Obama Ignores Credit Card Donation Fraud

Tuesday, October 21, 2008 10:01 PM

By: Kenneth R. Timmerman

What do Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong, O.J. Simpson, and Raela Odinga have in common?


All are celebrities; and with the exception of Odinga and O.J. Simpson, they also are fictional characters. And yet, all of them gave money earlier this month to the campaign of Barack Obama, without any apparent effort by the campaign to screen them out as suspect donors.


The Obama fundraising machine may owe its sensational success in part to a relaxation of standard online merchant security practices, which has allowed illegal donations from foreign donors and from unknown individuals using anonymous “gift” cards, industry analysts and a confidential informant tell Newsmax.


An ongoing Newsmax investigation into the Obama campaign’s finance reports has exposed multiple instances of campaign finance violations and has been cited in a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission filed by the Republican National Committee on Oct. 6.


Though many of the known violations include donations in excess of the $2,300 per election limit on individual contributions and contributions from foreign nationals, the extent of the amount of fraud is hidden because of a loophole in federal election law.


Campaigns are not required to disclose contributors who donate less than $200 — and Obama’s campaign refuses to release their names, addresses, and donation amounts. Obama has collected a staggering $603.2 million. Most of the money — $543.3 million — has come from individual contributors, half of it from “small” donors Obama won’t disclose.


The Obama campaign has turned a blind eye to the possibility of donor fraud. Reportedly, during the heated primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the Obama campaign “turned off” many of the security features on its online donor page, allowing any person with a valid credit card number to donate using any name or address.


Typically, card merchants require a cardholder’s name to match critical personal details, such as an address or, at the least, a ZIP code.


Though in recent months the Obama campaign has tightened up security and restored some of the security features used by merchants to weed out fraud, it still has left open easy ways for potential credit card fraud, including techniques similar to those employed by terrorists and drug traffickers to launder illicit funds.


For example, on Oct. 14, an individual using the name “O.J. Simpson” participated in Obama’s latest small-donor fundraising drive, making a $5 donation through the campaign’s Web site.


Giving a Los Angeles address, he listed his employer as the “State of Nevada” and his occupation as “convict.” The donor used a disposable “gift” credit card to make the donation.


The Obama campaign sent O.J. a thank-you note confirming his contribution, and gave him the name of another donor who had agreed to “match” his contribution.


Four minutes earlier, an individual using the name “Raela Odinga” also made a $5 contribution, using the same credit card.



The real Raela Odinga became prime minister of Kenya in April and has claimed to be a cousin of Obama’s through a maternal uncle.


Obama donor “Raela Odinga” listed his address as “2007 Stolen Election Passage” in “Nairobi, KY.” This credit card donation raised no alarm bells in the Obama campaign.


A few minutes earlier, “Daffy Duck” gave $5 to the Obama matching campaign, listing his address as “124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.”


But just as with Odinga’s address, the “Wacky Way” address failed to raise any alarm bells or security traps on the Obama Web site. Daffy Duck also used the same credit card.


Within the hour, three other new donors gave $5 to the Obama campaign. They were:



Bart Simpson, of 333 Heavens Gate, Beverly Hills, Calif.


Family Guy, of 128 KilltheJews Alley, Gaza, GA.


King Kong, of 549 Quinn Street, Capitol Heights, Md.


Newsmax learned of these contributions, which were all made on a single $25 Visa gift card (oddly, the total was $30), from a source that requested anonymity.


Calling himself “Bart Simpson,” the tipster said he had been following the Newsmax investigation of Obama’s campaign finance irregularities “with great interest,” and believed that some of the small donations were coming from gift cards — “you know, the type of disposable debit card you can pick up at Rite-Aid or just about any supermarket.”

[Editor's Note: See "Obama Campaign Runs Afoul of Finance Rules."]



“I tried it myself a few days ago,” he said. “I’m attaching for you proof of the contributions I made in the names of Daffy Duck, Bart Simpson, Raela Odinga, and Family Guy.


“What this means is that the Obama campaign does no verification of the name of the contributor. With a normal credit card, this wouldn’t wor[k], but with these disposable debit cards, no problem!


“This needs to be exposed,” he said.


The tipster attached the confirmation pages from the Obama Web site showing the names of the donors, and in some cases, the names of other Obama donors who had agreed to “match” their contributions.


None of the matching donors’ names appears in the Obama campaign’s public disclosures to the FEC.


Other donors with clearly fictitious names revealed previously by Newsmax, The Los Angeles Times, and blogger Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) include “Dertey Poiiuy,” “Mong Kong,” “Fornari USA,” and “jkbkj Hbkjb.”


Five major companies process the bulk of all credit card transactions made in the United States, industry insiders tell Newsmax. The Obama campaign paid one of them, Chase Paymentech, just over $2 million to process its online transactions.


“We never discuss our relationships with any of our merchants, or customers we work with,” James Wester, a spokesman for Chase Paymentech, told Newsmax.


Newsmax asked whether Chase Paymentech had any security feature that would allow it to identify individuals making contributions using gift cards, but Wester declined to comment.


But other industry analysts, who asked not to be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the issue, told Newsmax that processors could track gift cards and debit cards “only by the numbers on the cards.”


“There are no names associated with these cards, so as a processor, you have no way of knowing who made the transaction,” one industry analyst said.


Anyone can go into a supermarket or a Rite-Aid and buy a batch of these cards with cash, so there is no trace of the transaction, he added.


“It’s like walk-around money. They could be handing these things out as perks” to newly registered voters or others, “and there’s no way of tracing who is using them.”


Ken Boehm, a lawyer with 30 years of experience in campaign finance law, said that such contributions were clearly illegal.


“Making a contribution in the name of another person is the only part of federal election law that actually carries a criminal penalty,” he told Newsmax. Boehm is the CEO of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.


The Obama campaign has paid Synetech Group Inc. of Charlottesville, Va., close to $2 million to compile all of the campaign contribution data from online contributors, bundlers, telemarketers, campaign events, and direct-mail campaigns, and process it for submission to the FEC.


