JustMe wrote:beastie wrote:Ooooo let me guess... he pals around with terrorists?
No, no, no Beastie! Get it right love...... he's a *M-U-S-L-I-M.....[/quote]No, though he probably lied about having never been a Muslim in his youth.
I was talking recently to a man who claimed that he worked for Obama for many years but eventually left when he decided that BHO was too liberal. I have no way of knowing whether he was telling the truth though I've been able to check out this story. He said that he had leaked to the press a story of Obama taking a bribe and that LA Times published an article about it. The man who told me this said that these ten individuals did not have the means to make the $1000 contribution to Obama. He was afraid about retribution if he went public with his assertions against Obama. I can't blame him since Democratic officials broke the law in using Ohio state records to dig up dirt against Joe the plumber. Of course, the civil libertarians have been screaming to high heavens about this - not! Why didn’t the mainstream media ask some tough questions about this bribery story? I guess it's an everyday occurrence for an opponent in s state senate race to turn around and write big checks to his opponent!
As a presidential candidate, Obama has been critical of the congressional system of doling out money for pet projects. But he is no stranger to pork-barrel politics and the practice of spreading government money around his district. In Springfield he once directed state funds to a nonprofit group headed by a Republican and former ballot foe, Yesse B. Yehudah.
Yehudah barely registered a ripple of meaningful opposition, drawing only 10% of the vote in his 1998 challenge of Obama.
The following year, a nonprofit run by Yehudah, a social services organization called Fulfilling Our Responsibility Unto Mankind, began seeking state support. At the same time, Obama was considering mounting an ambitious challenge to U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush, a fellow Democrat.
Former foe Yehudah stepped up early to help. In November 1999, five people who worked for the Republican’s nonprofit organization each gave $1,000 checks to Obama’s congressional campaign committee. Yehudah makes no secret of his goal.
“We want [politicians] to know that when we sit down, we’re serious,” Yehudah said. “They know it when a $1,000 check comes in.”
Obama lost his congressional bid. President Clinton backed incumbent Rush, who received twice as many primary votes as Obama. Obama was left with a $40,000 debt.
Later that year, Yehudah associates pitched in an additional $5,000 to help retire Obama’s debt. The contributions were recorded on Oct. 7, 2000, three days after the Illinois Senate, at Obama’s behest, approved a $75,000 state grant to Yehudah’s nonprofit, state records show.
In an interview, Yehudah said the commitment for the grant was secured months earlier, in July. He called timing of the donations a coincidence.
The donations were modest by political standards, as was Obama’s relatively small assist to the nonprofit group of his ex-rival and new benefactor. But in Illinois, “government actions often occur around the time of campaign donations,” said Stewart of the Better Government Assn. “The answer is always the same: It’s always a coincidence.”
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said there was no connection between the campaign donations and the grant to Yehudah’s organization. “Of course not,” he said.
By 2002, Obama was preparing for his next challenge, a run for the U.S. Senate. Also that year, the Illinois attorney general sued Yehudah over allegations of kickbacks unrelated to the state grant. It was settled out of court.
Three days after the suit was filed, Obama returned one batch of donations totaling $5,000.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/sep/08 ... maprofile8Then there’s Obama’s crooked purchase of his house:
I last wrote about this subject at length on June 4, 2008, when Tony Rezko was convicted on 16 counts of financial corruption, many of which had to do with buying off politicians via sham real estate transactions. But let me reduce the Rezko-Obama house transaction into a one-sentence question which ought to make it clear to you:
If not to bestow a six-figure financial payoff to Barack Obama — who was getting a $300k discount on the same day in June 2005 from the very same seller — why would Tony Rezko ever agree to pay the full asking price of $625k for the adjoining property, instead of insisting upon at least sharing proportionately in that $300k discount?
Ignore the later sale by Rezko of a strip of the property he purchased to the Obamas after they had some more book revenues coming in and were more flush with cash. We can argue until the cows come home about whether that was a delayed partial pay-back of the original favor to Obama or not. It's a red herring, and requires you to make judgments about property values.
Instead, put your trust in the much easier judgment you can make about who, as between Obama and Rezko, was a shark in the real estate market. No one can explain how real estate neophyte Obama supposedly managed to out-negotiate real estate "professional" Rezko — who's not so coincidentally also a professional politician buyer through fraudulent real estate deals, which is exactly what Rezko has since been convicted of — by fully $300k.
While admitting that this was a package deal that had to be closed on the same day, the seller denies any explicit agreement to link the two sale prices — i.e., to grant a bigger discount to Obama in exchange for Rezko paying the full asking price. The seller effectively has to say that, because to make any contrary admission might subject him to potential criminal liability as a co-conspirator, along with Rezko and his wife, to the making of false statements on the federally guaranteed loan application paperwork in which Rezko's wife had to deny the existence of any side deals. (That would be an excellent reason for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to be subpoenaing those loan documents, as the new Isakoff article linked below by Hugh reveals.)
Now, let me be perfectly clear: I'm certainly not accusing the seller of having actually violated any law, and neither do I have any specific reason to believe that the seller was necessarily a party to any discussions between Obama and Rezko about what Rezko expected in return for the favor he was doing Obama by facilitating the transaction by paying the full asking price. Indeed, even between Obama and Rezko there may not have been anything more than a wink and a nod. But surely the seller at least had to hold his nose and avert his eyes to keep from perceiving the strangeness of this transaction, and even his retrospection about the transaction ought to be circumscribed by his potential criminal liability, if he's been getting any decent legal advice.
You, gentle readers, need not be so willfully imperceptive. When something stinks, you can and should say: "That stinks!"
This was a political payoff, friends and neighbors, from Day 1, and it was in the age-old tradition of mobsters doing favors for rising but ethically challenged young politicians whose influence the mobsters may someday need. If you cannot see this, then you ought to climb back on the pumpkin truck, and please don't ever try to purchase real estate yourself.
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/f ... 488ce39e90How many stories about this did you read in the mainstream media? Maybe it didn't give them a tingle up the leg.