And that is why I took particular delight in Andy Borowitz’s most recent piece, “Obama Quits While Ahead; Prez Resigns After Hundred Days: “It’s All Downhill From Here.” Oh, if only:

In a move that stunned both political allies and foes alike, President Barack Obama resigned today after serving 100 days in office, telling the White House press corps, “It’s all downhill from here.”

The reporters seemed stunned by the President’s decision in light of the fawning media coverage he received during his first 100 days, but the hyperbolic nature of that reportage, ironically, may have been the prime motivator behind Mr. Obama’s shocking move.

“Let’s face it, I’m not going to get better coverage than I have to date,” he said. “The only guy with a higher approval rating is that dude who landed the plane on the Hudson - or maybe that other dude who escaped from those pirates.”

Click HERE to read the rest - it is pretty funny, especially to see who has higher poll numbers than Obama!

Sigh. I guess it is easy for him to have slightly better than half approval ratings when liberals and progressives ignore: expanded faith-based initiatives, a program we detested under Bush; keeping No Child Left Behind intact, a program we have all widely decried, especially teachers; and Obama’s EXPANSION of warrantless wire-tapping on American citizens. For added irony, here is a video from Keith Olbermann, of all people, on this very thing:

Then there is the attempt to nationalize our banks, firing the CEO of a private company, and the list goes on and on. These are just off the top of my head. I am sure there are more - feel free to add them!

The point is, someone who was inexperienced and unqualified was elected president as the result of the best marketing ploy I have ever seen. His connections to: Tony Rezko; Jeremiah Wright; Bill Ayers; Khalid Rashidi; Kwame Kilpatrick; Louis Farrakhan; and James Meeks, to mention a few, all ignored. Also ignored was his massive contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as was his his dearth of a record, both as an IL state senator and a US senator (or how he got to either one of those positions - getting the qualified people kicked off with the very thinnest of reasons). His sexist behavior, and his homophobic associates, all ignored by the MSM and his followers, people who ordinarily would never give quarter to such a person (and about which I have written extensively here. To find those posts, and other related articles by fellow No Quarter writers on those issues, and Obama’s associates, feel free to do a Search at No Quarter.).

Oh, what might have been. Below are a few very good videos on Hillary Clinton, the one who received the most votes in a Primary EVER, despite being outspent at every turn, and having the MSM expose its Clinton Derangement Syndrome at every turn. Still, STILL, she received the most votes of anyone EVER. That says something, both about her, and about the DNC’s choice to pick Obama over her, for all of their concocted reasons and unethical machinations to make it so. In recognition, then, of Obama’s 100 Days in the White House, I hope these will bring a smile to your face (though they also brought tears to my eyes):

In Europe, he chastised America for what he called our “arrogance.” In the Caribbean, he gave the dictator of Venezuela a warm smile and a handshake, and called him “amigo.” Before the Saudi king, he bowed low and long.

And just the other day, in a cynical nod to Turkish generals, the American president who campaigned for human rights quietly avoided the word “genocide” in a resolution marking the anniversary of the 1915 Ottoman Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenian Orthodox Christians.

A few years after that slaughter, as he prepared to engage in his own genocide of the Jews, Adolf Hitler was credited with saying: “Who remembers the Armenians?” The United States may remember, but our president can’t call it genocide.

Ah, yes, his trip to Turkey. Our guide in Turkey mentioned Obama’s two days spent there in Istanbul. He lifted up his hands, and his eyes to the heavens, and said, “yes, people here think he is the new savior.” There was a tinge of irony in his voice, thankfully. I was glad he appeared not to have been sucked in by Obama’s rhetoric. And all I could think was, “He has benefited from a GREAT marketing campaign, that man.” I might add, there were VERY few responses to the guide’s having said this, but in particular, there were no enthusiastic affirmations. Perhaps after Obama’s unwillingness to call genocide what is is, there may be fewer Turks who see him as The Messiah.

Kass continues:

Still, President Barack Obama offers himself up to an adoring world — and the enraptured, Hopium-smoking American media that helped elect him — as a leader more flexible than his hopelessly rigid predecessor, George W. Bush.

And he’s proved it, charming nations and their leaders, remaining in campaign mode, where he’s most comfortable.

While in Egypt, at the Citadel and its two mosques, we were all on the bus getting ready to leave. One of the constant souvenir hawks kept talking to people on the bus, and said, “I love Barack Obama! He will change the world! I hate George Bush and Tony Blair!” Well, I couldn’t disagree with his last assessment, but one of the other women on the bus, when he said Obama would “change the world, ” muttered, “We’ll see.” Again, not an enthusiastic response from the people on the bus (different group, for the most part, too, by the way). But it is clear that the MSM, Plouffe, and Axelrod meme that Obama really is a change agent, in contradiction to his entire political history thus far, and his underhanded way of even getting into politics in the first place (getting everyone thrown off the ballot), has taken root abroad. People believe what they want to believe, facts notwithstanding. It’s one thing for people in other countries to buy this stuff - they can’t vote here. Quite another that people here bought it. But I digress.

Back to the USA and John Kass:

But last week, he bowed to his base in the hard political left by reversing himself, opening the door for the prosecution of Bush Justice Department officials who helped develop harsh interrogation policies for suspected terrorists.

Some call it torture and legitimately oppose it. Others say harsh interrogation — such as waterboarding — was necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But what Obama accomplished by opening the possibility of political witch hunts was to offer up one of his own eyes to his political supporters. He needs both eyes to see a dangerous world.

The week began when Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos to reiterate Obama’s pledge not to prosecute.

“He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided,” said Emanuel, no fool. “They shouldn’t be prosecuted. … It’s time for reflection. It’s not a time to use our energy in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution.”

Two days later, Obama abruptly changed course to please his anti-war base that demands a few severed political heads.

“With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say, that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general,” he said. “I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.”

His critics used phrases such as “chilling effect” on intelligence gathering, but I call it the pucker factor. In all bureaucracies, it rolls down hill.

Of course, Obama caved. Anyone who thought he would do otherwise was sadly mistaken.

As for his releasing of the Torture memos, a number of my fellow writers at No Quarter have taken this on, including none other than Larry Johnson, American Girl In Italy, and SusanUnPC, to name a few. No need for me to get into that with such stellar writers already dealing with it, except to say - once again, Obama did not consider the implications and/or ramifications of doing so, including, as SusanUnPC pointed out, the impact on some of his more sychophantic supporters like Nancy Pelosi. (If you haven’t had a chance to read those, and others, I highly recommend that you do.)

Kass continues on the torture theme:

Reporters are kind of like intelligence gatherers. We don’t waterboard politicians, but we’re under pressure to get good information. So, let me tell you a story.

In 1985, I was a kid in the news business, and our gossip columnist, Mike Sneed — now at the Sun-Times — got the story of the year: “Reform” Mayor Harold Washington had been secretly taped pressuring a fellow to get out of the 3rd Ward aldermanic race. It sounded like raw politics. It didn’t sound anything like reform. And Washington was enraged.

Jim Squires, then our editor, decided to publish transcripts but tell readers the tapes were leaked by Washington’s white ethnic political opponents who wanted to embarrass him. Fair enough.

Then he ordered me and another young reporter to find Sneed’s source and walk back the cat. I didn’t want to do it, but he was the boss and Sneed understood, and after a few days, he dropped his harebrained scheme.

Yet for a long time afterward, sources worried they might be outed. Reporters were concerned their bosses might investigate their sources. And in the gathering of political intelligence, when sources start puckering up, they’re not going to kiss you. You get scooped.

And some editors shriek, “How did you get scooped?!” even when they knew that the boss made a decision that sent spasms through everything. More spasms ensue. The pucker factor multiplies exponentially.

Now THAT is a quote for the ages, isn’t it? “The pucker factor multiplies exponentially.”

Kass makes his point:

Obama isn’t an editor. He’s the president of a nation targeted by terrorists and constantly probed for weakness, even by our allies.

His intelligence gatherers — and others who give them the tools and the go-ahead — can’t spend their time wondering if he has their backs.

His statements surely sent spasms through bureaucracies that are vital to his own success and America’s safety. All because he wanted to campaign, rather than lead.

Our president has a fine ear for language and nuance. Yet sometimes he shapes his principles to fit the moment, something anyone who watches Chicago politics understood years ago(Emphasis mine.). The Democratic machine candidates he eagerly endorsed for re-election — from Boss Daley II to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger to disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich — are testament to Obama’s flexibility.

But he must stop campaigning someday, and start thinking like a chief executive. And he’ll need both eyes to see where he’s got to go. (
jskass@tribune.com)

I could not have said it better myself. Except to say that it isn’t just the intelligence gatherers who have to wonder if he has their backs, but ALL Americans. When the President of the United States goes abroad and insults the very people he was elected to serve, it does raise the question if he indeed does. Personally, I never suffered the illusion that he gave a damn about the American people - he seems to care about one person and person only: himself. Still, his position alone as POTUS would certainly IMPLY he has a duty to not trash us in other countries while apparently campaigning for Master of the Universe. Just sayin’.

And, while I know others are writing about this, a president who cares, really cares about the people whom he was elected to serve does NOT, DOES NOT, have a PHOTO OP of a 747 being chased by an F-16 Fighter Jet flying over lower Manhattan and New Jersey. The bubble surrounding this man and his inner circle is mighty thick, and mighty clueless. (If you have not yet heard about this incredibly insensitive, assholic move by the White House, click HERE and HERE for just two articles on this.)

If Obama is truly capable of leading, rather than just campaigning, and having his ego stroked, it is time, PAST time, for him to hop to it. And enough with the press conferences already, too. And the vacations (I’ve lost count, but it has been at least three in the first One Hundred Days. Feel free to enumerate them if you know of more!). And playing games while real issues are arising (golf, basketball, whatever). That is all to say, President Obama, get to work already.

It cheapens the game, is horrible on the bodies of these athletes, and sets a BAD example for our youth. I hope he is telling the truth that his use was limited to those two years, and that his apology is sincere.

I bring this up because this issue was raised to Obama the other night at the big White House press conference. His response:

The president’s strongest answer was in response to the evening’s fluffiest question, about Alex Rodriguez’s confession that he had taken steroids.

After an honest baseball fan’s lament (”it tarnishes an entire era”), Obama jumped to a larger point that transcends sports–the lesson in A-Rod’s downfall for the young: “There are no shortcuts; that when you try to take shortcuts you may end up tarnishing your whole career.” (Emphasis mine.)

I about fell out of my chair laughing. Obama claims there are “no shortcuts”??? His ENTIRE political career has been one of “shortcuts”! He gets everyone else thrown off the ballot so he can run unopposed for the IL Senate. While in the IL Senate, the primary legislation that passed with HIS name on it was thrown on there by “kingmaker,” Emil Jones. Obama did little, if any, of the work for the legislation passed in his name. His handlers exposed SEALED information on his Republican opponent in his run for US Senate, thus ending up with Alan Keyes thrown on the ballot at the last minute. And, he did not even complete his first term as US Senator! (All of the above information, and more, can be found HERE.) Could Obama BE any more duplicitous?

Well, it turns out the answer is yes! It seems that Obama is claiming there is NO pork in this humongous stimulus package he is traipsing around the country trying to sell. Perhaps he is unclear on the definition of “pork.” Given how much pork Obama tried to get for IL while a US Senator, $740 MILLION, you would think he would know what it was. And he’s supposed to be so smart and everything. But he claims that there is NO pork in this stimulus package. None. That’s what he said. And right after he said that while in IN, he gave examples of some pork that would benefit IN! I’m not kidding:

OBAMA: “Not a single pet project,” he told the news conference. “Not a single earmark.”

THE FACTS: There are no “earmarks,” as they are usually defined, inserted by lawmakers in the bill. Still, some of the projects bear the prime characteristics of pork — tailored to benefit specific interests or to have thinly disguised links to local projects.

For example, the latest version contains $2 billion for a clean-coal power plant with specifications matching one in Mattoon, Ill.*, $10 million for urban canals, $2 billion for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrid cars, and $255 million for a polar icebreaker and other “priority procurements” by the Coast Guard.

Obama told his Elkhart audience that Indiana will benefit from work on “roads like U.S. 31 here in Indiana that Hoosiers count on.” He added, “And I know that a new overpass downtown would make a big difference for businesses and families right here in Elkhart.”

U.S. 31 is a north-south highway serving South Bend, 15 miles from Elkhart in the northern part of the state.

* Remember, that coal plant was shut down for being “inefficient,” and they want to throw $2 BILLION at it.

There are numerous examples of the pork stuffed into this stimulus package, and I have detailed some in previous posts. But you can click HERE for a reminder. But there most definitely IS pork in this package, despite Obama’s nonsensical claims to the contrary.

