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

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

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

[...]

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why, oh why?

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

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

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

:::::

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

It’s quite a spectacular big-budget production of ugly, isn’t it? We couldn’t make this stuff up.

Actually, The Beast has been sliming the Windy City for a long time. Organized crime and dirty politics (“vote early and vote often and include your dead family members and pets while you are at it”) dominated Chicago during the early part of the last century. Scandals galore.

So, why can’t this beast be conquered?

More

Hauslaib’s brief history of Chicago sums the whole mess up quite well.

“The reason Chicago politics is so corrupt is because, in modern American history, it’s never not been, which makes it very difficult to clean up. Especially because every politician who says they’re going to try and straighten Chicago out ends up lying and cheating worse than the pig who came before him. Imagine trying to clean up a greasy stove with a sponge covered in used Crisco and you’ll understand the job of cleaning up Chi-town. Basically, it’s the Frankenstein’s monster of political machines—a thing, composed of scrap materials functioning for a common cause (money), that will only be stopped if it commits to self-immolation.”

So, the day before yesterday during his news conference Obama said that some people see politics as a “business” (translation: make money any way that works, legality be damned) and others “want to serve.” Presumably, we are to infer, Obama means to place himself in the latter category.

But why did he come to Chicago in the first place? He had no ties there that I ever heard of, except for a job offer from now convicted Tony Rezko (who also helped him buy his home). Why would he have anything to do with William Ayers or the long line of those “business-oriented politicians” from whom he accepted large sums of campaign money? Why would he not be interested in how Emil Jones was going to get him elected to an office?

Let me reprise some amazing quotes from an article about Obama’s “toxic mentor” , Emil Jones, who refers to himself as “Obama’s Godfather.”.

Obama has often described Jones as a key political mentor whose patronage was crucial to his early success in a state long dominated by near-feudal party political machines. Jones, 71, describes himself as Obama’s “godfather” and once said: “He feels like a son to me.”
At one point during Obama’s 2003 Senate campaign, Jones set out to woo two African-American politicians miffed by Obama’s presumption and ambition. One of them, Rickey “Hollywood” Hendon, a state senator, had scoffed that Obama was so ambitious he would run for “king of the world” if the position were vacant.

When Jones secured the two men’s support, Obama asked his mentor how he had pulled it off. “I made them an offer,” Jones said in mock-Mafioso style. “And you don’t want to know.” Jones is now at the centre of a long row over his attempt to block proposed laws cracking down on his state’s “pay-to-play” tradition – whereby companies hoping to win government contracts have to contribute to the campaign funds of officials.

It’s difficult to imagine that Obama could emerge from this political cesspool clean. But he wants us to believe in his words. He’s really good with words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[...]

And yet more:

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

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

This No Quarter story ends thusly:

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

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

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

[...]

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

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

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

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

A former Illinois real estate specialist says FBI agents have questioned him about a Chicago property that had been bought by convicted felon Tony Rezko’s wife and later sold to the couple’s next-door neighbor, Sen. Barack Obama.

The real estate specialist, Kenneth J. Conner, said bank officials replaced an appraisal review he prepared on the property and FBI agents were investigating in late 2007 whether the Rezko-Obama deal was proper.

“Agents and I talked about payoff, bribe, kickback for a long time, though it took them only a short number of minutes of talking with me while looking at the appraisal to acknowledge what they already seemed to know: The Rezko lot was grossly overvalued,” Mr. Conner told The Washington Times Monday.

“Rezko paid the asking price on the same day Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller for his adjacent mansion,” he said. “This begs the question of payoff, bribe, kickback.” ….

Read the full article today at the Washington Times.

NOW, because it deserves to be read in full — and Truthteller went to the time-consuming trouble to LINK ALL of NoQuarterUSA’s articles on Tony Rezko — here is his latest article on Tony Rezko because NO ONE ELSE knows the terrible story of Tony Rezko and Barack Obama like Truthteller (who’s hosting our great ELECTION NIGHT show tonight!):

“BREAKING: Obama Land Deal with Rezko and Mutual Bank Subject of New Court Complaint.”

