The World Net Daily has just printed an article outlining the results of the Obama Campaign’s loosy goosy online fund-raising practices. It appears that two Palestinian brothers in the Hamas movement donated nearly $30,000.
Palestinian brothers inside the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are listed in government election filings as having donated $29,521.54 to Sen. BarackObama‘s campaign.
The donations would violate election laws, including prohibitions on receiving donations from foreigners and guidelines against accepting more than $2,300 from one individual during a single election, Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission, told WND in response to a query.
The contributions also raise numerous questions about the Obama campaign’s lax online donation form, which apparently allows for the possibility of foreign contributions.
In an online form on Obama’s campaign site, the Edwans listed their street as “Tal Esaltan,” which they wrote was located in “Rafah, GA.”
Rafah is not a city in Georgia. The Atlas blog immediately raised concerns that the money may have been donated from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah.
The brothers swore they just bought tshirts to sell in the Gaza strip. Considering those t-shirts are $20.08 a pop… that’s a heckuva a lotta t-shirts. Also, the GDP per capita for the Gaza Strip (average income) is $1100 per year. I can’t imagine buying a tshirt for that kind of money if I was trying to feed a family on $1100 a year.
Monir and Hasam Edwan denied their financial transactions online – listed as donations in U.S. government election filings – were actual donations to Obama’s campaign. Instead they claimed they purchased about $30,000 in Obama T-shirts from the presidential candidate’s online store – a contention that did not hold up during a WND interview, when they changed their story several times.
“My brother Hosam and I knew that Obama will be a big hit even before he became a candidate. We knew the guy would be a celebrity in Gaza so we decided to invest the amount of $29,000 to buy Obama T-shirts from his website and sell them in Gaza,” Monir Edwan told WND, speaking by cell phone from Gaza.
“I know on the back of this story Obama rivals will present our business as a donation and they will try to use this story to let Obama fall, but I’m telling you, we bought T-shirts,” Edwan maintained.
Edwan said any profit made from purportedly selling the Obama T-shirts was not returned to the Obama campaign.
“We have nothing to do with the Obama campaign. We just like Obama and believe he will be the best for the Palestinians and for the world.”
At first Monir Edwan claimed he sold the T-shirts in Gaza for around $9 and that a profit was made.
“Some young men even bought the T-shirts for 60 shekel ($17.29), which is a lot to spend in Gaza on a T-shirt, but that is how much Gazans like Obama,” Edwan claimed.
Further complicating the transaction are these small facts.
“Maybe we sold the shirts for a lot more. I can’t remember now,” said Edwan.
Asked why he would purchase T-shirts at such a high rate and pay the cost of shipping when he could pay a company to produce T-shirts for less, Edwan replied, “We wanted the shirts to come from the campaign.”
But Edwan could not explain how he managed to get shipments of T-shirts into the Gaza Strip during the months he claimed to have purchased the merchandise, since Israel imposed a tight closure of the Gaza Strip starting in June 2007 that lasted until June 2008, when the Israeli government agreed to a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza.
“We don’t want to cause any damage to Obama’s campaign,” was Edwan’s reply.
There appears to be more in the works. Larry Johnson at NQ listed reason number one for superdelegates to change their mind.
1. Barack Obama’s campaign has filed false, misleading financial reports with the FEC. We have the story but a mainstream journalist is working on it. We will break the story, probably next week, once it hits the press.
Grab some popcorn folks … time to get a front seat! Just a few more weeks to the DNC. Will he self-implode enough for the DNC to actually stop the Obamanation abomination or will we have to endure another looser DNC candidate for prez when this should be the year for progress?
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Since Senator Obama is still having issues with electability, he’s decided to try to go back to groups he threw under the bus and see if he can get enough votes to shove him to the 50% line.
First, there is this series of telling polls by Rasmussen Reports.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows the race for the White House is tied with Barack Obama and John McCain each attracting 44% of the vote. However, when “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%.
It’s worth noting that there are far more uncommitted voters at this point in Election 2008 than there were four years ago. The Election 2004 Presidential Tracking Poll showed that 92% of voters were committed to either President Bush or Senator Kerry on July 24, 2004. Only 8% were uncommitted.
This year, 37% of the uncommitted voters plan to vote for a Democratic Congressional candidate while 22% say they’ll vote for the GOP. But, when asked which way they’re leaning in the race for the White House, 26% say McCain and 19% say Obama. Twenty percent (20%) say they still prefer a third-party candidate.
and this:
The first nationwide survey since Barack Obama returned from his highly publicized travels in Europe and the Middle East finds that the trip had little or no impact on the U.S. presidential race.
and this:
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.