And speaking of pork, how about this little payback for ACORN? Ah, yes. ACORN - the organization under federal investigation for voter fraud. But hey - they did their job, and accomplished their goal, so no doubt, Obama has to “show them the money” (and this isn’t the first time ACORN has found its way into one of these bills spending OUR money):

Bear in mind, your taxpaying dollars have already been shelled out to ACORN, despite the numerous investigations into its wrong doing over voter fraud/voter registration fraud. Yes, just as a reminder, back in April, ACORN and La Raza were the beneficiaries of $100 MILLION of your dollars in another Housing bailout. I’m sure ACORN and La Raza thank you. I’m CERTAIN Obama thanks you, since he most definitely benefited from the work of ACORN this past year. I’m going to bet Obama wouldn’t consider this pork, either…

I realize I should have offered this warning earlier, but if you have high blood pressure, you may want to skip the following video of Senator Chuck Schumer, a senator I USED to like, but how can you respect someone who says this:

You know what is surprising about this? That Senator Schumer seemed to have no qualms about insulting American citizens who actually do care how our taxpaying dollars are being squandered on pet projects and paybacks. His arrogance is staggering, referring to us as “the chattering class” simply because we do not want to have our great-grandchildren paying for some 36 hole Frisbee golf course, or billions to an organization under federal investigation, or inefficient power plants, or any other of the numerous pet projects tucked into what is SUPPOSED to be a JOB stimulus package. “Chattering class” indeed.

Feel free to contact Senator Schumer and tell him how you, one of the “chattering class,” feel about his contention that we do not care about the pork in this bill HERE. We, the “chattering class,” actually care about the course our nation is on, and the path down which it is currently being steered. It’s about damn time our representatives act like they care, too, especially when they are spending OUR money. We the “chattering class” care, all right - a lot. And we care when a US Senator dismisses our concerns about a tremendously flawed bill as if we should have nothing to say about it. That is not just hubris, that is condescension and arrogance toward the very people who gave this man a job. Senator Schumer has sure shown HIS true colors, and they are not pretty…Let him hear about it.

In the nation’s capitol, on the brink of history, the hour approaches …

If January 20th marks the “brink of history,” what have we been living in so far? And won’t the Visigoths, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians be just a little bit ticked off to be left out of history, particularly by Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and David Shuster?

Another favorite of mine is “new beginnings.” If it’s a “beginning,” it’s necessarily new. I.e., the phrase is ridiculously redundant.

Okay, that out of my system, here’s a video about a nice, sweet man from Illinois about whom a great fuss was made and for whom police were called, until today when, all of a sudden, he was before the Vice President of the United States, being sworn in as a U.S. Senator:

Just kidding. It was sweet today to see him touch his name plate next to the door to his new Senate office. And the excitement in the faces of his family. PEBO erred on that, but Harry Reid paid the price. But, at least in the end, it came out the way it should have for U.S. Senator Roland Burris (D-Ill.).

And what else is going on in the world? And Illinois? Any new scandals?

Rather, I want to share with you the backbone, the intestinal fortitude, with which some of NY’s politicians are made. You may recall that not everyone in NY was happy with the whole Kennedy Schlossberg push for Clinton’s Senate seat. Specifically, the Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, was opposed to her appointment. I know I should not be surprised by this, but in this NY Post article, “Silver Now Takes Shine To Caroline,” we learn WHY he has made this 180 turn. Ready for this? Here it is:

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who last week sharply questioned whether Caroline Kennedy should be appointed to the US Senate, said yesterday he’s rethinking his views because he believes Gov. Paterson may soon pick her.

The emphasis is mine. I am practically speechless. Silver wasn’t, though:

“I have determined there’s a good possibility she will be the appointee of the governor,” Silver, the state’s second most powerful Democrat, told The Post.

“If she is the appointee of the governor, I will certainly be supportive of her. I will work for her and will work strenuously for her election.”

Let’s see - even though he was opposed to her the other day, because he now thinks the governor may pick her, he’s for her. Wow - way to stick to the courage of your convictions there, Silver! Oh, yeah - and he’s willing to work for her re-election, too! Just like that - snap! I am sure his constituents are thrilled that he is such a man of his word.

Here is the recap of the past week on Silver’s position:

Last week, Silver said Kennedy seemed more loyal to Mayor Bloomberg, who has twice defeated Democratic opponents, than she was to Paterson.

He also said he was unhappy with Kennedy’s less than 100 percent commitment to support the Democratic candidate who’ll run against Bloomberg, who was twice elected as a Republican, this year.

Asked if he was now more favorably inclined toward Kennedy then he was last week, Silver responded, “Yes, it’s true.”

The speaker insisted he had no inside information - from the governor or anyone else - that Kennedy would be named to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of state.

But he said he reached the conclusion her appointment was likely because of “public opinion polls, which are not negative, and because the governor, I think, wants to run [in 2010] with a strong candidate, and I’m sure . . . having a well-known woman on the ticket will be helpful.”

Well, one would think. Didn’t help Hillary, but, oh, yeah - that’s because she was cheated, as we all were. But I digress.

Here’s the problem. Silver’s math comprehension:

While a national poll earlier this week showed a majority of Americans view Kennedy as qualified to be senator, a survey of New York voters last week found that 41 percent felt she was not qualified and 40 percent thought she was.

Apparently, he is not clear on PERCENTAGES. A friend who’s a math professor could help him with that. And even though it is a small percentage, it is not that Kennedy Schlossberg is being received with OVERWHELMING support the way, oh, I dunno, CLINTON was. Just sayin’.

But get this explanation for why it should be the exceedingly wealthy, connected Kennedy (and someone remind me why this is not a “pay to play” scheme? Does ANYONE think favors have not been promised for her to get in? Really??):

Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s top political aide, Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey - who has been lobbying for Kennedy - played his trump card yesterday. He argued that only Kennedy, an early Obama supporter, would have the clout a cash-strapped New York will need within the next administration.

“I think New York needs someone who can work with the new president. I think New York needs someone who supported the new president. I think New York desperately shouldn’t appoint someone who opposed the new president,” Sheekey said.

I think Sheekey means to say this is the payback for all Kennedy Schlossberg did for Obama during the campaign, like comparing him to her father, though there is absolutely no basis whatsoever for such a comparison. And for her coming out of her private little world to stump all over creation for The One (and no doubt, her uncle’s influence in having the RBC make a mockery of any sense of decency and fair play).

Just seems to me that this is different only in small degrees from what has happened in IL. She is someone Obama wants in there because she won’t EVER buck him (I assume that’s what Sheekey means when he says she’ll “work” with PEBO), and will simply be a yes-woman to him. We all know that would NOT have been Hillary’s role - acquiescing to whatever PEBO wants. The other piece of the equation often left out is the representation of the people of NY. Cuomo would be a much better pick for that, but why quibble. If PEBO wants her in, you know she’ll get it, even though she is unqualified for it. Welcome to New Politics Obama-style, same as Chicago-style. Seems it’s here to stay…

Can you believe that about the school changing its name to Barack Obama Elementary?? Sadly, it is true. Here is the article: New York School Changes Name to Barack Obama Elementary,

Some public figures wait a lifetime — or longer — to see their names affixed to airports, bridges and public schools.

Not so Barack Obama.

In what appears to be a national first, the school board in Hempstead, N.Y., has voted unanimously to change the name of its 460-student Ludlum Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School.

Officials hope to hold a name-changing ceremony shortly after the new year begins. Such quick action could put the 47-year-old president-elect’s name on a public institution even before his inauguration Jan. 20. “I think we were still caught up in the moment,” principal Jean Bligen said.

Like many across Long Island, Hempstead students followed the campaign closely. Students at the former Ludlum School held a mock debate, and a straw ballot there in grades 3-5 produced 257 votes for Obama, 28 for opponent Sen. John McCain.

The school’s enrollment is 62 percent Hispanic and 36 percent African-American. Several students come from Africa, and many more come from El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Puerto Rico.

“For me, we made history,” said Teonte Jackson, 11, a fifth-grader who played Obama in the debate. “I feel really proud to have an African-American president. I don’t think it’s a racial thing. I think he will bring everybody together.”

Here’s the thing. If they indeed did follow this election closely, did it not ever bother any of these TEACHERS that Obama refused to provide his transcripts? ANY of his transcripts from any three of the institutions of higher learning he attended? It didn’t bother ANY of them that he treated women so poorly? It didn’t bother them at all that he PLAGIARIZED his speeches and policies?? All because he is half black, he gets a school named after him?? He has done VERY little on his own, as I have been saying for months, and as the video above details.

Oh, but you know there is more:

Clear Stream Avenue School in Valley Stream will also consider a renaming resolution next month, The Associated Press reported.

Eileen Garbe, who teaches fifth grade at the former Ludlum School, said the election provided a “monumental” opportunity to bring history alive for students. She plans to retire in about a year and a half after 20 years of teaching. “Isn’t this a wonderful way to go out?” she said.

A photo of Obama already hangs in the school’s office. Coincidentally, since September the school has been sending hundreds of books to an orphanage in Kenya, the home of Obama’s late father, even before the idea of a name change took hold.

The idea began to jell after another fifth-grade teacher asked students Jalani Johnson and Samantha Alburez, both 10, to write essays on why their school should be named for Obama.

Interim Superintendent Joseph Laria praised both students and adults for urging the name change at the Thursday school board meeting. The board’s vote was 5-0.

As he voted, board president Charles Renfroe thought of his own fifth-grade teacher, Artiebelle Lowe, who worked in a segregated, two-room schoolhouse in rural Alabama.

Renfroe still recalls her joy at the news in 1955 that a Montgomery, Ala., seamstress named Rosa Parks had defied Jim Crow laws by refusing to move to the rear of a bus. “I just wish she could be around today to see how far we’ve come,” Renfroe said of his former teacher.

“I think this will unite us,” said another board member, Betty Cross, who has differed with the board on other issues.

Hempstead Village Mayor Wayne Hall said naming the school after Obama is appropriate. “The fact that he was elected on Nov. 4 as the first African American is the achievement,” Hall said. “He doesn’t have to do anything else. The fact that he was elected is the ultimate achievement for all Americans.”

A Web search finds no mention of other schools or public facilities in the United States named for Obama, though such moves are being advocated in Calumet City, Ill., and Portland, Ore.

Geezy pete. JUST because he is half African and half American is sufficient. Wow. That seems like a mighty low threshold to me, but hey - maybe I expect too much. Again, it just shocks and appalls me that these teachers are completely ignoring the reality of how Obama got to where he is - the lying, cheating, stealing, misogyny, homophobia, and deception (to name a few). If they were truly following this election closely, they would have to know on SOME level that what they are doing is all about color of the skin, and NOT character. What the hell kind of message is THAT to be sending to our young people??? No wonder so many of our youth are cheating, lying, and plagiarizing - they see that success comes to those who cheat their way to the top, with no recrimination whatsoever. Wow.

And on a final note of disgust, this was the very end of the article:

In Antigua, the prime minister has said he’s taking measures to have the island’s highest peak renamed Mount Obama, according to the AP.

A school in Kogelo, Kenya, birthplace of Obama’s father, was named for the president-elect after he was elected senator.

ANTIGUA??? What the hell does Obama have to do with ANTIGUA??? Kenya maybe, but holy cow, these people have drunk way too much kool aide…

It didn’t take long for Barack Obama to start playing a significant role in promoting Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics.

About 15 minutes into Chicago’s Friday presentation of its bid plans to the general assembly of the European Olympic Committees, the president elect gave an 85-second videotaped address to an audience that included some two dozen International Olympic Committee members….

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley arrived in Istanbul Friday and introduced the Obama video….

There also were also four still pictures of Obama, all with Mayor Daley, during the 20-minute presentation, the third of five Chicago is making to annual assemblies of regional Olympic committees.

Obama filmed the video last Friday in Chicago at his transition office in the Kluczynski Federal Building….

“With Mayor Daley and president-elect Obama, this bid team now enjoys unprecedented partnership for a U.S. candidate, reaching from City Hall in Chicago to the White House in Washington, D.C.,” Ryan said.

Obama, in other words, is parlaying his status as President elect to help procure the crown jewel of Mayor Daley’s agenda: the 2016 Olympics.

This concerns me for many reasons. According to the Chicago Tribune, Chicago is the only city that made a presentation before the International Olympic Committee that did not have full governmental backing. Chicago has also failed provide a compelling argument that the current economic situation would not make it impossible for Chicago to host such an expensive event. But even worse, it seems backers of Obama were already aware of Obama’s role in Daley’s bid to procure the approval of the International Olympic Committee to host the international event before Obama was elected.

Here is a entry from No Quarter’s Site Meter I captured on 14 September 2008:

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Someone at The University of Chicago Hospitals on 14 SEP 2008 performed a Yahoo search for “Reverend Meeks” and “Olympics,” and they were directed to No Quarter. The University of Chicago Hospitals, for those who have not been reading No Quarter the past few months, employed Michelle Obama from 2002 through 2007, when she resigned in order to campaign for her husband. When she was promoted to the position of Vice President for Community and External Affairs in 2005, her salary increased from $121,910 to $316,962. This was the same year her husband joined the US Senate, where he submitted an earmark request on behalf of Michelle’s employer. I quote the Chicago Tribune:

In among them was a request for $1 million in federal funding in 2006 for a new pavilion at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where his wife, Michelle Obama, was a vice president at the time.

One wonders why the federal government should have bankrolled a new pavilion at The University of Chicago, a private institution. One also wonders why Michelle received such a large increase after her husband had the ability to secure federal funds for the private hospital. But one also wonders why a computer of Michelle Obama’s former employer, an employer who had what appears to be a political and fiduciary relationship with Barack Obama, would perform a Yahoo search for “Rev. Meeks” and “Olympics” on 14 SEPT 2008.

