The website Obama Shrugged has a good concise guide to the unprecedented fundraising practices of the Obama campaign, leaving the door wide open for fraudulent and illegal contributions. A sample:
- On October 22, a citizen does his own investigative work and gives an online donation to the Obama campaign with a the fake name of John Galt along with a fake address. Several bloggers quickly follow up on this story with their own investigative work and find that they too can donate to the Obama campaign with fake names and addresses. Most disturbingly, foreign citizens were also able to donate using their foreign issued credit cards with fake foreign addresses.
- By now, it has become common knowledge that the Obama campaign is the ONLY campaign to NOT disclose their "under $200″ campaign donor list. No substantive reasons are given by the Obama campaign.
- On October 24, it is confirmed by the National Journal that the Obama campaign has turned off address verification on their website. This is highly irregular - in fact, it's quite unheard of. Essentially, turning off address verification (known as AVS) enables donors to fake addresses and circumvent donor limits. This means foreigners can give illegal donations and motivated Obama supporters can exceed the $2300 campaign limit! As Internet and e-commerce professionals, we launch this blog to raise the issue of how highly irregular and potentially unethical it is to turn off online credit card address verification.
Vanessa Niekamp said that when she was asked to run a child-support check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16, she thought it routine. A supervisor told her the man had contacted the state agency about his case.
Niekamp didn’t know she just had checked on “Joe the Plumber,” who was elevated the night before to presidential politics prominence as Republican John McCain’s example in a debate of an average American.
The senior manager would not learn about “Joe” for another week, when she said her boss informed her and directed her to write an e-mail stating her computer check was a legitimate inquiry.
The reason Niekamp said she was given for checking if there was a child-support case on Wurzelbacher does not match the reason given by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Director Helen Jones-Kelley said her agency checks people who are “thrust into the public spotlight,” amid suggestions they may have come into money, to see if they owe support or are receiving undeserved public assistance.
Niekamp told The Dispatch she is unfamiliar with the practice of checking on the newly famous. “I’ve never done that before, I don’t know of anybody in my office who does that and I don’t remember anyone ever doing that,” she said today.
To summarize, Ms. Appleton has been FL for 6 weeks, says she voted in FL, but plans to return “home” to NY a day or so after the election. According to this link and this one, Ms. Appleton’s residency is open to question. If I am missing something and this is legal, I do not think it should be. At least as long as we have an electoral system of electing a president, it seems fundamentally contrary to that system for people to leave “safe states” for a candidate (in this New York) and go to a battleground state to cast a ballot. It seems as though campaigns would spend their resources moving people from safe states to contested states. Maybe that is the point of this Obamatravel.org thing…This is not the only case of Obama supporters circumventing or ignoring voter laws for their man:
Obama campaign staffers are voting in swing states across the county – and it appears they are bypassing state residency requirements.
Palestra.net’s voter fraud investigation started in Ohio where the law entitles only permanent residents, who intend to remain in the state, the right to vote in Ohio. In the past two weeks, 14 temporary Obama staffers who registered to vote have withdrawn their ballots. The individuals did not meet the legal requirements to cast a ballot in Ohio. When this was brought to their attention, they pulled their ballots. The Prosecuting attorney believes this was a misunderstanding by some “very excited and loyal volunteers.”
On Thursday October 30, Palestra.net turned our attention west to New Mexico. We found a former California delegate to the Democratic National Convention, Shayne Adamski, registered to vote in Albuquerque. New Mexico’s Secretary of State, Mary Herrera (D), said she would turn Adamski’s information over to the FBI to investigate.
Two swing states with similar stories sparked my curiosity. So I checked into the other prominent states in play: North Carolina, Florida, Missouri, Virginia and Nevada. The trend continued. From swing state to swing state, some out-of-state campaigners are casting ballots without following election law.
Meet Farah Minwalla, an Obama field organizer in North Carolina. She registered to vote in Mecklenburg County, NC on October 4. According to county auditor reports, the address Minwalla used belongs to a Wanda Nabors. But oddly – Minwalla is also registered to vote in New York AND Nevada. All three registrations are listed as active. So, is she a resident of North Carolina, Nevada or New York? Technically, it appears she could vote in all three.
Minwalla's online bio for NextGenNow says she is currently pursuing a degree in English and Journalism in New York City. As recently as July, Minwalla wrote a review for a band in Brooklyn, but now she's registered to vote in swing state North Carolina. The latest RealClearPolitics poll shows Obama ahead by 0.3 percent, in New York Obama leads by 29.7 percent. As I’ve heard so often from campaigners, every vote counts.
I called Minwalla's cell phone on Sunday and she answered. When I asked when she arrived in North Carolina and why she registered, she handed the phone to an Obama spokesperson. The Obama spokesperson took my questions but gave me no answers. North Carolina election law says you must be a permanent resident to vote.
