hello gerry
this is how you do it
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
THE CULT-DRINK THE KOOLAID
The Cult of Obama
2/11/08
Barack Obama’s presidential effort more closely resembles a religious movement than a presidential campaign. An underwhelming lightweight when it comes to issues of substance, issues, and policy, Obama has managed to garner mass popular support through his mastery of rhetoric and oratory. With gatherings that are closer to cult religious services than political rallies, Barack Obama speaks in messianic language, as if he is the Second Coming of Christ rather than a candidate for president of the United States.
At least Hillary Clinton doles out regular doses of specific policy proposals, she can be given credit for that much. On the other hand, Barack Obama doles out vague, indefinite yet somehow inspiring and mesmerizing messages of “change” and “hope”. “We are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again,” says Obama. Cast a look at his followers, and you’d think the man could feed thousands with two loaves and five fishes, turn water into wine. To see the way some of the people behind him grasp and cling to every word he says, one might expect him to turn around, place his hand upon her head like a healing Evangelical pastor, and cast the cancer right out her body.
He occasionally, fleetingly speaks of the issues faced by ordinary Americans, such as the mortgage that can’t be paid, crumbling schools, and so on. But the only real proposal that he’s made is that tax breaks will be taken away from companies like Maytag that “ship jobs overseas.” So how do we fix the problems of foreclosures and crumbling schools, Barack? Any ideas? I’ve yet to hear one.
Obama sounds an awful lot like Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King used a similar style of oratory to inspire the masses to march toward a worthy goal – civil rights for blacks. At least he had an end goal that was concretely defined. Obama steals a page from Dr. King’s playbook, yet there are no defined end goals to accompany his message.
With lines such as “our time has come” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” perhaps Barack Obama is actually the Messiah returned in the flesh to establish the Kingdom of God. If he isn’t, he needs to drop the vagaries and start talking some substance. Perhaps all we need is for Walter Mondale to pop his head around the corner and ask, “Where’s the beef?”
2/11/08
Barack Obama’s presidential effort more closely resembles a religious movement than a presidential campaign. An underwhelming lightweight when it comes to issues of substance, issues, and policy, Obama has managed to garner mass popular support through his mastery of rhetoric and oratory. With gatherings that are closer to cult religious services than political rallies, Barack Obama speaks in messianic language, as if he is the Second Coming of Christ rather than a candidate for president of the United States.
At least Hillary Clinton doles out regular doses of specific policy proposals, she can be given credit for that much. On the other hand, Barack Obama doles out vague, indefinite yet somehow inspiring and mesmerizing messages of “change” and “hope”. “We are hungry for change, and we are ready to believe again,” says Obama. Cast a look at his followers, and you’d think the man could feed thousands with two loaves and five fishes, turn water into wine. To see the way some of the people behind him grasp and cling to every word he says, one might expect him to turn around, place his hand upon her head like a healing Evangelical pastor, and cast the cancer right out her body.
He occasionally, fleetingly speaks of the issues faced by ordinary Americans, such as the mortgage that can’t be paid, crumbling schools, and so on. But the only real proposal that he’s made is that tax breaks will be taken away from companies like Maytag that “ship jobs overseas.” So how do we fix the problems of foreclosures and crumbling schools, Barack? Any ideas? I’ve yet to hear one.
Obama sounds an awful lot like Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King used a similar style of oratory to inspire the masses to march toward a worthy goal – civil rights for blacks. At least he had an end goal that was concretely defined. Obama steals a page from Dr. King’s playbook, yet there are no defined end goals to accompany his message.
With lines such as “our time has come” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” perhaps Barack Obama is actually the Messiah returned in the flesh to establish the Kingdom of God. If he isn’t, he needs to drop the vagaries and start talking some substance. Perhaps all we need is for Walter Mondale to pop his head around the corner and ask, “Where’s the beef?”
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
OBAMA-RAMA the MEDIA the TRUTH
OBAMA-RAMA
The TRUTH and MEDIA HYPE
I believe the media are trying to manipulate this election. I have come to this conclusion after months of watching the developing “stories” or lack of “stories” More so that lack of factual reporting and total bias of reporting I have seen daily. The drumbeat never stops. I am outraged at how stupid some people are at not being able to
A. see this
B recognize this
C be angered at this and most of all
D be worried about this
Maybe the Clintons are not the most perfect people; no politician really is, including Obama if you are being honest. This is what worries me the most and it should worry any real Democrats reading this. Why? Well I’ll tell you why. As a life long Democrat, I have waited, and waited for the Evil “Shrub” and his minions to vacate the Whitehouse and for someone intelligent to take over and start rebuilding America, both at home and abroad!
Needless to say I waited for my “Christmas” to come and the elections process to begin in earnest. Instead what I have seen compares to……..well, I don’t know what it compares to really. I’ve never seen anything like it. A bit of American Idol, a bit of cover up, a bit of head in the sand and a whole lot of daydreaming, and absolutely NO thinking, serious reporting, serious research, serious talking. No, instead we have a new “phenomenon” a “Rock Star” that is what one media station called it. Obama-rama………But really folks, this is an ALL IMPORTANT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO TAKE BACK THE WHITEHOUSE AND HELP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Not some stage show!!
Next we come to obamas 17 year relationship with Tony Rezko. How many “Sheeple” have actually gone online to the Chicago papers and checked the archives to find out about Obama? Never mind the national TV media who are supposed to do this for us and report the facts. Cook County politics is corrupt, and it has been for many years. Ask any one from Chicago! This was the breeding ground Obama came up in. Surrounded by corrupt politicians and corrupt dealings. Read the compilation of blog articles I have on this. Then tell me Obama has had enough scrutiny to survive a long Presidential campaign and win in the end. Oh and one more thing, Rezko goes on trial March 3rd, the day before Texas and Ohio primaries. Should the “sheeple” get him the nomination, then what happens when the media begin doing their job honestly and Obama has to defend what he calls “mistakes?” Right now he is having an easy time and yet already has made SEVERAL "mistakes" What about his comment on invading Pakistan. That created an international incident the USA had to deal with, and of course Obama said it was a mistake. Then another mistake, allowing Donnie McClurkin and anti-gay homophobic gospel singer to perform in his South Carolina event, disgraceful. This from a man claiming to be a "uniter"????
And just look at so called “Democrats” if they really ARE Democrats online, posting vile and nasty things about Hillary Clinton. The ads began early, by Obamas camp. Remember the you tube 1984 video? Remember they claimed they had nothing to do with it? Not true sadly. After this thing ran for ages in the TV media the truth finally came out, long after the damage had been done. For many young people this was their introduction to politics, Hillary Clinton and Obamas not so honest campaign…. This is disgraceful…. And, it is the first thing that actually made me WAKE UP and begin to look into Obama and his campaign. Before that I had no bad feelings towards the man. But did the media report fairly? Nope. They gave Obama free airtime and showed the video over and over for days. Much like the latest video from the Black Eyed Peas front man we have seen all week now. FREE PRESS FOR OBAMA once again. I would not mind so much, however this is not balanced as there are actually several EXCELLENT music videos about Hillary out there, but are they reported on? Nope! Are they played on TV? Nope!! Sophie B. Hawkins has a great one, so does a young African-American New York rapper called Madame Star, her song is called “Hillary” why are they not shown??? Because the media cannot give anything to Hillary. It’s all about getting the nomination for Obama.
Then we have the comment from Obama’s wife about Hillary Clinton's family. Really, as a woman this hit me all wrong. Michelle Obama said of Clinton, "role modeling what good families should look like" is important....Basically, if you read between the lines, the meaning is clear and it is an insult to many women. She somehow places the blame on Hillary Clinton for her husband’s affair AND for staying with him and saving her marriage. As such Hillary's family is "no good" because it does not look the same as hers. If this is her belief then enyone elses family not exactly like hers is also bad. Her comment basically is a slap in the face to any women who has suffered through a marital affair, any woman who decided to then stay with her husband and save her marriage. I believe that women like this should be praised, far too much divorce in America! And, she gets no praise for toughing it out with dignity as she did!! I think it is also an insult to say that if your family is not exactly like Michelle Obamas family then it is somehow the woman’s fault, and your family is less then hers. The glee with which she said this was almost ecstatic. It really bothered me and still does. You can see this video if you search you tube and I do have this in a blog. Did anyone report this? Did anyone call her on such a comment? Nope! You have to look online newspapers for the truth. The TV media have made up their mind and they are making up the minds of the “sheeple” as well.
Then we have all of these ads supporting Obama magically showing up on Anti-Hillary websites. Which I might add also began springing up on the internet early on in the campaign. I have also read hundreds, if not thousands of online blogs and posts on message boards, all parroting the same things on the Smear Hillary websites. The vile posts and rage at Hillary supporters online borders on manic. Are these really Democrats, or are the bulk of them Obama campaigners, Republicans or students working for Obama. Because Democrats can debate and talk and have issues with Candidates, but this is not what I am seeing. There are never any “real” facts, just smears. Any democrat seeing this would believe it was coming from a Republican. And perhaps some are closet Republicans afraid of Hillary winning the nomination. Any of the Obama ads on anti-Hillary sites investigated or forever reported by the TV media? Not really, only the press online and in print and not many of them either.
And of course there are the snide remarks Obama made to Clinton in the debate. I notice when he is pressed on his record he gets rather testy and defensive, but rather than come back with facts, he attempts to smear Hillary for being on the board of Wal-Mart. However, he forgot to mention how much money his own wife makes from wal-mart and how Michelle Obama’s relation ship with Treehouse foods, who, by the way, has wal-mart as their biggest supplier. So why was this not reported by the media? Too stupid to find the info? Or are they just trying to manipulate this election!! In addition his 2nd comment at the end bothered me as well. He has no decorum, when Wolf Blitzer was asking Hillary how she felt about people saying she was not-likable and Obama was? Well Obama leans over and says very smugly “Hillary you’re liked enough” that was telling to me. The more I began to listen to Obama the more I began to worry about how well he can actually handle a tough race with Republicans. John McCain can rip him a new A**hole when they debate about the Military, Homeland Security and all those issues. Regardless how you feel about Clinton, she has a history and an experience there that Obama does not. And she can take attacks without getting defensive or falling apart, or worse whining. Will Obama use the race card when McCain attacks him on his politics and record? Will we then see a country divided along racial lines? These are all valid points to consider.
And there is the other thing in Michelle Obama’s closet, her dealings with a Hospital that charges poor people more!!! Michelle Obama is on the board. Again you can read it here in my other blogs or google it yourself, the truth is out there. Trouble is that Obama has so far a very short political career. And unless you look into Chicago politics you won’t find it. Because as a low level politician, and the bulk of the corrupt dealing taking place in poor Chicago communities, you would not have seen the national media covering local politics of one state.
Lastly, let’s go ahead and talk about the thing Hillary haters and Republicans like to smear her on the most. Unfortunately for these “sheeple”, the very thing that they attempt to smear the Clintons with, is the very same thing that can win her the election against the Republicans. However, “sheeple” are too stupid to think outside the box and without media help. More importantly, Obama has not had ANY scrutiny like this, now has he??. You see, the Clintons certainly are the most investigated politicians on Capitol Hill and we can thank the Republicans for this. And we can thank the Republicans for actually proving they could not be charged with anything!! Because after $70 million of YOUR money, Ken Starr, the Media and the Republicans still couldn't get to the so-called "truth"? Why? Because it was a Republican Witch Hunt and any real Democrat should know this!! So the “sheeple” out there pretending to be Democrats supporting Obama and who use this Republican garbage, if they are Democrats, then they are no better than the worst right wing Republican that watches FOX news!! The reality of the Clinton years are all fact, but only if you actually research the figures that is. These years were known as the Golden Years and for a very good reason. Clinton left moronic BUSH with a SURPLUS of money, a balance budget, a safe world and safe America and Republicans screwed it into the ground and created two wars, one of which was illegal. I, for one, remember the Golden Years, too bad the American youth don't read about this, or anything else regarding Obama, before jumping on the media band wagon for "Rock Star" obama-rama……….
Notice how FOX news, the Reich wing republicans news station are having a “love fest” with Obama? Even Satan O’Rielly sings his praise…. Day after day FOX and their talking heads report how the Republicans want Hillary to win because they can beat her. McCain himself was on yesterday saying the same mantra.... HELLO???? Anyone with a brain out there???? If FOX news are saying this, you have to wonder WHY, if you have a brain that is!! And should the “sheeple” and the Republicans get their wish of Obama winning the Nomination, I cannot wait to say to the “sheeple” when the glow is off Obama and the media begin reporting what they are ignoring now. When McCain brings up all of this and Obama is subjected to the SAME scrutiny as Hillary Clinton, then what??? When the Republicans win the Whitehouse again we can all thank the “sheeple”
HEY “SHEEPLE” WHEN THE GOVERNMENT HAS SPENT 70 MILLION INVESTIGATING OBAMA THEN COME AND TALK TO ME
Baaaaa Baaaa
The TRUTH and MEDIA HYPE
I believe the media are trying to manipulate this election. I have come to this conclusion after months of watching the developing “stories” or lack of “stories” More so that lack of factual reporting and total bias of reporting I have seen daily. The drumbeat never stops. I am outraged at how stupid some people are at not being able to
A. see this
B recognize this
C be angered at this and most of all
D be worried about this
Maybe the Clintons are not the most perfect people; no politician really is, including Obama if you are being honest. This is what worries me the most and it should worry any real Democrats reading this. Why? Well I’ll tell you why. As a life long Democrat, I have waited, and waited for the Evil “Shrub” and his minions to vacate the Whitehouse and for someone intelligent to take over and start rebuilding America, both at home and abroad!
Needless to say I waited for my “Christmas” to come and the elections process to begin in earnest. Instead what I have seen compares to……..well, I don’t know what it compares to really. I’ve never seen anything like it. A bit of American Idol, a bit of cover up, a bit of head in the sand and a whole lot of daydreaming, and absolutely NO thinking, serious reporting, serious research, serious talking. No, instead we have a new “phenomenon” a “Rock Star” that is what one media station called it. Obama-rama………But really folks, this is an ALL IMPORTANT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TO TAKE BACK THE WHITEHOUSE AND HELP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. Not some stage show!!
Next we come to obamas 17 year relationship with Tony Rezko. How many “Sheeple” have actually gone online to the Chicago papers and checked the archives to find out about Obama? Never mind the national TV media who are supposed to do this for us and report the facts. Cook County politics is corrupt, and it has been for many years. Ask any one from Chicago! This was the breeding ground Obama came up in. Surrounded by corrupt politicians and corrupt dealings. Read the compilation of blog articles I have on this. Then tell me Obama has had enough scrutiny to survive a long Presidential campaign and win in the end. Oh and one more thing, Rezko goes on trial March 3rd, the day before Texas and Ohio primaries. Should the “sheeple” get him the nomination, then what happens when the media begin doing their job honestly and Obama has to defend what he calls “mistakes?” Right now he is having an easy time and yet already has made SEVERAL "mistakes" What about his comment on invading Pakistan. That created an international incident the USA had to deal with, and of course Obama said it was a mistake. Then another mistake, allowing Donnie McClurkin and anti-gay homophobic gospel singer to perform in his South Carolina event, disgraceful. This from a man claiming to be a "uniter"????
And just look at so called “Democrats” if they really ARE Democrats online, posting vile and nasty things about Hillary Clinton. The ads began early, by Obamas camp. Remember the you tube 1984 video? Remember they claimed they had nothing to do with it? Not true sadly. After this thing ran for ages in the TV media the truth finally came out, long after the damage had been done. For many young people this was their introduction to politics, Hillary Clinton and Obamas not so honest campaign…. This is disgraceful…. And, it is the first thing that actually made me WAKE UP and begin to look into Obama and his campaign. Before that I had no bad feelings towards the man. But did the media report fairly? Nope. They gave Obama free airtime and showed the video over and over for days. Much like the latest video from the Black Eyed Peas front man we have seen all week now. FREE PRESS FOR OBAMA once again. I would not mind so much, however this is not balanced as there are actually several EXCELLENT music videos about Hillary out there, but are they reported on? Nope! Are they played on TV? Nope!! Sophie B. Hawkins has a great one, so does a young African-American New York rapper called Madame Star, her song is called “Hillary” why are they not shown??? Because the media cannot give anything to Hillary. It’s all about getting the nomination for Obama.
Then we have the comment from Obama’s wife about Hillary Clinton's family. Really, as a woman this hit me all wrong. Michelle Obama said of Clinton, "role modeling what good families should look like" is important....Basically, if you read between the lines, the meaning is clear and it is an insult to many women. She somehow places the blame on Hillary Clinton for her husband’s affair AND for staying with him and saving her marriage. As such Hillary's family is "no good" because it does not look the same as hers. If this is her belief then enyone elses family not exactly like hers is also bad. Her comment basically is a slap in the face to any women who has suffered through a marital affair, any woman who decided to then stay with her husband and save her marriage. I believe that women like this should be praised, far too much divorce in America! And, she gets no praise for toughing it out with dignity as she did!! I think it is also an insult to say that if your family is not exactly like Michelle Obamas family then it is somehow the woman’s fault, and your family is less then hers. The glee with which she said this was almost ecstatic. It really bothered me and still does. You can see this video if you search you tube and I do have this in a blog. Did anyone report this? Did anyone call her on such a comment? Nope! You have to look online newspapers for the truth. The TV media have made up their mind and they are making up the minds of the “sheeple” as well.
Then we have all of these ads supporting Obama magically showing up on Anti-Hillary websites. Which I might add also began springing up on the internet early on in the campaign. I have also read hundreds, if not thousands of online blogs and posts on message boards, all parroting the same things on the Smear Hillary websites. The vile posts and rage at Hillary supporters online borders on manic. Are these really Democrats, or are the bulk of them Obama campaigners, Republicans or students working for Obama. Because Democrats can debate and talk and have issues with Candidates, but this is not what I am seeing. There are never any “real” facts, just smears. Any democrat seeing this would believe it was coming from a Republican. And perhaps some are closet Republicans afraid of Hillary winning the nomination. Any of the Obama ads on anti-Hillary sites investigated or forever reported by the TV media? Not really, only the press online and in print and not many of them either.
And of course there are the snide remarks Obama made to Clinton in the debate. I notice when he is pressed on his record he gets rather testy and defensive, but rather than come back with facts, he attempts to smear Hillary for being on the board of Wal-Mart. However, he forgot to mention how much money his own wife makes from wal-mart and how Michelle Obama’s relation ship with Treehouse foods, who, by the way, has wal-mart as their biggest supplier. So why was this not reported by the media? Too stupid to find the info? Or are they just trying to manipulate this election!! In addition his 2nd comment at the end bothered me as well. He has no decorum, when Wolf Blitzer was asking Hillary how she felt about people saying she was not-likable and Obama was? Well Obama leans over and says very smugly “Hillary you’re liked enough” that was telling to me. The more I began to listen to Obama the more I began to worry about how well he can actually handle a tough race with Republicans. John McCain can rip him a new A**hole when they debate about the Military, Homeland Security and all those issues. Regardless how you feel about Clinton, she has a history and an experience there that Obama does not. And she can take attacks without getting defensive or falling apart, or worse whining. Will Obama use the race card when McCain attacks him on his politics and record? Will we then see a country divided along racial lines? These are all valid points to consider.
