Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Is 'Senate Candidate No. 5', Says He Did Nothing Wrong

Chicago Rep. Says He Will Cooperate Fully with the Blagojevich Investigation
By BRIAN ROSS
Dec. 10, 2008

Chicago Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., is the anonymous "Senate Candidate No. 5" whose emissaries Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich reportedly offered up to $1 million to name him to the U.S. Senate, his attorney confirmed today after it was reported earlier on ABCNews.com "The Blotter".

According to the FBI affidavit in the case, Blagojevich "stated he might be able to cut a deal with Senate Candidate 5 that provided Rod Blagojevich" with something "tangible up front."

Jackson told ABC News this morning he was contacted Tuesday by federal prosecutors in Chicago whom he said "asked me to come in and share with them my insights and thoughts about the selection process."

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what did we expect from Chicago politics?

Obama Says He Had No Contact With Blagojevich on Senate Seat

Questions Arise About the Obama/Blagojevich Relationship

[the Senate seat] is a fucking valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing

Gov. Blagojevich and Operation Board Games

Obama works to distance himself from Ill. governor


Axelrod: Obama has talked to Blago about replacement

Illinois Governor Arrested on Corruption Charges

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff were arrested in Chicago Tuesday on two counts each of corruption charges relating to trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat.

FOXNews.com | Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested Tuesday morning in Chicago on two counts each of federal corruption charges stemming from allegations Blagojevich was trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder.

The arrest is part of a three-year probe of "pay-to-play politics" in the governor's administration. The criminal complaint by the FBI says each man was arrested on two charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery.

The charges also relate to allegations that Blagojevich and Harris schemed with previously convicted defendants and Obama associates Antoin Rezko, Stuart Levine, Ali Ata and others to arrange financial benefits in exchange for appointments to state boards and commissions, state employment, state contracts and access to state funds.

Blagojevich and Harris will have an initial appearance in U.S. District Court Tuesday.

A statement by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Grant said Blagojevich and Harris "allegedly conspired to sell U.S. Senate appointment, engaged in pay-to-play schemes and threatened to withhold state assistance to Tribune Company for Wrigley Field to induce purge of newspaper editorial writers."

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," Fitzgerald said in a statement.

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Obama: Don't stock up on guns

December 8, 2008 | Chicago Sun-Times
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter

As gun sales shoot up around the country, President-elect Barack Obama said Sunday that gun-owning Americans do not need to rush out and stock up before he is sworn in next month.

"I believe in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the second amendment," Obama said at a news conference. "Lawful gun owners have nothing to fear. I said that throughout the campaign. I haven't indicated anything different during the transition. I think people can take me at my word."

But National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said it's not Obama's words — but his legislative track record — that has gun-buyers flocking to the stores.

"Prior to his campaign for president, his record as a state legislator and as a U.S. Senator shows he voted for the most stringent forms of gun control, the most Draconian legislation, gun bans, ammunition bans and even an increase in federal excise taxes up to 500 percent for every gun and firearm sold," Arulanandam said.

Obama answered "yes" in 1996 to a questionnaire from an Illinois group on whether he supported a handgun ban. But he later said a staffer filled out that answer and he did not support a ban.

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Radio Havana Cuba talks about the revolution

Recorded Sunday night, December 7, 2008.

was Bill Ayers a terrorist? Well, yeah

Eric Posner, December 6, 2008 at 11:24am

[even though he says no] There is no doubt, however, that at least under current law, he would be considered a terrorist. Here is a definition of terrorism in U.S. law (22 USC 2656f(d)f(2)) (there are others as well but similar):

the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents

The Weather Underground was a subnational group; exploding bombs is an act of violence; government offices are non-combatant targets (the Weather Underground also bombed banks); and the use of violence had the political goal of ending the Vietnam War. "Screaming response" or no, this was terrorism.

Under current law, Ayers was a terrorist. This definition is not idiosyncratic; similar definitions can be found in the laws of foreign countries and in international treaties. Ayers seems to think he ought to be excused for violence because his motives were good, but that is the excuse that terrorists always offer—that their political goals justify their use of violence—and naturally the legal definition could not permit such a defense without subverting itself, or turning every terrorism trial into a debate about whether the political ends of the defendants are "good" or "bad" from a moral or political perspective.

Though Ayers is right that the he was a sideshow to the campaign, the term “unrepentant terrorist” seems accurate. Worse terms would be even more accurate.

