Chicagoist: Obama Comes Clean on Rezko

celerysalt

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:39:46 -0600

oh geesh - typos aplenty above. sorry. i'm afraid i might be becoming spook.

celerysalt

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:18:36 -0600

clinton: whitewater. and let's face it - lots of other stuff. mccain: keating 5. and didn't his wife steal drugs from the nonprofit she headed up? uhm, yeah. really - the "i paid 1/10th share of the property" answer works for me. i work with wealthy individuals (though i myself am brokeasspoor) and you just don't/can't vet everyone you have business dealings with. if they're sneaky enough to get around the IRS, chances are they're going to get around you too. you just watch your own morality in the situation, and do you best. in this case, most news agencies are reporting that there's slim to no possibiliy there was pay to play or favors with obama, but rather rezko was working that angle with G-Rod. so when obama got involved in politics, he met a big dem fundraiser who would've been hard to avoid in a tight night dem state. big deal. he returned the money. as long as he didn't sell anything, i don't know why we're going off on a witchhunt. let's not confuse *judgement* with *perfection*, shall we? nothing to see here folks!

senaber

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:06:56 -0600

@ leon: My friend actually thinks he might be the antichrist. I wonder if we could go directly from the voting booth to receive our mark. just throwing it out there...

A2

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:38:52 -0600

Navin, MSNBC, probably the most unbiased major news organization, ran a story last year that found out of 140 major reporters, 125 had given money to the Dems.

Navin

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:29:47 -0600

Sorry I have to spell it out for you. Pffft. hahaha... Poor A2, reality don't jibe with what the political talky guy on the radio done said. I think like 2 cycles of Rev. Wright stories had already gone through by the time you'd made your first post. left bias! left bias! Hilarious, google news: Results 1 - 10 of about 1,707 for rev wright. (0.18 seconds)

fed up

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 10:56:08 -0600

scooter come on, obama who could have dirt on him he is a crook co machine politican and they are all legit, next you will be smearing the good names of daley stroger and blago. obama is the underling of E jones and he is pure I am sure. As pure as the 72 virgins awaiting a jihadist in the promised land

Scooter Libbby

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 03:11:35 -0600

The Republicans are pretty much laying off of Obama right now. The wing-nut radio guys aren't bothering to dump on him at the moment. That can mean only one thing: They have so much dirt on him, they are hoping against hope that he's the nominee! They have zero chance against Hillary, contrary to the polls, because we no everything about her & Bill. There's nothing left to find, but Li'l Ole Barry, why there's just got to be more shit on him, just with Rezko, than the Sanitary District has!

A2

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:46:42 -0600

Sorry I have to spell it out for you. Yes, of course the story is reported by various news outlets. I was addressing a question of emphasis. Obviously. Yawn.

A2

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:42:41 -0600

When I wrote that, no one had posted anything about it except CNN. A few hours later the NYT picked it up in an obligatory way...they posted it far down on the page under "politics." Now, a few hours later, it's off their front page. Go figure.

fed up

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:20:13 -0600

smussy, how are you going to feel a month from now when obama finds some more rezko money that he overlooked months ago and overlooked this time. Or when video pops up with the good Rev preaching his anti u.s. speel with obama sitting front and center after saying he would of left the church if only he had known. obama is a crook co. hack fraud and it is slowly starting to unravel, he is not setting the record straight once and for all he is feeding his adoring press some b.s. just like before but no one in the press is asking why he was lying before.

magilla gorilla

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:34:48 -0600

a2, the wright/obama controversy is all over the news. what the hell are you talking about? i don't know why the national media hasn't picked up the rezko/obama thing that much but it's certainly not from a lack of chicago coverage

Navin

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:05:53 -0600

None of the major news outlets are even picking it up (or the stuff about his minister, aside from a small blip buried on CNN) except for Fox News. A2 There's a thing called "Google News" Go to it. Type in "Reverend Wright" Click "Search" button. Wow! Look at the results : a story on the good Rev. by nearly every MSM outlet that exists. So are you deliberately lying? or just willfully misinformed? Also story on Obama and Wright is on front page of U.S. section of NYT today.