[...]
Crossing the country to Missouri now, we meet William Jay Urquhart. Will is a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Missouri. Along with getting out the vote, Urquhart decided to register to cast a vote of his own in Boone County. His current cell phone has a Washington, D.C. area code. I called the number, left a message and sent him an email. No response.
Missouri election laws are almost exactly the same as Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and New Mexico. All of these swing states have the same guidelines in determining residency – you must be a resident, a resident is defined by the intent to remain in the state permanently or to return to it when you leave. In other words, where you tell people you are from and where you tell people you voted, should be the same place. Further, in these states, election law states you cannot gain residency by temporarily working in the state. Did I mention voting records show Urquhart is also registered to vote in Massachusetts? I found voter registration records of a William Jay Urquhart registered to vote in Connecticut and Massachussets. Is this the same individual?
If not, William please contact me so we can straighten this out.
Virginia last elected a Democratic president in 1964. Obama's campaign is emphasizing the state known as "the Mother of Presidents" so much, that his final rally will take place in Manassas Park. When I tried to cross check names of out-of-state campaigners and volunteers with the state voter registration database, I hit a wall. The database required name, locality, date of birth and the last four numbers of an individual's social security number to access so checking or verifying information is near impossible.
While there may be a lack of access to information, there's no shortage of out-of-state volunteers trying to 'turn Virginia blue.' A July 24 Washington Post article entitled, "Obama Seeks Out-of-State Volunteers" states Obama's campaign is calling for out-of-state support, despite its claims that 10,000 volunteers are already active in Virginia. Obama Voter Protection Program, Counsel for Change is the mirror group to a Facebook group for lawyers in Ohio.
The founder for the Ohio Facebook group, James Cadogan, graduated from Princeton and Columbia then practiced law in New York City. This year, Cadogan registered to vote in Ohio. After Palestra.net's investigations, Cadogan withdrew his ballot. The Virginia Counsel for Change group has 213 members. Are any of them following in Cadogan's footsteps?
Nevada is a bit of an outlier. The swing state’s law only requires a 30-day residency to vote. I didn't find a clause that mentions intent to remain or the requirement of permanency. According to the campaign’s "Drive for Change" website, "Barack needs support not just from all Nevadans, but also from Nevada's neighbors – especially California. This is the chance for Californians to have a major impact on this historic race." So, technically the many Southern Californians helping to get out the vote in swing state Nevada could vote in Nevada – as long as they stay for 30 days. It all appears legal.
As for the McCain campaign, the numbers aren’t there. Anecdotal evidence and my personal experience of visiting campaign offices around the country do not reflect the same efficient grassroots, get-out-the-vote machine. But we have been looking and we will continue to look.
Tomorrow is Election Day and Palestra.net doesn't have the time or resources to document every individual voting in every swing state. But something is going on and for every person I profiled, I have additional names in queue. Out-of-state temporary campaign workers are registering and voting in swing states around the country without meeting the letter of Election law. Election Day is tomorrow, what do we do now?
A man asks a simple rhetorical question and before he knows it the entire media and people are out to smear his name, beat him, insult him, and invade his personal life, now they are shouting death threats at him. Obama supporter and San Francisco's KGO radio host Charles Karel Bouley said that he wanted Joe the Plumber, real name Joe Wurzelbacher, dead.
[...]
Joe the Plumber was just the average guy tossing around a football with his son on his front lawn when Obama came into his neighborhood attracting many people and many of them he felt were asking easy questions. So he decided to throw a tough question at Obama where he asked him "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more isn't it?" further along in the answer by Obama he stated that he felt "spreading the wealth around" was the correct way to handle the U.S. economy. What this meant was that he would give a tax break, and 40% of America who doesn't pay income tax, check from the wealthiest of American's. Obama's campaign states, whoever makes over $250,000 a year will be taxed more. Since then, Obama has been called a socialist, marxist, and communist for his extreme views and taxing the American dream and the hard working earners in America.
Since then he's been called racist terms like "skin head" and has had his entire life probed by the media. All the guy did was ask a fair question...does it matter that he isn't a licensed plumber (but still does a plumber's job) or owes a grand in back taxes? It should not be a crime to ask a person running for president a question.
The day after Joe the Plumber asked the question, Obama and Biden made fun of Joe and put him in public eye at rallies and in the final debate against McCain. Since then, Joe has been campaigning with McCain after the way Obama treated him and his question.
