2008 Presidential Election Thread

catbox_9 wrote:

gs78 wrote:

How about Rush Limbaugh for President?

Nominate him - it'll be a landslide the other way no matter who he runs against.

Rush Limbaugh Rules!


He once worked for the KC Royals

I would vote for Rush Limbaugh

Even Lou Dobbs said China's military buildup will be a huge situation, maybe the first crisis Biden is speaking of...

laprimamirala wrote:

Even Lou Dobbs said China's military buildup will be a huge situation, maybe the first crisis Biden is speaking of...

Told ya we should have boycotted the Olympics

I miss Tigers beisbol

laprimamirala wrote:

Hard to show that in an emoticon

Isn't this the sarcastic smilie

I think George W. Bush is the best President ever...

bobrob2004 wrote:

laprimamirala wrote:

Hard to show that in an emoticon

Isn't this the sarcastic smilie

I think George W. Bush is the best President ever...

I think his father is the second-best President ever

Why do so many people hate Bush

I still say he be cool to drink or smoke with


Better than McCain and Obama

I wish I could vote for Bush this election

gs78 wrote:

I wish I could vote for Bush this election

You can! Write in Jeb Bush or Bush, Sr. They are both eligible.

somehow doesn't do it for me....

I miss Tigers beisbol...........

catbox_9 wrote:

gs78 wrote:

I wish I could vote for Bush this election

You can! Write in Jeb Bush or Bush, Sr. They are both eligible.

Jeb Bush should run next election

If Obama wins this one

He have my vote

Go Jeb

Jeb was supposed to be the son to run after Sr. Darn shame W. ran first!

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

Jeb was supposed to be the son to run after Sr. Darn shame W. ran first!

Jeb Bush for 2012

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

Jeb was supposed to be the son to run after Sr. Darn shame W. ran first!

While not a Bush fan, I hear he's smarter (or less dumb?) than the rest of the Bushes. Even though I know very little about him, if all the Bushes were to run at once, he'd get my vote (assuming nobody else was running, voting was mandatory, and write-in votes were prohibited).

catbox_9 wrote:

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

Jeb was supposed to be the son to run after Sr. Darn shame W. ran first!

While not a Bush fan, I hear he's smarter (or less dumb?) than the rest of the Bushes. Even though I know very little about him, if all the Bushes were to run at once, he'd get my vote (assuming nobody else was running, voting was mandatory, and write-in votes were prohibited).

I think if Obama wins the election

Jeb will run in 2012

The Republican Party will get behind him

I don't think he'll run. Too many people hate Bush. The hardcore Republicans would vote for him, but the moderate Republicans would go with the Democrat (assuming it's not someone insanely moronic like Al Sharpton). Jeb has very little electability.

catbox_9 wrote:

I don't think he'll run. Too many people hate Bush. The hardcore Republicans would vote for him, but the moderate Republicans would go with the Democrat (assuming it's not someone insanely moronic like Al Sharpton). Jeb has very little electability.

Just a prediction Cat

Just a prediction

Night Catbox!

Obama takes 10-point lead on McCain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrat Barack Obama has expanded his national lead over Republican John McCain in the presidential race to 10 points, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Wednesday.

Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 42 percent among likely U.S. voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, up from an 8-point advantage for Obama on Tuesday. The telephone poll has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

It was the third consecutive day Obama gained ground on McCain as the two begin the final sprint to the November 4 election.

"Obama just keeps growing, he has expanded his lead among almost every major voting group," said pollster John Zogby. "McCain seems to be out of steam for the moment."

The 10-point lead was the first time Obama's advantage over McCain, an Arizona senator, reached double-digits in the poll. Obama's lead had floated between 2 and 6 points in the more than two weeks of polling until stretching to 8 points on Tuesday.

Obama made gains with two key swing voting blocs. His advantage with independent voters grew to a whopping 27 points from 15 points and his edge with women voters grew to 16 points from 13.

Obama, an Illinois senator, led among all age groups and in every income group except for the most wealthy voters. He now has the support of 21 percent of self-described conservatives -- his best showing with those voters.

McCain narrowly trails Obama by 2 percentage points among men and saw his lead among whites drop to 6 points from 9 points, 50 percent to 44 percent.

The poll, taken Sunday through Tuesday, showed independent Ralph Nader, Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney and Libertarian Bob Barr each registering 1 percent support.

Three percent of voters remain undecided.

