So, did you see the Barack Obama commercial, when he commandeered a half-hour of prime time on seven of the major networks? I didn’t. If you did, please report.
He sure has a lot of money to burn, unlike John McCain, the father of campaign finance reform. It is ironic justice that McCain is now hampered by his own free-speech-denying rules.
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I watched the whole thing. Aesthetically, it was very impressive. I marveled at Obama’s rhetorical strength and his “of the people” appeal. Substantively, I wasn’t that impressed. Early on in the commercial, Obama promised to lay out his economic plan in detail (something that I’ve been anxious to see) but really all I got was “tax cuts for the middle class and people who need it” and “invest in alternative energy.”
Watching it left no doubt in my mind that Obama will be our next president. He is simply too engaging not to be.
Well, I just posted on my blog, but my comments were short and sweet. Here’s what I thought:
I took a nap after supper tonight and woke up to an infomercial…a presidential infomercial. It all seemed so odd to me. Is it representative of how future generations will choose a president: an infomercial offering deals for voters? I am truly trying to consider Obama, but I watch the emotion-laden infomercial and wonder how he would pull all that off? I truly felt like I was being offered a deal…a proposition. Being somebody raised in the 70’s, I just cannot trust someone who tells me that government will be on my side and take care of me. I don’t want that. I’m not thrilled by McCain, but at least I feel nearly 100% sure of what he stands for and what he will deliver. I’m done ever calling myself a GOP Republican, but I’m still a conservative.
Michelle Malkin has some comments in her article, Obama TV: Dear Leader’s infomercial.
Kneel before Zod!
Here is an insightful, thought-provoking article
by Thomas Sowell that could probably fit under any “political talk” heading!
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/10/30/a_perfect_storm
Watched “Pushing Up Daisies.” What a great show! I missed Obama? Dang!
I missed the show, was at a Wednesday night wedding!
But in general, I dislike infomercials.
Buy one Obama, get one free (the unknown one).
I still find it ironic that these are always scheduled for Wednesday night when us “Compassionate Conservatives” are at Wednesday night Church activities. He may still win, but if he’s trying to engage the Christian voting public, wouldn’t one put the infomercials on a night that “they” would be more apt to watch television?
I think BHO should “redistribute” some of his campaign funds to John McCain, so he can do his own infomercial.
It’s only “fair”
But did you hear the part in the infomercial where he promised health care for $19.95 a month - if you act now?
I agree that the campaign finance rules which are in place today are byzantine and anti-First Amendment, and John McCain had a significant role to play in getting them in place. But, these rules deal mostly with soft money contributions and third party advocacy. McCain didn’t have anything to do with the public financing of general election campaigns for President. Every candidate since Nixon in 1972 had participated in this program, funded by “check-off” contributions on income tax returns, until Obama. Obama promised to participate, then broke that promise. This is why he has so much money. Also, as the Washington Post finally reported a couple of days ago, the Obama campaign, which raises most of its funds through internet contributions, disabled all of the fraud protection measures, such as address and name verification, available from credit card processors. McCain did not do this. Additionally, even though cash contributions are illegal under federal campaign finance laws, because they are not verifiable for purposes of reporting contribution sources, Obama’s campaign accepts on-line donations using pre-paid gift cards. These are no different from cash, but because they are not technically illegal yet (they will be after this election, no doubt), he is taking them. McCain does not accept these cards.
Who really knows who is contributing to the Obama campaign, and whether they are even Americans, as required by law?
Here is the link to that Washington Post article, which was actually in yesterday’s paper.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/28/AR2008102803413.html
I thought it was very good. My wife, like one of the women featured in the piece, has rheumatoid arthritis. You simply can’t endure it without lots of medicine. Without my health insurance, we would be paying at least $2,000 per month for my wife’s medicine alone. So if I lose my job, we’re in real trouble. We both were moved to tears when we heard that woman’s problems.
I realize that some here believe that my wife and I have a duty, as confessional Lutherans, to mindlessly hate everything about Sen. Obama. He’s supposedly a baby-killing Muslim communist who will put Christians in concentration camps while forcing us all to marry someone of the same sex. I get it.
But guess what? We don’t hate Obama. In fact, we voted for him already. He’s a flawed man, to be sure, and we don’t agree with all he says he’ll so. But during his campaign he seems to have learned something about what government can and should do for Americans who really need help.