Reverend James Meeks is a Chicago ally of Obama and an Illinois State Senator. He is also a homophobic minister from whom Obama regularly seeks “spiritual counsel.” Obama will not be seeking Meeks counsel on the Olympics, however, for Meeks believes Chicago business leaders should focus on rebuilding schools and the city’s infrastructure, not on the 2016 Olympics. Notice how the Chicago Sun-Times article I cite was published on 13 SEPT 2008, and notice how someone on a computer of Michelle Obama’s former employer, an employer on behalf of whom Barack Obama submitted an earmark request for a “pavilion,” performed a Yahoo search on 14 SEPT 2008 for “Rev. Meeks” and “Olympics.” Clearly someone at The University of Chicago Hospitals is concerned about Reverend and state Senator Meeks’s opposition to Daley’s latest cash cow, a cow for which Obama is now advocating.

Let us recapitulate:

• Obama has been and remains Daley’s puppet
• Daley desires to host the Olympics in Chicago in 2016
• Obama, now President elect, appears before the International Olympic Committee in a video presentation that Daley introduced in Istanbul, and the two appeared together at least four times in photographic stills
• Daley has been mobilizing the support of Chicago business leaders for this event for some time, sparking the opposition of Reverend and state Senator James Meeks, who believes Chicago’s business leaders should invest in the city’s infrastructure
• Someone at Michelle Obama’s former employer, The University of Chicago Hospitals, happened upon No Quarter one day after the Chicago Sun-Times published an article on Meeks’s opposition to Daley’s plan to mobilize support in Chicago for the Olympics. They were searching for information on “Rev. Meeks” and the “Olympics.”
• Barack Obama attempted to secure federal funds in an earmark for The University of Chicago Hospitals to build a “pavilion.”
• Michelle Obama’s salary tripled the same year her husband gained the power to submit earmark requests in the US Senate.
• The University of Chicago also recently built a pool they call “the most prominent feature” of their athletic facility. Olympics officials have already visited the pool to consider it for Olympics 2016.
• Someone at The University of Chicago Hospitals, Michelle Obama’s former employer and the intended recipient of an Obama earmark, has what seems to be a vested interest in Olympics 2016.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe Daley and The University of Chicago pushed Obama in order to obtain financial benefits, namely the ability to host the 2016 Olympics. Why else is an employee of Michelle Obama’s former employer, The University of Chicago, searching for information on “Rev. Meeks” and “Olympics?” Why did Michelle Obama receive such a large salary increase when her husband could secure earmark requests for her employer? Moreover, why is Daley already forcing Obama to cut videos during his transition into the White House? Furthermore, why did The University of Chicago become the beneficiary of an earmark request for a “pavilion?” How much do Michelle Obama’s friends at The University of Chicago Hospitals stand to gain from Olympics 2016? How much does Daley stand to gain? Is this the final culmination of the contracts scandals in Chicago’s City Hall? Are the contracts scandals of Chicago City Hall now to pervade the White House in the name of Olympics 2016? And why is the Obama video already on display at Chicago 2016, the website dedicated to promoting Chicago’s candidacy for the Olympics?

Olympics 2016: not only is it a fraud; it is Daley’s attempt to introduce the world to the Chicago machine and to quid pro quo politics. And Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are at the center of it all.

It seems that others are noticing the rampant sexism/misogyny, and the hypocrisy of the “liberal elite” when it comes to who can be a feminist or not. Victor David Hanson would be one such person in his article,An Instructive Candidacy: What Sarah Palin taught us about ourselves. In his excellent piece, parts of which are excerpted here, Mr. Hanson takes on not just the Feminist Police, but the journalists who have been “reporting” during this campaign season:

Soon this depressing campaign will be over, and we can reflect on what we learned from our two-month introduction to Sarah Palin.

Clearly, it is more than we would have ever wished to know about ourselves.

First, there turns out to be no standard of objectivity in contemporary journalism. Palin’s career as a city councilwoman, mayor, and governor of Alaska was never seen as comparable to, or — indeed, in terms of executive experience — more extensive than, Barack Obama’s own legislative background in Illinois and Washington. Somehow we forgot that a mother of five taking on the Alaskan oil industry and the entrenched male hierarchy was somewhat more challenging than Barack Obama navigating the sympathetic left-wing identity politics of Chicago.

Well, true that. Everyone seems to have convenient amnesia when it comes to the accomplishments of the Governor of Alaska. Far too often, I have seen letters to the editor or comments at blogs claiming she is “just a mother of five.” No, she is that, which is no small thing, by the way, to which my mother can attest, but she is One of FIFTY governors in the entire United States, with the highest approval rating of any governor, as well as one who has taken on her own party, and WON, thank you so much.

But I digress:

So we seem to have forgotten that the standards of censure of her vice-presidential candidacy were not applied equally to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. The media at times seems unaware of this embarrassment, namely that their condemnation of Sarah Palin as inexperienced equally might apply to Barack Obama — and to such a degree that by default we were offered the lame apology (reiterated by Colin Powell himself) that Obama’s current impressive campaigning, not his meager political accomplishments, was already an indication of a successful tenure as president. The result is that we now know more about the Palin pregnancies — both of mother and daughter — that we do the relationships of Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Father Pfleger with our possible next president.

No FREAKIN’ KIDDING! Obama hasn’t had a tenth of the vetting in eighteen months that Palin has had in two months - nice that some people are keeping score here. Hanson continues:

Indeed, the media itself — in private, I think — would admit that while (we? they?) have learned almost everything about Tasergate and the Bridge to Nowhere, we assume that at some future date a publicity-starved, megalomaniac Rev. Wright will soon offer his post-election memoirs, detailing just how close he and a President Obama were. Or we will learn Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, as long-time friends, in fact, did communicate via phone and e-mail well after Ayers had told the world, about the time of 9/11, that he, like our present-terrorist enemies, likewise wished he had engaged in more bombing attacks against the United States government. And the media never wondered whether a Palin’s falling out with those who ran Alaska might have been more of a touchstone to character than Obama’s own falling in with those who ran Chicago.

Uh, yeah. For some reason, while still in the Primary season, the MSM were all too happy to do their level best to ignore anything to do with Wright. They downplayed the videos, believed Obama when he claimed he certainly didn’t hold the same beliefs that Wright does even though his butt was in the pew in that church for over twenty years, and even though he called Wright his “uncle.” Oh, no - we must take him at his word that he would NEVER believe in that hate mongering theology. Just like we are supposed to take him at his word about Bill Ayers, Domestic Terrorist-Who-Wishes-He-Had-Been-More-Successful! Never you mind that they have been hanging around with each other for the past 13 years, working together, living near each other, and handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote Ayers’ “unique” ideology to the youth of Chicago, through Wright, of course. Obama is such a straight shooter, naturally we must believe every word that escapes his lips, right?? Evidently.

And now is when we get to the issue of feminism:

Second, there does not seem to be much left of feminism any more. Of course, feminists once gave liberal pro-choice Bill Clinton a pass for his serial womanizing of vulnerable subordinates, and Oval Office antics with a young female intern. But they gave the game away entirely when they went after Gov. Palin for her looks, accent, pregnancies, and religion, culminating in assessments of her from being no real woman at all to an ingrate — piggy-backing on the pioneer work of self-acclaimed mavericks like themselves.

Feminism, it turns out, is no longer about equal opportunity and equal compensation, but, in fact, little more than a strain of contemporary elitist identity politics, and support for unquestioned abortion. Had Gov. Sarah Palin just been a mother of a single child at Vassar rather than of five in Alaska, married to a novelist rather than a snow-machiner, an advocate of pro-choice, who shot pictures of Alaskan ferns rather than shot moose — feminists would have hailed her as a principled kindred soul, and trumpeted her struggles against Alaskan male grandees.

So there was something creepy about droves of irate women, in lock-step blasting Sarah Palin from the corridors of New York and Washington, when most of them were the recipients of the traditional spoils of either family connections, inherited money, or the advantages that accrue from insider power marriages. Indeed, very few of Palin’s critics on their own could have emerged from a small-town in Alaska, with an intact marriage and five children, to run the state of Alaska.

We have come to understand that — for a TV anchorwoman, op-ed columnist, or professor — it would be a nightmare to birth a Down Syndrome child in her mid-forties, or to have had her pregnant unwed teen actually deliver her baby. In the world outside Sarah Palin’s Wasilla, these are career-ending blunders that abort the next job promotion or book tour— or the future career of a prepped young daughter on her way to the Ivy League.

Right? I’ve known people who couldn’t endure the stress of their partner getting a PhD., for cryin’ out loud, much less the stress of moving from one level of government to another with five kids, one of whom is a Special Needs child. Add to that the lack of support from her own party in doing these things, and you got yourself some stress. Which Sarah Palin has handled with seeming ease, a feat that should have been CELEBRATED by feminists, not ridiculed.

Hanson then takes on the whole Biden v. Palin contest:

Third, from the match-up of Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, we discovered that our media does not know anything about the nature of wisdom — how it is found or how it is to be adjudicated. For the last eight weeks, Palin has been demonized as a dunce because she did not, in the fashion of the class toady with his hand constantly up in the first row, impress in flash-card recall, the glasses-on-his-nose Charlie Gibson, or clinched-toothed Katie Couric.

Meanwhile Joe Biden has just been Ol’ Joe Biden — which means not that he can get away with the occasional gaffe, but that can say things so outrageous, so silly, and so empty that, had they come out of the mouth of Sarah Palin, she would have long ago been forced to have stepped aside from the ticket.

Factual knowledge? Biden, in the midst of a financial meltdown on Wall Street, apparently thinks that the last time it happened in 1929, we heard FDR rally us on television. And such made-up nonsense came in the form, as many of Biden’s gaffes do, of a rebuke to the supposedly obtuse George W. Bush…

Amazingly, very, very little is made of either Biden’s OR Obama’s gaffes, though BOTH of them have PLENTY. Had Clinton, or McCain, or Palin, or anyone else made the factual inaccuracies or flat out lies that either of these men have made, they would be running across the bottom of your screen for days on end. But Biden and Obama? Hahaha, they made a mistake, move along, nothing to see here. Sheesh. Here are just a few for you:

Silliness? Imagine the following outbursts, mutatis mutandis, from the mouth of a Sarah Palin — “John McAmerica,” “a Palin-McCain administration,” “Senator George Obama,” “Congressman Joe Biden,” who is both “good looking,” and “drop-dead gorgeous.” Or “I guarantee you, John McCain ain’t taking my shotguns. . . . If he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem. I like that little over and under, you know? I’m not bad with it. So give me a break.”

Or “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Or “Mitt Romney is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly he might have been a better pick than me.”

Holy toledo. Reversing the positions helps to highlight just how absurd all of this has been…I agree with the following assessment:

The list could go on ad nauseam. But we got the picture. Biden has devolved from the ridiculous to the unhinged, confident that in-house journalism would understand that the law graduate with 36 years in the Senate was simply being Joe, while a Sarah Palin, who flinched when asked to parse the Bush Doctrine, was a Neanderthal creationist. I thought by now the You-tubed exchange of a Congressional Finance Committee hearing between the pompous Harvard Law School graduate Barney Frank and the conniving Harvard Law School graduate Franklin Raines — at the proverbial moment of conception of the financial meltdown — would have put to rest the notion that graduation from law school was any proof of either wisdom or morality.

I don’t know whether Sarah Palin would make a great vice president. But I did learn that by the standard of John Kerry’s pick of John Edwards, and now Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, as running mates, she is wise and ethical beyond their measure.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

He’s got a point, don’t you think?

And in conclusion, while looking for videos for something else, I stumbled upon the following video. From this person’s lips to the powers-that-be in the universe:

Aren’t I BENEVOLENT???” Woohoo!!! Where do I sign up? Well, I suppose I could vote for the Authoritarian Socialist in the election and have these dreams (cough, choke) come true! Yes, you, too could have your hard earned dollars go to spread the wealth around, apparently something the Civil Rights Activists didn’t work hard enough to do, according to Obama.

Oh, yeah - surely by now you have seen the video of Obama from 2001. A whole bunch of intrepid writers at No Quarter have dealt with this video and story in a most awesome fashion(Uppity Woman, LisaB, Matthew Weaver, Ani, to name a few), but someone else has weighed in, too. And I don’t mean me.

Well, except to bring you this, someone of whom you have surely heard - Johnny Mac. Yep, there’s a brand new Mac Attack on Obama’s long-held ideology of “spreading the wealth.” I might add, Obama can just feel FREE to share his millions of dollars any ol’ time he wants, though judging from the donations on his released tax returns, like so many other issues, he is ALL TALK and NO ACTION. What the hell else is new?

Anywho, Senator McCain was speaking in Ohio, land of the fraudulent votes by Obama staff (oh, McCain wasn’t talking about the fraudulent votes and ACORN, though I reckon he could have thrown that in there - maybe another day), and focused on the whole “lemme have your money and I’ll dole it out the way I see fit” mindset of Obama:

It’s been a long campaign and we’ve heard a lot of words, and great campaign trail eloquence. The amazing thing is that we’ve learned more about Senator Obama’s real goals for our country over the last two weeks than we learned over the past two years. It is amazing that even at this late hour, we are still learning more about Senator Obama and his agenda. He told Joe the plumber right here in Ohio he wants to quote “spread the wealth around.” It’s always more interesting to hear what people have to say in these unscripted moments, and today we heard another moment like this from Senator Obama.

