The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette.

The other day a friend of mine confided that in the weeks leading up to the election, the Obamas’ apparent joy as a couple had made her just miserable. Their marriage looked so much happier than hers. Their life seemed so perfect. “I was at a place where I was tempted daily to throttle my husband,” she said. “This coincided with Michelle saying the most beautiful things about Barack. Each time I heard her speak about him I got tears in my eyes — because I felt so far away from that kind of bliss in my own life and perhaps even more, because I was so moved by her expressions of devotion to him. And unlike previous presidential couples, they are our age, have children the same age and (just imagine the stress of daily life on the campaign) by all accounts should have been fighting even more than we were.” … [emphases mine]

DAMN! I forgot to warn you to grab a bucket. Hope you made it to a barf bag in time! But wait. There’s more, and it’s even WORSE. Like this much worse: “Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president.” …

[...]

Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.

There was some daydreaming too, much of it a collective fantasy about the still-hot Obama marriage. “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex,” a Los Angeles woman wrote to me, summing up the comments of many. “Often. With each other. These days when the sexless marriage is such a big celebrity in America (and when first couples are icons of rigid propriety), that’s one interesting mental drama.”

[...]

One woman wrote that when she couldn’t get to sleep at night, she “lay in bed and thought about the Obama girls in their rooms at the White House. I thought about Marian Robinson up on the third floor. And about Barack and Michelle, a couple who clearly have a ‘thing’ for each other, spooning together in bed. It helped me relax.”

I understood perfectly where these cozy dreams of easy familiarity came from. It was that sense so many people share of having a very immediate connection to Barack Obama, whether they’re black or biracial, or children of single parents or self-made strivers; or they’re lawyers or community organizers or Ivy League graduates or smokers or basketball players or Blackberry users or parents or married or Democrats. A lot of people share the fantasy that having the Obamas over for “dinner and a game of Scrabble,” as one daydreamer put it to me, is something that really could just about happen. …

And these poor people have “Obama anxiety” and WISH they had lived HIS life, and given themselves SO unselfishly to the betterment of mankind! Why hadn’t THEY been community organizers like he? Why, why, why, why, why????? Why hadn’t they sacrificed like he did?

Why didn’t they make sordid deals on pensions to benefit their crooked cronies like Tony Rezko? Why hadn’t their wives used their position on the historic preservation board to find and grab a mansion and then used Rezko’s money to enable them to buy it, no matter that they knew that Rezko was already being investigated and followed by the Feds everywhere?

Why hadn’t they tipped off their rich buddies like Cullen and Allison Davis so they could rip off millions and millions from taxpayers and let Mssrs. Davis do NOTHING about the appalling conditions in the former public housing, and allow the gentrification of such properties, even though the original intent was to preserve low-income housing?

Why hadn’t they given a stirring speech to terrified workers at the Maytag plant in Illinois, promising those workers their jobs would be saved and taking their hard-earned money as campaign contributions, and then going to visit the patriarch of the billionaire Crown family, with controlling stock in Maytag, and never once mentioning to patriarch Lester Crown the plight of those workers, while sucking up all the campaign contributions he could from Lester Crown as well as every member of the Crown family and all of their extremely wealthy friends and allies? (Oh yes, all those jobs went to Mexico, but the Crowns said that Obama never asked them about saving those jobs, according to Chicago newspapers.)

Watch this infuriated union leader instead of indulging your sex fantasies, you boobs:

– From “Machinists Union Tells It Like It Is” (about Obama)

Why, oh why?

Oops. Did I just ruin the sex fantasy for you? I’m so sorry. Not.

A teaspoon of knowledge about who this man REALLY is would sober these people up plenty fast, and they’d no longer be plagued by their insanely goofy obsessions with him and his supposed fantastic sex life. Good god almighty. I just shake my head.

That stimulus package should include counseling and psychiatric help for all of these still-delusional Obamabots living in their unreal Obamatopia.

:::::

For those stout enough to take it, the full “article” is here: “Sometimes a President Is Just a President.”

Listen to the video in its entirety because Matthews describes further how VERY near he was to where that bomb went off. And Ayers (of course, this was not discussed today) is a free man solely because his attorneys managed to prove the FBI improperly conducted wiretaps. (I have MUCH MORE TO SAY about this below, and ask you to read along and then share YOUR reactions and add your own knowledge and your own impressions of what occurred, shamefully, on MSNBC.)

I can only imagine what Concerned Mother would have to say about this travesty.

It is unconscionable to me that we and the MSM constantly RAGE about O.J. Simpson, who murdered two people, but not reject Barack Obama, a presidential candidate, now president-elect, who has associated freely and over a long time with a man who could have killed dozens and dozens of people.

On his remarkable radio show a few weeks ago, Nocturnal Warrior made a brilliant point about PEBO’s selection of numerous former Clinton White House and cabinet members. Warrior said that PEBO has to select such people because he has almost no FRIENDS or LONGTIME ASSOCIATES to appoint to any serious jobs in his administration. This is a situation that has NEVER occurred in the history of the presidency of the United States. Heretofore, every U.S. president has had a rich collection of friends, associates, and allies from whom he could select many qualified for high-ranking administration positions. But not Barack Obama. You faithful readers of No Quarter know of many of Obama’s real longtime associates: Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, William Ayers, Allison and Cullen Davis, Penny Pritzker, Bernardine Dohrn, and on and on, only a very, very few of them suited for any respectable position at any level in an administration. (I’ve clicked several Categories to provide you with a list.) And now, this week, we learn more about other Obama longtime associates like Rod Bagojevich and his wife.

William Ayers’ Crimes, and Additional Perspective History

The SOLE reason no one died is because Ayers et al. were piss-poor bomb makers. What is the sentence range these days for an attempt to commit murder? And don’t forget all the other bombs that nearly killed many others. Including the judge, his wife, and his children — while they slept — simply because that judge was doing his job: Handling the trial of a Black Panther. I’m not generally in favor of the death penalty, but Ayers’ and the Weather Underground’s attempts, repeatedly, to kill as many people as possible in the Capitol, the Pentagon, police stations, and a judge’s home are the works of people so dangerous that those people should never be freed, and may be eligible to be charged with a capital offense.

Ayers has famously said, “Free as a bird, guilty as hell, ain’t America great.” (From Larry Johnson’s must-read article, “A Statement by a Retired FBI Agent Re William Ayers.”)

Dear readers, please understand this: All that, to Matthews, is just some history. It has some import to Matthews, given that he might have been blown up himself, but apparently not much since the conversation flows easily and reasonably amicably, and Matthews, at the end of the interview, gladly flogs Ayers’ book. THEN, after this interview, Matthews has his panel on. Matthews asks Joan Walsh, Salon’s editor, why Ayers — who appeared today to be “confessional” in his tone — didn’t do that during the campaign. Ms. Walsh LAUGHS with a SMIRK on her face, and says, “I think he wanted to stay out of it entirely, and not dignify what the McCain campaign and others were doing.”

Thank you, Ms. Walsh. We now know who the real criminals are. Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sarah Palin.

Ms. Walsh, please share your opinions with John Murtagh. Well, of course. That’s unfair. You don’t know who John Murtagh is.

Uppity Woman can tell you, in her story, “When This Man Was 9 Years Old, Ayers Bombed His Home.”

If I may, I will contrast the actions of William Ayers and the rest of the sociopathic members of the Weather Underground to the actions of a man who — unless you’re my age and you closely followed anti-war activities during the Vietnam War — you’ve probably NEVER heard of, and will not hear of in the MSM.

After all, he didn’t make bombs. He didn’t befriend a future president and excite the easily excitable rightwing. He simply did the hard work of truly changing history and he paid the price that true, albeit boring, heroes do, in anonymity.

His name is David Harris.

He was the resident counselor in the boys’ dormitory across the street from my girls’ dorm. Many of us sat at his feet as he modestly told us his stories about traveling to the South in summers past to try to help black people get the right to vote. He also shared with us the music he’d learned about in the South — the blues. He told us about Muddy Waters and more. We were entranced. With him, with his stories and the very REAL danger he was in during those summers when white racists wanted to kill him and every white college kid who dared to fight for blacks’ right to vote.

He ran for student body president and I worked on his campaign. He ran on the sole condition that, if elected, he would not serve. He won in a landslide. And did not serve.

Then his draft number came up. (My memory is vague these days, but I believe he tried all the normal routes available back then, such as conscientious objector status, and so on. All of those routes failed.)

So he went to prison. Leavenworth. About seven years ago, I did a search on him, curious what his life had been like. I discovered that he had written a book about his time in Leavenworth, along with his then-wife Joan Baez. I bought the book, and read it. It was a heart-wrenching account. I had no idea that being an inmate in Leavenworth was such a horrific, maddening, insane experience.

It is a simple story, really.

He refused to fight for a war he did not believe was right.

The U.S. government tried him and sentenced him to prison.

He served roughly three years, as I recall.

You may disagree with his decision, but he decided to take the punishment like a man.

He had a father who, as I remember it, was an attorney in Fresno, California. His father surely had some means, but not enough to prevent his son from going to prison.

Bill Ayers had a father who was Chairman of Commonwealth Edison and a mover/shaker in Chicago politics, the arts and education. His father had the means to hire a cadre of attorneys who successfully prevented his son from spending a single day in prison.

David Harris did not build bombs.

He tried to help blacks in the South get to vote, at great risk to his own life.

He helped educate and watched over younger students attending the university, which was often a tedious task, listening to those 18-year-olds’ angst and fear and uncertainty and their various problems with and anxieties about their classes.

He helped the students with the difficult reading for the required freshman class, The History of Western Civilization, because he had read all of those works, including all of Plato, Socrates, and more, and he could — and did — explain those works to those anxious students. He spoke with them patiently and kindly and always very softly.

He was a hulk of a man with broad thick shoulders and a large angular head and a blond mustache but he was, as they say, a gentle giant.

He did not teach the younger students to build bombs or burn down buildings.

He taught the students about giving black people the right to vote and about the blues and about philosophy and about literature and about political thinking and about peaceful protest and about Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

He marched and sang folk songs with his wife, who bore their son.

What a dull man.

Doubtless, Chris Matthews will never invite David Harris for a feature interview.

If only he’d built bombs and then buddied up with a future president, he’d be a sought-after guest.

At least he has an entry in Wikipedia.

:::::::::::

Via Google News results:

Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ – NewsBusters

Chris Matthews invited on Bill Ayers on Wednesday night’s “Hardball,” and actually confronted him about his bombing of Capitol Hill during his days as a member of the ’60s terrorist group Weather Underground, as the former Capitol Hill police officer emotionally observed: “I was a Capitol policeman at the time, so I was one of the guys that could have been killed obviously at the time you put that, your guys put that bomb in there. So I have a little personal interest. It wasn’t just vandalism. To me it was life-threatening to the guys I worked with. And there were some pretty good guys working there.”

