In normal times, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’ buffoonery would have garnered more critical public attention.

But these are not normal times. These are the times of hope’n'change.

So, Hilda’s inadequateness goes largely without comment as we try not to drown beneath the flood of bizarre goings-on within the Obama administration.

But she’s doing her best to get noticed.

Hilda would ever so much like to repeal reporting regulations that allow union members to see how union bosses spend their dues.

Hmm. Can’t think of much good that could come of that.

There was an age when trade unions carried out vital work. It was, unfortunately, about 200 years ago, when factory owners had a penchant for shoving children, sorry “workers of advanced youth”, into machinery, chimneys, mines, etc. But those days are gone.

In the UK, trade unions now account for up to 90 per cent of donations to the Labour Party.

As far as single-issue pressure groups go, it’s pretty hard to beat effectively owning your own political party.

I’m just waiting for Hilda to get together with James Hoffa, though.

Together, there’s surely nothing they can’t accomplish.

The title tells the story:

Then blogger J. Justin Wilson reveals the depressing details:

I just got off the AFL-CIO’s kick-off conference call with Obama. What a tragedy of errors.

First of all, Sen. Obama was about 40 minutes late to the show. You can image how fantastic 40 minutes of Muzak went over. Finally, John Sweeney introduced Obama.

Next …

After rattling off nearly the exact same speech he delivered a few months ago to the AFL-CIO (see above [video]), Obama proceeded to hang up. Click. Just like that.

Someone at the AFL-CIO muttered something like “is that it?” and then we went back to hold music.

A lady came back on and made an excuse, saying Obama’s line was cut off and that he would come back on the call. Minutes pass, and then she came back on and said that Obama had left the building. …

Go to “Stood Up and Hung Up” to view a video and to listen to the actual phone call.

Oh well. I completely understand.

It is such an annoyance to have to talk to those “typical” little people.

:::::

P.S. Originally I described the blog as “pro-labor.” That is not entirely true. However, the facts of the event — backed up with an AUDIO — remain true.

• 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.

Effective May 1, 2008, as matter of principle, I am resigning from CSEA as President of Chapter 645 and as a CSEA union member.

My reason for this principled decision is because I can’t support or work on behalf of a union that allows and condones bigotry and racist remarks by Keynote Speakers and does not publically and forcefully correct the error when brought to the Presidents’ attention.

On Tuesday April 29th, a paid CSEA keynote speaker by the name of Lee Mun Wah, gave a presentation to the assembled members of CSEA. Throughout Lee Mun Wah’s presentation of “multi-cultural diversity,” he repeatedly blamed European white males for the suffering of others.

In addition, I understand CSEA has not endorsed a presidential candidate, but permitted the Keynote Speaker, Lee Mun Wah, to use the CSEA platform to, by his words, endorse a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, defending hate speech by Senator Barak Obama’s spiritual mentor Reverend Wright, while denigrating the other two candidates.

I, sir, am a white male of Scottish heritage and personally had absolutely nothing to do with the imprisoning of Japanese American’s during WWII, or the death of Lee Mun Wah’s mother, or ANY of the racist examples he put forth. I will not be associated with an organization that permits the use of “white guilt,” calls me a bigot or ANY other form of racism and does nothing to address it.

I cannot stand by while a photo of the jet crashing into the World Trade Towers is used for marketing purposes in describing a “stereotypical” group of younger people. Among the many innocent lives to perish, I had friends die in that building that day, on 9/11/01. How dare CSEA use that tragic event, in the manner it did.

Nor can I condone, when a training “skit” is used to depict a registered Republican and a member of CSEA listening to the members of the audience laugh in condemnation, and so such disrespect. It saddens me that the CSEA leadership shows the same indifference, lack of respect and in-sensitivity for CSEA members,. that Lee Mun Wah showed. I expressed my views to CSEA leadership and was ignored. Your lack of response to my serious concerns is deplorable.

In closing, I held the belief that CSEA’s mission was about the workplace rights and well being of its union members. That belief has been damaged beyond repair because of your indifference to my real concerns, and I will make it my duty to alert media outlets that CSEA is more interested in multi-cultural racism and citizenship for illegal aliens, then the welfare of its own members.

I was and will be, deeply offended by Lee Mun Wah remarks and CSEA’s lack of response in repudiating them.

Respectfully,

Adrian Gillies

The civil war now being waged in the Democratic Party gives us an opportunity to redefine liberalism and the Party itself. The sexism and elitism by the blogger boyz is one part of this civil war. It’s largely a class war:

The Democratic primaries have been skewed for decades by the presence of large numbers of upper-middle class elitists concerned about environmentalism, race and gender quotas, balanced budgets, good government, corruption, gridlock, excessive partisanship, and related issues. They are not interested in the minimum wage, trade union rights, stopping home foreclosures, and other kitchen table concerns of the less well off.

