Via Raw Story from the Chicago Sun-Times.
Pick-ax digging for any scandal to put on Obama.
In addition to a land deal, Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to indicted dealmaker Antoin “Tony” Rezko include an internship the senator provided the son of a contributor at the request of Rezko, an Obama spokesman confirmed Saturday.
John Aramanda served as an intern for Obama for about a month in 2005, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. His father is Joseph Aramanda, a Rezko business associate who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal corruption case against Rezko. Aramanda has contributed $11,500 to Obama since 2000, Gibbs said.
Umm, I never thought Obama was all that clean, but a Mob connection this is not.
Obama and Rezko have been friends since 1990, and the Wilmette businessman has raised as much as $60,000 in campaign contributions for him.
After Rezko’s indictment, Obama donated $11,500 to charity — the amount Rezko contributed to the senator’s federal campaign fund.
Apparently, this has been roiling since week before last. Pardon me if I am just finding all this out. Here is more on it from Slate:
he Chicago Tribune broke the story back in November. It begins in 2004 with Obama’s $1.9 million book advance for The Audacity of Hope. In June 2005, Obama used the money to purchase a $1.65 million Georgian revival home on Chicago’s South Side–$300,000 less than the asking price. On the very same day, Rezko, a Democratic Party fund-raiser and developer, bought the adjacent empty lot at the asking price from the same owner (the house and the lot were previously owned by the same person). Rezko, who had raised money for Obama and known him since the senator attended Harvard Law School, did not develop the empty lot. In January 2006, he sold a 1,500-square-foot slice of it to Obama for $104,000, a fair sum in that market.
Here’s the question: Did Rezko orchestrate his same-day purchase of the lot at full price so that the seller would give Obama a break on the price of the adjacent house? Was Obama in on the deal? And did Rezko never intend to develop the lot, giving Obama a nice roomy side yard, a favor which he’d call in later?
My first question is, just who is Rezko at all?
And my second, what is the scope and depth of his investment in Barack Obama?
And vice versa.
And are there other Rezko-types deep in Obama’s cloakroom who may be worse and who we haven’t seen?
I don’t expect Barack Obama to be clean as a sheet treated with Clorox. But I sure don’t want him to smell.
And I sure don’t want him to explain this away.
I’d take this revelation into consideration far more than the pathetic BS about his middle name.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not enamored of Obama as a possible presidential candidate.
But I would like to know where he’d like to take us under what past circumstances.
This is all total crap. Providing an internship for someone? Pardon me while I laugh hysterically.
You actually believe that this is a problem? Providing an internship is “causing a smell”
And, be very careful about drawing conclusions about “$1.65 million dollar houses.” No house has ANY DEFINITIVE VALUE. The value of a house is what someone will pay for it. So, what is ALLEGED here is that he got a house for $1.35 million that someone else thought was worth $1.65 million.
That’s all a HUGE PILE-O-CRAP.
Don’t repeat crap.
And are there other Rezko-types deep in Obama’s cloakroom who may be worse and who we haven’t seen?
Internships, especially PAID ones, can be problematic.
And one month for a young guy whose dad is in a corruption case, albeit unindicted?
Obama didn’t have to do this. Why?
Do you honestly and non-trollishly believe that giving out an internship to someone is an indication of corruption? Do you really believe that?
You also did not address my point about the house cost. How do we know, in an era of house price inflation, what the cost of a house is, until someone buys it?
And, no, internet house valuation is not the value of a house. It is an ESTIMATE or GUESS about the value.
No house has a value.
Giving out an internship, especially if you don’t need to give one out, looks fishy.
I know only a few things about buying houses. To me,
it looks like manipulative insider stuff, really. The kind of thing that happens with stocks. And with housing values fluctuating, some things can be fixed, and while others not.
A house goes on the market. If people 1) want the house 2) at somewhere near the price offered 3) it will sell. If there are problems or the house is over-priced, it will languish on the market. After a period of time, the house might be reduced in price. However, many houses on the market do not actually go through a realtor, and their price is seldom even known.
It’s like any other commodity. You can BELIEVE that your house has a certain value, but all beliefs are just a speculation. Your house has whatever value that someone will pay for it.
So all this stuff about Obama getting a “deal” or whatever – just a pile of crap. The house has the value that is paid for it. Especially since the house had a purported value of 1.65, and he paid 1.35 – that’s 20 % off. Not at all unheard of in housing, expecially since the house prices of really high-priced properties are really MUCH more speculative.
can be manipulated, as I said. All they needed is a few phone calls and come within the area of the price.
All among friends.
But oh Lawd, what kind of friends?
wow, you really need to take a step back and quit offering such automatic kneejerk defenses of every Dem you want to put up on a pedistal. They aren’t going to save us, only we can help them, use them, FORCE them, to help us, to help this country.
He should have walked away from these people, no matter how innocent the connection seems on its face. At the least, it will be used to smear and redirect him. At worst, it’s a hook to try to influence him.