No Quarter introduced readers to the Mutual Bank in Chicago after a Chicago Sun-Times columnist mentioned how a certain financial institution in Chicago would become the subject of a federal probe to be conducted by Fitzgerald’s prosecutors in relation to the conviction of Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Although I cautioned I did not have conclusive evidence when I argued Mutual Bank is most probably the financial institution in question, it now appears I may have been correct.

For according to a Washington Times exclusive printed today, a Real Estate and Commercial Credit Analyst of Mutual Bank has assumed whistleblower status and filed complaint against his former employer.

The subject of his complaint is the Mutual Bank and its potentially fraudulent reappraisal of the lot on which Obama’s home sits.

Obama, we recall, was only able to purchase the mansion he could not afford in June 2005 as a result of Rita Rezko’s ability to secure a mortgage for the lot on which the home sits from Mutual Bank.

And yes, Obama is involved in this complaint, for his decision to purchase a 10 foot strip of the lot on which his home sits from Rita Rezko in January 2006 was, according to the complaint, the reason why these potentially fraudulent reappraisals of the Rita Rezko lot were drafted.

I quote the Washington Times:

In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth J. Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document.

Mr. Connor, a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the Mutual Bank Corp. in Chicago, also noted in the complaint that the bank received a grand jury subpoena in October 2006 requiring it to produce information concerning Mrs. Rezko’s purchase, including the bank’s files on the property.

Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko’s account and the mortgage Rita Rezko received from Mutual for the lot on which Obama’s home sits were the subjects of a grand jury subpoena in 2006. I recommend you read my essay on Rita Rezko, the Obama land deal and Mutual Bank for an explication of why the mortgage she received from Chicago machine banker “Uncle” Amrish Mahajan of Mutual would have raised the eyebrows of federal prosecutors.

The Washington Post continues:

The complaint also said that the grand jury wanted information on Mrs. Rezko’s checking account and loan file and that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) had audited the Rezko file – although Mr. Connor’s lower reappraisal had been replaced with a higher amount.

“Connor’s internal whistle-blowing activity at Mutual Bank implicates Mutual Bank and the potentially guilty officers thereof to prosecution under federal and Illinois statutes,” said the complaint, filed by attorney Glenn R. Gaffney.

The complaint said Mutual Bank officials could be guilty of making false statements, willfully overvaluing property, bank fraud, witness retaliation, willful violation of a lawful subpoena, FDIC violations, and state banking regulations…

According to the complaint, Mr. Connor reviewed the appraisal of the Rezko property by another firm, Adams Appraisal, which had set the value at $625,000. Mr. Connor’s complaint said that he told his bosses in a report that the property had been overvalued by at least $125,000 and that a “reasonable and fair evaluation” should have been no greater than $500,000.

Why would Mutual Bank desire to inflate the value of the Rezko property on which the Obama home sits? Why would Mutual Bank risk obstructing justice? A paragraph in the Washington Times exclusive answers these questions. I quote them again:

The complaint said the Rezko loan was approved by Mutual Bank President and CEO Amrish Mahajan and others so that Mrs. Rezko could buy a 9,090-square-foot vacant parcel of real estate. It said that in January 2006, Mrs. Rezko and Mr. Obama, along with his wife Michelle, signed an agreement to sell a 10-foot strip of the property to the Obamas. At that point, according to the complaint, Mr. Connor’s firm asked him to conduct the reappraisal.

Connor, in other words, was fired for noting that the value of the property had been inflated.

For if Mutual adhered to Connor’s appraisal, Rita Rezko would have received less money from Obama for the ten foot strip of land next to his home he purchased from the convicted slum landlord’s wife.

And Mahajan, the CEO of Mutual, had an interest in ensuring Rezko would receive more money from Obama, for Mahajan is deeply imbricated in the Chicago machine that used Obama to funnel government revenue into the privatization of public housing scheme from which Obama’s friends profited.

Now wonder why Mutual removed Connor’s appraisal from the Rita Rezko file.

Mahajan, the Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko and the Obama land deal are now the subjects of a complaint filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, and Obama’s financial dealings with the Mutual Bank and with Rita and Antoin “Tony” Rezko are the subjects of news articles that explore Chicago corruption and questionable real estate transactions.

I guess the deal really was “boneheaded.”

