Valerie Jarrett...Obama's Handler.... and Jailkeeper. You see this unelected nebbish sitting in on all Obama's Meetings.

Obama has named his longtime friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett to be his White House senior adviser.

 

Longtime Friend And Supporter

Obama has named his longtime friend and supporter Valerie Jarrett to be his White House senior adviser. Jarrett, who hired Michelle Obama for a job in the Chicago mayor's office years ago, is one of the president-elect's closest friends and advisers.  Her name has been floated for several top administration jobs.  But Obama settled on the senior adviser role, said a person close to the president-elect and willing to speak only on background because the decision has not been officially announced. A White House senior adviser can handle a range of duties. President George W. Bush's top political aide Karl Rove held the title in the current administration. Jarrett has a background in real estate and politics in Chicago and is linked to a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin "Tony" Rezko. According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis, Obama's former boss.  Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis. As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama's former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza.  According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered "uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Obama signed an executive order in March 2009 that established a "White House Council on Women and Girls."  The Council will be chaired by Jarrett, and the day-to-day operations will be run Tina Tchen, who is currently director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and was a major fundraiser for Obama during the campaign. "The mission of the Council will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families," reads a memo describing the move and obtained by The Fix. As soon as I saw Valerie Jarrett's name, I knew this was going to be a big job -- every single policy, of every single government agency will have to fit the women’s rights agenda -- As interpreted by Obama and the Bride -- as executed by the trusted aid -- that's breathtaking!

Jarrett's Habitat Company

Earlier this year The Boston Globe reported on the stunning failures of Jarrett's companies. "Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this [past] 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."

Jarrett's Staff

But in order to get the full impact of the presence of Jarrett on the Obama team, one must take a close look at her team. Click here to see Video>>>http://youtu.be/Pr4eNqUcOXw Jarrett has surrounded herself with some rather unsavory characters who appear to be more like 'enforcers' than 'advisers.' Meet Mike Strautmanis, Jarrett's Chief of Staff. Strautmanis is one of Barack and Michelle Obama's closest friends, going all the way back to the beginning in Chicago.  He has worked not only for the Obamas but for disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. But here is an interesting tidbit concerning Strautmanis, in Jarrett's own words: Obama describes him as a "utility man," and campaign advisor and Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett says he's the person you call when you need help with a delicate situation.  "He understands the importance of the personal touch and that e-mails and phone calls are not always appropriate," she said, talking about a specific example that she wouldn't describe in detail.  "There are times when a face-to-face is just the right thing to do. He dropped everything and hopped on a plane. And now meet an Obama mystery man that the campaign staff didn't even know existed. In fact, nobody knew what he looked like. His name is Michael Signator. Michael Signator, a 50-year-old police officer in suburban Chicago, is paid as one of Barack Obama's campaign staffers -- nearly $50,000 during Obama's Senate campaign in 2004; and $47,600 from March 2007 through August of this year -- yet no one knows what he looks like, and even Obama staffers didn't know he works for the campaign. So just who is Michael Signator? Although his job description is to provide "supplemental security support" and to coordinate the Obama family's personal and campaign schedules, Signator appears to be much more than an aide. The relationship between Obama and Signator is one of the most highly guarded secrets in Washington and Obama's home-base of Chicago.  In fact, at first Obama officials denied that Signator worked for Obama...until it became clear that he was Obama's driver and bodyguard during the campaign.  But the extent of Signator's activity on behalf of Obama is murky.

The Jarrett Connection -- Obama’s Hawaii And Chicago Communist Networks Were Linked

Romantic Poet blog has published some interesting artifacts that provide proof that Obama’s Hawaii and Chicago communist networks were linked? It is now well established that Barack Obama was linked to the Hawaiian Communist Party network through his boyhood/teenage mentor Frank Marshall Davis. It is also well known that after moving to Chicago, Obama linked up with the local communist networks. Manning Marable, a leader of the Communist Party offshoot Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism claims that Obama "understands what socialism is.  A lot of the people working with him are, indeed, socialists with backgrounds in the Communist Party or as independent Marxists.  There are a lot of people like that in Chicago who have worked with him for years…" This leads to two key questions. A. Were the Hawaii and Chicago networks connected? B . Did Obama’s connection to Frank Marshall Davis in any way influence his progress up the Chicago political ladder? If the answer is yes to both, there are significant implications. It means that that the Communist Party USA was watching Obama from an early age and was willing to help his political career. Frank Marshall Davis was active in the Chicago Communist Party until he moved to Hawaii in late 1948. I speculated in this post that Davis may have known left wing journalist Vernon Jarrett in post war Chicago.  A connection would be significant because the Jarrett family has played a very important role in Obama’s rise to power. Both Jarrett and Davis worked in the communist dominated South Side Community Art Center and on the communist influenced Chicago Defender newspaper, in late 1940s Chicago. I have since found conclusive evidence that Davis and Jarrett not only knew each other, but worked together in another Communist Party dominated organization -- The Citizen’s Committee to Aid Packing House Workers. Continue reading here . . . there's some real stuff . . .

Obama Rules

According to Jarrett, the Obamamessiah is "ready to rule." (video) The co-chair of Barack Obama’s Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett, appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and used, shall we say, an interesting word to described what she thinks Barack Obama will be doing in January when he’s officially sworn into office.  She told Tom Brokaw that Obama will be ready to "rule" on day one.  It’s a word that reflects the worst fears that people have for Obama the "arrogant," the "messiah," that imagines he’s here to "rule" instead of govern. Jarret told Brokaw that "given the daunting challenges that we face, it’s important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one." Someone needs to get to Jarrett and inform her that American politicians are not Kings and do not "rule" from office.  But if this is the attitude of Obama’s transition team, what does The One himself imagine he is about to unleash?  Could the fears that Obama thinks he is being anointed America’s King be far off with this sort of talk flying about?