And there is the other thing in Michelle Obama’s closet, her dealings with a Hospital that charges poor people more!!! Michelle Obama is on the board. Again you can read it here in my other blogs or google it yourself, the truth is out there. Trouble is that Obama has so far a very short political career. And unless you look into Chicago politics you won’t find it. Because as a low level politician, and the bulk of the corrupt dealing taking place in poor Chicago communities, you would not have seen the national media covering local politics of one state.
Lastly, let’s go ahead and talk about the thing Hillary haters and Republicans like to smear her on the most. Unfortunately for these “sheeple”, the very thing that they attempt to smear the Clintons with, is the very same thing that can win her the election against the Republicans. However, “sheeple” are too stupid to think outside the box and without media help. More importantly, Obama has not had ANY scrutiny like this, now has he??. You see, the Clintons certainly are the most investigated politicians on Capitol Hill and we can thank the Republicans for this. And we can thank the Republicans for actually proving they could not be charged with anything!! Because after $70 million of YOUR money, Ken Starr, the Media and the Republicans still couldn't get to the so-called "truth"? Why? Because it was a Republican Witch Hunt and any real Democrat should know this!! So the “sheeple” out there pretending to be Democrats supporting Obama and who use this Republican garbage, if they are Democrats, then they are no better than the worst right wing Republican that watches FOX news!! The reality of the Clinton years are all fact, but only if you actually research the figures that is. These years were known as the Golden Years and for a very good reason. Clinton left moronic BUSH with a SURPLUS of money, a balance budget, a safe world and safe America and Republicans screwed it into the ground and created two wars, one of which was illegal. I, for one, remember the Golden Years, too bad the American youth don't read about this, or anything else regarding Obama, before jumping on the media band wagon for "Rock Star" obama-rama……….
Notice how FOX news, the Reich wing republicans news station are having a “love fest” with Obama? Even Satan O’Rielly sings his praise…. Day after day FOX and their talking heads report how the Republicans want Hillary to win because they can beat her. McCain himself was on yesterday saying the same mantra.... HELLO???? Anyone with a brain out there???? If FOX news are saying this, you have to wonder WHY, if you have a brain that is!! And should the “sheeple” and the Republicans get their wish of Obama winning the Nomination, I cannot wait to say to the “sheeple” when the glow is off Obama and the media begin reporting what they are ignoring now. When McCain brings up all of this and Obama is subjected to the SAME scrutiny as Hillary Clinton, then what??? When the Republicans win the Whitehouse again we can all thank the “sheeple”
HEY “SHEEPLE” WHEN THE GOVERNMENT HAS SPENT 70 MILLION INVESTIGATING OBAMA THEN COME AND TALK TO ME
Baaaaa Baaaa
DIRTY POLITICS-KNOWS WAY AROUND A BALLOT 1996
www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-070403obama-ballot,0,1843097.story
chicagotribune.com
MAKING OF A CANDIDATE
Obama knows his way around a ballot
Some say his ability to play political hardball goes back to his first campaign
By David Jackson and Ray Long
Tribune staff reporters
6:48 PM CDT, April 3, 2007
The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.
A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it
.One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.
"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"
In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled."I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said.
"My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."
Obama behind challenges
America has been defined in part by civil rights and good government battles fought out in Chicago's 13th District, which in 1996 spanned Hyde Park mansions, South Shore bungalows and poverty-bitten precincts of Englewood.
It was in this part of the city that an eager reform Democrat by the name of Abner Mikva first entered elected office in the 1950s. And here a young, brash minister named Jesse Jackson ran Operation Breadbasket, leading marchers who sought to pressure grocery chains to hire minorities.
Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.
But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.
Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.
"I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant," Obama said. "It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently."
His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.
"There was friction about the decision he made," said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer's behalf. "There were deep disagreements.
"Had Palmer survived the petition challenge, Obama would have faced the daunting task of taking on an incumbent senator.
Palmer's elimination marked the first of several fortuitous political moments in Obama's electoral success: He won the 2004 primary and general elections for U.S. Senate after tough challengers imploded when their messy divorce files were unsealed.
Obama contended that in the case of the 1996 race, in which he routed token opposition in the general election, he was ready to compete in the primary if necessary."We actually ran a terrific campaign up until the point we knew that we weren't going to have to appear on the ballot with anybody," Obama said. "I mean, we had prepared for it. We had raised money. We had tons of volunteers.
There was enormous enthusiasm."And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers: "If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people's business."
At the time, though, Obama seemed less at ease with the decision, according to aides. They said the first-time candidate initially expressed reservations about using challenges to eliminate all his fellow Democrats."He wondered if we should knock everybody off the ballot. How would that look?" said Ronald Davis, the paid Obama campaign consultant whom Obama referred to as his "guru of petitions."
In the end, Davis filed objections to all four of Obama's Democratic rivals at the candidate's behest.
While Obama didn't attend the hearings, "he wanted us to call him every night and let him know what we were doing," Davis said, noting that Palmer and the others seemed unprepared for the challenges.
But Obama didn't gloat over the victories. "I don't think he thought it was, you know, sporting," said Will Burns, a 1996 Obama campaign volunteer who assisted with the petition challenges.
"He wasn't very proud of it."
Endorsement or informal nod?
By the summer of 1995, Obama, 34, had completed his globe-trotting education and settled deep into Chicago's South Side.He had gone to Harvard Law School with private ambitions of someday following Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago.
At Harvard, where Obama was celebrated as the first black president of the Law Review, classmate Gina Torielli remembers him "saying that governor of Illinois would be his dream job."
Back in Chicago after graduation, Obama won respect for running Project Vote, which registered tens of thousands of black Chicagoans. "It's a power thing," the volunteers' T-shirts said.Community organizers packed his wedding to Michelle Robinson, a South Shore resident and fellow Harvard Law graduate.
The newlyweds bought a Hyde Park condo.His memoir, "Dreams from My Father," was published that summer to warm reviews. He was working at a small but influential legal firm, teaching constitutional law as a University of Chicago adjunct professor and sitting on the boards of charities.
At the same time, the South Side's political map was thrown up for grabs when then-U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds was convicted of sex crimes and a special election was called to fill his congressional seat.
Palmer joined the race and, according to multiple accounts, introduced Obama as the successor for her Illinois Senate seat."She said, 'I found this wonderful person, this fine young man, so we needn't worry that we'd have a good state senator,' " said former 5th Ward Democratic committeeman Alan Dobry, who volunteered to help both Palmer and Obama that year.
In recent interviews, Obama and Palmer agreed that he asked her whether she wanted to keep her options open and file to run for her state Senate seat as a fallback in case her congressional bid failed.
Obama says he told her: "We haven't started the campaign yet.""I hadn't publicly announced," he said. "But what I said was that once I announce, and I have started to raise money, and gather supporters, hire staff and opened up an office, signed a lease, then it's going to be very difficult for me to step down. And she gave me repeated assurances that she was in [the congressional race] to stay.
"Obama "did say that to me," Palmer says now. "And I certainly did say that I wasn't going to run. There's no question about that."But beyond that, the private discussions they held in 1995 are shrouded today in disputed and hazy memories.Obama said Palmer gave him her formal endorsement.
"I'm absolutely certain she … publicly spoke and sort of designated me," he recalled.Palmer disputes that. "I don't know that I like the word 'endorsement,' " she said. "An endorsement to me, having been in legislative politics … that's a very formal kind of thing. I don't think that describes this. An 'informal nod' is how to characterize it."
In July 1995, Obama announced he was planning to run for Palmer's seat. He filed papers creating his fundraising committee a month later and officially announced his candidacy in September.
He emerged that winter as a gifted campaigner who after finishing hectic workdays would layer on thermal underwear to knock on South Side doors.In impromptu street-corner conversations and media interviews, he disparaged local pols for putting self-preservation ahead of public service.
At the last house on a dark block, "he would start a discussion that should have taken five minutes and pretty soon someone was cooking him dinner," said paid campaign consultant Carol Anne Harwell.
Then Palmer's congressional bid collapsed. On Nov. 28, 1995, she placed a distant third behind political powerhouses Jesse Jackson Jr., who holds that congressional seat today, and current state Senate President Emil Jones Jr.Palmer didn't fade quietly away.
Citing an "outpouring" of support, she upended the political landscape by switching gears and deciding to run in the March 1996 primary for her state Senate seat.But she had two big problems. To get on the ballot, Palmer needed to file nominating petitions signed by at least 757 district voters—and the Dec. 18 deadline was just days away.And then there was Obama, the bright up-and-comer she had all but anointed.
Obama's aides said he seemed anguished over the prospect of defying Palmer. "I really saw turmoil in his face," Harwell said.Obama sought advice from political veterans such as 4th Ward Ald. Toni Preckwinkle and then-15th Ward Ald. Virgil Jones, who say they urged him to hold his course."I thought the world of Alice Palmer," said state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), now the House majority leader. But "at that point she had pulled her own plug."According to Palmer, it was without her knowledge that her supporters initiated discussions to persuade Obama to step aside.
They invited him to the home of state Rep. Lovana "Lou" Jones, now deceased. Obama arrived alone."It was a brief meeting," said Black, a Palmer friend who had advised Obama when he was a young community organizer in the mid-1980s.Obama didn't try to justify his decision to reject Palmer's plea, Black said."He did not put it in inflammatory terms, he just did not back away. It was not arguments, it was stubbornness," Black said. "Barack had by then gone ahead in putting together his own campaign, and he just didn't want to stop."
'If you can get 'em, get 'em'
Just in time for the Dec. 18, 1995, filing deadline, Palmer submitted 1,580 signatures—about twice the minimum required.
That day, Obama lashed out at her, telling the Tribune she had pressured him to withdraw."I am disappointed that she's decided to go back on her word to me," he said.
Obama campaign aides also responded that day—but quietly, and out of the limelight.
Davis and Dobry marshaled volunteers and began poring through the nominating petitions of Palmer and the three lesser-known Democrats, according to interviews."We looked at those petitions and found that none of them met the requirements of the law," Dobry said.
"Alice's people, they'd done it in a great hurry. Almost all her petitions were signed a day or so before the deadline."According to Davis, Palmer "had kids gathering the names. I remember two of her circulators, Pookie and Squirt."Davis and others urged Obama to file legal challenges.
Such tactics are legal and frequently used in Chicago. Ballot challenges eliminated 67 of the 245 declared aldermanic candidates in Chicago before this past February's elections, an election board spokesman said.
Davis recalled telling Obama: "If you can get 'em, get 'em. Why give 'em a break?"I said, 'Barack, I'm going to knock them all off.'"He said, 'What do you need?'"I said, 'I need an attorney.'"He said, 'Who is the best?'"I said, 'Tom Johnson.' "
Obama already knew civil rights attorney and fellow Harvard Law graduate Thomas Johnson, who had waged election cases for the late Mayor Washington and had offered Obama informal legal advice since the days of Project Vote.With Johnson's legal help, Obama's team was confident.
They piled binders of polling sheets in the election board office on the second floor of City Hall, and on Jan. 2, 1996, began the days-long hearings that would eliminate the other Democrats.
Little-known candidate Marc Ewell filed 1,286 names, but Obama's objections left him 86 short of the minimum, and election officials struck him from the ballot, records show.
Ewell filed a federal lawsuit contesting the board's decision, but Johnson intervened on Obama's behalf and prevailed when Ewell's case was dismissed days later.Ewell could not be reached for comment, but the federal judge's decision showed how he was tripped up by complexities in the election procedures.
City authorities had just completed a massive, routine purge of unqualified names that eliminated 15,871 people from the 13th District rolls, court records show.Ewell and other Obama rivals had relied on early 1995 polling sheets to verify the signatures of registered voters—but Obama's challenges were decided at least in part using the most recent, accurate list, records show.
Askia filed 1,899 signatures, but the Obama team sustained objections to 1,211, leaving him 69 short, records show.
Leafing through scrapbooks in his South Shore apartment, Askia, a perennially unsuccessful candidate, acknowledges that he paid Democratic Party precinct workers $5 a sheet for some of the petitions, and now suspects they used a classic Chicago ruse of passing the papers among themselves to forge the signatures.
"They round-tabled me," Askia said.Palmer to this day does not concede the flaws that Obama's team found in her signatures.
She maintains that she could have overcome the Obama team's objections and stayed on the ballot if she had more time and resources.It was wrenching to withdraw, she said. "But sit for a moment, catch your breath, get up and keep going. I'm a very practical person. Politics is not the only vehicle for accomplishing things."
She became a special assistant to the president of the University of Illinois and is now retired.
Obama said he has not been in touch with Palmer since 1996. "No, not really, no," he said.
Though she hasn't determined whom to support in the presidential race, Palmer, 67, said her dispute with Obama doesn't affect her assessment of his fitness to hold office.Saying that jobless high school dropouts "are sitting on the steps next to my house," Palmer added: "There is a savage economy going on out here, and we've got collateral damage. I am looking closely to see who has the courage, the smarts."dyjackson@tribune.comrlong@tribune.com
chicagotribune.com
MAKING OF A CANDIDATE
Obama knows his way around a ballot
Some say his ability to play political hardball goes back to his first campaign
By David Jackson and Ray Long
Tribune staff reporters
6:48 PM CDT, April 3, 2007
The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.
Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.
But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.
A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it
.One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.
"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"
In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled."I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said.
"My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."
Obama behind challenges
America has been defined in part by civil rights and good government battles fought out in Chicago's 13th District, which in 1996 spanned Hyde Park mansions, South Shore bungalows and poverty-bitten precincts of Englewood.
It was in this part of the city that an eager reform Democrat by the name of Abner Mikva first entered elected office in the 1950s. And here a young, brash minister named Jesse Jackson ran Operation Breadbasket, leading marchers who sought to pressure grocery chains to hire minorities.
Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.
But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.
Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.
"I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant," Obama said. "It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently."
His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.
"There was friction about the decision he made," said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer's behalf. "There were deep disagreements.
"Had Palmer survived the petition challenge, Obama would have faced the daunting task of taking on an incumbent senator.
Palmer's elimination marked the first of several fortuitous political moments in Obama's electoral success: He won the 2004 primary and general elections for U.S. Senate after tough challengers imploded when their messy divorce files were unsealed.
Obama contended that in the case of the 1996 race, in which he routed token opposition in the general election, he was ready to compete in the primary if necessary."We actually ran a terrific campaign up until the point we knew that we weren't going to have to appear on the ballot with anybody," Obama said. "I mean, we had prepared for it. We had raised money. We had tons of volunteers.
There was enormous enthusiasm."And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers: "If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people's business."
At the time, though, Obama seemed less at ease with the decision, according to aides. They said the first-time candidate initially expressed reservations about using challenges to eliminate all his fellow Democrats."He wondered if we should knock everybody off the ballot. How would that look?" said Ronald Davis, the paid Obama campaign consultant whom Obama referred to as his "guru of petitions."
In the end, Davis filed objections to all four of Obama's Democratic rivals at the candidate's behest.
While Obama didn't attend the hearings, "he wanted us to call him every night and let him know what we were doing," Davis said, noting that Palmer and the others seemed unprepared for the challenges.
But Obama didn't gloat over the victories. "I don't think he thought it was, you know, sporting," said Will Burns, a 1996 Obama campaign volunteer who assisted with the petition challenges.
"He wasn't very proud of it."
Endorsement or informal nod?
By the summer of 1995, Obama, 34, had completed his globe-trotting education and settled deep into Chicago's South Side.He had gone to Harvard Law School with private ambitions of someday following Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago.
At Harvard, where Obama was celebrated as the first black president of the Law Review, classmate Gina Torielli remembers him "saying that governor of Illinois would be his dream job."
Back in Chicago after graduation, Obama won respect for running Project Vote, which registered tens of thousands of black Chicagoans. "It's a power thing," the volunteers' T-shirts said.Community organizers packed his wedding to Michelle Robinson, a South Shore resident and fellow Harvard Law graduate.
The newlyweds bought a Hyde Park condo.His memoir, "Dreams from My Father," was published that summer to warm reviews. He was working at a small but influential legal firm, teaching constitutional law as a University of Chicago adjunct professor and sitting on the boards of charities.
At the same time, the South Side's political map was thrown up for grabs when then-U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds was convicted of sex crimes and a special election was called to fill his congressional seat.
Palmer joined the race and, according to multiple accounts, introduced Obama as the successor for her Illinois Senate seat."She said, 'I found this wonderful person, this fine young man, so we needn't worry that we'd have a good state senator,' " said former 5th Ward Democratic committeeman Alan Dobry, who volunteered to help both Palmer and Obama that year.
In recent interviews, Obama and Palmer agreed that he asked her whether she wanted to keep her options open and file to run for her state Senate seat as a fallback in case her congressional bid failed.
Obama says he told her: "We haven't started the campaign yet.""I hadn't publicly announced," he said. "But what I said was that once I announce, and I have started to raise money, and gather supporters, hire staff and opened up an office, signed a lease, then it's going to be very difficult for me to step down. And she gave me repeated assurances that she was in [the congressional race] to stay.
"Obama "did say that to me," Palmer says now. "And I certainly did say that I wasn't going to run. There's no question about that."But beyond that, the private discussions they held in 1995 are shrouded today in disputed and hazy memories.Obama said Palmer gave him her formal endorsement.
"I'm absolutely certain she … publicly spoke and sort of designated me," he recalled.Palmer disputes that. "I don't know that I like the word 'endorsement,' " she said. "An endorsement to me, having been in legislative politics … that's a very formal kind of thing. I don't think that describes this. An 'informal nod' is how to characterize it."
In July 1995, Obama announced he was planning to run for Palmer's seat. He filed papers creating his fundraising committee a month later and officially announced his candidacy in September.
He emerged that winter as a gifted campaigner who after finishing hectic workdays would layer on thermal underwear to knock on South Side doors.In impromptu street-corner conversations and media interviews, he disparaged local pols for putting self-preservation ahead of public service.
At the last house on a dark block, "he would start a discussion that should have taken five minutes and pretty soon someone was cooking him dinner," said paid campaign consultant Carol Anne Harwell.
Then Palmer's congressional bid collapsed. On Nov. 28, 1995, she placed a distant third behind political powerhouses Jesse Jackson Jr., who holds that congressional seat today, and current state Senate President Emil Jones Jr.Palmer didn't fade quietly away.
Citing an "outpouring" of support, she upended the political landscape by switching gears and deciding to run in the March 1996 primary for her state Senate seat.But she had two big problems. To get on the ballot, Palmer needed to file nominating petitions signed by at least 757 district voters—and the Dec. 18 deadline was just days away.And then there was Obama, the bright up-and-comer she had all but anointed.
Obama's aides said he seemed anguished over the prospect of defying Palmer. "I really saw turmoil in his face," Harwell said.Obama sought advice from political veterans such as 4th Ward Ald. Toni Preckwinkle and then-15th Ward Ald. Virgil Jones, who say they urged him to hold his course."I thought the world of Alice Palmer," said state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), now the House majority leader. But "at that point she had pulled her own plug."According to Palmer, it was without her knowledge that her supporters initiated discussions to persuade Obama to step aside.