The rolling tracking poll surveyed 1,208 likely voters in the presidential election. In a tracking poll, the most recent day's results are added while the oldest day's results are dropped to monitor changing momentum.

The president is determined by who wins the Electoral College, which has 538 members apportioned by population in each state and the District of Columbia. Electoral votes are allotted on a winner-take-all basis in all but two states, which divide them by congressional district.

AP INVESTIGATION: Alaska funded Palin kids' travel



ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Gov. Sarah Palin charged the state for her children to travel with her, including to events where they were not invited, and later amended expense reports to specify that they were on official business.

The charges included costs for hotel and commercial flights for three daughters to join Palin to watch their father in a snowmobile race, and a trip to New York, where the governor attended a five-hour conference and stayed with 17-year-old Bristol for five days and four nights in a luxury hotel.

In all, Palin has charged the state $21,012 for her three daughters' 64 one-way and 12 round-trip commercial flights since she took office in December 2006. In some other cases, she has charged the state for hotel rooms for the girls.

Alaska law does not specifically address expenses for a governor's children. The law allows for payment of expenses for anyone conducting official state business.

As governor, Palin justified having the state pay for the travel of her daughters — Bristol, 17; Willow, 14; and Piper, 7 — by noting on travel forms that the girls had been invited to attend or participate in events on the governor's schedule.

But some organizers of these events said they were surprised when the Palin children showed up uninvited, or said they agreed to a request by the governor to allow the children to attend.

Several other organizers said the children merely accompanied their mother and did not participate. The trips enabled Palin, whose main state office is in the capital of Juneau, to spend more time with her children.

"She said any event she can take her kids to is an event she tries to attend," said Jennifer McCarthy, who helped organize the June 2007 Family Day Celebration picnic in Ketchikan that Piper attended with her parents.

State Finance Director Kim Garnero told The Associated Press she has not reviewed the Palins' travel expense forms, so she could not say whether the daughters' travel with their mother would meet the definition of official business.

On Aug. 6, three weeks before Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain chose Palin his running mate, and after Alaska reporters asked for the records, Palin ordered changes to previously filed expense reports for her daughters' travel.

In the amended reports, Palin added phrases such as "First Family attending" and "First Family invited" to explain the girls' attendance.

"The governor said, 'I want the purpose and the reason for this travel to be clear,'" said Linda Perez, state director of administrative services.

When Palin released her family's tax records as part of her vice presidential campaign, some tax experts questioned why she did not report the children's state travel reimbursements as income.

The Palins released a review by a Washington attorney who said state law allows the children's travel expenses to be reimbursed and not taxed when they conduct official state business.

Taylor Griffin, a McCain-Palin campaign spokesman, said Palin followed state policy allowing governors to charge for their children's travel. He said the governor's office has invitations requesting the family to attend some events, but he said he did not have them to provide.

In October 2007, Palin brought daughter Bristol along on a trip to New York for a women's leadership conference. Plane tickets from Anchorage to La Guardia Airport for $1,385.11 were billed to the state, records show, and mother and daughter shared a room for four nights at the $707.29-per-night Essex House hotel, which overlooks Central Park.

The event's organizers said Palin asked if she could bring her daughter.

Alexis Gelber, who organized Newsweek's Third Annual Women & Leadership Conference, said she does not know how Bristol ended up attending. Gelber said invitees usually attend alone, but some ask if they can bring a relative or friend.

Griffin, the campaign spokesman, said he believes someone with the event personally sent an e-mail to Bristol inviting her, but he did not have it to provide. Records show Palin also met with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs representatives and visited the New York Stock Exchange.

In January, the governor, Willow and Piper showed up at the Alaska Symphony of Seafood Buffet, an Anchorage gala to announce winners of an earlier seafood competition.

"She was just there," said James Browning, executive director of Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, which runs the event. Griffin said the governor's office received an invitation that was not specifically addressed to anyone.

When Palin amended her children's expense reports, she listed a role for the two girls at the function — "to draw two separate raffle tickets."

In the original travel form, Palin listed a number of events that her children attended and said they were there "in official capacity helping." She did not identify any specific roles for the girls.

In July, the governor charged the state $2,741.26 to take Bristol and Piper to Philadelphia for a meeting of the National Governors Association. The girls had their own room for five nights at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel for $215.46 a night, expense records show.

