2 votes
Posted 07 October 2008 - 02:41 AM
The man suing Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee for proof of Obama's American citizenship is outraged that his own party – rather than just providing the birth certificate he seeks – would step in to silence him by filing a motion to dismiss his lawsuit.
As WND reported, prominent Pennsylvania Democrat and attorney Philip J. Berg filed suit in U.S. District Court two months ago claiming Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen and therefore not eligible to be elected president. Berg has since challenged Obama publicly that if the candidate will simply produce authorized proof of citizenship, he'll drop the suit.
Berg told WND the longer the DNC tries to ignore his lawsuit or make it go away – instead of just providing the documents – the more convinced he is that his accusations are correct.
Despite assertions by the Washington Post, FactChecker.org and other organizations that Obama has produced a certified Hawaiian birth certificate, Berg told WND he remains "99.99 percent sure" that the certificate is a fake and he wants a court, not a website, to determine its validity.
Earlier last week, lawyers for Obama and the DNC filed a joint motion to dismiss Berg's lawsuit. The fact that the DNC joined in the dismissal request has Berg fuming, believing his party's leaders have ignored his pleas for proof in order to favor their chosen candidate over a rank-and-file constituent.
"I think it's outrageous," Berg said. "The Democratic National Committee should be ensuring the Democratic Party and the public that they have a qualified candidate up there. To file a joint motion is like they're in cahoots.
"Since then, I have asked by way of press release that Howard Dean resign, because (the DNC members) are not fulfilling their duties," Berg said.
"The DNC has a responsibility to all Democrats in this country to make sure that all of their candidates are properly vetted and properly qualified," Berg added. "I think it's really an outrage to the 18-plus million people who voted for Obama and the people who donated more than $425 million to him under false pretenses."
Posted 07 October 2008 - 02:56 AM
James Lewis
Not the crime but the cover-up, as Woodward and Bernstein liked to say. Well, Obama's close alliance with Bill Ayers, Leftie bomb maker from the 60s, may not have been a crime. But O sure peddled a barefaced lie to the nation on ABC News about knowing Ayers.
Remember this answer to George Stephanopoulos?
"This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense."
And later,
" ...Obama's campaign manager, David Axelrod, added: "Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school.""
Pretty innocuous, no?
Here's the truth, from Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online and the Wall Street Journal, Joshua Muravchik at Commentary, and Aaron Klein at WND.
1. Ayers hired Obama to run the Annenberg Chicago education project, which did not help kids get educated but paid off radical organizations in Chicago.
2. Ayers and Obama were both on the steering committee of that 160 million dollar project --- with no measurable improvements in learning for kids on the South Side. (That is simply immoral.)
If you want to know why a total unknown who couldn't get into the Democrat National Convention eight years ago, is now its official nominee for President of the United States, that 160 million bucks may have had something to do with it. It looks like Bill Ayers, just some "guy who lives in my neighborhood" gave Obama the capital to get the Chicago Machine humming for him. That's why Obama launched his Illinois Senate candidacy at chez Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
As for Jeremiah Wright, he wasn't just a "spiritual mentor."
3. "It was in the course of trying to mobilize churches for political protest that Obama met Jeremiah Wright. ... The first time Obama attended services at Trinity, Wright delivered a sermon (it was titled "the audacity of hope") whose theme was: "white folks' greed runs a world in need."
Twenty years later, when it was revealed that Wright's church had honored Louis Farrakhan, that Wright had traveled with Farrakhan to visit the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, and that in his sermons Wright had beseeched God to "damn America," charged the U.S. government with inventing the AIDS virus in order to kill black people, and claimed that Israel and South Africa had colluded to invent an "ethnic bomb" to kill blacks and Arabs while leaving whites unharmed-when all this was revealed, Obama, under pressure from the Hillary Clinton campaign, declared himself "shocked" at Wright's vitriol.
But in truth not only was he aware of Wright's views, they were what had drawn him to Trinity church in the first place." (italics added)
There's no longer any question about the biggest influences in Barack Obama's life. Sure, he could have met Leftwing radicals like any other Democrat politician. They certainly swarm around Democrats like horse flies around a cattle trough. Mere association with Lefty radicals may not prove much.
