The Muslim outreach meeting
On September 15, newly named Muslim outreach director Minha Husaini spoke to a small group of Muslim leaders and potential Obama supporters at a hotel in Springfield, Virginia, several meeting participants and the campaign said. Two other Obama-affiliated Democratic Party workers joined Husaini and also spoke to the crowd. Some Virginia and Washington, D.C.-based Muslim activists and interested citizens attended, and flyers were passed out from “Arab Americans for Obama” stating Sen. Obama’s goals for achieving peace in the Middle East, protecting the civil liberties of Arab Americans and ending the war in Iraq.

Several participants told NBC News that Husaini and other speakers delivered a standard Obama campaign pitch. “They said, ‘We’re here to get the concerns of Muslim voters and let everyone know that the Obama campaign does want the support of the Muslim community,’ ” recalled one participant, who requested anonymity. The meeting was not advertised and some attendees got text phone messages notifying them that day of the meeting’s location, the participant said.

Nearly a month later, the meeting is drawing controversy--and not because of anything said at the meeting itself.

The attendees
One meeting attendee was Mahdi Bray of the Muslim American Society, several of the participants said. The MAS website describes Bray as an imam and “long time civil and human rights activist.” Bray’s critics say he has a history of defending terrorists. They point to a video of Bray at a rally in 2000, for example, in which he can be seen pumping his fist in the air in support of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. In a 2004 interview, he called the Israeli assassination of a Hamas spiritual leader an “unlawful, cowardly and dangerous act of state-sponsored terrorism.” Bray did not return a call requesting comment.

Also attending the meeting was Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is a Muslim-American civil rights group that has, as its website states, “consistently and persistently condemned terrorism and the killing of innocent civilians.” Nonetheless, the group has many critics, especially in law-enforcement circles, and is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case.

You're not the little lady that still continues to think that Obama is an Arab are you? Check with John McCain on that even he knows it ain't so. He even corrected the old lady and said he's not an Arab, he's a decent american family man. But he could be wrong. Maybe Obama has the WMDs that Bush has been starting wars over, or maybe he took all the money that was in surplus and gave it to the Arabs, maybe he's Bush's buddy Bin Laden in a rubber mask..ooooooooo you got to screen who comes to your rallies. Can't let in people with a different opinion or religion.

Hmmmmmm,,,freedom of religion..didn't somebody try that?

Must have been somebody long ago...we'd never stand for that now would we?

Ouch, that’s going to leave a mark!

quote:

Originally posted by announcer:
You're not the little lady that still continues to think that Obama is an Arab are you? Check with John McCain on that even he knows it ain't so. He even corrected the old lady and said he's not an Arab, he's a decent american family man. But he could be wrong. Maybe Obama has the WMDs that Bush has been starting wars over, or maybe he took all the money that was in surplus and gave it to the Arabs, maybe he's Bush's buddy Bin Laden in a rubber mask..ooooooooo you got to screen who comes to your rallies. Can't let in people with a different opinion or religion.

Hmmmmmm,,,freedom of religion..didn't somebody try that?

Must have been somebody long ago...we'd never stand for that now would we?

Now look what you have done.................

Gave some new material for Palin.

Trans Lady....

You don't happen to have a
RED dress, do you?????


http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=390686...&ch=4226716&src=news

Where did I say Obama is an Arab or mention anything about religion?

This shows another case of Obama's lack of GOOD JUDGEMENT, he has an ever growing list of shady associations.

I am questioning his JUDGEMENT.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Trans Lady,

You people eagerly swallowing the kool-aid the empty suit, terroist abetting racist is pouring will love this. NOBODY on social security making less then $100,000.00 will have to pay ANY income tax!
I'll have to make some rather large adjustments to be eligible but at first glance it will be worth it!
TOO BAD THIS IS JUST ONE MORE LIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Barry hussein has another endorsement, the Libyan madman! Kadaffi also crowed about all the med-east campaign donations the messiah has received! ILLEGAL DONATIONS BY THE WAY!!!!!!!!!
The annointed ones campaign is ignoring FEC regulations and the estimate is it has received between $13,000,000.00 and $63,000,000.00 in illegal foreign donations, probably much nearer the bigger amount!!!!!!!!!!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Koski:
Barry hussein has another endorsement, the Libyan madman! Kadaffi also crowed about all the med-east campaign donations the messiah has received! ILLEGAL DONATIONS BY THE WAY!!!!!!!!!
The annointed ones campaign is ignoring FEC regulations and the estimate is it has received between $13,000,000.00 and $63,000,000.00 in illegal foreign donations, probably much nearer the bigger amount!!!!!!!!!!!!

