A man with Barack Obama’s record has no business being President of the United States. Can Obama be trusted to administer the vast (and, in recent weeks, rapidly expanding) federal power to distribute jobs, favors and resources with restraint and honesty and respect for the taxpayer? Or will he deliver money, jobs and power into the hands of left-wing radicals, panhandling “community organizers” and sleazy machine politicians? If you want the answer to that question, look at his record. Indeed, if I was advising John McCain about tonight’s debate, my single-minded mantra would be to focus on Obama’s record. And follow the money.

I don’t generally write posts here just to promote posts I have written before, but as you gear up for tonight’s debate, and you consider what America really needs to know about Barack Obama, I’d refer you one more time to my posts yesterday covering the waterfront of Obama’s shady associations and the favors he’s traded with them over the years. Here is the bottom line conclusion:

Nearly all of Obama’s appeal requires his supporters to take on faith that he will do things he has never done. But on the question of whether Obama will ever take a meaningful stand against corruption or waste in his own party or stand up to vested interests and ideological extremists on his own side, we already know the answer: Obama is so thoroughly marinated in extremism and corruption that it would be nearly impossibe to extricate himself and still have a meaningful identity left.

You will often hear Obama’s defenders argue that his ties to this or that extremist or corrupt figure is an isolated aberration, an example of “guilt by association”; that the various favors he dispensed with public money and private charitable foundation funds are nothing unusual in politics. But when you look at Obama’s record and biography taken together, what you see is that the favors, the extremists and the machine ties are all inextricably intertwined, and that far from being isolated incidents, Obama’s modus operandi of mutual back-scratching with radicals and crooks extends to nearly every aspect of his life and career – his family, his faith, his home, his jobs and education, his significant election victories and legislative “accomplishments,” his closest advisors and most important mentors, the money and organization that made up his campaigns.

So to catch yourself up on the real dirt that makes up nearly all of Obama’s record, take a walk with me through the following installments:

Obama’s Rootless Ambition looks at the influences that shaped Obama before he ran for office.

Obama and the Extremists looks at his relationships with left-wing radicals and how they were an integral part of his rise in politics.

Obama and ACORN looks at his intimate relationship with a network of community organizers with a pervasive record of voter fraud and deep involvement in the subprime housing crisis.

Obama and the Machine looks at Obama’s long, deep and multifacted partnership with machine politicians in Chicago and Springfield. (Obama’s thrall to the Chicago machine is the single most scandalously under-reported story of this election…really none of this stuff is significantly disputed or hard to discover if you follow the Chicago papers.)

Obama and the Favor Factory looks at Obama’s routine practice of trading favors with his political benefactors.

Obama, “New Politics” and Principles looks at the illusory nature of Obama’s “new politics,” his absence of a record of fighting tough battles on principle, and wraps up and concludes the series.