6 a.m. Tuesday visit from his local FBI, but was out of town for a union meeting.  The focus of SEIU discussions was Candidate #1, says the Fitzgerald Complaint (not yet an indictment).  That would be thisclose Obama advisor and confidante Valerie Jarrett, per WSJ, “Graft Case Touches Jackson Jr.: Democrat Denies Seeking Senate Seat From Blagojevich; Service Union Is Scrutinized”.

The Obama team used SEIU to keep Blago “at arm’s length,” Republican National Committee alleges. Which puts SEIU in a surrogate role here, seeing what it could see about getting Valerie the senate seat.  Who has a half million for this, or a million, more readily available than O. and his team?  

Tom Balanoff is brother of the far lesser known James Balanoff, his brother, a (losing) 2007 Oak Park village board candidate.

Meanwhile, Chi Trib’s Sam Zell told a CNBC interviewer he is not “personally familiar” with Blago pressuring the Trib about staffers whom Blago wanted fired. (“Personally”? In what way was he familiar?) Z. couldn’t say if staffers were pressured. He was not asked about his role in the sordid episode.

Both Triple-J, as WLS-AM’s Roe Conn calls Jesse Jr, and SEIU are very close to Obama, by the way. SEIU outgave all other non-party givers to his campaign this year, coughing up $29.2 million in checked-off dues money. Balanoff and Obama go back 15 years, says Balanoff.

We have learned by now to take what Big O. says with our ever-handy grain of salt.  Here’s an item about his supposed small-donor explosion:

The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) study says that 26 percent of donors to Obama’s presidential campaign gave $200 or less, the definition of a small donation. That’s compared to 25 percent for President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign.

I blame the tingle-in-leg mediums for their habits of ballyhoo.

It looks like the Big O. fooled us with his claim of being an infrequent attender at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads vs. U.S. and all things middle class:

President-elect Barack Obama said in 2004 – while he was a state legislator running for a U.S. Senate seat – that he attended services at Trinity United Church of Christ every week.
 
This is in contrast to what Obama, as a presidential candidate, said this year after controversial anti-American remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright surfaced. Obama then told news outlets that he did not attend the church frequently and was not aware of Wright’s comments.

Sun-Times religion writer, now columnist posted the full interview at Belief.net, where she explains:

At 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 27, 2004, when I was the religion reporter (I am now its religion columnist) at the Chicago Sun-Times, I met then-State Sen. Barack Obama at Café Baci, a small coffee joint at 330 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, to interview him exclusively about his spirituality. Our conversation took place a few days after he’d clinched the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat that he eventually won. We spoke for more than an hour. He came alone. He answered everything I asked without notes or hesitation. The profile of Obama that grew from the interview at Cafe Baci became the first in a series in the Sun-Times called “The God Factor,” that eventually became my first book, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (FSG, March 2006.) Because of the staggering interest in now President-Elect Obama’s faith and spiritual predilections, I thought it might be helpful to share that interivew, uncut and in its entirety, here.
–Cathleen Falsani

In the course of the interview, Falsani asked if he still attended Trinity Church.

OBAMA:
Yep. Every week. 11 oclock service.

Ever been there? Good service.

I actually wrote a book called Dreams from My Father, it’s kind of a meditation on race. There’s a whole chapter on the church in that, and my first visits to Trinity.

Which church he had to abandon, as we know.