Barack Obama gave an interview to MTV and got challenged on his redistributionist tax policies. In answering, Obama called his increases “chump change” to those making over $250,000 a year — a characterization that should raise eyebrows (emphases mine):We are so screwed if you all allow Obama to ascend to the White House just because he's got a good tan and has sold you all on HOPE and CHANGE.At $250,000, an additional 3.6% isn’t chump change. It’s an extra $9,000 that goes to the federal government on top of what they already take. That money could go to the college funds for his own children, or get invested in businesses that create jobs, or just get spent and create even more jobs for others in the community. Instead, it will go to Washington DC, get filtered through ever-growing bureaucracies, and perhaps a tenth of it will actually go to any purpose — if that.Sway: Our next question is from Matt from Iowa: “If your desire is to spread the wealth around, what incentive is there for me to try to work hard? If I am only going to get more taken away from me, the more money I make, why wouldn’t I just slide into a life of relaxation and let rich people take care of me? And a lot of people are asking similar questions, and I wanted you to specify. What does this mean exactly?”
Obama: What is amazing to me is this whole notion that somehow everybody is just looking out for themselves. I mean, the fact is, we just talked about student loans. When young people who have the drive and the skill to go to college can’t afford to go to college, how do you think we pay for scholarships or loan programs? That money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s got to come from somewhere, and the attitude that I have is that, if we want to grow our economy, the way it grows is from the bottom up. You don’t just give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. What you do is make sure the tax code is fair. I want to give a tax cut to 95 percent of working Americans, but in order to pay for that, I’m going to take the tax rates back to what they were in the 1990s for people who are making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. Now for people who are making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, if they are paying 2 or 3 percent higher in taxes, the notion that they’re somehow going to stop working, or that this young man is going to not want to be successful, that just doesn’t make any sense. Back in the 1990s, we created more millionaires, more billionaires, because the economy was growing, everything was strong, at every income bracket, people were doing well. So this idea, that somehow everybody is just on their own and shouldn’t be concerned about other people who are coming up behind them, that’s the kind of attitude that I want to end when I am president.
Sway: Just out of curiosity, for those that are being taxed that are making more than $250,000 a year, how much difference would it be from how they are being taxed today?
Obama: Well, right now, they are getting taxed at 36 percent. Under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, they were being taxed at 39.6 percent. You are talking about a 3.6 percent difference, and for the average person who is making half a million, a million dollars, now people like you Sway, that’s chump change, that’s nothing. But it could make a big difference for that young person who is trying to figure out whether they can go to college or not, if we could give them more of a break or more scholarships or grants to go to college.
I provided the entire answer to show that one doesn’t have to take Obama out of context to see the folly of his economics. Wealth does not grow “from the ground up”. It takes investment and risk by those who have capital in order to create the kind of private-sector jobs that promote economic strength and stability. Until now, our tax policies have recognized the value of risk-taking by taxing capital gains at a lower rate, in order to encourage people to invest money in something other than savings accounts. That is what allows the American economy to remain so resilient.
Instead, Obama thinks that we can penalize investment and still get people to take risks. Instead, they will simply put their capital where it is most safe and stop taking risks altogether. Businesses will not expand, and small businesses will not get created. Research and development will stop altogether. Without rewarding risk, risk will not get taken — and especially when government redirects capital away from private investment and sinks it into large bureaucracies instead.
Obama thinks $9,000 is “chump change”. I’d say someone’s certainly a chump.
"This is not going to be complimentary to Senator Obama ..... he didn't have the political courage to make a statement and walk out."Congress Nadler seems to pay very little attention to the news both foreign and domestic:
Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association (OCA), today issued the following statement in response to just-released remarks from Senator Barack Obama about the nation's coal industry.
"Regardless of the timing or method of the release of these remarks, the message from the Democratic candidate for President could not be clearer: the Obama-Biden ticket spells disaster for America's coal industry and the tens of thousands of Americans who work in it.
"He thinks he can really do anything — he does. With his own power and will, he can fix it..."Because he's the mutha f**kin' Messiah, ya'll.
PURGE: SKEPTICAL REPORTERS TOSSED OFF OBAMA PLANE
Fri Oct 31 2008 08:39:55 ET
NY POST, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, WASHINGTON TIMES TOLD TO GET OUT... ALL 3 ENDORSED MCCAIN
**Exclusive**
The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!
The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says their reporters -- and possibly others -- will have to vacate their coveted seats so more power players can document the final days of Sen. Barack Obama's historic campaign to become the first black American president.
MORE
Some told the DRUDGE REPORT that the reporters are being ousted to bring on documentary film-makers to record the final days; others expect to see on board more sympathetic members of the media, including the NY TIMES' Maureen Dowd, who once complained that she was barred from McCain's Straight Talk Express airplane.
After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.
Developing...
And...The Washington Times, which has covered the Barack Obama campaign from the start, was kicked off the Democrat's campaign plane for the final 72 hours of the race.Everything this slime ball Obama has done since getting into Occidental and then having the Saudi's pay his way through Harvard and associating himself with the scum he has, has been a litmus test for an Obama administration.
