Obama nation: A donation-grant scandal

Just to throw a little TNT on the fire of Barack Obama’s burning election hopes, a new story has come out about how Sen. Obama received more than $100,000 from a donor whom Obama then helped obtain a state grant.

According to the Los Angeles Times, when Obama was an Illinois state senator, he began receiving an $8,000-a-month retainer from Robert Blackwell Jr. to provide advice to his technology company Electronic Knowledge Interchange.

At the time, Obama was struggling with debts from an unsuccessful bid for Congress, and he was so strapped for cash that his credit card was rejected for a rental car at the 2000 Democratic Convention, according to Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope.”

The monthly payments from EKI supplemented Obama’s state Senate pay and finally totalled $112,000, according to NewsMax. Yet, Obama’s disclosure forms for 2001 and 2002 did not specify that EKI was the source of most of his private-sector compensation, the Times reported.

According to the Times story: “A few months after he received his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.”

The day after writing the letter, Obama received a $1,000 donation to his Senate campaign from Blackwell.

Killerspin, which promoted table tennis tournaments and gear, eventually received $320,000 in grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments, the Times reported.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief political adviser, denied the story: “Any implication that Sen. Obama would risk an ethical breach in order to secure a small grant for a ping pong tournament is nuts.”

Obama’s Web site reports that Blackwell is committed to raise $100,000 to $200,000 for the presidential campaign.

Obamites will no doubt vivisect, downplay and rationalize this story, but for thinking people, this fits right into the pattern we’ve seen from the self-annointed agent of “change” and “hope.”

Anyone started a pool yet on how many days till Obama drops out?

Obama nation: Better late than never?

Barack Obama’s winning praise from a number of media outlets and liberal blogs for his denunciation Tuesday of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but it may be too late to save his campaign.

In case you missed it, Wright embarked on what was supposed to be his rehabilitation tour this past weekend, with several media appearances in a few days. But what started out with a soft-peddled interview on PBS rapidly began to devolve a little more at each stop, until Wright’s rehabilitation tour turned into a full-fledged crazy tour. By the end, Wright’s derangement was obvious even to many of Obama’s willfully blind supporters.

On Tuesday, Obama finally admitted what most of the world has known for months, that Wright’s hateful, anti-American, prejudicial views are way outside of the mainstream. “His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church,” Obama said at one point.

Since before the start of his campaign, Obama had sensed that Wright could be trouble, yet he clung to the man who was his pastor for 20 years, who married him and his wife, who baptized his children and who inspired an entire book. That long relationship had raised serious questions about the judgment of a man who wants to be president, but supporters tried their best to downplay the importance of the issue.

But Obama was finally forced to implicitly admit his critics have been right: “Obviously, whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed. I don’t think he showed much concern for me; more importantly, I don’t think he showed much concern for what we’re trying to do in this campaign.”

Except for willing followers who might be persuaded by Obama’s 11th-hour realization, those who have left the Obama camp don’t seem likely to come back. The real issue has been too clearly defined now: Obama’s lingering refusal to part with Wright indicates the candidate is either too spineless to stand up to a hatemonger, or he agrees with the pastor. At this late date, how can Tuesday’s remarks be seen as anything but a desperate political maneuver?

And there may be worse up ahead. Rev. Wright wasn’t the only live grenade in the Obama bunker. Still waiting to explode is the senator’s relationship with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and indicted real estate developer Tony Rezko. Plus who knows what other time bombs may be found in Obama’s past?