However Matthews, who paradoxically may not even be alive to conduct this interview today if the Weather Underground’s bombs were more devastating, devoted most of the interview tossing softballs Ayers’ way, as the two often agreed with each other on Barack Obama and Iraq policy as the “Hardball” host pointed out they only really differed on how to spread their points of view: “Well, Mr. Ayers, with all due respect, you agitate your way, I agitate my way.

Matthews, who back in October dismissed Sarah Palin’s mention of Ayers, as “the politics of distraction,” began the interview by setting up Ayers to play down any association he had with Obama: …

READ ALL: Matthews to Ayers: ‘I Agitate My Way, You Agitate Your Way‘ — NewsBusters

AND READ MORE of NoQuarter’s treasure trove of materials on the bombings conducted by William Ayers.

“Ms. Jarrett’s role will be threefold, as is her title: White House Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison.

A longstanding member of Barack Obama’s tiny core of top advisers, she will continue providing him with counsel on a wide-ranging set of issues, she said Friday evening. Second, she will serve as the White House’s point person for business with state and local officials. Additionally, she will supervise the Office of Public Liaison, a relatively quiet office which she hopes to turn into a more active channel for government-citizen collaboration.” (Read all. Italics mine.)

When you’ve done as much opposition research on Obama as has this blog, it is amazing what can be found right HERE about a woman about whom most American are saying, “Who’s she?” — at the very same moment that all of you veteran NoQuarter readers are saying, “Oh yeah. Her. It figures.”

Here, in chronological order, are snippets from many of our stories that refer to Valerie Jarrett. Even with our handy administrative-section search engine, this took a while, but it’s worth it:

(1) From the great investigative story by City Nell, a true must-read, “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford,” February 4, 2008 (edited brilliantly by Truthteller) — which, besides pointing out Jarrett’s significant role in the trajectory of Michelle’s career path, also explains how Michelle Obama became aware of the availability of the historic mansion:

… In 1996, she left the Public Allies to help create a student volunteer program at The University of Chicago. By the time of this interview, she was the Executive Director of Community Affairs for The University of Chicago Hospitals. This is how Michelle portrays her change of career:

She was devastated when her father died from MS complications. “That’s when I started analyzing my life, sitting in a firm,” she recalls, adding that in that same year she also lost one of her best friends from college to cancer. She soon left the firm to pursue a much lower-paying path in the public sector.

The fact is Michelle was actively recruited for City Hall by a close friend, Valerie Jarrett, who was Mayor Daley’s Deputy Chief of Staff at that time. Valerie later became the Finance Chair of Obama’s 2004 US Senate campaign and then First Treasurer of Barack’s political action committee, Hopefund.

It helps to have friends at City Hall. Among other positions, Michelle was appointed twice to sit on the board of the Commission of Chicago Landmarks for two consecutive terms. Michelle maintained this board seat from 1998 to March 2005, although normally a member only serves one 4 year term. …

(2) From NoQuarter’s story (formerly known as nasuS), “Obama’s 2006 Earmarks & the Crown Family,” March 13, 2008 (aided, as always, by Truthteller’s considerable knowledge of all things Chicago and by Andy, a reader who’s sent me great tips for a long time):

Lynn Sweet, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, has more on Michelle Obama and Obama’s other earmarks:

Obama sought money for the University of Chicago Hospitals. Wife Michelle works for the University of Chicago Hospitals, appointed in spring 2005 as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She is now on leave from the job to campaign for her husband. Top campaign adviser and friend Valerie Jarrett is the Chair of the University of Chicago Medical Center Board and also Chair of the Executive Committee of that board. She has also been named Vice-Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. Obama taught at the U. of Chicago law school and the Obama’s two daughters attend school there. [bold mine]

Here’s an FYI digression: My March 13th story begins with the significance of the Crown family’s money to Obama’s rise — Larry Johnson has correctly tagged the billionaire Crown and Pritzker families as of the highest influence to both Barack Obama and his aide-de-camp Rahm Emanuel — and a cautionary tale for those KoolAid dipsomaniacs:

Do you remember the Crown family? Do you remember the Crown patriarch who sits on the board of Maytag? Do you recall that Barack Obama, as a U.S. Senate candidate, met with Maytag workers, asked for their donations and promised them he’d help save their jobs, and that he then went to the Crown family and took their large donations, but never said a word to Crown about saving the jobs of the Maytag workers? …

(3) From Larry Johnson’s story, “Let’s Help Barack Fight the ‘Smears’,” June 12, 2008, which answered his critics taunting him about the “whitey tape”:

Now, are you ready for the shocker? Look at the next paragraph of [Time magazine reporter Karen Tumulty's] piece:

When the Obama campaign got wind of the rumor in April, Michelle’s close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett asked Michelle if there could be anything to it; the candidate’s wife dismissed it out of hand.

I did not hear about the tape until MAY. REPEAT. I DID NOT HEAR ABOUT THE TAPE UNTIL MAY. Yet, the Obama campaign knew about the tape in April. Got it? And I am the one responsible for the so called rumor? …

(4) From Un coup de des’s story, “Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron,” June 27, 2008, a stunning and sickening story of how Obama abetted his greedy friends in making millions from taxpayers by privatizing public housing and letting it go to ruin or driving out the poor. You will see that Valerie Jarrett had a DIRECT ROLE and MADE MILLIONS from taxpayers’ monies while making the inhabitants of public housing criminally miserable. If you’ve never read this story, you simply must do so. If only the MSM had picked up this courageous investigative report by the Boston Globe and given it the “play” it deserved, Barack Obama would likely not be president-elect. That is how devastating this story is.

It is stomach-churning that Valerie Garrett had ANY role in this cruel, corrupt, and calamitously consumptive plundering of public monies.

First, a brief introduction from the No Quarter story is in order:

This is the first of a series of articles to be written on a lengthy exposé published in the Boston Globe entitled “Grim Proving Ground for Obama’s Housing Policy.” The 27 JUN 2008 investigative report is required reading for all No Quarter users. …

Now, here is first of the bizarre, baffling and bold sections that describe some of Valerie Jarrett’s plundering and political moves:

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.

One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.

Similar to Rezko, Cecil Butler is a developer who profited from the privatization of low income, public housing in Chicago during the 1990s.   Butler is also not coincidentally a major supporter of Barack Obama whose low income tenements were ultimately seized by the government for multiple building code violations.

The Boston Globe provides a description and a brief history of Butler’s Lawndale Restoration.

[...]

And yet more:

Who helped Cecil Butler secure government funds for Woodlawn Restoration?  Barack Obama, of course: the same Barack Obama who wrote letters on behalf of Rezko’s slum properties the same year residents of Rezko’s tenements were complaining of lack of heat and sanitation services.   For the Executive Vice President of Habitat Co., the company who helped Butler manage his deteriorating warren of slums, was Valerie Jarrett, another Obama contributor who develops low income housing and serves as a top advisor to the Obama for President campaign.  The Boston Globe explains how Obama exploited his position as state Senator to assist Jarrett and Cecil Butler.  I quote:

Obama translated that belief into legislative action as a state senator. In 2001, Obama and a Republican colleague, William Peterson, sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his taxable income by 50 cents. …

This No Quarter story ends thusly:

 A disturbing pattern emerges, and it can be summarized as follows:

• Obama secured funds for developers who desired to earn profits off of low income housing during the privitization scheme of the Chicago Housing Authority that occurred during Barack Obama’s tenure as a state Senator.  Those developers include Tony Rezko, Valerie Jarrett and Cecil Butler.
• These public-private partnerships failed, leaving many in squalor.
• Barack Obama remained silent, but he accepted contributions from Rezko, Jarrett, Butler and others.
• Rezko is not an isolated case.  Obama also colluded with the likes of Cecil Butler, whose negligence inspired African-American residents of the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side to organize support for radical Republican Alan Keyes during Obama’s 2004 Senate bid.
• Obama’s desire to privatize public housing has resulted in a series of failed projects that have left the indigent in squalor.
• But Obama accepted the political contributions of these unscrupulous developers nonetheless.

Flineo created a video entitled “Obama’s Forgotten People,” and I publish it again, as there is a new group of low income housing residents on the West Side of Chicago Obama we can add to the group on the South Side Obama abandoned in order to climb the political and social ladder.

[...]

Nothing, in my opinion, is more deplorable than a career politician who exploited African-Americans in low income housing for political and personal gain.  And Obama did it again and again in inner city Chicago.  Now he has manipulated African-Americans across the country to view his candidacy as the empowerment of the very people Obama ignored in order to line the pockets of his slumlord friends and contributors.  Progressives and ostensible Democrats may forget, but those of us who are concerned with social justice will continue to serve as the true muckrakers this election cycle. 

 The edifices reproduced in this essay are buildings managed by Cecil Butler.  The restoration project that followed in the wake of Cecil Butler’s mismanagement of Lawndale Restoration is described in this document.

There are so many more stories to share with you, but I’m weary at the moment. You can find so many more by simply searching our site.

These stories about the public housing always tear me up. Let’s end with Flineo’s great video:

He is a quintessential enigma wrapped in a conundrum (i.e., an inscrutable mystery having only a conjectural answer). He is an old style Chicago politician, complete with all of the corruption and unsavory relationships, but has a soothing voice and easy manner. He got away with a mythological presentation of his family history in part because the media was unwilling to ask him why he was known as Barry Soetoro until he was about 18 years old. He has still not explained his trip as a young man to Indonesia and Pakistan.

We know nothing about his academic achievements in college. If you have an honest, objective bone in your body you will admit that if he had high SAT or ACT scores we would have heard about it. His college performance as an undergraduate was mediocre and he certainly earned no accolades for getting a high GPA. Otherwise, we would have heard about it. I graduated Cum Laude and was Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Missouri. We know nothing about Obama’s record at Columbia University or Occidental College.

We do have a clear record of his clever politicking but meager accomplishments since 1995.

Barack is a savvy, tough politician. He figured out a way to shove an established politician, Alice Palmer out of the way. And he won election to the Senate of the United States. However, he was at best an undistinguished legislator and only got his name on a slew of bills in his last two years in the Illinois state legislature thanks to Emil Jones. Barack avoided many tough votes, often choosing to vote “present,” but did not champion any major legislation. He continued this record in the U.S. Senate. He did not chair any hearings and undertook no significant legislative initiatives.

Barack did prove to be adept at raising money. This was achieved, as we will discover in the coming year, through the efforts of two prominent Chicago families–Lester Crown and Penny Pritzker–who also bankrolled Rahm Emanuel.

