Hi, gang.  Comments and recommendations are most welcome!  

Now I need to catch up on the latest diaries here!

Are you a paid operative?

This getting ridiculous.

Keep digging because the press won't do squat to Vett the Senator from Chicago.

I will continue to support and encourage support of John Edwards!

John Edwards.
http://johnedwards.com

Contibute and take action for John Edwards
https://www.johnedwards.com/action

Blog on John Edwards site
http://blog.johnedwards.com/

Nevada
http://www.johnedwards.com/nevada/

South Carolina
http://www.johnedwards.com/sc/

When are people going to learn?

Bigtime.

That woke the media up a little bit.  In the last few days John Harwood, and Brian Williams - two heavies for sure - have open questioned how the media has treated Obama to date and wondered if he was give a pass or a soft treatment because some reporters may quietly support him.

That is going to stop.

Mark Halperin going after him won't help a bit.  I think Halperin is a tool who is too quick to swallow the GOP talking points du jour but like it or not is a one of the guys that sets the CW.  

Following was part of an earlier diary you did on Sen. Obama in which you take very selective quotes from an article.  

There are more details on Obama's Illinois state senate voting record, from a Chicago Tribune columnist, who quotes 2004 Democratic primary opponents' concern about Obama's record:

   "You want to talk about ducking issues Mr. Obama? Where were you in Springfield when there were six pro-choice votes called? You were present or not present, but you weren't there to vote. So let's not talk about who ducked issues here." --Cook County Treasurer [Democrat] Maria Pappas, at the Feb. 23, 2004  Democratic Senate Primary debate

   "Seven times, Barack Obama ducked [the issue of abortion]. ... Each time he ducked by voting `present' instead of taking a stand." --2004 [Democrat] Blair Hull campaign flier

The Tribune columnist, Eric Zorn, dug up the records on "then-state Sen. Barack Obama's 'present' votes on tough issues in the Illinois Legislature--votes that at least two of his opponents in the March 16, 2004 Democratic U.S. Senate primary say mark him as a coward":

   Additionally, in 1997, Obama voted "present" on a proposal to drop the penalty for carrying a concealed gun from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Did you accidently miss the idea that the portions you quoted were used in the article to soundly discredit them?  How is it you "forgot" to mention the whole point of the article?  Did you intend to bury the intent of the article behind a link so fewer people would see it?

The blog article was a repost from March 19, 2004 when Dem oponents and Alan Keyes failed in an attempt to lie about Sen. Obama's support for pro-choice.  In case you missed it the conclusion was:

Sutherland just laughs. "We also had [Democratic Senate leader] Emil Jones, [current Atty. Gen.] Lisa Madigan, Miguel del Valle, Rickey Hendon and other very strong pro-choice legislators voting `present' on that one," she said. "It was all done to pull `present' votes off the fence."

Obama confirmed Sutherland's account of the legislative strategy and said, "No one was more active to beat back those bills than I was."

"Criticizing Obama on the basis of `present' votes indicates you don't have a great understanding of the process," said Thom Mannard, director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence.

Or you are willing to pretend you don't to score cheap political points.

There's dirt here all right. It's all over the hands of those pointing the finger.

So if Obama is unacceptable because of his big money contacts then Hillary must be radioactive. She has made NO attempt at lessen the power of the lobbyist in her campaign.

Isn't someone who is at lest making incremental  improvements better then the status quo (aka Hillary).

This was as predictable as the moves of that 17 year old guy who took you to the junior prom.  Too bad Seymour beat you to it.

In addition to not being within a mile of illegal, there is a pretty simple explanation why this story has not and will not get anywhere no matter how many times the Clinton clan repeats it.  Obama made a judgment mistake and has repeatedly admitted that he made a judgment mistake.

And Obama has learned from this mistake by making the diminution of the corrosive impact of money on the political process a centerpiece of his Presidential campaign.  He's not perfect but he is trying.

That's that.

what happened to change?  I thought he was billed as a fresh, uncontaminated face which makes up for no experience. Seems he has experience, but of his 'wrong' kind?  

ok, so Obama has one guy on his campaign who is a "state" lobbyist, and he exercised poor judgment on a real estate deal.  I have heard this for more than a year now.  we could go on and on and on and on and on and on about the poor judgment of Clinton and her and her husband's nefarious conduct of the past.  The Obama campaign doesn't do it because we believe he can win this thing on his own merit.  He does not have to resort to such Rovian political methods whereby a candidate compensates for being a crappy candidate by tearing down the other one.  But since you continue to annoy us with this bs, let's break down the message you're pushing once and for all.....

