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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (398678)	7/14/2008 2:13:27 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1573926

"Rezko and Obama were not." lolol, link

To: tejek who wrote (398678)	7/14/2008 6:07:25 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573926

Obama says he still considers Rezko a friend CHICAGO (AP) — Presidential candidate Barack Obama said he still regards indicted fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko as a friend despite the political headaches caused by their relationship. .... usatoday.com ---------------------------- To Barack Obama, Tony Rezko was more than a fund-raiser. He was a friend. Rezko helped bankroll Obama in five election runs — for the state Senate, U.S. House and U.S. Senate. The savvy businessman with the North Shore mansion could bring in as much as $70,000 from political donors in one night. In the heat of a campaign, Obama said he sometimes talked strategy with Rezko daily. Then, during political down-times, Rezko was his lunch or breakfast companion, more concerned about Obama, his wife and daughters than with posing for snapshots with the senator as he rose from political obscurity to Democratic presidential hopeful. On one occasion, Obama recalled, they wiled away time with their wives at Rezko’s Lake Geneva estate. ... Is Rezko still a friend? “Yes,” Obama said, “with the caveat that, obviously, if it turns out the allegations are true, then he’s not who I thought he was. And I’d be very disappointed with that.” ... Obama acknowledged that Rezko had raised $250,000 for him — about $100,000 more than had previously been disclosed and about five times more than Obama conveyed during a November 2006 question-and-answer exchange with the Sun-Times. ... Rezko did just that. In the heat of Obama’s campaigns, the two men would talk daily. But once the politics died down, the senator said, they were simply friends. “We’d continue to have lunches or breakfasts. We’d talk about politics. We’d talk about family. . . . Even visited [his] home in Lake Geneva once for the day,” Obama said. Obama picked Rezko for the campaign finance committee for his 2004 U.S. Senate run. Around that same time, Rezko had begun walking away from affordable-housing projects he was building with government funds, leaving some in squalor — including some buildings in Obama’s own Illinois Senate district. Obama said he knew nothing of those problems. Had Obama known, he said he would have talked to Rezko about the problems. “I think it is deeply troubling he did not keep these properties up, and I am very disappointed in that,” Obama said. After Rezko helped Obama win the U.S. Senate seat, Obama approached Rezko about the house Obama now owns in Kenwood. The house has become a political headache for Obama because Rezko’s wife bought the vacant lot next door, with Obama and Rita Rezko closing on their transactions on the same day in June 2005. Lter, in January 2006, Obama bought a 10-foot-wide strip of Rita Rezko’s lot at a time when Rezko was widely known to be under federal investigation — a move Obama called “absolutely a mistake.” After touring the Kenwood home with Rezko and his real estate agent, Rezko “expressed some interest potentially in purchasing the lot,” which remains zoned to accommodate town homes or a small condominium building. “My basic view at that time was having somebody who I knew, a friend of mine, who would be developing the lot if he could, would be great. It would be somebody who we know.” Why didn’t alarm bells sound when it was known Rezko was under investigation? “Probably because I had known him for a long time, he had acted in an aboveboard manner with me, and I considered him a friend,” Obama said. ... suntimes.com