No Quarter asked readers to focus on the land deal and on Mutual when the Chicago Sun-Times mentioned that a financial institution is the subject of federal prosecutors’ interest, for Obama’s decision to purchase land from Rita Rezko catalyzed all the press on his questionable land deal with convicted slumlord Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Now we know that transaction was the subject of a federal subpoena in 2006, and now we know a complaint has been filed against Mutual for intimidating employees and attempting to increase the value of the Obama lot most probably in order to ensure Rita Rezko would receive enough money to repay the $500,000 loan she received from Mahajan and the Mutual Bank even though she only earns $35,000 per annum at her government job.

Much more is to be learned about this land deal. But now that it is the subject of a complaint and a federal subpoena filed in 2006, I imagine we will learn that Obama chose Rezko to tour the mansion and purchase the lot on which it sits in order to ensure that he could later repay Rezko for the land he could not afford.

Why else did Mahajan, one of Rezko’s bankers who also sat on the Chicago Plan Commission of Daley with Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis, manipulate the value on the lot when Obama was ready to repay the Rezkos for the favor?

Must money always be kept within a small network of corrupt Chicago machine cogs?

I imagine we will read more about Obama and his financial dealings with Rita Rezko and Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank before votes are cast in November. It was a “boneheaded” deal indeed, Senator Obama.

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

• About the Financial Institution Mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times: Obama, Tony Rezko, Amrish Mahajan, the Kenwood Mansion & Rita 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”

ALSO OF NOTE: See Truthteller’s most recent article on Rezko, at the end of which Truthteller lists all of the stories published here at NoQuarterUSA.net about Tony Rezko and Barack Obama’s long, entangled, intimate relationship: “BREAKING: Obama Land Deal with Rezko and Mutual Bank Subject of New Court Complaint.”

The following excerpt is posted at NoQuarterUSA.net with the express permission of GOPMom.

Recently, a friend asked for information on now convicted Tony Rezko and Barack Obama. Here’s what I sent her, from more stories on the Obamas’ mansion to Obama’s entanglements in with Chicago slumlords to Rezko’s trial, conducted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s very able team:

First, I sent her a link along with some notes about Truthteller’s October 7th story:

“CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen

– Obama’s history with Rezko is lengthy (Rezko contacted him when Obama was still at Harvard Law School — I believe, although it’s a hunch, that they met when Obama was in Chicago before he went to Harvard). 

Their connections are political, business, and personal. Obama’s law firm represented Rezko’s interests, Obama pushed state legislation that helped Rezko, etc. The Woods Fund, along with its board members Bill Ayers and Barack Obama, was involved with Rezko and gave him financial grants.

In Obama’s own district, Rezko controlled former public housing and let it go to ruin. NoQuarter has numerous fact-checked stories on this + Flineo’s great videos offer rich fodder that can be used in TV/Web advertising.  Examples from Flineo’s channel:

THIS is an INVALUABLE video. Flineo included video footage of Carol Marin, a noted Chicago NBC reporter, saying that Rezko got over $100 million in taxpayer monies for his schemes IN Obama’s own district.  Ms. Marin shows the actual conditions of those properties.

Flineo then adds a still image of a map in which he highlights, one by one, how many of Rezko’s foreclosed, closed down properties are IN Obama’s own state senate district.  (That map comes from one of the Chicago newspapers — I can find the link if need be.)

Here are more links to some of our key stories and a radio show we did on how Obama used public housing privatization in Chicago to benefit his rich allies and political benefactors.

The Boston Globe did a great investigative piece on Obama’s links to the housing privatization schemes — but none of the rest of the MSM picked up their great work.  Our own Un Coup De Des wrote it up brilliantly in two parts:

     (a) Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron;

     (b) Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous; and

     (c) I wrote a story about a little boy, with video and photos, who was killed this summer — it was all over the Chicago newspapers and TV stations– because another of Obama’s political godfathers/benefactors failed to maintain his privatized housing property in a safe manner. That was Cullen Davis, the son of Alison Davis who gave Obama his first job at a law firm that handled Rezko’s housing schemes: “The Blood Money of Barack Obama’s Money Men.”

See also: Larry Johnson’s more recent story on the ties among Obama, ACORN, and Obama’s slumlord buddies, Allison and Cullen Davis (father and son): “Barack Worked For ACORN, Promises to Do So Again.”