It may be obvious, but if not, I’ll point out that in my penultimate sentence the last word should be “do” not “so.” Sorry.
Don (@10), you said, “Every candidate since Nixon in 1972 had participated in this program, funded by ‘check-off’ contributions on income tax returns, until Obama.” That’s not entirely true. There are, I believe, two phases to public campaign funding. Many candidates — Bush among them — opted out of public funding during the primaries. However, I believe Obama is the only one to do so during the main race.
Your summary of the WaPo article rather fails to mention that the Obama campaign says it is doing all its checking on the back end, preferring to refund illegitimate donations rather than make the donation process harder or more rigorous. The campaign claims that this process is ultimately as good as up-front screening. Do you have evidence to the contrary? You make it sound like no checking is being done by the Obama campaign — or, for that matter, that McCain’s campaign has not let fraudulent donations slip through. As the article makes clear, neither point is true.
Not that it matters much anymore, but if we want to talk campaign finance, there was the issue of McCain’s spending millions more than allowed in the primary this year. The way he danced around the issue of being in — or out — of the public funding system reminded me less of someone dedicated to campaign finance and more to saving his candidacy at any cost.
I would love to see us do away with public financing of campaigns. Why should my tax dollers go to promoting viewpoints with which I fundamentally disagree?
tODD @ 14: My post refers to general election campaigns, and that is what I meant, but your clarification of that point is appreciated.
Why, do you think, did Obama’s campaign disable the front-end protections? I didn’t find their explanation for disabling this basic safeguard very compelling. It seems stupid, in fact, and labor intensive, if your intention is truly to ensure that you don’t receive unlawful contributions. And why would you think that disabling the first line of defense against fraud is “as good” as keeping it in place?
You ignored the issue of gift cards. I presume you can see why accepting these is a bad idea if your concern is to avoid accepting unlawful contributions.
tODD,
Here is more background on the checking the Obama campaign appears to be doing.
It’s not looking pretty right now.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021868.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2008/10/021924.php
No, I took the opportunity to watch a show I’d never seen before: Pushing Up Daisies. Creative, silly and fun.
Don, the New York Times for all intents and purposes a propaganda organ of the Obama campaign, has reported that 200 million dollars of BS/BO’s finances come from Saudi Arabia and other mid-east Muslim countries. The Palestinians are doing a cold-call operation for him, long distance from Lebanon. Of course his praise of the PLO terrorist Khalidi just a few years ago is being sat upon by the faithful-to-Obama L.A. Times.
J. you just voted for evil. I agree with you though that health care is messed up. But since your wife has a chronic condition, don’t expect much help from her from a federalized health care system. CDC has already recommended that such people not be treated in the case of a pandemic. I suspect that will become the basis for federal guidelines.
Where is the evidence that the Obama campaign has returned any of the illegal contributions? Why will it not release the names of the contributors of 200 dollars and under, as the McCain campaign has? Have the people who found false charges to their credit cards given to the Obama campaign received their stolen funds back?
Don (@16), I could speculate on why Obama’s campaign might have done that, but of course I don’t have many (if any) facts, and neither do you. What we have is speculation that fraud could occur. What I would like to see is proof that it has (or hasn’t) occurred at a systematic level.
As for speculation, I might guess that the point was to make (legally) donating as easy as possible. Not being intimately familiar with the mechanics behind it, I don’t know if the safeguards the Obama campaign disabled were likely to produce false alarms, which would then reject a donation as it was being processed on the Web site. I further don’t know if those types of false alarms would be more common for the types of people donating (legally) to Obama’s campaign.
But my best construction would be that such false alarms did occur, were hindering the ability of some subset of donors to give easily (and legally) online, and were disabled, with the idea being to catch any fraud or illegal donations on the back end. That is: place the burden on the campaign workers, not the donors.
We can argue about the likelihood of this supposition, but it will probably be colored by our partisan views, no?
