44 replies to this topic

[inawe]

Truthiness Stages a Comeback

By FRANK RICH
Published: New York Times, September 20, 2008

NOT until 2004 could the 9/11 commission at last reveal the title of the intelligence briefing President Bush ignored on Aug. 6, 2001, in
Crawford: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” No wonder John McCain called for a new “9/11 commission” to “get to the bottom” of
9/14, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off another kind of blood bath in Lower Manhattan. Put a slo-mo Beltway panel in charge,
and Election Day will be ancient history before we get to the bottom of just how little he and the president did to defend America against
a devastating new threat on their watch.

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and
potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every
part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five
scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s
not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice.

McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by
definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of
truthiness. All campaigns, Obama’s included, engage in false attacks.
But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to
mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard
journalistic stabs at puncturing it. When a McCain spokesman told Politico a week ago that “we’re not too concerned about what the media
filter tries to say” about the campaign’s incessant fictions, he was channeling a famous Bush dictum of 2003: “Somehow you just got to go
over the heads of the filter.” In Bush’s case, the lies lobbed over the heads of the press were to sell the war in Iraq. That propaganda
blitz, devised by a secret White House Iraq Group that included Rove, was a triumph. In mere months, Americans came to believe that Saddam
Hussein had aided the 9/11 attacks and even that Iraqis were among the hijackers. A largely cowed press failed to set the record straight.
Just as the Bushies once flogged uranium from Africa, so Palin ceaselessly repeats her discredited claim that she said “no thanks” to
the Bridge to Nowhere. Nothing is too small or sacred for the McCain campaign to lie about. It was even caught (by The Christian Science
Monitor) peddling an imaginary encounter between Cindy McCain and Mother Teresa when McCain was adopting her daughter in Bangladesh. If
you doubt that the big lies are sticking, look at the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Half of voters now believe in the daily
McCain refrain that Obama will raise their taxes. In fact, Obama proposes raising taxes only on the 1.9 percent of households that make
more than $250,000 a year and cutting them for nearly everyone else. You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest-hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on “The View.” Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several
falsehoods, including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska. Behar used the word “lies” to his face.
The McCains are so used to deference from “the filter” that Cindy McCain later complained that “The View” picked “our bones clean.” In
our news culture, Behar, a stand-up comic by profession, looms as the new Edward R. Murrow. Network news, with its dwindling handful of
investigative reporters, has barely mentioned, let alone advanced, major new print revelations about Cindy McCain’s drug-addiction
history (in The Washington Post) and the rampant cronyism and secrecy in Palin’s governance of Alaska (in last Sunday’s New York Times). At
least the networks repeatedly fact-check the low-hanging fruit among the countless Palin lies, but John McCain’s past usually remains off
limits. That’s strange since the indisputable historical antecedent for our current crisis is the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal of the
go-go 1980s. When Charles Keating’s bank went belly up because of risky, unregulated investments, it wiped out its depositors’ savings
and cost taxpayers more than $3 billion. More than 1,000 other S.&L. institutions capsized nationwide. It was ugly for the McCains. He had
received more than $100,000 in Keating campaign contributions, and both McCains had repeatedly hopped on Keating’s corporate jet. Cindy
McCain and her beer-magnate father had invested nearly $360,000 in a Keating shopping center a year before her husband joined four senators
in inappropriate meetings with regulators charged with S.&L. oversight. After Congressional hearings, McCain was reprimanded for
“poor judgment.” He had committed no crime and had not intervened to
protect Keating from ruin. Yet he, like many deregulators in his party, was guilty of bankrupt policy-making before disaster struck. He
was among the sponsors of a House resolution calling for the delay of regulations intended to deter risky investments just like those that
brought down Lincoln and its ilk. Ever since, McCain has publicly thrashed himself for his mistakes back then — and boasted of the
lessons he learned. He embraced campaign finance reform to rebrand himself as a “maverick.” But whatever lessons he learned are now
forgotten. For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown, McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped
avert the current catastrophe. In 1999, he supported a law co-authored by Gramm (and ultimately signed by Bill Clinton) that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies and investment banks from mingling their businesses. Equally laughable
is the McCain-Palin ticket’s born-again outrage over the greed of Wall Street C.E.O.’s. When McCain’s chief financial surrogate, Fiorina, was
fired as Hewlett-Packard’s chief executive after a 50 percent drop in shareholders’ value and 20,000 pink slips, she took home a package
worth $42 million. The McCain campaign canceled Fiorina’s television appearances last week after she inadvertently admitted that Palin was
unqualified to run a corporation. But that doesn’t mean Fiorina is gone. Gramm, too, was ostentatiously exiled after he blamed the
economic meltdown on our “nation of whiners” and “mental recession,” but he remains in the McCain loop. The corporate jets, lobbyists and
sleazes that gravitated around McCain in the Keating era have also reappeared in new incarnations. The Nation’s Web site recently
unearthed a photo of the resolutely anticelebrity McCain being greeted by the con man Raffaello Follieri and his then girlfriend, the
Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, as McCain celebrated his 70th birthday on Follieri’s rented yacht in Montenegro in August 2006. It’s
the perfect bookend to the old pictures of McCain in a funny hat partying with Keating in the Bahamas. Whatever blanks are yet to be
filled in on Obama, we at least know his economic plans and the known quantities who are shaping them (Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul
Volcker). McCain has reversed himself on every single economic issue this year, often within a 24-hour period, whether he’s judging the
strength of the economy’s fundamentals or the wisdom of the government bailout of A.I.G. He once promised that he’d run every decision past
Alan Greenspan — and even have him write a new tax code — but Greenspan has jumped ship rather than support McCain’s biggest
flip-flop, his expansion of the Bush tax cuts. McCain’s official chief economic adviser is now Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who last week declared
that McCain had “helped create” the BlackBerry. But Holtz-Eakin’s most telling statement was about McCain’s economic plans — namely, that the
details are irrelevant. “I don’t think it’s imperative at this moment to write down what the plan should be,” he said. “The real issue here
is a leadership issue.” This, too, is a Rove-Bush replay. We want a tough guy who will “fix” things with his own two hands — let’s take
out the S.E.C. chairman! — instead of wimpy Frenchified Democrats who just “talk.” The fine print of policy is superfluous if there’s a
quick-draw decider in the White House. The twin-pronged strategy of truculence and propaganda that sold Bush and his war could yet work
for McCain. Even now his campaign has kept the “filter” from learning the very basics about his fitness to serve as president — his finances
and his health. The McCain multihousehold’s multimillion-dollar mother lode is buried in Cindy McCain’s still-unreleased complete tax
returns. John McCain’s full medical records, our sole index to the odds of an imminent Palin presidency, also remain locked away. The
McCain campaign instead invited 20 chosen reporters to speed-read through 1,173 pages of medical history for a mere three hours on the
Friday before Memorial Day weekend. No photocopying was permitted. This is the same tactic of selective document release that the Bush
White House used to bamboozle Congress and the press about Saddam’s nonexistent W.M.D. As truthiness repeats itself, so may history, and
not as farce.