How about another link to this nonsense from a reputable news sourse and not from Hannity or limpballs.
lmao

quote:

Originally posted by ihrabob:

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Koski:
Barry hussein has another endorsement, the Libyan madman! Kadaffi also crowed about all the med-east campaign donations the messiah has received! ILLEGAL DONATIONS BY THE WAY!!!!!!!!!
The annointed ones campaign is ignoring FEC regulations and the estimate is it has received between $13,000,000.00 and $63,000,000.00 in illegal foreign donations, probably much nearer the bigger amount!!!!!!!!!!!!

How about another link to this nonsense from a reputable news sourse and not from Hannity or limpballs.
lmao

Link

Secret, Foreign Money Floods Into Obama Campaign

Monday, September 29, 2008 9:23 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman Article Font Size

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

Obama has raised nearly twice that of John McCain's campaign, according to new campaign finance report.

But because of Obama’s high expenses during the hotly contested Democratic primary season and an early decision to forgo public campaign money and the spending limits it imposes, all that cash has not translated into a financial advantage — at least, not yet.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee began September with $95 million in cash, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

The McCain camp and the Republican National Committee had $94 million, because of an influx of $84 million in public money.

But Obama easily could outpace McCain by $50 million to $100 million or more in new donations before Election Day, thanks to a legion of small contributors whose names and addresses have been kept secret.

Unlike the McCain campaign, which has made its complete donor database available online, the Obama campaign has not identified donors for nearly half the amount he has raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

Federal law does not require the campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them once they go beyond the $200 mark.

Surprisingly, the great majority of Obama donors never break the $200 threshold.

“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”

The FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign has identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount comes from donors the Obama campaign has identified.

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.

Biersack would not comment on whether the FEC was investigating the huge amount of cash that has come into Obama’s coffers with no public reporting.

But Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for CRP, a campaign-finance watchdog group, dismissed the scale of the unreported money.

“We feel comfortable that it isn’t the $20 donations that are corrupting a campaign,” he told Newsmax.

But those small donations have added up to more than $200 million, all of it from unknown and unreported donors.

Ritsch acknowledges that there is skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers.

“We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he said. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”

The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raises new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.

But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed for far more abuse.


"While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” said Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center.

Already, the FEC has noted unusual patterns in Obama campaign donations among donors who have been disclosed because they have gone beyond the $200 minimum.

FEC and Mr. Doodad Pro

When FEC auditors have questions about contributions, they send letters to the campaign’s finance committee requesting additional information, such as the complete address or employment status of the donor.

Many of the FEC letters that Newsmax reviewed instructed the Obama campaign to “redesignate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.

Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.

In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.

Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”

A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.

In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.


Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.

There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.

In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.

Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.

But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”

Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600.

Here again, LaBolt pledged that the contributions would be returned but gave no date.

In February, after just 93 donations, Doodad Pro had already gone over the $2,300 limit for the primary. He was over the $4,600 limit for the general election one month later.

In response to FEC complaints, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro even before he reached these limits. But his credit card was the gift that kept on giving. His most recent un-refunded contributions were on July 7, when he made 14 separate donations, apparently by credit card, of $25 each.

Just as with Mr. Good Will, there can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed the contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Doodad’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $10,965.

Foreign Donations

And then there are the overseas donations — at least, the ones that we know about.

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” which the FEC often uses as an abbreviation for "information requested." Another 63 listed it as “UK,” the United Kingdom.

