Why Obama's Affiliation with Tony Rezko is "Boneheaded"

Barack Obama doesn't want to talk about his friend, Tony Rezko, Chicago restaurateur and low-income housing developer. Rezko, a seventeen year associate, if not friend, of Barack Obama, is under federal investigation for racketeering. Chicago attorneys on the case say Obama may be called for questioning during the trial.

This isn't Rezko's first run-in with the law either. Rezko was in trouble a couple years ago for failing to pay property taxes on some of his low-income housing. Some of the units ended up being shut down. Similarly, his Papa John's and Chinese Panda franchises located in the O'Hare airport got into trouble and eventually closed down due to misuse of government funding for minority business.

Obama has danced around the issue of his alliance with Rezko, first at the debate where Hillary accused Obama of representing the well-known Chicago "slumlord", and again now that the press has released that Obama did indeed buy property from Rezko. The property in question was actually one parcel of land that Obama and Rezko split. Obama bought one section of the property, that part which housed the mansion which later became Obama's home, at approximately $300K below cost. Rezko reportedly bought the adjoining property at cost. About a year later, Obama decided he wanted to increase the size of his yard, and so he bought a parcel of the remaining property from Rezko.

Rezko has been a large contributer to Obama's campaign fund, as well as to many other elected officials over the years. However, much of the funds donated to the Obama campaign are now in question because they are believed to be wealth accumulated through Rezko's racketeering. Obama, in turn, donated a large portion of Rezko's contributions to charity.

The real story here, though, is not about whether Tony Rezko is a slumlord, or if he aided Obama in driving up Obama's property value by buying land adjacent to his Chicago home. The question voters should be asking is how many Obama supporters of Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern thoughts will it take for Americans to wake up and start questioning the sincerity of Obama's denouncement of Muslim extremism?

Tony Rezko is actually Syrian born, a country whose U.S. relations have been guarded at best. He allegedly was raised in Syria by a Christian family, although if so, he would have been in the minority, since he was born in 1955, and even today Christians make up less than 10% of the Syrian population. The main population of the country is, you guessed it, Muslim, weighing in at 90%. About 70% of those Muslims are Sunnis.

Now, before anyone starts accusing me of discrimination, let me adamantly say that I do not think all Muslims are terrorists. Nor do I think all Middle East countries harbor terrorists. I do, however, find it awfully strange that so many Muslim and Arab celebrities (let's not forget Big Daddy Farrakhan) are backing a candidate who claims he is not Muslim, never has been, and whose ethnicity is African-American, not Middle Eastern. Even though both his father and step-father were both Muslim, his denouncing of the Muslim faith should have settled this question of his religious ties by now, if it were sincere.