Oh, and PLEASE stop calling anybody who questions a fucking politician from your “team” a “troll”. Citizens have a right, and more importantly, a RESPONSIBILITY, to question people who offer themselves up as leaders. They aren’t messiahs. They aren’t heroes or role-models or avatars of our hopes and dreams. They are people who act as go-betweens between constituencies that they represent and other interests, all fighting for more influence in our public institutions. We already have a rightwing that is slavishly devoted to their politicians … we won’t fight them or beat them back by BECOMING them.
I have no problem with any question on any politician. What I really hate is this tendency to take every little media bullshit attack and go with it. Not every attack on a politician is legit, and this one is particularily stupid. Sorry, it’s idiotic.
I do not put Mr. Obama on a pedestal. To me, he is a modestly talented guy who is a good speaker, but has no resume, no issues and little to recommend him save the lack of experience he has.
Do not attack him for giving someone an internship. That is just fucking moronic. Attack him for something important, like the fact that Obama stands for nothing save standing for whatever you want him to stand for. He is, at this point, a variable in politics not a constant.
of nothing.
But these little things hint at bigger ones on the horizon. The harangues about his middle name–hell, he was named before anyone was even conscious of a Saddam Hussein, and it doesn’t even count.
Yeah, I would not like to see Obama running on the top ticket in 2008. I’d rather see him as a veep.
But he’s far from perfection. And the anger that you turned on me for even questioning what’s behind it all makes it obvious you’re a true believer, not someone who is able to question and see the clay within Obama’s feet.
No doubt the Repubs (and even Hill’s people) are digging away and trying to find something/anything (apologies to Todd Rundgren) to discredit the guy. Hence these articles in Chicago papers.
It took me a while to accept some of the rot surrounding the Kennedys, even Bobby’s shyt. I have the luxury of age, experience and reading at my disposal.
I’m going to say my man is Edwards at the moment. I like what I see. An Edwards-Obama ticket would a dream come true, in my view.
But I am willing to examine for myself any stuff that Edwards would rather see buried off the Monterey coastline myself, just so’s I know I am keeping tabs on my own sanity.
There’s a great danger of us creating saviors and finding that to our heartbreak that they aren’t.
To me, the only true American savior within the last century has been Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
None of his shoes (painful braces, crutches or wheelchairs) would fit the toes of would-be candidates in 2008. I mean, let’s be for real.
I might (might) add Harry T. to that list as well. He navigated some nasty thickets after WWII and managed to keep the country’s mind, body, and soul together almost as well as FDR.
One of the reasons this is getting so much attention in Chicago is Rezko’s ties to the Daley machine, especially coming on the heels of his ties to the Governor’s scandals. The right loves to raise the spector of Daley corruption and stolen elections in the past.
Obama should stay far, far away from these people.
Well, I agree with that. But, talking to someone is not an indication of corruption.
Which is why I asked why Obama did not cut his losses and back away from these people.
Weird.
it’s hard to do much in that town w/o help from the Daley machine.
I’m sure he tells himself that he’ll do what he has to do in order to get himself into position to do more good. That is, of course, the way the moneychangers and influence peddlers have redirected reformers throughout the ages.
only problem, look what happened to Carol Moseley-Braun. The problem with the house, the right will try to spin it so it would look similar to Duke Cunningham’s house sale.
The Daley machine can be broken, it happened with Harold Washington and from what I hear it could happen again.
And the Right will go into spin overdrive when it involves a person of color who is outspoken and/or has the ability to become a national leader.
.
TNR Online Dec 20 – If new facts come out that reveal actual wrongdoing, then, by all means, go nuts. But stop pretending that the appearance of a wrong is a crime worth more than an inch of newsprint. Give Obama all the scrutiny in the world–just not a different standard of guilt.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I would be thrilled if Barack Obama became president: he’s very,very smart; he has a good understanding of some important issues, he has the rethoric ability to change political narratives and he would probably be competent.
Having said that, I think the image of B.O, his aura of progressivism and invinsibility is the product of wishful thinking (and a kickass speech at the 04 dem convention). Who wouldn’t want a black, progressive able and inspiring politician to become president?
But only now is he going through the meatgrinder of the RWNM, and skeletons, real or invented, are bound to emerge. It is important to see how he responds to larger scrutiny of his life.
He certainly could become president some day (and he has about eight elections cycles to try) but maybe he needs to toughen up a bit and gain experience. A common flaw of bright people is that they sometimes think they have nothing to learn.
than Obama, but it’s perception and not necessarily reality.
Sharpton refused to knuckle under the nice-nice remonstrations of McAuliffe and Kerry, and for that, he got rousing, standing ovations as well. I think people at the convention were dying for his kind of speech.
I hear ya about Obama, but 2008, I believe, is not his year.
Sharptonn kicked Obama’s ass speechwise (and every other speaker save Jimmy-ok I admit, I have a real soft spot in my heart for Jimmy C.)
But Obama sounded themes that resonate with a much broader slice of the American public.