The sheer scope of the Obama fundraising juggernaut was “never contemplated by the FEC,” a company official told Newsmax, asking not to be quoted by name.


“It’s a lot of data. You’re talking 7 million contributions,” he said.


The campaign itself is responsible for screening out fraudulent donors, not Synetech, he said. “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and this is as well-managed as any [campaign]. It’s just huge. When it’s this big, any little thing becomes something more than it is.”


One of the biggest problems the campaign faces is fraud, he said. “It’s a colossal problem. They’re paying the campaign with other people’s money.”


Individuals such as “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will” who made hundreds of contributions to the campaign in excess of the legal limits were not working for the campaign, but for themselves, he insisted.


“It’s all fraud. They do it for kicks. Or they’re testing the cards. The campaign doesn’t want this. Why on earth do they want to have all these messy little transactions? It’s a colossal pain.”


However, the campaign itself has solicited these “messy little transactions” in numerous e-mails to supporters.


For instance, just days before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, campaign manager David Plouffe sent an e-mail to supporters, asking them to “make a donation of $5 or more before midnight this Thursday, July 31st, and you could go backstage with Barack.”


Since them, the campaign has run several small donation drives, claiming to “match” donations of $5, $10, or $25 with an equal amount for a previous donor.


Newsmax put a series of questions to the Obama campaign more than a week ago in preparation for this article, such as whether its Internet contribution system automatically matches donors' names and addresses to their credit card numbers, as is common industry practice with online stores.


Newsmax also asked if the campaign uses a similar security screen to match a donor’s name and address to the card number when the donor uses a debit card or a gift card.


Despite multiple requests from Newsmax, the Obama campaign declined to comment for this story.

reported by Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Howard Stern's Interviewing Harlem Voters ...

Wolf Blitzer asked Obama if he supported driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. Obama answered: “Yes.”

Text

Nineteen terrorists infiltrate the U.S.

Thirteen get driver’s licenses.

The 9/11 plot depended on easy to get licenses.

Obama’s plan gives a license to any illegal who wants one.

A license they can use to get government benefits, a mortgage, board a plane, even illegally vote.

[Wolf Blitzer of CNN asks:] “Senator Obama, yes or no.”

[Obama responds:] “Yes.”

Barack Obama. Too radical. Too risky.

The National Republican Trust PAC is responsible for the content of this advertisement.

The driver’s license issue emerged in September 2007, when then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered New York officials to grant driver’s licenses to illegals. During the Oct. 30, 2007, Democratic primary debate at Drexel University, Sen. Hillary Clinton fumbled a question from the late Tim Russert over whether she supported Spitzer’s plan. As for Obama, he has supported driver’s licenses for illegals since his days in the Illinois Senate, and continues to maintain that training illegals to drive, and insuring them, enhances public safety.


Fact: Obama also addressed the licensing of illegals during the October 2007 debate. Asked if he favored Spitzer’s plan, Obama replied: “I think that it is the right idea. And I disagree with [Sen.] Chris [Dodd], because there is a public safety concern. We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn’t negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.”

[Source: Debate transcript, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pa., Oct. 30, 2007]

Fact: A full 77 percent of American adults oppose granting driver’s licenses to people who are in the United States illegally.

[Source: Rasmussen Reports, national telephone survey, November 2007]

Fact: There are 203 million licensed drivers in America, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Approximately 1 in 5 fatal car accidents involves a driver who, for whatever reason, does not have a valid driver’s license.

[Source: “Outrageous! Cracking Down on Illegal Drivers”
by Michael Crowley, Readers Digest, September 2008]

Fact: Sen. John McCain’s online policy statements do not specifically address driver’s licenses for illegals. McCain is on record, however, opposing any benefits for those who “have come here illegally and broke our laws.”

In one speech he pledged, “It would be among my highest priorities to secure our borders first, and only after we achieved widespread consensus that our borders are secure, would we address other aspects of the problem in a way that defends the rule of law and does not encourage another wave of illegal immigration.”

[Source: Feb. 7, 2008 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC]

Fact: In February, Obama told ABC’s David Muir, “If [McCain] wants to try to parse out this one issue of driver’s licenses, an issue of public safety, my response is that we have to solve the overall problem and this driver’s license issue is a distraction.”

[Source: “Obama Defends Illegals’ Driver’s Licenses,” ABC.com]

Fact: When he served as a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama voted to train, insure, and license illegals to operate motor vehicles in order to “protect public safety.”

[Source: Debate transcript, Nov. 15, 2007, Las Vegas]

Obama wins debate with Charisma

It’s a fact Obama has great charisma when comes to speaking with the Voters and media, but that only goes so far. Supporters of Obama don’t care about having no record when it comes to legislation, all they want is change.
Obama has no record:
Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005 his first sponsor of legislation was 1/31/07 with no legislation passed see below and go to the website maybe I missed one or two.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery

He has 129 of Sponsored or Co-Sponsored Legislation with nothing passed, anybody can write legislation or jump on the bandwagon and co-sponsor legislation, but a leader needs to bring people together to pass legislation. Obama Has not done that.

As for John McCain he is no Ronald Reagan. He has no charisma and doesn’t look very well on T.V, which is most of his problem. He is the wrong candidate to be running up against Obama. Although he does have a track record of crossing the isle and working with both sides to pass legislation. We all know John McCain’s record good or bad.

This election will go to Obama

Obama convincing a voter speading the wealth is good for America

Obama in Ohio was confronted by a man, who shouted: “Do you believe in the American Dream?”
When Mr. Obama answered yes, the man said he had a follow-up question.
“I’m being taxed more and more for fulfilling the American Dream,” the man said, perhaps referring to Mr. Obama’s plan to increase taxes for those making $250,000 a year or more . While Mr. Obama ran through a series of points about how his plan would mean tax cuts for 95 percent of people, that didn’t seem to convince the man.
“I’ve got to go prepare for this debate,” Mr. Obama said as he walked away. “But that was pretty good practice.”
Obama states he will give tax cuts to 95% of Americans, but what he doesn’t tell you is that 40% of Americans right now don’t pay any income taxes what so ever, under his plan those folks not paying any taxes will receive $500.00 for a single person and $1,000.00 for every married couple which will be funded directly from payments from the U.S. Treasury - funded by higher-income taxpayers.