However, Obama’s comment that his Republican opponent will try to scare people because Obama does not look like all the other presidents on dollar bills was seen as racist by 53%. Thirty-eight percent (38%) disagree.
So, now we see another flip by the Obama campaign. I guess he’s decided that some of the voters he threw under the bus during the primary are necessary for an Obama win. He wants to seat the Florida and Michigan Delegation restored to one vote.
Obama Asks Panel to Restore Votes
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE AUG. 4, 2008
Senator Barack Obama has asked the credentials committee of the Democratic Party to give full voting rights to delegates from Florida and Michigan at the national convention in Denver.
The request is likely to be granted because it comes from Mr. Obama, the all-but-certain nominee, who now controls the party apparatus.
After Florida and Michigan held early primaries in violation of party rules, the party punished them by saying their delegations would not be seated at the convention. In May, the rules committee agreed to let the delegates have half a vote each.
Mr. Obama’s request is likely to cause consternation among party officials, who have struggled to maintain some authority over the primary calendar. Restoring full voting rights will essentially be giving a green light to other states to ignore the primary calendar next election.
The credentials committee is scheduled to meet Aug. 24, the day before the convention begins
I know I’m a cynic, but something tells me this move is not to restore the democratic party to its one man-one vote principle. They must have had time to restack the deck in these states and now feel secure enough to let them vote. Could this be part of the negotiations with Hillary? I would love to figure out what went in to this complete reversal. I’m sure he must feel secure in the nomination if he’s agreeing to this change at this point.
The bigger question, however, goes to Howard Dean and Donna Brazile and all those folks that were pushing the rules like they’d been handed down on stone tablets to Charlton Heston on movie set, how are you going to spin this?
I’ve spent the last day watching a hurricane develop south of me. If you look at the sky above my house you’ll see mostly blue sky. However there are some very low lying clouds with a hint of darkness spinning back towards the Southeast. These little spinning clouds are harbingers of something bigger picking up steam just out of sight of the little kathouse in the ninth ward. I’m wondering if folks in Colorado see something similar around Denver.
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One thing that I’ve learned about Pumas is that follow-up and follow through are obsessions. Nothing comes between a Puma and the Truth. Right after I saw SimoFish’s video, I posted it here then linked to No Quarter and Camille and Blues’ Bitterpolitcz. I picked up the youtube link at RiverDaughter’s The Confluence the moment SimoFish posted it. Isn’t it amazing how quickly inspiration and revolution can spread these days? SimoFish’s video with its two follow ups went viral shortly thereafter. Why? Because every PUMA took that video link and went on the prowl. I had no idea how widespread the Puma movement had become until this blog started getting pingbacks from all sorts of places. I tried to get the videos up as soon as I could because I knew exactly how starved we all were for some Hillary wonkyness after several weeks of Baracky vagueness. I immediately emailed Just Say No Deal (Nicely led by a PR Genius Princess Wears Prada) where it became a press release. Within a few moments, Gary Chapel Hill had posted the analysis and linked it to earlier work by Alegre. However, the best Puma growl was the creative and brave work of Guilda of Bitterpolitcz. She is one very bitter and brilliant Camillion. Most of us just dropped the video link where ever we could. Guilda did us all one better. She called Thom DeFrank and blogged it live for us. She later posted his response. I’ve reposted it all here because there’s nothing like networking and teamwork to see a plan through. I think the DNC and Senator Obama should be very afraid of the audacity of PUMAs everywhere!
My question of the day? What will the NY Daily Times say now?
I just got off the phone with Thom DeFrank. I started the conversation by asking him to retract his story. He told me that the news came from a person high up in the Clinton campaign, who talks with Hillary on a daily basis. I them told him about the video and he asked me to email it to him and I did.
He was very nice and said that if what I say is true about the video and this person doesn’t have a reasonable response as to why he told him this story, he will never trust that source again.
He said one or three things may have happened 1)Hillary changed her mind 2)Hillary knew he was going to tell Thom the story and she wanted to beat the story down(which I don’t believe for onwe minute!) and 3) The source lied to him. He’s going to watch the video and get back to me. When he does, I’ll let you know his response.
