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Banned
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
actually, I suggested that if pan thinks Obama is a "fucking idiot"..he should prove it with something beyond "gaffes" that every candidate makes during a course of a campaign (misstating the current location of a speech, misstating numbers, etc).
Such gaffes are commonplace and far different than intentionally misleading the voters: Clinton: "I remember landing under sniper fire....(in Bosnia)"
McCain: "You can walk the streets of Baghdad safely...." (while wearing body armour and surrounded by troops and blackhawk helicopters....his proof that the surge was working.) loquitor....do you think any reasonable person would conclude that Obama was referring to the 57 states in the OIC (because he is secretly a muslim) as Malkin/Limbaugh inferred when he misstated the number of states he had visited?
I would suggest the Malkin (Limbaugh, et al) puts out crap like that "57 states in the OIC" inference (or the Rachel Ray wearing a keffiyeh in ad ad) for one purpose...to feed the ignorance and/or prejudice of their readers/viewers, who jump all over it (including pan, who initially posted the "57 muslim states", before wisely deleting it.) |
Here ya go, _dux. IMO, compared to the unwavering attacks on Clinton, if you only compare Obama's background vs his media coverage to the Clinton's White Water land "deal", Obama has gotten a free ride. He is no more straightforward or ethical than Clinton. At least we all know and admit to ourselves who and what she is...... the Kool-Ade induced comments I am reading on this forum and all over the web, related to Obama, baffle me.... it's quite a con. I'm too cynical to take a sip. Hope and unity are not enough to ignore this. Be sure to watch the NBC video, re: the Obama residence and Rezko's lot. It cannot be sold, and it was never intended to be, when Rezko purchased it, IMO. The "kicker" was when he sold a portion of it to Obama, after the double closing on the house and lot. It is as if that was done to make double sure that no one would ever be interested in buying Rezko's remaining share.....blatant bribe, or total stupidity on Rezko's part? I doubt it.
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http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Vote2008/s...4176367&page=1
....Obama, too, has had issues with telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
On health care, during Monday night's debate-turned-slugfest, in a verbal scuffle with former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Obama said, "I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single-payer."
But he did. Maybe not Monday night. But back in June 2003 in a speech to the AFL-CIO when he was campaigning for the Senate.
Said Obama, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health-care program."
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Quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/...ipt/index.html
Mon January 21, 2008
Part 1 of CNN Democratic presidential debate
...CLINTON: Bad for America, and I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Resco, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.....
...OBAMA: I'm happy to respond. Here's what happened: I was an associate at a law firm that represented a church group that had partnered with this individual to do a project and I did about five hours worth of work on this joint project. That's what she's referring to....
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<h2>Obama, "I did not have realty relations with THIS INDIVIDUAL !"</h2>
Can you not see that Obama's debate answer is akin to Clinto and Monica, and Bush claiming he hardly knew "Kenny-Boy", Lay? Vote for Obama, reluctantly, as the lesser evil of the shittyest candidates we could ever imagine, but stop pretending that he is above the fray. He's just another greedy, elitest, politician, selling out his constituent's interests in the interest of his own.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...,3804748.story
By David Jackson and Bob Secter | Tribune reporters
2:44 AM CST, February 19, 2008
Obama: I toured home with Rezko
Before he bought his South Side mansion in 2005, Sen. Barack Obama took his friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko on a tour of the premises to make sure it was a good deal, Obama's campaign revealed Monday.
Weeks after saying he'd answered all questions about his controversial dealings with the now-indicted Rezko, Obama released new details about their purchase of adjacent lots from the same seller on the same day. But the disclosures by Obama's presidential campaign left unanswered questions and raised new ones.
Obama was able to buy the house for $300,000 less than the listed price while Rezko, in his wife's name, paid the full $625,000 asking price for an undeveloped side lot.
On Monday, Obama's campaign gave Bloomberg news service e-mails from the sellers, who reportedly said Obama's $1.65 million bid "was the best offer" and that they didn't cut their asking price because Rezko bought the adjacent yard....
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Quote:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/p...,2968927.story
Obama: I trusted Rezko
Senator says friend raised more money than previously known
By David Jackson
TRIBUNE REPORTER
March 15, 2008
Trying to put his past with Antoin "Tony" Rezko behind him, presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday said he never thought the nowindicted Chicago businessman would try to take advantage of him because his old friend had never asked for a political favor.
But in a 90-minute interview with Tribune reporters and editors, Obama disclosed that Rezko had raised more for Obama's earlier political campaigns than previously known, gathering as much as $250,000 for the first three offices he sought.
