(Watch) Biden Asks ‘How Many Know Someone Who Served In Iraq and Iran’ – Harry Reid Raises Hand
Joltin’ Joe commits a gaffe, and Dirty Harry plays right along.
At a campaign stop in Las Vegas, Joe Biden asked people in the crowd how many of them know someone who has served in … Iran?
While most of us would have sat there in stunned silence, Harry Reid can be seen in the background raising his hand like a schoolboy dying to give the teacher an answer.
And guess what happens next … Joe asks another question – How many know someone who has been injured or lost in Iraq or Iran? And Reid raises his hand again!
I wasn’t aware that we had any troops on the ground in Iran. Thanks for the history lesson, Joe!
Watch these two Mensa candidates in action…
Scandal: ‘Obama Campaign is Clearly Soliciting Donations From Foreign Nationals’
Over the last few days, the internet has been abuzz with the possibility that the Obama campaign was about to be nailed with a major foreign donor scandal, with some even speculating that the President was so distracted by the pending story, that it contributed to his horrible debate performance.
Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner wrote:
President Obama’s reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowledgeable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.
The campaign tried desperately to block the story, indicating its importance.
Now, the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) has released the report that shows the campaign has been using social media portals to solicit foreigners for donations, using data mining techniques to gain information about people who may not have actually visited the campaign site, and even operating a website for internet users outside the United States.
This, to put it mildly, would be a violation of federal election laws.
The Daily Caller reports (emphasis mine):
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has been soliciting foreigners for donations, an explosive report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) shows. Those foreign donors are allegedly visiting the Obama campaign’s donation solicitation Web pages through a social media website the campaign controls, and through an outside website that serves mostly Internet users from outside the United States.
About 20 percent of visitors to the “my.barackobama.com” social media website “originated from foreign locations,” the report found. That Web address is owned and controlled by the Obama re-election campaign.
“At no point during the [website’s] subscription process is a visitor asked whether he or she can legally donate to a U.S. election,” GAI notes.
The report adds that once a visitor signs up for the website, they are immediately solicited for campaign donations. “In fact, numerous foreign nationals report receiving solicitation letters and thank you emails from the campaign for their support.”
In a report accompanying the GAI report’s release, former U.S. Attorney Ken Sukhia concluded that the Obama campaign is clearly soliciting donations from foreign nationals.
They also add that the campaign site employs various techniques to mine e-mail and other data from “friends and associations” of members of the site. An example:
Neither President Obama nor his campaign owns Obama.com. Sukhia said data show that 68 percent of traffic to that website comes from foreign users, all of whom are redirected to Obama fundraising Web pages.
Obama.com was registered in September 2008 to Robert Roche, an Obama campaign bundler living in Shanghai, China, according to GAI.
…
“By October 2, 2008, Obama.com began redirecting all visitors to specific content on my.barackobama.com,” GAI wrote. “Upon arrival to my.barackobama.com, visitors were asked for their name, email, and zip code and presumably were sent solicitation letters, like every other visitor who provides that information to the campaign.”
The report then goes on to demonstrate other tactics that the websites use to gather information, such as e-mail addresses, and continues to redirect viewers to the campaign donation web page.
The donation web page seems to be the crux of the foreign donations activity.
For instance, the campaign website has disabled industry standard credit card verification methods, eliminating the necessity to provide the Card Verification Value (CVV) code on the back of a credit card. The Mental Recession reported on this several months ago, as conservative bloggers were easily demonstrating that the Obama campaign websites were allowing very real donations from some very fake names – Nidal Hasan and Hitler as an example.
Some in the media were pointing out this tactic all the way back to the 2008 presidential campaign, oddly enough spurred on similarly by a record breaking fundraising overhaul reported in September. Back in 2008, Obama had raked in $150 million. This September, $181 million, a massive increase from the donations submitted to his campaign the previous month. The release raised eyebrows, as it was announced quietly via Twitter on a Saturday morning, when it clearly should have been touted as a news story to energize his base.
What’s more, a vast majority of those donations – 98% – are not required to be reported, leaving the door open to the possibility that multiple millions in donations were generated from illegal foreign entities.
An excerpt from U.S. election code reads:
It shall be unlawful for –
(1) a foreign national, directly or indirectly, to make –
(A) a contribution or donation of money or other thing of
value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a
contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State,
or local election;
(B) a contribution or donation to a committee of a political
party;
The President himself has griped about American elections being bankrolled by foreign entities. Here is an excerpt from his 2010 State of the Union address (video below):
“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”
Hypocrisy, thy name is Obama.
