Who Do You Suppose Leaked this Hit Piece on Obama? Say it ain't so Hill!

[NoHitlery]

March 7, 2007 NY Times

In ’05 Investing, Obama Took Same Path as Donors
By MIKE McINTIRE and CHRISTOPHER DREW
Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors.
One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease.
The most recent financial disclosure form for Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also shows that he bought more than $50,000 in stock in a satellite communications business whose principal backers include four friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees.
A spokesman for Mr. Obama, who is seeking his party’s presidential nomination in 2008, said yesterday that the senator did not know that he had invested in either company until fall 2005, when he learned of it and decided to sell the stocks. He sold them at a net loss of $13,000.
The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama’s broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made.
“He went about this process to avoid an actual or apparent conflict of interest, and he had no knowledge of the stocks he owned,” Mr. Burton said. “And when he realized that he didn’t have the level of blindness that he expected, he moved to terminate the trust.”
Mr. Obama has made ethics a signature issue, and his quest for the presidency has benefited from the perception that he is unlike politicians who blend public and private interests. There is no evidence that any of his actions ended up benefiting either company during the roughly eight months that he owned the stocks.
Even so, the stock purchases raise questions about how he could unwittingly come to invest in two relatively obscure companies, whose backers happen to include generous contributors to his political committees. Among those donors was Jared Abbruzzese, a New York businessman now at the center of an F.B.I. Inquiry into public corruption in Albany, who had also contributed to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sought to undermine John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004.
Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed about the stock deals, has already had to contend with a controversy that arose out of his reliance on a major campaign contributor in Chicago to help him in a personal financial transaction. In that earlier case, he acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to involve the contributor, a developer who has since been indicted in an unrelated political scandal, in deals related to the Obamas’ purchase of a home.
Senate ethics rules do not prohibit lawmakers from owning stocks — even in companies that do business with the federal government or could benefit from legislation they advance — and indeed other members of Congress have investments in government contractors. The rules say only that lawmakers should not take legislative actions whose primary purpose is to benefit themselves.
Mr. Obama’s sale of his shares in the two companies ended what appears to have been a brief foray into highly speculative investing that stood out amid an otherwise conservative portfolio of mutual funds and cash accounts, a review of his Senate disclosure statements shows. He earned $2,000 on the biotech company, AVI BioPharma, and lost $15,000 on the satellite communications concern, Skyterra, according to Mr. Burton of the Obama campaign.
Mr. Burton said the trust was different from qualified blind trusts that other senators commonly used, because it was intended to allow him greater flexibility to address any accusations of conflicts that might arise from its assets. He said Mr. Obama had decided to sell the stocks after receiving a communication that made him concerned about how the trust was set up.
The investments came at a time when Mr. Obama was enjoying sudden financial success, following his victory at the polls in November 2004. He had signed a $1.9 million book deal, and his ethics disclosure reports show that he received $1.2 million of book money in 2005.
His wife, Michelle, a hospital vice president in Chicago, received a promotion that March, nearly tripling her salary to $317,000, and they bought a $1.6 million house in June. The house sat on a large property that was subdivided to make it more affordable, and one of Mr. Obama’s political donors bought the adjacent lot.
The disclosure forms show that the Obamas also placed several hundred thousand dollars in a new private-client account at JPMorgan Chase, a bond fund and a checking account at a Chicago bank.
But he put $50,000 to $100,000 into an account at UBS, which his aides say was recommended to him by a wealthy friend, George W. Haywood, who was also a major investor in both Skyterra and AVI BioPharma, public securities filings show.
Mr. Haywood and his wife, Cheryl, have contributed close to $50,000 to Mr. Obama’s campaigns and to his political action committee, the Hopefund. Mr. Haywood declined to comment.
