This country is being run by a gang of hoodlums, criminals, thieves and racketeers. Where is everyone? Where are the good guys? Where is Elliot Ness? Where are the crimebusters?
Rod Blagojevich's lawyers want the FBI to give up details of interviews
conducted last year of President Obama, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, White
House adviser Valerie Jarrett and others as part of the investigation into the
former governor.
In a Friday filing, Blagojevich attorneys also asked for information
regarding first lady Michelle Obama. However, a source said late Friday that the
FBI never interviewed the first lady.
Rod Blagojevich's lawyers want the FBI to give up details of
interviews conducted last year with President Obama (from top left), Michelle
Obama, Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel. A source said Friday, the FBI never
interviewed the first lady.
Then-President-elect Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett sat down with the FBI about a
year ago -- just after Blagojevich was arrested on charges of trying to sell
Obama's recently vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder.
Obama revealed he was interviewed in a report he made public last
December.
The defense request, filed in federal court, asks for "notes, transcripts and
reports" of interviews with the Obamas, Emanuel, Jarrett and union chiefs Thomas
Balanoff and Andy Stern.
The request was part of a larger bid by defense lawyers to have prosecutors
turn over additional materials, including witness statements, six months before
the June trial date. Typically, prosecutors give the defense such information 30
days before the trial.
Shelly Sorosky, an attorney for Blagojevich, said the defense needs
additional time with the material "because there's so much of it. This is
massive stuff."
"I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." (Obama, in address to ACORN in 2007)
Obama's first job out of college was with ACORN as a community organizer. Obama hired ACORN affiliates for voter registration. Obama was a speaker at ACORN seminars. Obama was their lawyer. And now he says the enormous, gross ACORN scandal is not something he is "paying a lot of attention to"?
Only one of the five television networks that interviewed President Obama for their Sunday shows bothered to ask him about Acorn, the left-wing community organizing group whose federal funding was cut off last week by an overwhelming vote in Congress.
"Frankly, it's not something I've followed closely," Mr. Obama claimed, adding he wasn't even aware the group had been the recipient of significant federal funding. "This is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to," he said.
Mr. Obama added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Not the biggest issue facing the country? I beg to differ. I think a national organization dedicated to stealth revolution, Communism, ripping off the American taxpayer, and subverting free markets, among other insidious traitorous objectives, is of enormous import.
What is he paying attention to? Nationalizing a perfectly good private health care system, the best on the world? Outreach to the ummah (worldwide global Muslim community)?
What is he paying attention to? Mounting a DoJ witch hunt, a persecution of CIA agents whose crime was keeping us safe in immediacy of 911 and a worldwide jihad. What's he paying attention to - ethnically cleansing Israel of the Jewish people? Or facilitating a nuclear Iran? Sanctioning Islamic law? Snuffing out the people marching for freedom in Iran? Lest we forget his priority of crushing democracy in Honduras.
Mr. Obama
added that an investigation of Acorn was appropriate after an amateur
hidden-camera investigation had found Acorn offices willing to abet
prostitution, but he carefully declined to say whether he would approve a
federal cutoff of funds to the group.
Mr. Obama took
great pains to act as if he barely knew about Acorn. In fact, his association
goes back almost 20 years. In 1991, he took time off from his law firm to run a
voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an Acorn partner that was soon fully
absorbed under the Acorn umbrella. The drive registered 135,000 voters and was
considered a major factor in the upset victory of Democrat Carol Moseley Braun
over incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Dixon in the 1992 Democratic Senate
primary.
Mr. Obama's
success made him a hot commodity on the community organizing circuit. He became
a top trainer at Acorn's Chicago conferences. In 1995, he became Acorn's attorney, participating in a landmark
case to force the state of
Illinois to implement the federal
Motor Voter Law. That law's loose voter registration requirements would later be
exploited by Acorn employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake
names.
In 1996, Mr.
Obama filled out a questionnaire listing key supporters for his campaign for the
Illinois Senate. He put Acorn first (it was not an alphabetical list). In the
U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama became the leading critic of Voter ID laws, whose
overturn was a top Acorn priority. In 2007, in a speech to Acorn's leaders prior
to their political arm's endorsement of his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was
effusive: "I've been fighting alongside of Acorn on issues you care about my
entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran Project Vote in
Illinois, Acorn was smack dab in
the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
But the Obama
campaign didn't appear eager to discuss the candidate's ties to Acorn. Its press
operation vividly denied Mr. Obama had been an Acorn trainer until the New York
Times uncovered records demonstrating that he had been. The Obama campaign also
gave Citizens Consulting, Inc., an Acorn subsidiary, $832,000 for
get-out-the-vote activities in key primary states. In filings with the Federal
Election Commission, the Obama campaign listed the payments as "staging, sound,
lighting," only correcting the filings after the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
revealed their true nature.
Given his
longstanding ties with Acorn, President Obama's protestations of ignorance or
disinterest in the group's latest scandal seem preposterous. Here's hoping White
House reporters will press the president to clarify just how much he really
knows about Acorn and when he knew it.
It is implausible to think, based on Bertha Lewis’s White House
contacts, that Barack Obama is not paying attention to ACORN.
The story in a
nutshell:
Bertha Lewis is the CEO of ACORN.
In a review of Lewis’s contacts list, which was leaked to RedState, Bertha
Lewis has the office, cell phone, home number, and private personal email
address of Patrick Gaspard.
Patrick Gaspard holds Karl Rove’s position in the White House and was
Obama’s Political Director during the campaign.
In addition to Patrick, Bertha has Patrick’s brother Michael in her rolodex.
She lists Michael as working at the Advance Group.
The Advance Group is ACORN’s lobbying organization.
In other words, besides having Obama’s political director’s contact info,
the political director’s brother works for ACORN via its lobbying shop.
On Sunday, Barack
Obama played ignorant on the situation with ACORN. Obama told ABC’s George
Stephanopoulos, “Frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely.
I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal
money.” Never mind that Barack Obama used to work for ACORN.
Based on information obtained by RedState, we think Barack Obama may live to
regret those words.
With everybody focused on ACORN these days, what if we could dig around and
see who in the Obama administration shows up in Bertha Lewis’s rolodex? Bertha Lewis is the
CEO of ACORN.
It’s not that hard to look into her contacts. RedState has seen a list of
Bertha Lewis’s contacts. We did not seek it out. It just showed up one day
unsolicited. We did not ask for it. We did not expect to get it. But now that we
have it, we should see who is in there.
The contacts came from a credible source who is no fan of ACORN. An ACORN
employee gave it to him. Having examined the file for a week and after
consulting with others, we believe the list is legitimate. It fits a recent
pattern of leaks out of ACORN as the rats scramble from the sinking ship.
The list contains the private email addresses and cell phones of scores of
powerful and influential people from Al Sharpton to Charlie Rangel. It contains
several people inside the Barack Obama administration including one of the
closest ties to Barack Obama other than his wife.
This is one of the dirtiest administrations in modern history and the media provides the alibi. Breathtaking corruption.
The House Republican
Conference digs in today to a fact reported recently by Bloomberg's im Burger: That the
pharmaceutical lobby, PhRMA, has hired David Axelrod's AKPD Media -- a fact that
raises eyebrows because Axelrod sold the firm under an agreement that left it
owing him $2 million, a lot of money for a political media company.
It's
hard to imagine a situation in which, say, Karl Rove was still getting checks
from a firm that was, in turn, employed by the drug lobby not drawing fire from
the left, and Axelrod's arrangement is, a bit belatedly, getting that attention.
Emails HRC spokesman Matt Lloyd:
As the pharmaceutical
industry spends hundreds of millions supporting a government takeover of health
care—one which drug companies obviously believe will increase their profits,
even as it raises Medicare premiums for seniors—some may wonder whether White
House senior advisors earning millions of dollars paid for in part by the
pharmaceutical industry represents the kind of change Americans can believe
in.
Exposed "Ethicsgate" Obama and the Democrats' multiple direct links to the political effort to destroy Sarah Palin.
I encourage Atlas readers to DOWNLOAD THIS VIDEO. Post it everywhere. Post it offshore. The left fascists will keep writing their emails to take it down -- "they are using my mug!" -- and we will keep putting it up.
If I tried to have removed every image and video the left has ripped off of me, I would employ a small nation. Believe me, it pains us to look at those momzers -- it's an ugly part of the job.
DEKALB COUNTY, Ga.
-- Two DeKalb County police officers have been placed on paid
administrative leave after an investigation revealed they ran a background check
on President Barack Obama.
A representative for the DeKalb County CEO’s office identified the
officers as Ryan White and C.M. Route.
Officials said Obama’s name was typed into a computer inside a DeKalb
County police car on July 20 and ran through the National Crime Information
Center.
The secret service was immediately notified and contacted the DeKalb
County Police Department.
A representative said both officers have been with the department less
than five years.
A representative said one of the officers denied involvement.
An official investigation is being conducted by the DeKalb County Police
Department’s Internal Affairs division.
It is unclear why the officers ran a check on the president.
As the rule of law continues to break down by the actions of what is, in effect, the autocrat in chief, there comes the latest egregious act of flagrant despotism.
The Senate protects the independence of Inspector Generals. The firing of the brave Inspector General Gerald Waprin is fresh on the heels of the
Obama administration cutting a Chicago gangland style deal with a major Obama backer, the corrupt Gerald Johnson. Obama OK'ed more taxpayer dollars in federal funding to Johnson as mayor of Sacramento. Worse still, Kevin Johnson does not have to return the money he robbed from taxpayers.
In
an email and fax sent late Friday, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa,
demanded that Alan D. Solomont, the chairman of the Corporation for National and
Community Service, provide "any and all records, email, memoranda, documents,
communications, or other information, whether in draft or final form" related to
President Obama's firing of CNCS Inspector General Gerald Walpin.
Walpin had investigated Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's community service
organization, St. HOPE Academy, which confessed to misusing AmeriCORPS grants.
In April of this year, St. HOPE Academy agreed to pay a $423,836.50 settlement
-- $72,836.50 of which would be paid personally by Mayor Johnson.
"For reasons that I do not yet understand, the OIG was excluded from this
proceeding and the settlement lifting the suspension, was done in complete
disregard of the OIG’s findings, as well as the previous determination of wrong
doing identified in the Notice of Suspension," Grassley wrote. "Perhaps the
settlement agreement was reached without any input from the OIG, because less
than half of what was misused by the Corporation grantees is being returned to
the taxpayer and the OIG would not have agreed to this arrangement. In fact, an
argument can be made that not even half of the misused funds is being returned,
because the settlement does not require that payment in full be made. Rather
the settlement places the grantees on a type of payment plan that will occur
over a decade; to date less than 10% of the misused money has been
recovered."
During the course of his investigation, Walpin clashed with the US Attorney's
office; eventually Acting US Attorney Lawrence Brown, complaining that Walpin
acted "as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier" in his
investigation, wrote to the chair of the Integrity Committee for the Counsel of
the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency "to express my Office's
concerns about the conduct" of Walpin.
Over the weekend we covered this firing HERE
and HERE.
In his Friday email and fax, Grassley told Solomont, who backed Walpin's
termination, that he wanted to see all materials related to Walpin's performance
as Inspector General, his removal, any contacts CNCS had with the United States
Attorney’s Office, St. HOPE Academy, Mayor Johnson, the White House, or the
First Lady's office.
This appears to be related to a report in Youth
Today, an independent, nationally distributed newspaper for
professionals in the youth service field, which reported that "Some decisions
about CNCS are being made by First Lady Michelle Obama, according to service
advocates (who asked not to be named). Last week, Mrs. Obama announced that her
chief of staff, Jackie Norris, would move to CNCS as a senior adviser. Officials
said yesterday that Norris is scheduled to arrive on June 22."
Bottom line: The AmeriCorps IG accuses
prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. Prominent Obama
supporter has to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money. Obama fires
AmeriCorps IG.
From what is shaping up to be the most corrupt administration in American history comes this Obombshell (Americorps - Obama's civilian army, mandatory "volunteerism"):
There are a number of unanswered questions today about President Obama's abrupt decision to fire the inspector general of the AmeriCorps program, Gerald Walpin. Obama sent letters to House and Senate leaders yesterday informing them that he was firing Walpin, effective 30 days from the date of the letters.
"It is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General," the president wrote. "That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General."
The 30 day requirement is important because last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which was designed to strengthen protections for IGs, who have the responsibility of investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse within federal agencies, against interference by political appointees or the White House. Part of the Act was a requirement that the president give Congress 30 days' notice before dismissing an IG. One of the co-sponsors of the Act was then-Sen. Barack Obama.
The Act also requires the president to outline the cause for his decision to remove an IG. Beyond saying that he did not have the "fullest confidence" in Walpin, Obama gave no reason for his action.
There are two big questions about the president's actions. One, why did he decide to fire Walpin? And two, did he abide by the law that he himself co-sponsored?
According to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a strong advocate of inspectors general, Walpin received a call from the White House Counsel's office on Wednesday evening. Walpin was told that he had one hour to either resign or be fired. Senate sources say Walpin asked why he was being fired and, according to one source, "The answer that was given was that it's just time to move on. The president would like to have someone else in that position." Walpin declined to resign.
Grassley fired off a letter to the president on Thursday saying that, "I was troubled to learn that [Wednesday] night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated," Grassley wrote. "As you know, Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions. Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure. This independence is the hallmark of all Inspectors General and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny."
Grassley's version of events suggests that the White House first tried to muscle Walpin out of his job without having to go through the 30-day process. It was only when Walpin refused to resign that the White House then notified Congress of the president's intention to fire Walpin.
The bigger question is why the president is doing this and why he is attempting to do it so quickly. Senate sources now believe Obama is firing Walpin over Walpin's investigation of Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and a prominent supporter of the president.
It bears repeating that if any Republican ever pulled the crooked, politically corrupt garbage that Obama does, he'd be hanged in effigy. Geez, Bush was hanged in effigy for loving America and trying to protect the American people.
The Bush presidency was a breath of fresh air next to this hack. What a scoundrel. Bringing Chicago-land political gang politics to DC. This is the "transparency" that O promised? He promised "a new era of openness in our country " and "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency" (here).
By MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama on Thursday tapped four big Democratic Party donors for plum ambassadorships in Europe and Latin America while naming six career diplomats to posts in Africa, the Mideast and the Pacific.
A tipster over at Director Blues made a startling assertion. A cursory review by
that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors.
To
quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names
appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to
political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn't an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified.
However, I also found additional research online at Scribd (author unknown), which also appears to point to a highly partisan decision-making process.
Consider
the partial list of Chrysler dealership owners, listed below. You'll
notice that all were opponents of Barack Obama, most through
sponsorship of GOP candidates and organizations, but a handful through
Barack's Democrat rivals (Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in 2008, for
example).
• Vernon G. Buchanan: $147,450 to GOP candidates and organizations • Wallace D. Alley and Family: $4,500 to GOP. • Robert Archer: $4,600 to GOP and conservative causes. • Homer S. Higginbotham and Family: $2950 to GOP. • James Auffenberg and Family: $28,000 to GOP; $6,000 to one Democrat candidate. • Michael Maroone and Family: $60,000 to GOP; $8,500 to two Democrat candidates. • Jerome Fader: $6,500 to Democrats; $2,500 to Independent Joe Lieberman. • Stephen Fay and Family: $13,500 to GOP. • William Numrich: $20,000 to GOP. • Robert Carver: $10,000 to Democrats including $1,950 to Hillary Clinton, nothing to Barack Obama.
In Obama's continuing mission to make America safe for his thugs and scoundrels, now comes this - his latest attack on America. What a crook we installed, eh?