They invited him to the home of state Rep. Lovana "Lou" Jones, now deceased. Obama arrived alone."It was a brief meeting," said Black, a Palmer friend who had advised Obama when he was a young community organizer in the mid-1980s.Obama didn't try to justify his decision to reject Palmer's plea, Black said."He did not put it in inflammatory terms, he just did not back away. It was not arguments, it was stubbornness," Black said. "Barack had by then gone ahead in putting together his own campaign, and he just didn't want to stop."
'If you can get 'em, get 'em'
Just in time for the Dec. 18, 1995, filing deadline, Palmer submitted 1,580 signatures—about twice the minimum required.
That day, Obama lashed out at her, telling the Tribune she had pressured him to withdraw."I am disappointed that she's decided to go back on her word to me," he said.
Obama campaign aides also responded that day—but quietly, and out of the limelight.
Davis and Dobry marshaled volunteers and began poring through the nominating petitions of Palmer and the three lesser-known Democrats, according to interviews."We looked at those petitions and found that none of them met the requirements of the law," Dobry said.
"Alice's people, they'd done it in a great hurry. Almost all her petitions were signed a day or so before the deadline."According to Davis, Palmer "had kids gathering the names. I remember two of her circulators, Pookie and Squirt."Davis and others urged Obama to file legal challenges.
Such tactics are legal and frequently used in Chicago. Ballot challenges eliminated 67 of the 245 declared aldermanic candidates in Chicago before this past February's elections, an election board spokesman said.
Davis recalled telling Obama: "If you can get 'em, get 'em. Why give 'em a break?"I said, 'Barack, I'm going to knock them all off.'"He said, 'What do you need?'"I said, 'I need an attorney.'"He said, 'Who is the best?'"I said, 'Tom Johnson.' "
Obama already knew civil rights attorney and fellow Harvard Law graduate Thomas Johnson, who had waged election cases for the late Mayor Washington and had offered Obama informal legal advice since the days of Project Vote.With Johnson's legal help, Obama's team was confident.
They piled binders of polling sheets in the election board office on the second floor of City Hall, and on Jan. 2, 1996, began the days-long hearings that would eliminate the other Democrats.
Little-known candidate Marc Ewell filed 1,286 names, but Obama's objections left him 86 short of the minimum, and election officials struck him from the ballot, records show.
Ewell filed a federal lawsuit contesting the board's decision, but Johnson intervened on Obama's behalf and prevailed when Ewell's case was dismissed days later.Ewell could not be reached for comment, but the federal judge's decision showed how he was tripped up by complexities in the election procedures.
City authorities had just completed a massive, routine purge of unqualified names that eliminated 15,871 people from the 13th District rolls, court records show.Ewell and other Obama rivals had relied on early 1995 polling sheets to verify the signatures of registered voters—but Obama's challenges were decided at least in part using the most recent, accurate list, records show.
Askia filed 1,899 signatures, but the Obama team sustained objections to 1,211, leaving him 69 short, records show.
Leafing through scrapbooks in his South Shore apartment, Askia, a perennially unsuccessful candidate, acknowledges that he paid Democratic Party precinct workers $5 a sheet for some of the petitions, and now suspects they used a classic Chicago ruse of passing the papers among themselves to forge the signatures.
"They round-tabled me," Askia said.Palmer to this day does not concede the flaws that Obama's team found in her signatures.
She maintains that she could have overcome the Obama team's objections and stayed on the ballot if she had more time and resources.It was wrenching to withdraw, she said. "But sit for a moment, catch your breath, get up and keep going. I'm a very practical person. Politics is not the only vehicle for accomplishing things."
She became a special assistant to the president of the University of Illinois and is now retired.
Obama said he has not been in touch with Palmer since 1996. "No, not really, no," he said.
Though she hasn't determined whom to support in the presidential race, Palmer, 67, said her dispute with Obama doesn't affect her assessment of his fitness to hold office.Saying that jobless high school dropouts "are sitting on the steps next to my house," Palmer added: "There is a savage economy going on out here, and we've got collateral damage. I am looking closely to see who has the courage, the smarts."dyjackson@tribune.comrlong@tribune.com
OBAMAS WAL-MART LIE- ALSO see video
Obama called hypocrite for wife's Wal-Mart link
By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 12/05/2007
As a fluent public speaker, independent-minded wife, devoted mother and professional woman, Michelle Obama has been hailed as an invaluable asset to her husband Barack's mission to capture the Democratic 2008 presidential nomination.
Yet, while her style and performance are winning plaudits on the campaign trail, a little-reported business interest of Mrs Obama's has opened her husband up to one of the criticisms that politicians fear most - the taint of hypocrisy
She is taking a break from her main job, as a well-remunerated Chicago hospital executive, to campaign for her husband. But she has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago to gain experience of the private sector.
And the biggest customer for the pickles and peppers produced by Treehouse Foods is the retail giant Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and the bête noire of American liberals, including Sen Obama, for its employment practices, most notably its refusal to recognise trade unions.
As the Illinois senator prepared to join the presidential fray late last year, he threw his weight behind the union-backed campaign against Wal-Mart. He declared that there was a "moral responsibility to stand up and fight" the company and "force them to examine their own corporate values".
According to the couple's tax returns, Mrs Obama earned $51,200 (£25,700) for her work as a non-executive director on Treehouse's board last year, on top of the $271,618 salary she was paid as a vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.
She also received 7,500 Treehouse stock options, worth a further $72,375, as she did the previous year, when she banked a $45,000 salary from the company.
The apparent contradiction between Sen Obama's political calculation to join the Wal-Mart-bashing lobby, and his wife's profitable role with a company that makes money from Wal-Mart, is being closely scrutinised by "opposition" research teams working for rival White House candidates, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
They are collecting information about Mrs Obama's Treehouse ties, anticipating that - in a country where "going dirty" is a political way of life - the link may provide valuable ammunition in the election campaign.
Such attacks could be particularly damaging for Sen Obama, who has promised a change from politics as usual. Just last week, on her first foray to the crucial first primary state of New Hampshire, Mrs Obama praised her husband's "moral compass", reflecting a key message of his campaign.
Joe Novak, a Chicago political consultant who runs an anti-Obama website, said: "The Obamas would have us believe that, when it comes to money and ethics and compassion, he is a different kind of politician.
"What's different here is that they actually seem to believe it. That's the only way they can justify the contradictions between what they preach and what they practice. Defending Treehouse while attacking Wal-Mart is a blatant example of personal hypocrisy."
Sen Obama's campaign team and Mrs Obama's spokesman did not respond to requests by The Sunday Telegraph for comment. But the senator previously told Crain's Chicago Business magazine that, while his views on corporate reform and social justice remained the same regardless of what happens at Treehouse, "Michelle and I have to live in the world and pay taxes and pay for our kids and save for retirement".
Hillary Clinton, Sen Obama's main rival for the Democratic nomination, can testify to the political dangers in liberal America of being associated with Wal-Mart, even though the company's cost-cutting policy makes its goods more affordable for the low-paid. The New York senator and wife of the former President Bill Clinton still encounters flak for serving on the company's board from 1985 to 1992, before becoming First Lady.
According to Treehouse's financial filings, Wal-Mart accounted for 16.1 per cent of its sales last year, up from 11.7 per cent in 2005 (a 37 per cent increase), comfortably making it the company's biggest customer. Treehouse's annual operating profits rose from $28 million two years ago to $84 million (up 200 per cent) in 2006.
Mrs Obama, 43, was re-elected to the board last month for a further three years, a period that would overlap with her husband's time in the White House if he becomes America's first black president.
Mrs Obama is Treehouse's senior non-executive director and sits on the company's audit and nominating and corporate governance committees. Her Treehouse connection is not the only awkward ethical question that has confronted Sen Obama as his past is dug over.
Earlier this year, in response to a newspaper investigation, he said he was unaware that his broker had bought $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose leading investors included some of his biggest political donors.
He has also apologised for his "boneheaded error" in striking a property deal with Tony Rezko, a Chicago Democrat operative facing a federal indictment.
By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:37pm BST 12/05/2007
As a fluent public speaker, independent-minded wife, devoted mother and professional woman, Michelle Obama has been hailed as an invaluable asset to her husband Barack's mission to capture the Democratic 2008 presidential nomination.
Yet, while her style and performance are winning plaudits on the campaign trail, a little-reported business interest of Mrs Obama's has opened her husband up to one of the criticisms that politicians fear most - the taint of hypocrisy
She is taking a break from her main job, as a well-remunerated Chicago hospital executive, to campaign for her husband. But she has just been re-elected to the board of an Illinois food-processing company, a position she took up two years ago to gain experience of the private sector.
And the biggest customer for the pickles and peppers produced by Treehouse Foods is the retail giant Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation and the bête noire of American liberals, including Sen Obama, for its employment practices, most notably its refusal to recognise trade unions.
As the Illinois senator prepared to join the presidential fray late last year, he threw his weight behind the union-backed campaign against Wal-Mart. He declared that there was a "moral responsibility to stand up and fight" the company and "force them to examine their own corporate values".
According to the couple's tax returns, Mrs Obama earned $51,200 (£25,700) for her work as a non-executive director on Treehouse's board last year, on top of the $271,618 salary she was paid as a vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.
She also received 7,500 Treehouse stock options, worth a further $72,375, as she did the previous year, when she banked a $45,000 salary from the company.
The apparent contradiction between Sen Obama's political calculation to join the Wal-Mart-bashing lobby, and his wife's profitable role with a company that makes money from Wal-Mart, is being closely scrutinised by "opposition" research teams working for rival White House candidates, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
They are collecting information about Mrs Obama's Treehouse ties, anticipating that - in a country where "going dirty" is a political way of life - the link may provide valuable ammunition in the election campaign.
Such attacks could be particularly damaging for Sen Obama, who has promised a change from politics as usual. Just last week, on her first foray to the crucial first primary state of New Hampshire, Mrs Obama praised her husband's "moral compass", reflecting a key message of his campaign.
Joe Novak, a Chicago political consultant who runs an anti-Obama website, said: "The Obamas would have us believe that, when it comes to money and ethics and compassion, he is a different kind of politician.
"What's different here is that they actually seem to believe it. That's the only way they can justify the contradictions between what they preach and what they practice. Defending Treehouse while attacking Wal-Mart is a blatant example of personal hypocrisy."
Sen Obama's campaign team and Mrs Obama's spokesman did not respond to requests by The Sunday Telegraph for comment. But the senator previously told Crain's Chicago Business magazine that, while his views on corporate reform and social justice remained the same regardless of what happens at Treehouse, "Michelle and I have to live in the world and pay taxes and pay for our kids and save for retirement".
Hillary Clinton, Sen Obama's main rival for the Democratic nomination, can testify to the political dangers in liberal America of being associated with Wal-Mart, even though the company's cost-cutting policy makes its goods more affordable for the low-paid. The New York senator and wife of the former President Bill Clinton still encounters flak for serving on the company's board from 1985 to 1992, before becoming First Lady.
According to Treehouse's financial filings, Wal-Mart accounted for 16.1 per cent of its sales last year, up from 11.7 per cent in 2005 (a 37 per cent increase), comfortably making it the company's biggest customer. Treehouse's annual operating profits rose from $28 million two years ago to $84 million (up 200 per cent) in 2006.
Mrs Obama, 43, was re-elected to the board last month for a further three years, a period that would overlap with her husband's time in the White House if he becomes America's first black president.
Mrs Obama is Treehouse's senior non-executive director and sits on the company's audit and nominating and corporate governance committees. Her Treehouse connection is not the only awkward ethical question that has confronted Sen Obama as his past is dug over.
Earlier this year, in response to a newspaper investigation, he said he was unaware that his broker had bought $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose leading investors included some of his biggest political donors.
He has also apologised for his "boneheaded error" in striking a property deal with Tony Rezko, a Chicago Democrat operative facing a federal indictment.
THE EXELON LIE IN IOWA
Obama said " I will never lie to you"
EXELON LIE
It should be scrutiny time for Obama, even if only as a helpful exercise in vetting him, if he is the Democrat to face John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Right before Super Tuesday The New York Times reported that Obama took up the cause of residents in Illinois who were outraged that Exelon Corp. did not disclose radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants. Obama, who introduced a bill requiring all plant owners to notify state and local authorities of small leaks, told voters on the campaign trail it was "the only nuclear legislation that I've passed."
However, as the Times reported, the bill ultimately died in the full Senate after Obama rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Exelon, Senate Republicans, and nuclear regulators. Meanwhile, Exelon contributed at least $227,000 to Obama's campaign and two top Exelon executives are among his largest fund-raisers. According to the Times, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, also worked as a consultant for Exelon.
But Obama is promising a new kind of politics, not a tamped-down version of the Clinton brand. The Times said the Obama campaign did not directly address the question of why Obama told Iowa voters that the legislation that died had, instead, passed. That should be worthy of follow-up. Obama is pledging to hold himself to a completely different standard of political behavior
EXELON LIE
It should be scrutiny time for Obama, even if only as a helpful exercise in vetting him, if he is the Democrat to face John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Right before Super Tuesday The New York Times reported that Obama took up the cause of residents in Illinois who were outraged that Exelon Corp. did not disclose radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear plants. Obama, who introduced a bill requiring all plant owners to notify state and local authorities of small leaks, told voters on the campaign trail it was "the only nuclear legislation that I've passed."
However, as the Times reported, the bill ultimately died in the full Senate after Obama rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Exelon, Senate Republicans, and nuclear regulators. Meanwhile, Exelon contributed at least $227,000 to Obama's campaign and two top Exelon executives are among his largest fund-raisers. According to the Times, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, also worked as a consultant for Exelon.
But Obama is promising a new kind of politics, not a tamped-down version of the Clinton brand. The Times said the Obama campaign did not directly address the question of why Obama told Iowa voters that the legislation that died had, instead, passed. That should be worthy of follow-up. Obama is pledging to hold himself to a completely different standard of political behavior
OBAMA'S JUDGEMENT AND MEDIA
THOUGHTS ON OBAMAS JUDGEMENT
This business of Rezko is important; there are many unanswered questions that go to judgment. Senator Obama's purchase of his house on the same day as Mrs. Rezko's purchase of the side lot at a time it was well known that Mr. Rezko was under investigation is more than just 'boneheaded'. Mr. Rezko was indicted October 2006, why did it take Senator Obama until January 2008 to donate this money from Rezko? He has known Mr. Rezko for well over 17 years, why give the impression it was just '5 hours' of work during the debate?
A reader tossed out Norman Hsu's donations to Senator Clinton. You might want to read up, Mr. Hsu has donated money to many Democrats and the Democratic Party as well as Senator Obama.
Then there is the matter of his early political years. The Chicago Tribune has an article "Obama Knows his way Around a Ballot". His challenges to the other candidate’s signatures to get on the ballot, leaving him as the only candidate, gives me great pause. It may have indeed been, as he claimed, his legal right, but it certainly was not fair, it certainly wasn't the image of a candidate who claims to be above it all.
There was another candidate not to long ago, who also talked of unity, changing Washington, he was like able we were told, in fact, they told us he was the kind of guy you could have a beer with, many people voted for him his name is President Bush.
Why is everyone so angry at Hillary for brining it up? She went there because Obama started the accusations in the debate...she followed suite. We should be glad the info is coming out to investigate. Why be angry at Clinton for Obamas "lack in judgment?" He claims his judgment is better than all the so called Washington politicians. This is questionable to say the least. Truth is he is like them.
Why is it up to Clinton to bring this up? Why hasn't the media brought it up on their own?. Oh and by the way, on top of all of his "not present votes" he didn't bother to show up in the US Senate to vote for the Iran Resolution, such an important vote that he condemns Hillary for, yet he didn't even vote. Why? Because there isn't a chance to vote "Present" and not have to put on record your vote? And the "oops" I made a mistake and pushed the wrong button 6 times in the Illinois Senate? Isn't your only job in the moment to push the right button? Or ... did you really want to change your vote because it was not popular. We are choosing a President....and he has to make sure that he can push the button he intends on pushing.
This business of Rezko is important; there are many unanswered questions that go to judgment. Senator Obama's purchase of his house on the same day as Mrs. Rezko's purchase of the side lot at a time it was well known that Mr. Rezko was under investigation is more than just 'boneheaded'. Mr. Rezko was indicted October 2006, why did it take Senator Obama until January 2008 to donate this money from Rezko? He has known Mr. Rezko for well over 17 years, why give the impression it was just '5 hours' of work during the debate?
A reader tossed out Norman Hsu's donations to Senator Clinton. You might want to read up, Mr. Hsu has donated money to many Democrats and the Democratic Party as well as Senator Obama.
Then there is the matter of his early political years. The Chicago Tribune has an article "Obama Knows his way Around a Ballot". His challenges to the other candidate’s signatures to get on the ballot, leaving him as the only candidate, gives me great pause. It may have indeed been, as he claimed, his legal right, but it certainly was not fair, it certainly wasn't the image of a candidate who claims to be above it all.
There was another candidate not to long ago, who also talked of unity, changing Washington, he was like able we were told, in fact, they told us he was the kind of guy you could have a beer with, many people voted for him his name is President Bush.
Why is everyone so angry at Hillary for brining it up? She went there because Obama started the accusations in the debate...she followed suite. We should be glad the info is coming out to investigate. Why be angry at Clinton for Obamas "lack in judgment?" He claims his judgment is better than all the so called Washington politicians. This is questionable to say the least. Truth is he is like them.
Why is it up to Clinton to bring this up? Why hasn't the media brought it up on their own?. Oh and by the way, on top of all of his "not present votes" he didn't bother to show up in the US Senate to vote for the Iran Resolution, such an important vote that he condemns Hillary for, yet he didn't even vote. Why? Because there isn't a chance to vote "Present" and not have to put on record your vote? And the "oops" I made a mistake and pushed the wrong button 6 times in the Illinois Senate? Isn't your only job in the moment to push the right button? Or ... did you really want to change your vote because it was not popular. We are choosing a President....and he has to make sure that he can push the button he intends on pushing.
OBAMA UN-MASKED-ARTICLE
Politics
Obama unmasked
Andrew Stephen
What's going wrong for the man who would be president? Our US editor Andrew Stephen reports from Washington.
We at the New Statesman must take some of the blame, I suppose. Barack Obama had been a senator for just ten months in 2005 when we devoted a cover to his face, anointing him as one of ten people likely to have an impact on the world. It was only during 2007, however, that the American media fell head-over-heels in love with Obama; when he trounced Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party caucuses in Iowa on 3 January, it seemed that the electorate was swooning in a headlong rush to the altar with Obama, too. By the end of the first week of the '08 presidential election year, the media had all but handed over the keys to the White House to him.
So it all came as a shock to the pundits and pollsters on the night of 8 January when, despite predictions of an overwhelming Obama triumph, it became clear that the voters of New Hampshire had given Hillary Clinton the victory over Obama she badly needed. The reason for the media's distortions, I believe, is that Obama's relationship with the press and the electorate is still at the stage of starry-eyed infatuation. Yes, he is a mesmerising political orator who offers a magic elixir that somehow contains both stimulants and sedatives: that we need not worry about the present or future, because we can look forward to a new dawn of hope and reassurance in the safe hands of President Obama. Exactly how and why this would happen is not clear, but it is heady and exciting stuff.
