April 27, 2008

Obama supporters, how do you justify Barry’s Blackwell-EKI-Killerspin wheeling and dealing?

• Barack Obama says that in 2000, he was so broke, his credit card was declined when he tried to rent a car at LAX;

• Michelle Obama (who pisses and moans constantly about how rough she had it, skipping through life from private charter school to Harvard) says she and Barry were still heavily burdened by debt (specifically, by student loans from 1988 and 1991) until Barack’s book sales took off in 2005.

Despite these facts:

• In 1993, the Obamas put a $111,000 down payment on a $277,500 condiminum;

• In 2000, the Obamas earned a combined household total of $240,000.

With that in mind, get a load of what’s come out in this morning’s L.A. Times — “Obama donor received a state grant“:

After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client — a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell’s firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.

Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.

Obama’s staff said the senator advocated only for the first year’s grant — which ended up being $20,000, not $50,000. The day after Obama wrote his letter urging the awarding of the state funds, Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign received a $1,000 donation from Blackwell.

Uh, isn’t this sort of thing illegal?

Oopsy-daisy! My mistake! Apparently, this is just Chicago-style — or at least Illinois-style — politics as usual:

Business relationships between lawmakers and people with government interests are not illegal or uncommon in Illinois or other states with a part-time Legislature, where lawmakers supplement their state salaries with income from the private sector.

So, it’s not illegal. But you know what? It should be.

Now, you take this Blackwell wheeling-and-dealing (and there’s plenty more about it at the LAT link) along with Obama’s questionable dealings with Tony Rezko, and the way Obama got where he is today — plainly put, he was kicked upstairs by another close ally, the powerful Emil Jones, Jr., whom Obama rewarded with pork-barrel earmarks of “more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones’ Senate district” — and you’ve got to start asking just how “transparent” Barack Obama really is.

It shouldn’t matter a whit if Barry’s Peter-Pays-Paul dealing is legal; the question is: Is it ethical?

I say it isn’t.

I say it all just plain stinks.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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March 31, 2008

Charles Lipson on Obama’s “Four Stumps in the Water”

A funny thing happened recently: Ever since Mike Gravel jumped back into the race, I’m not paying a lot of attention to Barack Obama — other than to shake my head and cluck my tongue every time he says something stupid. (Did you hear what he said about a woman’s right to choose? I agree with the guy, on every word, but that “punished with a baby” line is red meat for the Right. Dumb, Barry, really dumb.)

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean I’m not glad to see Obama’s very real liabilities brought up in the MSM, as often as possible. I don’t hate Barack — I just don’t want him to be president, and to that end, I want all Americans who have yet to vote in a primary to understand that Barack Obama is not the Messiah he and his blindly adoring supporters want you to think he is.

To that end, I direct your attention to a long, detailed piece that gets into the specifics of Obama’s ties to some very unsavory characters (and Jeremiah Wright isn’t even one of “the four stumps”!) worth bookmarking:

Four Stumps in the Water for Obama

As the high-water mark for Barack Obama recedes, his campaign must now confront several dangerous stumps that were once hidden below the surface. The problems began with Obama’s long attachment to Rev. Wright, Trinity United Church, and Black Liberation Theology, but they won’t end there.

So, what issues are now lurking for Obama?

The first is the volatile mix of race and religion, begun with the Rev. Wright controversy. Videos have now surfaced of virulent race-baiting by yet another Chicago preacher with ties to Obama, the Rev. James Meeks. Obama was not a member of Meeks’s church and their connection may be only a tactical alliance between prominent local figures. That’s the question: how close are those ties?

Meeks is no ordinary pastor. He is an important political and religious figure in African-American Chicago. He not only leads a mammoth congregation, he is an Illinois state senator and a key player in Jesse Jackson’s powerful local political organization, which is squarely behind Obama’s run for the Presidency. …

Obama’s second problem is his most important patron in Illinois politics: Emil Jones. Jones heads the Illinois State Senate and is one of the two most powerful legislators in Springfield. He played a vital role in Obama’s rise in state politics and, most significantly, he blessed Obama’s underdog candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Now that Obama is playing on a national stage, his ties to Jones raise uncomfortable questions about his years in Illinois politics. …

The Rezko trial highlights another problem for Obama, potentially a devastating one, though it is unlikely to arise for several months or more. Antoin “Tony” Rezko is on trial for taking large bribes in return for political favors. …