Obama received millions of payoff dollars from unions to fund his coup on America. Check this out from Don Todd, Director of Research for Americans for Limited Government, who formerly served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Labor Management
Standards under President George W. Bush.
The President’s fiscal year 2010 budget for the federal government was unveiled
last Thursday and surprisingly he found one agency that he thinks deserves a 9%
budget cut. This agency is the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) in
the U.S. Department of Labor. Obama proposed to cut its budget from $45 million
in fiscal year 2009 to $41 million in fiscal year 2010.
OLMS is the federal agency that investigates financial crimes that occur when
union officials steal from their union. OLMS also investigates cases where union
officials engage in fraud and other corrupt practices in conducting union
officer elections.
Over the last eight years this office secured over 900 criminal convictions
of union officials for embezzlement and other crimes and obtained court orders
of over $91 million dollars – dollars that will be returned to union members.
One would think that given Obama’s emphasis on helping unions that he would want
to beef up the only agency in the federal government that watches out for union
members and prosecutes those who steal from them.
However, apparently Obama believes that there is no need to prosecute those
union officials who steal from their members because his budget cuts this
agency, while at the same time other enforcement agencies in the Labor
Department are given a huge boost. For instance, the Wage and Hour Division in
the Labor Department received a boost of 18%, from $201 million in fiscal year
2009 to $238 in fiscal year 2010.
In the last appropriations cycle OLMS was the only agency in the entire Labor
Department that was targeted by Congressional Democrats for a budget cut.
Democrats were successful in cutting the budget from $47 million to $45. Now
with a Democratic president in the White House and Democratic control of
Congress one can only wonder where the final budget number will land.
The loss of $4 million dollars, millions that are being shifted to other
programs such as the Wage and Hour Division, will most certainly in a reduction
of the ability of OLMS to prosecute those who steal from the working man and
woman.
My quick back of the envelope calculations lead me to believe that OLMS is
probably looking at staff reductions in the neighborhood of 40-50 personnel.
This is significant for an agency that has slightly over 300 personnel
nationwide.
Atlas Shrugs: ***ACORN OBAMA VOTER FRAUD ALERT*** I have repeatedly asked, why hasn't ACORN been stripped of its
eligibility? Obama is poised to lose. He knows it. He also knows there
is more than one way ...
Atlas Shrugs: STEALING THE ELECTION
Sep 15, 2008 ... Every voter registered by ACORN should be voided. More
ACORN Voter Fraud in Wisconsin Weekly Standard In light of the reports
of voter fraud ...
Much needed cuts were made in February to the SEIU, the unionized home health care workers, as
part of the budget approved by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state
lawmakers.
The Service Employees International Union, which represents the
workers, said in a statement that it had asked the Obama administration to
intervene.
“SEIU’s members are temperamentally suited to Obama; he
is a longtime friend of Chicago’s SEIU Local 880 and worked closely
with the union as an organizer and later as a state legislator.”
SEIU paid for door-to-door canvassing for Obama, voter identification and registration, phonebanks…an expenditures document.
Atlas reader Laura S. provided updated figures for the obscene sums that SEIU spent on getting Obama elected. I under reported the $13,355,389.00 in dirty money paid to Obama during the election.
All the figures are right off the FEC site.
SEIU spent $18,818,358.97 through December of 2008 on
behalf of Obama. Source here.
The $13 million dollar figure was only through
August/2008--actually SEIU spent $18,818,358.97 through December of 2008 on
behalf of Obama. Total on FEC site. I did not add it myself.
This doesnot include the $$$ SEIU spent against McCain.
Here are some entries of notice as pertains to SEIU
healthcare workers-first is 100 grand to the Healthcare Workers in Oakland, CA
to phone bank for Obama. There are tons more but I don't have time right
now.
Here is entry for $100,000.00 for phone banking paid to SEIU United Healthcare Workers West out of Oakland, CA, 560
Thomas L. Berkley Way, Oakland, CA 94612.
Phone banking calls on behalf of Obama listed on
FEC wedsite as Against McCain. So under the McCain category on FEC website.
DatedOctober 15th, 2008. Schedule E (FEC form 3x)
Itemized Independent Expenditures. (documentation here)
$322,372.35 spent on
October 17,2008 for SEIU HEALTHCARE IL_IN to canvas
for Obama (more here)
$50,000.00 on April
30,2008 to SEIU General fund for th ecost of Healthcare Bus Tour AGAINST
McCain (more here)
This amount does not tally as $$$ spent for Obama
BUT as Money spent AGAINST MCCAIN.
$50,000 to SEIU General
Fund for the healthcare bus "Road to Heal" Healthcare Bus Tour and $50,000 to "costs of anti-greed events" Both against
McCain Total $100,000 for July 17, 2008. Wow, that bus must have gotten
around. (here)
Over $918,719.81 for canvas staff on July 31, 2008
payable to SEIU General Fund-TONS of entries are for
SEIU General fund for canvassing-they had an army knocking door to door all
working for the SEIU and paid from SEIU General Fund this is only one of many
of like receipts on FEC site.
October 15, 2008 $172,008.00 for mailings in
Caifornia payable to TBWB Strategies-on behalf of Obama with love from
SEIU (here and here)
$465,000 to pay for canvass workers-$165,000 to
"GOTV" canvass workers in Feb, 2008 (here)
Also lots and lots to Compass Media Group-for
mailers and distribution on behalf of Obama. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Compass Media group is out of Chicago with address of 1415 N Dayton Ste 1S;
Chicago IL 60622--no maybe over a million at least or two as I am running across
lots of these.
Here's a fun one "PHONE BANK PERSUASION AND GOTV"
WTF is GOTV? "Get out the Vote"
$50,000 to SEIU Communications center in DC February 21, 2008
Tyson organization-another grass roots phone bank
call center that is non-profit but charges for their services. here
$250,000 to Tyson.org for "phone bank persuasion
and GOTV" on 2-21-2008 here and again for $162,139.24 to non-profit phone bank
Tyson Organization lol-this one paid on Feb 28,2008-seven days after SEIU paid
Tyson $250,000 here
Obama continues the slash and burn approach to economy and the "balance of power" that keeps this ship on its constitutional course. Regular Atlas readers recall one of many EXCLUSIVES I broke on Obama's massive illegal campaign activity. Obama paid out at least $2,250,000 to the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union - the nation's largest labor union. And SEIU COPE-PAC spent $13,355,389.00
on behalf of Barack Hussein.
Payback time for voter fraud and illegal campaign activity.
More illegal harassment and intimidation - more blackmail from the thug-in-chief. Over at Newsmax, by Jim Meyers:
The Obama administration
is threatening to rescind nearly $7 billion in
federal stimulus money
earmarked for California if the state does not
restore wage cuts to
unionized home healthcare workers.
[...]
Federal health officials have advised Schwarzenegger's office
that the
cuts violate provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act,
the Los Angeles Times reports.
The cuts involve workers who care
for around 440,000 low-income disabled
and elderly Californians. They would
see their wages reduced from a
maximum of $12.10 an hour to a maximum of
$10.10. The Service Employees International Union, which represents the
workers, said in a statement that it had asked the Obama administration to
intervene.
SEIU COPE-PAC
$13,355,389.00 was spent on behalf of Barack Obama through August 21, 2008.
($1,600,415.00 has been spent against John McCain through July 31, 2008). Click below for breakdown. Source here.
“SEIU’s members are temperamentally suited to Obama; he
is a longtime friend of Chicago’s SEIU Local 880 and worked closely
with the union as an organizer and later as a state legislator.”
SEIU paid for door-to-door canvassing for Obama, voter identification and registration, phonebanks…an expenditures document.
To an observer from outside Louisiana, it’s
sometimes difficult to tell where SEIU ends and
ACORN begins. The union and the community
organization seem to merge. The relationship is
easier to understand when one learns that Wade
Rathke, who founded the New Orleans ACORN
chapter 30 years ago, is also the chief organizer
of SEIU local 100. The two are fraternal, not
identical, twins.40 (here)
Rathke is the founder of the Association of Community Organizations
for Reform Now (ACORN) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
Local 100. He was ACORN's chief organizer from its founding in 1970
until he stepped down June 2, 2008.[1] Rathke and his wife, Beth
Butler, live in New Orleans, Louisiana. (All the cockroaches are at
this party). (from Rotten ACORN)
When employees of Rathke’s SEIU Local 100 wanted
to organize themselves into a union, Rathke relied on
his wife and brother to plot out an aggressive (and
hypocritical) union-avoidance strategy. One former
employee reported that after employees provided
Rathke with a petition demanding union recognition:
Rathke quickly called a meeting of ACORN’s inner
circle, which included his wife, Beth Butler, head
organizer of Louisiana ACORN, and Rathke’s
brother Dale, who is the financial guru of the outfit.
The troika devised a variety of tactics, such as can be expected from any union-busting corporation, to
divide and destroy our solidarity.
Department of Labor financial disclosures
show at least $623,829 in transactions
between ACORN’s SEIU locals 100 and 880
and other Rathke/ACORN-run operations.
Democrats are split on how to deal with Acorn, the liberal "community organizing" group that deployed thousands of get-out-the-vote workers last election. State and city Democratic officials -- who've been contending with its many scandals -- are moving against it. Washington Democrats are still sweeping Acorn abuses under a rug.
On Monday, Nevada officials charged Acorn, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms last year. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, says he believes 48% of Acorn's forms "are clearly fraudulent." On Thursday, prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven Acorn employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before last year's general election.
Acorn spokesman Scott Levenson calls the Nevada criminal complaint "political grandstanding" and says that any problems were the actions of an unnamed "bad employee." But Catherine Cortez Masto, Nevada's Democratic Attorney General, told the Las Vegas Sun that Acorn itself is named in the criminal complaint. She says that Acorn's training manuals "clearly detail, condone and . . . require illegal acts," such as requiring its workers to meet strict voter-registration targets to keep their jobs.
Other Democrats on the ground have complaints. Fred Voight, deputy election commissioner in Philadelphia, protested after Acorn (according to the registrar of voters and his own investigation) submitted at least 1,500 fraudulent registrations last fall. "This has been going on for a number of years," he told CNN in October. St. Louis Democrat Matthew Potter, the city's deputy elections director, had similar complaints.
Elsewhere, Washington state prosecutors fined Acorn $25,000 after several employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2007. The group signed a consent decree with King County (Seattle), requiring it to beef up its oversight or face criminal prosecution. In the 2008 election, Acorn's practices led to investigations, some ongoing, in 14 other states.
The stink is bad enough that some congressional Democrats have taken notice. At a March 19 hearing on election problems, Michigan Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, pressed New York Rep. Gerald Nadler, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, to hold a hearing on Acorn. He called the charges against it "serious." Mr. Nadler agreed to consider the request.
Mr. Nadler's office now says there will be no hearing on Acorn because Mr. Conyers has changed his mind. Mr. Conyers's office released a statement on Monday saying that after reviewing "the complaints against Acorn, I have concluded that a hearing on this matter appears unwarranted at this time." A Democratic staffer told me he believes the House leadership put pressure on Mr. Conyers to back down. Mr. Conyers's office says it is "unaware" of any contacts with House leaders.
Then there's Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Last month, he voted for a committee amendment (to the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act) by Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R., Minn.) to block groups indicted for voter fraud from receiving federal housing or legal assistance grants. Identical language was passed into law in the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Mr. Frank now says he "had not read [the amendment] carefully" before backing it. He gutted the amendment on Thursday, claiming that the language Congress passed just last year is "a violation of the basic principles of due process."
A lot of money is at stake. In the stimulus bill passed by Congress, Acorn is eligible -- along with other activist groups -- to apply for $2 billion in funds to redevelop abandoned and foreclosed homes. Meanwhile, public records show that last spring the IRS filed three tax liens totaling almost $1 million against Acorn, most of which concerned employee withholding.
The corrupt media lies by omission while propagandizing the 'public enlightenment'. Goebbels redux. Obama and his goons are perfecting the "Big Lie" technique of propaganda -- the principle that a lie, if audacious enough and repeated enough times, will be believed by the masses. President Lie.
The Madman Theory of the
Presidency Robert Tracinski, TIA DAILY
The Business Insiderprovides
more corroboration, including the quote I used as the title of today's TIA
Daily:
Although the focus has so far been on allegations that the White
House threatened Perella Weinberg, sources familiar with the matter say that
other firms felt they were threatened as well. None of the sources would agree
to speak except on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of political
repercussions.
The sources, who represent creditors to Chrysler, say they were taken aback
by the hardball tactics that the Obama administration employed to cajole them
into acquiescing to plans to restructure Chrysler. One person described the
administration as the most shocking "end justifies the means" group they have
ever encountered. Another characterized Obama as "the most dangerous smooth
talker on the planet—and I knew Kissinger." Both were voters for Obama in the
last election.
One participant in negotiations said that the administration's tactic was to
present what one described as a "madman theory of the presidency" in which the
president is someone to be feared because he was willing to do anything to get
his way. The person said this threat was taken very seriously by his firm….
These allegations add to the picture of an administration willing to use
intimidation to win over support for its Chrysler plans—and then categorically
deny it.
Carney also links
to another financial blog which provides a hedge fund manager's
account of what "car czar" Steven Rattner told him to assure his fund's
acquiescence in the Chrysler deal:
Who the ---- do you think you're dealing with? We'll have the IRS
audit your fund. Every one of your employees. Your investors. Then we will have
the Securities and Exchange Commission rip through your books looking for
anything and everything and nothing we find to destroy you with."
The blogger continues:
[T]he fund whose tale I am privy to is allegedly not the only entity
that was subject to such inducements. There are, according to my source, two
others. Of course, in the present climate it would take a rather courageous
witness to come forward and confirm these allegations. Let's hope that comes to
pass. No, scratch that. Let's hope that the entire thing turns out to be a
fabrication. While I doubt this, it would be much easier to sleep if it were.
Yet as a blogger at the Wall Street
Journal points out, the intrepid investigative reporters in the mainstream
media have yet to touch any of these stories. No wonder the newspapers are going
bankrupt.
The
far-reaching — and potentially dangerous — provision that no one knows
about.
You’ve heard a lot about the astonishing spending in the $787 billion
economic stimulus bill, signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. But
you probably haven’t heard about a provision in the bill that threatens to
politicize the way allegations of fraud and and corruption are investigated — or not investigated — throughout the federal
government.
The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the
1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability
and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who
are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as
inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of
wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by
political appointees or the White House.
In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT
Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from
conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to
follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his
decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is
supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector
general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic
hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.
When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors
general, read the words “conduct or refrain from conducting,” alarm bells went
off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the
president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general
to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the
inspector general to go after a tempting political target.
“This strikes at the heart of the independence of inspectors general,”
Grassley told me this week, in a phone conversation between visits to town
meetings in rural Iowa. “Anytime an inspector general has somebody questioning
his authority, it tends to dampen the aggressiveness with which they pursue
something, particularly if it’s going to make the incumbent administration look
bad.”
I asked Grassley how he learned that the RAT Board was part of the stimulus
bill. You’d think that as a member of the House-Senate conference committee, he
would have known all about it. But it turns out Grassley’s office first heard
about the provision creating the RAT Board last Wednesday, in a tip from a
worried inspector general. It wasn’t until Friday morning — after the bill was
finished and just hours before the Senate was to begin voting — that Grassley
discovered the board was in the final text. “This was snuck in,” Grassley told
me. “It wasn’t something that was debated.”
Snuck in by whom? It’s not entirely clear. “I intend to get down to the
bottom of where this comes from,” Grassley vowed. “And quite frankly, it better
not come from this administration, because this administration has reminded us
that it is not about business as usual, that it is for total transparency.”