The media and the voters didn’t seem to care about these illegal tactics in 2008, will it matter this election?
Update: Other high profile Democrats not using the CVV security measure on their campaign donation pages include House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin.
Update: Download the full report here…
Report: Obama Sacrificed the American Economy and Defense For a Better Chance at Reelection
Glenn Thrush, writer for the Politico, has recently produced an e-book on the Obama campaign, and it’s causing quite a stir. While many are focusing on the many conflicts the campaign is suffering this year – an issue with which they did not contend with as much in 2008 – there is another damning aspect of the book being vastly under-reported.
Essentially, the President was willing to place his reelection bid above the needs of our economy and our national defense.
Excerpts from the book claim that Obama rebuffed pleas from Nancy Pelosi of all people, to reconsider the sequestered defense cuts because doing so would make reelection more difficult.
Here are a couple of quotes from Thrush’s work that stand out:
“In mid-2012, the House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, requested a sit-down to ask Obama to reconsider the billions of defense cuts that would kick in automatically as part of the 2011 budget deal. The cuts included in ‘the sequester,’ she argued, would hurt Democratic House members with major defense contractors in their districts. They were asking for an alternative state of cuts, or any kind of plan that would keep local employers – and, by implication, local contributors – happy.”
And…
“Obama told the former speaker what he had been saying for months – that he wasn’t budging on the defense cuts. Doing so would surrender his only leverage in forcing House Republicans to accept the expiration of tax cuts for the wealthy – the only weapon he had against their efforts ‘to delegitimize me,’ as he put it. Moreover, he bluntly called on Hill Democrats to reorient their priorities – from them to him. ‘Look, guys,’ he told Pelosi, Harry Reid, and several other congressional leaders, according to a person briefed in detail on the interaction. ‘I plan on winning this race. If I don’t win, then anything we say now doesn’t matter. I plan on winning this race. So let’s figure out how to win this race.’”
These are stunning claims that demonstrate a President willing to sacrifice the good of his own country, the good of the military men and women that he leads, for the good of his own political aspirations.
Please read the rest of the report…
Flashback: Dems Claims That Ryan Would End Medicare Named "Lie of the Year"
The question is, how do they sort through all of the lies coming out of the Democrat party during the course of an entire year?
The first line of attack against Paul Ryan out of the Democrat party has clearly been the claim that he wants to end Medicare.
Paul Tonko (D-NY):
Governor Romney’s pick of Congressman Paul Ryan confirms his commitment to the radical Republican budget. As the lead author of this extreme thinking, Paul Ryan proposed and Tea Party House Republicans passed a budget that would end the Medicare guarantee as we know it and shift costs onto the backs of seniors….
Julian Schreibman (running against Chris Gibson):
Congressman Chris Gibson’s embrace of that agenda – including supporting Ryan’s budget plan to end Medicare as we know it …
Bill Nelson (D-FL):
Romney VP pick bad for seniors. Signals an end to Medicare as we know it.
David Axelrod (Obama adviser on lying):
President Barack Obama’s senior campaign adviser David Axelrod says the Medicare changes supported by Rep. Paul Ryan, the likely Republican vice presidential candidate, would put the popular health-care plan for the elderly in “a death spiral.”
Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader on lying):
By picking Rep. Paul Ryan, Gov. Romney has doubled down on his commitment to gut Social Security & end Medicare as we know it.
The problem with these claims is that they’re simply untrue. Left-leaning Politifact even had to squash the Democrat claims back in 2011, naming it the biggest “lie of the year” (h/t Weasel Zippers).
Republicans muscled a budget through the House of Representatives in April that they said would take an important step toward reducing the federal deficit. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies.
Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care “because Republicans voted to end Medicare.”
Rep. Steve Israel of New York, head of the DCCC, appeared on cable news shows and declared that Republicans voted to “terminate Medicare.” A Web video from the Agenda Project, a liberal group, said the plan would leave the country “without Medicare” and showed a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff. And just last month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a fundraising appeal that said: “House Republicans’ vote to end Medicare is a shameful act of betrayal.”
After two years of being pounded by Republicans with often false charges about the 2010 health care law, the Democrats were turning the tables.
PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.
Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year.
In fact, if you click on the Poltifact article you’ll see nine different ways the Democrats have made the same claim laid out on the right side of the page. Each claim that Ryan’s plan would “end Medicare” has been labeled as false, or with the more subtle “pants on fire”.