I also told him that I will never vote for Obama. He said, “so you’d rather have McCain as opposed to Obama?” I sad “Thom, I’d rather have four more years of BUSH, than one MONTH of Obama!” He was quite taken aback by that. He said, you know- that’s a very strong statement. I said, Thom- I do not trust him period. I don’t like the company he keeps and I don’t feel that he will make decisions that are good for this country and to keep Democracy in place. I also said that I truly believe he wants the “title”, but not the job.
He was so nice. And he tahnked me for being civil, because aparently, he’s gotten callers that have not been as nice as me.
He thinks part of why Hillary got the treatment in the press that she’d gotten, was because apparently, the Clinton’s were not very press friendly, so…some of it might have been payback. So I asked him if he truly feels that that statment justifies how she was treated and he said it doesn’t justify it, it just that probably came into play
I also told him that I was truly appaled at the news cycle this primamry season. I told him that I used to depend on newspapers like the Daily News, Wall St, Journal and the like to give me TRUE reports of what’s going on in the world, not just some bullshit that people tell them to write.
Then we got into what true journalism is and that’s how the stuff about the Clinton’s and the press came about.
He agreed that it was pretty brutal and he also said that the last 2 months of the primaries, that she was definitely the stonger candidate.
Everybody knows it…they all do…so why won’t people stand up?
I really enjoyed our chat and have now listened to the entire YouTube segment you sent me. Respectfully, all she says is that no decisions have been made. The paper’s story quotes a Clinton aide saying the same thing. That aide is several rungs down the ladder in the Clinton campaign. She would not know the state of play. In other words, my source is far better placed.
Senator Clinton saying no decisions have been made is hardly a definitive knockdown. I believe in the end she’ll have the best of both worlds: she won’t have her name placed in nomination – insulating her from charges that she’s either a sore loser or a spoiler. But she will have the satisfaction of seeing hundreds of her admirers vote for her anyway. Remember, delegates are free to vote for her even if her name isn’t placed in nomination. That formulation is the savvy way to go, and she’s nothing if not savvy.
Regardless, I hope you’ll call again. I always enjoy the dialogue, especially with callers as civil and passionate as you, which is not always the case.
Sincerely, Tom DeFrank
I still say she wants her name placed in nomination. I wonder what the hell they’re saying to her.
Amazing what a little creative networking by some really determined patriots will do! Can you imagine what Paul Revere might have done if he’d had access to the Internet? One IM if by day, TWO PINGS if by night.
UPDATE: SimoFish’s Video has hit the MSM: this is from 8/7 and ABC
I thought I’d blog this evening about the number of young AA’s heckling Obama today in Florida but something more astounding came to light. No, it wasn’t that Youtube from the McCain camp featuring the ‘ONE’ and Charlton Heston parting the read sea. It’s the latest under the bus moment. Environmentalists and Mother Nature (one bitter OLD woman) are now under the bus
The correlation between Obama’s falling poll numbers and today’s flip-flop on offshore drilling has to be more than just a coincidence. Obama’s positions are continually linked to nothing remotely resembling sticking up for a cause. His positions are truly based on whatever he thinks will get him into the White House. I have to ask any one supporting him if they actually believe that anything he says right now isn’t subject to revision and negotiation?
First up, this morning’s Gallup polls that show McCain and Obama in a dead heat. This is a historical oddity given the incredible unpopularity of the Republican Party and President (sic) George W. Bush. Also, given the state of the economy, the Democrats should be able to run an eggplant against a Republican right now and be WAY up in the polls. Sorry, Governor Dukkakis, I really didn’t mean you, although I have to point to the HUGE lead you had in the polls during that election cycle. This is not puzzling to me, however, it seems to endlessly confuse the Obama-enamored press. Perhaps they need to buy a clue from a few Pumas.
We’ve paid a lot of attention to Gallup polls this week, in the wake of seemingly contradictory results by the most-famed brand name in gauging public opinion. By one Gallup measure, John McCain was up; Barack Obama had a solid lead in a different survey by the company and a narrower advantage among a third sample group.
Today, the Gallup daily tracking poll — the rolling average of voter interviews conducted, in this case, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday— shows the race at almost a dead heat. Obama had a statistically insignificant one-percentage-point lead over McCain, 45% to 44%.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Friday he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that’s what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources.
Shifting from his previous opposition to expanded offshore drilling, the Illinois senator told a Florida newspaper he could get behind a compromise with Republicans and oil companies to prevent gridlock over energy.
