Excuses wearing thin for Obama, media pals :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Steve Huntley
Have you heard the news? President Obama inherited an economic mess from the Bush administration.
You say that’s hardly news? But it’s been the message sounded over and over by the White House. Top Obama adviser David Axelrod said on one of the Sunday news shows, “He walked in the door, we had the worst economy since the Great Depression.” In San Francisco, Obama talked of being “busy with our mop.” White House heavy hitter Rahm Emanuel used the worst-economy-since-the-Depression line on a public TV news show.
You’d think it’s October 2008, the final month in the Obama presidential candidacy, rather than October 2009, nine months into the Obama presidency. Yet the Obama White House is in full campaign mode — maybe because it needs to mask the shortcomings of the Obama presidency.
read the rest here… Excuses wearing thin for Obama, media pals :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Steve Huntley.
Obama’s Illegal Donations
Newsmax has a piece on Obama’s mysterious donors and lots of shady dealing…
By Obama’s own admission, more than half of his contributions have come from small donors giving $200 or less. But unlike John McCain’s campaign, Obama won’t release the names of these donors.
A Newsmax canvass of disclosed Obama campaign donors shows worrisome anomalies, including outright violations of federal election laws…
And more than 37,000 Obama donations appear to be conversions of foreign currency.
According to a Newsmax analysis of the Obama campaign data before the latest figures were released, potential foreign currency donations could range anywhere from $12.8 million to a stunning $63 million in all. With the addition of $150 million raised in September, this amount could be much more…
Ronald J. Sharpe Jr., a retired teacher from Rockledge, Fla., appears in the Obama campaign reports as having given a whopping $13,800.
The campaign reported that it returned $4,600 to him, making his net contribution of $9,200 still way over the legal limit.
But there’s one problem with the Obama data: Sharpe doesn’t remember giving that much money to the Obama campaign in the first place, nor does he recall anyone from the campaign ever contacting him to return money.
“At the end, I was making monthly payments,” he told Newsmax. The Obama campaign records do not show any such payments.
John Atkinson, an insurance agent in Burr Ridge, Ill., refused to discuss his contributions, which totaled $8,724.26, before numerous refunds.
Atkinson and others gave in odd amounts: $188.67, $1,542.06, $876.09, $388.67, $282.20, $195.66, $118.15, and one rounded contribution of $2,300.
Sandra Daneshinia, a self-employed caregiver from Los Angeles, made 36 separate contributions, totaling $7,051.12, according to FEC records. Thirteen of them were eventually refunded.
In a bizarre coincidence, those 13 refunded contributions — for varying amounts such as $223.88 and $201.44 — added up exactly to $2,300, the amount an individual may give per federal election…
In all, Newsmax found an astonishing 37,265 unique donors to the Obama campaign whose contributions were not rounded up to dollar amounts. That amounts to more than 10 percent of the total number of unique donors whose names have been disclosed by the Obama campaign to the public.
Of those, 44,410 contributions came in unrounded amounts of less than $100. FEC regulations only require that campaigns disclose the names of donors who have given a total of $200 or more, so that means that all these contributors were repeat donors…
But the campaign has never produced any accounting for proceeds from its online store, which virtually shut down several weeks ago after Newsmax and news organizations revealed that Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and other foreigners had made large purchases there.
The Republican National Committee has filed a complaint against the Obama campaign for “accepting prohibited contributions from foreign nationals and excessive contributions from individuals,” which incorporated reporting from Newsmax and other news organizations.
The Obama camp claims to have 2.5 million donors in all. But until now, they have kept secret the names of the overwhelming majority of these money-givers. According to a Newsmax analysis, the Obama campaign finance records contain just 370,448 unique names.
Even accounting for common names such as Robert Taylor or Michael Brown, which can signify multiple donors, Obama’s publicly known donor base is less than 20 percent of the total number of donors the campaign claims to have attracted. But the identity of the other 2 million donors is being kept secret.
