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Sunday, January 21, 2007

Here we go again
Posted by Jill | 10:22 PM
I guess John Edwards is a potential nominee after all, despite the breathless coverage of the two "glamour" campaigns of Obama and Clinton. How do we know this? Because the first smear-by-innuendo piece has appeared in the Washington Post.

Identity of Edwards Home's Buyers Veiled
Assisted-Living Magnates in SEC Probe Paid Candidate $5.2 Million

When former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally succeeded last month in selling his imposing Georgetown mansion for $5.2 million after it had languished on the market, the names of the buyers were not publicly disclosed.

At the time, Edwards's spokeswoman told reporters that the house had been sold to an unidentified corporation. In reality, the buyers were Paul and Terry Klaassen, according to several sources and confirmed by Edwards's spokeswoman yesterday.

The wealthy founders of the nation's largest assisted-living housing chain for seniors, the Klaassens are currently cooperating with a government inquiry in connection with accounting practices and stock options exercised by them and other company insiders. They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid.

The grand 18th-century house had lingered on Washington's slowing real estate market for more than 18 months. The Edwardses paid $3.8 million in 2002 for the six-bedroom Federal-style house once owned by socialite Polly Fritchey, and they did substantial renovations. The final sale price was half a million dollars below the asking price but still $1.4 million more than the Edwardses paid four years earlier.

Edwards closed the deal in late December -- the night before he announced his presidential candidacy. Edwards aide Jennifer Palmieri said he left the details to real estate agent W. Ted Gossett. Gossett declined to reveal the Klaassens' identity but said the buyer decided to purchase the mansion as a "surprise Christmas gift" for his wife.

Edwards was told the Klaassens' name "in passing" around the time the offer came in on Dec. 18, Palmieri said last night, but he did not investigate further and had no knowledge of their business until a reporter's inquiry Wednesday. Palmieri said Edwards had not delved into the Klaassens' background: "They left it to be done at arm's length, real estate agent to real estate agent."

Asked about the allegations lodged against the Klaassens by their union stockholders, she added, "He believes all CEOs should follow the law, should protect their shareholders and should protect their workers, and he expects that will happen in this case as well."


Why the fuck should it matter who the buyer for Edwards' house in Georgetown was? Are sellers in a soft market now required to screen their buyers? Tell that to the people up the street from me whose house has been languishing on the market for the last six months.

Mr. Brilliant and I bought our house from a devoutly Catholic Italian-American elderly couple. I guess they should have done due diligence and not sold to us since we are not churchgoers.

This is exactly the kind of crap the press has been pulling with Democrats for the last fifteen years, and they're picking up right where they left off in 2004. George W. Bush lies us into a war, loses $8 billion in taxpayer dollars down a hole in Iraq and no one can tell us where it went. He allows his friends and campaign contributors to war profiteer, he violates the laws he signs, he calls the U.S. Constitutions "a Goddamn piece of paper" as he insists that wiretapping Americans and reading their mail is necessary -- and the Washington Post doesn't give a shit. But John Edwards doesn't screen the buyer for the house he sold, in absentia, through a realtor, and this is some kind of scandal when the buyer turns out to be a capitalist scumbag.

I can't wait to hear how John Solomon, who authored this piece, explains away Rudy Giuliani's washing away of his first two marriages, along with his children. That, I guess, is perfectly OK. Why? Because he's a Republican, and we all know that "It's OK if You're a Republican." Of course the corollary of this is "Anything You Do, No Matter How Benign, Is Shady if You're a Democrat."

I'm not kidding. Pass me the contour pillow. I want to just go to sleep till it's all over.

(h/t: ShakesSis)
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