OBAMA AUNT ILLEGAL ALIEN, DEFIED DEPORTATION ORDER; DIRTY TRICKS CHARGE...

[Hazcat]

Obama aunt leak raises questions
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 11/1/08 12:42 PM EDT   Text Size:     
 

Obama last heard from Zeituni Onyango, who attended his swearing-in ceremony to the U.S. Senate in 2005, two years ago.
 
HENDERSON, Nev. — Barack Obama did not know a relative was living in the United States illegally for the past nearly four years prior to today's Associated Press report, "but obviously believes that any and all appropriate laws be followed," the campaign said Saturday in a statement.

The Democratic nominee last heard from Zeituni Onyango, who attended his swearing-in ceremony to the U.S. Senate in 2005 and is a half-sister of Obama's late father, two years ago, when she called to say she was in Boston, the campaign said. Campaign officials said they did not assist her in getting a tourist visa and had not known that she was living in America.

News of Onyango's legal status, which the AP confirmed through sources, including a federal law enforcement official, provided an unwelcome diversion for the Obama campaign during its final push toward Election Day and stoked suspicions among supporters of a political motive behind the timing of the leak.

“The American people are pretty sensible,” said Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, “and I think they are pretty suspicious of things that are dumped in the marketplace 72 hours before a campaign, so I am not concerned about that.”

Asked whether he was suggesting there were political motives from a Republican administration, Axelrod said: “I am not saying anything at this point.”

Obama did not respond to questions shouted at him by members of the traveling press corps as he exited Caesars Palace hotel here Saturday morning with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at his side.

The Associated Press wrote that it confirmed the deportation case with two separate sources, one of them a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP said it could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has written to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff requesting an immediate investigation of the leak, which he deemed "deplorable" and said "was not the first leak of law enforcement information apparently designed to influence the coming presidential election," referring to an ongoing investigation of voter fraud by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would not comment on the leak or whether the agency was looking into it.

"ICE is prohibited from commenting on any individual’s status or the status of any case,” she said. “I would also add that as a matter of practice, we don't discuss law enforcement operational details.”

Given the timing, the case led to an unusual nationwide directive within ICE requiring that any deportations before Tuesday's election be approved at least at the level of the agency's regional directors, a U.S. law enforcement official told the AP.

John McCain seems to be staying far away from the issue, making no mention of Obama’s family in his two Virginia appearances this morning. His press aides have also remained quiet, issuing no statement about her immigration status.

Obama met Onyango, 56, when he traveled to Africa as an adult, and she earned a mention in his 1995 memoir "Dreams From My Father," in which he referred to her as "Auntie Zeituni."

The campaign said Obama has seen Onyango several times over the years, including during a second trip to Kenya with his wife, Michelle. Onyango previously traveled to Chicago on a tourist visa at the Obamas' invitation about nine years ago before visiting friends on the East Coast and returning to Kenya, according to the campaign.

Axelrod said Obama did not have a close relationship to Onyango.

The campaign will return $265 in contributions that Onyango made to Obama, citing prohibitions against foreign nationals donating to American campaigns.

The Associated Press reported that Onyango had been instructed to leave the country four years ago by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from her native Kenya. Onyango is living in public housing in Boston.

Senior strategist Robert Gibbs shut down any line of questioning Thursday when news broke about Obama's relative, telling reporters, "I'm not going to get into it."

Reporters asked, "Why not?"

"I'm just not," Gibbs said.


 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15161.html

So Obama isn't the only one in his family in the US illegally!  

[tombogan03884]

Didn't B Ho say He was his brothers keeper in one of his speeches ? His "Brother lives in a shack in Nairobi on less than $300 a year.  I'm willing to bet his illegal alien Aunt in Boston is not living on Beacon Hill, What a hypocrit.
Why does the name "David Axelrod" ring a bell ? When I read it alarm bells went off in my head, but I can't recall where I heard the name before.

[tombogan03884]

Hooray for Wikipedia,
David Axelrod;
    At the age of 27, Axelrod became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the Tribune for eight years, covering national, state and local politics. He became the youngest political writer there in 1981.[4] Unhappy with his prospects at the Tribune, in 1984 he joined the campaign of US Senator Paul Simon as communications director; within weeks he was promoted to co-campaign manager.[5]

He formed a political consultancy, Axelrod & Associates, in 1985. In 1987, he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. This established his first experience in working with black politicians and he later became a key player in similar mayoral campaigns of blacks, including Dennis Archer in Detroit, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia.[6] Axelrod is a longtime strategist for Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley and styles himself a "specialist in urban politics."

In 2004, Axelrod worked for the presidential campaign of John Edwards. During the campaign, he lost responsibility for making ads, but continued as the campaign's spokesman. Regarding Edwards' failed 2004 presidential campaign, Axelrod has commented, "I have a whole lot of respect for John, but at some point the candidate has to close the deal and—I can’t tell you why—that never happened with John."[7] [8]

In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including for the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and for Deval Patrick in Massachusetts's gubernatorial election. Axelrod also served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.

[edit] 2008 presidential campaign

Axelrod and Barack Obama's ties reach back a decade. Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lu Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago's "lakefront liberal crowd," during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two. Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered his famed 2002 anti-war speech[9] and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.[10]

Axelrod currently serves as the chief strategist and media adviser for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Tom Vilsack—were past clients. Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE). (Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod's wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened on finding a cure for the condition was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy."[11] Ultimately, however, he viewed Obama's potential candidacy as inspirational and historic. He often likens Obama to Robert F. Kennedy and told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life."[2]

Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama's campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007. [12] He continued to use 'man on the street' style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.

