I just love Mark Steyn. Here he is on a reference to Charlie Gibson’s query re: Obama’s questionable online donations:
Re: Charlie Gibson Hits Obama On His Donors [Mark Steyn]
Oh, please, Greg. That’s not a “hit”, that’s a Swedish massage by Princess Fluffy Bunny. That’s Charlie Gibson appearing to cover himself while letting Obama get away with mush. A (Palin-style?) hit would have taken the conversation on a quite different tack:
OBAMA: What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.
INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: What’s unprecedented is that, unlike John McCain, your website disabled the standard credit-card security system used by almost all reputable online retailers. Why did you do that? And, given that of the record $150 million you raised in September two-thirds was raised under this systemically corrupted Internet operation, isn’t it likely that a significant proportion of your half-hour infomercial was paid for by fraudulent donors? And, as to “expanding the pool of small donors in this country”, what about the way you’ve expanded the pool of donors in other countries who’ve been able to make illegal contributions to your campaign because you switched off the AVS security checks?
OBAMA: I mean, you’re looking the people who are giving $5, 10, 25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is…
INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: Also a lot of extraordinary folks have gotten impassioned about your campaign. You’ve received contributions from, among others, a Mr Saddam Hussein, Mr A Hitler and Mr K Marx? How do you propose to return those contributions given that all three “donors” are deceased?
OBAMA: Look, you know, 3.1 million donors would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process…
INFORMED GIBSON QUESTION: Why? I mean, you’ve had no problem “processing” the money, have you? And, if you hadn’t monkeyed with the standard online retail data system, all you have to do is press a button and 3.1 million names and addresses pop right up. Ask Amazon. So why did you switch it off? And, if you yourself did not make that decision, who did?
The Senator terminates the interview to instruct an aide to have state and local officials look into this guy Gibson’s child-support payments, tax liens, etc. Later, it emerges that Charlie the Anchor is not even a state-licensed interviewer.
This morning I heard someone - I think it may be have been Megyn Kelly on Fox News – talking about people buying prepaid credit or debit cards (which have no name or address associated with them) and using those to donate as much as they wish, since Obama’s campaign turned off the credit card security measures on their website.
Who knows how many millions have been collected illegally and/or improperly? The whole thing stinks, and even though Obama will not agree to release a list of his donors, or turn the online security stop gaps back on, not one mainstream/network media outlet (other than Fox) seems to give a damn.