Joe lives in a $150,000 home I don't consider that rich

Jesse Jackson: Obama will rid United States of 'Zionist' control

By Haaretz service

Rev. Jesse Jackson said the United States will rid itself of years of "Zionist" control under an administration headed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The daily quoted the veteran civil rights leader on Tuesday as having said that although "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" remain strong, they will lose a much of their clout when Obama enters the White House.

Speaking at the first World Policy Forum event in Evian, France, Jackson promised "fundamental changes" in U.S. foreign policy. He said the most important change would occur in the Middle East, where "decades of putting Israel's interests first" would end.

Jackson said that Obama "wants an aggressive and dynamic diplomacy." He went on to criticize the Bush administration's handling of Middle East diplomacy, telling the Post, "Bush was so afraid of a snafu and of upsetting Israel that he gave the whole thing a miss. Barack will change that," because, as long as the Palestinians haven't seen justice, the Middle East will "remain a source of danger to us all."

Obama Investigation on his Past

By Stanley Kurtz

10/14/08

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

African Village
In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in [Chicago’s] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS an “external partner,” i.e. a community organization linked to a network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network, named the “South Shore African Village Collaborative” was thoroughly “Afrocentric” in orientation. CIESS’s job was to use a combination of teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.

The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a part of the Afrocentric “rites of passage movement,” a fringe education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured “African-Centered” curricula built around “rites of passage” ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright’s worldview.

Rites of Passage
To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article, Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United States is shaped by “capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and oppression.” According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values “have confused African American people and oriented them toward American definitions of achievement and success and away from traditional African values.” American socialization has “proven to be dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,” Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of passage movement, designed “to provide African American youth with the cultural information and values they would need to counter the potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented society.”

The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s grew out of the “cultural nationalist” or “Pan-African” thinking popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these programs as “a social and cultural ‘inoculation’ process that facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist, sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society.”

We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references to “rites of passage,” but also because SSAVC’s faculty set up its African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most prominent leaders of the “rites of passage movement.” For example, a CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial Afrocentrist.

Jacob Carruthers
Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient “Kemet” (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African superiority.

Carruthers’s key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to “dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide against African peoples.” Carruthers includes “African-Americans” within a group he would define as simply “African.” When forced to describe a black person as “American,” Carruthers uses quotation marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any authentic sense. According to Carruthers, “The submission to Western civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy.”

Carruthers’s goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state. The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives, to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: “...some of us have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our disrupted ancestral culture.” The rites of passage movement is a way to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and recover their authentic African heritage.

America as Rape
Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process to rape: “We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape, but we do not have to marry the rapist....” In other words, American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to American culture, but that doesn’t mean they need to accept it. The better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the wisdom of Africa’s original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical, genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist United States.

Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as oppressive and violent “ice people,” in contrast to peaceful and mutually supportive black “sun people.” The divergence says Jeffries, is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries. Carruthers’s vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously parallels Jeffries’ opposition between ice people and sun people.

More of Carruthers’s education philosophy can be found in his newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans’ School Board to remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school. Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George Washington School, Carruthers crowed: “These events remind us of how vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization from the Champions of African Civilization.”

According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers’s training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was a huge hit: “As a consciousness raising session, it received rave reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey....” These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast of SSAVC’s curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers’s concerns about “menticide” and “genocide” at the hand of America’s white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that says: “Our children need to understand the historical context of our struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us.”

When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright’s African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many prominent thinkers from Carruthers’s Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes of Carruthers’s work in Wright’s distinction between “right brained” Africans and “left brained” Europeans, in Wright’s fears of U.S. government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright’s embittered attacks on America’s indelibly white-supremacist history. In Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers’s own writings, blacks are often referred to as “Africans living in the diaspora” rather than as Americans.

Asa Hilliard
Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard’s ties to Wright run still deeper than Carruthers’s. A close Wright mentor and friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with Wright and members of Wright’s congregation. Hillard was scheduled to deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization, which he co-founded with Carruthers and other “African-centered” scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the board of Wright’s new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy. Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, “We need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy.” (For more on Wright’s Afrocentric school, see “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.’”)

Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard’s memorial service, with prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a special, two-cover double issue of Wright’s Trumpet Newsmagazine was published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright’s own educational philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought out Hilliard’s and Carruthers’s counsel to construct its curriculum.

Perhaps inadvertently, Wright’s eulogy for Hilliard actually established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely “white Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught.” As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard and Carruthers.

Ayers’s Pals
An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, but who is still “palling around” with the same folks. Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife, and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently present for Wright’s eulogy at Asa Hilliard’s memorial service. Less than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same page.

Obama’s Knowledge
Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright, Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he publicly rejected “the unrealistic politics of integrationist assimilation,” a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and Carruthers. (See “No Liberation.”)

And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC’s Annenberg proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard’s or Carruthers’s names, SSAVC’s proposals are filled with references to “rites of passage” and “Ptahhotep,” dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.

We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the Ayers-headed “Collaborative” to distance itself from monetary issues, all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly, there was dissent within the board. One business leader and experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg proposals as “awful.” (See “The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First Three Years,” p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations focused on traditional educational achievement.

As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn’t warning enough, their proposals consistently misspelled “rites of passage” as “rights of passage,” hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve children’s reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s own evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure, in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg’s “external partners” had little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill, and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.

However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that, from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It’s time for McCain to say so

Obama "Community Organizer" in Chicago with Acorn

Mr. Obama, who got his start as a Chicago "community organizer" at Acorn's side. In 1992 he led voter registration efforts as the director of Project Vote, which included Acorn. This past November, he lauded Acorn's leaders for being "smack dab in the middle" of that effort. Mr. Obama also served as a lawyer for Acorn in 1995, in a case against Illinois to increase access to the polls.