But the fact that Obama has consistently told lies and made misleading statements on national TV, and gone out of his way to deceive the country about Ayers, Wright, Meeks, Pfleger, Frank Davis, Tony Rezko, Axelrod, "Khaleed Mansour" (former Black Panther associate Don Warden) and all the others --- it all makes an open and shut case. In fact, Obama's campaign shows a deadly convergence between Stalin-type radicals and Muslim influence peddlers. Those people will end up running the Federal government if Obama is elected in November --- now a 50-50 toss-up.
If Obama is what he looks like, the country is in danger. Barack Obama may be running the deadliest deception campaign since Stalin-supporter Henry Wallace almost captured the Democrat nomination in 1948.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 02:59 AM
“McCain would rather tear my campaign down than lift America up! That’s what you do when you are out of ideas, running behind and running out of time!” Barack Obama from the campaign trail Sunday
According to the Obama campaign, Sarah Palin’s first round jabs regarding Obama community organizing pal, political mentor and convicted terrorist William Ayers, are an “unfair attempt” at eleventh hour “character assassination” by a “desperate campaign” running behind late in the game.
Clearly, Palin’s jab landed squarely on Obama’s nose and Obama is looking for a referee to stop the fight. However, the William Ayers connection is only the tip of an iceberg that Obama hopes to steer clear of for another thirty days. The fight has just begun and he’s already crying foul.
Who Obama really is, and what he really believes, IS the primary issue in this election. And no matter how badly he wants to run from the dirty little secrets of his life, no issue on earth matters more at this moment in history.
Obama could have headed all of this off early in his campaign by offering full disclosure and complete explanations about his radical past. But he chose to hide it all and force investigative journalists to crisscross the continent in an effort to find out who and what he is.
Only now are all the pieces of that puzzle starting to come together in a horrifying picture and like it or not, thirty days before the election, the people are about to find out what Mr. Obama and his leftist press minions have been working so hard to conceal.
The Blank Obama Résumé
The people have a very natural curiosity about any politician seeking the highest office in the land. That has never been truer than it is today, since one of those men has a blank résumé.
According to Obama’s campaign, he has only three items on his job application that speak to his qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief.
His years spent as a community organizer
His brief and uneventful stint in the Illinois State Senate
His brief and equally uneventful partial first term in the U.S. Senate
In his short lived legislative career, his greatest personal accomplishment is limited to his talent for knowing when to vote “present” on the tough issues that could come back to haunt him in a later quest for higher office. This has only made him a crafty politician, not a good “leader.”
He was instrumental in passing not one single important piece of legislation in either legislature, which mostly speaks to the fact that he is new and untested. He really hadn’t been in either office long enough to do anything more.
That leaves only his time in college and his years as a community organizer on the table for discussion. He has no other experience, no other job qualifications, and no other résumé items to discuss.
Unanswered Community Organizing Questions
As community organizing is the centerpiece of his campaign, one of only two “executive experiences” listed on Obama’s job application, it is his community organizing which we must discuss.
His only other executive experience was also brief, as editor of the Harvard Law Review, the official records of which Obama still holds under lock and key today. Obama has thus far refused to release any records from Occidental, Columbia or Harvard.
Obama’s life was spent in the company of several other well known community organizers. Weatherman terrorist Williams Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn were much more than brief casual acquaintances of the young Obama and Obama knows it. They worked together for years.
In fact, the Obama-Ayers relationship appears to begin while Obama was attending Columbia University. As we are coming to understand, community organizing seeks to exploit the easily exploited in poor neighborhoods and on college campuses.
Obama and Ayers didn’t just work together; they headed up the Annenberg Challenge together. They were not just casual acquaintances or friends; they were “partners” in what some have called crimes. Obama didn’t just accidentally have tea and crumpets in Bill Ayers living room; Bill Ayers launched his buddy’s political career from the comfort of his living room!
But the community organizing connections run much deeper. And don’t bother “fact-checking” at FactCheck, as it is owned and operated by Obama minions at the left-wing Annenberg Foundation.
Bill Ayers father Thomas Ayers, the rich and powerful former Chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison and dear friend to the overtly corrupt Chicago left-wing political machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley, served on both corporate and community organizing efforts with none other than Black Panther mentor Dr. Khalid Al-Mansour (aka Donald Warden).
