Study: 19 Ambassador Nominees Bundled $4.8 Million for President’s Campaign, Inauguration

If you voted for change…you should be wondering why right about now.

It’s not surprising. A little disapointing when Obama claimed he would combat the culture of corruption. because every President has done it doesn’t make it excusable. Maybe we should demand Congress pass a law that Ambassadorships are chosen from within the already established Government Service pool. If your a GS, the only way your getting a promotion is if someone dies or retires. Part of the cause of this is the very top are appointees, so when a spot comes open, an appointee takes it instead of someone who has been a GS employee at an Embassy for years.
So lets couple words with actions and demand congress create a law for ambassadorships be promoted from within.

His roommate at Occidental was a foreign born student. That makes him a foreign student too. Having gone to an international college, I know that is how they do it. He is once again ineligible to President of the United States. What Constitution?

Re, Small Donors Increase Impact, By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY, 5/2/2008
“Since January 2007, Obama has collected more than $101 million in small donations — an amount that far surpasses the $68.4 million raised in small increments by all 10 Democratic presidential contenders at this stage in the 2004 campaign.
“Obama’s small donation outreach is “staggering,” said Jonathan Krasno, a political scientist at New York’s Binghamton University. “He has done more to reach out to people and to get their donations than I thought was possible”
So, how many ambassadorships will these “small donors” be given?

Jake’s is perhaps the only voice remaining in the official govt approved American State Media that resembles objectivity. Keep up the good work, Jake.

Wow I’m stunned! Imagine the Messiah tying positions in his administration to donations! Wonder if they are tax cheats like the rest?

Sure looks like “pay to play” to me. If he were the Gov in Illinois he might be in trouble.

What’s the big deal?
Just because he gives big donors an Ambassadorship?
HE IS GIVING US FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE. Examples:
Firing Inspector Generals that get too close to his cronies.
Taking over publicly listed companies (GM) and giving equity to unions at the expense of bondholders.
“Not knowing” relatives are in the country illegally living on taxpayer dollars and doing nothing about it.
Giving his first television interview to a muslim organization.
Apologizing to Europe and the Middle East for America’s arrogance.
Greatly increasing the deficit, much beyond Bush’s reckless spending.
Attempting to socialize and/or regulate all aspects of our life.
What’s not to like?

You can take the politician out of Illinois, but you can’t take Illinois politics out of the politician. Obama is no better than Blago, just classier and smarter. Pay to Play, what a concept!

At least I was one of the 58 million who didn’t vote for Hope and Change.

Neil . .. you should read Jake Tapper’s column here more often. He consistently takes on the White House with critical comment.

Best government money can buy.
In some circles, this would be called corruption.

One point that’s interesting about Obama’s appointment of Susman to be the Ambassador to the UK is that while
the Obama White House press release of May 27, 2009, which announced Susman’s nomination to be its Ambassador to the UK, indicated that he used to be the Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking Vice Chairman, was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team’s board of directors from 1975 to 1989, worked for Salomon Brothers and “was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy,” it failed to mention some other interesting recent business affiliations of Louis “The Vacuum Cleaner” Susman.
According to a November 15, 2000 Business Wire article, Susman has also been a member of the corporate boards of D & K Healthcare Resources, Inc., the U.S. Can Corporation, Drury Inns and Knightsbridge Solutions LLC in recent years. The same article also revealed that at Salomon Brothers, Susman “provided leadership for major merger transactions, representing Dayton Hudson in the purchase of Marshall Field’s, General Dynamics in the sale of Cessna Corporation, and LG Electronics in the purchase of Zenith Electronics Corporation.”
U.S. Ambassador to the UK-Designate Susman apparently has a lot more experience working as a Citigroup investment banking and collecting campaign contributions for some of the U.S. politicians who recently authorized the use of public funds to bail out Citigroup’s executives than diplomatic experience.

There are only about 5 individuals in the Senate and Congress that should keep their seats, and EVERYONE ELSE needs to go. This is the only way we’re going to stop this joke of a president from giving away, or should I say selling away our country, for his own purposes. The lot of them make me want to vomit! Both Parties!!

