† Chicago On The Potomac: Pundits are having a field day trotting out mobster lingo (not to be confused with gangsta lingo) to describe the thuggish behavior of President Barack Hussein Obama and the Chicago cronies he’s surrounded himself with in the West Wing.

Here’s how Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer starts off his column on the subject of the White House’s war on FOX News: “Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.”

And The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel intersperses David Mamet’s dialogue from "The Untouchables" with recent White House attempts to whack opponents - notably: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way”:

[T]hat recent black eye for the Chamber (when several companies, all with Democratic ties, quit in a huff)—think that happened on its own? ("Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him! Somebody steals from me, I'm gonna say you stole. Not talk to him for spitting on the sidewalk. Understand!?") …

When the insurance industry criticized the Baucus health bill, the response was this week's bill to strip them of their federal antitrust immunity. ("I want you to find this nancy-boy . . . I want him dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground!")

This summer Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl criticized stimulus dollars. Obama cabinet secretaries sent letters to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. One read: "if you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to the state, as Senator Kyl suggests," let us know. The Arizona Republic wrote: "Let's not mince words here: The White House is intent on shutting Kyl up . . . using whatever means necessary." …

[M]any Americans voted for this president in thrall to his vow to bring the country together. It's hard to do that amid gunfire, and voters might just notice.

("I do not approve of your methods! Yeah, well . . . You're not from Chicago.")

To Strassel’s point, RealClearPolitics executive editor Tom Bevan notes that “President Obama’s approval rating has fallen consistently since taking office while Americans' disapproval of the way he’s handled his job has more than doubled and is now at an all time high of 44 percent”:

During the campaign Barack Obama vowed he would be a different kind of leader who would move America beyond the "smallness of our politics." That inspired promise was not an insignificant part of why he was elected last November.

In his inaugural address Obama told us that "the time has come to set aside childish things." He promised to bring "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."

Not only has President Obama failed to live up to those promises so far, it appears that on more than a number of occasions he’s made a conscious decision to break them. …

Voters expect politicians to say one thing and do another. But Obama took the public’s cynicism and turned it to his advantage by vowing he would be a different kind of leader. So far, however, he is falling well short of his promises, using tactics and rhetoric that not only drive Americans apart but hurt him politically. It's time for Obama to start acting like the President he told us he’d be.

Maybe Obama doesn’t know the difference between being the Chief Executive and being The Boss. Emanuel and his other cronies certainly don’t.

† Is Deeds A Dead Man Walking?: President Barack Hussein Obama is putting his charisma to work stumping for several Democrat candidates, but “[i]t is proving tougher to recruit volunteers and get people to vote – suggesting that he may have lost his mojo, reports the Los Angeles Times:  

Some Democratic candidates running for local office around the country call the phenomenon the "Obama hangover." …

"It's like the morning after the party," Michael McGann, a Democrat running for clerk of courts in the Philadelphia suburbs, said in an interview. "The party was wonderful and exciting. The day after it's like, 'Gee, I don't want to do that again for a while.' " …

Worse for the Democrats, if any one constituency is energized this season it's conservatives, who are angry about rising deficits, some pollsters said.

"There's real anger on the right, and that anger isn't matched by enthusiasm on the left," said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. "So the emotion is on the side of the far right. And voting has become very emotional."

† Nationalized Healthcare Always Leads To Rationing: This Wall Street Journal op-ed makes the case that under any universal healthcare coverage scheme, free market forces and physican free will is likely to exacerbate the shortage of primary care physicians, resulting in “longer wait times, shorter visits, higher prices, and decreased customer satisfaction” – as has happened in MA with Romney Care:

Because of physicians' overbearing work loads and a massive administrative bureaucracy, Massachusetts is struggling to recruit and retain doctors. About three-quarters of medical group directors say that their ability to retain physicians has become more difficult in the last three years. Over half of the state's resident physicians choose to practice elsewhere. …

[T]he president can try to increase the number of medical students entering primary care through incentives like improved student loan programs. …

Even if the federal government were to pay off all of primary care physicians' student loans, specialists would still be financially better off than primary care doctors after only a few years. …

Mr. Obama ignores two of the most important reasons why U.S. medical students specialize: they want more flexible, lighter work loads and don't want to deal with primary care's tangle of bureaucracy. …

A September survey by Investors Business Daily found that 45% of doctors would consider quitting if Congress passes its "comprehensive" health-care overhaul, largely because of the increased bureaucracy and liabilities and lower reimbursements.

† CIGNA Gives Grieving Family The Finger – Twice: This Los Angeles Times editorial explains why Nataline Sarkisyan’s parents did not prevail in court when they sued CIGNA for denying coverage for a liver transplant their 17-year daughter’s doctor insisted was medically necessary to save her life:

The problem starts with the 35-year-old Employee Retirement Income Security Act, a federal law that regulates the pensions, retirement savings programs and other benefits provided by private employers, guilds or unions. ERISA … exempts employers from state rules mandating which types of treatments must be covered and protects employers and their insurance partners from most damages if a policyholder's treatment is wrongfully delayed or denied. Patients can go to federal court and try to force the insurer to pay for the treatment, but, … that's cold comfort for the families of those who die waiting for the dispute to be resolved.