Within two weeks of his purchase of the biotech stock that Feb. 22, Mr. Obama initiated what he has called “one of my top priorities since arriving in the Senate,” a push to increase federal financing to fight avian flu.
Several dozen people had already died from the disease in Southeast Asia, and experts were warning that a worldwide pandemic could kill tens of millions of people. Mr. Obama was one of the first political leaders to call for more money to head off the danger, which he described as an urgent public health threat.
His first step came on March 4, 2005, when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved his request for $25 million to help contain the disease in Asia; the full Senate later approved that measure. And in April 2005, he introduced a bill calling for more research on avian flu drugs and urging the government to increase its stockpiles of antiviral medicines.
Mr. Obama repeated this call in a letter that Aug. 9 to Michael O. Levitt, the health and human services secretary. And in September 2005, Mr. Obama and Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, succeeded in amending another bill to provide $3.8 billion for battling the flu.
Meanwhile, the drug company in which he invested, AVI BioPharma, had been working to develop its own medicine to treat avian flu victims. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts on March 8, 2005, the company’s chairman, Denis R. Burger, said the firm was “aggressively going forward” with its avian flu research and hoped to work with federal agencies on it.
The company, which is also developing medicines in a number of other areas, provided several updates on its avian flu research in 2005, including one on Oct. 21 saying the company was likely to develop a treatment for avian flu “in a relatively short time.”
Mr. Obama sold what appears to have been about 2,000 shares of the company’s stock a week later, when it traded at about $3.50 a share, or about $1 a share more than when he bought it. Company officials said they never talked to the senator about his work on avian flu. And while the company has received millions of dollars in federal money to develop drugs for treating ebola and other serious diseases, it still has not received any federal money for its avian flu research.
The company’s stock briefly surged to nearly $9 a share in January 2006 when it announced promising research findings on the flu drug. But the company still has not applied for federal approvals to test and market the drug.
Unlike his investment in AVI, which yielded a small profit, Mr. Obama’s stake in Skyterra Communications went in the opposite direction, despite a promising start.
He bought his Skyterra shares the same day the Federal Communications Commission ruled in favor of the company’s effort to create a nationwide wireless network by combining satellites and land-based communications systems. Immediately after that morning ruling, Tejas Securities, a regional brokerage in Texas that handled investment banking for Skyterra, issued a research report speculating that Skyterra stock could triple in value.
Tejas and people associated with it were major donors to Mr. Obama’s political committees, having raised more than $150,000 since 2004. The company’s chairman, John J. Gorman, has held fund-raisers for the senator in Austin, Tex., and arranged for him to use a private plane for several political events in 2005. Mr. Gorman declined to comment.
In May 2005, Mr. Abbruzzese, who was vice chairman of Tejas and a principal investor in Skyterra, contributed $10,000 along with his wife to Mr. Obama’s political action committee — a departure from his almost exclusive support of Republicans. Eight months earlier, for instance, he had contributed $5,000 to the Swift Boat group, and he has given $100,000 to the Republican National Committee since 2004.
Last year, Mr. Abbruzzese, a major investor in several high-tech companies in New York and elsewhere, emerged as a central figure in the federal investigation of the New York State Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno. The inquiry is examining Mr. Bruno’s personal business dealings, including whether he accepted money from Mr. Abbruzzese in return for Senate approval of grants for one of Mr. Abbruzzese’s companies. Both men have denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Abbruzzese did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Skyterra’s share price was lifted into the $40 range for a time on the strength of the F.C.C. ruling, but eventually drifted down into the low 30s, and was at $31 when Mr. Obama sold his shares for a $15,000 loss on Nov. 1, 2005. A few months later, it plunged into the $20 range, and today trades below $10 a share. A spokesman for Skyterra said the company’s top officials had not been aware of Mr. Obama’s investment.