The blogger Anglachel has written brilliantly on the class divide in the party. She captures perfectly the attitude of the Typical Chardonnay People Obama confided to last weekend:

the “wine track” cadre of the Democratic party has no clue about working class America except for their own strange blend of bitter, bible-thumping rubes who just can’t grasp the big picture, the poor things, and keep voting against their own interests.

Snob-gate has made me think about why I’m a proud American and Democrat and the direction we should move our party. Here’s a few reasons:

We are the heirs of the world’s most enlightened revolution.
We believe the United States is a force for good in the world.
We believe that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are sacred documents.
We believe brave men and women gave their lives so others can have liberty.

We despise prejudice towards any group; there is no historical context which makes any form of racism acceptable.
We reject sexism or stereotypes of both men and women, gays or lesbians, blacks or whites, city dwellers or farmers.
We respect all faiths and forms of belief or non-belief.

We have been entrusted to continue the legacy of the New Deal.
The mission of the Democratic Party is to expand opportunity for all.
We believe an expanding and prosperous middle-class is good for
both business and labor.
We believe poor Americans should be given the opportunity and
responsibility to improve their own lives, and we will help them do it.

We believe that all work has dignity and that everyone deserves to be paid a living wage.
We believe a smart environmental policy can save the planet and create jobs.
We believe a farmer or a housewife can have as much or more wisdom than a famous journalist.
We believe in safe working conditions, fair pay, health care for all, a dignified retirement, and respect for our veterans.
We should have military strength sufficient to defend our nation and our allies.
We believe in our country and our flag and all who serve it.

It’s one thing when someone’s repeating things that he may or may not know is inaccurate when it comes to Hillary’s record on NAFTA.  I refrained from posting on all this before because I gave Senator Obama the benefit of the doubt - maybe he just didn’t know he’d gotten it wrong.

But folks have been pointing out the error if his ways for a week or more now and he’s still making false claims about Hillary’s record – in fact he did it again today.  It’s no longer a mis-read or a mistake – now he’s just flat out lying and I’m calling bullshit on his lies.

This isn’t change we can rely on – it’s more of the same bullshit and Chicago smack-down politics.

Make the jump – there’s more…

As I’ve pointed out on many occasions, states in the rust belt are hurting. Plants are shutting down and folks are out of work in Michigan and Ohio, so BO knows NAFTA’a a hot button issue back in the Midwest.  He’s using fear and lies to turn voters against Hillary in his stump speeches, and in flyers that he’s sending to their homes.   From today’s Washington Post…

CINCINNATI — Hillary Rodham Clinton angrily accused her Democratic rival Saturday of deliberately misrepresenting her positions on NAFTA and health care in mass mailings to voters, adding, “Shame on you, Barack Obama.”

Clutching two of Obama campaign mailings in her hand for emphasis, the former first lady said, “enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook.”

She said by his actions, Obama was giving “aid and comfort to the very special interests and their allies in the Republican Party who are against doing what we want to do for America.”

“Meet me in Ohio,” she said. “Let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign.” The two are scheduled to debate Tuesday in Cleveland.

In her criticism of Obama, she asked, “Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal health care?”

(For those who may have missed it, loads of people have called BO out on stopping short of truly universal health care here here, here, and here.  Ok back to the Washington Post article…)

The second mailing, on the North American Free Trade Agreement, quotes a 2006 Newsday article suggesting Clinton believed the agreement had been a “boon” to the economy. NAFTA and other trade agreements are extremely unpopular in Ohio, which has suffered an exodus of blue-collar jobs to other countries in part due to such agreements.

“I am fighting to change NAFTA,” she insisted. “Neither of us were in the Senate when NAFTA passed. Neither voted one way or the other.”

Clinton said Newsday had corrected the record about her views on the agreement. Indeed, the paper published a blog item earlier this month saying Obama’s use of the word “boon” was unfair.

“Obama’s use of the citation in this way does strike us as misleading,” the paper said. “The quote marks make it look as if Hillary said “boon,” not us. It’s an example of the kind of slim reeds campaigns use to try to win an office.”

From ABC’s Jake Tapper…

In the fierce fight for votes here in Ohio, where NAFTA is not popular among many blue collar Democrats, Obama has repeatedly attacked Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for the trade deal pushed by President Bill Clinton and passed in Congress in November 1993.

