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.
