By Steve Rhodes
“Obama charged that the Clintons have shown a willingness to ‘fudge the truth,'” the Tribune reports. “‘What this country needs most is a president who says what he means and means what he says,” Obama said.”
Perhaps now would be a good time to review the Tony Rezko files.
* “Mr. Obama has portrayed Mr. Rezko as a one-time fund-raiser whom he had occasionally seen socially. But interviews with more than a dozen political and business associates suggest that the two men were closer than the senator has indicated.”
See “My Pal Tony.”
* “New facts [have] come to light that paint Rezko as a landlord overseeing dilapidated housing in the middle of Obama’s former state Senate district,” the Sun-Times has reported.
“For five weeks, the Sun-Times sought to interview Obama about Rezko and the housing deals. His staff wanted written questions. It responded Sunday but left many questions unanswered. Other answers didn’t directly address the question.”
See “The Senator and the Slumlord.”
* “Obama donated more than $44,000 in Rezko-linked contributions to charity last year, including the $10,000 donation mentioned in the court filing,” the Sun-Times reported on Sunday.
“That money was donated to Obama by Joseph Aramanda, a Glenview businessman and Rezko associate who, sources have said, is the ‘Individual D’ prosecutors say received the $250,000 in finder’s fees demanded by Rezko. Individual D did nothing to earn those fees, according to prosecutors.
“The $10,000 contribution to Obama was given in Aramanda’s name on March 5, 2004, records show. While Obama’s camp has said the senator did not know Aramanda, Obama’s office hired Aramanda’s son as an intern in 2005, at Rezko’s urging.”
* “It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else,” Obama once said of his real estate deal with Rezko, “to believe that he had done me a favor.”
Nice spin, but it was Rezko who did a favor for Obama that allowed him to buy his $1.65 million mansion.
* “You act like I’m no longer alive/Helped buy your house in 2005/Well our land was side by side/We were neighbors, my friend.”
See “I Had A Crush On Obama.”
Obama on Reagan
And Bill Clinton. In his own words. Excerpts from The Audacity of Hope.
Beachwood’s Barack
See what kind of portrait emerges.
* “Obama on the attack is nothing new.”
See “Obama’s a Mudder.”
* “Many of Obama’s supporters are defending a position their man doesn’t actually hold.”
See “Spinning the Obama Doctrine.”
* “A tale of consultants fixing Barack Obama’s politics around the brand they are selling to America.”
See “Building Brand Obama.”
* “David Axelrod is building a narrative campaign built around cult of personality.”
See “Obama’s Media Manipulator.”
* “The Obama campaign doesn’t want you to know that it has a secret K Street Project, and is actively soliciting campaign contributions that would get around its own ban on accepting money from lobbyists.”
See “The Secret Money Machine.”
* “If you watch Obama’s Selma speech objectively, you must once again call into question the standard assumption that the man is an orator for the ages. Not only was his delivery disjointed, and oddly aloof, but his text was barren.”
See “Talkin’ Selma Blues.”
* “Who needs the right-wing nutjobs when you have the Obama campaign invoking the tired canard of the Clinton White House whoring out the Lincoln Bedroom.”
See “Geffen’s Folly.”
* “The way a candidate presents himself (or herself) does matter – especially if you are Obama and your case for becoming president is based more on faith in things not yet seen than substantive evidence.”
See “Barack Hollywood.”
* “It was a very ordinary speech. Tell the truth, now.”
See “The Obama Kool-Aid Report.”
* “More in common then you knew.”
See “Lincoln vs. Obama.”
* “JUST IN: Obama Fired Up.”
See “JUST IN: Obama Speaks.”
* “For all his talk of representing a new kind of politics, Obama’s every move smacks of business-as-usual.”
See “Barack Obama (D-Daley).”
* “The real reason why the media is slobbering over Obama is that he helps them move product.”
See “The Trouble With Obama.”
Summer Preview
“For weeks now, the Republican National Committee has been circulating Rezko clips,” Lynn Sweet reports today.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Satisfy yourself.
Posted on January 23, 2008