Point to remember:
Robertson/Falwell/Dobson type –> Christian movement in politics (“Babylonian Captivity”) –> Patrick Henry College
(sorry about that, wrong thread. It belongs on the Captivity thread)
Anon @18, “The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism. ” Reinhold Niebuhr
Remember, folks, that your tax dollars do not have to go toward financing the presidential campaigns. You opt in or out every year; the box is right near the top of the 1040, under your SSN. We always opt out. The deficit is bad enough as it is, without $3 from each of us being diverted to political campaigns.
tODD @ 19: Well, we know from reports of bloggers who have attempted small donations to both campaigns using assumed names and false addresses that those contributions go through on the Obama website, and do not go through on the McCain website. Those who have tried it, and subsequently reported on the results, have used names and addresses such as “Adolfe Hitler”, of “the Reichstag Building”, and funds have come out of their accounts. Whether those donations will later be refunded is a question for the future. I guess I don’t believe the burden is that great on a donor to ensure that the name, address, and confirmation codes on their credits cards all match. We do that every time we purchase something on an on-line website, such as Amazon.com, for goodness sake.
And, the gift card donations……….you still haven’t addressed those. If Ahmed Ahmadinejad wants to donate $100 to Obama using a gift card, and identifies himself as “John Jones”, 123 Elm Street, Cleveland, OH, exactly how is the Obama campaign supposed to know that the donation is unlawful? This is why cash donations are illegal.
tODD 19, while I agree with you that even though there isn’t proof of any large-scale fraud (there certainly is fraud, but no one knows the scale of it), in this sort of situation it is necessary to take significant steps to avoid the possibility of fraud.
Why? Because by the time any fraud is investigated, the damage has long since been done. Obama isn’t doing anything strictly illegal, but is certainly doing something that ought to be illegal. It probably will be made illegal very soon.
What sort of trust do we put in an organization that:
1) lied to the WaPo about the name-checking for credit card donations (”Name-matching is not a standard check conducted or made available in the credit card processing industry. We believe Visa and MasterCard do not even have the ability to do this.”) So stupidly, obviously a lie that I doubt the person was able to say it with a straight face.
2) Has a black-box system to refund, on their honor, millions of dollars which have already come in. That’s just screaming for abuse by even the most reputable organizations. (see #1 for examples of the donation dept’s honesty) I wouldn’t trust the Salvation Army with that sort of system!
For everyone: consider if this was done by McCain. What sort of reaction would you be having? Would you say “I’m sure he’s checking the funds well.” Would you say “That just goes to show McCain is a greedy hypocrite without principles.”
Obama supporters: Would you jump all over McCain? Well why aren’t you jumping all over Obama?
McCain supporters: Would you excuse it as not so bad? That’s excusing something for “your” guy but nor for the “other” guy? Where are principles?
Obviously, no one is faced with this, so everyone will say that of course they would be perfectly fair in recriminations and accusations.
Don (@24), “Whether those donations will later be refunded is a question for the future.” Indeed. And, frankly, not one for which I expect to hear blaring headlines from said bloggers if they do get refunded.
Again, I’d like to stress my relative nonchalance on this issue is due to my not understanding it. One could argue that I should therefore become quickly educated on it, but we all pick our battles.
That said, imagine that your wife wants to donate the legal maximum to the McCain campaign in the last week, to buy ads to spread the word. But you just got married, so her legal name (which she changed with the county) is not the same as on her credit card. She goes to the McCain Web site and tries to donate. She is rejected, the Web site tells her, because of some error. Not being as tech-savvy as you, she figures it’s one of those things that always goes wrong with computers and gives up. Maybe this situation is realistic, maybe it isn’t. But again: I don’t really know.
Does the gift card thing seem like a bad loophole? Yes. I’d support closing it. But again, I don’t even know how a Web site would tell apart one card from another, though I presume it’s possible. Nor do I see any evidence that the gift card loophole is actually being abused on a large scale.
WebMonk (@25), I’m afraid justice will always be reactionary. That’s the way it goes. Al Gore will never benefit from any improved voting laws passed after 2000 (whether or not it would have helped him anyhow; I’m not trying to debate that). Frankly, no one is going to make any difference along these lines as far as Obama’s fundraising goes until it’s too late.
I’m aware of my bias here, but given the reply about “name-matching” is sourced to an anonymous e-mail, it’s not clear if the person is lying or merely uninformed. I’m pretty certain that there are many spokespeople in any campaign who are not very technically savvy. But you’d expect me to argue as such.