Obama’s New Nuclear Advisor

Front Page Magazine says the last time that Obama’s senior advisor and assistant Valerie Jarrett was in the news, her favored political recruit, Anthony "Van" Jones, was resigning his post as White House presidential advisor amid revelations of a radical background that included communist sympathies and his support for 9/11 Truther conspiracy.  Now Jarrett, widely viewed as Obama’s radical alter ego, has reemerged -- this time as a foreign policy guru. As Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a new nuclear arms treaty last week, Jarrett sat observing nearby.  That Jarrett has once again found herself in a position of influence is not surprising.  Jarrett proudly acknowledges her remarkable closeness to President Obama.  "We have kind of a mind meld" is the way she put it in a New York Times magazine interview last summer.  "When senior staff meetings in the Oval Office break up, Valerie Jarrett often stays behind" with Obama, the Times article reported.  In short, Jarrett is like a member of the Obama family, but one who has seized command of a variety of policies at the White House. Although neither elected, nor confirmed, nor even vetted, and without previous Washington experience, Jarrett has been installed as senior adviser and assistant to Obama for intergovernmental and public engagement.  She also was given the recently created Office of Urban Affairs, even though we have a cabinet member who is Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  Now it appears she is involved in our nation’s foreign policy. Why else would she be in Prague for the preparations and signing of the arms treaty?  As Obama has said, "She is someone I trust completely.  She combines the closeness of a family member with the savvy and objectivity of a professional businesswoman and public-policy expert," the Times magazine article stated.  She is trusted "to speak for me particularly when we are dealing with delicate issues."  Such as nuclear arms matters?  If so, that should be cause for concern.  Jarrett’s only experience in foreign affairs is the insignificant fact that she was born in Iran, where her father was a doctor working for an American aid program.  She lived in London as a child before coming to the United States. Continue reading here . . . Trevor Loudon has documented the close working relationship between Jarrett's late father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, and a certain Frank Marshall Davis, in a Communist Party front in late 1940s Chicago. Frank Marshall Davis -- a covert Communist Party member -- then went to Hawaii and ended up mentoring the young Barack Obama, and when Obama moved to Chicago, Vernon Jarrett used his newspaper columns to promote Obama's political career. The Chicago Communist Party mucks in as well and writes Vernon a lovely eulogy when he dies a few years ago. Then, coincidentally, Valerie Jarrett hires Michelle Obama, becomes friends with Barack and ends up advising him in the White House.  Chicago -- it's such a small, small world.

And Speaking Of Communists

Trevor Loudon says senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett's late father-in-law and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Vernon Jarrett, was a key member of the South Chicago communist left of the late 1940s. After graduating from Knoxville College in Tennessee, Jarrett moved to Chicago in 1946 to work as a journalist.  On his first day on the job at the radical Chicago Defender, he was sent to cover a race riot.  The Defender was heavily influenced by the Communist Party USA and included on its roster well known Chicago Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. Jarrett and Davis worked on the Defender around the same time.  They certainly knew each other through the Communist Party and its fronts. In June 1946, Vernon Jarrett was elected to the Illinois Council of the Communist Party's youth wing, then known as American Youth for Democracy.  This is according to Testimony of Walter S. Steele regarding Communist activities in the United States.  Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session, on H. R. 1884 and H. R. 2122, pages 75,76.  It is the first hard evidence tying Vernon Jarrett directly to the Communist Party.  Frank Marshall Davis, incidentally, was an official sponsor of American Youth for Democracy, along with confirmed communists Howard Fast, Langston Hughes, John Howard Lawson and Dirk Struik. In April 1948, Frank Marshall Davis and Vernon Jarrett were working together as members of the publicity committee of the communist controlled Citizens' Committee to Aid Packing-House Workers.           Besides Davis and Jarrett, communist officials of the strike committee included Oscar Brown (Treasurer), Louise Patterson (Assistant Treasurer) and Ishmael Flory (food & groceries committee). Later that year, Frank Marshall Davis left Chicago for Hawaii to work on the Honolulu Record, then edited and run by Communist Party member Koji Ariyoshi. Loudon is just getting warmed up.  He's got a ton of stuff here . . .

Valerie Jarrett Has A Secret Service Detail

Keith Koffler is reporting that Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett apparently has Secret Service protection.   This is highly unusual, and of course, costly. I’ve never really heard of someone who is merely a senior White House aide getting assigned Secret Service agents.   My understanding is that at the senior levels of the Bush White House, at least during the latter days, only the president and his family, the vice president, the chief of staff, the national security adviser, and the homeland security adviser were assigned Secret Service agents.    It’s possible that Jarrett has received enough specific and credible threats to justify Secret Service protection, or that the Secret Service has for some other reason calculated that she needs bodyguards. But it’s also possible this is a case of oddly overdoing it -- and overusing taxpayer resources.   Is she really such a public figure? I’m sure 90 percent of Americans have little to no idea who she is. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is far better known and spends his time warning terrorists and our foreign adversaries about bad behavior while trumpeting the killing of Osama Bin Laden. I’m sure he does not have protection. According to a local report, Jarrett was accompanied by at least two Secret Service agents during her pre-Martin Luther King Day appearance in Atlanta Sunday, where she bashed Republicans in church.       One source of mine, who is knowledgeable about what a Secret Service detail would look like, said he spotted Jarrett at Reagan National Airport with her protection as she departed Washington just before Christmas. After watching her blow past a long line at the security gate, he noticed she had one Secret Service agent in back and the other in front, with someone who was possibly a third agent to her side.   Valerie Jarrett NEEDS Secret Service agents assigned to her. Who else will carry her luggage? You don't expect her to carry her bags -- do you?

