The investigation dubbed "Operation Board Games," into the influence peddling within the cesspool of corruption that encompasses Illinois politicians from both major parties, has developed into multiple subplots, many of which feature Barack Obama.

Therefore, Obama should start bidding for the starring role in the movie that is sure to follow the criminal trials involved in this case because he has absolutely no chance of winning the White House, even if the leaders of the Democratic party allow this sorry charade to carry on and his name appears on the ballot.

The major media organizations continue to ignore a story that is destined to become the biggest political scandal of the decade, except for a bleep here and there. By now this can only mean one of two things. They are either unwilling to commit the manpower necessary to connect the dots of all the subplots or they know the Republicans will supply the goods free of charge the minute Obama becomes the nominee.

Barack Obama has a long history of working with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and governors of Illinois, including the current Governor Rod Blagojevich, in doling government funding for housing development in Chicago. His history is hardly a model of success, except for the hundred of millions in profits made by the chosen few slumlords.

Less than a year ago, in the April 26, 2007, Chicago Sun-Times, Fran Spielman reported that Chicago aldermen were accusing the Daley administration "of being asleep at the switch while low-income housing projects developed by the now-indicted Tony Rezko collapsed into disrepair."

The most trusted leaders of the Democratic party, such as John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, ought to be ashamed of themselves for supporting Barack Obama. With use of the internet, a fifth grader could connect the dots to show a picture of a guy who was picked up in college and carried up the political ladder by a corrupt gang of influence peddlers.

John McCain is just drooling waiting for Obama to become the nominee so that he can come out with the trail of dirt that the Democratic party is too afraid to reveal this late in the in the game. If nominated, Obama will not survive a month when faced with the Republican attack machine.

More than any time in the past fifty years, this country is in need of a qualified leader with a solid base of combined knowledge and experience. Barack Obama does not fit the bill. The first Clinton Administration provided disaster relief after Bush Sr left office and a first-rate team of responders is needed more now than in 1993.

Bush Jr's torrid affair with the oil and defense industries has turned the US economy into a war zone with Americans running out of money to pay for the basic necessities in life such as housing, utilities, and health care.

According to Nobel Prize winning economist and former World Bank vice president, Joseph Stiglitz, so far, the war in Iraq has cost $3 trillion, instead of the $50 or $60 billion price presented to the American people in 2003. On February 28, 2008, he provided testimony to the Senate Joint Economic Committee and told lawmakers we are spending $50 billion in operations every 3 months.

This election cannot be based on personal likeability. It matters not whether Barack Obama is a better speaker than Hillary Clinton or visa versa. Now is not the time or place for a popularity contest - the stakes are too high.

This country is in the midst of the biggest downhill plunge of the 50 years and we need a President with a team of advisors ready to move into the White House with the most experience in every area of policy making the minute Bush leaves.

As personable as he is, and despite his good intentions, the fact remains; Barack Obama does not have the qualifications or experience for the job he is seeking.

The steady leaking of insider information about products under review by the FDA has caused enormous losses for average American investors since the Bush Administration took control of the agency six years ago.

There are several ways that investors can profit from this type of insider information. The first is obvious, buy the stock because approval of a product will almost certainly raise a company's stock value. Investors who know about the decision ahead of time can bet the farm based on that information.

But investors who are tipped off that a product will not be approved can do the opposite. They can bet that company's stock value will fall by selling the stock short knowing full-well that the minute the news of non-approval becomes public, the stock's value will drop like a rock.

The tax dollar funded photo op of Bush landing on an aircraft carrier all dressed up in a flightsuit to announce Mission Accomplished was a desperate attempt to give the illusion that Bush actually did serve his country in the military and to bolster his image as a self-described "war president."

This country is now paying a heavy price for Bush's lack of military experience, and his taunting invitation of "bring it on," that has resulted in a never ending stream of challengers traveling to Iraq to teach our loudmouth President a lesson.

When evaluating Bush's performance as the Commander-in-Chief leading the Iraq war, it might be helpful to take another look at his years of service in military, or lack thereof.

Congress has demonstrated its unconditional love for the Bush administration by handing the war profiteers another $100 billion worth of good reasons to keep the war in Iraq rolling along at full-throttle.

And today there was the President, whose only military experience consists of draft-dodging, going AWOL from a cushy stint in the National Guard set up by daddy, and finishing his term of duty as grounded fighter pilot, calling a press conference to inform Americans for the umpteenth time that the only way to the keep the terrorist at bay is by allowing the slaughtering in Iraq to continue; forever apparently.

When President Bush announced "Mission Accomplished," and the end of the war in May 2003, he also said we would help the citizens of Iraq rebuild their country. "Now that the dictator's gone," he stated, "we and our coalition partners are helping Iraqis to lay the foundations of a free economy."

Apparently he was referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority that took up residence in Saddam's luxurious palace in May 2003, with the newly appointed King, Paul Bremer. The CPA was granted the authority to award reconstruction contracts in Iraq and it used that authority to implement what will go down in the history books as the most blatant war profiteering scheme of all time.

It's time for Americans to face the cold hard truth that nothing will be accomplished by allowing the daily carnage in Iraq to continue, and if Bush has his way, our young people will be dying in this war profiteering scheme until hell freezes over. Congress needs to authorize funding to pull our troops out of that deathtrap and not one dime more.