[inawe]

Lots of Straight Doubletalk

There are some dishonest people who are trying to present McCain as a watchdog of our financial system. This is the same McCain who was
embroiled in the Keating scandal.
http://www.thenation...6/keating_video .

More on this guy
http://www.thenation...20081006/sumner

There is that saying that each country has the government it's people deserve. People spreading lies and distortion deserve a McCain for
president. The problem is that I'm in the same boat and don't deserve him.

[biknut]

There is that saying that each country has the government it's people deserve. People spreading lies and distortion deserve a McCain for
president. The problem is that I'm in the same boat and don't deserve him.

I disagree. Since you work for Obama, and are obviously one of his liars you DO deserve McCain for your president.

No politician is without sin but since we only have 2 the choices, the question is which one has the most blood on his hands. Obama is far worse. He has so many skeletons in his closet. You want to compare? Here's just one case.

Look how many crooks he's associated with, but he didn't know anything about, rrright

Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy

The candidate endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair.

By Binyamin Appelbaum
Globe Staff / June 27, 2008
CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Some of the residents of Grove Parc say they are angry that Obama did not notice their plight. The development straddles the boundary of Obama's state Senate district. Many of the tenants have been his constituents for more than a decade.

"No one should have to live like this, and no one did anything about it," said Cynthia Ashley, who has lived at Grove Parc since 1994.

Obama's campaign, in a written response to Globe questions, affirmed the candidate's support of public-private partnerships as an alternative to public housing, saying that Obama has "consistently fought to make livable, affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods available to all."

The campaign did not respond to questions about whether Obama was aware of the problems with buildings in his district during his time as a state senator, nor did it comment on the roles played by people connected to the senator.

Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.

Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama's US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama's former law firm. Davis, a developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used government subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several apartments.

Antoin "Tony" Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama's early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko's company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama's district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.

Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers - including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko - collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama's campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama's own accounting.

One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.

Butler and Davis did not respond to messages. Rezko is in prison; his lawyer did not respond to inquiries.

Jarrett, a powerful figure in the Chicago development community, agreed to be interviewed but declined to answer questions about Grove Parc, citing what she called a continuing duty to Habitat's former business partners. She did, however, defend Obama's position that public-private partnerships are superior to public housing.

"Government is just not as good at owning and managing as the private sector because the incentives are not there," said Jarrett, whose company manages more than 23,000 apartments. "I would argue that someone living in a poor neighborhood that isn't 100 percent public housing is by definition better off."

In the middle of the 20th century, Chicago built some of the nation's largest public housing developments, culminating in Robert Taylor Homes: 4,415 apartments in 28 high-rise buildings stretching for 2 miles along an interstate highway.

By the late 1980s, however, Robert Taylor Homes and the rest of the Chicago developments had become American bywords for urban misery. The roughly 30 developments operated for poor families by the Chicago Housing Authority were plagued by crime and mired in poverty.

In Stateway Gardens, a large complex just north of Robert Taylor, a study of 1990 census data found the per-capita annual income was $1,650. And the projects were falling apart after decades of epic, sometimes criminal, mismanagement.

Similar problems plagued public housing in other cities, leading the federal government to greatly increase funding to address the problems. Many cities, including Boston, mostly used that money to rehabilitate their projects, maintaining public control.

Chicago chose a more dramatic approach. Under Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was elected in 1989, the city launched a massive plan to let private companies tear down the projects and build mixed-income communities on the same land.

The city also hired private companies to manage the remaining public housing. And it subsidized private companies to create and manage new affordable housing, some of which was used to accommodate tenants displaced from public housing.

Chicago's plans drew critics from the start. They asked why the government should pay developers to perform a basic public service - one successfully performed by governments in other cities. And they noted that privately managed projects had a history of deteriorating because guaranteed government rent subsidies left companies with little incentive to spend money on maintenance.

Most of all, they alleged that Chicago was interested primarily in redeveloping projects close to the Loop, the downtown area that was seeing a surge of private development activity, shunting poor families to neighborhoods farther from the city center. Only about one in three residents was able to return to the redeveloped projects.

"They are rapidly displacing poor people, and these companies are profiting from this displacement," said Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle of Southside Together Organizing for Power, a community group that seeks to help tenants stay in the same neighborhoods.

"The same exact people who ran these places into the ground," the private companies paid to build and manage the city's affordable housing, "now are profiting by redeveloping them."

Barack Obama was among the many Chicago residents who shared Daley's conviction that private companies would make better landlords than the Chicago Housing Authority.

He had seen the failure of the public projects in the mid-1980s as a community organizer at Altgeld Gardens, a large public housing complex on the far South Side.

He once told the Chicago Tribune that he had briefly considered becoming a developer of affordable housing. But after graduating from Harvard Law School in 1991, he turned down a job with Tony Rezko's development company, Rezmar, choosing instead to work at the civil rights law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, then led by Allison Davis.

The firm represented a number of nonprofit companies that were partnering with private developers to build affordable housing with government subsidies.

Obama sometimes worked on their cases. In at least one instance, he represented the nonprofit company that owned Grove Parc, Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., when it was sued by the city for failing to adequately heat one of its apartment complexes.

Shortly after becoming a state senator in 1997, Obama told the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin that his experience working with the development industry had reinforced his belief in subsidizing private developers of affordable housing.

"That's an example of a smart policy," the paper quoted Obama as saying. "The developers were thinking in market terms and operating under the rules of the marketplace; but at the same time, we had government supporting and subsidizing those efforts."

Obama translated that belief into legislative action as a state senator. In 2001, Obama and a Republican colleague, William Peterson, sponsored a successful bill that increased state subsidies for private developers. The law let developers designated by the state raise up to $26 million a year by selling tax credits to Illinois residents. For each $1 in credits purchased, the buyer was allowed to decrease his taxable income by 50 cents.

Obama also cosponsored the original version of a bill creating an annual fund to subsidize rents for extremely low-income tenants, although it did not pass until 2005, after he had left the state Senate.

"He was very passionate about the issues," said Julie Dworkin of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, who worked with Obama on affordable housing issues. "He was someone we could go to and count on him to be there."

The developers gave Obama their financial support. Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko all served on Obama's campaign finance committee when he won a seat in the US Senate in 2004.

Obama has continued to support increased subsidies as a presidential candidate, calling for the creation of an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which could distribute an estimated $500 million a year to developers. The money would be siphoned from the profits of two mortgage companies created and supervised by the federal government, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"I will restore the federal government's commitment to low-income housing," Obama wrote last September in a letter to the Granite State Organizing Project, an umbrella group for several dozen New Hampshire religious, community, and political organizations. He added, "Our nation's low-income families are facing an affordable housing crisis, and it is our responsibility to ensure this crisis does not get worse by ineffective replacement of existing public-housing units."

