Press searching for scandals - going after Edwards and Obama. Seems pathetic.

[Pirate Smile]

Two articles:

Washington Post A1:

Identity of Edwards Home's Buyers Veiled
Assisted-Living Magnates in SEC Probe Paid Candidate $5.2 Million

By John Solomon and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 19, 2007; Page A01

When former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally succeeded last month in selling his imposing Georgetown mansion for $5.2 million after it had languished on the market, the names of the buyers were not publicly disclosed.

At the time, Edwards's spokeswoman told reporters that the house had been sold to an unidentified corporation. In reality, the buyers were Paul and Terry Klaassen, according to several sources and confirmed by Edwards's spokeswoman yesterday.

The wealthy founders of the nation's largest assisted-living housing chain for seniors, the Klaassens are currently cooperating with a government inquiry in connection with accounting practices and stock options exercised by them and other company insiders. They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid.

The grand 18th-century house had lingered on Washington's slowing real estate market for more than 18 months. The Edwardses paid $3.8 million in 2002 for the six-bedroom Federal-style house once owned by socialite Polly Fritchey, and they did substantial renovations. The final sale price was half a million dollars below the asking price but still $1.4 million more than the Edwardses paid four years earlier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802077.html

So.... This is on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow. There was actually a lot of real news today. :wtf:


Obama

Andrew Sullivan:

Obama's Autobiography
18 Jan 2007 11:09 am

Does he have a James Frey problem? I like Obama, but you've got to worry when a campaign dismisses something as a "non-story." That almost always means it's a real one.

links to:

Chicago Sun-Times on Obama's Book: 'What's Real, What's Not'
January 16, 2007 3:09 PM

Rhonda Schwartz Reports:

The Chicago Sun-Times columnist who got the scoop on Barack Obama's presidential announcement today is the same reporter who earlier raised serious questions about the facts in Obama's much-praised autobiography that was the No. 1 bestseller in the country.
Lynn Sweet, the savvy Chicago political columnist who's been tracking Obama's rise, called into question Obama's use of composite characters and made-up names in his highly praised autobiography.

-snip-
As Sweet noted in her article, in the introduction of the book, Obama does disclose to his readers the use of composite characters "for the sake of compression" and also says that other than his family and public figures, other characters' "names have been changed to protect their privacy."

-snip-
Sweet questioned Obama about Kaufman's true identity and the other composites in the book in an interview just prior to the 2004 Chicago Democratic Convention. Obama said that while he couldn't remember all the real names, he said "Marty Kaufman" was really "Gerald Kellman," his first boss at the Calumet Community Religious Conference in Chicago.
Sweet tracked down Kellman who had no complaints about his portrayal in the book. "I think Barack was very accurate not only about myself but other people that I knew," Kellman told the reporter.

-snip-
Obama's response? "'I say in the book it is my remembrances of what happened,' Obama told me . I don't set it out as reportage...read the book for what it is worth.
'You reconstruct your memory for what happened. It is not reportage. It is not appearing in the New York Times or the Sun-Times. I say that explicitly in the book.'"

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/chicago_suntime.html

He did what he disclosed in the introduction ... well, how outrageous! :crazy:

[ShortnFiery]

1. Our press is becoming inane ... I hope, they will soon be the brunt

of most jokes and essentially IRRELEVANT!

Face it folks, the USA M$M sucks pond-water. They are pathetic, just awful. :(

[illinoisprogressive]

2. I don't get it. They aren't slam stories. Just gossip stuff and human interest

[ShortnFiery]

4. That's because in Corporate America it's not Patriotic to have intellectual

curiosity for anything other than personality and good looks of our elected representatives. :shrug:

[Pirate Smile]

5. I think they are trying to raise questions where there aren't any.

Why is the Edwards story on the front page of the WP? What is the point? I don't get it either.

The Obama story does the same sniff of something bad but you read it and see there is nothing bad.

It is just odd but seemed like they were trying to use some innuendo of something bad when there doesn't appear to be any "there" there.

edit to add - I don't think either feels like a human interest story. It seemed like they were aiming more for an expose but didn't find any real dirt.

[Imagevision]

3. FOXnews will create there own news, then post retractions!!

[illinoisprogressive]

6. The headlines are to grab people and then they do a puff peice.

Either way, it doesn't look any way shady. It is what they always do to get the readers. make sales.
Nothing there.

[bigdarryl]

7. I almost hate living in this country when all the press wants to do is tear people appart

this is bullshit. if thats the best they can find then Obama and Edwards will be fine.

[bigdarryl]

8. why don't they dig into Rudy Gulliani's past on his 2 failed marriages

[blm]

15. Corpmedia will always treat GOPs with kid gloves. The Dems who think constant attacks happen

only to other Dems and don't get involved to stop ALL false attacks in their tracks, will one day regret not having built a media infrastructure within their party that works against false attacks against ALL Dem lawmakers.