If you can't play rough and dirty..don't play in Obama's Sandbox... This is Chicago Gangster Thug with a flashy smile and a bullshit story!!

A bit of history: How Obama won his first election with a petition challenge. Saul Alinsky Politics from Day One !!!

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Obama won almost all of his electoral victories through technicalities, getting opponents thrown out or forced to withdraw for one reason or another.

Back in 1996, Barack Obama won his first election by knocking his opponents off the ballot with petitition challenges. He took not one, but four opponents off the ballot.  He ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.

The method he used was to allege that his opponents had an insufficient number of valid signatures, primarily because many of the people who signed his opponent’s petitions weren’t registered to vote. This is exactly the problem with Obama’s current petitions. There are large numbers of signatures from people who aren’t registered to vote.

The Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama began in with the 1997 swearing in of Obama to his first term in the Illinois Senate and ended with his 2004 election to the United States Senate. During this part of his career, Obama continued teaching constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School as he had done as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996–2008.^[1][2][3]

In 1994, Senator Alice Palmer announced her desire to run for the United States House of Representatives, leaving the Senate's 13th district seat open. When filing opened in 1995 for her seat, Obama entered the race. Eventually, his challengers were disqualified and he won the Democratic primary unopposed in 1996. He won re-election in 1998 and 2002. During his Senate tenure, Obama was involved with a wide range of legislation. While serving, he ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in the 2000 elections. In the redistricting following 2000 Census, the Democrats gained control of the Illinois Senate, and Obama became more active in his legislation, which included work in areas such as health care, labor, law enforcement, campaign finance reform, welfare, and community reinvestment.

First state Senate election, 1996

On November 21, 1994, Senator Alice Palmer, a Democrat of Chicago's South Shore neighborhood announced she was launching a campaign committee to raise funds to run in 1996 for the 2nd congressional district seat of indicted U.S. Representative Mel Reynolds, and suggested that 29-year-old Jesse Jackson, Jr. run for her 13th district Illinois Senate seat in 1996 instead of running against her for Congress.^[4][5]

On June 27, 1995, Palmer announced she was running for Congress and would be giving up her Senate seat instead of running for re-election in 1996.^[6] The following week, newspapers reported that Palmer-supporter Barack Obama of Hyde Park—who had been announced as chairman of the $49.2 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge on June 22 and whose memoir Dreams from My Father would be published on July 18—would announce he was running for Palmer's 13th district seat,^[7][8] which was then a T-shaped district that spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south through South Shore and from the lakefront west through Chicago Lawn.^[9]

On September 11, 1995, Governor Jim Edgar set November 28 as the date for a special primary election to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Mel Reynolds following his August 1995 conviction.^[10] On September 19, Obama announced his Illinois Senate candidacy to an audience of 200 supporters at the Ramada Inn Lakeshore in Hyde Park-Kenwood.^[11] Palmer introduced and endorsed Obama as her successor to supporters that included 4th Ward Alderwoman Toni Preckwinkle of Hyde Park, newly elected 5th Ward Alderwoman Barbara Holt of Hyde Park, and state Representative Barbara Flynn Currie (D-25) of Hyde Park.^[11]

On November 7, 1995, Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, died of metastatic uterine cancer at the age of 52 in Honolulu.^[12] Obama arrived in Hawaii the following day, remained for his mother's memorial service and returned to Chicago soon after.^[12] On November 28, after finishing a distant third in the special congressional primary election won by Jesse Jackson, Jr., a disappointed Palmer announced she wouldn't seek re-election and was undecided about again challenging Jackson in the March 1996 primary.^[13][14]

On December 11, 1995—the first filing day for nominating petitions—Obama filed his nominating petitions with more than 3,000 signatures; perennial unsuccessful candidate Ulmer Lynch, Jr., also filed nominating petitions.^[15] On December 18—the last filing day for nominating petitions—Palmer held a press conference to announce she was running for re-election to the Senate, accepting a draft by more than 100 supporters.^[16] Palmer then drove to Springfield to file her nominating petitions; also filing nominating petitions on the last filing day were first-time candidates Gha-is Askia and Marc Ewell.^[16] On December 26, Obama campaign volunteer Ron Davis filed objections to the legitimacy of the nominating petitions of Senator Palmer, Askia, Ewell and Lynch.^[17][18]

On January 17, 1996, Palmer announced she was withdrawing her bid for re-election because she was around 200 signatures short of the 757 needed to earn a place on the ballot after almost two-thirds of the 1,580 signatures on her nominating petitions were found to be invalid.^[18][19] The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners had previously sustained an objection to the nominating petitions of Lynch because of insufficient valid signatures and subsequently also sustained objections to the nominating petitions of Askia and Ewell because of insufficient valid signatures.^[18][19]

Obama therefore won the Democratic nomination unopposed.^[20] On November 5, Obama was won the race for the 13th Senate district, with 82 percent of the vote; perennial unsuccessful Harold Washington Party candidate David Whitehead (13%) and first-time Republican Party candidate Rosette Caldwell Peyton (5%) also ran.^[21]

Second state Senate election, 1998

Obama was up for reelection in 1998; Illinois state senators serve one two-year term and two four-year terms each decade. In the March 17 primary, Obama won re-nomination unopposed, and first-time candidate Yesse Yehudah won the Republican nomination unopposed.^[22] At the November 3 general election, Obama was re-elected to a four-year term as state senator for the 13th district with 89% of the vote; Yehudah received 11% of the vote.^[23]

Third state Senate election, 2002

Obama won both the March 19 Democratic primary election^[24] and November 5, 2002 general election^[25] for the newly configured 13th district unopposed.

