At some point in the past few weeks, Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias was sitting in his million-dollar Chicago condo wondering how he could possibly stop the death spiral of his campaign for the United States Senate.

It had all seemed so perfect just a few months ago—The dashing and urbane Alexi had burst on the political scene only four years ago spending millions of his parents money to win statewide office in his very first foray into politics.  He shot hoops with his role model and political patron, Barak Obama.  He had wealth, charisma, connections and unbridled ambition and a solidly blue state in which to make all his dreams come true.

But things started to go poorly from the start.  His entry into the race for his idol’s Senate seat was met with a collective wince from Democrats.  From the White House on down, political operatives made overtures to nearly every possible alternative candidate short of Rod Blagojevich.  State Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, Chris Kennedy, and Dem mandarin Bill Daley are just the alternatives that readily come to mind.  Even with all these A-listers taking a pass, Alexi still drew four primary opponents.  The scuttlebutt was that Democrat insiders felt Alexi lacked depth and that, coupled with troubles at his family’s Broadway Bank, he would be a very weak candidate.

He spent a ton of cash to eke out a primary win.  But 61% of Democrats wanted someone else to be the nominee.  Meanwhile, moderate GOP Congressman Mark Kirk cruised with nearly 60% of the Republican primary vote against six challengers.  Since then, things have gotten progressively worse for Alexi.

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Judging by their unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented” to describe everything the Obama administration has done it appears that they truly think they have fundamentally changed the national landscape in one short year.

Of course, those outside the delusional bubble of the White House know that the only truly unprecedented thing this administration has done is to destroy its own popularity faster than any other modern president, primarily thanks to its ham-handed push for a left-of-center realignment of the nation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the titanic health care “reform” struggle.  The administration cannot seem to grasp the reality or the reasons for the public’s rejection of Obamacare.  The White House is correct that Americans want to reform health care and make it more affordable, accessible and understandable.  But the people know intuitively that a government takeover, or just a much bigger government role, won’t achieve those goals.

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Politics has often been called the “Art of the Possible.”  We have seen many a strange thing happen in the history of American elections.  But nothing would be more unexpected, or more immediately helpful to the American people, than if Republican State Senator Scott Brown could pull of the mother of all upsets and capture the special election for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat on January 19^th.  A Brown victory would deny the Democrats the 60 votes necessary to shove through the takeover of the nation’s health care system.

For those political junkies who just assumed when Uncle Ted passed away that his seat would stay firmly in the grasp of the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party, take note, and take heart.  State Attorney General Martha Coakley won the Democratic Primary with under 50% of the vote and has taken a cavalier attitude towards what she expected would be her coronation in the general.

Meanwhile, Senator Brown, and Army Reservist and an energetic campaigner, has been waging an insurgent battle that has pulled him to within nine points in the latest Rassmussen poll. According to Rassmussen, Brown’s surge is entirely due to a swing among independent voters, who can make the difference in Massachusetts in spite of the Democrats’ 3 to 1 edge in registration.  Just ask GOP Governors Weld, Romney and Cellucci, who all have won statwide in the past two decades.

Even the New York Times, which would normally ignore any news that does not support its pro-Democrat narrative, has taken notice.  It may be that the Gray Lady is trying to wake up the moribund Coakley campaign before it’s too late, but it is none the less a sign that this race is for real.

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The controversy surrounding the recent mammography guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a recommendation for swift and decisive defeat of efforts to expand federal oversight of health care.  It almost seems as if this was designed as a laboratory experiment to learn exactly what will happen under Obamacare.  The results validate some of the most compelling arguments that opponents have made over the past few months.

When opponents claim that Obamacare will lead to rationing of medical services, defenders counter with an irrelevant but true retort that care is already rationed by insurance companies.  By this logic, everything is rationed by economics.  Housing is rationed by the availability of capital to invest in housing which is a collective market choice.  Cars are rationed in that you can’t just walk into a dealer and drive off the lot.  So, yes, currently the health care market, mostly in the form of third-party payers (insurers and public programs), rations care in that there are finite resources to pay for treatments and everyone cannot have everything any time they wish.

The reason that argument is irrelevant is that the debate here is about government rationing of care, which represents an entire new level of restrictions on individuals.  When the government sets up panels of “experts” to make recommendations of what kind of care is appropriate under what circumstances and those recommendations are implemented in the form of regulations over what care will and will not be paid for by both private and public insurance, it limits the rights of patients to control their care in consultation with their physicians.  It also destroys the market for those excluded treatments which then become either prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable.

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Illinois can be extra proud of its Democratic elected officials these days as they have joined to create a perfect storm of stupidity resulting in the possibility that terrorist detainees may be transferred to an unopened new prison in the rural northwestern corner of the Prairie State.

Favorite son Barack Obama has so muddled his administration policy on terror detainees that we are left with an approach that nearly everyone eight years ago agreed was to be avoided.  That is, incarcerating terrorists on American soil.