One of the earliest public-private partnerships of the type supported by Daley and Obama took place in the Woodlawn neighborhood, a checkerboard of battered apartment buildings and vacant lots just south of the University of Chicago.

Grove Parc Plaza opened there in 1990 as a redevelopment of an older housing complex. The buildings had a new owner and a major renovation funded by the federal government. Even the name Grove Parc Plaza was new.

The owner, a local nonprofit company called Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., was led by two of the neighborhood's most powerful ministers, Arthur Brazier and Leon Finney. Obama had relationships with both men. In 1999, he donated $500 of his campaign funds to another of their community groups, The Woodlawn Organization.

Woodlawn Preservation hired a private management firm, William Moorehead and Associates, to oversee the complex. In 2001, the company lost that contract and a contract to manage several public housing projects for allegedly failing to do its job. The company's head, William Moorehead, was subsequently convicted of embezzling almost $1 million in management fees.

Woodlawn Preservation hired a new property manager, Habitat Co. At the time, the company was headed by its founder, Daniel Levin, also a major contributor to Obama's campaigns. Valerie Jarrett was executive vice president.

Residents say the complex deteriorated under Moorehead's management and continued to decline after Habitat took over. A maintenance worker at the complex says money often wasn't even available for steel wool to plug rat holes. But as late as 2003, a routine federal inspection still gave conditions at Grove Parc a score of 82 on a 100-point scale.

When inspectors returned in 2005, they found conditions were significantly worse. Inspectors gave the complex a score of 56 and warned that improvements were necessary. They returned the following year and found things had reached a new low. Grove Parc got a score of 11 and a final warning. Three months later, inspectors found there had been insufficient improvements and moved to seize the complex from Woodlawn Preservation.

After negotiations with tenants, the government agreed to allow a new company, Preservation of Affordable Housing, a Boston-based firm, to replace Habitat as the manager of Grove Parc. The company is negotiating to buy the development, which would then be demolished and replaced with new housing.

Officials at Woodlawn Preservation say the government didn't give them enough money to properly maintain Grove Parc. Habitat's Jarrett declined to comment on Grove Parc in particular but said it is hard to manage something you don't own.

But other Chicago developers and housing activists say federal subsidies can be adequate if managed properly. They say Grove Parc stands apart for how badly it fell into disrepair.

Preservation of Affordable Housing has assumed responsibility for numerous subsidized complexes across the country.

"Grove Parc is quite an exception to what we've normally done because it's in such bad shape," said the nonprofit's chief executive, Amy Anthony. "These complexes are often tired, they're always denser than today's philosophy, but they're not usually anywhere near as deteriorated."

Similar problems also plagued the next generation of affordable housing de velopment in Obama's district, created as part of the Daley administration's efforts to subsidize smaller apartment buildings scattered throughout neighborhoods.

One of the largest recipients of the subsidies was Rezmar Corp., founded in 1989 by Tony Rezko, who ran a company that sold snacks at city beaches, and Daniel Mahru, who ran a company that sold ice to Rezko. Neither man had development experience.

Over the next nine years, Rezmar used more than $87 million in government grants, loans, and tax credits to renovate about 1,000 apartments in 30 Chicago buildings. Companies run by the partners also managed many of the buildings, collecting government rent subsidies.

Rezmar collected millions in development fees but fell behind on mortgage payments almost immediately. On its first project, the city government agreed to reduce the company's monthly payments from almost $3,000 to less than $500.

By the time Obama entered the state Senate in 1997, the buildings were beginning to deteriorate. In January 1997, the city sued Rezmar for failing to provide adequate heat in a South Side building in the middle of an unusually cold winter. It was one of more than two dozen housing-complaint suits filed by the city against Rezmar for violations at its properties.

People who lived in some of the Rezmar buildings say trash was not picked up and maintenance problems were ignored. Roofs leaked, windows whistled, insects moved in.

"In the winter I can feel the cold air coming through the walls and the sockets," said Anthony Frizzell, 57, who has lived for almost two decades in a Rezmar building on South Greenwood Avenue. "They didn't insulate it or nothing."

Sharee Jones, who lives in another former Rezko building one block away, said her apartment was rat-infested for years.

"You could hear them under the floor and in the walls, and they didn't do nothing about it," Jones said.

By the time Rezmar asked Chicago's city government for a loan on its final subsidized development, in 1998, the city's housing commissioner was describing the company in a memo as being in "bad shape." The Daley administration still made the $3.1 million loan.

Shortly thereafter, Rezmar switched from subsidized housing to high-end development, fueled by the money it had made in subsidized work. Rezko's companies also stopped managing the subsidized complexes.

"Affordable housing run by private companies just doesn't work," Mahru, who no longer works with Rezko, said in an interview with the Globe. "It's difficult, if not impossible, for a private company to maintain affordable housing for low-income tenants."

Responsibility for several buildings fell to the Chicago Equity Fund, which had purchased government tax credits from Rezmar to help finance the projects. After Rezko walked away, the fund was obliged to maintain the buildings as affordable housing. If it did not, it would have to repay the government for the tax credits.

The fund found the buildings in terrible condition. In a 2001 plea to the state to temporarily suspend payments on its mortgages, a fund executive wrote that heating problems, lapsed maintenance, and uncollected rent made the buildings almost impossible to manage.

Most of the buildings have since been foreclosed upon, forcing the tenants to find new housing.

All the while, Tony Rezko was forging a close friendship with Barack Obama. When Obama opened his campaign for state Senate in 1995, Rezko's companies gave Obama $2,000 on the first day of fund-raising. Save for a $500 contribution from another lawyer, Obama didn't raise another penny for six weeks. Rezko had essentially seeded the start of Obama's political career.

As Obama ascended, Rezko became one of his largest fund-raisers. And in 2005, Rezko and his wife helped the Obamas purchase the house where they now live.

Eleven of Rezmar's buildings were located in the district represented by Obama, containing 258 apartments. The building without heat in January 1997, the month Obama entered the state Senate, was in his district. So was Jones's building with rats in the walls and Frizzell's building that lacked insulation. And a redistricting after the 2000 Census added another 350 Rezmar apartments to the area represented by Obama.

But Obama has contended that he knew nothing about any problems in Rezmar's buildings.

After Rezko's assistance in Obama's home purchase became a campaign issue, at a time when the developer was awaiting trial in an unrelated bribery case, Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times that the deterioration of Rezmar's buildings never came to his attention. He said he would have distanced himself from Rezko if he had known.

Other local politicians say they knew of the problems.

"I started getting complaints from police officers about particular properties that turned out to be Rezko properties," said Toni Preckwinkle, a Chicago alderman.

She had previously received campaign contributions from Rezmar and said she had regarded the company as a model, one of the city's best affordable housing developers.

