What’s with Obama’s choice of old-time Clinton cronies and recycled Washington insiders to run the transition to his new politics of change?

Can’t the anti-Washington insiders President-elect find anyone who isn’t a Beltway has-been?

Barbarians inside the gates in Philly.  Cops cuff McCain-Palin supporter, take him away.

The newly named Obama White House enforcer is not only a case of business as usual in the Washington so often condemned by The Messiah in his recent campaign. 

He is also one who “failed in [his] duty to follow up on matters brought to [his] attention” as a director of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) when it “misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002.”

“Rahmbo” he may be, but he apparently knows when not to make waves.

In addition, this just in:

A day after being elected president and acknowledging “the worst financial crisis in a century,” Barack Obama asked one of the biggest recipients of Wall Street campaign contributions to be his chief of staff.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel . . . was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry . . . .

Since being elected to Congress in 2002, after working as an investment banker, Emanuel has received more money from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment business than any other industry.

Not to worry.  He believes in change.

Some great thoughts, discovered while looking for something else:

* “This election was about one thing and one thing only,” says Ben Shapiro at CNS News, “Americans’ puerile need for unity through self-congratulatory, cathartic membership in a broad, transformative political movement.”

Not about Obama’s record: “He didn’t have one.” Or his views, “radical in the extreme.” or his associations: “Americans didn’t care about Wright, Ayers, or Khalidi.”  Not about McCain.

O. is the original feel-good president, perfect for a feel-good electorate — 52% of the whole.

* He said spread to wealth to Joe the Plumber, not to his campaign:

Indianapolis – Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown to control the crowd.

The line was long and the crowd was angry at times.

“I want my money today! It’s my money. I want it right now!” yelled one former campaign worker.

Cheapskate.

* Finally (for now), a list of 2010 senatorial candidates, gotten by Dr. Helen of Nashville, who got it from Michael Barone’s Almanac of American Politics:

Democrats up for re-election

Bayh, Evan (D-IN)
Boxer, Barbara (D-CA)
Dodd, Christopher J. (D-CT)
Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND)
Feingold, Russell D. (D-WI)
Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI)
Leahy, Patrick J. (D-VT)
Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR)
Mikulski, Barbara A. (D-MD)
Murray, Patty (D-WA)
Obama, Barack (D-IL) [sic: self-appointed replacement Blabojevich?]
Reid, Harry (D-NV)
Salazar, Ken (D-CO)
Schumer, Charles E. (D-NY) [”Chuck-you,” per El Rushbo]
Wyden, Ron (D-OR)

Republicans up for re-election

Bond, Christopher S. (R-MO)
Brownback, Sam (R-KS)
Bunning, Jim (R-KY)
Burr, Richard (R-NC)
Coburn, Tom (R-OK)
Crapo, Mike (R-ID)
DeMint, Jim (R-SC)
Grassley, Chuck (R-IA)
Gregg, Judd (R-NH)
Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)
Martinez, Mel (R-FL)
McCain, John (R-AZ) [I remember him.  He ran for president, didn’t he?]
Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)
Shelby, Richard C. (R-AL)
Specter, Arlen (R-PA)
Thune, John (R-SD)
Vitter, David (R-LA)
Voinovich, George V. (R-OH)

So what?  So get going to defeat or get elected these people.  Better to elect one good guy and defeat one bozo than to curse the darkness!

* Finally, finally, 70% of unmarried women voted for Obama!  He touched the right buttons, did he not?  Did he tap their need for unity through self-congratulatory, cathartic membership in a broad, transformative political movement?

Rep. Barney Frank, who heads the financial services meddlers — sorry, committee — has his plans.

[He said] a central point . . . would be the creation of a “systemic-risk regulator.” It could have unprecedented powers over a wide range of financial institutions, from insurance firms to hedge funds, with responsibility for protecting the soundness of the whole financial system, not just one sector. [italics added]

This be the Barney Frank who let prostitutes use his house as headquarters and took for his lover Fannie Mae executive Herb Moses and, what’s more important, denied problems with Fannie M. and Freddie Mac five years ago, when Bushies were pressing for more oversight, objecting to constraints as thwarting the goal of “affordable housing”?  The same.

From an Anchorage Republican to Pres.-Elect O.:

As someone who cares deeply about the issues surrounding race and ethnicity in America, I sincerely hope that your Presidency can contribute to moving us towards a more color-blind society.

On campaign finance:

your campaign has thankfully shown that public financing is dead. I think most fellow conservatives would agree that one of our most vehement disagreements with Sen. McCain was his support of public financing of campaign. While your explanation of not taking public money was disingenuous at best, it gives both parties a chance to compete for creative ways to raise money and gives the country a chance to call for more transparency in campaign finance.

A look at Republican campaigning:

In this election, the GOP has shown that revolving too much around a “campaign command center” can cause inflexibility and limited mobility in a grassroots organization.