While the Clinton campaign chose an incumbent strategy that emphasized experience, Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign's main theme of "change." Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign's positioning by saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change...[Clinton's] initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands."[12] The change message played a factor in Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Just over half of [Iowa's] Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton."[13] Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they - bewilderingly - seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."[13] In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.

Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from the effectiveness of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama. Axelrod explained to Rolling Stone magazine, "When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in."[14] This includes drawing on "Web 2.0" technology and viral media to support a grassroots strategy. Obama's web platform allows supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home. Axelrod's elaborate use of the Internet has helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.[15] The Obama strategy stood in contrast to Hillary Clinton's campaign, which benefited from high name recognition, large donors and strong support among established Democratic leaders.

The Politico described Axelrod as 'soft-spoken' and 'mild-mannered'[16] and it quoted one Obama aide in Chicago as saying, "Do you know how lucky we are that he is our Mark Penn?"[17] Democratic consultant and former colleague Dan Fee said of Axelrod, "He's a calming presence."[18] "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys," political advisor Bill Daley said of Axelrod in the Chicago Tribune. "He has a good sense of humor, so he's able to defuse things."[19]

In late April and early May, Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright criticized Axelrod's influence on Obama. The New York Times reported that Wright said of Axelrod "while he was expert at promoting black candidates with white voters, he did not know much about relating to the black community...They're spiriting him away from people in the African-American community. David doesn't know the African-American church scene."[20]

[edit] ASK Public Strategies

Axelrod operates a second business from the same office, ASK Public Strategies, that discreetly plots strategy and advertising campaigns for corporate clients to tilt public opinion their way.[21] He and his partners are secretive about operations and won't reveal the client roster or revenue. [22] Customers and public records confirm agency has run campaigns for the Chicago Children's Museum, ComEd, Cablevision, and AT&T.[23] The firm helped set up front organizations that were listed as sponsors of public-issue ads, a practice that industry insiders call "Astroturfing" (manufacturing grassroots support).[24] Eric Sedler, 39, a former public relations director at AT&T and corporate-reputation specialist at PR giant Edelman, is the "S" in ASK and the company's managing partner. The "K" is John Kupper, 51, a former congressional press secretary and ad-industry consultant, while the "A," of course, is Axelrod.[25] One TV commercial, penned by ASK, warned of a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts without a rate hike and was sponsored by a group known as CORE, which describes itself on its Web site as "a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations," but after a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd acknowledged that it had bankrolled the entire $15 million effort.[26] Employees of the utility and its parent, Exelon, have contributed $181,711 to Obama's presidential bid, more than workers at any other company in the state.[27] When Illinois utility Commonwealth Edison wanted state lawmakers to back a hefty rate hike two years ago, it took a creative lobbying approach, concocting a new outfit that seemed devoted to the public interest.[28] The firm also worked on behalf of Madison Square Gardens to stop plans for the construction of a football stadium for the Jets on New York's Westside.[29] ASK's $1.1 million fee was listed as the "largest lobbying contract" of the year in the annual report of the state's lobbying commission.[30]

ASK last year proposed another "front" group campaign to help Illinois hospitals block a state proposal that would have forced them to provide more medical care to the indigent.

    One part of its plan: create a "grassroots" group of medical experts "capable of contacting policymakers to advocate for our position," according to a copy of the proposal. (ASK didn't get the contract.) Public-interest watchdogs say these grassroots campaigns are state of the art in the lobbying world. "There's no way with a straight face to say that's not lobbying," says Ellen Miller, director of the Sunlight Foundation, which promotes government transparency.[31]

The firm's work has also involved Michelle Obama's employer, the University of Chicago Hospital. She helped create a program, called the Urban Health Initiative, that hired ASK Public Strategies in 2007 to assist in marketing the plan to the community as a better alternative for poor patients. The plan has critics in the community, however, who see at as a way to dump costly patients and increase the hospital's bottom line.[32][33]

[edit]               

[Pathfinder]

Didn't B Ho say He was his brothers keeper in one of his speeches ? His "Brother lives in a shack in Nairobi on less than $300 a year.  I'm willing to bet his illegal alien Aunt in Boston is not living on Beacon Hill, What a hypocrit.
Why does the name "David Axelrod" ring a bell ? When I read it alarm bells went off in my head, but I can't recall where I heard the name before.

Glad to see you scratched the dirty surface of this POS. Being a long-time denizen of the metro Chi-town area (I know, still doing penance here for that), I cringe whenever I hear Axelrod's name. Dirty politics is his game and he is a freakin master at it. ANY candidate who uses his services I immediately vote against. Any candidate. Axelrod is truly that evil.

[ericire12]

Update: katie Couric Asked Obama if he supported the deportation of Onyango

His response:

If she is violating laws those laws have to be obeyed. We’re a nation of laws. Obviously that doesn’t lessen my concern for her, I haven’t been able to be in touch with her. But I’m a strong believer you have to obey the law.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/11/03/throw-aunti-from-the-bus/trackback/


Yes, he will say anything to get elected..... So, who wont he throw under the bus?

[Sponsor]

[Ckott]

Update: katie Couric Asked Obama if he supported the deportation of Onyango

His response:

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/11/03/throw-aunti-from-the-bus/trackback/


Yes, he will say anything to get elected..... So, who wont he throw under the bus?

But he didn't really ever answer the question did he?

[MikeBjerum]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/01/obama.aunt/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Rather than take information, follow through, and do what legally must be done (or should have been done in the first place) we waste time and money on investigations and hearings to punish the ones doing the right thing.

ericire12,

You are correct!  He never did really answer the question ... at least not in a way that meant anything.