The Obama campaign informed the newspaper Thursday evening of its decision, which came two days after The Times editorial page endorsed Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama. The Times editorial page runs completely independent of the news department.
"This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth, we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama's campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporter's pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign," said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon.
"I hope the candidate that promises to unite America isn't using a litmus test to determine who gets to cover his campaign."
In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda.The only time Obama has been a moderate, centrist, or someone who reaches across the aisle in a bi-partisan manner has been since he defeated Hillary in the primaries.
The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.
One of the more surreal arguments made on behalf of Obama is that he showed us something meaningful about his temperament by his handling of the credit crisis....To have Billy Jeff explain it, it appears that Obama had no clue (like even the most brilliant economic minds like Greenspan) and he needed to be told what to do and how to sell it.
But the essential requirement for proving your mettle in a crisis is that you have to believe you are facing a crisis - and for Obama, the credit crisis wasn't a crisis at all. It was the best thing that happened to him all year. It was manna from heaven at a time when he was trailing in the polls, and at present it looks likely to deliver him to the White House in spite of his manifold errors and weaknesses as a candidate....
Second, let's consider how Obama actually managed the crisis:
(1) Stay calm.
(2) Remain at a distance from where the crisis was being handled unless directly summoned there.
(3) Continue going about his usual daily routine.
(4) Avoid hands-on involvement in making sure things got done.
(5) Leave things uncritically in the hands of incompetent leaders in his party on the assumption that they'll call him if they need him.
In a word, exactly to the letter how Bush handled Hurricane Katrina.
This is not reassuring.
Barack Obama cultivated the image of a cool and collected leader during the height of the economic crisis last month, when lawmakers on Capitol Hill scrambled to draft a workable bailout package after a meltdown on Wall Street.
And when John McCain suspended his campaign to dive head first into the fray, Obama's campaign accused the Republican of being "unsteady."
But to hear Bill Clinton tell it, the Democratic nominee didn't quite have a handle on the situation himself.
"I haven't cleared this with him and he may even be mad at me for saying this so close to the election, but I know what else he said to his economic advisers (during the crisis)," Clinton told the crowd at a Wednesday night rally with Obama in Florida. "He said, 'Tell me what the right thing to do is. What's the right thing for America? Don't tell me what's popular. You tell me what's right -- I'll figure out how to sell it.'"
Clinton said when the crisis broke, Obama called his own advisers as well as those of the former two-term president, Hillary Clinton, Warren Buffet and others.
"He called those people. You know why? Because he knew it was complicated and before he said anything he wanted to understand," Clinton said. "That's what a president does in a crisis."
The seeming praise may come off as a backhanded compliment, especially since Obama repeatedly accuses McCain of admitting he doesn't know much about the economy. McCain's campaign said Clinton's remark shows Obama was uncertain when Wall Street seemed to be on the verge of crumbling.
"Barack Obama had no idea what the right thing to do is or at least that's Bill Clinton's impression," McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said.
"It's disturbing that ... Barack Obama's response to this is 'Tell me what to do and I will sell it,'" Goldfarb added. "That's been Barack Obama's entire campaign -- is one big sales job."
...told the Post that infomercials should spend more time on the solution and less on the problem. In other words, don’t talk about belly flab for 25 minutes and then talk about the Tummy Stretcher for 5. The Obamamercial gave viewers tons of gloom and doom, with people talking about the tough economy (from their own houses and driving their own cars) to such an extent that the solution — Obama — hardly seems appropriate to the task involved.In other reviews:
The ratings will be what depresses Team Obama, though. Despite having a near-monopoly on broadcast television and no particularly compelling competition, only one-fifth of the nation bothered to watch. That doesn’t exactly scream enthusiasm, and the crashing waves of a landslide may just be imaginary.
Review:A no-holds-barred weepathon - At times during this half hour of mawkish misery you longed for the wit and wisdom of a debate featuring Sarah Palin.
America’s supplies of tissues must have been exhausted during Barack Obama’s 30-minute election broadcast late on Wednesday night. It had been billed as a “closing argument” by the Democrat’s seemingly unstoppable campaign. In reality, it was an all-out, no-holds-barred weepathon with a feel-bad factor pitched somewhere between the third act of Schindler’s List and the slaughter scenes in Watership Down. I emerged from my TV room sodden-eyed and legs trembling, wishing that Iran would just drop the bomb and get it all over with.
[...]
Then Obama brought up his dead mother. It was enough to make you pine for the wit and intelligence of a Sarah Palin debate. I had hoped for goosebumps and that swollen feeling you get in your chest when you know that something good might happen. But instead I just felt downbeat; not only because of America’s obvious problems but also because of Obama’s willingness to exploit them so mawkishly.