But in the early 2000s, she called Rezko to ask for an explanation for the declining conditions. He told her Rezmar was "getting out of the business," she said - walking away from its responsibility for managing the developments.

"I didn't see him nor have anything to do with him after that," she said.

Preckwinkle, who will be an Obama delegate at the Democratic National Convention, said she would not answer any questions about Obama's role in her district, nor his relationship with Rezko.

Allison Davis, Obama's former law firm boss, dabbled in development for years while he worked primarily as a lawyer. He participated in the development of Grove Parc Plaza. And in 1996, Davis left his law firm to pursue a full-time career as an affordable housing developer, fueled by the subsidies from the Daley administration and aided, on occasion, by Obama himself.

Over roughly the past decade, Davis's companies have received more than $100 million in subsidies to renovate and build more than 1,500 apartments in Chicago, according to a Chicago Sun-Times tally. In several cases, Davis partnered with Tony Rezko. In 1998 the two men created a limited partnership to build an apartment building for seniors on Chicago's South Side. Obama wrote letters on state Senate stationery supporting city and state loans for the project.

In 2000 Davis asked the nonprofit Woods Fund of Chicago for a $1 million investment in a new development partnership, Neighborhood Rejuvenation Partners. Obama, a member of the board, voted in favor, helping Davis secure the investment.

The following year, Davis assembled another partnership to create New Evergreen/Sedgwick, a $10.7 million renovation of five walk-up buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood. The project, a model of small-scale, mixed-income development, was subsidized by almost $6 million in state loans and federal tax credits.

Conditions deteriorated quickly. Chronic plumbing failures consumed the project's financial reserves while leaving undrained sewage in some of the apartments. In October, after repeated complaints from building residents, the city government sued the owners, and a judge imposed a $5,500 fine.

New Evergreen/Sedgwick is managed by a company run by Cullen Davis, Allison Davis's son and also a contributor to Obama's campaigns. Cullen Davis said the problems were rooted in the way New Evergreen/Sedgwick was financed. Like most new projects, it is owned by a company created to own one building. That company determined how much to spend on renovations, how much to set aside for maintenance - and how much to keep as profit. When the maintenance funds ran out, there was no other source of money.

"All these deals are set up as islands," Cullen Davis acknowledged. In this case, "The margin of error at Sedgwick was a little too close to begin with."

Chicago's struggles with the deterioration of its subsidized private developments seemed to reach a new height in 2006, when the federal government foreclosed on Lawndale Restoration, the city's largest subsidized-housing complex. City inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations, including roof leaks, exposed wiring, and pools of sewage.

Lawndale Restoration was a collection of more than 1,200 apartments in 97 buildings spread across 300 blocks of west Chicago. It was owned by a company controlled by Cecil Butler, a former civil rights activist who came to be reviled as a slumlord by a younger generation of activists.

Lawndale Restoration was created in the early 1980s, when the federal government helped Butler take control of a group of old buildings, including lending $22 million to his company to redevelop the buildings and agreeing to subsidize tenant rents. In 1995, Butler's company got a $51 million loan from the state to fund additional renovations at Lawndale Restoration. In 2000 Butler's company brought in Habitat Co. to help manage the complex.

Nonetheless, the buildings deteriorated badly. The problems came to public attention in a dramatic way in 2004, after a sport utility vehicle driven by a suburban woman trying to buy drugs struck one of the buildings, causing it to collapse. City inspectors arrived in the ensuing glare, finding a long list of code violations, leading city officials to urge the federal government to seize the complex.

In the midst of the uproar, a small group of Lawndale residents gathered to rally against the Democratic candidate for the US Senate, Barack Obama.

Obama's Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, trailed badly in the polls and was not seen as a serious challenger. But the organizers had a simple message: Cecil Butler had donated $3,000 to Obama's campaign. Habitat had close ties to Obama. And Obama had remained silent about Lawndale's plight.

Paul Johnson, who helped to organize the protest, said Obama must have known about the problems.

"How didn't he know?" said Johnson. "Of course he knew. He just didn't care."

Butler did not return messages but in the past has said the government did not give him enough money to maintain the project. Habitat emphasized in a statement that its role at Lawndale was restricted to tasks that included financial oversight and management.

In 2006, following the foreclosure, the federal government sold the buildings to the city for $10. The city has since parceled out the buildings among two dozen developers, who are rebuilding Lawndale for the fourth time with yet another round of government loans and subsidies.

Even as Lawndale Restoration and Rezmar's buildings were foreclosed upon, and Grove Parc and other subsidized developments fell deeper into disrepair, Obama has remained a steadfast supporter of subsidizing private development.

And although he has distanced himself from Rezko, Obama has remained close to others in the development community. Jarrett participates in the campaign's senior staff meetings. And Obama chose another close friend, Martin Nesbitt, as his campaign treasurer. Nesbitt is chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority, one of the key overseers of the shift toward private management and development.

"Throughout his career in public service, Barack Obama has advocated for the development of mixed-income housing and public-private partnerships to create affordable housing as an alternative to publicly subsidized, concentrated, low-income housing," the Obama campaign said in a statement provided to the Globe.

As a result, some people in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods are torn between a natural inclination to support Obama and a concern about his relationships with the developers they hold responsible for Chicago's affordable housing failures. Some housing advocates worry that Obama has not learned from those failures.

"I'm not against Barack Obama," said Willie J.R. Fleming, an organizer with the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and a former public housing resident. "What I am against is some of the people around him."

Jamie Kalven, a longtime Chicago housing activist, put it this way: "I hope there is not much predictive value in his history and in his involvement with that community."

http://www.boston.co...licy/?page=full

[inawe]

Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CHARLES DUHIGG Published: September 21,2008

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000
a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the
mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against
stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

http://www.nytimes.c...amp;oref=slogin

[inawe]

Some more straight double-talk

McCain Doesn’t Regret Financial Dergulation; Says It Was “Helpful”
By: Blue Texan Monday September 22, 2008 7:58 am

On "60 Minutes" last night, McSame refused to disown the reckless financial deregulation of Wall Street he championed, which experts are universally blaming for the worst crisis since the Great Depression recent market adjustments.

PELLEY: In 1999, you were one of the Senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?

MCCAIN: No. I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.

Really, it's just astonishing that someone who was already knee-deep in banking scandals and who's economic adviser and campaign manager have their dirty fingerprints all over this one couldn't at least muster some variation of the "mistakes were made" cliche.

Not McSame. Even in the face of this epic catastrophe, he cannot bring himself to abandon the Club for Growth party line.

That's the mark of an ideologue, not a maverick.

http://firedoglake.c...it-was-helpful/

[luv2increase]

Plain and simple, you can't believe what you read in the media right now as it relates to John McCain and Sarah Palin. It is completely biased. If you watch MSNBC for instance, they talk nothing about how Obama is going to a great president or how in the world he is going to do it, but rather it is constant bickering mostly about Palin and a little about McCain.



