I TOLD YOU SO: SECRET, FOREIGN MONEY FLOODS INTO OBAMA'S CAMPAIGN

This election will go down in history as the one decided by the dirty liberal media and foreigners. You haven't heard the end of this story. I predict some devastating news to surface on this issue in the future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

I see two things happening here. One, scurrilous foreign types are donating huge amounts to the Obama campaign. Second, scurrilous domestic types, the same ones that ran this country in the ground by not paying their mortgages, are racking up huge credit card debt to support Obama. Debt they have no intention of ever repaying. This is what's will decide our fate. How does that sit with you?

OBAMA DODGING FOREIGN MEDIA

The shuck and jive comes to Europe:

Barack Obama is on his way to Europe, where an adoring public awaits. But I wonder if the reception would be quite so enthusiastic if Obama's fans across the Atlantic knew a dirty little secret of his remarkable presidential campaign: Although Obama portrays himself as the best candidate to engage the rest of the world and restore America's image abroad, and many Americans support him for that reason, so far he has almost completely refused to answer questions from foreign journalists. When the press plane leaves tonight for his trip, there will be, as far as I know, no foreign media aboard. The Obama campaign has refused multiple requests from international reporters to travel with the candidate.

As a German correspondent in Washington, I am accustomed to the fact that American politicians spare little of their limited time for reporters from abroad. This is understandable: Our readers, viewers and listeners cannot vote in U.S. elections. Even so, Obama's opponents have managed to make at least a small amount of time for international journalists. John McCain has given many interviews. Hillary Clinton gave a few. President Bush regularly holds round-table interviews with media from the countries to which he travels. Only Obama dismisses us so consistently.
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This spring Obama allowed at least one foreign reporter on trips to Ohio and Texas. But as the campaign has progressed, access has become more difficult for foreign correspondents. E-mail inquiries get no reply, phone calls are not returned. My colleagues and I know: We are last in line. We don't matter.

Obama is indeed popular in my country and elsewhere in Europe. But Europeans have the same questions about his experience and character that Americans do. Unlike U.S. citizens, we can't vote in the election; its results, though, will affect our lives, much as it will affect theirs. Surely a man who has said he would talk with U.S. adversaries such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can spend a few moments with journalists from friendlier countries.

OBAMA KEEPS IT REAL AT TOWN HALL MEETING: EXPLAINS HE IS EMBARRASSED BY AMERICANS

Obama keeping it real:

At his Georgia town hall meeting, Obama cautioned kids not to drop out of school to pursue a far-fetched dream. Addressing a mostly African American crowd outside Atlanta, Obama joked, “You can’t find a job unless you are a really, really good basketball player. Which most of you brothers are not. I know you think you are. But you’re not. You are overrated in your own mind. You will not play in the NBA. You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Little Wayne, but probably not. In which case you need to stay in school.”

Oh Hims just tellin' it like it T I is. Word. You brothers need to stay in school fool. Unless you actually are a good rapper. Then, you know, hang with the bitches and ho's.

On a roll, Obama then said they’d be much more employable if they know a foreign language, and said we should be emphasizing foreign language study in classrooms. “It’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is merci beaucoup.”

WTF? Your "brothers" can hardly speak English and you're pimping French to them?

JOHN BOLTON RIPS OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY

Let's just say they don't see eye to eye:

Barack Obama's willingness to meet with the leaders of rogue states such as Iran and North Korea "without preconditions" is a naive and dangerous approach to dealing with the hard men who run pariah states. It will be an important and legitimate issue for policy debate during the remainder of the presidential campaign.

Consider his facile observations about President Kennedy's first meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in Vienna in 1961. Obama saw it as a meeting that helped win the Cold War, when in fact it was an embarrassment for the American side. The inexperienced Kennedy performed so poorly that Khrushchev may well have been encouraged to position Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, thus precipitating one of the Cold War's most dangerous crises.

Such realities should cause Obama to become more circumspect, minimizing his off-the-cuff observations about history, grand strategy and diplomacy. In fact, he has done exactly the opposite, exhibiting so many gaps in his knowledge and understanding of world affairs that they have not yet received the attention they deserve. He consistently reveals failings in foreign policy that are far more serious than even his critics had previously imagined.

Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: "Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. ... Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn't stand a chance."