Republicans have always used fear to their advantage. Now it seems that the Democrats are just as skilled with self-pity....
Once you get past the soaring oratory, to experience a speech by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is to be hit with an astoundingly lengthy list of promises.
"I don't know how any reasonable person" could think he'd really be able to accomplish everything he's pledging to do, said the mother-in-law of a colleague, a Missouri woman who intends to vote for Obama.
Just today in Sarasota, Fla., the Democratic presidential nominee said that he'd:
* "give a tax break to 95 percent of Americans who work every day and get taxes taken out of their paycheck every week";
* "eliminate income taxes on Social Security for seniors making under $50,000";
* "give homeowners and working parents additional tax breaks";
* not increase taxes on anyone if they "make under $250,000; you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime –- not your income taxes, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains tax";
* "end those breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas";
* "give tax breaks to companies that invest right here in the United States";
* "eliminate capital gains taxes for small businesses and start-up companies that are the engine of job creation in this country";
* "create two million new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling roads, and bridges, and schools -- by laying broadband lines to reach every corner of the country";
* "invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create five million new energy jobs over the next decade";
* "reopen old factories, old plants, to build solar panels, and wind turbines";
* build "a new electricity grid";
* "build the fuel efficient cars of tomorrow";
* "eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East in 10 years";
* "lower premiums" for those who already have health insurance;
* "if you don't have health insurance, you'll be able to get the same kind of health insurance that members of Congress give themselves";
* "end discrimination by insurance companies to the sick and those who need care the most";
* "invest in early childhood education";
* "recruit an army of new teachers";
* "pay our teachers higher salaries, give them more support. But ... also demand higher standards and more accountability";
* "make a deal with every young person who's here and every young person in America: If you are willing to commit yourself to national service, whether it's serving in our military or in the Peace Corps, working in a veterans home or a homeless shelter, then we will guarantee that you can afford to go to college no ifs ands or buts";
* "stop spending $10 billion a month in Iraq whole the Iraqis have a huge surplus";
* "end this war in Iraq";
* "finish the fight and snuff out al Qaeda and bin Laden";
* "increase our ground troops and our investments in the finest fighting force in the world";
* "invest in 21st century technologies so that our men and women have the best training and equipment when they deploy into combat and the care and benefits they have earned when they come home";
* "No more homeless veterans"; and
* "no more fighting for disability payments."
This on top of his 30-minute infomercial last night, and the myriad other pledges and promises he's made throughout the last 21 months.
It's quite a list!
He does call for some sacrifices, though nothing that would equal the cost of these measures.
* "Washington is going to have to tighten its belt. It's going to have to put off spending on things we don't need. As president, I'm gonna go through the federal budget, line-by-line, and we're going to end programs that we don't need. We're gonna have to make the ones we do need work better and cost less."
* Of course, he'll soon be "asking folks who are making more than a quarter million dollars a year to go back to the tax rate they were paying in the 1990s before the Bush tax cuts."
* And in a way of attempting to head off at the pass any criticisms that there's no way the U.S. can afford all this, he says supporters should tell skeptics that ending the war will save the U.S. $10 billion a month.
The AP's Calvin Woodward took a look at Obama's assertion that he's "offered spending cuts above and beyond" what he's pledging to spend, and he concluded that's "accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by 'eliminating programs that don't work' masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are -- beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq."
Even accepting the savings Obama pledges to bring, the bi-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Obama will add a net $428 billion to the deficit over the course of his term.
After writing twice about the deliberate decision by the Barack Obama campaign to avoid validation checks on credit-card contributions, I’ve heard from a number of people in the credit-card industry on how this works. Two explanations in particular explain the depth of deliberation and deception involved in disregarding address and security-code verification. The first explains that Team Obama probably didn’t just opt out of using these verification processes, but more likely rewrote the code on their site to bypass them,...Just making sure you don't come back here later and say we didn't tell you so. Obama lied at the very beginning when he said he didn't think he would run due to inexperience, and he has continually lied to us since.
Thanks to Team Obama, millions of people now have to wonder whether they’ve been victimized by credit thieves. Some of us wonder if the thieves aren’t really working at Team Obama in the first place.
Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed.Emphasis added.
Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged. Instead, the campaign is scrutinizing its books for improper donations after the money has been deposited.
Berman (a "journalist") talked with an Arab reporter for a major Israeli daily who is known for penning articles that are routinely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and who has, incredibly, interviewed more terrorist leaders than I have.
The Arab reporter informed Berman the terrorists he talks to, as well, are rooting for Obama.
"I explained to him how Al-Jazeera has been reporting the Zionists and conservatives are trying to destroy Obama's campaign, so therefore the fighters in the West Bank think Obama must be good for the Palestinians," the reporter told me.