Early Senate career

On January 8, 1997, Obama was sworn in as senator.^[26] Early in his first term, the just-retired U.S. Senator Paul Simon contacted longtime Obama mentor, judge and former congressman Abner Mikva suggesting that Mikva recommend Obama to Emil Jones, Jr., the powerful Democratic leader of the state Senate. "Say, our friend Barack Obama has a chance to push this campaign finance bill through," Simon said in a telephone conversation, as recounted by Mikva in a 2008 interview, "Why don’t you call your friend Emil Jones and tell him how good he is." With Jones' support, Obama helped shepherd through a sweeping law that banned most gifts from lobbyists and personal use of campaign funds by state legislators.^[27]

During his first years as a state senator, Obama was a co-sponsor of a bill that re-structured the Illinois welfare program into the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. He also helped get various pieces of legislation that established a $100 million Earned Income Tax Credit for working families, increased child care subsidies for low-income families, and required advance notice before mass layoffs and plant closings passed.^[28]

Campaign for Bobby Rush's congressional seat

Main article: Illinois's 1st congressional district election, 2000

In September 1999, Obama and fellow Senator Donne Trotter (neither faced re-election that year) both announced their candidacies for the March 2000 Democratic primary election for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Rush had been badly defeated in the February 1999 Chicago mayoral election by Richard M. Daley—who won 45 percent of the African-American vote and even won Rush's own ward—and was thought to be vulnerable.^[29] The support of some veteran Democratic fundraisers who saw Obama as a rising star, along with support of African-American entrepreneurs, helped him keep pace with Rush's fundraising in the district's most expensive race ever.^[30]

During the campaign, Rush charged that Obama was not sufficiently rooted in Chicago's black neighborhoods to represent constituents' concerns, and also benefitted from an outpouring of sympathy when his son was shot to death shortly before the election.^[29] Obama said Rush was a part of "a politics that is rooted in the past" and said he himself could build bridges with whites to get things done. But while Obama did well in his own Hyde Park base, he didn't get enough support from the surrounding black neighborhoods.^[27] Starting with just 10 percent name recognition, Obama went on to get only 31 percent of the votes, losing by a more than 2-to-1 margin despite winning among white voters.^{[31][32][33][34]}

Later Senate career

After losing the primary for U.S. Congress to Bobby Rush, Obama worked to repair relations with black politicians and clergy members, telling them he bore no grudges against the victor. He also became more responsive to requests for state funding, getting money for churches and community groups in his district. Senator Trotter, then the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in 2008 that he knew Obama was responding more to funding requests "because the community groups in his district stopped coming to me".^[27]

In September 2001, Democrats won a lottery to redraw legislative districts that had been drawn ten years earlier by Republicans and had helped ensure ten uninterrupted years of Republican control of the Illinois Senate.^[35] At the November 2002 election, the Democratic remap helped them win control of the Illinois Senate and expand their majority in the Illinois House to work with the first Democratic Illinois governor in 26 years.^[36][37] In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, after six years on the committee and four years as its minority spokesman. The new Democratic majority allowed Obama to write and help pass more legislation than in previous years. He sponsored successful efforts to expand children's health care, create a plan to provide equal health care access for all Illinois residents, and create a "Hospital Report Card" system, and worker's rights laws that protected whistleblowers, domestic violence victims, equal pay for women, and overtime pay.^[28] His most public accomplishment was a bill requiring police to videotape interrogations and confessions in potential death penalty cases. Obama was willing to listen to Republicans and police organizations and negotiate compromises to get the law passed.^[38] That helped him develop a reputation as a pragmatist able to work with various sides of an issue.^[27] Obama also led the passage of a law to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they stopped.^[39][40]

THE STORY CONTINUES:

By David Jackson and Ray Long Tribune staff reporters

6:48 p.m. CDT, April 3, 2007

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.

There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens.

But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

One of the candidates he eliminated, long-shot contender Gha-is Askia, now says that Obama's petition challenges belied his image as a champion of the little guy and crusader for voter rights.

"Why say you're for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates?" Askia said. "He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?"

In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot."

But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled.

"I gave some thought to … should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."

Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."

Obama behind challenges

America has been defined in part by civil rights and good government battles fought out in Chicago's 13th District, which in 1996 spanned Hyde Park mansions, South Shore bungalows and poverty-bitten precincts of Englewood.

It was in this part of the city that an eager reform Democrat by the name of Abner Mikva first entered elected office in the 1950s. And here a young, brash minister named Jesse Jackson ran Operation Breadbasket, leading marchers who sought to pressure grocery chains to hire minorities.

Palmer served the district in the Illinois Senate for much of the 1990s. Decades earlier, she was working as a community organizer in the area when Obama was growing up in Hawaii and Indonesia. She risked her safe seat to run for Congress and touted Obama as a suitable successor, according to news accounts and interviews.

But when Palmer got clobbered in that November 1995 special congressional race, her supporters asked Obama to fold his campaign so she could easily retain her state Senate seat.

Obama not only refused to step aside, he filed challenges that nullified Palmer's hastily gathered nominating petitions, forcing her to withdraw.

"I liked Alice Palmer a lot. I thought she was a good public servant," Obama said. "It was very awkward. That part of it I wish had played out entirely differently."

His choice divided veteran Chicago political activists.

"There was friction about the decision he made," said City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus Timuel Black, who tried to negotiate with Obama on Palmer's behalf. "There were deep disagreements."

Had Palmer survived the petition challenge, Obama would have faced the daunting task of taking on an incumbent senator. Palmer's elimination marked the first of several fortuitous political moments in Obama's electoral success: He won the 2004 primary and general elections for U.S. Senate after tough challengers imploded when their messy divorce files were unsealed.

Obama contended that in the case of the 1996 race, in which he routed token opposition in the general election, he was ready to compete in the primary if necessary.

