Part 1–THE LINEUP: A Who’s Who of The Associates of Barack Obama

~~By Grail Guardian

EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I has been combined in a double post with the follow-up with more Obama connections in Part 2 HERE.

For months now, we’ve been reading and hearing from the Obama campaign that it’s not experience that matters for Barack Obama (whose paper-thin resume includes being a Community Organizer, Chair of the failed Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and running for public office), but rather the excellent judgment that he displays. In light of the continued media frenzy favoring Obama and shielding him from public scrutiny, I decided that it would be timely to revisit that judgment in the form of the people Obama associates with professionally and personally (both past and present). I personally have been able to find few people that are close to the Illinois Senator that I would want anywhere near the Oval Office, but I’ll let you be the judge. I intend this article to be part of a much needed grassroots effort to educate those that only get their news from the Main Stream Media or do not follow politics closely, so feel free to link it, print it, e-mail it, or do whatever you need to do to get the word out (giving proper credit and/or links to Insight Analytical and myself is always appreciated). You can consider it an Obama 101 Picture Book Primer and a serious attempt to save this great nation.

Antoin “Tony” Rezko: Convicted Chicago developer (16 out of 24 felony counts) that helped the Obamas buy their expensive Hyde Park mansion. Investigation by a Federal prosecutor is ongoing into whether Rezko received government contracts in exchange for political contributions to Barack Obama, and whether Obama was a conspirator in the “Pay to Play” scheme. There is still the possibility that Obama will be named as a defendant, which likely depends on the outcome of the November election.

Nadhmi Auchi: This former member of Saddam Hussein’s government lent money to Tony Rezko just prior to the Obama’s purchasing their Hyde Park mansion. Auchi has also donated money to Obama’s campaign.

(Photo: Auchi is on the left, shown with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, right)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright (right): Obama’s radical pastor for 20 years (at Trinity United Church of Christ), whose claims that the AIDS epidemic was caused by the US government and 9/11/01 was an “inside job,” caused Obama to leave the church earlier this year amid a firestorm of controversy about Wrights comments and connection with Marxism-based “Black Liberation Theology”.

Rod Blagojevich: Illinois Governor and Obama supporter under investigation for his involvement in Chicago’s “Pay to Play” political corruption trials and possible connections to Tony Rezko.

Penny Pritzker: Obama Campaign Finance Chair, whose family owned Superior Bank which was the first in the nation to go under (in 2001) as part of the current Wall Street sub-prime mortgage crisis. She is rumored to be a candidate for Treasury Secretary in an Obama Administration.

Franklin Raines: Former head of the recently rescued lender Fannie Mae who walked away with some $25 million as the institution crumbled in the Sub-Prime Mortgage fraud. Once claimed to a reporter to be a personal advisor to Barack Obama.

Frank Marshall Davis: This confirmed member of the Communist Party USA has been identified as the childhood mentor Obama calls simply “Frank” in Dreams From My Father. Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Dunham, introduced him to the boy as a black male role model in Honolulu. In his writings, Davis confesses that he and his wife once had sex with a 13-year-old girl named Anne.

Rashid Khalidi: A Hyde Park neighbor of Obama and the co-founder of the Arab American Action Network, which calls the establishment of Israel a “catastrophe”, Khalidi is a former spokesman for the PLO, served on the Woods Foundation with Barack Obama, and has raised funds for him.

Cecil Butler: A Chicago real estate developer who profited from the privatization of low income, public housing during the 1990s (similar to Tony Rezko) in the “Pay to Play” fraud. Butler is a major supporter of Barack Obama whose low-income tenements were ultimately seized by the government for multiple building code violations.

(No photos of Butler are readily available, but this building has been identified as one of his west side projects.)