[Vinca]

9. Well, on the "up" side, most Republican scandals involve small children.

I doubt anyone will lost sleep over who Edwards sold his house to and the Obama "story" is a columnist try to fill space. It's nothing.

[Mass]

10. They are running for president - They should expect things like that

and even worse. No surprise there.

I would consider the article on Obama more damaging than the one on Edwards. It is a known fact that Edwards is rich, so what is the deal here? He sold his house to somebody who is rich and spends his money without counting. I do not think that he could expect to find somebody else for a $5 M house.

Obama, though, may become more of a problem. One of his main attraction is authenticity. If the media starts dwelling if he is authentic or not, it will be a problem, whether he deserves it or not. Those are things like that that have been held against Gore throughout the 2000 campaign and that probably prevented him from getting a high enough margin in Florida so that he could not be cheated of his victory. I hope this does not spread.

[beaconess]

11. Kind of hard to accuse Obama of "James Freying" his book when he explained his process upfront:

"Finally, there are the dangers inherent in any autobiographical work: the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one's experiences hold for others, selective lapses of memory. Such hazards are only magnified when the writer lacks the wisdom of age; the distance that can cure one of certain vanities. I can't say that I've avoided all, or any, of these hazards successfully. Although much of this book is based on contemporaneous journals or the oral histories of my family, the dialogue is necessarily an approximation of what was actually said or relayed to me. For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known, and some events appear out of precise chronology. With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures, the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of privacy.

"Whatever the label that attaches to this book - autobiography, memoir, family history, or something else - what I've tried to do is write an honest account of a particular province of my life."

--- Barack Obama, Introduction to "Dreams from my Father," 1995.

These people are going to have to try a little harder if they want to upend Obama. This brother is much too deep to trip up on an okie-doke and, besides, he's 15 steps ahead of them.

[oasis]

12. According to "Fox", Hillary Clinton's campaign uncovered that Obama

had attended a "medrasa" for 4 years. :scared: "Those evil Islamo-fascists".:eyes:

The a.m. trio of Foxbots pulled that one out of their asses today.

[beaconess]

13. Right . . . And if he did, it's further proof of his strength and resolve

since after supposedly addening this "medrasa," Obama converted to Catholicism, got married, is raising an extremely traditional family and joined "the establishment."

Apparently, the "Islamo-fascists" couldn't get to Obama - he's a baaaaaaad man.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

18. Good for Barak

I'm liking him.

[Pirate Smile]

19. He isn't Catholic. I believe he joined the United Chuch of Christ.

This is all RW crap.

[beaconess]

22. You're right - he attended Catholic school in Indonesia.

But he is a longtime member of a United Church of Christ church. In fact, his second book "Audacity of Hope" takes its title from a sermon delivered by Rev. Jeremaiah Wright, his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

[Pirate Smile]

16. That could be - "THE RICOCHET SMEAR" trying to nail Hillary and Obama at the same time.

THE RICOCHET SMEAR:
A while back I predicted that conservatives would shamelessly smear Barack Obama and then blame the smearing on Hillary Clinton. Today I saw this article (via the Corner) about Obama from the conservative magazine Insight, which breathlessly asks:

Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?

Of course, it's not Insight asking this question, the article goes on to explain, it's Hillary. The article continues:

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.



Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama's Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

The attribution on all this is broad enough ("political opponents within the Democratic Party"; "researchers connected to Senator Clinton") that I suppose this information about Obama could have originated with people in Clinton's orbit. But let's not forget where this information appeared. And let's be on the lookout for who goes on the cable shows and wonders whether "Barrack Hussein Obama" is "The Manchurian Madrassa Candidate." Something tells me it isn't going to be Hillary, or any liberal for that matter.

--Jason Zengerle

http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=72792

[oasis]

17. Thanks for the link. Dems need to shoot down the rightwing b.s.early on. (eom)

[Beer Snob-50]

14. Dear Lord!!

We have the RW smear crowd starting to "Whitewater" the 2008 Presidental Canidates.

I think the surrogates for the candidates have to go on the air or write ltte's stating these are non-events.

[generaldemocrat]

20. This is the gauntlet that all potential candidates have to run.

Obama and Edwards generate a lot of buzz and have high profiles, so naturally they're going dig up crap on them. When Clinton, Gore, Clark, etc officially enter the race they'll have to run the gauntlet as well.

[underpants]

21. Is the Libby trial going on like RIGHT NOW?????

:grr:

Jeeesh

[Imagevision]

23. FOXnews smears Barack Obama... and his numbers go up... not too bad!!