Obama also elaborated on previous statements about his private real estate transactions with Rezko, saying they were not simply mistakes of judgment because Rezko was under grand jury investigation at the time of their 2005 and 2006 dealings. "The mistake, by the way, was not just engaging in a transaction with Tony because he was having legal problems. The mistake was because he was a contributor and somebody who was involved in politics."
The Illinois senator made his most extensive comments about Rezko to date in an effort to quell the lingering controversy over his relationship with the politically influential developer and over the personal financial deals first revealed by the Tribune in November 2006.
Faced with intensifying scrutiny as the Democratic primary season grinds on, Obama said voters should view his Rezko dealings as "a mistake in not seeing the potential conflicts of interest." But he added that voters should also "see somebody who is not engaged in any wrongdoing . . . and who they can trust."
After news reports of Rezko's questionable political dealings first emerged in 2005, Obama said he asked his friend about them. Rezko assured him there was nothing wrong. "My instinct was to believe him," he said.
Asked if he ever thought Rezko would expect something from their relationship, Obama was emphatic: 'No. Precisely because I had known him for [many] years and he hadn't asked me for something."
The friendship between the Obamas and Rezkos included occasional dinners and the Obamas once spending a day at the Rezkos' Lake Geneva retreat. It began in about 1991, when Obama became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and Rezko offered him a job building affordable homes with his Rezmar Corp. Though Obama declined, a friendship and political alliance began.
His first big contributor
When Obama launched his bid for the Illinois Senate in 1995, Rezko was his first substantial contributor. Obama said it was his "best guesstimate" that Rezko raised $10,000 to $15,000 of Obama's roughly $100,000 collected for that race. Obama said he didn't have more certainty because he didn't then have the staff to maintain better campaign finance records.
Rezko helped bankroll all of Obama's subsequent campaigns except his presidential bid. Rezko was on Obama's campaign committee in his failed run against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and gathered between $50,000 and $75,000 of the estimated $600,000 raised in that race, Obama said.
Rezko also was on the finance committee for Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate run. "My best assessment is that he raised $160,000 during my U.S. Senate primary," he said, adding that those funds had been given to charity.
Obama explained Rezko's appeal to up-and-coming politicians. Part of it was his seeming modesty. "In my interactions with him, he was very gracious. He did not ask me for favors. He was not obtrusive. He wasn't one of those people who would insist on coming around all the time or constantly being photographed with me."
And Rezko was loyal. He had been a supporter of Rush but sided with Obama in that 2000 race. Five years later, bolstered by payments for his best-selling autobiography and advances for future books, Obama and his wife, Michelle, went house hunting. They were drawn to a 96- year-old South Side home with four fireplaces, glassdoor bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany and a wine cellar.
The house and the adjoining yard had been owned as a single property, but the owners were listing them separately and asking $1.95 million for the house and $625,000 for the landscaped side lot.
Obama disclosed Friday that someone else already had an option to buy the garden lot. But he said Rezko took over that option after Rezko learned Obama was bidding for the house. Obama said he knew next to nothing about those transactions and does not recall when he learned that Rezko was interested in buying the side lot- or even how Rezko learned it was for sale.
But they talked about the upcoming sales. "He said, 'I might be interested,' " Obama recalled. "My response was, 'Well, that would be fine.'"
Obama added: "This is an area where I can see a lapse in judgment." He said his motivation was "if this lot is going to be developed, here's somebody I knew. So I didn?t object."
The senator said that at the time, in early 2005, he was aware of the growing controversies surrounding Rezko's dealings with state and city government. In March 2005, for example, city officials alleged that a minority contractor at O'Hare International Airport acted as a front for a Rezko firm. "I started reading the reports that were surfacing," Obama said. Rezko "gave me assurances that this wasn't a problem." And, Obama added, "at that time, the news around Rezko's problems had not elevated to the levels that they did later."
At some point before the property sales closed, Obama toured the home with Rezko for 15 to 30 minutes. Obama said he asked Rezko to assess the property because he was a real estate developer in the area. "He said, 'I'd be willing to go inside and take a look,' " Obama recalled.
In his first accounts of the purchase, Obama did not divulge that tour. He said Friday that he simply didn't feel the information was salient and insisted the tour didn't mean he and Rezko coordinated their purchases.