Related:  How the Obamas got that mansion.  I posted several links to stories about the mansion, including “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford,” which details how Michelle Obama used her position as a member of a preservation board to find out about and get that mansion that had been labeled “historic.” 

::::: OPEN THREAD! :::::

No Quarter introduced readers to the Mutual Bank in Chicago after a Chicago Sun-Times columnist mentioned how a certain financial institution in Chicago would become the subject of a federal probe to be conducted by Fitzgerald’s prosecutors in relation to the conviction of Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Although I cautioned I did not have conclusive evidence when I argued Mutual Bank is most probably the financial institution in question, it now appears I may have been correct.

For according to a Washington Times exclusive printed today, a Real Estate and Commercial Credit Analyst of Mutual Bank has assumed whistleblower status and filed complaint against his former employer.

The subject of his complaint is the Mutual Bank and its potentially fraudulent reappraisal of the lot on which Obama’s home sits.

Obama, we recall, was only able to purchase the mansion he could not afford in June 2005 as a result of Rita Rezko’s ability to secure a mortgage for the lot on which the home sits from Mutual Bank.

And yes, Obama is involved in this complaint, for his decision to purchase a 10 foot strip of the lot on which his home sits from Rita Rezko in January 2006 was, according to the complaint, the reason why these potentially fraudulent reappraisals of the Rita Rezko lot were drafted.

I quote the Washington Times:

In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth J. Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document.

Mr. Connor, a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the Mutual Bank Corp. in Chicago, also noted in the complaint that the bank received a grand jury subpoena in October 2006 requiring it to produce information concerning Mrs. Rezko’s purchase, including the bank’s files on the property.

Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko’s account and the mortgage Rita Rezko received from Mutual for the lot on which Obama’s home sits were the subjects of a grand jury subpoena in 2006. I recommend you read my essay on Rita Rezko, the Obama land deal and Mutual Bank for an explication of why the mortgage she received from Chicago machine banker “Uncle” Amrish Mahajan of Mutual would have raised the eyebrows of federal prosecutors.

The Washington Post continues:

The complaint also said that the grand jury wanted information on Mrs. Rezko’s checking account and loan file and that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) had audited the Rezko file – although Mr. Connor’s lower reappraisal had been replaced with a higher amount.

“Connor’s internal whistle-blowing activity at Mutual Bank implicates Mutual Bank and the potentially guilty officers thereof to prosecution under federal and Illinois statutes,” said the complaint, filed by attorney Glenn R. Gaffney.

The complaint said Mutual Bank officials could be guilty of making false statements, willfully overvaluing property, bank fraud, witness retaliation, willful violation of a lawful subpoena, FDIC violations, and state banking regulations…

According to the complaint, Mr. Connor reviewed the appraisal of the Rezko property by another firm, Adams Appraisal, which had set the value at $625,000. Mr. Connor’s complaint said that he told his bosses in a report that the property had been overvalued by at least $125,000 and that a “reasonable and fair evaluation” should have been no greater than $500,000.

Why would Mutual Bank desire to inflate the value of the Rezko property on which the Obama home sits? Why would Mutual Bank risk obstructing justice? A paragraph in the Washington Times exclusive answers these questions. I quote them again:

The complaint said the Rezko loan was approved by Mutual Bank President and CEO Amrish Mahajan and others so that Mrs. Rezko could buy a 9,090-square-foot vacant parcel of real estate. It said that in January 2006, Mrs. Rezko and Mr. Obama, along with his wife Michelle, signed an agreement to sell a 10-foot strip of the property to the Obamas. At that point, according to the complaint, Mr. Connor’s firm asked him to conduct the reappraisal.

Connor, in other words, was fired for noting that the value of the property had been inflated.

For if Mutual adhered to Connor’s appraisal, Rita Rezko would have received less money from Obama for the ten foot strip of land next to his home he purchased from the convicted slum landlord’s wife.

And Mahajan, the CEO of Mutual, had an interest in ensuring Rezko would receive more money from Obama, for Mahajan is deeply imbricated in the Chicago machine that used Obama to funnel government revenue into the privatization of public housing scheme from which Obama’s friends profited.

Now wonder why Mutual removed Connor’s appraisal from the Rita Rezko file.

Mahajan, the Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko and the Obama land deal are now the subjects of a complaint filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, and Obama’s financial dealings with the Mutual Bank and with Rita and Antoin “Tony” Rezko are the subjects of news articles that explore Chicago corruption and questionable real estate transactions.

