Is Rezko still a friend? "Yes,'' Obama said, "with the caveat 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.''

1. He said this last week, so it's odd he still considers Rezko a friend. But more power to him for loyalty right?
   
2. Actually, no. Should Rezko be found guilty, he will no longer be Obama's friend. "with the caveat if it turns out the allegations are true, then he's not who I thought he was,"
   
3. Obama seems really optimistic Rezko will be found not guilty. Or he seems oblivious that he should hedge his bets, oblivious that this statement will hurt him in the GE as it shows his naivete.

Frankly, the whole position is based on who has the better judgment.

Two of Barack Obama's most important endorsements from America's Heartland are from Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

But how will the controversy that now surrounds Obama and his long-time pastor, Jeremiah Wright Jr., affect those endorsements?

At the very least, both Midwesterners will face pressure from Missourians and Kansans to back off their earlier enthusiastic support of Obama.

Both Sebelius and McCaskill will be watching very closely in the days ahead as Democrats in their states react to Wright's offensive words.

It's not that Obama is a bad guy...it's just that we have way too little information about him to actually know what his judgments will be.

It's sort of why it's so hard to be a US Senator and be elected President because when you have a lot of votes recorded, you become known and people dislike you because of some votes that you made (i.e. HRC's vote on AUMF). Obama is benefitting from his lack of votes and that also means that he is (phrase that I saw in another thread), the empty vessel that just simply isn't known or defined.

So either the former community organizer didn't know what was going on in his district, or he's lying about his assessment of Rezko during the purchasing of his house.

Reford plays a young lawyer who's working as a kind of community organizer (can you see where this is going?) who is somewhat deceptively talked into running by a hard-boiled campaign consultant, played by Peter Boyle.

Redford's character is convinced to run because he can't possibly win - so he has the opportunity to place the issues he cares about (poverty, the environment, health care, etc) in front of the electorate because there's nothing to lose.

Eventually though, the candidate begins to become somewhat wrapped up in the campaign process (although never completely) and begins to rise in the polls. Each gain in the polls is accompanied by less ability to say what he really thinks and more pressure to mouth meaningless boilerplate campaign rhetoric created by speechwriters. Finally, the candidate is running on a meaningless platform of hope and change and comes very close to declaiming "we are the change we've been waiting for". Instead of "Yes, we can", his campaign slogan is "A better way".

[SPOILER] Ultimately, the candidate wins, and his final lines in the film are: "What do we do now? What do we do now?"

I'm increasingly convinced that the Obama campaign is an example of life imitating art - that things like the Rezko affair or Rev. Wright are holdovers from things pre-candidate Obama seriously believed in to some extent, to the point of saying Rezko is still a friend, or his continuing admiration for Wright. The real Obama, I think, is as naive about political campaign realities as Redford's Bill McKay in the film, and as much a creation of campaign consultants and ad men.

Novak asked the questions I wanted to hear:  did you not know, did you not get letters at the firm etc.  Obama kept saying how it was not brought to his attention.  I am really sorry, This is not acceptable.  

 1.  As a public servant he should know or ask about how someone who does business in his community is serving his community and how he is using public funds.  As a self proclaimed community organizer, with roots in that field he totally failed in this job, he should have looked beyond the friendship and the supporter status and looked around.  

2.  It's a small district, he should have heard from people in the community.  He talks about how he had only one staff person.  Who would "bring it to his attention" if they perceived him to be part of the political Rezko machine?  

I frankly don't care about the corruption charges, but the fact that from 1997 till 2007 Rezko was going down the tube and taking all the projects down with him and Obama had no clue...YIKES. Eleven projects in Obama's district.   How do you explain that?

The comments about Hillary's war vote are off topic and have been deleted.

Any political path is going to be littered with folks who will reflect badly on the candidate.  To me, it's not an issue in terms of judgment.  Hell.  I don't even think Wright is a bad person.  I don't even think what he said, in terms of how he said it, within the context of his sermons, are that off the mark.  We have been an imperial country.  Imperial countries make enemies.  Etc.   Nina Simone sings "Mississippi Godamn!" and no one thinks she hates Mississippi in some literal sense.

The issue I keep hitting is Obama's claim that he can do something something that Clinton can't do.  He claims he doesn't have the baggage that she has.  The baggage that prevents her from buiding the political alliances and uniting the country behind change.

Even though I don't think Wright is a bad person, nor do I think Wright hates America or even believes America DESERVED to get attacked, I also know how those videos look.

I also know Obama won't be able to keep up his charade for much longer.  Who really believes he didn't know the sermons of Pastor Wright?  I don't.  "I did NOT hear the sermons of that pastor!" maybe complete with a wave of a finger.  

Likewise, from a candidate beating the drum of transparency and ethics, is it reasonable to claim that "It's hard for me to know precisely." when asked exactly how much money Rezko raised for his campaigns?

The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign.

   We fully expect the Clinton campaign, given its current desperation, to do whatever it must in order to keep the Rezko tin can tied to Obama's bumper.

    When we endorsed Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination Jan. 27, we said we had formed our opinions of him during 12 years of scrutiny. We concluded that the professional judgment and personal decency with which he has managed himself and his ambition distinguish him.

    Nothing Obama said in our editorial board room Friday diminishes that verdict.

"We raised our offer to five, uh $1.5 [million], and all this was done through our respective brokers. The issue of the lot and the lot price never came up.

"It was never an issue in our purchase. Tony Rezko was not involved in those negotiations. Those were negotiations between our brokers, and we ended up agreeing to a sale price of $1.65 [million].

"I have in the documents a statement by the sellers indicating that at no time did they ever consider the lot in relation to the price of the house, that they did not offer a discount on the house, that there was no contingency with respect to our house purchase relative to the lot. There was simply no connection between our purchase of the house and our price of the house and the sale of the lot.

"As I indicated before, the lot was already for sale. I wasn't involved in that transaction. I'm not aware of how Tony ended up getting the option from the previous individual. That was not something that I was concerned with. I didn't know exactly what the price was that he paid. I knew that there had been an option there for 600 and something dollars because the broker had told me when I had first gone to visit.

It appears that the statement from the sellers is contemporaneous with the sale because of his claim that the statement is with the documents from the house closing. If that statement is contemporaneous with the sale, it eviscerates his argument about being unaware of the import of Rezko buying the lot.  If it was not done as part of the sale and came later, this issue has not been put to bed.  It was only spun to willing Tribune editorial board members who were so happy to see Senator Obama they forgot to act like journalists and ask some follow up questions.

Trib columnist John Kass doesn't think the interview ended the Rezko questions either.

On the other hand.. he takes credit for the war judgment ... that did not mattered..!! but we give him credit for..  

On Wright, I think the poorest judgment shown was the statements made on Friday about never having heard anything like those statements. That one seems likely to blow up.

All that said, these are minor issues in real life, but not generally in political life. For any other DEM pol, Wright would have been enough to finish him.

But Obama has a magic Media halo. I think he will come out of this not completely unscathed but at least intact.