Donald Warden was the 1960s community organizer behind the Black Nationalist movement known as the Black Panthers. Warden later adopted the Islamic faith and the name Khalid Al-Mansour, when he became the international deal-maker and fixer for the Saudi Royal Family.
Warden has been the international business partner and front-man for Prince Alwaleed bin Talal since the 70’s. You will remember bin Talal as the Saudi Prince that angered Mayor Rudy Giuliani with his $10 million dollar check days after 9/11, which he blamed on America.
In a May 2008 TV interview, another community organizer from New York City, Percy Sutton, explained how he was contacted by dear friend Donald Warden (aka Khalid Al-Mansour), who was “raising money for Obama’s education” at the time. Warden asked Sutton to write a letter to help Obama gain admission into Harvard Law School, which Sutton did write. No records of how Obama paid for tuition at Occidental, Columbia or Harvard, have been released by the Obama campaign.
The community organizing connections also led to Obama’s twenty year relationship with radical anti-America racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
They lead to community organizing giant, ACORN, who has been caught red-handed in massive voter fraud in distract after district across the country for years, but remains the “voter registration” arm of the Obama campaign today. “Obama Formerly Represented ACORN, Taught Classes For Future Leaders Of ACORN, And They Endorse His 2008 Presidential Campaign”
Posted 07 October 2008 - 03:17 AM
Posted 07 October 2008 - 01:54 PM
Posted 07 October 2008 - 03:13 PM
Could Obama be getting undisclosed money from terrorist organizations???
More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.
And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.
Obama has raised nearly twice that of John McCain's campaign, according to new campaign finance report.
But because of Obama’s high expenses during the hotly contested Democratic primary season and an early decision to forgo public campaign money and the spending limits it imposes, all that cash has not translated into a financial advantage — at least, not yet.
The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee began September with $95 million in cash, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.
But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.
Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.
Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.
“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”
The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.
It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.
Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.
But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.
“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.
But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.
Ritsch acknowledges that there is skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers.
“We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he said. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”
The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raises new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.
But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed for far more abuse.
“While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center.
Already, the FEC has noted unusual patterns in Obama campaign donations among donors who have been disclosed because they have gone beyond the $200 minimum.
FEC and Mr. Doodad Pro
When FEC auditors have questions about contributions, they send letters to the campaign’s finance committee requesting additional information, such as the complete address or employment status of the donor.
Many of the FEC letters that Newsmax reviewed instructed the Obama campaign to “redesignate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.
Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.
In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.
Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”
A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.
In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.
Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.
There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.
In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.
Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”
Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600.
Here again, LaBolt pledged that the contributions would be returned but gave no date.
In February, after just 93 donations, Doodad Pro had already gone over the $2,300 limit for the primary. He was over the $4,600 limit for the general election one month later.
In response to FEC complaints, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro even before he reached these limits. But his credit card was the gift that kept on giving. His most recent un-refunded contributions were on July 7, when he made 14 separate donations, apparently by credit card, of $25 each.
Just as with Mr. Good Will, there can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed the contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Doodad’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $10,965.
Foreign Donations
And then there are the overseas donations — at least, the ones that we know about.
The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.
More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.
But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.
Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.
With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.
At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.
The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.
Concerns about foreign fundraising have been raised by other anecdotal accounts of illegal activities.
In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.
“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."
Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.
The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.
Campaign spokesman LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport, and a new requirement that overseas contributors must provide a passport number when donating online.
One new measure that might not appear obvious at first could be frustrating to foreigners wanting to buy campaign paraphernalia such as T-shirts or bumper stickers through the online store.
In response to an investigation conducted by blogger Pamela Geller, who runs the blog Atlas Shrugs, the Obama campaign has locked down the store.
Geller first revealed on July 31 that donors from the Gaza strip had contributed $33,000 to the Obama campaign through bulk purchases of T-shirts they had shipped to Gaza.
The online campaign store allows buyers to complete their purchases by making an additional donation to the Obama campaign.
A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show.
Their largesse attracted the attention of the FEC almost immediately. In an April 15, 2008, report that examined the Obama campaign’s year-end figures for 2007, the FEC asked that some of these contributions be reassigned.