I guess the deal really was “boneheaded.”

No Quarter asked readers to focus on the land deal and on Mutual when the Chicago Sun-Times mentioned that a financial institution is the subject of federal prosecutors’ interest, for Obama’s decision to purchase land from Rita Rezko catalyzed all the press on his questionable land deal with convicted slumlord Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Now we know that transaction was the subject of a federal subpoena in 2006, and now we know a complaint has been filed against Mutual for intimidating employees and attempting to increase the value of the Obama lot most probably in order to ensure Rita Rezko would receive enough money to repay the $500,000 loan she received from Mahajan and the Mutual Bank even though she only earns $35,000 per annum at her government job.

Much more is to be learned about this land deal. But now that it is the subject of a complaint and a federal subpoena filed in 2006, I imagine we will learn that Obama chose Rezko to tour the mansion and purchase the lot on which it sits in order to ensure that he could later repay Rezko for the land he could not afford.

Why else did Mahajan, one of Rezko’s bankers who also sat on the Chicago Plan Commission of Daley with Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis, manipulate the value on the lot when Obama was ready to repay the Rezkos for the favor?

Must money always be kept within a small network of corrupt Chicago machine cogs?

I imagine we will read more about Obama and his financial dealings with Rita Rezko and Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank before votes are cast in November. It was a “boneheaded” deal indeed, Senator Obama.

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

• About the Financial Institution Mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times: Obama, Tony Rezko, Amrish Mahajan, the Kenwood Mansion & Rita 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”

A former Illinois bank official, now claiming whistleblower status, says bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama.

In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth J. Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document.

Mr. Connor, a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the Mutual Bank Corp. in Chicago, also noted in the complaint that the bank received a grand jury subpoena in October 2006 requiring it to produce information concerning Mrs. Rezko’s purchase, including the bank’s files on the property.

The media, who for the most part have ignored the shady land deal between the felon Tony Rezko and Barack Obama, may now be shamed into at least examining the matter in light of their relentless scrutiny of Joe the Plumber. This was a fairly sophisticated money laundering transaction. For starters, Tony Rezko was one of Barack Obama’s major fund raisers. The property that Barack and Michelle Obama wanted to buy had an asking price of $1.95 million dollars. They got a sweetheart loan and bought the house for $1.65 million. Why? Because the owners of the home were able to sell the adjacent lot on the same day to Tony Rezko and his wife for $125,000 dollars more than the land was worth. The Rezkos paid full price, $625,000 for a strip of land adjacent to the house, that according to the appraiser is only worth $500,000.

The inimitable John Batchelor is on this like a chicken on a bug.

John writes:

Startling news this morning from a bizarre break in the mystery of what Tony Rezko is telling prosecutors in Chicago in exchange for a better deal on his conviction for graft and corruption. In the Washington Times — not from either of the Chicago papers — there is a report of a whistleblower lawsuit by previously unknown bank clerk Kenneth J. Connor against his former employer, the Mutual Bank Corporation in Chicago, for firing him because he refused to go along with an apparent real estate fraud involving the house that Barack Obama lives in. The details are complex, including the inflating of the value of the lot that Rita Rezko purchased and later sold a piece of to Barack Obama, including the fact that the bank owner, Amrish Mahajan, is a long-time Rezko crony and creditor, and I point to the gifted encyclopedic site The Real Barack Obama for a full explanation and savvy speculation of the reason Mr. Connor is upset. The heart of it is that Mr. Connor refused to go along with a fraud with regard the lot at 505o South Greenwood Avenue that Rita Rezko (as a cut-out for her husband Tony) bid on and purchased between January and June 2005 in order to make it possible for Barack and Michelle Obama to bid on and purchase their mansion at 5046 South Greenwood Avenue in Hyde Park. Mr. Conner now reveals all this in a lawsuit against the bank that fired him because he wouldn’t play along. Stepping around Mr. Conner’s ambition, there is the much more fetching clue here that the prosecutors have raced way past talking to Tony Rezko about the “Board Games” that led to his conviction, past Tony Rezko’s corrupt dealings raising cash for Governor Rod Blagojeich, past Tony Rezko’s years of skimming and cheating and bullying in Chicago, to go right after the critical piece of the Obama house deal that underlines that something is rotten in Hyde Park. Kenneth J. Conner doesn’t file a lawsuit in civil court unless he has spoken at great length with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office in front of a Grand Jury with regard the criminal investigation of Rezko and his clients. And the extremely irregular and unexplained purchase of the Hyde Park mansion for the newly elected and then sworn-in Senator Barack Obama in 2005 is a major mystery. On Sunday 12, when I spoke to Natasha Korecki, Chicago Sun-Times, re Rezko talking, I was convinced that the prosecution is pursuing the governor’s vulnerability first, and that the senator’s vulnerability was left till later if at all. Now I see, as can anyone who has studied the byzantine pleasure palace of Cook County, that Mr. Fitzgerald and his team have hold of secrets within secrets, and that Tony Rezko’s talking is like 3-in-1 oil, it lubricates the whole investigation of the governor and the senator. The lot! They are on to Rita Rezko’s lot! That is the backdoor to Barack Obama’s self-described “boneheaded” deal with Tony Rezko. That is the backdoor to what really happened between Tony Rezko and Senator-elect Obama and the Wondisfords sellers and the two silent-so-far realtors who were both friends of Tony Rezko.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s Clock is Ticking