"We actually ran a terrific campaign up until the point we knew that we weren't going to have to appear on the ballot with anybody," Obama said. "I mean, we had prepared for it. We had raised money. We had tons of volunteers. There was enormous enthusiasm."

And he defended his use of ballot maneuvers: "If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people's business."

At the time, though, Obama seemed less at ease with the decision, according to aides. They said the first-time candidate initially expressed reservations about using challenges to eliminate all his fellow Democrats.

"He wondered if we should knock everybody off the ballot. How would that look?" said Ronald Davis, the paid Obama campaign consultant whom Obama referred to as his "guru of petitions."

In the end, Davis filed objections to all four of Obama's Democratic rivals at the candidate's behest.

While Obama didn't attend the hearings, "he wanted us to call him every night and let him know what we were doing," Davis said, noting that Palmer and the others seemed unprepared for the challenges.

But Obama didn't gloat over the victories. "I don't think he thought it was, you know, sporting," said Will Burns, a 1996 Obama campaign volunteer who assisted with the petition challenges. "He wasn't very proud of it."

Endorsement or informal nod?

By the summer of 1995, Obama, 34, had completed his globe-trotting education and settled deep into Chicago's South Side.

He had gone to Harvard Law School with private ambitions of someday following Harold Washington as mayor of Chicago. At Harvard, where Obama was celebrated as the first black president of the Law Review, classmate Gina Torielli remembers him "saying that governor of Illinois would be his dream job."

Back in Chicago after graduation, Obama won respect for running Project Vote, which registered tens of thousands of black Chicagoans. "It's a power thing," the volunteers' T-shirts said.

Community organizers packed his wedding to Michelle Robinson, a South Shore resident and fellow Harvard Law graduate. The newlyweds bought a Hyde Park condo.

His memoir, "Dreams from My Father," was published that summer to warm reviews. He was working at a small but influential legal firm, teaching constitutional law as a University of Chicago adjunct professor and sitting on the boards of charities.

At the same time, the South Side's political map was thrown up for grabs when then-U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds was convicted of sex crimes and a special election was called to fill his congressional seat.

Palmer joined the race and, according to multiple accounts, introduced Obama as the successor for her Illinois Senate seat.

"She said, 'I found this wonderful person, this fine young man, so we needn't worry that we'd have a good state senator,' " said former 5th Ward Democratic committeeman Alan Dobry, who volunteered to help both Palmer and Obama that year.

In recent interviews, Obama and Palmer agreed that he asked her whether she wanted to keep her options open and file to run for her state Senate seat as a fallback in case her congressional bid failed.

Obama says he told her: "We haven't started the campaign yet."

"I hadn't publicly announced," he said. "But what I said was that once I announce, and I have started to raise money, and gather supporters, hire staff and opened up an office, signed a lease, then it's going to be very difficult for me to step down. And she gave me repeated assurances that she was in [the congressional race] to stay."

Obama "did say that to me," Palmer says now. "And I certainly did say that I wasn't going to run. There's no question about that."

But beyond that, the private discussions they held in 1995 are shrouded today in disputed and hazy memories.

Obama said Palmer gave him her formal endorsement. "I'm absolutely certain she … publicly spoke and sort of designated me," he recalled.

Palmer disputes that. "I don't know that I like the word 'endorsement,' " she said. "An endorsement to me, having been in legislative politics … that's a very formal kind of thing. I don't think that describes this. An 'informal nod' is how to characterize it."

In July 1995, Obama announced he was planning to run for Palmer's seat. He filed papers creating his fundraising committee a month later and officially announced his candidacy in September.

He emerged that winter as a gifted campaigner who after finishing hectic workdays would layer on thermal underwear to knock on South Side doors.

In impromptu street-corner conversations and media interviews, he disparaged local pols for putting self-preservation ahead of public service. At the last house on a dark block, "he would start a discussion that should have taken five minutes and pretty soon someone was cooking him dinner," said paid campaign consultant Carol Anne Harwell.

Then Palmer's congressional bid collapsed. On Nov. 28, 1995, she placed a distant third behind political powerhouses Jesse Jackson Jr., who holds that congressional seat today, and current state Senate President Emil Jones Jr.

Palmer didn't fade quietly away. Citing an "outpouring" of support, she upended the political landscape by switching gears and deciding to run in the March 1996 primary for her state Senate seat.

But she had two big problems. To get on the ballot, Palmer needed to file nominating petitions signed by at least 757 district voters—and the Dec. 18 deadline was just days away.

And then there was Obama, the bright up-and-comer she had all but anointed.

Obama's aides said he seemed anguished over the prospect of defying Palmer. "I really saw turmoil in his face," Harwell said.

Obama sought advice from political veterans such as 4th Ward Ald. Toni Preckwinkle and then-15th Ward Ald. Virgil Jones, who say they urged him to hold his course.

"I thought the world of Alice Palmer," said state Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), now the House majority leader. But "at that point she had pulled her own plug."

According to Palmer, it was without her knowledge that her supporters initiated discussions to persuade Obama to step aside. They invited him to the home of state Rep. Lovana "Lou" Jones, now deceased. Obama arrived alone.

"It was a brief meeting," said Black, a Palmer friend who had advised Obama when he was a young community organizer in the mid-1980s.

Obama didn't try to justify his decision to reject Palmer's plea, Black said.

"He did not put it in inflammatory terms, he just did not back away. It was not arguments, it was stubbornness," Black said. "Barack had by then gone ahead in putting together his own campaign, and he just didn't want to stop."

'If you can get 'em, get 'em'

Just in time for the Dec. 18, 1995, filing deadline, Palmer submitted 1,580 signatures—about twice the minimum required. That day, Obama lashed out at her, telling the Tribune she had pressured him to withdraw.