Finally, as to how I’d feel if McCain were doing this, you’ve pretty much set it up so I can either agree that I’m not being fair, or else I’m just lying to say what sounds right. Not sure it matters if I comment, given that set up, but I will say this: there was plenty to be dubious about in McCain’s campaign during the primaries. He went over his public funding limit and made various claims about being either in or out of the system, apparently depending on whether it would help his campaign or not. If he didn’t break any laws, it certainly seemed unethical, especially from someone championing campaign finance reform.
But you know what? It’s done. Maybe something bad happened, maybe it didn’t, but I don’t really care anymore. Given that there is little evidence here of anything systemically fraudulent here, I feel the same way about Obama. Similar? That’s your call.
How did the Obama Show compare to Leni Reifenstahl’s work?
Well, the voter registration fraud that is actively going on in support of Obama is verifiable, so I would assume that there is also illegal contributing and lots of it.
LAJ, there is no other feasible reason to disable the address verification feature or to take gift card donations other than to take illegal contributions. We already know that Obama is not a man of his word. We knew that when he unilaterally abrogated his commitment to do as every other candidate since Nixon has done during the general election — opt into the federal campaign financing system and accept the $84 million limit.
I posted a number of citations, but that post is still awaiting moderation.
Don, and more and more reports of conservatives finding donations to Obama mysteriously appearing on their credit card statements. Everyone should check their statements to make sure that Obamans aren’t stealing from them.
Now the 0bamessiah has kicked the reporters of three newspapers off his plane. The newspapers failed to bend the knee of obeisant endorsement to The 0ne.
Get ready for more.
Should I retrieve those citations and post them one at a time? That seems inefficient and distracting to readers. But when people accuse me of making things up, and the host does not approve multiple citations. . .
tODD 26, I realize I set forward a very limited set of responses, but I haven’t seen any/many statements around here step beyond those set of responses.
There is a very strong tendency evident that takes “bad things” about one’s particular favorite candidate and brush them off as minor incidentals (or ignore them entirely) and take what seem to be equivalent “bad things” about the enemy candidate and declare those to be ultimately core issues to that candidacy.
Take the recent conservative Republican love affair with Palin. From FW and others there were LONG statements about putting our faith in fallen people and how we should instead be putting faith in God. (quite right!)
Then take the recent Obama shrine, and what is the response - it’s not worship, it’s just showing respect, it’s only by some itty-bitty subset of people.
Individually, the arguments have various amounts of validity, but when they’re juxtaposed there is something seriously wrong going on.
I see something similar with the Obama’s fund raising actions - oh we don’t completely know that significant fraud is actually happening, it’s just a minor functionary who doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says credit card protections don’t exist, etc.
I can’t help but suspect that should it be McCain who deliberately removed protections from online, blind donations, that all the arguments on both sides would be reversed - Obama fans would be howling for blood and McCain defenders would be trying to brush it off as “no biggie”.
Now on CNN a guest called the Republicans evil because they want to question the legitimacy of the votes and are separating some ballets so they can. Evil is registering voters that don’t exist or are illegal aliens or the Dallas Cowboy roster in MN.
In its article Dreams From His Aunt, part 2, Powerlineblog points out (with links) that the 0bamessiah’s aunt, Zeituni Onyango, found living in a run-down Boston public housing, donated $250 to her nephew. Ms. Onyango is not an American citizen and thus cannot legally make a campaign donation.
In a linked article Mark Steyn also notes that 0bama campaign contributors, “A Hitler” and “S Hussein,” would also have to be American citizens to legally contribute.
Powerlineblog also points out that Barry’s aunt is awaiting deportation from the U.S. as an illegal alien. Yeah, like that’ll happen.
Michelle Malkin has more on Zeituni Onyango in her article, “Obama’s illegal alien aunt (and campaign donor!) is a deportation fugitive; Bush administration moves to protect her”.
Looks like Palin will need to rearrange McCain’s attitude on illegal aliens, too.
true patriotism sounds like this…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfe9hNxWXVw
Wrong sound, FW. This is the actual sound of dangerous incompetence.
Two 0bama supporters caught stealing McCain-Palin signs from the lawn of the McCain-Palin Racine County (WI) Co-Chairman. The punks were sent to the slammer. Perhaps this is an example of 0bama’s Civilian National Sturmabteilung… er, Security Force.
Also, according to , the thieves’ 1997 Jeep shown in the picture has expired plates.
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