It’s not easy for me to contact you guys, so I thought I’d write here that the pop-up add below this post is currently a link to an organization that wants to stop abortion on demand.  You might want to take it down?

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time,” Abraham Lincoln supposedly said.

In a rare display of scientific spirit, his successors have over the last several decades conducted increasingly elaborate experiments to determine exactly the circumstances under which it is possible to fool 50.1% of the people once every 4 years.

I’ll give you $5 if you can grab ten guys coming out of a grocery store and two of them know who Tony Rezko is.  That’s why this is awesome.  Mitt can flap his gums about this bunk till the first tuesday in November, but he’s not going to get McCain any more support than he’s already picked up.  On the flip side, if you interview those same ten guys and ask them if John McCain is rich, of the subset of those people who know who John McCain is, I’m betting all of them will agree with you.

So, in short, you’re absolutely right.  Let Obama keep pegging McCain on this sort of thing and the GOP will retreat to more obscure levels of smear tactics that will only ostrasize them from the mainstream even further.  When Obama gets up to talk about gas prices and stagnant wages, people will listen.  When McCain demands a hearing on the Obama / Farrakhan connection, people will stare blankly and nod off.

And then Obama’s $100 million ground game will kick McCain all over the map.  Because at the end of the day, voter registration is going to be where Democrats kick the living shit out of their Republican opponents.

Slut for your fortune! It’s the Republican way!

“The ‘special deal’ was Obama paying full market price for his house and then paying full market price for a piece of adjoining land.”

Is there an analysis somewhere showing that Obama paid market price for the house?  (Honest question here, since I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had gone back and done an appraisal for the property at the time).

Obama paid $300k less than the asking price for the house (which was around $1.95 million) while Rezko paid the same seller the asking price for an adjacent lot.  On the one hand, it’s quite possible that the sellers had set their price higher than the market for the house, but the right amount on the adjacent lot.  On the other hand, the prices could give the appearance that Rezko might have done Obama a favor since the seller would have been willing to give Obama a deeper discount on the house since Rezko was paying the asking price on the lot (i.e., the seller may have wanted $2.29M period for the properties and not cared about how it was sliced up).

The “special deal” was Obama paying full market price for his house and then payingmore than full market price for a piece of adjoining land.

Fixed.

Obama paid $300k less than the asking price for the house (which was around $1.95 million)

Asking price is not the same thing as market price. Market price is the accepted competitive bid.

A great comment from he boston.com site:

What else do you expect to spew from assholes? Crap. That’s it. Romney is an embarrassment.

If they’re not careful, this is going to start sounding like that common winger rant that affirmative action means that black people steal jobs from white people, which is of course why there are so many black CEO’s and so few white ones.

They’ve already been trying to play that card on Hillary Clinton’s behalf (so very kind of them after they spent 15 years trying to destroy her, don’tcha think?) and I think it’s going to come out for John McCain very soon.

Tim Burger of Bloomsberg News interviewed the previous owner, who confirmed that $1.65 million was the product of negotiations between the Obamas and the owners; that this did not represent a discount on the basis of receiving the full asking price of the lot next door, and that the previous owner specified both the house and adjoining lot were to close on the same day.

Archpundit provides a lot of useful information here:

http://archpundit.com/blog/2008/01/24/rezko-primer-vi-house-purchase/

‘There’s apparently a new definition of “earning” that means “someone else doing the work and you getting the fruits when they die”. ‘

Don’t forget, another definiton of “working”/“earning” by the right is that Democrats don’t do it (this one always amazes me, although I do think we need to use “blue collar” instead of “working class” for similar reasons.)

And let me also say that it makes me giddy every time the Republicans bring up Rezko since it turns out Rezko’s a lot closer to Dennis Hastert and Karl Rove than he is to Obama.  Bringing up Rezko has enormous potential to blow up in McCain’s face, but he’s so desperate that he’s playing the card anyway and hoping no one follows up.

“black people steal jobs from white people, which is of course why there are so many black CEO’s and so few white ones. “

Actually, this is the exact argument they use: that “over-promotion” resulting from affirmative action causes “mismatching,” resulting in black people to be in over their head at jobs just below CEO and thus unable to make the next step, or in over their heads at better law schools than they “should” be at.

Three rebuttals:

(1) Shouldn’t the racist wing of the GOP be glad that affirmative action helps white people, if that were true?

(2) What about legacies/unearned personal job connections?  Shouldn’t they also be complaining about the mismatch effect that McCain got when he probably got in over his head, finished 894th/899 and still managed to fly and crash planes, or the C average Bush got at Yale and the businesses he unfairly got to run and fail?

(3) From everything I understand, it is almost always better to do poorly at an elite law school than well at a lower law school, everything else being equal.

Does this mean that soon we’ll be able to talk about how many houses Mitt Romney has?

Mitt will probably be McCain’s choice.

One, they can’t stand each other.

Two, Romney will not be received well by the Religious Right.  He’s Mormon and they are a cult after all.

Three, he probably thinks he earned all his money, too.  Daddy, of course, was CEO of an automobile company.  Romney did at least work in the private sector for a while at a private equity firm.

Four, he’s changed his position on every possible issue since he ran in Massachusetts.  Didn’t even support George W. Bush and denied he voted for him.

Is this the same Mitt who employed illegal aliens to mow his lawn for one of his several homes, then denied it, then blamed his contractor?

Is this the same Mitt who spent the Vietnam Draft era in France?

Rezko?  I thought that Keating (rhymes with cheating) would be the response.

One thing to friend a scumbag wheeler-dealer, quite another to use your office to obstruct investigation and protect a theiving, lying, S&L;looting scumbag friend.