"I am disappointed that she's decided to go back on her word to me," he said.

Obama campaign aides also responded that day—but quietly, and out of the limelight.

Davis and Dobry marshaled volunteers and began poring through the nominating petitions of Palmer and the three lesser-known Democrats, according to interviews.

"We looked at those petitions and found that none of them met the requirements of the law," Dobry said. "Alice's people, they'd done it in a great hurry. Almost all her petitions were signed a day or so before the deadline."

According to Davis, Palmer "had kids gathering the names. I remember two of her circulators, Pookie and Squirt."

Davis and others urged Obama to file legal challenges.

Such tactics are legal and frequently used in Chicago. Ballot challenges eliminated 67 of the 245 declared aldermanic candidates in Chicago before this past February's elections, an election board spokesman said.

Davis recalled telling Obama: "If you can get 'em, get 'em. Why give 'em a break?

"I said, 'Barack, I'm going to knock them all off.'

"He said, 'What do you need?'

"I said, 'I need an attorney.'

"He said, 'Who is the best?'

"I said, 'Tom Johnson.' "

Obama already knew civil rights attorney and fellow Harvard Law graduate Thomas Johnson, who had waged election cases for the late Mayor Washington and had offered Obama informal legal advice since the days of Project Vote.

With Johnson's legal help, Obama's team was confident. They piled binders of polling sheets in the election board office on the second floor of City Hall, and on Jan. 2, 1996, began the days-long hearings that would eliminate the other Democrats.

Little-known candidate Marc Ewell filed 1,286 names, but Obama's objections left him 86 short of the minimum, and election officials struck him from the ballot, records show. Ewell filed a federal lawsuit contesting the board's decision, but Johnson intervened on Obama's behalf and prevailed when Ewell's case was dismissed days later.

Ewell could not be reached for comment, but the federal judge's decision showed how he was tripped up by complexities in the election procedures.

City authorities had just completed a massive, routine purge of unqualified names that eliminated 15,871 people from the 13th District rolls, court records show.

Ewell and other Obama rivals had relied on early 1995 polling sheets to verify the signatures of registered voters—but Obama's challenges were decided at least in part using the most recent, accurate list, records show.

Askia filed 1,899 signatures, but the Obama team sustained objections to 1,211, leaving him 69 short, records show.

Leafing through scrapbooks in his South Shore apartment, Askia, a perennially unsuccessful candidate, acknowledges that he paid Democratic Party precinct workers $5 a sheet for some of the petitions, and now suspects they used a classic Chicago ruse of passing the papers among themselves to forge the signatures. "They round-tabled me," Askia said.

Palmer to this day does not concede the flaws that Obama's team found in her signatures. She maintains that she could have overcome the Obama team's objections and stayed on the ballot if she had more time and resources.

It was wrenching to withdraw, she said. "But sit for a moment, catch your breath, get up and keep going. I'm a very practical person. Politics is not the only vehicle for accomplishing things." She became a special assistant to the president of the University of Illinois and is now retired.

Obama said he has not been in touch with Palmer since 1996. "No, not really, no," he said.

Though she hasn't determined whom to support in the presidential race, Palmer, 67, said her dispute with Obama doesn't affect her assessment of his fitness to hold office.

Saying that jobless high school dropouts "are sitting on the steps next to my house," Palmer added: "There is a savage economy going on out here, and we've got collateral damage. I am looking closely to see who has the courage, the smarts."

THIS IS HOW HE PLAYS!!!

Before he died suddenly while walking home in the late of night, Andrew Breitbart had vowed to do the job that the media deliberately neglected to do — vett the man known variously as Barry Soetoro Stephen Dunham Barack Hussein Obama.

What the Bill Ayers hometown mailman knows about Obama

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Dr. Eowyn
Before he died suddenly while walking home in the late of night, Andrew Breitbart had vowed to do the job that the media deliberately neglected to do — vett the man known variously as Barry Soetoro Stephen Dunham Barack Hussein Obama.
The organization that he left behind, Breitbart.com, is carrying on Andrew’s work (although paradoxically, Breitbart.com’s new editor Ben Shapiro declared Obama’s eligibility “simply doesn’t matter”). So are others.
Here are excerpts from author Jack Cashill‘s latest effort. I inserted the photos.
~Eowyn

What the Mailman Knows about Ayers and Obama

By Jack Cashill – American Thinker – March 19, 2012
[...] a video interview with the mailman by WND sleuth Jerome Corsi [...] made me sit up and pay attention.  The mailman is a real person.  His name is Alan Hulton.  He seems entirely credible, and he has a story to tell.

Alan Hulton

Hulton delivered mail in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, from 1962 to 2001 with a couple years off to serve in the military.  During roughly ten of those years, he delivered mail to the home of Tom and Mary Ayers, Bill Ayers’s parents.  Hulton talked to Tom once, Mary several times, their daughter-in-law Bernardine Dohrn a few times, and Bill Ayers not at all.  Memorably, he talked once to one of their visitors, but more on that in a moment.