Maybe not this time. When I inquired with the office of a Democratic senator,
one who is a big fan of inspectors general, I was told the RAT Board was
“something the Obama administration wanted included in this bill.” When I asked
the White House, staffers told me they’d look into it. So for now, at least,
there’s been no claim of paternity.
The RAT Board has all sorts of other things wrong with it. For one thing,
it’s redundant; there is already a board through which inspectors general police
themselves, created last year in the Inspectors General Reform Act. For another
thing, it could complicate criminal investigations stemming from inspector
general probes. And then there’s the question of what it has to do with
stimulating the economy.
But none of that matters now. It’s the law.
Last Friday, when he learned the RAT Board was in the final bill, Grassley
wanted to voice his objections on the Senate floor. But there was no time in the
rush to a vote, so Grassley’s statement went unread. “It’s fitting that the
acronym for this board is RAT,” he was prepared to tell the Senate, “because
that’s what I smell here.”
I think Rahm should be fired, not American CEOs. I think dirty, filthy politicians should be fired. Does Hussein hang with anyone who is not dirty and corrupt?
Obama - more like Capone than Lincoln. The Chicago Mob is running the not -so- clean White House.
Before its portfolio of bad loans helped trigger the current housing crisis, mortgage giant Freddie Mac was the focus of a major accounting scandal that led to a management shake-up, huge fines and scalding condemnation of passive directors by a top federal regulator.
One of those allegedly asleep-at-the-switch board members was Chicago's Rahm Emanuel—now chief of staff to President Barack Obama—who made at least $320,000 for a 14-month stint at Freddie Mac that required little effort.
As gatekeeper to Obama, Emanuel now plays a critical role in addressing the nation's mortgage woes and fulfilling the administration's pledge to impose responsibility on the financial world.
Emanuel's Freddie Mac involvement has been a prominent point on his political résumé, and his healthy payday from the firm has been no secret either. What is less known, however, is how little he apparently did for his money and how he benefited from the kind of cozy ties between Washington and Wall Street that have fueled the nation's current economic mess.
Though just 49, Emanuel is a veteran Democratic strategist and fundraiser who served three terms in the U.S. House after helping elect Mayor Richard Daley and former President Bill Clinton. The Freddie Mac money was a small piece of the $16 million he made in a three-year interlude as an investment banker a decade ago.
In business as in politics, Emanuel has cultivated an aggressive, take-charge reputation that made him rich and propelled his rise to the front of the national stage. But buried deep in corporate and government documents on the Freddie Mac scandal is a little-known and very different story involving Emanuel.
He was named to the Freddie Mac board in February 2000 by Clinton, whom Emanuel had served as White House political director and vocal defender during the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals.
The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.
On Emanuel's watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass.
The accounting scandal wasn't the only one that brewed during Emanuel's tenure.
During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle. That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.
The board was throttled for its acquiescence to the accounting manipulation in a
2003 report by Armando Falcon Jr., head of a federal oversight agency for
Freddie Mac. The scandal forced Freddie Mac to restate $5 billion in earnings
and pay $585 million in fines and legal settlements. It also foreshadowed even
harder times at the firm.
Barack Obama's chief of staff spent two years
working as an investment banker in Chicago. Wassterstein Perella paid Rahm
Emanuel $16.2 million and made him a managing director, despite the fact that
Emanuel had never held a job outside of politics before. So what did he do to
earn that kind of pay day? "He was a highly-paid deal-maker who enriched himself
by using his government connections to enrich big business," Tim Carney writes.
(Disclosure: blah, blah, blah, brother.) From
the Washington Examiner:
One of Emanuel’s two biggest deals never would
have happened without government pressure. When telecom giant SBC bought fellow
telecom company Ameritech, SBC executives intended to hold onto Ameritech’s
home-security company SecurityLink.
But Bill Clinton’s Federal Communications
Commission insisted that federal law required SBC to sell the security company.
Clinton’s old right-hand man, Emanuel, happened to be working on behalf of a
venture capital firm called GTCR Golder Rauner that wanted to buy SecurityLink
from SBC. The government pressure helped Emanuel get his clients a good deal, as
the Tribune tells the story:
“Under a regulatory deadline to divest itself of
SecurityLink, SBC financed all but $100 million of GTCR’s $479 million purchase
of the firm. Less than six months later, GTCR resold the company for $1 billion,
earning a quick $500 million on its investment.”
UPDATE: Tracy sent us this bit of thuggery:
When Lyman reads a Washington Post profile of him which tells how he sent a
congressman a rotting fish in the post, he asks his assistant, Donna, if she was
the source. In fact, it was Mr Emanuel – who reportedly once sent a pollster he
had fallen out with the same gift – as a warning never to cross him again.
It is not the only episode in Mr Emanuel’s history which reads like a scene
from a gangster movie.
At a dinner to celebrate Bill Clinton’s first presidential victory – Mr
Emanuel was his chief fundraiser – he began to reel off the names of those who
had 'crossed' him. He grabbed a steak knife and began plunging it into the table
shouting “Dead! Dead! Dead!” after each name.
“When he was done the table looked like a lunar landscape,” a witness
relates. “It was like something out of The Godfather. But that’s Rahm for you.”
Mr Emmanuel became infamous for his cutting manner during the Clinton years,
even towards the world’s most powerful leaders.
In 1998, when Tony Blair visited the White House at the height of the Monica
Lewinsky scandal, the Prime Minister and Mr Clinton scheduled a public
appearance. As he was preparing to walk out, Mr Emanuel cautioned Mr Blair :
“This is important. Don’t f*** it up.”
This is madness. What this constitutes is a coup on the American electoral system, a usurpation of the will of the people, a government by the people for the people made into a sham. It's a government by the moochers and the looters, for the moochers and the looters, stolen from the good, hardworking American. Do you see how tragic this is - and worse, the American people have sat by and let it happen. Drip drip drip drip ................ until what? President Hussein, that's what.
The Mansourian candidate was not accident of history. It was a very deliberate assault by the hard left on foundation of the greatest country in human history. The hatred of the good for being good.
If we purged the illegals, the dead and the fraudulent, this would be a different country, with honest leadership that reflected the real landscape of this great nation (look at the tea parties, for example). That criminal gang would not be running this country. Foeshizzle. Do you expect the corrupt Congress to take action on this? And the "polite," aka weak and timid Republicans?
These pigs are stealing your money, robbing your wealth, bankrupting America and your children. What are you going to do about it?
I say we allocate a mere 50 million of O-bankruptcy's 7.8 trillion dollar rout and create an independent verifying company that validates EVERY VOTER REGISTRATION IN THE USA - so that they are ALIVE, LEGAL, ..... AND EXIST! Create jobs in every state - with the "Legal Voter Defense of America Act" - this save America action will pay off in ways we cannot even begin to see. For every fraudulent registration - get a buck! You'll be a millionaire in no time!
More than half the voter registrations turned in by ACORN canvassers during
the last election were not valid, according to testimony to be presented before
a House Judiciary subcommittee.
The testimony is from Anita MonCrief, a former employee of an affiliate of
the Association of Community Organizations. MonCrief, who was fired for
improperly charging personal expenses to the ACORN affiliate, originally
testified under oath as part of a request by the Republican State Committee in
Pennsylvania for an injunction against ACORN. The request was denied. The FBI
has been investigating the liberal community organizing group for possible voter
registration fraud.
MonCrief will appear at the congressional hearing Thursday with Heather
Heidelbaugh, who represented the Republican committee in the civil suit and is
on the executive board of the Republican National Lawyers Association. She will
provide a legal analysis of MonCrief’s testimony.
“We will be presenting evidence that ACORN is engaged in voter registration
irregularities and fraud,” Heidelbaugh tells Newsmax,
According to MonCrief, ACORN considered 40 percent an acceptable level of
accurate voter registrations turned in by its workers. She said ACORN barely
trained its workers in how to register voters properly and would fire employees
if they did not meet a quota of 20 new voter applicants daily. If the
registration cards turned in did not meet the quota, supervisors were told to
“fire them right there; don’t let them waste your money for the day.”
If a canvasser was caught committing fraud, ACORN threw the individual “under
the bus,” MonCrief said. ACORN employees were briefed on how to deny that voter
registration fraud existed, she said.
According to MonCrief, the Obama presidential campaign called her in October
2007 asking for coordination in soliciting donations from people who had already
made the maximum contribution to Obama allowed by election laws. MonCrief
testified that she was given a massive database of Obama donors who had already
reached the limit. Her task was to cull it for potential donors who would then
donate to Project Vote, an ACORN affiliate which targets individuals and
entities to solicit donations.
If true, MonCrief’s allegations constitute violations of the Internal Revenue
Code, federal campaign finance laws, and laws against voter registration fraud,
according to a memo by Cleta Mitchell, co-chairman of the Republican National
Lawyers Association.
FBI agents have made two arrests after raiding the D.C. office of the man
tapped to be President Obama's chief information officer, sources told FOX
News.
The agents on Thursday morning raided the office of Vivek Kundra, who was
leaving his post as the D.C. chief technology officer to join the
administration. The investigation is related to allegations of corruption, one
source said, but is not targeting Kundra.
FBI agents arrested a District of Columbia government worker, Yusuf Acar, as
well as Sushil Bansal, who works for a company called Advanced Integrated
Technologies Corp, sources said. Both are expected in court later Thursday.
FBI spokeswoman Lindsay Gotwin would not describe the nature of the
probe.
"It's an ongoing law enforcement investigation," she said.
In a March 5 White House press release, the administration said it chose
Kundra to be the federal chief information officer because of his "depth of
experience in the technology arena and a commitment to lowering the cost of
government operations to this position."
The chief information officer is responsible for overseeing federal
technology spending.
In response to the infuriating remarks of Attorney General Eric Holder
calling America a “nation of cowards” Lt. Col. (R) Allen B. West,
issued the following statement calling for the immediate resignation of AG
Holder:
The PC Club Sun, 22 Feb 2009 LTC(R) Allen West
Greetings readers, I have held my peace long enough to allow Attorney General
Eric Holder an opportunity to rectify his faux pas from last week. I am now
compelled to offer my insights into Attorney General Holder’s epidemic of
diarrhea of the mouth when he called our Country a “Nation of Cowards”.
Whenever I think of fools speaking unwisely I am drawn to the writings of one
who is considered the wisest man the world has ever known, not you Bill Clinton.
Rather, I speak of King Solomon and his words from the Book of Proverbs.
Solomon certainly has some advice which Eric Holder may wish to take to
heart. I shall use The Soldiers New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs, Holman
Christian Standard Bible
Proverbs 15:7 “The lips of the wise broadcast knowledge, but not
so the heart of fools”
Proverbs 15:14 “The discerning mind seeks knowledge, but the
mouth of fools feed on foolishness”
For Eric Holder to castigate our America as a “nation of cowards”, being
someone who has capitalized on every opportunity this Country could afford, is
pure foolishness. It also represents a malicious narcissism and hypocrisy from
someone purported to be of great education.
I am a West Man, third of four generations of military servicemen; Dad World
War II combat wounded veteran, older Brother Vietnam Marine combat wounded
veteran, my serving 22 years active duty in 13 different countries and three
combat zones, and my young nephew, Captain Herman Bernard West, commanding an
artillery unit serving his second tour in Afghanistan. We are proud American
black Men who certainly are not indicative of a “nation of cowards”. Holder’s
comments are offensive to the legacy my Dad established for our family.
Perhaps also Attorney General Holder forgot about the many white Americans,
and Jewish persons, who marched during the civil rights movement, some cowards
huh?
Attorney General Holder, do not ever refer to my Country with such manner of
disrespect. I have stood with Americans in many foreign lands, seen them
everyday across this Nation, and we are not cowards!
Proverbs 17:28 “Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps
silent, discerning when he seals his lips”
Attorney General Holder has certainly lost respect as the enforcer of our
Nation’s laws. It would have bided him best to have kept his comment to himself,
even though it must be in his heart. It has to be evident to the American people
that this person cannot be trusted to protect a County which he holds in such
disdain.
What could have persuaded Holder to make such an insidious comment and
believe he would not be challenged? And anyone defending his comment or ignoring
it is complicit in this terrible offense against our great Nation.
If Holder had any honor, which I doubt, he would have apologized. Since an
apology seems to not be an option, Attorney General Holder
MUSTresign.
If Holder does not resign then President Obama
MUST dismiss Eric Holder from his
Cabinet, or perhaps Obama and his cabinet hold the same contempt for
America?
Proverbs 18:6 “A fools lips lead to strife, and his mouth
provokes a beating”
My recommendation to Holder is to stay away from places where we cowards
congregate; military bases, NASCAR races, around law enforcement officers, first
responders, Southeast Conference college football and basketball games, Boy
Scout meetings, biker bars, VFW and American Legion Posts, youth soccer games,
anywhere true Americans exist.
Remain in those places where the bravest victims in America exist; your
office, the White House, Ivy League schools, Hollywood, NAACP offices, Oprah
Winfrey Show, and MSNBC. Cowardice is voting for an inexperienced usurper and
charlatan just because he is black, do not be confused.
Yes, I am angry and therefore Attorney General Eric Holder you have earned a
lifetime membership in The Phallus Cranium Club.
Sir, you are not there alone, Speaker Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Rod
Blagojevich are members, and Congressman Clyburn of South Carolina membership is
being processed as well.
NEWS broke last week that Rahm Emanuel, now White House chief of staff, lived
rent- free for years in the home of Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.) - and failed to
disclose the gift, as congressional ethics rules mandate. But this is only the
tip of Emanuel's previously undislosed ethics problems.
One issue is the work Emanuel tossed the way of De Lauro's husband. But the
bigger one goes back to Emanuel's days on the board of now-bankrupt mortgage
giant Freddie Mac.
Emanuel is a multimillionaire, but lived for the last five years for free in
the tony Capitol Hill townhouse owned by De Lauro and her husband, Democratic
pollster Stan Greenberg.
During that time, he also served as chairman of the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee - which gave Greenberg huge polling contracts. It paid
Greenberg's firm $239,996 in 2006 and $317,775 in 2008. (Emanuel's own campaign
committee has also paid Greenberg more than $50,000 since 2004.)
To be fair, Greenberg had polling contracts with the DCCC before - but each
new election cycle brings its own set of consultants. And Emanuel was certainly
generous with his roommate.
Emanuel never declared the substantial gift of free rent on any of his
financial-disclosure forms. He and De Lauro claim that it was just allowable
"hospitality" between colleagues. Hospitality - for five years?
Some experts suggest that it was also taxable income: Over five years, the
free rent could easily add up to more than $100,000.
Nor is this all that seems to have been missed in the Obama team's vetting
process. Consider: Emanuel served on the Freddie Mac board of directors during
the time that the government-backed lender lied about its earnings, a leading
contributor to the current economic meltdown.
The Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Agency later singled out the Freddie
Mac board as contributing to the fraud in 2000 and 2001 for "failing in its duty
to follow up on matters brought to its attention." In other words, board members
ignored the red flags waving in their faces.
Following Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing Thursday, several reporters
approached the CIA director-designate in the hallway outside room G-50 in the
Dirksen Building.
There, CongressDaily reporter Chris Strohm — upon
asking a question — was physically restrained by a man who accompanied Panetta
at hearings both days.
Strohm, when reached by phone Friday, said he was
unsure of the man’s role.
“I felt this hand grab my right arm and push me aside,” Strohm said.
By his account, Strohm told the man, “Please don’t touch me” more than
once. Eventually, the man let him go.