Bottom line is this: Obama wants to spend spend spend money we don't have! The other day he said he'd give 50 billion to world poverty and by 2015 would cut world poverty in have by giving close to 800-900 billion. I think he has his priorities wrong. He needs to worry about our country first before he goes out and attempts to be the world's savior. Also, it has already been proven numerous times that the money would only go to the people in power of those poor, third world countries rather than the actual oppressed, poverty stricken people themselves!!! He wants to rid the US of our nuclear missile defense system. He wants to spend money on a national health care system that we don't have money to spend on. He wants to do all of this at the same time as decreasing our taxes. Say what??? He will most definitely put our country right into the slumps moreso than it already unfortunately is! What planet is this guy living on? It is like a homeless guy saying he is going to buy a Lambourghini on credit with no means of paying it back!

If you vote for Obama, you are not in favor of a good future for our country. The only reason why anyone is going to vote for him sadly is because they nitpick on my belief he has. For a pro-choice woman, she will completely put every other issue aside and solely vote for him in order to keep pro-choice. Heck, our country could be destroyed, but at least woman had the right to kill their baby in the process!!! It is completely absurd.

Edited by luv2increase, 22 September 2008 - 11:59 PM.

[inawe]

Plain and simple, you can't believe what you read in the media

Where did you see that Obama "he'd give 50 billion to world poverty and by 2015 would cut world poverty in have by giving close to 800-900
billion"? He also eats children for breakfast!
He wants to rid the US of our nuclear missile defense system? Good, any sensible person would. The only purpose of that system is to give
money to certain companies and piss off the Russian. By the way, the Russians are not communists any more.
Abortion is the law of the land. Only religious fanatics want to change something in the abortion issue.
As far as the country being destroyed, the highest probability is with bomb-bomb-bomb-McCain. What would happen if Shaakashvili tries to
retake South Ossetia and we enter the fight against the Russians?

[luv2increase]

Plain and simple, you can't believe what you read in the media

Where did you see that Obama "he'd give 50 billion to world poverty and by 2015 would cut world poverty in have by giving close to 800-900
billion"? He also eats children for breakfast!

http://elections.fox...overty-program/

Barack Obama, who lamented Friday that “we have not managed our federal budget with any kind of discipline,” is nonetheless promising to spend $50 billion on a United Nations anti-poverty program that critics say will drive up American debt.

But in December, Obama also sponsored the Global Poverty Act which, if passed, would require the president to commit to cutting global poverty in half by 2015. Critics say that would cost American taxpayers $845 billion.

Johns Hopkins professor Steve Hanke said such spending would merely drive up American debt, while doing almost nothing for the world’s poor.

“It goes down a bureaucratic rat-hole, lining the pockets of people who are connected to the power structure,” said Hanke, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “It’s basically a system to redistribute income from middle class people in the United States to rich people in poor countries. It never reaches those people who are living on a dollar a day.”

Eats kids for breakfast, wow! I bet you feel dumb now.

He wants to rid the US of our nuclear missile defense system?

Good, any sensible person would. The only purpose of that system is to give
money to certain companies and piss off the Russian. By the way, the Russians are not communists any more.

You must not be very old or understand how this stuff works. Good??? Why would you say that? Do you not know that nations want to destroy us and us having nuclear power is the only deterrent we have in our arsenal from preventing this from happening??? Where have you been?

any sensible person would

You are forgetting than every other nation with nuclear power will not dismantle all their nuclear arms as well. You are forgetting that the terrorists would definitely try and nuke us if they had the capabilities. You are not realizing we don't live in a utopian society.

If all countries and terrorist organizations would promise to not use nuclear weapons and to disarm the ones they currently have and there was some way to know for sure that absolutely every one of them were destroyed and somewhere down the line someone wouldn't create and execute a nuclear warhead, "THEN" we could get rid of our nukes. There is one problem though. There isn't anyone who is psychic in this world to determine this. This simply is not feasible. This simply won't happen; nukes are here to stay indefinitely!

Edited by luv2increase, 23 September 2008 - 03:20 AM.

[niner]

Plain and simple, you can't believe what you read in the media

Where did you see that Obama "he'd give 50 billion to world poverty and by 2015 would cut world poverty in have by giving close to 800-900 billion"? He also eats children for breakfast!

http://elections.fox...overty-program/

Fox News. Now there's a reliable source.

Barack Obama, who lamented Friday that “we have not managed our federal budget with any kind of discipline,” is nonetheless promising to spend $50 billion on a United Nations anti-poverty program that critics say will drive up American debt.

But in December, Obama also sponsored the Global Poverty Act which, if passed, would require the president to commit to cutting global poverty in half by 2015. Critics say that would cost American taxpayers $845 billion.

"Critics say" is not the same as Obama agreeing to spend that amount of money, which he's well aware isn't going to happen. The bill does not allocate any funding. It also has 114 cosponsors.

He wants to rid the US of our nuclear missile defense system?

Good, any sensible person would. The only purpose of that system is to give money to certain companies and piss off the Russian. By the way, the Russians are not communists any more.

You must not be very old or understand how this stuff works. Good??? Why would you say that? Do you not know that nations want to destroy us and us having nuclear power is the only deterrent we have in our arsenal from preventing this from happening??? Where have you been?

Missile "defense" systems are destabilizing. They make us less safe, not more.

[biknut]

Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CHARLES DUHIGG Published: September 21,2008

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000
a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the
mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against
stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

http://www.nytimes.c...amp;oref=slogin

Is this this the best you can do? 2 measly smezsly million dollars? Obama adviser Frank Raines stole 90 million dollars in bogus bonuses from American tax payers when he was chief executive of Fannie Mae.

You might as well face the facts, your man Obama is now, and always has been surrounded by major league crooks.

[niner]

Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly $2 Million

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and CHARLES DUHIGG Published: September 21,2008

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000
a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the
mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against
stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

http://www.nytimes.c...amp;oref=slogin

Is this this the best you can do? 2 measly smezsly million dollars? Obama adviser Frank Raines stole 90 million dollars in bogus bonuses from American tax payers when he was chief executive of Fannie Mae.

You might as well face the facts, your man Obama is now, and always has been surrounded by major league crooks.

Oh come on. Frank Raines is not now, and never has been an "Obama advisor". Someone from the Obama campaign talked to him on the phone a couple years ago. That was the end of it. I don't think he stole anything from American Taxpayers, either. FNMA is a publicly traded company. He may have behaved like a typical high ranking corporate executive, and he may have done things that were not in the best interests of the shareholders. He may be a sleazeball, but it's just a current right wing myth that he has any connection to Obama.