I suspect that the longer the relationship continues, however, the more Obama's many faults and shortcomings as a presidential candidate will emerge. In his speech admitting defeat in New Hampshire on Tuesday, for example, a hint of his bad-tempered haughtiness emerged. He is not the fresh-faced young idealist the media like to portray, but a hard-headed 46-year-old lawyer whose monumental drive and political calculations make the Clintons seem like a pair of amateurs. The media and electorate may have fallen in love with him spontaneously, but Obama has been carefully plotting his strategy to seduce them for decades.
A little "blow"
Even dedicated political operators such as the Clintons, for example, did not publish self-promoting memoirs at the age of 33 - but that is exactly what Obama did, revealing his use of cocaine ("a little blow") before anybody else could beat him to it, for example. In those memoirs, Dreams from My Father, he burnished a personal and political résumé that, in places, seemed almost unbelievable - so I was not surprised to read in his introduction to the reissued edition of "selective lapses of memory" and "the temptation to colour events in ways favourable to the writer".
I'll provide two brief examples of how Obama did just that. He wrote movingly of a turning point in his life when, as a nine-year-old, he read in Life magazine of a "black man who had tried to peel off his skin". But the Chicago Tribune - it and the Chicago Sun-Times being honourable exceptions to the media quiescence I have described - reported that "no such Life issue exists", and an exhaustive search of similar magazines failed to find any article remotely similar to the one Obama had described. The Obama media machine, too, obligingly enabled television crews this month to interview Obama's very elderly Kenyan "grandmother"; the only problem was that the woman in rural Kenya was not Obama's grandmother, but the alleged foster mother of Obama's father. "Give me a break . . . this whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," huffed Bill Clinton, visiting Dartmouth College on the eve of the New Hampshire vote, telling his audience the US media are not being tough enough on Obama.
Politically, there is remarkably little difference between the three leading Democrats - Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Obama was not in the Senate in 2002 and did not therefore vote for the resolution that authorised the invasion of Iraq. But he has not been the sainted man of peace his supporters portray, either. In his three years in the Senate he has kept his head safely below the parapet, leaving two congressional colleagues - Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania - to spearhead opposition to the war on Capitol Hill. In 2006 he voted against a Senate resolution calling for the withdrawal of troops and has also voted to continue funding the war.
Most recently, he said he would not hesitate to send US troops into Pakistan without Pakistan's permission to hunt down terrorists, and he insists that the US must not "cede our claim of leadership in world affairs". He wants the military to "stay on the offensive, from Djibouti to Kandahar" and to increase defence expenditure. Like most identikit US mainstream politicians, he talks of "rogue nations" and "hostile dictators", and says the US must maintain "a strong nuclear deterrent" and be ready to "seize" the "American moment". He appeared to support Israel's attack on Lebanon, but then said "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" - which, in turn, he denied saying.
In the meantime he let his mentor and fellow senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, swing alone in the wind after Durbin - perhaps the most liberal Democrat in the Senate - compared US interrogation techniques of prisoners in Guantanamo with those of the Soviet Union, Nazis and Khmer Rouge. He voted to reauthorise the Bush administration's repressive Patriot Act, and says that as president he would not rule out a US first-strike nuclear attack on Iran.
His equivocations and contradictions thus proliferate. He promised solemnly on coast-to-coast live television on NBC in 2006 that he would complete his six-year Senate term and definitely not run for the presidency. He voted in favour of President Bush's nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. I am not the first to see Obama's self-portrayal as almost Christlike: a young black man is tormented by racism and gets into drugs, and only his own inner goodness rescues him from the ghettos to which he was surely consigned. Human foibles - that he smokes and likes playing poker, for example - are determinedly kept under wraps.
Dysfunctional
The sad point of all this is that the reality of his life is actually much more fascinating than the manufactured version. His background is strikingly dysfunctional but by no means economically underprivileged. His eccentric white American mother met his Kenyan father when both were students at the University of Hawaii, but like so many male politicians - Bill Clinton, for one - his father, an alcoholic who ended up fathering several families before being killed in a car accident in Kenya in 1982, was literally and figuratively absent from his life. He abandoned Obama and his mother to take up a scholarship at Harvard when the young Barack was a toddler. So much for his Kenyan "relatives".
His mother, who died in 1995, subsequently remarried an Indonesian student destined to become an oil company executive, and the newlyweds took the young Obama to live in Jakarta when he was six. He duly attended a local school that the Fox News channel gleefully but inaccurately labelled a madrasa. His middle name, like his father's, is Hussein - though Obama insists that his father was not, in fact, a Muslim but an atheist. The adult Obama now attends the evangelical Trinity United Church of Christ in Chi cago and says he is a devout Christian.
The young Obama acquired a half-sister when he lived in Jakarta (she is now a Buddhist), but his mother sent him to live permanently with his white grandparents in Honolulu when he was ten. He then began a new, elitist life that even he describes as "a childhood dream": surfing in Hawaii and attending the renowned private Punahou School, founded by Congregationalist missionaries in 1841 and known to local people as a school for the haole (whites). Its annual tuition today costs $15,725.
Far from being the brilliant student his image suggests, Obama was a consistently B-grade pupil. He went on to attend Occidental College, a perfectly respectable private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, but hardly an academic powerhouse; its present-day endowment is $377m. He transferred to Columbia University in New York and completed his degree there, and finally graduated with a degree from Harvard Law School at the age of 30. His upwardly mobile ascent had begun, and Obama joined the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He began his professional political career when he stood successfully for the Illinois General Assembly (the state senate) in 1996.
Here we come to one of the major contradictions between Obama's image and reality. The media, both here and in Britain, assume that Obama has the black vote sewn up - a Daily Telegraph columnist, with stupendous racism, casually asserted on Monday that Hillary Clinton has lost an opportunity because American blacks now "have one of their own to support" - but Obama is regarded with suspicion by most African Americans. My postman, for example, screws up his face with disdain at the mere mention of Obama's name. He alienated much of the black political Establishment in 2000, when he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primaries against the incumbent congressman for an Illinois district, Representative Bobby Rush - a former Black Panther and current leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus. His congressional district has more black people than any other in the country, and Obama lost to Rush by 31 points.
In a career that has seemed - until now, at least - to be unstoppable, he nonetheless went on to win the Democratic nomination to run for the US Senate in 2004. The seat was being vacated by a retiring Republican, Peter Fitzgerald, but Obama had a tremendous stroke of luck: the former wife of his strong Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, made sordid allegations about their sex life and Ryan was forced to drop out. He was replaced by Alan Keyes, a former black activist and diplomat who had morphed into a figure of the far right and become one of America's fully paid-up political lunatics. Obama, having won national attention for the first time by delivering the keynote address at John Kerry's Democratic coronation convention in Boston the previous July, won by a 70-27 per cent landslide.
Which brings us back to his entry to the Senate in 2005 and our cover of him less than ten months later. Part of Obama's contrived sainthood is an undertaking that he will not take funds from lobbyists or political action committees. But, like the Clintons and just about any other American politician, he has assiduously done just that. According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton has so far raised $78,615,215 and Obama $78,915,507; Obama's campaign has relied heavily on people such as Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago-based hedge-fund manager who reportedly earned $1.4bn last year.
The further away you get from Chicago, though, the more the saintly image takes hold. Publications like the New Yorker may coo for pages over "the conciliator", but the two Chicago newspapers are much more interested in Obama's close 17-year friendship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a long-time Obama donor and property developer awaiting trial on charges of attempted extortion, money laundering and fraud. A low-income housing project received more than $14m from taxpayers while Obama was a state senator, but he consistently denied that he had done any favours for Rezko.
The hope mantra
That was until the Chicago Sun-Times unearthed two letters Obama wrote to state officials in 1998 urging them to grant extra funds for Rezko's project. Democrats and Republicans alike in Chicago, too, are intrigued by the question of why Obama paid $1.65m for a mansion in the city's south side in 2005 - $300,000 less than the asking price - on the very same day Rezko's wife happened to buy the house next door for the asking price. In their tax return for the following year, Obama and his wife, Michelle, who is vice-president of a non-profit hospital organisation, reported taxable income of $983,826 for 2006, down from $1.6m the previous year.
"Hope" is the mantra word in Obama's magic elixir, but Bruce Reed - president of the Democratic Leadership Council - points out that tens of millions of Americans are supporting Obama not because of what he's done, but because of what they hope he might do. "We don't need leaders to tell us we can't do what we need to do," Obama said in a typical stump speech on 7 January. "We need them to say 'yes, we can', to say 'yes, we believe'."
Huge crowds roar their approval over lines like this, long on beautifully delivered rhetoric but short on facts and concrete undertakings. A casual observer might assume Obama is proposing a vastly more ambitious health-care plan than Clinton; in fact, the reverse is true.
Those who know Obama say privately that he has a healthy sense of entitlement that often manifests itself in an imperious, thin-skinned manner. We caught just a glimpse of this peevishness in his concession speech in New Hampshire, I thought - of a man somehow denied his rightful Schadenfreude over the second humiliating defeat of Clinton that he and the American punditocracy had confidently anticipated. Obama's latest book may be called The Audacity of Hope, but it really should be called The Audacity of Hype.
Obama unmasked
Andrew Stephen
What's going wrong for the man who would be president? Our US editor Andrew Stephen reports from Washington.
We at the New Statesman must take some of the blame, I suppose. Barack Obama had been a senator for just ten months in 2005 when we devoted a cover to his face, anointing him as one of ten people likely to have an impact on the world. It was only during 2007, however, that the American media fell head-over-heels in love with Obama; when he trounced Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party caucuses in Iowa on 3 January, it seemed that the electorate was swooning in a headlong rush to the altar with Obama, too. By the end of the first week of the '08 presidential election year, the media had all but handed over the keys to the White House to him.
So it all came as a shock to the pundits and pollsters on the night of 8 January when, despite predictions of an overwhelming Obama triumph, it became clear that the voters of New Hampshire had given Hillary Clinton the victory over Obama she badly needed. The reason for the media's distortions, I believe, is that Obama's relationship with the press and the electorate is still at the stage of starry-eyed infatuation. Yes, he is a mesmerising political orator who offers a magic elixir that somehow contains both stimulants and sedatives: that we need not worry about the present or future, because we can look forward to a new dawn of hope and reassurance in the safe hands of President Obama. Exactly how and why this would happen is not clear, but it is heady and exciting stuff.
I suspect that the longer the relationship continues, however, the more Obama's many faults and shortcomings as a presidential candidate will emerge. In his speech admitting defeat in New Hampshire on Tuesday, for example, a hint of his bad-tempered haughtiness emerged. He is not the fresh-faced young idealist the media like to portray, but a hard-headed 46-year-old lawyer whose monumental drive and political calculations make the Clintons seem like a pair of amateurs. The media and electorate may have fallen in love with him spontaneously, but Obama has been carefully plotting his strategy to seduce them for decades.
A little "blow"
Even dedicated political operators such as the Clintons, for example, did not publish self-promoting memoirs at the age of 33 - but that is exactly what Obama did, revealing his use of cocaine ("a little blow") before anybody else could beat him to it, for example. In those memoirs, Dreams from My Father, he burnished a personal and political résumé that, in places, seemed almost unbelievable - so I was not surprised to read in his introduction to the reissued edition of "selective lapses of memory" and "the temptation to colour events in ways favourable to the writer".
I'll provide two brief examples of how Obama did just that. He wrote movingly of a turning point in his life when, as a nine-year-old, he read in Life magazine of a "black man who had tried to peel off his skin". But the Chicago Tribune - it and the Chicago Sun-Times being honourable exceptions to the media quiescence I have described - reported that "no such Life issue exists", and an exhaustive search of similar magazines failed to find any article remotely similar to the one Obama had described. The Obama media machine, too, obligingly enabled television crews this month to interview Obama's very elderly Kenyan "grandmother"; the only problem was that the woman in rural Kenya was not Obama's grandmother, but the alleged foster mother of Obama's father. "Give me a break . . . this whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," huffed Bill Clinton, visiting Dartmouth College on the eve of the New Hampshire vote, telling his audience the US media are not being tough enough on Obama.
Politically, there is remarkably little difference between the three leading Democrats - Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Obama was not in the Senate in 2002 and did not therefore vote for the resolution that authorised the invasion of Iraq. But he has not been the sainted man of peace his supporters portray, either. In his three years in the Senate he has kept his head safely below the parapet, leaving two congressional colleagues - Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania - to spearhead opposition to the war on Capitol Hill. In 2006 he voted against a Senate resolution calling for the withdrawal of troops and has also voted to continue funding the war.
Most recently, he said he would not hesitate to send US troops into Pakistan without Pakistan's permission to hunt down terrorists, and he insists that the US must not "cede our claim of leadership in world affairs". He wants the military to "stay on the offensive, from Djibouti to Kandahar" and to increase defence expenditure. Like most identikit US mainstream politicians, he talks of "rogue nations" and "hostile dictators", and says the US must maintain "a strong nuclear deterrent" and be ready to "seize" the "American moment". He appeared to support Israel's attack on Lebanon, but then said "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" - which, in turn, he denied saying.
In the meantime he let his mentor and fellow senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, swing alone in the wind after Durbin - perhaps the most liberal Democrat in the Senate - compared US interrogation techniques of prisoners in Guantanamo with those of the Soviet Union, Nazis and Khmer Rouge. He voted to reauthorise the Bush administration's repressive Patriot Act, and says that as president he would not rule out a US first-strike nuclear attack on Iran.
His equivocations and contradictions thus proliferate. He promised solemnly on coast-to-coast live television on NBC in 2006 that he would complete his six-year Senate term and definitely not run for the presidency. He voted in favour of President Bush's nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. I am not the first to see Obama's self-portrayal as almost Christlike: a young black man is tormented by racism and gets into drugs, and only his own inner goodness rescues him from the ghettos to which he was surely consigned. Human foibles - that he smokes and likes playing poker, for example - are determinedly kept under wraps.
Dysfunctional
The sad point of all this is that the reality of his life is actually much more fascinating than the manufactured version. His background is strikingly dysfunctional but by no means economically underprivileged. His eccentric white American mother met his Kenyan father when both were students at the University of Hawaii, but like so many male politicians - Bill Clinton, for one - his father, an alcoholic who ended up fathering several families before being killed in a car accident in Kenya in 1982, was literally and figuratively absent from his life. He abandoned Obama and his mother to take up a scholarship at Harvard when the young Barack was a toddler. So much for his Kenyan "relatives".
His mother, who died in 1995, subsequently remarried an Indonesian student destined to become an oil company executive, and the newlyweds took the young Obama to live in Jakarta when he was six. He duly attended a local school that the Fox News channel gleefully but inaccurately labelled a madrasa. His middle name, like his father's, is Hussein - though Obama insists that his father was not, in fact, a Muslim but an atheist. The adult Obama now attends the evangelical Trinity United Church of Christ in Chi cago and says he is a devout Christian.
The young Obama acquired a half-sister when he lived in Jakarta (she is now a Buddhist), but his mother sent him to live permanently with his white grandparents in Honolulu when he was ten. He then began a new, elitist life that even he describes as "a childhood dream": surfing in Hawaii and attending the renowned private Punahou School, founded by Congregationalist missionaries in 1841 and known to local people as a school for the haole (whites). Its annual tuition today costs $15,725.
Far from being the brilliant student his image suggests, Obama was a consistently B-grade pupil. He went on to attend Occidental College, a perfectly respectable private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, but hardly an academic powerhouse; its present-day endowment is $377m. He transferred to Columbia University in New York and completed his degree there, and finally graduated with a degree from Harvard Law School at the age of 30. His upwardly mobile ascent had begun, and Obama joined the Chicago law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He began his professional political career when he stood successfully for the Illinois General Assembly (the state senate) in 1996.
Here we come to one of the major contradictions between Obama's image and reality. The media, both here and in Britain, assume that Obama has the black vote sewn up - a Daily Telegraph columnist, with stupendous racism, casually asserted on Monday that Hillary Clinton has lost an opportunity because American blacks now "have one of their own to support" - but Obama is regarded with suspicion by most African Americans. My postman, for example, screws up his face with disdain at the mere mention of Obama's name. He alienated much of the black political Establishment in 2000, when he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primaries against the incumbent congressman for an Illinois district, Representative Bobby Rush - a former Black Panther and current leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus. His congressional district has more black people than any other in the country, and Obama lost to Rush by 31 points.
In a career that has seemed - until now, at least - to be unstoppable, he nonetheless went on to win the Democratic nomination to run for the US Senate in 2004. The seat was being vacated by a retiring Republican, Peter Fitzgerald, but Obama had a tremendous stroke of luck: the former wife of his strong Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, made sordid allegations about their sex life and Ryan was forced to drop out. He was replaced by Alan Keyes, a former black activist and diplomat who had morphed into a figure of the far right and become one of America's fully paid-up political lunatics. Obama, having won national attention for the first time by delivering the keynote address at John Kerry's Democratic coronation convention in Boston the previous July, won by a 70-27 per cent landslide.
Which brings us back to his entry to the Senate in 2005 and our cover of him less than ten months later. Part of Obama's contrived sainthood is an undertaking that he will not take funds from lobbyists or political action committees. But, like the Clintons and just about any other American politician, he has assiduously done just that. According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton has so far raised $78,615,215 and Obama $78,915,507; Obama's campaign has relied heavily on people such as Kenneth Griffin, a Chicago-based hedge-fund manager who reportedly earned $1.4bn last year.
The further away you get from Chicago, though, the more the saintly image takes hold. Publications like the New Yorker may coo for pages over "the conciliator", but the two Chicago newspapers are much more interested in Obama's close 17-year friendship with Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a long-time Obama donor and property developer awaiting trial on charges of attempted extortion, money laundering and fraud. A low-income housing project received more than $14m from taxpayers while Obama was a state senator, but he consistently denied that he had done any favours for Rezko.
The hope mantra
That was until the Chicago Sun-Times unearthed two letters Obama wrote to state officials in 1998 urging them to grant extra funds for Rezko's project. Democrats and Republicans alike in Chicago, too, are intrigued by the question of why Obama paid $1.65m for a mansion in the city's south side in 2005 - $300,000 less than the asking price - on the very same day Rezko's wife happened to buy the house next door for the asking price. In their tax return for the following year, Obama and his wife, Michelle, who is vice-president of a non-profit hospital organisation, reported taxable income of $983,826 for 2006, down from $1.6m the previous year.
"Hope" is the mantra word in Obama's magic elixir, but Bruce Reed - president of the Democratic Leadership Council - points out that tens of millions of Americans are supporting Obama not because of what he's done, but because of what they hope he might do. "We don't need leaders to tell us we can't do what we need to do," Obama said in a typical stump speech on 7 January. "We need them to say 'yes, we can', to say 'yes, we believe'."
Huge crowds roar their approval over lines like this, long on beautifully delivered rhetoric but short on facts and concrete undertakings. A casual observer might assume Obama is proposing a vastly more ambitious health-care plan than Clinton; in fact, the reverse is true.