…Rezko problems are bad news for Obama because the two have close, long-standing ties. Obama initially downplayed those ties and minimized the money Rezko had raised for him. When local reporters raised pointed questions, Obama declined to answer. He broke that silence at a strategic moment, just as the Rev. Wright story hit and the national media was focused on nothing else. That’s when Obama found time to give extensive interviews about Rezko to the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. Predictably, the story got some play locally but was drowned out nationally. …

Where does Obama figure in all this, aside from being a recipient of Rezko’s campaign cash? No one knows for sure, but suspicion centers on one particular real estate deal. …

Obama’s final stump also lies in Kenwood, where he was friendly with the 1960s radicals, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Ayers and Dohrn, now married, were members of the Weather Underground, a group that killed police and tried to bomb the US Capitol. …

Obama served with Ayers on the board of a small, leftist foundation, the Woods Fund. Ayers later chaired the board and is still a member. Obama served from 1999 until 2002 and received several thousand dollars annually as compensation. According to the 2001 annual report, the fund made a $6000 discretionary grant to Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church “in recognition of Barack Obama’s contribution of services to the Woods Fund as a director.” Serving with Obama and Ayers was the prominent Palestinian activist, Rashid Khalidi, then a historian at the University of Chicago and now the Edward Said Professor at Columbia. (While they were all on the board, the Woods Fund gave a generous grant to the Arab American Action Network, headed by Khalidi’s wife, Mona.)…

Much, much more at the link, and all well worth reading.

And the Meeks Shall Inherit the Obamanation

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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Permalink | Trackback | Category: Barack Obama, Corruption, Election 2008, Homeland Insecurity, Illinois, Mike Gravel, Race/Ethnic Issues

March 24, 2008

And the Meeks Shall Inherit the Obamanation

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can cool it for a while with the hate mail, Obamaniacs — you know what I mean: the ones that go “You racist!” and “You quoted Fox News! That proves you’re a paid political operative for Hillary and/or the GOP!”

Here’s one you can’t lay at our doorstep, from Queerty.com — a news blog (one of our favorites, in fact) even queerer than the one you’re reading right now, and one that’s been extremely fair (often to a fault) to The Anointed One:

More Preacher Probs For Obama

… First, we had Donnie McClurkin, the man who nearly derailed the Senator’s mega church campaign. Then came Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s preacher who damned the United States and spurred that revolutionary race speech.

And now Fox’s ire-inducing Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes have turned their attention to another Obama “spiritual counselor,” Reverend James Meeks, a state Senator who spends his free time blasting the bent boys and girls. Obama’s camp already denounced the remarks, saying:

Obama has appeared at hundreds of churches and served with scores of colleagues and can hardly be expected to be held responsible for all that they say.

While that may be true, Meeks’ history will certainly propel a few news stories this week. …

Meeks, who’s closely associated with anti-gay groups like Americans for Truth and Focus On The Family, told a reporter during his 2006 gubernatorial run that he’s the perfect candidate for conservative white voters: “Theologically, politically, for the white conservative voter, I’m their guy. I have their philosophy.” That philosophy became his common call during that year, when he was swiftly defeated:

Come on with me white churches … Call me and tell me to run for governor. White people who believe in Jesus, call me and tell me to run for governor”

…

If I do run and there are two people in the race who both are not standing for morality, if I don’t have every white Christian vote in the state of Illinois, I will stand on top of the Sears Tower and call every one of ya’ll racist.Just one year earlier Meeks railed against white Christians…

Meanwhile, like Wright, Meeks has come under fire for using the pulpit to dispense racialized opinions, even referring to mayors as “slave masters” and some unnamed politicians as “house n****rs…

Though he’s since apologized for those remarks — and, again, Obama himself has denounced them — we’ve got no doubt Meeks’ Obama connection will be making the rounds this week. Can we expect another speech or will Obama be able to shrug this one aside and start focusing on the task at hand: the campaign. We’re hoping the latter, because the Democrats need to make sure they’re strong enough to fight John McCain. And the past few weeks have not been helping their case.

More — including links, an embedded video of Meeks, and some spirited reader comments (”Obama describes Meeks as one of his ‘closest religious advisors’; Meeks appeared in TV ads for Obama’s US Senate campaign; When he ran for US Senate in 2004, Obama campaigned at Meeks’ Salem Baptist church; Meeks’ church was Obama’s last stop on the night he won that primary … Obama appointed Meeks to his exploratory committee for the Presidency; Meeks is listed on Obama’s campaign website of influential black supporters”…) — at the link.

Our reaction: