Showing posts with label chicago. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chicago. Show all posts

Friday, April 9, 2010

Obama's Make-Believe Life

Hat Tip Libby

by Janet Crain

Once upon a time in a land far away, the perfect candidate was created. Some say by magic or something akin. A handsome urbane, well spoken charmer who would hoodwink the American people, much to their belated regret and chagrin. Some are too proud to admit their mistake, while some are too, let us say, dense common sense challenged to realize it yet. But I beg of you read this in full. Click on the link to the rest of the article. It makes more sense than anything I have read in a long time.

The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.



By Alan Caruba

I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.

In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father” was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope” followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a “communist with a small ‘c’” was the real author.

His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.

He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?

He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool” in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.

Click here for the rest of the article:

http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/obamas-make-believe-life.html


This blog is © Janet Crain

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Friday, February 20, 2009

Do Any of These People Pay Their Bills?

February 20, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park -- despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions.

"The Democratic National Committee has not yet paid us,'' Peter Scales, a spokesman for the city's Office of Budget and Management, said Thursday after questions from the Chicago Sun-Times. "We're reaching out to them this week."

» Click to view image
The Democratic National Committee has not paid Chicago for the cost of Barack Obama's election night rally in Grant Park. (John J. Kim/Sun-Times)

THE BILL

The bill for Barack Obama's election night rally at Grant Park Police $1 million Emergency Management and Communications Office $121,578
Fire Department $85,965
Streets and Sanitation $71,694
Transportation $49,659
Cultural Affairs $2,567
Environment $2,309
CTA $201,500
Chicago Park District $202,440
(Park District breakdown): Giant video boards $68,900
Electrical $37,185
Sound $37,500
Stagehands $29,850
Portable toilets $12,500
Security $7,505
Stage rental $6,000
Bike racks, barricades $2,000
Heavy equipment $1,000
Total bill $1,737,712

Stacie Paxton, a spokeswoman for the Obama-controlled DNC, explained the reimbursement delay by saying, "We are still looking at various costs and bills.'' She would not say whether parts of the bill are disputed.
The city spent $1 million on police protection for the rally. The Office of Emergency Management and Communications racked up more than $120,000 in expenses, including $19,500 paid to police official Neil Sullivan to quarterback election night logistics.

In late October, Mayor Daley assured that the cash-flush Obama campaign would reimburse the city for every penny spent on the rally. "We have a financial crisis," he said at the time. "The City of Chicago could not afford $2 million on this because we're gonna be laying off people, cutting back. That [cost] would really be unfortunate. . . . It's a huge cost to the City of Chicago.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1441157,CST-NWS-rally20.article


© Janet Crain

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Thursday, January 29, 2009

Blagojevich Removed From Office By Illinois State Senate

BREAKING NEWS


Without a dissenting vote, the Illinois State Senate found Rod Blagojevich guilty of abuse of his office. He was the eighth governor in United States history to be removed, andthe first in 21 years.Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na


Blagojevich Ousted by Illinois State Senate

By MALCOLM GAY and SUSAN SAULNY
Published: January 29, 2009
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois State Senate Thursday convicted Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich on a sprawling article of impeachment that charged him with abusing his power. The vote prompted the governor’s immediate and permanent ouster and ended nearly two months of political spectacle in which he sought unsuccessfully to salvage his reputation and career here and across the country.

Mr. Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat who rose from the ranks of Chicago ward politics on the strength of his charisma and family connections, is the first governor in the state’s history to be impeached. The senators voted 59 to 0 in favor of removing him after a four-day trial and about two hours of deliberation.

© Janet Crain

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Tuesday, December 9, 2008

With Friends Like This...........

Recorded Nov. 5th (the day after election) as part of an ongoing investigation:

"I've got this thing and it's f***ing golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for f***in' nothing. I'm not gonna do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there," Blagojevich said in a phone call secretly recorded by the FBI on November 5, the day after the election, according to the affidavit.

The FBI affidavit said Blagojevich had been told by an adviser "the President-elect can get ROD BLAGOJEVICH's wife on paid corporate boards in exchange for naming the President-elect's pick to the Senate."

Told by two other advisers he has to "suck it up" for two years, the FBI says it heard Blagojevich complain he has to give this "motherf***er [the President-elect] his Senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him."




The following articles will help familiarize you with the key players in this sordid saga beginning to unfold:

Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for OpEd News and an investigative journalist focused n exposing corruption in government and corporate America. Read her reports and prepare to be astonished. Many of those names "paying to play" will be familiar:

Part I - Curtain for Barack Obama


Part II - Curtain Time for Barack Obama

Part III - Curtain Time for Barack Obama - The Final Chapter


Part IV - Curtain Time for Barack Obama


Hat Tip to www.Radarsite.com


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Wright Singles Out Hasselback and Confuses WWII History


This man just won't go away. But I bet Obama wishes he would. Apparently miffed at no invitation to the inauguration, he lashed out at the media last Sunday andmade a major gaffe about the significance of Pearl Harbor Day. Pictured at left in happier days.
And people wonder why Obama can't quit smoking!

Wright visits Trinity pulpit, lashes media
Andrew Wang December 7, 2008 at 2:49 PM
For the first time since his retirement last spring, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. returned to the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ this morning with two goals: glorifying God and vilifying the media.In honor of Trinity's 47th anniversary, Wright preached Sunday worship services in place of Rev. Otis Moss III, who was attending his father's farewell from the pulpit of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland.

On Sunday, church officials turned reporters away from the worship service. But services were streamed live on the Internet, and audio and video recordings were sold in the church bookstore.Wright said no amount of media coverage could dampen Trinity spirit."Jesus said upon this rock I will build--listen to the promise--my church," he said. "And the gates of Hell--listen to the promise--the gates of Hell--neither ABC nor CNN--the gates of Hell--neither Hannity nor O'Reilly--the gates of Hell--neither Time, Time magazine, Chicago Sun Times, Chicago Tribune ... the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Nothing will be impossible with God."
At the 11 a.m. service, Wright belittled "baby milk believers," who, he said, suffer a delusion that politics don't belong in the pulpit. He pointed out that "Luke the evangelist, not Wright the radical" lambasted the oppressive policies of the Roman government in the Gospel story that recounts Jesus' life."Any preacher who dares to point out the simple ugly facts found in every field imaginable is demonized as volatile, controversial, incendiary, inflammatory, anti-American and radical," Wright said, taking time out to note the thousands of Japanese civilians who died 67 years to the day when American warplane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. (Actually, Dec. 7 marks the day when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.)
He implied that his previous use of derogatory language to describe Italians in a past sermon referred to the Roman oppression Luke condemned."Emperor Augustus in Rome--that's in Italy, dizzy blond on the View," Wright said, presumably referring to conservative television personality Elisabeth Hasselback, who has railed about Wright on the ABC daytime talk show.

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/12/reverend-jeremiah-wright-trinity-united-baptist-church-chicago-obama.html