Valerie Jarrett: An Obama insider once stated of this Iranian-born real estate developer: “She’s always been the other side of Barack’s brain.” She is considered by some to be a top candidate for Obama’s Chief of Staff, and is a longtime political insider (part of Mayor Richard Daley’s team responsible for hiring Michelle Robinson Obama) and stands at the center of Chicago’s controversial efforts to redevelop public housing limiting the number of residents, mostly poor and black, who can live in the new communities.

Louis Farrakhan: Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam, considered by many to be a radical anti-Semite, he had also accused the US government of launching “a war against the black people of America, the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan.” He provided NOI bodyguards for Obama during the 2008 Democratic Primary until Obama received Secret Service protection. Farrakhan has endorsed Obama’s bid for the Presidency in February 2008 calling him the “hope of the entire world”.

State Sen. Rev. James Meeks: Obama’s mentor in the Illinois legislature widely believed to have taken bills developed and worked on by various Illinois State Senate members and offered them to Obama to be introduced for votes with his own name listed as author in order to pad his resume for a US Senate run in 2006.

William Ayers & Bernadette Dohrn: Unrepentant domestic terrorists with the Weather Underground, Ayers and Dohrn participated in bombings and plots to murder policemen and judges in the 1960s. Obama’s political career was launched at a party in the couple’s living room, and Ayers hired Obama as the Chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and served with him on the Woods Foundation. Ayers is famous for stating, “I don’t regret setting bombs” and “I feel we didn’t do enough”, and, when asked if he would “do it all again” as saying “I don’t want to discount the possibility.”

Raila Odinga: Obama’s African cousin on his father’s side, who Barack campaigned for in the Kenyan Presidential election in 2007. Odinga is now the country’s Prime Minister in a coalition government thrown together to avert civil war, and has been accused of mass political genocide across Kenya after his failed bid for the presidency.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: In March 2008, virulently anti-American Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the Spanish El Pais newspaper that he would have no problems if the junior senator from Illinois were to be elected US President. Ahmadinejad has also denied the reality of the holocaust and stated that Israel should be destroyed, as well as denying that homosexuality exists in Iran. Currently the US and allies are trying to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Hardly the type of man you want to be comfortable with an American Presidential candidate, but not the only foreign leader to endorse an Obama Presidency (see below).

Editor’s Note; Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink and major Obama bundler, was among a large contingent of peace activists who met with Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, September 24, following his appearance before the U.N. General Assembly (Code Pink press release).

Kim Jong Il: The dictator of North Korea recently allowed it’s mouthpiece Chosun Sinbo to announce “We will see a better relationship between the U.S. and the Korean Peninsula with Obama, who sternly criticizes Bush and who would meet the leader of Chosun without pre-conditions”.

Obama repeatedly stated that he would meet leaders such as Il in debates during the Democratic primaries.

Muammar Al-Gaddafi: The de facto leader of Libya since a 1969 coup, he has called America a dictatorship and refers to the Senator as “our brother Obama”. He recently stated “all the people in the Arab and Islamic World … prayed for his success” and “a person lies and lies so that people will vote for him”. Gaddafi also said returning the Palestinians to their homeland is the “change Americans want”.

Fidel Castro: The ailing Cuban dictator called Obama “the most progressive candidate to the U.S. presidency” and refused to formally endorse him, as “Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor”.

Hugo Chavez: The Socialist President of Venezuela is a fierce critic of American and US foreign policy, but (again) Obama has stated publicly that he would meet with Chavez without preconditions, and Chavez indicated his endorsement of Obama on Sept. 11, 2008.

Fr. Michael Pfleger: Radical pastor of the mostly African American parish of Saint Sabina in Chicago, and frequent visitor to Obama’s former congregation at Trinity UCC. Obama has called Pfleger a spiritual mentor, but was forced to denounce him during the Democratic primary for making inflammatory racial statements about opponent Hillary Clinton.

(Photo: Father Pfleger left, shown with Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam)

Hatem El-Hady: The former chairman of the Toledo-based Islamic charity Kindhearts, which was shut down by the US government in 2006 for terrorist fundraising and ties to Hamas. Elhady once had a web page on the official Barack Obama campaign site, but it was removed in April 2008.