During his tenure on the board of Chicago's Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for "staging, sound, lighting." It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

This issue or other issues won't matter with the supporters of Obama they don't care how they get change as long as a Democrat is in the White House to support there Democrats in the House and Senate, and to push there Democratic Idea's and agendas. Trust me when I say this if Obama is elected the corruption of the Democratic Party will be front and center for all to see, and the 2010 mid term elections will make it a lot easier for Republicans to rebuild and start to take control of the House and Senate.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394051071230749.html?mod=special_page_campaign2008_mostpop

Acorn- Electoral Fraud Threat to Democracy

Lou Dobbs - CNN Why you should care about A.C.O.R.N





Dobbs Tries To Blame Financial Crisis on ACORN


Lou Dobbs: Wall Street Bailout Fraud - Acorn Under Investigation

Louis Farrakhan Calls Obama the Messiah

Obama campaign Linked to Acorn

On 12/01/2007 Obama at a democratic forum for Acorn stated He meaning Obama would meet with Acorn Representatives and other organizations within the first 100 days Of his Presidency



Obama's campaign website states:
Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.

Is that really a FACT, or just another lie? Let's take a look at a quote from a 2004 article - Case Study: Chicago- The Barack Obama Campaign - written by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago ACORN Leader, which was published in the journal Social Policy. Did we mention that Social Policy recently pulled this particular article from their website, while leaving links to all other articles up?
"Obama took the case, known as ACORN vs. Edgar (the name of the Republican governor at the time) and we won. Obama then went on to run a voter registration project with Project VOTE in 1992 that made it possible for Carol Moseley Braun to win the Senate that year. Project VOTE delivered 50,000 newly registered voters in that campaign (ACORN delivered about 5,000 of them).
Here is the link to the case copy and paste in your Browser to view
http://mediamatters.org/static/pdf/acornvedgar.pdf
Since then, we have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year, and, as a result, many of our newly developing leaders got to know him before he ever ran for office. Thus it was natural for many of us to be active volunteers in his first campaign for State Senate and then his failed bid for U.S. Congress in 1996. By the time he ran for U.S. Senate, we were old friends."

Not only does Foulkes boast of Obama's ACORN leadership training, but also makes it clear that Obama's post-law school organizing of "Project VOTE" in 1992 was undertaken in direct partnership with ACORN. The tie between Project VOTE and ACORN is also something that Obama and others have attempted to disprove in recent weeks as ACORN has come under fire for allegations of voter registration fraud.

As recently as March 2008, the Los Angeles Times also made reference to Barack Obama's involvement with ACORN:
"At the time, Talbot worked at the social action group ACORN and initially considered Obama a competitor. But she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff." (LA Times, March 2, 2008)
All this information was easily pulled up with minimal time investment. It took less than thirty minutes to find, despite attempts by some to bury the truth. If I could find this with little effort, imagine what could be dug up with a serious, in-depth investigation. Scary, isn't it?


follow-up story showing how the Obama campaign changed the original language on his web site from - to the following:
Fact: Barack was never an ACORN trainer and never worked for ACORN in any other capacity.
Sometime on Friday, the website was altered, and the text was changed to state:
Fact: ACORN never hired Obama as a trainer, organizer, or any type of employee

Look for connections between Obama, ACORN, Citizens Services Inc a money trail linked between all three with investigations currently on going not sure if they will be concluded by election time but will bring to light money donations by the Obama Origination to Citizens Services Inc transferred to Acorn to help register new voters where many states at this time are investigating.

ACORN Vegas Office Raided in Voter Fraud Investigation

ACORN's Las Vegas headquarters has been raided by Nevada authorities looking for evidence of voter fraud.



Nevada state authorities seized records and computers Tuesday from the Las Vegas office of an organization that tries to get low-income people registered to vote, after fielding complaints of voter fraud.

Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state's office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about "erroneous" registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN. The group was submitting the information through a voter sign-up drive known as Project Vote.

"Some of them used non-existent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications," Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev. He said some registrations used the names of Dallas Cowboys football players.

Walsh said agents from both the secretary of state's office and Nevada attorney general's office conducted the raid, and "took a bunch of stuff."

ACORN spokesman Charles Jackson confirmed the group's Nevada office was raided.

It's not the first time ACORN's been under investigation for irregularities in registration records.

In 2006, ACORN committed what the Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed called the "worse case of election fraud" in the state's history.

In the case, ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, but there was a problem. The names were made up -- all but six of the 1,800 submissions were fakes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Who Is ACORN
Going back over the years

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has announced a statewide investigation into widespread fraudulent
voter registrations, many of which have been tied back to the leading
organizer of Florida's Amendment 5 ballot initiative to raise the minimum
wage. But this is just the tip of an iceberg of illegalities, fraud and
contradictions connected to the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now (ACORN). In recent days, ACORN has been at the epicenter of
reports of potentially fraudulent voter registrations across the nation --
including many by ex-felons -- submitted by ACORN employees in the
presidential swing states of Ohio, Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New
Mexico and Minnesota.
The Employment Policies Institute has updated and re-released its report,
"The Real ACORN: Anti-Employee, Anti-Union, Big Business" with the latest
details on ACORN's involvement in what appears to be widespread voter
registration fraud. The report includes statements from former ACORN
employees on the illegal nature of the organization's promotion of the ballot
initiative to raise Florida's minimum wage to $6.15 per hour.
"This report reveals ACORN's pattern and practice of deception and fraud,"
said EPI research director Craig Garthwaite. "The latest allegations of
widespread voter registration fraud should prove to be the last of ACORN's
nine political lives."
Former ACORN Miami-Dade field director Mac Stuart has filed a lawsuit
against ACORN and has made charges of rampant voter fraud operations. Stuart
was employed and specifically tasked by ACORN to generate 103,000 new voter
registrations from Dade County. He reports that ACORN threw out Republican
registrations while paying gatherers for Democratic ones, both actions illegal
in Florida. Stuart also charges that ACORN targeted ex-cons and that he
personally set up registration tables outside the Miami police department and
Dade County jail. He went on to state, "The voter registration project has
been operating illegally since it started."
ACORN has paid workers for every voter registration card collected -- a
felony in Florida and also illegal in Missouri and Pennsylvania. ACORN also
routinely accepted signatures for Amendment 5 from individuals who were not
currently registered to vote -- a requirement under Florida law.
Voter registration and petition fraud is just the latest chapter in
ACORN's long sordid history. The EPI report also reveals:

ACORN Involved in Union Embezzlement -- In the late 1990s, ACORN's Project
Vote was involved in an $850,000 embezzling scheme, where union funds and
kickbacks were used to illegally aid the 1996 re-election bid of then-
Teamsters President Ron Carey. A New York federal jury found the Teamsters
political director guilty of the conspiracy.