The really fucked up think is that just 4 years ago, the right smeared John Kerry for being a “gigolo”, now in 2008 they run a canidate who trades a crippled woman for a rich, yougner model and its all good, I swear its like integrity is just a fucking buzzword to these people.

To his credit, Willard shows no signs of giving up on the crippled wife.

You still a starving gradual student Jeff?  We are now in a time of fortune economic luckiness - should we buy you dinner sometime?

To his credit, Willard shows no signs of giving up on the crippled wife.

Ten shillings to the person who says ‘So, Mitt: your wife has a disability. Ever thought of dumping her for a new one?’

Three, he probably thinks he earned all his money, too.  Daddy, of course, was CEO of an automobile company.  Romney did at least work in the private sector for a while at a private equity firm.

It also didn’t hurt that Daddy was a former GOVERNOR.

Dude wasn’t born on third-base - he was born about two feet from home plate.

Wow! Who would have thought that Mitt Romney would come out with an implicit statement of the kind of work that John McCain is willing to go through in the bedroom to please his woman?

I read this as Mitt Romney saying that John McCain is supremely skilled in the art of oral sex, and that’s the “work” he’s done to earn his multiple homes, bought by his very satisfied wife.

No other way to interpret it.

McCain’s houses? Simple. He gives good head.

McCain’s houses? Simple. He gives good head.

Now I’m trying to picture Mrs. McCain’s O-face.

jesus, susan, why did you bring up John McCain preforming a sex act?

///because now I’m thinking “Why would McCain give good head?” and the obvious, logical, physiologically solid answer is that his jowls create greater surface area for friction.

why, god, why?

Now I’m trying to picture Mrs. McCain’s O-face.

Hey, John McCain invited a bunch of drunken bikers to picture it.

Careful, now people, if you don’t want to, don’t go there in your own minds.

But by all means, if you know any McCain supporters, make THEM go there in THEIR minds.

And let me also say that it makes me giddy every time the Republicans bring up Rezko since it turns out Rezko’s a lot closer to Dennis Hastert and Karl Rove than he is to Obama.  Bringing up Rezko has enormous potential to blow up in McCain’s face, but he’s so desperate that he’s playing the card anyway and hoping no one follows up.

Well the MSM sure as hell won’t, so where are the Democratic response ads about this??

I should be writing tonight, but am having a massive block on how to organize the 5-7 pages I’m trying to finish this week.

Back in the day, MAJeff, I found lorem ipsum to be extremely useful.  Plus, no one still cared about what was in my dissertation anyway.  And now I need another drink.

Hey, John McCain invited a bunch of drunken bikers to picture it.

This remains my second-biggest beef with Obama (after FISA): shutting down the 527s that could be pushing what a sleazebag Mr. “Saved and Forgiven” is.  Yes, sanctified Baptists regularly attend drunken biker rallies and offer to have their wives perform simulated sex acts for the amusement of the crowd.  This is probably not the sort of thing the Obama campaign wants to push openly; hence the need for outside groups.

Now, if the Repubs keep pushing Rezko, I agree with Ms. Kate that it’s time to openly refresh the public’s mind about the Keating Five.  (Actually, they should already be highlighting it; enough of the “John McCain is a good man” bullshit, which is my fifth-biggest beef with the Obama campaign.)

“There’s no indication based on surrounding real estate prices that the owners of the house did anything but overprice it.”

For Quaker—I know, of course, that the asking price isn’t the market price, and said that in my original post.  That’s why I’m curious as to whether anyone has done an appraisal on the fair market value of the house.  And as far as market price being the accepted competitive bid, the accepted competitive bid was (I think) $2.29 million for the house and the lot; I haven’t seen how those would have been valued separately.

For Jesse—you make basically the same statement in your post to me as in the original post, and I’m curious about the support for it.  Has anyone done an appraisal of what that house would have sold for at the time?

To help clarify my original post, there are two ways Rezko could have benefitted Obama:  (1) if Obama didn’t have the money to, or simply didn’t want to, buy the adjacent lot, and the seller was requiring both to be sold at the same time, Rezko buying that lot could have enabled Obama to buy the house.  (This point wasn’t in my first post)  (2)  Rezko overpaying for the undeveloped lot so Obama could pay less for the house.  From the seller’s perspective, all they should care about is the total amount of money they receive, not how the two buyers split it up.  For example, if two buyers who weren’t looking to do favors for each other would have paid $550,000 for the lot and 1.74M for the house, then Rezko paying full price for the lot would have been the same as transferring tens of thousands of dollars to Obama.

Wow, Calderon is so helpful, pointing out all these big questions about possible favors done for Obama by Dennis Hastert’s buddy Tony Rezko.  Given the displayed dedication to rooting out such flagrant moral turpitude, I can’t wait for vis in-depth analysis of the Keating S&L;fiasco, or of McCain’s stream of favors for lobbyists (including the ones now running his campaign), or of his helping big donors get really favorable large-scale land deals.  Though perhaps those ethical lapses are too egregious for the disingenuous “Ask for proof of minutiae” approach that Calderon apparently favors.  So I suspect ve will stay focused on further piddling bullshit about Obama for some inexplicable reason.

And as far as market price being the accepted competitive bid, the accepted competitive bid was (I think) $2.29 million for the house and the lot; I haven’t seen how those would have been valued separately.

They were separate lots for 30 years.  Obama bought one small strip of the vacant lot from Rita Rezko and the rest of the lot was sold to someone else entirely at a profit a couple of years later.

But I guess that if you don’t know any of the basic facts of the story and haven’t bothered to read the multiple interviews where Obama discussed the facts at length, it would all seem very mysterious, the same way that television is very mysterious to someone who doesn’t understand that the tiny people in the box aren’t really there.