ATTENTION YOUNG OBAMA SUPPORTERS: Don’t you feel stupid right now? You voted for Obama while you held hands singing Kumbaya!!! You looked so foolish then and you look stupid now. Actually, you should be pissed!!!!! The man is the worst of the worst politicians. The thing is, he ran on the premise he wasn’t like other politicians. You’ve been had!!!! Now, go play a video game and keep it down while the adults try and right this ship…

Jeez, I wonder if the messiah has a cushy job for me? Just closed up shop, figure do it now before being forced into bankruptcy. Hope and change my rear end.
Are any of you guys near waking up yet?

This has been going on for as long as we’ve had ambassadors. It’s no big deal. It’s all the other things this administration is doing to pay off their political contributors–like firing inspectors general who get in the way of their friends criminal activity.

Hey, I voted for Obama’s change, what did I get? I’m still waiting.

This is a bipartisan issue that is worth keeping a light on, as long as it doesn’t descend into just another Republican two minute hate.
“President Obama is hardly the first president to appoint pals and big donors to ambassadorships nor, according to the American Foreign Service Association, is he the worst offender in recent history.”
I’m guessing the right will work themselves up since he’s merely doing better – but he’s not 100% perfect so obviously he’s an utter failure and should be impeached immediately.

BlueCaddy65:”Combine the facts that taxpayer money now funds the fraudulent ACORN “get-out-the-Democratic-vote” machine,”
That’s particularily humorous coming in the week that Mark Anthony Jacoby, owner of a group called Young Political Majors (YPM), pled guilty to voter registration fraud. Of course, YPM was hired by the Republican Party to register their voters so that’s not worth talking about. Better to keep working on repeating that ACORN lie (could you cite the line that earmarks funding to them again?).

Quote:
—————————————–
Hey, I voted for Obama’s change, what did I get? I’m still waiting.
Posted by: AmericanVoter | Jun 19, 2009 12:17:36 PM
—————————————–
From the Desk of the President of the United States:
Heres a quarter…call someone who cares.
Now you have your change…buzz off…We Won.

Quote:
—————————————–
The Republicans just had 8 years of wallowing at the trough . . . and now you begrudge the Democrats.
What a bunch of sore losers!
Posted by: danita | Jun 19, 2009 12:24:11 PM
—————————————
Another example of uninformed obama voter.
The Democrats controlled both houses of congress since the 2006 elections.
Please do your self a favor, got get an education before you post.
Voting should require a test to see if you are informed enough to vote. Morons should not drink and drive nor vote.

Jake, did you get permission from your boss(Obama)to print this? Be very careful. You may get kicked off the plane. I am sure we won’t hear anything about this on the All Barack Channel. When are you going to cover the inspector generals he terminated???

What is the point of this story??? You clearly call out that previous President’s have been granting Ambassadorships to contribuotrs since the dawn of time!!! Even stating previous President’s were far worse!
How about doing a story on the hundreds of W contributors that got jobs and contracts in Iraq??? 24 year olds right out of College, who’s Dad’s gave, being put in charge of Billion dollar agency’s in Iraq?
If he is doing something clearly out of the mainstream or clearly at a higher level than previous Admin. than I understand the need for a story…

What is the point of this story??? You clearly call out that previous President’s have been granting Ambassadorships to contribuotrs since the dawn of time!!! Even stating previous President’s were far worse!
How about doing a story on the hundreds of W contributors that got jobs and contracts in Iraq??? 24 year olds right out of College, who’s Dad’s gave, being put in charge of Billion dollar agency’s in Iraq?
If he is doing something clearly out of the mainstream or clearly at a higher level than previous Admin. than I understand the need for a story…

dirtybird . . ..
Ambassadorships are nominated by the President.