The home and lot sales closed on June 15, 2005. A land trust controlled by the Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million, and the Obamas secured a $1.32 million mortgage from Northern Trust to complete that purchase. That same day, Rezko's wife, Rita Rezko, bought the side lot for $625,000. A $37,000- a-year Cook County employee, she secured a $500,000 mortgage from Mutual Bank of Harvey.
Obama rejected the suggestion that, by paying the full price for the lot, Rezko was enabling Obama to buy the house for $300,000 less than the initial asking price.
"Frankly I don't think he was doing me a favor," Obama said. "There was simply no connection between our purchase of the house, the price of the house and the purchase of the lot."
No discount, sellers say
The senator's campaign provided a copy of a previously released e-mail from the sellers. In response to questions from the Obama campaign, the sellers agreed that they "did not offer or give the Obamas a 'discount' on the house price" because Rezko paid their asking price for the yard.
Obama said Rezko "perhaps thought this would strengthen our relationship, that he was doing me a favor." But he added that Rezko also was making a sound business decision by buying the lot. Obama said he always expected Rezko to build on the lot and was happy for the visual buffer it would provide.
Then came the next-and what Obama said was the more serious-lapse in judgment: a subsequent set of arrangements to redivide the lots and build a wrought-iron fence between them. "I wanted a fence to be erected between our properties," Obama said.
His attorneys and architect worked for several months to secure the fence permits. The Obamas paid several thousand dollars to complete that paperwork, but Rezko paid the roughly $14,300 cost of erecting the fence.
Rezko was not doing him a favor by paying for the fence, Obama said, because a city ordinance required owners of vacant land to install fences.
To put some space between his house and the proposed fence, Obama then asked Rezko to sell a 10-foot-wide strip. Obama's appraiser estimated the portion at $40,500. But Obama paid the Rezkos $104,500, or a sixth of their original $625,000 purchase price, because he was acquiring a sixth of the land.
Rezko later sold the rest of the lot to one of his former attorneys, who now has it listed for more than $900,000. "It appears," Obama said, "a sale is about to be consummated."....
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The Obama Rezko real estate "deal" stinks:
Quote:
http://rezkowatch.blogspot.com/2008/...t-case-of.html
Watch the NBC video and read the article at the link above. There is no access to the Rezko lot....it appears that Rezko's ourchase of the Obama lot is a bribe....."appears".....
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archi...29/617797.aspx
That Rezko land deal Posted: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:39 AM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Lisa Myers and Jim Popkin
NBC News' Investigative Unit took a look at that land deal between Obama and Rezko and why that piece of property now won't sell.
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Quote:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/wash...sobamaluv.html
Column: Obama's mystical (national media) disconnect from sleazy Chicago politics
....So why the disconnect? Why is Obama allowed to campaign as a reformer, virtually unchallenged by the media, though he's a product of Chicago politics and has never condemned the wholesale political corruption in his hometown the way he condemns those darn Washington lobbyists?
For an answer as to when pundits will ever put Illinois corruption in context, I called on Tom Bevan, executive director of the popular political website RealClearPolitics.com (which directs readers to my column on occasion) and a Chicagoan.
"To a large degree, the media has accepted much of the Obama narrative thus far," Bevan told me. "He's risen so quickly, but his history hasn't been bogged down with an association of Chicago politics and I can't tell you why exactly, except perhaps that some may have bought into the established narrative and can't separate themselves from it."
Bevan added: "And I don't know if the country understands just how corrupt the system is in Illinois. People don't see it. They're flying over us, cruising at 30,000 feet."
Our Chicago politics sure must seem sweet from that high altitude as journalists fly by. From up there, our politics must smell pretty, like vanilla beans in a jar, or lavender potpourri: you know, something truly authentic and real.
-- John Kass
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Quote:
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?sec...cal&id=6108177
Witness: Rezko said 'Fitzgerald would be eliminated'Monday, April 28, 2008 | 6:36 PM
....Rezko, 52, is charged with scheming to split a $1.5 million bribe from a contractor who wanted state permission to build a hospital in the McHenry County suburb of Crystal Lake and pressure kickbacks out of money management firms seeking to do business with a state pension fund.
Prosecutors say Rezko's fundraising for Blagojevich made him highly influential in the administration and as a result he could manipulate the state boards that decide on hospital construction and allocate money from the pension fund to investment firms.
U.S. attorneys are nominated by the president but traditionally are chosen by the senior senator of the president's party.
Fitzgerald was the candidate of Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., no relation, who said openly that he wanted someone from out of state who would be independent and attack the corruption long plaguing Illinois.
Since taking.........
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Last edited by host; 05-25-2008 at 12:32 PM..
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