Expense forms describe the girls' official purpose as "NGA Governor's Youth Programs and family activities." But those programs were activities designed to keep children busy, a service provided by the NGA to accommodate governors and their families, NGA spokeswoman Jodi Omear said.

In addition to the commercial flights, the children have traveled dozens of times with Palin on a state plane. For these flights, the total cost of operating the plane, at $971 an hour, was about $55,000, according to state flight logs. The cost of operating the state plane does not increase when the children join their mother.

The organizer of an American Heart Association luncheon on Feb. 15 in Fairbanks said Palin asked to bring daughter Piper to the event, and the organizer said she was surprised when Palin showed up with daughters Willow and Bristol as well.

The three Palin daughters shared a room separate from their mother at the Princess Lodge in Fairbanks for two nights, at a cost to the state of $129 per night.

The luncheon took place before Palin's husband, Todd, finished fourth in the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race, also in Fairbanks. The family greeted him at the finish line.

When Palin showed up at the luncheon with not just Piper but also Willow and Bristol, organizers had to scramble to make room at the main table, said Janet Bartels, who set up the event.

"When it's the governor, you just make it happen," she said.

The state is already reviewing nearly $17,000 in per diem payments to Palin for more than 300 nights she slept at her own home, 40 miles from her satellite office in Anchorage.

Tony Knowles, a Democratic former governor of Alaska who lost to Palin in a 2006 bid to reclaim the job, said he never charged the state for his three children's commercial flights or claimed their travel as official state business.

Knowles, who was governor from 1994 to 2002, is the only other recent Alaska governor who had school-age children while in office.

"There was no valid reason for the children to be along on state business," said Knowles, a supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. "I cannot recall any instance during my eight years as governor where it would have been appropriate to claim they performed state business."

Knowles said he brought his children to one NGA event while in office but didn't charge the state for their trip.

In February 2007, the three girls flew from Juneau to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines. Palin charged the state for the $519.30 round-trip ticket for each girl, and noted on the expense form that the daughters accompanied her to "open the start of the Iron Dog race."

The children and their mother then watched as Todd Palin and other racers started the competition, which Todd won that year. Palin later had the relevant expense forms changed to describe the girls' business as "First Family official starter for the start of the Iron Dog race."

The Palins began charging the state for commercial flights after the governor kept a 2006 campaign promise to sell a jet bought by her predecessor.

Palin put the jet up for sale on eBay, a move she later trumpeted in her star-making speech at the Republican National Convention, and it was ultimately sold by the state at a loss.

That left only one high-performance aircraft deemed safe enough for her to use — a 1980 twin-engine King Air assigned to the public safety agency but, according to flight logs, out of service for maintenance and repairs about a third of the time Palin has been governor.

Now, let look into everything Biden and Obama have ever done!

I know they have plenty of dirt too!

We are not trusting the voting machines in nearby WV!

In tests, every machine would give the vote to Obama, no matter who you voted for! They don't know if the machines can be fixed!

Sounds, to me, like someone is trying to fix the election! All other election issues worked correct. Just the Presidential voting was messed up.

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.

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

We are not trusting the voting machines in nearby WV!

In tests, every machine would give the vote to Obama, no matter who you voted for! They don't know if the machines can be fixed!

Sounds, to me, like someone is trying to fix the election! All other election issues worked correct. Just the Presidential voting was messed up.

People still vote in person? Why do that when you can vote absentee. So much easier.

catbox_9 wrote:

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

We are not trusting the voting machines in nearby WV!

In tests, every machine would give the vote to Obama, no matter who you voted for! They don't know if the machines can be fixed!

Sounds, to me, like someone is trying to fix the election! All other election issues worked correct. Just the Presidential voting was messed up.

People still vote in person? Why do that when you can vote absentee. So much easier.

That's just like saying, "why go to a baseball game? So much easier to see it on tv." I like the excitement of going to vote in person

Same way with direct deposit...I hate it. Would rather hand my paycheck to the teller than never ever see it except on my file online...

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

We are not trusting the voting machines in nearby WV!

In tests, every machine would give the vote to Obama, no matter who you voted for! They don't know if the machines can be fixed!

Sounds, to me, like someone is trying to fix the election! All other election issues worked correct. Just the Presidential voting was messed up.

Again


What Country is this!


Russia


Hard to believe this shit is happening

GoGetEmTigers wrote:

Now, let look into everything Biden and Obama have ever done!

I know they have plenty of dirt too!

We pay for so much

If it were fully revealed; it would blow our minds