“Yesterday [Saturday], [Clinton] said NAFTA was ‘negotiated’ by the first President Bush, not by her husband,” Obama said today. “But let’s be clear: It was her husband who got NAFTA passed. In her own book, Sen. Clinton called NAFTA one of Bill’s successes.”

Obama also relayed to the small crowd at the National Gypsum plant a number of quotes from Clinton he said indicated she had praised the trade agreement — including one from 2004, when she allegedly said, “I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America.”

Said Obama, “One million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio. And yet, 10 years after NAFTA passed, Sen. Clinton said it was good for America. Well, I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America — and I never have.”

Hillary’s team hit back with the following in an effort to set the record straight.  Take a look…

Obama Continues To Mislead on Hillary and NAFTA

2/24/2008 1:54:42 PM

“Senator Obama’s insistence on repeating attacks that have been demonstrated to be false by independent entities proves once and for all that his speeches about the new politics are just words. That’s not change you can believe in.”

—Clinton spokesman Phil Singer

Today, Sen. Obama said the following:

And yesterday, Senator Clinton also said I’m wrong to point out that she once supported NAFTA. But the fact is, she was saying great things about NAFTA until she started running for President.

This is false. Hillary criticized Sen. Obama for sending out a mailer that claimed she said NAFTA was a “boon to the economy” when she never did. Today, the University of Pennsylvania’s FactCheck.org concluded “We do judge that the Obama campaign is wrong to quote Clinton as using words she never uttered, and it has produced little evidence that she ever had strong praise of any sort for NAFTA’s economic benefits.”

Also, Hillary has been critical of NAFTA long before she started running for President. For example, here’s Hillary in March 2000:

What happened to NAFTA I think was we inherited an agreement that we didn’t get everything we should have got out of it in my opinion. I think the NAFTA agreement was flawed. The problem is we have to go back and figure out how we are going to fix that. [Working Families Party, 3/26/00]

Sen. Obama touts his consistent opposition to NAFTA. But speaking in Illinois in 2004 Obama said the United States “benefited enormously” from exports under NAFTA and talked about the need to continue to pursue trade agreement like NAFTA that support “a system of free trade in this nation that allows us to move our products overseas.”

(Please see above link for hyper links to sources)

Hillary’s setting the record straight with two new ads in Ohio – people need to know the truth about Hillary and NAFTA and these ads will go a long way in getting that information out…

Proud – with Senator John Glenn

And Level

Help her get these ads up on the air in Ohio.  Dig deep – send what you can.  Don’t let these lies stand unchallenged.

DONATE NOW!

I stopped being “in awe” of candidates a long time ago. I don’t want a symbol. I don’t think any candidate is above the fray, nor can be — and probably shouldn’t be. I’m left cold by “elusive” messages. I just want the one who does the work and knows her stuff. And, I’ll tell you, if I were for Obama, I’d be feeling very uncomfortable about reports like these:

• “The Mendacity of Hope: What We Want to Believe About Obama,” by Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, Jan. 1, 2008
• “The Delusional Style in American Punditry,” by the New Republic’s Sean Wilentz, Dec. 19, 2007 (”Forget experience: Opinion-slingers are mooning over Barack Obama’s instincts. Don’t they remember how badly that worked out last time?“)
• “Democrats are Not Choosing Obama,” by radio host Taylor Marsh, Jan. 1, 2008
• “Obama slams Gore,” by Kos — yes, the founder of Daily Kos who recently backed Obama
• “Obama goes Harry and Louise: The audio,” by Jedreport at Daily Kos, Jan. 1, 2008
• “Obama-labor relationship tense in Iowa,” by Politico’s Ben Smith, Jan. 1, 2008

Let’s see: Forty-five percent of Obama’s support comes from non-Democrats. And a bedrock Democratic group, labor, is royally pissed at Obama — as are (I’ve been told) the worker bees and leaders of Iowa’s Democratic party who are very worried about his use of GOP talking points on Social Security and more. Then we have more and more writers pointing out the “mendacity” (a polite word for “lie”) in Obama’s speeches and in his advertisements.

Have you heard any other Democratic candidate — any of them — pull a “Harry and Louise” GOP-like attack in a false, smear-laden ad defending his or her health care plan? I need to ask this: Do any of those awe-struck non-Democrats supporting him even know who Harry and Louise are, or why that history matters?

Real Democrats know better than to fall for those kinds of tactics. But those 40% independents and 5% Republicans who want to vote for Obama? How can we know about them? What have they bothered to learn? Or are they in a state of rapture, not worried about those Democratic bedrock constituencies and issues?

And where do I begin to tell you? I can’t quote from every one of those important reports above. But you can read them. And you must. Then you must tell others about what you’ve read. Before it’s too late.