Those who know Obama say privately that he has a healthy sense of entitlement that often manifests itself in an imperious, thin-skinned manner. We caught just a glimpse of this peevishness in his concession speech in New Hampshire, I thought - of a man somehow denied his rightful Schadenfreude over the second humiliating defeat of Clinton that he and the American punditocracy had confidently anticipated. Obama's latest book may be called The Audacity of Hope, but it really should be called The Audacity of Hype.
OBAMAS PROBLEMS plus video
Despite Obama's successes so far, it's hard to argue with Bill Clinton that it's a "roll of the dice" to vote for a freshman senator less than four years removed from the Illinois legislature. Obama still has much to prove. The potential for setbacks and mistakes is high.
REZKO: Obama's relationship with indicted businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko threatens his image as an antidote to the poisons of Washington. Rezko, accused of scheming to pressure companies seeking state business for kickbacks and campaign contributions, poured thousands of dollars into the campaigns of Obama and others. Rezko also helped Obama increase the size of his yard in a transaction that the Illinois senator now calls a "boneheaded" mistake.
RECORD: Scrutiny of Obama's record will increase with each step he takes toward the Democratic nomination. The New York Times recently poked holes in Obama's explanation of his role in legislation that ultimately benefited a nuclear energy company whose executives and employees have donated more than $200,000 to his campaigns.
RACE: Obama makes history with every victory as the first black candidate with a serious shot at the White House. But the question persists: Can a black man win it all? Obama drew support from four in 10 whites across 16 states _ more than he had captured in earlier primary states. He and Clinton tied among white men while Clinton led among white women. Clinton won six in 10 Hispanic voters, a crucial group that helped her win in California and Arizona.
TEMPERAMENT: Unlike his rival, Obama has never experienced a tough campaign _ and it shows at times. Remember when he said in New Hampshire that Clinton was "likable enough"? It grated on female voters. He needs to avoid looking rude, crabby or cocky. His friends would tell you that's not always easy for him.
EXPERIENCE: The unusually self-aware Obama acknowledged last summer that it was "a stretch" for voters to consider him for the presidency. He needs to avoid a miscue that underscores his inexperience. About one-fifth of the Democratic voters Tuesday said they favored a candidate with seasoning, and Clinton won nearly all their votes.
REZKO: Obama's relationship with indicted businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko threatens his image as an antidote to the poisons of Washington. Rezko, accused of scheming to pressure companies seeking state business for kickbacks and campaign contributions, poured thousands of dollars into the campaigns of Obama and others. Rezko also helped Obama increase the size of his yard in a transaction that the Illinois senator now calls a "boneheaded" mistake.
RECORD: Scrutiny of Obama's record will increase with each step he takes toward the Democratic nomination. The New York Times recently poked holes in Obama's explanation of his role in legislation that ultimately benefited a nuclear energy company whose executives and employees have donated more than $200,000 to his campaigns.
RACE: Obama makes history with every victory as the first black candidate with a serious shot at the White House. But the question persists: Can a black man win it all? Obama drew support from four in 10 whites across 16 states _ more than he had captured in earlier primary states. He and Clinton tied among white men while Clinton led among white women. Clinton won six in 10 Hispanic voters, a crucial group that helped her win in California and Arizona.
TEMPERAMENT: Unlike his rival, Obama has never experienced a tough campaign _ and it shows at times. Remember when he said in New Hampshire that Clinton was "likable enough"? It grated on female voters. He needs to avoid looking rude, crabby or cocky. His friends would tell you that's not always easy for him.
EXPERIENCE: The unusually self-aware Obama acknowledged last summer that it was "a stretch" for voters to consider him for the presidency. He needs to avoid a miscue that underscores his inexperience. About one-fifth of the Democratic voters Tuesday said they favored a candidate with seasoning, and Clinton won nearly all their votes.
VIDEO ON EXELON -click title-
Obama should right a book on how not to answer a question. The fact of the matter is that obama voted for the 2005 energy bill that was the nuclear industry's dream. Why doesnt he go and drink the water in the commnities who's wells have been contaminated by Exelon?
Please do a search on Exelon and Obama. There's more clarity out there than before. It is a very scary story and it involves citizens drinking contaminated water.
Please do a search on Exelon and Obama. There's more clarity out there than before. It is a very scary story and it involves citizens drinking contaminated water.
OBAMA LINKED TO ANTI-HILLARY SITES
Obama Ad on Hillary-Hater Siteby Jason Horowitz
Published: August 15, 2007
Obama Ad on Hillary-Hater Site
Here's something that's probably not in the script for the Obama campaign:
Published: August 15, 2007
Obama Ad on Hillary-Hater Site
Here's something that's probably not in the script for the Obama campaign:
I noticed yesterday on this conservative anti-Hillary web site an ad for Barack Obama's campaign site, prominently displayed among titles like "Truth Boating Hillary" and appeals to "Derail Hillary." The bottom of the ad clearly stated that the "Meet Barack Obama" ad was paid for by Obama for America.
The ad's presence on a site accusing Clinton of breaking federal election laws isn't necessarily the result of a direct decision by the Obama campaign. Most likely, the campaign bought certain key terms from Google, which, through its automated calculations, placed the ads where those key terms appear. (It's noted right under the ad that it was placed by Google.)
Google puts it this way: "Ads by Google are contextually relevant advertisements that appear beside related content on the page."
It's the same reason that Obama ads turned up on web sites sympathetic to Fred Thompson in July.
I asked JT Thompson, the webmaster of the anti-Hillary web site, for an explanation.
Here's what he said:
"The ads on the site are Google's AdSense. As a site owner we have no control over the ads. We DO have the ability to block certain domains from being advertised, but other than that its all based on Google's technology, including special keywords they use. There's no way for us to know that. (What the search terms are.) If it were publicized it would be abused so there's a real tight lipped exchange between publishers and advertisers."
Out of curiosity, I asked the Obama campaign what search terms they might have bought to end up there. Spokewoman Jen Psaki responded only with the following statement:
"The campaign purchases web ads using keywords on google, but most of the sites are chosen through a computerized system. The ad is nolonger on the site and we monitor placement closely."
The ad's presence on a site accusing Clinton of breaking federal election laws isn't necessarily the result of a direct decision by the Obama campaign. Most likely, the campaign bought certain key terms from Google, which, through its automated calculations, placed the ads where those key terms appear. (It's noted right under the ad that it was placed by Google.)
Google puts it this way: "Ads by Google are contextually relevant advertisements that appear beside related content on the page."
It's the same reason that Obama ads turned up on web sites sympathetic to Fred Thompson in July.
I asked JT Thompson, the webmaster of the anti-Hillary web site, for an explanation.
Here's what he said:
"The ads on the site are Google's AdSense. As a site owner we have no control over the ads. We DO have the ability to block certain domains from being advertised, but other than that its all based on Google's technology, including special keywords they use. There's no way for us to know that. (What the search terms are.) If it were publicized it would be abused so there's a real tight lipped exchange between publishers and advertisers."
Out of curiosity, I asked the Obama campaign what search terms they might have bought to end up there. Spokewoman Jen Psaki responded only with the following statement:
"The campaign purchases web ads using keywords on google, but most of the sites are chosen through a computerized system. The ad is nolonger on the site and we monitor placement closely."
DIRTY POLITICS-SSDD
OBAMA FACTS dirty politics
1. In Nevada, a union endorsing Barack Obama unleashed a Spanish language ad that read "Hillary Clinton does not support our people." Barack Obama said he did not support organizations spending their own money on his campaign, but did not take a stand against the claim made in the ad.
2. The Obama Campaign sent out 3-4 page memos to the media with alleged quotes from the Clinton campaign that could be interpreted as racial when used out of context. To give him credit, Barack did acknowledge and apologize for the memos at the Nevada debate. But this only shows how ruthless he is and that he is exactly like all other Washington politicians he claims to be above!!
3. Barack Obama's campaign released television ads that ran on Cable Networks in Florida. David Plouffe, Obama's Campaign Manager, made the claim that no campaigning occurred in Florida -- clearly not true.!!
4. Barack Obama was the ONLY Democrat to have Television ads running in Florida before the primary, and he still lost! Had he won he would be calling for the votes to count.
5. Barack Obama often talks about wanting to unify the nation -- Michigan and Florida are both states where the polls predicted that he would not do well - If he really wanted to unify the nation, he would be willing to seat the delegates at those states, as determined by the primary results, even if those results do not help him. By calling for votes not to count he is no better than George W. Bush who stole one election already, Obama is another election thief.
1. In Nevada, a union endorsing Barack Obama unleashed a Spanish language ad that read "Hillary Clinton does not support our people." Barack Obama said he did not support organizations spending their own money on his campaign, but did not take a stand against the claim made in the ad.
2. The Obama Campaign sent out 3-4 page memos to the media with alleged quotes from the Clinton campaign that could be interpreted as racial when used out of context. To give him credit, Barack did acknowledge and apologize for the memos at the Nevada debate. But this only shows how ruthless he is and that he is exactly like all other Washington politicians he claims to be above!!
3. Barack Obama's campaign released television ads that ran on Cable Networks in Florida. David Plouffe, Obama's Campaign Manager, made the claim that no campaigning occurred in Florida -- clearly not true.!!
4. Barack Obama was the ONLY Democrat to have Television ads running in Florida before the primary, and he still lost! Had he won he would be calling for the votes to count.
5. Barack Obama often talks about wanting to unify the nation -- Michigan and Florida are both states where the polls predicted that he would not do well - If he really wanted to unify the nation, he would be willing to seat the delegates at those states, as determined by the primary results, even if those results do not help him. By calling for votes not to count he is no better than George W. Bush who stole one election already, Obama is another election thief.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Rezko-Obama2-10-08 "OPERATION BOARD GAMES"
chicagotribune.com
'Operation Board Games' besmirches both parties
John Kass
February 10, 2008
The inevitability of President Barack Obama seems all but given now, doesn't it?Just consider those enemy tribes—the Clintonistas and the Limbaughtonians—sullen peasants on a muddy roadside, waiting for the wheels of Obama's glittering coach to spatter their homespun garments.The media so loves Obama that he's transcending again, this time from a politician into a religion.So if some Mt. Vesuvius were to erupt over America, preserving us in its ashen heavings, future archeologists would one day hunch down over our covered forms, and chip away until America was revealed like the Pompeian clay people, our arms outstretched, eager, waiting for Barack.Or, maybe not.
Either way, there are a few who don't consider Obama to be inevitable. They'll be paying close attention to the upcoming federal political corruption trial in Chicago of Obama's personal real estate fairy, indicted political fixer Tony Rezko.You'll be hearing a lot more about "Operation Board Games," but don't make the mistake of thinking that it's all about Democrats. It involves Republicans too.Rezko is a pal of the Democratic Gov. Rod "The Unreformer" Blagojevich. Rezko became involved in the questionable purchase of Obama's home, while under federal investigation. Every politician in Illinois—except for Obama—figured Rezko to be leprous with federal subpoenas. By dancing with Rezko, Obama impeaches his own judgment, and raises questions as to whether he has the presidential stuff.Rezko stands accused of using his Illinois political connections to extort kickbacks and political money from investment firms seeking billions of dollars worth of state business in the investing of state pension funds.But Republicans eager to use the trial to unearth problems about Obama should understand that if they dig deeper in the Rezko case, they will find evidence of the disaster facing them now.Because long before establishment Republicans in Washington lost their credibility—expanding big government, scarfing up pork like the "Bridge to Nowhere," and dealing with corrupt fixers like Jack Abramoff—the leaders of the Illinois GOP were quite busy.Their heads were in the taxpayer trough, their behinds up in the air, curly tails wiggling as they gulped. They ate up the deals, and squeezed out or killed off the conservatives, and danced with the Chicago Machine Democrats and became mouthpieces for the heavily corporate Republican establishment. And they formed an unofficial partnership I call the bi-partisan Illinois Combine.One of the Combine bosses implicated, but not charged, in "Operation Board Games" is Springfield's "Big" Bob Kjellander, a self-professed pal of former White House political guru Karl Rove.Kjellander was the treasurer for the Republican National Committee until he was identified as "Individual K" in the federal indictments. He made $4.5 million in finder's fees on state pension fund deals through the Blagojevich administration—then was made national GOP treasurer. That nifty move, pocketing Democratic money while mouthing Rove's talking points, makes him a candidate for Illinois Combine poster boy.But the real poster boy is Republican boss William "The Pope" Cellini—who started out in patronage, and has since made a fortune in state gaming, development and asphalt empires. Cellini and Kjellander backed Mitt Romney in Illinois, the same Romney who all but called for the ouster of the federal prosecutor investigating them.But that's probably just a coincidence.The other day, federal prosecutors heated Cellini up again, in Rezko court documents. The Tribune published a fascinating and detailed account of this on Friday.Though Cellini has not been charged, prosecutors insisted that he was a significant player in the case involved in extortion and kickbacks. They identified him in court documents as "Co-Schemer A" (that's A as in Alpha) and they knocked down the contention by Rezko's attorneys that since Cellini was not interviewed by investigators or charged, Cellini must be innocent of any crimes."As the court is aware," wrote prosecutors, "there are many other explanations that can account for the failure to charge or interview an individual other than innocence. Rezko's assumption to the contrary is unsupported by the evidence in the case."Republican Cellini's lawyer in the case is former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb, who recently represented the now-imprisoned former Republican Gov. George Ryan.Webb is a boss at the giant law firm Winston & Strawn. Other Winston & Strawn lawyers there are being paid millions of dollars by Blagojevich, presumably for criminal legal work related to "Operation Board Games."Sound confusing? Illinois politics is often quite muddy. Just don't think what's coming is just about the Democrats and Rezko and, by extension, Obama.It's about Republicans in Illinois mud too
'Operation Board Games' besmirches both parties
John Kass
February 10, 2008
The inevitability of President Barack Obama seems all but given now, doesn't it?Just consider those enemy tribes—the Clintonistas and the Limbaughtonians—sullen peasants on a muddy roadside, waiting for the wheels of Obama's glittering coach to spatter their homespun garments.The media so loves Obama that he's transcending again, this time from a politician into a religion.So if some Mt. Vesuvius were to erupt over America, preserving us in its ashen heavings, future archeologists would one day hunch down over our covered forms, and chip away until America was revealed like the Pompeian clay people, our arms outstretched, eager, waiting for Barack.Or, maybe not.
Either way, there are a few who don't consider Obama to be inevitable. They'll be paying close attention to the upcoming federal political corruption trial in Chicago of Obama's personal real estate fairy, indicted political fixer Tony Rezko.You'll be hearing a lot more about "Operation Board Games," but don't make the mistake of thinking that it's all about Democrats. It involves Republicans too.Rezko is a pal of the Democratic Gov. Rod "The Unreformer" Blagojevich. Rezko became involved in the questionable purchase of Obama's home, while under federal investigation. Every politician in Illinois—except for Obama—figured Rezko to be leprous with federal subpoenas. By dancing with Rezko, Obama impeaches his own judgment, and raises questions as to whether he has the presidential stuff.Rezko stands accused of using his Illinois political connections to extort kickbacks and political money from investment firms seeking billions of dollars worth of state business in the investing of state pension funds.But Republicans eager to use the trial to unearth problems about Obama should understand that if they dig deeper in the Rezko case, they will find evidence of the disaster facing them now.Because long before establishment Republicans in Washington lost their credibility—expanding big government, scarfing up pork like the "Bridge to Nowhere," and dealing with corrupt fixers like Jack Abramoff—the leaders of the Illinois GOP were quite busy.Their heads were in the taxpayer trough, their behinds up in the air, curly tails wiggling as they gulped. They ate up the deals, and squeezed out or killed off the conservatives, and danced with the Chicago Machine Democrats and became mouthpieces for the heavily corporate Republican establishment. And they formed an unofficial partnership I call the bi-partisan Illinois Combine.One of the Combine bosses implicated, but not charged, in "Operation Board Games" is Springfield's "Big" Bob Kjellander, a self-professed pal of former White House political guru Karl Rove.Kjellander was the treasurer for the Republican National Committee until he was identified as "Individual K" in the federal indictments. He made $4.5 million in finder's fees on state pension fund deals through the Blagojevich administration—then was made national GOP treasurer. That nifty move, pocketing Democratic money while mouthing Rove's talking points, makes him a candidate for Illinois Combine poster boy.But the real poster boy is Republican boss William "The Pope" Cellini—who started out in patronage, and has since made a fortune in state gaming, development and asphalt empires. Cellini and Kjellander backed Mitt Romney in Illinois, the same Romney who all but called for the ouster of the federal prosecutor investigating them.But that's probably just a coincidence.The other day, federal prosecutors heated Cellini up again, in Rezko court documents. The Tribune published a fascinating and detailed account of this on Friday.Though Cellini has not been charged, prosecutors insisted that he was a significant player in the case involved in extortion and kickbacks. They identified him in court documents as "Co-Schemer A" (that's A as in Alpha) and they knocked down the contention by Rezko's attorneys that since Cellini was not interviewed by investigators or charged, Cellini must be innocent of any crimes."As the court is aware," wrote prosecutors, "there are many other explanations that can account for the failure to charge or interview an individual other than innocence. Rezko's assumption to the contrary is unsupported by the evidence in the case."Republican Cellini's lawyer in the case is former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb, who recently represented the now-imprisoned former Republican Gov. George Ryan.Webb is a boss at the giant law firm Winston & Strawn. Other Winston & Strawn lawyers there are being paid millions of dollars by Blagojevich, presumably for criminal legal work related to "Operation Board Games."Sound confusing? Illinois politics is often quite muddy. Just don't think what's coming is just about the Democrats and Rezko and, by extension, Obama.It's about Republicans in Illinois mud too
Rezko-Obama 1-30-08 "REZKO STARS IN OBAMA PRODUCTION"
For better or worse, Rezko stars in Obama production
John Kass
January 30, 2008
Can Tony Rezko -- the indicted Illinois political fixer and Sen. Barack Obama's personal real estate fairy and fundraiser -- carry a tune?Can Rezko really sing, loudly in a clear voice, in that orange federal jumpsuit he's forced to wear, after a federal judge on Tuesday revoked his bond, figuring he'd run to Syria and skip out on his federal political corruption trial?If Rezko can sing, there's a starring role in a new musical I'm writing about politics and real estate called "Obama's Lot."
He'll make a fortune if Obama becomes president. It's sort of like "Camelot," with magic and demons and unicorns and an evil enchantress
Can't you see Rezko now? He waltzes across a national stage, surrounded by a chorus of Illinois politicians.They explain how Rezko helped the Obamas in the purchase of their nice home and that sumptuous lot next door."Obama's Lot./ Obama's Lot.We know dat sounds a bitbizarre/But it's Obama's Lot! Obama's Lot!/Dat's how conditions are."Mayor Daley made da law a distant moon ago here/Barack can never, ever, ever be too hot/And dere's a legal limit tooda snow here/
On Obama's Lot!"I suppose I could have called it "Barack-a-lot" or "Obamalot," but the Kennedys have put their paws all over the Camelot thing, and one issue between Obama and Rezko is that dream house he helped the Obamas purchase.It does borrow somewhat from the Arthurian tale so dear to some political writers, liberals high on the moist Kennedy/Camelot myth, yet clear-headed enough to keep cutting Chicago's Sam Giancana out of their propaganda.But in a unique use of symbolism, "Obama's Lot" involves a magical sword of power. The brave young Obama pulls it from the cornerstone of Chicago's City Hall and wields it proudly before his superiors in the Illinois State Senate.And, after a limited Washington engagement, he becomes president of the United States.A Hillary Clinton type plays the sensual Morgan La Fay, who uses her husky voice as she's constantly trying to wrest power from the brave Obama.