The op-ed is written carefully; one detects the touch of a lawyer or perhaps an author with lawyerly instincts. Ayers says that he never killed or injured anyone and that he co-founded the Weather Underground in 1970, which “went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices.” The natural question that arises is whether the Weather Underground actually did more than what it took responsibility for, and whether Ayers, as its co-founder, is responsible for those unnamed acts, or other acts that occurred prior to the founding of the Weather Underground in 1970. Anyone with even casual knowledge of the days of rage and the other antics of the Weathermen (the term used prior to the founding of the Weather Underground in 1970), and the various disputes involving what the Weather Underground did and did not actually do (as opposed to what it “took responsibility for”), might wonder what Ayers is not telling us, and whether Ayers considers himself responsible for the many injuries and deaths (of his own “comrades” who accidently blew themselves up in a Greenwich Village townhouse prior to the founding of the Weather Underground) even if he did not inflict them with his own hands. Ayres did not first enter the scene when he co-founded the Weather Underground in 1970, as uncareful readers might surmise.

The op-ed is a stupid piece of work; what it says about Ayers I leave to the reader.

Cleric calls for Obama to convert to Islam, or else . . .

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1934.htm

Egyptian Cleric Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal Calls on President-Elect Obama to Convert to Islam, and Threatens: We Have People Who are Eager to Die

Following are excerpts from an address delivered by Egyptian cleric Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal, which aired on Al-Nas TV on November 27, 2008.

Hassan Abu Al-Ashbal: Let me take this opportunity to address the leader of Europe, and the leader of America, who is the leader of the world, the recently-elected Obama, who is the leader of the Byzantines – he is like the Byzantine leaders in the days of Prophet Muhammad.

My message to him is three-fold. First, I invite him to convert to Islam. This is the call of the Prophet and of Allah. Oh Obama – convert to Islam, and you will be saved. I hope that Allah will reward you twice: Once for converting to Islam, and another reward for all those who will convert in your footsteps. If you want glory – you will find it in Islam. If you want honor – you will find it in Islam. In religions other than Islam there is utter humiliation, even if you are the president of the entire world.

[...]

You, Obama, are among those who have pledged before Allah – Allah who created you, sustained you, and brought you to this position – to be a Muslim who believes that Allah is the one God, especially since you have some kind of roots in Islam. Convert to Islam, and you will be saved. All glory and honor lie in following Allah and His messenger Muhammad. Know that the true religion is the religion of Islam, and all other religions are fabricated religions, which are null and void – religions that were abrogated by the shari’a of Muhammad.

If you refuse to return to your [Islamic] origins, to the way Allah created you, withdraw your huge armies and military bases from the lands of the Muslims. Know that all your predecessors have ended up in the garbage bin of history, and that America’s black and bleak history in the land of the Muslims and the Arabs constitutes an evil omen for you, your predecessors, and your successors. Know, Obama, that America, with all its size and might, will know no peace, as long as a single Muslim child lacks food, drink, medicine, or housing. If you refuse, Obama, and insist on remaining in Muslim lands, know that Allah still plants in [Muslims] obedience to Him, and they are willing to wait for Paradise, which is closer than their own shoelaces.

Know, Obama, that in the lands of Islam, there are people who seek death, and are eager for it, even more than you and your people are eager for life – any kind of life, even a life of humiliation.

Ayers says he's not a terrorist

The Real Bill Ayers
By WILLIAM AYERS
Published: December 5, 2008

IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.

Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”

Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.

I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.

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Barack, The Amazing Mr. Obama

02.12.2008 | Source: Pravda.Ru
By Mark S. McGrew

Barack Obama is truly an amazing man, with many amazing friends. He has succeeded where countless others have failed. And he has also succeeded where many before him have succeeded with the same time honored methods.

He has managed to create an illusion of a Public Office that does not exist, The Office of the President Elect.

Barry Sotero, AKA Barack Obama, along with the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission have successfully ignored a Federal Lawsuit asking him to produce a valid Birth Certificate. When the time to respond to that lawsuit expired, under Federal Court Rules, they all admitted that he was not a citizen of The United States of America and deemed to have committed fraud. A normal man would have been found to have admitted he was not a US citizen.

But the man with no visible past, was blessed by a light shining from above on a Federal Judge, by having the lawsuit against him dismissed, three weeks after his non-response was proof that he is not a US citizen.

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If Things Go Wrong In Russia, Who Will Take The Blame?

By Vitaliy Portnikov | December 04, 2008

"Lenin answers all questions." For Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, these words from a poem every Soviet schoolchild read are not an abstraction.

Each year during his presidency, Putin answered questions put to him by viewers of federal television, questions phoned in by viewers along with some posed by people who gathered at specially prepared regional centers.

Some moments from these telecasts have become the stuff of humor. One year a girl from the Far Eastern city of Birobidzhan called and told Putin there was no real New Year's tree in her city's main square. In truth, there was already a tree there, but local authorities -- having heard Putin promise to rectify the matter -- rushed to put up another one. That year, Birobidzhan had two trees -- one from the governor and one from the president.

This year's performance was interesting because it was Putin's first as prime minister. There had been some speculation about whether President Dmitry Medvedev might inherit this tradition from Putin. By hanging on to it, even if it was only broadcast on one of the country's national television networks instead of on all of them as in past years, Putin seems to be asserting visibly that he is still setting the tone for the country's leadership.

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