ACORN bilks AmeriCorps -- In 1996, the Inspector General of the AmeriCorps
program stripped a $1 million grant from the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC).
When applying, AHC had denied any connections to ACORN, since the grant was
not intended for political advocacy organizations. Evidence later uncovered
by the Inspector General found that not only was AHC created by ACORN, engaged
in numerous transactions with one another, and sharing staff and office space
-- but it utilized the AmeriCorps grant to increase ACORN membership, a
violation of federal guidelines.

ACORN Union-Busts Own Workers -- On March 27, 2003 the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) found that ACORN had violated the National Labor
Relations Act and was required to rehire and pay restitution to employees
terminated for attempting to form a union. The NLRB ruling is just the latest
in a trend of ACORN's union-busting tactics. ACORN employees have
historically demanded higher wages, safer working conditions and more timely
contracted wages. These efforts have been repressed behind closed doors by
the hypocritical ACORN leadership, which publicly advocates higher pay and
better working conditions for private sector workers.

ACORN and Minimum Wage Hypocrisy -- Most egregiously, ACORN promotes
ballot initiatives and local ordinances to force businesses to pay higher
minimum wages, as they are currently doing with the minimum wage proposal in
Amendment 5. In 1995, however, ACORN sued the state of California to have its
employees exempted from the state minimum wage. ACORN argued that being forced
to pay higher wages would mean that they would hire fewer employees -- the
very dilemma faced by businesses. Incredibly, ACORN stated that paying its
employees a lower wage would allow them to be more sympathetic to the low- and
moderate-income families they were attempting to help. ACORN argued that
abiding by the state minimum wage would limit their ability to promote their
agenda and would therefore be a violation of their First Amendment rights.
The trial court judge dismissed ACORN's suits, stating, "leaving aside the
latter argument's absurdity ... we find ACORN to be laboring under a
fundamental misconception of constitutional law."

The Associated Press/prnewswire.com/Foxnews/True facts News by Anthony Landaeta contributed to this report.

Obama, McCain Debate was a “TIE”

This was not a very good debate by either Presidential Candidate; there were a lot of sound bits as answers but no real substance. McCain should have done better with Foreign Affairs questions but didn’t, and Obama didn’t really do well with domestic issues either. Both candidates got a little flustered with each other it showed with Obama face turning red and McCain face changing shape and twitching. Both candidate’s raised good questions about there opponent but neither one of them addressed those concerns.
Obama on a question of him not holding hearing on Afghanistan referred to Joe biden being better equipped to handle foreign policy was a bad answer. John McCain referring to Governor Palin as the person that understands foreign policy was also a bad answer. I believe, as mush as I don’t like to say it, that Hillary Clinton would be a better President then these two people. Neither one of these two candidates get it.

Michigan wakes up to tax increases

A look Back to Oct 2007 In Michigan where a Democratic Governor Raises Taxes then and now did it help Michigan

Paychecks will shrink starting this week
Charlie Cain and Mark Hornbeck / Detroit News Lansing Bureau
LANSING -- Michiganians went to bed Sunday night with the state nearing its first government shutdown and awoke to a $1.35 billion tax hike, among the largest in state history.

An 11.5 percent income tax increase and expansion of the 6 percent sales tax to a strange brew of services will close most of the $1.75 billion hole in the state budget year that began Monday.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm billed it Monday as a $1 per person increase per week for the average state household.

"This is a solution, not one of celebration but one of resolve," Granholm said after the state avoided a full shutdown with a budget deal that called for the tax hikes and as-of-yet unspecified budget cuts of $440 million and long-range government reforms. The state constitution requires a balanced budget.

"This puts the state on solid fiscal footing and will allow Michigan to move forward," she said

State Treasury officials estimated the income tax increase from 3.9 percent to 4.35 percent, which took effect Monday, will cost the average family of four $157 a year after typical deductions.

The income levy begins to ratchet down gradually in 2011 and returns to 3.9 percent by 2015. The service tax -- on items such as landscaping, ski lifts, janitorial services, investment advice, carpet cleaning and tanning -- will cost that same family about $50 a year when it takes effect Dec. 1.

Sherry Pyszczynski, a 40-year-old business owner from Hazel Park, had a different take on the budget solution, particularly the service tax.

"I'm really shocked. It upsets me terribly," she said. "I own a janitorial service and now I have to pass that cost along to all my clients. I don't know how the people in Lansing consider that a luxury."

Robert Smith, a Ford Motor Co. retiree from Northville, said he wished the state shutdown had occurred with full force to wake up politicians and make state employees endure the same sacrifices that have befallen the private sector.

"People would have been mad, but my expenses have risen and my health benefits have been reduced," Smith said. "Everybody is giving out here, but I don't see it happening in the public sector. It needs to happen."

Taxes 'slightly above' U.S. average
State Treasurer Robert Kleine said the new taxes move the state's overall tax burden "from slightly below the national average to slightly above the national average."

It's difficult to compare income taxes across states because most states with such a levy have a graduated tax with varying rates. Using the top rates in each state, the Treasury claims Michigan's 4.35 percent makes it the fourth lowest in the nation. It's the highest rate in Michigan since 1999. The higher rate is expected to generate about $760 million annually.