An issue like this is always bound to elicit histrionics from both sides of the partisan divide—and no one has disappointed.  This new policy won’t lead to mass escapes of terrorists who will roam the heartland bombing at will.  Jihadist camps won’t spring up along the Mississippi River and Al Qaida is not likely to launch an assault on a rural Illinois prison.  But neither is this a simple economic development project that will create jobs and boom times for rural Illinois.  It is not an inconsequential relocation away from the politically charged Gitmo to a morally superior prison that  will win favorable international opinion.

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Earlier this year the federal government sent $3 billion tax dollars to the state of Illinois to provide financial support for education as part of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, a.k.a. “the stimulus,”.  Not for building schools, mind you.  There is money for that elsewhere in the $787 billion spend-a-thon.  This is for good old-fashioned reading, writing and arithmetic.  Of course, there are many reasons this is antithetical to the temporary economic jump-start concept behind the stimulus, but that is not the point here.

The State of Illinois dutifully began doling out this newfound largess to boost funding for low income schools under the Title 1 program, and to fund special education under the IDEA Part A program.  One can see the rationalization to increase funding for schools in poor areas in a recession, but it’s a bit of a stretch to see how the economic downturn has increased demand for special education.  But, again, that is not the subject of this piece.

As the Obama Administration has ramped up its efforts to portray the stimulus as an unqualified success that has rescued us from certain doom, they have resorted to the kinds of shoddy claims that smack of political desperation.

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to let everyone know that they really like Barack Obama. They approve of his political views and they want him to remake the world according to his vision.  Okay, we get it.  The Norwegians, one of the most homogeneous societies in the world, whose sole significant imprint on the world stage is the annual awarding of this increasingly worthless prize, arrogantly assume the role of moral arbiters of United States politics.  Thanks.  Appreciate it. 

It is blatantly absurd to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a nine-month president with absolutely no foreign policy achievement of note.  Especially when there are so many other fields where the Academy could justify lavishing glory, (and money–one wonders what POTUS will do with the cash?) on their secular savior. 

 President Obama has written two highly acclaimed (by the left) books.  Dreams from My Father is his accounting of his unique life story and his journey to understand his roots and his father’s abandonment of him and his mother.  It was called, “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” by fawning sychophant Joe Klein.

 His second book, The Audacity of Hope (the first campaign flier published by Crown) was his soaring vision of a nation and world guided by the kind of social justice that only a community organizer can envision.  No less a literary critic than Gary Hart called Obama a, “figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur.”  The book occupied the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks and won a Grammy to boot.

Almost any writer would kill to have sold as many volumes and have his or her books become so influential.  Surely the Nobel Prize for literature would have been much more justifiable.

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It is easy to feel a little melancholy on a rainy fall day in Chicago.  Summer is indisputably over and, while our autumn is lovely, we know too well what is right around the corner.  But today is truly a sad day in my city.   Despite the potential political fallout of losing the Olympics let’s all remember that America and one of its greatest cities was repudiated.  And that should not make any of us happy.

Chicagoans admit that we are ethically challenged when it comes to our politics.  It is important to point out that in our business and other dealings we try to espouse Midwestern values and deal fairly with others.  We are not proud of the reputation that the Cook County Democratic machine has won for us.  And many are still trying to do something about it.   But by and large, our distaste for local political habits in no way diminishes our love for our city, our state and our communities.

To my fellow conservatives who are deconstructing the implications of Chicago’s embarrassment at the hands of the International Olympic Committee and the indisputable damage it has done to the president’s reputation and image, I simply ask that you remember that there are millions of people in the Chicago area who are ordinary working people who take great pride in their community.  All of us, conservative, liberal and independent, bid supporters and even bid detractors, are hurting a little today.  We got embarrassed on the world stage as well.

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Over the past several tumultuous months America has seen the Democratic Party’s ambitious attempt to restructure health care slam head-on into the obstacle of public opinion.

The American people are learning first hand the answer to the age old question of what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.  President Obama has spent months pronouncing that action must take place on health care and stating “failure is not an option.”

Speaker Pelosi has chimed in with one of her definitive statements (the kind that keep getting her in trouble) that the Democrats will absolutely pass a health care package within weeks.  These proclamations come after weeks of unprecedented turmoil resulting in the public’s support for “reform” plummeting and taking confidence in the president with it.

What is truly amazing in this situation is that neither the White House, nor Democrat leaders in Congress have adjusted their positions or tactics one bit since widespread concern, uncertainty, confusion, anger, opposition and even rage over “reforms” swept much of the nation. 

At the White House the campaign team remains steadfast in their apparent belief that there is no problem that the President can’t talk himself out of.  They drove their seventy percent approval rating square into the brick wall of an always skeptical populace.  David Axelrod and friends promptly threw it in reverse, backed up, and then drove into the wall even faster. 