You want us to believe that Obama is not as sincere as he appears to many of us because he has one person in his campaign who is a state lobbyist.  Whereas your candidate admits to taking millions of dollars from special interest groups and lobbyists without apology.  So then, your argument is that they are both corrupt, and we should give up any hope of the system changing.  Our lives will always be ruled by special interests, and there is no way to stop it.  We should continue to bend over and take it because we're just part of the masses and that's what we deserve.   We should continue with the status quo  and vote for your candidate because that's what's safe.  Sorry, but I am a little more optimistic than that.  I think that although Barack has received some assistance from lobbyists,(albeit minimal) he speaks out against the practice. He also has minimized it in his own campaign to such a high degree that there is a lot of hope that once he gets into power he will be able to force others in congress and future presidents to halt the practice.  if you think our country has not been overrun by special interests and their lobbyists, you're clearly either one of them yourself or you're ignorant and not paying attention.  

i bet no one likes you in real life.

scum sucking bastard.

I don't know much about the Rezko affair, which is about ten-thousand times more than the average voter knows about it. It just don't got legs! And it shouldn't, because it's one of those sources of smoke lacking fire.

Not that it shouldn't be investigated thoroughly, but it has been - and still, nothing.

Wow. I had heard about the Rezko thing but didn't realize he had "fibbed" to the Chicago Tribune about doing favors for him. I also didn't realize that after Obama wrote a letter for Rezko's housing project that the buildings looked so horrible.

I am not an Obama or Clinton supporter so you can probably guess who I support. The Republicans will rip Obama to shreds on this in the General if he were to win. People don't respect slumlords like Rezko. I think this speaks volumes about the judgement of Obama and whether he is squeaky-clean.

I doubt if many Obama supporters will care though. They seem too mesmerized to pay this much mind.

The most amusing aspect about the fawning pro-Obama MSN talking-heads is how they took the Obama Iowa caucus win to assume that he should somehow be corronated, because talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey, fellow MSM talking-head, decreed it so.

Presumably that Iowa win--in keeping with the Des Moines Register poll, which was made a self-fulfilling prophecy--was all perfectly proper, but heaven forbid that New Hampshire, which proved the anti-Clinton polls annd pundits wrong, should have been proper.

Thus came the kooky Dennis Kucinich, which most of his own native Clevelanders are disgusted with, to the MSM and their honey Obama's rescue.

One can bet the MSM are going to report Kucinich's hair-brained charges, so long as they are against the Clintons.

And one can bet that the MSM are going to try to bring up racist charges against the truly "first black President" as Toni Morrison aptly named him, if it can somehow bolster Obama's chances in South Carolina.

The problem with that is, Bill Clinton was absolutely right--Obama is a fantasy.  

And Clinton is, really, in many ways outside of his skin color, more "black" than Obama.

First and foremost, Obama is only half African-American.  One has to wonder where his other half falls in the racial spectrum.

Secondly, Obama's largely privileged youth has about as much in common with most Americans of color as a country-clubber does with his golfing caddy.  

That he should be arrogant enough to believe that he is JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. combined demonstrates how appalling is his rhetoric.

Finally, Bill Clinton was as close to "white trash" growing up in Arkanas as one could get.  In the midst of the worst of racial tensions, he embraced Americans of color at a time and place where such relations made one a literal outcast.

African Americans knew he was the real article, and all the mudslinging from the MSM on Bill Clinton had no effect.

And in spite of the latest assault from the MSM, this new effort to impugn Bill Clinton will have no effect either.

Whereas the honey Obama, whose very privileged status and "give me the presidency, hell I've been in the Senate for three years so I consider my dues paid," resonates with no one else save the equally privileged MSM--who, like Obama, are legends in their own mind.

Of course, a neutral observer will search in vain to find the latest corruption charges on Obama to be properly dissected on any major news outlet.  Unless one peruses the Internet or reads an occasional Chicago newspaper, one wouldn't know just how truly corrupt Barack Obama is.

Obama is an unvetted time-bomb set to explode, and a genuine gift to the GOP.  

The MSM has been in overdrive since last November, when Russert and company fired their first true anti-Clinton salvo, a cause carried up by the Iowa caucus goers--largely bought-and-paid for outside forces from the Obama camp--in an effort to make him appear invincible before any actual primary vote was cast.

Then came all those "heavy" endorsements: Culinary workers in Nevada, solicited to vote in lock-step rather than with their brains, when most of those workers know damn well that the Clinton years were better for them; and of course the verdict from all sorts of high profile but still absolute losers like Bill Bradley and John Kerry.

The hope and prayer was that the steady drumbeat, and the anti-Clinton hammering would bestow upon Obama the nomination, rather like everything else in his life, without really having to much work for it.

