The U.S. Treasury is happy to commit $700 billion of taxpayer money to “fixing” the current credit crisis without basing the sum on any particular “data point.” (”We just wanted to choose a really large number,” one Treasury spokesman cheerily observed ^[1].)

Since there is an absence of data points in such exalted places, I thought readers might appreciate a few as they think about the upcoming presidential election. A friend who lives in Chicago sent me some arresting reflections on the Windy City, stomping ground of Barack Obama, former Community Organizer in Chicago, former Illinois State Senator, now first-term U.S. Senator from Illinois and Democratic nominee for President of the united States. In June, a newspaper carried this headline: “Obama Campaigns as Chicago Murder Rate Soars ^[2].” The email my friend sent put the numbers in perspective:

• In the last six months, 292 people were murdered in Chicago.
• In the same period, there were 183 Americans casualties ^[3] in Iraq.

Who leads Illinois, in Chicago?

Well, there are

• Senators Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, Democrats both.
• There is Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., a Democrat.
• There is Governor Rod Blogojevich, a Democrat.
• There is house leader Mike Madigan, a Democrat.
• There is Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat.
• There is Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat.

As my friend put it, they are all blaming each other for the combat zone that is contemporary Chicago: who else could they blame? There aren’t any Republicans there.

A couple more data points:

• The Illinois State pension fund is $44 billion in debt. That’s the worst in the country ^[4]. Thanks, folks!
• Cook County, wherein Chicago sits, not only put JFK in the White House back in 1960 by encouraging everyone, dead or alive, to vote early and vote often ^[5], but it also has the highest sales tax ^[6] in the United STates: 10.25 percent.
• Meanwhile, the Chicago school system is one of the worst in the country. ^[7]

As my friend observes: “This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois. He’s going to ‘fix’ Washington politics?”

That, a Latinist would say, is a “num” question, i.e., one expecting the answer No.