Tim Starks, a reporter for
Congressional Quarterly, said he witnessed Strohm approach Panetta and ask a
question, just before the man began “grabbing him by the arm and moving him
away.”
“I said to the guy, ‘That’s not the way you do it,’” recalled
Starks. Starks said that he’s covered the CIA for years and had never
seen a reporter strong-armed that way before, adding that the agency is
typically respectful of journalists.
The Democrats are rewarding ACORN for their fine Illegal work by throwing some cash their way in the Obama stimulus plan:
Looks like the infamous ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) that was caught up in voter fraud in 2008 will be in the running to get some funding (pages 72-73 of the report.) The bill provides for $10 million for the SHOP program. The funding will provide competively awarded grants to national and regional nonprofit housing organizations to develop or rehabilitate low-income housing.
There is plenty of more funding that will no doubt find its way to ACORN coffers like the $1 billion for Community Development Block Grants or the $4.1 billion for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Source Swine Line
ACORN is working hard for their money, this "non-partisan" organization is already campaigning for the stimulus:
For three weeks now ACORN members have been aggressively pursuing a campaign to pass a bold, progressive Economic Recovery package in the new Congress. Working closely with allies like US Action, AFSCME, and the larger Americans United for Change coalition, ACORN members are taking a major role in building the coalition to pass this recovery package, and to create the context for it to be both stronger and more directly responsive to the situation facing working families across this country.
Because of reality facing America's low- and moderate-income communities, ACORN members and their neighborhoods function as the canaries in our nation's economic coal mine. In many cases, our members are experiencing severe economic dislocation, but, despite their personal hardship, they are organizing for a progressive response to the worsening economic situation facing the entire United States.
Back on December 18, ACORN offices around the country helped launch the new Campaign for Jobs and Economic Recovery Now (CJERN). These 18 late-December events were all coalition events, featuring a cross-section of speakers from the community organization, human services, environmental, labor, and elected-official sectors - we were proud, for example, to be joined by the mayors of St. Louis and Oakland on the 18th. Source: Huffington Post.
Atlas Shrugs: ***ACORN OBAMA VOTER FRAUD ALERT***
I have repeatedly asked, why hasn't ACORN been stripped of its
eligibility? Obama is poised to lose. He knows it. He also knows there
is more than one way ...
Atlas Shrugs: STEALING THE ELECTION
Sep 15, 2008 ... Every voter registered by ACORN should be voided. More
ACORN Voter Fraud in Wisconsin Weekly Standard In light of the reports
of voter fraud ...
How many scandals do we have going on the Mansourian candidate - and he ain't even Pres yet. The press never vetted this man and still refuses to cover these bombshells.
Miner, Barnhill & Galland was Obama's employer when he did extensive
legal work for Rezko, who awaits sentencing after he was convicted in June of
fraud, money laundering and bribery-related counts.
Miceli, as a senior attorney at the firm, supervised Obama when the future
president wrote letters on behalf of Rezko urging public authorities to award
him new public properties to rehabilitate, notes the "Barack
Book" website maintained by GOP.com.
WND asked for comment from Obama's transition team and the Democratic
National Committee but did not receive a response.
There's more - let's see how long it takes the Obama gang to fashion a response.
First off, the biggest ass-kissing media refers to Michelle Obama as a
'distinguished attorney" despite the fact that Michelle Obama has been"inactive" since 1993. Click here: ARDC | Lawyer
Search
ARDC - Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission
of the Supreme Court of Illinois !
Click to enlarge image. Everyday another Obama skeleton comes careening out of the closet.
This ADRC is for discipline reasons...not for those volunteering to stop practicing. It is COURT ORDERED...not
"Michelle Obama ordered." Their website is very clear about their function and why they step in. (see below)
If this was a Republican, the Democrooks would have her up on charges already.
Schmoo, an attorney, points out, "sounds more to me like she was drummed right out of the practice of law. I am just dying to know what she did...
she ran to have a court ordered inactive status done...and then no malpractice report needed to be provided.
She wanted this to 'go away" fast and furious and the details not come out in depositions, courtroom documents, rulings for the client/plaintiffs...etc..
I would love to know what she did. I believe barack obummer himself was also disciplined--I know his law license is on "inactive"
he lied about ever going by any other names when he applied for bar application. He also failed to state any prior drug use...(which he admitted in his books...and he had outstanding tickets that were never paid)."
Michelle Obama is on COURT ORDERED INACTIVE STATUS--order said since she has been placed INACTIVE that "no malpractice record required."
WHAT DID SHE DO THAT in 1993 -- AFTER only 4 YEARS -- HER LICENSE to PRACTICE LAW WAS REVIEWED AND PUT ON INACTIVE by a DISCIPLINARY AGENCY?
What Is the ARDC? (this is NOT the Illinois Bar-where one can voluntarily be inactive)
As our name implies, the ARDC is the agency of the Supreme Court of Illinois which registers attorneys and investigates complaints of misconduct filed against attorneys holding a license to practice law in Illinois.
Our principal purpose is to assist the Supreme Court to determine a lawyer's fitness to practice law in Illinois. If a complaint is made that an attorney, licensed to practice law in Illinois, has engaged in illegal, unethical or dishonest conduct, we will investigate and, if warranted, bring formal disciplinary charges. The Supreme Court of Illinois will then ultimately decide if a lawyer should be censured (publicly rebuked), suspended (having the law license to practice either taken away for a certain period of time or placed on a probationary period) or disbarred (having the law license taken away indefinitely).
We cannot impose fines, imprison, obtain monetary damages, enforce remedies between the lawyer and client, or seek civil or criminal relief against a lawyer as part of the disciplinary process. We can affect only the lawyer's ability to practice law in Illinois.
We are not funded by taxpayers' money. We are funded entirely by the annual registration fees paid by attorneys authorized to practice law in Illinois.
What Is a Request for an Investigation of an Attorney?
It is a request to us that we look into the conduct of an attorney who you believe has acted improperly. We will review your request to determine if an investigation is warranted. In most cases, we will initiate an investigation where the information you provide us suggests that the attorney engaged in illegal, dishonest or unethical conduct. Filing a request accusing an attorney of unethical conduct is a serious matter to the lawyer. We recommend that, whenever practical, you try to resolve any differences or disputes that do not concern claims of unethical conduct directly with the lawyer.
How Do I Request an Investigation of an Attorney?
By mailing to our office, either in Chicago or Springfield, a request that you want an attorney to be investigated by our office. Your request should be in writing. No special form is necessary. For your convenience, you may download a Request for Investigation form. Please return the Request by postal mail or hand-delivery. The ARDC does not accept an e-mail transmission of a Request for Investigation.
UPDATE: Scmoo the attorney adds:
as an attorney I am telling you that people can "choose" to not pay their registration fees or take their continuing education of the bar and therefore go on "suspension...or inactive status
that goes thru the CAL BAR--the California Bar association
UPDATE: What was little Michelle from the Southside of Chicago doing in 1993?
1993: Public Allies Chicago with 30
Allies is launched by founding Executive Director Michelle Obama. President
Clinton names Public Allies a model for national service.
First Lady Hilary Clinton
hosts Rose Garden reception for Public Allies at the White
House.
Say what? Michelle and Hillary go back that far?
Shmoo finds more:
In 1992 Michelle Obama left her job at Sidley Austin to launch a career in public service, serving as an assistant to Mayor Daley and then as the assistant commissioner of planning and development for the City of Chicago.
(ask yourself how did a 2-3 year attorney...just wound up being Mayor Daleys "assistant" just like that...and what did she do as an "assistant" what does that even mean when you are a harvard trained attorney?)
Too close for comfort. Coincidental?
Bernardine Dohrn, Bill ayers wife was at Sidley Austin--- a law firm in Chicago from From 1984 to 1988. Dohrn was employed by the law firmSidley
Austin although her criminal record has prevented her from being admitted to either the New York or Illinois bar. (source: wikipedia)
For seven years, the presidential candidate
had a 'father-son' relationship with Frank Marshall Davis, who has confessed to
having sex with children, sadomasochism, bondage and practicing a wide array of
deviant sexual activities." Read
more.
"Obama begins his presidency with lies, coverups and scandals.
A preview of things to come...."(Timur in the comment section).
Advisor A - unindentified Advisor B - unindentified
Senate candidate 1
- Valerie Jarrett Senate candidate 2 - Illinois Attorney General Lisa
Madigan Senate candidate 3 - U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky
(speculation?) Senate candidate 4 - Louanner Peters, a deputy
governor Senate candidate 5 - U.S. Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr.
of Illinois 2nd Congressional District
Gov. Blagojevich called Reps. Jan Schakowsky, Danny Davis and Luis
Gutierrez Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss Obama's vacant Senate seat,
The Hill reports. The report did not confirm whether the governor
called Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
so Davis and Gutierrez has to be one of those Senate Candidates 6 and 7 (hat tip Randall)
Seanate candidate 6: U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez is a senate candidate Senate candidate 7: U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (Rod
made a Freudian slip referring to Senator Davis)
ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B
and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling
him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this
“motherf***er [the President-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F***
him.”
Shmoo pointing me to pages 62 - 68 of the criminal complaint. It is a stunning indictment of the ingrained corruption (matter of fact almost) and Obama's involvement vis a vis his advisers.
Red flags abound:
107. On November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with Advisor B. ROD
BLAGOJEVICH discussed with Advisor B his idea for a 501(c)(4) organization. Advisor
B stated that he likes the idea, but liked the Change to Win option better because, accordingtoAdvisor B, from the President-elect’s perspective, there would be fewer “fingerprints” on the President-elect’s involvement with Change to Win because Change to Win already hasan existing stream of revenue and, therefore, “you won’t have stories in four years that they bought you off.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that he likes the 501(c)(4) idea because he knows it will be there in two years when he is no longer Governor, whereas Change to Win might not be.
Item 107: "From the President-elect's perspective". "Fingerprints" spoken like true racketeers. Randall's take " Item 107 is damning, they knew "fingerprints" would
be left around incriminating Obama. They had to mkae a pick that "left
the fewest fingerprints."
110. On November 12, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with Advisor B. ROD BLAGOJEVICH told Advisor B that he told SEIU Official, “I said go back to [Senate Candidate 1], and, and say hey, look, if you still want to be a Senator don’t rule this out and then broach the idea of this 501(c)(4) with her.”
Item 110 might implicate Valerie Jarrett, as Rod asked advisor B to
talk to her about setting up the 501(c) corp.(hat tip Randall)
112. On November 13, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with JOHN HARRIS.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he wanted to be able to call “[President-elect Advisor]” and tell
President-elect Advisor that “this has nothing to do with anything else we’re working on but
the Governor wants to put together a 501(c)(4)” and “can you guys help him. . . raise 10, 15
million.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he wanted “[President-elect Advisor] to get the word
today,” and that when “he asks me for the Fifth CD thing I want it to be in his head.” (The
reference to the “Fifth CD thing” is believed to relate to a seat in the United States House of Representatives from Illinois’ Fifth Congressional District. Prior intercepted phone
conversations indicate that ROD BLAGOJEVICH and others were determining whether
ROD BLAGOJEVICH has the power to appoint an interim replacement until a special
election for the seat can be held.)
Item 112 shows the tie in. So Rod definitely was talking to the Team
Obama and then they relayed to Obama (shrewd move on his part to stay
one layer away, cannot have that direct evidence, you know. The use of buffers, they must have gotten some pointers from The Godfather.
We need to know more about the "Change to Win" organization. Any readers have intel?
There is a mountain of indirect evidence on pages 62 -68, thanks to Shmoo for pointing it out to me and Randall for going through it.
Bottom line is Obama knew what was happening, through his advisors. I
wonder how much Rahm Emmanuel knows, but won't say. Randall made a good point, he said Rahm might
have decided to give the go ahead at this time for Rod to be "outed"
as it seems odd to prematurely terminate the wiretaps when important
details were coming out.
Much thanks to Randall whose input and intel is invaluable in this unseemly and grotesque scandal.
Senator Dick Durbin finally spoke with Gov. Blagojevich about
President-elect Obama's Senate replacement, according to a comment
from a Durbin staffer to Capitol Fax. Durbin, who has an uneasy
relationship with Blagojevich, had publicly expressed his frustration
that the governor had not been returning his calls.
Though Delaware's governor named a replacement for Vice
President-elect Joe Biden today, Blagojevich said that he remains in
no rush to fill Obama's seat, according to the Daily Herald:
The governor also said he was not ready to make an appointment to
Obama's old Senate seat. He has had a team working on vetting
candidates for weeks.
In some of his remarks, he implied he may do so by Christmas, but
he gave no indication of who might get the plum appointment.
"We are still working on it," he said. "It is a process that
requires a lot of deliberation. It is not the sort of thing you should
push."
UPDATE 11/9
Real estate executive Valerie Jarrett, a member of Obama's transition
team and a trusted family confidant, is President-elect Obama's choice
to replace him in the Senate, reports ABC 7's Ben Bradley.
Without citing any sources, Bradley reports:
Whether that is merely Obama's personal opinion, or if he intends
to lobby on Jarrett's behalf, remains to be seen. After all, Obama has
to focus on a national agenda and may not want to be seen trying to
influence the governor's call.
An anonymous source told CNN the same thing.
Update 11/10
Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett will not be appointed to replace the
President-elect in the Senate and will instead work with him in the
White House, CNN reports, citing two anonymous Democratic sources.
"While he (Obama) thinks she would be a good senator, he wants her
in the White House," one top Obama advisor told CNN Monday.
This contradicts earlier reports from CNN and ABC Chicago that Jarrett
was Obama's choice to succeed him.
UPDATE: Davids opines in an email: I don’t see anyone making this point in the ‘Seatgate’ (Senate Seat for sale).
Advisor B obviously has the authority to represent Obama, and has the knowledge and ‘where with all’ to know how Obama operates and what Obama would ‘approve’ of.
For Advisor B to be presenting and representing the idea of a 501( c) (4) non profit and for him to have all of the knowledge on how they operate, Advisor B incriminates himself and Obama that ‘this has already been done before’.
I would assume a whole lot of 501 ( c) (4)’s that are tied to Obama and Michelle, and other Democrat Politicians are getting sanitized right now. It is also interesting to point out who the MASTER of 501 ( c) (4)’s is, none other that George Soros, although many of the Arabs and muslim organizations have been getting pretty good at them to.
Advisor B may have revealed ‘the cards’ that Obama and Michelle are already holding in promised 501 ( c) (4)’s, the next step would be to find out ‘who’ set them up.
‘Me thinks, me knows’!!
I am starting to believe that if an investigation were conducted into 501 ( c) (4)’s we would start finding a lot of Democrat politicians or their spouses or their family members. 501 ( c) (4)’s are the tool of the Democrats, and a loophole to pad their pockets.
UPDATE: From Mike:
Having been a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (and Trainmen)
Division here in Atlanta, I can fill you in a bit on Change to Win (the BLET is
part of the rail conference of the Teamsters). First, from their official
website:
About Change to Win Change to Win is a six million
member partnership of seven unions founded in 2005 to represent workers in the
industries and occupations of the 21st century economy. The seven affiliated
unions are: Service Employees International
Union, UNITE HERE, United Food and Commercial Workers International
Union, International Brotherhood of
Teamsters, Laborers' International Union of
North America, United Brotherhood of
Carpenters and Joiners of America and United
Farm Workers of America.
CtW was formed after the Teamsters
separated from the AFL-CIO, along with the SEIU, in 2005 following internal
political fighting between Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. and James Sweeney (AFL-CIO). They
have since peeled away five other unions. Thus, CtW could be considered a
competitor to the AFL-CIO organization and roughly equates in terms of what it’s
politics, goals, and functions are.