“President Obama is hardly the first president to appoint pals and big donors to ambassadorships nor, according to the American Foreign Service Association, is he the worst offender in recent history.”
———————————-
So, the essence of this is President Obama has done better on this count than previous Presidents – in other words a change toward the better.
The spammers demanding perfection here should go to Disneyland.

I don’t care about the appointments, but I thought that Obama’s contributions all came from those small donors — at least that was the hype. Supposedly, Obama wouldn’t be beholden to anyone. The whole campagin was based on hype.

Change what change?
Obama is business as usual in Wash DC with the added corruption of Chicago’s payback politics.

It’s pretty funny how you right wing spammers here demand perfection from President Obama.
Perfection . .. nope, most of us are happy with the change for the better.
Only the morons hold up the standard of perfection.

enough of this “both sides do it and have been” crap. do you know how stupid that makes us look as a people? “well, he started it!!!” we sound like a nation of babies who are completely fine with a culture of corruption as long as it’s on “our side” of the political aisle. how about doing the REAL right thing and not voting any of these jackasses into office?

what’s the difference between “selling” of his Senate seat in Illinois…….and “selling” the Ambassador seat?
This type of thing goes on in Africa, emerging countries…… but should NOT in America.

enough of this “both sides do it and have been” crap. do you know how stupid that makes us look as a people? “well, he started it!!!” we sound like a nation of babies who are completely fine with a culture of corruption as long as it’s on “our side” of the political aisle. how about doing the REAL right thing and not voting any of these jackasses into office?

Jake, did you not get the memo that ABC is now the state-run media arm for the Obama administration?? The All Barack Channel?
If you did receive it, then your blatant insubordination will cost you everything, in case you have not noticed. Oh, and you can now forget any possibility of ever getting a personal audience with the messiah…

Danita— “It is true – the number of small contributors to Obama’s campaign and the impact of those contributions was unprecedented and phenomenal.”- Is almost a urban myth perpetuated by Obama’s spin doctors to make it appear as if it is these folks that got him the financial kick to buy the presidency. It is true that the ‘average Joe’ that never sent donations before donated $5.00 to maybe $50.00. However, these donations never really made up a large percentage of the donations he received, it was a great smoke screen when people started wondering how an unknown was able to pull in more then the Clintons. All you have to do now is read who is on his receiving line for cushy jobs, what new organizations are getting more government support and who is actually receiving funds from this huge trillion dollar debt to see who Obama is glad handing and it certainly ISN’T the ‘average Joe’.
On another note I was stunned to see this article on the All Barack Corp. Then again maybe this too is just another smoke screen, if one starts to wonder about ABC’s cozy relationship with Obama, where they “hosting”(??) the White House Health Care broadcast, they can just point to this article and say “See, we’re doing our job”. This Admin. is nothing but ‘smoke and mirrors’. Case in point— has anyone wondered how a garden planted in April can been ready to harvest NOW??!!

If we all start right now Obama can be a one term president.
The guy is a fraud.
All together: we won’t be fooled again.

“About $156 million, or a quarter of Obama’s record-shattering campaign account, came from donors of $200 or less, according to the (non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute’s) analysis of federal election reports through Oct. 15. That compares with $205 million, or about a third, from those who gave between $2,300 and $4,600.”

Anthony . .. .
We can take some heart in the fact President Obama has done less of this ‘selling’ than previous Presidents.
Change for the better.

Great reporting! Now, I’m still waiting for this great journalist to dig into Senator Ensign’s scandal and how it appears that Fox News covered it up. You may want to know that your audience (here of course) already hates Obama. So, you’re not changing anything other than throwing gasoline on the fire.

Most of Obama’s donations came from fictional characters, disguising the true origin of the donations, since Obama’s team left their donation programming open to fraud, intentionally so. That’s how they got around the law, and NOBODY called them on it.
And because he broke his promise (shock!) and refused public campaign funds, his records were kept closed, unlike McCain, the idiot.
Many millions came directly from George Soros and foreign contributors, all of it illegal, and all of it… well, he got away with it, just like he gets away with everything. The media in this country is worth less than TASS.
At least TASS told you what each farmer’s quota would be for the five-year plan.