A2

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:27:12 -0600

This isn't going to affect Obama at all. None of the major news outlets are even picking it up (or the stuff about his minister, aside from a small blip buried on CNN) except for Fox News. Plus, your average voter--especially your average Obama supporter--isn't going to pay attention to something like this. Not when you have Rolling Stone posing him like Superman with the corny as hell tagline "A New Hope" on the cover, repeat ad infinitum, ad delirium, ad nauseum. That is the kind of crap that people who are going to vote for Obama are won over by, and makes those who already support him knees quiver. Anyone who doesn't think the media is waaaaaaaay biased to the left has rocks in their heads. Don't worry, they aren't going to let the Golden Boy get tarnished over something like this. Meanwhile the NYT does a front page story on the suspicion that someone once said they thought they heard someone say that John McCain might possibly have been giving the appearance of getting too close to a lobbyist.

quint

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:30:07 -0600

@smussy - I think the problem here isn't that Obama made mistakes. We all make mistakes. That issue is two-fold. The nature of the mistakes undermines his credibility on the one issue he has successfully used to separate him from all of the other candidates - judgment. Without being able to say that he has better judgment than McCain or Clinton he really has nothing firm by way of his record or accomplishments to stand on and separate him from the pack. The other problem is that he didn't just come clean. He was badgered, softly for a long time, by local media for months about his relationship with Rezko and Obama's camp just simply refused to address the questions. The national media got wind of it recently and Obama still refused to talk about it. The stalling certainly seemed more like traditional political maneuvering than the new age transparent leader he wants us to believe he can be. Those are 2 big big reasons why he deserves criticism here, and he has no one to blame but himself.

Navin

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:11:43 -0600

And who is his clout? Jack Ryan not settling for conventional sex with 7of9?

leomemorial

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 14:02:49 -0600

Obama comes from out of nowhere to quickly rise. Why? And who is his clout?

smussy

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:45:19 -0600

the comments on this absolutely befuddle me. i'll cop my obama bias right now, but regardless of who(m?) i support, one of the things that has frustrated me about big-time politics for a LONG time is politicians' reluctance, resistance and downright refusal to admit when they are wrong, come clean about things they've done and just outright lay out the facts about things that were mistakes. i think it's much more respectable and honorable to stand up and admit wrongdoing and then make amends (which doesn't just mean saying sorry ... it means saying what you're going to do to *change and repair the behavior*) for the action, then to lie and lie and lie until the bitter end. fact of the matter is, not one of us is exempt from effin' up, and it doesn't seem too many people in washington are crystal clean, no matter how much i want them to be. the others never seem to be very viable as presidential candidates. so, it is discouraging to see obama decide to set the record straight once and for all and to see people come and just rip the shit out of him for it. oh, someone's going to tell the truth and take responsibility for something? let's call *that* bad judgment. i think it shows GREAT judgment on his part. @jeremy -- my not at ALL politically savvy, WI mother also voted for him in the primary *despite* the fact that she fell for the idea that "he didn't believe in god" and "was a muslim." arrrrgh. but she voted for him -anyway,- which leads me to believe he's got something that transcends even the minds that can be easily led astray by smoke and mirrors.

Navin

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:43:36 -0600

Also can we get another "Rezko" photo. That down syndrome kid freaks me out.

Navin

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 13:41:45 -0600

With the exception of blacks Clinton has won the majority of the traditional Democratic constituency. Ha ha, Got some more of whatever that is your smokin'?

Jeremy

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:17:40 -0600

The interesting thing about Obama, to me, is his general appeal. My Texas born, incredibly racist, grandmother is supporting him, as well as a libertarian crazed college friend. If he can pull well from across the the aisle, he'll have more support than just the latte crowd.

Di Urrea

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:15:11 -0600

I don't have a horse in the Obama-Clinton race, and my support for McCain is mild. The Obama house of cards is beginning to crumble. Quint is right - for a man running on his supposedly superior judgment boneheadedness and naivety are undesirable qualities. Clinton has been wise to persevere, and the media has cut her some slack while scrutinizing Obama more after the SNL parody. With the exception of blacks Clinton has won the majority of the traditional Democratic constituency. Obama's coalition of blacks (only 1/8th of population), college students, and upscale wine and brie urban liberals is to thin for the long haul.

quint

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:47:45 -0600

This is a huge deal for Obama. He doesn't have a lot of experience or accomplishments to run on so he has pretty much staked his campaign on the idea that he has better judgment than those who have been in power. Just look at his position on Iraq. It is all about knowing back in 2002 that the war would be bad,wrong, etc., and he scores political points there because it appears that he had good judgement on that issue. But suddenly you start revealing certain actions of yours in the past to be "boneheaded" and by your own admission that you don't really know a conflict of interest when you see one (Mrs. Obama's hospital)your ability to analyze and judge any situation comes into question. Without good judgment Obama's qualifications are even thinner than they were before. It is no surprise that these interviews were released on a Friday afternoon. He's hoping that the initial impact will get buried in weekend coverage that nobody will pay attention to.

fed up

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:20:05 -0600

What makes you think this is coming clean. Obama has a big closet.