Maybe this belongs in the thread that tries to pin the mortgage crisis on Democrats, so we can see the kind of people that McCain surrounds himself with. I mean, my god! His Campaign Manager worked for 5 years to keep Fannie and Freddie deregulated! Phil Gramm, his "economic advisor", caused the whole problem in the first place! And you're trying to blow all this off because Franklin Raines once talked on the phone to some staffer on the Obama campaign?

[luv2increase]

"Critics say" is not the same as Obama agreeing to spend that amount of money, which he's well aware isn't going to happen.

What are you talking about? It says " Critics say that would cost American taxpayers $845 billion." It doesn't write "critics say Obama will spend $50 Billion right off the bat and then commit to cut poverty in half by 2015"!!! Obama said that! Critics just theorized on how much it would cost...

Missile "defense" systems are destabilizing. They make us less safe, not more.

Sources......... Yeah, it wouldn't be smart to have the ability to protect the USA by having missiles which intercept ICBMs on their way to the USA now would it LOL?????? Let's just let them come and detonate right on our soil without any way of intercepting them.... Good thinking niner. I've yet to hear an argument such as that before.

Edited by luv2increase, 23 September 2008 - 04:59 AM.

[luv2increase]

Oh come on. Frank Raines is not now, and never has been an "Obama advisor". Someone from the Obama campaign talked to him on the phone a couple years ago. That was the end of it. I don't think he stole anything from American Taxpayers, either. FNMA is a publicly traded company. He may have behaved like a typical high ranking corporate executive, and he may have done things that were not in the best interests of the shareholders. He may be a sleazeball, but it's just a current right wing myth that he has any connection to Obama.

Maybe this belongs in the thread that tries to pin the mortgage crisis on Democrats, so we can see the kind of people that McCain surrounds himself with. I mean, my god! His Campaign Manager worked for 5 years to keep Fannie and Freddie deregulated! Phil Gramm, his "economic advisor", caused the whole problem in the first place! And you're trying to blow all this off because Franklin Raines once talked on the phone to some staffer on the Obama campaign?

You just literally blurt the facts from getting engraved within your brain now don't you....


What do you think of Obama's 57 States (there are 57 Islamic states) and Obama's "my Muslim faith" freudian slips? Do you know that terrorist organizations like Obama? Did you know that it is impossible for any extremist Muslims to like a person who left their Muslim faith? They mark that person out for death! Did you know that Muslims who leave their faith always denounce it and a lot of time publicly? Why has not Obama done this? Also, why did Obama attend a church for 20+ years that preached anti-American and anti-White sermons? How can someone say they love this country more than anything yet sit in church services every Sunday for 20+ years listening to someone bash white people as well as America. Even Hillary Clinton said that Obama had the choice of his pastor and church, and he chose one that preached anti-White and anti-American!!!!!! This stuff is not made up niner. It is scary to think that someone like this may be actually representing and commanding our country yet listened and looked up to a man (his former preacher) who preached anti-American and anti-White for years! What in the world are people thinking??? It is truly insanity.

If someone has a pastor for years, they believe in the same stuff that pastor preaches. So when that guy said, and I quote "God damn America"; that is extremely scary because imagine if Obama was saying this? I mean his pastor says this. I know a lot of people who believe 100% in what their pastor says and will repeat it to other people. This isn't some little minor issue either; this is HUGE and significantly relevant!!!

Edited by luv2increase, 23 September 2008 - 05:13 AM.

[niner]

"Critics say" is not the same as Obama agreeing to spend that amount of money, which he's well aware isn't going to happen.

What are you talking about? It says " Critics say that would cost American taxpayers $845 billion." It doesn't write "critics say Obama will spend $50 Billion right off the bat and then commit to cut poverty in half by 2015"!!! Obama said that! Critics just theorized on how much it would cost...

Obama said no such thing. The critics theorized, and Fox News just reported, so You could "Decide".

Missile "defense" systems are destabilizing. They make us less safe, not more.

Sources......... Yeah, it wouldn't be smart to have the ability to protect the USA by having missiles which intercept ICBMs on their way to the USA now would it LOL?????? Let's just let them come and detonate right on our soil without any way of intercepting them.... Good thinking niner. I've yet to hear an argument such as that before.

Read up on it. It's not as simple as you're making it out to be.

Edited by niner, 23 September 2008 - 05:13 AM.

[niner]

Oh come on. Frank Raines is not now, and never has been an "Obama advisor". Someone from the Obama campaign talked to him on the phone a couple years ago. That was the end of it. I don't think he stole anything from American Taxpayers, either. FNMA is a publicly traded company. He may have behaved like a typical high ranking corporate executive, and he may have done things that were not in the best interests of the shareholders. He may be a sleazeball, but it's just a current right wing myth that he has any connection to Obama.

Maybe this belongs in the thread that tries to pin the mortgage crisis on Democrats, so we can see the kind of people that McCain surrounds himself with. I mean, my god! His Campaign Manager worked for 5 years to keep Fannie and Freddie deregulated! Phil Gramm, his "economic advisor", caused the whole problem in the first place! And you're trying to blow all this off because Franklin Raines once talked on the phone to some staffer on the Obama campaign?

You just literally blurt the facts from getting engraved within your brain now don't you....

Huh?

What do you think of Obama's 57 States (there are 57 Islamic states) ...

Don't believe everything in your inbox.

[luv2increase]

"Critics say" is not the same as Obama agreeing to spend that amount of money, which he's well aware isn't going to happen.

What are you talking about? It says " Critics say that would cost American taxpayers $845 billion." It doesn't write "critics say Obama will spend $50 Billion right off the bat and then commit to cut poverty in half by 2015"!!! Obama said that! Critics just theorized on how much it would cost...

Obama said no such thing. The critics theorized, and Fox News just reported, so You could "Decide".

I really hate to do this to you, but you must learn to eat your words at times.

Fight Global Poverty: Obama and Biden will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal. They will help the world's weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.

from Obama's website http://www.barackoba.../foreignpolicy/

AND THERE IS MORE

http://mcauleysworld...-america-first/

AND

http://www.weaselzip...un-program.html




I think you have a little too much confidence in your boy....

[luv2increase]

What do you think of Obama's 57 States (there are 57 Islamic states) ...

Don't believe everything in your inbox.

Come on niner. You just tried to disprove me and got called out what two three four times, heck I'm losing count...



The Muslim Faith Freudian Slip of Barack Obama

Edited by luv2increase, 23 September 2008 - 05:29 AM.

[niner]

"Critics say" is not the same as Obama agreeing to spend that amount of money, which he's well aware isn't going to happen.

What are you talking about? It says " Critics say that would cost American taxpayers $845 billion." It doesn't write "critics say Obama will spend $50 Billion right off the bat and then commit to cut poverty in half by 2015"!!! Obama said that! Critics just theorized on how much it would cost...

Obama said no such thing. The critics theorized, and Fox News just reported, so You could "Decide".

I really hate to do this to you, but you must learn to eat your words at times.