Republican rival John McCain, who earlier dropped his opposition to offshore drilling, has been criticizing Obama on the stump and in broadcast ads for clinging to his opposition as gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon. Polls indicate these attacks have helped McCain gain ground on Obama.
I guess some one had to tell him that cars don’t really need tuning any more and that we’d all figured out the inflate your tires thing from the old Mario Andretti commercials. Perhaps Obama’s typical white grandmother should have kept him home from his world trip and made him do some home work on a national energy policy instead.
Can anything be more opportunistic than a pol looking to halt a freefall in a poll? Can some one get on the phone to Al Gore and ask him what he thinks about this? How will the Cheeto and Huffpost spin this latest Obama flip-flop? How about Move On that has all those commercials out there talking about how disappointed folks are that McCain flipped on offshore drilling? Will Move On have to pull the ads?
McCain may be able to get away with the explanation that the facts on the ground demand a reassessment of the plan, but I doubt after so many switcheroos that Obama can credibly claim the same. Meanwhile, Mother Nature joins us under the Bus.
Remember, Barack: It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature… especially when there’s a Puma right there with her!
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How many times did your parents read the Boy who Cried Wolf to you? Perhaps you read it in grade school when you were learning about myths and fables. I think almost all societies have a children’s tale about a child that cries out about something foul just to get attention only later to not be taking seriously when the foul actually happens because he’s just said it too many times to be believable.
Has the Obama campaign overplayed the race card yet? Has he yelled race-baiter one too many times? What will this mean, not only to Obama and his aspirations, but how will this impact black people who have legitimate experiences with racism but now face a cynical nation that’s been played one too many times?
Those of us that watched the Hillary/Obama primary unfold were horrified the day the race card was played on Bill Clinton. He was talking about Obama’s ever evolving positions on the Iraq War, he labelled them a fairy tale, and bam! There it was, the race card. President Clinton was charged with calling Obama’s life story a fairy tale– a story line clearly out of context and fabricated. Like many fabrications, enough repetitions and they become legend. Over and over we saw this pattern, some off the cuff remark by Geraldine Ferraro about Obama’s qualifications and resume and there it was again, the race card.
Each time we’d see the Obama campaign run to the press, demand justice, create a stir, then the, candidate would come out in a few days and say, well, I think this was a big misunderstanding. Folks, how many times will this candidate cry wolf?
This time we see it at play against McCain. When McCain uses images of Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton to imply that Obama is a media phenomenon, some one in the Obama campaign implies that it’s just one of those ads showing black men wanting young white women. Scary black men!!! Young white women!!! There it is again, that race card.
Then, in three separate speeches in Missouri, Obama tells his audience that McCain will try to frighten them because Obama doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency or his name is a little funny. There it is again, the race card.
First off, EVERY one knows that Ulysses is a household name. Didn’t you go to school with tons of boys named Ulysses? I know my daughters bring home guys with powdered white wigs like Washington’s all the time.
Second off, some one should tell Obama that he’s about as scary-looking as Steve Urkel.
Finally, there are some real racial injustices in the world and I’m afraid they are going to get lost because of all this. When folks starting talking about racism, I’m beginning to think that no one is going to listen any more. If Obama keeps playing the race card every time he faces criticism, I swear, this is going to prevent any true dialogue about racism.
I had thought that this tactic would go away after Obama had solidified African American votes during the primary. After all, it was a tactic that pulled the southern states out of the Clinton column. However, what is the strategy now? Portray McCain as a racist for the benefit of white liberals? Most of the latte liberals are in his column any way, what particular good does that do? How does this benefit any one at this point?
I teach seminars in economics. Part of what I do is to try to get my students to think critically about promises candidates make on the economy and what is and isn’t possible. I teach in New Orleans. I have many black students. I’m now completely self-conscious about discussing anything on the candidate’s economy policies now because I feel that any criticism of Obama’s positions or his judgment are going to be taken wrong. Believe me, if you sit in my class, I run EVERY politician up the flag pole. I’m an equal opportunity critic. This is the first time in over 20 years of teaching I feel constrained. I can’t discuss even the issues because any criticism surrounding Obama might be labeled racist and create a wall between me and the students I’m trying to serve. I feel like I’ve lost a tool from my tool box. This is impacting my ability to relate to people.
So, what do you think? How many times can Obama play the race card and his campaign label folks as race-baiters before it is no longer taken seriously? Am I the only one that worries about race relations because of this campaign tactic?
Update: This is so cute, I had to add it.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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