedy for the "downright misleading" and unconstitutional ballot: hand out a flyer to voters telling them to disregard the referendum "Explanation" and "Notice" that are printed right on the ballot.

The bottom line is that citizens will vote on a ballot that a court has ruled is unconstitutional.

Irony.

He's a Victim of the System

The video surveillance system.

The head of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library was fired Tuesday, just days after it came to light that he had twice been arrested for shoplifting.

Director Rick Beard was placed on administrative leave last week after The (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported his arrests for stealing DVDs and neckties, but he continued to receive his salary.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich formally fired him on Tuesday. Beard was notified by telephone, said Dave Blanchette, spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

Beard made nearly $250,000 a year as director of the museum and the foundation.

He was charged in August with trying to steal $40 worth of DVDs from a Springfield Target.

And he was charged with misdemeanor theft last year after being caught allegedly trying to steal $300 worth of neckties at a Springfield shopping mall.

The DVDs? Season 4 of "House".

This is how it starts, petty theft, tire slashing, vote fraud. Then, you get bold, and rob your own armored cars.

Soon, the transformation will be complete, and Beard will be eligible to run for high office in Illinois.

Munchausen's Syndrome Strikes Again

You know Ashley Todd, the McCain campaign volunteer who pulled the idiotic stunt where she pretended to have been assaulted by an Obama supporter?

Turns out, her antics had previously gotten her thrown out of a group of Ron Paul supporters.

I didn't realize it was even possible to get thrown out of a Ron Paul group. I assumed they all wore capes and masks to protect their identities.

This Must Have Been Done by Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot

Illinois' "other" Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, in a remarkable moment of clarity:

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wishes he could blame Republicans for the mess and dysfunction paralyzing Illinois state government these days, but he knows he can't.

"This mess is our creation, Democratic creation, and there are no excuses for what has happened," Durbin, a Springfield resident and the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said in an interview Thursday with The State Journal-Register editorial board.

Durbin said he's tried to work more closely with Blagojevich on key issues, but doesn't get his phone calls returned regularly. He said he doesn't know what it will take to fix the problems or whether he or anyone else in Washington could help cut through the morass.

Don't worry: once we elect a product of the Chicago Democratic machine, shining beacon of good governance that it is, to the Presidency, everything will be puppies and unicorns in no time.

He Loves You Even More Now That You Hate Him

Point:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be the least liked politician in America. A new poll shows only 10 percent want him re-elected in 2010. Add that to the 13 percent who approve of Blagojevich's job performance -- that's even worse than President Bush's 18 percent approval ratings. The Chicago Tribune poll surveyed 500 likely voters last week.

The governor has become such a polarizing figure that both Republicans and Democrats are using him in negative ads. State Sen. Debbie Halvorson, a Democratic candidate for Congress in the 11th district, is now using the contributions of businessman Marty Ozinga, her opponent, to Blagojevich as a reason to vote for her.

Counter-Point:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich today blamed his low approval rating on the faltering economy and said he thinks voters would give him a third term in office if he was running on the Nov. 4.

What did he blame it on after Hurricane Katrina, when he somehow managed to rank worse than Governor Blanco?

He said he was confident that if he was on the ballot today that he'd "win by 10 points or better."

That's technically correct. If he was on the ballot today, he'd be unopposed.

"I love the people of Illinois more today than I did before," Blagojevich said. "And if it's a case of unrequited love at this point, I'll just have to work extra hard to get them to love me again."

In some jurisdictions, that'd be enough to get a restraining order. However, it looks like the feds would prefer to skip straight to prison.

HELLO WORLD

That's right, the blog is back online. I have, literally, not had time to repair a MySQL table until now.

Life gets better November 4th. Or, depending on how "big picture" I want to be about it, much, much worse.