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The participant list prepared for the White House/NEA/Ministry of Propaganda organizational conference call included autobiographical blurbs to apparently help the call’s organizers identify the participants since none of the “artists” involved could be considered a household name.  That is unless your household is comprised entirely of unemployed, surly twenty-somethings whose worldly possessions consist of an i phone, a Vaio, a skateboard and, perhaps a few cans of spray paint.

The conference call and other efforts now emerging were organized by the National Endowment for the Arts at the behest of the White House to try and coordinate and focus the existing pro-Obama passion of the artistic community to directly promote administration political objectives.

This effort is justifiably being criticized as a misuse of government resources and a creative example of adapting the Chicago pay-to-play style to the federal scene.  What is an alternative artists supposed to think when the largest artistic grant-dispensing agency of the federal government comes-a-calling asking for help?  It is only natural that one would expect a quid pro quo when it comes to doling out cash for all manner of non-traditional, (read: incomprehensible) art, while the chap who cleverly mocked up the Obama/Joker poster will probably not be in line to cash in at the federal trough.

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There are two things fundamentally wrong with the Obama administration’s efforts to turn the arts into a vehicle for political advocacy.  First, it is an egregious abuse of power both in terms of misappropriation of public resources and a chilling of the free expression of ideas at the core of artistic vitality.  The second problem is that the resulting art as propaganda usually stinks.

You don’t have to be an ancient history professor to know that government controlled (or heavily influenced) art is, on the whole, lousy.  There are still artists alive today who either toiled in or toiled against the socialized artistic regimens of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.  Some laudable efforts undertaken by the WPA aside, there is no shortage of examples of art and architecture that glorifies the state and crushes the human spirit.  The funny thing is that the critics who most abhor the impact on art of the Nazis and Soviets and the works they produced are proud liberals who saw how it helped quash the concepts of non-conformity and innovation that are the life blood of artistic progress.

 When Obama’s leftist appointees at the National Endowment for the Humanities came up with the idea that they would recruit fellow-travelers in the arts community to harness their “talent” to promote the One’s political agenda they were hardly charting new territory.  Most every regime in history has done the same thing.  Allegorical painting is the most common example used by popes and princes to glorify their side of the political story.  Chairman Mao’s Red Brigades used drama and opera as tools of the state propaganda machine, and made ruthlessly sure that you didn’t experience any alternative theater on the side.

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We can all be grateful that the Rev. Jesse Jackson has taken time away from his primary job of extorting money from corporate America fearful of his histrionic accusations of racism to cut through the rhetorical clutter and get to the bottom of the health care debate in a recent column in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Unfortunately, just like the president, Jackson is misrepresenting facts across the board and, also like the president, possesses little grasp of the fundamentals of health care economics.

Before itemizing the good Reverend’s errors and outright fabrications, it bears noting that, along with every other Obamacare apologist, Jackson starts by launching ad hominem attacks on those who have contrary opinions about the best way to reform health care.  He praises the president for calling opponents “fear-mongers” but asserts that daring to call Obamacare a “government takeover of health care” reduces the debate to childishness.  As countless commentators have noted, and as the American people are realizing, this administration and its allies couch no dissent and will vilify and personally denigrate anyone who opposes its policies.  This arrogance has been the most effective weapon available to slow the descent towards socialized health care.

Rev. Jackson says it is a “stark reality” that we already have “a government-run, single payer health care plan,” known as Medicare.  This is flat out incorrect.  A single payer system means that all, or nearly all, care is paid for by a government entity.  It is also known as a “universal” system, meaning it covers everyone.  Medicare covers only those over 65 and with permanent disability.  It also does not preclude beneficiaries from purchasing care outside of the Medicare system.  One fact that has been little mentioned by liberal champions of the Medicare model is that millions of seniors dig into their pockets each month to pay premiums for Medicare supplemental insurance that covers additional services and out-of-pocket costs that Medicare does not cover.  As it exists, Medicare is far short of a single payer system since beneficiaries can and do contract for additional coverage and can also go outside the Medicare system at any time and pay cash for any service they desire. 

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The all-consuming debate over health care has effectively sucked all of the oxygen out of the policy world leaving little room for discussion, let alone action on other major elements of the progressive agenda—or so it would seem.

The mammoth bills winding their way through Congress will certainly upend our health care sector, if they are enacted. Little known, however, are several provisions that will provide an enormous pay-off to one of the Democrat parties most loyal constituency—Big Labor.

The Obama campaign spent much of 2008 writing checks to various left-leaning interest groups who saw the opportunity to cash in on long-standing priorities that would finally be achievable with a Democratic Congress and a liberal president.  Now, these groups are finding that no one is available to cash these checks as long as the administration is laser focused on reconfiguring one sixth of the American economy.

But organized labor has sought to turn this situation into a new opportunity. By throwing themselves into the health care debate and mobilizing their resources behind passage of the Democrat proposal, labor has been rewarded with the ability to shape the content of the health care legislation and to begin to collect on its political debt. (more…)