E!! The True Conservative Story™

Stanley Kurtz was happy to see that the team of CNN reporters he worked with on the Obama-Ayers connection has gone ahead with their report. You can see the 6 minute video over at Hot Air.

I must say, I’m pretty surprised (and pleased) to see CNN do this. Although Anderson Cooper seems less than enthused, he and others did their jobs.

The video includes not only info on the Annenberg stuff, but also an extraordinary revelation on Obama’s 1995 political “coming-out” party at Ayers’ home. Bottom line, it WAS Ayers and Dohrn who planned and arranged the event WITH Obama.

This Newsmax story about ongoing investigations into Obama’s fundraising is disturbing.  It’s also long, so I’ll give you some highlights and excerpts (in italics) and encourage you to read the whole thing when you have time:

Over half of the $426.9 million Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won’t disclose.  (McCain has made his complete donor database available online, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP)).

 Federal law does not require campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200, but it does require reported running totals for each donor once they go beyond the $200 mark.   

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

It is the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system…

And shennanigans have been discovered:  for example, donors with fake names giving small amounts that far exceed the $2,300 limit for single persons.  In one case, over 1,000 charges of $25 or less came from a donor named “Good Will.”  Total credit card charges:  over $17,000. 

Another donor (”Doodad Pro”) gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25.

AND

The FEC has compiled a separate database of potentially questionable overseas donations that contains more than 11,500 contributions totaling $33.8 million. More than 520 listed their “state” as “IR,” often an abbreviation for Iran.

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

There are a lot of specifics and examples in the story, including instances where the Obama camp was caught in specific wrongdoing and had to agree to return money and discussions about some of the foreign donations.  (The campaign is still under investigation.)

I strongly encourage people to read the Newsmax story – and forward this link.

A friend recently asked if I jot down all my bloggy ideas as they come to me and then type them up later.  The answer is Yes, I have between two and twenty scraps of paper shoved in my purse or pocket at any given time and/or I type reminders in a Word doc if I’m at a PC when inspiration comes.  One of this morning’s looked like this:

Check out Pindell Reprt on Politicker.  If poor, slam for sub-title “dynamic and deeply reported” – WTF does that MEAN?  If good, give props.  Also, email webmaster re: typo on About page.

And the result is something like this:

Today’s Pindell Report has Nevada as most the closely contested swing state in the nation. 

The report ranks and re-ranks races by competitiveness, so the race ranked first will be won by the smallest margin of victory and the race ranked last is believed to promise the largest margin.  The report’s About page says it takes into account polling, fundraising, past election data, demographic changes, interviews with the nation’s top political strategists, and Politicker.com’s reporters out in the field.  The rankings are evaluated daily to ensure they’re current.

Seems like a good system to me, and I like the little “+2” and “-4” notations to show whether the race rose or fell on the list.  (Make sure to click on the Senate, House, Governor and Presidential tabs to see all rankings for all races.)