In a radio interview revealed today, he said that one of the quote — “tragedies” of the civil rights movement is that it didn’t bring about a redistribution of wealth in our society. He said, and I quote, “One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Good googly moogly. Did Obama REALLY say that? OUT LOUD?? Whew - “coalitions of power” has GOTTA mean ACORN, right? I mean, really, who else could it mean but the organization for whom he worked, to whom he has given almost a cool million from his own funds, and tons more from all of us. The one working overtime to amass so many voter registrations, legit and not, that they overwhelm election boards so they can’t POSSIBLY find all of the fraudulent ones…Just a guess on my part, though, since he didn’t SAY, “ACORN, the political and community organizers on the ground who can put together actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.” Ahem. Nothing like that. Right.

But since Obama has been a bit unclear on what he actually MEANT by his whole Hope/Change thing, McCain can clear that up for you:

That is what change means for Barack the Redistributor: It means taking your money and giving it to someone else. He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it, in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity. I am going to create wealth for all Americans, by creating opportunity for all Americans.

Pretty much! Hey! Guess who else holds these kinds of beliefs? Are you thinking who I’m thinking? Yes! Bill Ayers!!! The Marxist/Anarchist!

McCain then raises the Obama tax plan:

We’ve all heard his campaign trail promise: he says he only wants to tax the rich. But these unscripted moments and his record tell a different story. He supported the Democratic budget plan passed just this year that called for raising taxes on people making just 42,000 dollars per year. And Senator Obama has voted 94 times for tax increases or against tax cuts.

Senator Obama may say he’s trying to soak the rich, but it’s the middle class who are going to get put through the wringer, because even the tax increase he admits to misses the target. To pay for nearly a trillion dollars in new government spending, his tax increase would impact 50 percent of small business income in this country, and the jobs of 16 million middle class Americans who work for those small businesses.

Whether it’s Joe the Plumber here in Ohio or the working men and women across this country, we shouldn’t be taxing our small businesses more as Senator Obama wants to do, we need to be helping them expand their businesses and create jobs. America didn’t become the greatest nation on earth by giving our money to the government to “redistribute.” In this country, we believe in spreading opportunity, for those who need jobs and those who create them. And that is exactly what I intend to do as President of the United States.

According to the Wall Street Journal, when Obama says $250,000, he REALLY means more like $164,500, since that is when the tax hikes will kick in. There’s more:

Mr. Obama’s most dramatic departure from current tax policy is his promise to lift the cap on income on which the Social Security payroll tax is applied. Currently, the employer and employee each pay 6.2% up to $102,000, a level that is raised for inflation each year. The Obama campaign says he’d raise the payroll tax rate on incomes above $250,000 by as much as two to four percentage points — though it’s unclear if that higher rate would apply to the employee, the employer, or both.

In any case, lifting the cap would change the nature of Social Security from an insurance program — which pays out based on how much you paid in — into a wealth-transfer program that is far more progressive.

Huh - that seems to be a theme with Obama. Sharing the wealth. Oh, no, wait - sharing YOUR wealth however he sees fit. There is much more about his tax policy in the WSJ article (h/t to a No Quarter reader - sorry - can’t find your name now!). McCain adds:

My opponent’s massive new tax increase is exactly the wrong approach in an economic slowdown. The answer to a slowing economy is not higher taxes, but that is exactly what is going to happen when the Democrats have total control of Washington. We can’t let that happen. We need pro-growth and pro-jobs economic policies, not pro-government spending programs paid for with higher taxes…

I’m not going to spend $750 billion dollars of your money just bailing out the Wall Street bankers and brokers who got us into this mess. I’m going to make sure we take care of the working people who were devastated by the excesses of Wall Street and Washington.

I have a plan to hold the line on taxes and cut them to make America more competitive and create jobs here at home. We’re going to double the child deduction for working families. We will cut the capital gains tax. And we will cut business taxes to help create jobs, and keep American businesses in America. Raising taxes makes a bad economy much worse. Keeping taxes low creates jobs, keeps money in your hands and strengthens our economy.

Exactly. There is more in Senator McCain’s address to Ohio today, including more on the economy:

If I’m elected President, I won’t spend nearly a trillion dollars more of your money. Senator Obama will. And he can’t do that without raising your taxes or digging us further into debt. I’m going to make government live on a budget just like you do.

I will freeze government spending on all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, Social Security and health care until we scrub every single government program and get rid of the ones that aren’t working for the American people. And I will veto every single pork barrel bill Congresses passes.

I’m all for keeping an eye on the $700 BILLION bailout, especially with reports coming out today that bankers are planning billions - yes, I said BILLIONS - in bonuses to the very people who helped to get us into this position, as well as raises to employees, and maybe buying some more banks - with YOUR MONEY!!!! Maybe that whole oversight wasn’t such a bad idea after all…

McCain continued, saying:

Let me give you the state of the race today. There’s eight days to go. We’re a few points down. The pundits have written us off, just like they’ve done before. My opponent is working out the details with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid of their plans to raise your taxes, increase spending, and concede defeat in Iraq. He’s measuring the drapes, and he’s planned his first address to the nation for before the election. I guess I’m old fashioned about these things I prefer to let the voters weigh in before presuming the outcome.

What America needs now is someone who will finish the race before the starting the victory lap … someone who will fight to the end, and not for himself but for his country.

Obama has been claiming victory almost from the day he got into this race, if you ask me. For some reason, he refused to be held to the same standard as any other potential nominee EVER, refusing even to be properly vetted (see Larry Johnson’s excellent presentation by a former FBI agent on this very issue). What was more amazing is that he was allowed to get away with it, so we are just now - a WEEK before the election - getting some information that has been available for SEVEN YEARS. Wow.

We do know John McCain, though, and we know he is telling the truth when he says:

I have fought for you most of my life, and in places where defeat meant more than returning to the Senate. There are other ways to love this country, but I’ve never been the kind to back down when the stakes are high.

As a lifelong yellow dog Democrat until 5/31/08 (when the RBC/DNC took votes cast, and certified, from Clinton and GAVE them to Obama making it clear the fix was in, and the DNC was no longer democratic), I knew all about Senator McCain. One may disagree with his policies, but one cannot, with any credibility, challenge his patriotism or his dedication to the country he serves. He concludes:

I know you’re worried. America is a great country, but we are at a moment of national crisis that will determine our future.

Will we continue to lead the world’s economies or will we be overtaken? Will the world become safer or more dangerous? Will our military remain the strongest in the world? Will our children and grandchildren’s future be brighter than ours?

My answer to you is yes. Yes, we will lead. Yes, we will prosper. Yes, we will be safer. Yes, we will pass on to our children a stronger, better country. But we must be prepared to act swiftly, boldly, with courage and wisdom.

I’m an American. And I choose to fight. Don’t give up hope. Be strong. Have courage. And fight.

Fight for a new direction for our country. Fight for what’s right for America.

Fight to clean up the mess of corruption, infighting and selfishness in Washington.

Fight to get our economy out of the ditch and back in the lead.

Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.

Fight for our children’s future.

Fight for justice and opportunity for all.

Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.

Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. America is worth fighting for. Nothing is inevitable here. We never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.

Now, let’s go win this election and get this country moving again.

Could you please add, “Fight for free speech” while you are at it, Senator? That seems to be something the Obama camp would like to curtail. I, for one, think it’s mighty important. Just sayin’. Ahem.

Don’t you feel like McCain is channeling Hillary Clinton? Seems that way to me, anyway. I don’t agree with all of his policies, but I do think he is a man of honor, of integrity, a public servant burning with a passion for this country and her well-being, thus OUR well-being. Obama? Not so much. Obama seems in it for him and him alone, with an eye to imposing his true ideology and beliefs on this country once he has bamboozled and hoodwinked enough people to get him in (one way or the other - see comment regarding ACORN above) for HIM, not us, HIM. McCain seems to see Obama for who he is, and is fighting for this country to not fall into the hands of one who wishes to “redistribute the wealth” of the citizens any more than it already is (think Social Security), or to put our economy at greater risk.

Like I said, Obama - redistribute your OWN wealth, if you want (hey, maybe your buddy Warren Buffet will let you spread HIS around), but leave mine the hell alone.

[Bill] Ayers will be joined by Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, who is working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system; Randolph Stone, Director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago; Alex Correa, a reformed juvenile offender who spent 7 years in Cook County Temporary Detention Center; Frank Tobin, a former priest and teacher in the Detention Center who helped Correa; and Willy Baldwin, who grew up in public housing and is currently a teacher in the Detention Center. [...]

At the end of this SAME PRESS RELEASE are these two paragraphs that put Bill Ayers in the same program, the same views on criminal justice, and the same physical location as Michelle Obama — as well as Barack Obama:

Michelle Obama, Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University of Chicago Community Service Center, hopes bringing issues like this to campus will open a dialogue between members of the University community and the broader community.

“We know that issues like juvenile justice impact each of us who live in the city of Chicago. This panel gives community members and students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it.”

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

November 4, 1997, The University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Here is the text of the University of Chicago press release dated November 4, 1997:

Should a child ever be called a “super predator?”

A panel at the University of Chicago debates the merits of the juvenile justice system

Children who kill are called “super predators,” “people with no conscience,” “feral pre-social beings”–and “adults.”

William Ayers, author of A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court(Beacon Press, 1997), says “We should call a child a child. A 13-year-old who picks up a gun isn’t suddenly an adult. We have to ask other questions: How did he get the gun? Where did it come from?”

Ayers, who spent a year observing the Cook County Temporary Juvenile Detention Center in Chicago, is one of four panelists who will speak on juvenile justice at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, in the C-Shop of the Reynolds Club, 5706 S. University Ave.

The panel, which marks the 100th anniversary of the juvenile justice system in the United States, is part of the Community Service Center’s monthly discussion series on issues affecting the city of Chicago.

The event is free and open to the public.

Ayers will be joined by Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama, Senior Lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, who is working to block proposed legislation that would throw more juvenile offenders into the adult system; Randolph Stone, Director of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago; Alex Correa, a reformed juvenile offender who spent 7 years in Cook County Temporary Detention Center; Frank Tobin, a former priest and teacher in the Detention Center who helped Correa; and Willy Baldwin, who grew up in public housing and is currently a teacher in the Detention Center.

The juvenile justice system was founded by Chicago reformer Jane Addams, who advocated the establishment of a separate court system for children which would act like a “kind and just parent” for children in crisis.

One hundred years later, the system is “overcrowded, under-funded, over-centralized and racist,” Ayers said.

Michelle Obama, Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University of Chicago Community Service Center, hopes bringing issues like this to campus will open a dialogue between members of the University community and the broader community.

“We know that issues like juvenile justice impact each of us who live in the city of Chicago. This panel gives community members and students a chance to hear about the juvenile justice system not only on a theoretical level, but from the people who have experienced it.”

FACT CHECK

Obama claim:

STEPHANOPOLOUS: Can you explain that relationship [with William Ayers] for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

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.

The fact is that I’m also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who, during his campaign, once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.

Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn’s statements? Because I certainly don’t agree with those, either.

So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, that 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.

Facts:

• Michelle Obama scheduled a round table with Barack Obama and Bill Ayers at The University of Chicago in 1997
• The round table and the press release connect Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Bill Ayers
• Barack Obama, Michelle Obama and Bill Ayers exchanged ideas before, after and during the round table Michelle Obama organized
• Barack Obama and Bill Ayers collaborated during this conference, and their exchange of ideas informed Obama’s opposition to the Juvenile Justice Reform Act in the Illinois General Assembly in 1997
• This exchange of ideas reveals that Ayers’s governing philosophy is reflective of Obama’s views; indeed, Ayers’s philosophy shaped and determined Obama’s views
• Obama’s relationship to Ayers is anything but flimsy
• Obama lied during the Philadelphia debate
• One of Obama’s present votes in 1999 in the Illinois state Senate on juvenile justice legislation is also a result of his 1997 collaboration and collusion with Bill Ayers
• Obama’s legislative activity in Illinois can be tied to his intellectual relationship with terrorist Bill Ayers

How does the Obama campaign account for this official University of Chicago press release? And does Michelle Obama also share Bill Ayers’s ideas? It appears she does.

Michelle and Barack Obama have deep and controversial ties to Bill Ayers the Weather Underground terrorist and bomber.

**********Truthteller asks bloggers and reporters to direct their attention to Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey.**********

Mike Robinson’s AP article entitled “Obama Fundraiser, Convicted of Fraud, Spills Beans,” corroborates what we at No Quarter have been writing for weeks: Antoin “Tony” Rezko is cooperating with federal prosecutors interested in Barack Obama. While the national media’s attention to this topic is long overdue, I am not prepared to state that it is too little, too late. I am, however, disappointed.