He’s “the first Internet President”:

You have a large netroots organization behind you. How will they play in a governing position vs. playing in a campaigning position? You come into the White House with a divided Democratic Party: the netroots far left vs. the grassroots center-left. Where will you govern from? Will you try to merge the netroots with the grassroots?

From Republicans, what?

From your tax proposals to your health care plan to your foreign policy to your philosophy of government, expect a “loyal opposition” from a changed Republican Party. . . .  You will face a conservative movement that will come up with creative counter-solutions that the American people can be informed of, or a movement that will look back to old messages that don’t work. . . .  a conservative movement that will promote principles of freedom or promote a watered-down version of more government. One thing is for sure: you will face a conservative movement yearning for a new set of leaders.

The gauntlet thrown:

I will do my utmost to fight against every one of your proposals that limits freedom, and fight for every one of your proposals that promote freedom, although I am pessimistic about your plans to do the latter. From my point of view, it’s not government’s job to make history; that’s a job that should be left to the American people.

A friendly enough close:

But for making history tonight, congratulations once again, Mr. President-Elect.

Sincerely,

MM

Michael Moore holding O’s feet to fire:

The faith we now have will be lost if he forgets the main issue on which he beat his fellow Dems in the primaries and then a great war hero in the general election: The people of America are tired of war. Sick and tired. And their voice was loud and clear yesterday.

Wants him to pull out of Afghanistan. 

Woe is us.  Almost no bright side to this.  Taxers and spenders in charge.  Believers in what got us to this economic pass now running things.  Even our heroes believe in government beyond what any sane person should.  New party coming maybe.  Remade Republicans, that is. 

We don’t have McCain to pick on any more.  He can go back to his bipartisanship.  It gave us and him a law inhibiting free speech before elections which by various twists and turns worked specifically against him this time around.  His opponent reneged, saw his opening and took it, in pragmatic fashion. 

Somewhere in this blog is me wondering if David Axelrod were out of his depth on the national scene.  I’m leaving it there for my own disedification as object lesson in not venturing beyond one’s own depth (mine).

The Age of Sarah has dawned, in any event.  First of all, she’s a campaigner of the first water.  How do you win without one?  Second, she has terrific instincts.  Repeats herself in bald, even bland terms too often, but also has zingers to burn.  Third, she’s smart.  The 2012 campaign has its first candidate.

More later, in fact more more more . . .

We may and should distinguish between vote fraud and voter-registration fraud, or mistakes.  The phone registrants may not vote.  Then again, they may, and if there are a lot of them, as in Ohio this election, we should look for vote fraud.

Here’s John Fund on the issue in the 10/30/08 WSJ.com’s Political Diary:

[Karen] Gillette [ACORN’s Project Vote head fund-raiser] certainly deserves more scrutiny [in the matter of trolling for money among maxed-out Obama donors supplied by the Obama campaign]. In 2006, she was a campaign consultant for Jennifer Brunner, the Acorn-backed Democratic candidate for Ohio secretary of state. Since her election, Ms. Brunner has outraged Republicans and left many objective observers puzzled by her judgment calls.

Some 660,000 new voter registrations have been filed in Ohio this year by groups including Acorn, and more than 200,000 failed a “match up” test in which voter information was compared with driver’s license and Social Security databases. Despite these warning signs, Ms. Brunner refused to allow county officials access to information they needed to verify the newly registered voters.

Many of the new registrants cast ballots earlier this month in Ohio’s “Golden Week,” a seven-day period when state residents can register and immediately cast an absentee ballot. At least half a dozen cases have been documented of people illegally registering and casting ballots during “Golden Week.”

Republicans seeking to force Secretary Brunner to surrender the data have been stymied in court, but their hand may be strengthened by the latest revelation that Ms. Brunner’s campaign consultant has close ties with Acorn’s Project Vote and has been accused under oath of obtaining donor lists from the Obama campaign to drum up dollars for Acorn’s voter registration effort — including its large Ohio operation.

If Ohio goes for Obama by a slim margin, the courts may be busier than polling places have been, says Fund, here paraphrased.

Go here for a rousing talk by Arnold Schwarzenegger introducing McCain.  It’s a barn-burner.

He left Europe “because socialism had killed opportunities there.”

Only in America could he have done as well, ten times better than anywhere else.

He hits the anti-secret ballot legislation that Obama supports in union elections.

He hits Obama’s wealth-spreading: In this country “democracy is not for sale.”

He asks, which do you want in your leader, eloquence or courage?

As Power Line asks, where has he been for the last month or two on the campaign trail?

Yes.  He’s terrific, even referring to his own tax-raising (arguably not a good idea) as needed to meet government costs, vs. Obama’s ideological motivation, as in the importance of spreading wealth.