These are excellent points made by Atlas reader Randall on the Obama scandal.
Someone in Obama's camp is going to have to come clean.
Obama is going to have to throw some of his own people under the bus
That's why Blagojevich is not resigning his office.
BHO is playing a game with direct evidence [which does not exist of
him talking directly to Rod Blagojevich] and circumstantial evidence
[which conclusively absolutely implicates him]
It is interesting to note that a federal court judge's instruction to
a federal jury states:
"You should not be concerned about whether the evidence is direct or
circumstantial. "Direct Evidence is the testimony of one who asserts
actual knowledge of a fact, such as an eyewitness. Circumstantial
Evidence is indirect evidence that is proof of the circumstances that
tend to prove or disprove the existance or nonexistance of certain
other facts. The law makes no distinction between the weight you may
give to either direct or circumstantial evidence"
It is obvious that Fitzgerald trimmed the publicly stated facts to shield Candidates #1-#5 (why even use this designator
when the identities were already known?) and keep Durbin's discussions
from public scrutiny. They have been tripping over themselves to insure that this investigation does not taint Obama which is a complete about face as to how Fitzgerald handled the Plamegate investigation. he made sure everyone had mud on their faces, Cheney, Rove et al. Fitzgerald had no compunction in destroying men's careers and reputations in the Bush White House knowing all along that it was Richard Armitage that spilled the Plame beans (Colin Powell knew it too). But this is why the Democrats like Fitzgerald.This morning they are
urging Obama to keep Fitzgerald. (Schumer)
Disgusting and corrupt, all of it.
Obama is playing the typical lawyer game with evidence. "You don't
have direct evidence, therefore I am innocent" For him and others to
use the euphemism "We are appalled" is strictly designed for public
consumption to quell the rising tide of suspicion and connection to
the corruption.
And why does the news media still insist on calling the people
involved for the senate seat "candidate #1, #2, etc to #5, when their
identity is now known?
From the facts that Randall was able to discover, Rod was incensed[5]
that team Obama wouldn't give him anything in return for appointing
Jarrett as senator, which request came from Barack[6].
For Barack Obama to state this Thursday morning Dec 11, that he had no
idea of what was going on is unbelievable. His statement simply does
not fit the known facts.
By Alexis Hunt
Saturday, November 08, 2008 at 9:48 p.m.
QUINCY, IL --
Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled.
Obama met with Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this week to discuss it. Illinois law states that the governor chooses that replacement. There's already been speculation about his selection...from Congressman Jesse Jackson, Junior to Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth.
Duckworth made an appearance in Saturday's Veterans' parade in Quincy. We asked her about the possibility of filling Obama's seat.
"The Governor's office confirmed yesterday that he is considering me and I am deeply honored jus to be considered. I hope whoever is selected is someone who is willing to travel around the state and gets to know this wonderful state. I'm just honored to be considered," Duckworth said.
The governor expects to make his decision before Christmas. Part of the timing depends on when Obama officially vacates his senate seat.
November 5th Article
By Carol Sowers
Wednesday, November 05, 2008 at 10:39 a.m.
CHICAGO, ILL. -- Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the U.S. Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled.
That's one of Obama's first priorities today.
He's meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich this afternoon in Chicago to discuss it.
Illinois law states that the governor chooses that replacement.
There's already been speculation about his selection...from Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. of Chicago's south side who co-chaired Obama's presidential campaign, to recently-retired state senate president Emil Jones, to the governor himself.
It's likely the governor will make his decision quickly so the new senator will get some seniority before newly-elected senators take office in January.
Part of the timing depends on when Obama officially vacates his senate seat.
KHQA's Alexis Hunt is speaking with Illinois Senator John Sullivan today about his thoughts on that replacement process, his time working with Obama in the state senate, and if there's a chance Sullivan might play a role in the Obama administration. Watch KHQA News at 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. tonight to hear what he has to say.
Part of the timing depends on when Obama officially vacates his senate seat? Is that why Obama resigned early?
Quoting ------------
It also appears that Obama friend Valerie Jarrett, an incoming senior
White House adviser, is the person referred to repeatedly in court
documents as "Candidate 1." That individual is described as a female
who is "an adviser to the president-elect" and as the person Obama
wanted appointed to the Senate seat. Court papers say that "Candidate
1" eventually removed "herself" from consideration for the Senate
seat.
In a Nov. 11 phone conversation with an aide, Blagojevich talked at
length about "Candidate 1" and said he knew that Obama wanted her for
the open seat but "they're not willing to give me anything except
appreciation. (Expletive) them."
Schmoo wrote, "can you imagine what Washington is going to be like when the Obama-Daley looters descend on the capital? The sacking of Rome will look like a weenie-roast by comparison."
"I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so I was not aware of what was happening. And as I said it is a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that I don't think it's appropriate to comment."
On Nov. 23 David Axelrod, said on Fox Chicago:
"I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."
UPDATE: And then there is this on Obama's ridiculous 1oo year old stolen idea to throw money at "building roads" AKA pork for crony payouts.This is Obama genius? FDR's "new deal" - building roads, putting gravel on roads, sometimes asphalt? This is his answer to the Democrat failed social policy that resulted in the financial meltdown. Tar and feathering the Americna people with more stolen tax payer dollars. Howe innovative! How technologically advanced! One can only imagine the wonders it will do to educate a protean workforce.
Illinois Governor Rudy Blagojevich has been indicted
for many offenses. While the press has focused on the attempt to sell Barack
Obama's open Senate
seat, there is a more important aspect of the indictment as relates to Obama's infrastructure
plan.
Paragraphs 36-37 of the Criminal Complaint detail Blagojevich's extortion of
campaign contributions through his control of the Chicago Planning Board, which
issued Certificates of Need for medical facility construction. Blagojevich's unofficial
"spokesman" for Planning Board matters was none other than Tony Rezko, whose wife
worked a deal to help the Obamas purchase their house and who was a long-time
Obama fundraiser.
Blagojevich was a strong proponent of Obama's infrastructure
stimulus plan, and presented a wish list of his pet
projects:
Already, Governor Rod Blagojevich has sent Obama's office a "wish list" detailing nearly 300
construction projects in Illinois that are ready to begin immediately.The list
includes improvements to I-57 in Williamson, Jefferson, and Franklin counties.
The governor estimates the projects would provide about 1,700 jobs. Also on the
wish list is improving Amtrak service across Illinois, including new service to
Rockford and the Quad Cities. It's estimated this project would create about
4,700 jobs.
In light of the wide-ranging scope of Blagojevich's extortion,
is there any doubt that these construction projects would have aided Balgojevich in his
corruption? With the power, through control of state agencies and boards,
Governors will be the gate keepers of federal insfrastructure dollars. Corrupt
governors will become more corrupt, and honest governors will be tempted to use
this power for political purposes.
Obama and Blago go way back, and have been cavorting together a long time. Blago knew who to use to get to Obama.
ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: Obama paid out at least $2,250,000 to the SEIU, the Service Employees International Union - the nation's largest labor union and the latest 'criminalized' org to be exposed in the this Democrat scandal of enormous proportion. And SEIU COPE-PAC spent $13,355,389.00 on behalf of Barack Hussein.
The complaint alleges that Blagojevich tried to use an intermediary[SEIU] to
bargain with Sen. Obama; it describes a meeting on November 12 with a
high-ranking official at the Service Employees International Union,
where Blagojevich suggested that he'd accept a position at an
organization designed to help the Senate candidate.
Source: ‘SEIU official’ was Stern — A Democratic source
confirms that SEIU President Andy Stern is the “SEIU official” referred
to in the federal complaint against Rod Blagojevich.
Blagojevich seems to have mainly wanted money, because his family
was having financial problems, and possibly to have a political future
of some sort.
However Blagojevich seems to have kept changing his mind about
specifically what he wanted from SEIU. At one point he wanted a
501(c)(4) organization set up with 10 to 15 million bucks in it. The
organization would help the new Senator, but it looks like it would be
run by Blagojevich. The unnamed union official agreed to "send up a
flare".
At a different point Blagejovich wanted to be put in charge of
Change to Win, which is affiliated with SEIU. It sounds like the SEIU
official objected on the basis that other folks were doing the work
already, but Harris (Blagojevich's chief of staff) seemed to think that
a three way quid pro quo could be worked out in which Obama gave
something to SEIU and SEIU gave Blagojevich the job. No indication if
SEIU was good with this. Then Blagojevich got the bright idea that
perhaps SEIU could give his wife a job.
(Isn't it funny how coolly the left wing rabid blogs report news like this, sans party affiliation, of course -- lol.) The above excerpt is from the same blog that photoshopped Senator Lieberman in minstrel black face.
Interestingly enough, Obama paid at least $2,250,000 to the SEIU over the last few months of his election campaign. Coincidence? This is fishy; this plain stinks.
He [Obama] would not use
his influence to safeguard landmark state legislation barring big
government contractors from making campaign contributions. Designed as a response to the "pay-to-play politics" that have
flourished under Gov. Blagojevich, the plan would have barred firms with more
than $50,000 in state contracts from donating to the officeholder in
charge of the deals. (more on that here)
The transcript of Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference is available here.
CLICK BELOW FOR AN ITEMIZED SPREADSHEET OF OBAMA'S PAYOUTS TO SEIU.
UPDATE: SEIU COPE-PAC
$13,355,389.00 has been spent on behalf of Barack Obama through August 21, 2008.
($1,600,415.00 has been spent against John McCain through July 31, 2008). Click below for breakdown. Source here.
“SEIU’s members are temperamentally suited to Obama; he
is a longtime friend of Chicago’s SEIU Local 880 and worked closely
with the union as an organizer and later as a state legislator.”
SEIU paid for door-to-door canvassing for Obama, voter identification and registration, phonebanks…an expenditures document.
To an observer from outside Louisiana, it’s
sometimes difficult to tell where SEIU ends and
ACORN begins. The union and the community
organization seem to merge. The relationship is
easier to understand when one learns that Wade
Rathke, who founded the New Orleans ACORN
chapter 30 years ago, is also the chief organizer
of SEIU local 100. The two are fraternal, not
identical, twins.40 (here)
Rathke is the founder of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 100. He was ACORN's chief organizer from its founding in 1970 until he stepped down June 2, 2008.[1] Rathke and his wife, Beth Butler, live in New Orleans, Louisiana. ( all the cockroaches are at this party) (from Rotten ACORN)
When employees of Rathke’s SEIU Local 100 wanted
to organize themselves into a union, Rathke relied on
his wife and brother to plot out an aggressive (and
hypocritical) union-avoidance strategy. One former
employee reported that after employees provided
Rathke with a petition demanding union recognition:
Rathke quickly called a meeting of ACORN’s inner
circle, which included his wife, Beth Butler, head
organizer of Louisiana ACORN, and Rathke’s
brother Dale, who is the financial guru of the outfit.
The troika devised a variety of tactics, such as can be expected from any union-busting corporation, to
divide and destroy our solidarity.
Department of Labor financial disclosures
show at least $623,829 in transactions
between ACORN’s SEIU locals 100 and 880
and other Rathke/ACORN-run operations.
A Guv with a first name of R-d Is arrested for acting like G-d. You couldn't invent A story more bent...
Except about Senator D-dd!
Wonderful ditty thanks to Atlas reader David.
Obama was so in bed with this guy ............ how far are they going to go to cover Obama crimes? Illinois governor Blagojevich was arrested for trying to sell Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat.Court-appointed wiretaps last month intercepted Blagojevich conspiring to sell the Senate seat
that Obama resigned on November 16, according to US Attorney Patrick J Fitzgerald. In return, as recorded in various conversations, he sought a cabinet post, an ambassadorship or a
seat on a corporate board for his wife.This is some really sick shiz we are dealing with.
Senate seat for sale? Can I buy the NY senate seat or did Caroline Kennedy pick that up at a fire sale?
Blagojevich and Obama go way back. Both were funded enormous bucks by the convicted Syrian racketeer Rezko. Speculation has simmered for weeks that the key fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama was whispering what he knows in Illinois government to federal prosecutors in hopes of getting a lighter sentence.
Rezko raised more than $1 million for Blagojevich's campaign fund and was one of the governor's key advisers. He gave hundreds of thousands to Rezko.'
I do not know how Obama is going to stay one step ahead of his every dirty deal and corrupt actions.
Obama's voice over on Giannoulias's website here. Obama's list of criminal cronies goes on and on (Wright, Ayers, Farrakhan notwithstanding).
Photo: Corrupt Chicago Capos: Illinois Gov. Do-not-spare-the-Rod Blagojevich, left, U.S. Sen andB. HUsseinObama, center, and Chicago mayor Richard M. Dale
Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested by FBI
agents on federal corruption charges Tuesday morning.
Blagojevich and
Harris were arrested simultaneously at their homes at about 6:15 a.m., according
to Frank Bochte of the FBI. Both were transported to FBI headquarters in
Chicago.
In one charge related to the appointment of a senator to replace
Barack Obama, prosecutors allege that Blagojevich sought appointment for himseld
as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new Obama administration, or a
lucrative job with a union, in exchange for appointing a union-preferred
candidate.
Another charge alleges Blagojevich and Harris conspired to
demand the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members responsible for
editorials critical of him in exchange for state help with the sale of Wrigley
Field, the Chicago Cubs baseball stadium owned by Tribune Co.
Everything I read about B. Hussein and his backroom malfeasance, it gives me the creeps. And the American people keep drinking the media provided bong water. "CHANGE" a fancy word for lie.
It's a good thing for George Ryan that he is just a crooked Illinois politician behind bars hoping to get sprung by the Illinois Combine, and not some corrupt governor in Kenya relying on the Masai Combination or whatever they call it over there.
President-elect Barack Obama would never stand for such a thing.
Not if it happened in Kenya, he wouldn't.
He'd denounce the Free Ryan Express. And he'd denounce it loudly and angrily, as he's done before with other kinky stuff.
But he'd do it in Kenya.
Not in Chicago, or Washington.
Back in 2006, Obama visited Kenya and railed about wholesale political corruption there that robbed the people of their right to honest government.
Then, he was campaigning for president of the United States as a reformer, though he forgot to mention that if elected, he'd bring half of Chicago's Daley Machine to the White House.
At the University of Nairobi, Obama warned that corruption in Kenya was a dangerous "epidemic."
"Here in Kenya there is a crisis!" Obama said to the adoring multitudes of locals and American journalists, according to news reports. "It's a crisis that's robbing an honest people of the opportunities they fought for."
As a Chicago politician, Obama said he knew exactly what he was talking about.
"My own city of Chicago, Illinois, is the home of some of the most corrupt local politics in American history over the years, from patronage machines to questionable elections," Obama said.
Really?
Fast forward to this week, when Illinois' Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Big Jim) played Senator Water Boy to the bipartisan Illinois Combine that runs things, and wrote his controversial letter to President George Bush seeking an early release for former Gov. Ryan.
Ryan is as corrupt as they come, a human cartoon of a jolly political beefeater, convicted of 18 felony corruption counts, including this one:
Quashing an investigation in his office about whether an unqualified truck driver involved in a crash that burned six children to death had paid bribes for his license when Ryan was Illinois secretary of state.
Did President-elect Barack Hussein Obama commit a federal crime in September
of this year? Or did he never actually register and, instead, did friends of his
in the Chicago federal records center, which maintains the official copy of his
alleged Selective Service registration commit the crime for him?
It's either one or the other, as indicated by the release of Barack Obama's
official Selective Service registration for the draft. A friend of mine, who is
a retired federal agent, spent almost a year trying to obtain this document
through a Freedom of Information Act request, and, after much stonewalling,
finally received it and released it to me.