Also disappointing but somewhat predictable is the blogosphere’s bungled reception of Mike Robinson’s article. Of course those who have embraced Obama will dismiss the story as so much yellow journalism. One blogger claims that prosecutors are interested in Blagojevich and not Obama. But looming in the blind spot of that blogger’s necessarily tendentious gaze is Rezko’s 9 JUN 2008 letter to Judge Amy St. Eve and the reference to Obama as “Individual D” in the superseding indictment and the proffer of evidence filed by Fitzgerald and his prosecutors during the Rezko trial. Obama’s name can be printed again and again on the surface of the legal documents filed during the proceedings of the Rezko trial, but these writers with all their “naked” insight will clothe the verifiable record with their blindness. Knowledge production, it seems, has been lifted from its evidentiary supports when Democrats write about Barack Obama and Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

And yes, those Democrats include some ostensible Hillary Clinton Democrats. Seizing upon the following quotation in a Chicago Sun-Times column, one blogger believes the AP story heralds the end of the political careers of Alexi Giannoulias and Barack Obama:

Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.

Stay tuned.

While Rezko was a customer of Alexi Giannoulias’s Broadway Bank, where he amassed a debt of $450,000 after writing bad checks at Las Vegas casinos, and while Giannoulias did write loans for Rezko, I do not believe one can aver with the confidence of the blogger I cite above that federal prosecutors are now focusing on Giannoulias, even if Giannoulias was tied to Rezko by his opponent during his 2006 bid for the office of Illinois state Treasurer. Allow me to be clear: Obama bundler, mobster banker and Obama protégé Giannoulias is, to be sure, embroiled in the Rezko scandal and in other aspects of Chicago politics any political observer would find unsavory, but he is not in my opinion the topic of the conservation occurring between Rezko, Rezko’s attorney and Fitzgerald’s team of prosecutors. I do admit he is grist for the mill of impetuous bloggers who desire web traffic and a controversial headline or two, however. Because I tend to rely on evidence and not on hearsay, I believe we should focus our attention on Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey, not on Giannoulias and the Broadway Bank, if we are to assign names to the financial institution about which Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times has heard “rumblings.” Although Mahajan is not known to readers of No Quarter and to the national media, I imagine they will desire more information on the unscrupulous banker once they read the information I unpack below the fold. And yes, Obama is involved, deeply involved.

My interest in Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey was picqued by this list of contributors in Rezko’s bundling network provided by the Chicago Sun-Times last March. View the second page of the document, and notice the following entry:

The data available in the Sun-Times spreadsheet is corroborated by the following data, which is democratically available at the Federal Election Commission’s website:

MAHAJAN, AMRISH
CHICAGO, IL 60607
MUTUAL BANK

OBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
12/20/2003 500.00 24020030170
04/14/2004 1000.00 24020461757

Not only was Mahajan a member of Rezko’s bundling network; his bank, the Mutual Bank of Harvey, granted Rita Rezko the $500,000 mortgage she needed in order to purchase the lot on which the Obama mansion in Chicago sits. As many of you may recall, the Obamas could not have purchased the mansion they could not afford unless transactions for the mansion and the lot closed on the same day. Obama needed to locate someone who would buy the lot, and he approached Rezko, the convicted slumlord with whom Obama toured the property before they mutually agreed to the following arrangement:

The home and lot sales closed on June 15, 2005. A land trust controlled by the Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million, and the Obamas secured a $1.32 million mortgage from Northern Trust to complete that purchase. That same day, Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, bought the side lot for $625,000. A $37,000- a-year Cook County employee, she secured a $500,000 mortgage from Mutual Bank of Harvey.

The structure of this transaction begs the following question: What bank would lend a government employee who earns $37,000 per annum a $500,000 mortgage? What bank would assume such a risk?

The Mutual Bank of Harvey, of course, for the Mutual Bank of Harvey’s President is a man who is deeply connected to the Chicago machine that backed Barack Obama. Indeed, Amrish Mahajan was one of Mayor Daley’s first political appointments in 1989, when he was named to a seat on Chicago’s Plan Commission, where he would be joined by Obama’s former boss and Rezko’s business partner Allison Davis and by Valerie Jarrett, Daley’s Chief of Staff who chaired the Commission from 1991-1995. Mahajan, in other words, worked with those who devised and profited from Daley’s failed public housing experiment in Chicago, a public housing policy Obama helped fund as state Senator and US Senator.

Rezko, according to the Boston Globe, was one of the major beneficiaries of Obama’s legislative advocacy for funding of Daley’s public housing experiment. Other major beneficiaries are Jarrett and Allison Davis. Mahajan was also a beneficiary, for his bank had made $3.4 million dollars in loans to Tony Rezko’s slum landlord business since 2002. A banker for one of the slumlords who benefitted from the Daley housing program Obama helped bankroll, Mahajan was returning a favor when he wrote a $500,000 mortgage in 2005 for the wife of one of his clients. Although Tony’s financial problems were mounting in 2005, and although Rita earned only $35,000 per annum, Mahajan underwrote the mortgage. Favors must be reciprocated, I guess, especially when one can satisfy two parties at once: the person with whom one has a complicated relationship in real estate and the politician who helped finance that complicated relationship as state Senator and US Senator.

I doubt federal investigators are interested in the Mahajans solely for their involvement in the property deal involving Obama, Mahajan and the Rezkos. The Mahajans, I believe, are the foci of their probe for many reasons.

• Anita Mahajan, the wife of Amrish, has been involved with questionable real estate deals that are the subject of federal probes with Governor Blagojevich’s wife, Patricia
• Anita Mahajan exploited lucrative no bid contracts with the Department of Children and Family Services to steal $2.1 million from Illinois taxpayers; she was charged and released on a $250,000 bond in March 2007
• “Uncle Amrish” has raised more than a half million for Blagojevich and approximately $50,000 for Mayor Daley, whose father helped launch Mahajan’s banking career
• “Uncle Amrish” also helped Obama purchase a house he could not afford

The real estate transaction involving Rita Rezko, the Obamas and Mutual Bank of Harvey is just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the Mutual Bank of Harvey seems to be at the center of all the corruption in Chicago. To quote former Donald Perillo, Chicago insurance mogul and son of the lawyer for Al Capone, in the Chicago Tribune article I cite above:

Donald Parrillo said he isn’t surprised to see Mahajan mix it up with politics and business. “He got that attitude from the Parrillo family,” the former alderman said. “He wanted to get in the game.”

And Mahajan certainly is in the game. The banker of the Chicago machine, he is also the man who wrote the mortgage for Rita Rezko that facilitated Obama’s purchase the mansion he could not afford. This is why I believe prosecutors are interested in Harvey Mutual Bank. Not only did Rezko receive loans from this institution; this bank is heavily involved in problematic real estate dealings involving Blagojevich and Obama. And if I may quote Rezko in the 9 JUN letter he wrote to Judge Amy St. Eve:

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”

Rezko is now talking, and prosecutors are presently interested in a politically connected financial institution. I bet Obama now regrets paying Rita Rezko $104,500 for the strip of the land in the lot on which his house sits in January 2006. Acquired with the assistance of a questionable $500,000 mortgage from Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank of Harvey, this lot and Obama’s desire to expand his yard by bit was the catalyst for all the investigative reports into Obama’s deep ties to Rezko. By the way, Rita’s lot is only accessible through the front gate of Obama’s home; it is not a separate property, and it was never intended to be a separate property.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” Obama says of the real estate transactions with Rezko. I wonder if now he also believes it was a mistake for him to serve as the legislator who represented and bankrolled Richard Daley, Amrish Mahajan, Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis and the Chicago Plan Commission. But at least he and Michelle have a house, a house the Mutual Bank of Harvey, the politically connected bank that wrote loans for Rezko, helped them procure in 2005. Too bad that house will be the end of Barack Obama.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• Rezko, Giannoulias, Obama - Dominoes?
• CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen
• More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
• Obama’s Gangster Mentality
• Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

Obama has a friend or associate that is questionable.

Video or articles surface of Obama thanking them, supporting them, writing a blurb for their book, organizing events for them, campaigning for them, campaigning with them, playing poker with them, serving on boards with them, buying homes with them, dining with them, praising them, using them to prove his christian faith, or hiring them.

Obama then denies their tight relationship - brushes the association off as *a guy in the ‘hood*, claims they are someone who doesn’t advise him, minimizes the actual number of times he attended church, says he can’t vet his vetters, or flat out lies.

Obama THEN completely denies any knowledge of who they really are, denies ever knowing who they were, what they said, what they did, how corrupt they were, any fraud they were up to, and what they were preaching.

People - this isn’t a coincidence. One or two nefarious associations can be examined and written off. But there is a looooooooong list of people that Obama is close to - whether they be family members, business partners, friends or co-workers who are either radicals, criminals, racist, or anti-American.

This list, compiled by The Daily Antikos, is great, but forgot a few people/organizations (that I added at the end):

Jeremiah Wright - Obama’s Pastor for 20 years. Obama did not distance himself until it was political.

Father Pflager - Speaks at Obama’s former Church (only after embarrassment) and Obama gave him money & here they are in 2000.

Bill Ayers - Terrorist. Member of the Weather Underground. Killed Americans. Launched Obama’s Political Career.

Tony Rezko - bought land and sold it to Obama at a discount. Oh yeah, and he is a convicted felon.

Raila Odinga - Defeated in his bid for the Kenyan Presidency. Led Supporters in a Violent Uprising. Obama Campaigned for him in 2006. (at tax payer expense)

Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour - I can’t even get started. This is Obama’s Political Grand-father, and his intentions do not seem to be too honorable.

Franklin Raines - Cooked the Books at Fannie Mae. Obama hired him as an advisor on Housing and Urban Affairs.

Frank Marshall David - Communist Obama Mentor.

Emil Jones, Jr. - Ugh… Just Read It.

Rev James Meeks - Spiritual Mentor

Rashid Khalidi - PLO Terrorist.

Here are a few more:

Larry Walsh is the Will County (IL) County Executive, good buddy, political confidante, and frequent poker player with Barack Obama. He is currently being investigated by the FBI.

Kwame Kilpatrick, former mayor of Detroit, convicted felon, has been charged with 10 felonies including perjury, obstruction of justice and assaulting a public safety officer. He will be sentenced October 28th. In June, Kwame Kilpatrick gave Barack Obama his endorsement as a Democratic Party Superdelegate.

Gov. Blagojevich, who is under investigation.

Marilyn Katz, a former member of the ’60’s anti-war group SDS, led protestors against the police outside the Democratic Convention in 1968. Protestors threw nails in the street to impede the police and clashed with police on this occasion and others. Katz has said of her activities that she wanted the U.S. to become a socialist paradise. She is a close friend of Barack Obama. Katz is a member of Obama’s national finance committee.

James Johnson, Former Fannie Mae executive who was vetting candidates for Obama for his VP but had to resign. Johnson is drawing fire over his jumbo home loans from Countrywide Financial, a major actor in the subprime mortgage mess, that may have been below market rates.

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the NOI. Obama helped to organize his Million Man March in ‘95, and he is tight with Reverend Wright and Phleger.

Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac - Obama has recieved the most donations, second only to Dodd, from these companies, and also was thanked, in part with the Congressional Black Caucus, for *being like family* with Fannie and Freddi.

ACORN - Obama is the former Director of Illinois Project Vote, and they have been raided and charged for fraudulent voter registration practices. They are also linked to some of the above associations of Obama’s.

Michelle Obama. *First time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.* Nuff said.

How does someone hang out with that many people, who are, as I said, criminals, radicals, racists or just plain anti-American, and not share some of those characteristics?

And the best excuse Obama can ever come up with is *they aren’t the person I thought I knew* or *I never heard them say those things* or *I did not know they were a domestic terrorist when I was having my first fundraiser in their living room*.

Are we to believe that he truly didn’t know, that he is that uninformed, that naive, that, dare I say, stupid? Or is he just lying?

Why would someone who associates with all those people WANT to be President? And more importantly, why would anyone WANT him to be President?

I just don’t get it.

So who cares about some county executive anyway? Well, the FBI, for starters. Yes, that is right, yet another one of Obama’s CLOSE associates is under investigation. How many does that make now? Let’s see - there’s Tony Rezko, convicted felon who looks like he’ll be singing like a bird to stay out of prison; Kwame Kilpatrick, former mayor of Detroit, convicted felon; Gov. Blagojevich, who is under investigation, and about whom Rezko may well be singing; and then there’s Bill Ayers, confirmed, unrepentant domestic terrorist who is only out of prison on a mere technicality. These are the people of whom I can think off the top of my head. Feel free to add more.

Anywho, seems Larry Walsh is in a bit of hot water with the Feds. And before anyone tries to deny that Obama and Walsh aren’t really that close, and he doesn’t really know him, blah, blah, blah, just take a look at the photo above from February, 2008.

Uh, yeah. Just save it. They are clearly, um, close.

And then there are the EARMARKS that Obama has porked Walsh’s way (major H/T to Jennifer Rubin at Commentary Magazine for this information and newsflash. Earmark citation is HERE):

In 2006, Obama requested that Will County receive $1.3 million to support its Flood Studies for Unincorporated Will County.

In 2006, Obama requested $800,000 for the Will County Sheriff’s Office Wireless Communications Technology Upgrades.

In 2006, Obama requested $1,953,331 for Will County’s Ridgewood Water and Sewage Project.

In 2005, Obama requested $2 million for the Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois, to establish a Center for Academic and Community Learning, which is designed to address the significant educational needs of the less advantaged in the Will County region by providing academic assistance not only for students on campus but also for residents of the surrounding communities.