(Again, no photo of el Hady is readily available, but the image at left is a screen capture of the el Hady profile page on the official Obama site before it was removed. There are 3 friends listed on the right, the last of which is Michelle Obama. Her name was removed immediately after el Hady’s name began to appear in the Blogosphere.)

Robert Malley: Controversial former Middle East policy advisor to the Obama campaign. Malley was fired only after he acknowledged holding private meetings with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Malley argues that negotiations with the Palestinians today must include Hamas.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: High profile Obama Foreign Policy advisor criticized for his 2008 article defending the book “The Israel Lobby”, which accuses American Jews of McCarthyism. The former national security adviser has been at odds with elements of the American Jewish community since his stint in the Carter administration, and is seen by many as staunchly anti-Russian, which could exacerbate the current tensions between Russia and the democratic nation of Georgia.

Howard Dean: Current Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Dean identified Obama as one of his “Dean’s Dozen” (a group of handpicked potential Democrats to run for President) as far back as 2002. Dean himself lost a bid for the Presidency in 2004 after his infamous “I Have a Scream” speech, and has been strongly criticized for steering the 2008 Presidential primaries in Barack Obama’s favor and even illegally using his position to declare the race over before the August 2008 convention.

Joseph Biden: Obama’s Vice Presidential pick, he is also known as “Credit Card Joe” due to his deep and fruitful connections to lender MNBA (based in Biden’s home state of Delaware). Biden is also known for his mishandling of the Senate confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court. Biden accused former Thomas employee Anita Hill (who claimed Thomas had sexually harassed her) of “fantasizing” the entire incident. Activists lambasted Biden at the time for trivializing Hill’s experiences and setting back the cause of Women’s Rights.

Michelle Robinson Obama: Obama’s wife of 15 years has caused much controversy throughout the campaign by stating she was proud of America “for the first time in my life”, stating of former President Bill Clinton that she would like to “scratch his eyes out”, and calling Barack Obama “pathetic” in an appearance on ABC’s The View and referring to him as “My babies’ Daddy” when introducing him at a campaign event. Robinson is thought to have introduced Barack Obama to domestic terrorist Bill Ayers at the Sidley law firm. Her thesis at Princeton has been restricted until November 5, 2008 (the day following the Presidential election), but an excerpt reads: “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‘Blackness’ than ever before,” she wrote in her thesis “I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus, as if I don’t really belong.”

George Soros: This Hungarian-born billionaire and self described global financier and philanthropist is suspected by many of being the power and money source behind the Obama campaign. He recently bought Moveon.org, a progressive political organization that has been highly critical of anyone opposing Obama. Soros has stated “The Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and Communist propaganda machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing industries, ” as well as “supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization.”

Donna Brazile: Campaign Manager for Al Gore’s 2000 run for President, she also serves on the Rules and Bylaws Committee of the DNC that infamously stripped delegates from Florida and Michigan in the 2008 primaries. Following the embarrassing 2000 defeat, Brazile became e-mail buddies with Republican strategist Karl Rove and adopted his tactics against fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 campaign. As a CNN analyst, Brazile has been aggressively supporting Barack Obama since the start of the year, despite calling herself an “undeclared” Super Delegate.

Nancy Pelosi: The Speaker of the US House of Representatives took no action on ending the war in Iraq or rescuing the failing US economy, but found time to get involved in the Democratic primary race by pushing for NY Senator Hillary Clinton to drop out significantly before the Democratic Convention, and to write her own book. Pelosi leads the Democratic majority of the Congress with the lowest approval rating of all time.

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The descriptions listed above are easily confirmed by a simple Google search. Further information can be found at www.barackobamaassociates.info/ (which also presents a useful ,clear graphic/flowchart) and almost all of the sites listed in the Blog Roll on the right side banner.