The Obama camp complied sluggishly, prompting a more detailed admonishment form the FEC on July 30.
The Edwan brothers listed their address as “GA,” as in Georgia, although they entered “Gaza” or “Rafah Refugee camp” as their city of residence on most of the online contribution forms.
According to the Obama campaign, they wrongly identified themselves as U.S. citizens, via a voluntary check-off box at the time the donations were made.
Many of the Edwan brothers’ contributions have been purged from the FEC database, but they still can be found in archived versions available for CRP and other watchdog groups.
The latest Obama campaign filing shows that $891.11 still has not been refunded to the Edwan brothers, despite repeated FEC warnings and campaign claims that all the money was refunded in December.
A Newsmax review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.
But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the CRP estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.
Many of the small donors participated in online “matching” programs, which allows them to hook up with other Obama supporters and eventually share e-mail addresses and blogs.
The Obama Web site described the matching contribution program as similar to a public radio fundraising drive.
“Our goal is to bring 50,000 new donors into our movement by Friday at midnight,” campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed supporters on Sept. 15. “And if you make your first online donation today, your gift will go twice as far. A previous donor has promised to match every dollar you donate.”
FEC spokesman Biersack said he was unfamiliar with the matching donation drive. But he said that if donations from another donor were going to be reassigned to a new donor, as the campaign suggested, “the two people must agree” to do so.
This type of matching drive probably would be legal as long as the matching donor had not exceeded the $2,300 per-election limit, he said.
Obama campaign spokesman LaBolt said, “We have more than 2.5 million donors overall, hundreds of thousands of which have participated in this program.”
Until now, the names of those donors and where they live have remained anonymous — and the federal watchdog agency in charge of ensuring that the presidential campaigns play by the same rules has no tools to find out.
http://newsmax.com/t.../29/135718.html
Posted 07 October 2008 - 03:33 PM
LOL, republicans are getting desperate. I saw this a couple days ago. Its still a non story. Basically you can go to Obama's website or a site like DailyKOS and you can donate to his campaign right through the website. The maximum you can donate is $200 dollars. Some right wing rag tried making a scary story about these micro donations. These small donations aren't tracked(they don't match the money to the donator) so they tried saying "well, these donations could be coming from ANYBODY! Even Turrists!!! *scream*". They are so pathetic. They fail to realize that attacking these small donators undercuts their attempts to make themselves look like the party of Joe Sixpack. They are basically saying that anyone who makes a small anonymous donation(like Joe Sixpack) is a terrorist and only the big money coporate donors are "ok".
The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 05:57 PM
Edited by inmostleaf, 07 October 2008 - 06:05 PM.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 05:59 PM
Those are all just statements from blatantly biased websites, and some of them may be scrambled sound bytes. Interpreted loosely. They have no context.
Can I ask if you've actually read his two books?
Or did you find these from random websites & passages floating somewhere in the abyss of the internet?
Could this just be an issue about authority for you?
Will you or anyone ever fully trust the motives, beliefs and actions of whoever is in the White House?
Or is this all really about race?
Do you want something different or do you want the next four years to be the same?
Are you going to continue to post your fundamentalist right-wing punditry or will you DO something about it in November?
Posted 07 October 2008 - 06:15 PM
Which parts had no context? Would like like to counter the arguments with something substantive?
Posted 07 October 2008 - 06:23 PM
You want me to counter those contrived and baseless arguments that YOU merely copy & pasted?
More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.
And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.
Obama has raised nearly twice that of John McCain's campaign, according to new campaign finance report.
But because of Obama’s high expenses during the hotly contested Democratic primary season and an early decision to forgo public campaign money and the spending limits it imposes, all that cash has not translated into a financial advantage — at least, not yet.
The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee began September with $95 million in cash, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.
But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.
Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.
Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.
“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”
The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.
It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.
Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.
But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.
“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.
But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.
Ritsch acknowledges that there is skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers.
“We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he said. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”
The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raises new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.
But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed for far more abuse.
“While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center.
Already, the FEC has noted unusual patterns in Obama campaign donations among donors who have been disclosed because they have gone beyond the $200 minimum.