And that’s just for starters. Feel free to peruse the whole long list of Obama’s earmark requests - holy freakin’ toledo. Oh, yeah - Obama is SOOO not a typical politician!! Hahahahaha!! Right.

Now, just why are the Feds interested in Obama’s close confidant and long-time friend, Larry? Good question. No one’s saying, and Walsh claims he hasn’t the foggiest why anyone is talking about the Feds anyway - he hasn’t done anything!

Cough, choke.

Huh. I guess he didn’t see this Washington Times article, “FBI Investigates Obama’s Friend“:

According to Chicago authorities, the FBI visited the offices in Joliet, Ill., of a Will County auditor to ask questions about Larry Walsh, a longtime friend of Mr. Obama’s, and his chief of staff Matt Ryan.

Mr. Walsh, who served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2005, was endorsed by Mr. Obama in his county executive election bid. With the support of some of Mr. Obama’s U.S. Senate volunteers, he easily defeated incumbent Republican Joseph Mikan.

Will County auditor Steve Weber confirmed that his office had been asked by the FBI to assist in an investigation, but he did not elaborate on the specifics.

Two FBI agents out of Chicago reportedly spent more than an hour in the Will County offices on Wednesday morning.

Yeah, I’m guessing when the FBI comes to chat for an hour, they include that it is best to not talk about specifics. So, what’s the deal then? This:

According to sources, the Walsh investigation may be tied to lobbying firm Smith Dawson and Andrews, which was hired in 2006 for $10,000 per month to help Will County acquire federal grants.

The firm, which is registered with the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, assists clients with communications and legislative strategies that better their public policy agendas, according to its Web site. Last month, Mr. Walsh announced that Will County was the recipient of a $750,000 federal government grant that would allow law enforcement and prosecutors to fight against domestic violence.

One of the firm’s partners, James P. Smith, contributed $2,000 to help Mr. Walsh’s county executive election bid.

Money. It always comes down to money, doesn’t it? Let’s finish up this interesting article about the relationship between Walsh and Obama:

A corn farmer from Joliet, Mr. Walsh has supported his friend’s presidential bid, and campaigned for him in rural and farming areas of the state. They are seen hugging each other in photos before Mr. Obama’s announcement that he was running for president.

The two men became tight friends during their tenure in the Illinois Senate and bonded over games of poker. According to a report in Time magazine, Mr. Walsh lost to Mr. Obama once with what he thought was a winning hand, and then slammed down his cards and said: “Doggone it, Barack, if you were more liberal in your card-playing and more conservative in your politics, you and I would get along much better.”

Mr. Walsh denied any knowledge of any investigation.

“I don’t have a clue what you are talking about,” Mr. Walsh said in reports published Thursday in the Chicago Sun-Times.

“I’m innocent! I’m innocent! Just like Tony Rezko, Kwame Kilpatrick, and Bill Ayers! Really”

For crying out loud, the hits just keep on coming from Obama. If these are the people we KNOW about, with the total paper job of the MSM for Obama, how many more are there? And WHY are the alleged news sources not covering these issues? McCain is right - if this was ANYONE else but Obama, the MSM would investigate, nay, SCREAM from the front page, about these characters in Obama’s life, and Obama’s character. Can you just imagine, just IMAGINE, if these kinds of people were in Senator Clinton’s life? Or Senator McCain’s life? Or ANY OTHER POLITICIAN’S life? But with Obama, they are swept under the rug, “move along, folks, nothing to see here, nothing to see! Move along!” You know, at some point, preferably before November 4th, these questions must be asked, and answered, and I don’t mean Obama’s typical, “I barely know the guy - saw him walking down the street! That’s IT! Stop asking me already and leave it alone!” All I can say is where there is smoke, there is fire, and there is a smoldering one surrounding Obama. Questions must be asked, and answered now (though they COULD have been asked, oh, I dunno, maybe EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO???). Yep, some answers would be mighty nice.

You know, this would be a pretty big change for the US of A - to elect someone with known shady associates BEFORE they got into the White House and just letting it go as opposed to hounding them into shame like, say, Gary Hart. Heck, he had one affair and was sent off to Purgatory. Obama has a shady past, no records, criminal associates, and he is sailing right along. Maybe THIS is what he meant by Change? If so, that’s some change I can do without, I’ll tell ya. Anyway, stay tuned - no telling which good buddy of Obama’s will be in the cross hair’s next! Can’t wait until it is OBAMA in the cross hairs - now THAT would be new and different!

Isn’t this election electrifying?!?! Oh, boy…

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”

Either Rezko is “Levine, Loren, Mahru, [sic] or Winter,” or Rezko decided he will no longer relate “the ‘wrong’ things” but the right things he knows about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. For according to a Chicago Tribune article published today, Rezko has met with prosecutors and is considering cooperating with their investigation. I quote the Tribune:

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a convicted influence peddler who was once one of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s most trusted confidants, has met with federal prosecutors and is considering cooperating in the corruption probe of the governor’s administration, sources told the Tribune.

Rezko’s possible change of heart—after years of steadfast refusal—has sent ripples through a tight circle of prominent defense attorneys who represent dozens of potential witnesses and targets in the wide-ranging probe.

His cooperation would give prosecutors investigating the governor and his wife access to someone they have described as an ultimate political insider at the center of a pervasive pay-to-play scheme.

Rezko’s trial this year laid bare a culture of scams, bribes and backroom deals stretching from City Hall to the Statehouse. It even became fodder in the presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama, whose fundraising and personal ties to Rezko go back more than a decade.

Key phrases in this excerpt are “ripples through a tight circle of prominent defense attorneys who represent dozens of potential witnesses and targets,” “political insider at the center of a pervasive pay-to-play scheme” and “culture of scams, bribes and backroom deals stretching from City Hall to the Statehouse.” Obama, we recall, is the “unnamed political candidate” mentioned in the superseding indictment and in the proffer of evidence filed by Fitzgerald and his prosecutors. I quote the Chicago Sun-Times:

Obama is not named in the Dec. 21 court document. But a source familiar with the case confirmed that Obama is the unnamed “political candidate” referred to in a section of the document that accuses Rezko of orchestrating a scheme in which a firm hired to handle state teacher pension investments first had to pay $250,000 in “sham” finder’s fees. From that money, $10,000 was donated to Obama’s successful run for the Senate in the name of a Rezko business associate, according to the court filing and the source.

Rezko, who was part of Obama’s senatorial finance committee, also is accused of directing “at least one other individual” to donate money to Obama and then reimbursing that individual — in possible violation of federal election law.

This is only a scratch on the surface, however. For as I describe in one of my many essays on the subject of Obama and Rezko, Obama’s relationship with the convicted slum landlord is extensive and elaborate. I quote myself on the years 2003-2005:

2005 is the year Rezko helped Obama purchase the mansion in the Kenwood neighborhood in inner city Chicago. And 2003 is the year Rezko held a fundraiser for US Senate candidate Barack Obama at his posh home in Wilmette, Illinois. Another event of significance in 2003 is Illinois Governor Blagojevich’s appointment of Rezko to the Board that oversees the $30 billlion dollar teachers’ pension fund. This is the same year during which Barack Obama was appointed to the Illinois state Senate Committee on Pensions and Investments by his friend and mentor state Senator Emil Jones. According to the Superseding Indictment filed by Fitzgerald in December 2006, Obama’s appointment to this state Senate committee coincided with Rezko’s attempts to leverage his influence with “high-ranking State of Illinois officials” to oppose a pension consolidation plan that would complicate the efforts of Rezko and Levine to defraud investment firms and the pensions funds of Illinois. Notice also how Obama sat on the state Senate Pensions and Investments Board when Rezko funneled money he defrauded from an investment firm that sought access to the Illinois pensions fund to Obama through Joseph Aramanda, whose son worked as an intern in Obama’s US Senate office in 2005, the year Rezko advised and assisted the Obamas when they purchased the Kenwood mansion they could not afford.

That is only a brief summary of Obama’s involvement with Rezko during the years that are the focus of Fitzgerald’s probe. For more on Obama’s relationship with Rezko since at least 1991, I recommend consulting the diaries whose titles are listed below.

Obama’s ties to Rezko are deep and controversial. Moreover, recently unsealed documents from the court proceedings reveal Judge Amy St. Eve permitted prosecutors to summon witnesses who could provide testimony on Obama’s ties to Rezko. Prosecutors, in other words, were interested in Obama’s role in Rezko’s elaborate web of influence peddling and corruption.

The alarm expressed by defense attorneys who represent witnesses and potential targets in the wake of the revelation that Rezko is cooperating with prosecutors should be of interest to readers of No Quarter. For not only is Obama deeply embroiled in Rezko’s legal woes; Obama was also one of the prosecutors’ many targets. And although Obama’s campaign will claim that “prosecutors during Rezko’s trial never made any suggestions that Obama was involved in anything improper,” they neglect to understand that anything Rezko may relate now that he is cooperating with prosecutors will be used against Barack Obama. Besides, Rezko mentions Obama in his letter to Judge St. Eve dated 9 June 2008. If prosecutors were not pressing Rezko to reveal details about his relation to Obama, why would Rezko bother to mention Obama’s name?

Because Rezko is cooperating with prosecutors who demonstrated an interest in Rezko’s relation to Barack Obama during the trial, I imagine Obama’s campaign and defense attorneys are not pleased with this latest revelation in the Chicago Tribune. And yes, we at No Quarter will keep everyone posted. Rezko, after all, is one of the many reasons we insist on probing Barack Obama’s record.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

In mid-June, Truthteller and I did an hour-long radio show on the highly disturbing story of Rezko and Obama’s long relationships, and the impoverished people of Chicago who suffered because Obama was more interested in making big deals for his rich benefactors than in truly helping the poor get beter housing. Listen to the archive of our show, just as timely today as it was in June. It’s also vital to read these two articles on Obama’s entanglements with these corrupt and unconscionably cruel men: “The Blood Money of Barack Obama’s Money Men” and the Boston Globe’s “Grim proving ground for Obama’s housing policy.”

Also in June, in “The Epistolary Rezko,” Truthteller undertook the daunting task of compiling ALL of the posts at No Quarter — and there have been dozens of them! — on Tony Rezko and Obama’s other questionable associations with various characters in the Chicago Machine:

No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

You know, I was so happy when you endorsed and supported Senator Clinton. I thought you were a pretty decent guy, and seemed to make some good decisions. But I started to get an idea of how you really operate from the report of tax scandals, for starters, but then the way you could not WAIT to throw Hillary Clinton under the bus for Obama. That said a whole helluva lot to me about you and your character, none of it good. To recap, Rep. Rangel, you were a bit snarky. And now this - what the hell is the matter with you?

I swear, it is like respected members of the Democratic Party are taking on the thuggish, ill-mannered behavior of many of Obama’s minions. I expect better from them than this. A lot better.

Along those lines, to be bi-partisan, what the hell is wrong with CHUCK HAGEL? He, too, made some stupid, ill-informed comment about Gov. Palin, the VP candidate for his own PARTY. Yes. First he said he doubted she had the experience to be vice president, especially in terms of foreign policy. Well, okey dokey - way to be a team player, there Chuck! Oh, don’t think that’s all - he also made fun of her claiming she said she could see Russia from her house. Really, Chuck? Did you not SEE the whole interview?

I have to say, it kinda makes me wonder about Chuck considering his relationship to Obama and the voting machines-formerly-known-as-Diebold. You know, that he is saying this kind of crap about his party’s VP candidate. Just coincidence? Maybe, but it makes me a tad suspicious. And I noticed that Chuck hasn’t made any kind of similar statements about OBAMA’S lack of experience in foreign policy! Does he think that being on that little junket with Obama this summer is sufficient “foreign policy” experience??? But Palin’s going to Kuwait and Germany, plus having to be on constant alert because of the proximity of Russia doesn’t count for ANYTHING? Some double standard that.

And while we are talking about experience, I would like to bring the national down to the local. As some of you may know, Charleston had a horrible fire not too long ago, in which a number of fire-fighters were killed. It was the largest number since 9/11 of firefighters killed in one situation. As it turned out, there were things that could have been handled better. To make a long story short, the fire chief stepped down, and they have narrowed down their list of candidates. Wanna know what the main thing was on which they focused on the news last night and in the paper today? Experience. They list the name, the location in which the person is currently serving, and the length of time they have been in fire service. The LOWEST number of years is 30 - that’s THIRTY years. To be a fire chief. In a medium sized city. I am the first to say, I WANT my fire chief to be experienced - hell to the YES, I do. Lives depend on that level of experience. And I am sure you see where I am going with this. I want my PRESIDENT to be experienced, too. I want him/her to have experience delegating, fixing, maintaining, reforming, creating whatever needs to be delegated, fixed, maintained, reformed, and created. Being smart doesn’t hurt. Yes, Senator CLINTON fits the bill - and had the DNC not acted so immorally and unethically, she would be the hands down winner. But they did, and she isn’t. I will never forgive them for destroying the Party of the People the way that they have.