Bush has become a madman who will listen to no one. After his speech on January 10, 2007, about the plan to send more troops, retired Army Col Doug McGreggor, a former advisor to Don Rumsfeld in 2003, said in a broadcast interview, "There seems to be a complete failure to understand that we have been trying to suppress a rebellion against our occupation."

On Monday, April 9, 2007, the Boston Herald reported that the US military had announced the Easter weekend deaths of 10 more American soldiers, including six killed on Sunday. The Associated Press reports that, since the war began in March 2003, over 3,000 members of the US military have been killed in Iraq, as of April 8, 2007.

The military reported the deaths of four more US soldiers on Tuesday.

Its nearly impossible to estimate the number of deaths of civilians in Iraq, but the Herald reports that at least 47 people were killed or found dead in violence on Easter Sunday, including 17 execution victims dumped in the capital.

On May 1, 2003, in a spectacle televised worldwide, President George W Bush portrayed himself as a brave fighter pilot when he strutted across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce mission accomplished and an end to major combat operations in Iraq.

Bush put on a flight suit, strapped himself into a jet, flew off for a 30-mile jaunt before making a dramatic landing on the aircraft carrier and a speech under a banner with the words mission accomplished superimposed across stars and stripes, which he claimed was made by the sailors on the ship.

Everything about that theatrical event was a lie. Bush was never a brave fighter pilot; he was an AWOL draft dodger during his term in the military. The mission in Iraq was nowhere near accomplished, and the sailors revealed that the banner was made in the White House.

Ken Blackwell is ready to cash in on the Republican promise of putting him in the Governor's mansion in 2006 after he proved that he was indispensable in the successful plot to rig the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio for George W Bush.

As secretary of state in 2004, Blackwell held broad powers for setting election standards in everything from the processing of voter registration to overseeing the distribution of voting machines and ballots. He was also simultaneously serving as co-chairman in the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.

Which means, in 2006, with Blackwell still in the position of secretary of state, once again voters in Ohio have a fox guarding the voting henhouse. Only this time the stakes are even higher for Blackwell because his political future is on the line.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting a formal investigation into whether Halliburton made improper payments to government officials in Nigeria in connection with the construction and expansion by TSKJ of a natural gas liquefaction complex and facilities at Bonny Island in Rivers State, Nigeria.

TSKJ is a company registered in Portugal whose members include Technip SA of France, Snamprogetti Netherlands BV, a subsidiary of Saipem SpA of Italy, JGC Corporation of Japan, and Kellogg Brown & Root, a successor to the MW Kellogg Company, each of which has a 25% interest in the venture.

TSKJ entered into various contracts to build and expand the liquefied natural gas project for Nigeria LNG Limited, which is owned by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp, Shell Gas BV, Cleag Limited, and Agip International BV, an affiliate of ENI SpA of Italy.

Halliburton's contracts for work in Iraq are what's known as costs plus contracts, meaning that after all the costs for labor, materials and other expenses are added together, the company makes its profit based on a percentage of that total.

It certainly does not take a financial genius to figure out that under the terms of such a contract, a company has every motive in the world to increase the costs of every project to increase profits.

Since the minute Dick Cheney authorized the no-bid contracts for Halliburton, the granddaddy of war profiteering has been ripping off American tax payers left, right and center through the use of these cost plus contracts and another clear-cut profiteering scheme was recently revealed in testimony at a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing.

Much to the dismay of the Bush administration, Americans can remember all on their own, without any help from Democrats, that in the run up to the war in Iraq, it was top White House officials who were making the claim that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden and secretly involved to 9/11.

The fact that the administration's disinformation campaign was overwhelmingly successful was evidenced by an October 2004, Harris Poll, taken three weeks before the last presidential election, that found 62% of all voters, and 84% of those planning to vote for Bush, still believed that Saddam had "strong links" to Al Qaeda, and that 41% of all voters, and 52% of Bush backers, believed that Saddam had "helped plan and support the hijackers" who had attacked the country on 9/11.

The Pulaski and Middleman law firm in Houston, Texas head's a group of law firms that represent over 350 injured Charite spinal disc recipients. The patients allege that the disc is defective, that the device was improperly marketed and that the company did not adequately warn of the disc's dangers.

The Charite artificial disc was first approved for use in the US in October 2004, although it had been used in the European market since 1987. The device was approved to relieve pain by replacing the damaged disc with the Chirate disc, as an alternative to the surgical procedure known as lumbar spinal fusion surgery.

On July 28, 2006, a lawsuit was filed in Philadelphia against GlaxoSmithKline, on behalf of Adrian Vasquez, an infant born on April 19, 2004, with life-threatening congenital heart defects as a result of his mother having been prescribed Paxil during pregnancy.

Since birth, beginning when he was 8 days old, Adrian has undergone three open heart surgeries in an attempt to repair his heart. Each time, his parents were advised that his chance for survival was low.

In addition to the surgeries, he also underwent at least four cardiac catheterizations, and thirty echocardiograms within the first few months of his life. In March 2005, surgeons operated on Adrian again to install a pacemaker.

Big Pharma is bankrupting the nation's health care system by convincing prescribing doctors to over-medicate patients with expensive psychiatric drugs and then send the bills to government programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

The peddling of the new generation of psychiatric drugs that include the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors antidepressants (SSRIs), and atypical antipsychotics that began arriving on the market in the late 1980s, has become a cottage industry in the US.

Between 1986 and 2004, the sale of antidepressants went from $240 million to $11.2 billion and the sale of antipsychotic drugs rose from $263 million in 1986 to $8.6 billion in 2004.