The tax on 23 new services -- which will generate $725 million over a full year -- means Michigan now taxes 49 services, according to the Treasury. The state already taxes some services, including storage and auto leasing. That puts the state at 27th in the country in the number of services taxes, up from 36th, Kleine said.

Another measure of tax burden is state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income, with the national average at about 11 percent. Kleine said the new tax boosts mean Michigan edges up from slightly below 11 percent to slightly above 11 percent.

But the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., which tracks such data, takes a different view of Michigan's ranking. The combination of the sales and income tax hike puts Michigan's tax burden at 11th-highest in the nation, up from No. 14, the institute says.

Sports, concert tickets spared
The list of services to be taxed can be kindly called unusual. Services on the list were meant to be discretionary, mainly by the affluent. But nonessential items such as sports and concert tickets and cable TV won't be taxed. The Detroit Tigers, who drew more than 3 million fans this year, reminded fans before games to protest the proposed hike with lawmakers. Tigers tickets were excluded.

Ski lifts are on the ledger; golf fees and boat slips are not. Personal services, such as astrology, massage, dating and fortune-telling are now subject to the tax.

Asked about how the list was drawn up, Kleine said: "We had to look for a certain amount of money and we looked for services we thought we could get votes for."

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, likened the selection of the services to be taxed to a "Chinese food menu where you pick a la carte from the list. It's not scientific at all. You identify your revenue target then go down the list and make selections."

Bishop also said he wouldn't be surprised to see a citizens' referendum to try to repeal the service tax.

"There will be outward rebellion when some of these interest groups and industries impacted by it see exactly what it means," he said.

The tax increases were ushered in almost exclusively with Democratic votes. The service tax drew no Republican votes in the House and two in the Senate. The income tax hike attracted two GOP votes in the House and four in the Senate.

"Republicans refused to put up votes for anything," said House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township. "Basically, this entire package was delivered by Democrats."

House Republican Leader Craig DeRoche, R-Novi, said he expects outrage about the tax increases in general.

"This is a victory for the bureaucracy and special interests and a loss for families struggling to make ends meet," DeRoche said. "It's one of the largest spending sprees in Michigan history."

today has Michigan Worst Performance in Nation

Michigan is now in this vicious cycle. Over the past year U.S. personal income increased by 6.3 percent. In some states income grew faster. In others, it grew slower. Michigan has the dubious distinction of having the worst economic performance of all 50 states.

Michigan now has the slowest growth in income and the highest rate of unemployment. And this was the case before Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) insisted on and won a major new increase in taxes, which promises only to make things worse.

While Michigan tax receipts should increase in response to the latest tax hikes, the increase will be temporary. It takes time for businesses to relocate. As they relocate, Michigan will lose jobs and income to other states. Before long, Michigan's politicians will again be faced with a shortfall of revenue. With less revenue, they will once again be forced to cut government services and jobs.

To reverse this vicious cycle, Michigan must do what other states have done to attract jobs and businesses. Lawmakers must significantly reduce the tax burden on citizens. Doing so will help reverse the economic deterioration of the past 40 years.

Another case of Joe being Joe.

by Aaron Bruns
WASHINGTON, DC — Another case of Joe being Joe.
The Delaware Senator took issue with an attack ad from his own side in an interview with CBS, telling Katie Couric that the Obama hit on McCain’s ignorance of computers and technology was “terrible.” The ad paints McCain as out of touch — and all but calls him ancient — but doesn’t mention that the Arizona Senator’s war injuries actually prevent him from using computers for an extended period.
Asked whether he’s disappointed with the tone of the campaign, including the ad that Couric characterized as “making fun of John McCain’s inability to use a computer,” Biden said “I thought that was terrible by the way.
“I didn’t know we did it and if I had anything to do with it, we would have never done it”
“While the New York Times and other media outlets were silent in the face of Barack Obama’s shameless and dishonorable attack on John Mccain, even Obama’s own running mate has now condemned the ad as terrible,” said spokesman Brian Rogers in a statement. “Barack Obama has brought the sleazy gutter politics of Chicago to our national stage, exposing his call for a ‘new politics’ as a lie and embarrassing even his own running mate with the low road campaign he’s running.”
Looks like the stage is being set for Biden’s exit and…Hillary’s re-emergence?

Hype the Obama Effect Movie 2007

30 Second Television Ad


A movement is sweeping the nation. Frenzied crowds gather in every state. Young people chant and sing. Women swoon. The result is record voter turn out and a rare political enthusiasm. At the head of this unprecedented phenomenon stands a charismatic figure intent on becoming the President of the United States.

"I'm asking you to believe."
"We are the ones we have been waiting for."
"Yes, we can!"
"Change."
"Hope."

These words, from Barack Obama, have inspired everything from outrageous videos to the largest campaign fundraising success in history. He has taken what was considered a sure bet Clinton machine and turned it on its head. His supporters claim he is the new Martin Luther King, Jr. He is hailed as this generation's John F. Kennedy. This documentary explores the HYPE behind Barack Obama.


Movie Trailer


The Long Haul for Democrats



http://www.hypemovie.com/

Obama's top economic advisors have ties to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AND Lehman Brothers

In an ad, the Obama campaign goes hard after John McCain for employing big-time lobbyists in high ranking positions. Obama should be careful about throwing stones.

Jim Johnson was the CEO and Vice Chairman for Fannie Mae as well as managing director at Lehman Brothers who is currently Barack Obama's economic advisor.

Franklin Raines was CEO of Fannie Mae 1999 to 2004. Mr. Raines also is currently Barack Obama's economic advisor and has not yet been forced to resign. He is accused by The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the regulating body of Fannie Mae, of abetting widespread accounting errors, which included the shifting of losses so senior executives, such as himself, could earn large bonuses. Raines was sued for wrongdoing but was able to settle. An editorial in The Wall Street Journal called it a "paltry settlement" which allowed Raines and the other two executives to "keep the bulk of their riches." In 2003 alone, Raines's compensation was over $20 million. [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10977075... ].