FEC and Mr. Doodad Pro
When FEC auditors have questions about contributions, they send letters to the campaign’s finance committee requesting additional information, such as the complete address or employment status of the donor.
Many of the FEC letters that Newsmax reviewed instructed the Obama campaign to “redesignate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.
Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.
In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.
Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”
A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.
In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.
Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.
There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.
In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.
Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”
Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600.
Here again, LaBolt pledged that the contributions would be returned but gave no date.
In February, after just 93 donations, Doodad Pro had already gone over the $2,300 limit for the primary. He was over the $4,600 limit for the general election one month later.
In response to FEC complaints, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro even before he reached these limits. But his credit card was the gift that kept on giving. His most recent un-refunded contributions were on July 7, when he made 14 separate donations, apparently by credit card, of $25 each.
Just as with Mr. Good Will, there can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed the contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Doodad’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $10,965.
Foreign Donations
And then there are the overseas donations — at least, the ones that we know about.
The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran. Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.
More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.
But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.
Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.
With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.
At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.
The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.
Concerns about foreign fundraising have been raised by other anecdotal accounts of illegal activities.
In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.
“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."
Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.
The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.
Campaign spokesman LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport, and a new requirement that overseas contributors must provide a passport number when donating online.
One new measure that might not appear obvious at first could be frustrating to foreigners wanting to buy campaign paraphernalia such as T-shirts or bumper stickers through the online store.
In response to an investigation conducted by blogger Pamela Geller, who runs the blog Atlas Shrugs, the Obama campaign has locked down the store.
Geller first revealed on July 31 that donors from the Gaza strip had contributed $33,000 to the Obama campaign through bulk purchases of T-shirts they had shipped to Gaza.
The online campaign store allows buyers to complete their purchases by making an additional donation to the Obama campaign.
A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show.
Their largesse attracted the attention of the FEC almost immediately. In an April 15, 2008, report that examined the Obama campaign’s year-end figures for 2007, the FEC asked that some of these contributions be reassigned.
The Obama camp complied sluggishly, prompting a more detailed admonishment form the FEC on July 30.
The Edwan brothers listed their address as “GA,” as in Georgia, although they entered “Gaza” or “Rafah Refugee camp” as their city of residence on most of the online contribution forms.
According to the Obama campaign, they wrongly identified themselves as U.S. citizens, via a voluntary check-off box at the time the donations were made.
Many of the Edwan brothers’ contributions have been purged from the FEC database, but they still can be found in archived versions available for CRP and other watchdog groups.
The latest Obama campaign filing shows that $891.11 still has not been refunded to the Edwan brothers, despite repeated FEC warnings and campaign claims that all the money was refunded in December.
A Newsmax review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.
But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the CRP estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.
Many of the small donors participated in online “matching” programs, which allows them to hook up with other Obama supporters and eventually share e-mail addresses and blogs.
The Obama Web site described the matching contribution program as similar to a public radio fundraising drive.
“Our goal is to bring 50,000 new donors into our movement by Friday at midnight,” campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed supporters on Sept. 15. “And if you make your first online donation today, your gift will go twice as far. A previous donor has promised to match every dollar you donate.”
FEC spokesman Biersack said he was unfamiliar with the matching donation drive. But he said that if donations from another donor were going to be reassigned to a new donor, as the campaign suggested, “the two people must agree” to do so.
This type of matching drive probably would be legal as long as the matching donor had not exceeded the $2,300 per-election limit, he said.
Obama campaign spokesman LaBolt said, “We have more than 2.5 million donors overall, hundreds of thousands of which have participated in this program.”
Until now, the names of those donors and where they live have remained anonymous — and the federal watchdog agency in charge of ensuring that the presidential campaigns play by the same rules has no tools to find out.
Edited by luv2increase, 07 October 2008 - 06:24 PM.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 07:00 PM
LOL, republicans are getting desperate. I saw this a couple days ago. Its still a non story. Basically you can go to Obama's website or a site like DailyKOS and you can donate to his campaign right through the website. The maximum you can donate is $200 dollars. Some right wing rag tried making a scary story about these micro donations. These small donations aren't tracked(they don't match the money to the donator) so they tried saying "well, these donations could be coming from ANYBODY! Even Turrists!!! *scream*". They are so pathetic. They fail to realize that attacking these small donators undercuts their attempts to make themselves look like the party of Joe Sixpack. They are basically saying that anyone who makes a small anonymous donation(like Joe Sixpack) is a terrorist and only the big money coporate donors are "ok".