In fact, I believe that Rahm Emanuel may have been the one to introduce Obama to the Crown and Pritzker network. It is a point worth pursuing. Barack also put together a very sophisticated, nationwide campaign organization that made phone calls to prospective voters and knocked on doors.

We have discussed in detail on this site the fraudulent fundraising that was part of his campaign. At the end of the day, Barack reneged on his promise to rely on public funding and outspent the McCain folks by at least a factor of 8. Let’s give Barack credit–he played hardball and won. He’s not the first politician to use political and financial shenanigans to beat an opponent–just ask Barry Goldwater and George McGovern about Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon).

I have watched and listened with a mixture of amazement and sadness at the celebrations of African Americans over Barack’s triumph. Let’s be clear. Barack is no Jackie Robinson (Jack Roosevelt “Jackie” Robinson). Back in the day when African Americans were banned from competing on an equal basis, there was no doubt that Jackie Robinson and host of other black baseball players deserved to play in the Major Leagues. The breaking of that color barrier was long overdue.

But Barack Obama has never, until now, had any significant experience managing a government enterprise. If he had been white, with his record and associations, he would never have been elected and certainly would not have ousted Hillary Clinton. So let’s admit that he is an Affirmative Action choice by a majority of Americans.

I welcome sending a clear signal to every person who is a minority in this country that they are accepted and loved. The legacy of racism in our country has left ugly wounds that unfortunately are still festering. It is odd that so many African Americans continue to insist there is blatant racism in the face of the commercial and professional achievements of black entertainers, athletes, and businessmen and women. America today is not the America of 1946 that still allowed segregation and kept talented individuals like Jackie Robinson, Josh Gibson and Larry Doby from having the opportunity to compete.

The nice thing about the full integration of professional sports is that we no longer worry or think about a players color when discussing their performance. As a Washington Redskins fan I think cornerback Carlos Rogers is a bust. The man, who has dropped more sure-fire interceptions than any cornerback I can remember, could not catch the clap in a Thailand whorehouse. Shawn Springs, however, is a stud who delivers. When Washington played Pittsburgh last Monday Springs was out with an injury, which gave Rogers the chance to play. My point in this is to illustrate that in talking about the performance of these two men we don’t worry about their color. It is what they do on the field during a game that counts.

In watching Jesse Jackson, Juan Williams, and Oprah Winfrey weep over the news that Barack had won, I could only think of Sally Fields. Remember when she won the Academy Award for her work in Places in the Heart? She tearfully accepted the Oscar with this unforgettable line:

“The first time I didn’t feel it but this time I feel it and I can’t deny the fact you like me. Right now, you like me!”

So, America now has officially told black people, “we like you, we really, really like you.” Got it? From that standpoint I am happy that Obama’s election will inspire and reassure African Americans that they are accepted. Barack’s election does not completely erase the scars of segregation and Jim Crow, but it is a welcome step.

It is now Barack’s Martin Luther King moment. We are not going to judge you by the color of your skin but by the content of your character. We are going to judge you on what you do. So how is that going?

Barack’s selection of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff is alarming and troubling. It is a sign that he is catering to the Lester Crown family and his national finance chair, Penny Pritzker. He selected a man who served on the board of Fannie Mae when deliberate lies about the company’s performance were reported to shareholders. He selected a man who was a strong supporter of the October 2002 resolution to go to war in Iraq. The fact that Emanuel is closely tied to his money people tells me that this is more of the old style politics that rewards those who pay the most.

On the plus side, Barack has selected some solid people to advise him on what to do about the intelligence community. He and his advisors are showing good judgment on that front. I look forward to getting back to an intelligence community that is allowed to be a truth teller without being subjected to political pressure.

I do not hate Barack Obama. While I think he is unqualified to be a good President I stand ready to be proven wrong. Which reminds me of Robert Gates. I opposed Robert Gates as the replacement for Don Rumsfeld. Gates’ record at the CIA was not distinguished. He played politics with intelligence and pandered to the Reagan White House.

But let’s give Bob Gates his due. He has been an outstanding Secretary of Defense and has restored sanity and integrity to that entity. I was wrong about Bob Gates. I hope I am wrong about Barack Obama. If I am, then America will be better off.

If you made it through that video, I respect your capacity for the intolerable. Should someone call CPS? Geeezzz. Here is how the creator of that video, KathySawada, who has also created a Web site, “Sing For Change,” describes the experience:

Sing for Change chronicles a recent Sunday afternoon, when 22 children, ages 5-12, gathered to sing original songs in the belief that their singing would lift up our communities for the coming election. Light, hope, courage and love shine through these nonvoting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing.

Do those children and their parents have any clue about “Obama’s forgotten people”?

• Ask the tenants of Dear Leader’s financier Tony Rezko, whose tenants froze for months during a Chicago winter because Rezko didn’t manage the properties Obama’s influence gave him the means to buy up.
• Ask the mother of the little boy who died because Dear Leader’s close financial ally, Cullen Davis, couldn’t bother to maintain the iron fencing on the former public housing, which fell and crushed the little boy to death. (Watch that video, you privileged children and parents.)
• Ask the union employees of Maytag to whom Dear Leader promised he’d work hard to keep their jobs in Illinois, but when Dear Leader took money from the billionaire scion of the Crown family and a major owner of Maytag, it so happens that Dear Leader never even mentioned those Maytag workers to the one man with the influence to affect those workers, all of whose jobs left the country.

What planet are the parents of those children living on? Certainly not anywhere near the reality of most Americans’ lives. But, silly me. All we need to do is sing, “Yes we can,” and all those troubles will magically go away. HERE’S THE VIDEO THAT THESE CHILDREN, AND THEIR PARENTS, SHOULD BE WATCHING:

Yes, that’s another video by the great Flineo.

It breaks my heart every time I watch it.

It would break the heart of any person not doped up on Hopium.

Next, more tripe from the YouTube page about the planet these Hopium-addicted goofball parents are living on — that has nothing to do with the real-life problems that Barack Obama has ignored or used to enrich his corrupt pals. It’s disgusting to read this tripe:

Sing for Change was a confluence of hard work, good will, and shared vision. Inspired by ideas raised at a grassroots Obama fundraiser, a music teacher, Kathy Sawada, and the children composed and rehearsed the songs in less than two weeks. Several musicians heard of the effort and volunteered to accompany the children. Parents and older siblings designed and provided the T-Shirts and the banner. There’s a first for everything, but rarely do so many firsts come together at once: for the children and their parents, this is their first performance, first video, first banner, and first involvement with grassroots work on a presidential campaign.

As Sunday approached, a neighbor volunteered a home. Production wizards got wind of the project and offered their help in recording it. The likes of Jeff Zucker, Holly Schiffer, Peter Rosenfeld, Darin Moran, Jean Martin, Andy Blumenthal, and Nick Phoenix rearranged schedules to participate. Holly Schiffer was able to get three High Definition cameras (Panasonic HVX250’s), and an AVID editing facility. When Jeff Zucker went to pick up the camera package, Ted Schilowitz happened to be there and offered a RED camera set up on a Steadi Cam.

What we accomplished in a few hours on a Sunday afternoon embodies the nature of the Obama campaign: its grassroots inspiration, its inclusiveness, its community building. People pitched in quickly for a cause that resonated with them. There were not many conditions: “Think this is a good idea? Want to help? Great. Sunday at 12:00.” At the heart of the project were 22 children and their music. The willingness of all involved to come together for them was a testament to our hope, unity, courage, joy and belief in the future represented by these children.

We are offering the video to everyone, the Obama campaign and all media with high hopes that we can all join together to Sing for Change.

Technical info: Running time = 3 minutes; Standard Definition and HD Broadcast quality

WE’RE GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD Music and lyrics by Lily Campbell, age 9

We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em

We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
We’re gonna change the world.

SING FOR CHANGE
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada

Now’s the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!

YES WE CAN
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada

Yes we can
Lift each other up
In peace, in love, in hope
Change! Change!

sing…vote

http://www.barackobama.com

http://www.singforchange.com/

The denial of access to the archives of the CAC was unusual and possibly illegal.  It was done after the University, again without any legal justification that I am aware of, contacted someone they said was the “donor” of the records. That “donor” wanted to examine the records prior to their release to the public.

This is highly unusual in light of the fact that the records had been deposited with UIC in 2002 and had been processed by UIC librarians and made ready for access by researchers.  Only when Mr. Kurtz, a conservative, requested that he be allowed to see them was the “donor” contacted.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of a 3rd year law student in Chicago who filed a Freedom of Information Act request with UIC, Global Labor can reveal tonight that the alleged “donor” who was contacted by UIC and who tried to block Dr. Kurtz’ access to the CAC records was Ken Rolling, former Executive Director of the CAC and a former staff member of the Woods Fund in the 1980s when the Woods Fund provided financial support to the Developing Communities Project which was then headed up by Barack Obama.

Thus, someone with a 20 year history with Senator Obama was tipped off in advance and in secret by a public University about the interest of a political opponent of the Senator in these public records.  The CAC was a non profit corporation organized under the laws of the state of Illinois to serve the interests of the people of Illinois.  Of course, Ken Rolling now has no legally cognizable interest that I am aware of in the long defunct CAC.  Legally, the successor organization to the CAC is the Chicago Public Education Fund, on whose board sits Obama Campaign Finance Chair Penny Pritzker and Obama supporter Susan Crown.

I am reviewing now the documents that were produced as a result of this FOIA request.  As soon as I complete my review and assessment I will post the documents here as well as my conclusions.

- Steve Diamond (biography and blog)

::::::::::::::::::::::

SusanUnPC’s Note: Read all of law professor Steve Diamond’s articles on the six-year, $160-million Annenberg project that Barack Obama never mentions — curious, isn’t it — when he’s asked about executive experience.

Others here, including Larry Johnson, have also written about the Annenberg project. Larry’s most recent article was “The Obama-Ayers Coverup [Update] .”

Today’s “Obama’s Northern Trust connections” reveals that Barack Obama did indeed have a long relationship with his mortgage company, Northern Trust — which granted the Obamas a favorable mortgage in 2005.

When Obama served on the Woods Fund from 1993 to 2001, along with former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers, both he and Ayers dealt with Northern Trust, which provided “financial services.” The Woods Fund used Northern Trust’s investment services, and — with Obama’s and Ayers’ votes — approved $105,583 in fees and also participated in a Northern Trust private equity fund.

The plot, as they say, “thickens”:

We have Barack Obama and Bill Ayers sitting on the same Woods Funds board which hired Northern Trust’s financial services and equity fund.

Bill Ayers is the son of another Chicago titan, Thomas Ayers, who was the head of Commonwealth Edison.