Raines *also* has ties with Countrywide. In June 2008 Wall Street Journal reported that Franklin Raines was one of several politicians who received below market rates loans at Countrywide Financial because the corporation considered the officeholders "FOA's"--"Friends of Angelo" (Countrywide Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo). He received loans for over $3 million while CEO of Fannie Mae. [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12127997... ]

The federal takeover of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may stabilize the economy and help the housing industry.
But some politicians could take a hit too, most particularly Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
The money has gone to both Republicans and Democrats.
But Obama is the recipient of the 2nd largest individual money, at $111,849, according to federal campaign finance reports compiled by Times researcher Maloy Moore. The person in first place is Senator Chris Dodd this was the person getting special loans from Countrywide Home loans.

Biden's Son, Brother Named in Two Suits

Hunter Biden was made president with an annual salary of $1.2 million, despite his inexperience in the hedge fund industry, the lawsuit said. Before that, he had been part of the Washington law firm Oldaker, Biden & Belair, which earned $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006, according to Congressional Quarterly's CQ MoneyLine. One of its biggest clients is the National Association of Shareholder and Consumer Attorneys, a District-based group representing law firms specializing in investment and corporate law.

Hunter Biden is one of many children and relatives of prominent members of Congress who have made their careers as lobbyists. He returned to lobbying after less than a year with Paradigm.

Lotito's lawsuit alleges that James Biden called him in January 2006 to arrange a job for Hunter Biden. It says James Biden told him that his brother (Sen. Biden) "was concerned with the impact that Hunter's lobbying activities might have on his expected campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination," and, "Biden told Lotito that, in light of these concerns, his brother had asked him to seek Lotito's assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity."

Lotito does not provide any direct evidence of the senator's involvement and offers no witnesses to the assertion.

The campaign of Sens. Barack Obama and Biden declined to comment on the case, referring questions to Nicholas Gravante Jr., a lawyer representing Hunter and James Biden. Gravante said assertions that Joseph Biden told his brother he was concerned about his son's lobbying are "absolutely false."

"This lawsuit has nothing to do with Joe Biden, and there is absolutely no truth to those allegations," Gravante said. "It is a business dispute between former partners. The suit is baseless."

Brian C. Wille, an attorney for Lotito, said the lawsuit alleges no wrongdoing by Sen. Biden, only that his concerns set in motion the business deal.

"There was a concern that Hunter Biden's role as a lobbyist would have an impact on the senator's proposed presidential run," Wille said. "That's what James Biden told Mr. Lotito. . . . Was it true? Who knows? There is no allegation the senator was involved in any of these events."

In an affidavit, Hunter Biden said his father had nothing to do with the deal and that it is Lotito who swindled the Bidens.

He said Lotito lied about being a "fully licensed and accredited securities professional" with hedge fund experience.

In addition, he said Lotito recommended a lawyer to vet the business deal who was under investigation and was ultimately convicted on several felony charges of conspiracy and wire and mail fraud in a scheme to steal millions from a computer company.

By Kimberly Kindy and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 24, 2008; Page A09

A son and a brother of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) are accused in two lawsuits of defrauding a former business partner and an investor of millions of dollars in a hedge fund deal that went sour, court records show.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate's son Hunter, 38, and brother James, 59, assert instead that their former partner defrauded them by misrepresenting his experience in the hedge fund industry and recommending that they hire a lawyer with felony convictions.

The legal actions have been playing out in New York State Supreme Court since 2007, and they focus on Hunter and James Biden's involvement in Paradigm Companies LLC, a hedge fund group. Hunter Biden, a Washington lobbyist, briefly served as president of the firm.

A lawsuit filed by their former partner Anthony Lotito Jr. asserts in court papers that the deal was crafted to get Hunter Biden out of lobbying because his father was concerned about the impact it would have on his bid for the White House. Biden was running for the Democratic nomination at the time the suit was filed.


In the hedge fund business deal, Lotito and the Bidens created a company called LLB Holdings USA and together agreed to pay $21.3 million for 54 percent interest in Paradigm.

In the lawsuit, Lotito said that soon after creating LLB, the Bidens crafted a "secret deal" to create their own company that was designed to buy out his shares in Paradigm for a low rate, to which he agreed. He said he knew nothing of the secret deal until later and now believes he was defrauded out of millions of dollars and his share in the company.

In the second lawsuit against the Bidens, which was filed in June, Lotito is also named as a defendant. Stephane Farouze, now an executive with Deutsche Bank, seeks $10 million, saying the Bidens and Lotito promised to buy his shares in the hedge fund company but reneged.

Barack Obama contends that he is more experienced then Gov. Sarah Palin because he has managed his presidential campaign

Barack Obama contends that he is more experienced in executive matters than Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin because he has managed his presidential campaign for the past 18 months.

I had too re-read this article because I didn't believe it, I thought the spin by the media and the obama campaign was that he had more then enough experience to be President. But Obama has now settled that question for of us. Read below


Speaking on a cable news channel Monday night, the Democratic presidential nominee said he is better prepared to handle a disaster like Hurricane Gustav because of his pursuit of the White House.

“Well, my understanding is that Governor Palin’s town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We’ve got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the last couple of years,” Obama said.

John McCain’s spokesman called the suggestion “laughable.”

“For Barack Obama to argue that he’s experienced enough to be president because he’s running for president is desperate circular logic and its laughable. It is a testament to Barack Obama’s inexperience and failing qualifications that he would stoop to passing off his candidacy as comparable to Governor Sarah Palin’s executive experience managing a budget of over $10 billion and more than 24,000 employees,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Republican National Committee Victory 2008 Chairwoman Carly Fiorina also blasted the Democratic campaign.

“I am appalled by the Obama campaign’s attempts to belittle Governor Sarah Palin’s experience. The facts are that Sarah Palin has made more executive decisions as a mayor and governor than Barack Obama has made in his life,” Fiorina said, adding that the Obama camp’s attacks raise the question of sexism.