Fight Global Poverty: Obama and Biden will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and they will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal. They will help the world's weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.

from Obama's website http://www.barackoba.../foreignpolicy/

"embrace the Millennium Development Goal" doesn't mean "commit to". "Commit to" implies a contractual agreement or promise, while "embrace" is a lot more squishy. Doubling our Foreign Assistance level is exactly the kind of thing this country should be doing. The critic's theorizing was just a bunch of hot air. Anyway, I stand by what I've said. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit it. But so far I don't think I am.

[biknut]

"embrace the Millennium Development Goal" doesn't mean "commit to". "Commit to" implies a contractual agreement or promise, while "embrace" is a lot more squishy. Doubling our Foreign Assistance level is exactly the kind of thing this country should be doing. The critic's theorizing was just a bunch of hot air. Anyway, I stand by what I've said. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit it. But so far I don't think I am.

You 're really grasping at straws here. Sounds kind of like what the definition of is, is. You know full well what he the most "left" in the Senate wants to do..

[luv2increase]

"embrace the Millennium Development Goal" doesn't mean "commit to". "Commit to" implies a contractual agreement or promise, while "embrace" is a lot more squishy. Doubling our Foreign Assistance level is exactly the kind of thing this country should be doing. The critic's theorizing was just a bunch of hot air. Anyway, I stand by what I've said. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit it. But so far I don't think I am.

You 're really grasping at straws here. Sounds kind of like what the definition of is, is. You know full well what he the most "left" in the Senate wants to do..

I doubt he knows. He obviously didn't take a gander at the other links I posted. I'm beginning to think that niner doesn't know much about politics or what Obama or even Democrasts stand for. I can understand him not knowing what Obama stands for or how he proposes to accomplish the things of which he stands for, but if he is a Democrat I can't see how he wouldn't know what the Democrats stand for. If you ask any Obama supporter what he stands for and how he expects to accomplish what he stands for, no Democrat knows the answer. They have been mesmerized by this "Change" thing. It is peripheral advertising to the fullest, and Obama has pulled it off quite well. It's like selling a Ferrari to someone only to realize it is made out of plastic and has a 4 banger engine in it. Obama is all talk and no walk. He never did anything in the Senate to hint that he was for change.


It is funny how niner didn't comment on anything else besides the smallest of issues (the world poverty issue). Ah, someone must be in denial tonight that his savior does have faults and may have a completely different side than he has led out to be. A man, yes I repeat he is just a man, in disguise...

niner, it is ok to admit fault. Admitting fault and error is actually an attribute of a mature man.

Edited by luv2increase, 23 September 2008 - 06:32 AM.

[REGIMEN]

57 States = All 50 states + ...

"The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the two other areas considered integral parts of the country are the 1) District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and 2) Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. also possesses five major territories with indigenous populations: 3) Puerto Rico and the 4) United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and 5) American Samoa, 6) Guam, and the 7) Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship."

Wikiality, perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia....aphic_divisions

But yeah, why waste time in American Samoa when they aren't even citizens? Maybe they're...Muslim?

I too am a Muslim Samoan.

More wank-research from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia....uslim_countries

"This is a list of countries which are Muslim majority countries, in which Islam is the majority religion of the people. In a geopolitical sense these countries are often considered to form the Muslim world. The list only contains countries which are predominantly Muslim, meaning the Muslim population constitutes at least 50% of the total population."

There are only 52 in the list.

And don't you think Bush would release the wiretaps and e-mails that Obama would need to have sent to contact all of the leaders of those countries?

Get a clue. It's a bullshit issue. You are a toddler for spinning this blip in a opera. Millions of Morons for McCain looking for a video of Obama slipping on a banana peel when their own fearless POW leader (his only redeeming value) married to millionaire second wife is the exact carbon copy of "elitist" that he has all of them flinging the other direction. Imbecilic. It blows my mind how many grown adults are tricked by this kind of sloppy sleight of hand.

Yes, and FOX News is not allowed here. It is a tabloid cartoon of reality inverted.

Edited by REGIMEN, 23 September 2008 - 05:23 PM.

[REGIMEN]

"embrace the Millennium Development Goal" doesn't mean "commit to". "Commit to" implies a contractual agreement or promise, while "embrace" is a lot more squishy. Doubling our Foreign Assistance level is exactly the kind of thing this country should be doing. The critic's theorizing was just a bunch of hot air. Anyway, I stand by what I've said. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit it. But so far I don't think I am.

You 're really grasping at straws here. Sounds kind of like what the definition of is, is. You know full well what he the most "left" in the Senate wants to do..

I doubt he knows. He obviously didn't take a gander at the other links I posted. I'm beginning to think that niner doesn't know much about politics or what Obama or even Democrasts stand for. I can understand him not knowing what Obama stands for or how he proposes to accomplish the things of which he stands for, but if he is a Democrat I can't see how he wouldn't know what the Democrats stand for. If you ask any Obama supporter what he stands for and how he expects to accomplish what he stands for, no Democrat knows the answer. They have been mesmerized by this "Change" thing. It is peripheral advertising to the fullest, and Obama has pulled it off quite well. It's like selling a Ferrari to someone only to realize it is made out of plastic and has a 4 banger engine in it. Obama is all talk and no walk. He never did anything in the Senate to hint that he was for change.


It is funny how niner didn't comment on anything else besides the smallest of issues (the world poverty issue). Ah, someone must be in denial tonight that his savior does have faults and may have a completely different side than he has led out to be. A man, yes I repeat he is just a man, in disguise...

niner, it is ok to admit fault. Admitting fault and error is actually an attribute of a mature man.

luv2increase:

They have been mesmerized by this "Change" thing.

Hey! Didn't you hear that McCain is for Change, too?

Laughable.

------

Edited by REGIMEN, 23 September 2008 - 06:14 PM.

[inawe]

http://www.nbc.com/S...es-open/669582/

[luv2increase]

luv2increase:

They have been mesmerized by this "Change" thing.

Hey! Didn't you hear that McCain is for Change, too?

Laughable.

------

What does Obama mean by "change"? I don't you'd be able to answer me since no one really does know what he means.... It is sad that no one knows what he means either.



And actually, McCain has been against big government for along time and has gone against the wishes of his party because of corruption. Obama has never called out any corruption within his own party.

If you consider Obama's wishes of increasing the size of our already too large government and massively increasing spending when our country doesn't have the money and is in a recession "CHANGE" then that is the change I want no part of.





from http://www.topix.com...3BT8H8CLNK4NO74

What are Obama's accomplishments as a senator? He has been absent more often than any other democrat Senator. This is in sharp contrast to his voting record as an Illinois legislator where he frequently voted "present" on controversial bills.

Father, Kenyan Muslim.
Father is a SR. Obama is a JR.

Older brother, Abongo 'Roy' Obama is a Luo activist & militant Muslim

Cousin, Raila Odinga is of the Luo tribe. Is a Marxist/communist muslim.