Thomas G. Ayers served on the Finance Committee of the General Dynamics Corp. board of directors with Lester Crown, the largest share holder. It just so happens that Northern Trust was the trustee of the corporation’s Salaried Savings Plan and the Hourly Savings Plan overseen by the Committee.

So we have long relationships between Thomas Ayers and Lester Crown, and between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers — all with Northern Trust.

Well, as all the MSM reporters concluded rather snappily last week, there’s nothing to see here. There can’t possibly be any connection between the favorable loan that the Obamas received in 2005 on that mansion they couldn’t afford and the mortgage company Northern Trust, with whom Obama and Ayers dealt between 1993 and 2001, let alone Ayers’ father’s connections to Northern Trust and to Lester Crown. So let’s all just move along.

But in case you’re curious, check out today’s “Obama’s Northern Trust Connections” and our stories at No Quarter:

• “Bloggers Who Think Dig Into Obama Mortgage Loan Story”
• “Chicago Billionaire Industrialist on Board of Obama’s Mortgage Provider”
• “That ‘Guy Who Lives in My Neighborhood’: Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship” by law professor Steve Diamond
• “Obamas’ Home Loan Update and Taxes” by LisaB
• “Obamas Got Discounted Home Loan” by TexasDarlin

It surely helps to have friends in high places.

It clearly is financially beneficial.

One can also implore such friends, billionaire industrialists that they are who are majority shareholders of companies such as Maytag, to save endangered U.S. jobs.

Or one can choose not to bother such friends with such matters that aren’t in one’s self-interest.

Just ask Tom Buffenbarger.

• Our TexasDarlin pointed out the favorable treatment the Obamas received compared to the “neglected slums” of their impoverished neighbors in unimaginably horrific “public” housing that Obama helped privatize so that his rich longtime buddies — like Tony Rezko and Allison Davis — could scoop up tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money while the properties were left in such disrepair that many became uninhabitable.
• LisaB addressed the mysterious payments of property taxes for the Obamas.
• Now, Flopping Aces resurrects the mystery of Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi who helped an in-debt Tony Rezko (in exchange for what?) around the time Rezko somehow managed to help the Obamas buy their mansion:
  

  While there is no evidence that the bank in question had a program like Countrywide did, it sure does smell like political favoritism. Not as big of a deal as Johnson’s, Dodd’s, and Conrad’s, but you combine that with Tony Rezko’s involvement in the house deal when Rezko did not have the money to buy the property (at which point Iraqi financier Auchi comes in) and you get a fishy smell.

Ah. Nadhmi Auchi. Flopping Aces, a few months ago, reported:

Who is Auchi? He is an associate of Saddam’s who gave Rezko some big bucks and soon after receiving those big bucks Rezko helped Obama purchase a new home by buying the empty lot next to it at the same time. Auchi was convicted of fraud in France and was banned from entering the US in 2005. …

How in debt is Tony Rezko? During his federal trial, in March 2008, it was reported he is $50 million in debt. In fact, ABC News used this headline, which I cited in my story, “ABC News: Rezko $50 million in debt [Updated x3]“:

Rezko In Debt $50 Million; How Did He Afford Obama Lot?
Court Transcript Says Rezko Depends on Family Handouts of $7,500 a Month

In the same story, I wrote:

[F]rom the ABC News summary: Rezko “told the judge he had no current source of income, saying his last business deal involving a proposed power plant in Iraq had been cancelled.” That venture involved convicted Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi. See Larry Johnson’s story, “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?“

Of course, the Rezko scandal hasn’t derailed Obama, so protected by the media. If the Clintons were similarly indebted to an indicted (and now convicted) slumlord who bilked taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars, you’d hear the story ad nauseum.

Here’s more from my March story that owed much to ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross’s digging — including the laughable purchase of the adjacent lot by Mrs. Rezko, who had no financial means and obviously couldn’t rely on her heavily in-debt husband — which begs the QUESTION: Who supplied the money that enabled the Rezkos to make possible the purchase of the Obamas’ $1.6 million mansion?

Rezko’s bleak financial picture raises the question of how the Rezkos were able to buy a vacant lot adjoining the home of Sen. Barack Obama in 2005, at a time Rezko says he was already in deep debt.

Rezko also reveals in the testimony, before Judge Amy St. Eve on Jan. 16, 2007, that he already knew he was under federal investigation at the time of the land purchase and had hired a criminal defense attorney to deal with the “feds.”

Obama says he sought Rezko’s help because the house he wanted to buy in Chicago’s Hyde Park came with an adjoining lot the seller wanted to sell at the same time.

Unable to afford it himself, Obama says Mrs. Rezko bought it for $625,000, and then later sold a strip of the lot back to Obama so he would have a larger yard. Obama says he paid Mrs. Rezko a fair market price. …

Here’s a bit more from the ABC News story:

… Mrs. Rezko makes $37,500 a year.

[...]

According to the transcript, Mrs. Rezko sold the vacant lot a few weeks before the hearing, with all proceeds going to pay previous debts.

Asked how he was able to pay his lawyer, Joseph Duffy, Rezko said family and some unnamed “friends” were paying his legal bills.

Duffy told the judge, “Mr. Rezko has not provided us any money since his indictment.”

Rezko told the judge he had no current source of income, saying his last business deal involving a proposed power plant in Iraq had been cancelled.

He said he had an ongoing relationship with Nadhmi Auchi, a London-based Iraqi billionaire convicted on French fraud charges, who Rezko described as a close friend and business associate. …

Okay, you “professional” journalists — like Politico’s Ben Smith who calls the Washington Post story “padded” and is done with it:

– Tell me how the Rezkos got the money to enable the Obamas to buy the mansion they couldn’t afford.

– Tell me that Nadhmi Auchi’s money didn’t give the Rezkos the funds they needed to buy the vacant lot required for the Obamas to close the sale on the mansion.

– Tell me what Nadhmi Auchi got out of helping Tony Rezko. Billionaires don’t get that rich by helping desperate businessmen who are under federal indictment and facing long prison sentences.

– Tell me that major Obama campaign contributor Susan Crown, on the Board of Directors of Northern Trust mortgage company since 1997, didn’t make a phone call or two to make sure the Obamas got a favorable mortgage loan.

– Tell me why Barack Obama promised Maytag workers he’d fight for their jobs and took their hard-earned money for his campaign, then turned around and got a big donation from Maytag board member Lester Crown (as well as his family and friends), but never said a word to Crown about saving those workers’ jobs?

And, while we’re at it:

– Tell me why state senator puppetmaster Emil Jones put Barack Obama on the state senate pensions committee for three months, during which time that committee defeated an effort to consolidate state pensions? At the same time that Tony Rezko was fighting the consolidation because it would have defeated his schemes for dipping into individual minority-owned pension management companies.

Dear readers, if you want to know more about Nadhmi Auchi and Tony Rezko, click here. We’ve been on these stories since last year.

Again: If Nadhmi Auchi were involved with Hillary Clinton, every American would know his name and his sordid dealings with Saddam Hussein, his conviction in France, and his billionaire status.

But it’s rare that a journalist gets to write about stories like these, let alone get any prominent coverage of his or her story.

However, shortly, we will reveal additional details about the membership of the Chicago-headquartered billionaire Crown family on the board of directors of Northern Trust, which granted the Obamas their advantageous loan. Crown family members have been major donors to Obama’s campaigns, and serve on his elite fundraisers group for his presidential campaign.

Among the most disturbing stories of Obama’s many efforts to give political and legislative advantages to the Crown family’s holdings, Senate candidate Barack Obama promised Illinois’ Maytag workers he’d work to protect their jobs — and took campaign donations from the beleagured workers — but then met with Lester Crown, on the board of directors of Maytag, to take his campaign donations. Crown later told the press that Obama never raised the workers’ fate with him. The machinists lost their jobs to Maytag’s Mexican plant. From my story, “Machinists’ Union TELLS It Like It Is ,” quoting a must-read article at TradingMarkets.com, “Obama’s fundraising, rhetoric collide: Union says senator did little to save jobs“:

Obama had a special connection to Maytag: Lester Crown, one of the company’s directors and biggest investors whose family, records show, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaigns since 2003. But Crown says Obama never raised the fate of the Galesburg plant with him, …

These are the ties that bind:

Barack Obama plays the “populist” routine in his campaign speeches, but he delivers to his billionaire benefactors, not the common working stiffs who are losing their jobs and their homes.

Now for a quick round-up of bloggers’ reports on the Obamas’ “sweetheart” home mortgage from Northern Trust, on whose board a billionaire member of the Crown family sits:

Hot Air blog:

Barack Obama’s home loan has more questionable aspects than just the Tony Rezko connections, according to the Washington Post. After ten years as a prominent Chicago politician and in his first year in the Senate, Obama got a $1.32 million loan below market rates without paying the normal extra fees — a rate which saved him $300 per month on his mortgage. Obama managed to do this despite the extraordinarily large mortgage and his lack of history with the lender:

The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.

The Obamas had no prior relationship with Northern Trust when they applied for the loan. They received an oral commitment on Feb. 4, 2005, and locked in the rate of 5.625 percent, the campaign said. On that date, HSH data show, the average rate in Chicago for a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loan with no points was about 5.94 percent. [...]

Thus far, no evidence has arisen that the Obamas took advantage of a “Friends of Angelo” program, as Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad did with Countrywide. However, the difference in rates — especially for such a large mortgage — gives the appearance of a political favor, at the very least. Combined with the Tony Rezko’s financial involvement in the deal, at a time when Rezko had little income other than that from a shady Iraqi financier and fraudster, and it looks as though people in Chicago really wanted to see the Obamas move into that house.

Northern Trust has helped out Barack Obama in other ways … their employees have donated $71,000 to Obama’s campaigns. When Obama rejected public financing, were these donations the kind that he insisted represented the moral equivalent of the system he championed until he found that he could outraise and outspend his opponents?

Obama has spent plenty of time castigating credit lenders in this campaign for their capricious practices and bad management. He has rung the populist bell. …

The Swamp, Chicago Tribune’s blog — which generally downplays the importance of the WaPo story:

[C]oming as it does after all the disclosures of the erstwhile Friends of Angelo program at Countrywide Financial which apparently benefited some members of Congress and at least one former member of the Obama campaign team, James Johnson, who headed up Obama’s vice presidential selection process until stepping down because of the scandalette, this story about Obama’s mortgage is certainly worth knowing about.

Redstate.com blog:

Obama, caught off-guard about Johnson’s sweetheart Countrywide deals, initially tried to defend his vice presidential talent scout. But, Obama threw Johnson, under the bus, just a few days after Johnson’s Countrywide sweetheart deals came to light.

Obama is spinning his sweetheart mortgage deal as the lender competing for Obama’s business:

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors.

[. . .]