I'm not going to give it all away, but in my musical, Rezko walks behind Obama, part willowy magician, part jealous jester.He's constantly judging, winking broadly at the audience during Obama's few bouts with temptation."Obama's Lot" needs music, lyrics, stars and investors. And I thought Rezko was in desperate need of cash. That's what he told U.S. District Court Judge Amy
St. Eve, who thought he didn't have any money, until federal authorities found him with more than$3 million.So I'm thinking of a scene. Rezko's in his bunk, staring at the ceiling, when he starts dreaming of happier times, and gets up, pacing his cell under a spotlight:"The rain may never fall till after sundown/That lot we bought together means so much/The fence I put there will happily remind him/That I love Barack a lot, or maybe it's just a bunch."Naturally, he'll have to stare wistfully out at the audience and make small, plaintive gestures with his hands, sort of like he did in real life Wednesday in St. Eve's courtroom.There, Rezko wore his jumpsuit. He smiled at his friends and family and made friendly little gestures, as if he were shooting, pulling a trigger,
winking, his index finger and thumb hand-capping them with love.But then St. Eve announced that though she thought Rezko was broke, she was surprised he'd gotten his hands on more than$3 million.And she thought he should stay locked up rather than have the chance to flee to Iraq or Syria or wherever federal prosecutors thought he'd run."When you look at the factors, his incentive to flee has never been greater," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Reid Schar.And St. Eve agreed."I find the government has met its burden," she said. "I'm going to order that he remain detained."Rezko's shoulders slumped and they led him away.He'll stay inside now for weeks, preparing for his scheduled Feb. 25 trial. The federal lockup is not a nice place.Rezko once spent time raising campaign cash for his political buddies, hanging with Obama and Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Now he'll hang with guys with blue tattoos on their faces.So Rezko might even have time to study the words to another song in "Obama's Lot." You probably know the tune."If ever I would squeal on you/It shouldn't be in autumn.But it might just be in autumn/ as voters go to the polls.I'm no rat in the springtime/ summer, winter or fallBut I don't like being in here/No, not at all."
John Kass
January 30, 2008
Can Tony Rezko -- the indicted Illinois political fixer and Sen. Barack Obama's personal real estate fairy and fundraiser -- carry a tune?Can Rezko really sing, loudly in a clear voice, in that orange federal jumpsuit he's forced to wear, after a federal judge on Tuesday revoked his bond, figuring he'd run to Syria and skip out on his federal political corruption trial?If Rezko can sing, there's a starring role in a new musical I'm writing about politics and real estate called "Obama's Lot."
He'll make a fortune if Obama becomes president. It's sort of like "Camelot," with magic and demons and unicorns and an evil enchantress
Can't you see Rezko now? He waltzes across a national stage, surrounded by a chorus of Illinois politicians.They explain how Rezko helped the Obamas in the purchase of their nice home and that sumptuous lot next door."Obama's Lot./ Obama's Lot.We know dat sounds a bitbizarre/But it's Obama's Lot! Obama's Lot!/Dat's how conditions are."Mayor Daley made da law a distant moon ago here/Barack can never, ever, ever be too hot/And dere's a legal limit tooda snow here/
On Obama's Lot!"I suppose I could have called it "Barack-a-lot" or "Obamalot," but the Kennedys have put their paws all over the Camelot thing, and one issue between Obama and Rezko is that dream house he helped the Obamas purchase.It does borrow somewhat from the Arthurian tale so dear to some political writers, liberals high on the moist Kennedy/Camelot myth, yet clear-headed enough to keep cutting Chicago's Sam Giancana out of their propaganda.But in a unique use of symbolism, "Obama's Lot" involves a magical sword of power. The brave young Obama pulls it from the cornerstone of Chicago's City Hall and wields it proudly before his superiors in the Illinois State Senate.And, after a limited Washington engagement, he becomes president of the United States.A Hillary Clinton type plays the sensual Morgan La Fay, who uses her husky voice as she's constantly trying to wrest power from the brave Obama.
I'm not going to give it all away, but in my musical, Rezko walks behind Obama, part willowy magician, part jealous jester.He's constantly judging, winking broadly at the audience during Obama's few bouts with temptation."Obama's Lot" needs music, lyrics, stars and investors. And I thought Rezko was in desperate need of cash. That's what he told U.S. District Court Judge Amy
St. Eve, who thought he didn't have any money, until federal authorities found him with more than$3 million.So I'm thinking of a scene. Rezko's in his bunk, staring at the ceiling, when he starts dreaming of happier times, and gets up, pacing his cell under a spotlight:"The rain may never fall till after sundown/That lot we bought together means so much/The fence I put there will happily remind him/That I love Barack a lot, or maybe it's just a bunch."Naturally, he'll have to stare wistfully out at the audience and make small, plaintive gestures with his hands, sort of like he did in real life Wednesday in St. Eve's courtroom.There, Rezko wore his jumpsuit. He smiled at his friends and family and made friendly little gestures, as if he were shooting, pulling a trigger,
winking, his index finger and thumb hand-capping them with love.But then St. Eve announced that though she thought Rezko was broke, she was surprised he'd gotten his hands on more than$3 million.And she thought he should stay locked up rather than have the chance to flee to Iraq or Syria or wherever federal prosecutors thought he'd run."When you look at the factors, his incentive to flee has never been greater," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Reid Schar.And St. Eve agreed."I find the government has met its burden," she said. "I'm going to order that he remain detained."Rezko's shoulders slumped and they led him away.He'll stay inside now for weeks, preparing for his scheduled Feb. 25 trial. The federal lockup is not a nice place.Rezko once spent time raising campaign cash for his political buddies, hanging with Obama and Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Now he'll hang with guys with blue tattoos on their faces.So Rezko might even have time to study the words to another song in "Obama's Lot." You probably know the tune."If ever I would squeal on you/It shouldn't be in autumn.But it might just be in autumn/ as voters go to the polls.I'm no rat in the springtime/ summer, winter or fallBut I don't like being in here/No, not at all."
Rezko-Obama 1-30-08 "STAIN ON OBAMA"
Rezko stain tars gov and Obama
January 30, 2008
BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist
Tony Rezko is a story that is just not going away. This was made abundantly clear Tuesday night when Sen. Barack Obama announced that his U.S. Senate campaign is now returning almost double the money it had already given to charity from its former, now-indicted fund-raiser, Tony Rezko. The grand total of returned cash now stands at about $150,000.
There is no suggestion that the Democratic presidential contender is connected to the kind of illegal dealings for which Rezko will stand trial next month. But his judgment with regard to Rezko is distinctly in question.
Obama has admitted it was "boneheaded" to enter into a land deal with Rezko that allowed the senator and his wife to buy a $1.65 million mansion on the same day Rezko's wife bought the lot next door. But there are a host of unanswered questions. Here are just a few:
• • Exactly how were the terms and timing arrived at that allowed Obama to buy the house at a $300,000 discount, while Mrs. Rezko paid full price?
• • Given that Rezko was already publicly known to be under investigation, what persuaded Obama to still deal with him?
• • When did Obama realize that Rezko, a low-income housing developer, had 11 failed properties in Obama's state Senate district alone? Or that Rezko was defaulting on taxpayer-funded deals at the same time he was still an Obama political benefactor?
• • Was there, at the least, the appearance of a conflict of interest between Obama's legal work for low-income Rezco-connected developers and Obama's responsibilities as a state senator?
There are similar, even more urgent questions for Illinois' governor, Rod Blagojevich. And they deal with Rezko's influence on state government.
The governor, according to government documents, appears to have vastly more exposure in whatever it was that Rezko was doing. Blagojevich's unanswered questions include:
• • How many appointees to state boards and commissions were Rezko recommendations?
• • How many people did Rezko interview for those jobs?
• • Why does there appear to be a connection between big Blagojevich campaign contributors and people who either got appointments or won lucrative state pension business?
• • On how many occasions did first lady Patti Blagojevich partner or consult with Rezko on real estate or other deals?
• • What was earned from those transactions?
Rezko is a man who dresses immaculately, charms people easily and is an absolute genius at spotting and supporting raw political talent. Over the years, that has included a host of other national and state politicians besides Obama and Blagojevich.
On Tuesday in federal court in Chicago, the Syrian-born businessman, real estate developer and political power broker had to accept the government's version of sartorial splendor. He was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, white T-shirt, blue canvas Keds and leg shackles. He had spent the night in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in a tiny cell with a metal bunk beside a steel toilet.
It was a long way from his stately Wilmette mansion.
Bad enough that he goes on trial in a few weeks on influence peddling and fraud charges involving his connections to state government.
Now it is worse.
It's never a good idea to provoke a federal judge by having a shadowy Middle Eastern billionaire quietly wire you millions while you claim to be destitute.
Rezko's bond stands revoked. His base of operations will now be the dismal concrete fortress that houses federal prisoners in Chicago. Mobsters. Dope dealers. Bank robbers. Gang-bangers. And, last but never least, political operators.
Rezko is not talking to us.
Then again, we did not elect him to serve us.
But we did elect Obama and Blagojevich. And they're not talking to us nearly or clearly enough.
January 30, 2008
BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist
Tony Rezko is a story that is just not going away. This was made abundantly clear Tuesday night when Sen. Barack Obama announced that his U.S. Senate campaign is now returning almost double the money it had already given to charity from its former, now-indicted fund-raiser, Tony Rezko. The grand total of returned cash now stands at about $150,000.
There is no suggestion that the Democratic presidential contender is connected to the kind of illegal dealings for which Rezko will stand trial next month. But his judgment with regard to Rezko is distinctly in question.
Obama has admitted it was "boneheaded" to enter into a land deal with Rezko that allowed the senator and his wife to buy a $1.65 million mansion on the same day Rezko's wife bought the lot next door. But there are a host of unanswered questions. Here are just a few:
• • Exactly how were the terms and timing arrived at that allowed Obama to buy the house at a $300,000 discount, while Mrs. Rezko paid full price?
• • Given that Rezko was already publicly known to be under investigation, what persuaded Obama to still deal with him?
• • When did Obama realize that Rezko, a low-income housing developer, had 11 failed properties in Obama's state Senate district alone? Or that Rezko was defaulting on taxpayer-funded deals at the same time he was still an Obama political benefactor?
• • Was there, at the least, the appearance of a conflict of interest between Obama's legal work for low-income Rezco-connected developers and Obama's responsibilities as a state senator?
There are similar, even more urgent questions for Illinois' governor, Rod Blagojevich. And they deal with Rezko's influence on state government.
The governor, according to government documents, appears to have vastly more exposure in whatever it was that Rezko was doing. Blagojevich's unanswered questions include:
• • How many appointees to state boards and commissions were Rezko recommendations?
• • How many people did Rezko interview for those jobs?
• • Why does there appear to be a connection between big Blagojevich campaign contributors and people who either got appointments or won lucrative state pension business?
• • On how many occasions did first lady Patti Blagojevich partner or consult with Rezko on real estate or other deals?
• • What was earned from those transactions?
Rezko is a man who dresses immaculately, charms people easily and is an absolute genius at spotting and supporting raw political talent. Over the years, that has included a host of other national and state politicians besides Obama and Blagojevich.
On Tuesday in federal court in Chicago, the Syrian-born businessman, real estate developer and political power broker had to accept the government's version of sartorial splendor. He was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, white T-shirt, blue canvas Keds and leg shackles. He had spent the night in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in a tiny cell with a metal bunk beside a steel toilet.
It was a long way from his stately Wilmette mansion.
Bad enough that he goes on trial in a few weeks on influence peddling and fraud charges involving his connections to state government.
Now it is worse.
It's never a good idea to provoke a federal judge by having a shadowy Middle Eastern billionaire quietly wire you millions while you claim to be destitute.
Rezko's bond stands revoked. His base of operations will now be the dismal concrete fortress that houses federal prisoners in Chicago. Mobsters. Dope dealers. Bank robbers. Gang-bangers. And, last but never least, political operators.
Rezko is not talking to us.
Then again, we did not elect him to serve us.
But we did elect Obama and Blagojevich. And they're not talking to us nearly or clearly enough.
Rezko-Obama 1-29-08 "FUNDS TIED TO REZKO"
Obama donating more than $70,000 in campaign funds tied to Rezko
January 29, 2008
BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign aides said tonight that the South Side Democrat is donating to charity all remaining donations to his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign that are tied to indicted political fund-raiser Tony Rezko.
Obama initially gave to charity $44,000 linked to Rezko, then announced an additional $40,000 earlier this month. Another $72,650 from family members, employees and others tied to Rezko is now being shed.
“Senator Obama directed a further review of contributions made by family members and employees of Tony Rezko, and also by others who may have contributed through his efforts on behalf of the Senator's 2004 Senate campaign," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.
“As a result, the campaign is today donating to charity $72,650, equal to the total amount of contributions made by Mr. Rezko’s family members, employees of his companies and those whose contributions may be connected to the fundraiser at his home.
“By refunding these donations, the campaign has returned any and all funds that could be reasonably credited to Mr. Rezko's political support.”
In November 2006, Obama had told the Chicago Sun-Times his “best estimate” was that Rezko had raised more than $60,000 for him during his political career. The Sun-Times over the summer, however, linked $168,000 in donations to Rezko -- many of them believed to have come during a fund-raiser Rezko held for Obama at Rezko's Wilmette mansion.
Obama’s chief presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has accused Obama of not being straight about the money he’s received through Rezko. The former first lady’s attacks came after the Sun-Times first reported about Rezko possibly illegally donating money to Obama through straw donors.
January 29, 2008
BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign aides said tonight that the South Side Democrat is donating to charity all remaining donations to his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign that are tied to indicted political fund-raiser Tony Rezko.
Obama initially gave to charity $44,000 linked to Rezko, then announced an additional $40,000 earlier this month. Another $72,650 from family members, employees and others tied to Rezko is now being shed.
“Senator Obama directed a further review of contributions made by family members and employees of Tony Rezko, and also by others who may have contributed through his efforts on behalf of the Senator's 2004 Senate campaign," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.
“As a result, the campaign is today donating to charity $72,650, equal to the total amount of contributions made by Mr. Rezko’s family members, employees of his companies and those whose contributions may be connected to the fundraiser at his home.
“By refunding these donations, the campaign has returned any and all funds that could be reasonably credited to Mr. Rezko's political support.”
In November 2006, Obama had told the Chicago Sun-Times his “best estimate” was that Rezko had raised more than $60,000 for him during his political career. The Sun-Times over the summer, however, linked $168,000 in donations to Rezko -- many of them believed to have come during a fund-raiser Rezko held for Obama at Rezko's Wilmette mansion.
Obama’s chief presidential rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has accused Obama of not being straight about the money he’s received through Rezko. The former first lady’s attacks came after the Sun-Times first reported about Rezko possibly illegally donating money to Obama through straw donors.
Rezko-Obama 1-26-08 "REZKO IS OBAMA'S PROBLEM"
chicagotribune.com
If you look closely, it's plain: Rezko is Obama's problem
John Kass
January 26, 2008
There was some buzz about it, but it wasn't really a gotcha photo, and it really doesn't help Barack Obama, that photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton sandwiching indicted political fixer Tony Rezko at some forgotten fundraiser.Billary were like two icy slices of white political bread, and Rezko stood between them like meat. All the Clintons probably knew of Rezko was what they could feel coming through his palms pressed against their backs: some ambitious somebody ready to make some moves.That won't hurt Hillary. And she's probably got some other images in mind—either real photos or word pictures—about Rezko and Obama that she'll probably drop on the way to Super Tuesday.One image will surely involve the dream house that Rezko helped the Obamas buy. And another involves Rezko himself, about to stand federal trial in a huge political corruption case involving not only Democrats, but old bull Republicans in Illinois, with Rezko passing through the metal detectors in the federal courthouse.
Those are the images Obama must concern himself with. The Rezko-Clinton photograph wasn't much."I've probably taken hundreds of thousands of pictures," Hillary Clinton told "Today" show host Matt Lauer. "I don't know the man. I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door. I don't have a 17-year relationship with him."Perhaps some of the Obama folks hoped that photo would help them—a play on the old Clinton strategy of pulling everyone down into the mud. But Rezko won't stick to her. She scraped him off her shoe with ease."I try not to attack first, but I have to defend myself—I do have to counterpunch," said Sen. Clinton, playing the unwilling combatant, the victim forced to protect herself.As she spoke, you could hear the razors clacking against the back of her teeth. Sen. Obama must have heard them, too.He's the one with the long relationship with Rezko. He'll pay for that friendship. If he wants to survive the Clintons and their ambition, Obama will have to fight back, hard. He's been much too timid, much too gentle with them. He's too nice, and he's in a street fight."OK, well, I can't tell who I am running against sometimes," an exasperated Obama said the other day after another series of Clinton tag team attacks, with Bill punching low and Hillary with that roll of quarters inside her velvet glove.Up until now, politics has been so easy for Obama, with his opponents either exploding or imploding, as he ran for the Senate in Illinois. He didn't even have to run. Instead, he sauntered easily into Washington and then after just one speech at the 2004 convention he became the Democratic savior/rock star.So perhaps it's been too easy for him. When I called him the Mr. Tumnus of American politics, after the gentle, magical faun in the C.S. Lewis stories, I wasn't joking.Last week, the Clintons tricked his campaign into playing racial politics, and as others have noted, the Obama people bit, and played the race card and he finally fell out of the sky and became the black candidate. Now that he's scrambling on the ground with the mortals, the Clintons will try to bury him with Rezko.It's ugly and political and predictable, but fair. Obama has had the benefit of a loving media. If the Clintons want to force a constitutional crisis upon the country with a co-presidency, they must continue on the offensive.And now that John Edwards stubbornly and selfishly hangs in the race, splitting the anti-Hillary vote, the Clintons have the luxury of time, and can reach for the mud when Obama approaches.The Clintons must have waited for the national media to pick up on the Rezko Real Estate Fairy story broken by Tribune investigative reporters in 2006. But Hillary had to bend down herself and grab a few handfuls of Rezko to throw and she got her fingerprints all over things."Dirt shows up more on a white horse," a conservative political wise man who knows and likes Obama told me at breakfast the other day. "It doesn't show so much on a gray horse. But on a white horse, it's dramatic."So watch for the Clintons to push the story of the dream house the Obamas wanted and couldn't quite afford and how the Rezkos helped. Hillary Clinton couldn't quite make the case that Obama helped do legal work for his "slumlord" pal, but homeowners will understand Rezko as Obama's Real Estate Fairy.If there were a good gotcha photo of Bill and Hillary and Rezko, they'd be in the back yard of a dream house that Rezko helped them buy in a shady deal, Bill passing a PBR longneck through the wrought iron fence in the evening.They'd laugh, the three of them, Bill biting his lip, twinkly, Hillary with that sharp-eyed laugh, and Rezko, calm, the beer cold, condensation beading, some steaks burning on the patio grill, fireflies, night crickets, good times.That would be a gotcha photo, but it doesn't exist. Rezko belongs to Obama.