Heritage & African roots are muslim.

But further...his brother & cousin have participated in ethnic cleansing!

Like it or NOT, Obama'S FAMILY & HERITAGE IN AFRICA ARE DIRTY.

This IS NOT, WHAT SHOULD BE, IN THE RESUME OF AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT.

I don't even think you are a Muslim if you do not even know that there are 57 member states in the Organization of Islamic Conference. Go here and find out http://en.wikipedia....amic_Conference


Obama has not showed in the least as his SHORT time as a Senator anything that would allude that he is for change! Can't you see it is just a political ploy to get elected? Do you not think that candidates feed of the wants off the people to get elected yet never follow through!?! Look how the Democrats took over Congress in 2006 with all their promises they made to get elected, YET they never followed through with any of them!!!

Edited by luv2increase, 24 September 2008 - 02:10 AM.

[niner]

"embrace the Millennium Development Goal" doesn't mean "commit to". "Commit to" implies a contractual agreement or promise, while "embrace" is a lot more squishy. Doubling our Foreign Assistance level is exactly the kind of thing this country should be doing. The critic's theorizing was just a bunch of hot air. Anyway, I stand by what I've said. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit it. But so far I don't think I am.

You 're really grasping at straws here. Sounds kind of like what the definition of is, is. You know full well what he the most "left" in the Senate wants to do..

I doubt he knows. He obviously didn't take a gander at the other links I posted. I'm beginning to think that niner doesn't know much about politics or what Obama or even Democrasts stand for. I can understand him not knowing what Obama stands for or how he proposes to accomplish the things of which he stands for, but if he is a Democrat I can't see how he wouldn't know what the Democrats stand for. If you ask any Obama supporter what he stands for and how he expects to accomplish what he stands for, no Democrat knows the answer. They have been mesmerized by this "Change" thing. It is peripheral advertising to the fullest, and Obama has pulled it off quite well. It's like selling a Ferrari to someone only to realize it is made out of plastic and has a 4 banger engine in it. Obama is all talk and no walk. He never did anything in the Senate to hint that he was for change.

It is funny how niner didn't comment on anything else besides the smallest of issues (the world poverty issue). Ah, someone must be in denial tonight that his savior does have faults and may have a completely different side than he has led out to be. A man, yes I repeat he is just a man, in disguise...

niner, it is ok to admit fault. Admitting fault and error is actually an attribute of a mature man.

Gosh luv, I don't know what I'd do without you. Thanks for setting me straight. I wish I understood those wily Democrats, or politics, or, hell, anything, for that matter, as well as you do. Well, I guess there might be one thing that I understand better than you; the English language. It's cool. I've been speaking it longer than you.

[david ellis]

There is no thread discipline on this forum. Somebody starts a thread about McCain thruthiness. Next thing you know the subject is Obama is a muslim. Don't change the subject, start your own thread or discuss McCain truthiness. Don't mess up the threads. Without structure this is just a shouting match and not worth spending time on.

[biknut]

There is no thread discipline on this forum. Somebody starts a thread about McCain thruthiness. Next thing you know the subject is Obama is a muslim. Don't change the subject, start your own thread or discuss McCain truthiness. Don't mess up the threads. Without structure this is just a shouting match and not worth spending time on.

There's a good reason for that. there's not enough McCain untruths to sustain a thread for more than 2 or 3 posts, but on the other hand everything coming out of Obama's mouth is a lie. It'll take months just to write it all down.

Always remember this (don't worry, I won't let you forget anyway). One of John McCain's best friends is not named, William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

John McCain never had a friend that bombed the Pentagon, but guess who does? You guessed it, Obama.

[david ellis]

There is no thread discipline on this forum. Somebody starts a thread about McCain thruthiness. Next thing you know the subject is Obama is a muslim. Don't change the subject, start your own thread or discuss McCain truthiness. Don't mess up the threads. Without structure this is just a shouting match and not worth spending time on.

There's a good reason for that. there's not enough McCain untruths to sustain a thread for more than 2 or 3 posts, but on the other hand everything coming out of Obama's mouth is a lie. It'll take months just to write it all down.

Always remember this (don't worry, I won't let you forget anyway). One of John McCain's best friends is not named, William Ayers, an unrepentant domestic terrorist.

John McCain never had a friend that bombed the Pentagon, but guess who does? You guessed it, Obama.

You are just spreading more smoke. If you ran out of things to say about truthiness, start a new post. Stealing threads is bad manners.

[luv2increase]

"embrace the Millennium Development Goal" doesn't mean "commit to". "Commit to" implies a contractual agreement or promise, while "embrace" is a lot more squishy. Doubling our Foreign Assistance level is exactly the kind of thing this country should be doing. The critic's theorizing was just a bunch of hot air. Anyway, I stand by what I've said. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly admit it. But so far I don't think I am.

You 're really grasping at straws here. Sounds kind of like what the definition of is, is. You know full well what he the most "left" in the Senate wants to do..

I doubt he knows. He obviously didn't take a gander at the other links I posted. I'm beginning to think that niner doesn't know much about politics or what Obama or even Democrasts stand for. I can understand him not knowing what Obama stands for or how he proposes to accomplish the things of which he stands for, but if he is a Democrat I can't see how he wouldn't know what the Democrats stand for. If you ask any Obama supporter what he stands for and how he expects to accomplish what he stands for, no Democrat knows the answer. They have been mesmerized by this "Change" thing. It is peripheral advertising to the fullest, and Obama has pulled it off quite well. It's like selling a Ferrari to someone only to realize it is made out of plastic and has a 4 banger engine in it. Obama is all talk and no walk. He never did anything in the Senate to hint that he was for change.

It is funny how niner didn't comment on anything else besides the smallest of issues (the world poverty issue). Ah, someone must be in denial tonight that his savior does have faults and may have a completely different side than he has led out to be. A man, yes I repeat he is just a man, in disguise...

niner, it is ok to admit fault. Admitting fault and error is actually an attribute of a mature man.

Gosh luv, I don't know what I'd do without you. Thanks for setting me straight. I wish I understood those wily Democrats, or politics, or, hell, anything, for that matter, as well as you do. Well, I guess there might be one thing that I understand better than you; the English language. It's cool. I've been speaking it longer than you.

You didn't say anything there relevant to what I had posted. Instead, you wrote an immature condescending statement that shows how upset you are inside. Don't you have any logical, rational rebuttals instead of your ad hominem remarks?

You should be embarrassed especially since you are a navigator as well. chuckle

[luv2increase]

There is no thread discipline on this forum. Somebody starts a thread about McCain thruthiness. Next thing you know the subject is Obama is a muslim. Don't change the subject, start your own thread or discuss McCain truthiness. Don't mess up the threads. Without structure this is just a shouting match and not worth spending time on.

Good point. Can someone transfer all the Obama posting to a new thread by me entitled "Obama - Presidential Worthiness?"

Thank you.