Let's dissect this comment. Obama is correct that the rogue states he names do not present the same magnitude of threat as that posed by the Soviet Union through the possibility of nuclear war. Fortunately for us all, general nuclear war never took place. Nonetheless, serious surrogate struggles between the superpowers abounded because the Soviet Union's threat to the West was broader and more complex than simply the risk of nuclear war. Subversion, guerrilla warfare, sabotage and propaganda were several of the means by which this struggle was waged, and the stakes were high, even, or perhaps especially, in "tiny" countries.

What is implicit in Obama's reference to "tiny" threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: "And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah."

This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran's own perceived ambitions and interests. That would be news to the mullahs in Tehran, not to mention the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.

This guy knows so much more about global affairs than Obama it's scary. Obama couldn't even quell the violence in his own congressional district. Yet we are to believe he is going to bring abut world peace? Blogger please.

THE AUDACITY OF EVEN MORE BULLSHIT: OBAMA FLIP FLOPS ON HIS OWN FLIP FLOP -- AND THEN CRITICIZES HIS OWN FLIP FLOPPED FLIP FLOP

This might be a first in U.S. presidential politics. Barak Obama is flip flopping on a flip flop. Last week, we posted about Obama's claim (via his political adviser) that he never stated he would talk unconditionally with Iran on a direct presidential level. What we learned, in summary, was the following (bear with me---writing about a flip flop of a flip flop isn't easy):

May 10, 2008 Barak Obama's political adviser, as quoted in The New York Times stated the following:

Susan E. Rice, a former State Department and National Security Council official who is a foreign policy adviser to the Democratic candidate, said that “for political purposes, Senator Obama’s opponents on the right have distorted and reframed” his views. Mr. McCain and his surrogates have repeatedly stated that Mr. Obama would be willing to meet “unconditionally” with Mr. Ahmadinejad. But Dr. Rice said that this was not the case for Iran or any other so-called “rogue” state. Mr. Obama believes “that engagement at the presidential level, at the appropriate time and with the appropriate preparation, can be used to leverage the change we need,” Dr. Rice said. “But nobody said he would initiate contacts at the presidential level; that requires due preparation and advance work.”

Which in response to Ms. Rice's misstatement, we reminded Ms. Rice, The New York Times and our readers of The New York Times' own previous article about Obama's stance on negotiating with Iran which read, in pertinent part:

Senator Barack Obama said he would “engage in aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek “regime change” if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues…

Making clear that he planned to talk to Iran without preconditions, Mr. Obama emphasized further that “changes in behavior” by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees…

Mr. Obama’s willingness to conduct talks at the highest level with Iran … differs significantly from the Bush administration.

We even offered a video documenting Obama's then stance on negotiating with Iran


And to further illustrate Obama's then stance on negotiation without precondition with Iran, we provided the following screenshot taken from Obama's own campaign website:

(Click to enlarge)


His website still says he will negotiate with Iran without preconditions. I imagine that will disappear soon in light of what Obama is now saying.

So what is Obama now saying? Just a week later, and while his website still says he will negotiate with Iran on a presidential level without preconditions? Obama now claims the following is his foreign policy towards Iran:

“It’s time to present Iran with a clear choice,” Mr. Obama said. “If it abandons its nuclear program, support for terror and threats to Israel, then Iran can rejoin the community of nations. If not, Iran will face deeper isolation and steeper sanctions.”

And in a remarkable demonstration of sobriety, The New York Times, of all entities, notes the drastic change in Obama's stance on Iran in just a week:

On Friday, Mr. Obama tried, not for the first time, to deflect and counter the criticisms by articulating his view of foreign relations, one in which military might is accompanied by diplomatic engagement with all countries, including enemies. His most specific example was a significantly changed policy toward Iran, one that would be equal parts carrot and stick.

This "carrot and stick" approach certainly sounds like negotiation with preconditions to me. Even more significant, it sounds exactly like the Bush administration's policy towards Iran for the last 5 plus years. The same foreign policy Obama loudly criticized just Yesterday.

So there you have it. In the span of 9 days, Obama has gone from negotiating without conditions with Iran, to denying he would negotiate without conditions with Iran, to stating he would negotiate with Iran with conditions, to criticizing negotiation with Iran with conditions.

Barak Obama has been running on nothing but a platform of hope and change. I hope he quits changing.
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