[nohil-billy]

I guess we know whose side the NY Times is on.

[Herb Schaffler]

It wouldn't surprise me if the Hillary camp dug this up. It could be their way of bringing Obama down to their level. Remember Hillary's cattle trading profits? The closer Obama gets in the polls, the nastier Hillary and her camp will get. The latest Wall Street Journal poll shows Obama climbing to just 5 points behind the ice queen. She didn't count on a popular black running against her. Who knows, if she gets past Obama, she may have to face Condi in the general election. Condi would take women votes away from her as well as black votes. The only problem with Condi is she is associated with the unpopular Iraq war which would be an albatross on her.

[nohil-billy]

I don't think there's any doubt that the Clintonistas dug this up, but it seems that the NY Times is willing to be used as the conduit for attacking her opposition. I agree that the Hillary camp will get nastier but, with so many skeletons in her closet, it will do more harm to her than Obama. The question now is how long will Obama let the NY Times be Hillary's proxy mouthpiece in her campaign of "Politics of Personal Destruction" before he let's loose.

And watch for Edwards to be that little yappy dog nipping at her ankles as she tries to fight off the pit bull.

[NoHitlery]

Will the Clinton hit machine stop at nothing to make Senator Obama appear as sleazy and dishonest as we already know Hillary is?
Wow: He didn't pay his parking tickets?
[LINK POSTED BY MEMBER] Only Members Can View This No Hillary For President Forum Link.
Let us not forget these minor issues and baggage the Second Lady brought to Washington.
Contents [hide]
1 Wellesley thesis and suppression
2 Black Panther Party
3 Alleged anti-Semitic comments
4 Retention of birth name after marriage
5 Cattle futures
6 Tammy Wynette; baking cookies
7 Whitewater
8 Travel office firings
9 Vince Foster
10 Improper actions regarding FBI files
11 Imaginary discussions with Eleanor Roosevelt
12 Role in 1996 campaign finance controversy
13 Staying in marriage to Bill Clinton
14 Kissing Suha Arafat
15 Changing sports affiliations
16 Book contract
17 Ghostwriters
18 Hasidic pardons
19 Attendance at funerals after September 11
20 Gandhi comment
21 Hollywood fundraiser
22 2006 Martin Luther King Day comments
23 Remarks on young people's work ethic
24 Coping with the alleged fashion double standard
25 Affected Southern speech patterns
26 References

[Herb Schaffler]

27 Reports of her lesbian tendancies. I don't condemn her over this, but it is information that she would prefer the public not find out about.

[oz007]

'Their most pervasive trait is a stunning lack of conscience.

[oz007]