Marxist domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and wife Bernardine Dohrn

As Hulton tells Corsi — and he has sworn an affidavit to the same — he met Tom Ayers not long after the Ayerses moved to the neighborhood.  Until he retired in 1980 at the age of 65, Tom Ayers was the CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison.  Tom, however, was not your garden-variety plutocrat.  According to Diamond, who knows his way around Chicago politics, Tom was a “lifelong liberal” — one deeply involved in the same educational reform movement that engaged son Bill and, briefly, Barack Obama in 1988.  Tom Ayers was comfortable enough with Bill’s lifestyle to live with him in Hyde Park until Tom died in 2007.
When Hulton met Tom Ayers, they talked about working conditions at the Post Office.  ”I couldn’t believe how he responded,” Hulton told Diamond.  ”He started to talk about workers having to struggle to survive and about peasants and the proletariat.  It made me think later that he might be a Marxist!”  Hulton would tell Corsi, “I had this uncomfortable feeling that he thought he knew about my situation as a working person better than I did, that he knew what was best for me.”
Hulton also recalls one particular conversation with Mary Ayers.  ”She was enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student that they were helping out,” he tells Corsi, “and she referred to him as a foreign student.”  Adds Hulton, “I was taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about him.”  Within a year of this conversation, Hulton had a fateful meeting with the young man he presumed Mary was talking about.
According to Hulton, he encountered the fellow on the sidewalk on the front of the Ayers home.  In that it was extremely rare to see a black man in this tony neighborhood, Hulton believes that the man felt the need to explain his visit to the Ayers household.  Hulton describes him as friendly and neatly, although casually, dressed.  Hulton tells Corsi, “I am absolutely positive that it was Barack Obama.”
Hulton was sympathetic.  After he had come out of military service, he was a supporter of Martin Luther King, who had pressed for fair housing in the Chicago area in the 1960s.  ”I took some flak about my support for civil rights from my fellow workers at the time,” remembers Hulton.
Obama explained to Hulton that he had taken the train out from Chicago to Glen Ellyn in order “to thank the Ayers family personally for helping him with his education.”  What shocked Hulton was that when casually inquiring into the young man’s plans for the future, Obama answered, “I am going to be president of the United States.”  As Hulton tells Corsi, “[i]t came across like this was something that’s already been determined.”  Adds Hulton, “I was speechless.”
Hulton told Diamond and Corsi essentially the same story.  What gives the Corsi interview added value is that we see Hulton tell it.  Although just a year older than Bill Ayers, he seems to come from a different generation.  He has little to gain — and a lot to risk — by going public.  Corsi warns Hulton that by quoting Mary’s comment that Obama was a “foreign student,” he has put himself at some risk.  Says Hulton, “I am only telling you what I distinctly remember her saying — that he was a foreign student.”
[...] There is a good deal at stake here.  According to Snopes and the other fact-check sites, Bill Ayers and Obama did not meet until the mid-1990s.  This is a talking point that both Ayers and Obama have upheld.  When Ayers appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America in 2008, he put the date of their first meeting in 1995 at a fundraiser in Ayers’s own home.  “I think he was probably in 20 homes that day as far as I know,” said Ayers.  “But that was the first time I really met him.”

Percy Sutton

As it happens, I stumbled into my own discovery of Ayers’s involvement in the writing of Obama’s 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, when I was investigating how Obama got into Harvard Law School and who paid his way.  What had piqued my interest was an interview with veteran New York power-broker Percy Sutton on a local New York City show called Inside City Hall.  The interview took place in late March 2008 but did not surface until August 2008.
Sutton told how twenty years prior he had been “introduced to [Obama] by a friend.”  The friend’s name was Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, “the principal adviser to one of the world’s richest men.”  The billionaire in question was Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal.  According to Sutton, al-Mansour had asked him to “please write a letter in support of [Obama] … a young man that has applied to Harvard.”  Sutton had friends at Harvard and gladly did so.
A few months before the election, it should have mattered that a respected black political figure like Sutton had publicly announced that a fanatic black separatist, backed by an ambitious Saudi billionaire, had been guiding Obama’s career perhaps for the last twenty years.  It did to the Obama-friendly media, but not in a way in which it would have to real journalists.  Moving in swiftly to kill the story were Politico, an insider D.C. journal run by Washington Post alums, and Media Matters for America, an alleged watchdog group founded by the recovering Troopergate author, David Brock.
Ben Smith, then of Politico, took the lead.  Shortly after the story broke, Smith ran the disclaimer that “Barack Obama’s campaign is flatly denying a story told by former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton.”  After some conspicuous waffling, al-Mansour denied the story as well.  A self-appointed “spokesman for Sutton’s family” by the name of Kevin Wardally sent an e-mail to Smith that read in part: “As best as our family and the Chairman’s closest friends can tell, Mr. Sutton, now 86 years of age, misspoke in describing certain details and events in that television interview.”
[...]  With Hillary out of the race, no newsroom in America felt compelled to dig up dirt that could sully Obama.
About that time, I found a diary entry that caught my attention.  Radical-turned-actor Peter Coyote entered it at the time of the 1996 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  Coyote wrote, “I inform Martha that I’m dragging her to the apartment of old friends, ex-Weathermen, Bernadine [sic] Dohrn and Bill Ayers, hosting a party for Senator Leahy. Perhaps Edward Said will be there.”
Said had taught Obama at least one class at Columbia.  I had earlier seen a photo taken during an Arab-American community dinner in Chicago in 1998 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Palestinian nakba, or disaster.  The photo shows Obama sitting next to Said, seemingly engaged in an animated conversation at dinner.  The intimacy surprised me.  At the time of the photo, Obama was an obscure state senator while Said, according to the Nation, was “probably the best-known intellectual in the world” and the star of that evening’s show.  He would speak on this occasion, as the Los Angeles Times would later report, “against settlements, against Israeli apartheid.”
All of this got me to wondering whether an Ayers-Obama-Said-al-Mansour cabal had formed in the early 1980s back in New York City.  If so, such a combine might have generated enough momentum to push Obama’s career along.  To see if Obama and Ayers had crossed paths before Chicago, I ordered a copy of Bill Ayers’ 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days.  It was then that I began to realize the depth of Ayers’s involvement in Obama’s rise to power.
Obama would have needed help to get into Harvard.  Friendly biographer David Remnick tells us that Obama was an “unspectacular” student in his two years at Columbia and at every stop before that going back to grade school.  A Northwestern University professor, John L. McKnight, although a friend of Obama’s and a fellow Alinskyite, reinforces the point, telling Remnick, “I don’t think [Obama] did too well in college.”  As to Obama’s LSAT scores, Jimmy Hoffa’s body will be unearthed before those are.
How such an indifferent student got into a law school whose applicants’ LSAT scores typically track between the 98^th and the 99^th percentile and whose GPAs range between 3.80 and 4.00 is a subject the media have chosen not to explore.  Nor have they asked how Obama paid for that education

How Obama used a Influence in a bank and befriended a Felon called Rezko to buy his home at below market prices!