But the release of Obama's draft registration and an accompanying document,
posted below, raises more questions than it answers. And it shows many signs of
fraud, not to mention putting the lie to Obama's claim that he registered for
the draft in June 1979, before it was required by law.
[...]
The official campaign for President may be over. But Barack Obama's Selective
Service registration card and accompanying documents show that questions about
him are not only NOT over, but if the signature on the document is in fact his,
our next Commander-in-Chief may have committed a federal crime in 2008, well
within the statute of limitations on the matter. If it is not his, then it's
proof positive that our next Commander-in-Chief never registered with the
Selective Service as required by law. By law, he was required to register and
was legally able to do so until the age of 26.
But the Selective Service System registration ("SSS Form 1") and accompanying
computer print-out ("SSS Print-out), below, released by the Selective Service
show the following oddities and irregularities, all of which indicate the
document was created in 2008 and backdated:
* Document Location Number Indicates Obama Selective Service Form was
Created in 2008
It's only just begun .............. I expect we will be admonished by this mod squad rather frequently over the next four years. Nothing quite like a good tongue lashing from an unrepentant terrorist.
"For nine months, I kept quiet," Nation of
Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said today at Mosque Maryam in
Chicago, "because I saw that the good words that I spoke about this
beautiful young man" -- President-elect Obama -- "at our Saviours' Day
convention and the way they were misused. I decided it would be better for me to
just be quiet rather than be drawn into the controversy that was swirling around
his pastor, Father Pfleger, and others."
"I feel freer today to say the things that are in my heart," said the
controversial religious leader.
For a limited time Farrakhan's sermon can be viewed HERE.
Northwestern offered Wright an honorary doctorate of sacred theology last year.
University President Henry Bienen rescinded the offer after a number of Wright's
statements during sermons at Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South
Side drew negative attention.
In an interview Thursday, Bienen said he
would miss Wright's speech due to prior commitments but intended to meet the
pastor at a VIP event before the speech. University spokesman Al Cubbage
confirmed the two met Friday.
Sick.
In inviting Wright to speak on campus, FMO
coordinator Zachary Parker said he hoped to "de-mystify stereotypes" surrounding
Wright and his controversial remarks. He said inviting Ayers was "only fitting"
because the media treated the two figures similarly.
In the 1960s, Ayers
and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, participated in the Weather Underground, an
anti-Vietnam War group that bombed several government buildings, including the
Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. Dohrn is a professor in NU's School of
Law.
After Friday night's event, Ayers had harsh words for the
administration. He said Bienen made a "critical, critical decision" in
uninviting Wright from commencement.
"What possible reason could they
have except pressure by alumni, pressure by others?" Ayers said. "It's freedom
of speech, freedom of thought. Without that, academics is dead."
He said
he felt a "huge connection" to Wright.
That's rich. The hard left invoking freedom of speech (to kill freedom of speech).
During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship
with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the
Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In
1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him,
I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.
And he lie-eth!
When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a
now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I
pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)
The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.
Confederate Yankee discovered this revelation in the book of a former FBI informant who penetrated the group claimed he witnessed a meeting
in which members discussed a future communist takeover of America in which some
25 million "diehard capitalists" would need to be killed. Video here.
Larry Grathwohl spoke of this frightening freak show in the 1982 documentary "No Place to
Hide". Instead of these insane anarchists (that did bomb federal buildings), they are teaching our children and instituting education reform.
I asked, "well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?" and the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated.
And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.
And when I say "eliminate," I mean "kill."
Twenty-five million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
UPDATE: The NY Post has taken the story down ...... Page Six retracts
The source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster
and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been
under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying
at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going
to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such
disinformation.
America you know not what you do...... more on Obama's friends
Operation Exposé #1: Obama and the
Manson Murders
By
TRAFALGAR
Who is
Bernadine Dohrn? She's the prominent Chicago hostess who held Barack Obama's
very first fundraiser at her lovely home. She's also a former member
of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list, an underground fugitive for ten years, and
a domestic terrorist whose affection for violence is so deep that she publicly
praised Charles Manson's famous murder spree…with particularly vivid
appreciation for Manson's mutilation of the corpses.
Lately,
Dohrn's husband and fellow terrorist, Bill Ayers, has been getting all the
attention for his multiple connections with Obama. But Bernadine is a pretty
piece of work, too. Her resumé includes the bombings of the U.S. Capitol on
March 1, 1971, the Pentagon on May 19, 1972, and the home of New York State Supreme
Court Justice Murtagh on February 21, 1970.
UPDATE: PROOF OF MORE OBAMA LIES AND TIES TO RADICALISM. Amazing Ayers Audio Unearthed from Same Week Obama worked with him! Extremist Ayers and Obama views matched almost word for word Please circulate. Be horrified. (hat tip Bruce)
Obama, a deeply dishonest and dangerous subversive, has described Mr. Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," but "not
somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."
Ya gotta love his contempt for the folks when Obomba he keeps repeating, William Ayer is is a professor. Next he'll be telling us that Hitler was a painter.
He "doesn't exchange ideas" but he reviews Ayer's book?
New revelations.
OBAMBI GAVE DOMESTIC TERRORIST AYERS MILLIONS! BOOM!
OBAMBI SHARED AN OFFICE WITH HIS TERROR MASTER AYERS. BOOM! BOOM!
OBAMBI RECEIVED HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF REZKO DE FACTO GIFTS/GRAFT. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
OBAMBI DID NOT WRITE HIS BOOK! AYERS DID! BAD DAH BING! BAD DAH BOOM!
This Chicago Annenberg Challenge website from 2002 shows the total
amount of funds given to Bill Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop from 1995
to 2001. The amount is not the $175K I had reported earlier. According to this page, the total given under Barack Obama’s direct supervision was $1,056,162. Adding that amount to the money given by the Joyce Foundation and Woods Fund during Obama’s tenure brings the grand total to $1,968,718.
Just shy of two million dollars! [...]
Now here’s the second and bigger break [...]
Bill Ayers and Barack Obama shared an office. Ayers’ Small Schools Workshop, the one Obama directed all that money too is located at 115
S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607 (move over at Verum Serum who broke this story)
.....further evidence that Obama received a de facto gift from Rezko totaling
hundreds of thousands of dollars, allowing him to afford his house. A gift that
would violate Senate ethics rules and could very well be illegal.
Obama refuses to release his undergraduate records and has disclosed almost nothing about his days at Columbia University. Obama
graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a major in political science and
that he did not receive honors, but further information, including
transcripts, are sealed by the university.
Very little is out there on his days at second tier Occidental (where he spent much of his time blowing coke with his Pakistani roomates) , very little out there from his Walid procured, Mansour secured Harvard edjumucation. Nothing from his illustrious tenure (heh) as President of Harvard Law Review. Was there ever so little released from a Harvard Law pres? Cashill has been analyzing that "one's" book. There has specualtion for some time, that the Mansoruian candidate didn't write his book. That's no surprise. Apparently Ayers did - these two commies are closerthanthis.
Evidence continues to mount that
Barack Obama had substantial help from Bill Ayers in the creation of his 1995
book, Dreams From My Father, a book that Time Magazine has
called"the best-written memoir ever produced by an American
politician." The evidence falls into five general categories, here
summarized.
The discovery of new matching
nautical metaphors from both Ayers and Obama that almost assuredly came from the
same source: Ayers, a former merchant seaman.
The discovery of a Bill
Ayers' essay on memoir writing, whose postmodern themes and phrases are echoed
throughout Dreams.
A newly discovered book chapter
from 1990 that shows clearly and painfully the limits of Obama's prose style the
year he received a contract to write Dreams.
The revelation by radical
Islamicist Rashid Khalidi that Ayers made his "dining room table" available for
neighborhood writers who needed help.
A refined timeline that shows
Ayers had the means, the motive and the time to help Obama when he needed it
most.
The
timeline
A 1990 New York Times
profile on Obama's election as the Harvard Law Review's first black president in
1990 caught the eye of agent Jane Dystel. She persuaded Poseidon, a small
imprint of Simon & Schuster, to authorize a roughly $125,000 advance for
Obama's proposed memoir.
Obama repaired to Chicago with
advance in hand and dithered. At one point, in order to finish the book
without interruption, he and wife Michelle decamped to Bali. Obama was supposed
to have finished the book within a year. Bali or not, advance or no, he could
not. Simon & Schuster canceled the contract. His agent hustled him a new,
smaller contract.
Ayers published his book To
Teach in 1993. Between 1993 and 1996, he had no other formal authorial
assignment than to co-edit a collection of essays. This was an unusual hole in
his very busy publishing career.
Obama's memoir was published in
June 1995. Earlier that year, Ayers helped Obama, then a junior lawyer at a
minor law firm, get appointed chairman of the multi-million dollar Chicago
Annenberg Challenge grant. In the fall of that same year, 1995, Ayers and his
wife, Weatherwoman Bernardine Dohrn, helped blaze Obama's path to political
power with a fundraiser in their Chicago home.
In short, Ayers had the means,
the motive, the time, the place and the literary ability to jumpstart Obama's
career. And, as Ayers had to know, a lovely memoir under Obama's belt made for a
much better resume than an unfulfilled contract over his head.
Neighborhood
assistance
Allow me to reconstruct how Obama
transformed himself into what the New York Times has called
"that rare politician who can write . . . and write movingly
and genuinely about himself." There is an element of speculation in this, but
new evidence continues to narrow the gap between the speculative and the
conclusive. One clue comes from an unexpected source, Rashid Khalidi, the
radical Arab-American friend of Obama's and reputed ally of the
PLO.
In the acknowledgment section of
his 2004 book, Resurrecting Empire, Khalidi writes of Ayers, "Bill was
particularly generous in letting me use his family's dining room table to do
some writing for the project." Khalidi did not need the table. He had one of
his own. He needed the help.
Khalidi had spent several years
at Chicago University's Center for International Studies. At a 2003 farewell
dinner on the occasion of his departure from Chicago, Obama toasted him,
thanking him and his wife for the many dinners that they had shared as well as
for his "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own
biases."
Chicago's Hyde Park was home to a
tight, influential radical community at whose center were Ayers and Dohrn. In
this world, the Ayers' terrorist rap sheet only heightened their reputation.
Obama had to know. The couple had given up revolution in 1980 for the long slow
march through the institutions. By 1994, if not earlier, Ayers saw a way to
quicken that march.
I believe that after failing to
finish his book on time, and after forfeiting his advance from Simon &
Schuster, Obama brought a sprawling, messy, sophomoric manuscript to the famed
dining room table of Bill Ayers and said, "Help."
Obama's limited
skills
Obama needed all the help he
could get. Prior to 1990, he had written very close to nothing. In 1981
Occidental College published two of Obama's poems-"Pop" and "Underground. Obama
calls it some "very bad poetry," and he does not sell himself short. From
"Underground":
Under water grottos,
caverns
Filled with apes
That eat figs.
Stepping on the
figs
That the apes
Eat, they
crunch.
The apes howl,
bare
Their fangs, dance . .
.
It would be another decade before
Obama had anything in print, and this only an edited, unsigned student case
comment in the Harvard Law Review unearthed by Politico.
Attorneys who reviewed the piece for Politico described it as "a fairly
standard example of the genre."
Great. Our next president may not just be the most
liberal politician to ever serve but his only major achievement will be
his years working in an office with a domestic terrorist and a radical
Maoist on failed educational projects. Good God.
How far did Obama go to scrub Indonesia of his records? That depends. How many oppressed West Papuans were tossed into the trash heap of history?
Background on Obama's hatchet man.
Representative Eni Faleomavaega was a very early Obama supporter and said back in February,I believe Obama's style of leadership and his ability to bring people from all different walks of life and political persuasions is what our country needs right now."
Congressman Faleomavaega has been representing the territory of American Samoa in the United States Congress since 1989. He is the one territory's nonvoting delegate. Samoa has been on the receiving of untold perks, porks and Pelosi booty. The Democrat thugsters even managed to slip in an
extension of tax breaks for manufacturers in American Samoa in the Great Scoialist bailout bill - as if
being excused from US employment laws while running sweatshops isn't porky enough.
Furhter back still ,last January, the U.S. House passed a bill that says the minimum wage in this country
will rise over time from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Now, here's the thing.
Included in the small print is the fact that the minimum wage will now
include the islands of the northern marinas but it exempts American
Samoa which is the only U.S. Territory not subject to minimum wage
laws. (more here)
Samoa is bought and paid for. One of the Democrat parties tin republics. Sounds like Faleomavaega, a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Natural Resource, owes the Gang of Four some payback.
Faleomavaega is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Natural Resources. What better fixer for Obama's mop up in Indonesia?
Faleomavaega recently traveled to Indonesia to meet with government
leaders and while there, he visited the school that Senator Obama
attended when he was living abroad with his parents.Hmmmmm, that's
strange. Why would Faleo visit Obama's madrassah.
According to our Indonesian sources, "officials" who accompanied
Faleomavaega were interested in acquiring any and all documentation or
photographs of a young Barry Soetoro for America's "national archives"
and they were offering cash, lots of it. In a show of faith, Barack
Obama's childhood school would be one of the very first beneficiaries
of this outpouring receiving thousands of dollars to upgrade the school
and for the purchase of computer equipment, thanks in part to the
benevolence of this visiting junket.
So what did the Red Godfather ask of his lackey Faleomavaega? Clean up Indonesia.
“Obama is Indonesian. American Expat in Southeast Asia, Larry Martin told me that his sources claim that Obama was adopted and that the Indonesian
government is aware of this - so are Obama’s people who cut a deal with
the Indonesian government to have the records suppressed.”
The evil one like his comrade Odinga will do anything to advance his Coup d'état
In an article entitled "A Forgotten Cause",
Peter Tatchell sheds light on the plight of the West Papuans, many of
whom are Christians and have suffered under Indonesia's brutal policy
of ethnic and religious persecution.
Obama's campaign sold out mostly Chrisitan West Papuans in a desperate attempt
to protect Obama's presidential bid.
“In June 2004, nineteen U.S. Senators sent a letter to U.N.
Secretary General, Kofi Annan stating: “In Papua, the UN Special
Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention have long documented human rights violations. A military
campaign in the Central Highlands has led to an inestimable number of
civilian deaths and significant population displacement. The fate of
those hiding in the Papuan forests remains unknown, as military
authorities have prohibited provision of humanitarian assistance. Human
rights organizations have endured intimidation and threats by
government security forces operating with impunity.”
“In June 2004, nineteen U.S. Senators sent a letter to U.N.
Secretary General, Kofi Annan stating: “In Papua, the UN Special
Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention have long documented human rights violations. A military
campaign in the Central Highlands has led to an inestimable number of
civilian deaths and significant population displacement. The fate of
those hiding in the Papuan forests remains unknown, as military
authorities have prohibited provision of humanitarian assistance. Human
rights organizations have endured intimidation and threats by
government security forces operating with impunity.”
According to our Indonesian sources, "officials" who accompanied Faleomavaega
were interested in acquiring any and all documentation or photographs of a young
Barry Soetoro for America's "national archives" and they were offering cash,
lots of it. In a show of faith, Barack Obama's childhood school would be one of
the very first beneficiaries of this outpouring receiving thousands of dollars
to upgrade the school and for the purchase of computer equipment, thanks in part
to the benevolence of this visiting junket.
The challenge of course was securing Indonesian goverment records potentially
damaging to Barack Obama's candidacy for the US presidency as well as other
records pertaining to a young Barry Soetoro and his family wouldn't be so easy
to acquire and secure, and for this, the visitors would need the assistance and
cooperation of the Indonesian government.
