Thursday, October 30, 2008

Charlie Gibson Challenges Obama; The One Dodges FTW!

Charlie Gibson must be trying to reclaim a bit of his journalistic credibility after his sneering ambush of Moose-Slayer because he attempted to ask the Fuhrer-in-waiting about his broken promises about contributions. Notice how Obama never actually answers the questions.

GIBSON: You're going to have a half an hour broadcast tonight on a number of the networks. And the expense is not inconsiderable to buy that much time.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: Aren't you able to buy it only because you broke a promise on campaign financing?

OBAMA: Well, look, there is no doubt that the amount of money that we've raised in this campaign has been extraordinary and surprised me as much as anybody — maybe more than anybody. 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.

GIBSON: But you haven't released their names.

OBAMA: We've got...

GIBSON: We don't know who they are.

OBAMA: Well, look, the — a whole bunch of them were out here today. 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...

GIBSON: Shouldn't we know the names of that list?

OBAMA: Look, you know, 3.1 million donors would be a pretty hard thing for us to be able to process. And we have done everything that's been asked of us under the FEC guidelines. These are small donors. They're ordinary folks. And the idea behind all campaign finance reform is to make sure that the public official is not bought and sold; that that public official is accountable to the public, that they are not subject to undue influence by big special interests in Washington and lobbyists.

And we don't take lobbyists' money. We don't take money from PACs. And there's no industry, there's no group out there that I owe favors to as a consequence of this campaign. In fact, I would argue that probably — should I be successful, I may come into the White House with fewer strings attached to me than just about any presidential candidate in history. I wasn't even supported by the establishment in the Democratic Party when I started this race.

So I don't have a lot of — a lot of chits out there that are going to be collected.
Unpacking this bag of manure in reverse order:

1. He owes the George Soros/Can'tMoveOn.Argh/anti-war/race hustling/fascist-socialist groups and the Treason Media for their support and it's amusing that he thinks we're so gullible as to believe he's not beholden to all those people, especially Soros.

B. It's too hard to report 3.1 million names? Really? You can't just have someone pull the list of names from the database? Federal law doesn't require donations under $200 to be reported and thru this loophole Obama has created a massive criminal operation to launder illegal contributions through. The RNC has a website where you can search for donations under $200; Obama insists on hiding the sources of his money. As this American living in South Africa demonstrates, it is possible to contribute from people and places you shouldn't be able to. I know Obama is running for Emperor of the World, but under the laws of this tiny country, they world can't legally fund his propaganda machine.

3. He totally dodges the fact that he broke his promise to take public financing. The irony of this is that the Left has always been yammering for public financing of elections - allegedly to "get the money out of politics" - but when they find a cult leader who can fleece the flock and bamboozle a country into voting away their rights and freedoms, then, well, it's ka-CHING! time, innit? Hypocrisy is the coin of the liberal realm.

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INSTA-UPDATE: Heh. Just after posting this, I see Mark Steyn poo-poo'ed the idea that Gibson was anywhere near hard on Barry.

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.

Steyn = teh aW3s0m3Z!1!!!

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