But, what real-life executive experience does Obama bring to the table? None. Well, unless you count trying to strong arm state senators to do his bidding in IL, against the wishes of their own constituents, as indicated here(H/T to alert reader at NQ - Freedom Eagle? Sorry -can’t remember for sure):

And the story doesn’t end with Obama’s support for set-asides. A Chicago Defender story of 1999 features a front-page picture of Obama beside the headline, “Obama: Illinois Black Caucus is broken.” In the accompanying article, although Obama denies demanding that black legislators march in perfect lockstep, he expresses anger that black state senators have failed to unite for the purpose of placing a newly approved riverboat casino in a minority neighborhood. The failed casino vote, Obama argues, means that the black caucus “is broken and needs to unite for the common good of the African-American community.” Obama continues, “The problem right now is that we don’t have a unified agenda that’s enforced back in the community and is clearly articulated. Everybody tends to be lone agents in these situations.”

Speaking in reply to Obama was Mary E. Flowers, an African-American state senator who apparently broke black caucus discipline and voted to approve the casino’s location in a nonminority area. Said Flowers: “The Black Caucus is from different tribes, different walks of life. I don’t expect all of the whites to vote alike.  .  .  .  Why is it that all of us should walk alike, talk alike and vote alike?  .  .  .  I was chosen by my constituents to represent them, and that is what I try to do.” Given Obama’s supposedly post-racial politics, it is notable that he should be the one demanding enforcement of a black political agenda against “lone agents,” while another black legislator appeals to Obama to leave her free to represent her constituents, black or white, as she sees fit.

Oh, what the hell - here’s a bonus quote:

When the 2000 census revealed dramatic growth in Chicago’s Hispanic and Asian populations alongside a decline in the number of African Americans, the Illinois black caucus was alarmed at the prospect that the number of blacks in the Illinois General Assembly might decline. At that point, Obama stepped to the forefront of the effort to preserve as many black seats as possible. The Defender quotes Obama as saying that, “while everyone agrees that the Hispanic population has grown, they cannot expand by taking African-American seats.” As in the casino dispute, Obama stressed black unity, pushing a plan that would modestly increase the white, Hispanic, and Asian population in what would continue to be the same number of safe black districts. As Obama put it: “An incumbent African-American legislator with a 90 percent district may feel good about his reelection chances, but we as a community would probably be better off if we had two African-American legislators with 60 percent each.”

Someone want to tell me again how Obama sitting in the pew at TUCC for over 20 years was NOT affecting his politics??

But I digress - experience. Obama is sorely lacking in it, and it would behoove both Charlie and Chuck to keep their yaps shut lest the glaring jackass in the room is actually discussed by, oh, I don’t know, the MEDIA?!?!?! Just a thought. In any event, you “gentlemen” do not reflect well on your respective parties, or on your chosen (apparently, for Chuck, definitely for Charlie) candidate. Try a bit of decorum, would you? It couldn’t hurt, and elevating the gutter politics in which Obama and his minions have engaged would be a blessed relief. Just sayin’.

Here is Bill Burton’s predictably sanctimonious response:

“It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why[.]”

And here is Jonathan Alter condemning McCain on Charlie Rose’s 11 SEPT 2008 television program during minutes 20:30-23:40 of the following video clip:

According to Jonathan Alter, because McCain “knowingly, intentionally, and shamelessly” “lied” in the advertisement on Obama’s controversial support for a sex education bill, McCain has lost all “moral authority” and is as a result “unable to govern.” Some would call his words an indictment; I view Alter’s lies as shameful and downright perverse.

Alter’s denunciation of McCain is shameful and downright perverse, for it is a knowing, intentional and shameless misrepresentation of McCain’s ad and of Obama’s legislative record. Let us consider the bill in question, SB0099 of the Illinois General Assembly. I quote:

Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K 6 through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV AIDS. Nothing in this Section prohibits instruction in sanitation, hygiene or traditional courses in biology.

Not only did Obama vote for and therefore support a bill that mandates sex education for all public school children; this bill was amended in order to ensure sex education would be provided to students from grades kindergarten through 6. How else does one explain the strike through the number six and the underscore below the letter “K” in the text I quote above?

Also shameful and downright perverse about Alter’s performance on Charlie Rose’s show is the silence of the host and the other guests: no one bothered to correct Alter. But even worse, no one bothered to explain how McCain’s decision to air an advertisement that correctly represents Obama’s record in the Illinois state Senate in no way justifies Alter’s hyperbolic claim that McCain is unable to govern.

If these commentators and reporters were not shameful and perverse in their willful, intentional and shameless advocacy for Barack Obama, they would have discussed another problematic aspect of Barack Obama’s record on sex, children and public schools during his tenure in the Illinois state Senate: a “present” vote on SB609, a measure that prohibits the opening of sex shops near schools, places of worship or day care facilities. Here is the synopsis of the bill on which Obama voted “present:”

Provides restrictions on the proximity of adult entertainment establishments to other adult entertainment establishments, schools, parks, places of worship, pre-schools, day care facilities, mobile home parks, or other residential areas. Provides that a violation of this Act is a
separate petty offense for each day of violation.

Shameful and downright perverse is not McCain’s advertisement; shameful and downright perverse is Obama’s support of sex shops and of sex education for students enrolled in public school kindergartens. If a five year old fails to absorb lessons about acts of penetration in the classroom, then he or she will at least see it in storefronts on their way to school: this, I guess, is what Obama was thinking while he was casting and failing to cast votes in the Illinois state Senate. But according to Alter, it is McCain and not Obama who lacks the “moral authority” to govern.

And no, Bill Burton, Obama’s status as father in no way militates against the demonstrably true claims propounded in McCain’s advertisements, for Obama’s children attend private school, not public school.

While it is shameful and downright perverse for Obama to desire to expose young children to the lewdness and scabrousness of sex, sex shops, STDs and acts of penetration, it is even more shameful and downright perverse for the traditional media to “willfully, intentionally and shamelessly” refuse to discuss and analyze these lurid aspects of Obama’s voting record. But then again, all the guests on Charlie Rose’s show were old, white men. And the traditional media, to be sure, enjoys promoting characters who openly profess their warped desire to copulate with Vice Presidential candidates on a set of sheets emblazoned with Barack Obama iconography.

The shameful and downright perverse predilections of Obama and the media apparatus that supports him: apparently this is the change in which parents of young children are expected to believe.

“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 eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense…”

The very next day, the Obama campaign posted on its Web site under the title “Fact Check on Obama and Ayers” the following, each prefaced with “Reality” and backed up with one or media reports:

• Obama was eight years old when the Weathermen were active
• Ayers connection is “phony,” “tenuous,” “a stretch”
• Ayers comments were published on September 11; the interview occurred prior to publication
• Ayers is a tenured professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a “respected adviser” to Mayor Daley on school reform.
• Charges against Ayers were dropped and he served no time

Obama continued his lies about Ayers when he appeared on Fox News Sunday, April 27. Barack repeated the claim that, “Mr. Ayres (sic) is a 60 plus year old individual who lives in my neighborhood…” (Fox News, April 27, 2008).

The campaign to persuade the public that Barack barely knew Ayers got a boost on August 21, 2008 from TruthFightsBack.com (John Kerry’s Web site for the Obama campaign). The site trumpeted, “Barack Obama Barely Knows William Ayers” and wrote that “The Republicans, desperate to smear Barack and try to build on their lies about his religion, insinuate that Barack Obama has a deep relationship with William Ayers. William Ayers was once a member of a radical group in the 1960s.” TruthFightsBack.com calls this lie “The Truth” under the title Barack Obama Barely Knows William Ayers:

“Barack Obama lived in the same area of Chicago as Ayers, and Ayers has been a politically active member of that community for years. Considering that, it’s actually remarkable how little the two have to do with each other. Early in Barack Obama’s career, he attended one reception in his honor at Ayers’s house. They also were separately asked by a charitable organization to serve on that organization’s board. And that’s it. There’s no friendship between the two, no relationship, no history of working together.”

The Obama team’s effort to cover up Barack’s ties to Ayers included an organized campaign to intimidate a Chicago radio station (WGN) that planned to interview Stanley Kurtz, who had succeeded in examining documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC). The campaign emailed an Obama Action Wire to its supporters encouraging them to call in to the show and use following talking points (as found on the report form for supporters to log their call):

• William Ayers was involved with the Weather Underground when Barack Obama was eight years old, and Barack has roundly condemned their actions.
• Last night on Fox News, Kurtz tried to radicalize an education reform program in Chicago called the Annenberg Challenge. The Challenge was funded by Republican Walter Annenberg, introduced by Mayor Daley and Republican Governor Jim Edgar, and one of its initiatives was even praised by John McCain.
• Kurtz claimed on Fox News that William Ayers recruited Obama to the Annenberg Challenge — a flat out lie. Ayers did not serve on the board of the Challenge, and he had nothing to do with Barack’s recruitment.

Lies, big lies, and damned lies. The Obama team offers a disingenuous blend of fact and fiction in trying to cover up the true relationship between Obama and Ayers. The devil is in the detials and details do matter:

Ayers is just a guy who lives in my neighborhood, a tenured professor, and adviser to the local mayor

Ayers does live in Barack’s neighborhood (or vice versa). In fact, Barack and Bill currently live about two blocks apart on Greenwood Avenue and 50^th Street. And before Barack’s “boneheaded” deal with convicted felon Rezko to purchase the Greenwood mansion, Obama lived about 1-1/4 miles from Bill. But the dismissive “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood” is a lie because Ayers was not just some fellow Barack bumped into at the corner market. They have a relationship that goes back nearly 20 years. Ayers was Barack’s friend, employer, colleague, and political supporter.

Ayers also is a tenured professor and multiple reports indicate he also is a buddy of Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley. In fact, Mayor Daley has defended him during the campaign saying they’ve worked together, that Bill Ayers is a respected educator, and valued member of the Chicago community (Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008).

It is unfair to say that Ayers’ actions 40 years ago when I was only eight should reflect upon me; anyway, charges against him where dropped and he did not serve any jail time. Plus, I’ve condemned the group’s actions

False. It is entirely fair to judge Barack by the people he surrounds himself with. Bill Ayer’s may have beat the terrorism charges but he has remained resolutely unrepentant about his actions. In 1981 David Horowitz quotes him bragging “Guilty as hell. Free as a bird. America is a great country.” In 2001 he is quoted saying “I don’t regret settings bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” (New York Times, September 11, 2001). Bill’s wife, Bernadine Dohrn went to jail rather than aid the government after the deadly Brinks armored car robbery. I like the comment at Hot Air (February 24, 2008) where See-Dubya expresses concern about Barack’s “…frightening tone-deafness toward terrorism, and a blithe ignorance of the evil and chaos these radicals represent.”

Any connection to Ayers is phony, tenuous, or a stretch. It is ridiculous to suggest any tie with Ayers

False. Everything discovered to date undeniably document that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers have personal, professional, and political ties that span nearly 20 years. Steve Diamond believes they likely first met in 1988 following Chicago’s teacher’s strike. Barack was hired into a Woods Fund sponsored position with Developing Communities Project that was a member of Bill Ayers’ Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs) (Global Labor and Politics, June 7, 2008).

Consider as well:

• In November 20, 1997. Michelle Obama, then Associate Dean of Student Services and Director of the University of Chicago Community Service Center, organized and participated in a panel that included Barack and Bill, Should a child ever be called a “super predator?” at the University of Chicago. See also, Chicago Tribune.
• In 1997 Barack wrote a review of Bill’s book “A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court”. Chicago Tribune published a blurb from Obama about books he was reading. See also USA Today.
• April 19-20, 2002, Barack, Bill, and Bernadine participated in a conference and panel “Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?“. See also, Chicago Tribune.
• February 2005. Barack and Bill participated in a conference and dinner for Rashid Khalidi at Columbia wherein they offered testimonials to Khalidi. Mayor Daley also attended this hate-fest. (See The Sun and Campus Watch for some commentary. Khalidi subsequently lost his position at Columbia because of his comments, see New York Times.)

Ayers did not help launch my career

False. Back in 1995 after Barack Obama had returned to Chicago upon graduating from Harvard Law School, Bill Ayers hired the young Barack, then a third year associate at Davis, miner, Barnhill & Gallad. Together they spent upwards to $160 million dollars over the next seven years. As well, Bill and his wife Bernadine Dohrn feted him to the community as then-State Senator Palmer’s successor.

Early in Barack Obama’s career, he attended one reception in his honor at Ayers’ house

Not the whole truth. This was not a meet and greet reception. And Barack had more than one isolated sit down with Ayers and Dohrn. The Ayers/Dohrn home is where Barack Obama launched his campaign to oust then-State Senator Alice Palmer. This reception is reported in numerous articles including Ben Smith in Politico (February 22). Maria Warren writes about this gathering in her blog Musings & Migraines on January 27, 2005, “When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him–introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.” Ari Berman also reports in The Nation (May 1) that Bill hosted a fundraiser for Barack in 1996. (Possibly an error on Berman’s part as this might be the 1995 event since there is no other mention of a 1996 fundraiser.)

Ayers had nothing to do with my joining Annenberg Challenge. He did not recruit me, nor did he serve on its board

False. Bill Ayers founded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, secured the initial $50 million from Annenberg Challenge, and claims to have co-chaired the Collaborative it with Barack Obama. While there is nothing to explicitly prove that Bill recruited Barack, it is simply not credible to say that Bill Ayers had nothing to do with Barack Obama joining the organization.