The Obama campaign called the rate “consistent with Northern Trust policies, and it reflected the base rate set for that period discounted to address the competition for the account and other opportunities, such as personal financial services, that the relationship would bring to Northern Trust.”

It’s those “other factors” and “other opportunities” that worry me. Those “factors” and “opportunities” could be anything, including special access to a grateful U.S. Senator or a President.

Presidents, and U.S. Senators, need to avoid the appearance of impropriety. As with Obama’s relationship with the crook, Antoin Rezko, Obama’s judgment once again failed both Obama and America.

Chicago Politics Godfather passes Down the Reins and Anoints Obama! Follow the Money!

Since Carl Bernstein, Keith Oldberman, Tim Russert et al have exposed their complete lack of journalism ethics, exemplified by acting like awe struck teens of the 1960’s over the arrival of The Beatles combined with the excitement of dirty old men in a sleazy, out of the way, XXX Porn Theatre, WE THE PEOPLE are forced to do a long line of Googles, reading, investigating in order to find the truth about Barack Obama!

In an August 2006 interview with Ayers and Dohrn it was stated: Despite their critiques, Ayers and Dohrn are eternal optimists. Over coffee, Dohrn reflected that their activist days can serve as a metaphor for a “candle” that illuminates the past—and the future. Stay vigilant. The light will come.
Funny how Obama started doing due dilligence in August 2006 to run for POTUS!

One thing Obama said during the ABC debate in Philadelphia was: “I think the American people are smarter than that.” Well Senator Obama, some are smart enough to not take you word for it, but to investigate and what is revealed once again, as it was when we investigated Rezko and Rev Wright, is that you lied! How big a lie, unlike Rev Wright where it is all on tape, is revealed with time, as it was with Rezko. But once a liar always a liar. So with that said, let’s begin investigating!

Mountie Captain: I do not approve of your methods!

Ness: Yeah, well… You’re not from Chicago.

- The Untouchables, 1987.

Let’s challenge the media to report. Will they have the honesty and integrity to do so?

What makes Illinois run and who controls the actual power in Illinois, especially in Cook County, isn’t some Mayor or some Senator, or even some Judge; it is actually a two tier power control. Tier one is the Money, and not just any money, but the Foundation and Associations money. Tier two is the Organizers of people and votes. So let’s examine them for a moment!

Foundations and Associations

Chicago has some of the strongest Foundations and Associations in the country, not because of what they control, but because of the large dollars they control and the powerful philanthropists controlling those dollars. These Foundations and Associations have and control Billions upon Billions of dollars. The circle of people within these groups is small, and while claiming to be philanthropists, they like everyone else are simply pushing their own agendas under the guise of doing so for the well being of the community. The more Foundations and Associations a person is on defines the power that person controls, because the greatest of strengths is the networking of the Foundations and Associations, thus controlling more of the money and its usage.

The Foundations and Associations of which a person is allowed to become a member is based upon the position they have in the working world. Status also increases the person’s chances of securing a Chairmanship of Foundations and Associations. That can bring immortal power and even more status to such an individual.

Chicago has many such Foundations and Associations, but the top ones that control the workings of Illinois life are:

• the Chicago Urban League ,
• the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ,
• Chicago Chamber of Commerce and Industy ,
• the Chicago United,
• the Community Renewal Society (Project funder for the United Church of Christ – Rev Wright anyone? Today a Minister from TUCC sits on the board),
• the Illinois Council on Economic Education,
• the Chicago Public Education Fund,
• the Chicago Community Trust,
• the Erikson Institute,
• the Woods Fund Chicago

and the jewel Commercial Club of Chicago, Chicago’s most prestigious business group.

These philanthropy associations drive politics in Illinois.

First discover who is Thomas Ayers. This man welded power in every way!

Thomas G Ayers was many things, but most importantly, he was the behind the scenes Godfather of Illinois Politics right up to his death last June and beyond. He passed the torch to his sons, especially Bill Ayers, Obama’s terrorist friend.

Normally, when you have a child who turns out to be a criminal of major proportions, more so when a child is one of the FBI’s most wanted and a terrorist, life usually becomes unbearable: you’re shunned from the community, and employment is at risk. But not for Thomas Ayers. While his son Bill was bombing America, Thomas Ayers was being promoted to one of a highest profile and prestigious positions in Illinois and the country. He was also handed the keys to the most Nuclear Plants in the country as Chairman of Con Ed!

So why did no one questioned his promotion? When you control a monopoly and you’re the Godfather of Illinois politics, anything is possible and no one can stand in your way.

Many think Mayor Richard J. Daley was the Chicago Kingpin till his death, only to be followed by his son, Mayor Richard M. Daley, but that is not really so. They in fact are simply crooked politicians in fancy suits, mouthpieces for those behind the scenes!

A lot of the following information was pulled from Tom Ayers Obituary of June 8, 2007, at the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, but for some reason they are no longer available. This is also the case with stories on Thomas Ayers. But other sources were found with it!

He was the Chicago establishment, he served on many boards, including that of G.D. Searle & Company (Donald Rumsfeld was CEO from 1977 to 1985 – that why Obama had such high praise of Rumsfeld?), Chicago Pacific Corp (sold Hoover to Maytag in 1985 – Crown Family), Zenith Corp., Northwest Industries, First National Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs and Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune.

But it was during his time as CEO of Con Ed that Thomas Ayers learned to work both sides of the street, making him the go to person in Illinois, the man with the “power”. It all started in the early 1960’s when he helped negotiate the first labor contract between Con Ed and the 12,000 member International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers! Thomas Ayers learned then that power comes from the streets; he also learned that power came from championing the plight of the Black community that provided real power in Chicago!

When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr brought his open house campaign to Chicago in the mid 1960’s, Thomas Ayers was called upon to negotiate between Mayor Richard J. Daley’s administration and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He also developed the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities to fight racial discrimination in housing.

Mr. Thomas Ayers learned then the power of philanthropy and became a leader in Chicago Philanthropy circles and an agent for change. He worked with many powerful nonprofit groups and many Foundations, serving as the chair of the Chicago Urban League, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber of Commerce and Industy, Chicago United, Community Renewal Society (Project funder for the United Church of Christ – Rev Wright anyone? Today a Minister from TUCC sits on the board), Illinois Council on Economic Education, The Chicago Public Education Fund, the Chicago Community Trust, Bank Street College of Education in New York (where Bill Ayers went to school after surfacing in 1980), Erikson Institute and the jewel Commercial Club of Chicago, Chicago’s most prestigious business group. These philanthropy associations drive politics in Illinois, especially with a combined worth exceeding $5 billion. Thomas Ayers knew how to network (new name for manipulate) them all for his own agenda!

If you look at all these Associations and Foundations Board of Directors, you will see the Who’s Who behind Obama’s campaign! According to Thomas Ayers, it all starts at the basics, elections and grass roots, in order to be working from inside the establishment and not fighting from the outside!

James O’Connor, former Chairman and CEO of Com Ed summed it all up about Thomas Ayers: “He had an extraordinary social conscience. He was willing to step into situations where very few people were willing to risk their reputation. He had total courage and never seemed to weigh the consequences of that sort of activity. He never did anything for applause or for any sort of recognition.” In other words it was “all about the power”!

“He was a guy of great intelligence and integrity, and he was willing to put the time in as well,” former Northwestern U president Arnold Weber said. “Those offices are not just honorary or for social distinction.” Again, it is for the “POWER.”

Michael Klonsky (former SDS leader and Founder of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) USA, and author of “Remembering the Summer of ‘66″ (Klonsky also collaborated with Bill Ayers on several projects over the years, and the duo, along with Gabrielle Lyon, of A Simple Justice: The Challenge of Small Schools) had these comments about Thomas Ayers:

Tom Ayers, was a force in the civic life of Chicago. “He will be remembered, not only as a business leader, but as an individual committed to civil rights and school reform. I loved to argue politics and baseball with Tom although I can’t say I ever made him see it my way in either area.”

Equally important to Mr. Thomas Ayers was the educational and financial advancement of African-Americans. “He felt the black community’s success was key to Chicago’s success,” son John Ayers said. “He pushed business people to be more open in the 1960s.”

Look at Thomas Ayers present day successor at Con Ed, Mr. Frank M Clark, who joined Con Ed under Ayers’s reign in 1966. Now compare Clark to Ayers by the Foundations Clark is on: the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Metropolitan Family Services, The Chicago Community Trust, the governing board of the Illinois Council on Economic Education, the Economic Club of Chicago, The Commercial Club of Chicago, and the Executives’ Club of Chicago. Clark also was ranked among the 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America by Fortune magazine in 2002. Mr. Clark also happens to be a super bundler for Obama. He is also a lobbyist.

——————————————-

“In the ’60s and ’70s, we went through some rough patches in our family,” he said. “He was very sweet and supportive of us all. He used to say, ‘It takes all kinds’ to get the world moving forward.” John Ayers worked on School Reform in the 1980’s representing the powerful Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Commitee that was put in place in 1983 in part to provide business sector leadership in support of the reform of the Chicago Public School system and public school financing.

During a 1993 interview by the Chicago Magazine with Bernadine Dohrn, many revelations materialized, some lies (she is a terrorist, after all), some not! She and her husband Bill Ayers have held high-profile dinner parties and seem to do so often. Obama’s campaign and political career launch party in 1995 was just one in a line of them.Terrorism today according to Bill Ayers’s good friend and fellow Weather Underground member, who is also today’s MDS partner, Mark Rudd is explained on his website. It starts at the basics, elections and grass roots, to be working from inside the establishment, according to Thomas Ayers, and not fighting from the outside!

———————————————-
So how powerful a man was Thomas Ayers? Well when Bernadine Dohrn was seeking her NY State law licence, two people wrote on Dohrn’s behalf to the Ethics Committee in her application. Her supporters included two powerful lawyers, Don H. Reuben (Sydley Austin), at one time the Chicago Tribune’s lawyer. The other supporter was a very well respected Federal Judge Harold Tylor!

How did she get into Sidley Austin Law Firm, where both Michelle and Barack Obama not coincidentally both worked? Howard Trienens, a partner at Sidley Austin since 1956, has been a member of the Northwestern University board of trustees since 1967 and chairman of the board from 1986 to 1995, replacing Thomas Ayers as Chairman (One more item: Ayers’ wife, fellow ex-terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, is a law-professor (without a licence to practice law) at Northwestern U since 1991. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Thomas Ayers served as the Chair of the Board of Trustees from 1975 to 1986 at the prestigious college. He was named a Life Trustee in 1987). He received two degrees from Northwestern, a bachelor’s degree in 1945 and a J.D. in 1949, and was editor in chief of the Illinois Law Review. Read More. And Read More.
——————–

Equally important to Mr. Thomas Ayers was the educational and financial advancement of African-Americans.
“He felt the black community’s success was key to Chicago’s success,” son John Ayers said. “He pushed business people to be more open in the 1960s.” “In the ’60s and ’70s, we went through some rough patches in our family,” he said. “He was very sweet and supportive of us all. He used to say, ‘It takes all kinds’ to get the world moving forward.” John Ayers worked on School Reform in the 1980’s representing the powerful Commercial Club of Chicago Civics Commitee that was put in place in 1983 in part to provide business sector leadership in support of the reform of the Chicago Public School system and public school financing.