Insurance industry lobbyists argue that many employers would stop providing health benefits if they lost this shield against bad-faith and wrongful-death lawsuits. But because it includes no potential penalty for bad faith - the only remedy, after all, is to pay for a treatment wrongfully denied - the current system has the perverse effect of giving insurers and self- insured employers an incentive to deny costly claims whenever possible.

† In Obamaland Everyone Agrees With Obama – Or Else: In a “Fox News Sunday" interview, Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, complained of a White House campaign of "invectives" and "name-calling" against his organization ("Let's be clear, we haven't raised up the Cain. It came from their side of the street"), reports The Washington Post. Josten added, “We're not going to take the bait and engage in a name-calling campaign here of invectives back and forth. We're going to stay focused.” For their part, White House officials deny they are at war with the Chamber, citing, for instance, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel agreeing to be the keynote speaker at the Chamber's board meeting next month. 
 

† Updates To Previous Posts (Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): While French President Nicolas Sarkozy had a close friendship with President George W. Bush, Reuters reports that there is zero “chemistry” between him and President Barack Hussein Obama and is “recalibrating his policies accordingly":

This lack of harmony does not constitute a crisis, but is nonetheless raising eyebrows.

"Sarkozy has clearly been thrown off course in his relations with America," said Didier Billion, a senior researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS). …

When Obama took office in January, Sarkozy was still glowing from the praise he had received for his accomplished handling of the European Union presidency, and was convinced that he was the natural partner for the new U.S. leader on the world stage. …

"There is an annoyance about what the French see as naivety in the Obama administration," said Bruno Tertrais, a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research.

Sarkozy's frustrations spilled into the open at the United Nations last month, when he appeared to chide Obama publicly.

"I support America's outstretched hand. But what has the international community gained from these offers of dialogue? Nothing but more enriched uranium and centrifuges," he said.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Is Obama’s Birth Certificate Fake?): As have federal judges in Washington, D.C., PA and GA, U.S. District Judge Jerome Simandle ruled that four voters lacked standing to challenge Barack Obama's eligibility to assume the presidency, or to claim their rights were violated by Congress' failure to investigate his place of birth, reports New Jersey Law Journal:

A claim that alleges the entire public is threatened or raises a general grievance about government isn't a sustainable under the Article III of the constitution, Simandle ruled in Kerchner v. Obama, 09-253. …

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, meanwhile, is set to meet Monday to decide whether to hear oral argument in the appeal of another "birther" loss, Berg v. Obama, 574 F. Supp. 2d 590 (E.D. Pa. 1995). Philip Berg, a Philadelphia lawyer, is appealing the dismissal of his suit, filed just before the Democratic National Convention last year, seeking to enjoin Obama's nomination because of alleged uncertainty about the candidate's birth.

Editorial Note: The appeals court cancelled the scheduled oral arguments today, and will be issuing its ruling based on the submitted briefs.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Extradite Polanski To Poland): After “[a]n extensive review of several thousand court documents, as well as numerous interviews” about Roman Polanksi’s rape of then-13-year-old Samantha Gailey, Los Angeles Times reporter Joe Mozingo finds the “basic dynamic defining the entire saga [has been] one force trying to drive debate away from a young girl's unshaken allegations, and another trying to reel it back in”:

Samantha's testimony that day was unequivocal: She had kept trying to get away from him, putting her clothes back on, saying no repeatedly. She had made up a lie about having asthma to get out of a Jacuzzi. He persisted. She was scared. She did not physically fight him off. He began to have sex with her, then, concerned she might get pregnant, switched to anal sex. When he drove her home, he told her not to tell her mom, adding, "You know, when I first met you, I promised myself I wouldn't do anything like this with you."

A generation of spectacle would follow: Polanski's indictment, his plea deal, his flight from the country, allegations of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, his decades of exile and critical success, his Oscar, a sympathetic HBO documentary last year, his rearrest in Switzerland last month.

Along the way, various people would scrub the core allegations into something more benign - a probation officer would deem the crime a "spontaneous" act of "poor judgment," a prison psychiatrist would call it "playful mutual eroticism."

But Samantha's stark testimony has never been seriously impugned, in or out of court. When she sued Polanski years later for sexual assault, he pleaded the 5th when asked if he illegally gave her champagne and part of a quaalude pill, then performed oral copulation on her and sodomized her. …

Now with the debate renewed by his arrest, the 32-year legal, media and cultural odyssey may finally be coming to an end.

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, Madoff’s Victims: Gullible Or Greedy?): Philanthropist and Madoff investor Jeffry M. Picower was found dead in a swimming pool at his mansion in Palm Beach, FL, reports The New York Times:

[A]ccused of reaping about $7 billion in profit from Bernard L. Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme … [i]n the last year, Mr. Picower’s life had become a tangle of litigation arising from his disputed role in the Ponzi scheme operated by Mr. Madoff, who was arrested in December and pleaded guilty in March to operating a long-running fraud that cost thousands of victims billions of dollars. ...

William D. Zabel, a family lawyer, said that Mr. Picower, who was 67, had a history of “cardiac issues” and had Parkinson’s disease.