It is follow the money. It is always follow the money. Who paid for the lot? Who paid for the house? When and how? Note that the Conner lawsuit also mentions that the grand jury was seeking, as far ago as October 2006, information on Rita Rezko’s checking account and loan file at the Mutual Bank. Her checking account. Fitzgerald is deeply involved in how 5050/5046 South Greenwood, the lot and the house (right), was passed over to Senator and Mrs. Obama. Mention also that another of my very best Chicago sources writes me that Mr. Fitzgerald best accelerate, his clock is ticking, and his tenure is iffy in an Obama Justice Department with a Democratic dominated Congress and an ineffective Chicago media

.

**********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”

Read the rest ->

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.

The Sneed tidbit is important because many Chicogans think the bank she alludes to is the Broadway Bank, owned by the family of 30 year-old Illinois state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.

Giannoulias became state treasurer at the age of 29, despite no experience and not even having voted before, when backed by Barack Obama.

Locals think this backing was payback for Broadway Bank’s help in getting Obama a loan for his first townhouse in Chicago.

Last year, the NYPost had a very pointed story about Giannoulias.

A man who has long been dogged by charges that the bank his family owns helped finance a Chicago crime figure will host a Windy City fund-raiser tonight for Sen. Barack Obama.

Alexi Giannoulias, who became Illinois state treasurer last year after Obama vouched for him, has pledged to raise $100,000 for the senator’s Oval Office bid. Before he promised to raise funds for Obama, Giannoulias bankrolled Michael “Jaws” Giorango, a Chicagoan twice convicted of bookmaking and promoting prostitution.

Giannoulias is so tainted by reputed mob links that several top Illinois Dems, including the state’s speaker of the House and party chairman, refused to endorse him even after he won the Democratic nomination with Obama’s help.

Therealbarackobama (formerly Rezkowatch – I miss the old name), is, of course, all over this. They detail some of Obama’s dealings with Giannoulias.

Flashback: Barackopolis: Sneed reported September 23, 2008: “Obama was scheduled to attend a private Greek fund-raiser” Monday night, September 22nd, at Chicago’s Powerhouse restaurant hosted by “Obama’s basketball buddy, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, who was hitting donors up for $28,500 for Democratic National Committee coffers.”

And TRBO believes Sneed at the Sun-Times is a solid source.

P.S. Why, you ask, does RBO hold Michael Sneed in such high esteem? Well, we can all thank her for providing the proof that Barack and Michelle not only attended that April 3, 2004, reception for Iraqi-British billionaire businessman, Nadhmi Auchi, at Rekzo’s house, but that Obama was observed delivering a toast in Mr. Auchi’s direction. RBO will place good money on anything Sneed has to say. Anytime. Anywhere. Anyhow.

In an earlier piece, TRBO shows how Obama, Giannoulias and Rezko are connected.

In 2006, when Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias was running for office, his good friend Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) not only vouched for him but also appeared in a campaign commercial in support of his campaign.