Here’s video of Paul Ryan actually explaining his plan for Medicare (h/t Twitchy):
Politifact Backs Up Priebus – Harry Reid IS a Dirty Liar
Earlier this week, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus repeated an assertion that Harry Reid is nothing more than a “dirty liar” publicly for a third time.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus has upped the ante in his war of words with Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over Mitt Romney’s tax returns.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends,” Priebus put all his cards on the table, continuing to hammer the Senate Majority Leader.
“There’s no triple down in blackjack, but I’ll triple down on my comments from yesterday,” Priebus said. “It’s just the truth. What else do you call somebody who goes onto the Senate floor and claims that someone hasn’t paid taxes in ten years, a complete lie, and uses his official office to do it?”
Priebus’ attacks stem from Reid’s interview with The Huffington Post on Tuesday, where the senator cited a Bain Capital source who claimed that Romney skirted past paying his taxes for 10 years. In a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Priebus called it a “made-up issue,” refusing to “respond to a dirty liar” in reference to Reid.
“You just called him a dirty liar,” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked. “You stand by that — you think Harry Reid is a dirty liar?”
“I just said it,” Priebus said.
Not only does Priebus stand by the statement, so does fact-checking organization Politifact, who has given Reid’s claims that Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years a rating of “pants on fire”.
Reid has said Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. It was no slip of the tongue. He repeated the claim on at least two more occasions, at one point saying that “the word is out” when in fact it was only Reid who put that “word” out.
Reid has produced no evidence to back up his claim other than attribution to a shadowy anonymous source. Romney has denied the claim, and tax experts back him up, saying that the nature of Romney’s investments in Bain make it highly unlikely he would have been able to avoid paying taxes altogether — especially for 10 years.
Reid has made an extreme claim with nothing solid to back it up. Pants on Fire!
Seriously, who is actually dumb enough to fall for this tactic? Aside from Nancy Pelosi of course. This is nothing more than trying to divert attention away from President Obama’s record yet again. It is simply Reid’s latest “Squirrel!” tactic. Unemployment is above 8% again … uh … Squirrel!
First Solar Given Millions to Buy Panels From… First Solar
Who knew the Obama administration was so good at government versions of three card monte?
Erika Johnsen at Townhall reports:
Just add it to the Obama administration’s ever-lengthening list of ridiculous stimulus-related schemes: a well-subsidized solar company received a federal loan guarantee (backed, it goes without saying, by The American Taxpayer) to sell solar panels… to itself.
And here’s the story from the Washington Examiner:
First Solar is the company. The subsidy came from the Export-Import Bank, which President Obama and Harry Reid are currently fighting to extend and expand. The underlying issue is how Obama’s insistence on green-energy subsidies and export subsidies manifests itself as rank corporate welfare.
Here’s the road of subsidies these solar panels followed from Perrysburg, Ohio, to St. Clair, Ontario.
First Solar is an Arizona-based manufacturer of solar panels. In 2010, the Obama administration awarded the company $16.3 million to expand its factory in Ohio — a subsidy Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland touted in his failed re-election bid that year.
Five weeks before the 2010 election, Strickland announced more than a million dollars in job training grants to First Solar. The Ohio Department of Development also lent First Solar $5 million, and the state’s Air Quality Development Authority gave the company an additional $10 million loan.
After First Solar pocketed this $17.3 million in government grants and $15 million in government loans, Ex-Im entered the scene.
In September 2011, Ex-Im approved $455.7 million in loan guarantees to subsidize the sale of solar panels to two wind farms in Canada. That means if the wind farm ever defaults, the taxpayers pick up the tab, ensuring First Solar gets paid.
But the buyer, in this case, was First Solar.
A small corporation called St. Clair Solar owned the wind farm and was the Canadian company buying First Solar’s panels. But St. Clair Solar was a wholly owned subsidiary of First Solar. So, basically, First Solar was shipping its own solar panels from Ohio to a solar farm it owned in Canada, and the U.S. taxpayers were subsidizing this “export.”
VIDEO: Allen West to Obama, Reid, Pelosi – ‘Get the Hell Out of the United States of America’
Somebody pinch me. I’m starting to wonder if this man is a machine, programmed for perpetual awesomeness.
Via the Blaze (Video below):
Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) had a strong message Saturday for President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “Get the hell out.”
West made the comments during a speech at a Palm Beach County GOP event in West Palm Beach.
“This is a battlefield that we must stand upon. And we need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and my dear friend, chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain’t on the table,” West said.
The audience was booing by the time West got to Pelosi’s name.
“Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else,” he continued. “You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.”
Mental Recession 