More than 1,400 of the overseas entries clearly were U.S. diplomats or military personnel, who gave an APO address overseas. Their total contributions came to just $201,680.

But others came from places as far afield as Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing, Fallujah, Florence, Italy, and a wide selection of towns and cities in France.

Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Unlike McCain’s or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s online donation pages, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently. Clinton’s presidential campaign required U.S. citizens living abroad to actually fax a copy of their passport before a donation would be accepted.

With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.

In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners.

At one event, a table for eight at one fundraising dinner went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.

The sponsors said the fundraisers were held to help Nigerians attend the Democratic convention in Denver. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is now investigating the matter.

Concerns about foreign fundraising have been raised by other anecdotal accounts of illegal activities.

In June, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.

“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency..."

Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign.

The rise of the Internet and use of credit cards have made it easier for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.

Campaign spokesman LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport, and a new requirement that overseas contributors must provide a passport number when donating online.

One new measure that might not appear obvious at first could be frustrating to foreigners wanting to buy campaign paraphernalia such as T-shirts or bumper stickers through the online store.

In response to an investigation conducted by blogger Pamela Geller, who runs the blog Atlas Shrugs, the Obama campaign has locked down the store.

Geller first revealed on July 31 that donors from the Gaza strip had contributed $33,000 to the Obama campaign through bulk purchases of T-shirts they had shipped to Gaza.

The online campaign store allows buyers to complete their purchases by making an additional donation to the Obama campaign.

A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show.

Their largesse attracted the attention of the FEC almost immediately. In an April 15, 2008, report that examined the Obama campaign’s year-end figures for 2007, the FEC asked that some of these contributions be reassigned.

The Obama camp complied sluggishly, prompting a more detailed admonishment form the FEC on July 30.

The Edwan brothers listed their address as “GA,” as in Georgia, although they entered “Gaza” or “Rafah Refugee camp” as their city of residence on most of the online contribution forms.

According to the Obama campaign, they wrongly identified themselves as U.S. citizens, via a voluntary check-off box at the time the donations were made.

Many of the Edwan brothers’ contributions have been purged from the FEC database, but they still can be found in archived versions available for CRP and other watchdog groups.

The latest Obama campaign filing shows that $891.11 still has not been refunded to the Edwan brothers, despite repeated FEC warnings and campaign claims that all the money was refunded in December.

A Newsmax review of the Obama campaign finance filings found that the FEC had asked for the redesignation or refund of 53,828 donations, totaling just under $30 million.

But none involves the donors who never appear in the Obama campaign reports, which the CRP estimates at nearly half the $426.8 million the Obama campaign has raised to date.

Many of the small donors participated in online “matching” programs, which allows them to hook up with other Obama supporters and eventually share e-mail addresses and blogs.

The Obama Web site described the matching contribution program as similar to a public radio fundraising drive.

“Our goal is to bring 50,000 new donors into our movement by Friday at midnight,” campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed supporters on Sept. 15. “And if you make your first online donation today, your gift will go twice as far. A previous donor has promised to match every dollar you donate.”

FEC spokesman Biersack said he was unfamiliar with the matching donation drive. But he said that if donations from another donor were going to be reassigned to a new donor, as the campaign suggested, “the two people must agree” to do so.

This type of matching drive probably would be legal as long as the matching donor had not exceeded the $2,300 per-election limit, he said.

Obama campaign spokesman LaBolt said, “We have more than 2.5 million donors overall, hundreds of thousands of which have participated in this program.”

Until now, the names of those donors and where they live have remained anonymous — and the federal watchdog agency in charge of ensuring that the presidential campaigns play by the same rules has no tools to find out.

CLARIFICATION

The original version of this story, published on this Web site Sept. 29, reported that the "IR" listed on 520 overseas donations is "often an abbreviation for Iran."

However, FEC spokesman Bob Biersack said Oct. 7 that “IR” generally means “information requested,” not Iran. “That’s often, but not always, what it means,” he said.

Next!!

From a reputable news source and not from a wack job as Timmerman who is a known conservative.