The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.
I would say that $222.7 million dollars in $200 installments is a little suspicious. At least McCain tells where every dime of his money comes from.
The FEC is investigating him anyways so I guess the truth will eventually come out. I meant to post this with my other thread about proof of his money from terrorists. Maybe you would like to take a gander at that Zenob.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 07:50 PM
The only reason the FEC is looking into it is so the RNC will quit whining like babies. The right wingers need to grow up and start dealing with reality instead of hiding in fantasies.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 08:20 PM
Biased? Prove it. Prove that anything in the following is indeed that accurate 100%, and I will give you a high 5.
Think about it; there is a lot of info in here that you could rip apart if it is indeed false. Go for it.
To prove that you are worthy to post factually and intelligently in my threads and not just your average Joe troll; prove me wrong why don't you? If you don't, please refrain from posting in this thread of mine anymore. Thank you!
Edited by shepard, 07 October 2008 - 10:49 PM.
Please refrain from categorizing other members in a derogatory manner.
Posted 07 October 2008 - 08:29 PM
The only reason the FEC is looking into it is so the RNC will quit whining like babies. The right wingers need to grow up and start dealing with reality instead of hiding in fantasies.
It isn't a fantasy. It is documented proof. Whether you like it or not, Obama has received money from terrorists and many others in Iran. This is absurd. It is a 100% conflict of interest, and there are no excuses for it Zenob.
Why do terrorists support Obama, yet anyone else who turns their back on the Muslim faith is shunned with a death sentence on their head?
This is the question to Obama.
Why are terrorists and people from Iran giving you money to help you get into the White House?
Posted 07 October 2008 - 10:38 PM
Edited by shepard, 07 October 2008 - 10:50 PM.
Please refrain from calling others names.
Posted 09 October 2008 - 11:30 PM
Leave the political discussions to those who can back up their claims for now on. Quit the name calling and ad-hominem attacks and start talking like real adults with proof for what you say. Don't you two get it? Anyone can call people names and say something, BUT "nobody" believes it if you don't have proof. Don't post in any of my threads anymore if you can't post relevant rebuttals. This is crazy. You two are disrupting my thread with your damn name calling, and it needs to stop.
Posted 10 October 2008 - 02:26 AM
Ad-hominem attacks? Please, please do not even make an attempt to discuss logic with me. Furthermore, there would be no "name calling" if you dropped your extremist, smug remarks.
And, must I repeat myself again...what arguments are YOU, yes, YOU stating?!
All you're doing is muttering second-wave punditry as copy & paste jobs. Is that how YOU think?
Posted 10 October 2008 - 02:48 AM
The only reason the FEC is looking into it is so the RNC will quit whining like babies. The right wingers need to grow up and start dealing with reality instead of hiding in fantasies.
It isn't a fantasy. It is documented proof. Whether you like it or not, Obama has received money from terrorists and many others in Iran. This is absurd. It is a 100% conflict of interest, and there are no excuses for it Zenob.
Why do terrorists support Obama, yet anyone else who turns their back on the Muslim faith is shunned with a death sentence on their head?
This is the question to Obama.
Why are terrorists and people from Iran giving you money to help you get into the White House?
Posted 10 October 2008 - 02:58 AM
According to a political writer in Haaretz, Osama bin Laden has told his followers to make a major strike in the US before hte election, to swing it to the Republicans. He thinks they are esier to manipulate. So I wonder why they are also giving Obama money too.
Edited by luv2increase, 10 October 2008 - 03:00 AM.