If you look closely, it's plain: Rezko is Obama's problem
John Kass
January 26, 2008
There was some buzz about it, but it wasn't really a gotcha photo, and it really doesn't help Barack Obama, that photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton sandwiching indicted political fixer Tony Rezko at some forgotten fundraiser.Billary were like two icy slices of white political bread, and Rezko stood between them like meat. All the Clintons probably knew of Rezko was what they could feel coming through his palms pressed against their backs: some ambitious somebody ready to make some moves.That won't hurt Hillary. And she's probably got some other images in mind—either real photos or word pictures—about Rezko and Obama that she'll probably drop on the way to Super Tuesday.One image will surely involve the dream house that Rezko helped the Obamas buy. And another involves Rezko himself, about to stand federal trial in a huge political corruption case involving not only Democrats, but old bull Republicans in Illinois, with Rezko passing through the metal detectors in the federal courthouse.
Those are the images Obama must concern himself with. The Rezko-Clinton photograph wasn't much."I've probably taken hundreds of thousands of pictures," Hillary Clinton told "Today" show host Matt Lauer. "I don't know the man. I wouldn't know him if he walked in the door. I don't have a 17-year relationship with him."Perhaps some of the Obama folks hoped that photo would help them—a play on the old Clinton strategy of pulling everyone down into the mud. But Rezko won't stick to her. She scraped him off her shoe with ease."I try not to attack first, but I have to defend myself—I do have to counterpunch," said Sen. Clinton, playing the unwilling combatant, the victim forced to protect herself.As she spoke, you could hear the razors clacking against the back of her teeth. Sen. Obama must have heard them, too.He's the one with the long relationship with Rezko. He'll pay for that friendship. If he wants to survive the Clintons and their ambition, Obama will have to fight back, hard. He's been much too timid, much too gentle with them. He's too nice, and he's in a street fight."OK, well, I can't tell who I am running against sometimes," an exasperated Obama said the other day after another series of Clinton tag team attacks, with Bill punching low and Hillary with that roll of quarters inside her velvet glove.Up until now, politics has been so easy for Obama, with his opponents either exploding or imploding, as he ran for the Senate in Illinois. He didn't even have to run. Instead, he sauntered easily into Washington and then after just one speech at the 2004 convention he became the Democratic savior/rock star.So perhaps it's been too easy for him. When I called him the Mr. Tumnus of American politics, after the gentle, magical faun in the C.S. Lewis stories, I wasn't joking.Last week, the Clintons tricked his campaign into playing racial politics, and as others have noted, the Obama people bit, and played the race card and he finally fell out of the sky and became the black candidate. Now that he's scrambling on the ground with the mortals, the Clintons will try to bury him with Rezko.It's ugly and political and predictable, but fair. Obama has had the benefit of a loving media. If the Clintons want to force a constitutional crisis upon the country with a co-presidency, they must continue on the offensive.And now that John Edwards stubbornly and selfishly hangs in the race, splitting the anti-Hillary vote, the Clintons have the luxury of time, and can reach for the mud when Obama approaches.The Clintons must have waited for the national media to pick up on the Rezko Real Estate Fairy story broken by Tribune investigative reporters in 2006. But Hillary had to bend down herself and grab a few handfuls of Rezko to throw and she got her fingerprints all over things."Dirt shows up more on a white horse," a conservative political wise man who knows and likes Obama told me at breakfast the other day. "It doesn't show so much on a gray horse. But on a white horse, it's dramatic."So watch for the Clintons to push the story of the dream house the Obamas wanted and couldn't quite afford and how the Rezkos helped. Hillary Clinton couldn't quite make the case that Obama helped do legal work for his "slumlord" pal, but homeowners will understand Rezko as Obama's Real Estate Fairy.If there were a good gotcha photo of Bill and Hillary and Rezko, they'd be in the back yard of a dream house that Rezko helped them buy in a shady deal, Bill passing a PBR longneck through the wrought iron fence in the evening.They'd laugh, the three of them, Bill biting his lip, twinkly, Hillary with that sharp-eyed laugh, and Rezko, calm, the beer cold, condensation beading, some steaks burning on the patio grill, fireflies, night crickets, good times.That would be a gotcha photo, but it doesn't exist. Rezko belongs to Obama.
Rezko-Obama 1-26-08 "PROBLEM SPILLS OVER"
Obama's Rezko problem spills over
LYNN SWEET When Clinton spotlighted their ties in last week's debate, what had been a local issue suddenly went national
January 26, 2008
COLUMBIA, S.C.--Once Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton uttered the name "Rezko" at a Democratic presidential debate last Monday, she moved to center stage and shined a spotlight on Tony Rezko, facing a Feb. 25 trial on federal corruption charges. Sen. Barack Obama's long relationship with Rezko is a major political problem for him in the primary, and in the general election if he wins the nomination.
Until the debate, Rezko's complicated ties with Obama mainly were contained in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, with the national press only occasionally visiting the story of a career patron of Obama who raised money for his state and U.S. Senate campaigns.
Rezko debuted as a troublesome factor for Obama in 2006, after his wife bought a parcel of land next to a house the Obamas were purchasing on the same day.
Several things happened recently to highlight Obama's links with Rezko, which date back to Obama's days as a Harvard Law student who got a call from the Chicago businessman offering him a job. Obama turned him down, but they continued a friendship that ended after the house deal and as the federal investigations of Rezko heated up.
Clinton herself elevated Rezko's status as a factor when, during the debate, she called out Obama for "representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago." That was a reference to a Sun-Times story about Rezko's real estate deals where Obama handled about five hours of legal chores.
The timing was bad for Obama because Clinton's willingness to make Rezko an issue triggered major follow-up stories by several national print and television outlets just before Saturday's South Carolina primary and the Feb. 5 primary and caucus votes taking place in 22 states.
With more attention to Rezko, a photo of Rezko and Obama -- the first time the two were pictured together -- was leaked to the Washington-based Politico.com. Raising the ante, a picture of Rezko, flanked by Bill and Hillary Clinton was leaked to NBC just before Hillary Clinton was interviewed on the "Today" show" Friday morning.
"Today" host Matt Lauer asked, "Do you know anything about the picture? Do you know when it was taken? Do you remember meeting this man?"
Clinton said, "No, I don't. You know, I probably have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures."
Clinton was not told during the interview where the picture came from, but
the Sun-Times has learned it was likely taken during an event connected to the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In a statement, the Clinton campaign said, "Today, NBC aired an undated photo of Hillary and Bill Clinton taken with Tony Rezko and tried to compare that picture to Sen. Obama's 17-year relationship with the indicted influence peddler. Over the course of her career, Hillary has probably taken tens of thousands of photos. Here are some facts you should know: Tony Rezko has never contributed a dime to Hillary or Bill Clinton. They have no relationship with Tony Rezko."
Obama has never agreed to an interview about Rezko, but after Clinton injected the name into the campaign on Monday, on Wednesday, ABC's "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer asked Obama about Rezko. Obama made it seem like he hardly knew Rezko -- who was a friend, a client and a fund-raiser -- and was clueless about Rezko's potential criminal legal problems that had been reported by the Chicago press.
"This is somebody who was active in politics in Illinois, who I knew. Nobody had any indications that he was engaging in wrongdoing. At the point where he was engaging in alleged wrongdoing, it had nothing to do with me, and nobody has made that allegation. And Senator Clinton knows that," Obama said.
LYNN SWEET When Clinton spotlighted their ties in last week's debate, what had been a local issue suddenly went national
January 26, 2008
COLUMBIA, S.C.--Once Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton uttered the name "Rezko" at a Democratic presidential debate last Monday, she moved to center stage and shined a spotlight on Tony Rezko, facing a Feb. 25 trial on federal corruption charges. Sen. Barack Obama's long relationship with Rezko is a major political problem for him in the primary, and in the general election if he wins the nomination.
Until the debate, Rezko's complicated ties with Obama mainly were contained in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, with the national press only occasionally visiting the story of a career patron of Obama who raised money for his state and U.S. Senate campaigns.
Rezko debuted as a troublesome factor for Obama in 2006, after his wife bought a parcel of land next to a house the Obamas were purchasing on the same day.
Several things happened recently to highlight Obama's links with Rezko, which date back to Obama's days as a Harvard Law student who got a call from the Chicago businessman offering him a job. Obama turned him down, but they continued a friendship that ended after the house deal and as the federal investigations of Rezko heated up.
Clinton herself elevated Rezko's status as a factor when, during the debate, she called out Obama for "representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago." That was a reference to a Sun-Times story about Rezko's real estate deals where Obama handled about five hours of legal chores.
The timing was bad for Obama because Clinton's willingness to make Rezko an issue triggered major follow-up stories by several national print and television outlets just before Saturday's South Carolina primary and the Feb. 5 primary and caucus votes taking place in 22 states.
With more attention to Rezko, a photo of Rezko and Obama -- the first time the two were pictured together -- was leaked to the Washington-based Politico.com. Raising the ante, a picture of Rezko, flanked by Bill and Hillary Clinton was leaked to NBC just before Hillary Clinton was interviewed on the "Today" show" Friday morning.
"Today" host Matt Lauer asked, "Do you know anything about the picture? Do you know when it was taken? Do you remember meeting this man?"
Clinton said, "No, I don't. You know, I probably have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures."
Clinton was not told during the interview where the picture came from, but
the Sun-Times has learned it was likely taken during an event connected to the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
In a statement, the Clinton campaign said, "Today, NBC aired an undated photo of Hillary and Bill Clinton taken with Tony Rezko and tried to compare that picture to Sen. Obama's 17-year relationship with the indicted influence peddler. Over the course of her career, Hillary has probably taken tens of thousands of photos. Here are some facts you should know: Tony Rezko has never contributed a dime to Hillary or Bill Clinton. They have no relationship with Tony Rezko."
Obama has never agreed to an interview about Rezko, but after Clinton injected the name into the campaign on Monday, on Wednesday, ABC's "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer asked Obama about Rezko. Obama made it seem like he hardly knew Rezko -- who was a friend, a client and a fund-raiser -- and was clueless about Rezko's potential criminal legal problems that had been reported by the Chicago press.
"This is somebody who was active in politics in Illinois, who I knew. Nobody had any indications that he was engaging in wrongdoing. At the point where he was engaging in alleged wrongdoing, it had nothing to do with me, and nobody has made that allegation. And Senator Clinton knows that," Obama said.
Rezko-Obama1-24-08 "COME CLEAN"
Time for Obama to come clean
To dismiss Rezko as 'somebody who I knew' just isn't going to cut it
January 24, 2008
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
Barack Obama just keeps bobbling the Tony Rezko hot potato, and if he doesn't get a handle on it soon, his campaign for the presidency is going to be badly burned.
On Wednesday, the Illinois senator fumbled again as he continued to try to minimize his relationship with Rezko while making the rounds of the morning news shows.
"My relationship is he was somebody who I knew and had been a supporter for many years," Obama said on CBS in response to Hillary Clinton's "slumlord" attack from earlier this week. "He was somebody who had supported a wide range of candidates all throughout Illinois. Nobody had an inkling that he was involved in any problems."
Somebody who I knew?
Wow.
That's such an understatement that it borders on a falsehood.
Proving, though, that this was one of Obama's preprogrammed talking points, not just a slip of the tongue, he also told ABC: "This is somebody who was active in Illinois politics who I knew. Nobody had any indications that he was engaging in wrongdoing."
Obama certainly did know Rezko. He knew him quite well, although perhaps not as well as he should have.
This was not some guy he used to hang with in high school.
This is somebody who spotted Obama's raw talent and offered him a job while he was still in law school, somebody who gave him one of his very first campaign donations for his first political race. This is somebody for whom Obama and his law firm performed legal work, not a great deal of it by Obama personally perhaps, but enough to know how the man made his money and that he was one of the major developers of low-income housing in his state legislative district.
Somebody who was a big fund-raiser
This is somebody who was one of the key fund-raisers for Obama's U.S. Senate campaign, somebody who came through with big money at a crucial juncture in a difficult primary contest.
And let's not forget this is somebody who bought the piece of real estate adjoining Obama's home, then sold the senator part of it, in a strange transaction about which key details have never been disclosed -- owing in part to the curious refusal of the real estate agents and prior owners to discuss it.
Beyond that, Obama and Rezko had a personal friendship that was still going strong two years ago, the extent of which has been difficult to explore with Rezko under indictment and Obama trying to run from him as far and fast as he can.
It's way past time for Obama to come completely and entirely clean about his Rezko dealings (preferably, of course, in an interview with this newspaper.)
Remember, this is a relationship to which Rezko could soon be testifying in federal court if he chooses.
But one way or another, it's all going to come out before Obama can reach the finish line in November. He needs to prove he can deal with this forthrightly now before the Republicans make him explain it.
I write this as somebody who has always expected to be voting for Obama this year.
This isn't going to go away
And while the Rezko business has definitely taken the bloom off the rose, I still haven't seen anything so far that should disqualify Obama from being president, certainly not in a matchup with Hillary Clinton, who has her own fund-raising con man albatross in Norman Hsu to complement the earlier trail of tears from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky.
Most troubling to me is how Obama keeps handling this, a continuing lapse in judgment that leaves me wondering if there's more here than meets the eye instead of less.
Just last weekend, the Obama campaign donated to charity another $40,000 in past campaign donations linked to Rezko. Why hadn't they taken care of that months ago instead of waiting for the latest Sun-Times' story?
From the start, Obama's approach to the Rezko situation has been to minimize and avoid, as if it would eventually just go away. It won't.
As far as nobody having an inkling that Rezko could be a problem, that's just not true either.
Many people recognized Rezko as a guy on the make who was busily ingratiating himself to Chicago politicians with an eye toward a future payback. As I've written before, from the moment he showed up as John Stroger's biggest campaign donor, the questions were always: What does he want? What's his angle?
The details of his indictment show just how far Rezko would allegedly go to take advantage of his ties to an Illinois governor. Imagine what he had in mind if his other buddy became president.
To dismiss Rezko as 'somebody who I knew' just isn't going to cut it
January 24, 2008
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
Barack Obama just keeps bobbling the Tony Rezko hot potato, and if he doesn't get a handle on it soon, his campaign for the presidency is going to be badly burned.
On Wednesday, the Illinois senator fumbled again as he continued to try to minimize his relationship with Rezko while making the rounds of the morning news shows.
"My relationship is he was somebody who I knew and had been a supporter for many years," Obama said on CBS in response to Hillary Clinton's "slumlord" attack from earlier this week. "He was somebody who had supported a wide range of candidates all throughout Illinois. Nobody had an inkling that he was involved in any problems."
Somebody who I knew?
Wow.
That's such an understatement that it borders on a falsehood.
Proving, though, that this was one of Obama's preprogrammed talking points, not just a slip of the tongue, he also told ABC: "This is somebody who was active in Illinois politics who I knew. Nobody had any indications that he was engaging in wrongdoing."
Obama certainly did know Rezko. He knew him quite well, although perhaps not as well as he should have.
This was not some guy he used to hang with in high school.
This is somebody who spotted Obama's raw talent and offered him a job while he was still in law school, somebody who gave him one of his very first campaign donations for his first political race. This is somebody for whom Obama and his law firm performed legal work, not a great deal of it by Obama personally perhaps, but enough to know how the man made his money and that he was one of the major developers of low-income housing in his state legislative district.
Somebody who was a big fund-raiser
This is somebody who was one of the key fund-raisers for Obama's U.S. Senate campaign, somebody who came through with big money at a crucial juncture in a difficult primary contest.
And let's not forget this is somebody who bought the piece of real estate adjoining Obama's home, then sold the senator part of it, in a strange transaction about which key details have never been disclosed -- owing in part to the curious refusal of the real estate agents and prior owners to discuss it.
Beyond that, Obama and Rezko had a personal friendship that was still going strong two years ago, the extent of which has been difficult to explore with Rezko under indictment and Obama trying to run from him as far and fast as he can.
It's way past time for Obama to come completely and entirely clean about his Rezko dealings (preferably, of course, in an interview with this newspaper.)
Remember, this is a relationship to which Rezko could soon be testifying in federal court if he chooses.
But one way or another, it's all going to come out before Obama can reach the finish line in November. He needs to prove he can deal with this forthrightly now before the Republicans make him explain it.
I write this as somebody who has always expected to be voting for Obama this year.
This isn't going to go away
And while the Rezko business has definitely taken the bloom off the rose, I still haven't seen anything so far that should disqualify Obama from being president, certainly not in a matchup with Hillary Clinton, who has her own fund-raising con man albatross in Norman Hsu to complement the earlier trail of tears from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky.
Most troubling to me is how Obama keeps handling this, a continuing lapse in judgment that leaves me wondering if there's more here than meets the eye instead of less.
Just last weekend, the Obama campaign donated to charity another $40,000 in past campaign donations linked to Rezko. Why hadn't they taken care of that months ago instead of waiting for the latest Sun-Times' story?
From the start, Obama's approach to the Rezko situation has been to minimize and avoid, as if it would eventually just go away. It won't.
As far as nobody having an inkling that Rezko could be a problem, that's just not true either.
Many people recognized Rezko as a guy on the make who was busily ingratiating himself to Chicago politicians with an eye toward a future payback. As I've written before, from the moment he showed up as John Stroger's biggest campaign donor, the questions were always: What does he want? What's his angle?
The details of his indictment show just how far Rezko would allegedly go to take advantage of his ties to an Illinois governor. Imagine what he had in mind if his other buddy became president.
Rezko-Obama 1-24-08 "8 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
8 things you need to know about Obama and Rezko
Tale in national spotlight, thanks to Clinton
January 24, 2008
All of a sudden, seems as if everybody's talking about Barack Obama and Tony Rezko. Even Jay Leno.
Rezko already was a big story in Chicago, accused of influence-peddling in the Blagojevich administration and set to face trial Feb. 25.
But Monday, he became national news -- and an issue in the presidential race. That's when Hillary Clinton blasted Obama for having represented "your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."
Having a hard time keeping track of the facts? Here are eight things to know:
1. They met in 1990. Obama was a student at Harvard Law School and got an unsolicited job offer from Rezko, then a low-income housing developer in Chicago. Obama turned it down.
2. Obama took a job in 1993 with a small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill, that represents developers -- primarily not-for-profit groups -- building low-income housing with government funds.
3. One of the firm's not-for-profit clients -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., co-founded by Obama's then-boss Allison Davis -- was partners with Rezko's company in a 1995 deal to convert an abandoned nursing home at 61st and Drexel into low-income apartments. Altogether, Obama spent 32 hours on the project, according to the firm. Only five hours of that came after Rezko and WPIC became partners, the firm says. The rest of the future senator's time was helping WPIC strike the deal with Rezko. Rezko's company, Rezmar Corp., also partnered with the firm's clients in four later deals -- none of which involved Obama, according to the firm. In each deal, Rezmar "made the decisions for the joint venture," says William Miceli, an attorney with the firm.
4. In 1995, Obama began campaigning for a seat in the Illinois Senate. Among his earliest supporters: Rezko. Two Rezko companies donated a total of $2,000. Obama was elected in 1996 -- representing a district that included 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects.