I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.
The tape recording of an interview that Barack Obama gave to Radio Station WBEZ in Chicago in 2001 surfaced, and in that interview Mr. Obama, then a law professor and a state senator, lays out how he would redistribute the wealth. He sounds like a man with a plan.Unfortunately, not many are interested in the America that became great. They are interested in taking the greatness from America.
The interview explains a lot, beginning with the attempt, abetted by a mainstream media that no longer tries to hide its slavish obeisance to the Democratic campaign, to destroy Joe the Plumber and shut down discussion of the implications of what the candidate said.
Mr. Obama doesn't think much of the Constitution, or even of the Supreme Court justices who have rewritten it over the years to accommodate notions of "social justice." The Warren Court, which wrote finis to public-school segregation with its unanimous Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, has been decried since as radical, but it wasn't radical enough. Earl Warren only pretended to be a soldier of the revolution.
One of the "tragedies of the civil-rights movement," Mr. Obama says, is that the Supreme Court did not address redistribution of wealth, probably because of the inherent difficulty of achieving such goals through the courts. The Supreme Court did not break from the restraints of the Constitution and "we still suffer from that." Mr. Obama is not "optimistic" that the Supreme Court can achieve redistribution of wealth - of taking from the workers to give to the deadbeats - but he obviously thinks he knows how to do it. A president with a compliant Congress, which he expects to be in January, can do it through legislation and "administration."
The Barack Obama of this interview clearly does not think much of what the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us: "The Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on to this day. The framers had that same blind spot ... the fundamental flaw of this country."
Mr. Obama is a gifted politician, with the smarts to understand that this could be the "game-changer" that leaves his campaign, almost picture-perfect until now, in ruins.
It is certainly possible that factors other than simple geography are at work here. TheIt's not like Biden is known for his intelligence or
populations in small towns are older, and older people are generally more expressive of pro-American values than younger people are, for example.
Also, rural areas are more Republican, and the University of Michigan survey shows a significant partisan difference in patriotism. Democrats are
considerably less likely to express strong love of country than Republicans are, and less likely to think being an American is important. Of those
who claimed to be “Strong Democrats,” only around half expressed extremely strong love of country, compared to three-fourths of the “Strong
Republicans.” A sizable share of (but by no means all) committed Democrats are apparently embarrassed about their country and about being
American.
Perhaps Governor Palin’s comment is one of those truths that is better left unspoken. The McCain campaign seems to be treating it that way. But
there is certainly no falsehood in her remarks, as Senator Biden suggested.
Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate prompted a small wave of warnings about Biden'sIn regard to media bias, file this one under "no shit":Study: Media Coverage of McCain Much More Negative Than That of Obama
propensity for gaffes. But no one imagined even in a worse-case scenario such a spectacular bomb as telling donors Sunday to "gird your loins"
because a young president Obama will be tested by an international crisis just like young President John Kennedy was.
Scary? You betcha! But somehow, not front-page news.
Again the media showed their incredible bias by giving scattered coverage of Biden's statements.
There were a few exceptions. On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," co-host Mika Brzezinski flipped incredulously through the papers, expressing shock at the
lack of coverage of Biden's remarks. Guest Dan Rather admitted that if Palin had said it, the media would be going nuts.
So what gives?
The stock answer is: "It's just Biden being Biden." We all know how smart he is about foreign policy, so it's not the same as when Sarah Palin
says something that seems off.
Yet, when Biden asserted incorrectly in the vice-presidential debate that the United States "drove Hezbollah out of Lebanon," nobody in the US
media shrieked. (It was, however, covered with derision in the Middle East.) Or when he confused his history by claiming FDR calmed the nation
during the Depression by going on TV, the press didn't take it as evidence that he's clueless.
And Biden is the foreign-policy gravitas on the Democratic ticket, so his comments are actually even more disconcerting.
[...]
Whether you believe Biden is exaggerating, as he is known to do, or is providing real insight, the double standard in the media does even more
damage to their lagging brand.
Part of the problem is their "Obama love," but we're also seeing the media elite's belief - prejudice - that anyone with an R behind their name is
dumb. So, if they say something dumb, they must be dumb. A Democrat, like Biden, can make wildly inaccurate or outrageous comments and they are
ignored because the TV and press insiders feel they "know who he really is."
On the stump recently, Sen. Biden declared he had "three words" for what the nation needs: "J-O-B-S."
Lucky for him, his name isn't Dan Quayle, or that would have followed him for the rest of his career.