When Giannoulias visited Chicago’s SouthtownStar editorial board last week, he said that he had “met several times” with convicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko as a “banking customer,” Kristen McQueary reported June 15, 2008.

TRBO notes ominously at the bottom:

P.S. Would it surprise anyone to know that Obama’s close friend Alexi Giannoulias was tossed under the Obama bus more than two years ago—and Giannoulias still runs the Obama endorsement on his official website?

Yep. Obama did “bus” Giannoulias back in 2006, BECAUSE HE WAS CONCERNED ABOUT BANK LOANS TO A “CHICAGO CRIME FIGURE.” Here’s the link to that story, at thecapitolfaxblog.com

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday he is concerned by revelations that the bank owned by Illinois Democratic treasurer nominee Alexi Giannoulias’ family gave loans to a Chicago crime figure and said the candidate owes him and the public a full accounting.

“I’m going to take a look at what’s been going on and I’m going to ask Alexi directly what is happening,” said Obama, an early and enthusiastic backer of the first-time candidate, after a town hall meeting at York High School in Elmhurst.

“I think it is absolutely appropriate for [Giannoulias] to have to explain what exactly the nature of the relationship was, how aware the bank was of some of the illegal activities that this gentleman had engaged in in the past,” he said. “I think that is something that, as his campaign goes forward, he’s got to explain to voters.” […]

“It sounds like they hadn’t fully thought that through,” Obama said. “My recommendation to him will be that he needs to have a thorough press conference in which all of this gets completely aired and all of these questions have to be answered. I think that’s what any elected official owes to the voters.”

Wow! Obama was worried at one time about relationships. Now? Not so much. Want to see and hear Obama’s endorsement of the Illinois state treasurer? It’s still a feature of Giannoulias’ site (before it gets taken down. . .).

Back on 10/8, the Sun-Times also had a short bit saying the Rezko sentencing had been postponed.

The delay comes as evidence mounts that Rezko is providing information to federal prosecutors. The Sun-Times first reported Rezko’s meetings with the feds in August and sources close to the investigation later confirmed the talks last month.


. . . If a deal is worked out with the government, Rezko could prove to be the most valuable witness yet in an ongoing probe into state corruption under Gov. Blagojevich’s administration.


. . . Blagojevich said he hoped Rezko “tells the truth” and said he wasn’t worried about his former adviser and fund-raiser talking about him.
The governor pointed to a letter Rezko sent St. Eve earlier this year saying he wasn’t going to make up lies about Obama and Blagojevich.


Ziegelmueller said both the letter and the governor’s comments speak for themselves.


”I think everyone else can draw their own conclusions,” he said.

Some NQ stories on Rezko:

Corroborated – Rezko Speaks Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen

Open Thread – Obama Can Try to Run but He Can’t Hide

ALSO:  The Boston Globe did a great investigative piece on Obama’s links to the housing privatization schemes — but none of the rest of the MSM picked up their great work.  Our own Un Coup De Des wrote it up brilliantly in two parts:

     (a) Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slumlord Patron

     (b) Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous

And a great video by Flineo:

Obama camp on ACORN: “Nothing to see here. Move along.”

Obama camp on Ayers: “People don’t care about these issues. They are worried about the economy. Move along.”

Obama camp on Wright: “Nothing to see here people, keep it moving.”

Obama camp on Jim Johnson and Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac: “Move along. Nothing here to see.”

But what the Obama camp doesn’t want you to believe, and his supporters don’t understand, is that these associations DO matter, and DO relate to what is happening with the economy, and who is best to handle it.

Obama is friends with Tony Rezko, and even purchased his home with him. Obama has lied about how much Rezko contributed to his campaign, and he has lied about what he knew, and when he knew it. Rezko is a slumlord. He owned the slums where people froze to death in the winter because they didn’t have heat, and almost 800 that died in the heat wave of 1995. The very districts that Obama was responsible for in IL are the worst in the country. Obama and Tony were responsible for those districts, and they are in shambles. Rezko was found guilty of mail fraud, wire fraud, soliciting bribes, and money laundering in connection to a federal investigation into political corruption in the state of Illinois.

What are Obama’s plans for the rest of the country? You have to question his ability and his intentions, when he has failed in his own state.

“This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew…” Obama.