5. Rezko's low-income housing empire began crumbling in 2001, when his company stopped making mortgage payments on the old nursing home that had been converted into apartments. The state foreclosed on the building -- which was in Obama's Illinois Senate district.
6. In 2003, Obama announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, and Rezko -- a member of his campaign finance committee -- held a lavish fund-raiser June 27, 2003, at his Wilmette mansion.
7. A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood -- a deal that has dogged Obama the last two years. The doctor sold the mansion to Obama for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price. Rezko's wife paid full price -- $625,000 -- for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a strip of her land, so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Questioned later about the timing of the Rezko deal, Obama called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor.
8. Eight months later -- in October 2006 -- Rezko was indicted on charges he solicited kickbacks from companies seeking state pension business under his friend Gov. Blagojevich. Federal prosecutors maintain that $10,000 from the alleged kickback scheme was donated to Obama's run for the U.S. Senate. Obama has given the money to charity.
Tale in national spotlight, thanks to Clinton
January 24, 2008
All of a sudden, seems as if everybody's talking about Barack Obama and Tony Rezko. Even Jay Leno.
Rezko already was a big story in Chicago, accused of influence-peddling in the Blagojevich administration and set to face trial Feb. 25.
But Monday, he became national news -- and an issue in the presidential race. That's when Hillary Clinton blasted Obama for having represented "your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago."
Having a hard time keeping track of the facts? Here are eight things to know:
1. They met in 1990. Obama was a student at Harvard Law School and got an unsolicited job offer from Rezko, then a low-income housing developer in Chicago. Obama turned it down.
2. Obama took a job in 1993 with a small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill, that represents developers -- primarily not-for-profit groups -- building low-income housing with government funds.
3. One of the firm's not-for-profit clients -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., co-founded by Obama's then-boss Allison Davis -- was partners with Rezko's company in a 1995 deal to convert an abandoned nursing home at 61st and Drexel into low-income apartments. Altogether, Obama spent 32 hours on the project, according to the firm. Only five hours of that came after Rezko and WPIC became partners, the firm says. The rest of the future senator's time was helping WPIC strike the deal with Rezko. Rezko's company, Rezmar Corp., also partnered with the firm's clients in four later deals -- none of which involved Obama, according to the firm. In each deal, Rezmar "made the decisions for the joint venture," says William Miceli, an attorney with the firm.
4. In 1995, Obama began campaigning for a seat in the Illinois Senate. Among his earliest supporters: Rezko. Two Rezko companies donated a total of $2,000. Obama was elected in 1996 -- representing a district that included 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects.
5. Rezko's low-income housing empire began crumbling in 2001, when his company stopped making mortgage payments on the old nursing home that had been converted into apartments. The state foreclosed on the building -- which was in Obama's Illinois Senate district.
6. In 2003, Obama announced he was running for the U.S. Senate, and Rezko -- a member of his campaign finance committee -- held a lavish fund-raiser June 27, 2003, at his Wilmette mansion.
7. A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjacent pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood -- a deal that has dogged Obama the last two years. The doctor sold the mansion to Obama for $1.65 million -- $300,000 below the asking price. Rezko's wife paid full price -- $625,000 -- for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rezko's wife $104,500 for a strip of her land, so he could have a bigger yard. At the time, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Questioned later about the timing of the Rezko deal, Obama called it "boneheaded" because people might think the Rezkos had done him a favor.
8. Eight months later -- in October 2006 -- Rezko was indicted on charges he solicited kickbacks from companies seeking state pension business under his friend Gov. Blagojevich. Federal prosecutors maintain that $10,000 from the alleged kickback scheme was donated to Obama's run for the U.S. Senate. Obama has given the money to charity.
Rezko-Obama 1-20-08 "OBAMA'S ACHILLES HEEL"
The Rezko Connection: Obama's Achilles Heel?
Obama's Connection With an Accused Political Fixer Raises Questions
By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
Jan. 10, 2008—
In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, for "advice" as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate.
The parcel included an adjacent lot which Obama told the Chicago Tribune he could not afford because "it was already a stretch to buy the house."
On the same day Obama closed on his house, Rezko's wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell both properties at the same time.
Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and "efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars."
This week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the Rezko trial to begin Feb. 25.
Obama maintains his relationship with Rezko was "above board and legal" but has admitted bad judgment, calling his decision to involve Rezko "a bone-headed mistake."
Rezko's behind-the-scenes connection in the Obama house deal became public as Rezko revealed personal financial details as he sought to post bail.
While Rezko's wife paid the full asking price for the land, Obama paid $300,000 under the asking price for the house. The house sold for $1,650,000 and the price Rezko's wife paid for the land was $625,000.
Obama denies there was anything unusual about the price disparity. He says the price on the house was dropped because it had been on the market for some time but that the price for the adjacent land remained high because there was another offer.
Obama then expanded his property by buying a strip of the Rezko land for $104,5000, which the senator maintains was a fair market price.
Obama later told the Chicago Sun-Times, "It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor."
Obama had known Rezko long before the house deal, calling him a "friend."
An ABC News review of campaign records shows Rezko, and people connected to him, contributed more than $120,000 to Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, much of it at a time when Rezko was the target of an FBI investigation.
"It surprised me that late in the game he [Obama] continued to take contributions from somebody who was under a rather dark cloud in the state," said Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a group that has worked closely with Obama and supported his legislative efforts.
In the wake of the Rezko indictment, Obama says he has given $44,000 of the Rezko-connected money to charity.
There is no mention of Obama in the Rezko indictment. Federal authorities say the investigation is focused on Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, identified in court filings as Public Figure A.
Obama's Connection With an Accused Political Fixer Raises Questions
By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
Jan. 10, 2008—
In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, for "advice" as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate.
The parcel included an adjacent lot which Obama told the Chicago Tribune he could not afford because "it was already a stretch to buy the house."
On the same day Obama closed on his house, Rezko's wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell both properties at the same time.
Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and "efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars."
This week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the Rezko trial to begin Feb. 25.
Obama maintains his relationship with Rezko was "above board and legal" but has admitted bad judgment, calling his decision to involve Rezko "a bone-headed mistake."
Rezko's behind-the-scenes connection in the Obama house deal became public as Rezko revealed personal financial details as he sought to post bail.
While Rezko's wife paid the full asking price for the land, Obama paid $300,000 under the asking price for the house. The house sold for $1,650,000 and the price Rezko's wife paid for the land was $625,000.
Obama denies there was anything unusual about the price disparity. He says the price on the house was dropped because it had been on the market for some time but that the price for the adjacent land remained high because there was another offer.
Obama then expanded his property by buying a strip of the Rezko land for $104,5000, which the senator maintains was a fair market price.
Obama later told the Chicago Sun-Times, "It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe he had done me a favor."
Obama had known Rezko long before the house deal, calling him a "friend."
An ABC News review of campaign records shows Rezko, and people connected to him, contributed more than $120,000 to Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, much of it at a time when Rezko was the target of an FBI investigation.
"It surprised me that late in the game he [Obama] continued to take contributions from somebody who was under a rather dark cloud in the state," said Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a group that has worked closely with Obama and supported his legislative efforts.
In the wake of the Rezko indictment, Obama says he has given $44,000 of the Rezko-connected money to charity.
There is no mention of Obama in the Rezko indictment. Federal authorities say the investigation is focused on Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, identified in court filings as Public Figure A.
Rezko-Obama 1-20-07 "OBAMA SURFACES CORRUPTION CASE"
Obama surfaces in Rekzo's federal corruption case
Source confirmed Obama is the unnamed "political candidate" referred to in document which outlines case against Rezko
January 20, 2008
BY DAVE MCKINNEY, NATASHA KORECKI, CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters
For the first time, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama has surfaced in the federal corrupton case against his longtime campaign fund-raiser, Tony Rezko, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
The Illinois senator isn’t accused of any wrongdoing. And there’s no evidence Obama knew contributions to his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign came from schemes Rezko is accused of orchestrating.
The allegations against Rezko that involve Obama are contained in one paragraph of a 78-page document filed last month in which prosecutors outline their corruption and fraud case against Rezko, who was also a key money man for Gov. Blagojevich and other politicians.
Rezko is set to go to trial Feb. 25. The revelation that Obama’s name could come up in court is a political headache he doesn’t need as he heads into a round of primaries that are likely to determine his party’s nomination for president.
Obama is not named in the Dec. 21 court document. But a source familiar with the case confirmed that Obama is the unnamed “political candidate” referred to in a section of the document that accuses Rezko of orchestrating a scheme in which a firm hired to handle state teacher pension investments first had to pay $250,000 in “sham” finder’s fees. From that money, $10,000 was donated to Obama’s successful run for the Senate in the name of a Rezko business associate, according to the court filing and the source.
Rezko, who was part of Obama’s senatorial finance committee, also is accused of directing “at least one other individual” to donate money to Obama and then reimbursing that individual — in possible violation of federal election law.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment.
Obama — a state senator when he got the contributions in 2004 — has moved to distance himself from Rezko since his longtime friend and supporter was indicted in October 2006. After news reports that Obama had engaged in a real estate transaction with Rezko’s wife at a time Tony Rezko was known to be under investigation, the senator called the episode “boneheaded” and “a mistake.”
‘No way of knowing’
Obama campaign aides said Friday he was unaware Rezko was behind the contributions cited in last month’s court filing or that the document referred to the senator.
“We have no way of knowing he is the politician named here,” spokesman Bill Burton said, “but we returned this money months ago for other reasons.”
Obama donated more than $44,000 in Rezko-linked contributions to charity last year, including the $10,000 donation mentioned in the court filing.
That money was donated to Obama by Joseph Aramanda, a Glenview businessman and Rezko associate who, sources have said, is the “Individual D” prosecutors say received the $250,000 in finder’s fees demanded by Rezko. Individual D did nothing to earn those fees, according to prosecutors.
The $10,000 contribution to Obama was given in Aramanda’s name on March 5, 2004, records show. While Obama’s camp has said the senator did not know Aramanda, Obama’s office hired Aramanda’s son as an intern in 2005, at Rezko’s urging.
Repeated attempts to reach Aramanda, who was involved in pizza franchises Rezko owned, were unsuccessful. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
A longstanding relationship
Rezko is one of Obama’s earliest political patrons. Long known as a prolific fund-raiser, the Syrian-born businessman helped raise money for Obama’s political campaigns beginning in 1995, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate.
In 13 years in politics, Obama has gotten at least $168,000 in campaign donations from Rezko, his family and business associates. The Sun-Times reported that figure last June. Obama’s “best estimate” seven months earlier had been that Rezko had raised no more than $60,000 for him.
When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, Rezko held a June 27, 2003, cocktail party in Rezko’s Wilmette mansion, picking up the tab for the lavish event. Obama’s campaign staff has said it has no records to show who attended that party, or how much it cost.
Obama’s relationship with Rezko dates to 1990, when Obama, then a Harvard law student, interviewed for a job with Rezko’s development company, Rezmar Corp. Obama turned down the job, instead going to work for a small Chicago law firm — Davis Miner Barnhill. That firm did work on more than a dozen low-income housing projects Rezmar rehabbed with government funds.
Eleven Rezmar buildings were in the state Senate district Obama represented between 1996 and 2004. Many of the buildings ended up in foreclosure, with tenants living in squalid conditions, the Sun-Times reported last year. In one instance, Rezko’s company left tenants without heat for five weeks. Obama said he was unaware of problems with the buildings and minimized the legal work he’d done.
Obama’s relationship with Rezko grew closer in June 2005, when Obama and Rezko’s wife bought adjoining real estate parcels from a doctor in the South Side Kenwood neighborhood. Obama paid $1.65 million for the doctor’s mansion, while Rezko’s wife paid $625,000 for the vacant lot next door. Obama’s purchase price was $300,000 below the asking price; Rezko’s wife paid full price.
Six months later, Obama paid Rita Rezko $104,500 for one-sixth of the vacant lot, which he bought to expand his yard. In November 2006, he expressed regret about the transaction.
“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else,” Obama said, “to believe that he had done me a favor.”
Sen. Obama Presidential Campaign Q&A
A Chicago Sun-Times Exclusive: Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign gave the following written responses to these questions about the Rezko court filing.
Q. What is Sen. Obama’s reaction to being referred to in the Rezko evidentiary proffer?
A. We have no way of knowing he is the politician named here but we returned this money months ago for other reasons.
Q. Was Sen. Obama aware that Rezko allegedly had directed at least one person to donate to the senator’s campaign and later reimbursed that person, possibly violating federal election law?
A. No.
Q. Has the Federal Election Commission or the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago contacted the senator or any of his representatives about these matters?
A. No.
Q. Why has the senator donated to charity campaign contributions from Rezko and Rezko-linked people?
A. In keeping with our practice of donating to charity donations from people who have been called into question through the legal process, when he was named in documents as potentially engaging in wrongdoing we thought it was appropriate to return his donation to charity.
Q. Does the senator think this development will have any impact on the presidential campaign or undercut the senator’s message that he is an agent of change?
A. No. In fact, Sen. Obama has been a champion of reforms that have made campaign finance laws more transparent so that the public can more closely follow the source of contributions to campaigns. As with any campaign, occasionally individual contributions are called into question. Sen. Obama’s policy in such instances is to donate that money to charity which is what he did in this case seven months ago when questions first surfaced.
Source confirmed Obama is the unnamed "political candidate" referred to in document which outlines case against Rezko
January 20, 2008
BY DAVE MCKINNEY, NATASHA KORECKI, CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters
For the first time, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama has surfaced in the federal corrupton case against his longtime campaign fund-raiser, Tony Rezko, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
The Illinois senator isn’t accused of any wrongdoing. And there’s no evidence Obama knew contributions to his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign came from schemes Rezko is accused of orchestrating.
The allegations against Rezko that involve Obama are contained in one paragraph of a 78-page document filed last month in which prosecutors outline their corruption and fraud case against Rezko, who was also a key money man for Gov. Blagojevich and other politicians.
Rezko is set to go to trial Feb. 25. The revelation that Obama’s name could come up in court is a political headache he doesn’t need as he heads into a round of primaries that are likely to determine his party’s nomination for president.
Obama is not named in the Dec. 21 court document. But a source familiar with the case confirmed that Obama is the unnamed “political candidate” referred to in a section of the document that accuses Rezko of orchestrating a scheme in which a firm hired to handle state teacher pension investments first had to pay $250,000 in “sham” finder’s fees. From that money, $10,000 was donated to Obama’s successful run for the Senate in the name of a Rezko business associate, according to the court filing and the source.
Rezko, who was part of Obama’s senatorial finance committee, also is accused of directing “at least one other individual” to donate money to Obama and then reimbursing that individual — in possible violation of federal election law.
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment.
Obama — a state senator when he got the contributions in 2004 — has moved to distance himself from Rezko since his longtime friend and supporter was indicted in October 2006. After news reports that Obama had engaged in a real estate transaction with Rezko’s wife at a time Tony Rezko was known to be under investigation, the senator called the episode “boneheaded” and “a mistake.”
‘No way of knowing’
Obama campaign aides said Friday he was unaware Rezko was behind the contributions cited in last month’s court filing or that the document referred to the senator.
“We have no way of knowing he is the politician named here,” spokesman Bill Burton said, “but we returned this money months ago for other reasons.”
Obama donated more than $44,000 in Rezko-linked contributions to charity last year, including the $10,000 donation mentioned in the court filing.
That money was donated to Obama by Joseph Aramanda, a Glenview businessman and Rezko associate who, sources have said, is the “Individual D” prosecutors say received the $250,000 in finder’s fees demanded by Rezko. Individual D did nothing to earn those fees, according to prosecutors.
The $10,000 contribution to Obama was given in Aramanda’s name on March 5, 2004, records show. While Obama’s camp has said the senator did not know Aramanda, Obama’s office hired Aramanda’s son as an intern in 2005, at Rezko’s urging.
Repeated attempts to reach Aramanda, who was involved in pizza franchises Rezko owned, were unsuccessful. He has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
A longstanding relationship
Rezko is one of Obama’s earliest political patrons. Long known as a prolific fund-raiser, the Syrian-born businessman helped raise money for Obama’s political campaigns beginning in 1995, when Obama was running for the Illinois Senate.
In 13 years in politics, Obama has gotten at least $168,000 in campaign donations from Rezko, his family and business associates. The Sun-Times reported that figure last June. Obama’s “best estimate” seven months earlier had been that Rezko had raised no more than $60,000 for him.
When Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, Rezko held a June 27, 2003, cocktail party in Rezko’s Wilmette mansion, picking up the tab for the lavish event. Obama’s campaign staff has said it has no records to show who attended that party, or how much it cost.
Obama’s relationship with Rezko dates to 1990, when Obama, then a Harvard law student, interviewed for a job with Rezko’s development company, Rezmar Corp. Obama turned down the job, instead going to work for a small Chicago law firm — Davis Miner Barnhill. That firm did work on more than a dozen low-income housing projects Rezmar rehabbed with government funds.
Eleven Rezmar buildings were in the state Senate district Obama represented between 1996 and 2004. Many of the buildings ended up in foreclosure, with tenants living in squalid conditions, the Sun-Times reported last year. In one instance, Rezko’s company left tenants without heat for five weeks. Obama said he was unaware of problems with the buildings and minimized the legal work he’d done.
Obama’s relationship with Rezko grew closer in June 2005, when Obama and Rezko’s wife bought adjoining real estate parcels from a doctor in the South Side Kenwood neighborhood. Obama paid $1.65 million for the doctor’s mansion, while Rezko’s wife paid $625,000 for the vacant lot next door. Obama’s purchase price was $300,000 below the asking price; Rezko’s wife paid full price.
Six months later, Obama paid Rita Rezko $104,500 for one-sixth of the vacant lot, which he bought to expand his yard. In November 2006, he expressed regret about the transaction.
“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else,” Obama said, “to believe that he had done me a favor.”
Sen. Obama Presidential Campaign Q&A
A Chicago Sun-Times Exclusive: Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign gave the following written responses to these questions about the Rezko court filing.
Q. What is Sen. Obama’s reaction to being referred to in the Rezko evidentiary proffer?
A. We have no way of knowing he is the politician named here but we returned this money months ago for other reasons.
Q. Was Sen. Obama aware that Rezko allegedly had directed at least one person to donate to the senator’s campaign and later reimbursed that person, possibly violating federal election law?
A. No.
Q. Has the Federal Election Commission or the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago contacted the senator or any of his representatives about these matters?
A. No.
Q. Why has the senator donated to charity campaign contributions from Rezko and Rezko-linked people?
A. In keeping with our practice of donating to charity donations from people who have been called into question through the legal process, when he was named in documents as potentially engaging in wrongdoing we thought it was appropriate to return his donation to charity.
Q. Does the senator think this development will have any impact on the presidential campaign or undercut the senator’s message that he is an agent of change?
A. No. In fact, Sen. Obama has been a champion of reforms that have made campaign finance laws more transparent so that the public can more closely follow the source of contributions to campaigns. As with any campaign, occasionally individual contributions are called into question. Sen. Obama’s policy in such instances is to donate that money to charity which is what he did in this case seven months ago when questions first surfaced.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