Posted 10 October 2008 - 03:05 AM
It makes sense that they would give money to Obama, then make sure that it was publicised. Obama would be the worst thing ever for al Qaeda. If Obama is elected president, a lot of Angry Young Muslims are going to stop and think: "hmm. The Americans elected a guy who kind of looks like me, and his middle name is the same as my uncle. Maybe they aren't the Great Satan after all. I think I'll stop the terrorism gig and open a falafel stand instead." It would be entirely reasonable for bin Laden to go to great lengths to stop Obama from getting elected. It's pretty clear that George W. Bush was the greatest thing that ever happened for al Qaeda. They'll probably have his face on their recruitment posters for years. McCain is such a hot-head, it would be simple for bin Laden to manipulate him into doing something rash and stupid.According to a political writer in Haaretz, Osama bin Laden has told his followers to make a major strike in the US before hte election, to swing it to the Republicans. He thinks they are esier to manipulate. So I wonder why they are also giving Obama money too.It isn't a fantasy. It is documented proof. Whether you like it or not, Obama has received money from terrorists and many others in Iran. This is absurd. It is a 100% conflict of interest, and there are no excuses for it Zenob.The only reason the FEC is looking into it is so the RNC will quit whining like babies. The right wingers need to grow up and start dealing with reality instead of hiding in fantasies.
Why do terrorists support Obama, yet anyone else who turns their back on the Muslim faith is shunned with a death sentence on their head?
This is the question to Obama.
Why are terrorists and people from Iran giving you money to help you get into the White House?
Posted 10 October 2008 - 03:09 AM
It makes sense that they would give money to Obama, then make sure that it was publicised. Obama would be the worst thing ever for al Qaeda. If Obama is elected president, a lot of Angry Young Muslims are going to stop and think: "hmm. The Americans elected a guy who kind of looks like me, and his middle name is the same as my uncle. Maybe they aren't the Great Satan after all. I think I'll stop the terrorism gig and open a falafel stand instead." It would be entirely reasonable for bin Laden to go to great lengths to stop Obama from getting elected. It's pretty clear that George W. Bush was the greatest thing that ever happened for al Qaeda. They'll probably have his face on their recruitment posters for years. McCain is such a hot-head, it would be simple for bin Laden to manipulate him into doing something rash and stupid.
Posted 10 October 2008 - 10:32 PM
Posted: February 17, 2008
4:45 pm Eastern
© 2008 WorldNetDaily
Editor's note: The accompanying YouTube video contains sexual language that some will consider offensive. The article itself contains material that is inappropriate for children.
Larry Sinclair accuses Barack Obama of homosexual acts and drug use in video posted on YouTube
WASHINGTON – The electrifying presidential campaign of Barack Obama faces a new challenge – a Minnesota man who claims he took cocaine in 1999 with the then-Illinois legislator and participated in homosexual acts with him.
When his story was ignored by the news media, Larry Sinclair made his case last month in a YouTube video, which has now been viewed more than a quarter-million times. And when it was still ignored by the media, Sinclair filed a suit in Minnesota District Court, alleging threats and intimidation by Obama's staff.
Sinclair, who says he is willing to submit to a polygraph test to validate his claims, will now get his chance – thanks to a website offering $10,000 for the right to record it and $100,000 to Sinclair if he passes.
"My motivation for making this public is my desire for a presidential candidate to be honest," Sinclair told WND by telephone. "I didn't want the sex thing to come out. But I think it is important for the candidate to be honest about his drug use as late as 1999."
(Story continues below)
Sinclair, who lives in Duluth and describes himself as "gay," claims he "personally engaged in sexual activity and personally used illegal drugs in November 1999" with the man who is now the leading Democratic presidential candidate. He claims the activity took place in the back of Sinclair's limousine and occurred again, later, in his hotel. Sinclair also says he personally no longer uses drugs.
In his lawsuit, filed last week, he charges his civil rights have been violated by Obama and the Democratic Party. Named as defendants in the case are the presidential candidate, David Axelrod of AKP Message and Media in Chicago and the Democratic National Committee.
Sinclair charges Obama smoked crack cocaine in the limo while Sinclair snorted powdered cocaine provided by the legislator. He says the two met in an upscale Chicago lounge before leaving in Sinclair's limousine where the drug use and sex took place for the first time.
Sinclair says he is a registered Democrat but has never voted for any candidate. He is 46 and claims to be physically disabled.
He says he was not physically impaired in 1999 when the alleged incidents with Obama took place.
Calls placed to the Obama campaign were not returned.
Edited by luv2increase, 10 October 2008 - 10:35 PM.
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