When William Ayers resurfaced in the 1980s, it was as though no time had passed between him and his father. “It was as if we were in the middle of a conversation and nothing much had changed,” William Ayers said. Probably because the communication was always there while in hiding!

While chairing the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, he helped start Chicago United in 1968 upon the request of Mayor Daley. Chicago United was dedicated to racial minority group access to jobs and education. In 1973, Chicago United joined with other civic organizations to create the Regional Transit Authority.

After the Board of Education’s financial collapse of 1979, Mayor Jane M. Byrne named Mr. Thomas Ayers as her choice for president of the new board.

In 1987, Mayor Harold Washington asked Chicago United (Thomas Ayers) to head a broad-based school reform coalition, one that lead directly to the landmark School Reform Act of 1988.

Active in the local control from below, on the “community” side of this effort was the University of Illinois, where Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Illinois’ Chicago Circle campus. Another ally in this battle at the same time was Executive Director Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project (DCP), as Obama notes briefly in his Dreams From My Father. The DCP had its origins in the “radical” movement started by Saul Alinsky.

A lengthy report done by Bill McKersie, published in 1992, on Philanthropy’s Paradox: Chicago School Reform (The Role of Chicago Foundations in Reform, 1987-1990) for the American Educational Research Association, exposes several things. McKersie wrote this having experience on the inside, having worked for the Joyce Foundation.

McKersie points out that the money funnelled to Community Activists was to represent parents and Community residents and that these Activists were pushing for a fast moving change agenda. The shift of Foundation money only occurred after the School Reform act was completed and sent for passage at the State level. Thus prior to late 1988, Foundation money was used and targeted to Activists to voice the peoples concerns to those involved in representing the Government (Thomas Ayers group) and the researchers and developers of the Reform Act (Bill Ayers group).

Two of the Foundations continually funded mainly Community Organizations, the Wieboldt and the Woods Fund. In 1987, the DCP, Obama’s group, was given in excess of $36,000/yr directly for School Reform work. What is important to note is that these two Foundations used Community Organizers to shape the agenda for School Reform for much larger Education funders, demanding also faster action to Reform. How does this happen? By being active with the Communities and those working for the Government and Institution researchers setting the agenda for School Reform!

But unfortunately, the Activist side of setting the agenda was squashed in late 1987, hmm-same time Obama decided to go to Harvard! It was in early 1988 that AT&T, Chicago Community Trust (Thomas Ayers), Joyce Foundation and McArthur Foundation came together and decided it was time to look at everything and actually do something concrete after linking up with the Community Renewal Society (Thomas Ayers), and the project came to fruition. Basically, it was the convergence of groups, the Activists (Obama et al) attempting to set an agenda without a plan and the Institutions able to forge a plan (Thomas/Bill/John Ayers et al). Basically, it is noted that the Foundations via the Activists attempted to have “Bought Reform.” But in the end, they didn’t: all they bought was moving certain ideas through discussions, but it took the Institutions to enact the final outcome and resolve. Sounds exactly like a POTUS campaign going on presently!

The reasoning for the Foundations funding of Activists was to make sure that multiple and diverse voices were heard! Obama was recruited by the Woods Fund to work the Afro-American community, the one community that they could not previously reach with their white Jewish Organizers, thus putting Obama front and center for the Black group of voices representing the DCP with all the powers to be, namely Thomas Ayers, since 1985 when the movement started on School Reform! Therefore, Slate is correct in stating Obama has more than 20 years experience in School Reform. Unfortunately, Obama’s work in School Reform has been a failure!

What this endeavour of School Reform also brought to Obama was not only his meeting Thomas Ayers, but also brought him closer to the powers to be at the Woods Foundation and other organizations such as the Joyce Foundation and ACORN, who endorses Obama, just to name a few.

When the ordeal was finally resolved, imagine who the head of the school reform coalition was, none other than Thomas Ayers son and Bill Ayers brother John Ayers! Coincidence?

So who brought Obama to Chicago? The DCP? Well, yes and no! The DCP brought him, but actually was funded by The Woods Fund Chicago!

——————————————
So what is the Woods Fund?

Frank Woods had a broad vision of philanthropy. Under his leadership, institutions like the Art Institute, which he chaired, were great beneficiaries. But he also gave grants to help equalize opportunities before the Civil Rights era and supported small community-based groups. He appeared to have valued risk taking in philanthropy, setting up fund at Chicago Community Trust (Thomas Ayers), whose purpose was to encourage “high risk grants.” He was known to be very open to community organizing and got involved early in its funding. Following Frank Woods’s death, George Kelm provided leadership. One critical leadership contribution of Mr. Kelm was hiring the Fund’s first full time staff director, Jean Rudd. She shaped the Director’s philanthropic visions into clear grant making guidelines, creating two major grant making programs – in community organizing and in public workforce development policy – that remain to this day. So you know, George Kelm was President and CEO and Chair of Sahara Enterprises and Sahara Coal Company, Illinois largest coal company, a main supplier to Con Ed (Thomas Ayers, David Axelrod and Obama’s vote for the Bush-Cheney Energy Bill)!

The Woods Foundation has a lot bigger a role than expected!

The Woods Fund, in many ways, is responsible for helping start Obama as an organizer and shaping his political identity. In 1985 the foundation gave a $25,000 grant to the Developing Communities Project, which hired Obama, at 24, as an organizer on Chicago’s economically depressed South Side. Obama became friendly with Woods director Jean Rudd (why if he was working for the DCP? The School Reform Act of course), and after he graduated from Harvard Law School and moved back to Chicago (1991), Rudd asked him to join the board, which met four times a year to review grant proposals. (Obama also served on the board of the larger Joyce Foundation, which specialized in environmental conservation, welfare reform and education.) “Community organizing was a central priority of this foundation, so more and more we drew him in,” says Rudd, who retired in 2000. Obama and Ayers happened to not only fund Rezko on the board, but also Dohrn and Rev. Wright via the Gamaliel Foundation.

Note: Obama was on the Woods Fund board for at least 6 years before Ayers joined it! Also, the Joyce Foundation is an anti-gun foundation hidden under the guise of being an environmental Fund. How come Obama never mentions this Fund he was on? Maybe because the NRA calls the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose “shadowy web of huge donations” leads “straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups.”

What seems to be critical is why would Obama be known to a Foundation, when the money was a grant to the DCP? Following this logic of Jean Rudd being involved in where the Woods Fund money goes, then is Jean Rudd’s involved in the money the Woods gave to Rezko, Ayers, Klalhia, and other assorted people, as today she heads the oversight for all Chicago slum rehabilitations?

I found the old Woods Fund site (hidden not removed). Some links don’t work, but I find it interesting who they gave money to! And notice the dates: everything is deleted during Obama years. Wonder why?

Obama also tends not to mention another Foundation he was on in the 1980’s, the Gamaliel Foundation, which teaches the works and practices of Saul Alinsky to community organizers! The Gamaliel Foundation is a church based Foundation, supported by many of Tom Ayers Foundations and happens to be a part of the United Church of Christ. Rev. Wright ring a bell?
————————————————
Also, another lie of Obama’s is his claim to meeting Illinois Senator Emil Jones in the Senate, not true; Obama met his State Senate Godfather in 1986!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/politics/main3858237.shtml
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Richard M. Daley, Chicago Mayor and member of Mayors against Illegal Guns member that receives big funds from The Joyce Foundation, stated after the ABC debate:

The liberal blogs are still aghast about the whole incident, and to varying degrees; many mainstream voices have denounced what’s being called a smear campaign.

On the surface, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s statement on the affair is surprising.

There are a lot of reasons that Americans are angry about Washington politics. And one more example is the way Senator Obama’s opponents are playing guilt-by-association, tarring him because he happens to know Bill Ayers. I also know Bill Ayers. He worked with me in shaping our now nationally renowned school reform program. He is a nationally recognized distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a valued member of the Chicago community.

I don’t condone what he did 40 years ago but I remember that period well. It was a difficult time, but those days are long over. I believe we have too many challenges in Chicago and our country to keep re-fighting 40 year old battles.

So while it would appear on the surface that Richard M. Daley picked William Ayers, well, out of the air, to help guide the reform of Chicago’s school system; upon a closer look, in a city like Chicago, where people get ahead on who they know and who they are related to, Daley’s selection made a lot of sense.

But there is something else the mayor will remember. Ayers father was Thomas G. Ayers, the head of Commonwealth Edison, which was then Chicago’s electrical utility. Just as Obama and the younger Ayers are, in the words of Obama aide and Com Ed lobbyist David Axelrod, “friendly,” so were the elder Daley and the senior Ayers.

Funny for Axelrod to say, considering David Axelrod happens to come from a politically communist family: his mother use to write for the NY paper “PW” which was a communist oriented paper. Axelrod also met Obama in the early 1990’s (1991 to be exact), when Obama was a community organizer leading a voter-registration drive on the South Side. Axelrod served as advertising director for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign. A former political reporter, Axelrod, 53, left the Chicago Tribune in 1984 (started in 1977) to become press secretary for then-Rep. Paul Simon, D-Ill., who was running for the Senate. He established himself as a fixture in Windy City politics, as well as statewide. In 1989, Axelrod went to work for Richard M. Daley in his first successful bid to be Chicago’s mayor, and he has remained close to the Daley machine ever since by displacing the African-American leadership from City Hall. Read More.

Then there is Valerie Jarrett: Jarrett in 1991 was Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Deputy Chief of Staff. After serving at Daley’s side, Jarrett was a Commissioner in the city’s Planning and Development Department (key to distort Obama’s claims of not knowing about Rezko’s dealings and failures) and went on to chair the Chicago Transit Board (Thomas Ayers created Board), which oversees the city’s flawed and failed public transportation system. Jarrett is a fixture in Chicago politics and in the Obama family. Jarrett, 51, is a senior unpaid adviser to the campaign, and is a confidant of both the candidate and his wife, Michelle. Jarrett’s role as an honest broker in the campaign stems from her deep friendship with the candidate and his wife. Barack Obama met Jarrett in 1991 when she was interviewing Obama’s then-fiancée for a job in City Hall. The three have been close ever since. A lawyer, Jarrett got her start in city government as a deputy corporation counsel for finance and development. She is also a member of the University of Chicago’s board of trustees, and she chairs its Medical Center Board. She served as chairman of Obama’s finance committee during Mr. Obama’s 2004 (alongside Tony Rezko) campaign for U.S. Senate. Her associations also helped pave the way for Mrs. Obama’s job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Ms. Jarrett was on the board of directors. Read More. Jarrett also is a Director of The Joyce Foundation, which claims to be an enviromental Foundation, although it is also an anti-gun foundation. Since 2003, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $12 million to gun control organizations. Gun rights groups including the National Rifle Association call the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose “shadowy web of huge donations” leads “straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups. Read More. Obama was a Director of the Joyce Foundation also. Read More. Was Jennett put in place to keep control over the OBAMA’s?

