The Times today has a story that does some real damage to Obama's pristine image. (I'm sad to say.)

The paper reports that...

Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.

One of the donors, by the way, was one of the major backers of the Swift Boat Group, and had previously only given to Republicans. Since 2004, he has given $100, 000 to the Republican National Committee. His name is Jared Abbruzzese, and he is a subject of an FBI investigation for allegedly paying off New York senate majority leader Joseph Bruno in exchange for Bruno funnelling taxpayer money towards one of Abbruzzese's companies. A quick Google search shows that is not a guy any politician—especially one who prides himself on his ethics, as Obama does—should be even seen in public with.

Obama, who doesn't comment for this article—I wish he would, instead of doing the politics-as-usual move of letting his flacks deflect the heat—puts out word that he had no knowledge of the investments, which were made by a broker in the process of setting up a blind trust for the new senator.

Sorry, but that doesn't pass the smell test. In the midst of doing something whose purpose is to be ethical, what broker would make an investment in two extremely obscure companies whose major investors are donors to the senator? Obama is either hedging the truth, or he's a liar.

The Times writes, There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.

But this is missing the point, which is: Were these investments supposed to be a way to funnel more cash to Obama? One made a small profit; one wound up losing money, as such dubious schemes (cf., Whitewater) often do. But was the idea to help a young politician and father, once saddled by law school debt, worry a little less about paying his bills?

Also, as the Times points out, this is the second mini-scandal in which Obama has tried to profit off a curious arrangement with a political donor; the first involved the sale of a parcel of land to a Chicago developer who also contributed to Obama.

Mitt Romney once said that his father told him that you shouldn't go into politics if you need money—the temptation is too great, and politicians ought to be disinterested.

Well, Obama clearly needed cash. He has said that he wrote his second book, for which he got a two million-dollar advance, because he needed the money, and these investments feel like ethical compromises he made due to financial pressures.

Meanwhile, at the same time that Barack was starting to cash in, his wife Michelle got a promotion that suddenly tripled—tripled!—her salary.

Huh.

One of the companies in which Obama invested was working on treatments for avian flu. Two weeks—two weeks!—after Obama bought stock in the company, he started pushing for an increase in federal financing to fight avian flu. It was, he said, "one of my many top priorities since arriving in the Senate."

If anyone can find a single mention of avian flu in Obama's 2004 campaign for the Senate, I will send you $20 right now. (Sorry, I'm cheap; only the first person who finds this gets the money.)

Greater federal funding for the disease would surely have helped the company in which he'd invested, thus paying off some campaign contributors with taxpayer money—in politics, the payoff always comes with taxpayer money, and it is always in sums much greater than the bribes required to get it—while increasing the value of Obama's investments.

Sigh. The bloom is off the Obama rose.