Thank you Obama for clarifying your experience for us but I don't think you running for president compares to any Governors record running a state or even Governor Palin for record 2yrs listed below But good try.

But here are things Gov. Palin has done in less then 2yrs as Gov.:
1. Palin canceled "Bridge to Nowhere"a contract for the construction of an 11-mile (18-kilometer) gravel road outside Juneau to a mine.
2. She also followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased (on a state government credit account) by the Democrat Murkowski administration. In August 2007, the jet was sold for US$2.1 million.
3. In June 2007, Palin signed into law a US$6.6 billion operating budget—the largest in Alaska's history. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The US$237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to nearly US$1.6 billion.
4. She also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits.
5. In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)
6. In August 2008, Palin signed a bill into law giving the state of Alaska authority to award TransCanada Pipelines US$500 million in seed money and a license to build and operate the US$26-billion pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48 through Canada.
7. In response to high oil and gas prices, she gave Alaskans US$1,200 directly, paid for from the windfall surplus the state is getting because of the high oil prices. As well as suspended the state gas tax for Alaskins.
These are just some I have shown above.

Experience Obama VS Palin who is not Running for President

I have received a lot of emails regarding the none experience of Governor Palin so here is my answer to all you not knowall the facts.

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005 his first sponser of legislation was 1/31/07 with no legislation passed see below and go to the website. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery
Here is a sample of sample legislation he has sponsored. "Obama passed no legislation since coming to office" (please see at the bottom of this page)


But here are things Gov. Palin has done in lees then 2yrs as Gov.:
1. Palin canceled "Bridge to Nowhere"a contract for the construction of an 11-mile (18-kilometer) gravel road outside Juneau to a mine.
2. She also followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased (on a state government credit account) by the Democrat Murkowski administration. In August 2007, the jet was sold for US$2.1 million.
3. In June 2007, Palin signed into law a US$6.6 billion operating budget—the largest in Alaska's history. At the same time, she used her veto power to make the second-largest cuts of the construction budget in state history. The US$237 million in cuts represented over 300 local projects, and reduced the construction budget to nearly US$1.6 billion.
4. She also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits.
5. In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA)
6. In August 2008, Palin signed a bill into law giving the state of Alaska authority to award TransCanada Pipelines US$500 million in seed money and a license to build and operate the US$26-billion pipeline to transport natural gas from the North Slope to the Lower 48 through Canada.
7. In response to high oil and gas prices, she gave Alaskans US$1,200 directly, paid for from the windfall surplus the state is getting because of the high oil prices. As well as suspended the state gas tax for Alaskins.
These are just some I have shown above.
Now your at a disadvantage first because O'bama is not a Govenor, the Govenor helps to create and pass legislation which Gov. Palin has Done so I personally believe that the Govenor has more experience then O'Bama with working with Democrats and Repblicans and Independents in regards to getting Legislation passed. I knew the answer before I asked you to come up with something.


the National Journal ranked O'bama as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007.

Obama Legislation

Items 1 through 100 of 129
1. S.CON.RES.5 : A concurrent resolution honoring the life of Percy Lavon Julian, a pioneer in the field of organic chemistry and the first and only African-American chemist to be inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 1/31/2007) Cosponsors (5) Committees: Senate Judiciary Latest Major Action: 1/31/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
2. S.CON.RES.25 : A concurrent resolution condemning the recent violent actions of the Government of Zimbabwe against peaceful opposition party activists and members of civil society.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 3/29/2007) Cosponsors (7) Committees: Senate Foreign Relations Latest Major Action: 6/26/2007 Held at the desk.
3. S.CON.RES.44 : A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that a commemorative postage stamp should be issued honoring Rosa Louise McCauley Parks.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 9/12/2007) Cosponsors (22) Committees: Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Latest Major Action: 10/19/2007 Referred to Senate subcommittee. Status: Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs referred to Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security.
4. S.CON.RES.46 : A concurrent resolution supporting the goals and ideals of Sickle Cell Disease Awareness Month.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 9/17/2007) Cosponsors (None) Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Latest Major Action: 9/17/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
5. S.CON.RES.96 : A concurrent resolution commemorating Irena Sendler, a woman whose bravery saved the lives of thousands during the Holocaust and remembering her legacy of courage, selflessness, and hope.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 7/29/2008) Cosponsors (1) Committees: Senate Judiciary Latest Major Action: 7/29/2008 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
6. S.RES.133 : A resolution celebrating the life of Bishop Gilbert Earl Patterson.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 3/28/2007) Cosponsors (4) Latest Major Action: 3/28/2007 Passed/agreed to in Senate. Status: Submitted in the Senate, considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent.
7. S.RES.268 : A resolution designating July 12, 2007, as "National Summer Learning Day".Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 7/11/2007) Cosponsors (4) Committees: Senate Judiciary Latest Major Action: 7/13/2007 Passed/agreed to in Senate. Status: Resolution agreed to in Senate without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent.
8. S.RES.383 : A resolution honoring and recognizing the achievements of Carl Stokes, the first African-American mayor of a major American city, in the 40th year since his election as Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 11/15/2007) Cosponsors (2) Committees: Senate Judiciary Latest Major Action: 11/15/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
9. S.RES.600 : A resolution commemorating the 44th anniversary of the deaths of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi, while working in the name of American democracy to register voters and secure civil rights during the summer of 1964, which has become known as "Freedom Summer".Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 6/24/2008) Cosponsors (3) Latest Major Action: 6/24/2008 Passed/agreed to in Senate. Status: Submitted in the Senate, considered, and agreed to without amendment and with a preamble by Unanimous Consent.
10. S.RES.628 : A resolution expressing support for the designation of Disability Pride Day and recognizing that all people, including people living with disabilities, have the right, responsibility, and ability to be active, contributing members of society and fully engaged as citizens of the United States.Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 7/25/2008) Cosponsors (1) Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Latest Major Action: 7/25/2008 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

I do agree that the governor has no foreign policy experience but neither does Obama and going on a trip to speak with citizens of other countries doesn't give him the experience either. That’s why he put Joe Biden on the ticket.