This is news? All ambassadorships are typically given to big donors. It happens in both parties.

You don’t get what it takes to be an effective President.Obama: He is a “talker” and not a “doer.”
“Being President means being both CEO and COO of one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world,”
“Government by adviser simply doesn’t work,” Obama’s pledge to be a President who inspires and provides a vision for the nation – not one who will make sure “everything’s running on time” in the federal bureaucracy.
You don’t get what it takes to be an effective President.Obama: He is a “talker” and not a “doer.”
“Being President means being both CEO and COO of one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world,”

Korla . ..
You might be more realistically concerned about the trillions of dollars President Bush sold in debt bonds to China in order to finance his holy war.
Bush already sold the country off to China.

Jack . . .
I simply stated President Obama has done less of this type of appointing than previous presidents – and way less than President Bush.
This is a change towards the better.
Are you saying President Bush was corrupt for making his appointments to ambassadorships?

danita – all politicans are corrupt – there are a few that appear less that others – very few, such as coburn form oklahoma
America’s problem with obama corruption is the hypocrisy of obama and his ilk
obama campaigned and promised to clean up and not be bush – a big fat laugh tract for those Americans with common sense, but meat for the sycophants, such as yourself
obama and his hypocrisy and lies is the issue and the marginal obama voters are getting the message and seeing the light
liberals such as yourself, are getting angrier, because you see the fact that a big part of obama voters are waking up to the obama lies and hypocrisy and the marginal obama support will not last forever
the adults will have to clean up the obama mess and that will leave you liberals on the outside again.

Jack . ..
President Obama has done less of this type of appointing than previous presidents – and way less than President Bush.
This is a change towards the better.
Actually it is you who is childish to demand perfection from a politician. Where do you live? Disneyland?
Are you saying President Bush was corrupt for making all of his political appointments to ambassadorships? Talk about double standards.

danita wrote:
“President Obama has done less of this type of appointing than previous presidents – and way less than President Bush.”
Your source? Can you prove it or you like most libs who throw crap against the wall to see if it sticks?

Question for everyone?
What’s the different between Barry paying back his big backers (money they gave to his campaign)with Ambassador positions and Blago getting money for Barry’s Senate seat (money for his campaign.
If Burris or Jessie Jr. found given (promising) money for Blago’s re-election, what’s different about this. Oh, did I mention that Blago was impeached.

Pay to play!

RD if you were more concerned with facts than insulting people you would have read the article above and noticed the following . .
“As we reported last month, President Obama is hardly the first president to appoint pals and big donors to ambassadorships nor, according to the American Foreign Service Association, is he the worst offender in recent history.”
And if you clicked on the link associated with “As we reported last month” you would have read . ..
“As was reported at the time, the first 35 diplomatic appointments of this kind made by President Bush donated an average of $141,110 to him and other GOP campaigns and committees in the previous election cycle.”
Let me restate that for you . ..
The FIRST 35 DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENTS made by BUSH donated AN AVERAGE of $141,110 to him and the GOP.
You get the picture?

danita: tell me what change for the better??????

Neal Bluhm, Judd Malkin own Midwest Gaming. They won the 10th casino license

You voted, your candidate lost.
Millions and millions voted for Obama – he won.
It’s called ‘democracy’ and it’s the best we have right now.
Posted by: danita | Jun 19, 2009 2:19:32 PM
————-
Honey…. We are a Republic.
You should look up the difference and see how Obama is supposed to lead. (Not Rule)

ack . . .
I simply stated President Obama has done less of this type of appointing than previous presidents – and way less than President Bush.
This is a change towards the better.
Are you saying President Bush was corrupt for making his appointments to ambassadorships?
Posted by: danita | Jun 19, 2009 2:11:29 PM
———–
Sure he has. But… He has made up for it with Czars that report ONLY to him.
“We the People” (the people Obama works for) have no way of watching over these Czars but they make decisions that affect our lives.

