{"id":4959,"date":"2008-12-16T12:14:40","date_gmt":"2008-12-16T17:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4959"},"modified":"2008-12-16T12:14:40","modified_gmt":"2008-12-16T17:14:40","slug":"grant-smith-will-obama-end-pay-to-play-in-mideast-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4959","title":{"rendered":"Grant Smith: Will Obama End Pay-to-Play in Mideast Policy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Grant F. Smith, Antiwar.com, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/orig\/gsmith.php?articleid=13909\">16 December 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The incoming Obama administration is scrambling to distance itself from the scandal emanating from the president-elect&#8217;s home state. It is still too early to tell how much Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich&#8217;s alleged attempt to sell the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/politics\/chi-raghuveer-nayak-081212-ht,0,1643228.story\">president-elect&#8217;s Senate seat<\/a> in exchange for $1 million may taint Obama <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/us_and_americas\/article5332897.ece\">advisers<\/a>.    But we may soon discover the answer to a larger question. Is pay-to-play going to be the modus operandi for Obama&#8217;s Middle East policy appointments?<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/orig\/gsmith.php?articleid=13909\">Read the article<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Grant F. Smith, Antiwar.com, 16 December 2008 The incoming Obama administration is scrambling to distance itself from the scandal emanating from the president-elect&#8217;s home state. It is still too early to tell how much Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich&#8217;s alleged &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=4959\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-1hZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4959"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4963,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4959\/revisions\/4963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}