All you far righties are on the short end of a stick and having to rely on desperation in your information gathering.
lmao

Let the ole lying dufus stand on his own 2 feet.

the Libyan madman! Kadaffi also crowed about all the med-east campaign donations the messiah has received! ILLEGAL DONATIONS BY THE WAY!!!!!!!!!

Don't make me call you a fawking lying idiot again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

October 20, 2008
Categories: John McCain

McCain camp hits up Russian envoy
On a day on which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis hinted that Obama was taking foreign money, the Russian Mission to the United Nations has released a standard-issue fundraising letter gone a bit astray: It was addressed to the Russian envoy to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, at the mission's address, but without his title.

As the Russian newswire RIA-Novosti tells it:

Russia's permanent mission to the UN has received a letter from U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain asking for financial support of his election campaign, the mission said in a statement on Monday.

"We have received a letter from Senator John McCain with a request for a financial donation to his presidential election campaign. In this respect we have to reiterate that neither Russia's permanent mission to the UN nor the Russian government or its officials finance political activities in foreign countries," the statement said.

According to Ruslan Bakhtin, press secretary of the Russian mission, the letter dated September 29 and signed by McCain, was addressed to Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the UN, and arrived on October 16.

The ambassador's title was not included in the letter, and was not clear why the letter had taken over two weeks to arrive.

Enclosed was a request for a donation of up to $5,000 to McCain's election campaign to be returned with a check or permission to withdraw the money from the donor's credit card until October 24.

Bakhtin confirmed the story to Politico, and wouldn't comment on the added oddity of the error coming from the anti-Russian McCain. "We just find it amusing," he said

MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) - John McCain's campaign has taken a brief time out from pushing his case to be the next U.S. president to admit a mistake - sending a letter to Russia's UN envoy soliciting donations.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin received the letter last week, the UN mission said on Monday in a statement, which stressed that Russia did not finance any foreign political activity.

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for McCain's election campaign, told the BBC the campaign had not itself received any complaints from the mission and that "it sounds like they're having a little fun at our expense."

"It's just an error," he was quoted as saying.

It is illegal for presidential campaigns to accept donations from foreign nationals.

Senator McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has been a harsh critic of Russia, most recently over the conflict with Georgia following Tbilisi's attack on its breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

On August 12, as Russian troops were concluding their operation in Georgia, McCain said he had told Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili: " I know I speak for every American when I say to him, 'Today, we are all Georgians.'''

Last year he said the G8 should exclude Russia, citing "diminishing political freedoms, a leadership dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers, [and] efforts to bully democratic neighbors."

The Russian diplomats may have taken the letter as an opportunity for a gentle push back.

But the McCain campaign has been able to laugh it off. According to the Washington Post, when asked whether there were any other ambassadors that they planned to solicit, Rogers laughed and said, "I hope not. Maybe we'll find out tomorrow."

Ruslan Bakhtin, press secretary of the Russian mission, said the letter was dated September 29 and carried McCain's signature. It was addressed to Vitaly Churkin, Russia's envoy to the United Nations, and arrived on October 16.

The ambassador's title was not included in the letter, which Bakhtin said was an indication it had been sent in error.

quote:

Originally posted by ihrabob:
From a reputable news source and not from a wack job as Timmerman who is a known conservative.

All you far righties are on the short end of a stick and having to rely on desperation in your information gathering.
lmao

I guess the FEC and watchdog groups are desperation then... No wonder you are in the tank for the lefties, super duped!!

Dave

Dave, you are in the tank. lmao

quote:

Originally posted by ihrabob:
From a reputable news source and not from a wack job as Timmerman who is a known conservative. ...

How many times do we have to remind you that it doesn't matter what the source is if it's fact based truth!?

What if I saw it on BrassCheckTV, or read it on the Huffington Post, or the Daily Kos?

Mike...You are too far to the right to go there.

Now we have an over the cliff leftie whack job accusing a center of the roader of being a right winger?????????????????
You lefties are so far out in left field you'll never find your way back to sanity!!!!!!!!!!!

For the not too bright............