The list of names go on, but they all lead back to Mr. Thomas Ayers!

————————————————

So as stated above, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, upon return to Chicago, spent a lot of time holding “High Profile Dinner Parties”, basically doing the passing of the torch from Tom Ayers to the new Godfather duo of Illinois Politics based upon Thomas Ayers years of building power and control by ways of civil rights and school reform!

Everyone remember Senator Leahy (D-VT) speaking out for Clinton to quit a couple of weeks ago? Well, actor and activist Peter Coyote talking on the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago on his website mentions a couple of times about having to inform his wife “Martha that I’m dragging her to the apartment of old friends, ex-Weathermen, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, hosting a party for Senator Leahy. Perhaps Edward Said will be there I urge her to come by promising that the event will push the edges of the envelope of her centrist politics.” (Wonder who got Senator Leahy to demand Clinton withdraw?)

But, all these social trappings notwithstanding, she and her husband say they have not lost any of their old, anti-Establishment fervour. Ayers, who still carries his SDS card in his wallet, says he feels no better about this country “just because a bunch of 40-year-olds are now part of the Establishment.”

Ayers says electoral politics is a tool to connect causes, like gay rights, disability rights, voting rights, human rights. “That’s how you use electoral politics. Not as an end in itself, but as an organizing mechanism. Our deepest belief, I think, is that we need to connect all these good projects and build the movement. …we should always be positioning ourselves, thinking, okay, if I’m involved in this next election, how am I positioned to help contribute to building a movement, raising consciousness, making the connections, and that’s a real tricky business.” (Any wonder who is behind Obama?)

——————————————————-

So what would attract someone like Obama to William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn?

Obama’s relationship with communist Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s adopted grandfather and life advisor, of course. Add to that Obama’s continual obsession for following Marxist types of organizations and education makes Obama a natural fit with his gift for being illusive!

So we are left to figure out, was 1987 the first time Obama met the Ayers or was it sooner, such as:

• At Cooper Union in New York during a Marxist convention?
• At Columbia U with Ayers or Dohrn as a political Science class guest speaker? (Is that why Obama’s Columbia records are locked up)?
• Any other time in NYC at some rally?

And do not forget, the Anti-war speech Obama gave in 2002, was organized by former terrorists of the SDS days, Carl Davidson, Marylyn Katz and others!

Lies, deception, corruption and so many links to radicals, and the Democratic Party feels someone like this is the future?

Answer: Dohrn stated: “I don’t look to the Democratic Party. I don’t have hope for the Democratic Party. I think the Democratic Party is bankrupt. And I think the only answer is for us to build an independent, radical movement, and, I mean, the big ‘us.’ “Stay vigilant. The light will come”…….is the light Obama, yes to them he is! JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!!

And this is what Obama stated during the Philadelphia ABC debate when questioned about his relationship to William Ayers:

SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about.
This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.
And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.
So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow — somehow their ideas could be attributed to me — I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

My Response: Senator Obama, first, your guy who lives in your neighborhood happens to be a terrorist teaching education to children and not English, and you, sir, being a Political Science Major from Columbia U should know that! Second, your children cannot possibly go to school with Ayers kids, as his kids are all over 21 years of age, Mr. Liar! Third, your relationship with this TERRORIST goes back over 20 years and your association is not based upon a howdy on the streets, but is one of you working side by side putting forth this TERRORIST’S agenda, especially when it comes to educating children! If they are not your values you share with him, then why did you sit on many foundations, support many of his causes and work so closely with him? Simple answer is because you are one of him! Yes, we are smarter than to be conned by a thug and a corrupt Chicago politician, Senator Obama! You claim to be a true Christian and believer in Jesus Christ, it is a mortal sin to lie and a moral sin to lie in a place of worship, Senator Obama, but you did.

——————————————–

Now in 1990, Obama was pretty much set as far as power from the streets was concerned, since Michelle Obama’s father was a powerful Democratic Precinct Captain, but timing is everything and Michelle’s father died in 1990, thus Obama lost his street power and to recoup it went out and worked for the Project Vote and registered 150,000 new voters in 1992 (Marilyn Katz of SDS fame happened to be leading Project Vote and working on many of Thomas Ayers Foundations, including working for Davis Miner Law firm, Barack Obama’s former employer, doing PR work). Funny thing, Miner happened to work on Mayor Washington’s staff from 1984 to 1987 and also happened to be classmates at the University of Chicago law school with Bernadine Dohrn!

Why must we do the media’s job to find out the workings of the corrupt Chicago underground attempting to control the DNP and now the White House?

So I went hunting, and was often surprised at what I found. It amounts to a pattern that I find dismaying. There are a lot of links here, documenting sources for my conclusions, and there is a lot to read.

Here is my list, in no particular order. See if you agree with me, and answer the questions for yourself… did he really not know, or is it just that he didn’t mind?

1. He joined and remained active in a church where racism and anti-American hate is routinely preached. He and his family attended, and heavily contributed for about 20 years. This has received worldwide attention, as show in the link below.
Ten Must-See Videos from The Times Online
Obama first claimed not to know about Wright’s inflammatory statements. He later admitted he did.
CBS News
Flip-Flip Video
CBS News
OOPS… didn’t notice. Or else he forgot.
Rev Wright, one of the ministers, even promoted Obama and denigrated Hillary Clinton from the pulpit spurring an IRS investigation as to the validity of their non-profit status. The Obama campaign is also reported to have campaigned on at least one occasion at church events, furthering the curiosity of the IRS.
WCBS TV

Obama Speech at General Synod of the United Church of Christ

But, OOPS… he didn’t know. Or didn’t mind.

2. Senator Obama bought stock in two companies whose investors included his 2004 campaign political donors. One, in fact, was developing medicine to treat avian flu — with the stock purchase coming right before Obama introduced legislation to increase funding to combat the virus.
The other company, SkyTerra, received government permission to build a national wireless network on the day Obama purchased his shares. Among the principal owners of this business were four people who had raised more than $150,000 for Obama. Attorney Obama claimed later that they were in a semi-blind trust, that just didn’t legally work out. When this became public, Obama sold the stock.

Chicago Sun-Times
New York Times
Oops… he didn’t know. Or didn’t he mind?

3. Senator Obama came into politics through the famously corrupt Chicago political machine, with the help of some of the slimiest characters imaginable. (Several major players who helped him are have been indicted for graft, fraud, etc. Obama now keeps a rep at Rezko’s trial every day to monitor testimony.) Obama has had to donate to charity much of the money they gave him to get his start, though the admitted dollar amount keeps increasing as time goes on. It’s now up over $250,000. Tony Rezko, currently at trial on federal charges of attempted extortion, money laundering, and fraud, was also involved in the purchase of Obama’s home at well below market value.

Huffington Post
Chicago Sun-Times
New York Times
Not so well publicized is the fact that Obama wrote letters to the Illinois Dept of Housing, recommending Rezco’s company, North Kenwood, LLC, for the housing projects that soon became slums, causing inhumane hardship for their residents.

Obama Letters
These slums, later repossessed, were in Obama’s district while he was an Illinois senator. In fact, some are about a mile from his home, and several are still boarded up. Obama professed to be unaware of any problems. During the Democratic debate on January 21, 2008, Obama, in fact, gave the impression that he had merely done about 5 hours of legal work for “this individual.”
The Rezko Foreclosed Properties
telegraph.co.uk
No Quarter
Rezko Watch
Chicago Tribune: Almost Believable
OOPS… he didn’t know. Or did he care?

4. According to the Sun-Times, Barack Obama, “allegedly decent guy and agent of change” in Washington, requested an earmark in 2006 for $1 million taxpayer dollars for the University of Chicago Hospitals, where is wife, Michelle Obama, was a vice president. Said hospital, by the way, gave Michelle Obama a huge raise (nearly $200,000, more than doubling her salary) in 2005 after Barack was elected to the United States Senate.
Michelle Obama
Chicago Sun-Times
According to The Chicago Tribune, “Obama had a special connection to Maytag: Lester Crown, one of the company’s directors and biggest investors whose family, records show, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaigns since 2003.” Maytag closed its refrigerator plant in Galesburg, Ill during Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign, but Crown says Obama never raised the fate of the Galesburg plant with him. Obama’s campaign responded “that the senator did not know Crown sat on Maytag’s board until the Tribune noted it last September in a story about the closing of the Maytag headquarters in Newton, Iowa.”

Chicago Tribune
Obama Truth
Oops… he didn’t know? Or didn’t he care?

5. Obama took donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees for his House and Senate races and his own Hopefund political action committee. He only stopped taking this political money — and began speaking out against it — when he launched his presidential campaign in February 2007. However, he still takes hundreds of thousands of dollars from their high level employees.
Politifact
The Hill
Politifact
Oops… he didn’t know? Or doesn’t mind?

6. Opponents have asked Senator Obama to release the records from his term of state office in Illinois. Since he has little other experience in politics (he did, after all, declare his presidential candidacy barely 2 years after election to the US Senate), this doesn’t seem an unreasonable request. The records might also shed light on his relationship with Rezko and some of the other corrupt individuals he rubbed shoulders with during his climb up through Chicago politics. But lo and behold, the records all seem to have mysteriously disappeared.
Politico
The Pantagraph, a central Illinois newspaper

Questions have also been raised about Obama-sponsored legislation during the last year he was in office there. It is alleged that, in the interest of making Obama appear more prolific, then Illinois Senate Majority Leader Emil Jones appointed Obama as sponsor of many pieces of legislation, even though other senior senators had spent many years working on the bills.

“I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.”
“I don’t consider it bill jacking,” Hendon told me. “But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.”

As a result, Todd Spivak of the Houston Press noted, “During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama’s stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.”
Houston Press

Oops… he didn’t know? Or did he mind?