How long can Obama’s errors, corruption, and ignorance be blamed on President Busch?
To any liberal out there I pose this question to you:
“what one item that Obama has tried (other than amassing unconstitutional power) has succeeded?”
If you have a documented logical answer please let me know. I will give you a hint: as of today, other than getting America deeper into debt his record is
outstandingly abysmal.

Tapper is the only legitimate reporter
ABC has these days.

Joseph – dont confuse the obamabots with the facts
It makes it to hard to defend their prez
OBAMA LIED AND THE ECONOMY DIED

Obama is nothing more than a hood. Slick-looking, smooth-talking, just an oh-so-slightly haughty tilted head.
He goes out his way to make promises that he deliberately breaks within days. Plus, he and his pals are plundering the public treasury.
Wait ’til he and the Congressional Black Caucus start screaming for slavery reparations.

Stop whining!! President Obama had millions of voters to get him into the White House, he still needs that support to change Washington. All politics is local, if you do not contact the folks you voted into office and let them know you support this President then it will all be in vain.
He can not change the corruption in Washington alone. Some of those folks have been there as long as he has been living.

Another liberal double standard.

“There are 169 million registered voters in the USA. 62 million of them voted for Obama. That leaves 107 million who either did NOT vote for him or simply did NOT vote. That is hardly a mandate for Obama to run roughshod over our society.”
Bush claimed a mandate with a slim margins in both popular vote and the electoral college.
Obama can certainly claim a mandate with a clear popular vote win as well as an overwhelming electoral college victory.

Obama’s hypocrisy on nearly every issue is a given. He promises the world and delivers nothing.
That said, I’ll give him (fundraiser) ambassadorships like Belgium and Belize, not really the most pressing junctures of the world. But essential allies and powers like Japan deserve someone with expertise in the region.
This John Roos character, from what I can gather online, has no fluency in Japanese and no knowledge of Japanese affairs. That’s a terrible slight to one of our most important allies. Same with Chris Hill, the failed State Department negotiator with North Korea, moving over to Iraq.

It’s exactly what Rod Blagojavich did, was kicked out of office for:
selling Illinois’ Senate seat for
donations to his coffers !
Impeach him!

“So let me get this straight Ryan C, out of all of the legitimate arguments that Nick in Virginia brought up, your only come back was that he was off a few tenths of a percent in the math”
The math was wrong and shaded towards the desired talking point. .
Not surprising a right winger prefers that but don;t expect a free pass on it.
Obama won by 11 Million votes and 7% of the electorate.
It was a resounding win.
“Trust me Ryan, by the time 2010″
In 2010 when the GOP should traditionally be picking up a few seats, they will be lucky to break even.
“and especially 2012 rolls around”
4 years is a long time in politics but the GOP crop for 2012 does not look promising (1 less now with Ensign going down).

“Nothing about the people that he called “Speculators and Fat Cats” in order to demonize them, who were actually everyday people who were counting on that money for their 401K’s”
yes those collecting enormous bonuses even while runnign their companies into the ground were just regular folk.

Still waiting for the “change”?

“Obama the candidate never promised perfection – that’s just the straw man put forward by right wing Republicans – the image they tried to stick on him by calling him (repeatedly) ‘the messiah’.”
That’s because Obama IS the Messiah.
On February 24, 2008, Louis Farrakhan made the following remarks while addressing a large crowd at Nation of Islam Saviour’s Day 2008: “You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking. Brothers and sisters, Barack Obama to me, is a herald of the Messiah. Barack Obama is like the trumpet that alerts you something new, something better is on the way.”
To the best of my knowledge, Farrakhan is not a right-wing Republican.

“you can’t keep sending the same people to Washington and expect different results”…Obama, the do as I say, not as I do president.

Oh my Lord. What the heck is the problem? Awarding Ambassadorships to campaign contributors has been the status quo for generations now. Why is everyone freaking out NOW that it’s Obama doing it? Why is everyone acting like it’s some totally new scandal? What’s disturbing is that the news media is holding the black man to a totally different standard than past presidents.