But God bless those New Hampshire voters--they saw through the MSM facade.  Reality came to America once more, at least momentarily--because the next anti-Clinton onslaught has already begun.

But the glory days for the MSM honey Obama are dwindling down, and after Florida and the many states beyond in which real Democrats cast their ballots for a Democratic nominee, the loyalty to the Clintons, rather than the risk of the three-year neophyte, will hold strong.

Naturally the MSM has convinced itself--and its many purveyers--that Senator Clinton against Senator McCain would mean a McCain victory.

Nope.  No way.  If anybody can reveal just how much in bed McCain has been with GWB, it is the Clintons, who have witnessed it all.

If she is the Democratic nominee, she is the next President.  Karl Rove, Roger Ailes, and talking heads Russert/WIlliams/Matthews have long known this.

But aside from now outright assassinating Senator Clinton, the MSM's recent attacks on the Clintons can do little to move bedrock Democrats away from their favored nominee.

When it comes to assaults--from sex scandals to accusations of murder, theft, whatever--everything has been charged against the Clintons for fifteen years--there is nothing salacious that hasn't been said already.

Bill Clinton, in particular, is the 24-carat gold politician of the Democratic Party.

Hillary has him by her side.  That is quite enough.  The MSM talking heads be damned--and hopefully soon, damned they shall be.

Its time we Clinton folk gave back as well as we've gotten lo these many years.

And soon a national slap-in-the-face of the Clinton-hating MSM is about to hurt them, hard.

A friend who is a master googlist was curious about one of the top contributors to Obama's campaign  that she saw on Open Secrets. The company is National Amusements, Inc. and they've given a total of $220,950 to his campaign.

What she came up with was quite surprising:

Owner [of National Amusements, Inc] is Sumner Redstone and his daughter -- same as Viacom/ CBS. They're the ones who disabled any and all Barack Obama comments from their online news sites, in case someone might say something racist. No other candidate enjoys the disabled comment feature. In case someone might say something... sexist.

From Wiki:

National Amusements, Inc. is a privately owned media and entertainment company based in Dedham, Massachusetts, USA. The company was founded in 1936 as the Northeast Theatre Corporation by Michael Redstone.

National Amusements is now owned by Michael Redstone's son, Sumner Redstone, who holds 80% of the company, and Sumner's daughter Shari Redstone who owns the remaining 20%.[1] It holds controlling voting interests in CBS Corporation, Viacom, and Midway Games. It is an equal partner in the online ticketing service MovieTickets.com and operates more than 1,500 movie screens across the United States, the United Kingdom, Latin America, and Russia under its Showcase Cinemas, Multiplex Cinemas, Cinema de Lux, and KinoStar brands. It also controls the former Paramount theaters that were disbanded in the 1948 Paramount decision.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Am usements

(Sorry for not including all the links in the Wiki article. There are tons)

What kind of a partisan hack would ignore Norm Hsu, who bundled millions for Hillary, and is now in jail, and attend only to Rezko, who is just Barack's next door neighbor.

This kind of biased hack diary makes me throw up.  The more I read the partisan wacks who support Hillary, the more repelled I am.

01.12.2008  

http://www.goiam.org/content.cfm?cID=117 08

Fact and Fiction on the Campaign Trail

Senator Barack Obama recently released a television campaign ad that highlighted an IAM leader from Galesburg, Illinois. Only the back of his T-shirt was visible and it says, "JOBS! Worth Fighting For." The image was memorable. But so are the facts.

"Illinois State Senator Obama came to a single rally as union, state and community leaders tried to keep the Maytag plant in Galesburg open," said IP Buffenbarger. "Once elected to the United States Senate, he never lifted a finger to help stop the outsourcing of those jobs. He stood idly by as an entire Illinois community was devastated."

When United Airlines declared bankruptcy, it happened again. Thousands of airline workers in Illinois saw their pensions disappear, their health care benefits shrink and their wages fall to pre-1996 levels. When those blue collar workers need his help, again Senator Obama stood idly by.

"As Senator Obama's rhetoric flourished, his own constituents' lives dissolved," said Buffenbarger. "His new-found zeal for the trade issue seems more rhetorical excess than real passion."

A United Airlines Pilot writes:

I loved barack when he first came out; not anymore.  He better not talk about not taking money from big business, because if you work for United Airlines you know that is what he did... When we were going thru bankruptcy, he was set to sign on to a bill to save our pensions, at the last minute he voted against saving our pensions, and then said he couldn't vote against his constituent united airlines from his state of Illinois... he is a liar... he is also spineless and gutless... he has screwed us on alot of other worker friendly issues. i dont care who wins, but not this poser.  (Monday, August 06, 2007)