7. Obama’s website sported a page for the New Black Panthers organization until it was discovered and reported by the media. It was quickly removed. Obama denounced their support, but the New Black Panthers’ Winter 2008 newsletter still carries a full page ad for his campaign on page 36. Though the origin of the ad is not stated, it contains logos, graphics and quotes from the Obama website, which Obama could have ordered removed as a copyright violation.
The NBP page, before its deletion.
NBP Winter 2008 Newsletter
OOPs… he didn’t know.

8. In addition to the controversy concerning his numerous “present” votes while in the Illinois legislature, Obama also maintains that he just pushed the wrong button on 5 or 6 other votes. (Let’s not even go there!)

According to the New York Times, however, an examination of Illinois records shows at least 36 times when Mr. Obama was either the only state senator to vote present or was part of a group of six or fewer to vote that way, causing many to question whether he was really just trying to avoid taking a stand.
LA Times on Obama votes

Real Clear Politics
New Your Times
Obama also has an exceptionally high no-show ration for votes since coming to the Senate.
Media Matters
OOPS… he didn’t know? Or didn’t he care?

9. On Wednesday, Feb 27, 2008, CTV reported that a senior member of Obama’s campaign, Austan Goolsbee, spoke directly with the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago to assure them that if Obama publicly spoke about opting out of NAFTA, they should not take it seriously. It would just be political posturing… campaign rhetoric. Obama flatly denied the report, attacking both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain for their comments on the issue.
On March 4, the New York Times, among other sources, revealed that the conversation had indeed taken place, and published the memo. The Canadian government announced that an investigation would begin to find out who was responsible for leaking the memorandum concerning the conversation.
CTV News
New York Times
New York Times published the memo
OOPS… he didn’t know.

10. Obama’s position on the war in Iraq, in spite of the October 2002 speech, has not been as unwavering as he would have us believe.

Commentary Magazine
Obama Gets the Facts Wrong
Clinton Takes on Obama
MSNBC
The Boston Globe
OOPS… did he forget?

11. Senator Obama is chair of of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe, having been appointed in early 2007. According to Congressional Records, the subcommittee’s jurisdiction includes “all matters, policies and problems concerning the continent of Europe, including the European member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.” That means it has jurisdiction over NATO.
As Senator Clinton asserted in a recent debate, “NATO is critical to our mission in Afghanistan. He’s held not one substantive hearing to do oversight, to figure out what we can do to actually have a stronger presence with NATO in Afghanistan.”
Politifact
OOPS… he didn’t know… or did he forget?

12. Senator Obama told Tim Russert in January of 2006 that “I will serve out my full six-year term.”

From the official transcript of Meet the Press:
MR. RUSSERT: But there seems to be an evolution in your thinking. This is what you told the Chicago Tribune last month: “Have you ruled out running for another office before your term is up?” Obama answered, “It’s not something I anticipate doing.” But when we talked back in November of `04 after your election I said, “There’s been enormous speculation about your political future. Will you serve your six-year term as United States senator from Illinois?” Obama, “Absolutely.”

SEN. OBAMA: I will serve out my full six-year term. You know, Tim, if you get asked enough, sooner or later you’re going to get weary and you start looking for new ways of saying things. But my thinking has not changed.

MR. RUSSERT: So you will not run for president or vice-president in 2008?

SEN. OBAMA: I will not.

Obama formed an exploratory committee in January of 2007 and declared his candidacy two months later.
Meet The Press Transcript January 22, 2006
“Obama Takes the Russert Test” from The Swamp
Obama Learns the Washington Ways
OOPS… he forgot.

13. Senator Obama promised to use public financing for the general election if his Republican opponent would do the same. Now, apparently after he realized how much more money he could have at his disposal, he has reversed himself.
League of Women Voters
Mr Obama’s Waffle
OOPS… he forgot.

14. Obama bragged in the Iowa debate about the “nuclear legislation I’ve passed.” When he encountered resistance from the nuclear industry… including Illinois-based Excelon, the country’s largest nuclear plant operator and one of Mr. Obama’s largest sources of campaign money, he edited his bill several times, making it weaker each time. The bill, however, never passed. It died. But Mr Obama gained a chief political strategist… David Axelrod. In October 2007, Obama resubmitted the bill in its watered-down version.
Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate
OOPS… he forgot.

15. Senator Obama purports to be in favor of “universal” health care, utilizing private insurance, on the campaign trail. In fact, he adamantly denied advocating single payor. But there was a time when he was in favor of the single payor system.

Video
The Swamp
OOPS… he forgot.

16. While campaigning, Obama told several hundred people in Iowa, “No lobbyists need apply to my White House.”
However, in contrast to his pledge to fight against the influence of special interests, his record on employing lobbyists isn’t quite so pristine. Several high level members of his campaign are registered lobbyists, including his New Hampshire campaign manager. Lately, he has softened his campaign line to, “They are not going to run my White House.”
The Boston Globe
The Wall Street Journal
Politico
The Washington Post
The Hill
Obama actually seems very comfortable working with lobbyists on legislation. To site just one example…

According to ABC, Obama “has quietly worked with corporate lobbyists to help pass breaks worth $12 million,” that gave two overseas companies tariff suspensions. Both companies also have facilities in Illinois.
One of these companies, Nufarm, told its shareholders it was making “more money than ever before in North America because it had increased its prices on its U.S. and Canadian customers, predominantly farmers.” This had the effect of profiting business interests in his state, while punishing its farmers.
According to ABC News, “With a dozen tariff suspension bills to his name, Obama stands out as the most prolific of any Democratic presidential hopeful on the topic.”
Despite Rhetoric, Obama Pushed Lobbyists’ Interests
OOPS… he forgot. Or didn’t he mind?

How many other things are we going to find that Senator Obama conveniently forgot? It is my hope that the political powers-that-be will lay off the talk about ending the primaries early, and that the media and the internet diggers will help us truly vet Senator Obama. Use a little old-fashioned, objective journalism… remember that?
If he has nothing more to hide, it can only help him.
But if we don’t know the whole story yet, it might just help us be certain that we can indeed put a Democrat in the White House in November.
That is, after all, what Democrats want, isn’t it?

Cross-posted at MyDD.com.

See Part i of How Can Obama Square These? [Update by Larry Johnson].”

SEE ALSO:

• “Racism and the Race Card”

• “Imagine if Wright Were Hillary’s Pastor …”

• “Obama’s 2006 Earmarks & the Crown Family”

• “The forgotten people”

• “Obama’s Pastor: “God Damn America”

• “[Updates] Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties”

• “The racists are coming. The racists are coming.“
• “The Rezko Saga: Two Videos [Updated]”

• “Thin-Skinned Obama Fans“

Andy just alerted me to Jeralyn’s post at TalkLeft, in which she highlights Obama’s earmarks for General Dynamics, one of the largest military contractors in the world, and its ties to Chicago’s Crown family.

“Among [Obama's earmarks are] an $8 million request for the ‘High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program’. Ultimately, $1.3 million in funding was awarded for the program,” writes Jeralyn.

the defense project was overseen by General Dynamics, one of the nation’s largest military contractors. Obama’s Illinois finance chairman, James S. Crown, serves on the company’s board of directors and his family holds a sizable stake in the company.

“Crown and his wife, Paula Crown,” Jeralyn adds, “are members of Obama’s National Finance Committee and have raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign, according to a list of fundraisers posted on Obama’s campaign website.”

Huh. I guess not confronting the Crown family about saving those Maytag jobs has worked out well for Sen. Obama. (If you’ve never seen the video, check out what Machinists Union president Tom Buffenbarger — who tried to save those Maytag jobs — thinks of Barack Obama.)

Next, here’s Riehl World View’s take on the earmark related to Michelle Obama:

First, Riehl notes that Obama obtained this earmark:

Obama Requested $1 Million For Construction Of A New Hospital Pavilion At The University Of Chicago. In 2006, Obama requested that the University of Chicago receive $1 million to support its Construction of New Hospital Pavilion. For more than 75 years, the University of Chicago Hospitals (UCH) has provided state of the art medical care on the South Side of Chicago.

Then Riehl points out:

From the Campaign Spot to NRO’s Byron York. Looks like Daddy-O brought home the bacon so Mommy-O could bring home even more bacon, too.

"In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office." Looks like that raise was worth it.

Andy’s comment in the thread at TalkLeft says it all:

Exactly the point of this post. It is and has been Obama the one whose raison d’etre as candidate has been his “different kind of politics” (anti-special interests, etc etc etc.).

What this proves sis that he is just another politician. There would be nothing wrong with it except that his “urgency” of a Presidential run was based on “changing Washington” and the “politics as usual.”

Ahem….

Lynn Sweet, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist, has more on Michelle Obama and Obama’s other earmarks:

Obama sought money for the University of Chicago Hospitals. Wife Michelle works for the University of Chicago Hospitals, appointed in spring 2005 as vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She is now on leave from the job to campaign for her husband. Top campaign adviser and friend Valerie Jarrett is the Chair of the University of Chicago Medical Center Board and also Chair of the Executive Committee of that board. She has also been named Vice-Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees. Obama taught at the U. of Chicago law school and the Obama’s two daughters attend school there.

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Jeralyn has an update:

Update: The AP says Obama has not responded to repeated requests to release his earmark legislation for six of his years in the Illinois Senate.

UPDATE: I found a Feb. 2 article from McClatchy/Chicago Tribune to which Buffenbarger refers, “Obama’s fundraising, rhetoric collide: Union says senator did little to save jobs.” I am looking for more. But here, for now, is the McClatchy/Chicago Tribune article:

Video from MSNBC. Awesome.

ARTICLE: “Obama’s fundraising, rhetoric collide: Union says senator did little to save jobs“:

Maytag workers whose jobs were shipped to Mexico serve as consistent characters in Barack Obama’s stump speech. He employs their stories in railing against corporations that use trade pacts to replace well-paid union workers with low-cost foreign ones.

It is a ready applause line for the Illinois presidential hopeful, one that he has been reciting almost verbatim since he was a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004, when appliance giant Maytag was in the process of shutting a refrigerator plant here, putting 1,600 people out of work.

But the union that represented most of those Galesburg workers isn’t impressed with Obama’s advocacy and has endorsed his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Its leaders say they wish he had done more about their members’ plight.

What rankles some is what Obama did not do even as he expressed solidarity four years ago with workers mounting a desperate fight to save their jobs.

Obama had a special connection to Maytag: Lester Crown, one of the company’s directors and biggest investors whose family, records show, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaigns since 2003. But Crown says Obama never raised the fate of the Galesburg plant with him, and the billionaire industrialist insists any jawboning would have been futile. [BUT OBAMA COULD HAVE TRIED, DAMMIT]

Aide: Didn’t know of tie

Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, said late Thursday that the senator did not know Crown sat on Maytag’s board until the Tribune noted it last September in a story about the closing of the Maytag headquarters in Newton, Iowa. … READ ALL.