At John McCain’s rallies these days, the talk is of taxes and Joe the Plumber and the financial crisis and mortgage relief and an end to wasteful federal spending. Those are all perfectly fine things for a campaign to emphasize; polls show voters of all stripes are overwhelmingly concerned about the economy. But at McCain’s events, you’ll also find people who’ve come for another reason, one that is slipping in the polls of voters’ concerns but is deeply personal to them: the war in Iraq.Obama is surrounded by people who nothing like the men and women who put their country first in a meaningful way as opposed to the self-interested manner in which Obama has promoted himself.
“I just gave John McCain my Purple Heart,” Marine Sgt. Jack Eubanks told me a few minutes after McCain finished a speech at a campaign rally in Woodbridge, Virginia Saturday. “I said, ‘I want to give this to you, sir, as a reminder that we want you to keep your promise to bring us home in victory and honor, so it will mean something.’“
“We fought over there, and we want it to mean something,” Eubanks continued. “We don’t want to come back and it just be all for nothing.”
Eubanks, 22 years old, knows as much about the war as anyone. On October 3, 2005, he was in a Humvee on patrol near the Syrian border when an IED went off. “I was thrown from the vehicle, took some shrapnel, landed on my spine and mashed it up a little bit,” Eubanks told me in a remarkably good-humored way. He was injured much more than just a little; it took him eleven months to recover. And then — then he volunteered to go back. In August 2007, he was hurt again in a strangely similar way. “Hit by a mortar, thrown from a vehicle — the same situation,” Eubanks told me. Now, he’s teaching recruits at Marine Corps Base Quantico — and walking with a cane.
These days, as he ponders the war and the meaning it has for him — he says he saw remarkable progress in Iraq between his 2005 and 2007 tours — Eubanks’s overwhelming fear is that it might all be for naught. “I think Obama’s just going to pull everyone home as soon as he can, despite what’s going on over there,” he told me. “I just don’t want it to turn into another Vietnam or worse where everything we fought for, and all my buddies who died over there, it was just for nothing.”
[...]
As I talked to Eubanks, just a few feet away a conversation — well, a pretty loud exchange of views — was wrapping up....
Medina told me the story of his son, Brian, who was killed after being in Iraq less than two months, shot to death on November 12, 2004 in fierce house-to-house fighting in Fallujah. The day it happened, Greg had slept badly and had a vague and awful premonition in the hours before Marine officers knocked on his door to deliver the news. Brian was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Now, Medina, who himself served 20 years in the Navy, is filled with the dread that his son’s death will have no meaning. “My fear is that if Obama gets elected, everybody who went over there and died, died in vain because he’s just going to drag this country through the mud,” Medina told me. He knew that sounded a little harsh, so he added, “That’s my opinion.” And then he said: “Whoever wins, I wish them luck, obviously, because I live in this country, and I don’t want to see anything bad happen.”
Talking to Medina brought back a conversation I had with McCain back in October 2007 as we rode around Iowa in a campaign van. McCain was talking about how badly the Bush administration had mismanaged the war. “The thing that makes you almost cry is that one of the battles that will rank among the most courageous the Marines have ever fought is the battle of Fallujah,” McCain told me. “They lost 86 guys and several hundred wounded in the most bitter kind of house-to-house fighting. And you know what happened then? They left. They left. After sacrificing 86 of those brave young 19- and 20-year-olds, they left. I mean, it’s unconscionable.”
Brian Medina was one of those 20-year-olds killed in that fighting. Less than a year later, Jack Eubanks was blown out of his Humvee. Now, Eubanks and Greg Medina are counting on John McCain to keep his promise, should he become commander-in-chief. Some things are more important than the economy.
First, he says he isn't going to run because of inexperience. 
Coverely said he has taken about 300 calls concerning stolen or vandalized McCain signs in the area.You can always count on those on the other side to act is in despicable manner with which they accuse the Right daily. Are these really the people we are going to allow to pick our government?
"It says this campaign is getting vicious," Coverely said.
Coverely said it appears Democrats are becoming more aggressive in the county.
October 26, 2005: The U.S. House of Representatives votes on an amendment to sunset the Democrat-proposed ACORN slush fund after five years (Roll Call 541).Who benefits from these dirt bags? Obama and his fellow Democrats, good to see them returning the favor with your tax dollars.
208 Republican vote YES
191 Democrats vote NO (only 2 Democrats vote yes)
May 22, 2007: The U.S. House of Representatives votes on an amendment to strip the ACORN slush fund from a housing reform bill (Roll Call 392).
155 Republicans vote YES
224 Democrats vote NO
May 8, 2008: The U.S. House of Representatives votes on a motion to prohibit the ACORN slush fund from benefiting convicted drug dealers, sex offenders, or mortgage fraud perpetrators (Roll Call 298).
196 Republicans vote YES
215 Democrats vote NO
July 23, 2008: The U.S. House of Representatives votes to officially create the ACORN slush fund, permanently writing it into law (Roll Call 519).