Obama worked for and is associated with ACORN, and has donated funds to them. And there is MASSIVE voter registration fraud going on, right now, today. Stories are breaking minute by minute. There is an active action, happening right now, to get Obama into the White House, by any means possible.

If Obama happens to win, and had done so honestly (I don’t believe he even won the primary honestly), then that would be the will of the majority of the people, and that is the way it should be. The President should be elected by the will of the people. I may not like the outcome, but if it is fair, it is fair. I would be unhappy, but I would respect the decision. I will not, and NO ONE should stand for a President who is elected by a bunch of dead voters, repeat voters, bussed in drunks and other fraudulent means.

You have to ask yourself: What, then, would they be able to pull off with a friend in the White House?

Obama, try as he might to deny it, is closely associated with Ayers. Yes, Ayers bombed the Pentagon 40 years ago, but Obama has been in contact with him, as late as 2005. And this should matter. Ayers has never apologized, and feels no remorse.

“Between 1995 and 1999, Obama distributed the $50 million and raised another $60 million from other civic groups to augment it. In doing so, he was following Ayers’ admonition to grant the funds to “external” organizations, like American Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), to pair with schools and conduct programs to radicalize the students and politicize them.

– Obama was consciously guided by Ayers’ radical philosophy, rooted in the teachings of leftist Saul Alinksy, in his distribution of ACA grant funds.”

You have to ask yourself why Obama would align himself with Ayers and Dohrn, and how this affects his thinking, and how it would affect the way he would lead as POTUS.

Obama sat in the church of Reverend Wright for 20 years, listening to his sermons (no need to rehash the content of them) and never spoke out, never left the church, never complained. He praised Wright, titled his book after his sermon, and appointed him to his campaign. THEN he lied about what he knew, and when he knew it.

You have to ask yourself why he would listen to all that, for 20 years, and how those views skew his own thinking. How would he govern moving forward?

Now, for the James Johnson/Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac connections. This has EVERYTHING to do with what is happening now with the economy, and is very important. Obama IS in part responsible for what is happening now. (read my other post) He is part of this problem, takes huge sums of money from them, and appointed Johnson to his VP vetting committee, and opposed a bill that McCain co-sponsored – twice.

If Obama is willing to look the other way, for big campaign contributions, and be part of the problem, that caused the biggest financial crisis since 1929, then you have to ask yourself what he would do as POTUS. And you have to see the relevancy in WHY his friends and associations and actions MATTER.

So, you see, it DOES matter who his friends and associates are. What do they say, Past is Prologue. Obama’s resume is very, very thin. All we have available to assess who he is is by looking at his past actions, and his friends. And it matters who has influenced him. It matters who has helped to shape his outlook and his thinking. Wright used to be referred to as his *spiritual mentor*. Like I said in my previous post – all of those people do not a coincidence make. It is a pattern.

And despite what Obama and his supporters try to tell you, it does matter. And people do care. *Show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are.*

It is about judgment.

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.

We warned readers of No Quarter of the problems convicted slumlord and political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko would create for Obama during the final stretch of the Presidential campaign, and now we have confirmation. I quote the Associated Press:

CHICAGO (AP) — Federal prosecutors have asked to delay the sentencing of convicted fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko indefinitely.

The motion filed Monday afternoon signals the key fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Sen. Barack Obama and other Illinois Domocrats may be telling prosecutors what he knows about corruption in state government.

It asks U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve to delay the sentencing “while the parties engage in discussions that could affect their sentencing postures.” The language is all but an acknowledgment that Rezko is talking.

Rezko was convicted of launching a $7 million scheme to use his clout with Blagojevich’s administration to pressure a contractor and firms wanting to do business with the state for kickbacks.

And yes, Obama was involved in Illinois state government in 2003 through 2005, the time during which Rezko was defrauding the Illinois State Teachers’ Pension fund and bankrolling certain politicians. I quote what I wrote in my last essay on this subject:

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.

I guess there will be surprises in October. And Obama thought Ayers was his only problem. Let us reintroduce the electorate to Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Also read the commentary available at Memeorandum.

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

• 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”

Part 5 of 6

Part 6 of 6

Please share your comments about all six parts here.

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

Note: Here are links to the important comments posted by our readers in open threads last night, during and after the show: first thread, second thread, and third thread. (Readers continued to comment throughout the night.)

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”