As of the end of August, those secret donors have given an incredible $222.7 million to Obama, according to the FEC — money whose origin remains unknown to anyone other than Obama’s finance team, who won’t take calls from the press.
While no exact figures are available, if the same percentage of potential foreign contributions found in the itemized contribution data is applied to the total $426.9 million the Obama camp says it has taken in from individuals, this could mean that Obama is financing his presidential campaign with anywhere from $13 million to a whopping $63 million from overseas credit cards or foreign currency purchases.
The sum of all unrounded contributions in the itemized FEC filings for the Obama campaigns comes to $6,437,066.07. That is the actual amount of money that appears to have been charged to foreign credit cards that the Obama campaign has disclosed.
If the same ratio applies to the unitemized contributions, which are again as large, then the Obama campaign may have taken as much as $13 million from foreign donors.
However, the donors who made those unrounded contributions gave a total of $31,484,584.27, meaning that as much as $63 million may have come from questionable sources.
Both presidential campaigns are required to submit detailed fundraising reports for September on Monday.
That’s the way Democrats play elections and policy, completely without moral character. And Obama wonders why there are character attacks.
CBS Intentionally/Unintentionally Mistranscribes Palin
Katie (aren’t her squirrel cheeks so cute!) Couric hacked her cute little way through a cute little string of interviews with future VPOTUS Sarah Palin. But something happened on the way back to the audience. A little error in transcription here and there, strangely at the times when the meaning is critical to her answers. I found it irresponsibly sloppy at best and outright crooked if intended to cause reader confusion on Palin’s positions.
| Katie Couric’s “CBS for Obama Victory” team transcription | Palin’s actual words |
| My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don’t know how long ago, a year or two ago that he’s not benefiting from that. And you know, I was – I would hope that’s not the case. | My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don’t know how long ago, a year or two ago that he’s not benefiting from that. And you know, I was – I would hope that’s the case. |
| I’m all about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. | I’m ill about the position that America is in and that we have to look at a $700 billion bailout. At the same time we know that inaction is not an option. |
Don’t you find that fascinating? I do. I find it very curious.
It’s really hard to justify dropping the ball like this, obviously when the video that conflicts with your poor transcription is on the same page.
You can look at it one of two ways.
First, it was unintentional; the dense CBS News team couldn’t understand “that thick Alaskan accent”, even though I had no trouble at all picking out what she said with perfect clarity. CBS News must be employing a really unqualified transcriber.
Second, it was intentional; while much more devious if true, it certainly wouldn’t be beyond any common expectations of liberal CBS to play with the text a little to subtly shake credibility with very plausible deniability. CBS has been playing that game for decades.
Either way, it’s irresponsible to take words out or put words into the mouth of a candidate weeks before an election. Especially when the horse your money’s on is the other one. Shame on you CBS. Please correct the copy and fake-spank the lackey who was just following orders.
Obama Tried To Delay Iraq Withdrawl
Barack Obama has almost entirely escaped media scrutiny of his efforts to influence leaders in Iraq to delay scheduled troop withdrawals until after the election. I don’t think I need to tell you why he would do something so crooked and frankly disingenuous to the American people and their soldiers for political gain. This slippery weasel is truly the opportunist we all know he is.
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.
“He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
The Opacity of Vinegar
I think it’s official. Obama has passed beyond worried and has entered the bitter angry stage of his campaign’s slowing train. While addressing the issue of his lipstick-pig comment (and whether that comment was intended or not we don’t know), Obama showed the strongest signs yet of his frustration and surprise to see his lead evaporate.
If he had smart handlers, they would have told him to address the issue very lightly and playfully beg forgiveness, then move on. Instead he sat on the subject and stewed about the need to address his comment and how McCain and the press are combining to attack him. Barry, the last thing you get to complain about is why your cheerleading squad has taken a five minute break from their persistent chanting over broadcast and cable. No one’s gotten more love and protection from the press than you. And you can’t have it both ways, denying the horse you came on, and then looking in its mouth.
What a baby.