149 Republicans vote NO
227 Democrats vote YES (only 3 Democrats vote no)
September, 2008: Congressional Democrats insert a provision into the emergency financial rescue package to kick-back 20% of taxpayer revenue to the newly created ACORN slush fund.
It takes all weekend for Republican negotiators to successfully remove this provision from the bill.
He accuses McCain of proposing to cut benefits. Not true.
Summary
In a TV ad and in speeches, Obama is making bogus claims that McCain plans to cut $880 billion from Medicare spending and to reduce benefits.
* A TV spot says McCain's plan requires "cuts in benefits, eligibility or both."
* Obama said in a speech that McCain plans "cuts" that would force seniors to "pay more for your drugs, receive fewer services, and get lower quality care."
These claims are false, and based on a single newspaper report that says no such thing.
After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is. As he told Joe, he wants to quote “spread the wealth around.” He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs and opportunities for all Americans. Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie. This explains some big problems with my opponent’s claim that he will cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans. You might ask: How do you cut income taxes for 95 percent of Americans, when more than 40 percent pay no income taxes right now? How do you reduce the number zero?Emphasis added.
Well, that’s the key to Barack Obama’s whole plan: Since you can’t reduce income taxes on those who pay zero, the government will write them all checks called a tax credit. And the Treasury will have to cover those checks by taxing other people, including a lot of folks just like Joe.
Raise you hand if you're surprised the Barack Obama-William Ayers multimillion dollar Annenberg Challenge was a bust? Let's hope by failing miserably it means the kids weren't successfully indoctrinated into America-hating Marxist bilge.
"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."The last time we allowed a rookie to run the show we ended up with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Berlin Wall. Thanks for reminding us things won't necessarily get better right off the bat, Joe.
"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."
Q: Is it true John McCain voted with George Bush 95 percent of the time?
The Obama campaign keeps claiming McCain has voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time. Is this true? Is this significant?
A: Yes, it's true, according to Congressional Quarterly's assessment of McCain's voting record.
Sen. Barack Obama has attempted to use the Arizona senator's voting record against him in statements like this:Barack Obama (June 3): It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year.The claim is true. According to Congressional Quarterly's Voting Studies, in 2007 McCain voted in line with the president's position 95 percent of the time – the highest percentage rate for McCain since Bush took office – and voted in line with his party 90 percent of the time. However, McCain's support of President Bush's position has been as low as 77 percent (in 2005), and his support for his party's position has been as low as 67 percent (2001).
Democrats are, of course, attempting to make the case that a vote for McCain is a vote to continue the policies of Bush, whose approval ratings are, to put it charitably, not a political asset for McCain.
Is 95% "Significant"?
As for whether voting with Bush 95 percent of the time last year is "significant," that's a matter of opinion that we leave to readers to determine for themselves.
When doing so, they may wish to consider that Obama's votes were in line with the president's position 40 percent of the time in 2007. That shouldn't be terribly surprising. Even the Senate's Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, voted with Bush 39 percent of the time last year, according to the way Congressional Quarterly rates the votes.
The McCain campaign points out that Obama told a local TV interviewer recently that "the only bills that I voted for, for the most part, since I've been in the Senate were introduced by Republicans with George Bush." Obama was actually wrong about that. In 2006 he voted alongside the president 49 percent of the time, and in 2005, the year before Democrats took control of the Senate, Obama voted with the president only 33 percent of the time.
Also, Obama voted in line with fellow Senate Democrats 97 percent of the time in 2007 and 2005, and 96 percent of the time in 2006, according to CQ.
And so . . .
So to sum up, McCain has indeed voted to support the unpopular Bush 95 percent of the time most recently, but less so in earlier years. And Obama has voted pretty close to 100 percent in line with fellow Democrats during his brief Senate career.
How did three weeks before the election did everyone become obsessed with Joe the Plumber? And what does this whole episode reveal about how the left will go after someone who happens to make The One look less than swell?I guess having a guy on the Obama staff who owes taxes and has tax liens against him, doesn't matter as much as some plumber who does. Gotta keep those priorities straight.
Remember this guy didn't seek out Barack Obama, Obama was doing a photo op in his neighborhood and Joe came out to ask a question. And now we're at the point where journalists and liberal bloggers are swarming all over this guy's personal background with an avidity that they haven't shown about Barack Obama's record and associates. Does he have a license? Is he registered to vote? Does he have tax liens? Is he related to Charles Keating? Is he a Republican?
They even posted his address on the internet. How low will these guys go to attack anyone who says anything that makes their guy look less than awesome?
What the left doesn't understand is that Joe's personal background doesn't matter at all. What matters is Obama's answer. And when asked about how Obama's tax plan would affect a small businessman earning over $250,000, Obama said that it was time to "spread the wealth around."
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