Obama's sweetheart-deal home loan:

When Barack Obama received a below prime rate home loan from Northern Trust Bank (the kind of loan that isn’t available to the “middle America” Obama supposedly cares so much about), the Obama campaign claimed there was no special treatment. That claim is patently false. As we continue to travel the incestuous money trail, we find that Northern Trust Bank serves as a central hub for Obama, his friend and devoted communist Bill Ayers, and a host of Obama supporters, bundlers and advisers.

Let us first examine the Obamas’ Northern Trust loan. The going rate in Chicago on the day the Obamas locked-in on their home loan was 5.93 percent. Yet they were given a rate of 5.625 percent on their “super, super jumbo” loan of $1.32 million. When Joe Stephens from the Washington Post first reported on this back in July, he wrote that “the Obamas had no prior relationship with Northern Trust when they applied for the loan.” The facts suggest otherwise.
The campaign’s effort to make this a “straight up” transaction is disingenuous at best. A cursory glance at campaign contribution records demonstrates that Northern Trust officials were clearly in Sen. Obama’s hip pocket. Since 1990, employees of Northern Trust have contributed more than $71,000 to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Five of 13 board members of Northern Trust had given previously to Obama’s Senate campaign before the Obamas received their home loan, including Northern Trust Chairman William Osborn, who contributed $1,000 on Sept. 30, 2003. Further, the bank’s political action committee, the Northern Trust Employees Good Government Fund, contributed $1,250 to Obama in 2004.
Even the Northern Trust management has personal connections to Obama, including current Exelon (Commonwealth Edison) Chairman and CEO John Rowe – a later successor of Bill Ayers’ father, Tom Ayers, who has been a member of the bank’s board of directors since 2004. Another board member is Susan Crown, whose family has been one of Obama’s proven fundraisers. Crown’s brother and sister-in-law, Jim and Paula Crown, are bundlers for Obama, and the Crown family has given at least $56,000 to Obama campaigns. Northern Trust general counsel Kelly R. Walsh, who contributed $1,500 to Obama a little more than one month before the Obamas were given their home loan, is married to current Joyce Foundation President Ellen Alberding. Alberding coincidentally served on the board of the Joyce Foundation with Obama in 2001.
While Northern Trust campaign contributions to Obama have been addressed by bloggers in the past, less was known about the community organization links between Northern Trust and Obama and the Ayers family. Until now.
Northern Trust contributed $100,000 to the Chicago Public Schools Education Fund while Obama and former Commonwealth Edison CEO Tom Ayers and his son John Ayers sat on its leadership council in 2001 and 2002 ($36,000 of that sum was given in 2000).
Tom Ayers, father of Obama friend, communist and unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, served on the General Dynamics Board. As head of the corporation’s finance committee, Northern Trust was the trustee of the corporation’s Salaried Savings Plan and the Hourly Savings Plan that was overseen by the committee along with fellow members Lester Crown whose son, Jim, and daughter-in-law, Paula, are $200,000 bundlers for Obama’s presidential campaign.
Many of Tom Ayers’ pet projects – charities and organizations with which he spent his time – have a Northern Trust connection and an Obama connection. Tom Ayers served as a trustee of the Erikson Institute. The Institute distributed $46,025 in Northern Trust scholarships. At the time, the Erickson Institute Board of Trustees also included Ayers’ convicted felon daughter-in-law, Bernardine Dohrn Ayers. In addition, the Institute’s co-founder, Barbara Bowman, is the mother of close Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.
Some of Tom Ayers’ projects appear to have been the beneficiary of coordinated spending between Northern Trust and the Woods Fund, on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served. For instance, in 2000, Northern Trust contributed $3,000 to the Community Renewal Society. That same year, the Woods Fund contributed $20,000 to the Community Renewal Society. Also in 2000, Northern Trust contributed $2,500 to the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, of which Tom Ayers was an active member. That same year, the Woods Fund, steered by board members Barack Obama and Bill Ayers, gave $16,000 to the Chicago Partnership for Economic Development.
The Chicago Urban League, another Tom Ayers organization, was the recipient of an $18,000 contribution from Northern Trust (doled out in $6,000 increments from 1999 to 2001). As a state senator, Obama secured $37,500 in earmarks for the League for “costs associated with conducting research on technology in the public schools.” The Urban League also pocketed $20,000 from the Woods Fund in 2000, at which time communist Bill Ayers and Obama sat on its board. The Woods Fund also participated in a Northern Trust private equity fund.
While some readers might need a GPS navigation tool to help them make sense of the complicated interpersonal relationships and connections between Obama, Northern Trust and the Ayers family, one thing ought to be abundantly clear: Northern Trust wasn’t just some bank that gave the Obamas a below prime rate home loan any more than Bill Ayers was just a guy who lived in Obama’s neighborhood. Theirs is a very long, circular and mutually beneficial partnership as each sought to wield power and financial clout in Chicagoland.
As we follow the incestuous money trail, we find a growing number of people who were connected to the Ayers family – and we find Bill Ayers constantly in the middle of everything related to Barack Obama. This is no coincidence, but rather a well-orchestrated campaign by Obama’s boss and mentor, Bill Ayers, to open doors and accelerate Obama’s political career.