Clinton's action in bombing Yugoslavia is indefensible.
If they did it once why not again ? 911 ?
Why they are crazy
Yet, almost invariably, these same people, who ought to know better, end up giving voice to some sentiment along lines of "now that we are in there, we have to go the whole way, we have to back up our fighting men," and so on, even if this means sending in ground troops. Invariably, they tell us that if we fail to do so, the United States will lose all its credibility. In other words, our commander in chief has made a tremendous error in committing us to a senseless war which we have no legal or moral right to wage, but we must go along with him to save face. This is moral insanity. .."
C.J. Barr 3/30/99 ‘…
Way back in the November 1994 issue of Reason, Edith Efron asked the intriguing question: "Can the President Think?" Her conclusion was that the president suffers from severe cognitive dysfunction and that the resulting chaos of his mind accounts for the chaos in his administration. In her analysis, Clinton emerges as the sum of two bedeviling paradoxes. The first, the paradox of the Hollow Sun King, refers to the strange emptiness that we perceive at the center of the charismatic Clinton phenomenon. The second, the paradox of the Paralyzed Sprinter, to the utter chaos that reigns at the center of his administration -- and, seemingly, of his mind….. Efron writes of the fragment of stone at the bottom of Stephanopolous' kaleidoscope -- reflecting in a unique way, showing a different facet to each person as Clinton turns. This is a metaphor for the elusive "real Clinton"; but, in truth, there is no real Clinton that we could possibly comprehend. That little fragment is so alien that it might as well not exist in our universe.At the core of this man, Clinton, where the soul is supposed to be, there is, instead, a gaping void. A black hole. The Sun King exists only as the irresistible gravitational pull he exerts on others and the dying light -- the catastrophic annihilation -- of everyone and everything that strays too close to his event horizon. Within, there is an unknowable emptiness…."
Capital Hill Blue 4/8/99 Doug Thompson "...White House staffers, Clinton confidants and others describe Clinton as "incredibly profane" and "an angry man who wants to inflict as much pain as possible on his enemies." Former White House senior staff member George Stephanopoulos in his book, All Too Human, writes about Clinton's mishandling of the Somalia crisis and shows the depth of the President's violent emotions: "'We're not inflicting pain on these #######,' Clinton said, softly at first. 'When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.' Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he leaned into Tony [Lake], as if it was his fault. 'I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.'" Those who have known Clinton since his days in Arkansas say the quote is "vintage Bill." "Only an idiot would buy the public persona of Bill Clinton," says Walter Erricson, a retired reporter who covered Clinton in his early political days in Arkansas. "He is an incredibly profane individual. He is now and always has been an angry man who wants to inflict as much pain as possible on his enemies." White House staff members say Clinton curses like a sailor, has temper tantrums that cause people to back away from him and uses the word "kill" often to describe what he wants to do with his enemies...."
Capitol Hill Blue (The Rant) 4/13/99 Doug Thompson "...The one word that says it all Contempt. Think about the word. Say it. Contempt. It rolls off the tongue easily when one needs a simple word to describe a complex man like William Jefferson Clinton. Contempt. Contempt for the law. Contempt for the truth. Contempt for decency. Contempt for the Constitution. Contempt for the people who were foolish enough to twice elect him twice to the highest office in the land. Contempt. The defining word for the legacy of Bill Clinton....No number of cruise missiles raining on Eastern Europe can erase this part of history. Clinton can bomb all of civilization back into the stone age and it still won't alter the fact that he is now officially censured, known forever as a man who so blatantly lied under oath that it pissed off a federal judge and she slapped him down for it.....And he may lose his license to practice law in Arkansas, not that anyone ever expected him to return to Arkansas to practice law or anything else. But fines and disbarrment are still overshadowed by that one word. Contempt. The word oozes with the slime that has inundated the White House from the first day Bill Clinton took office, promising the "most ethical administration in history." Six years later, after many investigations, many trials, convinctions of a number of cabinet officials, the "most ethical administration in history" is now laid bare for its contemptible disregard for everything ethical...."
The American Spectator 4/99 John Corry "...Words fail. Things fall apart. The president's apologists made the expected denials, but no one believed them, and even Geraldo Rivera had the grace to look embarrassed. Juanita Broaddrick had caused a problem. The New York Times, for one, tried to ignore it, although later it tried to make amends. It said in an editorial that Bill Clinton in his past confessions had presented himself as a "recreational philanderer," but now it seemed he might be "a serial masher or worse." The wording was close to whimsical - masher had a quaint ring to it - but you could excuse the Times for that. Some things are almost too painful to talk about, and the Times, and all the rest of the press, was having a problem. How do you deal with the idea of having a rapist in the White House? Or must you deal with it at all? .....None of this is promising. It should be obvious by now that Bill Clinton suffers from not merely reckless but clearly compulsive behavior, and that he will, as always, do anything to save himself when he gets in trouble. On the day the Broaddrick story broke in the Journal, the most interesting, and appalling, item on the evening news broadcast was a report by David Martin, the CBS Pentagon correspondent. The White House, he said, wanted to bomb Serbia, even though our NATO allies opposed it. It is to think the unthinkable that the proposed bombing had anything to do with diverting attention from Juanita Broaddrick, of course. The thought is too overwhelming. But it is also unthinkable that we have a rapist in the White House. Who could possibly believe that, either?..."
Strategic Investment Intelligence Bulletins 2/17/99 James Dale Davidson Freeper Ogle ".Jack Wheeler admits he was wrong about Clinton: "He's not a sociopath." In this month's issue of Strategic Intelligence, Jack reports: "On a visit to Canada last month, I read a book review in the Toronto Globe & Mail of British Columbia University Professor of Psychology Robert Hare's Without Conscience. Since I have publicly stated in past columns my agreement with Senator John McCain's assessment of Bill Clinton as a 'sociopath,' it was interesting to note Prof. Hare's careful distinction between a sociopath and a psychopath... Psychopathology is a spectrum, with vicious killers on one end and 'closet psychopaths' on the other. It was the description of the latter that intrigued me: 'Their most pervasive trait is a stunning lack of conscience. They are glib, lack remorse, guilt, or empathy, are emotionally shallow and lie easily and convincingly. Underneath a charming, sometimes irresistibly likeable fa‡ade, the closet psychopath is ruthless, ambitious, selfish, and dishonest. They are social predators who charm and manipulate their way through life, leaving a trail of broken hearts and empty wallets. Power and control are all-important to them, and they will use threats, intimidation, litigation, and violence to get what they want.' A nail-on-the-head of Slick Willie, wouldn't you say? ."
The Progressive Review 4/10/99 Sam Smith "…"Clinton is far more psychologically disturbed than the public ever imagined . ." NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff on DATELINE "I think that's an understatement. The suggestion is that this guy is in terrible trouble mentally and psychologically and is a completely hollow narcissist and egomaniac."

[WiseOne]

The Progressive Review 4/10/99 Sam Smith "…"Clinton is far more psychologically disturbed than the public ever imagined . ." NEWSWEEK's Michael Isikoff on DATELINE "I think that's an understatement. The suggestion is that this guy is in terrible trouble mentally and psychologically and is a completely hollow narcissist and egomaniac."

That's putting it nicely, I think. Hillary should disturb ANYONE with a "mind".

[nohil-billy]

It's a sad state of affairs that these people still have a following with everything we know about them. This crowd sounds like the Manson family.