It's not that getting Indonesian government help is difficult, it's not. It's
no secret that Indonesia is one of the most corrupt countries on the planet, but
we're not talking about the challenge of dealing with corrupt government
officials here, but rather, dealing with the "true believers of change".
Convincing the Indonesian government that an Obama presidency will be able to
deliver that "change" and that it was in the interest of both countries to see
that Barack Obama was elected was nothing more than a fait accompli for Faleomavaega's entourage.
For West Papua's governor in attendance, having been pacified at the prospect
that an Obama presidency would enable him to make zillions trading carbon
credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange, Barnabas Suebu would sit quietly as the
fate of West Papua was decided.
The only issue of contention Faleomavaega would face from the Indonesian
government would be the issue of West Papua. In the end, it was simply a give
and take situation. The Obama campaign needed assistance from the Indonesian
government and the Indonesian government wanted a free hand in Papua.
Later concerning Faleomavaega's meeting, Indonesian presidential spokesman
Dino Patti Djalal would
have this to say: "One thing that is sure is that Faleomevaega's visit here
has changed his views about Indonesia. It has made him realize this country is
so vast and complex it cannot be reduced by the Papua issue..." Dino said
Faleomavaega was known as a US Congress member who often commented on the Papuan
issue but now he had changed his views. "He now sees that Papua is inalienable
part of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia."
Faleomevaega's and meeting with Indonesia's president regarding West Papua
and his subsequent flipflop on supporting West Papua's right to
self-determination is something that you might think would warrant at least a
press release on the congressman's website, but there is
nothing, nor is there any mention on the House
Subcommittee's site. No press release, nothing, not even a mere mention of
his trip to Indonesia.
In the end, everyone got what they wanted, all to the detriment of the West
Papuans.
The is no denying the fact that the prospects of an Obama presidency has
emboldened the Indonesian government's brutal repression in Papua. In an earlier
article, we would explain in detail how an Obama presidency would stoke ethnic
and religious chauvinism in Indonesia and how Indonesia's Islamic
fundamentalists will use an Obama presidency to radicalize a new contingent of
militants from the ranks of Islam's moderates. Individuals who are mesmerized by
the phantasmagorical image of one of their own now inhabiting the White House
and who will see it as a sign of America's impending submission and our nation's
acquiescence to the superiority of Islam. Tee-shirts blazoned with messianic
images of Barack Hussein Obama are already starting to replace the Osama Bin
Laden tee-shirts that have been so popular in Indonesia. In Indonesia Barack
Obama is fast becoming the "Che Guevara" of Indonesia's young wannabe
Islamists.
The Indonesian government is not only failing to protect the West Papuans
from the violence of militant Islam, the government is actively stoking the
fires of ethnic and religious chauvinism and supporting intimidation againstWest
Papuans with many in recent days taking to the streets protesting
the introduction of Islamic law.
Marinka Peschmann has a stunning piece in the Canada Free Press on the corrupt legislation that Obama is co-sponsoring to protect the crooks and thugs that put him where his is. Quid pro quo baby.
I liked it better when, as a Senator, he did nothing and voted 'present' 130 times. Did our founding fathers foresee a traitor being elected to the White House?
Not only did Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign pay more
than U.S. $800,000 to a front of the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform, Now, ACORN, currently under investigation in
a dozen States for voter registration fraud and bribery schemes, for
“get-out-the-vote-efforts”; Obama co-sponsored legislation called the
“Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act of 2007”-- that
was supported by ACORN and protects them.
Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act, S.2136, was
introduced in the Senate by Illinois Senator Richard Durbin over a year
ago, on October 3, 2007. It was co-sponsored, by Obama and 12 other
Democrats, including Vice Presidential hopeful, Joe Biden, and Chairman
of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, Senator
Christopher Dodd.
According to a Senate transcript, Durbin stated: “It is true that
some families knowingly stretched a bit to buy more house than they
should have. But many families were sold mortgages they couldn’t afford
by unscrupulous brokers... This bill is supported by the AARP, ACORN,
AFL-CIO and SEIU, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Consumer
Federation of America, NAACP and La Raza, the National Association of
Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, the National Community Reinvestment
Coalition…”
Why would groups like ACORN, who according to Stanley Kurtz’s “O Dangerous Pals”
undermined “the US economy by pushing the banking system into a
sinkhole of bad loans…. by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions
of dollars in “subprime” loans to often un-creditworthy poor and
minority customers…” support this legislation? Perhaps because it
provides Chapter 13 Bankruptcy protections to homeowners who didn’t
have the means to buy homes, and it protects people who put those
borrowers into these high-risk mortgages.
Durbin’s bill, co-sponsored by Obama, “amends federal bankruptcy law to
permit a bankruptcy plan to: modify a [mortgage] secured by the
principal residence of a chapter 13 debtor...” It “exempts” them “from
the requirement for credit counseling if… that debtor…has been
scheduled” for foreclosure. The credit counseling typically
distinguishes debtors who, for instance, because of unforeseen medical
bills have no alternatives but bankruptcy, from debtors who’ve
recklessly or ruthlessly bought homes they couldn’t afford because,
according to the Federal Trade Commission, it evaluates a person’s
financial situation and discusses alternatives to avoid filing
bankruptcy. If this bill becomes law, the “certificate of completion”
a debtor receives after the credit counseling process would be waived.
Anyone, with a single home, could file Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.
[...]
But there’s more. The Department of Housing and Urban Development
reportedly found that “five million illegal aliens hold illegal
mortgages.” Who arranged these illegal mortgages?
The Helping Families Save their Homes in Bankruptcy Act is not
unique legislation that helps community organizers, and other special
interest outreach groups, like ACORN. As reported hereObama’s Citizenship Promotion Act “organizes the immigrant community”
by using U.S. $80 million taxpayer dollars for outreach programs
targeted at immigrants and future voters.
Demetris Giannoulias was on the Board at the Crossroads Fund, a Chicago Based
left wing organzation supported by Bill Ayers, Bernadine
Dohrn and Barack
Obama, which made grants to such stellar organizations as ACORN and other affordable housing swindlers.
In 2002, Rezko borrowed
$10.5 Million from Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias family bank, the same bank
where Barack Obama kept his Senate campaign funds. In 2006, Sen. Obama endorsed
Alexi Giannoulias for Illinois State Treasurer, and gives Sec. Giannoulias a
slot to speak at the Democratic National Convention.
Glad to see all these upstanding folks able to work so well together, too bad
that Rezko doesn’t want to serve time, and holds quite a bit of information
about the Chicago Political Establishment that may be interesting to the
Feds.
Perhaps there is a G-d, as opposed to a messiah. Hillbuzz has the latest on Michael Sneed's Chicago Sun Times column. Frankly, Obama is so dirty it's hard to get your arms around who the hell he really is and what his socialist objectives are. But like the conviction of Al Capone on tax evasion, I don't care how they stop him, as long as they stop him . I am not as confident of Fitzgerald's intent.We saw how he pursued Scooter Libby in the Plame affair, while knowing all along it was Armitage. So he has an agenda -
Here's more on Obama's mob tie sidekick -- 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. (hat tip Cathy)
"We believe Giannoulias’ banking experience will help him bring creative money
management ideas to the treasurer’s office.”
Barack Obama will serve a prison sentence in the next few years — because
knowing Fitzgerald, there is no reason he would be going through all of this if
that was not the targeted goal in the long term.
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.
(2) We just spoke with someone well-connected in Chicago politics who told us
that the bank Sneed is talking about has to be Broadway Bank, which is owned by
the politically-connected Giannoulias family. We were told that Sneed’s column
confirms rumblings people we know heard independently that Tony Rezko is giving
up the Giannoulias family to Patrick Fitzgerald — Rezko and the Giannoulias
family are as close and tied together as anyone in Chicago could be. If Rezko is
turning on them, then Rezko is going to give up Governor Rod Blagojevich and
Obama too.
We don’t want to end up in cement shoes for implying anything here, but if
you live in Chicago for any length of time, you hear rumors about Broadway Bank,
the Giannoulias family, and insert Tony Soprano references here. Kapeech?
(3) So, Rezko is singing about the Giannoulias family and its longtime
“business dealings” in Chicago, which would interest someone like Fitzgerald and
the Justice Department, who have had a long ambition to crack Soprano-style
business dealings in Chicago (the city known for Al Capone hasn’t changed much,
really). The next plate to drop in this will be Fitzgerald then leaning on the
Giannoulias family to give up someone bigger than them, who Fitzgerald once
discussed in terms of hoping “he has the morals to do the right thing”, to
paraphrase. We now believe that person Fitz was talking about is Barack
Obama.
(4) The Giannoulias family was involved with Obama as far back as his first
state senate campaign in 1996. It has been long rumored here in Chicago that
Obama obtained a sweetheart deal on his first town home here in Chicago — which
he could not have afforded otherwise — and guess who the financing came from for
that house? We’ve been told it was Broadway Bank, the Giannoulias bank. Now,
this sets up a scenario where the Giannoulias family helps Obama with his
campaign finances and gets him deeper in their pocket with his sweetheart
mortgage deal (for the first home he owned that he could not afford) – all in
exchange for quid pro quo to be determined later.
(5) One favor political Chicago claims Obama did for the Giannoulias family
was in 2006 when, out of the blue, 29 year old Alexi Giannoulias, with no
experience, and without ever having voted before,
decides to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Also out of the blue, Barack
Obama endorses Alexi Giannoulias for State Treasurer. This was a
SHOCK to everyone in Chicago — and Giannoulias would
have never become State Treasurer without Obama’s help. In political circles
here, it has always been believed that this endorsement was bought years ago
with that sweetheart mortgage deal Broadway Bank arranged for Obama to buy his
town house.
(6) So, the Tony Rezko sweetheart deal was not the first magic home loan
Obama ever received to buy a house he could not afford.
There’s more to this that looks like it will break soon. We were STUNNED
when we read Sneed’s column because we never in a million years believed Fitz
would actually be able to take down Obama.
We do not believe this will come out before the election, however, but we do
believe Fitzgerald will continue his prosecution to the highest level, because
that is what he does. Jean Valjean got off easy, compared to what it’s like to
be in the crosshairs of perhaps the greatest prosecutor this nation has had in a
generation. Patrick Fitzgerald is a force of nature.
Sneed’s clue can only mean Broadway Bank…we’ve now heard this from several
people in Chicago. And Broadway Bank can only mean Giannoulias. And Giannoulias
leads to Obama through that town house home loan and the quid pro quo political
endorsement several years later. And that home loan ties back to Rezko, in that
it was the first of two shady home buys Obama made with quid pro quos attached
to them.
Just thinking that last paragraph out, Obama’s defense in the Rezko business
was that he never did anything for Rezko so there was no quid pro quo. What the
Giannoulias and Broadway Bank stuff proves is that Obama sits in people’s
pockets for a while before the favor is given. He bought that town house
sometime between 1997-2000 or so, since he lived there for a few years before
trading up to the Obama Mansion with Rezko’s help in 2005, after he was in the
United States Senate. And it looks like the payback was not given to the
Giannoulias family until 2006, with Obama’s endorsement of Alexi Giannoulias for
State Treasurer.
If everything rumored here is true, it looks like David Axelrod, Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Obama himself, and possibly even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were all involved, together, in massive RICO violations, and thus federal fraud, if the DNC and party leadership knew what the Obama campaign and ACORN were up to and allowed it to proceed. Knowledge of federal crimes being committed makes all parties accessories to those crimes — and part of the conspiracy to defraud the public.
UPDATE: One of Strata's readers has done a ton of investigative work on this. Read it all. (hat tip Slimguy)
Here is the summary of what was found in the records:
A Lexis property search for Obama in Illinois shows the Hyde Park property
in Obama’s name beginning in 1998, but Obama supposedly bought the
property in 1993.
All tax assessments from 1998-2004 are in the name of Emil -
is this the person paying taxes on the property for the Obamas
until they sold the property in 2005?
Obama Records have a different Legal Description than the original owner’s
documents.
Cook County Recorder shows completely different information than Lexis: Emil
owns the property from 1986-1989, so why is he listed as paying taxes
from 1998-2004 in other records?
The property is passed via Warranty Deed to Stephen Anderson in 1989, then
via Warranty Deed to Obama in 1993, then via Warranty Deed to Elling in 2005 -
which aligns with the sequence one would expect given the standard news reports.
There is the Warranty Deed to Obama from Anderson in 1993, however release
of the Anderson Mortgage is not recorded until 1998,and there is a requests it be sent to Obama’s former Law Firm.
The Obama address in the 1999 records was shown as 927 W. Argyle 1W, not
Hyde Park.
The mortgage from Hyde Park Mortgage lent in 2002 is originally recorded and
sent to Chase Manhattan Mortgage Company. Then assigned from Hyde Park
Mortgage to Chase Manhattan Mortgage Company, Then it is supposedly Assigned
again from Hyde Park Mortgage to Chase, but this last transaction says
the original lender was Barbara Hill for an amount $30,000, property address
2772 E. 75th Street, Unit 3G S.
Finally, a 2005 Release from
GREATER IL TITLE CO is listed as a record of payment and there is another
seperate Release from Hyde Park Mortgage, even though it had been
assigned twice to Chase Manhattan Mortgage.
The final sale by the Obamas was financed by Northern Trust, the
same company that was used to purchase Obama’s new mansion which partially paid
for by Rezko, who bought part of the land which he later sold to Obama.
SBD has produced various detailed reports and made copies of the materials he
has gathered. The complete list of his work is linked below. We are offering
this information up to the blogosphere and public in hopes they can help unravel
what may be going on here with these records.
What is clear is we only have a few weeks to do the job the lazy and smitten
news media should have done vetting our presidential candidates regarding
possible corruption. SBD and I look forward to hearing from folks on what this
might be and what other information they may have to add to this picture as it
finally comes into focus.
And now Kids Parades for Obama - this is grassroots? The grassroots of Obama's role model Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (his final work, published in 1971 one year before his death),where he addressed the 1960s generation of radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. He coined the term "Think globally, act locally." Perfect.
On Sunday, October 12, Washington State kids and families will parade around Seattle's Green Lake. "Kids for Obama Parade" will illustrate one of Barack Obama's core beliefs: Everyone's voice counts. Join us as Obama's youngest supporters rally their families and call for change, for a better America. At 2 pm, rain or shine, children and teens will express with words and drawings their hopes for the future of America on "wish flags" that will be mailed to Obama. The first 300 kids will be given a helium balloon, an expression of solidarity. At 3 pm, the "Kids for Obama Parade" will skip, toddle, stroller, rollerblade, pedal, and red-wagon clockwise around Green Lake in a cloud of red, white, and blue balloons and a garland of kid-made wish flags. How to prepare? If possible, bring home-made signs and wear red, white, and/or blue clothing. That goes for moms, dads, big brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents too. Please spread the word.
UPDATE: Obama's organizing fellows: "Help us revive our democracy". I had no idea it needed resuscitating though I suspect it will be DOA after an Obama seizes power. Slimguy dug up this commie tool:
Please note that the campaign is NO LONGER ACCEPTING Obama Fellow
Applications. The deadline for submission has now passed.
Thank you to all those who applied. You will be hearing from us by June 2nd
regarding the final status of your application.
This summer we are looking for students and recent graduates who want to be a
part of a new generation of leadership that believes, like Senator Obama, that
real change comes from the ground up.
Fellows will be trained on the basics of organizing & campaign
fundamentals and then placed in a community to carry out grassroots activities.
Fellows will be asked to commit to a minimum of 30 hours per week and will:
participate in training on field organizing, messaging, and other activities
organize in a community, working in conjunction with grassroots leaders and
campaign staff
Just how in bed is Obama with the deeply corrupt and seditious ACORN? So deep he has taken to repeatedly bold faced lying about just how involved he is with them.