I do not exchange ideas with Ayers

Really? Can you say the same thing about your communications director, David Axelrod? According to a source who attended the Democratic National convention in Denver, an old friend of Ayer’s bragged that Axelrod and Ayers are in regular contact and coordinating on how to respond to the claims about the Ayers/Obama relationship.

Ayers has not ‘officially’ endorsed me

Really? So he’s backing McCain? The issue is not who Ayers has endorsed. The issue remains–why did Barack hang out for so many years with a guy like Ayers. Endorsement or not, it is a question that matter.

Ayers has been a politically active member of that community for years

True. First, as a home-grown domestic terrorist, then since around 1987 as a community activist, organizer, and financier. As Lynn Sweet wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times (March 3), “Hyde Park welcomed William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to the neighborhood after they resurfaced as local civic leaders following their years on the lam as members of the Weather Underground.” She notes Ben Smith observing in Politico (February 22), “While Ayers and Dohrn may be thought of in Hyde Park as local activists, they’re better known nationally as two of the most notorious — and unrepentant — figures from the violent fringe of the 1960s anti-war movement.”

Considering that, it’s actually remarkable how little the two have to do with each other

Oh yeah?! Now this is where the lying really begins. As is increasingly clear, they worked together and shared the same circle of friends and families, same business associates, and same political associates.

They also were separately asked by a charitable organization to serve on that organization’s board

Not true. They were involved in at least three different “charitable” organizations. There was the Woods Fund of Chicago, which Barack joined 1993 and Bill Ayers joined in 1997. But what about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers founded and worked on with Barack Obama from 1995 through 1999. While Barack chaired the Challenge, Bill co-chaired its Collaborative arm. This was actually three connected organizations: Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC, the Board), Chicago School Reform Collaborative (the Collaborative, and Consortium of Chicago Schools Research (CCSR).

And that’s it. There’s no friendship between the two…

Ben Smith in Politico (February 22) writes that Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician, told him that they were “friends”. At the time Smith dismissed this for lack of supporting information and the denial by Barack Obama. (I wonder if Smith has since reconsidered?). Mayor Daley now says they are friends. Even Bill Burton acknowledges that they were friends.

…no relationship

False. They have family, community, business, and political ties. The only tie they appear to not share regards religion.

…no history of working together

False. Why is the media so reluctant to explore the CAC relationship?

At the risk of being redundant, sometime in 1987 Bill and Bernadine returned home to Chicago, where both had family. Michelle likely already knew both through her Robinson family ties and then in her 1988 work at Sidley Austin, where Bernardine was also employed. It is likely that Barack at least knew of Bill Ayers because he was already involving himself among with the Ayers family and their players in the community. Bill Ayers operated in relative obscurity until February 2008 when his ties to Barack and Michelle Obama became a matter of discussion in Barack’s presidential aspirations.

As a community organizer in Chicago from 1985 to 1988 Barack Obama received funding from and worked with numerous groups, such as Developing Communities Project. Bill Ayers joined in this arena upon his return in 1987 through his own group, Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABCs). They both surely crossed paths as Ayer’s father, Tom, provided funding to Barack and Bill through Chicago United, a group of businessmen concerned about race and education issues in Chicago. Tom Ayers was once CEO of Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon) (Steve Diamond, Global Labor and Politics, June 18, 2008). Michelle, the Robinson daughter, continued her own involvement but details are murky at best. Barack Obama shows up again in Chicago after graduating from Harvard Law School, ends up at Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, and joins the Woods Fund board, 1993, as a freshly minted 32 year old law school graduate, where he remained through 2002 and continued association with until gaining a seat in the U.S. Senate. Bill Ayers formally joined the board in 1999 but had ties throughout the earlier years, including receiving funds from the group.

Anyway, in 1993 Bill began organizing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Despite his unrepentant terrorist past he succeeded in securing nearly $50 million from Annenberg Challenge and immediately named Barack as his co-chair. Together over the next five years they spent at least $110 million for “radical” school reform in Chicago (Steve Diamond, Global Labor and Politics, June 18, 2008 and August 18, 2008). Then, or shortly afterward, the remains of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was handed over to Chicago Public Education Fund.

This was a small circle of people, families, and businesses. They were figuratively partners in crime, Chicago’s political mafia enriching themselves through their political position, through federal, local, and state funding, and through their positions and funds given from private organizations, especially, of immediately focus here, from the Woods Fund and Annenberg Challenge. It is likely that there are other organizations and people involved and this needs to be explored further. Stanley Kurtz, Steve Diamond, and others are now beginning to look into what Annenberg Challenge did with its more than $160 million in private and federal dollars.

But first, let’s get back to Barack, Bill, and Bernadine. Again, Michelle plays at least a bit role in this but to what extent is still unclear. Over the years Barack, Bill, Bernadine, and Michelle show up together, along with other Chicago figures that include Rev. Wright, Minister Farrakhan, Rev. Meeks, Rev. Pfleger, Sen. Jones, and many, many more. Throughout this Barack also had his early ties with friend, businessman, and political financier Tony Rezko and Rezko’s partners and associates. And finally, let’s also not forget organizations that received funding from Barack and Bill, such as:

• Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)
• Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by husband and wife Rashid and Mona Khalidi.
• Maoist Mike Klonsky, another terrorist member of the Weatherman
• Children and Family Justice Center, Bernardine’s organization.
• Trinity Unity Church and Rev. Wright.

Finally, what role did Barack’s position as a sitting state senator play in all of this?

Summary

Fairly or not, Chicago has a long reputation as a corrupt political city. It is increasingly clear that Barack joined and became a willing partner in this corruption. The families, organizations, and businesses involved enriched themselves off of the private and public funds that Barack controlled. That Barack Obama lied and continues to lie about his relationship with Bill Ayers is a smokescreen and the tip-of-the-iceberg about the depth of his involvement in what are, or may be, corrupt practices among these people and their organizations.

A Bit of Background and Unresolved Items

As long as this post is, it is still embarrassingly incomplete. In writing this I have read every post at Larry Johnson’s NoQuarterUSA and Steve Diamond’s Global Labor and Politics blogs involving terrorist William Ayers. I also dug through scores of articles and posts at various media sites and blogs. While some matters are consistently reported, others vary significantly. I’m sure I’ve missed many salient points.

It is especially dramatic to read earlier compared to newer posts. Consider Ben Smith’s “Obama once visited ’60s radicals” from February 22, 2008. The title alone shows the naivety of Ben and everyone about the level of Obama’s involvement with Bill and Bernadine. That Obama let such false picture spread without correction, including then and now on his campaign Web sites, further reflects his clear intent to deceive voters.

Four unresolved items in an incomplete list of questions are:

• What is Michelle’s involvement in all of this?
• How did Barack’s role in the Illinois Senate affect or was a part of all of this?
• What are Barack’s other board and organization memberships?
• Where did the money go? E.g., to friends, family, personal and professional associates, and political cronies?

Suggested Readings

The body of evidence and discussion on the relationship among and between Barack and Michelle Obama, William Ayers, and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn is growing daily. As we get beyond the lies and begin to follow the money I recommend reading the following:

• Larry Johnson at his Web site NoQuarterUSA and as I have summarized here.
• Steve Diamond at Global Labor and Politics and as often published at NoQuarterUSA.
• Stanley Kurtz at National Review has made a start and it will be worth watching to see what he develops as he researches the Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers he’s now gained access to.
• Selected articles from multiple sources are summarized here.
• My posts at The Problem With Obama and The Independent View.

Matthew Weaver
Reprinted from It’s Not Just a Lie, It’s a Matter of Character

So, yes, George Bush can have his OWN DUI records, and cocaine use. No problem there! I don’t recall the NY Times running big ol’ articles on HIM! But what is more, is I sure don’t recall the NY Times running big articles on how OBAMA has not, was not, is not, vetted. For some reason, his admitted drug and alcohol abuse is off-limits. Apparently, it makes you a racist if you actually point out Obama’s drug/alcohol use. Who knew? See, I always thought it was racist to judge someone by the color of their skin alone. Part of that is also not holding someone to the same standards as everyone else, in terms of their accomplishments or lack thereof. So someone who hasn’t achieved as much as his competitors gets the nod because of his skin color is just as racist as NOT getting the nod when just as accomplished because of skin color. IMHO, that is. But hey - what do I know? I only did anti-racism work for years…Whatever.

There are some pretty major questions raised about OBAMA, Ms. Bumiller. Perhaps you were not aware of his drug/alcohol use? Or his long-term association with the noted domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers? Or his long-time association with Tony Rezko, who is now awaiting sentencing? Or with the governor of IL who is also being investigated? Or Jeremiah Wright? Or Senator James Meeks? Or his work for ACORN, and I don’t mean as a Community Organizer (and I use that terms loosely when it comes to Obama since, by his own admission in his “nonfiction” book, they were already organized, he didn’t do much, and they accomplished their goal AFTER he left). I mean his camp apparently funneling money through ACORN. My guess is that all of this is just the tip of the iceberg with Obama. And given his staunch refusal to allow ANY of his academic transcripts to be released, or his passport, or his birth certificate, etc., I think I am standing on some solid ground surmising there is more than we know about him. Judging from his past associations, and HIS incredible lack of vetting by the DNC, the MSM, and the voters.

ANYWHO - so the NY Times is finally bemoaning the lack of vetting going on, but only as it relates to the one woman left in this election season. Yes, she must be held to a TOTALLY different standard than anyone else. So, she is held liable for her husband’s DUI, and now, her 17 yr old daughter’s pregnancy (and really, if the MSM handled the Bush twins so gingerly when they were off partying, they should lay off this MINOR, too!!), and some hooey about her abusive former brother-in-law. Whoa - scary stuff that! Gimme a break already. Oh, and (H/T to Eastan McNeal finding THIS Time article), she considers herself - wait for it - a FEMINIST!!! Oh, you have GOT to be shitting me! How come no one found THAT out before?!?!? She considers herself a FEMINIST!!!!! Shocking!! She is a member of Feminists for Life, which does NOT oppose birth control. And she considers herself a FEMINIST, something many of those young twits who support Obama do not. Given how hard Palin has had to work to get to where she is in a difficult environment (see the Time aricle), she apparently appreciates all the hard work women of my generation did to even get the legislation passed we did. Now we are constantly being threatened that Roe v. Wade could go *POOF* is we do not support Obama. My response is: if you wanted to make absolutely sure Roe v. Wade stands, you should have supported Clinton. That being said, it isn’t going anywhere, and this manipulative ploy is just that. It isn’t working on those of us who know better. Sarah Palin considers herself a feminist, and holds the highest office in Alaska. Frankly, if it wasn’t all that important that George Bush was drinking and driving, and doing massive amounts of drugs, and if it doesn’t matter that Obama did a bunch of coke and drank a lot, then why the hell should it matter if TODD Palin had a DUI? I am sure he learned his lesson those 22 years ago!!

My point is that Palin is being investigated in ways Obama never was, and still isn’t. The MSM has made excuse after excuse after excuse for him. Plagiarize other’s speeches or policies? No big deal - it happens all the time! Emil Jones slapping his name on legislation on which he didn’t work? Well, the other people weren’t TOO mad, so it’s no big deal. Getting everyone thrown off the ballot right before the IL election day? What a clever campaign strategy! Same with releasing SEALED information about his Republican competitor for the US Senate! Brilliant! (Cough, choke) His not bothering to hold any European Affairs Subcommittee meetings? Hey, he was busy drawing in crowds (which he did with the help of rock bands and free food, don’t forget - not that the MSM would bother mentioning that). Jeremiah Wright? Well, yeah, they were close once for a little while, only 20 years or so, but not so much once the videos came out. And he really does like gay people - just ask Donnie McClurkin or IL Senator James Meeks! How about all of his “crossing the aisle” to work with the other side, like he claimed he did time after time? Well, heck - they just have to ask Senator John McCain about that, and his letter of 2/6/06 to Barack Obama. You know the one, about apologizing for taking Obama at his word? Yep, that one.

All of this stuff on Obama has been well-documented at a number of online sites. But the MSM has failed to do its due diligence on Obama. Instead, it is focusing on everyone else BUT him as a way to protect him. That is simply unacceptable. Again, I am not a Palin apologist, but I am damn tired of women being treated so disparately in this election, and it is happening all over again. Evidently, there have been no lessons learned from how the MSM treated Hillary Clinton. They seem to think there will be no comeuppance for doing it to Sarah Palin, too. I hope we can show them how very wrong they are.

So, Ms. Bumiller, how about this: instead of attacking Sarah Palin for things she has not even done herself, why don’t you and your little rag take a good, hard look at the Man Who Would Be King, Barack Obama? You didn’t vet George Bush properly, either, and look where we are as a result. This is your BIG CHANCE to have a do-over. Give it a shot. Try doing some honest-to-goodness impartial investigative journalism for a change? Just a thought.

See what Barack Obama has been able to “achieve” in Chicago. Perhaps we could expect the same from him as a President. Maybe he can give Tony Rezko a pardon and put him in charge of HUD.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ9fg4HPV_M[/youtube]

Watch it and be reminded to Just Say No Deal.