I will quote from the New Republic piece — which is a must-read in its entirety — about that “delusional” Boston Globe endorsement of Obama, because I have read more about what the TNR author is referring to:

The Boston Globe, in an ideal specimen of the delusional style, ran an editorial that endorsed Obama because he is biracial and grew up in “multi-ethnic cultures”–adequate substitutes, by the editorial’s lights, for serious background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has engaged in “a search for identity” and taken “a roots pilgrimage to Kenya,” all of which supposedly displays a “level of introspection, honesty, and maturity” that the newspaper longs for in a president. “Obama’s story is America’s story,” the Globe intoned–a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness.

Let us hold aside that the book the Globe relied on in discovering these singular Obamaesque virtues, Dreams From My Father, contains composite characters and other fictionalized elements–not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity. What is especially delusional is the Globe’s confidence that its own projections about Obama’s character and personality, as well as the mystical conclusions it draws from his ethnicity, are serious grounds for endorsing any candidate for any office, much less the presidency. … (From “The Delusional Style in American Punditry.”)

When the TNR author referred to Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father, which “contains composite characters and other fictionalized elements–not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity,” I recalled my recent reading of the very lengthy Chicago Tribune biography of Obama that pointed out many stories that Obama regularly recounts about his youth that — when Chicago Tribune reporters checked them out — simply weren’t true. In one story he tells often, Obama brags that he learned the Indonesian language rapidly and easily, but the Tribune reporters talked to his former teacher who remembers how much he struggled and how his schoolwork suffered because he couldn’t grasp the language. (I’m not faulting him for struggling with a new language, but it worries me that he brags about mastering it easily when that’s not what happened.) There are more similar instances in the Chicago Tribune bio series.

Then there’s a truly fine diary by Jedreport today at Daily Kos: “Obama goes Harry and Louise: The audio.” It’s another must-read in full, but here’s just a bit of it:

… Krugman’s post was about a friend who had heard an ad by Obama attacking Edwards and Hillary on their universal health care plans. At the time, there was considerable skepticism amongst Kossacks that any such ad existed, and if it did exist, whether it actually evoked the conservative “fear big government” theme of the Harry and Louise commercials from 1994.

Well, Ben Smith at politico.com has obtained an audio recording of the radio ad and I can report to you that unfortunately Krugman and his friend were right. Although the ad is partially a defense of Obama’s plan, it does savage Hillary and Edwards on universal health care — specifically mandates — and it even evokes the style, and more importantly, the theme, of the Harry and Louise ads.

Jedreport then quotes from Krugman’s post last week:

Obama goes Harry and Louise

A friend sends me this:

Have you seen or heard about the radio ad that Obama is running in Iowa about health care?

It has a man and a woman talking, with the man leading off saying that health care mandates “force those who cannot afford health care insurance to buy it, punishing those who don’t fall in line.”

This is what I’ve been complaining about. I was willing to cut Obama slack on the lack of mandates in his plan, even though the economics says they’re necessary; I figured that in practice, if elected, he’d end up doing the right thing.*

I started ramping up the criticism when he started attacking his opponents from the right, making the lack of mandates a principle rather than a compromise — because that was poisoning the well, making it much harder for any future Democratic president to implement a plan that will work.

Jedreports provides a YouTube of the ad, and part of the transcript:

MALE: Here’s the big difference on health care: Senators Edwards and Clinton favor mandates, which the Daily Iowan says would “force those who could not afford health insurance to buy it, punishing those who don’t fall in line.”

FEMALE: Barack Obama believes the solution isn’t making it illegal not to have health care, it’s making it affordable.

The kicker? Jedreport points out that “The Daily Iowan is the newspaper of the University of Iowa.” He adds, “I knew Obama had a lot of support from college kids, but now he’s quoting them on health care policy?”

JedReport also corrects misleading or false information in the ad.

But I’m just floored that Obama would quote a student newspaper as an authoritative source on health care. Well, I guess that’s how far his ad people had to look after an internationally renowned economist and New York Times columnist like Paul Krugman has reluctantly had to expose the problems with Obama’s health plan.

I ASK YOU AGAIN: Do any of those young people, those 40% independents, and those 5% Republicans who support Obama — do any of them know who Harry and Louise are, or why that history matters?

Real Democrats remember. Remember it well.

Don’t give me “hope.” Don’t leave me in “awe.” If your health care plan sucks, improve it! If your plan leaves out 15,000,000 people, say that you’re taking steps to correct it. But don’t attempt to smear your opponents’ plans when both John Edwards’ and Hillary Clinton’s plans are vastly better than yours.

I’ll stick with the REAL Democrats who’ll be voting in these primaries. The majority of them are behind the other candidates.