Barack Obama
endorsed Acorn State Chair Ted Thomas in his bid for the 15th ward alderman race
in 1999. Obama’s friend Madeline Talbott described it best when she wrote in
November 2000 that with Thomas’s victory “we (acorn) had elected one of our
own.” Perhaps Senator Obama should explain what led him to endorse the Acorn
candidate.
Another case of gross voter fraud: Indiana has received 5,000 voter registration cards from ACORN and all cards were fraudulent. This is added to the charges being made in Las Vegas, Missouri, and Ohio.
The Cleveland Leaderreports this morning that Barack Obama is lying about his involvement with the group ACORN, which recently added Missouri
to the list of states in which its activities are under investigation.
While Obama's site maintains that he never trained ACORN activists --
whose training apparently encourages them to play fast and loose with
election laws -- Chicago ACORN leader Toni Foulkes has thanked Obama
for doing precisely that:
Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training
sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many
of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for
office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in
his first campaign for STate Senate and then his failed bid for U.S.
Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old
friends."
The Los Angeles Times has reported the same. Given all the improprieties with which ACORN has been associated in the past, as well as the accusations against it this year, it's easy to see why Obama hopes the media will ignore this issue.
The push to register voters for this
year's presidential election is breaking records.
"This is really
disquieting. It's concerning. It's worrisome," said Seibert.
He heads up
the non-partisan news group on the web.
Texas Watchdog compared Harris
County's voter registration roll with the Social Security death index and
found more than 4,000 matches -- registered voters that, it appears, are
already dead.
Some of them, like Henderson Hill's late wife Linda, voted
postmortem.
"I would like to know who did it, myself," Hill told Davis.
Intrepid bloggers at Sweetness & Light, Gateway Pundit and Riehl World View have documented the lies that the Obama
campaign is publishing on its "Fight the Smears" website. Confident that the
media will not report the facts, the campaign does not hestitate to deny
docuemnted facts.
The underlined portion reads,
"Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other
capacity."
CHICAGO - Federal prosecutors moved Monday to delay indefinitely the sentencing of convicted fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, sending their strongest hint yet that he is ready to spill his political secrets.
The filing asks for a postponement while prosecutors and defense attorneys "engage in discussions that could affect their sentencing postures."
Speculation has simmered for weeks that the key fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama was whispering what he knows about
corruption in Illinois government to federal prosecutors in hopes of getting a lighter sentence.
Rezko raised more than $1 million for Blagojevich's campaign fund and was one of the governor's key advisers. He was frequently by the governor's side in the early days of his administration and could be in a position to shed considerable light on federal investigations into patronage hiring and a host of other issues involving Blagojevich.
The governor has not been charged with wrongdoing. A spokesman did not immediately respond to an e-mail message after business hours seeking comment.
U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve had set Sept. 3 as a firm date for sentencing Rezko on his conviction for launching a $7 million scheme to use his clout with the Blagojevich administration to squeeze kickbacks out of a contractor and seven money management firms wanting to do business with the state. Then she postponed the sentencing date to Oct. 28.
Federal prosecutors filed a three-paragraph brief late Monday asking for that date to be stricken and the sentencing postponed indefinitely. The wording left little doubt that Rezko offered enough to make the government consider some sort of sentencing break.
Federal spokesman Randall Samborn declined to comment on the latest development. Defense attorneys Joseph Duffy and William Ziegelmueller did not immediately respond to office voicemails left late Monday.
Two attorneys familiar with the investigation, speaking only on condition of anonymity because grand jury matters are secret, said last week that federal prosecutors were contacting the lawyers of a number of campaign contributors and others with information that only Rezko could have given them. One of the lawyers said it was plain the prosecutors were laying the groundwork for questioning Rezko further.
[...]
Obama's campaign says it has sent to charity $159,000 traceable to Rezko's past fundraising.
Atlas Shrugs: OBAMA, REZKO, AUCHI AND LEHMAN BROSA formerly high-ranking official in Iraq’s Oil Ministry, Auchi left Iraq at the end of ... Auchi’s loan to Rezko had come on May 23, 2005 but had not been ... -
Chutzpah: ACORN's drive to lower mortgage standards paved the
way for the meltdown - yet last week, it was holding protests like this one in
Florida, trying to get a cut of the financial-market-rescue bill.
WHAT exactly does a "community organizer" do? Barack Obama's rise has left
many Americans asking themselves that question. Here's a big part of the answer:
Community organizers intimidate banks into making high-risk loans to customers
with poor credit.
In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private
offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes - and
thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars
in mortgages to low-credit customers.
In other words, community organizers help to undermine the US economy by
pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama has spent
years training and funding the organizers who do it.
THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Commu nity Reinvestment
Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory
rulings in later decades.
CRA was meant to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, often
minorities living in unstable neighborhoods. That has provided an opening to
radical groups like ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform
Now) to abuse the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars
in "subprime" loans to often uncreditworthy poor and minority customers.
Any bank that wants to expand or merge with another has to show it has
complied with CRA - and approval can be held up by complaints filed by groups
like ACORN.
Obama campaign cracks down on misleading TV ads
September 23rd, 2008The Barack Obama campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading TV ad during the presidential campaign.
BLUNT BLAST UH UH UH UH BAMA: What a great American
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement on news reports that have exposed plans by U.S. Senator Barack Obama to use Missouri law enforcement to threaten and intimidate his critics.
“St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer, and Obama and the leader of his Missouri campaign Senator Claire McCaskill have attached the stench of police state tactics to the Obama-Biden campaign.
“What Senator Obama and his helpers are doing is scandalous beyond words, the party that claims to be the party of Thomas Jefferson is abusing the justice system and offices of public trust to silence political criticism with threats of prosecution and criminal punishment.
“This abuse of the law for intimidation insults the most sacred principles and ideals of Jefferson. I can think of nothing more offensive to Jefferson’s thinking than using the power of the state to deprive Americans of their civil rights. The only conceivable purpose of Messrs. McCulloch, Obama and the others is to frighten people away from expressing themselves, to chill free and open debate, to suppress support and donations to conservative organizations targeted by this anti-civil rights, to strangle criticism of Mr. Obama, to suppress ads about his support of higher taxes, and to choke out criticism on television, radio, the Internet, blogs, e-mail and daily conversation about the election.
“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts - not a free society.”
The Obama campaign has written radio stations in Pennsylvania and Ohio,
pressing them to refuse to air an ad from the National Rifle
Association.
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, who provided the letter, said it
shows clear evidence that the ads are "hurting him," and stood by their
substance. He also provided a copy of the NRA`s own letter to the
stations and memo disputing the Post story, after the jump.
As the Deacon points out in the comments section, let's not forget about this:
How stupid does Obama think his blinded-by-the-light followers are? (don't answer that). Beneath contempt I would say. FOX MEET HENSHOUSE! Obama talks of change? He can't even vhange his pay masters. The king of special interest payola is winning a popularity contest as we head off a cliff. Pied piper indeed.
Wonder how much graftboy is getting under the table for this assault on our wounded economy. JOHNSON SHOULD BE JAILED.
And remember, a couple of years ago, "McCain warned that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac
were in serious need of reform and he so-sponsored legislation to reform it.
Obama did not support this legislation, which the Democrats blocked. Obama was
near the top of the list of recipients of contributions from Fannie Mae and
Freddy Mac, and two executives from these outfits were among his campaign
advisors." (Read McCain leads Obama follows over at Powerline)
Former Senator Tom Daschle, a top Obama backer, emailed a select
list this afternoon that he and Johnson would be leading a briefing
intended largely for Clinton's campaign brain trust next month.
"Jim Johnson and I have scheduled another informal breakfast discussion
and update on the campaign early next month," he wrote to a list
including Senator John Kerry, James Carville, and Richard Holbrooke, as
well as Clinton's former top campaign aides, including Howard Wolfson,
Geoff Garin, and Harold Ickes.
Johnson's involvement comes at a moment when political association
with the failed mortgage giants is particularly toxic. He was already
the subject of a McCain ad attacking Obama.
The October third breakfast is also a mark of the continuing effort to bring the ex-Clintonites into the Obama fold.
So who was in charge of Fannie Mae for 16 of the last 18 years? Let’s start with James A. Johnson
(no relation). Remember him? Barack initially tabbed him to head up the
Vice Presidential search team. He was Walter Mondale’s campaign manager
in the 1984 fiasco and chaired the search committee for John Kerry. But
he started as Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae in 1990, quickly moved up to
be the CEO, and left Fannie in 1999 as Chairman of the Executive
Committee.
And guess where he went? Fishing? Nope. He became one of the outside
directors of the board of Goldman Sachs in 1999 and also served as the
Managing Director of Corporate Finance for Lehman Brothers.
The roles of Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers are important to
understand if you are to make sense of Fannie Mae’s collapse. When
Johnson moved to Goldman Sachs, the main man at Fannie was Franklin D. Raines.
Late in 2005 Raines resigned from Fannie Mae, accused of being in
charge when the books were cooked. The scheme is fairly simple. Raines
and other top executives made bonuses if they hit specific earnings
targets for the securities sold by Fannie Mae. They regularly hit those
targets until it was discovered by the (SEC) Securities & Exchange
Commission’s top accountant Fannie misstated earnings for 3 1/2 years,
leading to an estimated $9 billion restatement that will wipe out 40%
of profits from 2001 to mid-2004.
During the period covered by this report—1998 to
mid-2004—Fannie Mae reported extremely smooth profit growth and hit
announced targets for earnings per share precisely each quarter. Those
achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by
the Enterprise’s senior management with the aid of inappropriate
accounting and improper earnings management.
By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit
earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other
executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders.
Earnings management made a significant contribution to the compensation
of Fannie Mae Chairman and CEO Franklin Raines, which totaled over $90
million from 1998 through 2003. Of that total, over $52 million was
directly tied to achieving earnings per share targets.
Fannie Mae’s Board of Directors contributed to those problems by
failing to be sufficiently informed and to act independently of its
chairman, Franklin Raines, and other senior executives, failing to
exercise the requisite oversight over the Enterprise’s operations, and
failing to discover or ensure the correction of a wide variety of
unsafe and unsound practices, even after the Freddie Mac problems
became apparent.
Senior management did not make investments in accounting systems,
computer systems, other infrastructure, and staffing needed to support
a sound internal control system, proper accounting, and GAAP-consistent
financial reporting. Those failures came at a time when Fannie Mae
faced many operational challenges related to its rapid growth and
changing accounting and legal requirements.
Fannie Mae senior management sought to interfere with OFHEO’s
special examination by directing the Enterprise’s lobbyists to use
their ties to Congressional staff to improperly generate a
Congressional request for the Inspector General of the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to investigate OFHEO’s conduct of
that examination and to insert into an appropriations bill language
that would punish the agency by reducing its appropriations until the
Director of OFHEO was replaced.
Franklin Raines, along with Fannie’s former chief financial officer
and Fannie’s former controller, settled out of court and agreed to pay
fines totaling about $3 million. Raines also agreed to donate the
proceeds from the sale of the $1.8 million of his Fannie stock and to
give up stock options. Fannie Mae paid a fine of $400 million.
Goldman Sachs played a pivotal role in all of this. According to
OFHEO, one of the major vehicles Fannie used to hide its loses (e.g.,
“shift earnings into future years”) was a Real Estate Mortgage
Investment Conduit aka REMIC:
In fact, Goldman Sachs described the proposed
transaction (i.e. use of REMIC) in a November 19, 2001 presentation to
Fannie Mae. David Rosenblum, a Goldman Sachs managing director,
attached PowerPoint slides for the presentation to a December 3, 2001,
e-mail to Mr. Niculescu. Mr. Rosenblum referred to the project as
“Project Libra.”
So we are asked to believe that the former CEO of Fannie Mae who is
now sitting on the board of Goldman Sachs is completely unaware of
using REMIC to hide Fannie Mae losses? Wouldn’t you expect someone with
so much knowledge about Fannie Mae to have the least bit of concern
about the possibility of accounting mischief? These are questions that
have not yet been fully explored or vetted.
Oh yes, if you are going to sell Fannie Mae market securities what
bond index do you use? How about the Lehman Brothers U.S. Aggregate
Index. Sure helps to have a tie with Lehman Brothers through James
Johnson as well.
He vowed to 'work tirelessly' to build an oasis for Englewood. It never happened.
As a state senator, Barack Obama gave $100,000 in state money to a campaign
volunteer who failed to deliver on a plan to create a botanic garden in one of
Chicago's most blighted neighborhoods.
Obama -- who was running for Congress when he announced the project in 2000
-- said the green space in Englewood would build ''a sense of neighborhood
pride."
Instead, what was supposed to be a six-block stretch of trees and paths is
now a field of unfulfilled dreams, strewn with weeds, garbage and broken
pavement.
Kenny B. Smith, whose nonprofit group got the money, said it was spent
legitimately, mostly on underground site preparation. But he admitted Thursday
that the garden is a lost cause because other government money never came
through.
"We gave up," said Smith, who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association.
"It was a losing battle."
Obama is going to have to answer to the authorities:
A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen.
Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer
is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions,
prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been
misspent.
The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times
show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama
2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing
Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side
neighborhood.
Smith wrote another $20,000 in grant-related checks to K.D. Contractors, a
construction company that his wife, Karen D. Smith, created five months after
work on the garden was supposed to have begun, records show. K.D. is no longer
in business.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- a Democrat who is supporting Obama's
presidential bid -- is investigating "whether this charitable organization
properly used its charitable assets, including the state funds it received,"
Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, said Wednesday.
In addition to the 2001 grant that Obama directed to the housing association
as a "member initiative," the not-for-profit group got a separate $20,000 state
grant in 2006.
"You are a wonderful fighter for liberty" -- Bat Ye'or
"Well, I read Atlas Shrugs, Power Line, National Review blogs" ........ "Atlas Shrugs breaks more news than dozens of liberal blogs combined." ...... ... Ambassador John Bolton
"I'm a fan!" - Mark Steyn
"Fearless, intelligent, beautiful --- Pamela Geller wears her Supergirl
costume well."
"Pamela Geller is a dynamo of energy and
a paragon of courage and fearlessness.
-- Robert Spencer, JihadWatch in his book Stealth Jihad
"You do great work with your blog". -- Geert Wilders
"Courageous insights from a pulchritudinous pundit!" Dr. Andrew Bostom, Leading Scholar on Islam
"Great site," Dick Morris
"Indeed, some of Israel's best friends and most articulate defenders can be found in the blogosphere .... Atlas Shrugs, [et al] all provide a refreshing alternative to the moral relativism and politically correct anti-Israel blather of the media. Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post
"She does more in one week than most of us do in a frickin' lifetime -- Pamela Geller!" -- Jaz McKay, Talk Radio WKNZR
"The best there is," Beryl Wajsman, President Institute of Public Affairs
Speaking to the unnamed, unchampioned, beating heart of her new land, Ayn was to say: 'Yours is the glory.'"
A man whose ability and independence leads others to reject him, but who perseveres nevertheless to achieve his values. Man as an individual, as a creator. What's the most depraved type of human being? Not a sadist or a murderer or a sex maniac or a dictator; "The man without a purpose." Yet most people seem to go through their lives without a clearly defined purpose.
Life has Loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fires that sways and swing,
And children's faces looking up,
Holding wonder like a cup
Life has Loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of Gold,
Scent of pinetrees in the rain,
Eyes that love you,
arms that hold,
And for your spirit's still delight,
Holy stars that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of Peace
Count many a year of strife well lost
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
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